Chapter Fourteen

earlier it was employed in a limited sense, while today it is used in a more expanded sense. Some people interpret nationalism in an extremist fashion, so much so that they make it out to be synonymous with religion. But this is a case of ideological extremism. One can cite instances of this sort of ideological extremism with regard to religion, too. For instance, some modern Muslim thinkers have interpreted Islam in such an extremist manner that all systems other than Islam have been branded as taghuti nizams or ‘false or evil systems’. These writers have declared it haraam or completely forbidden for Muslims to cooperate with such systems. They have even declared it haraam for Muslims to seek education under such so-called ‘false systems’, to take up government employment, to vote in elections, and to approach the country’s courts to have their disputes solved. This notion of ‘false systems’ was the product of some extremist minds. It does not have anything in common with the real Islam. This is why practical realities have compelled many of those who once upheld this erroneous ideology to distance themselves from it in their own personal lives. And so, all these people have, in actual practice, abandoned this extremist theory, without announcing it as such. Exactly the same thing happened in relation to the issue of nationalism. Some extremist Western thinkers had expanded the notion of nationalism to the extent that they presented it in the form of a complete religion by itself. But when this notion had to contend with practical realities, it became completely untenable. And so, in practical terms, nationalism is now understood in somewhat the same natural manner as it is portrayed in the Quran. Most Indian Muslim leaders who emerged in the first half of the 20th century could not properly appreciate these matters. They thought that the unnatural and extremist understandings about nation and territorial nationalism were what nationalism was actually about, and so they declared nationalism to be un-Islamic.