avari | haroon moghul

The Arab Spring, Turkey, and Pan-Islam

Prime Minister Erdogan's well-publicized tour of North Africa generated a lot of momentum, and talk of increased business ties--all good for the region.  But I believe Turkey, through its private and non-governmental sector, can do more than this, and help realize political and social solutions for Muslim-majority societies by linking them together creatively.  I've written an op-ed on this in Today's Zaman.

Like many other terms, "ummah" has been tarnished by the actions of violent extremists and unimaginative literalists, eager for resumptions of "khilafa" (i.e., the Caliphate) which are irrelevant and unnecessary in the modern day; their unreality further masks their dangerousness, as they are predicated on political forms which would be unlikely to produce meaningful democracy, inclusivity, or social justice.  

But the underlying Islamic ideal of mutual help and cooperation should not be the proverbial baby thrown out with the outmoded bath water.  Many Muslims remain frustrated with ineffective politics, and that frustration can have problematic consequences.  Hence, my proposal: There are ways in which Muslim societies can develop real forms of cooperation, not through political homogeneity, but through cosmopolitan dialogue and debate.

Too often, cosmopolitanism is defined solely as the ability of someone to engage with certain types of Western culture--an alienated Pakistani fluent in American pop culture is "cosmopolitan," but a Muslim scholar who travels the world, although unknown to fashionable consumerism, is considered boorish and provincial.  There can be other types of cosmopolitanism and intellectual generosity; the same prejudice is directed towards Americans who do not fit into certain concepts of what is sophisticated.  

Here's how. 

I'll be elaborating on this theme in my khutbah (sermon) today at Masjid Darul Qur'an in Bay Shore (Long Island); I also touched on this topic yesterday at Stony Brook's MSA event, "My Muslim Neighbor."

The Taj Mahal: What A Disaster...

Here's my latest khutbah:

Like the Alhambra, the Taj Mahal is a symbol of Muslim sophistication, achievement, and wealth.  And like the Alhambra, the dynasty that produced the Taj Mahal vanished not long after producing it.  We often wonder why the Ummah (global community) finds itself in its present condition–but one thing is for sure: It’s not for lack of money.  Blame instead an incredible inability to use our wealth productively, respectfully, or compassionately. 

Once the Caliphate, Now a Footstool

As Pres. Obama tells us how he might bring our jobs back, I thought it was worthwhile to step back and take the long view. We seem to be possessed, as a country, by the idea of hacking away and spinning off our government's services and strengths, no longer seeing the worth and relevance of its various functions. No doubt, that is because in many ways our government has let us down.

But once you let something go, it is not very easy to snatch back. We can learn some lessons from the fate of the Ottoman Empire, which once, not so long ago, also had pretensions to being the latest incarnation of Rome:

As they came under increasing strain, the Ottomans decided to farm out crucial services they once directly controlled. We can call this privatization of a historic kind; like mercenaries, third parties were hired by the state, but were not the state, and worked for a fee, diluting the state’s authority and distancing it from its subjects, replacing human attachments with financial relationships. Sometimes this literally meant mercenaries.

Today we live in a culture that increasingly considers government provision of services problematic, “inefficient”, or unaffordable. (The market, which just crashed the planet, is deemed “efficient.”) But rather than eliminate those services altogether, which seems equally impossible, we’ve proposed privatizing, farming out, private contractors, and so on and so forth. This does seem like a reasonable solution considering the circumstances, but it doesn’t work in the long run.

Take what happened to the Ottomans: 

Read the full piece at AltMuslim.