The ummah is at war with alone. What other way is there to explain the brutal bloodletting by Muslims of Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Turkey, and, of course, Pakistan.
To be reasonable, the ummah has not mattered for a prolonged time to the governments or peoples of Muslim lands. Point out-to-point out relations among the Muslim international locations have been astonishingly impartial of religious id. They have depended alternatively upon perceived self-fascination, domestic politics and the whims of rulers. Just look at the proof.
Pakistan was created on a spiritual premise. But, in the days of Suez Crisis of 1956, Pakistan’s posture was nebulous. It refused to aspect with Gamal Abdel Nasser following he nationalized the Suez Canal and threw out the British. On the other hand, India was active in the Non-Aligned-Motion, completely professional-Arab, and loud in assistance of liberating Palestine. To present gratitude, King Saud bin Abdul Aziz paid a state pay a visit to to India and declared that Indian Muslims had been remaining dealt with perfectly. There was outrage throughout Pakistan. Newspapers exploded in anger when Jawaharlal Nehru, on his return check out to Riyadh, was greeted by the king and with road banners in Riyadh bearing the slogan rasul-ul-salam (messenger of peace).
Dawn’s editorial of Dec 1, 1956, bitterly castigated the Arabs and “Nasser’s hatred of Pakistan, and adore of Bharat and its Nehru”. It went on to counsel that these types of sensate bias and blind prejudice “could properly be examined by psychiatrists”. In other words, the Arab world’s best hero of the instant was denounced as crazy.
These days, Pakistan has disputes with equally its Muslim neighbors, Afghanistan and Iran. Iran often lobs artillery shells about to Pakistan, as does Afghanistan. Pakistan has reciprocated with its artillery, when PAF jets brought down an Iranian drone final thirty day period. Ironically, Pakistan has outstanding relations with one of its neighbors – China, a communist point out that has banned the beard and burqa in its only Muslim-dominated province. India has great relations with both equally Iran and Afghanistan. And, India’s trade with China much exceeds Pakistan’s trade with China.
It is not just Pakistan. The Muslim monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both equally Wahabi, are virtually at war with every other now. Teeny very small Qatar, say the Saudis, is acting way too huge for its boots and are unable to conduct its personal foreign policy. Qatar has dismissed the Saudi-UAE desire to near down Al Jazeera, the Arab world’s only independent news supply. In reaction, all Qataris and their families, as perfectly as 15,000 dancing Qatari camels, have been expelled from Saudi Arabia.
Very last yr, Saudi Arabia’s highest civilian award was conferred upon Hindu Fundamentalist Narendra Modi by King Salman. The Saudi king remaining Kashmir and pellet guns unmentioned.
Saudi Arab’s war on Yemen shows the emptiness of the ummah notion. Directed against one of the world’s poorest Muslim nations around the world, it has so significantly killed 7,600 and wounded 42,000 Muslims. Most casualties have resulted from air strikes of the Saudi-led multinational coalition. Pakistan has shown very little concern. I have but to see a solitary Television information report or night chat clearly show discussing the Yemen war.
Ending Israeli profession of Palestine was at the time the ummah’s grandest cause that minimize by means of the Shia-Sunni divide. But now, Saudi Arabia is rapid nearing rapprochement with Israel. Equally nations see Iran as the bigger enemy. Right after the unsuccessful Arab Spring, Sisi’s Egypt and the Gulf’s monarchies fear Iran as an insurrectionary ability and favor to get the job done with Israel. Palestine is unmentioned.
In which does this go away the Business of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), whose job is to bring jointly and depict the ummah? Based mostly in Saudi Arabia, it has 57 member states and phone calls by itself “the collective voice of the Muslim globe.” The OIC has had very little to say about wars that have consumed Syria, Iraq, Libya, or Yemen. Nor is it applicable to any other conflict in between Muslim states or that within just them. It has nonetheless to give a single cent to desperate refugees who, as a substitute, need to count on the West.
Pakistan acquired into the OIC fantasy early on. But the euphoria of the 1974 Lahore conference structured by ZAB has absent with the wind. What is still left is the wonderful flag-adorned developing on the Structure Avenue in Islamabad that serves as Comstech, the greatest scientific body of the OIC, for which Pakistan pays the lion’s share of its working expenditures.
Comstech is charged with marketing science in just the ummah. This is a futile and misplaced energy due to the fact science does not have a religion. Insert to this the abysmal good quality of science in Muslim nations around the world (with Turkey and Iran only partly excluded). Prime minister Suhrawardy at the time famously remarked, “zero in addition zero as well as zero is just after all nevertheless zero”. Although he mentioned this of the Arab bloc through the Suez disaster, it is even now more true about scientific cooperation.
It is time to give the OIC a decent burial and conclusion the fantasy that Comstech can serve as the centre of Muslim science. Between the gains, Comstech’s staff members could be place to excellent use selling science in Pakistan with the making turned into a general public science library or science Exploratorium the place Pakistani children could be released to the wonders of science.
If Muslim states have paid no attention to the ummah, non-point out actors have paid even much less. They have slaughtered tens of hundreds of co-religionists. The Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban are like two wings of the exact fowl. Just one kills Afghan Muslims, the other kills Pakistani Muslims. Just one finds shelter in Pakistan, the other in Afghanistan. The militant IS team would seem to be almost everywhere and kills with even significantly less problem. There is no indication any of them will fade absent soon.
There is a way for Muslim states and peoples to transfer forward. This will require developing robust democratic establishments dependent on equal legal rights for all citizens, encouraging the participation of women in public lifetime, and respecting similarly all Muslim sects as properly as other religions, delivering house and freedom to people today and education and learning for all primarily based on science and motive.
