Book Review by Ayub Khan – Chasing A Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of An Islamic State, By Tarek Fatah
Book Review: Chasing A Mirage
It is a tragedy of the post-911 world that the field of Islamic concepts and terminologies have also fallen a victim to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and plain hysteria. Fuelling these fears among the masses are not only rabid Islamophobes but also those who claim to be nothing of that sort but whose actions speak otherwise. Canadian TV host and commentator Tarek Fatah belongs to the latter category. He has a history of mindless criticism of things as mundane as the aversion to music to more significant ones as the introduction of Sharia-based laws in Ontario. In Chasing a Mirage: the Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State he tries to show that the idea of an Islamic state is not only futile and untenable but outright dangerous.
Reviewed by Ayub Khan
Chasing A Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of An Islamic State
By Tarek Fatah
Wiley, 2008
Pages: 410
Fatah lays his claims on a rather simplistic analysis of the concept of Islamic state by saying that, “Islamists argue that the period following the passing away of Muhammad was Islam’s golden era and that we Muslims need to re-create that caliphate to emulate that political system in today’s world.” For the casual observer it might appear that the “Islamists” want to create an exact replica of the age of the righteous caliphs. But this isn’t the case as an analysis of the writings of those advocating an Islamic state reveals. For most Muslims an Islamic state can adopt many forms of modern polity and administration without comprising the Islamic ideals. Even Dr.Israr Ahmed of Pakistan’s Tanzeem-e-Islami, for instance, is open to the concept of a parliamentary caliphate. Benazir Bhutto, for whom Fatah is of fulsome praise, was better informed than Fatah on this front as her last book reveals. She quotes the Pakistani Jamaat-e-Islami ideologue Khurshid Ahmed who says: “God has revealed only broad principles and has endowed man with the freedom to apply them in every age in the way suited to the spirit and conditions of that age. It is through the ijtihad that people of every age try to implement divine guidance to the problems of the time.”
Fatah fails to realize that most Muslims who consider the golden age of the righteous caliphs as an ideal do not want to re-create the historical epoch but rather the values which were prevalent at that time. But for him that age had nothing to offer as “when Muslims buried the Prophet, they also buried with him many of the universal values of Islam that he had preached.” In his attempt to prove this he cites in detail the disputes that arose after the passing away of the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) among his companions. There is nothing new in his research. These topics have been of much debate and discussion in the Muslim literature. What the author fails to understand is that these incidents, if indeed they were true, are of secondary importance to modern day Muslims. What is of importance is the emulation of sacrifice, sincerity, dedication, justice, and the brotherhood of the early Muslims. In his overzealousness to prove his pre-conceived notions Fatah marshals up a number of historical references of disputed events of history without any care for their authenticity. An indication of this un-scholarly attitude can be seen for example when he cites Maulana Maududi when convenient while at other times lashes out against him.
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Instead of just some comments, I prefer to give a complete review of the book.
Chasing a Mirage by Tarek FATAH
An Anatomy
1. As soon as I started to read the Book, I had the impression that it was written by a
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) man, targeting Muslims specially Maulana Maudoodi of Jamaat Islami. I assert this after having remarked the following.
2. The author says that after the 1970 election in Pakistan, the Islamists “colluded with the military to keep the winning party from power,” (Page 25). Wrong. I was in Pakistan then. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of the PPP is on record to have said that those West Pakistani politicians who would go to East Pakistan on the invitation of Mujibur Rahman (leader of the winning party), they should not forget that ‘we’ (PPP) hold West Pakistan and we will break their legs when they return. It was not the Military-Islamist alliance but the Military-PPP alliance which was complicit in keeping the winning party from power and this contributed greatly in the break-up of Pakistan. The author has dishonestly tried to shield Bhutto and the PPP.
3. On page 43, while mentioning the Baluchistan insurrection, he writes: “Another erupted early in the 1970s, led by leftist youth cadres and leading Baluch politicians in protest over the dismissal of a duly elected government.” Is that all he has to say? Dishonestly, he conceals the fact that this insurrection was brutally subdued by the military under the direct orders of the President of Pakistan, none other than Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto of the “secularist and democratic” (Sic!) Pakistan Peoples Party.
4. Here again the author has dishonestly tried to shield Bhutto and the PPP. And on the same page he goes on to write about Baluchistan: “Much of the population is malnourished, illiterate and self-destitute…” and tend to blame the Islamists whereas, in all honesty – if he is an honest man – he should have rightly placed the blame on the Military-Feudals-Politicians collusion.
5. By the time I reached page 23, Maudoodi had been criticized at least at seven different occasions (by the end of the book, at least at thirty-seven occasions). The author underlines the Sunni doctrine that considers as a sin the criticism of Sahaba (P. 130) and says that the Islamists do not criticize the Sahaba. According to him Maudoodi is the intellectual leader – the guru – of the Islamist movement (cf. pages 88, 112, 252, 274, …). And then without any qualms, he quotes from his book Khilafat wa Mulookiat (Caliphate and Monarchy) (P. 131, 154, 159), in which Maudoodi has criticized the Sahaba. There is obviously a contradiction in Tarek Fatah’s writing! How does Maudoodi fall under the definition of the Islamist with such criticism?
6. That Tarek Fatah is a PPP man is, of course, obvious from the very first page. The book is dedicated to Benazir Bhutto. Eventually, the author acknowledges (P. 345) that “he was the rabble-rousing student leader of the Left.” And, he ends the book with an “Afterword by Husain Haqqani” who I believe is a senior member in the PPP’s hierarchy.
7. However, it is no disqualification or drawback for the author to be a PPP man. Intellectual dishonesty is. And he has shown this trait throughout his work. He has regularly and constantly shown shallow scholarship, impaired logic, and dishonest and mischievous interpretations.
8. I quote the author:
“Pakistan’s elites turned the country into a graveyard of its indigenous culture and languages.” (P. 27).
“[Democracy] has been held hostage by the military might of the Pakistan armed forces that have been complemented by the country’s mosque establishment.” (P. 38).
Once again the author has dishonestly attempted to conceal that the “elites” (who) turned the country into a graveyard” were the Western educated, and so-called democratic politicians and the bureaucrats – the cream of our “secularists, liberalists, and modernists”. Principally, they, along with the feudal lords, always colluded with the military to govern (rather, to misgovern) the country and brought it to the brink of its graveyard. Mullahs were never the “elites”, nor they held political power at any time at the Centre. Unfortunately, the author, mired in his dishonesty, constantly refused to criticize “secularists, liberalists, and modernists”.
9. On P. 119, Tarek Fatah mentions the Quranic invocation: Cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (what it is).
Alas, this dishonest person has done the very thing throughout his book.
10. Let us come back to the Book. I was greatly impressed by the list of bibliography (P. 371-386), until I realized that there are about 330 books which have been referred to. Now, I tell my Ph.D. students that for their thesis, about sixty-seventy references are sufficient but they must be exhaustively read and studied. No point in giving 150 or more references that are read only perfunctorily. Here 327 works are cited! And mind you, these are voluminous works, not like the five or six pages of a scientific publication. So I shall go out on a limb and question the scholarship of the author. I sincerely doubt that the author has read these works thoroughly. And we know that just a cursory glance only procures impaired knowledge.
Examples of inaccuracies, impaired and superficial knowledge.
11. Spurious knowledge of the Subcontinent History
i) It was not the Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi who lead the Khilafat Movement to restore the Ottoman caliphate (P. 10). The principal leaders of the Khilafat Movement were the Johar Brothers (Maulana Shaukat Ali and Maulana Muhammad Ali).
ii) P. 26: “Muhammad Iqbal was the thinker behind this concept” (of Muslim State in India).
If the author had done an in-depth study, he would have known that the first germ of this concept was sown by Shah Waliullah Dehlevi (d. 1762).
iii) Still on P. 26, the author blames the Muslim League, after repeated electoral failures, for trumpeting the slogan “Islam in danger”. It is incredible that the author is unaware of the role of Nehru and the Indian Congress in pushing Jinnah and the Muslim League to seek a separate homeland for the Muslims. Or is this silence deliberate?
iv) As regards the massacre of the civilians during Partition: “When the carnage ended, half a million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs would be dead” (P. 29).
This is the first time that I am reading an estimate as low as this. Historians have given estimates as low as eight hundred thousand and as high as 1.4 million.
v) P. 29. “With partition, not only was Punjab divided, but the Sikhs were ethnically cleansed from Pakistan’s Punjab.”
Why fail to mention here that according to initial plans Punjab and Bengal were not supposed to be divided as they were Muslim majority, albeit slightly, provinces. It was under Hindu pressure that the British changed the rules and decided to divide the provinces and thus create the ensuing bloodshed.
12. Simple errors
i) P. 7: He writes Maudoodi (d. 1976). For his information he died in 1979.
ii) P. 131: Talha bin Abd Allah should be Talha bin Ubaydullah.
iii) P. 179: Mentions: seven centuries of Muslim presence in Spain. Wrong again. It is eight centuries (781 years to be exact).
13. Spurious knowledge of Islam
i) The author writes: “the last revelation he had received from God, “Today I have completed your faith for you”.” (P. 20 and on many other occasions).
This is definitely not the last revelation. This verse (5: 5) was revealed during the last pilgrimage of the Holy Prophet, it was a Friday. There is unanimity of religious scholars that Surah Nasr (Surah 110), was revealed later, most probably the following day – Saturday. Furthermore, according to Ibn Abbas, another verse – the last – was revealed to the Holy Prophet, some time before his death. It is verse 2: 281 which is considered the last revelation.
ii) P. 138. The Islamists are correct that the translation of “munafiq” is hypocrite. The translation “apostate” as seemingly proposed by the secularist author is more appropriate for the Arabic word “murtid”.
iii) P. 249: “In actuality, sharia is derived from at least ten sources.”
The author also mentions “five Shariahs” (P. 251).
This is the best example of the superficial knowledge of the author in religious matter. This inability to distinguish between sharia and fiqh is egregious. One who does not know this difference has no business writing anything about Islam. And the author has confused the two terms regularly.
The Sharia gives the guidelines for Aqeeda (Belief), Usool Al-Fiqh (Principals of Jurisprudence), Akhlaq (Morals/Morality), and Tasawwuf (Spirituality). The Sharia constitutes a few general principles only. How to apply the principles of Sharia to our lives at a certain place or a certain epoch (makan wa zaman) is the subject of Fiqh (Islamic Jurisprudence). Sharia is immutable whereas Fiqh changes. When the author is referring to ten sources of sharia, it is ten sources of Fiqh. When he refers to “five shariahs”, he means “the five Fiqh” (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafai, Hanbali, Jafari).
iv) On P. 256, the author writes: “The Quran does not prescribe death sentence for adulterers, but accepts repentance for such an act.”
Yes and no. It is true that Quran doe not prescribe the death sentence for adulterers. (Stoning to death is explicitly prescribed in the Bible: Deutronomy 22: 22-24.) However, Quran has prescribed hundred stripes as given in 24: 2-3. The verses 4: 15-16 are anterior to 24: 2-3.
14. Mischievous and malicious interpretations
i) “The sharia law permitting unrestricted polygamy” (P. 257).
Anterior to Islam unrestricted polygamy was prevalent in all societies and in all religions, Christianity included. Islam abolished unrestricted polygamy and limited it to four wives.
ii) “If a divorced Muslim woman wishes to re-marry her former husband, a sharia law makes it mandatory on her part to first marry a complete stranger, have sexual intercourse with him, and then obtain a voluntary divorce from this stranger. Only after she obtains this divorce is she permitted to remarry her former husband.” (P. 257).
The dishonest author has concealed the fact that this is only valid after the third divorce. If a husband divorces his wife, he can marry her a second time without any problem or condition. Then, if he divorces her a second time, he can again marry her (the third time now) without any problem or condition. And then only, if he divorces her for the third time (termed as talaq mughallaza), the above condition is applied.
The author makes it appear (under what “agenda”?) as it is applied immediately after the first divorce.
15. Author’s religious scepticism
i) Faith is for God to judge. However, a close reading, and in between the lines, shows his naked scepticism. I reached this conclusion because of what he writes, penned below.
ii) P. 4: “The Quran, which God is believed to have dictated to the Prophet Muhammad.”
Note the wordings and the scepticism therein.
iii) P. 16: Attempt of the author to mistranslate the Muslim attestation of faith (kalima). Certainly his knowledge of Arabic language is shallow; he has demonstrated this fact in other fields as well. “Ilaha” means god I a general sense, any god (such as the idols Laat, Mana, Uzza, Naela, etc), whereas Allah is a specific and a proper name – the only name of God, all other appellations are attributes. His trying to change the English translation and the criticism of the accepted Muslim translation probably harbour a “hidden agenda” – to use his words for the Islamists.
iv) P. 109: Implies that the First Caliph Abu Bakr was a liar and a cheat.
v) P. 228: Sarcasm that God did not prevent the sack of Jerusalem at the hands of the Crusaders.
vi) P. 251: The author implies that all compilations of Hadiths are forgeries.
vii) P. 270: “More than the Quran, it is the hadith literature that incites radicals to fight in the name of Allah as the highest form of worship.”
The abhorrence towards Quran and Hadith is evident in his sentence.
viii) On P. 269, he is more explicit: “the jihad that Osama bin Laden has launched against all of us is, unfortunately, the lesser jihad.” What is the implication of the pronoun “us”?
ix) P. 326: “… lard busters reading food labels to detect the faintest presence of prohibited ingredients.”
Eating pork meat is explicitly forbidden in the Quran. So why does it surprises the author that Muslims try to verify what they are buying? Why is he trying to ridicule them and why the contempt? Would he rather that Muslims start eating pork meat?!
x) With this mindset, no wonder that he has produced this tirade against Islam and is concealing it as an attack on the Islamists.
16. Tarek Fatah has also tried to create a rift between Arabs and non-Arabs, between black Muslims and white Muslims. He has criticized the Sunnis that they institutionalized the fact that the Caliph should be an Arab, and more so from the tribe of Quraysh, and this Arab hegemony was against the spirit of Islam. Then he goes on to say that the case of Shia is weaker still for they adhere to a narrower belief and limit the condition of Imam to one from the family of the Holy Prophet through his daughter Fatima and Ali.
17. However, this notion of Arab or Quraysh supremacy was not an institution. According to Tabari, whom the author has quoted extensively, Umar Khattab before his death said that had Abu Ubaydah bin Jarrah been alive, he would have nominated him (to be the Caliph) [Histoire Universelle de Tabari. Volume IV: Les Quatre Premiers Califes; Chapter: Othman, page 273; Sindbad, Paris, 1981.] Abu Ubaydah was not from the tribe of Quraysh!
18. (P. 129-130): His criticism of Umar, that he was an Arab racist is a far-fledged theory and quite obnoxious. Even if Umar allowed more emoluments to Arabs invoking their earlier contribution to Islam, there is nothing racist about this. Modern day democratic government are following this very principle. In France those who fought in the Great Wars receive special emoluments and special pension funds, and special care is taken for the families of those who died for the country. I saw the same thing in Algeria where special care and emoluments are for the families of those killed in the Algerian War of Independence. These governments are not being racist, they are simply showing the gratitude the nation owes to those who sacrificed themselves for it.
19. As regards my remark that he is trying to create a wedge between black Muslims and White Muslims, I refer to what he writes on P. 327: “These were, after all, dark-skinned Bengali Muslims dying at the hands of fairer-skinned Punjabi Muslims.” The author has mischievously tried to paint the massacre in East Pakistan by the West Pakistan army as a black and white racial problem. It is an open fact that the reason was for political power and not because of the colour. No Islamist has forwarded a theory that Black Muslims are to be eliminated. This is a malicious figment of his imagination.
20. His abhorrence of Arab is manifest by his remarks about the “rich Arabs” and that Islamic banking is making them richer (P. 261). Even if we accept that Islamic banking is not really Islamic, why should I put my money in a bank of a, say, Canadian Jew and why not in the bank of an Arab Muslim. In any case one is going to get rich. It is your choice now.
21. He has forcefully criticized jihad throughout the book (Cf. Chapter 12). But what is wrong with this noble notion that when your country or your community is attacked, you should take up arms to defend it? The same noble notion is practised by all secular and democratic nations of the world. If France is attacked, for example, by Germany, French citizens are required to defend it against the aggression. If they do not do this, they are considered collaborators or unpatriotic. It must be the same in Canada, I presume.
22. It is interesting to note that the self-professed democrat and modernist author speaks in glowing terms of the “Turkey’s founding president, secular modernist Mustafa Kemal Ataturk” (P. 10), and never mentions that Ataturk was an absolute dictator. The author is against Islamist but not against dictators! He should be against both, if he is a real democrat, but he is not. It is not any sort of altruism that has made him write the book, it is simply against Islam/Islamists.
23. This can further be remarked in the chapter on Palestine (Chapter 5) in which he has constantly criticized the Islamist Hamas but never the corrupt Fatah. I repeat: It is not any sort of altruism that has made him write the book, it is simply against Islam/Islamists.
24. “These are the imams and sheikhs who have perpetuated the myth that a woman is essentially the source of all sin.” (P. 286), and what follows after to the essence that Islamists are against joy and happiness (Music ban: P. 299).
The Islamists are absolutely wrong if they consider the woman to be the source of all evil and if they are against mirth. However, the author should have pointed out that this dogma is a specific Christian belief which seeped into Islamic mores. This was the doctrine of Saint Anthony predominant in Christianity, especially Catholics, for more than 1500 years. Even to smile was considered a sin!
25 As to the question “Why are Women Wearing the Hijab?” (P. 295). Perhaps a simple answer is “as an extreme reaction to prevalent nudity”.
26 The author had two pages (212-213) for Abu Nuwas and his wine and erotic poetry and his homosexuality. Okay, if he wanted to linger on the subject. But he had hardly a paragraph for the marvellous scientists and thinkers of that age. He simply swept them under the carpet. This is an extremely one sided “agenda” – to use the vocabulary of the author.
27. I failed to fathom the import of his remark on P. 326. “It is Pakistan that refuses to give dignity and self-rule to the Baluch, Pakhtoons, and Kashmiris, not India.”
India has not given the freedom of choice to the people in Kashmir, nor to those of Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram,…. Let us just not blame India or Pakistan, for once. Many European countries refuse self-rule to their provinces. Abraham Lincoln’s USA did not give self-rule to the Southern States! Freedom, self-rule, and independence are all inherently intertwined and a distinction is always clouded, depending upon the perception of the perceiver.
28. The author shows impaired logic and weak analysis. According to his analysis since the third and the fourth Caliph were assassinated in political turmoil, therefore, the model of Islamic State is not good and should be abandoned. By this logic, I would say, that India should abandon the democratic model of government since her two successive prime ministers were assassinated!
29. The author says that Spain was lost because of the fanatic Almohads. He is wrong again. The Almoravid Dynasty ruled in North Africa and Spain from 1055 to 1147 CE. They were dethroned by the Almohad Dynasty which reigned from 1147 till 1269. But Spain was not lost by the fanatic Almohads. The disintegration began even before the advent of the Almoravids. The important city of Toledo was taken by the Christian forces in 1085 and Lisbon was lost in 1147. So do not throw the blame on the “Islamist Almohad”. The reason was, of course, the cupidity and the lust for power in which minor princes and rulers indulged in, soon after the fall of the Umayyads in 1031.
Blaming the Almohads, who did not exist in the 11th century is the result of blind hatred for the Islamists. Lay every problem in history at their feet. There is no difference between the author and average uncultured and not much educated Muslim who for any problem faced by the Muslims or for problems in his country, blame the CIA. So is the author, in blaming everything on the Islamists, showing himself as an uncultured and not much educated person.
30. This is not a serious work. It is just written for a political purpose – local politics, as is evident from Chapter 14: Islamic Agenda in the West, from page 303 to page 330, which pertains to just local Canadian politics. And perhaps written for sycophantic reasons with flattering remarks, for the attention of the “White Masters”:
“Canada the best country on Earth in which to live” (P. 277).
Ooh! I thought it was France, or perhaps the USA, or …!
31. This is a very tendentious – in all its derogatory sense – book written calculatedly to attack Islamists, and under cover of this, Islam. I have read many books. Academic and scholarly works. Good authorship never write in such cotemptuous and arrogant manner:
“yet few Muslims know that or are willing to discuss it. I intend to.” (P. 88).
“A golden age? My foot.” (P. 166).
32. By the way concerning the “Golden Age”, he has mockingly asked at different places “when exactly did such an age occur?” (P. 167, 234, …). However, the author himself has praised the rule of Umar Khattab, Umar bin Abdul Aziz, and the Umayyads in Spain.
33. My criticism may appear to be harsh. Indeed, it is. I have maintained the same supercilious tone adopted by the author himself in his book while criticzing others, especially those whom he calls Islamists.
34. Of course, he has brought up certain points which are valid. But his refusal to criticize the feudal lords and the “elite” corrupted politicians, and just spew out venom against the Islamists make this book, a propaganda book.
i) He has aptly pointed out that the Muslim rulers nearly always excused their failings with “It is the Will of God”. Very true indeed. And this has seeped into the Muslim psyche. Parroting “In sha Allah” without making any efforts is the bane of the Muslim society and I have been speaking out and writing about this since 1978.
ii) The harem, several wives, the many concubines, and the numerous children were the major reason of dismemberment of empires. The author is right that few scholars have dealt with this problem. Perhaps this is his sole positive contribution.
35. There are many other annotations that I have made on the book but I think all this preceding discussion should be sufficient. However, if you wish, I can give you my copy for your scrutiny.
36. Eventually, all this reminds me of “Family of the Heart”, a Canadian (yes, Canadian, the country of Tarek Fatah – the best country on Earth in which to live) forum of intellectuals to whom I was introduced by Dr Ahsan Khan. There was discussion on the topic of “Why Democracy did not take root in Muslim Countries”. It was a good discussion and I think was beneficial to all of us. Mostly they blamed Islam. However, my final message, in which instead of just giving arguments that it was not so, I asked some pointed and explicit questions, disappeared. That message was never posted.
37. It was really the first time that I understood the meaning of “Intellectual Dishonesty” I cannot stop myself from ending with the punch line:
What else, other than dishonesty, can you expect from those who do not have faith?
Some truly superb blog posts on this site, thanks for contribution.