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The Grand Flowering of a New Civilisation

by Waheedul Haque
FOR hundreds of millions of people today is a very special day ... And also for many of the rest of the mankind. This is the day a leader of man was born who hasn't had a matching presence ever since. Many thought of Kari Marx becoming a close second but then he was no leader at all — that phlloso pher-ideologue who believed tn and led a life of activism but didn't quite command a multitude. Lenin was one who came close In his many faceted achievement as both a leader and a thinker but then tn only seventy years slier his death he. in his own native land and among his own people has largely been proved a true messenger of a god that failed - and brought down from his lofty perch. This happens while for more than fourteen hundred years the life and the teachings of an humble scion of an Arab clan continues to Influence close on to a billion people and as time passes the crowd keeps on getting thicker The days of proselytlz Ing through the lure of privileges and the fear of the sword arc long gone — and still Muhammad (SM). the messen ger of one and only God. continues gaining in attention and Importance.
If that is most gratifying to notice on the birthday as well as the day of demise of the last and the best of God's prophets, the indifferent material and spiritual situation of the progeny of those that flocked around him and put faith tn his words and deeds and founded and flourished a new world civilisation, cannot but sadden
There may be hosts of rea sons for that — rise of induslri alism. colonialism and imperialism with the western nations making the most of the technological. social and political transmutation on the global scale. The reasons may have had more to do with national and historical, economic and sociological developments rather than elements and influences of religious import. But one can as well look in the factors leading to the loss of a people's clan some dwindling of the morals and Ideals that over centuries of time sustain a
society and. rather than holding It back, prod It forward. Now that politics la getting a higher berth In the thoughts and actions of those bent on basing all social entities on religion and forging a modern day chimera called the ummah the Musllm-majorlty states keep on foundering endlessly. One may not be far too wrong to find In this a gross absence of the sense of realism and prdgmatlsm with which — completely devoid of unreasoning and Irrational dogma — the orphan child of Abdullah and Amcna. protected to his adulthood by an absolutely Impoverished uncle, Abu Taleb, led to the clannish and tribal Arabs first to a na tlonhood and then on to a great bridge-builder between the classical and the modern civilisations — and Itself a clvlltser of the West. Il was the Prophet's followers who kept the (lame of learning and the sciences burning during all of the dark medieval age
Can we not in Bangladesh hark back to the ways our dear Prophet took for raising his people — and In fact all of mankind where Islam travelled — out of Inertia of superstition and backwardness. Internecine violence and Intolerance. Whereas, basing on the principle of Ikhwanul Muslemln . he expressly denied a follower's right to lake his dally bread while hts neighbour starved — we have very ably built a society of half-fed people with a scattering of a microscopic minority that squanders more than It consumes. Shall we on this auspicious day specially remind eurselves of the great tenets of Islam as propounded by the Prophet: Peace and tolerance, equality and economic Justice? What else docs Bangladesh need to come out of Its present holes?
What distinguished the rise of Islam among the rise of very many other peoples ? First, it was not merely the rise of one people but of a whole world of peoples. Which is better de-scribed as. secondly and more Importantly, the rise of a supra-national civilisation. This was a flowering as important and as far-rcaching in infiu-
ence as happened in dynastic Egypt and classical Greece and Buddhist-Puranic India and Sln-and-Tang China.
The latest arrival In world civilisations, however, took place on a vastly greater scale Involving, as we said, dozens of different peoples and their cultures Diversity rather than classical homogeneity distinguished the new civilisation. And the main reason it succeeded was the emphasis It put on supra national learning and knowledge that was one for all mankind and on the synthesis with native cultures of the many converted societies rather than assimilating them Into nothingness.
That emphasis on knowledge and learning which included the sciences as well— otherwise Ibne Sina and Al-Bcruni, Khayyam and Khawarizml wouldn't have been possible nor would there be that father of sociology and historiography and perhaps even historical materialism — Ibne Khaldun — came from the Prophet himself.
Bangladeshis arc. In contrast, wallowing In ignorance and superstition, (lowing as an aftermath of colonial exploitation and nurtured and promoted by the self-proclaimed servants of Islam In toupees and beards and flowing garbs. The whole of our education system h#», impaired beyond any repair by cutting it up — • one-half going to dissemination of uncritical acceptance of dogma and thus making those that imbibe it enemies of knowledge and science, progress and tolerance.
That Islam flowered as nothing before or after had owed much to Ils power to let local cultures flourish and bedeck the Islamic civilisation the best of their gems. Three hundred years of relentless ethnic oppression by the Arabs on the ancient and civilised Persians failed to Arabise Persia excepting changing the lat-ter s script — a fact so forcefully celebrated by Firdausi of Tus in his Shahnama. But Persia or the present-day Iran — and not Arabia — became and remained the focal point of Islamic philosophy and learning — almost a fountainhead of Islamic thoughts for at least 12 centuries.
Unfortunately for us Bengalees, we failed to take one cue from either Iran or Indonesia. The reason for that lay in mean ways of divisive politics and neither in religion nor in society. Islam here was reduced Into a tool for communal hatred and grinding one's political axe.
On this day of our Prophet's auspicious birth let us eschew our practised ways of reducing and even ridiculing Islam and start on the ways of how Islam would contribute to the salvaging of our society from ignorant egotism and selfishness and lead on to sacrifices for the society and tolerance of all kind. The key to that should be to recognise and appreciate Islam not only as the religion as the fundamentalist makes of IL but a civilisation flourishing in diversity as the humanist would see it.