Misplaced Anger: The Assault on Illhem

Tariq Ali on the NPA candidate who wears a hijab

Misplaced Anger: The Assault on Illhem

By TARIQ ALI

Forgive an outsider and staunch atheist like myself who, on reading the recent French press comments relating to Ilhem Moussaid the hijab-wearing NPA candidate in Avignon, gets the impression that something is rotten in French political culture.

Let’s take the debate at face-value. A young Muslim woman joins the NPA [New Anti-Capitalist Party]. She obviously agrees with its program that defends abortion, contraception, etc, i.e. a woman’s right to choose. She is then told that despite this she does not have the right to choose what she wears on her head. It’s astonishing. There is no Koranic injunction involved. The book

says: "Draw their (women's) veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty", which can be interpreted in several ways but is disregarded most blatantly by hijab-wearing Egyptian women I see in Cairo and Karachi wearing tight jeans and T-shirts that contradicted the spirit of the Koranic message.

Patriarchal traditions, cultural habits and identity are what is at stake here and they vary from generation to generation. Pushing people back into a ghetto never helps.

I grew up in a Communist family in Lahore. My mother never wore a veil. She set up a feminist group in the Fifties that worked with working class women in the poorest quarter of the city. Half of them covered their heads in public. It did not affect their activism in the slightest. Similar stories can be told of women in different parts of the world, Muslim and non-Muslim. The Algerian women who fought in the resistance against French republican colonialism did so as anti-imperialists. Some were partially veiled, others not. It did not affect the way they fought or the methods used by the French to torture them. Perhaps the torturers should have been more brutal to the hijabed freedom-fighters to help integrate their progeny better in the Republican tradition.

In 1968-9, the Pakistani students, workers, clerks and women (including prostitutes) fought for three months against a military dictatorship and won: the only victory of those years. The religious groups backed the military. They were isolated and defeated, but many of the women students who fought with us wore the hijab and chanted militant slogans against the Jamaat-i-Islami. Should we have told them they couldn’t participate unless they took off their head-cover? Personally, I would have preferred that for purely aesthetic reasons, but it made nil difference to our struggle.

The anger against Ilhem and the NPA is completely misplaced. The real state of the world leaves the defenders of the Republic completely unaffected: the million dead of Iraq, the continuing siege of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, the killing of innocents in Afghanistan, the US drone attacks in Pakistan, the brutal exploitation of Haiti, etc. Why is this the case?

Several years ago I noticed that French protests against the Iraq war were muted compared to the rest of Western Europe. I don’t accept that this was due to Chirac’s opposition to the war [after all de Gaulle had opposed the Vietnam war even more strongly], but to Islamophobia: an increasing intolerance of the Other in French society, reminiscent of the attitude towards Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The conformism of that period explains the popularity of Vichy during the early years of the war.

Islamophobes and anti-Semites share a great deal in common.

Cultural or ‘civilizational’ differences are highlighted to sanction immigrant communities in Europe. The narratives are multiple. No universalist response is possible. Immigrants and the countries to which they migrate are different to each other.

Take the United States for a start. This is a territory peopled by migrants, many of whom were Protestant fundamentalists, from the seventeenth century onwards and which has depended on migrations ever since.

In most of Western Europe the first large wave of migrants were from the former colonies of the European powers. In Britain, the migrants were from the Caribbean Islands and South Asia, in France from the Maghreb. Without abandoning their identities, they integrated in different ways and on different levels. The South Asians, principally peasants and a sprinkling of workers, were not treated well by the trades-unions. Despite this, South Asian migrant workers led some of the most memorable struggles for unionization.



The Indians in particular came from a highly politicized culture where Communism was strong and they brought this experience with them to Britain (like the New York taxi drivers today). The Pakistanis were less political and tended towards networking groups reflecting clan loyalties in their villages or cities of origin. The British governments encouraged religion by pleading for mullahs to arrive so that the migrants could be kept away from the racial currents in the working class during the 1960s and 1970s.



In France, there was forced integration. Each citizen was taught that s/he had the same rights, something that was patently not the case. It is material needs and a desire to live better that fuel the rage, not spiritual beliefs. During the eruption of the banlieus in 2005, Sarkozy, then Minister of Interior, like the ultras in Stendhal’s novels, talked of ‘savages.’ I have often pointed out to the discomfiture of even some leftists that the kids who rioted had integrated well by internalizing the best French traditions: 1789, 1793,1848, 1871, 1968. When oppression became unbearable the young built barricades and attacked property. Deprivation, not disbelief, was the root of their anger.



How many Western citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers undoubtedly took humanity forward by recognizing no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: "Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes." Hume: "The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words." There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the Islamophobic ravings in sections of the global media.



Marx famously wrote of religion as the ‘opium of the people’, but the sentence that followed is forgotten. Religion was also ‘the sigh of the oppressed creature’ and this partially explains the rise of religiosity in every community since the collapse of Communism. Compare the young Normaliens trooping in to say Mass today to the horror of their parents. My women friends in the Muslim world complain bitterly when their daughters wear the hijab as a protest against familial norms. It was always thus.



Published in Le Monde on February 20, 2010.

Isam and Sceince

SCIENCE, WEST AND ISLAMIC ORIGIN OF SCIENCE

Asghar Ali Engineer

Recently I came across an excellent monograph in the form of a small book Is Science Western in Origin? By Pof. C K. Raju, …who has written earlier a book on Time – a thick volume on philosophy of time. The later work is also of high academic standard. This monograph on origin of science is a significant contribution which tries to shatter the myth that science is western in origin.

We would throw more light on it little later but to begin with it would be quite relevant to discuss whether Islam and science go together or, as many believe, Islam is against science. Of course one can say this debate about Islam and science was more relevant to 19^th century when the Muslim theologians (Ulama) opposed science as against Islam. What is its relevance today? Ulama no longer oppose science and its discoveries. This is largely true but still there are several problems in this debate which need to be discussed. Also, still some western scholars believe that Islam happens to be inherently opposed to scientific progress.

Recently I came across a book Lost in the Sacred – Why the Muslim World Stood Still by Dan Diner published by Princeton and Oxford and the main theme of the book is how Islam and Muslims oppose progress. That is why it is necessary to throw light on Islam and modern science and the monograph by Prof. Raju tries to prove that science originated from India and the Arab world and the west simply imitated it and then cleverly manipulated and interpolated to show that modern science is of Greek origin.

I

Does Islam oppose science? Qur’an is the main source of Islam and hence we would like to first see what Qur’an has to say about this….

The Qur’an repeatedly invites believers to reflect over the creation of Allah and this itself could inspire believers to develop knowledge about this universe and for a period of time they did and contributed richly to the knowledge about this world. The first impulse came when the Abbasids started Darul Hikmah (House of Wisdom). By the way Qur’an lays great emphasis on Hikmah (wisdom). It is Allah’s name (Hakim) and Qur’an describes hikmah as khayran kathira (i.e. goodness in abundance).

Thus the Qur’an says, “He grants wisdom to which He pleases. And whoever is granted wisdom , he indeed is given a goodness in abundance.” (2:269). Thus hikmah has great importance in the Qur’an because hikmah is not possible without knowledge and the Abbasids rightly called the place where books of knowledge from various countries as House of Wisdom. According to Prof. Raju this house of wisdom became epicenter of science and what we call western science today could not have developed without this house of wisdom.

II

In this background we would like to discuss here briefly the monograph of Prof. C.K.Raju Is Science Western in Origin? In this learned monograph Raju tries to show the science is certainly not western in origin but it owes much more to India on one hand, and Islamic centres in Baghdad and Spain. This monograph is part of the dissenting knowledges pamphlet series.

According to Prof. Raju it is a sheer myth to say that science is of Hellenic origin. He says that “The story of the Greek origin of science postdates the Crusades. Before the Crusades, Christendom was in ‘Dark Age’” Prof. Raju also says that it was Roman Christian Emperor who ordered burning down of the Great Library of Alexandria and he also says it was Justinian who ordered closure of all philosophical schools in 529 CE. In the footnote Raju refers to Edward Gibbon who discusses in his The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and dismisses the canard that burning down the Great Library might have been the work of Caliph Omar, or that it might have happened during a fire started at the time of Julius Caesar’s attack.

Dr. Raju also makes an interesting observation that “Ironically, this Christian Dark Age coincided with the Islamic Golden Age.” Then he goes on to say that in sharp contrast to the book-burning tradition of Christendom, the Abbasid Caliphate had established in Baghdad House of Wisdom by the early 9^th c. CE. This led to such an explosion in the demands for books that, along the lines of the hadith to seek knowledge even from China, paper-making techniques were imported from China to set up a paper factory in Baghdad, which had a flourishing book bazaar.

It is not true, according to him that books were brought only from Byzantine but also from Persia and India. Baghdad had scholars from all these countries and it became an important centre of intellectual debates and House of Wisdom, centre for transferring knowledge from these sources into Arabic. He also points out that apart from the contrast in knowledge, there was also striking contrast in wealth between Christendom and Islamic Arabs, Charlemagne’s emissaries were dazzled by the splendor of Haroun al-Rashid’s court, and the gifts they brought back were avidly imitated, and became models of Carolingian art.

It was only post-Crusades that the Church realized the importance of non-Biblical knowledge. In sharp contrast to earlier behavior Church preserved the magnificent library AT Toledo in the Muslim Spain when it was conquered during the proto-Crusades in 1085. Now the non-Biblical knowledge was accepted at the highest levels of the Church.

Prof. Raju also points out that India had very advanced knowledge of arithmetic and astronomy. He says that while the Arabs valued the ‘theology of Aristotle’ for arithmetic, they turned to India, not to Greece. Arabs imported various Indian arithmetic texts, notably those of Aryabhata, Brahmagupta and Mahavira. These were digested and transcreated in the Bayt al-Hikma, by al-Khwarizmi, and became famous as Algorismus after his Latinized name. These ‘Arabic numerals’ use the place-value system which makes it very easy to represent large numerals. It also makes arithmetic very easy through ‘algorithmus’. In fact the legendary Barmakids (derived from barmak- pramukh), the viziers of Abbasids were instrumental in importing knowledge from Persia and India.

Initially many texts in Baghdad came from Persia where the same practice of collecting world-knowledge was followed. But, even in Persia, knowledge of astronomy (translated as Zij-i- Shahryar) was imported from India. Raju then dwells on how of the secular knowledge nothing was available from Rome as otherwise Khusrau to whom Justinian was paying a hefty tribute for non-aggression would have imported it from there, not from India.

Prof. Raju also exposes the myth of Euclides as the writer of Geometry Elements. He points out nothing is known about Euclides as to who he was. He quotes to this effect the leading authority on Elements. Interestingly he also points out that the word Euclides is derived from Arabic iklid or klid which means key or here ‘key to geometry’. It could be because in Toledo translations were done either by those who knew Arabic but not the subject or those who knew Latin but not the subject and hence such howlers were common.

Raju also throws light on Copernicus who is considered as having revolutionized the knowledge of astronomy. Thus Raju points out that Copernicus’s mathematical model is a carbon copy of an earlier astronomical model by Ibn as-Shatir of Damuscus (d.1375). Ibn Shatir used a technique due to Nasiruddin Tusi (whose advice to Hulegu led to the downfall of Baghdad, and who was rewarded with the Maraghah observatory). The Maraghah school raised new questions, and offered novel solutions. Copernicus mimics both the questions and answers. Copernicus’s lunar model is identical to Ibn as-Shatir’s. the question therefore is not whether, but when, where, and in what form he learned of Maragha theory.”

Prof. Raju of course provides answers to these questions though it is too technical for us to throw light on that. But suffice it to say that Copernicus is hailed as father of modern astronomy and in turn on it depends our knowledge of universe today. All further developments in the knowledge of universe, of stars, of solar system and so on, depends on Copernicus’s revolution.

Prof. Raju raises one more important question and says, “The key questions, however, have never been asked: Could Copernicus have openly acknowledged his Islamic sources? Had he done that wouldn’t someone have denounced him as a heretic? Would that have helped his case for theological correctness? So, Copernicus followed the tradition: he used Islamic sources, but refused to acknowledge them.”

However, according to Dr. Raju the western scholars have manipulated evidence in such a way as to hide this fact that Copernicus imitated the model of Ibn as-Shatir and maintain that it was original work by Copernicus. After quoting the sources that Ibn as-Shatir’s manuscript was present in the library of the Church, he observes, “Note a further subtle way in which the rules of evidence are being juggled. The appropriate standard of evidence for history is balance of probabilities, and there is ample circumstantial evidence that Copernicus’ model was entirely derived. So, the onus of proof is on Western historians to supply solid evidence that Copernicus did not see that text! Instead, they shift the onus of proof, and demand further evidence! So the great Copernican revolution is better called the great Copernican Quibble!”

The pamphlet discussed here by Prof. Raju though small in length is much larger in significance. And more scholars would work on these lines. It is highly learned in its contents and unfortunately our universities do not have departments of history of science to carry on study on these lines. In the west history of science is an important area of study and it is high time we also carry on work in this important field.

In conclusion I would like to say though what has been discussed here is historical truth Muslims should not only celebrate this but use it an occasion for serious reflection that though west borrowed much from the Muslim world, why Muslim world is in such pathetic condition today. For them Islam is nothing more than a set of rituals and only an instrument for najat (emancipation) for the other world and not for achievements in this world?

Today Muslims are far behind western countries and depend entirely on the west for scientific knowledge. As the Christendom was passing through dark age when Islamic world was at its height of glory and achievements in the fields of science, mathematics and astronomy. Now it is just the reverse. Now the west (or Christendom) is at its height and the Muslim world is passing through dark age. The Muslim world now at best excels in religious knowledge (‘ulum al-Din).

;Ilm (knowledge) must be taken in its most comprehensive sense as this word has been used in the Qur’an and it should not be confined only to religious knowledge. The ‘Ulama should not mean only those who specialize in diniyat but all those who have expertise in modern secular sciences (all its branches). The ‘Ulama who have no knowledge of modern sciences have no right to lead us. Only those who have knowledge of modern world along with that of Islam have right to show us the way. Otherwise the ‘ulama would be nothing more than what Iqbal called them do rak’at ka imam (leader of prayer).