ow is Riyasat-i-Madina relevant in the contemporary day and age? Needs and necessities of humanity have ceased to be the same. Specifically, after the industrial revolution, the whole world has qualitatively changed; modes of behaviour, patterns of thought, the entire weltanschauung has undergone a huge change.

Before the industrial revolution, there had been reformation, renaissance, and the age of enlightenment. These reform movements overlapped with one another. The bottom line is the volte-face that eliminated the space for a religious ideology to have practical efficacy.

The shift from a priori (revealed or intuitive ideologies) to the seminality of sensory perception controverted medieval thought and epistemic structures.

She seemed quite incensed with Imran Khan’s recurring invocation of Riyasat-i-Madina. She also alluded to the miniscule size of that state. It had not been any larger than a suburban settlement of a middle-sized city of Pakistan.

All these questions had pertinence with some pointed criticality that may erupt in any mind, particularly young folks. But let me give a brief introduction of the lady who is invariably in touch with me. I like conversing with her because she interrogates mega-narratives and she tries to bring new dimensions to the ideas and thoughts, which have a measure of acceptability. She has done a tripos from University of Cambridge, UK, securing first class with her dissertation and was graded as the best among all, written on themes concerning South Asia. Now she is working for an accounting firm in London. Her academic inclination makes her extremely uncomfortable in an otherwise coveted job. She is prodigiously erudite; book reading has been her passion ever since she was a child.

I now come to the responses that I furnished. Some of them sounded plausibly acceptable, and a few, she thought, didn’t make sense. But I will try to reproduce those responses nonetheless for young thinking minds to reflect and come out with their own opinions.

I believe that despite the industrial revolution and all the reform movements having taken place and affected big change in the thought, ideas and modes of behaviour of the people, these developments in fact inverted the process that eventually culminated in the germination of ideas. Before, the 17^th Century, a priori ideas wielded decisive impact on the material world.

After renaissance, reformation, and especially industrial revolution took place this process was turned upside down. Primacy of empiricism came to rule the roost. Sensory perception became the principal instrument of acquiring knowledge. Previously (a cultured) human was expected to strike a balance in physical, intellectual, moral and aesthetic dimensions. A fine balance in these dimensions is absolutely vital for an enlightened, and empathetic person. If anyone asks me to define human, I will advance these three traits to be present in a human. In other worlds, a fine synthesis in the tradition and modernity makes a man perfect.

However, with the onset of the modern world, the physical aspect dominated the others, thus creating a new man with unending material needs. Other (three) dimensions were also judged from the material viewpoint. Hence, the modern world, being determined largely through the modes of physicality and the human instinct, which in my reckoning have caused degeneration in what we understand by humanity.

Thus, the contemporary world is far more dangerous than the earlier one. Empathy, compassion and justice (rule of law) are still considered preconditions for any civilised society. These values are as much in practice in the modern world as they had been in the pre-modern era.

Muslim historians claim that these values were practiced in the State of Madina. As regards its size, well, how big was Athens, which is the locus of inspiration for the Western world? If the contributions attributed to Athens are subtracted, then the whole edifice of the Western civilisation would collapse. Now all civilised (developed) nations are developed and civilised at the expense of neo-colonial, poor (underdeveloped) states and societies.

Metropolitan bourgeoise, in cahoots with their indigenous front men, extract resources from the Third World and transfer them to the First World. The struggle against these exploiting countries needs to be revived by the re-invention of theory. Young thinkers must read Aijaz Ahmad and Jameson very closely and draw new conclusions from their works.

These reform movements erupted in Europe and these were the outcomes of the local situation(s). The revolt against nobility and clergy came about because of their highhandedness. The clergy didn’t allow any advancement in knowledge in various European countries. This created circumstances for these reform movements and the age of enlightenment. It was only through the agency of colonialism that the ideas that had spun out of these developments were introduced, rather reinforced.

Local traditions were denounced as superstition and specimens of irrationality. The result was that the people of the colonised world were left with no ‘tradition’ to create their own system of knowledge. When we talk of our tradition, one must bear in mind that religion is an important part of the local tradition. It needs to be emphasised that the local tradition must be allowed to evolve. Stagnation kills it.

Lastly, what is not highlighted enough is Muslim tradition’s intrinsic ability to take into account the needs of the individual as well as the collective. It provides a comprehensive framework in which the rights and obligations of the individual as well as the collective (state) have been ascertained. When the state was transformed into an empire, the vicinities, with (non-Arab) Muslims constituting the majority, situated at a distance from the centre were allowed to practice their own customs and conventions.

Having said all that, I do not insist that it was any sort of utopia. All human societies, civilisations and states have their upsides and downsides. After listening to what I said, she said that a Muslim rejuvenation could only come about if Muslims were ready to invest in meaningful education and ensure peace and prosperity in their countries. These are assertions, obviously, I could hardly disagree with.

The writer is Professor in the faculty of Liberal Arts at the Beaconhouse National University, Lahore