Leap of a closed mind

Untimely meditations
With the end of the cold war and the triumph of liberalism over socialism there were high hopes that the world would enter the third millennium with everlasting peace. The new millennium, instead, has brought forth factors like religion, which was presumed to have receded under the disenchanting force of modernity.
In its initial phase, modernity also brought about change in non-western societies, including Muslim societies. Under this influence the secular Muslim intelligentsia during the colonial and post-colonial period tried to interpret religion in light of modern realities. This trend was visible in Muslim societies from Morocco to the Far East. This re-examination of the traditional way of thinking about Islam in early modernity was necessitated by the increasing influence of European ideas and culture in Muslim societies.
Albert Hourani in his book ‘Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789-1939’ masterfully examined the Arab revival (nehda) and interface of Arab societies with European culture and states. The leadership in the post-colonial period remained loyal to liberal ideals and tried to change societies on secular lines.
One of the shortcomings of the secular/liberal narrative in Muslim societies is that an alternate secular narrative was not developed because a complacent and uncritical approach to liberalism in local settings scuttled the possibilities of emergence of critical secularism thought in Islam. On the other hand, Islamists organically became part of the everyday life. When the veneer of secularism was ripped off by developments in the later decades of the previous century, Muslim societies found themselves without alternatives. This vacuum was filled in by forces of Islamism. Now the repressed have returned with a vengeance – as Islamists bent upon purging traditional Islam as well as secularism.
The Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Isis and Boko Haram are not embodiments of the old, traditional order of Islam for they do not derive their legitimacy from tradition. Rather they are forces that have succeeded to break the traditional world view of Islam by defying tenets and procedures that have succeeded to keep the religious worldview intact despite the onslaught of modernity.
Instead of following traditional Islam, the new forces of Islamism try to delegitimise the traditional narrative. It is their ability to break the traditional worldview that enables them to destroy the symbols and icons that were deemed to be representative of divine order in the world. The destruction of tombs and mausoleums of revered religious figures, and religious heritage etc, is a manifestation of the weakening control of the traditional worldview of Islam.
In Muslim societies, secular-minded intellectuals are trying to build an alternate narrative against the rising tide of violence, but their efforts have not been successful for reasons that are both external and internal to their discourse. The external element is the success of ideologues in distorting the idea of secularism by painting it as anti-religion.
Much has been written about the external aspect but the internal dynamics of the formation of secular discourse has not got the attention it deserves. A salient feature of the internal dimension of secular discourse in Muslim societies – with particular reference to Pakistan – is the inability of the secular intelligentsia to decouple secularism from the western variant and the failure to link with internal syncretic traditions that are more close to secularism.
It is a common mantra of the secularists in Pakistan that the objective conditions are not ripe for secular ideas and progressive change. Andrew Rippin, in another context, calls this attitude a “failure of nerves”. Among the much-touted prescriptions of secular ideologues to the solution of complex interface between religion, state and society is the prescription to separate religion from the state.
But so far the secularists have failed to find a space because they lack the required resources and organisations to create basic intellectual capital and connect with people’s life world. On the other hand, Islamists are linked with organic institutions, though for the wrong reasons.
In order to counter violent Islamism, a localised, fractured and fragmented secular counter-narrative is needed. But it cannot be launched unless we re-examine and rethink secular ways of seeing things in different cultural milieu and religious contexts. But, instead of drilling deep into our collective unconscious and diagnosing this malaise, we look at the symptoms and use a universal prescription.
Even those sections of ulema who are against the violent elements of Islamism, and declare Osama, Taliban, Boko Haram and Taliban as non-Muslims, tend to seek easy solutions to the intractable demons within their fold. They reject the existence of such elements within by simply labelling them non-Muslim. Thus they indulge in the same game that is played by exclusionary Islamists. In reality violent actors are escaping from the whole and dictating it. These forces are not foreign to us, rather they emerge from the contradictions in the hegemonic interpretation of what Professor Arkoun call the “official closed corpus.” Declaring internal elements as aliens precludes us from an understanding of broader socio-economic and political dynamics and processes in Muslim societies that give birth to violent elements within.
Muslim thought today has become a prisoner of the closed corpus of knowledge that was produced during the last millennium. In the face of the multi-faceted challenges and convoluted nature of contemporary time and civilisation, both fundamentalists and secularists have failed.
It is imperative to break the epistemic chains of both the traditional and modern variety. This can be done by taking what Karen Armstrong called a ‘psychological leap’. To take that leap we need to have the mental prowess to jettison securities furnished by a closed mind.
Much harm has been done by sticking to the boundaries of our respective ideologies. Violence thrives on this division. It is time to let the discourse of secularism take a leap into the sacred, and the religious narrative of the sacred into the secular. Only by crossing the boundaries can we open our mind and thus pave the way for an open society and alternate world.
The writer is Crossroads Asia Fellow at Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin. Email: azizalidad@gmail.com