One will search in vain for any two countries of the Ummah, sharing common borders, which do not harbour overt or barely-concealed hostility towards each other. … It is not just non-Muslim minorities which get the short shrift in Islamic countries, but Muslim ethno-linguistic and sectarian minorities as well. … The road to high political office in the Ummah is a perilous one, frequently littered with corpses. … The scale and ferocity of the rivalries, power struggles and blood-letting in past Muslim societies is stupefying.  Some of the history makes for chilling reading.

The state(s) of the Ummah – I 

Muslim states claim to belong to one large, universal nation, the Ummah.  Hence, the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), founded in 1969, the only religion-based international grouping of countries in the world.  Hence, too, the Islamic States’ Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (ISESCO), in contradistinction to the United Nations’ Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Then, there is Red Crescent, as opposed to the good old Red Cross, recipient of two Nobel Prizes for its service to mankind, regardless of religion.  In 1990 the governments of Muslim states adopted the ‘Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam’ to parallel the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.

The founding declaration of the 55-nation OIC affirmed the need to “consult together with a view to promoting close cooperation and mutual assistance in the economic, scientific, cultural and spiritual fields, inspired by the teachings of Islam”.   Its Charter mentions the promotion of “Islamic solidarity” and “cooperation among Member States” as two of its main objectives and the “settlement of any conflict that may arise by peaceful means” as one of its principles.  Foreign ministers of OIC member countries meet annually, while summit conferences occur every three years.  Speeches and communiqués issuing from the capitals of Muslim countries are laced with references to the Ummah.

But one will search in vain for any two countries of the Ummah, sharing common borders, which do not harbour overt or barely-concealed hostility towards each other.  Compare this with the European Union, the Scandinavian countries, or Australia and New Zealand, whose citizens are allowed to travel freely, live and work in the other countries within the group.  Citizens of USA and Canada can also travel unimpeded across their mutual border.  Even India and Nepal allow visa-free travel and work rights for each other’s nationals.

Pakistanis are familiar with the unhappy history of relations with Afghanistan, which was the only country in the world to have opposed Pakistan’s membership of the United Nations in 1947.  In 1961, Pakistani and Afghan troops fought border skirmishes.  When Afghanistan complained to the US that Pakistan had used American weapons which she had been provided to fight the communist threat, President Ayub Khan angrily retorted that Pakistan would use all the weapons at its disposal to counter any threat. 

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Pakistan openly meddled in the Afghan war, eventually in support of the brutal Taliban regime.  Its recent reversal of policy has been viewed as treacherous by the pro-Taliban Afghans, without regaining the trust of those opposed to the Taliban.                      

Pakistan’s relations with its other Muslim neighbour, Iran, have fluctuated between amiable and uneasy, more often uneasy than amiable.  Islamabad’s subservience to Saudi Arabia, sectarian violence against Shias and, more recently, nuclear proliferation and rebellion in Baluchistan have aggravated mutual distrust.

Iraq took advantage of turmoil in Iran to invade it in1980.  The war, which lasted eight years, led to a million deaths and colossal devastation on both sides.  The two countries dithered and bickered over the issue of prisoners of war and, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, prisoner exchange remains inconclusive nearly two decades after the end of hostilities.

Iraq’s relations with both its western neighbours, Syria and Jordan, have been strained.  Syria was the only Arab country to support Iran in the Iraq-Iran war.  Relations with Jordan have been tense since the brutal overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq in 1958.  Iraq invaded and annexed its southern neighbour Kuwait in 1989 and threatened Saudi Arabia. 

Syria sent its troops and tanks into Jordan in 1970 in support of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which had been attacked by the Jordanian Army.  Six years later, it intervened in the Lebanese civil war with nearly 40,000 of its troops.  Despite strong public opposition and UN demands for their withdrawal, about 15,000 Syrian troops and thousands of secret police are permanently stationed in this tiny country with a population of less than four million.

In 1958, President Nasser of Egypt created a union of Egypt and Syria into a new entity called the United Arab Republic.  It lasted but three years.  Between 1962 and 1967, Egyptian troops intervened in the civil war in North Yemen on behalf of the embattled republican regime which had overthrown the monarchy, while Saudi Arabia and Jordan supported the deposed Imam Mohammad El-Badr Yahya.  Thus, three Muslim countries fought out their ideological differences by turning a fourth Muslim country into a battlefield. 

Further afield, Libya has a maritime boundary dispute with Tunisia and lays claims to about 19,400 square kilometers in northern Niger, part of southeastern Algeria and northern Chad – all Muslim countries.  But none has more zealously tried to unite the Ummah than its president, Muammar Gaddafi.  Among his many exploits in this direction were attempted unions with Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia and Chad at various times, the conversion to Islam of President Bokassa of the Central African Republic (who relapsed soon thereafter, having pocketed Libyan cash), and support of the Muslim Moro Liberation Front of the Philippines.

His Islamic zeal notwithstanding, Gaddafi has been called “shockingly innocent” and “possibly deranged” by Nasser’s biographer Mohammad Heikal.  Sudan’s President Gaafar al-Nimeiri denounced him as a “split personality – both evil.”  President Anwar Sadat referred to him as al walid majnoon (that crazy boy) and later as a “vicious criminal” and “100 percent sick.”

Making territorial claims against its neighbour, Morocco went to war against Algeria in 1963, one year after the latter gained independence from France.  In 1976, it conspired with Mauritania to divide and annex the Western Sahara as soon as Spain granted it independence.  Three years later, when Mauritania withdrew its forces because of guerilla warfare led by the Polisario Front, Morocco helped itself to the rest of the Western Sahara. 

Tens of thousands of Muslim Saharawis now live in refugee camps across the border in Algeria, which also hosts the government of the exiled Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic, a member-state of the Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) since 1984.  A UN-administered ceasefire between Morocco and the Polisario Front took effect in 1991 and a referendum on independence was to follow.  But Morocco has doggedly subverted repeated UN efforts to organize the referendum, while continuing to assimilate the country and change its identity through a process of inter-migration.

Being a member of this special Ummah evidently does not even prevent some states from cannibalizing on others or trampling underfoot the basic norms of interstate relations, let alone ensure good relations as exist between numerous states of the contemporary world.   Aside from the vociferous declarations and affirmations of unity against perceived common enemies, the member-states of the Ummah distinguish themselves not by amicable relations but by the lack of them. 

(Published in Daily Times, 3 March 2005)

The elusive Ummah – II 

It is not just non-Muslim minorities which get the short shrift in Islamic countries, but Muslim ethno-linguistic and sectarian minorities as well.

In 1974, the Pakistan National Assembly declared Ahmadis, who profess to be Muslims, to be non-Muslims.  This must be the only instance in the history of the world where an elected national parliament has legislated to excommunicate a religious sect.  Powerful mainstream religious parties are now threatening a “worse fate” for the Agha Khani sect.  Fringe extremist groups already make no secret of their wish to see shi’as expelled from the fold of Islam as well.

Pakistan officially unleashed a reign of terror in 1971 against Bengali Muslims inhabiting its eastern province, accusing them of rebellion.  Despite widespread human rights abuses committed by Pakistani military forces in Bangladesh and the recommendations of the official Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report, not a single offender was ever prosecuted.

For its part, Bangladesh, which now likes to advertise its Islamic identity, refuses to grant the 300,000 or so stranded “Bihari” Muslims citizenship rights, although they have now lived there for many generations.  Most were born there and know no other country. They are unwelcome in Pakistan, to which they profess allegiance.  And there is no place for them in the vast Ummah, although some of its member-countries happen to be rich of cash but short of manpower.

The Hazaras of Afghanistan suffered persecution from the Taliban regime on account of their being doubly detestable, an ethnic and a sectarian minority (shi’ia) at the same time.  The shi’ia minority in Saudi Arabia is banned from building mosques and commemorating Ashura.  According to a shi’ia cleric, “my son studies a syllabus which says he is an infidel.”

In Indonesia, the Free Acehnese Movement (GAM) is fighting a guerilla war against the government since 1976, seeking independence for the 4.2 million Acehnese.  It is believed that GAM had the covert support of both Libya and Iran in the 1980s.

The indigenous Berbers of Morocco and Algeria, who constitute 40 and 30 percent of their respective populations, are struggling to preserve the little that remains of their language and culture.  In both countries the Berber language was officially taboo until a few years ago.  For the Berbers, centuries of Islamisation has been synonymous with Arabisation, leading to the virtual extinction of their cultural identity.

Iran has so thoroughly been Persianized by the ruling Persian-speaking elite that it should come as a surprise to many readers that only one in two Iranians is ethnically Persian.  Among the many Muslim ethnic minorities that suffer discrimination in Iran are the Kurds, Ahwazis, Baloch and Turkmen.

Palestinians constitute more than half of the population of Jordan, but they are by and large excluded from administrative and defence posts, which are held by the native Bedouins.  To Jordan’s credit, however, Palestinians there have been granted citizenship rights, denied to them in the other Arab and Gulf states of the Ummah, where many of them were born and most have lived and worked for decades.

But while the Ummah works itself into a frenzy over the plight of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza (numbering less than 4 million), it remains silent on the discrimination the large Palestinian communities face in the Arab countries, as well as on the plight of such Muslim ethno-linguistic minorities as the Kurds (20-25 million) and Darfuris (over 3 million) within the Ummah.

Kurds comprise 20 percent of the populations of both Turkey and Iraq and 5-8 percent in Iran and Syria.  In Iraq, Saddam Hussain bombed and gassed them, whereas in Turkey it was illegal, until a few years ago, even to sing songs in the Kurdish language.  In Iran, Kurds survive at the sufferance of the Persian-dominated regime.  Syria, which perceives them as a security threat, has revoked the citizenship of tens of thousands of Kurds under one pretext or another.

Muslims of the Darfur region of the Sudan are presently the victims of a frenetical campaign of murder, rape and eviction organized by the Sudanese government itself.  According to some estimates, up to 300,000 people may have died there in the last two years.

It should hardly surprise us that governments which treat their own Muslim ethnic or sectarian minorities so abysmally, are wont to regard expatriate labourers from poorer Muslim countries as only slightly better than slaves.

Usually paid below their contracted salaries and entitlements under one pretext or another and forced to work long hours, they are denied all recourse to legal, professional and personal rights, and virtually kept captives as their passports are taken away from them by their employers.  Mass deportations are routine.

In the event of any crisis in relations between two Muslim countries, expatriate workers are usually the first victims.  In 1985, according to one report, “for reasons that appeared more political than economic, Libya expelled tens of thousands of workers, including 20,000 Egyptians, 32,000 Tunisians, and several thousand from Mali and Niger. This exodus continued the following year when some 25,000 Moroccans were forced to depart.”  Many were given only 48 hours to leave and were forced to encamp in and travel through vast stretches of treacherous desert.

After the liberation of Kuwait in 1990, Palestinians settled there for decades were expelled en masse as payback for Yasser Arafat’s support for the Iraqi invasion.  The same fate befell Yemenis living in Saudi Arabia and for the same reason.  Hitherto allowed freely to work and settle in the kingdom, over 800,000 Yemenis were suddenly expelled after a royal Saudi decree of 1990 subjected them to the standard rules for immigrants.

Of the million or so illegal immigrants in Malaysia, most are fellow-Muslims from relatively poor Indonesia.  Preferred by Malaysian employers as they work with low pay under dismal conditions as well as for their linguistic affinity, Indonesians constitute about 70 percent of the labour force in the construction and manufacturing industries.  It is estimated that over a third of Malaysian prison inmates are Indonesians.  Malaysia has gone so far as to implement a “hire Indonesians last” policy, no matter its pronounced preference for the Ummah in everything else.

Bangladeshis in Malaysia have fared even worse.  Following a spate of marriages between Malay women and Bangladeshi migrant workers, in 2001 Malaysia promulgated a law banning such marriages. Later, it altogether stopped further migrant worker intake from the “brotherly Ummah” state of Bangladesh.

Contrast this with the West, where legal immigrants are given full rights as soon as they land and are granted citizenship according to non-discriminatory procedures clearly laid down in law.  Inter-racial and inter-religious marriages are the norm rather than the exception.  Amnesties are periodically offered to illegal immigrants who satisfy certain criteria and mass deportations are unknown.  Millions of erstwhile illegal immigrants, Muslims and non-Muslims, now live in western countries exercising all the rights and enjoying all the privileges that flow from citizenship.

(Published in Daily Times, 10 March 2005)

 Succession in the Ummah – III 

The road to high political office in the Ummah is a perilous one, frequently littered with corpses.  In a dispensation of interminable tenures, where all the spoils belong to the victor, aspirants to political power must tread with care, for a wrong move could cost one his liberty or life.  And those fortunate enough to reach the pinnacle of power must never let down their guard.  Not even ties of blood or association, or holy lineage, ensure safety for either incumbent or aspirant.  The struggle to get to the top and stay there results in farce, comedy and, most often, tragedy.

No government in Pakistan’s history has been able, or willing, to peacefully transfer power to a successor at the end of its term.  One elected, autocratic prime minister was sent to the gallows and a military dictator was blown to smithereens in mid-air.  Pakistan’s three most popular leaders, including two former prime ministers, are now living in forced exile abroad.

Bangladesh’s founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was killed by a band of junior officers, along with nearly everyone who had the misfortune of sharing his genes.  The new strongman, Maj Gen Ziaur Rahman, hanged a hero of the liberation war and his close comrade, Col Abu Taher, in order to consolidate his power. Zia himself was later assassinated by military officers, who, in turn, were quickly dispatched to meet their maker.

In Malaysia, when his deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim became overtly ambitious, Mahathir Mohammad sacked and jailed him on false allegations of sodomy.  Adding injury to insult, his police chief Nur personally kicked and punched the hapless Anwar, blindfolded and his hands tied behind his back.

Oman’s Qaboos ibn Said installed himself as the Sultan in 1970 after deposing his father and imprisoning him.  Qatar’s Crown Prince Hamad Bin Khalifa overthrew his father to become Emir in 1995.

In Jordan, a terminally ill King Hussain sprang from his death-bed in USA and briefly returned to his country in 1999 to depose his brother Crown Prince Hassan, his designated successor since 1965, and nominate his son Abdullah instead to succeed him.

Coups were an annual feature of Syrian politics until defence minister Hafez al-Assad seized power and ruled with blood and iron for 30 years until his death in 2000, to be succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad.

Gamal Nasser, who had seized power by deposing King Farouk in 1953, offered to resign after leading Egypt to a disastrous defeat in the six-day war against Israel in 1967.  However, the people begged him to stay, and stay he did, until God removed him.  Not so lucky was his successor, President Anwar Sadat, whose life was cut short in a hail of bullets in 1981.  President Hosni Mubarak will soon complete a quarter century in office.

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi has been there even longer, since overthrowing King Idris in 1969.  When Algeria’s generals denied the Islamists the fruits of an election victory in 1991, they avenged by slitting the throats of anyone they could catch who was on the government’s payroll, and their womenfolk and children as well.

In neighbouring Tunisia, Prime Minister Ben Ali seized the presidency in 1987, for 84-year old Habib Bourguiba, president for 30 years and increasingly senile, had shown no inclination to quit.  The former president-for-life lived his last thirteen years under house arrest.  Ben Ali has now been president for 18 years.

In 1985, Sudan’s President Gaafar Nimery, survivor of three coups since 1969 and a recent champion of sharia, hanged a 76 year-old Islamic scholar, Muhammad Taha, accusing him of apostasy.  The show trial was televised and the hanging of Taha was a public spectacle.  Nimery was deposed later that year by his top general.

Afghanistan’s King Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973 by his cousin and former prime minister, Sardar Mohammad Daoud.  Five years later, President Daoud himself was brutally murdered by military officers along with his entire family.  His successor, Nur Mohammad Tarahki was smothered with a pillow by his deputy, Hafizullah Amin, who was killed during the Soviet invasion. 

After the Soviet withdrawal, the various factions of the Mujahideen, brothers-in-Islam, fought a vicious struggle for power which, besides killing and crippling many tens of thousands of fellow Muslims, reduced Kabul to rubble.  Out of the debris emerged the brutal Taliban regime, which killed everyone who offered a different opinion.

The Shah of Iran was overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.  Lusting for retribution against the previous regime, the president of the Revolutionary Courts, Ayatollah Khalkhali, set about his task with zeal and gusto.  He later claimed that, in the first four months alone, he condemned to death over 400 officials and army officers of the previous regime, including the Shah’s longest-serving prime minister, Amir Abbas Hoveida.

Not content with this, the Ayatollah “led an assault on the tomb of the Shah’s ancestors in 1980. After 200 militia men worked with bulldozers and high explosives for 20 days, the tomb was a pile of rubble and the bones of the dead lay smashed, scattered across the desert.”  The Islamic Republic’s first elected president, Abolhassan Bani Sadr, himself did not feel safe from the murderous frenzy of the ayatollahs.  Discretion being the better part of valour, he fled the country dressed as a woman.

Iraq’s transition from monarchy to republic in 1958, thanks to a coup led by Brig Abdul Qassem, was accomplished when the executed members of the royal family, including King Faisal II, were hung by their feet outside the palace.  Hysterical crowds dragged the body of Abd al-Ilah, the king’s uncle, former regent and presently crown prince, through the streets of Baghdad, where it was hacked into pieces.  Prime Minister Nuri al-Said escaped, dressed as a veiled woman, but was caught and dragged through the streets from a car until there was nothing left but half a leg. 

Qassem himself was tortured and killed in 1963.  Faisal II was the great-grandson of Al-Hussein bin Ali, the last of the Hashemite Grand Sharifs of Mecca, descendents of Hazrat Ali, custodians of the holy cities and rulers of Hejaz for 700 years.  That rule ended in 1924, when Al-Hussein was chased out by Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of Najd, the father of the present King Fahd of Saudi Arabia. 

However, Al-Hussein was more fortunate than both his great-grandson Faisal II and son Abdullah, king of Jordan, with whom he found refuge after fleeing Mecca.  Abdullah was assassinated in 1951 as he was entering Al Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem (which was under Jordanian control until 1967) to offer Friday prayers. 

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s rise from vice-president to president in 1979 was spectacular.  At a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council on July 22 he suddenly started reading the names of “enemies of the state”. There was a stunned silence as the list included the names of many of those present. “As names were read from the list, each was arrested and taken away from the council meeting. Within mere hours, 21 of the men that Saddam named were dead”.

Politics anywhere can be rather unpredictable, but among the Ummah it is, quite literally, a deadly serious issue, a life-and-death matter.

(Published in Daily Times, 17 March 2005) 

The historical Ummah – IV 

The preceding three articles have revealed the dismal state of the contemporary Ummah.  This concluding piece will attempt to show that the popular notion of a glorious past is far from accurate.  The scale and ferocity of the rivalries, power struggles and blood-letting in past Muslim societies is stupefying.  Some of the history makes for chilling reading. (Unless otherwise mentioned, quotations that follow are from the History of Islam by Prof. Masud-ul-Hasan, published by Islamic Publications, Lahore, 1998, 2 vols.)

The murder of the third “rightly-guided caliph”, Hazrat Usman, in the year 656 is described thus: “The rebels from various parts of the country besieged Medina.  Hazrat Usman was besieged in his house.  The besiegers scaled the walls, entered the room where Hazrat Usman was reading the Quran and killed him”.  The ringleader of the group was Muhammad bin Bakr, son of Hazrat Abu Bakr, brother of Hazrat Aisha and a stepson of Hazrat Ali, by virtue of the latter marrying his widowed mother.  The 84-year old Usman “breathed his last on the afternoon of Friday, [but] the power of the rebels was so great that Usman’s body lay unburied until Saturday night when he was buried in his blood-stained clothes”(www.allaahuakbar.net).

After Hazrat Ali succeeded him as caliph, “Hazrat Talha and Zubair, two eminent companions [of the prophet] were the first to separate from Ali.  The rebels were able to muster a considerable force at Mecca.  Basra was occupied by the rebels.  Hazrat Ali marched with his force from Kufa to Basra.  The forces of the two sides met outside Basra.  In the battle Hazrat Ayesha took the field personally [against Hazrat Ali].  As many as 10,000 Muslims died from both sides”.  The situation in Hijaz became so troubled that Hazrat Ali moved his capital to Iraq.  But his woes continued and the last “rightly-guided caliph” was stabbed to death while praying in a mosque in Kufa in 661.

A continuation of the struggle for power led to the murder of Hazrat Ali’s son, Hazrat Hussain, at Karbala.  The forces of Caliph Yazid I “cut off the head of Hazrat Hussain.  His body was trampled under the hoofs of Umayyad cavalry with savage ferocity and subjected to every ignominy”.  The resulting revolts in Mecca and Medina were put down by a 12,000-strong force. After subduing Medina, the force proceeded to Mecca, “occupied all the surrounding heights, and from there bombarded the city with their mangonels. The siege lasted for 64 days”.

Upon the abdication of Caliph Muawiyah II in 684, another struggle for power ensued, from which Marwan I emerged victorious.  He sent a force to capture Medina, but was unsuccessful.  Reneging on his earlier commitment, Marwan nominated his son Abdul Malik to succeed him, followed by his brother Abdul Aziz.  Malik’s succession was contested by his cousin Amr bin Saeed, whom Malik removed “by inviting him to a feast and then killing him”.

At the turn of the seventh century, there were three caliphs in the Muslim world, namely, Abdul Malik (in Syria and Egypt), Abdullah bin Zubair (Hejaz and Basra) and Mukhtar (Kufa and Mosul).  In this triangular contest resulting in numerous battles and countless deaths, many prominent heads rolled.  These included Shammar and Umar bin Saad, responsible for the murder of Imam Hussain.  “Their heads were cut off and sent to Zainul Abidin, the son of Imam Hussain.”  Also killed was Ubaidullah bin Ziyad, commander of the Syrian force, whose “head was cut off, and sent to Kufa where it was displayed in the audience hall where Ubaidullah had at one time displayed the head of Hazrat Hussain.” 

After Mukhtar was defeated, Abdul Malik sent Hajjaj bin Yusuf to overthrow Abdullah bin Zubair in Mecca, which “was stormed with fire and sword.”  Abdullah died fighting in 692.  Thus concluded this particular conflict, which had lasted twelve years, with victory for Abdul Malik, whose four sons succeeded him as caliphs, but not without the spilling of more blood. 

Tariq bin Ziyad and Musa bin Nusair, the conquerors of Spain, and Muhammad bin Qasim, the victor of Sindh, fell victim to the renewed strife.   All three were recalled in disgrace and subjected to torture, Muhammad bin Qasim dying as a result.  Under the rule of Hisham, the last of the four brothers, there was an uprising in Kufa in 740, led by Zaid, the grandson of Hazrat Hussain.  The revolt failed, “Zaid was arrested, his head was cut off and sent to Hisham in Damascus”

In Turkey, Bayazid began his rule in 1389 by murdering his brother Yaqub.  After seizing the Turkish city of Sivas in 1400, Amir Timur ordered “all male citizens who had defended the city [to be] buried alive”. Bayazid proceeded to avenge the massacre, but was defeated and died in captivity.  A war of succession ensued among his five sons.  It culminated in the death of three and lasted eleven years, during which one of the contenders sought the military assistance of Christian Byzantium.  Later, Selim I dethroned his father Bayazid II in 1512 and settled the accession issue by putting to death his both brothers and five nephews.

The end of Muslim rule in Spain is attributed to internal conflict.  “Relations between Granada and Morocco deteriorated.  The king of Morocco sent a force under his brother Abu Said to capture Gibralter.  Yusuf III, Amir of Granada, with the aid of the Christians defeated the forces of Morocco. Abu Said was taken captive and the Sultan of Morocco made no attempt to secure his release. Yusuf III decided to exploit this position to his advantage and interfere in the affairs of Morocco.  He released Abu Said and promised to help him in his fight against his brother, the king of Morocco”. 

Assisted by a Granadian force, Abu Said invaded Morocco, defeated his brother and became the Sultan of Morocco.  “Heretofore the Marinids of Morocco had interfered in the affairs of Granada; now the roles were reversed for the first time”. Yusuf III’s son Muhammad VIII had three stints as Amir, for he was deposed by uprisings and the machinations of Muhammad VI, who sought the assistance of Christian-ruled Castille.  Finally, he was overthrown by his nephew, Muhammad X, and imprisoned.  The end of Muslim rule in Spain in 1492 was thus hastened by internecine warfare, which included a revolt by Boabdil against his father when Christian forces “stood at the gates of Granada”.

In seventeenth century India, Emperor Jahangir had his son Khusrau’s eyes gouged out as punishment for a premature bid for the throne and Shah Jahan had all potential male contenders put to death to secure his position.  Aurangzeb, renowned for his Islamic piety, had no scruples in killing his three brothers to wrest the Mughal throne.  He even had the severed head of Dara Shikoh delivered to their distraught father, the imprisoned former emperor Shah Jehan, as payback for his having favoured Dara as his successor.  Between them, these three Great Mughal emperors destroyed other independent Muslim entities in India, most notably the states of Bijapur and Golconda in the south, which were already weakened by the same rivalries and wars which characterised Muslim states elsewhere.

The above is an incomplete but representative survey of a rather murky past.  Neither the past nor the present reveals a harmonious Ummah.  Indeed, the only harmony appears to be between the Ummah’s past and its present.

(Published in Daily Times, 24 March 2005)