ISLAMABAD: This is with reference to Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy’s article “On choosing Popes and Caliphs” (March 22). By presenting his argument through giving the example of the process of electing the Catholic pope and drawing parallels between the pope and the caliph, Dr Hoodbhoy has at least admitted what his fellow liberals shy away from; that in drawing his conclusions about the role of religion in Muslim societies, he is borrowing from the intellectual experience of the Western world.
The bloodbath which Dr Hoodbhoy refers to was the result of deadly sectarian wars between Catholic and Protestant adherents of the Christian faith, when the Protestant Reformation movement arose in Europe. These wars plagued Europe for over a century in which, hundreds of thousands of Christians from both faiths died. Dr Hoodboy imagines that the Shia-Sunni divide in the Muslim world is the same as that of the Catholic-Protestant divide of Europe and the resultant sectarian violence which we are witnessing in Pakistan should be resolved in the same manner in which Europe resolved its problem with religion — by separating the temporal from the religion. This argument is flawed for a number of reasons.
First of all, the death toll in the Muslim world due to this sectarian violence is not even a shadow of what was witnessed in Europe’s wars of religion. Secondly, at the time of Europe’s sectarian wars, the temporal authority was with the Catholic Church when the Protestant movement rose against it, whereas in today’s Muslim world, the temporal authority rests with the secular ruling class whose failed policy of assimilation has resulted in divisions in society. Thirdly, Dr Hoodbhoy is either unaware or is deliberating choosing to ignore the geopolitical considerations for sectarian violence in Pakistan, which are directly linked to Pakistan’s flawed foreign policy of siding with the US and fighting its wars.
Fourthly, the huge volume of Islamic culture related to jurisprudence, in which different legal schools of thought flourished under the caliphate suggests that Islam not only tolerates, rather encourages, diversity of opinion and apart from a basic set of ideas and laws, it does not demand unity of thought and opinion. Lastly, the caliphate governed the Muslim lands for over a millennium in which not just different schools of thought within Islam flourished but minorities enjoyed full protection of their rights. If the caliphs and his governors were as bloodthirsty as Dr Hoodbhoy suggests, then how does he explain the Hindu majority under the Islamic rule in India or Coptic Christians and Jews present in Islamic lands after the destruction of the Ottoman caliphate? Perhaps, it is time Dr Hoodbhoy and his fellow liberals muster the courage to shun ideas borrowed from Western Europe’s intellectual and political experience and start afresh their studies by analysing the Muslim world’s experience with religion.
Moez Mobeen
Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2013.
