Islam Vs Communism
In order to understand the emerging trends between Pakistan and China, it is also important to compare and critically evaluate the objectives of both countries’ foreign policies and to see how they fit into each other policy preferences.
Islamic orientations play an important role in Pakistan foreign policy since the country’s inception, while Communism is an integral part of Chinese foreign policy since its founding in 1949. The relationship between Pakistan and China is the relationship of co-existence between Islam and Communism.
The relationship is the shining example of the peaceful co-existence between the two ideologies and people bringing together 2.9 billion of world’s population i.e., 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.6 billion Muslims all over the word. Pakistan was the first contact in the Islamic bloc with Communist China. This was the greatest pluralism, tolerance, and interaction of faiths and non-faiths.
It was an interaction between five thousand years old Confucius values and one-thousand fourteen years old Islamic norms. Both represented a different culture. Language was a barrier too. So were the lofty Himalayas to obstruct their ways but they built a unique relationship. Contract and assimilation is the beauty of this relationship.
Was Islam more close to Communism, was an important question to be asked. The answer is in affirmative. They only differ on the existence of God. Marxism preached atheism that rulers used religion to maintain the status quo. There are parallels between Islamic philosophy and Marxist ideology.
Like Communism, Islam is the most exclusive secular religion that brings many races, languages, casts, creeds, and regions together without any discrimination provided they were united under one faith. Both Islam and Communism are liberal and democratic in their own sense.
There are a number of similarities between them. Both opposed to capitalism. Islam views as an excessive capitalism as Haram (forbidden) and punish them on the Day of Judgment. Chinese were opposed to the lassie-faire market until 1978. State control over the economy is not over altogether.
The Fateh Mecca (victory of Mecca) was a revolution of faith but that happened gradually in ten years during the Prophet Muhammad’s (Peace Be upon Him) time. It was a “Cultural Revolution” as happened in China after fourteen centuries in 1966. Islam retained a number of pre-Islamic rituals. Revisionists in China also preserved pre-Communist China’s values and norms including Confucianism and Taoism and other systems. Like Communism, Islam vigorously talks about the rights of proletariats, lumpenproletaraits, peasants, and labors.
The legacy of pre-Islamic Iranian religious communism – the movement known as Mazdakism, a variant of Manichæism, which briefly flourished in the 6th century, is reflected in aspects of Iranian Shi’ism. Mazdakism adopted social collectivism and principles of public welfare.
The Sufi (Mystic) movements in Islam such as the Turkish Alveism and the Sufi orders in the Indian Sub-continent talked about a class-less society and an inter-faith harmony among diverse faiths. Unfortunately, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 and Communist Revolution in China in 1949 could not readily understood Islamic ideals of revolution and thus opposed and suppressed Muslims in their lands.
Communist Russia and China took fairly long time to understand the nexus that existed between Communism and Islam. In the second phase, after the end of the Cold War, both Russia and China respectably altered their policies towards their Muslim minorities to accommodate them as an integral part of their citizenship in order to integrate their States. The response of the Muslim minorities was affirmative.
Islamic Shura of elders to elect/ nominate representatives was more inclined toward the Soviet and Chinese presidiums. “Islamic Socialism”, a combination of the Soviet and Chinese models, became popular political movements in a number of Islamic countries such as Indonesia, Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Palestine, Libya, and in Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s and popular leaders emerged such as Sukarno, Houari Boumediene, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Moa’mar al-Gadafi, Yasir Arafat, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, and Sheikh Mujib-ure-Rehman.
A large number of Communist and Socialist political parties were organized in the Muslim world from Indonesia to Algeria. They directly or indirectly expressed solidarity with China and opposed its isolation in world’s affairs. The bloc of Islamic Socialism together with the Soviet Islamic States was a great source of encouragement for China. Therefore, separation of Islam from China is irrational and absurd.
These were the sacred ideologies of Islam and Communism that preached hate against terrorism and radicalism. Both talked about modernism. They brought civilizational change. Some say that Islamic radicals and militants just picked up where the Soviet and East European left off and where Islamic Socialists were defeated such as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya.
To them, if the pressure of the West withers away, within the concept of Ummah (Islamic nation) Islamic States would largely resemblance Communist States and pursue similar policies for global amalgamation to create a “Class-less Society in a Stateless World” with no geographical boundaries in order to create a lasting peace in the post-industrial word.
Islam is one of the religions that is still officially recognised in China. To one estimate, there are around 23 million Muslims in China or 1.7 percent of Chinese population of Hui and Uyghur and other ethnic organs.
Historically, Islam reached China during the third Caliphate Hazrat Uthman ibn Affan led by Sa’ad ibn Waqqas, the first delegation to China in 650 AD, about 72 years ahead of Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh and Multan in 712 AD. The magnificent Canton Mosque was built during the reign of Chinese Emperor Yung-Wei.
Muslims virtually dominated the trade by the time of the Sung dynasty (960-1279). During the Cultural Revolution mosques were de-faced. Later, Mosques and Madaris etc were rehabilitated and the Chinese Government took stern actions to protect the vales of Islam and Muslims by granting them freedom.
The Government has effectively controlled the separatist, East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), in cooperation with Pakistan under the joint-anti terrorism efforts. China was striving hard to create a revolutionary world order. Pakistan is an integral part of the Chinese policy.