Every religion has had a split due to modernity between the progressive variant and the conservative spirit. In this article, I seek to explore that modernity for Islam was an inevitable consequence of interaction with the West where people had discarded the utility myths had for them in understanding the world around them; religion had become an extremely private matter and the separation of church and state had become profoundly visible. Things in the orient were very different. The split similar to that created by the Reformation in the Europe had been imposed on the Orient, where the debate had change locus from deciding what were the proper practices of Islam to deciding which ethos better suited Islam- myth or logic. This divide is still seen in the mullahs whether they are from the Sunni or Shia sect of Islam. This started when great Islamic philosophers like Al-Kindi and Al-Razi wanted to remove the shackles of dogma and blind imitation, known as Taqlid, by using Greek Philosophy for the understanding of Islam. Later, Imam Ghazali in his famous book, The Incoherence of The Philosophers, pointed out-philosophically- how Mu’tazilites, though convincing for a lot of Muslims, had introduced a lot of Bidatsto the traditional Islamic discourse. Similarly, in Shiism there has been a similar divide between the Akhbarisand Usulis, where the Usulis have been the more progressive and forward looking ones, and they had triumphed after MullaSadra was able to impress people with his version of the Shiism based on logic. The same divide is present in all radical organizations of our time, such as the Taliban. The idea of this divide is reiterated by the famous Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid as well- according to him, there is a faction within the Afghan Taliban which wants to adopt a conciliatory approach towards the Afghan government, while the other aims to resort purely on violence to obliterate any Western influence. In a bigger picture, it would be fine to believe that the two versions of Islam might as well be antithetical; ISIS is relatively more violent than Taliban, which explains why the two organizations are at odds with one another. These factions may lie on different points on the same continuum but when two off-shoots of a common branch are observed, there appears to be an antinomy. For Example, ISIS is present in Syria and the Free Syrian Army opposes it quite vehemently- the best strategy therefore, is to support the lesser evil to fight off the bigger and more prominent threat. This policy might as well be counter-productive, but it seems to me as the only solution forward. Lastly, it is important to mention that this policy should only be adopted when a tangible threat is posed by a particular institution; it should be perfectly fine to be religious as long as you do not force your own beliefs onto others.
SANAULLAH KHAN
Lahore
