The history of world politics is never made of marble: it moves as dunes in the sand. Empires are born, blossom, rot and fade away. The world that was dominated by the Western-centered order is today experiencing a transformation that most people are not aware of. The law of nature is gradually filtering through the nations, throwing out the new bases of power as the old decays. Pakistan is in this realignment, doubted or underestimated, but nevertheless, a component of this new realignment.
The law of nature itself is screening out new centers of power as they emerge and deteriorate. Pakistan is an important part of this process.
Forget that the
dissolution of America is a matter of a decade and a half; I am seeing the
entire West disappear from the world. Repeated reminder that four or six
decades in the life of nations do not show any change. It has been stated that
the Central Asian countries have now joined hands with Russia, Turkey and
Pakistan to fill the void that was created by the dissolution of the Soviet
Union. Iran, which was mired in a sectarian quagmire, has finally turned to the
Muslim Ummah. May God grant that its ablution remains intact. The remaining
Afghan leadership and its adventures do not seem to be flourishing anywhere.
How long will this small island surrounded by turbulent seas escape the stormy
waves of the Quranic term "Balmarouf"?
For the people of the subcontinent, revolution is the result of any arbitrary action resulting from vandalism, burning, wheel jamming, beating and blocking of roads, even if it is not a revolution but something else.
In the rest of the
world, this work is done gradually, through silence and the contraction of
thoughts. According to Dr. Farooq Adil, the media advisor of the late President
Mamnoon, we were to go to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office briefed us: "Sir,
avoid the Islamic brotherhood there; the mother of the Uzbek president has
died. Do not offer condolences." The instructions were professional and
spot-on that Uzbekistan had not been liberated through war, but the Soviet
adventure in Afghanistan had weakened the Union so much that one day it sat
like a hawk, and the officials of all nine independent countries were Communist
Party officials, such as Uzbek President Islam Karimov, the party secretary.
Ignoring the instructions of the Foreign Office, President Mamnoon ordered the
plane to land in Samarkand instead of Tashkent and reached the shrine of Imam
Bukhari.
The thought inherent in human veins and fibers first awakens the sleeping mind. This thought, seemingly detached from the state, continues to blend into collective thought.
This thought walks on rocky paths and gets beaten, and
after being slapped by waves far from the shore, it finally becomes a nest. It
takes a deeply studied third eye and an awakened sixth sense to see this
thought walking on unseen paths, the slaps given to it, and the slaps of the
waves themselves. At the government level, Kazakhstan, according to President
Trump, is just about to join the Abraham Accord. No wonder! The generation that
grew up under 70 years of Soviet oppression will not end suddenly. Kazakhstan
is still young, and the Abraham Accord includes nobles like Sudan, Morocco, and
the Emirates. Why is there any surprise?
Let
us look at Kazakhstan from a different perspective. According to Central Asian
Affairs, at the time of independence in 1991, the country had about 100 mosques
out of a population of 17.3 million. By 2019, the population had grown by only
8 percent (1.4 million), but the number of mosques had increased by 2,400
percent to 2,500. And this increase was despite the state repression of Muslims
in Kazakhstan after September 11, 2001. During the Soviet era, few people went
to mosques, but in 2019, 10 percent of the Muslim population regularly attended
mosques and adhered to Islamic values. In light of my observations in
Uzbekistan and Turkey, I am convinced that the same emerging collective
consciousness is gradually and rapidly taking shape in Kazakhstan.
Listen to Amjad, the ancestor of the Turkestan countries. In 2008, when I heard the call to prayer in Istanbul, I ran to the mosque.
There were only three
worshippers, and all three were Pakistanis. He laughed and said, "The
official muezzin's job is to give the call to prayer, not to pray. We see this
every day." I was in Istanbul again in 2011. I went to the same mosque
again. Now, due to the large number of worshippers, there were lines outside on
the street. Until 2008, headscarves were banned in Mustafa Kemal's Turkey. When
the ban was lifted, in 2011, every third woman in Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey was
seen wearing a headscarf.
See
more. In 2016, Uzbekistan had a population of 21.5 million people aged 16 and
over. According to the World Health Organization, the annual consumption of
alcohol among this adult population was 2.8 liters per capita (62 million
liters). Five years later, in 2021, this consumption had decreased to 1.8
liters (44.1 million liters) in an increased population of 24.5 million. This
annual decrease of 16.1 million liters is not insignificant. This decrease was
not due to preaching, nor is it due to any fatwa. This decrease is due to the
natural gradualness and silent resignation that religion demands. This is the
approach adopted by our visionary late President Mamnoon. Without saying
anything, he apparently “visited” the Uzbek “tourist” site, the shrine of Imam
Bukhari. Contrary to the instructions of the Foreign Office, he even made
President Karimov’s mother cry by condoling with her. I wish Dr. Farooq Adil
would heed my request and pen down his memoirs.
When the Soviet Union disappeared as a superpower from world politics, the Chinese moved ahead. Forget the saying that America is about to dissolve, but think about the fact that an emerging bloc of Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Central Asia and Russia is gradually gaining strength.
There is no denying the existence of
taverns and dance halls in the newly independent Turkestan countries and
Turkey. This was also the case in Pakistan until the 70s. Liquor shops in Pindi
and Islamabad were as common as drug stores. We used to read in the newspaper
that yesterday an Egyptian cabaret dance troupe was going to a certain hotel in
Karachi, the day after tomorrow an Italian troupe will be in Lahore, and the
next week French dancers are coming to Lahore. But please read the language of
the shrinking circle of superstitions and the expanding circle of worshippers
in these countries. There is no anxiety among these newborns to replace the old
and emaciated Pir Fartout, but I request you, wise people of opinion, to bring
the people suffering from a distorted mind to this one point. Don't wait for
time, because time itself waits for no one.
History rarely knocks twice. During the silent awakening of the Muslim world, when the world order is tectonically shifting, one of the tasks that are left to thinkers, policymakers and ordinary citizens is the purification of the mind of the distortions that were inherited.
Time does not spare countries. The unreaders of its signs get buried in its dust. It is not anxiety but rather emotionalism that is needed, not emotion but sense, the sense of seeing new centers of power, of inspiring national self-confidence, of returning to that spiritual compass by which past civilizations have been guided. The chance is opening its eyes; the question is whether we are intelligent enough to perceive it.
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