SEPTEMBER 16: WHICH IS THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY?

So which is the right side of history and which is the wrong side? And am I on the right side or wrong side of history? It all depends. How do you measure right and wrong? What are the fundamentals you use in your measurement? To the fox, killing the chicken is right. Foxes are meant to kill chickens. To the chicken it is wrong. So do you speak as the fox or as the chicken?

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

In less than two weeks I will be celebrating my 65th birthday. That would mean I would have outlived both my parents, who died in their mid-40s, by about 20 years. Should I take this as a blessing or a curse? It was when I reached my mid-40s back in 1995 or so that I decided I wanted get off the merry-go-round of a capitalist life and devote the rest of whatever life I still had to activism and writing.

At that time I really did not know how long that would be. Twenty years on and it appears like it is going to be a long ride indeed, longer than my 20-year corporate life from 1974 to 1994. If I live to 75 and beyond this would certainly be true. Do I regret that change of ‘career’ at a time that most people would regard as the peak of their life?

I suppose one should never regret decisions one makes. Looking back, however, I have to admit that I do have some regrets. If I were able to relive my life all over again I would probably not do some of the things I did. But then I would still do some of those things I did do and not do them any differently.

You have to take the good with the bad and the plusses with the minuses. There are never absolutes in life. Life comes with pain and pleasure. It comes with the sweet and the sour. One needs to look at the balance and hope that on balance you have done more right than wrong in your life. You add up the debits and the credits and hope that the bottom line is black and not red.

I am always being told that I am on the wrong side of history and should instead get on the right side of history. But that is just the problem. Which is the right side and which is the wrong side? Is this not merely a matter of perception and interpretation? At different times of your life and in a different environment right and wrong are subjective and subject to the situation at that time.

Of course, when people tell me that I am on the wrong side of history and that I should get on the right side of history they are seeing things from their perspective and using their value system in evaluating things. Right and wrong are the way they see it and they are imposing their values on you and expect you to comply with their values. But then right and wrong change over time and are affected by the environment. It is a moving target and is never static.

Tomorrow, two events are going to take place. One is the ‘Red Shirt’ rally and the other is the creation of the new PAS-breakaway party. The ‘Red Shirt’ is a counter to the ‘Yellow Shirt’ while PAN is a counter to PAS. Which side do you support? Which is the right side and which is the wrong side? And can you choose not to take sides? And 20 years from now how would history judge 16th September 2015? Which is going to be labelled the right side and which the wrong side?

It all depends on who you are and what your value system is. It also depends on where you are and at what point of time in history you are making that assessment. History is not a science. There is nothing precise in history. History is not about reporting the events. History is about how you interpret those events against the backdrop of the environment and era of when those events took place.

Many have misinterpreted the events in history. While they may be correct in reporting what happened, they may be wrong in how they saw those events, the implications then and the implications now. It may be how you see it. But it may not be what really happened.

Let me walk you through one example. One popular notion is that Islam was spread through the point of the sword. Convert or die, is how many historians view the spread of Islam. And today Islam is a major world religion because of that. And today Islam is a violent and not so peaceful religion because of that. That is how many perceive Islam and this has come about because of the militant way that Islam was spread, or so they believe.

Actually Christianity was also spread the same way and that is why Christianity is also a major world religion. But I do not wish to talk about Christianity. I want to talk about Islam.

Back in the early years the Arabian Peninsula was dominated by desert tribes, what we call Bedouins. And there were roughly 360 tribes in all, each having its own religion. And they were constantly at war with one another. They raided each other and killed each other and robbed from each other and captured the women and children as slaves. It was the normal and accepted way of life back then at a time when Constantine first accepted Christianity as the state religion of Rome.

Loyalty was to your tribe because only your tribe offered you protection. And if you were exiled from your tribe then you are a dead man (or woman) walking. You will never survive the week on your own without the protection of your tribe. So you needed to place your tribe above everything else.

Prophet Muhammad successfully changed all this. And he did it the way Constantine did. Muhammad united all the tribes under religion and made them pledge loyalty to Islam and not to their tribe. He declared asabiyah (tribalism or nationalism) as haram and forbidden by Islam. But what Muhammad actually did was he created a higher asabiyah, Islam, which he called adeen and not asabiyah.

After Muhammad died there was no longer anyone to unite the many tribes. And some began to root for autonomy from the nation of Islam. So revolts erupted, which needed to be put down. Basically, the Arabian tribes are warring creatures and they need to fight. In the beginning they fought against Mekah. But after Mekah had been annexed there was no one to fight any longer. So they fought amongst themselves.

The Caliphs who came after Muhammad needed to look for new enemies. And that was when they sent armies to territories such as Turkey, Persia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc., to conquer. As long as the Arabs can be kept busy in war with external enemies they will not fight amongst themselves. You create an external enemy to unite the many tribes internally.

Conquering new territories meant wealth. If they resisted you attacked them and confiscated their wealth and took their people, those not killed in the war, as slaves. So the conquering army of the Arabs became wealthy and at the same time were happy. If the conquered people submitted you ruled over them and made them pay tax. Either way the Arabs became wealthy and remained happy. And they need not attack each other to become rich. They united to attack external non-Muslim enemies.

So it was an economic decision and a way to keep the peace amongst the many rival and warring tribes. You united them against another enemy and made them rich through war. That was a good enough reason for the many tribes to remain friends when as friends they profited more than when fighting amongst themselves.

Many of the conquered people eventually chose to convert to Islam not because they were forced to do so but because it made sense. As Muslims you were not treated as second-class citizens and were exempted from paying the tax. So from the point of status and for economic reasons it is better to convert to Islam than remain as non-Muslims. And after two or three generations children and grandchildren of converts were automatically born into Islam.

That is one example of how many, even renowned historians, have ‘misread’ the early spread of Islam. It is not as how many perceive. And today Islam is viewed as a militant religion and the ‘proof’ is in the history of the spread of Islam. Actually it is not Islam that is militant. It is the nature of the Arabs. The Arabs love war and fighting. They have been doing so for more than 2,000 years and are still doing it today. Only that now the fighting is done in the name of Islam so it appears like Islam is the issue.

Can you see how the history of the spread of Islam has been subjected to perception and interpretation? It is how western historians see it. But that does not make their views right. They have ignored Arab culture and the nature of the Arabs at that time. They view things the way they wish it were. But the reality based on the time and place then is totally different. And they try to analyse the militancy of Islam today based on this misperception.

So which is the right side of history and which is the wrong side? And am I on the right side or wrong side of history? It all depends. How do you measure right and wrong? What are the fundamentals you use in your measurement? To the fox, killing the chicken is right. Foxes are meant to kill chickens. To the chicken it is wrong. So do you speak as the fox or as the chicken?