The Curse of Intolerance

Islam brought a message of peace, amity, tolerance, equality and justice for all mankind. The messenger was chosen in a society riddled with all kinds of social and moral evils. Contrast between the religious teachings and the then reality on ground couldn’t be greater. There was bigotry, usury, intolerance, slaves were treated worse than animals ,blood feuds and tribal warfare were common. Women though not quite at par with men, did enjoy a much higher status than their sisters did in Europe and other countries. They owned properties and businesses, proposed marriage to men, The Prophets first wife proposed to him before the advent of Islam, and a woman had offered a hundred camels to his father as marriage portion before he married the prophets mother.
The prophet preached equality of man and woman, rich and poor. He forswore any compulsion in faith. He forgave his enemies, who had tortured him and his followers. When Mecca surrendered, he forbade any revenge. He enjoined protection of non-believers.
After the prophets demise, there was some dispute over succession. Ansars (natives of Madina) had actually chosen a successor who was prevailed upon to abdicate in favor of Abu Bakr (RA). He nominated Umar(RA) to succeed him.. Umar didn’t designate a successor. There was a tussle between factions supporting Usman(RA) and Imam Ali (RA).
By this time, idealism had given way to pragmatism, Usman (RA) was chosen as the third Caliph, by a procedure regarded by some as not quite above board. He belonged to the Umayyad clan, who had been among the most bitter foes of the prophet. Usman was assassinated, complete breakdown of law order followed. Imam Ali, now reluctant to wear the mantle of Caliphate was prevailed upon to accept the office. Muaviya, of the Umayyad clan, governor of a province, rebelled, civil war ensued, in which close companions of the Prophet were pitted against each other. and killed each other- in the name of Islam.
Supporters of Ali (called Shian’s Ali) a political group which later metamorphosed into a religious sect. There is no evidence that, at the time, Shias had religious beliefs different from that held by other Muslims.
Muaviya was able to take over the Caliphate after Imam Ali(RA) was assassinated by making a deal with Ali’s elder son(Imam Hasan) that the younger son Imam Husain will succeed Muaviya. Breaking his word, he designated his son Yazid to Caliphate. Imam Husain (RA) was enticed into an ambush and all male members of the family except Imam Zainul Abedin (RA)were killed.
During Umayyad rule which lasted a hundred and twenty years, the prophets family were closely watched, but otherwise left alone. They, themselves, shunned politics and kept busy with spiritual and academic pursuits.
Abbasids, descendents of the prophets uncle, Abbas, invoking the name of the Prophets family, incited a rebellion against Umayyad rule, and overthrew them. They initially paid lip service to the descendents of the prophet, going to the extent of offering them caliphate and ostensibly ruled in their name. In actual fact, being beholden to the latter, they were more apprehensive of the clan, than even Umayyad were. They kept the family under strict surveillance and once secure in power, put severe restrictions on them, and even tortured them. The last Imam, a young boy at the time, went into hiding in a cave and was never seen again. Shias believe that the Imam will return one day and redeem all Muslims.
During Abbasid caliphate, religious scholars was coerced into concocting a lot of Hadith (sayings of the prophet). Imam Bukhari the most credible compiler of Hadith critically analyzed over 600,000 purported sayings of the Prophet, and was able to accept only 7,397. Other nearly equally accepted compilers Imams Muslim and Tirmizi came to similar conclusions.
It is reported that the Prophet had expressly prohibited the collection of his sayings, lest they be put at par with the holy book. The prophets apprehension has come true. The majority of Muslims speak of Quran and Sunnah ( the Prophets sayings and examples from his life taken together.) In fact, one group of Muslims call themselves Ahl-e-Hadith. This sect formally equates Hadith and the Quran.
The veneration Muslims gave to the prophets family was initially frowned upon, later discouraged and finally condemned as un-Islamic.
It was during this period that, ostensibly, in the name of purging Islamic thought, of pagan beliefs, the religion was shorn of all tolerance, mercy, justice, arts and poetry, equality of races, and genders. Ibn-e-Tammaya, a leading cleric of the period, was the principal proponent of this “purification” of belief. Wahab, after whose name, the Muslims of Saudi variety are named was a latter day follower of Tammaya.
I have given a brief background of the genesis of the major sects of Islam(Shia-who followed the Quran and teachings of Imam Ali and his direct descendents, the Imams and Sunni-who followed Quran and Sunnah., so one can understand better, that a political movement, evolved essentially due to persecution of followers of Imam Ali ,led to divergence in the belief system. and was used for political advantage. Fatimids ( Shias ) were thrown out of Egypt by Sunnis and Shias took over Iran from Sunnis. Muslims rulers in India were mostly of Sunni persuasion except for occasional prevalence of Shia doctrine, mainly under the influence of Shia women imported as wives for Moghal princes. There were also several Shia regional rulers, specially in Oudh (part of UP) where the capital Lucknow, became the Shia capital of all India.
The only period of intolerance during Moghal rule was the reign of Aurangzeb, who actively discriminated against Muslims who did not agree with his beliefs, imposed Jizia (poll tax) on non-Muslims, but he could not over turn centuries of harmonious traditions. His own grand mother was a Hindu, his army chiefs counted several Hindus among their ranks. In fact, there is reason to believe that he used religion to advance his political ends. He could not have gotten the support of the Muslim establishment if he had not adopted the classic slogan of “Islam in Danger” used effectively by later demagogues too, against his elder brother Dara Shikoh, who was the Crown Prince and of Sufi persuasion.
But the common people, though disparaging each other’s beliefs, lived peaceably together, joining hands when faced with a non-Muslim foe.
British take over changed all that. Muslims went through a period national mourning and profound depression, giving up education and other enterprises. They had lived on land and largesse of Nawabs. The lands were confiscated and Nawabs banished, leaving most Muslims in North/East India destitute. Attempts at educating the them were dubbed heretical. Sir Syed Ahmad and his cohorts were openly condemned as Kafirs.
Decadent societies have a tendency to develop fissures in them.. All kinds of sectarian disputes came to the surface .At this time we come across a few instances of intolerance between the two sects.
With advent of the Industrial age, the concept of Nationalism had developed , and caught the imagination of Indians too.
Indian national congress, brain child of a liberal Englishman was founded in 1885. Nationalism took root and within a few decades started challenging British paramountcy.
The British who had conquered India by the Machiavellian techniques of divide and rule, had not lost their touch. They actively incited inter and intra faith conflicts. Extremists, Hindu, Muslim and the various sects among the two religions, played into British hands and went at each others throats.
Their machinations against Muslim sects in Lucknow are well documented. They bought a printing press for an extremist Sunni cleric who published highly inflammatory diatribes against Shias. The British also financed a “Sunni” college to rival the long established “Shia” college. There were some Shia Sunni riots.
But extremist bigots were shunned by the majority of both Shias and Sunnis. I clearly recall my family (Sunni) refusing invitations to the houses of fanatics, while we frequented both Shia and Hindu houses.
Let us go back about three centuries in history. Abdul Wahab a mediocre cleric, whom I have mentioned above too, tried to revive intolerant and exclusionary doctrines of Abbasid period. He didn’t get any where, till the house of Saud adopted his creed in a fight against fellow Muslims- Shareef, a descendent of the prophet and the ruler of Mecca and the Turkish caliphate. His influence was restricted to Saudi Arabia till oil was discovered, and Saudi rulers in order to divert attention from their debaucheries and luxurious un-Islamic life style started financing the export of his creed.
Sporadic Shia-Sunni violence continued in India and Pakistan till the advent of Zia, the Pakistani Machiavelli who in order to undermine peoples party (of Bhutto) promulgated the so called “Islamisation” program,( and also ordained creation of ethnic parties, the foremost being Mohajir Qaumi Movement (immigrant national movement) and as counter foil to it, Punjabi Pukhtoon Mohaz(Front) and Jia Sindh(Long live Sind movement).Sowing dissension among Muslims, according to a generally accepted saying of the prophet, condemns one to ever-lasting hell fire. Zia got a fore taste of it right in this world.
To give the devil its due- MQM did put a stop to Shia-Sunni riots during its hey day in Karachi.
Zia, whose rule was precarious initially, with the country on the verge of economic collapse, saw his salvation in the American sponsored Jihad against Russians in Afghanistan and gave Pakistan a culture of drugs and guns. After Russians were thrown out and a brief interregnum of war-lord rule, Saudi financed and Pakistan/ American trained, Taliban/Al Qaeda took over. in Afghanistan.
Taliban unleashed a reign of fundamentalist terror, clubbing women publicly for wearing high heels, inspecting pubic areas of men to see if they were properly shaved, measuring beards for proper length, closing girls schools, dismissing female physicians, publicity stoning alleged adulterers, and as though they had not gathered adequate international opprobrium, demolishing millennia old statues of lord Buddha, on the pretext that the international community had not listened to their appeal for help. (Taliban were so ignorant, I won’t be surprised if they believed that the French, Russian, and American Presidents, the British Prime Minister and head of the European union were all Buddhists).
With their roots in Pakistan and the economic/ moral morass the country was in, with attendant illiteracy, export of Taliban theology to Pakistan was inevitable. Add Al Qaeda to it and the mixture became too rich.
Shias, a small national minority were easy target and with perversity of a fanatic, Wahabis went after Shia doctors, engineers and professors with a vengeance.
The military, heavily infiltrated with fundamentalist, revanchists Jihadis collaborated with their civilian counter parts. The other elements of the ruling combine (Feudal, , Civil servant and Mullahs) aid and abet the Jihadis, as any progress, economic ,educational, or industrial, all pre-requisites of Capitalism, which would loosen their grip on the country , would encourage democracy, and threaten their interests.
It can be seen that the roots of intolerance in Pakistani society run deep. They have been nurtured for base political purpose by Clerics, fundamentalist parties, and for nine long years by the military dictator Zia, who fanned the fire of ethnic hatred as well. His predecessor ad military dictator, Ayub, incensed by the les majeste of the Urdu speakers in Karachi had threatened to have them thrown in the sea. Ayub’s son Gohar, later to be speaker of the National assembly, and foreign minister, had incited ethnic riots after the 1964 Presidential elections in which Karachi had voted for his opponent Miss Jinnah in such overwhelming numbers, that “not all the King’s men and horses” could dare to declare Ayub the winner. The riots caused the loss of several hundred lives.
After the initial mass insanity of post partition years, Hindu –Muslim riots had died down in Pakistan. There were episodic Shia-Sunni riots.
The first big conflagration was the Anti-Qadiani movement spearheaded by religious parties. It was concentrated in the Punjab, where large part of the province had to be put under Martial law.
The military were able to crush the movement, but that gave them the initial taste of Government, wit eventual disastrous consequences for the country.
Zia, however, gave a credible structure and legal cover to intolerance. With territorial wars for control of gun and drug traffic to finance and give sustenance to riots, large parts of Karachi, the premier industrial and commercial center of the country was plunged into virtual civil war for several years in the nineteen eighties. Other parts of Sindh were reduced to anarchy too. Untold damage was caused to the country’s economy.
Though they do not have overt ethnic riots in Karachi any more, but there is no law and order in the country. Young hoodlums with green head gears charge around cities, harassing the public with impunity. Shia, (declared heretics by Wahabis) Mosques and , Christian churches are bombed with sickening regularity. People are prosecuted under the so called Hudood and similar laws on spurious grounds. A man is under the sentence of death for writing that there is no mention of stoning to death as a punishment for adultery in the Quran.
Dalit and other women of the disempowered classes are raped in untold numbers on a daily basis. The President, so incensed by the outrage among expatriates and the foreign press, lost his cool. Instead of accepting his mistake, he roared at a questioner in a meeting called to project a soft image of Pakistan. In an instant he lost all the favor he had assiduously gained in Human Rights and liberal circles by assigning a substantial number of seats to women in the national assembly, and taking other measures to combat discrimination against women
I have referred to this incident to high light the intolerance of the rulers of Pakistan to opposition. It is an integral part of the general malaise.
It is incumbent upon all rational people ( not just for idealistic reasons but in their own self interest, as fanaticism does not know national boundaries and the virus of hatred will spread) to oppose, condemn and take part in the struggle against the neo-Neanderthals (that the fanatics are ), and promote, aid and support, in every possible way, liberal and democratic movements every where, but specially in South Asia.