As USA and its allies have set about building coalitions that include many of
the Islamic nations, it is easy to lose sight of the issue of intellectual
freedom within the Muslim world. While the safety of Western countries
may depend on alliances with other regimes, those alliances should not
come at the price of abandoning scholars and intellectuals in the Middle
East, whose ability to speak out is no less under attack, often by these
same governments. Our concern is that scholars in Muslim countries will
be overlooked in the rush to forge expedient alliances.The image shown to the world on the cover of the June 17, 2001, New York
Times Magazine, of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a respected Egyptian sociologist,
caged and on trial for the exercise of his intellectual freedom, ought to send
a chill through both the Muslim world and the West. Before his arrest for
alleged homosexuality, embezzlement, and spying for the United States and
Israel, he was conducting research on Cairo voters' sentiments about why
Muslims join militant groups. From South Asia to North Africa, an entire
generation of Muslim intellectuals is at this moment under threat: Many
have already been killed, silenced, or forced into exile.Consider Pakistan. The late nuclear physicist Abdus Salam, Pakistan's only
Nobel laureate, was pressured to leave early in his career, in the late 1950s,
because he belonged to a sect not recognised by most Pakistani Muslims.
Fazlur Rahman, instrumental in starting Islamic studies at the University of
Chicago in the late 1960s, was chased out earlier in that decade by Islamic
religious parties. There is considerable irony in the fact that Pakistan's
record in relation to freedom of thought is not good, given the nature of its
founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah believed in human rights, women's
rights, minority rights, and the rule of law. Along with his followers, he
hoped to create a modern Muslim nation, one that would respect Islamic
tradition but at the same time be part of a modern community of nations.Jinnah so respected women's rights that he insisted that his sister, Fatima
Jinnah, be with him publicly in his struggle for the creation of Pakistan in
1947. Fatima Jinnah herself became a role model for women. And Jinnah
deeply loved his wife, Ruttie, who was a non-Muslim (and half his age), and
his only child, Dina, who, as a young woman, refused to marry a Muslim.
The women in Jinnah's family thus created problems for those who wished
to portray Jinnah as a straightforward religious extremist.That view of Jinnah was pushed most strongly after General Zia-ul-Haq
took power in 1977 through a military coup and launched a campaign to
"Islamise" Pakistan. But how do you explain a wife who is not a Muslim,
and a daughter who refused to marry a Muslim? The historian Sharif
al-Mujahid - whose 1981 biography of Jinnah, Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah, is
perhaps the best known in Pakistan - did not mention either woman in his
806-page volume. Nor do Pakistan's official archives, pictorial exhibitions,
or official publications contain more than a picture or two of them.To portray the real Jinnah, Akbar Ahmed, one of the authors of this essay,
along with several friends and colleagues, spent the 1990s on several
related projects, which came to be called the Jinnah Quartet. They included
the feature film Jinnah (released in English and Urdu in 2000); a television
documentary, "Mr Jinnah-The Making of Pakistan" (released in 1997); an
academic book called "Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for
Saladin" (published by Routledge in 1997); and a graphic novel (published
by Oxford University Press in 1997).The Jinnah Quartet attempted to answer a crucial question about Muslim
society that many scholars and intellectuals - Muslims and non-Muslims
alike - are asking in their respective countries: Can Muslim countries
produce moderate leaders? Do Muslims have leaders who care for human
rights, women's rights, minority rights, and the sanctity of law, and who
can lead their nations to the international community with honour? The
authors of the quartet believe that Jinnah was one such leader who
provides a relevant, contemporary model. The Jinnah Quartet attempted
not only to challenge images and ideas of the last days of the British Raj,
but also communicate ideas about leadership, the nature of the Islamic
state, and the compassionate and tolerant nature of Islam.The Jinnah Quartet project was controversial. Once the filming started in
1997 - in England, where the author was living, and on location in Pakistan
- the Pakistani press and various political parties launched a disinformation
campaign, claiming that Salman Rushdie had written the script for the film,
or that it was part of a Hindu or a Zionist conspiracy.While filming in Pakistan, the author and others involved in the project
were verbally attacked and threatened by journalists and "concerned
citizens," and important officials repeatedly warned them not to portray a
tolerant Jinnah and the tolerant Islam he represented. Journalists
demanded money to publish positive articles about the project or
threatened to write slander; bureaucrats tried to stop the project through
delays and denials of permissions necessary for filming. (Eventually, the
government of Pakistan reneged on a written agreement and pulled out
almost one-third of the budget it had committed during the shooting of the
film.) The project was completed, and the film won several awards at
international film festivals. But despite gratifying responses in the West,
Africa, and even Pakistan, the Jinnah model appears to have failed in the
Muslim world. Even those political leaders who believe in democracy, once
in power, fall back on tyranny and corruption to stay in office.Ordinary citizens have little idea that an indigenous democratic model is
available to Muslim society, because the scholars and intellectuals who can
articulate that vision are being silenced.When Muslim scholars and intellectuals - those who seek and foster
knowledge - are silenced, Muslim citizens are cut off from part of who they
are. Islam places enormous emphasis on knowledge. It charges humans to
use their reasoning power bestowed by Almighty Allah to better themselves
and their dependents, and throughout history ordinary Muslims have
cherished that expectation and the benefits such knowledge has produced.
They appreciate the control that knowledge gives them over their destiny,
the connections it allows them to form with people different from
themselves, the insight it gives them into their faith, and the limits it may
place on those who exercise power. For that multifarious search for
knowledge to be jeopardised is to risk not only the loss of information but
also a crucial element of who Muslims know themselves to be.We think of knowledge in this information age as readily accessible to all.
When we see an Internet cafe in a dusty town of South Asia or a satellite
dish hooked up to a car battery in the countryside of North Africa, we
assume that authoritarian regimes can no longer control the flow of
communication. But being hooked up and online may make it easier to
know what is happening across the world than to know of events in the
next town or district.
