I have mentioned hype before and how I often feel that being swept up in popular hype goes against rational balanced thinking. This is just one of those stories and the apocalypse theories have been stirred in part by those who have taken the Long Calendar as some kind of prophesy. Even the ancient Mayans astronomers and mathematicians using their own Base 18/20 counting system did not make that claim.
Malala: “I want to ba a doctor but my father told me you have to be a politician. But I don’t like politics.”
Father: “My daughter can be better than a doctor.”
Writing about Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, the Orientalist scholar W Montgomery Watt wrote: "Of all the world's great men, none has been so much maligned as Muhammad." His quote seems all the more poignant in light of the Islamophobic film Innocence of Muslims, which has sparked riots from Yemen to Libya and which, among other slanders, depicts Muhammad as a paedophile.
This claim is a recurring one among critics of Islam, so its foundation deserves close scrutiny.
Critics allege that Aisha was just six years old when she was betrothed to Muhammad, himself in his 50s, and only nine when the marriage was consummated. They base this on a saying attributed to Aisha herself (Sahih Bukhari volume 5, book 58, number 234), and the debate on this issue is further complicated by the fact that some Muslims believe this to be a historically accurate account. Although most Muslims would not consider marrying off their nine-year-old daughters, those who accept this saying argue that since the Qur'an states that marriage is void unless entered into by consenting adults, Aisha must have entered puberty early.
They point out that, in seventh-century Arabia, adulthood was defined as the onset of puberty. (This much is true, and was also the case in Europe: five centuries after Muhammad's marriage to Aisha, 33-year-old King John of England married 12-year-old Isabella of Angoulême.) Interestingly, of the many criticisms of Muhammad made at the time by his opponents, none focused on Aisha's age at marriage.
According to this perspective, Aisha may have been young, but she was not younger than was the norm at the time. Other Muslims doubt the very idea that Aisha was six at the time of marriage, referring to historians who have questioned the reliability of Aisha's age as given in the saying. In a society without a birth registry and where people did not celebrate birthdays, most people estimated their own age and that of others. Aisha would have been no different. What's more, Aisha had already been engaged to someone else before she married Muhammad, suggesting she had already been mature enough by the standards of her society to consider marriage for a while. It seems difficult to reconcile this with her being six.
In addition, some modern Muslim scholars have more recently cast doubt on the veracity of the saying, or hadith, used to assert Aisha's young age. In Islam, the hadith literature (sayings of the prophet) is considered secondary to the Qur'an. While the Qur'an is considered to be the verbatim word of God, the hadiths were transmitted over time through a rigorous but not infallible methodology. Taking all known accounts and records of Aisha's age at marriage, estimates of her age range from nine to 19.
Because of this, it is impossible to know with any certainty how old Aisha was. What we do know is what the Qur'an says about marriage: that it is valid only between consenting adults, and that a woman has the right to choose her own spouse. As the living embodiment of Islam, Muhammad's actions reflect the Qur'an's teachings on marriage, even if the actions of some Muslim regimes and individuals do not.
Sadly, in many countries, the imperatives motivating the marriage of young girls are typically economic. In others, they are political. The fact that Iran and Saudi Arabia have both sought to use the saying concerning Aisha's age as a justification for lowering the legal age of marriage tells us a great deal about the patriarchal and oppressive nature of those regimes, and nothing about Muhammad, or the essential nature of Islam. The stridency of those who lend credence to these literalist interpretations by concurring with their warped view of Islam does not help those Muslims who seek to challenge these aberrations.
The Islamophobic depiction of Muhammad's marriage to Aisha as motivated by misplaced desire fits within a broader Orientalist depiction of Muhammad as a philanderer. This idea dates back to the crusades. According to the academic Kecia Ali: "Accusations of lust and sensuality were a regular feature of medieval attacks on the prophet's character and, by extension, on the authenticity of Islam."
Since the early Christians heralded Christ as a model of celibate virtue, Muhammad – who had married several times – was deemed to be driven by sinful lust. This portrayal ignored the fact that before his marriage to Aisha, Muhammad had been married to Khadija, a powerful businesswoman 15 years his senior, for 25 years. When she died, he was devastated and friends encouraged him to remarry. A female acquaintance suggested Aisha, a bright and vivacious character.
Aisha's union would also have cemented Muhammad's longstanding friendship with her father, Abu Bakr. As was the tradition in Arabia (and still is in some parts of the world today), marriage typically served a social and political function – a way of uniting tribes, resolving feuds, caring for widows and orphans, and generally strengthening bonds in a highly unstable and changing political environment. Of the women Muhammad married, the majority were widows. To consider the marriages of the prophet outside of these calculations is profoundly ahistorical.
What the records are clear on is that Muhammad and Aisha had a loving and egalitarian relationship, which set the standard for reciprocity, tenderness and respect enjoined by the Qur'an. Insights into their relationship, such as the fact they liked to drink out of the same cup or race one another, are indicative of a deep connection which belies any misrepresentation of their relationship.
To paint Aisha as a victim is completely at odds with her persona. She was certainly no wallflower. During a controversial battle in Muslim history, she emerged riding a camel to lead the troops. She was known for her assertive temperament and mischievous sense of humour – with Muhammad sometimes bearing the brunt of the jokes. During his lifetime, he established her authority by telling Muslims to consult her in his absence; after his death, she went to be become one of the most prolific and distinguished scholars of her time.
A stateswoman, scholar, mufti, and judge, Aisha combined spirituality, activism and knowledge and remains a role model for many Muslim women today. The gulf between her true legacy and her depiction in Islamophobic materials is not merely historically inaccurate, it is an insult to the memory of a pioneering woman.
Those who manipulate her story to justify the abuse of young girls, and those who manipulate it in order to depict Islam as a religion that legitimises such abuse have more in common than they think. Both demonstrate a disregard for what we know about the times in which Muhammad lived, and for the affirmation of female autonomy which her story illustrates.
Despite its vociferous campaign Muslim League could not ignite fears of Hindu domination in the support base of Bacha Khan. His comrades won the land mark elections of 1946 with a thumping majority. He opposed the Partition on the basis of religion, but it happened. His democratically elected government was dismissed 8 days after the independence, on 22 August, 1947 when Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the Governor General and Liaqat Ali Khan was the Prime Minister.
Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan was five-years younger to Bacha Khan. He was born in 1895 to a Muslim aristocrat family whose jagir starting at the eastern edge of Punjab (now Haryana) stretched into Uttar Pradesh. His family had cordial relations with the British. Some say the family gained fortunes and earned intimacy with the Raj, when his grandfather extended support to the British during the hard times of 1857. His father earned many a titles and honors too.
Liaqat Ali went to Aligarh and then to Oxford. On his return from London in 1923, he joined Muslim League. He contested his first elections in 1926 on a seat reserved for Muslims in the UP Assembly (Muzaffarnagar constituency) and comfortably won. He grew into an eloquent parliamentarian, pleading mostly for the causes of Muslim landlords who were a minority in that province.
He became one of the most important members of the Muslim League’s vanguard. Nawabzada is, in fact, credited to have convinced a dejected and disappointed Muhammad Ali Jinnah to end his ‘self-imposed exile’ in London and lead the movement for a separate homeland for Muslims. Liaqat Ali Khan was made the General Secretary of the Muslim League in 1936.
The party’s parliamentary committee did not award him the ticket for the 1936 elections for his home constituency which he valued highly. Despite holding a high office in the Muslim League, he contested as an independent from his home constituency and faced criticism of fellow party men.
He contested the 1946 elections for the Central Legislative Assembly on the Muslim seat of Meerut that is situated in Uttar Pradesh. Following this victory, Nawabzada won a place in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan and at independence was made the first Prime Minister with the additional charge of Foreign Affairs and Commonwealth Relations and Defense. He remained the longest serving prime minister in the history of Pakistan till Yousuf Raza Gilani exceeded him by a few weeks recently.
Prime Minister Liaqat Ali is accredited with a number of ground breaking contributions. He decided to ally with the US in the Cold War divide; quashed a coup attempt by communists; promoted General Ayub to the highest rank and fought a war with India over Kashmir to name just a select few. His government ruled on ad hoc basis under temporary laws as it could not formulate and build a consensus on a constitution for the country.
Reasons were simple. They could not dig out a monarchy to rule the country nor could they install a Caliph. The constitution has to be based on democracy. But the problem was that Meerut was now in India. The most powerful Prime Minister serving for one of the longest periods in the history of Pakistan had no constituency in the country to contest elections from. A committed democrat and an active parliamentarian, he knew well that he and his political class had no, or at best a very shaky, future under a democracy. In contrast, Bacha Khan’s was a completely secure political position. It was impossible to democratically uproot him from his constituency. He had voters, volunteers and diehard loyalists.
The ad hoc powers were thus used to change the rules of the game.
Six months after the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan moved the Objective Resolution in the Constituent Assembly that introduced Islam as the raison d’être of the new country. Religion was pitched against ones linguistic and cultural identity and faith was made to rival political interests. Those loving their culture, defending their language and demanding their democratic and political rights on these bases became heretics conspiring against the last citadel of Islam in the Subcontinent. Ideological boundaries of the country became more important than the limits of electoral constituencies and principles of democracy were contrasted to injunctions of Islam as defined by the select ulema.
Bacha Khan who enjoyed a hard earned and unflinching popular support in a vast constituency went down in our official gazettes as an anti-Pakistan traitor. Red Shirts were hounded and hunted. Politicians were jailed and elections were rigged.
By declaring the entire country as one constituency and setting ones perceived Islamic credentials as the only qualification, Liaqat Ali Khan tried to create a constituency for his class – the politically insecure Muslim elite that had migrated from the Muslim minority provinces of India. But ironically, they could not sustain their hold on this constituency for long. Within a decade they were outdone by the Army in the game they had pioneered. They were declared incapable of defending the citadel of Islam. The army took over the ‘responsibility’ of keeping the country united in the name of Islam and secure from the conspirators who had strong democratic constituencies in the country.
The army did not feel the need to redraft the national narrative that was scripted in those initial years. It was found to be in perfect harmony with the Army’s own scheme to block or cripple democracy and sustain its direct or indirect rule for decades to come. The narrative persists with all its detail and corollaries and insists on its refusal to recognise Bacha Khan as a great national hero.
When someone says ‘Muslims of Indo-Pak subcontinent’ with reference to our history, does this refer to one unanimous, monolithic block of people with no shades and diversity? I think it’s a big folly to ignore how divergent the political interests and ambitions of Muslims were in the period that ended on this day 65 years ago. A reintroduction to these groups and how the new state of Pakistan responded to their political aspirations might help us understand where we stand now.
Pre-partition Muslims can be classified in many ways. For now I would put them into two larger groups and instead of laboring over an academically-sound definition of each, I will demonstrate my point by offering example of one person from each of these two groups.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in 1890 to rural middle-class Pakhtun parents of Utmanzai, a small town in the present day district of Charssadda. At the age of 20 he opened a school in his village. He had woken up to the fact that his people have no future if they don’t educate themselves and their children. The tall, young man proved to be a zealous missionary. He would walk for miles from one village to the other with his simple message – educate yourself and abstain from violence. He was a devout Muslim, a five-timer namazi parhaizgar and would draw heavily from Islamic history and the Prophet’s sayings to rally fellow Pakhtuns. People joined him in droves. His arcane appeal matured into charisma, some would even give him a halo.
In his 30s, he founded a social reform movement named Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God). By now he was named Badshah Khan or Bacha Khan. The movement, like many others of that era, gave its volunteers a uniform that was red and organised them on the pattern of a militia that was, in his words, armed “with the weapon of the Prophet – that is, patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it.” It was only Bacha Khan who could unarm Pakhtuns who otherwise were considered quarrelsome and trigger-happy.
The Red Shirts, as the volunteers of the movement were known as, were against the British rule and demanded self government. For the British, the then province of NWFP had great strategic importance. It was a so-called buffer against the Afghan government that was not friendly with the Raj and also against the Russians whom the British dreaded as their rivals.
The Bolshevik revolution of Russia in 1917 was emerging as a huge challenge for Imperialism. It had a natural affinity with the nations oppressed by the British. The Russian revolution was colored red. The sight of a Red Shirt in the Peshawar valley gave the British a fright. At Qisa Khani Bazar in 1930, the frenzied British forces fired directly at a protest rally of unarmed Khudai Khidmatgars killing many hundreds. The movement and its committed cadre did not budge. They stood fast. Many estimate that at its peak there were as many as a hundred thousand Red Shirts.
When the British adopted a cautious policy of sharing power with local political forces and initiated limited franchise elections, the group allied with Indian National Congress. It contested successive elections, won majority and formed governments in the province. As the British hated them, they would conspire against the Red Shirts and jailed Bacha Khan frequently and for long periods but could not undo the politicisation of the Pakhtun middle class that he had initiated.
Pakhtun Muslims felt comfortable with Congress and that didn’t bear out of some personal friendship between the top leaders. Congress accommodated politics of budding smaller sub-national groups, offered them space for growth and opportunity to integrate with others without giving much consideration to religion. On the other hand, Bacha Khan did not owe his ‘fearlessness’ vis a vis Hindus to Pakhtun chivalric traditions, instead he had earned this confidence through successive electoral victories. He had a large constituency where Muslims were in majority. There were Hindus too but Pakhtun Muslims did not see Pakhtun Hindus as threat to their religion or politics.
Before the 1940s, the membership of Muslim League was solely comprised of non-practicing Muslim landed aristocracy. They had enjoyed fruits of British colonialism, who had bestowed upon them fiefdoms on which they had lorded over. They never wanted Independence from British, whom they considered taller, fairer and worthier rulers. Indeed, Muslim League consistently opposed India's independence, never took part in any agitation, or launched any significant mass movement. They were very comfortable with the status-quo.
The arrival of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi changed everything. He transformed the independence movement from a debating society to a mass mobilization. He injected his own brand of socialism into the movement. This scared the the Muslim as well as Hindu zamindars. They knew that if British left, their titles will be abolished and land distributed amongst the poor farmers on whom they had preyed upon in the past. The Hindu feudals were complete marginalized by the Congress. However, the non-practicing Muslim feudals launched the movement for Pakistan.
Aside from the landed aristocracy, until 1940s, the majority of Indian Muslims as well as Muslim scholars opposed the creation of Pakistan. . They opposed Pakistan Movement not because they supported secularism. On the contrary, they opposed it because they genuinely believed that the Pakistan's creation would hurt their long-term objective of spreading Islam in India through Da'wah. Even Maulana Maududi objected to Pakistan. Nevertheless, after the Pakistan movement gained momentum, the majority of Muslims voted for the Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah whose slogan was 'Pakistan ka matlab kya. La ilaha illallah' over the Congress Party which was under the leadership of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.
Pakistan's creation was thus an accident of history. As I explained above, the Muslim aristocracy was afraid of losing their undeserved wealth, so they demanded disproportional representation for Muslims, in the legislative assemblies to preserve their privileges, anticipating that the illiterate, poor Muslim masses would be easily manipulated by the use of religious rhetoric. Thus, Pakistan Movement was meant as a bargaining chip, they had no intention of going through with it. There was no actual partition or post-partition plan. Indian National Congress called Muslim League's bluff. Jinnah called for Direct Action Day in August 1946 as a show of strength of Muslims. Wide-spread communal riots first in Bengal then in other parts of India followed. From that day onwards, because of the hatred that ensued, Pakistan was fait accompali. The partition was ensured whether Muslim League leaders wanted it or not.This lack of planning is the reason why Pakistan has stumbled from one political crisis to another since its inception, and it took almost 10 years to frame Pakistani constitution (which would later be mutilated multiple times). And, unlike India, no land redistribution took place in Pakistan. The secular non-practicing Muslim aristocrats have new fiefdoms to lord over in Pakistan.
Indeed on his deathbed Mr. Jinnah admitted that he had committed a great blunder by creating a "mutilated, moth-eaten" Pakistan.
