What is the significance of this global change? Does it in fact entail
anything at all? After all, there is a famous hadith narrated by Abu Daud on
the authority of Thawban, which says that the day will come when the Muslims
will be numerous, but will be like froth and flotsam (ghutha') carried along
by a flash-flood.
It is true that sheer weight of numbers counts for much less today than it
did, say, a couple of hundred years ago, when military victories depended as
much on numbers as on technology. Napoleon could say that 'God is on the
side of the larger battalions' - but nowadays, when huge numbers of soldiers
can be eliminated by push-button weapons, this is no longer the case; a fact
demonstrated by Saddam Hussein's hopeless and absurd defiance during the
recent conflict over Gulf oil supplies.
The rapid increase in Muslim numbers does, however, have important
entailments. But for this, the UN would not have chosen Cairo, the world's
largest Muslim city, as the site of its 1994 Population Conference. There is
still some safety in numbers. But more significant than mere numbers is the
psycho-dynamic of population profiles. Aging populations become
introspective and flaccid. Young populations are more likely to be
energetic, and encourage national political assertiveness.
The new millennium will dawn over a Muslim world with disproportionately
young populations. Moreover, these populations will be increasingly urban.
And such situations historically have always bred instability, turmoil, and
reform. One explanation for the Protestant reformation in Europe is based on
the preponderance of young people in urban sixteenth-century Germany, the
result of new agricultural and political arrangements. The growth of fascism
in Central Europe in the 1930s is also attributed in part to the growth in
the number of young people. And in Islamic history, one thinks of the
example of the Jelali rebellions in the sixteenth and seventh century: once
the great Ottoman conquests had ceased, the young men who would have been
occupied in the army found themselves at a loose end, and launched a variety
of sectarian or social protest movements that devastated large areas of
Anatolia.
The Islamic revival over the past few years has faithfully reflected this
trend. One of the first Muslim countries to reach a peak proportion of youth
was Iran, in the late 1970s (around 22% of the population), and the
revolution occurred in 1979. In other countries the peak was reached rather
later: in Algeria this proportion was reached in 1989, just when the FIS was
winning its greatest support.
Following the millennium, this youth bulge will continue in many Muslim
societies. The number of people in their early twenties will increase in
Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and several other countries. As compared to
1990, in the year 2010 entrants to the jobs market will increase by about
50% in most Arab lands. The unemployment problem, already acute, will become
intolerable.
This rapid growth is likely to render some states difficult to govern. The
bunker regimes in Cairo and Algiers are already confronting rebellions which
have clear demographic as well as moral and religious dimensions. So the
first probable image we have of the next millenium is: in the West, aging
and static populations, with stable, introspective political cultures; and
in the Islamic world, a population explosion, and established regimes
everywhere under siege by radicals.
The next consideration has to be: will the bunker regimes survive? This is
harder to comment upon, although many political scientists with an interest
in the Islamic world have tried. Before the modern period, peasant revolts
stood a good chance of success, because manpower could carry the day against
the ruler's army. Today, however, advances in technology have made it
possible for military regimes to survive indefinitely in the face of massive
popular discontent. Spend enough money, and you can defeat even the most
ingenious infiltrator or the most populous revolt. This technology is
becoming cheaper, and is often supplied on a subsidised basis to the West's
favoured clients in the Third World. Similarly, techniques of interrogation
and torture are becoming far more refined, and have proved an effective
weapon against underground movements in a variety of places.
Let me give you an example. Last year's Amnesty International report
explains that in January 1995, the US government licenced the export to
Saudi Arabia of a range of security equipment including the so-called
'taser' guns. 'These guns shoot darts into a victim over a distance of up to
five metres before a 40-50,000 volt shock is administered. These weapons are
prohibited in many countries, including the UK.
Another example, also documented by Amnesty, is the export in 1990 of a
complete torture chamber by a UK company, which was installed in the police
special branch headquarters in Dubai. This is known in the Emirates as the
'House of Fun'. The Amnesty report describes it as 'a specially constructed
cell fitted with a terrifyingly loud sound system, a white-noise generator
and synchronized strobe lights designed to pulse at a frequency that would
cause severe distress.'
These are just two examples of the increasing sophistication of torture
equipment now being supplied to the bunker regimes. One could add to this
list the improving techniques of telecommunications surveillance.
But what about the Internet? Isn't the Internet the ultimate freedom
machine, allowing the pervasion of all types of dissent, from anywhere in
the world, to anywhere in the world?
At the moment the Internet is only available in a few Muslim countries.
Already there are indications that monitoring of the phone lines which carry
the signals is in progress. The centralizing nature of the Internet is in
fact tailormade for intrusive regimes. A fairly straightforward programme on
a mainframe computer logged on to the telephone net can inform the security
forces instantaneously if a forbidden site is being accessed. Once that is
established, investigation and arrest are a matter of course.
I believe that as technology improves, including ever more massive
surveillance systems, it seems quite likely that the regimes will be able to
suppress any amount of dissent, on one condition - that it does not spread
to the armed forces. The Shah fell because his army turned against him, not
because of the protests on the streets. But in Algeria the revolution has
been suppressed, largely because the radicals think they can overwhelm a
modern state without support from the armed forces.
The societies governed in this way are now experiencing severe traumas and
cultural distortions. They are sometimes called 'pressure-cooker cultures'.
The consequences for the human soul of being subjected to this kind of
pressure are quite alarming, and already in the Muslim world we see
manifestations of extreme behaviour which only a decade ago would have been
unthinkable.
This is not the context for providing full details of the problem of
'extremism', or what traditional Islam would call ghuluww. But it is clearly
a growing feature of our religious landscape, and I will have to deal with
it in passing. In early Islam the movement known as Kharijism fought against
the khalifa Ali for the sake of a utopian and purist vision of Muslim
society. Today, tragically, the Khawarij are with us once more. I have in
mind incidents such as the 1994 shooting in Omdurman, when Wahhabi activists
opened fire on Friday worshippers in the Ansar al-Sunna mosque, killing
fourteen. Ironically, the mosque was itself Salafi, but followed a form of
Wahhabism that the activists did not consider sufficiently extreme.
In Algeria, too, throat-slittings and massacres of villagers, and fighting
between rival groups, have transformed large areas of the country into a
smoking ruin.
We sometimes like to dismiss these movements as marginal irrelevancies.
However, the signs are that until the conditions which have bred them are
removed, they will continue to grow. The mainstream Islamic movements are
seen to have failed to achieve power, and desperate young people are turning
to more radical alternatives. It is fairly clear that a growing polarisation
of Muslim society, and of the Muslim conscience, will be a hallmark of the
coming century.
What is the defining symptom of Kharijism? In a word, takfir. That is,
declaring other Muslims to be beyond the pale, and hence worthy of death.
This tendency was attacked vigorously by the ulema of high classical Islam.
For instance, Imam al-Ghazali, in his book Faysal al-Tafriqa bayn al-Islam
wa'l-Zandaqa explained that it is extremely difficult to declare anyone
outside Islam for as long as they say La ilaha illa'Llah, Muhammadun
rasulu'Llah. And today, Sunni schoolchildren in many countries still
memorise creeds such as the Jawharat al-Tawhid of Imam al-Laqqani, which
include lines like:
idh ja'izun ghufranu ghayri'l-kufri
fa-la nukaffir mu'minan bi'l-wizri
since forgiving what is not unbelief is possible,
as we do not declare an unbeliever any believer on account of a sin.
wa-man yamut wa-lam yatub min dhanbihi
fa-amruhu mufawwadun li-rabbihi
Whoever dies and has not repented of his sin,
his matter is turned over to his Lord.
The legitimation of differences in fiqh was rooted in the understanding of
ijtihad. And differences in spiritualities were justified by the Sufis in
terms of the idea that al-turuq ila'Llah bi'adadi anfas al-khala'iq ('there
are as many paths to God as there are human breaths'). As Ibn al-Banna', the
great Sufi poet of Saragossa expressed it, ibaraatuna shatta wa-husnuka
wahidun, wa-kullun ila dhak al-jamali yushiru ('our expressions differ, but
Your beauty is one, and all are pointing towards that Beauty').
Diversity has always been a characteristic of Islamic cultures. It was only
medieval Christian cultures which strove to suppress it. However, there is a
growing tendency nowadays among Muslims to favour totalitarian forms of
Islam. 'Everyone who disagrees with me is a sinner, cries the young
activist, 'and is going to hell'.
This mentality recalls the Kharijite takfir, but to understand why it is
growing in the modern umma, we have to understand not just the formal
history, but the psychohistory of our situation. Religious movements are the
expression not just of doctrines and scriptures, but also of the hopes and
fears of human collectivities. In times of confidence, theologies tend to be
broad and eirenic. But when the community of believers feels itself
threatened, exclusivism is the frequent result. And never has the Umma felt
more threatened than today.
Even in the UK, the takfir phenomenon is growing steadily. There are
factions in our inner cities which believe that they are the only ones going
to Heaven. 99% of people who call themselves Muslims are, in this
distasteful insult to Allah's moral coherence, not Muslims at all.
We can understand this psychic state more easily when we recognise that it
exists universally. Not just in Islam, but in Christianity, Judaism,
Hinduism and Buddhism, there is a conspicuous tendency towards factional
excluvisism. In Christianity, one has to look no further than the Branch
Davidians of David Koresh, 89 of whom died when their ranch in Texas was
stormed by US troops three years ago. The Davidians believed that they were
the sole true Christians - everyone else would burn in Hell.
In Japan, even the usually peaceful religion of Buddhism has been re-formed
by this tendency. In early 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo sect released Sarin nerve
gas onto the Tokyo underground system, killing eleven people and sending
5,500 to hospital. Their guru, Shoko Asahara, had for ten years been
preaching the need to overthrow the corrupt order in Japan, and transform
the country into the true Shambala. As he said, 'Our sphere shall extend
throughout the nation, and foster the development of thousands of
right-believing people.' In his book From Destruction to Emptiness he
explains that only those who believe in authentic, pristine Buddism as
taught by Aum can expect to survive the corruption and destruction of the
world. Non-Aum Buddhists are not true Buddhists at all.
On the basis of this kind of takfir, he and his 12,000 followers bought a
factory complex on the slopes of Mount Fuji, where they successfully
manufactured nerve gas and the botulism virus. The sinners of Japan's
un-Buddhist culture would be the first to suffer, they thought, but they
also laid extensive plans for terrorist actions in North America. It is
claimed that had the sect been allowed to operate for another six months,
tens of thousands of people might have died from the sect's attacks in the
United States, which was seen as the great non-Buddhist source of evil
darkening the world.
It is important to note the close parallels between Aum Shinryo-kyo and the
modern takfir groups in the Middle East. The diagnosis is the same: the pure
religion has been ignored or distorted by an elite, and the process has been
masterminded by Americans. Hence the need to retreat and disown society -
the idea of Takfir wa'l-Hijra that informed Shukri Mustafa's group in late
1970s Egypt. In secretive inner circles, the saved elect gather to plan
military-style actions against the system. They are indifferent to the
sufferings of civilians - for they are apostates and deserve death anyway.
Such attacks will prefigure, in some rather vague and optimistic fashion,
the coming to power of the true believers, and the suppression of all other
interpretations of religion.
This idea of takfir wa'l-hijra is thus, in structural terms, a global
phenomenon. Its members are usually educated, almost always having science
rather than arts backgrounds. Technology is not disowned, but sedulously
cultivated. Bomb-making becomes a disciplined form of worship.
I believe that this tendency, which has been fostered rather than eliminated
by the repressiveness of the regimes, will grow in relative significance as
we traverse the end of the century. It will continue to besmirch the name of
Islam, by shooting tourists, or blowing up minor targets in pinprick attacks
that strengthen rather than weaken the regimes. It will divide the Islamic
movement, perhaps fatally. And it will provide the regimes with an excuse
further to repress and marginalise religion in society.
The threat of neo-Khariji heresy is thus a real one. It will exist, however,
against the backdrop of an even more worrying transformation. It is time now
to look at the last of our three themes: the apparently disconnected subject
of the degradation of the natural environment, one of the great neglected
Islamic issues of our time - arguably even the most important of all.
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