‘Islam will make India progress’
Former SIMI president Yasin Patel was arrested under POTA and is considered anti-national. SHOMA CHAUDHURY explores this allegation
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‘Democracy’, ‘secularism’, ‘nationalism’ are all man-made ideas imported from the west. They were largely born out of the war with Christianity. In the medieval ages, the Church which emphasized blind faith dominated every aspect of life, and its excesses became associated with the idea of god itself. But the Dark Ages of Europe was the best and most enlightened time of Islam. When this world came into contact with Islam in medieval Spain, it learned a lot. Science, invention, medicine and the pursuit of knowledge flourished in Islamic Spain. There was the renowned philosopher Avicenna and the inventor of algebra, Al-Khwarizmi. Knowledge -- uloom – is highly valued in Islam. We believe God is all-knowing, so to increase knowledge of the world is to increase knowledge of Him. This flood of uloom touched the Christian world and triggered the Enlightenment which countered religion based on blind faith. But there was a big adverse impact on Islamic Spain – the stories of the Inquisition make one’s hair stand. (There were lots of reasons why the Church had become like that – one reason was that Christ’s teachings were not in writing. There is no existing Bible in the language he spoke so one has to rely on translations.) The point I am making is, the impact of Spain on Christianity was that a conflict with the Church and by extension, God Himself, was born in the western world. The French Revolution was another big event which fashioned the ideas of democracy and secularism. Nationalism? Hitler had a big hand in that. Two World Wars were fought in the name of nationalism – everyone of the same religion, all white, but they devastated each other for nationalism. All these concepts fundamentally deny God and His role in our collective lives. They only sanction his role in our personal life. Then the question arises – who has the moral right to make laws for our collective life? Every individual. But this is obviously not practical, so we are back to square one. Choose your representatives, go to Parliament, debate, resolve, make laws. But in such societies, you can have many debates, many laws, and still get the opposite effect. To give you an example, America had no ban against drinking, yet seeing its ills, they had to bring in Prohibition in the 1920s. But instead of reducing the evil, things got so bad, in 1933, they had to lift the ban. See bans are not enough, there has to be a motivation as well. Who is making the rule? Is it an undisputed moral authority that a society subscribes to with its heart and mind? The problem with democracy as it is practiced is that it makes the individual the sovereign. So it is not democratic debate and discussion, not just the most informed or educated or convincing voice whose opinion carries weight, it is sheer numbers that is given emphasis. People are not counted but weighed. Look at India itself – many of the ills we face today is because of electoral politics – the game of numbers that passes for democracy. And India is being torn apart by sub-nationalisms. This is why we say 'No Democracy, No Nationalism, No Secularism'.
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