4 Changes in the Muslim World
   
 

There have not only been changes in the categorisation of the world into developed and developing nations since 1983. The meaning and character of the "Muslim world" have changed too. It is, of course, not obvious how one should define a "Muslim world". There are said to be approximately one billion Muslims in the world at the present time. The Encyclopaedia Britannica 1993 Book of the Year distributes this total by areas as follows :

    Africa 278,000,000
Asia 636,976,000
Europe 12,574,500
Latin America 1,350,500
NorthAmerica 2,847,000
Oceania 100,500
Former USSR 39,229,400
World Total 971,077,900
    Some of these numbers are suspiciously precise and some are disputed (e.g., the U.S. Muslim community claims 6 million in the U.S. alone) but the distribution is instructive. One notes the considerable Muslim population in Europe, some long established as in the Balkans, some a result of fairly recent immigration from North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. With the North American population these Muslims in Europe remind us that the "Muslim world" is more than a subset of the developing world. The concentration of the major Muslim populations in Africa and Asia also means that the world Muslim population will be growing impressively between now and 2020. The sheer growth of population assures major extension of the numbers of Muslims. The tables we have assembled in Appendix D on the countries of Asia and Africa with significant Muslim Populations show, e.g., the Muslim population of West Africa growing from some 95 million at the beginning of the 1990s to about 225 million by 2025, while the Muslims of East Africa are growing from 67 to 157 million. Assuming that they keep the same proportions in the totai population that they have now, there will be half again as many African Muslims in 2025 as there were Africans of all sorts in 1950. In this demographic sense the Muslim world will have an impressive, even enormous, expansion over the next 25 or 30 years. Most of this expansion will be in parts of the world that are relatively poor and some of which are, at present, becoming relatively poorer. The future Muslim world may have more feelings of relative deprivation than it does now.
   
  A large part of the world's Muslim population lives in countries where Muslims are not in the majority. But there is a natural disposition, despite the huge Muslim minority in India, to think of the Muslim majority states as making up the "Muslim world". Some of these countries, like Pakistan, Mauritania, or Iran, are officially "Islamic Republics"; though Bangladesh is a "Peoples' Republic", Indonesia is simply a "Republic", Saudi Arabia is a "Kingdom" and Qatar flatly the "State of Qatar". Some countries with predominately Muslim populations like Turkey or Iraq have had clearly or even aggressively secular governments and dominant ideologies.
   
  The diversity in Muslim majority countries remains great but we are all aware that there has been a rise of Islamic movements both activist and pietistic in recent decades, which have had profound effects on the political, social and intellectual life in the Muslim world, and indeed, beyond it. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 antedated the Harvard Report, as did the assassination of Sadat, the rising in Hama and its brutal suppression. The Report was much concerned about the limitations it then saw on the academic study of matters involving Islam within Muslim countries, and its recommendation of a Centre of Research in the Social Sciences and Humanities devoted to the Muslim world specified that this Centre "must be located in the Western world". But the Report did not dwell on challenges presented by "radical" or "fundamentalist" movements in the Muslim world. This Commission could hardly avoid doing so.
   
  An immense amount of attention is now given by public figures, the media, and scholars to Islamic movements. The Western world may remain oblivious of Egyptian Islamist papers that, as The Economist says, would have nothing to write about if they gave up attacking the West and its sins. But the fanatic terrorists who nearly brought down one of New York City's proud towers, Khomeini's death sentence on Salman Rushdie, and currently the demands in Bangladesh for the death of Taslima Nasrin have made front-page news around the world. The contrast to the state of discussion of the Middle East and other predominately Muslim areas as recently as 1970 is quite remarkable. [For example, the Ford Foundation conducted a major review of its Middle East programmes in the early 1970s and, seeking guidance on the future of the area, commissioned numerous papers from leading authorities; their papers contained hardly more than passing mention of the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamic movements.] Scholars like Clifford Geertz or Emmanuel Sivan have maintained that the phenomena now so abundantly discussed (and so carelessly described as "fundamentalist") have had long historical roots. Nevertheless, they had a sudden rise to prominence beginning about 1975. There may have been for a time a disposition to treat Khomeini and the Iranian revolution as unique. But the spread of similar movements in Sunni lands, now dramatically expressed in the challenges to the secular governments of Algeria and Egypt, has made evident that a powerful and widespread movement has been underway.
   
  It seems clear that AKU now faces a more challenging vocation as a Muslim university than it faced in 1983. There is now a more urgent need for presentations of Islam that correct the distorted versions presented by extremists. (This was an evident motivation of the Jordanian university described earlier.) These extremists' aggressive denunciation of other Muslims as idolaters or apostates has undoubtedly diminished awareness of variety that has existed among committed and pious Muslims.
   
  As we look ahead trying to envisage what AKU should be in 2020 or 2025, we must try to judge how lasting and profound this recent upsurge of Islamic movements may be. There have been persisting arguments over the secular or transitory nature of these movements since they first attracted widespread attention, and it is sometimes difficult to interpret the, course of events. For example, Prof. Barbara Metcalfe, a leading American scholar of South Asia, has traced a progressive triumph of Islamic over secular bases of legitimacy for the Pakistani state; but last year's national elections brought a sharp decline of the Islamic parties. A secure sense of the durability or transitoriness of the upsurge of militant extremist movements must rest on some analysis of its origins.

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