ہندستان میں علم و دانش کا بیش بہا ذخیرہ موجود ہے آپ اپنی محنت اور صلاحیت سے تحقیق و جستجو کے نئے دروازے کھول سکتے ہیں

ہندستان میں علم و دانش کا بیش بہا ذخیرہ موجود ہے آپ اپنی محنت اور صلاحیت سے تحقیق و جستجو کے نئے دروازے کھول سکتے ہیں

شعبۂ اردو جامعہ ملیہ اسلامیہ کے ریسرچ اسکالرز سمینار میں زاہدہ حنا کا اظہار خیال

نئی دہلی ۔۲۹،جنوری ۲۰۱۱ء

آپ اپنی محنت اور صلاحیت سے تحقیق کے نئے دروازے کھول سکتے ہیں ۔کمروں میں بیٹھ کر تحقیق کا حق نہیں ادا کیا جاسکتا ہے ۔اس کے لیے آپ کو لائبریروں اور دانش گاہوں کی خاک چھاننی ہوگی ان خیالات کا اظہار مشہور فکشن رائٹر زاہدہ حنا نے شعبہ اردو جامعہ ملیہ اسلامیہ کے ریسرچ اسکالرز سمینار کے افتتاحی اجلاس کے موقع پر کیا ۔افتتاحی اجلاس کی صدارت اردو اکیڈمی کے وائس چیرمین پروفیسر اخترالواسع نے فرمائی ۔پروفیسر مختار شمیم مہمان اعزازی کے طور پر شریک ہوئے ۔نظامت ڈاکٹر عمیر منظر نے کی ۔زاہدہ حنانے کہا کہ ہندستان ایک وسیع و عریض ملک ہے یہاں علم ودانش کا بیش بہا ذخیرہ موجود ہے ۔نئے موضو عات کے ساتھ ساتھ ادب و تہذیب کے بہت سے موضوعات ہیں جن پر کام کرنے کی ضرورت ہے ۔افتتاحی اجلاس میں شعبہ کے دو اسکالر صفوان صفوی (نثر آزاد کی شعریت :غبار خاطر کے حوالے سے )اور سلمان فیصل (آزادی کے بعد دہلی کے ادبی رسائل )نے مقالے پڑھے ۔ان کو سننے کے بعد زاہدہ حنانے کہا کہ ان اسکالروں نے جس اعتماد اور خوش اسلوبی کے ساتھ اپنے اپنے موضوعات کا احاطہ کیا ہے اس سے شعبۂ اردو ہی نہیں بلکہ اردو کے خوش آیند مستقبل کی ضمانت دی جاسکتی ہے ۔زاہدہ حنا نے کہا کہ نئی نسلوں کو اسی انداز میں تربیت کی ضرورت ہے اس کے لیے انھوں نے شعب�ۂ اردو کی کوششوں کو بطور خاص سراہا ۔پروفیسر خالد محمود نے مہمانوں اور حاضرین کا خیرمقدم کیا اور کہا کہ شعبۂ اردو میں تدریس کے ساتھ طلبا کی تربیت کا بھی خاص خیال رکھا جاتاہے۔پروفیسر مختار شمیم نے کہا کہ ان دنوں تحقیق و تنقید کابیشتر سرمایہ تن آسانی کا شکار ہوگیا ہے۔ مجھے امید ہے کہ شعبۂ اردو کی ان کوششوں سے تحقیق کا درجہ بلند ہوگا ۔ڈاکٹر اقبال مسعود نے کہا کہ شعبے کی یہ اچھی روایت ہے اس کے اساتدہ اور طلبہ سب مبارک باد کے مستحق ہیں۔ صدارتی خطاب میں پروفیسر اخترالواسع نے کہاکہ یہ سمینار علم وادب کی تحقیق کے لیے فال نیک ہے ۔ان دنوں جبکہ بازار کی قوتیں تعلیمی اداروں کو اپنی گرفت میں لیتی جارہی ہیں اور تعلیم بے چہرہ ہوتی جارہی ہے بعید نہیں کہ تعلیمی ادارے آئندہ تحقیق کے مرکز کے طور پر ہی باقی رہیں ۔پروفیسر شہپر رسول نے زاہدہ حنا کا تعارف پیش کیا انھوں نے بتایا کہ ادب و صحافت دونوں حوالوں سے زاہدہ حنا کا نام بہت معتبر ہے ۔افسانے ،ناول اور ڈرامے کے ساتھ ساتھ میڈیا سے ان کی غیر معمولی وابستگی رہی ہے ۔سمینار کے کنوینر ڈاکٹر شہزاد انجم نے سمینار کی غرض وغایت اور جامعہ کے عام ادبی و علمی ماحول پر روشنی ڈالی اور کہا کہ اس کا مقصد جامعہ میں علم و دانش کی روایت اور طلبہ میں ادبی ذوق و جستجو کو پروان چڑھانا ہے ۔افتتاحی اجلاس کے موقع پر پروفیسر مختار شمیم کی کتاب سواد حرف اور ڈاکٹر شہزاد انجم کی معاصراردو افسانہ اور ذوقی کا زاہدہ حنا کے دست مبارک سے اجرا کیا گیا ۔ابتدا میں پروفیسر قاضی عبید الرحمن ہاشمی نے پھولوں کے گلدستے سے زاہدہ حنا کااستقبال کیا ۔افتتاحی اجلاس کا آغاز شہنواز فیاض کی تلاوت کلام پاک سے ہوا ۔
ریسرچ اسکالرز سمینار میں مقالات کے تین اجلاس ہوئے جس میں ریسرچ اسکالرز نے مقالے پڑھے ۔صدارت اور نظامت کے فرائض بھی ریسرچ اسکالرز نے ہی انجام دیے ۔اس سمینار میں شوکت علی (عظیم آباد کی خانقاہوں کی شعری خدمات )نوشین حسن (اردو انشائیہ نگاری )محمد جلال الدین (اردو فکشن اورفلم )عزیز احمد خاں (فراق گورکھ پوری کی مکتوب نگاری )فخر عالم (گؤدان اور گودان کا تقابلی مطالعہ)،ذکیہ رخشندہ (ہندستان کی تحریک آزادی میں اردو کا حصہ)شاکر علی صدیقی (مومن خاں مومن کی غزل کا تجزیہ )محمد یوسف وانی (اکتشافی تنقید اور حامدی کاشمیری )زمرد مغل (میر سائنسی توضیحات کی روشنی میں )کے مقالے پڑھے ۔جاوید حسن،خالد مبشر،محمد منظر علی نے صدارت کے فرائض انجام دیے جبکہ محمد آدم ،رئیس فاطمہ،نوشاد منظر اور سلمان فیصل نے مختلف اجلاس کی نظامت کی ،آفتاب احمد، شہنواز حیدر اور ساجد ذکی فہمی نے شکریہ اداکیا۔مختلف اجلاس میں سوال وجواب اور بحث و مباحثہ میں ڈاکٹر کوثر مظہری ،ڈاکٹر سہیل احمد فاروقی ، مقیم احمد، شاکرعلی اور نزہت نے حصہ لیا۔ ڈاکٹر ندیم احمد، ڈاکٹر عمران احمد عندلیب اور ڈاکٹر سرورا الہدی نے طلبا وطالبات کی حوصلہ افزائی کی۔ آخر میں ریسرچ اسکالرز سمینارکے کنوینر ڈاکٹر شہزاد انجم نے سبھی مہمانوں ، ریسرچ اسکالرز اور طلبا و طالبات کا شکریہ ادا کیا۔سمینار میں حلیمہ فردوس ،قرۃ العین، ریاض ثاقب، عبدالکریم رضوان، ابوہریرہ ،شبنم، انجم جمال، صبا انجم، ثمرین، غزالہ شیرین، زاہد احسن، اقرا سبحان، تبسم، عبدالرزاق، سبا ماہم سمیت کثیر تعداد میں طلبا و طالبات موجود تھے۔

حب الوطن اور حب الوطنی

Large numbers of British citizens converting to Islam

Friday, 7 January 2011

Number of People Converting to Islam has Doubled in UK, The number of Britons choosing to become Muslims has nearly doubled in the past decade, according to a study by an inter-faith think tank. The study by think tank Faith Matters attempts to estimate how many people have embraced Islam.
Despite the “often negative” portrayal of Islam, thousands of Britons are adopting the religion every year, The Independent reported.
Estimating the number of converts living in Britain has always been difficult because census data does not differentiate between whether a religious person has adopted a new faith or was born into it.
Previous estimates placed the number of Muslim converts at between 14,000 and 25,000.
But the new study by Faith Matters suggests the real figure could be as high as 100,000, with as many as 5,000 new conversions nationwide each year.
The researchers used data from the Scottish 2001 census – which is the only survey to ask respondents what their religion was at birth as well as at the time of the survey.
The experts broke down what proportion of Muslim converts there were in Scotland and then extrapolated the figures for Britain as a whole.
In all, they estimated there were 60,699 converts living in Britain in 2001.
The researchers polled mosques in London to try to calculate how many conversions take place a year.
The results gave a figure of 1,400 conversions in the capital in the past 12 months which, when extrapolated nationwide, would mean approximately 5,200 people adopting Islam every year.
The figures are comparable with studies in Germany and France which found that there were around 4,000 conversions a year.
Fiyaz Mughal, director of Faith Matters, said that coming up with a reliable estimate of the number of converts to Islam was “notoriously difficult”.
“This report is the best intellectual ‘guestimate’ using census numbers, local authority data and polling from mosques. Either way few people doubt that the number adopting Islam in the UK has risen dramatically in the past 10 years,” he said.
Batool al-Toma, an Irish-born convert who works at the Islamic Foundation and runs the New Muslims Project, a group to help converts, said she believed the new figures were “a little on the high side”.
Inayat Bunglawala, founder of Muslims4UK, which promotes active Muslim engagement in British society, said the figures were “not implausible”.
“It would mean that around one in 600 Britons is a convert to the faith,” he said.
–Agencies–

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Mohd.ilyas Nadvi

Our Thoughts Are Incoherent & Disorganized

Our Thoughts Are Incoherent & Disorganized
We are not able to reach to conclusions on many issues of importance because our thoughts are incoherent and disorganized. It is like having a road in front of us and the road is broken and has gaps after every few feet. But we assume that the road is smooth and continuous. Resultantly, we keep falling in those gaps. We mix up a lot many issues in a flood of confusion.
We will say that Islam is a complete way of life and then divide the affairs of life into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’. Isn’t Islam a religion and it is complete? Then why this division? We will, however, not prepare a list of ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ matters despite being earnestly requested to do so – repeatedly.
I come across people once in a while who say that that they have ‘made’ hijrah from the West. (We made a hijrah in the Indian Subcontinent and should only read the headlines of one newspaper – everyday.) I am wonderstruck at this huge gap. They will believe that Islam is the best way of life and it is for the entire humanity. But practically they will exclude a significant part of the world from the ‘entire’ humanity and the ‘whole’ world. And they will not see the self-contradiction.
When we emphasize on the need for a huge component of rote learning and memorization in our curriculum then we give an impression that “We have actually tried hard with critical and scientific thinking. But it proved to be disastrous, you know. It did not produce the desired results (???). The students are not hard-working anymore, you see. They want it easy. You know how the new generation is. Our times were different. And you know they don’t send bright students to madrasaahs.”
An eminent speaker I met the other day. He started lamenting that the people do not send ‘bright’ children to madrasaahs. (I haven’t seen any students who aren’t bright – in their own way. Just as I haven’t seen any ‘ordinary’ and ‘common’ human beings in my life.) On the other hand, he was complaining that the syllabi of these institutions are extremely old. He did not realize why the people should send their ‘bright’ children to madrasaahs if the syllabi are so outdated.
I could not understand why the ‘bright’ students should be sent to these institutions if the curriculum is not up-to-date. How could or will an up-to-date teacher teach an outdated curriculum is beside the point. As if it was not enough, the respectable speaker started complaining about the graduates of madrasaahs. This wasn’t enough either. He was of the view that the madrasaahs should completely teach the Tafseer of the whole Qur’an and a student must necessarily go over the entire Qur’an – at least in translation.
I could not get a definite answer to my question about what was the real problem; the curriculum, the methodology, the students not being ‘bright’ or the Qur’an not being taught in full. We face a difficulty in staying focused on one subject while communicating with the ‘traditionally’ educated. With much difficulty I drew the attention of the gentleman to the core issue as he frequently stepped into sideways.
The ‘modern’ educated are very much appreciable in this regard. As a people, however, we need to develop a habit of staying with the problems longer. It will require that we stop repeating those sentences which we have heard a thousand times. The situations demand that we start ‘chewing the cud’.
We will talk about the need for more engagement with the fellow countrymen of other Faiths but will establish and perpetuate those educational institutions which are the antithesis of cohesion and engagement. Without noticing the self-contradiction. We will talk about Haqq-O-Baatil and will advise, too, for adhering to the former. We will, however, not call a spade a spade. We will still beat about the bush and stay away from the crux of it.
We read a lot of articles from many writers from all over the world. This is very important. But there is one apprehension. We might think that the journalists from across the globe will provide a solution to the problems. If we do so we may be mistaken. How could those who do not have the whole picture (who aren’t sure where the man has come from, what is he expected to do on earth and where is he going to) provide a solution to the vexed (???) problems of the world? If they still do that, it will be rare and, of course, admirable.
We are extremely concerned about educating every Muslim child but we do not know why we should do that. So we don’t know the reasons of this concern for Muslims which has become a kind of fashion now. It gives an instant impression that “I am in a much better situation, thank God.” No, we are not “in a much better situation”.
We ALL are poor (muflis). But there is something that does not allow us to concede that we are poor. We go about the idea of reform in circles and circles. I wonder if so many among us are trying to make things better – and for so long – then why don’t we see the results? The incoherence and disorganization in our thoughts is the diehard enemy of results.
Please don’t ever get impressed by quotations from Qur’an or Hadeeth or from history etc. It is most likely that the quotations will be out of context – ignoring the broader picture. It is most likely that we belong to a situation like Makkan and the quotation is of a Madeenan context, for example. There is also a slight chance that we may not be belonging to either of the two periods.
There is a possibility that the quotation is from a person who is sure about everything and has never been slightly confused about even a few things. May be the quotation is a result of deep conditioning. May be the sermon is from someone who has never tried to put all the ideas (or pieces of a jigsaw puzzle) in order and organize them. So we shouldn’t take chances.
The incoherence and disorganization in our thoughts (which naturally leads to incoherent and disorganized actions – and there is no force that can stop it from happening) is eating into our vitals. What to do now? We need to be watchful in our conversations. We have to very carefully and critically listen to every speech or read every piece of writing (including this one). We have to be many times more cautious than we have ever been.
We shouldn’t do so only when we are in the gathering of ‘others’. We need to do this even more when we are in ‘our own’ gatherings. If we do not do so, the discourse will not change which is precisely what we need to change. We will not be moving to the second stage which is long overdue. This is the price that we as a people have to pay for a CHANGE which we all are yearning to see.
Thanks and salaam.
Wasim
Ajman, UAE

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A rickshaw puller and an author of four books

Posted on January 17, 2011 by admin

A rickshaw puller and an author of four books
Submitted by admin4 on 16 January 2011 – 11:42am *
Indian Muslim By Asit Srivastava, IANS,
Lucknow : Rehman Ali Rehman, a rickshaw puller in Uttar Pradesh’s Basti district, doesn’t mind if has to wait long for a customer. He uses the time to scribble on pieces of paper – poems for his forthcoming book. Rehman, a native of Badeban village in Basti district, has already penned four books that have a total collection of around 400 poems on topics like national integration, communal harmony, water woes and corruption. “I don’t mind when I don’t get a ‘savari’ (customer) for my rickshaw, as I utilise the time in writing poems,” Rehman, 55, told IANS on a mobile phone arranged by a local in Basti, some 300 km from here. “Writing poems is an integral part of my life. I feel it is a driving force that gives me strength to face hardships of life,” he said. Rehman, a school dropout, always wanted to become a writer. “My father was a small famer. When I was about to pass Class 10, my father had nothing left to spend on our family. The small farm we had was also sold for my studies,” he recalled. “After my father’s death, I left my studies and took up menial jobs. I had no resources and time to pursue my ambition.” Rehman then went to Kanpur and worked at a cinema hall. “I got to watch Hindi movies at the cinema hall. I used to listen to songs carefully and noted some words from them. Thereafter, I tried to write songs on my own.” With his songs, Rehman became popular among the cinema hall staff. “They (cinema hall officials) often listened to my songs. They motivated me to take up a writer’s job. I just felt on top of the world when they appreciated me for my songs,” he said. “Earlier, I used to write songs on love relationships, but later I started writing poems on national integration, communal harmony and other topics.” He later moved back to his native village where he got married and started working as a rickshaw-puller but continued to write songs and poems. Rehman got his first book published with assistance from a customer, who happened to be a writer. “A ‘savari’ once noticed me writing on a piece of paper. He asked me about it after which he came to know about my aspirations.” “He invited me to recite poems at a function at the district Kanpur jail on Republic Day,” he added. Unaware of what life had in store for him, Rehman participated in the function and discovered that the man who invited him was Ram Krishna Lal ‘Jagmag’ – a humour poet (satirist). “He is my first guru, who in a way gave me a break to showcase my skills. During the function, I came in contact with several writers who suggested to me to get my poems published in a book,” said Rehman. At another function, he met some teachers of Gorakhpur and members of Kanpur-based Manas Sangam – an organisation involved in the promotion of Hindi literature, and with their help he got his first book “Kuch Kavitayen” published in 2005. Rehman authored three more books – “Rehman Ram Ka payara ho”, “Mat vyarth karo pani ko” and “Kaise Samjhe hua vihaan”. Manas Sangam convener Badri Narain Tiwari told IANS, “Rahman is just amazing in every sense. His sustained efforts at writing poems despite the unfavourable conditions really need to be acknowledged.” “He is a living example for those who think that a mission cannot be achieved with limited resources,” Tiwari said. Rehman lives in a small rented room in Basti and has no complaints with the almighty. “I just thank Him for helping me achieve what I had always dreamt of.” “Though poor living conditions didn’t allow me to take proper care of my six children, I feel they too would be able to survive hardships of life,” said Rehman, adding that he is working on a couple of books. While Rehman has got his three daughters married, his three sons work as labourers.

Extremism: Inaction is no longer an option

AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | ARAB NEWS

Extremism: Inaction is no longer an option

What a life!
From what little one has read and heard about Salman Taseer, he lived life king size with an irrepressible, in-your-face contempt for everything that ordinary Pakistanis – and Muslims everywhere – love and hold close to heart. The slain governor of Pakistan’s Punjab was both a successful politician and a successful businessman, building a nice, little media empire of his own.
Taseer certainly knew how to work his way up the slippery pole of power in the rough and tumble of Pakistani politics, having been close to both the powers that be – President Asif Zardari — and powers that were – Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He even had an Indian connection, having married journalist Tavleen Singh and fathered a son, Aatish Taseer, with her during his brief stay in India.
A slick operator and maverick to the core, Taseer had developed a taste for “good things of life” and lived dangerously in every sense of the term. But did Salman Taseer deserve to be killed, as he has been? That too in the sweet name of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and the blessed faith that he brought?
I know we have been here before but how much more infamy and disgrace Muslims will inflict on their faith in the name of protecting it? Every time we target someone in the name of Islam we add a blot to the long history of tolerance, kindness and generosity of the great faith. And where’s all this going to end, if we start settling our political or ideological differences? As Mahatma Gandhi would warn, an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind. We aren’t living in the middle ages for God’s sake!
More important, we do ultimate injustice to the Last Messenger, the noblest and kindest of men, who granted amnesty to the worst of his enemies including those who persecuted and tried to assassinate him when the whole of Arabia was at his feet.
I am no religious scholar. But with the limited understanding I have of my faith, I have to ask these so-called defenders of faith: Would the Prophet approve of this murder and mayhem in his name and in the name of a religion that is totally based on reason, truth and justice? But whoever said this had anything to do with religion or faith? This is more like the politics of religion, something we in South Asia have evolved into a science.
From Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic to the gunning down of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her own Sikh guards, religion has gone hand in hand with politics. As the BJP realized to its glee, after it was transformed from a 2-member party in Parliament into a “natural party of governance” after the Ayodhya campaign, it pays to mix politics with religion, or the other way round.
Across the border in Pakistan, our cousins seem to have turned this to another level with deadly effect and consequences. Even as I am a great believer in Allama Iqbal’s philosophy that “juda ho deen siasat se toe rah jaati hai changezi”(divorced from religion, politics is nothing but barbarity), I dare say what’s going on in Pakistan right now has got nothing to do with religion, nor with politics.
Pakistan was supposed to have been the citadel of Islam, a model state based on the celebrated Islamic principles of equality and accountability before God and justice and security for everyone including its minorities, a utopia that would be a source of inspiration and pride for the believers around the world.
Where does Jinnah’s Pakistan find itself today then? As a country that is so much like my own and is home to some of my closest friends, there’s always been a special place for the “land of the pure” in my heart (no matter what our Sanghi and Sena friends think!)
But would the founding fathers of Pakistan be proud of the state their baby is in today? Is this what Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah had in mind when he envisioned a model Muslim state?
Millions gave up everything they had for the “promised land.” There were hundreds of thousands of others who could never make it past what Qurratulain Haider called Aag ka Darya (The River of Fire). Were all those immense sacrifices meant for the dangerous, lawless land that some are bent on making of Pakistan?
It’s not just the lunatic fringe represented by the Tahreek-e-Taleban and numerous other outfits that are distorting the teachings of Islam and chipping away at the so-called ideal of Pakistan, almost every politician and party, including those in the “secular and liberal” Pakistan People’s Party, is guilty of using or abusing religion for petty political ends.
Same goes for the so-called blasphemy law, a relic of the late President Gen. Zia-ul Haq’s martial law era. Of course, no Muslim will ever tolerate any slur against the Prophet. And one has no reason to question Gen. Zia’s sincerity and intention in bringing in the law.
However, the very fact that it has generated so much heat and dust in and outside Pakistan with genuine concerns and complaints about its abuse to settle personal and political scores, calls for revisiting and reviewing the law. While any assault on the Prophet’s person or the Holy Book will always be intolerable for all believers, more reprehensible is potential victimization of innocents.
This is not just about a controversial law or some fanatics taking law into their hands in Pakistan. I hate to say this but the larger issue at the heart of this whole debate is increasing intolerance in Muslim societies around the world. Whatever the real and imagined causes of this growing extremism – Western conspiracies and interventionist policies, historical injustices or corruption and spinelessness of Muslim leaders – in our midst, it has acquired truly frightening proportions.
From mindless, suicidal violence targeting innocent Muslims to shameless attacks on religious minorities, the cancer of extremism is eating away into the vitals of Muslim societies everywhere and pristine image of Islam. And it’s no longer possible to ignore these extremists as a tiny, lunatic fringe because they have practically hijacked our voices and causes, painting a community of 1.7 billion believers as a dangerous, intolerant lot.
Governments, opinion leaders, intellectuals and religious scholars and leaders in particular have to wake up to this scourge of extremism before it’s too late. The Muslims have their issues and problems, just like any other people or community, and they are capable of taking care of them without help and intervention from the nuts celebrating death, thank you very much! Extremist violence in the name of religion is no longer an issue of idle, drawing room debate.
This is a clear and present danger to all of us. Too many innocents have died and too much innocent blood has been shed in our name. This is not us. Blowing up innocent, unsuspecting folks busy in prayers is the ultimate savagery and crime against the faith, against all faiths. We must act and act now to stop this dance of death. For God will not forgive us if we remain silent in the face of this outrage. Extremism has emerged as the biggest threat to Islam and Muslims everywhere. And the alternative to collective inaction is collective doom.
- Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based commentator who has written extensively on
Movement of ideas and excellence that once shaped the Islamic world has been lost in pointless delusions of grandeur and fruitless debates

By Aijaz Zaka Syed, Special to Gulf News
Published: 00:00 January 7, 2011

An idea can change the world. Who would know this better than the people of the UAE? This young nation is a living, thriving tribute to the compelling power of simple, yet magical ideas. The restless energy and enterprising spirit of the Emirates to constantly break new ground and build something new and refreshing in this long dormant, sleepy part of the world often reminds me of the pioneering spirit of early Arabs and Muslims.
A great deal has been written about the stark simplicity and honesty of the early believers and how the rustic, desert tribes started conquering the world within two decades of the dawn of Islam. What fascinates me no end though is their seminal contribution to modern science and all streams of pursuit of knowledge. From astronomy to anatomy to medical science and from mathematics to chemistry to physics to navigation and from philosophy to poetry, Muslims have not just left an imprint on modern science, they have shaped our world.
Did you, for instance, know that it was an Arab woman, Fatima Al Fihri, from Morocco who founded the world’s first university? Or the fact that the blueprint of the modern camera was created by an Iraqi scientist, Ibn Al Haitham, more than a thousand years ago? He wrote the Book of Optics that led to the invention of the camera.
How many of us, accustomed to the comfort and speed of air travel, realise that the idea had been first tried by a curious pioneer called Abbas Ibn Firnas? With his body covered in feathers and ‘wings’ strapped to his arms, the Berber polymath took to the sky in 9th-century Cordoba, managing to ‘fly’ several metres before crash landing. It was clearly a work in progress! But remember it happened a thousand years before the Wright brothers attempted their flight.
New York these days is hosting an unusual exhibition profiling hundreds of such pioneers, from Ibn Firnas to Ibn Sina, in a long due tribute to the contributions of Islamic civilisation. ‘1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage in Our World’ that opened in the Big Apple last month after immensely successful shows in London and Istanbul attracting 800,000 visitors is an attempt to recreate the glory of the magical millennium, from AD 700 to 1700, that changed the world.
It was during this period between the fall of Rome and the rise of the European Renaissance, that Muslim civilisation led the world in science and technology and virtually everything else.
Endless list of inventions
From the humble coffee beans to the crafty game of chess to windmills to clocks to fountain pens to soap to surgical instruments and from quilting or sewing to gunpowder, the list of Muslim inventions is endless. Five hundred years before Galileo discovered earth was round and was duly punished for it by the Church, the Muslim scientists had established the spherical nature of the planet.
In the empire of the faith that stretched from Spain through the Middle East to China, new ideas were constantly generated, encouraged and embraced. It’s this ferocious hunger for knowledge that took the Arabs and Muslims to great heights of power, prosperity and intellectual supremacy. They fought the battle of ideas from a position of strength, challenging reigning ideas and ideologies of the time.
They embraced the best from around the world. This was how the science of arithmetic from India and Greek philosophy were passed on to Europe and the rest of the world. Indeed, the Arab contribution played a critical role in the progress the West has made over the past five centuries.
A culture of excellence coupled with their willingness to learn enabled the Muslims to conquer new lands. Muslim countries were home to scores of universities and libraries long before Oxford and Cambridge were founded in Europe.
When the Mongol armies overran the Middle East, sacking eminent centres of power and learning like Baghdad, Damascus and Alexandria and killing hundreds of thousands of people, there was more ink than blood in rivers. The invaders burnt and dumped in the river hundreds of thousands of invaluable books and rare manuscripts authored and collected over the centuries.
How would you then explain the current intellectual stagnation? Why aren’t Muslims part of the knowledge revolution anymore, let alone leading it? Have they run out of steam as a people and as a civilisation?
It’s no coincidence that power began to slip from Muslim hands just when they stopped exploring and expanding new horizons of knowledge. Muslims haven’t produced one intellectual or scientist of the stature of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) in the past many centuries.
Why? Because the movement of knowledge and ideas that once drove Muslims and fired their imagination has lost itself somewhere. A small European nation or a backward Indian state boasts more universities today than all the Arab world put together.
All we do these days is spend all our time and energy on pointless delusions of grandeur and fruitless debates. Instead of doing something concrete to lift ourselves out of the intellectual morass we are stuck in, we are busy issuing fatwas condemning each other.
There’s no dearth of talent or resources, human or material, in the Muslim world today. What it needs is original ideas and men who could translate them into reality. More important, what is needed is an opening of minds.
Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based writer who has extensively written on Muslim world affairs.

AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | ARAB NEWS

What’s wrong with Muslims?

W hat is a writer without his or her readers?

I take my share of readers’ feedback seriously. It’s invariably interesting and instructive.
Check out this mail from a regular reader, Shiv Dhanush, for instance, in response to my recent column on the predicament of Indian Muslims: “There are less than one million Hindus and Sikhs in the US, that is, 0.3 percent of the population. But governors of two out of the 50 US states are from this community. There are nearly six million Muslims in the US but they do not have anyone in governor mansions. You can extend the example to other top learning institutions like MIT, Cal Tech, Berkeley, Harvard and Yale etc. The representation of Hindu and Sikh children is greater than their percentage in the population.
“The share of Muslims in these elite institutions is lower than their population ratio. You can make a comparison of Punjabi (or Sindhi or Bengali) Hindus and Sikhs versus Punjabi Muslims in the US or UK and their relative achievements. Make a similar comparison of Hindus and Sikhs versus Muslims in US and UK prisons and you’ll see alarming results.
“The playing field for all immigrants in the West is the same. So how did this happen? It happened because Hindus, Sikhs, and others give highest priority to education and personal excellence (whereas Muslims do not). This is why Muslims today find themselves even behind the Dalits in India in all walks of life.”
My apologies for this long quote but it’s intrinsic to my argument. Besides, this is fascinating stuff, don’t you think? In fact, Shiv goes on to argue that the South Asian Muslims wanted Pakistan because they knew they couldn’t compete with Hindus and Sikhs in an undivided India!
I have no issues with Shiv’s argument and most of his facts. In fact, we are on the same page about the Muslim under representation in all walks of life and their excessive presence on the wrong side of the law.
The shining examples of Louisiana Gov. Piyush Jindal, being lionized as the Republicans’ answer to Obama and a future president, and South Carolina Gov. Nimrata Kaur are a source of inspiration and pride not just for Hindus and Sikhs but the whole of India and Asia. There are countless such examples in the land of opportunity that is America — of Indians scaling the pinnacle of excellence in universities, research and scientific centers and Silicon Valley companies thanks to their hard work and dedication.
However, if Indian Hindus and Sikhs are increasingly becoming the shining face of the great American dream while their Muslim counterparts rough it out in the cold, there’s another more prosaic explanation.
I hate to disrupt Shiv’s reverie but if the Jindals and Kaurs of this world find themselves in US governor mansions today, and possibly on their way to the White House, they’ve had to pay a price for it. Piyush Jindal was born a Hindu to Hindu immigrant parents from Punjab. He converted to Christianity when he grew up christening himself as Bobby Jindal. Today, he and his wife Supriya are proper church-going folk, like the rest of the predominantly white, genteel Christian America.
Ditto Nimrata Kaur who today calls herself Nikki Haley. She was born a Sikh to second— generation Sikh immigrants. Like Jindal, she converted to Christianity before joining politics. She’s married to Michael Haley and has two children, all of them nice, practicing Christians.
Of course, this has nothing to do with faith. Each to his or her own and I am a firm believer in everyone doing his/her own thing. What I am trying to emphasize is the fact that both Jindal and Kaur had to give up their original identity and faith to find acceptance in the white, middle class America.
I am an ardent admirer of the great American dream and its enduring allure that continues to beckon generations of dreamers from around the world. But I have to point out that today if Jindal and Kaur are where they are, it’s also because of their willingness to give up their beliefs to merge their identity with the host society, becoming tolerable for the Republican and Tea Party rabble-rousers. Compromises are made at every step of the staircase to heaven.
Unfortunately or fortunately, this is something the Muslims cannot do. They would rather languish on the edges of the American dream, rather than give up their identity and faith to live in governor mansions.
I know this is a huge weakness or failing, according to the worldview of friends like Shiv. But that’s how they are: Rigid and uncompromising when it comes to their convictions and totally out of sync with the way of the world and liberal ways of the West. If they are left out in the cold while the rest of the world is partying, they do not seem to mind. And this is a global phenomenon, wherever Muslims are, from Americas to Australia.
In fact, this apparent lack of “flexibility” and preoccupation with religion is seen as being at the heart of the West-Islam conflict today. Call it what you will but this is in the very nature of Islam that it demands its followers to accept it as a way of life, rather than as something private between God and the believer.
But if the Muslims find themselves stuck in a rut almost everywhere while the rest of the world is flying past them on the high road to glory, it’s not because there’s too much of religion in their lives. It’s because they have failed to apply it the way it should be to their lives. Instead of imbibing the liberating teachings and revolutionary spirit of a faith that guides us every step of the way, we have turned it into a set of meaningless rituals and a heavy yoke around our neck.
It was the same faith that transformed the bands of unruly, bloodletting Arabian tribes into a world power in less than a decade bringing down the mighty Persian and Roman empires like a house of cards.
It wasn’t just on the battlefield that they beat others. They pioneered a knowledge and scientific revolution, which in turn fed and inspired the European Renaissance. From philosophy and poetry to physics and chemistry and from mathematics and medicine to planetary science, the West built its discoveries and advances based on blueprints created by Muslim pioneers.
Unlike us, early Muslims had been driven by a compelling craving and hunger for knowledge and new ideas, wherever they could find them. While we have become the prisoners of our past and our often narrow, literal interpretation of Islamic teachings, they looked to the future showing the way forward to others.
They did not preach their faith. They lived it, promoting it with their actions and with their honesty, simplicity, piety and courage. At the same time, they promoted a culture of hard work, perseverance and excellence wherever they went and whatever they turned their attention to. No wonder they conquered the world in no time and have left behind a civilization to last forever.
They were extraordinary men, giants among men. A really hard act to follow, indeed! But if we could recreate even a fraction of their magic, we would do ourselves an immense favor, transforming our wretched existence forever and creating a better world.

AIJAZ ZAKA SYED | ARAB NEWS

The real battle for the idea of India

What’s India’s ruling Congress party up to now?

Is it really undergoing a radical metamorphosis or is this yet another clever, little trick out of its ancient bag? When was the last time you had senior Congress leaders hold forth on Hindu extremism being a grave threat to India’s security and integrity? That too in the presence of the high and mighty of government and party, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi!
Digvijay Singh is one of those few Congress leaders who wear their liberal credentials on their sleeve. Yet watching him take on the saffron brotherhood at the party’s plenary was breathtaking, even if simplistic. “In the 1930s, Hitler’s Nazi party attacked the Jews. Similarly, the RSS ideology wants to capture power by targeting Muslims under the garb of nationalism,” thundered the former Madhya Pradesh chief minister. Accusing the RSS-VHP-BJP combine of sowing the seeds of terror in the country with the destruction of Babri Masjid, Singh warned the nation of the Hindutva forces infiltrating all organs of the state, including the bureaucracy, police, and the army.
What makes Digvijay Singh’s assertions interesting is the fact that they were not projected as his own views but as a clear ideological line of the party. Earlier, in her opening address, Sonia Gandhi, the party’s president, warned the country against both majoritarian and minority extremism. “They are all dangerous and must be defeated. We cannot ignore such elements who provoke people to violent means by using religion” said the Italian-born politician.
This theme of Hindutva specter was emphasized further in the final political resolutions, without the usual spin and hedging. Secularism, said the Congress’ resolution, the lifeline of Indian democracy “is threatened by the ideology of the BJP and its affiliate organizations like the RSS. The RSS and the VHP are insidious in their efforts to break India.”
Launching a full frontal attack on you know who, the resolution said: “The role of fundamentalist organizations in challenging the security of the nation can no longer be ignored. The Indian National Congress calls upon the government to tackle this menace in the strongest possible manner and investigate the links between terrorists and the RSS and its sister organizations that have been uncovered in some recent cases. Terrorism, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be dealt with firmly and effectively.”
Of course, nothing of this sanctimonious stuff comes as news to anyone familiar with the rough and tumble of Indian politics. Hindutva’s history and shenanigans are not exactly state secrets. Everyone knows how the BJP grew from a two-member party in Parliament to the “natural party of governance” that calls itself today in no time. From the hundreds of riots and pogroms targeting the Muslims to the Ayodhya outrage to the constant demonization and witch-hunt of the minority community, Muslims have got a great deal to thank the saffron friends for.
And as Congress so wisely warns us, these forces aren’t just a threat to religious minorities but a clear and present danger to India and everything it stands for — tolerance, pluralism and religious and cultural diversity.
The question is why the Congress has woken up to the dangerous designs of Hindutva forces now? And what’s with its sudden love for the Muslims? Is it a real concern for the well being of the nation or is this inspired by something more mundane like power? Is the party, with its back to the wall over all these corruption scams, resorting to what it does best, vote bank politics, using Muslims as the cannon fodder all over again?
The Muslims have enough reasons to be wary of Congress. While they have over the past couple of elections begun voting for the party once again, it’s not out of love for the Gandhis. It was not a mandate for the Congress but more of a protest against the RSS-BJP worldview. Even if the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) experiment with some secular, regional parties falling for the amiable mask of the BJP, Atal Behari Vajpayee, had persuaded some Muslims briefly to vote for the alliance, Gujarat served as a stark warning of the shape of things to come.
It was this fear that has made Muslims vote for the Congress, and other secular parties. However, their deep sense of distrust and betrayal of the grand old party remains.
While they have come to respect Sonia Gandhi, they cannot get over the Babri Masjid demolition and the carnage that followed on Narasimha Rao’s watch. It’s not just that particular phase under India’s answer to Nero though. Talk to any member of the community and there’s a long history of treachery, exploitation and repeated betrayals that is revisited.
And it’s not just the loss of lives, businesses and property that the Muslims suffered in hundreds of riots for decades after India won independence in 1947. If today they find themselves educationally and economically in conditions worse than the Dalits, lowest of the low in the social hierarchy, the party that has ruled India for nearly half a century must share the responsibility.
Despite their large numbers — at least 150 million, twice the population of Egypt — the community remains dangerously dispossessed and on the margins of the amazing economic revolution that India has lately witnessed. They have no voice in the decision making process either at the centre or in the states. Their representation in the government, bureaucracy, police and the army is next to nothing.
Little has been done even under the present dispensation, except form commissions and committees. Justice Sachar Committee’s recommendations are waiting for their implementation five years after their submission. Even government schemes and funds to help the minority community remain underutilized or not utilized at all.
Even when some governments did try to do their bit, their efforts have been defeated by a systemic indifference and, let’s say it, deep-seated prejudice at all levels. A disturbing state of affairs, indeed! And this won’t change overnight or in a year or decade. But someone has to start somewhere.
If the Congress is sincere and really means what it says about the need to fight the dark forces of fascism and communalism, the Muslims and other minorities must support its efforts. In fact, what’s urgently needed is a national movement against the scourge of communalism and extremism, a threat far bigger than corruption.
This is perhaps the first time since Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister, that the Congress has given the call to fight the ideology of hatred and fascism in such unequivocal terms. Rahul Gandhi may still be a babe in the woods but he got it right when he argued, according to WikiLeaks, that the threat to India from the Hindu extremists is greater than that posed by groups like Lashkar. A sentiment echoed long before him by his great-grandfather Nehru who had argued that majoritarian extremism was more dangerous than a minority’s militant mindset because it always dresses itself in nationalism. Just as it did in Germany. And Nehru hadn’t even seen the latter-day avatars of the RSS and company!
But fighting the scourge of communalism isn’t the responsibility of one party or community. It’s not just in the interest of the Muslims and other minorities that India’s secular and plural character is protected. India’s unique selling proposition (USP) is its breathtaking diversity and fabled tolerance. All of us — Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs — have a stake in a secular, progressive and pluralistic India. If India fails, none of us will survive.
For their part, Muslims cannot fight their battles alone. If India is what it is, it’s because of its silent majority that is reasonable, peace-loving and believes in justice and fair play. We must enlist their support and involvement. Inclusion, not isolation, is the way forward.

BJP’s lessons in patriotism

India and Indians as a nation have moved on and have little patience for those dividing them along religious and sectarian lines

PATRIOTISM is the last refuge of a scoundrel, warned Samuel Johnson. I wonder what the celebrated English writer and lexicographer would have said about our friends from the Bharatiya Janata Party who love to wear their patriotism on their sleeve, ever ready to wave their flags and tridents at the drop of a hat. One wouldn’t mind their patriotic zeal so much if it weren’t for their tendency to offer condescending lessons in nationalism to the rest of the world, implying everyone except them is a traitor.
Every time it finds itself painted in a corner or gets that sinking feeling that it’s running out of issues to keep itself in the media spotlight, it dips into its deep bag of tricks. Like the Bedu’s camel, patriotism — or politics of patriotism rather — is the cure-all panacea for the Hindutva brigade. Combined with bigotry, ignorance and hatred, this competitive patriotism could be really lethal.
One has lost the count of hate-spewing yatras the party has organized over the past couple of decades to burnish its image not just as the champion of the Hindus but Bharat Mata (mother India) itself. And it always seems to work. Who cares if such marches to cuckoo land end up driving the nation of a billion people over the edge? How many innocents are consumed by its cauldron of hatred and bigotry matters little. What really counts is how many people are taken in by your rhetoric and end up voting for you. At the end of the day, it’s all about power.
This is not the first time the Hindutva brigade has given the call to hoist the Indian flag in Srinagar, the scenic capital of Jammu and Kashmir. We have been here before. Exactly a decade ago, Murli Manohar Joshi launched an Ekta (unity) yatra from Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India, to Kashmir. After much hand wringing and sleepless nights in Delhi and Srinagar, Joshi was rescued by security forces from his own dangerous devices.
Joshi was of course trying to do a Lal Krishna Advani after stepping into his oversized shoes. India can never forget the terror and devastation sparked by Advani’s rath yatra in September 1990, which eventually led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, not to mention the thousands of innocent lives lost in communal violence that followed.

India has yet to recover from that long winter of madness in the 1990s. However, it helped the BJP grow and mutate from a marginal player with two members in Parliament into the “natural party of governance,” as it once lionized itself. No wonder the BJP and its numerous avatars are on an endless road trip, perpetually milking the golden cow called patriotism. Consequences for the country be damned!
This is what the party tried to do all over again this week with its campaign to hoist the tricolor at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk. The stated objective of this yatra was to protect the nation’s unity, pride and honor. Is the pride and honor of this amazing democracy so fragile that it constantly needs the Hindutva forces to protect it? As someone said, a politician can drape himself in the flag but it is the texture of his politics which will determine if he truly cares for the nation or not.
The truth is, this is nothing but old-fashioned politics of opportunism. It’s just another cheap, attention-grabbing tactic. Or should we say, attention-diverting tactic? There’s a distinct possibility that the BJP came up with the idea of Kashmir yatra to deflect the undesirable spotlight chasing the Hindu groups after the recent revelations of RSS leader Swami Aseemanand linking the saffron brotherhood to numerous terror attacks across the country.
Aseemanand’s stunning confessions implicating the Hindutva groups in terror strikes on the Samjhauta Express, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer shrine and Malegaon mosque, blamed all these years on local Muslims, have caught the RSS and company with their pants (shorts?) down.
Whatever the reason, the BJP is out to extract maximum mileage out of a sensitive issue like Kashmir all over again, at a time when the governing Congress is finding the going tough. To the opposition’s glee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is turning out to be a monumental disaster. The World Bank-trained economist with impeccable credentials has had the rare distinction of presiding over some of the biggest corruption scams in the nation’s history, squandering all the good will the Congress had generated under Sonia Gandhi.
Kashmir remains on Hindutva’s radar for the very same reasons that it has doggedly refused to acknowledge all these years. Even as the BJP and company refuse to acknowledge the special status of the Himalayan state and all the promises we made to the Kashmiris when they decided to join India after the independence, they end up training the global spotlight on the K conundrum with these shenanigans.
Where were these patriots when Kashmir was burning until recently? Throughout last year, the state was rocked by fierce protests that were not just against governments in Srinagar and Delhi and security forces, they were a vote against all that has been visited on the state in the past six decades or so. In the last quarter century, Kashmir has lost nearly a hundred thousand people to this never ending siege within. Thousands of men, both young and old, have simply vanished. Tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits have been living in refugee camps in Delhi and elsewhere for years.
In the recent protests demanding the withdrawal of omnipresent security forces, more than a hundred youths, some as young as 13, died in police firing. Even if those boys were hurling stones at the security forces, how do we justify such lethal use of force against civilians? Protests are not unusual in other parts of India. But nowhere else in the country do the troops open fire on a crowd of protesters. The reality is, even as we Indians proclaim Kashmir to be an “integral part” of India, we seldom view the Kashmiris as part of the mainstream.
For the Sangh fanatics and much of the establishment, Kashmir is merely a prized piece of territory that we must protect at any cost from the devious designs of Pakistan and the ISI. The Kashmiri people were never part of this scheme of things. As Siddharth Varadarajan wrote in The Hindu this week, this approach is the product of a mindset that considers Kashmir to be terra nullius, an empty landscape to be coveted and possessed rather than a land with a people and soul who have as much right to a life with dignity as those elsewhere in the country do.
But I think this is less about Kashmir and more about the skewed worldview of the Hindutva clan, which wants to paint this melting pot of a nation with myriad identities and voices in its own color. Now everyone is entitled to his/her views and beliefs and change the world according to them. The trouble arises only when you tend to accomplish this at gunpoint, as our Taleban comrades once did — and the Hindutva forces have been doing all these years. In this idea of India, there’s no place for nonconformity or cultural and ideological diversity.
This will not go on forever though. India is not the country it used to be, say when the Hindu extremists held the entire country to ransom with their temple-mosque politics. India and Indians as a nation have moved on. Today, they have little patience for those who not only remain handcuffed to history, they want the rest of the country to sleepwalk back into the past. Globalization and the unprecedented economic empowerment of middle classes, and those trying to catch up fast, have transformed the country and its outlook. India has truly arrived and is enjoying its new exalted status. It will not tolerate anyone who tries to spoil the party by dividing Indians along narrow religious and sectarian lines.

Healthy man in a sick Europe

Last year Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News asked me to do a piece on how the Arab world — its traditional leaders like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria — views Ankara's growing involvement in the Middle East.

This was before Turkey found itself in the global spotlight after Israel attacked the Mavi Marmara, the vessel carrying aid for Gaza, killing nine Turkish peace activists. The Hurriyet asked me to examine if the big boys of the Middle East felt challenged by Turkey's overarching clout in the region.

Frankly, the whole notion of rivalry sounded somewhat absurd to me and I said it as much in my piece. If the Arab street has responded rapturously to Turkey's moves to revive its historical ties with the Middle East, powers that be aren't exactly losing sleep over the Turkish interest in the region.

If anyone ought to get insecure about Ankara looking east, it's the US and its ‘only ally and friend' Israel. No matter how its friends and foes view its new geopolitical priorities, one thing is for sure: Turkey has finally arrived.

While an awful lot has been said and written about the breathtaking rise of Asian giants China and India, the other big story of success and economic transformation missed by pundits is Turkey.

Following the demise of the Ottoman empire in the last century and after its spoils were duly divided among the thieves, the Orientalists came up with the term ‘Sick Man of Europe' to describe the superpower whose empire once extended from North Africa in the south to Hungary in the north and from Greece and Macedonia in the West to Xinjiang in Asia (now in China).

In fact, this condescending view of Turkey has been at the heart of the vehement opposition to the largely Muslim country joining the white, elite Christian club that is the European Union.

So what do you call it but a cruel irony of history that even as the EU struggles, Turkey has emerged as the ‘healthy man of (sick) Europe.' The recession has been particularly cruel to the continent.

Debt tsunami

The tsunami generated by the collapse of Greece and Ireland now threatens the established and once apparently secure economies like Spain, Britain and others. The generosity of big players like Germany has failed to suppress the panic that has the whole continent in its grip.

Across the Bosporus in Turkey, things have never been better.

The country has registered an incredible growth rate of 11.7 per cent over the last year. The fastest in six years, points out Bloomberg.

Incredibly, at a time of the continuing global slump, Turkey has been investing big time in its backyard in east European nations to Central Asian republics and the Middle East of course.

Even as it is courting investors from around the world, especially from the Middle East, Ankara is aggressively investing in projects in the neighbourhood and beyond. These projects worth billions of dollars will not just generate millions of jobs in these countries in years to come, they are sure to generate loads of goodwill, adding several feet to Turkey's stature.

Modern face

It's not all economics though. Under the aggressive leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey appears determined to restore its ties with the Muslim world and reclaim its lost glory. It's working to restore the fabled Hijaz railway line that once connected the holy city of Madinah with Istanbul. Secondly, it's joined hands with Central Asian states and China to build a new railway line that will connect Turkey to Urumqi in Xinjiang.

At home, the governing Justice and Development Party has defanged the all-power military establishment, taking total control of the power structure in its true sense.

By successfully marrying Islam with democracy and progress with tradition, Erdogan's Turkey is demolishing all the myths and stereotypes long associated with Islam.

For decades after the end of the Ottoman caliphate, the so-called Young Turks of Mustafa Kemal Pasha tried their best to sever the robust emotional and intellectual bonds with the Muslim world. Islam and Arabic language were practically banished. Even the humble Muslim headscarf was banned in government offices and schools and universities. Kemalist Turkey looked Westwards for inspiration.

All this has changed under Erdogan.

If after decades of military alliance with Israel, Turkey is now aggressively speaking up for the Palestinians and has the audacity to stand by an isolated Iran. This is not a coincidence. Its close alliance with the US and its Nato membership haven't deterred Ankara from saying it as it is on issues that exercise a billion believers. Who can forget the lashing Erdogan gave Shimon Peres in Davos after Israel's murderous, 2008 Christmas offensive on Gaza?

The new Turkey shows that you need not part with your beliefs and convictions to negotiate the demands of a modern world. Faith and progress can go hand in hand.

At a time when the gulf between the West and Islam is at its widest, Turkey could be the bridge that it already is, geographically. The Middle East could certainly do with an honest broker, who is really honest.

Aijaz Zaka Syed is a Dubai-based commentator who has written extensively on the Middle East and South Asia.