From: Dr. Salim Mansur <mansurss@hotmail.com>To: <shetubondhon@onelist.com>Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2000 3:29 PM
Subject: [Shetubondhon] Islam, Democracy, and America: Reflections of a Bangladeshi/South Asian MuslimDear Shetubondhon friends:
On being invited by one of my friends with Shetubondhon, I visited the Shetubondhon website recently. I was greatly surprised and deeply impressed by the forum and the exchanges that are being conducted through this medium. It was reassuring to see that this forum has set upon itself the task of bringing together people with diverse opinions, experiences, backgrounds, without any reservation to encourage free and open exchange of ideas and opinions that can only help contribute to the making of and nurturing a culture of Democracy.
This is my first posting to Shetubondhon. I will seek in my own limited and small way to add some colour to this forum. I am a Bangladeshi/South Asian Muslim and now a North American by choice and my thoughts will be reflective of the effort to bring the positives of the two cultures together. Hence I trust my opinion will be of interest to Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Most of us who have made North America our home by choice, necessity or otherwise are in a very privileged situation. We are located on a continent and at a point in time from where we can survey the past and the future direction of world history in a manner that others observing the same may not grasp the essential nature of change involved as readily or clearly as we may. It is this privilege that also places upon us a burden of responsibility as purveyors of ideas.
I read some of the archived pieces on the website of Shetubondhon. The vitality of thinking and healthy debating is self-evident. What I wish to add to these exchanges is an appeal that we strive to explain and understand the world unfolding in front of our eyes, to go beyond the obvious disparities, inequalities, injustices which abound and probably will become even more acute in the years ahead and identify that essential characteristic of our time which holds the potential for the upliftment of mankind in general and for those societies, such as Bangladesh, in particular were they to absorb the lessons of contemporary history . I hope in time I will have the opportunity to expand on what I view are the lessons of history we need to reflect upon and what I view is the essential characteristic of our time, which in my view is also essentially Islamic.
Here I may simply suggest as a beginning that we need to study, explore, analyse, understand what is truly the defining character of the United States as a democracy which has propelled it to become the richest, most powerful, most dynamic and creative society in human history. In a recent book America titled "American Exceptionalism" Seymour Martin Lipset, a highly respected sociologist, suggested "there can be little question that the hand of providence has been on a nation which finds a Washington, a Lincoln, or a Roosevelt when it needs him. When I write the above sentence, I believe that I draw scholarly conclusions, although I will confess that I write also as a proud American." I think we owe it to ourselves to grasp what America represents in history if we as Muslims are to convince Americans to grasp what Islam represents for mankind. I think, as I reflect over the past 25 years of my own living and struggling to come to terms with America, that many Muslims, perhaps a majority because of their particular experiences and perceptions maintain a view of America that has become an impediment to progress of Muslims as a people and Islam as a civilization. This view is not a denial of some very powerful forces within America which sees Muslims and Islam with hostility. The challenge for Muslims is to combat these forces as unrepresentative of American values of democracy and liberalism.
I also think that many Muslims worldwide, and again perhaps a majority, remains bound in a vision and understanding of Islam that is both inconsistent with the divine message and the reality of the emergent world in the post-Cold War epoch. If there is one great positive factor about Muslims from Bengal (or Bangladesh), it is that Islam came to this part of the world not as a soldier’s creed, not as a part of a conquering army, but as the norms of those who followed the path of the Prophet in practising "tasawwuf", the Sufi teachers such as Shah Jalal, Bayazid Bistami, Shah Amanullah and others, and who won the hearts and minds of the population by their personal integrity, examples and affection.
It is this heritage that can distinguish us within the world of Islam, though we are not alone in this respect. Most Muslims, however, have tended to forget this aspect of Islam and its appeal, and many have been dismissive about it in the wake of the appeal of Islam presented solely in its political dimension since the 1970s. Now we can look back from the vantage point of the 21st century to what extent this narrow, reductive view of Islam as politically oriented, primarily concerned with the politics of the state and all its various aspects of power, has been destructive for Muslims in general, and how the Muslim world has been reduced to an intellectual wasteland by the brand of Islam being practised that places a premium on its own romanticized past and seeks to exclude others.
A lot of people, Muslims and others, will greatly disagree with me. The evidence in some ways, however, point to continued failure of Muslims as a people bound by a faith and a tradition to build prosperous societies where equity and justice may eventually come to be realized at least in part. The Muslim world at the end of the 20th century found itself collectively to be even more broken up politically, economically, technologically, to fall even further behind the West than when the century began given the expectations and the promise of post-colonial development.
What we need to do is what periodically every Muslim sensitive to the reality of the world around him and the direction in which it was headed has demanded of Muslims. They have demanded of Muslims, be they Md Iqbal, al-Afghani, Sayyid Ahmed Khan, Abul Kalam Azad, Abdus Salam (perhaps the greatest Muslim scientist since Al-Biruni) and a host of others, that Islam be rethought in the spirit of the time. Ironically just about all of them (and in the case of Salam many will even dispute his faith!) were ignored. The spirit of our time, and for past several hundred years at least from the late 18th century, has been the unfolding of the idea of Democracy as Freedom from all the forces of negativity that enslaves mankind to superstition, ignorance, bigotry and poverty of spirit and matter. In this sense Democracy is a cultural reality more than merely a political arrangement, a culture that emphasise in ideas and in practice the values of freedom in all its apsects, of tolerance, respect of others, place of security for minorities and most importantly support for individuals to attain their full potential.
The Muslim world unfortunately has contributed little to this process during the past several centuries as we now look around, and by juxtaposing Islam against Democracy Muslims have continued to undermine both Islam and Democracy which are intimately boundin essence, that the full flowering of Islamic values can only take place within a democratic culture. This was true during the life of our Prophet only to be ruptured after his demise by his followers when Islam became usurped by authoritarian forces, and this arrangement of Islam presented as an authoritarian system has continued to haunt us. Consequently, as non-Muslim world discovered Democracy and began its journey into the Modern world (and this is in large part the story of America) which it created through its openness to knowledge and freedom (characteristics which once flourished in Muslim lands), it left the Muslim world behind to the extent that now the gap has become almost insurmountable.
The 20th century history is furthermore a confirmation of the failure of all those doctrines that were counterposed to Democracy, be they Marxism in all its various permutations, Fascism and other totalitarian ideologies which seek to enslave man in the name of some higher ideology. For Muslims the problem has been and continues to be reductive, limiting the understanding of Islam to some picture of a past held as glorious instead of recognizing that Islam is a divine message, timeless as all truths fundamentally are timeless and eternal, to liberate mankind from falsehood in all its innumerable forms. In part such a view as I am in a capsule form presenting suggests that an understanding of Islam cannot be bound by some interpretation made in the past, that an understanding of Islam in human mind is evolutionary, in keeping with the Quranic metaphor that Allah’s Word is inexhaustible even if all the oceans were converted to ink and all the trees were made into pen. Such an understanding holds the possibility of an emancipated human being able to reach for the stars, or to be a "dhumketu". In Iqbal’s poetry the Prophetic miraj, or ascension to heaven, was a metaphor for the inherent potential in man to climb upward towards heaven once he internalized the divine message of "tauhid". I believe this is what we Muslims need to debate, discuss and discover that hidden reality constituting Islam as Allah’s message which is ever new, fresh, dynamic even as it always and evermore will remain the same as received by the Prophets. Herein lies the universality of the Islamic message, that any people who embrace this message can swiftly emerge in the hierarchy of civilizations as once the Arabs and Muslims did a long time ago. This message seemingly has been forgotten by Muslims, and it might be said that in America we have more than a glimpse of this message in practice. Hence America offers to Muslims both the environment for such discussion and a model for what a people can achieve together.
In this first message I may have said things in brevity that may very well be misconstrued. So forgive me if I have said things that may appear improper or not fully articulated. I hope I will be able to contribute to the discussions on Shetubondhon, and I look forward to learning and growing together.
With my best regards,
Salim Mansur
Associate Professor
Department of Political Science
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canadaemail:
smansur@julian.uwo.ca; or mansurss@hotmail.com