Khurram Hussain - Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity

Islam as Critique

Islam of the Global West

Series editors: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri and Frank Peter

Islam of the Global West is a pioneering series that examines Islamic beliefs, practices, discourses, communities, and institutions that have emerged from the Global West. The geographical and intellectual framing of the Global West reflects both the role played by the interactions between people from diverse religions and cultures in the development of Western ideals and institutions in the modern era and the globalization of these very ideals and institutions.

In creating an intellectual space where works of scholarship on European and North American Muslims enter into conversation with one another, the series promotes the publication of theoretically informed and empirically grounded research in these areas. By bringing the rapidly growing research on Muslims in European and North American societies, ranging from the United States and France to Portugal and Albania, into conversation with the conceptual framing of the Global West, this ambitious series aims to reimagine the modern world and develop new analytical categories and historical narratives that highlight the complex relationships and rivalries that have shaped the multicultural, poly-religious character of Europe and North America, as evidenced, by way of example, in such economically and culturally dynamic urban centers as Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Madrid, Toronto, Sarajevo, London, Berlin, and Amsterdam where there is a significant Muslim presence.

Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape: Religious Pluralism and Secularism in the Netherlands , Pooyan Tamimi Arab

Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires, Xavier Bougarel

Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism, Merin Shobhana Xavier

To my father

Islam as Critique

Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity

Khurram Hussain

Contents

Only a year into his presidency, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent a curious letter to George W. Bush. Curious not so much in its content but in the very fact of its existence. No direct communication had taken place between executives of Iran and the United States in almost thirty years. And whatever indirect talk there had been was more of kin to Japanese kaiju movie titles than international diplomacy: The Great Satan versus The Axis of Evil, Death to America versus Tehran Terror Theocrats, and so on. It was an odd sort of thing then, this personal letter, from one head of state to another when the states they presided over had persisted, for so long, in carefully preserving a perpetual state of reciprocal enmity. Tensions with Iran had only intensified in the preceding years with the American war on terror grinding on in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq. And now, in 2006, the international community was becoming increasingly apprehensive about Irans nuclear energy program and debating possible sanctions at the UN Security Council. The letter was an exceedingly polite litany of complaints to Bush about US foreign policy, Western imperialism, and international double standards that ended with Ahmadinejad highlighting their common Abrahamic monotheism as a possible source of dtente between their two societies and a peaceful new world order. But it landed amid all the rancor as a feisty snowflake on oozing lava, preserving its form for the barest of moments before being obliterated. Bush quickly rejected any future official response from his office. The press reported state department officials (anonymously) deeming it a window into Iranian mentality... [an] inclination to dwell on myriad grievances of the past rather than... [deal] with its intransigence over the nuclear issue.lead to any dtente between the West and Iran, nor did it make the situation any worse. It provided occasion to ridicule Ahmadinejad for his naivete or his lunacy, an unnecessary addition to the brimming annals of the bizarre from the Orient. Other than that, this curious letter accomplished nothing.

Still, even as a faded curiosity, this letter deserves attention. It may have fizzled out abruptly and ignominiously in the West, but it received far more salutary and sustained attention in the Muslim world. Pakistans paper of record ( Dawn ) lauded Ahmadinejad for his pragmatism in trying to break the old taboos of directly addressing the Great Satan, a move to which the only opposition and derision appeared to be coming from Iranian hardliners and the US administration. Writing for Hurriyet Daily in Turkey, Professor Alon Ben-Meir of New York University suggested that

although his letter did not address the nuclear issue, it was clearly meant as an opening, and only by directly engaging the Iranians can Washington establish its own agenda for discussion. If it chooses not to, the administration, to the utter dismay of its friends and allies, will forfeit the chance afforded by a great opening to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East.

An editorial for Egypts Daily News called it one of those moments of clarity that show the huge gap between how the United States and the West see the world and how Muslims in the Middle East perceive it. No one was laughing and nary a soul was confused.

This makes sense. Nothing in Ahmadinejads letter was particularly obtuse. I will not regurgitate the entirety of the letters contents here; meriting the seriousness of its substance, the letter deserves a more considerable prcis than space permits. The salient points raised were the various different ways in which Western powers have continuously asserted their power over Muslim majority societies (Latin America also earned a brief mention) in exploitative, oppressive, and restrictive ways that render any claim to a moral high ground not just bogus but also constitutively corrupt. His tone is questioning and polite throughout, but critical, with an edge. He demands common standards of evaluation and judgment. He seeks underlying frameworks of shared vintage for understanding and dealing with the problems of the world. This last concern leads him to an emphasis on the traditions of the prophets and Jesus Christ and their shared monotheism as a possible basis for a conversation with the Christian Bush. Other than the unfortunate (and unfortunately obligatory) brief mention of Israel and the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad stays on message throughout. If in fact

One need not have any position on Ahmadinejads politics to understand both the appeal of his letter to Muslims around the world and its summary rejection and ridicule by Western audiences. It has little or nothing to do with his politics. Depending on point of view, Ahmadinejads offenses or accomplishments are one and the same. From a self-consciously Muslim point of view, and informed by the history of Muslims in West Asia (and not the West), he is questioning the commonsense paradigm that equates Western modernity and its institutions and values with universal progress. And he is seeking a conversation from an assumed position of discursive equality with his Western counterpart:

The people of the world are not happy with the status quo and pay little heed to the promises and comments made by a number of influential world leaders. Many people around the world feel insecure and oppose the spreading of insecurity and war and do not approve of and accept dubious policies. The people are protesting the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots and the rich and poor countries. The people are disgusted with increasing corruption. The people of many countries are angry about the attacks on their cultural foundations and the disintegration of families. They are equally dismayed with the fading of care and compassion. The people of the world have no faith in international organizations, because their rights are not advocated by these organizations. Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the Liberal democratic systems.