"All the material of the building of Kaaba, won't become new,
if the idols2 to put in it are imported from England!"
I have just said that the Maulana's statement that nations are
formed by lands, is not open to objections. This is so because
from remote past nations have been associated with countries and
countries with nations. We are all Indians and are so called
because we live in that part of the world which is known by the
name of India. So with the Chinese, the Arabs, the Japanese, the
Iranians, etc. the word "country" used in this statement is merely
a geographical term and as such, does not clash with Islam. Its
boundaries change with time. Till recently those living in Burma
were Indians: at present they are Burmese. In this sense every
human being loves the land of his birth, and according to his
capacity remains prepared to make sacrifices for it. Some
unthinking persons support this by the saying:
"Love of one's
native country is a part of one's Faith."
which they think is a Tradition of the Prophet, but this is
hardly necessary. Love of one's native land is a natural instinct and requires no
impressions to nourish it. In the present-day political
literature, however, the idea of "nation" is not merely
geographical: it is rather a principle of human society and as
such, it is a political concept. Since Islam also is a law of
human society, the word "country", when used as a political
concept, comes into conflict with Islam. No one else knows it
better than Maulana Husain Ahmad that in its principles of human
association, Islam admits of no modus vivendi and is not
prepared to compromise with any other law regulating human
society. Indeed it declares that every code of law other than that
of Islam, is inadequate and unacceptable. This principle raises
some political controversies closely connected with India. For
instance, cannot the Muslims live in unity with other nations?
Cannot the various nations and communities unite for serving the
country's ends and so on and so forth? I must, however, perforce,
leave these questions aside because at the moment my object is to
criticize only the religious aspect of the Maulana's statement.
Besides rational arguments, experience also proves the truth of
the above-mentioned claim of Islam. First, if the purpose of human
society is to ensure peace and security for the nations and to
transform their present social organism into a single social
order, then one cannot think of any other social order than that
of Islam. This is so because, according to my reading of the
Quran, Islam does not aim at the moral reformation of the
individual alone; it also aims at a gradual but fundamental
revolution in the social life of mankind, which should altogether
change its national and racial viewpoint and create in its place a
purely human consciousness. The history of religion was national
as in the case of Egyptians, Greeks and Iranians. Later on, it
became racial as that of the Jews. Christianity taught that
religion is an individual and private affair. Religion having
become synonymous with private beliefs, Europe began to think that
the State alone was responsible for the social life of man. It was
Islam and Islam alone which, for the first time, gave the message to
mankind that religion was neither national and racial, nor
individual and private, but purely human and that its purpose was
to unite and organize mankind, despite all its natural
distinctions. Such a system cannot be built on beliefs alone. And
this is the only way in which harmony and concord can be
introduced in the sentiments and thoughts of mankind. This harmony
is essential for the formation and preservation of a community.
How beautifully sings Maulana Roomi:
"Mutual love and unity is much better
than merely speaking the same language."3
Any other way will be irreligious and contrary to human
dignity. The example of Europe is before the world. When the religious
unity of Europe got shattered and the nations of that continent
became disunited, Europeans began to search for the basis of
national life. Obviously, Christianity could not be such a basis.
The Europeans found this basis in the idea of nationality. But
what has been the end of their choice? The reformation of Luther,
the period of unsound rationalism, and separation—indeed
war—between the principles of religion and state. Where did these
forces drive Europe to? To irreligiousness, religious scepticism
and economic conflicts. Does Maulana Husain Ahmad desire that the
experiment should be repeated in Asia? The Maulana thinks that in
the present-day world land is the necessary basis of a nation. No
doubt, this is the general feeling these days, but it is also
evident that this basis is by itself inadequate. There are a
number of other forces also which are necessary for the formation
of a nation. For instance, indifference towards religion,
absorption in the day to day political issues, and so on. Besides,
there are also other factor which statesmen think out for
themselves as means for maintaining unity and harmony in that
nation. The Maulana ignores the fact that if such a nation
comprises with different religions and communities, the
communities generally die away and the only common factor that
remains in the individuals of that nation, is irreligiousness. Not
even a layman, let alone religious leaders, who thinks that
religion is a necessary factor for human life, desires that such a
state of affairs should be brought about in India. So far as the
Muslims are concerned, it is a pity that, simple-minded as they
are, they are not fully aware of the consequences for this view of
nationalism. If some Muslims have fallen into the error that
Religion and Nationalism can go hand in hand as a political
concept, then I want to give a timely warning to the Muslims that
this course will ultimately lead to irreligiousness. And if this
does happen, Islam will be reduced to an ethical idea with
indifference to its social order as an inevitable consequence.
But the mischief latent in Maulana Husain Ahmad's statement
demands closer examination. I, therefore, hope that readers will
peruse the following lines carefully. Maulana Husain Ahmad is a
learned divine: he cannot, therefore, be unaware of the dangerous
consequences of the view he has set forth for the followers of
Muhammad. Whether he has used the word "qawm" or
"millat" is immaterial. To use a word for a party which,
according to him consists of the followers of Muhammad and to say
that land forms the basis of that party, is very regrettable and
unfortunate. It appears from his statement that he is conscious of
his mistake, but not to the extent which should lead to its
admission or rectification. A purely verbal and philological
argument is mere quibbling. And a philological distinction between
millat and qaum is no consolation. The distinction
may perhaps console those who are unaware of the faith of Islam.
Surely, this statement cannot deceive those who are in the know of
things.
The Maulana has not realized that by offering his
interpretation he has put before the Muslims two wrong and
dangerous views. First, that the Muslims as a nation can be other
than what they are as a millat. Secondly, because as a
nation they happen to be Indians, they should, leaving aside their
faith, lose their identity in the nationality of other Indians or
in "Indianism". It is merely quibbling on the words qaum
and millat. Otherwise the view is the same that has been
described above and which the major community (Hindus) in this
country and its leaders are every day persuading the Indian
Muslims to adopt, viz., that religion and politics are
entirely separate, and if the Muslims want to live in this
country, they must understand religion to be a merely private
affair, which should be confined to individuals alone. Politically
they should not regard themselves as a separate nation; they
should rather lose themselves in the majority.
By saying that he has not used the word "millat" in his
speech, the Maulana seems to pretend that he regards millat
as something higher than nation. "There is", he says, "a world of
difference between the two, and if the nation be compared to the
earth, millat is like heaven." In actual practice, however,
he has left no place for millat by preaching to the eight
crore Muslims to lose their identity in the country, and
therefore in the majority and to make nation a heaven and to
ignore the fact that Islam will thereby be reduced to the status
of the earth.
By supposing that I was unaware of the difference between the
meanings of qaum and millat and that before writing
the verse I had neither examined the Press report of the Maulana's
speech nor looked up the Qamus, the Maulana has charged me
with ignorance of the Arabic language. I welcome the charge. It
would, however, have been better if the Maulana had, if not for
me, at least for the sake of the Muslim community, passed beyond
the Qamus and referred to the Quran and before placing this
dangerous and un-Islamic view before the Muslims, had consulted
the Holy Revelation sent by God. I admit that I am neither a
learned divine nor a litterateur in Arabic:
"A true lover of Allah has but two words
and they are
La-Ilah:
(there is none worthy of worship but Allah)
On the
other hand, the jurist of the city
has a lot of Arabic
vocabulary!"4
But why was the Maulana content with the Qamus alone?
Has not the word "qaum" been used hundreds of times in the
Quran? And has not the word "millat" occurred repeatedly in
the Quran? What do qaum and millat mean in the
Quranic Verses? Is not the word "ummat" also used in
addition to these two words to denote the followers of the
Prophet? Are these words so divergent in meaning that because of
this difference one single nation can have different aspects, so
much so that in matters of religion and law, it should observe the
divine code, while from the viewpoint of nationality it should
follow a system which may be opposed to the religious system?
Had the Maulana sought evidence from the Quran, I am confident,
the solution of this problem would have automatically suggested
itself to him. The philological meaning of the words given by the
Maulana is to a great extent correct. "Qaum" literally
means "a group of persons excluding women". Philologically, then,
women are not included in qaum. But it is obvious that when
the Holy Quran makes mention of the qaum of Musa and the
qaum of ‘Ad, women are included in qaum. Millat
also means religion and law. But the question is not one of
difference between the dictionary meanings of the two words. The
real question is this: First, are Muslims collectively a single,
united and definite party founded on the Unity of God and the
Finality of Prophethood as its basis, or are they a party which
owing to the requirements of race, nation and colour can, leaving
aside their religious unity, adopt some other social order based
upon a different system and law? Secondly, has the Quran ever
employed the word "qaum" to denote this idea? Or does it
use the words "ummat" or "millat" only? Thirdly,
which word does the divine Revelation employ in this connection?
Does any Quranic Verse say, "O ye people!" or "O ye faithful! Join
the qaum of Muslims or follow it"? Or is the call to follow
the millat and to join the ummat?
So far as I have been able to understand, wherever the Quran
calls upon the people to follow and join the Muslim party, the
word "millat" or "ummat" is used. There is no call
to follow or join any particular nation. For instance, the Quran
says:
"And who is better in religion than he who submits himself
entirely to Allah, while doing good (to others), and
follows the
Faith of Abraham, the upright one?" (4:125)
The call is to obey and to follow millat because
millat stands for religion, a law and a programme. As qaum
is no law or religion, it was of no use calling upon people to
follow and to adhere to it. A group, whether it be a tribe or a
race, a band of dacoits or a company of a businessmen, the dweller
of a city or the inhabitants of country, as a geographical unit is
a mere group either of men or of both men and women. From the
viewpoint of divine Revelation and of a Prophet, this group is not
yet a guided one. If Revelation to a Prophet appears in this
group, it will be the first to be addressed and it is for this
reason associated with it, e.g. qaum of Noah,
qaum of Moses and qaum of Lot. If, on the contrary,
this group instead of following a Prophet, follows a king or a
chief, it will be attributable to him also, e.g. the
qaum of ‘Ad, the qaum of Pharaoh. If two groups happen
to live in one country and if they follow mutually opposed
leaders, they can still be associated with both the leaders; for
instance, the qaum of Moses lived side by side with the
qaum of Pharaoh:
"And the chiefs of Pharoah's people said: wilt thou leave Moses
and his people to make mischief in the land?" (7:127)
But wherever the word "qaum" occurs, it is used to mean
a group including both the guided and unguided. Those who followed
the Prophet, and professed the Unity of God, became part and
parcel of the millat of the Prophet and his religion. In
plainer language, they became Muslims. It must be remembered that
the unbelievers can also have a faith and millat:
"Surely, I have forsaken the religion of a people who do not
believe in Allah, and are deniers of the Hereafter!" (12:37)
A qaum can have a millat or a particular way of
life. The millat of a qaum, on the other hand, has
nowhere been used. This means that, in the Quran God has used the
word "millat" and not "qaum" for those persons who,
after renouncing different qaums and millats
embraced the millat of Abraham.
What I have said above means that, so far as I have been able
to see, no other word except ummat has been used for
Muslims in the Holy Quran. If it is otherwise, I would very much
like to know it. Qaum means a party of men, and this party
can come into being in a thousand places and in a thousand forms
upon the basis of tribe, race, colour, language, land and ethical
code. Millat, on the contrary, will carve out of the
different parties a new and common party. In other words,
millat or ummat embraces nations but cannot be merged
in them.
Circumstances have forced the present-day ‘ulama to say
things and interpret the Quran in a way which could never have
been the intention of the Prophet and the Quran. Who does not know
that Abraham was the first Prophet in whose revelation the
distinctions of nations, races and lands were set aside? Humanity
was divided into two classes only—monotheists and polytheists.
Since then there are only two ummats in the world, without
a third. The guardians of the Kaaba have today neglected the call
of Abraham and Ishmael. Those who have put on the garb of
nationalism, do not think of that prayer of the founders of this
millat which the two Prophets uttered when lying the
foundation of Kaaba:
"And when Abraham and Ishmael raised the
foundations of the
House (Kaaba), they prayed:
Our Lord! Accept from us (this humble
service of ours).
Surely, Thou art the Hearing, the Knowing! Our
Lord!
and make us both submissive to Thee, and (raise) from
our
offspring, a nation submissive to Thee!" (2:127-28)
After getting the name of ummat-Muslimah from the Court
of God, was there any room left for merging part of the form of
our society into some Arabian, Iranian, Afghani, English, Egyptian
or Indian nationality? There is only one millat confronting
the Muslim community, that of the non-Muslims taken collectively.
The name of the faith which the Muslim community professes is
"din-i-qayyim", in which term lies concealed a remarkable Quranic
point, namely, that it is this religion alone in which is vested
the responsibility of sustaining the present and future life of a
group of people which surrenders its individual and social life to
its system. In other words, according to the Quran, it is the
religion of Islam alone which sustains a nation in its true
cultural or political sense. It is for this reason that the Quran
openly declares that any system other than that of Islam must be
deprecated and rejected. (3:84)
There is another subtle point which the Muslims must ponder
over. If the sentiment of nationalism was so important and
valuable, why then did some of the people of his own family, race
and land rise up against the Holy Prophet (God’s blessings be upon
him)? Why did the Prophet not regard Islam as an all-embracing
millat and from the viewpoint of nation or nationalism
continue to own and encourage Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab? Indeed, why
did he not keep the bond of national affinity with them in the
political affairs of Arabia? If Islam stood for complete
independence, the Quraish of Mecca had the same ideal before them.
It is unfortunate that the Maulana does not consider the fact that
the Messenger of God was concerned with the freedom of the upright
Faith of Islam and the Muslim community. To ignore the Muslims or
to make them subservient to some other social order and then to
seek some other kind of freedom was simply meaningless. The
Prophet had to wage defensive war against Abu Jahl and Abu Lahab
because they could not tolerate Islam flourishing in freedom.
Before his call to Prophethood, the nation of Muhammad (peace
be upon him) was no doubt a nation and a free one, but as
Muhammad's ummat began to be formed, the status of the
people as a nation became a secondary one. Those who accepted
Muhammad's leadership, became part and parcel of the Muslim or
Muhammadan community, irrespective of the fact whether they
belonged to his own nation or other nations. Formerly they had
been slaves of land and race, but land and race now became their
slaves:
"Anyone, who attached himself to his 'country' and 'pedigree',
couldn't understand the real spirit of Islam. If a nation could
exist only by the love for one's country, Muhammad would not have
invited 'Bu-Lahab'5 to the Faith of Islam!"6
It was a very easy course for Muhammad to tell Abu Lahab, Abu
Jahl, or the unbelievers of Mecca that they could stick to their
idol-worship while he himself would hold fast to the worship of
God and that they could together form an Arabian unity by virtue
of the factors of race and land common to them both. God forbid,
but if he had adopted this course, it would certainly had done him
credit as a patriot but not as the last Prophet. The ultimate
purpose of the prophetic mission of Muhammad (may peace be upon
him) is to create a form of society, the constitution of which
follows that divine law which the Prophet Muhammad received from
God. In other words, the object purify the nations of the world of
the abuses which go by the name of time, place, land, nation,
race, genealogy, country, etc., although the differences of
nations, tribes, colours and languages are at the same time
acknowledged. It is thus to bestow upon man that spiritual idea
which at every moment of his life remains in constant contact with
Eternity. This is where Muhammad stands and this is the ideal of
the Muslim community. How many centuries will it take man to reach
these heights, none can say, but there is no doubt that in
removing the material differences between the nations of the world
and in bringing about harmony among them in spite of their
differences of nations, tribes, races, colours and languages,
Islam has done something in thirteen hundred years what other
religions could not do in three thousand years. Take it from me
that the religion of Islam is an imperceptible and unfeelable
biologico-psychological activity which is capable of influencing
the thoughts and actions of mankind without any missionary effort.
To invalidate such an activity by the innovations of present-day
political thinkers is to do violence to mankind as well as to the
universality of that prophetic mission which gave birth to it.
That part of Maulana Hussain Ahmad's statement in which he has
asked the editor of the Ehsan to produce an authority in
support of the view that the millat of Islam is founded
upon human dignity and brotherhood, must surprise many Muslims. To
me misfortune, or error too, never comes alone. When a Muslim's
mind and heart are overpowered by that idea of nationalism which
the Maulana is preaching, then it is inevitable that various kinds
of doubts should arise in his mind concerning the foundation of
Islam. From nationalism thoughts naturally move towards the idea
that mankind has been so sharply divided into nations that it is
impossible to bring about unity among them. This second error
which arises from nationalism, gives birth to the conception of
the relativity of religions, i.e., the religion of a land
belongs to that land alone and does not suit the temperaments of
other nations. This third error must inevitably lead to
irreligiousness and scepticism.
This is the psychological analysis of that unfortunate Muslim
who becomes a victim of spiritual paralysis. So far as the
question of authority is concerned, the whole of the Quran is an
authoritative verdict for it. There should be no misunderstanding
about the words "dignity of man". In Islamic thought these words
mean that higher reality which has been vested in the heart and
conscience of man, i.e., his inner structure derives itself
from the immutable divine law, and that his dignity depends for
its continuance and preservation upon that yearning for the Unity
of God which permeates his whole being.
The history of man is an infinite process of mutual conflicts,
sanguine battles and civil wars. In these circumstances can we
have among mankind a constitution, the social life of which is
based upon peace and security? The Quran's answer is: Yes,
provided man takes for his ideal the propagation of the "Unity of
God" in the thoughts and actions of mankind. The search for such
an ideal and its maintenance is no miracle of political
maneuvering: it is a peculiar greatness of the Holy Prophet that
the self-invented distinctions and superiority complexes of the
nations of the world are destroyed altogether and there comes into
being a community which can be styled:
(a nation submissive to Thee)
and to whose thoughts and actions the divine dictate:
(they are witnesses on the actions of other nations)
justly applies.
The truth is that in the mind of Maulana Hussain Ahmad and
others who think like him, the conception of nationalism in a way
has the same place which the rejection of the Finality of the Holy
Prophet has in the minds of Qadianis. The upholders of the idea of
nationalism, in other words, say that, in view of the present-day
needs, it is necessary for the Muslim community to take up a
position in addition to what the divine law has prescribed and
defined for them for all time to come, in the same way in which
the Qadiani view, by inventing a new Prophethood, directs the
Qadiani thought into a channel which ultimately leads to the
denial of the perfection and consummation of Prophethood in
Muhammad. Prima facie nationalism is a political concept,
while the Qadiani denial of the Finality of Muhammad is a
theological question, but between the two there exists a deep
inner relationship which can be clearly demonstrated only when a
Muslim historian gifted with acute insight compiles a history of
Indian Muslims with particular reference to the religious thought
of some of their apparently energetic sects.
Let me conclude this article by quoting two verses from Khaqani
in which he has addressed his contemporary Muslim thinkers, who
thought that perfection of knowledge consisted in interpreting the
truth of Islam in the light of Greek philosophy. With a little
change in meaning these verses aptly describe the present-day
Muslim political thinkers:
"The Horse of the Religion of Islam was originally born in
Arabia. Now, do not brand him with the Seal of Greece! Similarly,
don’t place the Table of Decadence7 in the armpit of a few
(Muslim) children, who have just begun their education!"