Practice What You Preach
Many political leaders of our country routinely sing paeans to the country’s Constitution, but when it comes to the question of what they practice, they play a completely different tune. They routinely cite the Constitution to pontificate on social equality, but you will not find them behaving in an equitable manner in their own lives. They will glorify the secular character of the Constitution, but in practice they hurriedly abandon their secular pretensions and bare their communal prejudices. It is as if for them the Constitution is something to boast about or to take great pride in but not a guide to action in their own lives.
The same sort of thing applies to Muslims today. They loudly proclaim the glories and beauties of Islam in their speeches and writings, but in their personal lives they are guided by their personal interests and communal prejudices, not by true Islamic teachings.
Muslims will talk at great length about belief in the oneness of God. They will stress that in Islam, worship is due only to the one God and to no one else. But, in actual practice, the community is immersed in the ‘worship’ of entities other than God. Some members of the community worship their ‘elders’, others worship some ‘thinker’ or the other. Some consider some or the other living person to be ‘holy’. Others give this status to deceased people. Their gatherings resound with praises of the glories of some human figures or the other, not the glories of God. Their talk about pure monotheism is simply a means to express their claim of ideological superiority over other communities and derive a sense of pride from this. As far as their actual practice is concerned, the Muslims’ condition is, by and large, no different from that of other communities.
In the same way, Muslim writers and speakers fervently declare that, according to Islam, God is one, that humans are one, and that all Muslims share one scripture. They seem to think anything less than universal unity as lowering Islam’s greatness. They loudly announce, “We have a clear Shariah that provides guidance for all aspects of life!”
Now, all these assertions are undoubtedly true. But for Muslims, these are all now just things to be talked about. If you see their practical lives, you will discover that they behave in a completely contradictory manner. For instance—and this is an undeniable fact—there is no community anywhere in the world that is as badly divided and torn apart by strife and conflict than Muslims. Going by the way Muslims’ behave, you might think that they have nothing in common with each other and that there is nothing that can unite them. In this context, then, it would be right to claim that the word ‘unity’, which Muslims never cease talking about, is simply a means for them to express their claims of superiority over and against other communities. Islam has now become for them simply a thing to boast about, not something to be acted upon.
This holds true across the board, with regard to all the communal or collective affairs of Muslims today.
Let me clarify this point with the help of an example that relates to the Treaty of Hudaybiyah. Often, when Muslim leaders and thinkers speak about the Prophet’s life or the Quran, they highlight, with much fervour and gusto, the Prophet’s policy of patience, as exemplified in the events related to the signing of this Treaty. They proudly declare, “Makkah was won through this Treaty, not through war!” But, at the same time, when it comes to the question of the conflicts present-day Muslims are involved in with other communities, their practice is completely contradictory to the spirit of the Hudaybiyah Treaty. Muslim leaders excel in highlighting and hailing this Treaty, but this Treaty is possibly the most important Islamic teaching that they continuously and consistently ignore.
Take the instance of a famous Muslim paper. Several years ago, it published a long article on the Hudaybiyah Treaty. It explained that the Treaty facilitated Islam’s victory over Arabia. According to the article, the crux of the Treaty was that, despite all kinds of provocations from their opponents, Muslims would unilaterally abstain from reacting. Avoiding confrontation, they would focus on constructive and positive work and would thereby gain success. In the words of the author of this article:
During this period, while negotiations were on, the Quraysh continued with their efforts in different ways to provoke Muslims to start a fight, but the Companions all through exercised great self-restraint as directed by their leader and refused to fall into any trap. Once, a group of around 50 stealthily approached the camp of Muslims in the night and started pelting stones. The Companions of the Prophet, who had already been cautioned against reacting to such provocations, kept their cool and rounded up them all and produced them before the Prophet, who simply let them go.
The article discussed in detail this spirit that informed the Hudaybiyah Treaty. It explained that because the Muslims did not get provoked despite the provocative situation, it enabled Islam to be victorious over Arabia.
Interestingly, this very same Muslim paper which published this article has been consistently advocating precisely the opposite approach on the question of relations between Muslims and others in India. It has for long been instigating Muslims to get worked up in the wake of provocations. For instance, with regard to the Bhiwandi and Mumbai riots in 1984 (discussed in the previous chapter), it wrote that Mr. Bal Thackeray had insulted the Prophet and that, in reaction to this,
Mr. A.R. Khan, a Muslim Member of the state Legislative Assembly (MLA), took out an angry demonstration and that some Muslims garlanded an effigy of Mr. Thackeray with worn-out slippers.
The paper accepted that this was not an appropriate way to demonstrate, but, in the very next sentence, it sought to justify this behaviour. Thus, it commented:
[…] the Muslims took out an angry procession on May 11, and a Muslim MLA, Mr. A.R. Khan, in his muddle-headedness, garlanded an effigy of Mr. Bal Thackeray with worn-out chappals. No level-headed Muslim approves of the Congress legislator’s indecent manner of protest. But one need not strain one’s common sense to conclude that the initial provocation had come from the Shiv Sena chief.
The statements in the two above-quoted passages clearly contradict each other. In the first statement, the paper indicates that the Prophet and his Companions did not get agitated in the wake of grave provocations by their opponents. They ignored these provocations and acted in a positive manner. On the other hand, however, the second statement claims that, when faced with a provocation, people will definitely react to it. The Prophet’s sunnat or practice teaches us that if we are attacked with stones, we must not reply, even with mere words. But, according to this Muslim paper, if Muslims react to words with chappals (slippers), they would still supposedly be in the right, because, so this paper claims, they are simply reacting to a provocation!
This twisted logic is not a unique feature of this paper alone. Rather, today, all Muslim papers and all Muslim leaders are victims of this contradiction. And it is this contradiction that has made all the efforts of Muslims to fail miserably. When it comes to writing and speaking about Islam, our leaders present glowing tributes to it. But when it comes to the practical application or expression of Islam, they do just the opposite—they begin to think and act in terms of communal interests and prejudices. This indicates that Islam is now no longer a religion to be followed for Muslims, but, rather, simply something for stressing and boosting their communal pride. When it comes to their actions, they are guided by their own desires. But if it is an occasion for expressing their pride, they will sing the praises of Islam, and in this way seek to satisfy their urge to claim superiority over others.
The fact is that there is really no difference between Muslim and other leaders. Many of the latter routinely invoke and sing the praises of the country’s Constitution. “Our Constitution has this! Our Constitution says that! Our Constitution is so great!” they proclaim with enormous pride. But their own actions are just the opposite. Muslim leaders behave in exactly the same way. They sing the praises of the Quran and the practice of the Prophet, and in this way fulfil their urge to express their pride. But when the time comes for them to act, they are guided simply by their personal interests and communal prejudices and desires.
Our Muslim leaders may not engage in inter-communal violence themselves. But when, because of the foolishness of some ignorant members of their community, communal riots are triggered off, they always lend them their support. They never hold their own people responsible for this, as the case of the Muslim paper quoted above clearly demonstrates. And so, even though they may not physically engage in rioting, they are also to be counted among the guilty.
People routinely take the name of the divine religion, but the fact is that they only know ‘communal religion’—wrongly perceiving Islam to be the religion of a certain cultural community.
