Islam has had a bad press. Even before the terrorist outrages in the US, the belief that Islam harboured more subversives than any other religion had been widespread.

The first response to the Oklahoma bombings in the US in 1995 was that the Muslims were responsible. This suspicion has a long history, dating back to the Christian crusades in medieval times to recover the biblical holy land from the Muslims.

In our part of the world, the partition of India to accommodate a Muslim ‘homeland’ (like the Jewish homeland of Israel in West Asia) has helped both the Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists to foster a sense of enmity between the two communities. Now, as the US targets Afghanistan, the saffron camp in India is trying to portray the conflict once again in civilisational terms.

There have been official efforts to make a distinction between Islam and terrorism. The Indian government has said so, as have leaders of the western world. “Such acts of infamy and cruelty are wholly contrary to the Islamic faith,” said Tony Blair. But the perception nevertheless persists that the two are the same. A recent article in the conservative Daily Telegraph of London carried the headline: A religion that sanctions violence.

It went on to quote a verse from the Koran saying, “Then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them. And seize them, beleaguer them, And lie in wait for them, In every stratagem (of war).” Our own Arun Shourie of the saffron brotherhood can add any number of such verses from the Koran to make the same point.

Arguably, such sanguinary passages reflect the merciless times when they were written. In his Study of History, Arnold Toynbee wrote that “in matters of Race, the promptings of this old-fashioned Syriac oracle (the Old Testament) are very clear and very savage.” Toynbee regarded the Old Testament as “representative of the Syriac religious genius in its young and callow phase; and even in this phase, towards its latter end, there was an outburst of spiritual experience and spiritual creation — recorded in the Books of Prophets — which points towards the New Testament. It is in the New Testament, manifestly, that the Syriac religious genius is revealed at its zenith”.

Jesus, then, was the first ‘reformer’ of the ‘Syriac’ Judaeo-Christian religious faith, transforming it from its ‘very savage’ eye-for-an-eye phase to the one advocating the turning of the other cheek. And when Christianity degenerated, Martin Luther in the 16th century sought to cleanse it.

Hinduism, too, has had its reformers. But since it is not a proselytising religion, its drawbacks were of little consequence to others and were tackled internally by Rammohun Roy, Ranade, Vidyasagar and others in modern times and by savants like Kabir, Chaitanya and others earlier.

Islam has had no reformers because of the belief in the immutability of the doctrine. The same conviction guides the Christian Right (based mainly in the US), which is why they oppose Darwin’s theory since it negates the Word of God in the Bible. The only person who challenged Islam was Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliphate instead of trying to reform it. Accusing the Caliphate of having “bled us white for centuries”, he asked, “was it not for the Caliphate, for Islam, for the priests and such-like cattle, that for centuries the Turkish peasant has fought and died in every climate?”

According to Ataturk, “the Ottoman empire was a crazy structure based on broken religious foundations. The new republic must have good foundations

and a well-made scientific structure. The Caliph and the remains of the house of Osman must go. The antiquated religious courts and codes must be replaced by modern scientific civil codes. The schools of the priests must give way to secular government schools. State and religion must be separated. The republic must finally become a secular State... We must dress like a civilised people... let them (the women) show their faces to the world.”

It has to be remembered, however, that Ataturk actually put a final seal on the process of modernisation which had begun a century earlier. For instance, Ataturk banned the fez so that the Turks could dress like ‘civilised people’. But the fez itself had replaced the earlier cumbrous turban under a decree issued by Mahmut II (1809-39), who himself dressed like a European. Mahmut also said that “I distinguish between my subjects Muslims in the mosque, Christians in the church, Jews in the synagogue, but there is no difference among them in any other way.”

Not surprisingly, when he was passing through the streets of Istanbul once, a dervish shouted at him: “Infidel sultan, God will demand an accounting for your blasphemy! You are destroying Islam!” It is a cry which might be echoed today by the mullahs, to whom the concept of equality between citizens in a Muslim country, as mentioned by Mahmut (and also by Jinnah at the time of Pakistan’s birth), is blasphemous.

Except for Turkey, the Muslims of West Asia have remained trapped in a time warp, trying to refashion today’s world in accordance with the ideas of a thousand years ago. It is hardly surprising that the distinguished Arab scholar, Edward Said, recently bemoaned the “overall conditions of mediocrity and galloping degeneration” in the Muslim countries which are moving, according to him, towards “greater degrees of tyranny” while the rest of the world is becoming more and more democratic.

If these countries are today at the “bottom of the heap when it comes to the quality of life”, to quote Edward Said again, the reason is that these have become virtual mullacracies, like Iran and Afghanistan, or are ruled by dictators from Pakistan westwards to Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt. In the east, Malaysia, too, is a virtual dictatorship. Indonesia remains in a state of turmoil. Bangladesh, perhaps, is the only democracy. But the mullahs there can still succeed in ostracising Taslima Nasreen.

The result of such a repressive system is that there is unredeemed intellectual stagnation. There is no scope for scientific advancement or artistic efflorescence. The most visible example of the stifling backwardness is the wretched condition of women in Muslim countries. It may be at its worst in Afghanistan. But it is only marginally better elsewhere.

The reason for this subjugation of half of a country’s population has been ascribed by Fatima Mernissi in her book, Women and Islam, to the possibility that the “hijab, the attempt to veil women, that is claimed today to be basic to Muslim identity, is nothing but the expression of the persistence of pre-Islamic mentality, the jahiliyya mentality that Islam was supposed to annihilate.”

What is unfortunate is that instead of trying to replace the theocracies with democracy, there is a continuing attempt to mould a country’s social and political life in accordance with ancient Islamic tenets. Such efforts to turn the clock back inevitably foster violence as society is sought to be bound hand and foot and dragged back to the medieval times.

Little wonder, therefore, that a country like the US becomes a target of Islamic zealots because of its aggressive modernity. Yet there is no Ataturk in sight who can lead the Muslim countries out of their blind alley.