Puppets Of Faith Theory Of Communal Strife (A critical appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity ‘n more)

by BS Murthy

  For years thereafter, the Arabs, the deprived race of Ishmael, ensconced in the conquered lands, went about their life as though to compensate for their lost out forebears. What is more, they had ensured to make the subdued peoples of the conquered lands the servants of their God that is after enslaving them. It appeared as if Ishmael could have had the last laugh as his progeny planted Islam in the rich and fertile

  climates that he felt were unjustly denied to him, and what is more his tormented soul could have rested in peace, when, in the end, the M usalmans hoisted the flag of Islam in Jerusalem itself!

  However, the hatred for the idols that M uhammad inculcated in his believers, though as a tool to conquer Mecca, eventually fetched the highest dividends for Islam in Hindustan. M ahmud Ghazni, who opened its gates to the faith of M uhammad, would have had no reason to think of undertaking the task but for the tempting prospect of plundering its temples replete with riches besides defiling their deities falsified as idols by the M usalmans.

  Alberuni might have had a correcting influence on Ghazni's mind regarding the socalled Hindu idol worship had he preceded him; and then, perhaps, the subsequent Indian history would have been far less vicious! It is interesting to note Alberuni's observations regarding the religious beliefs and the philosophical orientation of the Hindus around the turn of the eleventh century.

  "The main and most essential point of the Hindu world of thought is that which the Brahmans think and believe, for they are specially trained for preserving and maintaining their religion."

  "Since, however, here we have to explain the system and the theories of the Hindus on the subject (idol worship), we shall now mention their ludicrous views; but we declare at once that they are held only by the common uneducated people. For those who march on the path to liberation, or those who study philosophy and theology, and who desire abstract truth which they call sara, are entirely free from worshipping anything but God alone, and would never dream of worshipping an image manufactured to represent him. A tradition illustrative of this is that which Saunaka told the king Pariksha in these words:

  "There was once a king called Ambarisha, who had obtained an empire as large as he had wished for. But afterwards he came to like it no longer; he retired from the world, and exclusively occupied himself with worshipping and praising God for a long time. Finally, God appeared to him in the shape of Indra, the prince of the angels, riding on an elephant.

  He spoke to the king:

  "Demand whatever you like, and I will give it you."

  The king answered:

  "I rejoice in seeing thee, and I am thankful for the good fortune and help thou hast given; but I do not demand anything from thee, but only from him who created thee.'

  Indra said:

  "The object of worship is to receive a noble reward. Realize, therefore, your object, and accept the reward from him from whom hitherto you have obtained your wishes, and do not pick and choose, saying, 'not from thee, but from another."'

  The king answered:

  "The earth has fallen to my lot, but I do not care for all that is in it. The object of my worship is to see the Lord, and that thou canst not give me. Why, therefore, should I demand the fulfillment of my desire from thee?"

  Indra said:

  "The whole world and whoever is upon it are obedient to me. Who are you that you dare to oppose me?"

  The king answered: "I, too, hear and obey, but I worship him from whom thou hast received this power, who is the lord of the universe, who has protected thee against the attacks of the two kings, Bali and Hiranyaksha. Therefore let me do as I like, and turn away from me with my farewell greeting."

  Indra said:

  "If you will absolutely oppose me, I will kill you and annihilate you."

  The king answered;

  "People say that happiness is envied, but not so misfortune. He who retires from the world is envied by the angels, and therefore they will try to lead him astray. I am one of those who have retired from the world and entirely devoted themselves to worship, and I shall not give it up as long as I live. I do not know myself to be guilty of a crime for which I should deserve to be killed by thee. If thou killest me without any offence on my part, it is thy concern. What dost thou want from me? If my thoughts are entirely devoted to God, and nothing else is blended with them, thou art not able to do me any harm. Sufficient forme is the worship with which I am occupied, and now I return to it."

  As the king now went on worshipping, the Lord appeared to him in the shape of a man of the grey lotus colour, riding on a bird called Garuda, holding in one of the four hands the sankha, a sea-shell which people blow when riding on elephants; in the second hand the chakra, a round, cutting orbicular weapon, which cuts everything it hits right through; in the third an amulet, and in the fourth padma, i.e. the red lotus. When the king saw him, he shuddered from reverence, prostrated himself and uttered many praises. The lord quieted his terrified mind and promised him that he should obtain everything he wished for.

  The king spoke:

  "I had obtained an empire which nobody disputed with me; I was in conditions of life not troubled by sorrow or sickness. It was as if the whole world belonged to me. But then I turned away from it, after I had understood that the good of the world is really bad in the end. I do not wish for anything except what I now have. The only thing I now wish for is to be liberated from this fetter."

  The Lord spoke:

  "That you will obtain by keeping aloof from the world, by being alone, by uninterrupted meditation, and by restraining your senses to yourself."

  The king spoke:

  "Supposing that I am able to do so through that sanctity which the Lord has deigned to bestow upon me, how should any other man be able to do so? For man wants eating and clothing, which connects him with the world. How is he to think of anything else?"

  The Lord spoke:

  "Occupy yourself with your empire in as straightforward and prudent a way as possible: turn your thoughts upon me when you are engaged in civilizing the world and protecting its inhabitants, in giving alms, and in everything you do. And if you are overpowered by human forgetfulness, make to yourself an image like that in which you see me; offer to it perfumes and flowers and make it a memorial of me, so that you may not forget me. If you are in sorrow, think of me; if you speak, speak in my name; if you act, act for me.”

  Again on the idol worship itself Alberuni's had this to say:

  " ... that such idols are erected only for uneducated low-class people of little understanding; that the Hindus never made an idol of any supernatural being, much less of God; and, lastly, to show how the crowd is kept in thralldom by all kinds of priestly tricks and deceits.

  Therefore the book Gita says: "M any people try to approach me in their aspirations through something which is different from me; they try to insinuate themselves into my favour by giving alms, praise, and prayer to something besides me. I, however, confirm and help them in all these doings of theirs, and make them attain the object of their wishes, because I am able to dispense with them."

  On the subject of idol worship Alberuni's views as follows are worth noting by M uslims who tend to revere, if not worship, the symbols of Islam:

  "It is well known that the popular mind leans towards the sensible world, and has an aversion to the world, of abstract thought which is only understood by highly educated people, of whom in every time and every place there are only few. And as common people will only acquiesce in pictorial representations, many of the leaders of religious communities have so far deviated from the right path as to give such imagery in their books and houses of worship, like the jews and Christians, and, more than all, the Manichaeans.

  These words of mine would at once receive a sufficient illustration if, for example, a picture of the Prophet were made, or of M ekka and the Ka'bah, and were shown to an uneducated man or woman. Their joy in looking at the thing would bring them to kiss the picture, to rub their cheeks against it, and to roll themse
lves in the dust before it, as if they were seeing not the picture, but the original, and were in this way, as if they were present in the holy places, performing the rites of pilgrimage, the great and the small ones."

  Contrast this with what we have now. The Quran is not only venerated as the Holy Quran but also handled reverentially in book form by every Musalman and his woman! The pictures of the Kabah adorn the walls of every Muslim home and business establishment! When it comes to Muhammad, it is hero-worshiping all the way, more fervent than any idol-worshipping ever.

  Besides, M uhammad's name in Islamic print must be obligatorily suffixed with pbuh, the short form of 'Peace Be Upon Him'. For whatever that might suggest to the M usalmans, the skeptics would feel that given the strife in his life the practice could be apt.

  However, sadly for the Musalamans, the legend of Muhammad, accentuated by the hearsays of his personal proclivities, vicissitudes of his life and the attitudes of his detractors, which the mechanism of their ummah perpetuates, shapes their abnormal psyche. What is worse, the sublimity of his preaching in Mecca and the severity of his sermons in Medina that make Islam a Janus-faced faith forever bedevil their minds to their and the others' eternal hurt. And that makes Islam a catch-22 from which Allah Ta'ala's Call is the only plausible escape.

  Chapter 14 Pitfalls of Faith

  If the ecstasy of the Quran is the soul of Islam, the legend of M uhammad is the mind of the Musalman. The exalted sense of his pedigree could have made Muhammad fiercely honest, even in the state of deprivation. It is to be appreciated that neither his insignificance as an orphan affected his self-worth nor his poverty dented his selfesteem. While nature endowed him with a shrewd mind his destiny seems to have

  helped him cultivate a sense of purpose. Though unlettered, he obviously possessed native intelligence, and thus was alive to every opportunity that came his way. Above all, at some stage at least, he seems to have developed an unwavering faith in his own destiny. As can be seen, he was an uncanny man manager and mob manipulator extraordinary.

  His exemplary personal courage in battle enabled him to lead by example, and this single character of his played no mean a part in the battles his faithful fought to raise the standard of Islam in the nations of the world. Though he grew up in an environment of sentimentality, he imbibed a balanced outlook that his stint as the Czar of M edina turned into statesmanship. The frugal lifestyle he adopted at the height of his fame and fortune could be owing to his personal proclivity or the public posturing, and / or both. It was thus, he was known to avoid material comforts, save his fondness for perfumes, apart from women; and that his faithful didn't mind as their culture acquiesced in both. Traditionally, there appears to be an inbuilt advantage for the prophets in the Abrahamic Order in that while it granted them to indulge as humans, it ordained the believers to revere them as divine just the same.

  While M uhammad's reconciliation with Abu Talib's refusal of Fakhitah's hand for him reflects his pragmatism, his marriage to Khadijah underscores his practicality. However, it would be erroneous to misconstrue his devotion to her as a necessary evil to ensure her munificence, for he remained faithful to her memory till the very end. It is worth noting that he considered his years with her as the happiest of his life.

  But what is remarkable was his fidelity to her in spite of her advanced age, and that too in the prime of his life, that was, notwithstanding his gusty libido. Needless to say, it reveals a rare strength of character and a great ability for self-sacrifice born out of strong personal conviction. And, for all that, it might have been for a purpose. But, whatever it was, that served him well in sustaining his creed in spite of odds.

  The very fact that in his otherwise well recorded life, there was nothing amiss in the lengthy chapter of Khadijah indicates that he could have led an amiable married life unmarred by scandal or quarrel. Sans Islam, still he would have had his place of honor in M eccan memory as Al Amin, and possibly remembered for long in his country. But that night of Ramadan, in a cave of M ount Hira, made all the difference to his memory.

  Given that the legend of Muhammad is a memorized byline of the Musalmans, for the teeming multitudes of believers there is much in the M uhammad's life to give solace and hope in this world whose worth the Quran deprecates any way. It could be owing to Muhammad's influence on them that the poorer sections of the Muslim community, even in today's materialistic world, tend to lead as frugal a life as possible.

  Thus, even as his billion strong faithful across the globe revere him as the Messenger of God, the rest of the world is wont to be skeptical about his personal ethics and question his credentials for prophethood. And what is worse, it decries his legacy for the fanatical intolerance and extremist adventurism of a band of his faithful. But then, one has to pay the price for power and fame; and if anything, so extraordinary a life like that of M uhammad would naturally earn the envy and suspicion of many. Whatever, in the history of man, there is no other man like M uhammad, who vertically splits the world opinion about his character and legacy, and /or both.

  However, even the genius of M uhammad could not have anticipated the antipathy of the Jews towards the Quran though he would have expected the hostility of the Quraysh on account of his antipathy towards their idols. On the other hand, he could well have hoped for the Jewish support in his tirade against the Arab idolatry as the Quran co-opted the Torah and the Jewish Prophets alike. Unfortunately, the

  overbearing Jews made fun of Muhammad's prophethood and poked holes in his preaching beside.

  This unexpected development gave rise to a unique situation in which Muhammad, while pursuing his agenda against Arab idolatry, had to defend Islam in the battle of dogma that the Jews forced upon it. After all, with the Jews being a formidable race who mastered the Torah for ages; Islam faced a theological crisis to Muhammad's chagrin, and that occasioned a schism amongst the Semitic Order. While the Quran accused the Jews and the Christians as renegades, the accused in turn called the Islam's prophet an imposter and plagiarist besides.

  This mutual acrimony has disastrous consequences for the human destiny, as the hostility that the Quran exhibits towards the kafirs, besides infusing a sense of separateness in its believers, inculcates in them a streak of aggression as well. Nevertheless, in the face of the Jewish onslaught, 'the God' tried to defend Muhammad thus:

  "Or they say: He hath invented it? Say: Then bring a surah like into it, and call (for help) on all ye can besides Allah, if ye are truthful."

  "Say: Verily though mankind and the J inn should assemble to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce the like thereof though they were helpers one of another.”

  "And if ye do not and ye can never do it - then guard yourselves against the fire prepared for the disbelievers, whose fuel is men and stones.”

  "And if they deny thee, say: Unto me my work, and unto you your work. You are innocent of what I do, and I am innocent of what ye do."

  As can be seen, the unceasing Jewish nagging seems to have had an unintended effect on the Quran itself, making it repetitive as if to drive home the issue rather desperately. Even otherwise, by and large, repetition is the characteristic of the Quran. Innumerable admonitions such as we have seen above, and elsewhere, get repeated, over and over again, in chapters and verses in similitude. It's as though 'the God' wanted to zero in on the human propensity of believing fervently what is repeated frequently.

  Besides, wouldn't censure directed against those whom we tend to abhor sound music to our ears? The Quranic accounts of the verbal tussles that M uhammad had with the Jews, the Christians and the idolaters invariably coloured its divine message itself. Moreover, the private conduct and the public campaigns of Muhammad that are integral to the Quran make it contextually mundane and temporally aggressive. Thus, the body of the Quran in its instructional mode accords Islam a code of conduct sans philosophy of discourse.

  However, as love and hate are the obverse and the reverse of the same human emotion, the fe
eling of alienation towards 'the others', nevertheless, brings in the M usalmans a sense of rare togetherness. In turn, this tends to inculcate amongst them the lofty ideal of the Muslim Brotherhood, which, ironically, in modern times causes them so much emotional hurt.

  Herein lay the dichotomy of Islam in that while it tries to bestow peace on the believers, it pours out scorn on the nonbelievers. While many Musalmans, probably unaware of the genesis of the WE -THEY syndrome steeped in many a contextual Quranic verse or those who deliberately ignore these, conclude that the rest of the peoples are unfairly hostile to the M uslim populace, and thus come to grudge the kafirs even more for that nevermind who's divisive in the first place.

  On the other hand, and sinisterly at that, the misguided Islamists, by taking the many inflammatory verses of Quran out of context, would be able to indoctrinate the gullible M usalmans in madrasas and the masjids to set them on the destructive course of jihad. Well, in turn, to the dismay of the world, the more cynical or more covetous of hurries among them turn into fidayen. It is thus; one comes to hear two voices of Islam - the hurt voice of the well-meaning M usalmans that their 'religion of peace' is being unfairly dubbed as the 'doctrine of death', and that of the Islamic fundamentalists spewing venomous hatred on the nonbelievers with Allah hu Akbar rants.

  Nonetheless, this dual dimension of Islamic reaction is not difficult to fathom either. That the Quran is recited in Arabic the world over, its ayats rendered to rhythm would have no more than a reverential impact on the majority of the M usalmans. Thus, they would be unaware of the Quranic instigations against the kafirs in such surahs as AlBaqarah, Ali-lmran, Al Ma idah, Al-Anfal etc. Such of the run-of-the-mill M usalmans in the know it, whatever their intellectual perception at finding such in a Holy Book, would not wager much on them. But the fundamentalists and the Paradise seekers swear by these very inimical verses of the Quran.