Question of Reviving Islam in a (Post) Modern Secular World

By Omar Javaid

The tree was dying, and its death came with a little surprise. The stakes were high though and the concerned tried hard to bring it back to life, but there was too much pollution, in the air, on the ground... someone came up with an idea! "Let’s cut it off into pieces and put these pieces inside the machines in the industry, automobiles etc. let’s put some inside the exhaust of the car for example, and the tree would be resurrected! 

This someone obviously 'didn't knew what these machines were/are and had no idea how the very machines had polluted the environment in the first place. Obviously this innocent someone can be forgiven on the basis of his idea, however one need to worry when this idea is being put into practice by lots of follower of that 'innocent someone' and the entire forest is being chopped off to be placed inside the most infertile and non-conducive place one could find. Another lesser brutal example, let’s consider the sports of hockey is dying in this country, so let’s divide the team and place the hokey players in teams of completely different type of sports, let’s say cricket, football, kabaddi, etc. and expect to revive hockey again.

There is a movement going on in the world to revive Islamic practices, particularly in the domain of trade and finance, within the machinery/systems of modern, secular & capitalistic world. The above example explains what exactly is being done with Islam to revive it again. Islam is being chopped off and being placed into a sociocultural, economic and political framework brought to this region by colonizers during their global conquest, which in view of Ernest Gellner is completely opposite to its traditional counterpart. Some of it is going in to the banking sector, some in conventional business (marketing, finance, human resource, etc. being the sub compartments), some in politics, some in judiciary, military etc. However the most examples of something "Islamic" are being found in the modern market place where we see things like "Islamic Education", "Islamic Banking", "Islamic Capital Market", "Islamic commodity markets", "Islamic Marketing", "Islamic Human Resource Management", "Islamic Derivates", to stuff like, "Islamic Swim Suits", "Islamic Rock Music", "Islamic Prostitutes" etc.

This is again being done in innocence by certain honest people who assume that the modern sociocultural, economic and political landscape is completely harmless except few of its ingredients, whose harmfulness can be easily controlled or eradicated if the said ingredients are replaced by certain features extracted from the Islam's model of individual or collective life.

So the problem lies in two concepts: 

(a) lack of understanding of the modern life system, and presuming to it be lifeless, and void of any energy, dynamism of its own, and/or

(b) presumption that Islam is not a complete system instead a set of random acts or practices with no well defined order which can be scattered in any system to cleanse it and claim it to be Islamic.

It is claimed that such measures are to provide first aid to those who are stuck in the sinful practices within the modern world, and provide them with a safest possible alternative. This claim itself become questionable when we see first aid being mass marketed and being used with a belief that it is the ultimate solution, while its continuous use would somehow miraculously evolve into a complete solution... a solution which will transforming the modern capitalist system (as if it’s a zombie) into the direction where Islamic ideals expect the system to be!... Its already more than visible now, since the time of Jamaluddin Afghani, this method hasn't shown any proof of its correctness. 

The alternative to this method therefore would require a clean state, a place where the modern systems has little or no influence. The good thing is lots of places in the world still exists, but not for too long, like the underground economy of Pakistan, which doesn't use the banking system (for e.g.), where the old community based businesses still exists, and religion is also very much alive among its people. Its the rural area of Pakistan, and majority of business oriented communities like Dehliwala, memon, chinioti, etc. But the time is perhaps too short as media and the modern education system has begin to influence these communities, and it wouldn't be long enough when the chances of replanting the seed of Islamic model of life would rather be diminished.