Seeking Sense
Santosh Kr. Singh

Journey into Islam: The crisis of Globalization
by Akbar Ahmed. Penguin/ Viking. Pages 323. Rs. 525.

Post 9/11 the world seems to have changed irrevocably. The US-sponsored war against terror appears to be heading nowhere and everywhere at the same time at least in terms of its spirit of hatred, leaving a trail of blood behind. There is a fear that humanity may face apocalyptic doom if the fault lines are not cemented fast. Increased world wide phenotypical identification of the community as terrorists is one such state of despair. Islam and Muslims are increasingly being seen as inherently violent. The acceptance and irresponsible invocation of the words such as Islamophobia and Islamofascism by the West has further alienated the community and made them behave as a monolith in defense of increasing demonisation of the faith.

Thanks to the media networks, the vehicles of globalisation, the package of hatred and campaign of vilification generated by the USA in particular against the Muslims gottransported to every nook and corner of the world within no time. If the barbarism of Abu Gharaib and Guantanamo Bay by the American soldiers rubbed salt on the collective bruises of the believers of Islam, the gory video clippings of Saddam’s cold blooded hanging when beamed across the world through satellite networks it symbolised the pinnacle of crisis of globalisation and its role in fomenting the most dangerous divide ever in the history of mankind.

To find out the reasons and ramifications of this dreadful engagement between the West and the Islamic world Akbar Ahmad, the author, an internationally renowned Islamic scholar and professor at American University led a team of his young American students on a daring and unprecedented tour of the Muslim world what he refers to as ‘an anthropological excursion’.

From the mosques of Damascus to the madrassahs of Karachi and Deoband to the homes of Jakarta, Ahmed and his companion met with Muslims from all walks of life. They listened to students and professors, presidents and prime ministers, sheikhs and cab drivers, revealing stories of hopes and despair among the Muslims. Critiquing globalisation as a process without any ‘moral-core’ Ahmad agrees with Anthony Giddens for whom the process of globalisation is nothing but a little more than a ‘global pillage’ which puts a few on the fast track to prosperity leaving a vast majority to languish in misery and despair.

Placed in the vortex of tumultuous change and between the pulls of market and mosque Muslims find themselves increasingly at the receiving end of the process of globalisation, both existentially and symbolically.

Ahmad at this juncture talks about three models for the Muslim world, namely Ajmer model, Aligarh model and the Deoband model. While Ajmer model represents mystical Islam with its thrust on humanism and universal harmony, Aligarh model represents the west-savvy Islam with ‘reason’ at its centre. The Deoband, in contrast is orthodox and faith-bound.

Based on his experiences from the field Ahmad talks about immense possibility and ultimate hope in this interface and interaction based on mutual trust and understanding.

It is true that the west and especially the Americans have messed up with the Muslim world. They needed an enemy in the post cold war period to show their economic clout and bullish hegemony and they found it in Islamic societies. Yet it does not help to continue to harp about the west’s injustices alone. For it does not explain the rot within us, in our society, the failures of our own political elites, most of them representing the much celebrated Aligarh model of yore, the corrupt and dictatorial regimes collaborating against their own, the almost uncontested rise of religious fundamentalism instead of literacy and life-chances enabling avenues.

Where has the saner voice of the intelligentsia of our society disappeared? What led to the marginalization of the ‘sufi’ element as represented by the Ajmer model in the Islamic world view? What made a faith which considers ‘the ink of a scholar more sacred than the blood of the martyr’ so unreasoned and vulnerable to violent appeals? We may not be partners in al-Qaeda’s violent acts but neutrality is no intervention any more. Our silence and refusal to any self introspection are as damaging.

Journey to Islam by Ahmad is too America-centric/bashing and pays scant attention to the internal contradictions of the Islamic societies. So every thing that is happening in Pakistan, for instance, from Mukhtaran mai’s case to prolonged suspension of democracy is explained with the common tool of West’s anti-Islamic agenda.

Moreover, Ahmad falls in the trap of Huntington’s much maligned thesis and throughout continues to refer to the problem of the west with Islam as problem of two civilisations which contests many of his own understandings as articulated in the book.

The ambiguities in its prescriptions and gaps in the arguments notwithstanding, the book written with urgency and compassion makes a strong case for forming bonds across religion for a more harmonious world and hence worthy of readers’ interest.

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