Islamic state and the Muslim world

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What is an Islamic state? This is a question that has been asked ever since the founding of the religion by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). As I will discuss later, this question has been answered in several different ways in different parts of the Muslim world.

Most recently, the question has become important as the various factions and leadership groups in Syria are attempting to establish a state that would serve its highly diverse population. What happens to Syria is likely to affect the rest of the Muslim world.

I should perhaps start with what Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founding father, had in mind when he campaigned for the establishment of Pakistan, a country in which the large majority of the citizenship would follow the Islamic faith. Was Jinnah creating an Islamic state or a country in which the large majority of the citizens would follow the Islamic faith?

He had an answer to this question in the much-quoted address delivered on August 11, 1947, three days before being sworn in as Pakistan's first Governor General. He made it clear that he had worked hard not to create an Islamic state but a state in which most Muslims of the British Indian colony would be able to live their lives as Muslims, not subject to the wishes of the Hindu majority that would greatly outnumber the Muslim subjects.

There was an enormous cultural difference between the members of these two communities. To illustrate this point, Jinnah is reported to have said that "whereas Hindus worship the animal cow, Muslims eat it."

In the countless meetings Jinnah had with the British leaders who had been instructed by the government in London to take India towards independence, he pressed this point and managed to convince the departing British that the best way for the two religious communities would be to let them have their own countries in which they would follow their own ways.

If Pakistan were to be created he did not suggest that it would be an Islamic state; only a country where the Muslim community could live comfortably not fearing intrusion by the majority Hindu population.

At the time the British handed over power to the successor states of India and Pakistan, their colony's population was estimated at 400 million people. Of these, one fourth or 100 million were Muslims. Of the Muslim population, 75 million became Pakistanis and 25 million stayed bank in India.

However, those who were to become Pakistanis would live in two parts, East and West Pakistan separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory. This was not a viable solution to what the British had called the "India's Mussalman problem". In December 1971, after a bitterly fought civil war, East Pakistan became the independent state of Bangladesh.

The people of Pakistan had to wait 70 years before they saw the truth in Jinnah's strongly held views about the cultural differences between the large religious communities that lived together uncomfortably under the British rule. When Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in India after winning the elections of 2014,

Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist, led the devoted followers whose aim was to turn India into a Hindu nation. The BJP made it clear that the large Muslim minority by then estimated to number 200 million – eight times its size in 1947 – could not be treated as equal to the large Hindu majority. Modi also began to work to change the name of India to Bharat.

There was logic in this move since the name India applied by the British rulers of the land they governed was named for the River Indus, one of the longest rivers in the world. It originated in the high plateau of Tibet and then flowed into Pakistan, not touching India. After moving through Pakistan it emptied into the Indian Ocean, through a large delta not far from the Indian border but not located in India.

I will go briefly into the history of Islamic states in the Muslim world. The first Islamic state was in the Arabian city of Medina to which the Prophet (peace be upon him) went after conveying the messages sent to him by God to preach to the Meccans. These came in the form of revelations in the Koran. In my fairly extensive readings on early Muslim history, I have found the book, The First Muslim, by Leslie Hazelton to be especially revealing.

According to her, the concept of al-Shura consists of the following four elements: One, selection of a leader to guide the discussion about Islamic governance. This leader was usually called the caliph. Two, all members of the community are given the opportunity to express their opinions. Three, the basic discussion should be to define public interest. Four, the majority opinion should be accepted as long as it does not violate the teachings of the Koran and Sunnah.

Muslim scholars of Islam identify the following countries as providing different interpretation of Islamic statehood. Brunei is an absolute Islamic monarchy, with the constitution of 1959 adopting Islam as the official religion. Iran's 1979 revolution led to the adoption of the doctrine of Imamate which initially allowed political rule by Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) or one his true successors.

The current supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is now the imam. Saudi Arabia leadership has declared the Koran and the Sunnah to be the official constitution of the country. The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan claim to have followed Saudi Arabia by declaring the Koran and the Sunnah to be the ultimate basis of governance. But the way they govern is not envisioned in the holy books of Islam.

Nowhere do the Islamic scriptures downgrade the status of women to the level to which they have been brought down by the governance structure in Afghanistan. The governing Taliban have gone to the extent of totally isolating women. They are not allowed to go to schools and educate themselves. They can't venture out unless they are accompanied by a male member of their family.

There are other examples of nations moving towards extremism in other parts of the Muslim world. Turkey, for instance, became a secular state patterned after those in the West. Its then leader, Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, brought about radical changes in the way the country was governed. He went about to the extent of abandoning the Arabic script in favour of Romanising the language thus depriving the Turks the knowledge of their own history. Tayyip Erdogan, the current president of the country, is attempting to bring his country back to its traditions.