The premise that Islam is something that can be a closed or an open religion may not be the best one. Islam, in its many forms, methods and practices, is a reflection of the person who practises it (just like any other religion). If your view on dealing with other people and their faiths and intellectual backgrounds is rigid and closed, then your practice of Islam or whatever faith you practise will also be rigid and closed. There are innumerable ways to approach one’s spiritual relationship and so the question will be whether those who claim to be adherents of Islam will take a rigid approach as opposed to an ostensibly open one. That is a function of many issues—economic, social, cultural and, of course, political. In societies where we perceive Muslims as being closed, they are often subject to repressive regimes (both secular and religious) where their closed practice of Islam is highly correlated to the nature of their rigid society, with limited basic freedoms (expression, speech and, yes, even religion).
Those who are making such closed/open claims about Islam are liberals, and liberalism has always been associated with racism, authoritarianism, extreme violence and efforts to destroy non-European ways of life. Muslims, like other non-European peoples, have always been targets of liberal violence, and they have responded to defend themselves, albeit not always in the most appropriate or ethical of ways.
John Stuart Mill (1806-73) is the leading theorist of liberal imperialism and the civilising mission. Mill spent his life employed as a high-ranking officer for the British imperial regime in India, where he formulated policies to govern the subcontinent’s Muslim and Hindu communities. Mill argues for placing non-Europeans under dictatorships in the form of imperial rule (i.e., “despotism”). These dictatorships exercise their power to compel adoption of western civilisation. Championing this policy, Mill remarks: “There are…conditions of society in which a vigorous despotism is in itself the best mode of government for training the people in what is specifically wanting to render them capable of a higher (i.e., western) civilisation.”
Mill goes on to make another important point: dictatorship (despotism) need not be applied by an outside country. It can also be applied within a country by the civilised elite. In these circumstances, a ruler drawn from the elite should govern through dictatorship for the purpose of coercing the masses to adopt western civilisation. Put differently, the ruler should use dictatorship to undertake a civilising mission. Hence Mill remarks, “The case most requiring consideration in reference to institutions is the not very uncommon one, in which a small but leading portion of the population, from difference of race, more civilised origin or other peculiarities of circumstance, are markedly superior in civilisation and general character to the remainder. Under these conditions, government by the representatives of the mass would stand a chance of depriving them of much of the good they might derive from the greater civilisation of the superior ranks.”
Historian Mohammad Sajjad rightly observed: “Sir Syed (Ahmed Khan) is relevant today for his rationalist enquiries and engagements…. (He) took to writing rebuttal and refutation of William Muir’s expositions against the Prophet. Unlike today’s hard-headed radicals who don’t know how to engage intellectually and resort to ominous violence, Sir Syed hated pan-Islamic, extra-territorial loyalties, and believed that India could march ahead only with its polychromatic character and inter-faith harmony. He instituted scholarship exclusively for Hindus in his Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, to make its enrolments heterogenous. He did not allow beef in the hostel mess of Aligarh College. He campaigned for free press to build modern India. He braved the ire of conservative clergy”.
The liberal notion of imposing western civilisation through imperial rule licenses European warfare across the globe, and opens the door to the wholesale destruction of non-European religious and cultural traditions (including Islam). These issues are taken up by the political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), arguably the most celebrated French liberal of his era. Tocqueville was a member of the French parliament and frequently corresponded with Mill on political matters. Like Mill, Tocqueville was a staunch proponent of imperialism, championing the French conquest and colonisation of Muslim Algeria. He travelled to Algeria in 1841 and 1846, becoming the French parliament’s leading expert on Algeria and a key policy-maker on Algerian issues.
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