Daily Times

From the time soldiers of the powerful Muslim Ottoman Empire were knocking at the gates of Vienna in the 16th century, attempting to conquer this last bastion of resistance in Europe, to the wretched state the Muslims find themselves in just 400 years later, there is a story of their loss, anger and bewilderment that continues to undermine their place in the modern world.
This story has resulted in a highly divided world where the landmines of conflict have spread to the four corners of the globe. The trail of destruction started with Islamic militants flattening the two ultimate symbols of western power in New York City. It went on to turning the mountains of Afghanistan to rubble, turning the ancient city of Baghdad into killing fields and blowing death winds in the deserts of the Middle East and Africa. The cycle of violence is not over by any means; blood always calls for more blood. No one seems to know how to end this story of power and revenge and bring back peace to the world.
The story starts in the year 616 AD in Mecca where a new religion was born. This new religion took roots very quickly. Soon, the followers of the new faith rode out from the Arabian deserts on a mission to build a new empire. In just 400 years, these few soldiers and administrators created one of the greatest empires the world has witnessed.
At its zenith, the great Muslim empire expanded from the Arabian Peninsula to the borders of China, India, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and significant parts of Europe. As Islam spread rapidly from the small towns of Mecca and Medina to other parts of the Arabian Peninsula, and then to other parts of the world, Muslims had to make constant adjustment to the laws dealing with newly gained lands and the non-Muslims who lived in these lands. The use of force was limited and the incentives that were provided for converting to Islam were the main driver behind the large-scale conversions that took place in the conquered lands.
Since large settled areas need clearly articulated laws to regulate society, a process of ‘consultation and inquiry’, called ijtihad, was used to make laws that were in harmony with the new realities, while attempting to stay as faithful as possible to the fundamentals of Islamic tenets as laid out in the Quran and the Hadiths.
It is important to note though, that the process of ijtihad was not fully agreed and adhered to by all the Muslims. There was a constant tussle between those orthodox lawmakers who were in favour of keeping Islam ‘pure’ by not using any reference other than the injunctions of the Quran and Hadith and those who had a pragmatic approach of taking into consideration the ground realities following the conquests of new lands. The success of the supporters of ijtihad for nearly 400 years was an important factor in the expansion of the Islamic Empire.
As Islam spread in the seventh and eighth centuries, Muslim scholarship also thrived. Muslim scientists and mathematicians made major discoveries that later became the foundations for scientific development in Europe. Things were going well for the Muslims until the 12th century, when the process of ijtihad came under attack since it was deemed to be compromising the true religious and spiritual basis of the religion.
This conservatism was further consolidated and expanded in the 14th century by A?mad ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328 AD). The current incarnation of this orthodoxy is the fundamentalist form of Islam known as Wahabiism, which is the ideological underpinning of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that of many Sunni extremist groups round the world. As the process of rational inquiry came under threat, so did the ability to manage lands that were under widely different geographic and socio-cultural domains. With the new orthodoxy dousing the passion of inquiry, Islamic science also began its decline in the 12th and 13th centuries.
The ‘golden age of Islam’, which had lasted from the seventh to the 13th century came to an end with the destruction of Baghdad in 1258 AD by the Mongols. It is an irony of history that the same Mongol destroyers later converted to Islam and founded the great Moghul Empire in India. Unfortunately for the Muslims, this was the time when Europe was coming out of the dark ages and was about to enter the period of the Early Renaissance. The Renaissance (14th-17th century) eventually broke the back of the Christian religious orthodoxy and brought in rational and scientific thinking. During this period of enlightenment, Europe made large strides in economic performance and scientific knowledge. This head start that Christian Europe gained over the declining Muslim power was to prove decisive in determining the future of the world in terms of ascendancy and control of economic, intellectual and military power.
The Muslim Empire got a second wind as the Ottoman Empire rose from the plains of Anatolia (modern day Turkey) in the early 14th century. During the 15th and 16th centuries, in particular at the height of its power under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1494-1566), the Ottoman Empire was one of the most powerful states in the world. However, this too was not to last long. The Europeans had already taken a lead in trade and commerce through their superior knowledge of shipbuilding, map making and navigation. They went around looking for new worlds, new materials and human resources.
While the intellectual and economic dynamism of the newly awakened Europe was on the rise, Muslims were facing the consequences of being too slow to adapt to the modern ways of science and commerce. Soon, the Ottomans fell behind the Europeans on all counts. The end of Muslim expansion in Europe came when the Ottoman forces were defeated in the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

(To be continued)

The writer is an engineer by training and a social scientist by inclination. He works as a consultant in the social sector