The
telephone, satellite television, and the Internet have connected the
Islamic community of 1.2 billion people across the globe. This
connectivity has strengthened Muslims' sense of belonging to one
community, which Islamic scholars call ummah. But it has also brought
the realization that Islam, as practised around the globe, is
heterogenous. A group of Muslims in oil-rich Saudi Arabia have urged the
worldwide adoption of a purist strand of Islam and advocate making it
the sole basis of society and politics, a position which has created
tension and promoted extremism. Australian scholar of Islam, Riaz
Hassan, says the only way to resolve this tension is to accept the
existence of "culturally and religiously differentiated ummah" in
different parts of the world. - YaleGlobal
Muslims in Indonesia: One God, many colors.
NEW HAVEN: In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11,
the effect of globalisation on Islam has emerged as a hotly debated
topic. With twenty percent of the world's population professing Islam as
their religion, it is a matter of more than academic interest. A survey
of the evolution of Islam in recent decades shows that ummah - a
universal community based on shared Islamic faith and implementation of
its law - has indeed become a greater reality in an ever-shrinking
world. At the same time, globalisation has also allowed divisive
militancy to arise and flourish. In the years to come the force of
globalisation may lead to the emergence of multiple centres of Islam
rather than the current one based in Saudi Arabia Islamic historians
have credited the concept of ummah as an important contributing factor
in the rise and development of Islam and Islamic civilization. The
evidence from various studies shows that although Muslims share a sense
of being part of a global ummah, the intensity of this feeling varies
significantly across Muslim countries.
This variation can be attributed to the broader reality of the Muslim
world. Unlike in the past, when limitations of transport and
communication technologies made it difficult for Muslims worldwide to
acknowledge the cultural and social diversity of the ummah, the
introduction of satellite television, internet, international travel,
and access to books and magazines and increasing literacy is now making
Muslims aware of their cultural and social diversity. The impact of
colonialism and the emergence of nationalist movements, which
spearheaded the struggle against it, have also served to fragment the
Islamic world into over 45 Muslim countries with competing economic and
political interests. Another consequence of this development for Muslims
is that while they are becoming aware of the cultural diversity of the
Muslim world the new technologies are also promoting a greater ummah
consciousness, a heightened sense of belonging to a global community of
believers.
In the pre-globalised world ummah consciousness was largely
determined by the practice of the 'five pillars' of Islam (belief in
Allah, payment of zakat (welfare tax for the poor), performance of hajj,
daily prayers and fasting) and certain other key beliefs. The existence
of these Islamic beliefs and practices was seen by many believers
everywhere as evidence that the entire culture of the Muslim societies
was Islamised, that is, had come to resemble the Arabian Islamic culture
where Islam had originated. This transformation of all Islamised people
was considered to be an integral part of Mohammad's social and
religious mission. It was rather naively assumed by many Islamic
intellectuals in the Middle East that such a cultural trajectory was the
common destiny of all Islamised people. The difficulties of
communication and contact with people in far-off regions fed this
belief.
Globalisation is prompting a reformulation of the common Muslim
belief that Islam is not only a religion but also a complete way of
life, which in Islamic discourse is known as the 'one religion, one
culture' paradigm. Instantaneous and worldwide communication links are
now allowing Muslims and non-Muslims to experience the reality of
different Islamic cultures. Such experiences reveal not only what is
common among Muslims but also what is different. For example, gender
relations and dress codes for Muslim women are structured in different
ways in Muslim countries like Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and
Uzbekistan.
Similarly, there are vast differences in the religious practices of
Abangan or syncretic Javanese Muslims and Wahabi Muslims (followers of
the strict practice insisted by Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahab) of Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan. This realisation has provoked an unfavourable
reaction among some groups of Islamic intellectuals towards this
'hybridity' (syncretic and heterogenous Islam). It has caused some
radical Islamic movements to seek to replace 'hybridity' with the
'authentic' Islamic way of life. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim
country, Islamic scholars like Azyumardi Azra have rejected the
ideologies of radical Islamic organizations like Front Pembela Islam,
Jamaat Muslimen Indonesia and Al Qaida because they see these
organizations as advocating 'Arabic Islam'(authentic Islam) and
rejecting the accommodative Indonesian Islam (hybrid Islam).
The struggle between 'hybridity' and 'authenticity' represents
perhaps the most important challenge of globalisation for the Muslim
ummah. It is one of the underlying causes of the emergence of Islamic
fundamentalist movements. Fundamentalism refers to a strategy used by
followers of Islamic 'purists' like Maududi, Syed Qutb and Ayatuallah
Khomenei to assert their own construction of religious identity and
Islamic social order as the exclusive basis for a re-created political
and social order. They feel that Islamic religious identity is at risk
and is being eroded by cultural and religious hybridity. They try to
fortify their interpretations of religious ways of being through their
selective retrieval and particular reading of Islamic doctrines and
practices from a sacred past.
Modernity in its political and social forms refers to increasing
specialisation of societal institutions like political systems, law,
economic management, and education in isolation from religion. Unlike
social life in the pre-modern era, in modernity these functions are
carried out free from the overarching influence of religion. From this
perspective, religious fundamentalism - in the sense of a return to a
purist past - is a problem produced by the encounter between modernity
and the Muslim ummah in all its diversity and cultural hybridity.
Although the strength of fundamentalism varies according to the
intensity of attitudes towards these features, it is clear that in a
globalising world diversity and cultural crossovers will become a matter
of routine. Instead of eliminating hybridity, this may in fact
transform different Islamic countries and regions into autonomous
cultural systems, thus posing a challenge to the conventional
categorical oppositions of 'us' and 'them', 'Muslim' and 'others'.
This type of development would have far-reaching implications for the
Muslim ummah. Islamic countries in different parts of the world could
be transformed into unique religious and cultural systems, each claiming
acceptance and recognition as authentic traditions of Islam. This
transformation may lead to the 'decentering' of the Muslim world from
its supposed cultural and religious centre in the Arabic Middle East to a
multi-centered world. Five such centres of the Islamic world can
already be identified, namely, Arabic Middle Eastern Islam, African
Islam, Central Asian Islam, Southeast Asian Islam and the Islam of the
Muslim minorities in the West.
A decentered Muslim ummah would confer a kind of legitimacy on the
regional ummahs, and thus could lead them to chart their own social,
political, economic, religious and cultural developments along
distinctive lines suitable to the history and temperament of their
people. This would engender new opportunities for the Muslim ummahs to
again strive for the intellectual, cultural and material superiority
that was achieved by the ummah in its formative centuries under the
institution of the Islamic Caliphate. In such a scenario, the Islamic
ummah would gain strength not as a unified and unitary community but as a
differentiated community consisting of the regional ummahs all striving
to gain material and ideological influences in a global system. These
developments would also produce their own opposing and supporting
movements requiring each ummah to find appropriate responses to them.
In a culturally and religiously differentiated ummah setting, it is possible that political and cultural leanings of one or some of the regional ummahs may not find approval with the governors of the holy centres of Mecca and Medina. This may pose difficulties for the members of these regional ummahs regarding free access to these centres to perform their religious duties. This in turn may necessitate the formulation of new and appropriate governing structures for Islam's holy centres of Mecca and Medina.
Muslims from different parts of the Islamic world are becoming interested in reforms to the management and governance of the holy centres by the government of Saudi Arabia. There is growing dissatisfaction with the current idiosyncratic policies of the Saudi government. Policies and practices such as barring adult single women unaccompanied by a male member of the immediate family and banning non-Muslims from visiting the Islamic holy places like Mecca and Medina are seen as inappropriate, anachronistic and unsuitable to the conditions of modern times. While these and similar issues which are likely to arise may initially pose difficulties, they may also be the harbingers of the new futures which await a differentiated Muslim ummah in the modernized and globalised world of the twenty-first century.
In ending, open ideas, diverse art and media, non regulated media, freedom of thought, freedom of spirit and freedom choice should be implemented. Women must be given equal rights not according to traditional ideas of a religion, but according to modern day globalization accordingly.
