Islamic world at decisive point in history: Will it take the path of Emirates or Turkey? – World News , Firstpost

The year 1095 was perhaps the most important one in the life of Islam since 610, the year Prophet Muhammad is believed to have had his first revelation.

Islam was going through its golden era of philosophical exploration and scientific discoveries. In front of it were two roads. One of enlightenment, modernity, innovation and peaceful co-existence. The other of orthodoxy, insularity and violent impulses.

It chose the path of darkness and could never recover.

It was in 1095 that Abu Hamid Al Ghazali – an otherwise outstanding thinker, jurist and mystic – published his book ‘Tahafut al-Falasifa’ and launched a visceral attack on philosophy and openness of learning. He played on the faith’s worst instincts to discredit ‘falsafa’, attack the stellar work of scholars such as Al Farabi and Ibn Sina, and declare them ‘kafir’ or infidel.

Even while the world rediscovered the wisdom of the Greeks, Romans and even ancient Indians through the work of the likes of Ibn Rushd, Ghazali had dimmed out that light from the Islamic world for centuries to come.

In 2020, the Islamic world has once again reached a forked road in history. The United Arab Emirates has taken a revolutionary step to embrace Israel, the only non-Muslim nation in the middle of the Arab world. Last week, the momentous first flight between the two countries landed in Abu Dhabi.

Saudi Arabia, which was cosying up to Israel in the last couple of years and even secretly allying on strategic and military issues, gave permission for the flight. Bahrain followed with an overflight clearance.

Israeli and Omani foreign ministers have already spoken on the phone, and Oman could be the next Arab nation to normalise relations with the Jewish state.

Sudan ended 30 years of Islamic law by separating the state from religion. Coincidentally or not, it is one of the countries actively considering normalising relations with Israel.

Years of siding with Palestine and holding Israel as the pariah is slowly, unexpectedly ending. Hostilities unleashed by the Muslim world again Israel to deny its right to exist has made the Middle East the most disturbed and violent place in the world, obviated the scope of solving things bilaterally, egged on the entire Ummah to wallow in victimhood over a local problem, and motivated scores of Islamist terrorist groups worldwide to butcher the innocent in the name of avenging Palestine.

The fact that tiny Israel has been the target of a cabal of over a dozen powerful nations and a victim of relentless waves of terror attacks has constantly been underplayed.

While the new geopolitical changes in the Middle East has wide-ranging positive implications in the Islamic world and the promise of openness last held out in the time of Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina and Al Farabi, there is a troubled road lurking alongside in the form of Turkey.

Tayyip Erdogan could do what Al Ghazali did in 1095: lead Islam down the dark road. He has meticulously dismantled Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular legacy and dreams of being the modern-day Caliph of the Muslim world. It is easier dreamt than done, with more than half the Arab world having a very different plan.

But Erdogan has managed to pull in a few wretches like Pakistan to do his bidding and try to form a block. The examples he sets to the Islamic world is grabbing the Hagia Sophia church and converting it into a mosque, running a hub at home to revive the failed Kashmir separatism and hosting troublesome elements, bombing Tazidis and Kurds already tormented by ISIS, and following a brutally regressive track on freedom of speech.

The Islamic world is at a very crucial juncture again. Whether it takes the road to Ankara or Dubai will decide whether it loses another shining opportunity to lift itself from the morass of bigotry and orthodoxy.