Communist Challenge to Islam

Ansari Memorial Series

Communist Challenge
to
Islam
An Exposition of Communism vis-a-vis Islam

By

Dr. Fazlur Rahman Ansari

Compiled by

Dr. Umair Mahmood Siddiqui

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

 Umair Mahmood Siddiqui

First Published in 1951

By

THE MAKKI PUBLICATIONS

100 BRICKFIELD ROAD - DURBAN - SOUTH AFRICA

All rights are reserved

Second Edition Jan 2018

Islamic Research and Publications Bureau

Organ of

World Federation of Islamic Missions

North Nazimabad Block-B Karachi, Pakistan

Wfim.org.pk…[email protected]

92-21-36644156, 0321-2080031, 0346-3225863, 021-36629282

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Dedicated by author to

HIS EMINENCE MOULANA MOHAMMED ABDUL

ALEEM SIDDIQUI AL-QADERI

"Guide, Philosopher, Father"

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Dr. Muhammad Fazlur Rahman Ansari in 1943

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Contents
Editor
Dr.Umair Mahmood Siddiqui
Foreword
Prof. Dr. Mohammad Ihsanullah Khan
Foreword
Mustafa Fazil Ansari
Foreword
Dr.Habib-ur-Rahman
Preface
Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman Ansari

Chapter 1: COMMUNISM: THE DANGER-SIGNAL

General Remarks - The Intellectual Situation in
the World of Islam - The Social Situation -
General Situation

Chapter 2: COMMUNIST TACTICS

Deception and Fraud - Illustration from China -
Illustration from Albania - Illustration from
Yugoslavia

Chapter 3: THE COMMUNIST WORLD-VIEW

God and Man - Marxist Philosophical
Materialism

Chapter 4: THE BUSINESS OF COMPROMISISM

Communism Brooks no Compromise - The

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Peace-Mission of Marxism - Hero-Worship,

Iron-Dictatorship and Negation of Freedom and
Equality in Stalin's Russia

Chapter 5: COMMUNISM AND NATIONAL AND

CULTURAL ASPIRATIONS
National Self-Determination and Cultural
Autonomy under Communism - Definition of
Nation - Nations' Right to Self-Determination -
The National Right of Secession - Down with
National Distinctions! Long Live Marxism! -
National Cultural Autonomy under
Communism - The Type of National Culture
which Communism permits and develops - All
must bow to Moscow! - The Communist
Tactics Again! - The Communist Explanation
of Variations in Policy

Chapter 6: ISLAM AND MUSLIMS IN THE SOVIET

UNION
(A) Political Aggression
The Great Illusion - The conquest of Central
Asia, Crimea and Azerbaijan

Chapter 7: ISLAM AND MUSLIMS IN THE SOVIET

UNION (Continued)
(B) Ideological Aggression
The Cobweb of Intrigue - The Lesson for Us

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Chapter 8: Islam versus Marxism

Being an Essay written for the Muslim-
Christian Convention held in Lebanon in 1954

Chapter 9: Islam vs. Communism

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Communist Challenge to Islam

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Prologue
Dr. Umair Mahmood Siddiqui
“Communist Challenge to Islam” the magnum opus of
Maulana Asari was first published in 1951, Durban, South
Africa by Makki Publications and we have the privilege to
reproduce it in 21th century as Communism‟s return as a
philosophical concept has fully established after USA bitter
loss and agony of defeat in Afghanistan. Dr. Ansari authored
the book in 1950 and penned its preface in Medina
Munawwarah during missionary world tour along with his
mentor Maulana Shah Abdul Aleem Siddiqui in whose name
he dedicated the book. Being an exposition of Communism
vis-à-vis Islam, it may rightfully be asserted to be a unique
endeavour of its kind in the literary history of Islam which
deserves serious recognition. In 1949, Maulana Ansari was on
job and worked as officer incharge of the Sind Government
weekly journal, the “Sind Information”. He resigned from his
job to complete his work on Communism and thereafter to
proceed on a world tour. Though he was in financial crisis
and suffered from various ailments but he quit his job and left
no stone unturned to accomplish the task assigned to him by
his Shaykh Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui. His epistles to
Maualana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui are enough to comprehend
the depth of hi concern.1 The Reader can easily feel his true
love for Islam in his resignation letter;
“God, in His infinite Mercy, has arranged
for my return to Islamic missionary work,

1
Read Epistles of Maulana Ansari compiled by the editor, published
by WFIM in 2016.
9
 Communist Challenge to Islam

which I carried on for about fifteen years

before joining the present employment
under you. The call of Islamic duty has
been incessantly agitating my mind during
my Government service, so much so that
lately it became more and more impossible
for me to resist it. I have, therefore, by
God’s Grace, resolved to resign my present
job and to plunge forthwith in the storm
and stress of Islamic work. I intend to
complete as soon as possible my book on
“ISLAM & COMMUNISM” and thereafter
to proceed on a World-Tour, Insha-
Allah!.....”
According to Osman Belal after Maulana‟s demise, United
States Information Services offered to publish and distribute
“The Communist Challenge to Islam” in its campaign against
Communism provided the following sentences were removed
from the content of the book:
“Among internal evils, the “Ahmadiya”
propaganda from Qadian and Lahore provides a
fitting instance, while Communism enjoys this
privileged position among external forces.”

Alhumdulillah! This satanic offer was turned down by Shaykh

Ja‟afer (May he rest in peace) and these lines are intact to
unveil false Qadiani propaganda.
Maulana Ansari has discussed the nature of Marxist
philosophy, its implications and bearing. He arrived at the

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

conclusion that no ideological or practical compromise is

possible between Communism and Islam. Aptly he wrote:
“In the present book we have shown that: (1) In
its spiritual and philosophical foundations
Communism is Islam's enemy No.1; (2) The
political ideology of Communism is thoroughly
incompatible with the ideal of Muslim
nationalism and all that it stands for; (3)
Communism has already wrought widespread
and far-reaching ideological irreligious
devastation among all those Muslim
populations which have so far come under its
sway; (4) Alliance with the Communists in any
form means nothing less than courting
disaster.”

There can be no compromise with Communism or American

Capitalism. These two ideologies are contrary to Islam and
devastating for humanity. Karl Marx wrote in “A Contribution
to the Critique of Hegel‟s Philosophy of Right”:

“It is the opium of the people. The abolition of

religion as the illusory happiness of the people
is the demand for their real happiness.” 2

2
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-
hpr/intro.htm#05. Retrieved on 9/1/2018

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

He wrote in fragment of the Appendix of his doctoral

dissertation:
"In the country of reason the existence of God
cannot have any meaning. Take paper money to
a country in which this use of paper money is
not known, and everyone will laugh at your
subjective representation. Go with your gods to
a country in which other gods are worshipped,
and you will be shown that you are the victim
of fancies and abstractions. And rightly.
Anyone who had brought a migrant god to the
ancient Greeks, would have found the proof of
the non-existence of this god, because it did not
exist for the Greeks. What is the case in a
certain country for certain foreign gods, takes
place for god in general in the country of
reason: it is an area in which his existence
ceases"3
Former KGB officer Yuri Bezmenov wrote in his book “Black
is Beautiful, Communism is Not”:
“Now please try to understand that in the eyes
of people who walk by Comrade Lenin‟s
statue, he was a short, bald man with a speech
impediment who died from syphilis, and who
introduced the system of mass terror and
concentration camps in my country long before

3
ttps://www.ewtn.com/library/Theology/ATHEMARX.HTM.
Retrieved on 9/1/2018

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

these beautiful ideas came to the mind of Adolf

Hitler. Nazis killed 6 million Jews. The system
established by Lenin killed 66 million of my
people.”
As a result of American imperialism over 6 million Muslims
have been killed brutally after 9/11 carnage. Inhuman
invasions on Islamic countries reflect the thought of famous
American moral and political philosopher in liberal tradition
John Bordley Rawls (1921-2002), as he wrote in his book
“Political Liberalism”:
“That there are doctrines that reject one or
more democratic freedom is itself a permanent
fact of life, or seems so. This gives us the
practical task of containing them like war and
disease.4
We have no need to incline towards any “ISM” or any
philosophical ideology. In the words of Quaid-e-Azam, we
have the Quran and Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad ‫ﷺ‬for
our inspiration and guidance. Instead of putting prefix and
suffix with Islam we must vow to follow Islam as we are
directed by Allah and His last Prophet Muhammad ‫ﷺ‬.
I am very thankful and indebted to Abdul Wahid Osman
Belal, one of the close adherents of Maulana Ansari for
providing me the original copy of the book “Communist

4
John Rawls, Political Liberalism, New York : Columbia
University Press, 2005, p.64

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Challenge to Islam”. I have annexed “Islam versus Marxism”

and “Islam verses Communism” (A lecture delivered by
Maulana in South Africa) so that it may be a compendium of
what Maulana had done on Marxism in his life time. May
Allah accept this humble effort. Aameen

Dr. Umair Mahmood Siddiqui

Assistant Professor
Department of Islamic Learning
University of Karachi
Karachi, Pakistan
[email protected]

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman Ansari

Author‟s brief profile which appeared in the original publication
printed in Durban, South Africa in 1951.

Pakistani scholar, journalist, author and missionary. Born in

India in August 1914. Educated at Madressah Islamiah
Arabiah, Meerut (Hafiz-ul-Quran; Persian and Arabic
education); Government High School, Saharanpore
(Matriculation); Meerut College, Meerut (Intermediate);
Aligarh Muslim University B.A. - 1st Class 1st, M.A.
Philosophy – 1st Class; B.Th. – 1st Class 1st; Completed
Doctoral Theses on Islamic Moral and Metaphysical
Philosophy (1947). Recipient of the Muslim University Gold
Medal and the Philosophy Record Gold Medal. Awarded
Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, Berlin
(1939). Life-sketch included in the BIOGRAPHICAL
ENCYCLOPAEDIA. New York (1947).
Visited the Far East in 1937-1938 for the religious and social
uplift of Muslims. Missionary-in-charge of the All-Malaya
Muslim Missionary Society, Singapore (1937-1938). Joined
His Eminence at Mecca during the pilgrimage of 1949 and
visited Egypt, Italy, Great Britain, France, Portugal, British
West Indies, Br. and Dutch Guianas, U.S.A. and Canada.
Member, Islamics Sub-Committee, Education Planning
Committee of the All-India Muslim League (1944-1946).
General Secretary, The International Union of Islamic Service
(1938 to onwards). Editor, The Genuine Islam (monthly),
Singapore (1938-1940). Editor-in-Chief, Five Pillars
(quarterly), Durban (1945-1950), and Pakistan News, Durban
(1948-1950), Editor, Sind Information (weekly) (1948-1949),
Editor, “Ramadan Annual” and “The Muslim‟s Digest”
(monthly), Durban.
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Introduction
Mohammed Makki

The literature on Communism is growing every year.

Indeed, there is no subject more important to the world at
large. where it is possible to gain much enlightenment about
Communism in theory from the various students and writers, it
is at least inevitable to discover the truth about how it works in
the country where it was first evolved and applied.

There is quite definitely a great distinction to be drawn

between Russian Communism and the Communism of the
common good which most of us would subscribe to, if we
were able. The challenge of Communism affects every one of
us. It threatens the existence of established religions and
ancient faiths, and there is a very real danger that unless the
people of Islam and of Christianity recognise and know the
sinister meaning of this new and dangerous ideology, the
whole world will be thrown into another dark age as confusing
and as confounding as any other dark ages mankind has
known in the past.

The author of this book, Muhammad Fazl-ur-Rahman Ansari,

the General Editor of "The Muslim's Digest" and the
"Ramadan Annual", is a research scholar, whose work is so
well known that he requires no introduction. "The Communist
Challenge to Islam" is a successful attempt to throw up in bold
relief the significance of Communism to the Islamic world.
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Here is an analysis and commentary, substantiated by

documentary evidence which gives a convincing account of
what Communism means to the good Muslims.

No one can read this book without being impressed by the

scholarship and erudition brought to its writing, and no one
can leave this book without being profoundly moved by its
breadth of argument and sound reasoning. We commend it, as
a contribution to the library of every Muslim.

MOHAMMED MAKKI

Organiser of the International Union of

Islamic Service in South Africa.
100 Brickfield Road, Durban.
1st May, 1951.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Abdul Wahid Osman Belal

Ever since the secular spirit of Western civilization

gave birth to Marxisim, a gigantic conflict between Religion
and organized Ir-religion and Atheism has been speedily
developing throughout the world. The Islamic world was the
last to permit the permeation of this conflict into its precincts,
but it has at last forced its way on the wings of the ignorance
and social ill health of the Muslims, on the one hand, and the
intrigues of Western imperialists, on the other. The Anglo-
French aggression in the Suez is the latest important move on
behalf of imperialism and colonization to bolster up
Communism in the Muslim world.

Ignorance of true facts about Marxism, and even about

Islam, exists most unfortunately to an appalling degree in the
ranks of the Muslim youth who, in their devotion to secular
education of the Western make up, get hardly any opportunity
of studying Islam, especially in the background of the
ideological conflicts of the present day. In the student world of
Pakistan they constitute more than seventy-five years per cent
of the whole. To enlighten them, therefore, on their own
ideology as well as about the hostile ideologies would be a
service not only to them but also to Pakistan, - in fact, to
humanity.

It is with this ideal that this monograph is being

published by the All-Pakistan Student‟s Association. The

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

writer of the monograph, Professor Muhammad Fazl-ur-

Rahman Ansari, is one of those chosen few theologians in the
entire world of Islam who combine the knowledge of Islam
and of Modern Thought with distinction and eminence. It is
hoped, therefore, that his words will penetrate not only the
minds but also the hearts of his readers, clearing away all
cobwebs of confusion.

Dated: 15-10-1956.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Foreword
Prof. Dr. Mohammad Ihsaanullah Khan

M.A., LL.B. (Alig.), Doctor of Phil. (Bonn)

Islam is a Religion, whereas Totalitarianism is simply a

political ideology taking finally the form of a state. Both are
believed to stand for an all-out, complete and a total reform or
well-being of man. Hence the reason why both are conceived
to be incidental and why an Islamic State is considered to be
very much the same as a Totalitarian one. But this is a wrong
notion and is grounded on a misconception of the nature of the
two states. As a matter of fact they differ violently and there is
a radical and fundamental distinction between the two. Islam
is a religion, and religion constitutes a relation between Man
and God. Now, If any party through this relation is to be
benefited, it is Man and not God, for God is already a Perfect
Being, complete in Himself, and needs no further
improvement or reform. Evidently, any genuine relation
between Man and God (a Perfect Being) will go a long way to
elevate man to the status of Insan-i-Kamil - a perfect man.
This perfect man is one who has the best of conduct and
character, the best of intellect and reason, the best and finest
sense for the appreciation of beauty and has the best of health,
is free from all cares and wants and is consequently the
happiest of all creatures. It is this sort of man, well-provided,
well-talented and a totally reformed person, which is the goal

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

of an Islamic State. The same, likewise, is said to be the goal

of a Totalitarian State. But this it is only apparently, not in
reality, at best it is so in intention only, not in actual practice.
In actual practice, it yearns to realize only a partial physical
and economic well-being. This alone is the sole end of a
Totalitarian State, to which all the other ends of man are
subordinated and made subservient. If religion of any
established moral code somehow comes into conflict with the
economic and political programme of a Totalitarian State, it is
the former that is to be sacrificed in the interest of the latter
and not vice versa. This much abstractly speaking!

Coming to concrete facts, Totalitarianism is a certain

constitution of the state in which only one political party is
permitted, and that consists only of the supporters of the
Dictator, e.g. that of Russia. In this system everything -
material, mental and spiritual - is considered as belonging, or
owing allegiance to the State; and the individuals exist for the
society. The total power is in the hands of one party, indeed,
one man, at the helm of the state; and he is all powerful. It is
really in this sense - in the sense of a total power being in the
hand of one person - that it is called a Totalitarian State, rather
than in the sense of a total reform of man realized by it. In a
word, it is only another name for an outright Dictatorship.
Democracy is only a misnomer and is simply a futile
conception according to this way of thinking. Sovereignty,
therefore, belongs to the state and not to the people; and it is
exercised only by the leader or the Dictator of the state. No

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

individual has any right to question the justice, motive or

sense of judgment of the leader; nor, indeed, have the
individuals the power to depose the Dictator, if he is in the
wrong. The right of legislation, therefore, likewise belongs to
the Dictator; and no legislature or judicial authority in the
country can question the validity of the laws ordained by the
Dictator. As such, the individuals are only soulless chattels,
having no say in matters of state; and they are only the link in
a big superstructure - are only the means to an end, which is
the State. They have no fundamental or inherent rights as
against the state, e.g., a right to private property or a right to
lead a family life. Everything personal can be usurped or
confiscated in the name of the state by the leader or the party
in power. A Russian is no Russian if he insists on retaining a
right to his private property, no matter howsoever honestly he
might have earned it. This is also the reason why, to achieve
its economic and political programme, a Totalitarian state
leaves no stone unturned in sanctioning class war, violence,
etc., against those sections of the population which do not
believe in its ideology, e.g., against the bourgeoisie in Russia.
In a word, the entire social life of the people in a Totalitarian
state ends in the regimentation of the individuals. The
individuals are assigned work, which they must have to
function, no matter whether they will it or not, or whether it
suits or does not suit their taste. The individual is lost sight of;
and he ceases to think or function independently. All is
compulsion and constraint from above, and nothing is
voluntary or autonomous. No doubt, a Totalitarian state might

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

well consciously and overtly admit it to itself that the state is

really there only for the sake of the individuals, and that its
entire existence and being is only a means to an end, which is
the individual and his well being. Yet in its actual planning
and in the working out of things, it unconsciously and
surreptitiously lapses into quite a reverse order; and the
individual's welfare ultimately remains a welfare only in name
or at best in intention merely.

With the loss of this "individuality" of persons, the moral or

spiritual life of the individuals also ceases to operate, for
"individuality" is precisely the essence and the prime
condition of all moral or spiritual life. No amount of
compulsion or restraint through laws or regulations, or
through fear or reward from above, can make me moral or a
righteous person, so long as I do not myself will it to be so.
Morality or piety depends only on the motive of the
individual, which is subjective and private, and is not open to
the gaze of the state to be reformed or rectified by it. It is the
work of the individual himself to purify or reform his motive
and to moralise or spiritualise himself. I might well give alms
at the command of the state and yet it is possible that I am still
a bad man, if I do all this hypocritically and am not good at
the bottom of my heart. In a word, the state can at best
command my action, overt action, but not my motive, which is
purely personal and on which alone depends morality and
spirituality. Thus, if the individuality is lost and man is
reduced simply to a soulless chattel, every action of his is

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

compelled and constrained from above and nothing of him is

autonomous or out of free will, his moral and spiritual life also
necessarily ceases to function altogether.

Contrasted to this, in an Islamic state the Sovereignty belongs

to God and not to the people or a people's party or to the
Dictator for that matter. Thus it is something other than the
modern Democracy or the Dictatorship. It is Theocracy. This
Sovereignty is exercised by the Khalifa in the name of God
and as His agent in the interest of the community. The Khalifa
is elected by the people, though not on numerical strength, as
is the case in Democracy, but on qualitative grounds. The
Khalifa, being the agent of God, must be the most pious,
virtuous and an all-round, talented, gifted and a reliable
person. The Khalifa can as well be deposed by the people, if
he betrays trust and does not abide by the laws of God. Now if
Khalifa can be elected and as well deposed by the people, that
means that an Islamic state is in no way different from
Democracy and that the people do possess the right of
Sovereignty to all intent and purpose. Of course they do, but
that only derivately so, not directly. Directly, the Sovereignty
still remains with God, for the people have the right to election
or deposition only subject to the instructions or the principles
laid down by God, not subject to their own whims or caprice.
Indeed, at times the Khalifa can act even against the will of the
whole population, if it is intended to serve the purpose of God.
Thus, an Islamic state may better be termed as Theo-
Democracy, if that term be permitted, rather than as

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Democracy or Theocracy pure and simple.

Further, since sovereignty essentially belongs to God, the right

of legislation, likewise, belongs to God and to no other person
or persons besides Him. Such a legislation is laid down in
Quran or the Tradition, and they admit of no alterations from
any quarter. Only Bye-Laws are allowed, but that, too, within
the framework of the fundamental principles laid down in
Quran or the Traditions. These laws deal with all the aspects
of individuals' life and are tantamount to a complete, thorough
and a total reformation of man. More, they leave the freedom
of man, in action and in thought, and his individuality
completely intact, so long as it does not vitally affect the
interest of the state. Even in so fundamental and in so sacred
and valuable a matter as religion, it also allows complete
freedom! - and one is absolutely free to be or not to be a
Muslim in an Islamic state. Thus, there is no compulsion in an
Islamic state - neither in religion nor in matters mundane. The
fundamental rights of man, e.g., the possession of private
property or leading a family life, are likewise guaranteed by
the Almighty. No Khalifa, people or a section thereof can
encroach upon these rights even at time of a wholesale
national emergency, such as war, famine, etc. Muslims and
non-Muslims are alike in these rights. Unlike Totalitarianism,
the removal of poverty or of economic inequality or the
dispelling of any national distress - they are all realized by
Islam through persuasions or appeals to the free loyalty of the
people by sanctioning alms-giving, charity, acts of piety, etc.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Thus the act of "giving" by the individual in an Islamic state,

since freely given, is not only conducive to helping others, but
also goes a long way to his own reformation or self
purification.

Further the rule of party or parties does not exist in Islam. The
party, strictly speaking, is the entire community itself. The
programme of an Islamic state is essentially, indeed
predominantly, moral and religious: and only secondarily it is
economic and political. It stands for the reformation of
humanity, and it sanctions war against wickedness and moral
vices wherever existing. Even against one's Khalifa, one is
entitled to wage war or Holy War if he is a wicked person.
More, it believes in a certain ideology which is revealed and
not thought out by man himself - revealed by God through the
Prophet ‫ ﷺ‬and the Quran. Lastly, Islam being a missionary
religion, the Islamic state naturally stands for Internationalism;
and it does not remain confined within its own bounds. But
unlike Totalitarian states it seldom crosses its boundaries with
a set purpose of aggrandisement or of colonization. It is
predominantly a moral and spiritual state and, as such,
wherever it goes it spreads religion, morality, learning, culture
and all-pervading peace.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Mustafa Fazil Ansari

President
WFIM, Chief Successor of Maulana Ansari (RA)

The onslaught of Communist philosophy was a consequence

of emergence of Darwinism in the field of biology and the
extension of the same theory based on mechanical causation
which vehemently negates the concept of God, was applied in
the field of sociology and by John Stewart Mill in the domain
of ethics and law followed by its materialistic interpretation in
the field of metaphysics by Feuerbach. But a deeper probe
would reveal the antagonism of Karl Marx, who propounded
the Communist philosophy based on dialectic materialism
applied to the social phenomena in his book „Das Kapital‟, as
a fundamental antipathy to Capitalism. One can feel the
sentiments of hatred and aversion to then prevailing class of
bourgeois and the poverty stricken class of proletariat. In the
ailing, decrepit society of that period of history, the slogan of
equality and abolition of the heinous discrimination rampant
in those times, found strong support in the general masses and
posed a formidable challenge in general to the concept of
religion and divinity. Apparently Christianity and Judaism
could not weather the storm based on their philosophy of faith
and the lacunas in their scripture and fell like a house of cards
due to their inherent inability to resolve the conflict between
faith and reason.

The religion of true faith - Islam alone was structured to

provide the resolution of the conflict. Islam‟s egalitarian
concept of a social order based on the monotheistic divine
belief in a Just God, Omnipotent and Omnipresent, the Master

27
 Communist Challenge to Islam

and the Sustainer of this Universe, providing a system devoid

of any discrimination of class, color or creed, through a
flawless code of life contained in His divine message in the
Qur‟an, revealed by the Al Mighty to His beloved, last
Prophet Syedna Muhammad (pbuh).

Dr Fazlur Rahman Ansari (ra) while discussing the role of

Qur‟an as the book of guidance with particular reference to the
economic code, states in his book, The Quranic Foundations
and Structure of Muslim Society: „to bestow on Religion the
role of functioning as Social Alchemy for the establishment of
a Total Welfare Society; to harmonize Truth and Justice with
love and mercy; to make Social Justice the very foundation for
healthy collective life; to establish the concept of Wealth for
Welfare; to eradicate Poverty, Disease and human Suffering
im general; to crown Labor with Dignity; to provide the
Golden Mean between the extremist philosophies of
Monopoly, Capitalism and Communism.

Dr F R Ansari (ra) has fulfilled his mission as a Islamic

missionary, an outstanding scholar and a exemplary soldier of
Islam meticulously wielding his pen in totally annihilating the
philosophy of Communism and logically extending and
projecting the Islamic vision, meeting the challenge with his
iconic dexterity in his writing presented to the reader in a
beautiful compilation by our worthy brother, Dr. Umair
Mahmood Siddiqui who fully deserves my love and
appreciation for his monumental contribution and devotion.

Mustafa F Ansari
President
World Federation of Islamic Missions

28
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Foreword
Dr. Habib-ur-Rahman

If we analyze the philosophical teachings of dialectical

materialism that was presented in the name of communism in
the twentieth century, we reach the conclusion that it is to
topple down the well recognized status of Religion. No doubt
that Religion always had firm roots and an important role to
play in the human history. The communist philosophy is
meant to promote agnosticism and atheism. Although
communism is cited by its advocates, provides social justice,
negation of self centeredness, dispelling danger, health care,
surety of employment, curbing down business monopolies
etc,. But on the other hand, despite soothing slogans the fact is
that it hampers personal growth, restricts freedom of speech
and all business and financial activities are run under the strict
control of the state. Despite an organized propaganda
campaign, communism could not create heaven in Soviet
Russia or elsewhere.

During the culmination of communist regime in Russia, the

true picture of Russian life, in spite of Communist leaders
boast that “ they have created way of life which is superior to
other systems and which will in the foreseeable future be
immeasurably better than the decaying capitalist western
civilization‟‟. The facts and figures revealed the true picture of
the glamorized heaven that in the face of having most

29
 Communist Challenge to Islam

powerful police, army, intelligence services and merciless law

enforcement agencies, communist rulers failed to eliminate
social injustice, poverty, class conflict and power struggle.

From the very beginning, Communism has directly targeted

religion and declared it as an “opium for people”. It was
therefore extremely necessary to evaluate the “communist
challenge to Islam”. Today among religions Islam is the
perfect and final representative of all revealed religions in
human history. If it withstands any ideological attack from
modern philosophy then can it be possible for other religions
to take shelter under the garb of Islam for their self-defense.
Otherwise distorted religions will not have the potency to
encounter the philosophical theories which have equipped the
man of modern scientific era with unrestricted logical
arguments. Before commenting on the this valuable book, it is
more appropriate to go through the basic propaganda of
communism against Religions.

1) According to the communist philosophy any Religion or

philosophy of life is not acceptable unless it is logically
realistic and can be proven materialistically. While the basic
and fundamental pillar of Religion is to believe in the great
unseen realities. It is therefore impossible for any communist
to believe in Religion.

2) According to communism, Religion is the outcome of fear

that resulted from the age of ignorance. So now it is obsolete
both in theory and practice.

30
 Communist Challenge to Islam

3) Communists firmly believe that Religion is the

consequence of helplessness of humans before the nature to
get rid of social, psychological and economic-problems.

4) They think that Religion is a blind affliction based on

horror in the hearts of people which cannot be proven through
facts but can only be examined.

5) They consider that Religion does not address human reason,

and gives no importance to observation or experiments but
deals with emotions and provokes the human sentiments
artificially to accept unseen superior Authority.

6) They regard that Religion inculcates terror in the mind of

man for baseless punishments in the Hell Fire and teaches him
the concept of virtues to attract him towards Paradise.
Religion also teaches belief in the predestination to surrender
before the adverse circumstances.

7) They deem that the sole purpose of religious rituals is to

enslave the people to a particular religious belief for blind
adherence.

8) They presume that Religion supports the dominance of

exploitative capitalist and tyrant class in the society to squeeze
the oppressed. In this connection communist also suppose that
the holy Quran teaches economic inequality and bars the ways
for equal distribution of wealth among masses.

31
 Communist Challenge to Islam

According to communist philosophers, dialectical materialism

shows the realistic and practical way of life and helps to
liberate the poor from the clutches of Religious superstitions.

All the above mentioned accusations are but unrealistic. To

pose allegations is the easiest way to undermine the truth in
the eyes of innocent people. History itself is the best testing
laboratory wherein you do not have to pay a single penny to
get the true result of every claim made in the past. The same is
true for all philosophies and religions to prove their
authenticity in this laboratory. Islam has the long history of
over 1450 years, proving its validity and authenticity. It had
been through the vicissitude of the human history in the east
and the west and undoubtedly emerged the most successful
ideology in every sense of the word. Twentieth century was
not the exception for Islam to stand firmly alone before dark
or bright sides of dangers. Communism was first overpowered
in the ideological battle fields by the scholars of Islam. This
battle was led by a few Muslim scholars who had sound
knowledge of Islam on one hand and modern scholarship on
the other hand.

Dr Fazlur Rahman Ansari Al Qadri (R A) was a shining star

on the firmament of Islamic intelligentsia. He was a man of
great vision to justify his faith in Islam. He was fully
convinced about the revolutionary aspect of Islamic ideology.
In this regard, he kept himself fully abreast with the
communist philosophy to encounter it with full preparation.
He never behaved like other Muslim traditional scholars who

32
 Communist Challenge to Islam

have been under delusion that mere word Islam possesses

some occult power and will act like a talisman and protect
them from communism. They conveniently forgot the fate of
Bukhara, Samarkand, Turkmenistan. Why did not they pay
heed to the laws of Allah which does not discriminate between
Muslims and non Muslims on the basis of the faith? Dr Ansari
(R A) firmly believed that as long as the Muslims behaved
like true Muslims and observed the laws of Allah, they won
the spectacular successes in the world and were acknowledged
as the torch bearers of civilization. But when they began to
discard the laws of Allah, they were reduced to the position of
camp followers of other nations.

Dr Ansari‟s (ra) endeavor to render his scholarly potential,

extensive study, intellectual deliberations, academic dialogues,
philosophical acquaintance and vast travelling experiences in
writing this priceless book meant to safeguard the Muslim
culture, civilization, history, values, heritage and glory of
Islam. This book will help Muslim Ummah as a bulwark
against the Red Flood that might surge again in the Muslim
world in near future. This book is not a simple exposition of
communist philosophy but in-depth analysis of the problem
and is presented with comprehensive and relevant Islamic
answer to the overall challenge caused by communism and
Marxism to Islam. It serves as a initial scholarly response an
the Communism phenomena by an erudite Muslim scholar in
English.

33
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Congratulations to Dr. Umair Mahmood Siddiqui for he has

done a very significant job to reclaim the copy of the original
book “ Communist Challenge to Islam” from Mr. Abdul
Wahid Osman Belal to reprint the missing scholarly
masterpiece of Dr. Ansari on this vital global issue. This
publication will help the positive minds to find out the genesis
of Communism, intra- communist rivalries and vulnerabilities
vis-a-viz Islam.

Dr Habib –ur- Rehman

Director General
DBF Seerat Research Centre
Karachi

34
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Preface
"There is a widespread belief that Capitalism
and Communism are the only two ideologies
between which the world has to make a choice.
Actually, there are not two, but three ideologies
- Capitalism, Communism and Islam."

Liaquat Ali Khan,

Prime Minister of Pakistan

In the following pages I have presented the outlines of the

Communist challenge to Islam and I have discussed its nature,
implications and bearing. I have arrived at the conclusion that
no ideological or practical compromise is possible between
Communism and Islam.

Lest I may be misunderstood by my Communist friends, I

must make an important point clear. I regard it not only
intellectual honesty but also good manners to call a spade a
spade. I am, therefore, unable to tolerate the deliberate or
indeliberate confusion of Communist ideology with Islamic
values or the minimisation of the danger which lurks behind
the misplaced Muslim sympathy or admiration for
Communism, as much as I am in dead earnest not to tolerate
the present-day confusion of Capitalist ideals with Islamic
principles. I would not allow the Communists to rob Muslims

35
 Communist Challenge to Islam

of their Islamic heritage though I respect the ideal of the

alleviation of human suffering wherever it may be found, as
much as I hate unreservedly the shylocks - the bloodthirsty
money-worshippers, non-Muslim and Muslim alike. Basically,
I hold and believe that the salvation of the Muslim world and
the world at large lies only in the Islamic ideology - call its
social aspect Islamic Socialism, if you so please - in the
Islamic form of society.

I do not believe that Communism can deliver the goods - that

the Marxist doctrine is a panacea for the ills of humanity.
Rather, to the contrary. I also do not believe in the fiction that
the only road to national greatness and strength lies via
Communism. The Communists are in the habit of arguing that
Soviet Russia could give a good account of herself during the
last World War, solely because of the inherent merits of
Communism. That is fallacious. Soviet Union's strength lay in
totalitarianism. So did that of Nazi Germany, which performed
a greater feat of power and which would have annihilated
Russia had they fought as singles.

I, however, admit as who would not, that Communism is a

very living and ferocious destructive force, virile to the core. It
has delivered some severe blows at Capitalism, which itself is
a decrepit offshoot of materialism and as much an enemy of
Islam as Communism. As for the Muslim world, its threat is
very real. It can cause an immense amount of harm to Islam if
we do not wake up in time and put our house in order by
removing the social evils which exist in our society and by re-

36
 Communist Challenge to Islam

installing, in place of our present decrepit un-Islamic systems,

the Islamic principles of social health practised by the Holy
Prophet Muhammad (God bless him!) and delivered to us by
him for dynamic and progressive realization.

The Communist propaganda among Muslims mainly takes up

the following lines according as the need be:

(1) To the religious-minded masses the Communists

preach that Communism is an ally of Islam and that Muslims
can have the fullest opportunity of Islamic development under
a Communist government.

(2) Among the half-religious Muslim nationalist, for

whom Islam is merely a private faith, and who have been
compromising with Western social norms for the past one
hundred years, the Communist teaches that Philosophical
Materialism is not the fundamental part of Communism, that
Muslim nationalism can very well flourish under Communist
aegis, and that Marxian economics, which is the only panacea
for the ills of humanity, deserves to be adopted for the
salvation of Muslim peoples, in preference to all other
economic systems, including the Islamic, which he takes pains
to prove cannot meet the present-day problems full length,
even though he gladly concedes that of all religions the
Islamic social outlook is the noblest and was the most
progressive outlook for the age in which Islam was born.

This attack by the Communist propagandists on the Muslim

world necessitates a corresponding counter-approach and
37
 Communist Challenge to Islam

clarification for issues. Unless all the confusion which the

Communists create by means of their subtle propaganda is
removed, we cannot hope to wipe out the cobwebs which are
being spun in the brains of Muslims today.

In the present book we have shown that: (1) In its spiritual and
philosophical foundations Communism is Islam's enemy No.1;
(2) The political ideology of Communism is thoroughly
incompatible with the ideal of Muslim nationalism and all that
it stands for; (3) Communism has already wrought widespread
and far-reaching ideological irreligious devastation among all
those Muslim populations which have so far come under its
sway; (4) Alliance with the Communists in any form means
nothing less than courting disaster.

A separate volume shall be devoted to the comparative and

critical study of Marxist and Islamic philosophical and social
teachings and the elucidation of Islamic economic ideology.

This book (which would have been ready long ago but for the
unavoidable obstacles created by the Indo-Pakistan
disturbances) forms the third literary work in English
undertaken at the instance of The Islamic Research Academy
and Publications Bureau (Karachi, Pakistan), the other two
being the present writer's "Islam and Christianity in the
Modern World" and "The Islamic Moral and Metaphysical
Philosophy". The Academy was inaugurated in a very
unostensible way, in 1943, at the Aligarh Muslim University
of India, as the organ of the International Islamic Service

38
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Union, under the patronage of the celebrated Islamic

missionary and international leader, His Eminence
Muhammad Abdul Aleem Siddiqui, and under the guidance of
the revered Islamic philosopher of blessed memory, the late-
lamented Professor Dr. Syed Zafar-ul-Hasan, M.A., LL.B.
(Alig.), D.Phil. (Oxon.), Dr.Phil. (Erl.). The partition of India
caused it to be shifted to Karachi in 1947.

As the Director of the Academy, the author feels he must take

this opportunity to thank His Eminence Muhammad Abdul
Aleem Siddiqui, who has been the guiding light and the
person mainly responsible for the establishment of the
institution; Al-Haj Syed Ali Akbar Shah, M.L.A. (Sind), who
gave his invaluable co-operation in its re-establishment at
Karachi; the late Mr. A. J. A. Cader (Secretary of the Ceylon
Muslim Missionary Society) and his friends from Ceylon; Mr.
Mohammed Makki (Director of the Makki Publications,
Durban) and his friends from South Africa, and Messrs. C. H.
Khizr Mohammed & Co., of Madras, for their support in the
task of initial organisation. God bless them all.

MUHAMMAD FAZL-UR-RAHMAN
Medina, Arabia
(Camp during missionary world-tour)
25th Rabi-ul-Awwal, 1369 A.H.
14th January, 1950.

39
Communist Challenge to Islam

40
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Chapter I
COMMUNISM: THE DANGER SIGNAL!
1. GENERAL REMARKS

It was towards the middle of 1948 that the Pakistani press

first published news of the arrest of certain Muslims named
Communists in eastern as well as western provinces. Soon
after that, the Sind Observer (Karachi) informed:-

"Police are reported to be on the trail of some of

the famous Indian Communists, including Mr. P.
C. Joshi, ex-General Secretary of the All-India
Communist Party, who are said to have recently
infiltrated into Pakistan for carrying on Party-
Programme and other subversive activities.

"It is learnt that Mr. P. C. Joshi and Mr. Sajjad

Zahir came to Karachi along with Dr. K. M.
Ashraf, an eminent member of the Indian
Communist Party, who is now in Karachi District
Jail, in the first week of August. Dr. Ashraf stayed
here…..while his other comrade, Mr. Sajjad Zahir,
left for Lahore whereafter it is not known where
he has gone.

"It is strongly rumoured in political circles that

41
 Communist Challenge to Islam

both Mr. Sajjad Zahir and Mr. P.C. Joshi are

carrying on their underground activities in
Pakistan.

"It is also learnt that another group of Indian

Communists has gone to East Bengal with a set
programme."

In the meantime, Communist parties in China, Burma and

Indonesia were struggling to capture power and were waging
actual war against the national governments which, except in
the case of China, was, in the very nature of the case, immoral.
The clumsy way in which the Indonesian Communists (all
bearing Muslim names and born of Muslim parents) tried to
stab the infant Republic in the back at a most critical moment
pained every Muslim deeply. The abortive attempt could only
assist in weakening the freedom-struggle of that great outpost
of Islam in the Pacific and could mean nothing better than
indirectly strengthening the hands of Dutch imperialists.
Subsequently, the Pakistani press revealed the existence of a
deep-laid, Moscow-sponsored, conspiracy in Muslim Asia:-

"Signs are increasing that Russia had begun an

intensified penetration campaign in the Near and
Middle East . . . .

"The drive seems to be a partial diversion of

activity following Communist checks in Europe
and America. It is probably linked with the
mounting offensive in the Far East.
42
 Communist Challenge to Islam

"Despite stringent anti-Communist measures in

Arab States, the Palestine war and some social
unrest have provided the Russians an opportunity.
…..Communist underground organisations are
particularly active in Syria and the Lebanon….

"In Iraq and Iran, new cells of Communism are

known to have been recently created among the oil
workers, but Transjordan and Saudi Arabia are
harder problems for the Kremlin, though its agents
are also active there.

"Besides trying to undermine the existing regimes

from within, the Communists are also attempting
to exacerbate nationalist differences between
various nations and ethnological groupings. They
have had some success with the Kurds and among
the tribes of Azerbaijan.

"The establishment of a Soviet diplomatic mission

in Tel Aviv, capital of Israeli State, has provided
the Russians with their best foothold so far in this
region. In the few weeks since its creation, the
Soviet Legation in Tel Aviv has been remarkably
active. Outward signs of this include a wave of
pro-Soviet propaganda in Israel. Russian films and
publications are being widely distributed."

(The Daily Gazette, Karachi)

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

While this news was being circulated, the Commonwealth

Premiers' Conference (1948) was being held in London and
one of the main items of discussion was reported to be the
Communist problem in Asia. All seem to have agreed that it
was a menace and must be combated. Pakistan's Premier, the
Hon'ble Liaquat Ali Khan, was reported to have observed
during an interview with the diplomatic correspondent of the
"Star" that:

"Russia's policy is quite definite. It is one of

expansionism: to create trouble; even to promote a
revolution because Communism thrives on chaos."

(Dawn, Karachi).

Meanwhile, Begum Liaquat Ali Khan assured the people of

Great Britain that Pakistan was "the greatest bastion against
Communism." Soon after that, Governor-General Al-Haj
Khwaja Nazimuddin observed that in Pakistan "the
Communist influence is so negligible that they are no real
danger at present."

The present writer agress with both the above observations.

But Liaquat Ali Khan's crisp statement is a definite warning
and the Governor-General's assurance is only a qualified one.
The words "real" and "at present" speak for themselves. It is,
therefore, our duty to face the vital question squarely today
itself: How long can we expect the Communist problem to
remain in abeyance in Pakistan and other Muslim countries
where, as we have already noticed, the first seeds of active
44
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Communism have been sown already? It all depends upon

circumstances, internal as well as external.

Internally, the Muslim world cannot be considered a "bastion

against Communism" in view of the anti-Islamic and pro-
Capitalist and pro-feudal character of the main governing
trends of Muslim economic life. Pakistan and Indonesia might
be regarded as exceptions to this general condemnation.
Pakistan cannot be condemned for the social and economic
evils which exist within its boundaries for the simple reason
that they are not its creation, but only a heritage from its non-
Muslim political past. On the other hand, it should be
applauded for the reformative steps it has already taken in the
field of agricultural economy and the definite assurances
which have come forth spontaneously from its beloved Prime
Minister and other responsible spokesmen that the future set-
up of Pakistan's economy shall be based on Islamic Socialism.
Indonesia cannot be condemned because, though not yet fully
stabilised, its leaders have already given definite promise of
establishing a Welfare State.

The transformation of the existing feudal - cum - capitalistic

socio-economic order, sanctified by age-old practices and
deeply entrenched in Muslim national life, into the Welfare
State of the early days of Islam, if and when accomplished,
shall be a stupendous task and those who undertake its
accomplishment shall be required to put in their best Islamic
fervour, statesmanship and the knowledge of the social and
economic problems and of the comparative merits of their

45
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Islamic and non-Islamic solutions. Internally, Pakistan or, for

the matter of that, any other Muslim country, shall be able to
ward off Communism only if such a transformation takes
place, and takes place early. Externally, Pakistan and, for the
matter of that, the combined strength of all Muslim countries,
can hardly succeed in facing the armed might of Communist
aggression if once the present Anglo-American military
power, which is the only physical check, is liquidated.
Communism does not believe in soft sentiments or
compromises. Its sole aim is World-Revolution in the light of
Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin ideology.

All these alternatives are, however, hidden behind the misty

horizon of the future. As regards the present, we should only
face facts of the existing situation. These facts point decisively
in one direction, namely, that the conditions existing in
Pakistan and other Muslim countries are favourable to the
propagation of Communism, that Communist forces are not
only already sufficiently mobilised in Muslim countries, but
are also gradually mustering greater and greater strength, that,
in addition to the 30,000,000 Muslims inhabiting the Soviet
Union and enslaved by Communism after the first World War,
the Muslim populations of Albania (8000,000), Yugoslavia
(1,750,000), Bulgaria (780,000), Rumania (260,000), Hungary
(3,000), Poland (12,000)and China (80,000,000) have been
engulfed by Communism since the termination of the second
World War, the Communists are still underground in most
Muslim countries solely because of considerations of strategy,

46
 Communist Challenge to Islam

that Communism is gaining favour among the frustrated

Muslim intelligentsia and the exploited Muslim masses in
almost all Muslim countries, and that a general confusion,
solely favourable to Communism, has been already created
among Muslims as regards the comparative merits of Islam
and Communism and the perversions and blasphemies which
once and for all distinguish Communism from Islam and
throw them into positively hostile camps.

Our statesmen have the habit of assessing the strength of

Communist propaganda among Muslims by the very small
numbers of active Muslim members of the Communist Party.
Its consequence is that, at least in their public utterances, they
habitually belittle the Communist influence and its
potentialities. That this is a dangerous miscalculation will
become evident to everyone who takes the trouble of eliciting
the innocent opinion of average-educated Muslims in this
behalf. Such a survey invariably reveals a vast majority of
"passive sympathisers" and "dumb admirers", if not of
Communism, at least of Communists. The cleverly-
maneuvered, mani-faced and powerful propaganda carried on
by the Communist agencies which depicts the Communists as
angels of peace, apostles of freedom, liberators of slaves and
saviours of the oppressed, as contrasted with their opponents,
the Western Powers, whom the average Muslim has learnt to
hold in suspicion because of their imperialistic record in
Muslim lands - these factors, combined with the appalling
ignorance of even educated Muslims as regards the actual

47
 Communist Challenge to Islam

merits of Communist ideology and the ultimate mission of

Communism vis-a-vis Islam and the blacker record of
Communist "imperialism", which has meant nothing less than
the annihilation of Islam in all the Muslim areas that have so
far come under Communist rule, have been in the main
responsible for creating a favourable disposition among
Muslims towards Communism.

The country-wide expression of joy and satisfaction at the

invitation from Moscow to the Prime Minister of Pakistan was
no doubt primarily based on political considerations. It was an
act of political kindness on the part of the Soviet Union for
which the present writer, too, is indeed thankful. But along
with this political thankfulness some innocent sentiments of
love, which the Communist jeers at as epiphenomena and
irrational factors, but which have vital bearings on Muslim
life, have also crept stealthily into the hearts of Muslims. This
was possible only because of the factors referred to in the
preceding paragraph. Little did the general Muslims think that
for the materialism-ridden world, whether Communist or
Capitalist, love is a crime except when it relates to "self". The
moral foundation of their political creeds is sheer expediency.
It all depends on how far it suits the interests of Washington or
Moscow to "befriend" a particular nation. Absolute values and
spiritual considerations are out of court.

The western nations, including the Russians, understand each

other thoroughly and know how to reciprocate "political
kindness". Not so the Muslims, who commit blunders by

48
 Communist Challenge to Islam

seeing others in the mirror of their own values. Consequently,

the invitation from Moscow to the Prime Minister of Pakistan
for a visit to the Soviet Union became, for the general
Muslims, an invitation to consider the Soviet Union, that arch-
enemy of religion and Islamic nationalism, a staunch friend
and prospective ally and to increase their sympathetic interest
in Communism. The following news item, released by APP on
August 31, 1949, and published in "Dawn", Pakistan's premier
daily, speaks for itself:-

"The keen popular interest aroused in Lahore by

the Pakistan Prime Minister's forthcoming visit to
Moscow is reflected in the sharp rise which local
sales of Russian periodicals and literature on the
USSR have recorded in the last two months.

"This rise has been specially marked in the case of

Soviet magazines, the local demand for which has
gone up by 200 to 800 per cent. The circulation of
the Moscow English weekly New Times has
increased from just under 25 copies three months
back to its present figure of over 200 copies. Two
other periodicals, published from Moscow,
namely, USSR in Construction and Russian
Literature, seldom seen hitherto in local
bookstalls, are now selling like hot cakes. Another
newcomer, the Anglo-Soviet Journal, published
from Glasgow, is also receiving increasing
popular attention.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

"Novels by Russian authors such as Gorki,

Turgenev, Tchekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and
Solokhov have once again come into their own
and now occupy pride of place along with the
works of Somerset Maugham as best sellers in the
local market."

In Pakistan and other Muslim lands Communism is indeed

very much alive! It has already subjugated nearly a hundred
million Muslims north of the Himalayas and the Pamirs and to
the west of Bosphorous. Among other Muslim communities,
too, it has triumphantly crept in. Its propaganda-machinery has
already been set up. It has achieved initial victories in certain
quarters. The spadework of gaining general sympathies in its
fight against decrepit elements is also almost complete. On the
map of the Muslim world hangs a big question mark:

Should the Muslims surrender to Communism - or - should

they compromise with it as they did in the case of Western
Capitalism - or - should they fight it?

2. THE INTELLECTUAL SITUATION IN THE

WORLD OF ISLAM.
During the eighteenth century, and even during the nineteenth,
the answer to the Question posed in the last section world
have been a simple affair. It is, however, not so now.

Ever since the advent of Western culture in Muslim lands,

which followed fast upon the heels of Islam's political
50
 Communist Challenge to Islam

landslide in the nineteenth century, the demoralised world of

Islam has been increasingly permitting itself to be absorbed by
the materialistic and anti-religious Western thought and ideals.
The basic cause of this passivity was that much before the
Western nations subjugated the Muslim lands, various factors
- moral, social, political and intellectual - had already
combined to render passive, if not to actually paralyse,
Muslim thought and action. The Western thought, pulsating
with all the vigour of youth, was not confronted with the
vigorous and all-conquering dynamism of the early days of
Islam but with an outworn and moribund medieval outlook.

It is not the purpose of this book to discuss in any detail the

causes of Muslim passivity in the face of Western thought. We
are concerned here only with the results, which, alas! have
been most tragic. After one hundred years of slow poisoning
the condition of the Muslim world can be described today only
in terms of disintegration, confusion and chaos, the struggles
for political stabilisation, economic advancement, industrial
progress, military preparedness, intellectual growth and
religious revival notwithstanding.

From the point of view of the present discussion, Muslims all

over the world can be broadly classified into four categories,
which have been brought into existence by the currents and
cross-currents of the internal weaknesses and the external
impact of Western thought. These categories are:

(1) The progressive and enlightened Muslims who have learnt

51
 Communist Challenge to Islam

to understand and appreciate Islam in the light of modern

knowledge and problems. They have an unshakable faith in
Islam, which is based on understanding, and they practise it
intelligently. This provides them with complete immunity
against all anti-Islamic influences, whether Marxist or
otherwise. These upholders of dynamic orthodoxy are the
future hope of Islam.

(2) The old-fashioned Muslims who refuse to come out of the

intellectual atmosphere of eight hundred years ago. Their view
of Islam is marred by certain wrong notions based upon
obscurantism and misguided conservatism which confines
their religious outlook mostly to rituals and basic morals,
renders their practice of Islam imperfect and lands them in
innocent forms of compromise with un-Islamic ideals. They
have a staunch faith, but because they do not possess a clear
view and a correct understanding of Islam's economic system,
political outlook and social ethos, they are capable of being
misguided on that score by the glamour of un-Islamic slogans
and movements.

(3) The "believing" but "non-practising" Muslims and the

"indifferent" Muslims whose religious consciousness is
defective and for whom Islam is only a historical legacy - a
part of their national heritage which, like the archaeological
remains of the past, might be respected vaguely but which is
not meant to be adopted as a living guidance governing the
practical issues of life. Educated in irreligious Western ideals,
brought up in an atmosphere alien to Islam and deprived of the

52
 Communist Challenge to Islam

opportunity to imbibe Islamic teachings, they are hardly

distinguishable from the non-Muslims in their practical lives
except in the matter of what might be termed "Muslim
nationalism" which, combined with a vague belief in God,
they uphold in varying degrees. They have thus only a formal
faith in the Islamic religion, while in all the practical affairs of
life they look to the West for inspiration and guidance.
Though a small minority, they wield considerable influence in
all the Muslim countries because of their major share in the
political life and administration where modern Western
education alone counts today.

(4) The atheistic and anti-religious people who bear Muslim

names only because their Muslim parents named them so.
They imbibe atheism either because they become entangled in
grossly immoral ways of life and thus lose all sense of
nobleness and spirituality, or because they receive one-sided
education in the materialistic philosophy of Western atheistic
thinkers and area captivated by the idea or, in the case of those
who are not very highly educated, because they consider it
fashionable to swim with the latest currents of Western
thought which are aggressively atheistic. In all cases, these
"Muslim atheists" are a people who never had any opportunity
of knowing even the fundamentals of Islam and thinking on
them seriously. This group forms a microscopic minority and
is drawn from among the modern-educated intelligentsia.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

3. THE SOCIAL SITUATION

Combined with this tragic intellectual situation is the still
more tragic social situation which renders the world of Islam
vulnerable to all kinds of external influences, especially
Marxism. Since the day when Yazid aimed his first blow at
the Islamic democracy and the Muslim Welfare State, the
Muslim world has been gradually and persistently drifting
away from the social and political ideals of Islam, substituting
classes for the original classless society, monarchy for the
original democracy and Individualism for the Islamic type of
Collectivism. It was this tragic transformation which, in the
fullness of time, brought about the political downfall of
Muslims two centuries ago and it is this again which is
inviting today the substitution of Islam by such heretical
socio-economic ideologies as Communism.

The fact is that there is hardly a social, political or economic

evil which does not exist in the world of Islam today.
Feudalism has been the order of the day in our countries for a
long time past now. Lately it was reinforced by mercantilist
Capitalism. Industrial Capitalism is being added now. As the
Islamic social values have receded into the background, the
sufferings of the common man have multiplied until they have
become intolerable today under the combined pressure of
internal and external exploiters. Love of money and lust for
power, which had been ruled out by Islam as symbols of
infidelity, crept stealthily into the Muslim society and have
now come to stay with only light opprobrium sticking to them.
54
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Social evils borrowed from non-Islamic systems have been

sanctified and legalised by the passage of time, so much so
that the ignorant would consider it an act of impiety to voice a
protest against them. Our social conscience has been
benumbed and the vested interests in our midst have even had
the courage of justifying their evil ways on the basis of
pseudo-religious sanctions.

The Muslim body-politic has lost its backbone. The contented

middle-class forms only a virtually impotent minority. The
bulk of Muslim society consists of poverty-stricken masses
groaning under the dual tyranny of the Muslim vested interests
and the imperialist blood-suckers. The rich and the well-to-do
have deleted philanthropy from their code of life and, with few
honourable exceptions, worship the demon of wealth instead
of Allah. The consequence is that widespread poverty, hunger
and want, ignorance and illiteracy, disease and debility,
frustration and bad government have become the hall-marks of
Muslim society all over the world. Poverty and want, said the
Holy Prophet Muhammad (on him be blessings of Allah) lead
people to infidelity. Can we, therefore, wonder if we find that
the Muslim masses today are susceptible to all sorts of un-
Islamic and anti-Islamic influences and are eager, in utter
desperation, to catch hold of any helping hand, even though it
may be that of a non-Muslim!

4. GENERAL SITUATION
Intellectually and socially, the world of Islam is in a diseased

55
 Communist Challenge to Islam

condition. Add to it the political intrigues and conspiracies and

the frustration of Muslim autonomy movements in different
parts of the world, and you get a complete picture of the
causes of social unrest brewing up in Muslim lands. Today the
Muslim is wide awake, after an age-long slumber, to the
miseries and insults and exploitation which have been heaped
upon him by the exploiters belonging to his own community
and by the foreign blood-suckers. He is deeply conscious of
the sting and the agony, and is burning with the desire to put
an end to it at the earliest possible opportunity.

Actually, the root cause of all this misery lies in principles and
forces which are not only outside Islam but positively opposed
to it, and, consequently, the only right road to emancipation
and salvation lies in a sincere and complete return to Islam
which, in its devotional, moral, economic and political
systems guarantees the establishment of perfect liberty,
fraternity and equality and the complete elimination of all
forms of exploitation and oppression and which originally
brought into existence the healthiest society and the best
Welfare State ever known to man. An exposition of these
glorious principles shall be taken up later on. Here we might
confine ourselves to a bare statement of the fact.

The salvation of the Muslim world lies in a return to original

Islam. But there are obstacles and obstacles in the way.
Firstly, there is the conservative group which confuses
orthodoxy with conservatism and thus fights shy of returning
to orthodox Islam, which is based on the principles of rational

56
 Communist Challenge to Islam

progress and natural enlightenment. Secondly, there is the

powerful coalition of vested interest and the westernised
Muslims who hate to see orthodox Islam being re-installed in
place of power. A recent and most striking example of this is
brutal, immoral and anti-Islamic attempt made in Egypt to put
and end to the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen movement by murdering
its great leader Shaikh Hasan Al-Banna, by throwing behind
prison-bars not less than twelve thousand Ikhwan and by
oppressing the rest in other ways. Little did the perpetrators of
these crimes, who were seemingly playing into the hands of
foreign anti-Islamic powers, realize that by suppressing and
exterminating this great Islamic movement they were paving
the way for the only other positive ideology, viz. Communism,
which though it is spiritually the very anti-thesis of Islam, will
destroy them more thoroughly and brutally. For, the present
writer holds that, as matters stand, the Muslim world has to
choose only between two alternatives, i.e. the original
dynamic Islam and Communism. Pan-Islamism without the
complete re-adoption of Islamic programme for the salvation
of the common man lacks inspiration, while Westernism and
territorial Nationalism, in their present hollow forms, cannot
carry us far and will have to be abandoned soon.

Howsoever it may be, intellectual confusion, social

oppression, economic exploitation, political subjection, the
all-too-plain intrigues of foreign powers in whose hands many
a Muslim statesman plays today, and, above all, the efforts by
certain Muslim governments to suppress the attempts made by

57
 Communist Challenge to Islam

the upholders of Islamic dynamic orthodoxy to set the house

in order - all these factors have, in short, landed the Muslim
populations of the world in a state of tragic chaos. The Muslim
is looking forward to his social and political salvation in utter
bewilderment. Here is an opportunity for the Communist
propagandist to step in.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Chapter II
COMMUNIST TACTICS
1. DECEPTION AND FRAUD
THE opportunity is there and the Communist propagandist is
there. In fact, he has been there for the past many decades and
has already achieved considerable success by means fair and
foul. The question is: What are his tactics? This question is
essential in order to enable ourselves to understand and assess
the problem of Communism vis-a-vis Islam in all its
ramifications.

It is difficult for the average Muslim to dive into the deeper

depths of Communist psychology. For, in their psychology of
morals, they stand poles apart, Islam has taught the Muslim
that he has not only to strive for the achievement of ends
which are good but that he has also the perforce employ means
therefor which are fair, noble and good. It is not so with the
Communist, for whom absolute moral values, like truthfulness
and fairness, are sheer bourgeoise frauds, and who has been
explicitly allowed by his moral code to employ all means, fair
or foul, to gain his ends. His simple maxim is:

"Whatever helps in the struggle (for the

establishment of Communism) is good; whatever
hinders is bad." (A.B.C. of Communism).

59
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Lenin is very explicit on this point. He says:

"We repudiate all morality which proceeds from

super-natural ideas or ideas which are outside
class-conceptions. In our opinion, morality is
entirely subordinate to the interests of class-war;
everything is moral which is necessary for the
annihilation of the old exploiting social order and
for the uniting of the proletariat. . . . . . .In the
struggle of an exploited class against their
enemies, lying and deceit are often very important
weapons."

As regards the tactics which Communists adopt in their

propaganda, Lenin says:

"(In periods of uncertainty) it is necessary to

combine the strictest loyalty to the ideas of
Communism with the ability to make all necessary
compromises, to 'tack', to make agreements,
zigzags, retreats, and so on." (Quoted by Edgar
Snow in his Red Star Over China, p. 445)

For instance, Communism is a sworn enemy of all religions. It

is one of those fundamental things with which it cannot
compromise, as is evident from the following statements:

"The fight against religion", says Lenin, "is

necessary and Marxism says: 'We must fight
religion'…..The fight must be brought into close

60
 Communist Challenge to Islam

connection with the concrete tasks and activity of the

struggle which is directed to eliminate the social
roots of religion."(The Labour Monthly, Dec. 1926).

Lenin further says on the authority of Marx:

“Religion is the opium of the people. Marxism,

therefore, regards all present-day religion and
churches. . . . as instruments of bourgeois reaction
which serve as a shield for the exploitation and
deception of the working class." (Ibid.).

Again and again in his writings and in his speeches, says the
author of Gandhi and Lenin,

"Lenin pointed out that the Communist proletariat

and its leaders must work with might and main to
overthrow God, the arch-enemy of the Communist
social order."

"It is the task of the Communist Party", says the Communist

writer Buharin Priobrazensky in his A.B.C. of Communism,

"to make this truth (the truth of Karl Marx's

saying 'Religion is the opium of the people')
comprehensible to the widest possible circles of
the labouring masses . . . religion and Communism
are two entirely contradictory things, both
theoretically and practically . . . a Communist who
carries his religious belief with him has nothing to

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

do with Communism." (Italics are author's).

These statements are final, covering, as they do, both theory

and practice. They prove to the hilt that between Communism
and religion and, for the matter of that, Islam, no compromise
is possible, that Communism can in no way permit any
concession to Islam.

Still, Communism does allow such a concession where need

arises. For the method laid down by the Fifth Congress of the
Communist International is that of slow-poisoning. The
following resolution speaks for itself:

"Among the tasks of combating bourgeois

prejudices and superstitions the first place is taken
by the fight against religion, a fight which must be
carried on with all the requisite tact and caution
especially among those sections of workers in
whose daily life religion has been hitherto deeply
rooted." (Italics are author's).

Consequently, where the Communist is in power, as in the

Soviet Union, he can, proudly and without sting of conscience,
walk knee-deep in the blood of innocent Muslims, while
elsewhere he adopts varying types of tactics ranging from
Progressive Literature movement (where Progressivism
equates Atheism) to respect for religion. He has to gain his
grip over the Muslims, for he knows that once they are in his
power he can do with them what he likes. The forthcoming
story of the subjugation of Muslims by Soviet Russia will bear
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

it out.

Here we are concerned with Communist tactics. We have

already given the classifications of Muslims. Among the four
categories mentioned, the first one is immune. Consequently,
the Communist does not touch them. He leaves them aside
until the day when he will have captured power and will be in
a position to send them to the gallows - the most favourite
pastime of Communist rulers, in which they have beaten all
records of world's history.

The remaining three categories are the Communist's targets,

and he deals with them according to their deserts.

When he goes to the general Muslim masses, the peasants and

the workers and the poverty-stricken members of lower
middle class, who are mostly ignorant and generally illiterate,
and whose attachment to religion is deep-rooted, he poses as a
religious man himself, often participates in religious functions,
shows the utmost respect to Islam, and tells the people that
Communism and Islam are virtually the same - that
Communism is only a Marxian edition of Mohammad's Islam,
which Muslims have forsaken now. He further tells them that
as the Muslim leaders are not prepared to abandon their
present-day corrupt notions, the only road to success lies in
adopting the banner of hammer and sickle, in forming trade
unions and peasants' organisations under that banner, and in
joining hands with international Communism, thereby
defeating their exploiters and making their lives happy. He

63
 Communist Challenge to Islam

paints before them a rosy picture of Soviet Russia and the

revival of Muslim life in the Soviet republics, and asks them
to follow in the footsteps of their brothers inhabiting Central
Asia, Transcaucasia, Crimea, the Volga, the Balkans and
China. They are thus slowly drawn into Communist-sponsored
organisations and gradually indoctrinated until, with the
passage of time, Communism becomes for them as much an
integral part of their lives as Islam itself and it becomes well-
nigh impossible to dissociate them from the red banner. One
such very significant incident occurred lately in Pakistan. At
the annual conference of the Sind Hari (Peasants') Committee,
the Labour M.L.A. for Sind requested the office-bearers of the
Committee to adopt the national flag of Pakistan in place of
the Red flag. He was vehemently opposed by all the
responsible office-bearers of the Hari Committee (all of them
Pakistanis and belonging to the Muslim community) who
insisted that they were not prepared to substitute their national
flag for the foreign Red flag. Another step forward and a man
would be a thorough Communist and anti-Islam!

Among the educated and cultured Muslims who are weak in

Islamic practice but who have nevertheless a faith in Islam,
however faulty it might be, the Communist approach is
different. The greatest weakness of this type of Muslims is
Compromisism. For the past one century or more, they have
been making all sorts of compromises with Western thought
and culture, keeping intact their Islamic metaphysics. What
harm is there if they now effect a compromise with the

64
 Communist Challenge to Islam

economic and political programme of the Communists for the

sake of humanitarian issues of the elimination of exploitation
and oppression and inequalities? - this is the advice which
comes to them from their Communist friends and it is highly
fascinating. There is nothing to lose but chains. On the other
hand, the Communist advises them that they should not give
much weight to Karl Marx's or Lenin's outbursts against
religion which were actually transitory in character and
referred only to the corruptions for which the Christian Church
in Russia was responsible. The great socialistic religion of
Islam need not fear on that score, they would say. They would
further argue that, by aligning themselves with international
Communism, their Muslim nationalism will not suffer, for
does not Communism support the cause of national autonomy
and equality and freedom of all nations more than any other
ideology of the present day? Quite fascinating indeed! This
farce of "national autonomy" under Communism will be dealt
with shortly. Now we might refer to the Communist's third
target, i.e. the atheistic people among Muslims.

Once you tell a Communist that you are not a believer in Islam
but an atheist, he will readily open out his heart to you. Why,
he would say, you are half-Communist already. For, Atheism
and Materialism are the very bed-rocks on which the super-
structure of Communist ideology has been built; the only thing
you have to do is to change your negative Atheism and
Materialism for the Marxian dialectic which is positive and
scientific. And once you do that, the whole structure of the

65
 Communist Challenge to Islam

social teachings of Communism is deducable logically.

Communism, he would say, is the highest form of modern
Materialism, irrefutable, magnificent, great; it is the noblest
consummation of modern thought; it is the ideology of the
most enlightened; it is the harbinger of true freedom,
liberating man from all those forms of bondage which have
tortured him so far; so why not be among the most
progressive, the most enlightened and the most emancipated?

2. ILLUSTRATION FROM CHINA

As a practical illustration of how the Communists employ
their tactics and succeed in entrapping the Muslim populations
because of the numerous evils existing among them and
because of their general ignorance of men and things, we
might refer to the recent history of China where the
collaborations of Muslims has contributed in no small a
measure to the victory of Communist arms. The following
account is based on the authentic information supplied by
Edgar Snow, a pro-Communist writer of eminence, in his
famous book, The Red Star Over China.

Of all the Muslims in China, variously estimated at 40

millions and 80 millions, nearly half are concentrated in the
north-western provinces of Shensi, Kansu, Ninghsia,
Szechuan and Sinkiang, where they wield incontestable sway
and power. It is these provinces which played a vital part iin
consolidating Communist power in China at a time when one
intelligent move from the Nationalist Government would have

66
 Communist Challenge to Islam

swept them off clean.

Before 1934, the Communist headquarters were located in

Kiangsi, in Central China, where they were encircled on all
sides by Nationalists and could not, therefore, hope to make
much headway. Consequently, as Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of
the Chinese Communist Party, told Edgar mile Long March
began from Kiangsi in October, 1934, and Snow, "As a result
of mistakes and the new tactics and strategy of China's
campaign, combined with the overwhelming numerical and
technical superiority of the Kuomintang forces, the Red Army
was obliged, in 1934, to seek to change the conditions of its
existence in Kiangsi, which were rapidly becoming more
unfavourable. Secondly, the national political situation
influenced the decision to move the scene of main operations
to the North-West." The 6,000 mile long march began from
Kiangsi in October, 1934, and continued up to October, 1935,
when the Red Army at last reached northern Shensi and
established its capital in the town of Sianfu. Yu Wang Pao,
"an ancient Mohammedan walled city in south-east Ninghsia",
became the headquarters of the Red 1st Front Army under the
Commander Peng Teh-huai.

These Muslims, Edgar Snow says (p.321), were "the largest

people left in China among whom priest and bishop are the
real arbiters of temporal as well as spiritual life, with religion
a deciding factor . . . . Mohammedan society revolves around
the men-huang and ahun (Ameer and Mullah) . . . . . To most
of them Turkey, not China, seems to be still the fatherland,

67
 Communist Challenge to Islam

and pan-Islamism, rather than pan-Hanism, the ideal."

What were the causes which urged these pious Muslims to

welcome atheistic Communists with open arms and to help
them not only against the Nationalist Government but also
against the Muslim administrators who were working under
that Government.

There were two major causes:

(1) Muslims hated the Sinicizing policy of the Nationalist

Government and wanted to establish their autonomous state in
the provinces mentioned above.

Edgar Snow observes:

"Although theoretically the Chinese consider the

Hui or Moslem people one of the five great races
of China, most Chinese seem to deny Moslem
racial separateness, claiming that they have been
Sinicized. In practice, Nanking decidedly follows
out a policy of absorption, even more direct
(though perhaps less successful) than that pursued
towards the Mongolians……However, it is quite
evident to anyone who sees them in their own
domain in the North-West that their claims to
racial unity and the right to nationhood as a people
are not without substantial basis in fact and in
history."

68
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Muslims, in fact, made several unsuccessful attempts to gain

autonomy, e.g., the Tu Wei-hsiu rebellion in Yennan in the
Nineteenth Century, the 1864 revolt in the North-West, and
the latest in 1928 when General Feng Yu-hsiang was warlord
of that region. "It was under Feng that Wu-Ma, or 'Five Ma',
combination acquired much of its influence and secured the
nucleus of its present wealth and power."

Having failed in their attempts, Muslims were looking forward

to some powerful group which might help them in securing
their hearts' desire. The Communists readily gave them a
definite promise in that behalf. This provided one of the most
important incentives to the Muslims to line up with the
Communists and try their luck.

(2) The second major cause was the social evils existing in
those Muslim provinces, which Muslims could not remedy
under the policies of Kuomintang. In utter desperation, they
were forced to prefer the Communist system to the
exploitation and oppressive conditions brought into being and
preserved by Chiang Ki-Shek's Government. Edgar Snow has
given a graphic account of the social conditions prevailing and
the consequent Muslim reaction. He observes:

"Today the struggle of three sects among the Chinese Muslims

somewhat weakens their unity and creates a convenient
alignment for the Chinese Communists to work among them.
The three sects are simply the Old, New and Modern schools.
Old and New recently formed a kind of 'united front' of their

69
 Communist Challenge to Islam

own to oppose the heretical Modern school", which stood for

destroying the temporal power of the clergy and for pan-
Hanism. "In the North-West, the four Mas are leaders of this
Modern school, and around them have grouped their own
satellites, bureaucrats, and the wealthy land-owners and cattle-
barons upon whom their regime depends. And yet the Great
Horses (Mas) are not precisely the men you would expect to
lead a reform movement in religion.

"For example, consider Ma Hung-Kuei, probably the richest

and strongest of the quartet. He has numerous wives, is said to
own about 60 per cent of the property of Ninghsia City, and
has made a fortune of millions from opium, salt, furs, taxes
and his own paper-currency. Still, he proved himself modern
enough in one sense when recently he chose a new 'picture-
bride'. Importing a secretary from Shanghai, he had him gather
photographs of eligible, educated beauties, and made his
choice. The price was fixed at $50,000. Old Ma hired an
aeroplane, flew out of the northern dust-clouds to Soochow,
where he swooped up the latest addition to his harem - a
graduate of Soochow Christian University - and then swept
back again to Ninghsia like an Aladdin on his carpet, amid a
blaze of publicity.

"But although this may seem charming enough to an

Occidental, it is doubtful whether either Ma Hung Kuei's
peasants or soldiers fully appreciated the romance of it all, for
the peasants knew where the $50,000 came from , and the
soldiers wondered why, if the Great Horse had money to pay

70
 Communist Challenge to Islam

for a Christian bride, he could not pay them wages. When a

few months later, the Reds began their westward drive into
Ma's territory in southern Ninghsia and northern Kansu, it was
not perhaps entirely surprising that his troops - which he had
boasted would annihilate the 'bandits' - put up little fight.
There were reasons."

The reasons were mainly three:

(1) The corrupt personal character of the ruler to which a

reference has been already made and which must make every
Muslim to bow his head in shame.

(2) Oppressive character of the administration. In this

connection, the most fiercely resented measure was the one
relating to conscription. Almost all of General Ma's 40,000
soldiers and the indefinite number of "gate-guards" were
conscripts. And not only was the law of conscription in force,
the manner in which it was operated was cruel in the extreme.
"Every family with sons had to contribute, or hire a substitute,
at a cost which had risen to about $150. The poor could
borrow the sum - at rates from 40 per cent to 60 per cent.
annually - from a pawn-shop usually owned by one of the
Mas. Not only did the soldiers get no pay; they had to furnish
their own food and clothing."

(3) Economic exploitation of the masses. The Government

Bulletin of Ninghsia (Ninghsia Kung Pao, Dec., 1934,
Ninghsia City) lists the levies collected in that province by
General Ma according to the following items: sales, domestic
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

animals, camels, salt-carrying, salt consumption, opium,

lamps, sheep, merchants, porters, pigeons, land, middle-men,
food, special food, additional land, wood, coal, skins,
slaughter, houses, firewood, milling, scales, ceremonies,
tobacco, wine, stamp, marriage, vegetables. And there were
many more petty taxes collected besides these. That the worst
form of exploitation prevailed can be judged from the fact that
Ma Hung-Kuei not only held a monopoly in salt, but also
compelled every person to buy half a pound every month,
whether the person concerned needed it or not. The salt thus
purchased could not be re-sold, for private trade in that
commodity was punishable by whipping or even death.

"Excessive taxation and indebtedness", says Edgar Snow, "had

forced many farmers to sell their cattle and abandon their
lands. Great areas had been bought over by officials, tax-
collectors and lenders at very cheap rates, but much of it
remained waste-land, because no tenants could be found to
work under the tax-burden and rents imposed. An acceleration
in the concentration of land, cattle and capital was taking
place, and big increase in hired farm labourers. In one district
investigated (i.e., Yuwang Hsien) (see Tang-ti Kung-Tso,
Aug. 3, 1936, Pao An), it was found that over 70 per cent. of
the farmers were in debt, and about 60 per cent. were living on
food bought on credit. In the same district 5 per cent. of the
people owned from 100 to 200 mou of land, 20 to 50 camels,
20 to 40 cows, 5 to 10 horses, 5 to 10 carts, and had from
$1,000 to $2,000 in trading capital, while at the same time

72
 Communist Challenge to Islam

about 60 per cent. of the population had less than 15 mou of

land, no livestock other than one or two donkeys, and an
average indebtedness of $35 and 366 pounds of grain - much
more than the average value of their land.

"Had the picture been otherwise when the Reds arrived, it is

doubtful if they would have made much headway among the
Mohammedans. Ma's troops had no interest in fighting and
only 5% of the people had much at stake in resistance. But it
still remained for the Communists to overcome the Moslem's
natural aversion to co-operating with the Chinese, and to offer
them a suitable programme. This the Reds were trying hard to
do, for the strategic significance of the Mohammedan areas
was manifest. They occupied a wide belt in the North-West
which dominated the roads to Sinkiang and Outer Mongolia -
and direct contact with Soviet Russia."

That the Communists were conscious of the strategic

significance of Muslim areas and were deeply desirous of
enlisting Muslim co-operation, is evident from the following
admission (Company Discussion Materials: "The
Mohammedan Problem", p.2, 1st Army Corps, Pol. Dept.,
June 2, 1936):-

"There are more than 10 million Mohammedans in the North-

West occupying an extremely important position. Our present
mission and responsibility is to defend the North-West and to
create an anti-Japanese front in these five provinces, so that
we can more powerfully lead the anti-Japanese movement of

73
 Communist Challenge to Islam

the whole country and work for an immediate war against

Japan. At the same time, in the development of our situation
we can get into connection with the Soviet Union and Outer
Mongolia. However, it would be impossible to carry out our
mission if we failed to win over the Mohammedans to our
sphere and to the anti-Japanese front."

For enlisting Muslim co-operation, the Communists left no

stone unturned and spared no move. On the one hand, they
deputed their best propagandists, drawn from among the
Muslims, to agitate among the Muslim soldiers for the
overthrow of Ma Hung-Kuei, "the Koumintang running-dog
and the traitor to Mohammedanism". On the other hand, they
proclaimed the following attractive promises in return for
Muslim co-operation:-

To abolish all sur-taxes.

To help form an autonomous Muslim Government.

To prohibit conscription.

To cancel old debts and loans.

To protect Muslim culture.

To guarantee religious freedom of all sects.

To help create and arm an anti-Japanese Muslim army.

To help unite Muslims of China, Outer Mongolia, Sinkiang

74
 Communist Challenge to Islam

and Soviet Russia.

"Here", says Edgar Snow, "was something to appeal to nearly

every Moslem. Even some of the Ahuns saw in it an
opportunity to get rid of Ma Hung-Kuei (punishing him for
burning the mosques of the Old and New schools) and also a
chance to realise an old aspiration - to re-establish direct
contact with Turkey through Central Asia. By May (1936) the
Communists were claiming that they had achieved what
sceptics had said was impossible. They boasted that they had
created the nucleus of a Chinese Moslem Red Army."

The following facts emerge clearly from the above:-

1. That Muslims were burning with enthusiasm for the

creation of a sovereign Chinese Muslim State in the North-
West.

2. That the general Muslim masses were groaning under the

tyranny of the oppressive laws promulgated by their
thoroughly decrepit and corrupt administrators, who were the
agents of Koumintang regime.

3. That all the social evils from which the Muslims were
suffering had their source outside Islamic principles and could
and should have been therefore fought squarely on the basis of
Islamic teachings without any reference to ideologies and
movements outside Islam.

4. That this could not be done because the Muslim religious

75
 Communist Challenge to Islam

leadership was practically of a worthless type.

5. That to achieve their Islamic ends, Muslims were forced by

sheer expediency to join hands with the Communists, to help
them in their hour of distress and to obtain help from them in
return.

Were the Chinese Muslims right in adopting the line of action

they did? Were the beliefs and principles of Chinese
Communists in any way different from the orthodox Marxist
beliefs and principles? Were the Chinese Communists pro-
Islam or even neutral? Were they sincere in their promises and
actually meant what they said? Could the Communists afford
to relish the idea of creating an Islamic state, free to frame its
own laws on the basis of the Shariah, free in its internal
administration, and free in its foreign policy, in place of a
Bolshevik state, i.e., could they afford to forsake the
Communist ideal of World-Revolution and a World
Communist State for the sake of a few million Muslims? Were
they foolish enough or consistent enough to fight for the
establishment of a Muslim state which might become a
rallying centre of Islam in the heart of Asia, to employ their
resources and to waste their energy over it, and then to make a
present of it to Islam - to a people and a party much weaker
materially than themselves?

The plain answer is: Nothing of the sort:

(1) The Chinese Communists were and are as orthodox

Marxists as any other Communist party in the World. They are
76
 Communist Challenge to Islam

thorough-going in their ideology. Edgar Snow says:-

"Certainly and obviously Russia has for the past

dozen years been a dominating influence - and
particularly among educated youth it has been the
dominating external influence - on Chinese
thought about social, political, economic and
cultural problems of the country. . . . . Everywhere
that youth has any solid political beliefs in China,
the impact of Marxist ideology is apparent, both as
a philosophy and a kind of substitute for religion.
Among young Chinese, Lenin is almost
worshipped, Stalin is by far the most popular
foreign leader, Socialism is taken for granted as
the future form of Chinese Society, and Russian
literature has the largest following - Maxim
Gorky's works, for example, outselling all native
writers except Lu Hsien, who was himself a great
social revolutionary." (p.377.)

"The Reds . . . . rejected nearly all the old Chinese

philosophy that was the basis of what was once
Chinese civilisation, and most important of all,
perhaps, they were the most implacable enemies
of the old Chinese familism . . . . . Social
organisations in general follow the pattern laid
down by Russian Bolshevism." (p.381.)

". . . The political ideology, tactical line, and

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

theoretical leadership of the Chinese Communists

have been under the close guidance, if not positive
detailed direction, of the Communist International,
which, during the past decade, has become
virtually a bureau of the Russian Communist
Party." (p.382.)

(2) The Chinese Communists are as much anti-religious and

atheistic as any other Marxist group and it is their definite
mission to wipe out religion, including Islam, altogether. If
they gave guarantees to Muslims for the protection of Muslim
culture and for the maintenance of religious freedom, as
mentioned above, it was actually not out of respect for Islam
but in the interests of their own tactics. The rosy promises
were meant to deceive the Muslims, to keep them in pious
delusion in order to receive the utmost help from them, to gain
the ultimate victory over the Koumintang and then to blow up
their promises and guarantees with bombs and bullets.

Edgar Snow's account makes it evidently clear that joining the

Communist Party in China positively meant forsaking one's
religion. Consequently, according to him (p.369), a religious
man, e.g., Dr. Nelson Fu, head of the Red Army Medical
Corps, who "still adhered to his faith", had not been accepted
as a member of the Communist Party, though he
"enthusiastically supported" the Reds and worked with them.
"In Kiangsi", Edgar Snow further says (p.370), "the Soviets
carried on an extensive anti-God propaganda. All temples,
churches and church-estates were converted into State

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

property, and monks, nuns, priests, preachers, and foreign

missionaries were deprived of the rights of citizenship; but in
the North-West a much milder policy of religious toleration
was practised. Freedom of worship was a primary guarantee,
in fact . . . . . . The Communists reserved the right to preach
anti-religious propaganda of their own, holding the 'freedom
to oppose worship' to be a democratic privilege of the freedom
to worship."

(3) The real aim in forming alliance with Muslims was not the
exchange of fair benefits, viz., victory for the Communists
over the Koumintang balanced by the creation of an
autonomous Muslim national state. Slow and gradual
conversion of Muslims from Islam to Marxism with the
utmost tact and caution was the ultimate target. First, a mere
political alliance on terms of virtual equality with the attendant
sentiments of mutual sympathy, then a gradual indoctrination,
creation of class-consciousness, acceptance of the social
philosophy of Karl Marx, Sovietisation, and ultimately
throwing aside Islamic values and a gradual march towards the
anti-religious Marxist philosophy of life. Haste or compulsion
at that inopportune hour would have spoiled the whole game.
Hence the Communist leaders were in no haste.

Says Edgar Snow (pp. 327-331):-

"The Reds had organised two training regiments of

Mohammedans at the front, both recruited largely from former
troops of Ma Hung Kuei and Ma Hung Ping. They were taller

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

and more strongly-built than the Chinese, heavier of beard and

darker-skinned, some of them very handsome in a distinctly
Turkish way, with large black almond-shaped eyes and strong
sharp Caucasian features . . . . .

"Cartoons, posters, maps and slogans covered the walls of

their barracks. 'Down with Ma Hung-Keui!' . . . 'Realize the
independent Government of the Mohammedan people!' 'build
our own anti-Japanese Mohammedan Red Army!' Such were
the exhortations which had attracted what Moslem following
the Communists had, and answers given to me by Moslem
soldiers concerning their reasons for joining the Reds centred
on them as main issues.

"The Moslem soldiers with the Reds had originally been won
by subversive propaganda conducted among Ma's troops, and
by political lectures when they reached the Red camp.

"Although these Red Moslem regiments had been organised

less than half a year, they had already achieved considerable
'class-consciousness', it seemed. They had read, or heard read,
the Communist Manifesto, brief lessons from Class Struggle,
and daily political lectures, a la Marxism, on the immediate
problems of the Mohammedan people. This instruction was
given to them not by Chinese, but by Mohammedan members
of the Communist Party - men who had been through the
Reds' Party School . . . . Already nearly 25 per cent. of these
Moslems had joined the Communist Party.

"With the autonomy slogan the Moslem population was

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

naturally in sympathy, for this had been their demand for

many years. Whether the majority of them believed the Reds
were sincere in their promise is quite another matter . I
doubted it.

"Such Moslems as co-operated with the Reds had reasons of

their own. If Chinese offered to help them drive out the
Koumintang, help them create and equip an army of their own,
help them get self-government, and help them despoil the rich
(they no doubt said to themselves) they were prepared to take
the opportunity - and later on turn that army to uses of their
own if the Reds failed to keep their bargain. 5 But it was
apparent from the friendliness of the farmers, and their
readiness to organise under the Reds, that their programme
had a distinct attraction, and that their careful policy of
respecting Muslim institutions had made an impression on
even the most suspicious peasants and Ahuns.

"Among the soldiers themselves it appeared that some of the

historical racial animosity (between Chinese and Moslem) was
being overcome, and gradually meta-morphosed into class
antagonism. Thus when I asked some Moslem soldiers
whether they thought the Hui and Han peoples could co-
operate under a Soviet form of Government, one replied:

'The Chinese and Moslems are brothers; we Moslems also

5
What an impossible variety of simpletons these Muslims must have been
to have considered it possible to face the combined might of victorious
Communist China and the mighty Soviet Union! (Author)

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

have Chinese blood in us; we all belong to Ta Chung Kuo

(China), and therefore why should we fight each other? Our
common enemies are the land-lords, the capitalists, the
money-lenders, our oppressive rulers, and the Japanese. Our
common aim is Revolution.'

Q. 'But what if the revolution interferes with your religion?'

A. 'There is no interference. The Red Army does not interfere

with Mohammedan worship.'

Q. 'Well, I mean something like this. Some of the Ahuns are

wealthy land-lords and money-lenders. Are they not? What if
they oppose the Red Army? How would you treat them?'

A. 'We would persuade them to join the Revolution. But most

Ahuns are not rich men. They sympathise with us. One of our
Company Commanders was an Ahun.'

Q. 'Still, suppose some Ahuns can't be persuaded, but join

with the Koumintang to oppose you?'

A. 'We would punish them. They would be bad Ahuns, and the
people would demand their punishment.'

"Rules of conduct for the Red soldiers stationed in Muslim

districts were that they 'must not: enter the house of a Moslem
without his consent; molest a mosque or a priest in any way;
say "pig" or "dog" before Moslems, or ask them why they
don't eat pork; or call the Moslems "small faith" and Chinese
"big faith".'
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

"Beside these efforts to unite the whole army intelligently

behind the Moslem policy of the Reds, there was incessant
work with the peasantry. The two Moslem training regiments
led in this propaganda, but companies in the Red Army also
sent their propaganda corps from house to house, explaining
Communist policies and urging farmers to organise; the army
dramatic club toured the village, giving Mohammedan plays,
based on local situations and incidents of history, and
designed to 'agitate' the population; leaflets, newspapers and
posters were distributed, written in Chinese and Arabic; and
mass meetings were frequently called to form revolutionary
committees and village Soviets . . . By July, communities in
Ninghsia had elected village Soviets, and were sending
delegates to Yu Wang Pao to confer with the Moslem
Communists there . . . . Early in September enough progress
had been made in Ninghsia to convene a meeting of over 300
Moslem delegates from Soviet Committees elected by the
villages then under the Red Army. A number of Ahuns,
teachers, merchants, and two or three small landlords were
among them, but mostly they were poor farmers . . . . . The
meeting of delegates elected a Chairman and a provisional
Moslem Soviet Government Committee."

What will be the ultimate fate of Islam and these Muslim

followers of Communists can hardly be a matter of
speculation. No sooner the Communist power is fully
stabilized, every conceivable effort will be made to wipe out
Islam and the individuality of the Muslim people. In his

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Report to the Communist Party (Yenan, April 10, 1937), Mao

Tse-tung said in another reference that "there are definite
limits" to "exchange of concessions". He futher elaborated the
Communist policy by saying: "The Communist Party will
never abandon its aims of Socialism and Communism. The
Communist Party retains its own programme and its own
policies."

Chinese Muslims might not yet be feeling very uneasy

because Communist China is still in the stage of the
bourgeoisie democratic revolution. Those among them who
hold Islam dear will, however, writhe in agony on the day
transition takes place from the present stage to that of pure
Marxism. But, alas, it will be too late then to repent and to
retrace the steps!

3. ILLUSTRATION FROM ALBANIA

Closely resembling the Chinese drama are two others recently
enacted among the Muslim populations of Albania and
Yugoslavia, who, among all the Muslim Communities of
Europe lately brought under sway by the Communists, are the
most important. Albania has a majority of Muslims, while in
Yugoslavia Islam has built up a power minority.

At the time of the Italian conquest of Albania in 1939, the

Communists, under the leadership of Enver Hoxha, were the
smallest of all those parties who entrenched themselves in the
natural mountainous fortifications for continuing the war

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

against the invaders and ultimately liberating the country.

There were the Liberals, who were struggling to establish a
sovereign national democratic government. There were the
Monarchists, who wanted to re-instal King Ahmed Zugo after
driving out the Italians. There were the Communists, who
wanted to set up a Soviet government in collaboration with
Russia. There were others, too, with definite and indefinite
aims. It was, however, fated for the Communists to capture
power when the hour of liberation came.

In spite of their small numbers, the Communists ultimately

succeeded in becoming the most powerful party because they
got timely and constant help and support from Soviet Russia
in the form of military and political experts, and money and
materials, while the other parties were divided among
themselves, isolated from the outside world and had no helper.
Another factor which helped them and enhanced their prestige
was their revolutionary spirit, which was more in consonance
with the spirit of Albania's hardy, freedom-loving but
oppressed mountaineers, while other parties possessed no such
asset.

It was, however, a herculean task to convert the proud

individualistic Albanian peasants to the totalitarian
Communist ideology. Their religious sentiments and their
rugged individualism were the greatest obstacles in the way of
Communist success, in spite of the Communist superiority in
resources. Consequently, the Communist leaders marched
towards their goal most cautiously. According to Bogdan

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Raditsa (The Reader's Digest, New York, October, 1947), they

"formed a 'non-Communist' organisation which could win the
allegiance of the Albanian people. This was a patriotic union
of all liberal parties against the Fascists, called the National
Liberation Front and dedicated to the independence of
Albania."

In the course of the struggle against the Fascists, which

progressed rapidly under the National Liberation Front,
Communists carried out their plan of eliminating the leaders
of other parties participating in the union. "Mustafa Gjinishi, a
liberal who understood the true aim of the Communists, was
shot in the back during a battle against Mussolini's Fascists.
And he was not the only one. A policy of 'liquidation' was put
in operation from the beginning." (Ibid.)

The result of this policy was that by the time the country was
liberated (in May, 1944), the Communists had already
acquired substantial control of the National Liberation Front,
and it was Enver Hoxha who headed the Committee which
took over the reins of the new Albanian state.

The country was still not ready to accept Communism. In

order, therefore, to establish themselves in power peacefully,
Enver's Committee played one more trick and issued the
following popular declaration. It was, in fact, a "Charter of
Rights" which guaranteed to all citizens:

Equal rights before the law; freedom of religion, of assembly,

speech and press; private ownership of property; freedom of
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

private initiative in economic life; personal security of

citizens; equal rights of women; rights of election by secret
ballot; right of complaint from decisions of the government;
right of appeal; and right to sue the organs of the state
authority.

This "Charter of Rights" was, however, merely a smokescreen

and was solely meant to deceive not only the Albanian people
but also the democratic world at large. For it did not remain in
force more than a minute after Hoxha took power, and was
speedily relegated to the limbo of oblivion. Today you would
court danger if you were to quote it in public in Albania. "If",
says Bogdan Raditsa, "you were to confront a Communist
with it privately he would, without blushing, explain its
disappearance as follows: 'In order to pass from the feudal
system in Albania to the higher form of democracy
represented by the Soviets, you have to have two revolutions.
First, a 'bourgeois' and then a 'proletarian' revolution. The
'Declaration of Rights' was the 'bourgeois revolution', and
that's over now. We have entered a new era'."

Simultaneously with the suppression of the "Charter of Right",

the "People's Republic of Albania" was proclaimed with a
constitution modelled on that of Soviet Russia. The new
regime was hailed with the murder of a liberal supporter,
Kokoshi, who had been Minister of Education in the
provisional government, announcing, so to speak, to the world
a thousandth time that Communism, though it deludes the
unwary into its fold on the offer of compromise, is actually not

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

prepared to tolerate the slightest difference of opinion and

deviation from the Marxist creed, not to speak of the
monstrous absurdity of a compromise between Marxism and
Islam!

"Private lands, businesses and industries were confiscated and

taken over by the Government. The stores were closed and
their stocks disappeared to reappear in greatly reduced
quantity in a few government stores where party members
could have them at lowered prices . . . . . The old coffee-
houses in the once gay capital (Tirana) were closed as 'dens of
reaction'. In their place are clubs for Communist Youth,
Communist women government workers, where glib orators
grind out the propaganda of the new era . . . . . Bookstores
were raided and books removed 'for examination', leaving
nothing but Soviet literature, which arrived in a flood from
Moscow. The movie houses were nationalised and only Soviet
films were shown. . . . . A systematic purge of anti-Communist
democrats was started on the 'amalgam' plan made famous in
the Moscow trials. That is, real traitors and quislings were
trotted out, and innocent people tried with them, the issues and
personalities thus becoming so confused that honest judgment
was impossible. Then groups of innocent people alone were
tried. When sentenced to death, the accused were shot the next
day. When sentenced to prison they were shipped to slave-
labour camps - a slower and more painful death . . . .
totalitarian education was introduced . . . . teachers of doubtful
loyalty to the Soviets were thrown out; able and acquiescent

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

teachers were taken to Moscow for higher training. The

Communist device of training children to tell on anti-
Communist parents was introduced. Religious teaching was
eliminated." (Ibid.).

Five years have elapsed since the Communist Party captured

power in Albanian masses are still resisting the heretical
doctrines of Communism in spite of the reign of terror which
has been let loose upon them. The Communists are ruling
Albania behind an iron-curtain which makes it well-nigh
difficult to obtain detailed information. In a way, the iron-
curtain is itself a proof of the fact that all is not well in
Albania.

Recently, Reuters flashed a news item from Belgrade which

confirms our conjecture. "Living conditions in Albania,
smallest of the 'people's Democracies'," reads the news, "are
reported to have deteriorated since she broke off economic
relations with Yugoslavia last July (on the question of
acceptance of Russian hegemony) . . . . . Albanian refugees
crossing the border into Yugoslavia in some numbers tell of
profound economic distress and political discontent. Food
shortages, they say, have in some places reached starvation
level. [That must be due to sabotage by the peasants, as was
the case in the Soviet Union during the early twenties. -
Author] . . . . . Albanian refugees, who according to the
Yugoslavs now number some 8,000, speak of 'political terror
worse than under the fascists' set against pro-Yugoslav
elements and suspected sympathisers of the recently executed

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

General Dzodze. General Dzodze, former Minister of the

Interior, was tried recently and condemned in Tirana on
charges of collaborating with Marshal Tito in his alleged aims
of turning Albania into Yugoslav colony. Concentration
camps inherited from previous regimes at Tepelin, Berat and
Tirana are reported to be full." (Dawn, Karachi, August 3,
1949).

4. ILLUSTRATION FROM YUGOSLAVIA.

In Yugoslavia, the Communist Party took full advantage of the

troubles in which the Muslims were finding themselves after
the conquest of the country by Hitler's army and the
subsequent campaign of persecution launched by the Christian
majority. Finding themselves between two evils they at last
chose the one which at the time seemed less hard to them
because of the definite promises of equal treatment of all
religious and national groups which Marshal Tito gave to the
people. Under the political leadership of Dzaferbeg Kulenovic,
Hakija Hadzic and others, Muslims had committed certain
mistakes. Instead of remaining neutral, which alone suited
them as a minority, they participated in the administration of
the German quisling Ante Pavelich. Some of them also
allowed themselves to be used by the Germans against the
Serbs. The result was that they had to face persecution at the
hands of the Chetniks led by Draza Mihailovic. The only
refuge finally lay in joining the Communists.

This alliance was political in beginning. But it could not

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

remain so after the Communists had come to power.

Communist propaganda absorbed many a Muslim intellectual.
Those who could not accept the Marxist leadership had to flee
for life or were shot dead. Yugoslavia's policy towards
religion appears to be a mild one. Still the transformation
which has taken place among the Muslim intellectuals who
have joined the Communist party is nothing short of being
anti-Islamic. The pamphlet entitled Yugoslav Muslims'
Message to India, signed by thirteen eminent Muslim
Communists and published by the Communist Party of India
in January 1947, speaks for itself in this behalf. If they are
emphatic on any issue, it is the unqualified condemnation of
the Yugoslav Muslim religious leadership, including Reis-ul-
Ulema Spaho. In practice, it accounts for the ultimate
suppression of religious thought and action though the
guarantee of "freedom to worship" is there, and though the
Muslim Communists may be well-meaning in their
compromise between Islam and Communism. Their thesis of
the division of humanity into classes, irrespective of religious
distinctions is a violent negation of a fundamental principle of
Islam which divides the whole of mankind into two major
blocks of Muslims and non-Muslims, and later on sub-divides
the Muslim block into those of the righteous and the
unrighteous. It may be that Marshal Tito will ultimately
succeed in evolving a formula whereby Muslim and Christian
worship and moral values could be accommodated
comfortably alongside Marxian economics. For the present,
the tone and make-up of Muslim Communist thought is not

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

very flattering to Islam. Rather, it is positively anti-Islamic.

And the spiritualisation of Communism at the hands of
Marshal Tito is a thing which is so far concealed in the womb
of the future. It is still a far cry. In the meantime the house of
Islam is burning!

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Chapter III
THE COMMUNIST WORLD VIEW

1. GOD AND MAN

In the general discussion of Communist tactics we have

already referred in passing to the Marxist attitude towards
religion and the deleterious effects of practical Communism
on Muslims in China, Albania and Yugoslavia. In fact, the
atheistic and materialistic aspect of Communist ideology is so
obvious for all those who study the Communist classics, from
which a few statements against religion have been quoted in
the foregoing, that an elaborate proof is hardly necessary. For
the general Muslims greatest walking proof are the "Muslim
Communist leaders" themselves, if only Muslims could cast
away the bad habits of closing eyes to realities and of wishful
thinking. Indeed, I have yet to meet a Muslim Communist in
Pakistan or elsewhere who is not a thoroughbred Atheist and
Materialist and is not recognisable as such from his face and
his sly talk. And to compromise the aggressive proselytising
Atheism of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tng and others with
the positive, uncompromising and fundamental Islamic belief
in God and His Unity, Power and Grace is a height of
absurdity which only the de-rationalised humans can possibly
attempt to scale.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

The reply to the question: whether Communist Philosophy is

compatible with Islam, is one big NO. It is not compatible
because, to put the argument in a nut-shell, it denies the
existence of God, revelation and a future life; it treats the
individual as a means and not as an end; it encourages class-
warfare; it regards the moral law not as absolute but as relative
to the needs of the Party and the State - and it does so with all
the uncompromising aggressiveness conceivable.

Modern Communism took its birth primarily as a theory of

economics, with the abolition of private property and equal
distribution of wealth as its main theses, but it overstepped its
limits during the process and ultimately transformed itself into
a theory of life and a positive system of philosophy which is
through and through materialistic. It has its own metaphysical
notions, its own ethical ideas, its own cultural outlook and a
man cannot be a Communist unless he believes in all aspects
of Communism.

What connection is there at all between a materialistic view of

life and the gentle, soft and spiritualistic emotion of sympathy
for the weak? That is a question which puzzles many. Yet
Communism has tried to combine these two elements in its
system.

Why has it tried to do so? That is another question. At the very

outset it may be said that it has done so not because of any
inherent necessity. It was nothing else than the pressure of
circumstances which gave to Communism the role of the

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

apostle of Materialism. Modern Europe, ever since it learnt its

first lessons in Science and Philosophy from the Muslims, had
been imperceptibly drifting away from religion, because of the
mistakes committed by the Father of the Christian churches,
and by the time awakening appeared among the labouring
classes, materialism had already acquired a strong hold on the
intelligentsia. Consequently, the minds of scholars who came
forward to lead the labour movements were saturated with
materialistic ideas.

Karl Marx, who has come to be known as the father of modern

Communism and who played the greatest part in expounding
and popularising it, was, by his very mental make-up, an arch-
enemy of religious values and an aggressive materialist.
Besides being a materialist, he was also a Jew and had
consequently inherited from his forefathers a deep spirit of
antagonism towards Christianity. Therefore, from the very
beginning, he directed the forces of the Communist movement
against religion. His stand against religion received a great
support when Communism started its struggle in Russia,
where the religious dignitaries had formed an alliance with the
Czarist bureaucracy for sucking the blood of the peasantry.
This provided a most favourable opportunity to the
Communists to direct their attack against both, and when
Lenin and his party overthrew the Czarist rule and established
the Bolshevik Government in 1917, religion was suppressed
throughout the Soviet Union, under pretexts in the beginning
and later on openly, and the members of the Russian

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Communist Party launched a powerful campaign for the

extermination of religion and the belief in God.

That Communism is an uncompromising enemy of God and

religion is fact which has been already substantiated in the
statements quoted in the last chapter. Here we might quote
another which deals with the actual conditions in Russia that
grew up after the Revolution. "The Communist", wrote
Professor Julius F. Hacker, a staunch supporter of the Soviets,
in his book Religion under the Soviets (pp. 192,193), "is a
militant materialist and atheist. He not only demands a
confession of atheism from the members of his party, but he
most zealously preaches his atheism and materialistic
philosophy to non-party members and shapes the programme
for the education of the young in such a way as to prepare the
new generation for a materialistic conception of life . . . . .
There are no other lives to come for him; therefore he makes
the most of his life upon this earth . . . . . At the initiative of
the party there has been founded a special propaganda society,
the 'Union of the Godless . . . . . (which) gets full support of
the Communist Party and is actually but one of its propaganda
organisations."

Having severed its relation with God, Communism has

installed in her temple the idol of carnal desires, and the
fanatical priests of that temple preach that the primal source of
all human activity are the instincts of hunger and sex, which
alone should be worshipped. The mechanistic view of life as
accepted and preached by the Marxists means the demolition

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

of the foundations of morality in Communist society and the

displacement of the family by the individual as the social unit.
Consistently, therefore, the Russian Communists tried the
experiment in the teeth of opposition put forth by long-
established tradition and human nature. Very soon, however,
the disintegration of the family, though it could be with
difficulty achieved only among a small section of the
population, began to tell its tale of woe and the moral disaster
with its consequent social disaster appeared above the surface
in all its ugliness. Subsequently, as a matter of sheer
expediency, family life was reinstated in direct conflict with
the Marxist theory. (See: The Pattern of Soviet Power).

In fact, if there is not God and no future life, if there is no

moral law governing the universe,6 and if the cultivation and
development of animality is the only and the highest ideal for
man, all ethico-religious notions of truthfulness, faithfulness,
sincerity, honesty, modesty, chastity and piety must ipso facto
fall to the ground. And that is what happened in Communism.
The advocacy of free sexual relations, the denunciation of
marriage, the repudiation of the idea that any man can have
the right to call any woman "my wife", and the notion that all
children born under Communism were the property of the
state and, as the state had to provide for their maintenance, it
had the prerogative to issue orders prohibiting the production
of children though allowing sexual relations and to open
hospitals where abortion could be procured - all these were

6
Cf. Lenin's verdict on morality quoted in the foregoing.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

and are the natural corollaries of the Marxist ethical hedonism,

and Soviet Russia very naturally cherished them for a pretty
long time, until sheer ugliness of consequences forced her to
modify the social regulations. Many a full-blooded Russian
Communist arose in those days to give sermons on and to
popularise the revolutionary ethical standards. According to
one of them, Artsybashev, the author of the famous novel
Samine and an eminent Progressive writer and one of the
prominent expounders of Communist moral discipline:
drunkenness and adultery are nothing to be ashamed of; there
is no such thing as sin; love, strong drink and lust for women
are manly and natural passions, and what is natural cannot be
wrong. (See Religion under the Soviet, p.164).

The ugly consequences of Marxist ethical outlook were

admitted by no less a person than Anton Nemilov, a
distinguished Russian scientist and a staunch Communist. In
his book, The Biological Tragedy of Woman (pp. 202,203), he
confessed that sexual anarchy was universally prevalent
among the workers. He expressed a deep concern at the storm
of sexual licentiousness that had overtaken all the ranks of
Communists, and sounded a note of warning that those
abnormal conditions foreshadowed a total breakdown of
Communist society.

About the same time, M. Domillet, a former Belgian Consul in

Russia, revealed that as a result of sexual anarchy there were
about 5,000,000 homeless and starving children who had no
means to subsist, that there were innocent girls of as tender an

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

age as twelve who could manage to get food only by

submitting their bodies to the rapacity and lust of heartless
Communists, and that the Government recognised it as a trade
and took its share out of the wages of sin!

(See: Communism Exposed)

To the Communist, human beings are not the "vicegerents of

God on earth", as Islam teaches, but merely one of the
varieties of beasts, distinguished from other beasts only in as
much as they possess more developed powers of intelligence,
which should, however, be employed for the cultivation and
enhancement of physical pleasures.

In this connection the following news flashed by Reuter from

Paris on October 12, 1948, and published in Dawn, Karachi,
will be of special interest:

"The Soviet Union has made a 'friendly protest'

against including in the projected United Nations'
declaration of human rights the propostion that
'men are created in the image and likeness of God.'

"Professor Alexei Pavlov, Soviet delegate, told the

Social Committee of the General Assembly
yesterday: 'In my country the postulate that man is
created in the image of God is much disputed and
is sometimes even regarded as reflecting a certain
social backwardness.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

"Prof. Pavlov also opposed the opening paragraph

of the proposed declaration which enunciates that
'all human beings are born free and equal in
dignity and right', saying that 'freedom and
equality in rights are not inherent by birth, but are
a product of social structure.'

"Dr. Augusto Moreno, of Columbia, defending the

paragraph said: There exist ideologies which claim
to be progressive, but in reality place men on the
level of a dog'."

2. MARXIST PHILOSOPHICAL
MATERIALISM
The above short discussion may now be supplemented with a
short account of the Marxist Philosophical Materialism,
prefaced with introductory remarks on Dialectical and
Historical Materialism, which taken together constitute,
according to Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, and the
consensus of world Communist opinion, "the theoretical basis
of Communism, the theoretical foundations of the Marxist
Party", it being "the duty of every member of our
(Communist) Party to know these principles", "and thus
safeguard the theoretical foundations of the Marxist Party".
(Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,
pp. 103, 105.) Such a study would set at rest all doubts if they
still exist as regards my contention that, in their philosophical
foundations, Marxism and Islam stand in absolute antagonism.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

According to the officially compiled and published Short

History of the Communist Party of Soviet Russia (pp. 105 -
114):-

"Dialectical Materialism is the world-outlook of the Marxist-

Leninst party. It is called dialectical materialism because its
approach to the phenomena of nature, its method of studying
and apprehending them, is dialectical, while its interpretation
of the phenomena of nature, its conception of these
phenomena, its theory, is materialistic."

"Historical Materialism is the extension of the principles of

dialectical materialism to the study of social life, an
application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the
phenomena of the life of society, to the study of society and its
history."

As to Marxist Philosophical Materialism, "it is fundamentally

the direct opposite of philosophical idealism."

"The principal features of Marxist Philosophical Materialism

are as follows:

"(a) Contrary to idealism, which regard the world as the

embodiment of an 'absolute idea', a 'universal spirit',
'consciousness', philosophical materialism holds that the world
is by its very nature material, that the multifold phenomena of
the world constitute different forms of matter in motion, that
interconnection and inter-dependence of phenomena, as
established by the dialectical method, are a law of

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development of moving matter, and that the world develops in

accordance with the laws of movement of matter and stands in
no need of a 'Universal Spirit'(i.e. God) . . . .

"(b) Contrary to idealism, which asserts that only our mind

really exists, and that the material world, being nature, exists
only in our mind, in our sensations, ideas and perceptions, the
Marxist materialist philosophy holds that matter, nature,
being, is an objective reality existing outside and independent
of our mind, that matter is primary, since it is the source of
sensations, ideas, mind, and that mind is secondary,
derivative, since it is a reflection of matter, a reflection of
being; that thought is a product of matter which in its
development has reached a high degree of perfection, namely,
of the brain, and the brain is the organ of thought; and that
therefore one cannot separate thought from matter with out
committing a grave error . . . . . . .

"(c) Contrary to idealism, which denies the possibility of

knowing the world and its laws, which does not believe in the
authenticity of our knowledge, does not recognise objective
truth, and holds that the world is full of 'things-in-themselves'
that can never be known to science, Marxist philosophical
materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully
knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by
experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge, having the
validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the
world that are unknowable, but only thing which are still not
known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the

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efforts of science and practice . . . . . . "

That the belief in God and other transcendental verities, which

form the very basis of religious outlook, have absolutely no
place in, and are in no way reconcilable with, the Communist
world-view, becomes still more clear from the following
statements by the founders of Communism:-

"The materialistic outlook on nature", says Engels, "means no

more than simply conceiving nature just as it exists, without
any foreign admixture" (e.g. God, Who is a non-material
Being above and beyond the material world). (F. Engels,
Ludwig Feuerbach, Eng. ed., p. 79).

Commenting on the theory of Heraclitus, who was strictly

anti-God and who preached that "the world, the all in one, was
not created by any god or any man, but was, is and ever will
be a living flame, systematically flaring up and systematically
dying down", Lenin wrote: "A very good exposition of the
rudiments of dialectical materialism." (Lenin, Philosophical
Notebooks, Russ. ed., p. 318).

Marx is still more explicit:

"The material, sensuously perceptible world to which we

ourselves belong is the only reality." (Karl Marx, Selected
Works, Eng. ed., Vol. I, p. 435).

"The world picture", says Lenin, "is a picture of how matter

moves and how 'matter thinks'." (Lenin, Selected Works, Eng.

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ed., Vol. XI, p. 402).

Blinded by its hatred of the idea of God and other

transcendental and spiritual ideas, Communism does not only
reject the Idealism of philosophers like Berkeley, which is
faulty from the Islamic philosophical view-point, too, but also
the Critical Philosophy of thinkers like Kant, who in his
Critiques of Theoretical Reason and Practical Reason gave to
science what belongs to science and to religion what belongs
to religion, and thus evolved a system of thought which is the
most rational and reasonable. In fact, Communism is impatient
with any and every system of thought and belief which might
try to accommodate religion in any way and to any extent.
Thus, although Marx and Engels usually refer to Feuerbach as
"the philosopher who restored materialism to its rights" and as
the thinker from whom they borrowed the "inner Kernel" of
their materialist philosophy, they cannot still tolerate him
because he tried to accommodate religious morals alongside
materialism.

(See Karl Marx, Selected Works, Eng. ed., Vol. I, pp. 439, 442).

Similarly, accusing Bogdanov, Bazarov, Yushkevich and

others of fideism, and defending materialism, Lenin says:

"Contemporary fideism does not at all reject

science; all it rejects is the 'exaggerated claims' of
science……if natural science, reflecting the outer
world in human 'experience', is alone capable of
giving us objective truth, then all fideism is
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absolutely refuted." (Lenin, Selected Works, Eng.

ed., Vol. XI, p. 188).

Such, in brief, is the Communist philosophical creed. This is

not the place to discuss it critically and to refute it. Such a task
is reserved for the second volume. Here, it would suffice to
observe that the acceptance of the Communist creed means
nothing less than the abandonment of Islamic metaphysical
beliefs which are fundamental to Islam and which form the
background and the basis of the Islamic moral and social
teaching. This fact must be evident even to Muslims of
ordinary intelligence and education.

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Chapter IV
THIS BUSINESS OF COMPROMISISM

1. COMMUNISM BROOKS NO COMPROMISE

Those whom the Communist propaganda has screened

from realities and has rendered incapable of clear thinking,
because of certain prejudices which have come to stick to their
modes of thought, but who at the same time are not ready to
sever their relations with Islam, are in the habit of permitting
themselves indulgence in such muddled thinking as follows: It
is right that the Marxist-Leninist philosophical ideology is
materialistic and atheistic and does not, therefore, conform to
Islam. But, then, we can substitute the religious philosophy of
Islam in its place and thus create "Islamic Communism" and
an "Islamic Communist Party", join the ranks of International
Communism, and fight the internal as well as the external
forces of exploitation. A novel idea indeed! Unfortunately,
however, it would not work. Not only is Islam vehemently
opposed to it, for it has its own revealed social ideology which
alone it regards as true in contra-distinction to all others, but
the Marxist world also will cry "Shame!", will condemn such
a move as thoroughly heretical, and will consider it their
sacred duty to fight and destroy such muddle-feaded heretics if
they persist any more in their child-like fancies. For Marxism
is as much uncompromising as Islam and it claims infallibility

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

with the same amount of aggressive conviction. Like Islam, it

might allow minor re-interpretations in matters of details or
technique. But just as the denial of the article of faith: "There
is one God and Mohammad is His Prophet" means nothing
less than excommunication in Islam, so does the denial of the
philosophical foundations of Marxism-Leninism entail
condemnation to gallows in Communism.

Fortunately for us, Communist history has already supplied a

clear-cut answer in this behalf. Neither are the "Islamic
Communists" mentioned above the first party to think in this
fashion, nor is their idea without parallel. The experiment of
"spiritualising" Marxism was tried by several Russian
Marxists themselves at a time when Marxism was still in the
throes of transition from being a "dream of theorists" to
becoming the practical guiding ideology of a mighty state. The
experiment, however, failed ignominously and the Marxist-
Leninist Party announced from the house-tops for all time that
atheism and materialism and ethical hedonism were as much
an integral and vital part of the Marxist creed as its social
teaching.

The following official account given in the Short History of

the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (pp. 101 - 104) is
unambiguous and hardly leaves any room for confusion:

"The defeat of the Revolution of 1905 started a process of

disintegration in the ranks of the fellow-travellers of the
revolution. Degenerate and decadent tendencies grew

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particularly marked among the intelligentsia . . . . . In the

realm of philosophy increasing attempt were made to
"criticize" and revise Marxism; there also appeared all sorts of
religious trends camouflaged by pseudo-scientific theories . . .
. . Decadence and scepticism also affected a section of the
Party intelligentsia . . . . . Among them were writers like
Bogdanov, Bazarov, Lunacharsky (who had sided with the
Bolshevik in 1905), Yushkevitch and Valentinov
(Menshevisks). They launched their "criticism"
simultaneously against the philosophical foundations of
Marxist theory, i.e., against dialectical materialism, and
against the fundamental Marxist principles of historical
science, i.e., against historical materialism. Their criticism
differed from the usual criticism in that it was not conducted
openly and squarely, but in a veiled and hypocritical form
under the guise of 'defending' the fundamental positions of
Marxism. These people claimed that in the main they were
Marxists but that they wanted to 'improve' Marxism - by
ridding it of certain fundamental principles. In reality they
were hostile to Marxism, for they tried to undermine its
theoretical foundations, although they hypocritically denied
their hostility to Marxism and two-facedly continued to style
themselves Marxists. The danger of this hypocritical criticism
lay in the fact that it was calculated to deceive rank-and-file
members of the Party and might lead them astray. The more
hypocritical grew this criticism, which aimed at undermining
the theoretical foundations of Marxism, the more dangerous it
was to the Party, for the more it merged with the general

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campaign of the reactionaries against the Party, against the

revolution. Some of the intellectuals who had deserted
Marxism went so far as to advocate the founding of a new
religion (these were known as 'god-seekers' and 'god-
builders').

"It became urgent for the Marxists to give a fitting retort to

these renegades from Marxist theory, to tear the mask from
their faces and thoroughly expose them, and thus safeguard
the theoretical foundations of the Marxist Party . . . . .

"It was Lenin who accomplished this task in his famous book
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, published in 1909.

" 'In the course of less than half a year', Lenin wrote, 'four
books devoted mainly and almost entirely to attacks on
dialectical materialism have made their appearance. These
include first and foremost Studies in (? - it would have been
more proper to say 'against') the Philosophy of Marxism (St.
Petersburg, 1908), a symposium by Barazrov, Bogdanov,
Lunacharsky, Berman, Helfond, Yushkevich and Suvorov;
Yushkevich's Materialism and Critical Realism: Berman's
Dialectics in the Light of the Modern Theory of Knowledge
and Valentinov's The Philosophical Construction of Marxism .
. . . All these people . . . . . are united in their hostility towards
dialectic materialism, (and) at the same time claim to be
Marxists in philosophy! Engels' dialectics is 'mysticism', says
Berman. Engels' views have become 'antiquated', remarks
Bazarov casually, as though it were a self-evident fact.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Materialism thus appears to be refuted by our bold warriors,

who proudly allude to the 'modern theory of knowledge',
'recent philosophy of modern natural science', or even the
'philosophy of natural science of the twentieth century'."
(Lenin, Selected Works, Eng. ed., Vol. XI, p. 89.)

"Replying to Lunacharsky, who, in justification of his friends -

the revisionist in philosophy - said, 'perhaps we have gone
astray, but we are seeking', Lenin wrote: 'As for myself, I too
am a "seeker" in philosophy. Namely, the task I have set
myself in these comments is to find out what was the
stumbling block to these people who under the guise of
Marxism are offering something incredibly muddled, confused
and reactionary.' (Ibid., p. 90.)

"But as a matter fact, Lenin's book went far beyond this

modest task. Actually, the book is something more than a
criticism of Bogdanov, Yushkevich, Bazarov and Valentinov
and their teachers in philosophy, Avenarius and Mach, who
endeavoured in their writings to offer a refined and polished
idealism as opposed to Marxist materialism . . . . .

". . . . . . Lenin comes to the following conclusions regarding

philosophical and theoretical revisionism:

(1) 'An ever subtler falsification of Marxism, an ever subtler

presentation of anti-materialist doctrines under the guise of
Marxism - this is the characteristic feature of modern
revisionism . . . .' (Ibid., p. 381.)

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

(2) 'The whole school of Mach and Avenarius is moving

towards idealism.' (Ibid., p. 405.)

(3) 'Our Machinas have all got stuck in idealism.' (Ibid., p.

395.)

(4) ' Behind the gnosiological scholasticism of empirio-

criticism it is impossible not to see the struggle of parties in
philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis expresses the
tendencies and ideology of antagonistic classes in modern
society.' (Ibid., p. 406.)

(5) 'The objective, class role of empirio-criticism reduces itself

to nothing but that of the servitor of the fideists (the
reactionaries who hold faith above science) in their struggle
against materialism in general and historical materialism in
particular.' (Ibid., p. 406.)

(6) 'Philosophical idealism is . . . . . . a road to clerical

obscurantism.' " (Ibid., p. 84.)

The cat comes out of the bag in this last. Marxism-Leninism

cannot tolerate religion in any form, and those who try to
effect a compromise with religion are pure and simple
heretics!

2. THE PEACE-MISSION OF MARXISM

The more I think of those who proudly call themselves Islamic
Communists or who harbour sentiments of love and affection

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for the Communists, the more I pity them and their faith. They
are out to compromise with an enemy who knows no mercy
and who shows no mercy even to brother and sister Marxists if
they budge an inch from the policies of the Party or in their
devotion to the infallible leadership of Stalin and his group or
in subjection of their policies to those of the Soviet Union, or
in the hero-worship of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin quartet,
which, for the Communist is meant to fulfill the psychological
function of a Muslim's devotion to God and Mohammad and a
Christian's devotion to Jesus Christ.

The Communists are very often heard denouncing religion in

the strongest terms, mostly on the basis that religion has been
responsible for great bloodshed in human history. In fact, they
assert that but for religion the world would have been an
abode of peace and claim that Communism is out to bring the
long-cherished millennium on earth. (See Dialectic
Materialism by V. Adorutsky.) It is not the proper occasion to
examine this claim and to show that while religion originates
in love, Communism has originated in hatred. We can only
express astonishment at the boldness of Communist claim, for
actually Communist history has been written with fire and
sword and Communism has walked knee-deep in the blood of
its victims - men, women and children. Mr. John Wynne Hird,
whose thirty years' stay in Russia entitled him to speak on the
subject authoritatively, published an account of Communist
atrocities in the Daily Gazette of Karachi (5th and 6th June,
1934), which will enlighten our people to some extent on this

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

point. The facts and figures are as follows:-

CLASS OF PEOPLE MURDERED NUMBER

Patriarchs………………………………………....................31
Clergy……………………………………………………1,560
Judges, Lawyers and Magistrates………………………34,585
Teachers and Students………………………………….16,367
Civil Officers…………………………………………...79,000
Members of the aristocracy…………………………….65,890
Military Officers………………………………………..56,340
Labourers……………………………………………...196,000
Peasants……………………………………………….890,000
Soldiers and Sailors…………………………………...268,000

These figures were published in 1934 and referred to the first

sixteen years of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union.
The purges and assassinations that have been continuously
taking place there since then have their own blood-curdling
tale to tell, and account for the murders of some of the finest
Communists, not to speak of fellow-travellers whose ranks our
so-called "Islamic Communists" would love to join.

Theoretically, Marxism feigns to stand for absolute freedom

and pretends to emancipate humanity from all types of fetters
and bondages, social, religious and even natural. But in actual
practice, Communist domination means the total annihilation
of freedom and a complete mechanistic regimentation where
all human dignity and personality is liquidated. The
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Communists promise to restore freedom after they have

triumphed in their bloody fight against human nature and
brought into existence a society of those who are known in
religious terminology as "angels", and who, in consonance
with the demands of Communist ideology might be called
"automatons". For the present, however, the Satanic or
bourgeois evils persist. Hence the "teeth and claws" of the
Communist must also remain red. We weak and imperfect
humans, however, sigh for, cherish and wish to see in
existence, freedom in the present and in spite of the frailties of
human nature. For us there is no hope, says the Marxist well-
wisher!

To return to our Compromisists; let it be asserted once for all

that there is no possibility of a compromise between
Communism and Islam and that those who delude themselves
by thoughts of Compromise are living in a fools' paradise.
Nothing more, nothing less! And they must meet the same fate
as Narodnik Nicolai-on (Dnielson), "who earned the
undeserved reputation of being a Marxist solely on the
grounds of his claim to being a believer in 'Marx's economic
theory'." (G. V. Plekhanov, The Materialist Conception of
History, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow,
1946; p.46).

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3. HERO-WORSHIP, IRON-DICTATORSHIP
AND NEGATION OF FREEDOM AND
EQUALITY IN STALIN'S RUSSIA
"A lot of fellows carry the ball in Russia," observed an
American businessman who spent some time in the Soviet
Union, "but Stalin makes all the touch-downs."

In Soviet Russia, the cradle of "genuine and true democracy"

and the State of the workers and the peasants, man-worship
has assumed such alarming proportions as to put to shame the
worst corresponding practices among the religiously-
superstitious people. They fanatically deny the existence of
God; but they have deified not only the dead heroes - Marx,
Engels and Lenin - but also their living master, Joseph Stalin.
To love the heroes, to admire them and to respect them is not
something bad. But it is not the same thing in the case of
Stalin. It is not love which leads men to worship him, but
outright fear. Safety of one's honour and life is so uncertain in
Soviet Russia, and Stalin has entrenched himself and setup his
administrative machinery on such an iron-dictatorial pattern,
that there is no escape from sacrificing one's self-respect and
dignity and "licking his august feet," so to say. Never was a
monarchy more ruthless than the present ill-named proletarian
dictatorship.

The Communists admit that suppression of personal freedom

was resorted to in the early days of the revolution only as a
necessary and passing evil. In those days, Prof. J. F. Hacker
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(Religion under the Soviet, p. 184) observed: "Bolshevism,

with its dictatorship of the proletariat, is unquestionably a
despotism, perhaps more ruthless than that of the old regime";
while the opinion of the Russian peasants, voiced by one of
them in an open meeting of the Communist Congress, was:
"The public opinion is a mere toy. We have to send even a
pony as our representative if the Communists so wish."

It is, however, thirty-two years now that the Communists have

enjoyed unchallenged power in Soviet Russia. A close and
intelligent study of the conditions existing in atheism and
materialism and the State-machinery has become more
powerful with the expansion of industry and development of
agriculture and advancement of science, freedom has
positively receded back, and the Soviet Union today is a worse
despotism than it was during the Leninist regime. If that is the
path to reach the promised millennium of freedom and peace
and safety, one may be sure it will never come until Marxism
is consumed in the fire of its own making.

If the Soviet Union is a democratic people's republic where

personalities don't count, but where personalities don't count,
but where only abstract principles are respected, as the authors
of the Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union have tried to make the world believe, what for is this
Stalin-worship? Why is it that there is not a single public
building, a single factory, in the whole of the Soviet Union,
where the life-size photo or statue of Stalin does not occupy a
place of privilege. Lenin, too, is treated in the same way, but

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on that score the Communists may be pardoned, for he was the

father of the revolution and the founder of the state. But
Stalin's deification shows that the Communists have adopted it
as a tradition and have allowed themselves to indulge in plain
idolatry, which is more dangerous consequentially as
compared to symbolic icon-worship.

As in the case of despotic monarchs, of the past as well as of

the present, the secret of Stalin-worship lies in his ability to
instil unbounded fear, that favourite weapons of all dictators,
by means of numerous purges, constant terror and numberless
arrests. "When everybody is frightened, the 'Vozhd' is happy,"
says Louis Fischer. "Fear induces 'passing the buck' to higher-
ups, who pass to still higher-ups so that even Marshal Zhukov
and Foreign Minister Molotov 'pass the buck' to Joseph Stalin,
and he accordingly becomes the source of all authority. They
act only after he has given the wink or assigned them an area
of responsibility."

What is condemnable in our eyes is just the opposite in

Communist eyes and is, in fact, the key to Stalin's success,
thanks to Marxist philosophy! Stalin is heartless,
unconscientious, unscrupulous. His "triumph at home and
abroad" is, according to Louis Fischer, due to "the alacrity
with which he sacrifices persons, principles and truth. Stalin's
rules of success are: Alliances are made to be broken;
friendship has no real meaning; men must be discarded when
no longer useful; ideas and words have no existence unless
chained to the chariot of power; ends are everything, means

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

don't matter."

Stalin's whole life has been governed by those rules of

conduct. After Lenin's death, Stalin has to surmount several
obstacles to become dictator. The greatest obstacle was the
injunction against him in Lenin's last will. Then there was
Leon Trotsky, Lenin's second-in-command. But he gained his
end by combining with Zinoviev and Kamenev, two important
associates of Lenin and holding great influence in the party.

No sooner, however, had Stalin gained his objective and his

grip over the state became firm, he made an alliance with
Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky to 'bite the hand that had fed
him' - to crush Zinoviev and Kamenev. After both of these
leaders had been duly executed, he sent Bukharin and Rykov
also to the gallows, and Tomsky committed suicide before he
could be arrested.

Heinrich Yagoda, officially honoured as the "flaming sword of

the revolution" and the chief of the Soviet secret police
(G.P.U.), remained Stalin's right-hand man for over a decade.
He "arrested, exiled, imprisoned and shot many tens of
thousands" in obedience to the will of his master, Stalin, who,
however, did not fail to send him to the gallows on charges of
being a "foreign agent" and "traitor" after the famous Moscow
trial of March, 1938. The trial was conducted by the new
G.P.U. Chief, Yezhov, who also met the same fate in due
course of time.

Purges, which are Stalin's "substitute for democratic

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elections," which "remind the survivors that they derive their

authority from the autocrat whom they must serve" and that
"nobody in Soviet Russia must enjoy more authority or
popularity than is deflected upon them by the sun, Stalin," and
which serve to protect Stalin, the all-high, the sinless, the
infallible, from blame whenever something goes wrong, are,
according to Louis Fischer, "a permanent feature of Stalin's
Russia, In March, 1948, for instance, the Presidents of two of
the 16 republics in the Soviet Union (Georgia and White
Russia) were dismissed (in open violation of "Stalinist"
constitution - Author); no reason was indicated. Ministers and,
of course, minor officials are often expelled without notice
and without explanation. Usually this is followed by execution
or disappearance into oblivion."

(Joseph Stalin: the Man of Steel; "Sind Observer," Karachi)

This brief account of Soviet democracy and freedom forms yet

another warning to the upholders of Compromisism. If
confirmed and bona fide Communists cannot escape
persecution and slaughter at the hands of the so-called
dictatorship of the proletariat, what fun can there be in the
"romantic alliance" between heretical "Islamic Communism"
and orthodox, pure-blooded Marxism!

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Chapter V
COMMUNISM AND NATIONAL AND
CULTURAL ASPIRATIONS

1. NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION AND

CULTURAL AUTONOMY UNDER
COMMUNISM

In the vast multi-coloured panorama of Muslim political

activity all over the world, the two most important unifying
and synthesising strains on the canvas, apparent even to the
most casual observer, are those of "Self-determination" and
"Cultural Autonomy." Different parties interpret the two
factors differently without, however, destroying the
fundamental demands. The secularists interpret the former in
terms of territorial, linguistic or racial nationalism, while the
religiously-tuned Pan-Islamist, who form an over-whelming
majority of the world's Muslim population, strive ultimate aim
of forming a world federal state. Similarly, the secularists
mean by the latter the traditional Muslim culture which,
though Islamic in its foundations, has acquired different
secondary colourings in different Muslim communities
because of local conditions and history, while the pure
Islamists lay absolute emphasis on the Islamic aspect of their
"national culture" and its further development on Islamic lines.
In both cases, however, "Self-determination" and "Cultural
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Autonomy" practically mean "Muslim Self-determination"

and "Muslim Cultural Autonomy," the differences between the
"secularists" and the "theocrats" being, in the last analysis,
only quantitative.

The question may now be asked: What is the attitude of

Communism to these principles of Self-determination and
Culture Autonomy? A clear-cut and authoritative answer to
this question, namely, a plain exposition of Communist policy
in this behalf, is essential. For the Communist propagandists
have spread a widespread confusion, so much so that the
average unthinking Muslim who had the misfortune of coming
into contact with the elusive Communist propaganda has come
to believe that the rights of "national sovereignty" and
"cultural autonomy" are nowhere safer than in Communist
hands. A better instance of broad daylight fraud can hardly be
given, thanks to the Communist sanctification of "white lies."

For us Muslims, however, who have pledged to live and die

by Islam and to retain it at all costs, the fraud is not merely a
legal or a moral issue. It is rather something which endangers
our very existence.

It may, therefore, he declared at the very outset that

Communism is a sworn enemy of all forms of nationalism and
of all types of culture except the Marxist. The words, National
and Cultural Autonomy, have a peculiar significance in
Communism which no Muslim, whether a "secularist" or a
"theocrat", can possibly relish.

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The following statements (italicised by the present writer at

places for emphasising the Communist position), culled from
the writings of no less an authority than Stalin, and quoted
from an official propagandist publication, viz., Marxism and
the Question of Nationalities (Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin
series No. 14; People's Publishing House, Bombay), are
sufficient to open the eyes of all honest Muslims.

2. DEFINITION OF NATION
"What is a nation?" asks Stalin, and answers: "A nation is a
historically evolved, stable community of language, territory,
economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a
community of culture," and "it is only when all these
characteristics are present that we have a nation." (p. 7).

He refutes Springer's definition: "A nation is a union of

similarly thinking and similarly speaking persons; (it is) a
cultural community no longer tied to the soil," and Bauer's
definition: "A nation is a relative community of character,"
and says: "What, then, distinguishes Bauer's nation from the
mystical and self-contained 'national spirit' of the spiritualists?
. . . . . But what is national character if not a reflection of the
conditions of life, a coagulation of impressions derived from
environment?" (pp. 8, 9.)7

7
This notion has been derived by applying Marxist Philosophical
Materialism to the problem of Nationalities and is the anti-thesis of the
Islamic notion that "all who believe in the same principles are brothers, are
one Umma, one People."

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3. NATIONS' RIGHT TO SELF-

DETERMINATION.
"A nation is not merely a historical category but a historical
category belonging to a definite epoch, the epoch of rising
capitalism." (p. 11). Consequently, during the stage of the
Bourgeois Democratic Revolution - and in that ephemeral
stage alone! - already referred to in the sections on Albania
and China, which is a stage of Communist Struggle preceding
the stage of the Proletarian Democratic Revolution, "Social-
Democratic parties" must "proclaim the right of nations to
self-determination." This "right of self-determination means
that only the nation itself has the right to determine its destiny,
that no one has the right forcibly to interface in the life of the
nation, to destroy its schools and other institutions, to violate
its habits and customs, to repress its language, or curtail its
rights.8 This, of course, does not mean that Social-Democrats
will support every custom and institution of a nation. While
combating the exercise of violence against any nation, they
will permit the right of the nation to determine its own destiny,
at the same time agitating against the noxious customs and
institutions of that nation - (the most noxious being religion,
as already cited. - Author) - in order to enable the toiling strata
of the nation to emancipate themselves from them. The right

8
The word "forcibly" is significant, for the Communists, like the
imperialists, pretend to commit all acts of violence with the alleged consent
and at the initiative of the people. The exclusion of the word "religion" is
also significant. - Author.

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of self-determination means that a nation can arrange its life

according to its own will. It has the right to arrange its life on
the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal
relations with other nations. It has the right to complete
secession. Nations are sovereign and all nations are equal.9
This, of course, does not mean that Social-Democrats will
support every demand of a nation. A nation has the right even
to return to the old order of things; but this does not mean that
Social-Democrats will subscribe to such a decision if taken by
any institution of the said nation.10 The obligations of Social-
Democrats, who defend the interests of the proletariat, and the
rights of a nation, which consists of various classes, are two
different things . . . . . And this is why the class-conscious
proletariat cannot rally under the 'national' flag of the
bourgeoisie." (pp. 16, 17).

That the slogan of the "right of nations to self-determination"

is merely a make-shift and a smoke-screen in Communist
ideology, becomes clearer from Stalin's following remarks:-

"Comrade Chicherin's third mistake is that he speaks too much

of national self-determination, which has in effect become an
empty slogan easily adaptable to the use of the imperialists.
Comrade Chicherin has strangely forgotten that we discarded
this slogan two years ago (i.e., in 1919 - Author). Our
programme no longer contains this slogan - but of a better-

9
Beautiful words, these. But there is a world of difference between
"appearance" and "reality"! - Author.
10
What brazen-faced suppression of freedom! - Author.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

minted and more clearly-defined slogan - the right of nations

to political secession.11 These are two different things." (p.42).
"I must make a remark regarding one of Comrade Safarov's
amendments. He has allowed the phrase 'national cultural self-
determination' to creep into one of his amendments. This
amendment contains the following: 'Before the October
revolution the colonial and semi-colonial peoples of the
Eastern border regions of Russia were deprived by imperialist
policy of all possibility of partaking in the cultural
achievements of capitalist civilisation by means of their own
language,' etc. I must say that I am unable to accept this
amendment, because it smacks of Bundism. National cultural
self-determination12 is a Bundist formula. We have long ago
abandoned the nebulous slogans of self-determination - there
is no need to revive them. Furthermore, this whole phrase is a
most unnatural concatenation of words." (p. 45).13

4. THE NATIONAL RIGHT OF SECESSION

"On the question as to who is to express the will of the nation

11
Mark the word "political". Not ideological secession anyway! - Author.
12
More of this national cultural self-determination presently. Here, the
reader might compare, for the sake of disillusionment, this condemnation
with Mao Tse-tung's guarantee of "protecting Muslim culture" under
Communism, cited in the foregoing. What a contrast! What a deception! -
Author.
13
How fanatically orthodox are the Marxists even in the use of words!
And yet some Muslims can afford to think of a compromise between
Marxism and Islam! - Author.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

to secede, the Russian Communist Party adopts the class

viewpoint and in this takes into consideration the stage of
historical development of the given nation; whether it is
evolving from medievalism to bourgeois democracy, etc."
("Extract from the Party Programme, adopted March, 1919).
That is, no nation under Communism shall have the right to
sovereignty and secession until she has attained to the highest
stage of Marxist society, ideologically as well as practically,
which, for us Muslims; means that the Muslim republics of the
Soviet Union and other Muslim units now living under
Communism will not earn the right to secession and
sovereignty until and unless they have thoroughly absolved
themselves of the Islamic ideology and have become perfect
Marxists in philosophy as well as in social life!

"The question of the right of nations freely to secede must not

be confused with the question whether it would be expedient
for any given nation to secede at a given moment. This latter
question must be settled by the Party of the proletariat 14 in
each particular case independently, from the point of view of
the interests of the social development as a whole and the class
struggle of the proletariat for socialism." (Principal Decisions
of the G.P.S.U. on the National Question, p. 69). That is, not
until Marxism has triumphed thoroughly on a world-scale and
not unless Marx has been installed as the "Supreme Personal
Deity" of the globe, should our brothers living in the Soviet

14
Even though it may be a microscopic minority only, as in the case of the Muslim Republics
in U.S.S.R. (see Dawn Over Samarkand). - Author.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Union or in other Communist countries expect the consent of

the Communist over-lords for the transfer of "national
sovereignty" to their hands. Who will live to see the day?

5. DOWN WITH NATIONAL DISTINCIONS!

LONG LIVE MARXISM!

"The development of Communist organisations in the border
region (of the Soviet Union) is taking place under rather
peculiar circumstances which tend to hinder the normal
growth of the Party in these parts. On the one hand the Great
Russian Communists working in these regions, who have
grown up under the conditions of a 'sovereign' nation, and who
have never known national oppression, not infrequently
minimise the importance of national peculiarities in Party
work, or else ignore them altogether, and fail in their work to
reckon with the peculiarities of class structure, culture, social
life, and historical past of the given people, and so vulgarise
and distort the policy of the Party on the national question.
This circumstance leads to a deviation from Communism
towards the dominant-power spirit, the colonising spirit, the
spirit of Great-Russian chauvinism. On the other hand, the
native Communists, who have lived through the painful period
of national oppression and have not entirely ceased to be
haunted by the horrors of that period, not infrequently
exaggerate the importance of national peculiarities in Party
work, leave the class interests of the toilers in the background,
or else simply identify the interests of the toilers of the given

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nation with the 'general national' interests of that nation,

failing to pick out the former from the latter and to base their
Party work on them. This circumstance in its turn leads to a
deviation from Communism towards bourgeois-democratic
nationalism, which at times assumes the form of Pan-Islamism
and Pan-Turkism (in the East).15 The (Tenth) Congress (of the
Communist Party) emphatically condemning both these
deviations as harmful and dangerous to the cause of
Communism . . . . . ." (p. 33).

"The second deviation, on the contrary, lies in an exaggeration

of local peculiarities, in the fact that the common and main
thing which links these Eastern republics with industrial
regions of the Soviet Union is forgotten, that socialist tasks are
hushed up and that adaptations are made to the aims of a
narrow and restricted nationalism. The comrades who commit
this deviation are little concerned with the internal
development of their country, they prefer to leave this
development to the natural course of events . . . . . The result
of this deviation is that they become divorced from socialism
and degenerate into ordinary bourgeois nationalists. The task
of the University of the Peoples of the East is to train cadres in
a spirit of irreconcilable warfare against this latent
15
In the explanatory notes at the end of the book we are quoting from,
there is a note: "PAN-ISLAMISM - The political ideology of the upper
classes (Khans, mullah, landlords, merchants) of the Turkish and Tartar
peoples, which aims at uniting into a single unit all the nations professing
Islam, or Mohammedanism. Pan-Islamism is akin to Pan-Turkism, which
aims at uniting all the Turkic-Mohammedan people under the supremacy
of the Turks." (p. 71.)

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

nationalism." (pp. 58,59).

Finding that the Islamic sentiments of the people are dying

hard, the anger of Stalin and the Communist Party rises to a
higher pitch: "The Congress calls for a vigorous struggle
against all pseudo-Communist elements (e.g., those who want
to combine allegiance to Marxism with affection for Islam -
Author) who have wormed themselves into the Party of the
proletariat, and warns the Party against the temptation of
'enlarging' itself by the admission of intellectual, petty-
bourgeois nationalist elements (who, in sharp contrast to the
easily-deceivable illiterate and poverty-stricken people, are a
harder nut to crack - Author). The Congress considers that
reinforcement to the ranks of the Party in the border regions
(inhabited in the South by Muslims - Author) must be
recruited chiefly from among the proletarians and the poor,
toiling peasants of those regions (who can be easily converted
and subjugated to Marxism and from among whose offspring
can be trained and raised up the fiercest intellectual
Communists - Author) and that at the same time activities
must be directed to strengthening the Party organisation in the
border regions by improving the quality of the membership."
(p. 34).

"The aim must be" to efface16 all distinctions existing between

16
Cf. the next para. All ideologies create psychological, social and political
barriers between their followers and the outside world for the purposes of
self-preservation. And the surest way to annihilate an ideology is by
removing those barriers. This is what Communism has been ruthlessly

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

different national groups and between Muslims and non-

Muslims, and, for that purpose, "to unite the workers of all
nationalities in Russia into united and integral collective
bodies in the various localities and to unite these collective
bodies into a single party . . . . . .

"The type of organisation influences not only practical work.

It stamps an indelible impress on the whole mental life of the
workers. The worker lives the life of his organisation, which
stimulates his intellectual growth and educates him. And thus
moving within his organisation and continually meeting
comrades belonging to other nationalities, and with them
fighting a common struggle under the leadership of a common
collective body, he becomes deeply imbued with the idea that
workers are primarily members of one class family, members
of the one army of socialism. And this cannot but have a
tremendous educational value for large sections of the
working class . . . . . But this is not the case with an
organisation (of the workers) based on national lines," in
which "type of organisation the worker is primarily a member
of his nation," it being a crime according to the Marxist creed
which wants to see the worker de-nationalised, de-Islamised
and de-non-Marxised! (p. 22).

doing inside the Soviet Union for the past thirty years. Condemnation of
national distinctions is therefore nothing to be surprised at. - Author.

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6. NATIONAL CULTURAL AUTONOMY

UNDER COMMUNISM
"What must be our attitude towards nations which for one
reason or another will prefer to remain within the general
framework (of the Soviet Union)?

"We have seen that national cultural autonomy is unsuitable.

Firstly, it is artificial and impracticable, for it proposes
artificially to draw into a single nation people whom the very
march of events, of real events, is disuniting and dispersing to
every corner of the country (i.e., the Communist-sponsored
bloody conflict between the Communist led workers and their
helpless brethren-in-faith has already smashed the solidarity of
Muslims, Christians and Jews - Author).

Secondly, it stimulates nationalism, because it tends to the

view which advocates the 'demarcation' of people according to
national curiae, the 'organisation' of nations, the 'preservation'
and cultivation of 'national pecularities' - a thing that is
entirely incompatible with Social-Democracy. . . . . .

"Thus national autonomy does not solve the problem.

"What is the way out?

"The only real solution is regional autonomy. . . . . . .

"The advantage of regional autonomy consists firstly in the

fact that it does not deal with a fiction deprived of territory.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

"Secondly, it does not divide people according to nation

(which might leave room for the revival of religious or moral
traditions at some future date - Author), it does not strengthen
national partitions and unites the population in such a manner
as to open the way for division of a different kind, division
according to class . . . . . . .

"Thus regional autonomy is an essential element in the

solution of the national problem." (pp. 19,20).

"The Party of the proletariat decisively rejects what is known

as 'national cultural autonomy', under which education and so
on is removed from the competence of the state and placed
within the competence of something in the nature of National
Diets. National cultural autonomy artificially divides the
workers living in one locality, and even working in the same
industrial enterprises, in accordance with their membership of
a particular 'national culture' (here the reference seems to be
directly to the Mosque and the Church - Author) ; in other
words, it strengthens the ties between the workers and the
bourgeois culture of individual nations, whereas the aim of
Social-Democracy is to strengthen the international culture of
the proletariat of the world" (i.e., Marxist materialist culture -
Author). (p. 69).

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

7. THE TYPE OF NATIONAL CULTURE

WHICH COMMUNISM PERMITS AND
DEVELOPS
As we have seen just now, Marxism is a sworn enemy of
"national cultural autonomy." It, however, has a place for
"national culture" of its conception, which it creates and
upholds and strives to develop. This fact, however, lands in
confusion many Muslims who do not take the trouble of
studying Communist classics and trying to understand the
implications of Communist principles intelligently. Super-
ficialism throws them into raptures over the "Communist
support for national culture and its development" and prepares
the way for Compromise.

But unfortunately the national culture of Communist

conception is a purely Marxist materialistic, atheistic culture.
It comes to be differentiated from nation to nation only in
point of language, the native genius of the people and their
stage of class-wise development. Nothing more. As for the
Islamic cultural concepts, they are anathema to such a culture
and even their most harmless traces are meant to be wiped out
for the purposes of the purification and evolution of the
'national culture'.

This is what Stalin says:-

". . . . . what is national culture? How is it to be made

compatible with proletarian culture? Did not Lenin, even

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before the war, say that there are two cultures - bourgeois
culture and socialist culture - and that the demand for national
culture is a reactionary demand of the bourgeoisie, which
strives to infect the minds of the workers with the virus of
nationalism? How are we to render the development of
national culture, the development of schools and courses in the
native languages, and the training of Communist cadres from
among local people compatible with the building of socialism,
with the building of a proletarian culture? Is this not an
irreconcilable contradiction? Of course not! We are building a
proletarian (Marxist) culture. That is absolutely true. But it is
also true that proletarian culture which is socialist in content,
assumes different forms and methods of expression among the
various peoples that have been drawn into the work of
socialist construction, depending on differences of language,
customs,17 and so forth. Proletarian in content and national in
form - such is the universal human culture towards which
socialism is proceeding.

"To develop national culture" - what does it signify in Soviet

Russia? It signifies: "to build up a wide system is marching.
Proletarian culture does not cancel National culture but lends it
content. National culture, on the other hand, does not cancel
proletarian culture but lends its form. The demand for national
culture was a bourgeois demand as long as the bourgeois was
in power and the consolidation of nations proceeded under the
aegis of the bourgeois system. The demand for national culture

17
Not religious customs, mind you! - Author.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

became a proletarian demand when the proletariat came into

power…..Whoever has not grasped the fundamental difference
between these two situations will never understand either
Leninism or the essence of the national question from the
standpoint of Leninism." (pp. 54,55)….of courses and schools
for both general education and vocational and technical
training, teaching in the native languages, with the purpose of
training Soviet Party, trade union and economic cadres from
among the native people." (p. 53).

Stalin's remarks about the sufferings of national minorities and

their proposed remedy also clarify the Communist conception
of national culture.

"What is it that particularly agitates a national minority?

"A minority is discontented not because there is no national

union but because it does not enjoy the right to use its native
language. Permit it to use its native language and the
discontent will pass of itself.

"A minority is discontented not because there is no artificial

union but because it does not possess its own schools. Give it
its own schools and all grounds for discontent will disappear.

"A minority is discontented not because there is no national

union,18 but because it does not enjoy liberty of conscience,

18
See how cleverly the antipathy against national consciousness is being
created here psychologically. A Communist never forgets his mission of
obliterating religious and national influences! - Author.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

liberty of movement, etc. Give it these liberties and it will

cease to be discontented."

This last factor is, in fact, the most important. But it is a pity
that, while advocating it academically, Stalin and his Pary
have been the greatest enemies of these liberties. The Muslim
regions of Central Asia, the Volga, Caucasia and Crimea are
still red with the blood of those sons and daughters of Islam
who refused to sell their conscience and religious convictions
to the blood-thirsty Communists. And so long as a single
believer in Islam is alive in the Soviet Union, there will be no
end to it, we may be sure!

8. ALL MUST BOW TO MOSCOW!

Since the termination of the Second World War, Communism
has succeeded signally in extending its territories both in the
East and the West. As a consequence several new Communist
States have come into existence, adding immensely to the
political power as well as the prestige of Communism. It
would be out of place here to discuss whether the means
which the Communists employed to gain control of these
countries were fair or otherwise and to assess the relative
importance of the various factors which contributed ultimately
to Communist success - the social unrest, the political
unstability, the vigilance of Moscow and its timely action, and
the hesitation shown by the Anglo-American block.
Communist victory - thumping victory - has sealed all these
issues, at least for the time being, and the world must reckon

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

with the fait accompli. One issue, however, has significantly

come up, and it is of vital concern to us, or, rather, to those
who think in terms of joining the Communist block. The issue
revolves round the question of national freedom which we
were discussing in the previous sections. Several incidents
have happened during the last couple of years which go to
prove that, even outside the Soviet Union, the Kremlin cannot
tolerate the slightest show of national independence on the
part of a sister Communist country, in spite of the impending
peril of the third World War, and is prepared to sacrifice - to
actually murder - her most loyal agents and locally -
influential Communist leaders on that account.

Communist loyalty is, of course, a well-known fact. Instances

could be multiplied by the score that a Communist would
rather die than commit the crime of acting disloyally toward
the mother-State, the Soviet Union. Here, one such instance,
selected off-hand, will suffice. The following news-item
appeared in the Pakistan Times on September 16, 1948:-

"Mr. G. Burns, a member of the Queensland Communist Party

Executive, publicly declared today that Australian
Communists would fight for Russia in the event of a war
between Russia and the Western Powers.

"Answering a question put by an ex-serviceman at the

Queensland People's Party forum, he said: 'If Australia is
involved in such a war between Soviet Russia and British
imperialism, we shall oppose that war. We shall fight on the

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

side of the Soviet.' -Reuter."

For the Kremlin, however, and for the Communist

International, such sentiments of loyalty and their execution
are not enough. What is demanded is abject submission and
absolute surrender - total suspension of one's powers of
thinking and mechanical execution of the tasks set by the
Kremlin. And woe to him who might have the audacity of
differing even "most respectfully" and in the minutest detail!

It might sound strange, but it is a fact. Facts are sometimes

stranger than fiction. It is more true of Communism than of
any other camp. The excommunication of Marshal Tito, the
spear-head of Communism in south-eastern Europe, is one of
the greatest sensations of recent politics.

This punishment, however, was not enough in the eyes of

Russia's man of steel. The Cominform ordered the satellites to
sever diplomatic relations with Communist Yugoslavia, put a
price on Tito's head, and engineered large-scale sabotage in
the country.

In the whole Communist history, Marshal Tito is perhaps the

only Communist leader who, having courted the displeasure of
the Kremlin, has been singularly fortunate in being able to
plough his lonely furrow, to keep his head high and to escape
death.

There have been several other cases more or less of the same
type in the newly-born Communist States of Europe, and in all

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cases, without exception, the victims could not withstand

Stalin's intrigues and had ultimately to submit to the GPSU's
fetters and the executioner's hand. Two such cases may be
cited here: those of Gomulka and Rajk.

On September 7, 1948, the News Chronicle commented:

"the dismissal of Uradislau Gomulka that took away this post

as Secretary-General of the Polish Communist Party, will be
an immense shock for the Polish people, who have been
taught to admire and revere him as one of their greatest
leaders. It is also a signal victory for Moscow. Like most of
his compatriots, Gomulka was first a Pole and afterwards a
Communist. He believed in friendship with Russia but on
many points of national policy he was unable to follow the
Moscow directives. With good reasons, he was particularly
reluctant to force the pace in agriculture. Now he has paid the
price."

The incident of Rajk's execution is of more recent occurrence.

This veteran Communist leader, who was virtually responsible
for the conversion of Hungary into a Communist state and
who held the posts of Minister of the Interior and Foreign
Minister in the Hungarian Communist Government, was tried
on charges of planning to overthrow the Government and to
make Hungary a "colony of Tito's Yugoslavia". His only
crime actually was that he was not a "Moscowite", and though
a staunch Communist and Marxist, he did not relish the idea of
flattering Moscow.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Laszlo Rajk's intergrity as a Communist was above reproach

and his devotion to Marx above all doubt. He became an
active Marxist at an early age and was imprisoned in Hungary
in 1931 for subversive activity. In 1936 he led the "Rakosi
Brigade" of Hungarian Communists in the Spanish Civil War.
Having returned to his country just before the last World War,
"he was entrusted by Moscow with the important task of
organising the resistance movement in Hungary and in 1944
was arrested by the Fascist police and sentenced to death. But
his brother, Under-Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior,
had him smuggled out of the country just before the sentence
was due to be carried out." (Dawn, September 26, 1949.)

With the victorious Red Army, however, Rajk returned to

Budapest as Secretary of the Communist Party.

In 1946 he became Minister of the Interior and "ruthlessly

purged the country of non-Communists who held important
posts, and organised secret police." (Ibid.)

But though a fanatical Communist, Rajk was not a Moscowite.

"He had never visited the Kremlin until he was summoned
there in May, 1948, to receive severe rebukes for deviationist
tendencies." (Ibid.)

Intrigues were started against Rajk soon after Tito's quarrel

with the Cominform. "First he lost control of the police and
became the Foreign Minister. Then he was removed from all
office in disgrace . . . . . At the last election he was at the top
of the list of candidates; but he was arrested soon afterwards"
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and sent to the grave.

Political emancipation and national self-determination with

the help of Soviet Russia! - that is one of the slogans some
unthinking Muslims believe in and propagate. But, could any
sensible Muslim subscribe to this slogan in the face of the
facts narrated above?

Russia, they say, is a friend of the oppressed nations, and

therefore, while struggling for wresting power from the hands
of Western imperialists, we must seek close alliance and help
from Russia. Very well, indeed! But could anyone tell me if
the Arabs of Palestine were and are not an oppressed people?
It would be impossible to find a single Muslim on this earth
who would not readily admit that the Palestinian Arabs are an
oppressed people who have been violently wronged by the big
Powers. Then, how is it that Soviet Russia, instead of helping
these oppressed people to the green valleys of freedom, joined
hands with the Western imperialists, nay, actually competed
with them, in letting loose an avalanche of the molten lava of
indescribable miseries upon them, in throttling their freedom,
in rendering them homeless, in jeopardising their safety, and
in establishing the alien aggressor imperialist party of Israel.

The fact is that Communism is not governed by moral

standards or the accepted human values of the non-Communist
world. She is heartless and without conscience, and her whole
moral code is condensable into one word: EXPEDIENCY.
The Communist acts in a given situation, not according to

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some high and noble set moral principles, but in accordance

with the exigencies of the case. If it suits his end to assist
ruining Palestinian Arabs, he will do so gladly; while, if it
suits his end to offer his moral help to Indonesian Muslims in
their righteous struggle for freedom and to expose and oppose
the intrigues of the imperialists in that connection, he will
accomplish the task as gladly. In all cases, the guiding
consideration for the Communist world has been and will
always be: what line of action suits the cause of the
furtherance of Communism best. No altruism of our type. No
question of fighting for the sake of absolute moral values. No
problem of showing respect to the birth-rights of nations as we
understand them Yesterday Russia posed as the friend of
Indonesians and backed up their demands. Tomorrow, when
Indonesia opposes Marxist domination, though it might still
sincerely feel for Russia in terms of friendship, Russia and her
satellites will leave no stone unturned in heaping columnies
and miseries upon the country. In fact, nothing better can be
expected from those who can excommunicate or murder their
own veteran comrades like Tito, Rajk and Gomulka on the
issue of the slightest insubordination to the Kremlin, declaring
thereby to the world in the most unmistakable terms that the
non-Communist nations, countries and states should expect
Communist help only if they transfer the control of their
national policies to Moscow and give definite promise of
continuous and sure march towards Marxism.

More than 99 per cent. Muslims will not accept this position

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

even at the cost of their lives. What fun is there, then, in such
slogans as "Compromise with Communism" or "Alliance with
Communists". The earlier we wash our minds clean of these
delusions, the better for us and the world at large.

9. THE COMMUNIST TACTICS AGAIN !

As remarked above, the Communists act in a given situation
according to the demands of "time and place" - according to
what would serve their end and not according to what would
serve the ends of their deluded friends, e.g., national liberation
and political emancipation. This is a very important distinction
which Muslims would do well never to lose sight of ; for it
forms the key to our future relations with the Communists.

To a Muslim it is most puzzling to see the Communists

supporting a certain thing in one country, for instance
bourgeoisie democratic nationalism, and fighting it in another.
This not only puzzles the Muslims but also helps in creating
confusion among them. Yet this is what is in perfect harmony
with the requirements of the demands of Communist ideology.

The following observations by Stalin which he made on May

18, 1925, while outlining the "tasks of the University of the
Peoples of the East in relation to the Colonies and Dependent
Countries of the East," should be enough to clear all confusion
which might exist in the mind of any Muslim. It is not
necessary to read between the lines to find out what the
Communists aim at. Stalin says (pp. 60-65):-

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"What are the immediate tasks of the revolutionary movement

in the colonies and dependent countries . . . . . . . ?

"The peculiarity of the colonies and dependent countries at the

present time is that a single and all-embracing colonial East no
longer exists.19 . . . . . . We have now at least three categories
of colonies and dependent countries. Firstly, there are
countries . . . . . which have no proletariat, and which
industrially are completely undeveloped. Secondly, there are
countries……which are industrially little developed, and
which have a comparatively small proletariat. Thirdly, there
are countries…….Which are capitalistically more or less
developed, and which possess a more or less numerous
national proletariat.

"Clearly, it is quite impossible to put all these countries in the

same category."

In countries falling under the first category, "where the

national bourgeoisie has yet no grounds for splitting into a
revolutionary party and a compromising party, the task of the
Communist elements is to do everything to create a united
national front against imperialism. The separation of
Communist elements into a single Communist Party can take
place in these countries only in the course of the struggle
against imperialism, especially after a successful revolutionary
war against imperialism."

19
It is more so at the present moment (1949). - Author.

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In countries falling under the second category, "where the

national bourgeoisie is already split into a revolutionary party
and a compromising party, but where the compromising
section of the bourgeoisie cannot yet become welded with
imperialism, the Communists can no longer make it their aim
to form a united national front against imperialism. In such
countries the Communists must pass from the policy of a
united national front to the policy of a revolutionary bloc of
the workers and petty bourgeoisie. In such countries this bloc
may assume the form of a single party of workers and peasants
. . . . . on the condition, however, that this peculiar kind of
party shall actually represent a bloc of two forces - the
Communist Party and the party of revolutionary petty
bourgeoisie. The task of this block is to expose the
temporising spirit of the national bourgeoisie and to wage a
determined struggle against imperialism. A party with such a
dual composition is both necessary and expedient, as long as it
does not bind the Communist Party hand and foot, as long as it
does not restrict the freedom of the Communist Party to carry
on agitation and propaganda, as long as it does not hinder the
rallying of the proletarians around the Communist Party, and
as long as it facilitates the actual leadership of the
revolutionary movement by the Communist Party. A party
with such a dual composition is neither necessary nor
expedient if it does not answer all these requirements . . . . . "

In countries falling under the third category, the characteristic

feature "is not only that the national bourgeoisie has split into

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a revolutionary party and a compromising party, but primarily

that the compromising section of this bourgeoisie has already
managed in the main to come to an agreement with
imperialism. Dreading revolution more than imperialism . . . . .
this section of the bourgeoisie . . . . is completely going over
to the camp of the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution . . .
. The victory of the revolution cannot be achieved unless this
block is broken. But in order to break this block fire must be
concentrated on the compromising national bourgeoisie its
treachery must be exposed; the toiling masses must be
emancipated from its influence, and the conditions necessary
for the hegemony of the (Marxist) proletariat must be
systematically prepared. In other words, it is a question of
preparing the proletariat of such countries . . . . for the role of
leader in the liberation movement, and of dislodging, step by
step, the bourgeoisie and its spokesmen from this honourable
position. The task is to create a revolutionary anti-imperialist
block and to ensure the hegemony of the proletariat within this
block. This block may, but not always necessarily, assume the
form of a joint workers' and peasants' party formally bound by
a single platform. The independence of the Communist Party
in such countries must be the basic slogan of the advanced
elements of Communism . . . . But the Communist Party can
and must enter into an open bloc with the revolutionary wing
of the bourgeoisie in order, after having isolated the
compromising national bourgeoisie, to lead the vast masses of
the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the fight against
imperialism."

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"In this connection one must not lose sight of two deviations
in the practice of the active workers of the colonial East,
which must be combated if genuinely revolutionary cadres are
to be trained.

"The first deviation consists in under-rating the evolutionary

possibilities of the liberation movement and in over-rating the
idea of a united all-embracing national front in the colonies
and dependent countries without due regard for the state and
degree of development of these countries. This is a deviation
to the Right, which threatens to degrade the revolutionary
movement and to submerge the Communist elements in the
general welter of bourgeoisie nationalists. It is the direct duty
of the University of the Peoples of the East to combat this
deviation with the utmost determination.

"The second deviation consists in over-rating the

revolutionary possibilities of the liberation movement and in
under-rating the importance of an alliance between the
working class and the revolutionary bourgeoisie against
imperialism. The Communists in Java, who recently
erroneously put forward the slogan of a Soviet government for
their country, suffer, it seems, from this deviation. This is a
deviation to the Left, which threatens to isolate the
Communist Party from the masses and to transform it into a
sect. A determined struggle against this deviation is an
essential condition for the training of really revolutionary
cadres for the colonies and dependent countries of the East."

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10. THE COMMUNIST EXPLANATION OF

VARIATIONS IN POLICY
We have seen the high flexibility of Communist technique
which radiates policies often apparently conflicting with one
another and is capable of deluding all except those who might
take the trouble of delving below the surface. Change of front
is a part of Communist strategy and it succeeds, more than
anything else, in bringing victories to Communism.

When the Communists appear on the political scene of a

country, they pose as harmless nationalists carrying the banner
of economic reform for the uplift of the down-trodden and the
oppressed; and they are ready to stand for the preservation of
all the categories of freedom. But once they succeed in
capturing power, their first task is to liquidate their fellow-
travellers and to cancel all freedoms except the freedom of
mechanically believing in and practising Marxism.

This, however, cannot be termed as fraud, according to

Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist teaching, though even if it could be
considered a fraud, it would have been a morally-good act
according to the Communist code. The Communist has his
own beautiful theory to defend his action. He would say
outright that the transition from Capitalism to Socialism
necessitates that the struggle should pass through the stage of
the Bourgeoisie Democratic Revolution and that the
nationalist sentiments and guarantees of religious and other
freedoms refer to that particular stage. Having reached the

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stage of Proletarian Democratic Revolution, however, those

sentiments and those guarantees become meaningless. This
explanation is quite satisfying from the Communist pint of
view and for the Communist interests. But what of those who
followed the Communists solely because they said things and
gave promises which they liked and wanted? The only course
left open to them shall be to commit actual suicide, for they
had already committed political suicide when they joined
forces with the Communists!

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Chapter VI
Islam and Muslims in the Soviet Union (1)
POLITICAL AGGRESSION

1. THE GREAT ILLUSION

The appalling ignorance of Muslims as regards and its methods and

the subtlety of Communist propaganda necessitates a somewhat
detailed exposition, not only of Communist aims, but also of
Communist methods. Muslims, even the highly educated Muslims,
in fact the “Muslim Communists” themselves, seldom take the
trouble of studying Marxism and its practical applications critically.
Muslim Communists are usually such persons whom their
psychological make up and the emotional bias, rather than an honest
intellectual grasp, drives into the fold of Marxism; while the pro-
Communist Muslims are cent percent those who remain contented
with what one Communist propagandists tell them. They never try
to penetrate to the sources below the surface, with the consequence
that they ultimately fall a prey to various types of illusions.

We have been dealing in these pages with some of the illusions.

There is, however, one which still remains to be dispelled. The
Communist propagandists are telling the Muslims that the Muslim
national groups inhabiting the Soviet Union are the most fortunate
in the world and that Islam has gained by the Communist victory
and domination in Russia. Books like “Muslims in the U.S.S.R.” are
being circulated, commendatory articles on the treatment of Islam
and Muslims in the Soviet Union are being published even in such
Muslim countries as Pakistan and “white lies” are being broadcast

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in general to delude the ignorant Muslims.

The main theme of all this propaganda literature is that the Muslims
of the Soviet Union have progressed in the material domains. There
is nothing to be sorry about it. In fact, a Muslim must, in conformity
with Islam, feel positively happy. But what the Muslim further
wants to know is whether his fellow-religionists have progressed as
Muslims or as Marxists. He wants to know whether they have
progressed religiously also or have moved just in the opposite
direction. This propaganda is simply silent on that point but for a
photograph in the “Muslims in the U.S.S.R.” depicting some old-
fashioned Muslims offering prayers during the war-day when, as
everybody knows, the Soviet Union relaxed its anti-religious policy,
patronized the church and the mosque and even the “fatherland” and
“motherland” type of nationalism, and staged so many other
somersaults, for the sake of expediency, eventually to return to her
former orthodox Marxist programme.

LENIN’S DECLARATION

The new life of Muslims under Communist rule began with an

illusion for which no less a person than Lenin himself was
responsible. At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, all was not
well with the Communists. They were masters of Central Russia
only and were surrounded on all sides by enemies. The fight was
tough, the path to victory was strewn with thorns, and many a time
it appeared as if the Communists were going to lose the day. There
was consternation in the Communist camp and they were resorting
to every possible trick to gain their ends and to liquidate their
enemies.

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There were 30,000,000 Muslims in the Russian empire who had

suffered terrible persecution and had been virtually bled white under
the Czarist rule. Devoutly religious and intensely nationalistic, they
had struggled and were struggling at the time of the Revolution to
re-gain their lost freedom and to rebuild the house of Islam.

To win over these sturdy Muslims, the Council of Peoples‟

Commissars broadcast the following beautiful declaration on 7th
December, 1917:-

“Comrades and Brother! Muslims of Russia, Tatars on the Volga

and in Crimea, Kirghies and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Turks
and Tatars of Transcaucasia, inhabitants of Caucasus---all whose
mosques and houses of God have been destroyed, whose faith and
customs have been trampled down by the tyrants of Russia! It is
solemnly declared that from today on your faith and your customs,
your national and cultural institutions are free and inviolable.
Organize your national life freely and without let or hindrance. This
is your right. Know that your rights, as well as the rights of all
nations of Russia, will be protected by the full might of the
Revolution and its organs.” (Dawn Over Samarkand, pp. 55, 56)

On top of this declaration came the propaganda of Lenin‟s

friendship for the Muslims. For instance, the news was widely
circulated that on 9th December, 1917, the Soviet of Petrograd (now
Leningrad) had sent from the famous Ermitage museum to
Samarkand a copy of the Holy Qur‟an said to have been written by
Caliph Osman himself.

Lenin‟s declaration closely resembled that of Mao Tse-tung, made

later to the Chinese Muslims, and the success it achieved in creating
confusion was not very different from that achieved later in China.

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The Revolution was successful and disillusionment too was not late
in coming.

THE COMMUNIST BETRAYAL

In their own good time, the Communists not only drowned Muslim
nationalism in the blood of innocent Muslim men, women and
children, but also launched the campaign of the gradual elimination
of Islam, for which they employed both methods: direct as well as
indirect. Those who were educated and intelligent and had the
courage to stick to Islam and to refuse the conversion to Marxist
materialism, were tried on charges of being counter-revolutionaries
and bourgeoisie and were secretly assassinated or openly executed.
The uneducated Muslims, who were harmless in the sense that they
were incapable of leading any Islamic campaign, were left with their
Islam to die a natural death and to perform the task of burying Islam
along with them when they moved to the graves. The rising
generations were tied up to the Marxist system of education an order
to grow in due course into full-fledged Marxist atheists and
materialists.

Indeed, the story of the subjugation of Muslims by Communist

Russia, and the gradual eliminations of Islam by Communism,
constitutes the greatest tragedy of all Muslim history. Compared
with this tragedy, all the miseries which Muslims have suffered
under the heels of imperialism pale into insignificance. The tragedy
is great. But what is more tragic than the tragedy itself is the
colossal ignorance of Muslims. Demoralized, disintegrated and
confused, most of us have lost contact with the reality and the
consequence is that we are easily misled by appearances. We live in
an age of propaganda. Yet we are the only religious group whose
propaganda machinery is the weakest in the world. Therefore, any
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propagandist organisation which has sufficient courage to propagate

falsehoods can lead us astray. Among internal evils, the
“Ahmadiya” propaganda from Qadian and Lahore provides a
fitting instance, while Communism enjoys this privileged
position among external forces.

FALSE COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA

Not only do the Communists carry on false propaganda among the

Muslims but they have also the courage of bringing the allegation of
misrepresentation against all those who might try to state the true
facts. If you say anything which may not be pleasing to them, they
would at once dub you as an agent of Capitalists, although you may
be actually more anti-capitalist than they themselves. Knowing that
the Muslims of the Soviet Union are living behind an “Iron Curtain”
which renders it practically impossible to verify the facts, they will
challenge you outright. You may quote to them the authority of
those numerous Muslim victims of Communist aggression who are
now living as exiles in Arabia and Turkey and Afghanistan and the
Far East. Actually their evidence must be decisive. But a
Communist will not accept it, saying that they are all stooges of
capitalism and that their statements concerning the persecution of
Islam in the Soviet Union are false.

On the other hand, the Communist literature on this topic is one-

sided and elusive. The facts are arranged to suit a predetermined
conclusion. The story is made up to create a particular effect. It is
difficult to glean any bitter truths from such writings,

It is difficult, but it is not impossible. It is not impossible for those

who might study that literature with care and deeper effort.

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The present writer has before him a Communist publication, “Dawn

Over samarkand”, where the veteran communist Joshua Kunitz
relates the story of the conquest of Muslim Central Asia by
Communism. It is dedicated to the Negro People of the United
States of America and has been published “with the permission and
authority” of the Communist People's Publishing House, Bombay.

The Communist propagandists proclaim aloud : (1) that the Muslim

units of the Soviet Union were not subjugated forcibly and
Communism was not forced upon them, and that on the contrary it
was a case of voluntary acceptance; (2) that the Communist rule had
no deleterious effects upon the Muslim religious life.

How far these assertions are true shall become clear from the
following historical account, where the narrative of Central Asia is
directly based on the book referred to.

2. THE CONQUEST OF CENTRAL ASIA

The beginnings of the troubles of Muslim Central Asia date back to

the eighteenth century, when the house of Islam, divided against
itself, began to fall before the onslaught of Russian armies. In 1717,
Peter the First made the first attempt to crush Muslim power by
siding in the internal disputes of the various khanates into which
Central Asia had become divided. The attempt did not succeed. It
was left to his successor to execute the plan.

SUBJUGATION BY THE CZARS

The Khirghies were the first to give way under constant pressure
and continuous invasions from the north and the west. Very soon
the Russian armies were on the banks of the Syr-Daria. By 1870, the
Khanates of Kokand and Bokhara had fallen to the invaders. Khiva
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was annexed in 1873. The Emir of Bokhara and the Khan of Khiva
became the vassals of the Czar. A Russian Viceroy was installed in
Tashkent. Ultimately, the whole of Muslim Central Asia lay
prostrate at the feet of the “Great White Czar.”

The abandonment of Islamic social dynamism had given rise to

social evils and political degeneration which, in its turn, transformed
those conquerors of Russia into her salves in the eighteenth century.
After holding high the torch of learning and social justice and
political stability for Centuries, Muslims of central Asia had
permitted themselves to fall into intellectual lethargy and social
indolence and political corruption and the inevitable consequence
was slavery. Thence-forth evils were bound to increase, and so they
did.

THE POLICY OF THE ROMANOVS

Afraid of religious opposition the imperialism of the Romanovs did

not manifest itself in the policy of Russification. Ruthless economic
exploitation was adopted instead, and the degenerate Khans and
their corrupt officials were employed for its execution.

The equilibrium of the natural economy of the Muslim regions was

shattered. Its place was taken by modern capitalist economy, with
all the poison of imperialist design. Whatever prosperity the Muslim
masses enjoyed under the half-Islamic economy of the former days
was rapidly wiped out. The movement from agricultural economy to
industrial economy was effected with the total exclusion of those
compensating advantages which had come up in independent
countries. The aim of the Romanovs was not to build up the Muslim
regions but to develop them into sources of raw materials only for
feeding Russian industry. Whatever native industry was in existence

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already was mercilessly suppressed. Textile manufacture was totally

prohibited. Slowly the wealth of the country became the monopoly
of the Russian industrialists and money-lenders. A small portion of
it was also shared by the Muslim middle-men, i.e. the corrupt Khans
and Beys. The peasant masses, who formed the backbone of the
population, were progressively pauperised, until prosperity became
a forgotten word.

The economic policy of the imperialists, which hinged on cotton-

growing for the Russian textile-mills, finally spelt complete disaster.
“In the cotton-districts of Turkestan, for instance, thirty per cent of
the entire population was landless, forty per cent had only one head
of cattle per family or no cattle at all, thirty per cent were altogether
property less and homeless . A vast army of landless peasants and
agricultural workers wandered from one region to another in search
of jobs. The indebtedness of the poorest section of the peasantry
mounted by almost 100 per cent, from 1901 to 1911. The same was
true of Bokhara and Khiva. Peasants lost their lands . Farm tenancy
was on the increase. Only the richer peasants, the Kulaks, the beys,
hose who could afford to cultivate cotton without having to resort to
loans, found cotton-growing profitable. Also the usurers and the
Russian firms craxed rich on cotton. For the majority of the native
peasantry the transition……from a primitive natural economy to
commercial farming was the cause of infinite suffering and
widespread ruin.” (Dawn over Samarkand, pp. 25, 26).

The Russians not only ruined the settled agriculturists but also the
nomad tribes of the Kazzaks, the Khirghies and the Turkomans by
seizing their pastures and giving them away to Russian peasants.
“Deprived of their pastures, the sole source of livelihood , the
nomads retired farther and farther into the barren steppes, where

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they were rapidly dying out.” The more advanced peasants of

Bokhara and Khiva and Ferghana move into the hills and took to
brigandage for earning their livelihood.

MUSLIM REVOLT AGAINST CZARIST IMPERIALISM

The Czarist regime was indeed an unmixed evil for Muslim Central
Asia. But as we just saw in the case of peasants, the Muslim masses
did not submit to it as humble slaves. Their struggle for liberation
from the clutches of the Russian tyrants continued throughout.
Kokand witnessed a furious revolt between the years 1873 and
1875. Ultimately the Khan who had submitted to Russian
suzerainty, was himself obliged to leave the country and seek refuge
in Moscow. The superior Russian armies suppressed the revolt with
all the ruthlessness they could command. In 1898 there was a
general conflagration throughout Central Asia. 1916 saw the third
upsurge of the forces of Muslim liberation. This time the Muslims
had much greater chances of success. Because the czarist
imperialism was on its last legs. But just when they were nearing the
fulfilment of their cherished ambitions they were forced into the
trap of Communist “imperialism” and were thrown from the frying
pan into the fire.

THE REACTIONARIES

Crushed and disintegrated by imperialist strategy, Muslims had

become divided into two groups in matters of political ideology,
though both were fundamentally united on the issue of self-
determination. On the one hand there were the feudalists like the
corrupt Emir of Bokhara and his compatriots. They had shared with
the Russians the exploitation of the masses. They had learnt to adore
their personal interests. Confused thinking, lack of courage and the

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absence of a correct grasp of Islamic obligation had led them to

ignore the most essential instruments of Islamic progress and power.
Short-sighted and suffering from unhealthy prejudices, they had
played into the hands of the imperialists and had learnt to uphold
corruption and social injustice. They desired freedom from the
Russian yoke, but theirs was a conception of freedom devoid of
progressive idealism.

PROGRESSIVE MUSLIMS

Opposed to this group, which possessed all the political power by

virtue of its association with the imperialists, was the party of
progressive Muslims which stood not only for overthrowing the
foreign yoke but also for establishing a healthy political and social
order for Islamic enlightenment, advancement in scientific learning,
social justice and democratic government, Distinguished for their
progressive outlook from the conservatives, they were known by the
name of jadids‫ـــ‬the Modern

It was in the year 1905, soon after the Russo–Japanese War, that the
movement of the jadids began to take its form. It first appeared
among the more advanced Muslims of the Volga, the Crimea and
the Caucasus. From there it penetrated into Central Asia and
captured the imagination of “the small group of intellectuals in
Turkestan and Bokhara.” In the beginning it was a purely cultural
and constitutional movement working for secular education and a
few administrative reforms. But soon it “developed into a genuine
underground organization with a considerable membership, several
branches, and numerous sympathisers from among the most
progressive nationalist elements. This change came primarily in
response to the stimulus of the Turkish and Persian revolutions in
1908.” The party –aim eventually crystallized itself into the demand
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for “a bourgeois democratic constitution similar to that of the

Young Turks.” (Ibid, pp.45, 46).

PERSECUTION OF THE PROGRESSIVES BY THE

REACTIONARIES

Ignorant and corrupt, the servile Khans and the reactionaries did not
allow the Jadids to work unhampered. They were obstructed and
persecuted from the very first day. But, inspired by the ideal of
building up a strong Muslim nation, they became a representative
group comprehending the progressive members of the various
sections of the people. Under the banner of their movement “were
gathered progressive representatives of the native industrial and
commercial bourgeoisie, a number of liberal clergymen (Ulema),
members of the small professional class, and representatives of the
worker, artisan and peasant classes......To be sure, within the
nationalist liberation movement in Turkestan there were shades of
difference with regard to questions of tactics and other points. On
the whole, however, those questions were relatively negligible. The
leadership accepted also by the workers and peasants was in the
hands of the nationalist petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.” (Ibid, p.87).
The progressive forces of national liberation stood united for the
cause of Islam.There were no class-antagonisms, no differences, and
no distinctions. The common aim was to set the house of Islam in
order. This state of affairs continued right up to the February
Revolution of 1917, where after the period of confusion began.

The factors which brought about confusion were many. There was
the persecution of the nationalists at the hands of the Muslim agents
of Russia like Emir Said Alam Khan of Bokhara. By virtue of his
office he was able to deceive the masses into opposition of the
progressives on the basis of all kinds of false charges. Little did that
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dangerous friend of Islam realize that by doing so he was digging

his own grave as well as of Islam. The persecution ultimately
assumed such brutal form as to throw some of the exasperated and
desperate jadids into the arms of the communists.

In fact, the Emir proved to be the worst tyrant. He granted reforms

in 1917 only to let loose persecution on the jadids. “In the
demonstrations which followed, the reactionaries made the better
showing. Seeing this, the Emir decided to avenge himself on his
foes. His magnanimous gesture of granting them freedom was
forgotten. Reaction went on a rampage. Thirty of the outstanding
leaders of the revolution (Jadids) were arrested and mercilessly
flogged. One of the leaders, Mirza Nasrullah , received 150
Lashes……. died on the following day.”(Ibid, p.48).

This was followed by more bitter experiences for the Jadids

described by of their leaders, Faizullah, in his Memoirs.

THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF PERSECUTION

In the meantime, the Russian converts to Communism living in

Central Asia were in the field. Their timely and practical sympathy
during the incident in which Mirza Nasrullah was involved created a
favorable impression on the Jadids who, deprived of all possibility
of getting help from any Muslim group or power, found themselves
in a very unenviable position . (Ibid, p. 48). On top of such
demonstrations of sympathy came Lenin‟s Autonomy stunt in the
form of a proclamation already cited. Disappointed and
demoralised, some of the Jadid leaders, whose Islamic religious
foundations were not very sound, cut themselves off from the ideal
of Islamic nationalism, formed a small left-wing party and threw
their lot with the Russian Communists. But they were an

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insignificant group and remained so until Central Asia had been

totally subjugated by Communism. (Ibid, p. 58).

Thus at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Muslim Central Asia

had three parties: (1) the reactionary feudalists who were the most
powerful and the most numerous; (2) the right-wing Jadids, who
formed the progressive Muslim group and who were in
overwhelming majority as compared with the left-wing Jadids (3),
who stood for co-operation with the Communists, but who were so
negligible in numbers that they could not be regarded as a force by
themselves.

THE STRENGTH OF THE “MUSLIM COMMUNISTS” AT

THE TIME OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

The great enemy of Islam and torch-bearer of Marxism, Joshua

Kunitz, admits it, thereby exploding the Communist propaganda
that Russian Communist armies went there at the invitation of the
people and that the Communist government was not established by
force of arms. Not only were the people almost cent per cent ardent
Muslims and desirous of establishing an independent Muslim State,
but even the class-structure of Muslim society was such that it could
hardly admit of Communist intervention on the basis of their own
ideology. There was no class-conscious proletariat in Central Asia.
While admitting it, Joshua Kunitz says: “The class-conscious
proletarian stratum in Bokhara ‫ـــ‬and not only in Bokhara but in the
whole of Central Asia including the most industrialized Tashkent
and Kokand regions ‫ـــ‬was exceedingly thin and narrow, a small
group of Russian and native revolutionists in the vast mass of
faithful Muslims. The readiness of the mob to lynch the very
moderate Jadids during their visit to Alam Khan indicated what
treatment real rebels could expect at the hands of the fanatics. Then
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the Jadids were saved by the revolutionary Russian soldiers and

workers from Kogan. But obviously there were not enough Russian
workers in the Khanate to effect an overturn against the will of the
millions of natives, even if such a course were desirable or
feasible.” (Ibid, p. 71).

At the Fourth Congress of the Turkestan Soviets held in November

1917, the Communist leader Tobolin also admitted it while
enunciating the following principle: “At present the policy of
including Muslims in the regional organs of our Revolutionary
government is unacceptable; first, because of the native population‟s
uncertain attitude towards the Soviet Power; second, because of the
absence of such native proletarian organisations whose
representatives might be welcomed into the higher organs of our
Revolutionary government.” (Ibid, p. 74).

THE UNRIGHTEOUS CHARACTER OF COMMUNIST

CONQUEST

This is the background of that unrighteous and unholy conquest

which brought Muslim Central Asia under the heels of Communist
imperialism and set the house of Islam ablaze.

Indeed, it was a conquest and for the matter of that, and unrighteous
and unholy conquest. It was a conquest because it was effected not
by the people themselves but by outsiders---the Russian Communist
armies. It was unrighteous and unholy because it was directly
opposed to the popular will, which stood solidly for Muslim
nationalism. Even the handful of left-wing revolutionists among the
Muslims were not actually Marxists, although if they had been, the
one percent minority which they constituted could not be regarded
as the repository of the popular will. The most that could be said of

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them was that they believed in the sincerity of Communist promises

for Muslim self-determination (Ibid, p. 61), and stood for “the
upsurge of the poor working population of the villages” for the
elimination of feudalism. They were, indeed, non-Marxists to such
an extent that even when the Russian Communists had subjugated
the country, those “local Bolsheviks were themselves not clear as to
the basic theories of Communism or the specific character of the
revolution…..To many the whole question seemed rather baffling:
How could one attach a proletarian or bourgeois label to a
revolution which had in back of it neither a proletariat nor a
bourgeoisie?......(they) tended to deny the socialist character of the
revolution even in Russia, let alone in Bokhara.” (Ibid, pp. 119,
120).

As opposed to these one per cent pro-Bolsheviks were the ninety-

nine per cent anti-Bolsheviks divided among themselves into the
conservative and progressive groups but united in the common aim
of Muslim self-determination.

CAUSES OF THE FAILURE OF ISLAMIC NATIONALISTS

Why these groups did not succeed in their aim in spite of being in
such great majority was due to the following factors.

The more powerful group was that of the conservatives. The

followers were a set of pious people, but the leaders were incapable
of seeing the reality in the right perspective, blinded as they were by
ignorance, false prejudice, selfishness and greed. Not only were
they incapable of joining hands with the progressives, but they
could not even combine among themselves.

The progressive Jadids were a minority group. Their strength lay not

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in numbers but in their enlightened outlook. They were to some

extent capable of forging Muslims unity in the face of common
danger, although, before the year 1917 arrived, they had already
gone quite far in their fight with the conservatives. They might have
compromised but for Lenin‟s Declaration of People‟s Rights and the
“Proclamation to the Mohammedans of Russia”, which made them
close their eyes to Communist danger and to resolve to settle their
dispute with the conservatives right then. “Now that national self-
determination was at last proclaimed, the bourgeois nationalist
Jadids thought it best for Bokhara to overthrow the Emir, break
away from Bolshevik Russia, form a constitutional democratic
republic...” (Ibid, p. 60).

Coupled with these internal dissentions, which were themselves

enough to spell disaster for the Muslims, was their extreme
weakness as regards soldiery and armaments. Having remained
disarmed during the half century of the most repressive kind of
slavery, they had hardly any good trained soldiers and scarcely any
modern armaments. (Ibid, p. 80). Thus they were incapable of
defeating any aggressor army equipped with modern training and
modern armaments. And that is what actually happened.

Help from the neighboring Muslims countries was out of the

question. After the ravages of the World War (1914-1918) neither
Turkey nor Iran not Afghanistan was in a position to help. Turkey
might have helped sincerely, but it was struggling to save its own
life. The Communists make much of the help which Britain tried to
give. But, on the face of it, it was a half-hearted step meant to gain
certain specific ends and, as circumstances stood then, was bound to
prove abortive.

While the Muslim body-politic was suffering from these wasting

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diseases, the Communist monster from the north was trying to

penetrate and, like and insatiable octopus, was slowly pushing its
greedy tentacles and trying to tighten their coils around the Muslim
regions of Czarist Russia, which were struggling to move into the
sunshine of freedom. The history of Czarist imperialism was
repeating itself in the form of the more ruthless Marxist
imperialism.

LENIN’S POLICY OF “PEACEFUL PENETRATION” AND

ITS FAILURE

The first step which Lenin and his compatriots in Lenin-grad took
was to attempt “peaceful penetration” behind the smoke-screen of
the Proclamation of Muslims‟ Right to Self-Determination. The plan
was not only to gain Muslim sympathies during the most critical
days of the Revolution, but also to enter the house of Islam as
friends and to capture it from within. Its other function was to at
least create confusion in the ranks of Muslims, to divide them
according to ethnological groupings, to use it as a shield during
Communist aggression by deceiving the starving and poverty-
stricken sections on that score.

The plan of “peaceful penetration” did not succeed, because the

progressive nationalists (Jadids) ultimately saw through the
Communist game. In the beginning they had been “deeply stirred”
and had regarded Lenin‟s Proclamation as giving “expression to
their fondest hopes.” (Ibid, p. 60). But afterwards, “most of them on
sober reflection came to doubt the ultimate sincerity of Bolshevik
protestations concerning the right of each nation to form a separate
independent state….. a thorough analysis of Bolshevik writing on
this subject ‫ـــ‬maintained the bourgeois nationalists ‫ـــ‬revealed a
curious fundamental contradiction: Always separation and
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unification in the same breath !......Stalin, in 1913, made it quite

clear that the whole purpose of the Bolsheviks‟ struggle for national
self-determination in Russia was ultimately „to undermine the
national struggle, to rob it of its sting, to reduce it to a minimum‟
and thus enable the labouring classes of the different peoples to
unite against the common enemy ‫ـــ‬the bourgeoisie…….When the
bourgeois national Jadids finally grasped the full import of what the
Bolsheviks meant by „national‟ self-determination they were
horrified. They had yearned for a constitution, a parliament, an
opportunity to develop native industry and trade……They had hated
the Emir and his entire clerical-feudal set-up. However, now that
they had discovered what Bolshevism actually stood for, they knew
that they hated Bolshevism even more.” (Ibid, p. 60, 62, 63, 65).

The failure of the Russian Communists to win over the progressive

Muslims, while the conservatives were already against them, proved
disastrous for the policy of peaceful penetration. The handful of left-
wing Jadids, whom the Communists had succeeded in deceiving
into friendship, were too few and too powerless to be able to
accomplish any serious thing by themselves. (Ibid, p. 58). They
could only be used for “window-dressing” as tools for foreign
propaganda, false---for Russian Communist aggression, just as
similar stooges have always been employed by other imperialist
forces.

COMMUNIST CONQUEST: A REPITITION OF CZARIST

CONQUEST

As already observed, Communist conquest was to be a repetition of

the former Czarist conquest. Czarist imperialism had sent Russian
soldiers and Russian arms for achieving the subjugation of Muslims.
Muslims were divided among themselves and suffered form
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inferiority in armaments when they were called upon to face the

Czarist armies. Both of these weaknesses were present in a much
greater degree when the time came for the Communist aggressors to
aim their blows. The Czarist aggression succeeded. So was the
Communist aggression destined to succeed.

The Communists were sure of it. They had already created enough
confusion in the ranks of Muslims by their proclamation of self-
determination. Muslim leadership was too worthless to offer any
real deterrent to the spirit of conquest rising high in the hearts of
Russian Communists. The primitive arms which Muslims possessed
were too inferior to be capable of frightening the Communist
military machine. The pitchforks and knives of the hitherto-slave
Muslim peasants and commoners were no match for the heavy
bombs and machine-guns of the hitherto-imperialist Russian
soldiers. The Muslim governments were too weak and too
demoralized to give any assistance to their Muslim brethren in
Central Asia and elsewhere. The anti-Communist Allies were too
exhausted to intervene for safeguarding the liberty of Muslims, even
in their own imperialistic interests.

All these factors were in favour of the Communist aggressors. In

addition to them, there was another factor which became the real
instrument of Communist victory. There were colonies of Russian
soldiers and industrial workers and peasants in the very heart of
Muslim Central Asia---in Tashkent, in Kogan, in Chardjui, in
Kokand, and in many other places. They had lorded over the
Muslim populations and had kept them in submission with their
superior arms, education and imperialism of the Romanovs. It was
they, and not the Muslim natives, who joined Communism and
became the spearheads of Communist aggression. For the Muslims

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it was not a change of masters, but only of ideology. Under Czarism

they had been exploited only economically. Under the new ideology
they were to be ultimately deprived of their religion itself. Slavery
and humiliation for Islam was writ large on the banners of both the
ideologies.

Slavery and humiliation! Yes! The Muslims of Central Asia appear

to have sensed it instinctively at the very outset. Hence the Muslim
masses of Central Asia, like their brethren in southern European
Russia, stood up to forestall and to fight the menace. They stood up
for the love of Islam which was, however, more than out-balanced
by their weakness in armaments and in leadership.

Communism was aggressive from the very first day. Without any
referendum, without any appeal to the popular will, without any
voting, in fact openly against the will of the people, the Russian
soldiers and workers and colonists in Tashkent ‫ـــ‬for fifty years the
seat of Russian imperialist hierarchy ‫ـــ‬formed the Soviet
Government of Turkestan soon after the October Revolution (1917)
and started the acts of aggression. In the words of Joshua Kunitz:
“The few Russian railroad workers and Bolsheviks who happened to
be in Central Asia during the October days formed a revolutionary
government at Tashkent…….(under) Kolesov, the chairman of the
Soviet of People‟s Commissars in Turkestan”, (Ibid, p. 71). It was
from this base that Communist aggression spread to the whole of
Central Asia with all the naked brutality of imperialism.

THE KOKAND GOVERNMENT AND ITS FALL

We have already observed that the Muslims of Central Asia had

been continuously struggling for their political liberation during the
Czarist regime. Their last revolt in 1916 was no doubt suppressed

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cruelly by the Russian armies, but the flame of faith continued to

burn, until, “about five weeks after the October Revolution”, all
sections of Muslims combined under the leadership of progressive
nationalists, and in Kokand, which “was far from Tashkent, i.e., far
from the leading revolutionary city in Central Asia where the main
Red forces were located”, “the Fourth All-Turkestan Congress of
Muslim Deputies proclaimed Turkestan an autonomous Republic,
and proceeded to elect a national government”, in which “the
reactionary clerical and feudal interests, though relegated to a
secondary position, were supporting the progressive bourgeois
government”. (Ibid, pp. 76, 77).

What the Russian Communist saviours of human freedom did to this

popular and democratically-constituted national government we
might learn from Joshua Kunitz himself. He says: “At the
beginning, the Kokand government confined itself to high-sounding
declarations and persistent notes demanding recognition from the
Soviet Government.” Having failed in that and having realized the
evil intentions of Russian Communists, “it made preparations for
the inevitable struggle. Money was gathered through subscriptions
and a government loan …… army was organised. Propagandists
were sent out to secure the co-operation of other Central-Asian
cities. Sympathetic demonstrations were organized throughout the
Bokhara Emirate ‫ـــ‬in Samarkand, Bokhara and numerous other
towns and villages. The Turkestan Soviets (i.e., the
Russians ‫ـــ‬Author) were at that time engaged in a desparate struggle
with Dutov‟s armies and were quite unable to undertake practical
steps to combat the counter-revolutionary government at Kokand.
Hence the Soviets, too, were forced (for deceiving the
people ‫ـــ‬Author) to resort to declarations promising an autonomous
Soviet Republic to the inhabitants of Turkestan. In this battle of

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declarations the Kokand government had the advantage of being by

race, religion and language closer to the population. It out-
maneuvered the Bolsheviks even in its handling of the native
workers. In January, 1918, the Kokand Government called a
Muslim Workers‟ and Warriors‟ Congress, at which a considerable
number of……delegates from the Union of Toiling Muslims and the
Ittifak were present. Thus, under the very noses of the
Bolsheviks…..(the Kokand Government was) gaining the co-
operation of those sections of the working population which, but for
the myopia of the Bolsheviks, would naturally be wholly on the side
of the Soviets.” (Ibid, pp. 77, 78).

Because of the fundamental weaknesses already mentioned, this

popular Muslim national government could flourish only so long as
the better-equipped and better-trained imperialist Russian Red
armies of Kolesov stationed in Tashkent were busy with fighting
Dutov‟s crack troops. No sooner were they relieved from that front,
they made ready, without any legal or moral right, to invade
Kokand, where the New City was already in the hands of Russian
Communists. In the words of Joshua Kunitz: “detachments of
Kolesov‟s army arrived in Kokand. Irgash (the Muslim head of
government) refused to surrender and disarm. The Red armies
launched an offensive against the Old City. Irgash‟s army was
smashed. Irgash himself escaped. The bourgeois government of
Kokand was dead”, (Ibid, p. 79).

Though defeated because of their military weakness, the Muslim

masses did not submit to the Communists, formed themselves into
“guerilla detachments organised by the Ulema and continued their
fight for years afterwards, with Ferghana as their centre.” (Ibid, pp.
79, 86). They attained fame in the annals of Turkestan under the

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name of Basmachi. They ultimately became the spearhead of the

anti-Communist struggle in Central Asia and “supplied the
ideological and military leadership”. Their basic fighting
contingents were drawn from the peasant class. (Ibid, p. 90). In the
beginning, they achieved many spectacular victories over the
Russian Red armies and on October 24, Amin Bek, “heading the
anti-Soviet peasant detachments, formed a Provisional Government
of Ferghana”. (Ibid, p. 97). Ultimately, however, as the grip of
Russian Communists grew tighter on Central Asia, their power was
gradually liquidated, though they did not give in until they had shed
their last drop of blood in defence of Islam.

THE ASHKABAD FRONT

We have seen that the Russian over-lords living in Tashkent formed

the “Soviet Government of Turkestan” in a purely arbitrary manner
and very soon started military operations against the Muslims.
Similar things happened in all those cities where Russian colonies
existed. For instance, the Russian soldiers and workers living in
Ashkabad proclaimed the formation of a “Soviet Government of
Turkmenistan” simultaneously with the October Revolution.
Mulsims of Turkmenistan rose to a man against that illegally-
constituted government. By July, 1918, “the Soviet power in
Ashkabad was overthrown” and a Muslim government was
established instead. (Ibid, p. 83). “The organisation of the anti-
Soviet government at Ashkabad was preceded by a period of bloody
strife and celebrated by the execution of nine Bolshevik leaders on
July 15, 1918. Immediately preparations were started for an attack
on Tashkent……An uprising against the Soviet power in Turkestan
had been plotted in various cities in Central Asia for several months.
The Central Committee of the underground anti-Soviet Military

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Organisation of Turkestan, located in Tashkent, had kept up steady

contact. According to the plans, all uprisings against the Soviets in
Central Asia were to be synchronised, all anti-Soviet activities were
to be co-ordinated. This was a sound plan. The leaders of the
Ashkabad organisation, however, took it into their heads to assume
the initiative and to place themselves at the forefront of the entire
anti-Soviet movement.” (Ibid, pp. 83, 84). That was a hasty step and
a tactical mistake in view of the fact that it did not allow the plan of
the co-ordination of Muslim activity to ripen. Consequently,
although the Ashkabad front “held out against Bolshevik onslaughts
for almost two years”, it had to suffer ultimately the same fate
which had earlier befallen the Kokand front.

LACK OF CO-OPERATION IN MUSLIM RANKS

The great weakness of Muslims was, not only that they had no
suitable armaments and no properly-trained army, but also that there
was no proper sense of co-operation in the ranks of Muslim
leadership. This lack of co-operation some-times went even so far as
to assume the colour of positive hostility under which self-seeking
leaders could misguide the groups of their followers into clashes
with one another, thus paving the way for the success of their
Russian Communist enemies who were well-knit in matters of
policy, ideology and leadership and who had at their back a
powerful Red army and a mighty Communist state.

THE HOSTILE ROLE OF JUNEID KHAN

Thus it was that just when every ounce of Muslim energy was
needed for combating the menace of Communist aggression,
Muslims of Khiva started fighting among themselves on the basis of
tribal rivalries. In the early months of 1918, the opportunist Juneid

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Khan formed a large army of Turkoman nomads and led a

successful, boldly insurrection against Khan Isfandyar, and let loose
tribal vengeance on the members of other tribes. “The peaceful
Uzbek population writhed in the claws of the tyrant…..More than
the Uzbeks even suffered the Khiva Kazzaks. In certain regions the
entire Kazzak population was annihilated.” (Ibid, pp. 85, 86). The
miseries which Juneid‟s misrule brought to that region broke the
back of Muslim resistance to Communist aggression. Discontent
mounted high. Demoralisation and confusion spread among the
Muslim ranks. By 1920, “Juneid Khan was meeting with serious
military reverses, and was losing his authority. Many of the
Turkoman chieftains and their personal followers were deserting
him.” (Ibid, p. 106).

KHIVA SUCKED INTO THE RED EMPIRE

The Khivan Jadids---the progressive nationalists‫ـــ‬who “were religious

Muslims”, for “according to reliable reports the last meeting of the
Central Committee and the Presidium of their party was preceded by
fervent prayers in the mosque”, (Ibid, p. 107), were becoming
desperate. On the one hand, they “were carrying their subversive
propaganda into the very heart of the Khivan population. They were
winning support not only among the workmen, the peasants, and the
petty tradesmen, but even among the clergy and the more prosperous
classes, all of whom were eager to throw off Juneid‟s yoke.” (Ibid, p.
106). On the other hand, relying on Lenin‟s promise of self-
determination, they were joining hands with the Russian Reds. The
Communists, who had been testing the Muslim defences throughout,
ultimately caught hold of the golden opportunity. Juneid Khan was
overthrown. His corrupt government came to an end. But instead of the

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establishment of an autonomous Muslims state, Khiva was sucked into

the Red Empire. (Ibid, p. 107).

AGGRESSION AGAINST BOKHARA

Because of the weaknesses of Muslim themselves and the

ruthlessness of Russian Communist aggression, the Muslim
defences were falling one after another, even as they had fallen
before the onslaught of Czarist intrigues and military invasion. After
Khiva came the turn of Bokhara. Here, too, as elsewhere, it was not
the handful of half-conscious non-Marxist Bokharan pro-Bolshevik
revolutionaries but the Russian Red armies who planned and
achieved the conquest. The story of the successive attempts made to
overthrow the Emir of Bokhara reveals this fact fully.

As regards the beginning of struggle, Joshua Kunitz says: “To

overthrow the Emir, the Young Bokharans, still too weak to attempt
anything by themselves, would have to invite outside help,
especially from Russian railroad workers and Bolsheviks who had
happened to be in Central Asia during the October days and had
formed a revolutionary Soviet government at Tashkent. And that
was precisely what the Young Bokharans did. They entered into
secret agreement with Kolesov, the chairman of the Soviet of
People‟s Commissars in Turkestan, who promised to assist them
with arms and men. They then began to make energetic preparations
for an armed rebellion and the seizure of power.” (Ibid, pp. 71, 72).
This is the Communist way of saying things. Actually, it was
Kolesov‟s Russian army which had to make “energetic
preparations” and not the Young Bokharans, who were a mere
nonentity and who could only function as propaganda-tools for the
Communists. However, it took some time before Kolesov could find
himself in a position to spare his troops for the conquest of Bokhara,
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

because, in those last days of 1917, “the Tashkent Soviet was itself
in a highly precarious situation and was busy fighting for its own
life. To understand why the Emirate maintained itself for three long
years after the Bolsheviks had formed a government in Turkestan, it
is essential to bear in mind that the course of the struggle elsewhere
in Central Asia, especially in the adjacent regions.” (Ibid, p. 72)

“Just at the time when with Kolesov‟s aid the armed insurrection
was to take place in Bokhara, two events occurred which threatened
the very existence of Kolesov and Turkestan Soviets: the loss of
contact (because of the „Dutov Cork‟) with the Central Government
in Russia and the formation of an anti-Bolshevik Government in
Kokand. Turkestan was in danger.” (Ibid, p. 75).

It was after the fall of the Muslim Republic of Turkestan that

Kolesov, who “was too intoxicated with his victory in
Kokand…….issued an ultimatum to the Emir…..The Emir hedged
for time. Kolesov refused to wait and ordered his troops,
accompanied by three hundred Young Bokharans, to advance on the
city….the resistance offered by the loyal followers of the Emir was
genuinely heroic. The fanatical adherents of the old, the mullahs,
though badly armed ‫ـــ‬with knives, axis and rusty swords ‫ـــ‬fought
desperately…..one of them, holding a cudgel in his hand and a long
knife in his mouth, advanced unflinchingly against our machineguns
and hurled himself against and killed one of our gunners. Still, the
revolutionary troops were victorious.”(Ibid, p. 80).

The victory was, however, short-lived. “Kolesov ordered the army

to return to Kohan, the New City” and at the same time “demanded
immediate disarmament of the enemy‟s forces.” While Kolesove
waited in the New City for news form Bokhara, the Emir seized and
executed his representative and “hastily reorganised his forces,
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preparing to attack and wipe out the small forces of the

revolutionists. In this he was brilliantly successful…..An army,
35,000 strong, rose to the defence of the country and faith. Before
the revolutionists realized it, they were surrounded. True, they had
one advantage, artillery. But even this seemed to work against them.
A cannonade which lasted thirty-six hours brought absolutely no
results; not one shell struck the city……When ammunition was
almost exhausted, Kolesov smashed through the enemy ranks and
beat a hasty retreat towards Tashkent.” (Ibid, pp. 80, 81, 82). Thus
ended the first attempt of the Russian Red army to subjugate the
Muslims of Bokhara.

But the “knives, axes and rusty swords” of the Muslims were no
match for the modern military resources of Kolesov. He had the
Communist Russia at his back. Moreover, Bokhara had already been
cut off from “its best market” because of “severance of relations
with Russia”. “She began to choke with a superabundance of raw
materials and starve for the lack of manufactured products. The
Emir made a dash for the markets of Afghanistan and India and
Persia, but those markets could not take the place of Russia. Cotton-
growing and the commercial and industrial enterprises connected
with it began to decline with catastrophic rapidity. Bankruptcies
began to multiply by the hundred. A sharp financial crisis, a
cessation of trade and industry…..such were the conditions in
Bokhara.” (Ibid, p. 96).

Thus, time also was on the side of Kolesov, and as time progressed
life began to grow more and more difficult. “The humble, pious
peasants, the mainstay of the Emir” began to starve, and “his
soldiers, ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed, decimated by epidemics,
were beginning to grumble.” (Ibid, p. 102). What kept up the morale

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of the people in those trying days was the ideal for the defence of
Islam. But morale alone could not accomplish everything. In the
meantime, the isolated Muslim defences in other parts of Central
Asia were crumbling one after another. Moreover, Russia was
emerging from the chaos of the revolution into a state of military
and political stability. The Red armies in Tashkent were marking
time and making preparations for the final act of aggression. “By
August 1920, conditions were ripe for a second revolutionary
advance against the Emirate.”(Ibid, p. 108).

Besides the Autonomy Declaration of Lenin, all kinds of deceptive

measures were adopted to demoralize the Muslim masses. The
promised “Constitution of Soviet Bokhara….guaranteed all citizens
the right freely to dispose of their movable and immovable
property.” (Ibid, p. 123). All other freedoms were also guaranteed.
The purpose was to disarm the opposition of the people and to
create a false impression that the forthcoming Russian invasion was
only meant for removing the feudal tyrants and that neither Islam
nor the four freedoms were in danger. The Communist
propagandists also worked up the inter-tribal hatreds in order to
weaken the Muslim ranks. The Turkoman population which was
“inimical to the Bokhara Emir and his preponderantly Uzbek
officials” was backed up to stage an “armed uprising”.(Ibid, p. 110).

All this was done. But actually Muslim Bokhara could only be
subjugated by the Russian armed might. Hence, a farcical “appeal
was addressed to the government, proletariat, and the Red Army of
Russia, wherein the (handful of ) Young Bokharans, speaking
(falsely) in the name of the workers and peasants of Bokhara, asked
that the comrades of the Russian Soviet Republic help them in the
struggle against the armed forces of the Emir . The appeal was, of

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course, calculated to appease the nationalist elements in Bokhara by

removing the suspicion of a Russian invasion. Naturally, too, the
response to the appeal was immediate. In his order to the Red
Armies on the Turkestan front, Frunze wrote: „In various places in
Bokhara there have broken out revolutionary uprisings. The hour
has struck for the final struggle of the oppressed and enslaved
toiling masses of Bokhara against the bloodthirsty government of
the Emir and his Beks……I order all our armed forces to go to the
aid of the people of Bokhara in their hour of need……Red Army
men, fighters, commissars, the eyes of the whole of the Soviet
Union are turned towards you in the faith that each and every one of
you will fulfill his revolutionary duty. Forward, to the battle for the
interests of the toilers of Bokhara and Russia‟.” (Ibid, p. 110, 111).

At last the final hour for the consummation of the act of Russian
Communist aggression arrived. In the last week of August 1920,
Red detachments were dispatched to different parts of the state to
start the offensive. On August 31, the main Red Army launched its
attack on the famous walled city of Old Bokhara. “Clutching the
Korans in their hands, tearing their clothes, issuing frenzied cries,
the mullahs incited the city mob…..A desperate battle developed at
the very walls of the city. Both sides fought tenaciously…….Now
and then the city gates were flung open and the infuriated mobs,
exhorted by mullahs and officials…..yelling „Allah‟, advanced
towards our machine-guns, throwing themselves at our gunners with
bare hands…..Neither that night nor the following day did the battle
abate even for one moment……The ranks of our fighters were
thinning……Then came the third day…..We made the last attempt.
Everything that could in some way injure the enemy was thrown in
this attack. At the price of the lives of our bravest comrades we
managed to make a breach in the city walls. They dragged the

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cannons right to the very walls and shot into them. With shouts of
triumph the first two groups of daredevils dashed into the city. They
were soon followed by the others. Street fighting started, and it was
bloodier than the fighting outside the walls….We had to fight for
each house, for each square.” (Ibid, p. 113, 115). Ultimately, in the
blood of Muslim men, women and children, the freedom of Islam
was drowned by the Russian Communist “saviours” of national self-
determination and human liberty !

SUBJUGATION OF ENTIRE MUSLIM CENTRAL ASIA

COMPLETED

The fall of the state of Bokhara made the Communists the de facto
rulers of the whole of Muslim Central Asia. The Red imperialism of
Russia had triumphed by sheer force of arms. It had triumphed by
subjugating the people militarily. It had not triumphed on the basis
of the acceptance of Marxism by the people. In fact, even those
small groups who were pro-Bolshevik had been won over on the
basis of very false notions. Those false notions and all allied
sentiments of co-operation were bound to disappear into thin air,
now that the time came for the practical enforcement of Marxism.

This so-called Communist “revolution” in Central Asia was indeed

non-Marxist to such an extent that even the local “Bolshevik”
leaders “were themselves not clear as to the basic theories of
Communism or the specific character of the……..revolution.” (Ibid,
p. 119, 120). “The lack of theoretical clarity and the wavering
attitude of most of the local leaders, including some would be
Bolsheviks, resulted, however, in numerous mistakes.” (Ibid, p.
122). The popular will was so anti-Marxist that “the word Socialist
had not been incorporated in the name of the Republic” of Bokhara,
and “no move had been made to enter the Russian Socialist
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Federation of Soviet Republics.” (Ibid, p. 122). Because of “the

complex nature of the revolution and the lack of Bolshevik training
among the local leaders”, “excessive caution” had to be observed.
“Even the moderate programme adopted at the outset remained a
paper programme……In Soviet Bokhara people could buy and sell
and bequeath to others lands and their belongings just as
unrestrained as in any bourgeois country !” (Ibid, p. 123).

This is the truth. And yet the Communists have the courage to say
that the Russian armies went there at the request of the masses who
wanted to establish Marxism ! In fact, it was a brutal and
unrighteous conquest of Muslim populations by the hostile
Communist imperialists and cannot be differentiated from the
conquests of capitalistic imperialism.

MUSLIM REVOLT AND COMMUNIST TACTICS

Consequently, soon after the conquest, when the anti-Islamic

character of Marxism began to unfold itself before the people,
discontent among the pro-Bolshevik elements themselves began to
grow and “tendencies towards bourgeois nationalism, local
chauvinism, pan-Islamism” started manifesting themselves. (Ibid, p.
124). “Even revolutionary leaders----Muhammad Khodzahiev,
Usman Khodzhaiev, Arefov, and many others were subsequently
discovered to have been traitors working hand in hand with the
beys, the mullahs and the forces of reaction. The worker and peasant
masses (who were not prepared to forsake Islam---Author) were
becoming disillusioned. Popular dissatisfaction was growing. The
Basmachi movement was gathering momentum. Counter-revolution
was raising its head. Destruction, arson and murder held the country
in their grip”. (Ibid, p. 125).

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Defeated by the Communist military machine, but ready to

sacrifice their all for preserving their freedom and their religion,
the Muslim masses started joining the Basmachi guerilla bands in
large numbers. The Communist overlords were aware of their
weakness. They had built their castles in the air and they could
maintain them only by artificial means. To overcome the popular
Muslim opposition to Marxism, they worked up one deception
after another. They “took every care to neutralize the opposition
of the rich by respecting their property rights and to win the
support of the clergy by sparing their religious susceptibilities.
The mosque was not touched. The mullahs were not criticized.
Religion was either left severely alone or shown every sign of
deference. Bolshevik tolerance finally reached a point where the
Muslim divines were actually drawn into making pro-Soviet
declarations and assailing the Basmachi.” (Ibid, p. 147).

With no respect for moral values. Marxism could never run short of
fraud ! And it could go to any length. The purpose was to create
confusion among the illiterate and half-illiterate Muslims and to add
to their demoralization. That was one of the two fronts of the
Communist fight against Islam.

The other front was constituted of military struggle. All the vast
military resources were thrown into battle against the forces of
Muslim resistance. In the very nature of the case, the Basmachi
could not hold out for long. Firstly, they were very inferior in
matters of armaments and soldiery. Secondly, they could obtain no
substantial outside help. Thirdly, they were incapable of
overcoming their tribal rivalries. “The Uzbek bands, and the
Turkoman bands with both. The Kazzaks introduced further
complications. Among the Basmachi leaders, too, there was no

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coherent programme….Though all of them were engaged in the

common struggle against the Bolsheviks, they nevertheless
distrusted one another, and as a result failed to evolve a united
programme, a solid organisation, a solid organisation, an
authoritative, universally accepted leadership.” (Ibid, p. 128, 129).

The Communist knew this. They knew that however heroically the
Muslim masses may fight, their struggle must ultimately collapse.
Therefore, they had to wear the mask of compromise, toleration and
friendship until such time only as they could succeed in pushing the
enemy to the wall. Once thoroughly demoralized, the illiterate and
poverty-stricken Muslim masses could be comfortably tied to the
chariot of Marxism.

And so it happened. The Muslim resisters wrote many a page of

heroism in the history of Central Asia. The peasants and workers
fought against the aggressors resolutely. The “handsome brilliant,
magnetic, daring and imaginative Enver Pasha” got martyrdom in
the same cause. Selim Pasha, too, gave his life for it. Local leaders
like Daulat-Monbei, Sultan-Ishan, Abdel Jabbar, Khasanov (who
had been a Bolshevik war commissar), Usman Khodzaiev (who had
been the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the
Bokhara Republic), Karry Abdullah (a Bokharan revolutionary),
Nurkul Batyr, Danial Bek Ollikbashi, and Ibrahim Bek kept the fires
of freedom burning. Ibrahim Bek continued to fight even as late as
after 1930. But it was not merely a fight of ideologies. It was
primarily a fight of material values. It was a fight of arms and
soldiery. It was a fight of “rebels” possessing primitive weapons
against a “government” infinitely superior in military strength. In
course of time, the Muslim guerilla fighters were tired out. The
chaos which had prevailed in the country for a sufficiently long time

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and on a sufficiently wide scale had played havoc with a people

already impoverished by fifty years of slavery under the Czars.
Coupled with this was the Communists‟ ruthlessness in war, on the
one hand, and their ideological compromises, on the other. “The
peasants, weary of lawlessness and bloodshed, were glad to return
to a settled life. They were coming back from the mountains in
hordes. Assured of the government‟s readiness to overlook past sins.
Basmach bands, one after another, began to surrender their arms and
return to peaceful labour.” (Ibid, p. 147).

Fatigued and exhausted, Central Asia ultimately lay prostrate at the

feet of its Communist masters. The act of physical subjugation was
almost complete. Thereafter, the task of wiping out Islam was to be
taken in hand and wisely executed. How the Communists performed
it we shall shortly see. In the meantime, we might refer in passing to
the material conditions which came into existence in Muslim
Central Asia after the conquest, especially because the recent wave
of Communist propaganda is dishing out very exaggerated reports
which are being published by the friendly Muslim periodicals.

ACHIEVEMENTS OF COMMUNIST CONQUEST

That Communism in Central Asia was a purely Russian business at

the time of conquest, we have already seen, True, the Russians tried
all sorts of tricks to give their conquest the colouring of a local
“national revolution.” But they could not succeed. They possessed
no alchemy whereby they could transform gold into iron. Even the
small group of Muslim “friends” whom they were using as show-
boys began to desert them. “Usman Khodzhaiev, the Chairman of
the Central Executive Committee of the Bokhara Republic, soon
afterwards……at the head of 600 men, deserted the revolution and
joined Enver Pasha.” (Ibid, p. 131, 132). An effort was made to
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swell the ranks of the local Communist Party by means of false

promises and deceptive concessions. They thus built up “a
membership of 14,000 within a few weeks after the fall of the
Emir……In the 1922 purge the membership was rapidly reduced
from 10,000 to 6,000 then to 3,000 and, finally, to 1,000 ! But even
that scarcely improved matters.” (Ibid, p. 124).

How could matters be improved when the so-called “revolution”

had been imposed forcibly from outside? How could matters be
improved when there was neither native proletariat nor neither
native Marxist leadership? How could matters be improved when
Islam and Marxism were, in the words of Stalin, diametrically
opposed? How could matters be improved when “the local
Bolsheviks regarded the native masses with a definite feeling of
superiority or at least distrust” (Ibid, p. 74) and when the Russian
Communists maintained that: “Before admitting the Muslim masses
to social and political activity they must first go through a period of
development and training in the socialist spirit” (Ibid, p. 74)

The Muslim masses were not ready to compromise Islam or national

freedom. Hence, even among “the native progressive
intelligentsia……not many were ready to work with the
revolutionary government.” (Ibid, p. 124).

This was the state of affairs in the beginning. It did not improve
very much even afterwards because of the struggle between Islam
and Communism----a struggle which continues up to the present
day. The Russian over-lords have permitted the Muslim natives to
share the blessings of higher governmental and industrial
administration only in proportion to the acceptance of Marxism by
the populations inhabiting the so-called autonomous Muslim
Republics. As against the elusive Communist propaganda, the
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following summary of achievements reported in the Civil and

Military Gazette of Karachi is very revealing:-

“Although increased, albeit closely supervised, participation in local

economic and political affairs, increased educational opportunities
and limited improvements in their economic well-being do
constitute gains for the preponderantly Muslim population of
Central Asia, the actual conditions under which the people live, and
their actual progress fall far short of the grandiose standards
depicted by Soviet propaganda.

“Russian, not natives, play the leading role in the economic life of
the Central Asian Republics. This might have been expected for a
period of several years as a necessary concomitant to the intensive
programme of industrialisation of the entire Soviet Union, since the
Central Asian peoples were especially retarded in modern western
industrial know-how. However, after thirty years of Soviet power, it
appears that there are few instances of real progress in training
native personnel to replace the present Russian leaders within the
republics of Central Asia.

“The Soviet press noted that in Kazakhstan, in 1946, a relatively

large proportion of those engaged in industry were Kazakhs (who
constitute about 58 per cent of Kazakhstan‟s population of slightly
over 6 million); that 449 of 602 recipients of awards as Heroes of
Socialist Labour were Kazakhs. However, the real role of Kazakhs
in the life of their republic is to be gleaned from the figures.
(published in Kazakhstan Pravda on August 13, 1948) on white-
collar work in Kazakhstan‟s ministries, which reveal that the
Kazakhs held only 2 per cent. of such jobs in Local Industry, 2 per
cent in Public Health, 4 per cent in Light Industry, 6.7 per cent in
Textiles, 7.9 per cent in Communal Economy, 10 per cent in
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Agriculture, and 14 per cent in Milk and Meat. What is even more
significant is the charge levelled against local ministries of being
delinquent in training sufficient numbers of natives as skilled
workers. Of the 63,400 trained in factory schools during 1945-46
only 14.3 per cent were Kazakhs.

“Local officials similarly were charged with responsibility for the

failure of Kazakhs to secure sufficient education. Of the 1,687
graduated of higher educational institutions in Kazakhstan between
1945 and 1947, only „several dozen‟ received middle technical
school training. Obviously, Kazakhs are not receiving adequate
preparation to permit them to hold important positions in
Kazakhstan‟s economy and government administration in the future.

“Russians, who hold most of the important positions throughout the

Central Asian economy have retarded economic development by the
same sort of bungling and malfeasance which hobbles economic
recovery elsewhere in the USSR. Quite frequently the Soviet press
recounts delinquencies in plants under the management of Russians,
such as several which appeared in Kommunist Tadzhikistana and
Kazakhstanskava Pravda both of July 2, 1948. The former
newspaper related that the coal production plan of the Tadzhikugol
Trust had not been fulfilled, and that the miners owed the country
60,000 tons of fuel largely because of the ineffective utilisation of
machinery, the poor organisation of labour, and the failure to
conserve mined coal. The latter paper criticized the failure of the
administration of Kazmed‟stroi Trust engaged in important
construction work to make effective use of the workers provided to
it, and its failure to give adequate attention to the daily living
requirements of construction workers. The paper also criticized a

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number of shops and plants within the Trust for operating

inefficiently and falling behind production quotas.

“In both government and party circles, Central Asian Muslims

possess little real control. In the government hierarchy, although
natives hold high official positions, they are often subordinate in
practice to political commissars from Moscow who supervise their
activities. Within the Communist Party of the Central Asian
Republics, natives still constitute a disproportionately small part of
the membership. Although Party Life of April, 1947, claimed that in
the Kazakh SSR a large proportion of local party functionaries were
Kazakhs, it is notable that the Central Asian Republics have an
exceptionally small representation at the executive level of the All-
Union Party hierarchy and that they possess extremely little
influence upon the highest party decisions.

“There is undoubtedly discontent with the Soviet regime among

various Muslims groups, particularly members of whole
communities which were transferred eastwards at the end of the
war. These mass deportations were justified by Soviet authorities as
punishment for alleged general collusion with the Germans, despite
the lack of culpability of many of the individual members of the
community. This step taken by the Soviet Government is indicative
of the lack of consideration shown to individual Muslim citizens.”

SUBJUGATION OF MUSLIMS IN CRIMEA, AZERBAIJAN

AND TRANSCAUCASIA

We may now turn to the tragic story of the rape of the Muslim
regions of southern European Russia, i.e., Crimea and Azerbaijan.

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Crimea, known to the tourists as the Russian Riviera and famous for
its delicious watermelons, is inhabited mainly by Tatar Muslims
who numbered approximately 700,000 at the time of Communist
conquest. The forefathers of these Tatars had settled there as far
back as the thirteenth century and had established their independent
state under Haji Ghirai. That state preserved its independence till
late in the fifteenth century when, in 1475, it became a province of
the Ottoman Empire. In 1783 it was conquered by the armies of the
Czar, who allowed the Muslim population to retain their religious
autonomy by electing their Mufti.

Like other Muslim groups inhabiting the Russian empire, the

Crimean Tatars never actually compromised with the imperialism of
the Romanovs and continued to struggle for their independence. The
campaign led by Ismail Bey Gasprinsky is well known to all
students of history. When ultimately the Czarist regime crumbled
during the first World War, Muslims lost no time in declaring their
independent Republic.

COMMUNIST AGGRESSION IN CRIMEA

The Autonomy Declaration of Lenin thrilled them with joy and they
applied them with joy and they applied themselves wholeheartedly
to the sacred task of building up the infant state. But this joy was
short-lived. The Russian Communists first of all tried to gain a
foothold among the population by means of Marxist class-
propaganda. In that they signally failed. No Muslim was ready to
embrace Marxism. Hence Communist imperialism came out into the
open. On 13th January, 1918, the Russian Red Army invaded and let
loose a reign of terror and bloodshed. All the national leaders,
including the President of the Republic were shot in cold blood. The
blooming land was turned into a desert. The orgies continued for
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three months, when the Ukrainish and German troops led by

Generals Natijew and Koch ended the Communist rule. Soon after
that the country became the battlefield for the Red Army and the
troops of Denikin and General Wrangel. This brought more
devastation in its train.

On top of this continuous devastation came the second Communist

invasion in 1920. “none other than the notorious Hungarian Jew,
Bela Kun, was at that time the head of the Tscheka, the like of
whose cruelties the world‟s history has not witnessed. Thousands of
poor men and women fell to the shots of the conqueror. Bela Kun
killed his victims with his own hands. It is estimated that 70,000
Muslims were murdered at that time.”

Massacres and the disruption of agricultural economy created a

famine not long after the first anniversary of Communist rule.
“About one-fourth of the total population of the peninsula died as a
result. In Baghchaserai, the capital of Crimea, as many as 55% of
the inhabitants died.”

The year 1923 brought still greater hardships for the Muslims. Quite
arbitrarily, the Soviet leaders in Moscow planned to settle in Crimea
100,000 Jews from all parts of the Soviet Union and even from
foreign countries. The Communists wanted to establish a National
Home for the Jews on the fertile Black Sea coast. “In order to
realize this criminal plan tens of thousands of Muslim peasants were
transported from Crimea. Three-fourths of these victims of
Bolshevist-Jewish madness lost their lives on the way.

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In due course of time collective farming made its appearance. As

elsewhere, so in Crimea, many thousands of Muslims were sent into
exile on charges of being “Kulaks”, “counter-revolutionaries” and
“nationalists”.

The sufferings have not yet come to an end. The very home-land has
become a prison-house for the upholders of Islam and national
freedom.

THE RAPE OF AZERBAIJAN

Among the national republics which came into existence between

the shores of the Black and Caspian Seas after the downfall of
Czarism, was the Muslim Republic of Azerbaijan. It was proclaimed
on the 28th of May, 1918 and its freedom was guaranteed through a
special treaty by Russia and Turkey. It had then a total population of
3,000,000 out of which 2,800,000 were Muslims.

After enjoying independence for centuries, Azerbaijan first slipped

into the claws of the Russian tyrants in 1801. It was, however, after
thirty years of continuous struggle that Czarism could establish
itself in the country to some extent. “The farmers revolted and
organized uprisings and ran away into the mountains. The brave
people continued a guerilla war against the foreigners who had
come to Russify it and rob it of its riches.”

Simultaneously with the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks tried to

dynamite the Muslim Independence movement by means of their
ever-subtle propaganda. Lenin appointed the notorious Armenian
Turk-hater, Schaumian, for this purpose and sent him to Baku. His
mission was “to bolshevize the people of Caucasus”, “to create an
alliance between the Communists and national-Armenians

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

(Daschnaken)”, and “to establish the Greater Armenian Republic”

under the protection of Soviet Russia. Muslims were to be divided
on the basis of class-dialectic, Armenians were to be organized and
armed on the basis of Armenian nationalism, and, ultimately, with
the help of Russian soldiers and workers who were living in their
own colonies in the heart of Muslim populations since the days of
the Czars, the infant Muslim Republic was to be stabbed.

Schaumian‟s propaganda and intrigues brought – little fruit,

however. His followers suffered a crushing defeat in the elections at
the hands of nationalist leaders, such as Rasul Zadeh Mohammed
Emin, Topchibashi Ali Merdan, Fateh Ali Khan, Hasan Bey, Yusuf
beyli, Nasib Bey, etc.

The weapon of propaganda having proved a failure, Lenin and his

compatriots resorted to armed aggression. Russian and Armenian
troops were thrown into the field to give Muslim nationalism a
blood-bath in Baku and other larger towns of Azerbaijan. “Fifteen
thousand men, women and children fell victim to it. Most of those
murdered were workmen and intellectuals. The offices of the
Turkish (national) press, the buildings of national movement was
burnt and destroyed.”

Muslim nationalism absorbed this first shock and prepared to give

the counter-blow. In less than four months the combined
Azerbaijanian and Turkish forces reconquered Baku and ended the
Communist reign of terror.

However, Muslims could not enjoy their victory for long, because
of the same military weakness which brought them ultimate defeat
in Crimea, in Idel-Ural and in Central Asia. During the two years of
its existence, the young Republic could organise a small army of

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10,000 soldiers only. In the meantime, the Revolution had been

stabilized in Russia, and the huge Red Army was free to accomplish
the conquest of the Muslim regions, under the shadow of the by-
now exploded subterfuge that „the proletariat masses of Azerbaijan
had called their brothers in Moscow to help in freeing them from the
yoke of the capitalist government of Baku.” The Red Army marched
into Azerbaijan on April 27, 1920. Muslims fought heroically. But
the fight was between unequal opponents. The Republic was finally
blown up to pieces, even as the retreating Muslims blew up the oil-
wells of Baku. Every Muslim hamlet was searched and every
Muslim leader became the target of the aggressor‟s bullets.

Since the day of Communist conquest, “the continual risings of the

peasants, the incessant revolts of Turkish workmen in the petroleum
territory of Baku, the passive resistance of the collectivised Turkish
peasants, the flights of the people in great numbers to Turkey and
Iran, the sabotage by the people of the measures and orders of the
Communist Party, the spreading of the nationalist movement among
the intellectual classes, and the increasing number of anti-
Communist organisations”, continued to proclaim to the world for
years and years that Communist domination and Communist
ideology had been imposed aggressively upon an unwilling people.
Even as late as August 25, 1938, the correspondent of the Hindustan
Times (Delhi, India) reported from Moscow:-

“Ten leading officials of the Azerbaijan Commissariat of

Agriculture, who are alleged to have confessed to being members of
the Nationalist counter-revolutionary terrorist organisation, have
been sentenced to death at Kirovobal.

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“They were found guilty of plotting to overthrow the Soviet

Government and wrecking in connection with cattle-breeding. Four
other officials were sentenced to terms of imprisonment between
twelve and fifteen years.”

This, in brief, is the tragic story of the so-called “Communist

Revolution” in the Muslim regions of Czarist Russia. It is a true
story and most of it has been drawn from and is based directly upon
orthodox Communist sources. Can anyone still doubt that
Communism is as imperialistic as Capitalism? Can anyone still say
that it was not Russian Red aggression, pure and simple, but the
voluntary acceptance of Marxism, which joined the Muslim regions
of Asia and Europe to Soviet Russia? Can anyone still deny that
Marxism is the greatest enemy of Muslim nationalism? Certainly,
none. In our next installment we shall show that the Communists
not only crushed Muslim nationalism but also the Islamic religion.

Before we close this discussion, however, we might refer to the first

great “blessing” which descended upon the Muslims of the Soviet
Union in the wake of the Communist “revolution”. The epidemics
of loot, arson and murder which the Communist saviours of
humanity brought to the Muslim regions de-populated whole
villages and devastated whole Muslim areas. To those large-scale
killings was soon added a severe famine which broke out in 1918
and raged till the end of 1919. George Safarov, who was a member
of the Commission sent from Moscow in October, 1919, admitted
that the Russians fell upon the Muslim areas “with the avalanche of
requisition and confiscations; and the Mussalman populations,
unable to cope with the famine, were slowly dying out”. Similarly,
T. Riskulov, President of People‟s Commissars of Khirghizia from
1926 to 1931 and acting President of the R.S.F.S.R. Council of

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People‟s Commissars in 1939, wrote: “We do not have exact

information. But from provinces one can estimate that about one-
third of the total population must have died.” (Quoted in C. and M.
Gazette, Karachi, April 30, 1919.)

No wonder that while the Muslim population at the end of the

Czarist regime was 30,000,000, it is now quoted as 23,000,000.
What a devastation ! What tragedy ! As the Communist Uzbek poet,
Ghafoor Ghulam, has said:-

“The Unconquerable Army moved,

And all the roads were spread with human bones.”

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Chapter VII
Islam and Muslims in the Soviet Union (2)
Ideological Aggression
THE COBWEB OF INTRIGUE

During the discussion of Marxism and its methods, we have seen

that:

(1)Marxism is the sworn enemy of all religion, which it is its

mission to destroy at all costs;20

(2) Marxism is aggressively materialistic and atheistic in its

fundamental foundations and outlook;

(3) No one can be a Marxist unless he adheres firmly to Marxist

Philosophical Materialism as well as Marxist Social Philosophy and
abides by the discipline of the Party;

(4) The aim of the whole Communist struggle is only one, viz, the
creation and establishment of a perfect, uncompromising society of
Marxist people;

(5) With this aim in view, the first task of every Communist state is
to affect regimentation of education and the whole cultural life of

20
Among the latest statements of Communist leaders on this point, we
may quote the following from Stalin: “The Party can not be neutral
towards religion…..The Party stands for science, whereas religious bias is
opposed to science. Every religion is diametrically opposed to science.”
(Komsomolskaya Pravda, 16th September, 1944.)

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

the people, including the press and the club, on the Marxist pattern,
outlawing at the same time all cultural activity which falls outside
Marxist conceptions and is opposed to Marxist doctrines about
Religion, or God, or Morality, or National-Political values;

(6) Marxism might sometimes permit certain transitional

makeshifts, for tactical reasons, but it can tolerate no opposition, not
to speak of compromise, whether it is religion or national sentiments
with which it is dealing at a given moment.

Out of this six-fold Communist policy was cast a mighty steam-

roller of Party and governmental machinery which has been on the
move all these years to gradually crush Islamic life in the Soviet
Union out of existence. True, in the beginning when the ship of
Marxism was rocking in the midst of the storm of furious Muslim
opposition, the captains of Communist movement had permitted
certain makeshifts. But conditions were to change as soon as the
Communists found themselves in safer waters. And so they
changed. Ultimately, from Moscow, “the godless riff-raff” (in the
words of Joshua Kunitz) released the flames of atheism and
irreligion which raced across the burning steppes of Turkmenia and
enveloped the Asiatic extremities of the old empire.

The Communists knew that they were out “to deal with the most
fanatical Muslims in the world”. (Dawn Over Samarkand, p. 218).
Hence they did not proceed to challenge the Islamic religion
forthwith. A policy of initial indirect attack was adopted instead.
Explaining that policy, Joshua Kunitz says: “The Bolsheviks hold
that the cultural and psychological aspects of life are „super-
structures‟, that there is no such thing as „immutable human nature‟,
and they are out to change the economic and social foundations of
society in the conviction that they will thus bring about
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corresponding changes in the psychological and cultural

superstructures. As regards cultural innovations, they employ their
strategy, leveling their first, direct and most powerful attacks at the
determining, i.e., the economic, factors…… on the whole, it is safe
to say that in their work the Bolsheviks had to be exceedingly subtle
and diplomatic.” (Ibid, pp. 210, 211).

SUBTLE AND DIPLOMATIC APPROACH

Consequently, when a Communist visitor from abroad “expressed

amusement over the grotesque forms which Bolshevism has
assumed in some of the remoter regions of Central
Asia ‫ـــ‬Communists going to the mosque, members of the Party
clinging to all kinds of superstitions…..” Sluchak, the Jewish
Communist chief of Tajikistan, answered: “This does not worry us.
Our first test in these backward regions is this: Is the fellow with us
in the matter of collectivization and industrialisation, is he ready to
fight for our programme? If he is, he is eligible for Party
membership. Don‟t you. see? We must be flexible in approaching
the masses. We have the responsibility of reconstructing a whole
society, and we cannot permit ourselves the comfort of sectarianism.
Here the acceptance of Marxist and Leninst materialist ideas is not a
pre-requisite for Party membership, but it invariably happens that a
few months in the Party result in a gradual acceptance of our ideas.
When a native is drawn into the Party, he is much more amenable to
our influence and teaching. We are in a transition period. Naturally,
you encounter some grotesque specimens.” (Ibid, p. 212).

Thus, “the dramatic conflict between Mohammedanism and

Marxism-Leninism” (Ibid, p. 240) was a reality from the beginning,
so much so that when, in the very heart of Central Asian Islam, the
Communists built modern Stalinabad on the site of ancient
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Dushambe, they made it “the only capital city in the world free of
any religious institutions ‫ـــ‬no mosques, no churches, no
synagogues”. (Ibid, p. 232). The elimination of Islam was the
definite and positive Communist goal. The only deceptive feature in
the beginning was that the Communists were subtle and diplomatic
in their work, as already mentioned.

The Communist period of Muslim history may be roughly divided

into two epochs, with the year 1929 forming the demarcating line.
During the first epoch, the Communists worked for changing the
social, political, economic and literary structures, on the one hand,
and for weakening the religious front by means of indirect attacks
on the integrity and prestige of the Ulema, on the other. “Freedom
of religious education and practice” was permitted, and Stalin was
of the opinion that even “Pan-Islamic or Pan-Turanian views, while
not desirable, were not incompatible with Party membership.”

TRIBALISM EMPLOYED TO CRUSH MUSLIM NATION

SOLIDARITY

The Communists pierced their arrow into the heart of Muslim

nationalism by emphasising and perpetuating the tribal
differentiation of Muslim Central Asia. In the name of cultural
autonomy, they dissolved the former boundaries and grouped the
Muslims separately as Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkomans, Kazzacks and
Khirghies. (Ibid, pp. 153, 154) According to Mustafa Chokayev,
formerly President of the Turkestan National Council, the aim of the
Communists was “not to provide cultural autonomy but to preclude
the unification of one nationality, the Turki people of Russian
Turkestan.”

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AGRICULTURAL PATTERN CHANGED TO PERPETUATE

THE SLAVERY OF MUSLIMS

The second step was to change the agricultural pattern of the

Muslim regions with a view to making them economically
dependent on Russia for all time and to forestall any future move on
the part of the Muslims to secede from the “mother-country”.
Instead of bringing about self-sufficiency in agricultural products, a
vigorous campaign was launched by the Government and the Party
for producing one commodity only, i.e., Cotton. This policy was
given the innocent name of Regional Specialisation ‫ـــ‬i.e., “grain and
lumber to flow into Central Asia from Siberia and Central Russia;
cotton to travel from the south to the grain regions in the north.”
(Ibid, pp. 166, 167). Joshua Kunitz presents the Communist
justification of this policy in these words, which are highly
revealing: “Not only is such territorial specialisation economical
and rational---it is also highly politic. It makes the several National
Republics economically interdependent and renders less likely any
excessive tendencies towards local nationalism which may
degenerate into chauvinism and even into separatism…..it is no
exaggeration to say that cotton is the magic key to the maze of
economic, political and cultural inroads the Bolsheviks have made
into the age-long immutability of Central Asian existence….. In the
final analysis, the Bolsheviks are more interested in socialism than
in the natural medium through which the Bolshevik ideal can be
realized.” (Ibid, p. 167).

ARABIC ALPHABET REPLACED

The third step was to replace the Arabic alphabet by Latin alphabet
and thus to cut off the Muslims from the rest of the Islamic world,
on the one hand, and form their whole Islamic religious and cultural
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past, on the other. Thenceforth, Islamic tradition, as enshrined in

their national literature, was to be a sealed book for the coming
generations. (Ibid, p. 29).

CLASS-CONFLICTS CREATED

The fourth step ‫ـــ‬the basic step ‫ـــ‬was, of course, the division of
Muslims into classes and to gradually increase the tempo of the
class-war. Paralysed religiously, confused politically, demoralised
socially as the Muslims were, the subtle Communist propaganda
succeeded slowly in bringing about “class differentiation in the
cities and villages….From and attitude of antagonism and
neutrality, the poor and middle peasants….were gradually swinging
into an attitude of active sympathy with the revolution and its
purposes….By 1923 there was a large and well-functioning
organisation of poor and middle peasants‫ـــ‬the Peasants‟ Union‫ـــ‬that
was doing a great deal of work in crystallising the peasants‟ hatred
for the beys, the kulaks, the reactionary mullahs.” (Ibid, p. 144).

ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY THE PRESTIGE OF

RELIGIOUS LEADERS

This brings us to the last-named, i.e., the Ulema. On the purely

religious front, it was they who were made the direct target for
attack. Misplaced conservatism and the absence of the knowledge of
modern thought were their greatest weakness. The more intelligent
and learned among them, who could have faced the issues squarely,
had been put to the sword already or had fled from Bolshevik
persecution. The third class leaders who remained were no match
for the brilliant Communist leadership. In his enmity towards Islam,

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Joshua Kunitz has gloated over the misfortunes of those helpless

“poor Mullahs”. He has cited the case of land-reform which was
made by the Communists into a subtle instrument for disparaging
the authority and prestige of the Ulema. He says:-

“One vulnerable spot in the position of the mosque was the conflict
of interests between the upper and lower clergy….The conflict of
interest was taken advantage of by the Bolsheviks; without
attempting direct attacks on the mosque, they proceeded to assail the
reactionary clergy by exposing before the masses its greed and
selfishness….What made the position of the upper clergy more
vulnerable was the possession of much fertile land coveted by the
peasants. The land-reform, crystallising as it did the conflicting
class interests in the village, succeeded in shaking the already
shaken front of the clergy….the less myopic of the upper clergy
began to beat a hasty retreat. The Soviet authorities refrained from
gloating or vindictiveness. When the recalcitrants called upon the
faithful to resist the redistribution of lands, a group of prominent
penitents, encouraged by the Government, issued a proclamation in
favour of such redistribution. Rather than quixotically oppose
religion and fight the Koran and thus antagonise the masses, the
Bolsheviks availed themselves of the opportunity to utilise the
proclamation issued by the Mullahs. The document was printed in
the Bolshevik press and given the widest publicity….many of the
rich clergy began to renounce their lands. The famous ishan
Fakhruddin Vali-Khodzhaiev was among the first voluntarily to
surrender his vast holdings and in a much-hailed epistle blessed the
land-reform....The statements of the progressive Fergana and
Tashkent clergy, as well as of the renowned ishan Vali-Khodzhaiev,
created a furore among the intransigents who accused the
progressives of wilfully misinterpreting the teachings of

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Mohammed and deliberately distorting passages from the Koran.

They made every effort to prevent these statements, published in
thousands of leaflets, from reaching the masses. They destroyed
every bundle of leaflets they managed to lay hands on. Of course,
their efforts were futile. Within a few weeks the religious front was
completely shattered (because of the subtle handling of the situation
by the Communists)……what is more, there suddenly broke out, for
the first time in the history of Islam, desertions of the Holy Orders
and conversions to Bolshevism and atheism.” (Ibid, pp. 179-181).

POSITIVE PROSELYTISATION

In the field of positive proselytisation, the Communists concentrated

on opening cafes and made them the silent centres of anti-Islamic
propaganda. Joshua Kunitz reported: “Almost every village has a
Red Chai-Khanah….There one sees colourful posters plastered all
over the back wall, ridiculing….the Mullahs….There one sees
stands with Uzbek and Tajik books and papers and pamphlets
printed for the most in the Latin alphabet.” (Ibid, pp. 250, 20).

WORK AMONG THE WOMENFOLK

“Another important phase of cultural work” was the opening of

clubs, especially “women‟s clubs, the main purpose being to draw
the woman out of her seclusion” and away from Islam. (Ibid, p.
284). The Communists knew very well that “the hand that rocks the
cradle rules the world”. Hence, side by side with their endeavour to
win over the poorest classes, they tried to penetrate the sanctuary of
Muslim womanhood. They set about their work in a manner which
was apparently quite innocent and harmless. They had to be very
cautious. As a “Muslim” Communist woman leader once observed:
“We Bolsheviks, while intransigent in our aims, are yet, when

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necessary, patient in pursuing them. We gamble only when we are

fairly certain of our chances…..in dealing with cultural and
psychological „superstructures‟, we often resort to Fabian tactics.”

(Ibid, p. 288).

And they did resort to such tactics. The ultimate aim was to convert
Muslim women to Marxism. But this aim was totally concealed in
the beginning. Innocent temptations were offered. Even the veil was
not interfered with. “To make sure that the women could be tempted
to come to the clubs, practical inducements were offered. For
instance, the Tashkent club organised under its auspices a sewing
artel which gave employment to a considerable number of woman
members. It established a (free) medical service…..Now it is
interesting to note that, while going to the club does not require
unveiling, unveiling is the inevitable consequence of frequent visits
to the club.” (Ibid, pp. 284, 285).

The real Communist aims could not, however, remain concealed for
long. Originally, only “occasionally one would hear the voices of
the youngsters: Down with the paranja (veil) ! Long live the free
women of Central Asia ! Down with the beys and Mullahs ! Long
live the Soviet Government !” (Ibid, p. 270). But, “as the Party was
gaining in members and power, its attack on the old grew bolder and
more determined. And one must bear in mind that not everywhere
were the representatives of the Women‟s Department as diplomatic
and tactful as were Marchenko and Dvorkina. In many places the
enthusiasts were forcing the issue, removing the paranjas, and losing
their heads in the process.” (Ibid, p. 280).

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DISASTROUS MORAL CONSEQUENCES

The trouble was not confined to the paranjas alone. In conformity

with the Marxist moral values, the chastity of Muslim womanhood
was actually under fire. As a Muslim Communist woman
complained in those days: “Even our best, most sincere,
intellectually most emancipated and principled Communists reveal
occasionally this psychological aberration. Even they betray at times
the inability to suppress a reaction which in its immediacy is
tantamount to a conditioned reflex. Even they, although
unconsciously, tend to assume that peculiar freedom of manner
which men allow themselves only in the presence of women of
„questionable character‟. As a result we have a vicious
psychological circle. It is generally the adventurous, daring and ,
naturally enough, rather good-looking woman who flings aside her
paranja…..She now tends to become more self-assertive and
unrestrained than is good for-her. In her relations with the opposite
sex she is helpless.”(Ibid, pp. 286, 287).

The following is a typical instance of what the Muslim Communist

women were experiencing in those days as the fruit of Marxist
freedom. Khoziat, the Organiser of Woman‟s Department in
Tashkent, says: - “In my own case this (Communist freedom)
resulted in tragedy. Meeting men was to me a novel thrilling
experience. A compliment or an embrace was a grand experience. I
lost my head. Being a good Communist, Feizullah tried to overlook
it. But after all he was a Central Asian. For him to let his wife go
out unveiled was a tremendous step forward. It was absurd to expect
of him the tolerance which I know is rare even among European
men (in fact, among all men who are mentally normal ‫ـــ‬Author). He
suffered terribly. He made jealous scenes. He even struck me on

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several occasions. He would then cry, and begged me not to bring it

up before the Party nucleus. We argued and discussed and
quarreled. Both young and inexperienced, this new freedom was too
much for us. Later, when I began to understand the true nature of
most of the compliments and advances, I suffered doubly. I used to
be hurt and insulted (because of the faint Islamic sense of modesty
still remaining ‫ـــ‬Author). Are these comrades? Are these
Communists? I began to lose respect. I began to detest some of the
best and most heroic fighters in our ranks….In the meanwhile,
Feizullah and I were becoming more and more estranged….In the
tortures of our souls, in the fires of our passions a new morality was
beginning to be modeled. The process is not over yet. Very many
are still doomed to burn their wings in their heedless dash for
freedom.” (Ibid, pp. 287,288)

This burning of wings “naturally brought a sharp reaction” among

the pious, simple folk. “Resistance, at first passive and peaceful,
began to assume more ominous forms. In Auliae-Ata, where
Khoziat had been commandeered in 1924 to organise a women‟s
department, the Mullahs lodged complaint against her….To forestall
violence, the Committee had to make a pretence at arresting
Khoziat. She was then urged by the authorities to stop all
propaganda which might result in serious trouble. Here was not by
any means a unique case. Tajik and Uzbek Communists were
seized, beaten and forced to swear that they would make their wives
wear the paranja; they were summoned to the mosque and were
made to renounce their struggle against religion and custom….The
point is that the embattled forces of reaction were putting up a stiff
fight…. The Communists has to be extremely cautious.”

(Ibid, p. 280, 281)

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Certainly the Communists had to be extremely cautious. In fact,

they are always cautious whenever they have to deceive and entrap
religious-minded Muslims. But that caution was to be observed only
during the initial time of weakness. Once they were firmly in the
saddle of power, they knew what to do. And that is what happened.

LAUNCHING OF FULL-FLEDGED ATTACK ON ISLAM BY

THE COMMUNIST PARTY AS WELL AS THE STATE

By 1929 the forces of opposition were in a state of “nervous

exhaustion”, while the Communist hierarchy had prepared the field
for enforcing its ideology and bringing about a “cultural
revolution”.

The first symptoms of change in the general policy manifested

themselves in the tightening up of Communist discipline. Before
that, one could “occasionally meet a Tajik Communist who still
frequented the mosque”.(Ibid, p. 242).

After that, the tendency grew up not to permit such concession. In

1930-31, “in a Kokand village, ten middle peasants were denied
membership in a kolkhoz because they had been seen praying in the
mosque. In the village of Kodja Yakshabo, a kolkhoz was dissolved
because the members insisted on going to the mosque. In the Bokhara
districts some over-zealous officials declared that in the kolkhozi
cremation of the dead would be compulsory.”(Ibid, p. 192).

That was in a way the attitude of the Party. The Government, too,
did not lag behind. It opened the battle of ideological aggression
with all the planned vindictiveness it could command. The infamous
Tashkent treason trials of 1929 announced the commencement of
operations.

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According to the Soviet authorities, the trials revealed “the

persistence of strong Pan-Islamic ideals”. Prominent defenders of
Islam were sent to the gallows. Others “were subjected to extremely
heavy taxes, while thousands of them were arrested and thrown into
jail regardless of the dubious nature of charges against them”.
Execution and imprisonment became the order of the day. (Ibid, p.
33). The purpose was to deprive the Muslims of Islamic leadership
and to frighten them into submission, so that Marxism could be
injected into them without much inconvenience and with greater
success.

CONDEMNATION OF THE SHARI’AT BY SOVIET

AUTHORITIES

Attacks on the Islamic religious beliefs and the Holy Qur‟an became
more frequent and more outspoken. The laws of the Islamic Shariat
which had been allowed till then in matters of marriage, divorce,
and so on, were banned. Shariat itself was officially misrepresented
and condemned. The Soviet Political Dictionary of 1940 bears
witness to the hostile attitude of the Government. It says: The
Shariat is “a means for keeping the workers in economic and
political subordination by the rich. It legalised domination,
exploitation and slavery of the workers, the enslavement of women,
and polygamy….The Shariat is still applied among Muslims in
capitalist and colonial countries. In the U.S.S.R., now, the Shariat is
eradicated.”

PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA BANNED

An iron-curtain was drawn around the Muslim regions. Contact with

the outside world, especially the Islamic, was made a crime.
Pilgrimage to Mecca was banned.

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MUSLIMS MADE PRISONERS IN THEIR OWN

HOMELANDS

Ultimately, Muslims became prisoners in their own

homelands ‫ـــ‬their “autonomous Republics” ‫ ـــ‬with the specter of
persecution constantly hanging over their heads. There was slight
relaxation in the Soviet policy of repression just before the entry of
the Soviet Union into the League of Nations. It was meant as an
eye-wash. For soon the persecution flared up again during the
purge-trials of 1936-38. All those prominent Muslims whom the
previous persecution could not wipe out, were accused of all kinds
of charges this time and executed. Islam was being given a
continuous blood-bath !

The Kremlin knew, however, that no amount of persecution and

ridicule could by itself succeed in wiping out Islam. The Soviet
leaders knew that it would be a long and arduous task for them to
thoroughly Bolshevise the Muslims, so long as the mosques and
religious schools persisted.

MOSQUE UNDER FIRE

Hence, as regards the mosques, the first step taken was to confiscate
their properties, even though they were not private but communal
properties. In addition to this measure, the Government started
converting the mosques themselves into modern schools and the
like. Joshua Kunitz says: “In many villages we find mosques turned
into modern schools.” (Ibid, p. 250).

According to the statistics compiled during the Czarist regime, in

1907 there were as many as 7,000 mosques in European Russia
alone. The total number in all the areas of the Russian empire must

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have been in the neighbour of fifteen thousand. How many mosques

were converted by the Communists can be estimated on the basis of
the fact that in 1942 the “Soviet War News” of May 16 gave the
figure of the total number of mosques in the whole of the Soviet
Union as 1,312.

ISLAMIC RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS CLOSED AND

INSTRUCTION OUTLAWED

As for the institutions of Islamic religious instruction, there were as

many as 8,000 in the Soviet Union when the Communists launched
their campaign and enforced their decree separating the schools
from the churches. Subsequently, not a single institution was left in
existence. The buildings of those institutions were converted into
warehouses, theatres and clubs. The famous Islamic Theological
Seminary of Registan, built by the grandson of Timur, was turned
into a museum. (Russia on the Way: Salisbury, p.135).

Not only were the religious institutions closed, but religious

instruction itself was outlawed, only anti-religious instruction
remaining lawful. One of the blackest laws in the history of
mankind was proclaimed in the following words: “Instruction in any
type of religious doctrines given in schools to minors and under-
aged is one of the forms of infringement on the freedom of
conscience guaranteed by the U.S.S.R. constitution.” (Trainin,
Menshagin and Vyshinsky : “Commentaries on the Criminal Code
of the R.S.F.S.R.”, 2nd Ed., Moscow, 1946, pp.167,168).

COMPULSORY ANTI-RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

As all students of Marxism know, regimentation of education under

the strictest Government vigilance is the most important Communist

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weapon for converting to Marxism all those who might happen to be

under their control. This is so because the education thus given is
through and through Marxist. The courses of study are so planned
and the text-books are so compiled that the children imbibe Marxist
atheism from the very beginning and their intellects are trained in
such a way that they learn to view every problem of life from the
Marxist angle. Every subject they are taught is dipped in Marxist
atheism and materialism before it is dished out to them. These
defenders of the “freedom of conscience” prohibit religious
instruction on that ground but themselves commit the crime of
giving compulsory anti-religious instruction on a much-magnified
scale and of killing the freedom of human conscience in a hundred-
and-one other ways !

Compulsory Marxist education combined with the total prohibition

of religious instruction can produce only one result, namely, the
creation of whole generations of full-fledged Marxists. Any other
ideology which might apply the same strategy can succeed in the
same way. And when we think of all those instruments of Marxist
influence, like the government, the party, the theatre and the club,
which are invariably added to that anti-religious education, the fate
of Islam in the Soviet Union can be better imagined than described.
On the other hand, it must be considered a miracle of Islam if there
are still men and women ‫ـــ‬and they are there! ‫ـــ‬who adhere to their
faith.

With education as their best weapon, the Soviet Union proceeded

with determination to de-Islamise the Muslim population. Referring
to the early days, Joushua Kunitz says: “More than illiteracy, the
new government feared the influence of the old schools conducted
by the Mullahs. To stimulate interest in the new education, the

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government found it necessary to grant privileges, exemptions and

even monetary compensations to parents who agreed to send their
children to Soviet schools. A few teachers‟ training schools were
opened. Also courses were organised to train natives for various
political, economic and cultural jobs.” (Ibid, p. 143).

Gradually, Communism came to hold the monopoly in the field of

education and Islamic influences began to disappear. “The old Muslim
schools…..have passed into oblivion. Gone, too, is the old type of
teacher---the Mullah or the student of Muslim religious academies. The
schools are modern schools; the subjects are modern subjects; and the
teachers are modern teachers.”(Ibid, p. 237)

That the education imparted to the rising generations of Muslims is

not only modern but also definitely anti-Islamic is borne out by the
following statement: “It is very characteristic that during the
Basmach troubles the village teacher was usually the first to be
killed…..The village teacher in Central Asia is the worst enemy of
reaction and bigotry (Communist synonyms for religion ‫ـــ‬Author),
the best and most enthusiastic career of the Communist ideals.”
(Ibid, p. 239).

DISASTROUS RESULTS OF ANTI-RELIGIOUS

EDUCATION

Among the blessings of the Communist regime, the propagandists

of Marxism in Muslim lands refer very often and very boldly to the
progress which the Muslims of the Soviet Union have made in the
field of education. But I ask every sensible and honest Muslim:
Should such de-Islamising education be actually regarded as a
blessing or a curse from the Islamic point of view? True, the
Communist system has spread greater literacy among the Muslims.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

But, at what price? The garden of Islam has been uprooted and
transformed into a desert of atheism!

According to Joshua Kunitz: “The revolution has unleashed a

whirlwind of passion….there are appearing in ever-increasing
numbers the bobbed hair and the khaki uniforms of the
revolutionary youth. Mullahs….have been supplanted by Soviet
Commissars and Red factory managers. Mosques and medresse
(religious academies) are being crowded out….by the vast sweep of
modernity….Aini, the beloved writer of the Tajik masses shows
very clearly that the great miracle of his people‟s emancipation has
been accomplished not through the kind intervention of Allah and
His prophets….Almost all the songs of freedom contain the contrast
between the „acrid days‟ of the past and the „fragrant days‟ of the
present….Closely related to the songs of freedom have been the
countless songs and stories and legends about Lenin….(who is) a
holy savior….Lahuti‟s „Wreath on Lenin‟s Grave‟ is symptomatic
of what is transpiring in the realm of culture all over the Soviet
lands.” (Ibid, pp. 4, 323, 325, 326, 330, 331).

The following few specimens reveal the trend of “Muslim”

Communist thought in the Soviet Union.

(Poem by Munavvar-Sho, the Tajik poet):-

“To the prophet

“In the year of great war I strolled along the road……..

“From a ruined cell emerged my old teacher, the guide of my

childhood years, a Mullah and a lord of learning. And he cries to
me-: Hearken to my prophecies. Years will pass. You will recall my
words.
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

“Years have passed, I remember your word, O teacher……

“You said: The words of the Koran are eternal……

“You said: The mosques will never be empty,

“Islam shall reign eternal.

“Hardly……..

“Mullah, teacher,

“Where are your prophecies?

“Mullah, teacher,

“The thought of you makes me tired……..” (Ibid, p.40)

(Poem by an Uzbek peasant bard) :-

“The greatest of good deeds was done by Lenin,

“The urn of virtues, he who freed the earth………

“The name of the greatest of men will never be forgotten……..

“Lenin‟s equal in mind and heart

“Earth has not yet begotten.” (Ibid, p. 41)

(Battle Song by Piarau Sulaimani) :-

“There is no place here any more for emirs or beys or mullahs.

“We need no God and no servants of His from this or other lands.”
(Ibid, p. 53)

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

(Poem by Lahuti, the Tajik poet) :-

“Today we have a Muslim holiday‫ـــ‬

“Roza we call it here.

“And what a holiday it was in the past !

“Deserted the homes, desert the fields,

“Crowds kneeling all day in the mosques.

“But now who has time to think of Roza?

“Who has time for this nonsense of the salvish past?”

(Ibid, pp. 333, 334)

How far have things gone can also be gauged from the observations
of the well-known non-Muslim Indian author, Mr. M. R. Masani
who visited the Soviet Union twice, in 1927 and 1936. He gives the
following account of his conversation with a prominent Communist
official of Azerbaijan. (I have translated it from the Urdu version of
his Soviet Sidelights) :-

“I asked: Comrade ! Now tell me something about your anti-God

movement. I am myself a Rationalist and am, therefore, pretty
deeply interested in it.”

The reply came :-

“We did not launch a stormy anti-religious campaign here like that
in Russia. Religion, too, like Capitalism, cannot be annihilated
overnight. We relied upon education for the creation of the scientific

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

point of view against superstition-mongering. The results are highly

encouraging. The youth have been thoroughly won to the side of
irreligion. And, what is more, the Muslim peasant, who now works
on the collective farms, has begun to understand that he has been
saved from the payment of tax to the Mullah for obtaining comforts
in the next world. I can‟t say whether the policy pursued in Russia
was wrong. There the people were comparatively more prepared for
the change. Hence they could move faster (towards atheism).”

Describing his impressions of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, Mr.

Masani says :-

In the old town which is known as „the old Turkish city‟, “there is a
mosque. I had a talk with its Mullah. He told me that thirty to forty
Muslims came daily to that mosque for prayers. He recalled the
days gone by when the mosque used to remain full with the
worshippers. Now only the aged people come, and they, too, not
punctually. These worshippers are usually from the villages and live
in the town with their sons, who work here as labourers. As for the
youngsters, they have their own different world to move in. And
they can‟t be blamed also in view of the numerous modern
attractions such as games, libraries, parks and the study circles of
the Trade Unions.”

“„How do the old people feel about collectivism sponsored by the

new regime?‟, I asked. He replied: „Different people hold different
views. I personally think it has done a lot of good. But I am against
the abolition of veil which is against the Qur‟anic teaching.‟ ” (p.54)

By the way, the last sentence shows the pitiable standard of

religious leadership left after the learned Ulema had been killed and
removed from the scene.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Mr. Marsani proceeds to say :-

“This poor Mullah has spent his whole life in serving this mosque.
His face twitched with agony when he remarked: „After a few years
there will be none who would come to the mosque and it would be
closed or some school would be opened here. What has been
destined will come to pass!‟ he uttered with a deep sigh. This was
an admission of defeat from a vanishing system.” (p. 54, 55).

PERSISTENCE OF ISLAMIC INFLUENCES

The Communists and atheists are happy that, with the help of the
most brutal means ever employed by any aggressive group for
killing the freedom of thought, they have at last succeeded in
gaining adherents from among the Muslims of the Soviet Union.
But the struggle is not over yet. The Islamic influences and the
desire for freedom still persist. The Muslim populations cannot yet
be trusted fully. One proof of this is the fact that in 1938, Marshal
Voroshilolv, the then Acting Commissar for Defence, ordered the
abolition of Muslim national regiments and their distribution among
Russian troops.

SOME RECENT COMMUNIST SUBTERFUGES

Another proof of the persistence of Islamic influences are those

concessions which the Soviet Union made to the Muslims on the
religious front during the last World War when the fate of
Communism hung in the balance. True to Marxist opportunism, the
Kremlin permitted the publication of the Holy Qur‟an and the
resumption of Pilgrimage to Mecca after a period of eighteen years.
Permission was also given to form four Muslim religious regional
boards, although at the same time (1944) a Council for the Affairs

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

of Religious Cults, consisting of government lay officials, was also

formed under the U.S.S.R Council of People‟s Commissars, with a
view to “supervise religious activities, keeping them…..within
political limits prescribed by the Kremlin.” (C. and M. Gazette,
Karachi, April 30, 1949). As if to compensate for the thousands of
mosques confiscated by the Communists, the Soviet authorities also
permitted the construction of ten new mosques in 1944.

These few concessions are being made much of by the Communist

propagandists. In fact, they go even so far as to say that thereis
perfect religious freedom in the Soviet Union and they refer to the
U.S.S.R. Constitution of 1936 in their support. But that Constitution
reflects no legal change for the status of religion at all. The utmost
that it permits is the right of the individuals to “perform religious
rites”. The ban on religious instruction and propaganda remains,
while “anti-religious propaganda is recognised for all citizens”.
Religion can, at best, stay as a paralysed entity, ultimately to wear
out of existence.

The concessions referred to above hardly mean anything more.

They form yet another Marxist hoax. They were made, not out of
respect for Islam or to keep Islam alive, but only to deceive the
U.S.S.R Muslims and to win their support at a time of great
emergency. If they still exist, they are meant to soften the
psychological defences of the Muslim world which the Communists
are struggling with all their might to penetrate. They might continue
to exist for some time more ‫ـــ‬but only for such time as the Soviet
Union feels there is need for wooing the Muslims.

That these concessions are a mere hoax is borne out by the Soviet
behaviour not only in the past but also in the present. When the
writer of these lines visited Mecca during his recent world tour and
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

enquired about the pilgrims whom the Soviet Union permitted to

visit the Holy Land since 1944, it was revealed that they consisted
every year of batches of three or four Muslim Communist
missionaries only. Thus the so-called permission to perform the Hajj
was designed to make Mecca a venue of Communist propaganda
and contact and not to provide an opportunity to the pious Muslims
of the U.S.S.R to perform a religious obligation. The Communist
appearances are always different from the reality !

The concessions were made. The anti-religious policy was relaxed.

But the purpose was not to resuscitate the religious life. Therefore,
the moment the Communist leaders discerned signs of a sort of
religious revival among the Muslims, warnings immediately went
forth from the masters to the slaves to remain “within limits”. After
the war was over, these warnings became more and more
pronounced.

In December, 1947, the leading article in “The Young Bolshevik”,

organ of the Central Committee of the Young Communist League,
called for the “intensification of the struggle against all survivals of
bourgeois ideology and morality including religious prejudices and
superstitions”. In May, 1948, the same magazine proclaimed: “For
us Communists, Young Communists, religion never was and never
will be a „private affair‟. The high status of Communist and Young
Communist can be applied only to one who is not only completely
free from religious prejudices, but also considers it his most
important duty to educate the Soviet people and the Soviet youth in
the real spirit of scientific Marxist-Leninist views.” In the same
month, the Turkmenskaya Iskra (Turkmenian Spark), which deals
with the Turkoman Muslim population of Central Asia, launched a
general attack upon Islam and said: “It would also be incorrect to

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

look upon all these harmful customs and habits separately from
religion when the latter specially shows its influence upon them.
The religious leadership is trying with all its forces and abilities to
support the old forms in order to retain faith among the populace in
the permanence of Islam. Here there is need for an active struggle
against religious prejudices. The need for such a struggle against
religious prejudices is dictated not only by the fact that they are
incompatible with the materialist viewpoint of the Party, but also by
the fact that the Mullahs and their helpers maintain in the
consciousness of the people the oldest and most harmful customs
and habits and hamper the development of culture in general.” In
September, 1948, the “Sovetskaya Kirgizia”, official organ of the
Muslim Khirghiz Republic, while noting with alarm that “among a
certain section of the workers incorrect views existed regarding the
relation of Party to religion,” called for an all-out war against
Islamic beliefs.

Only one last item of Communist propaganda now remains to be

exploded. The present writer has heard many a simple-minded
Muslim saying that, if the Soviet Union is so anti-Islam, why is it
that the Muslims fought in the Red Army against Germany? The
simple answer is that their forefathers had similarly fought in the
armies of the Czars against their own brothers, the Turks. Verily, a
slave has little option !

THE LESSON FOR US

The above account of the political and ideological aggression of

Communists on Muslims, based as it is mostly on approved and
authentic Communist documents, provides the picture of the
practical application of Communism to Islam. Communism, the
ideology of the under-man, flourishes underground and attracts the
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

people to its bosom under deceptive masks. It always shoots its

arrows from behind the curtain. It always weaves its trap of the most
deceptive fibre. It always hides its “red teeth and claws” and
comforts the masses into submission with its soft tail. Simple-
minded Muslims are being taught to regard it as a purely
humanitarian movement out to help the oppressed poor against the
tyrannising rich. It does destroy the parasites of wealth, but, like a
blind monster, it also simultaneously destroys religion and morality.

Communism is not merely a theory of Economics. Had it been so,

we could comfortably rest in an academic attitude. It is, however, a
full-fledged philosophy of life, which stands as the very antithesis of
Islam. Hence the need for a more serious thought than what the
Muslim world has given so far.

The facts recounted in the foregoing prove beyond all doubt that
Communism is Islam‟s enemy No.1. But a mere realisation of this
fact cannot carry us far. Communism has already swallowed up a
portion of the Islamic world. It has gained, in spite of its black
spots, primarily because of our weakness.

We are weak, not only politically and militarily, but also socially.
The Muslim world is infested with different kinds of evils. It is
diseased. The social order which it was Islam‟s mission to bring into
existence is present nowhere. The decrepit social order under which
Muslims are living cannot withstand the vigorous Communist
onslaught.

Muslim statesmen have basked in the sunshine of illusions and un-

Islamic ideals for quite a long time now. If they could lodge the
Muslim world in a vacuum, they might have continued in it for
some time more. But that is not possible. The hour of decision has

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

struck. The present worm-eaten “social dis-order” shall have to be

scrapped.

The purpose in writing this thesis was not to abuse the Communists.
The author holds no brief for the imperialists and the capitalists,
who have been the real cause of bringing the Communist scourge to
humanity. In fact, he regards such an act as the blackest sin. His
language has assumed a severe tone at certain places. For that he
owes no apology. Communism has inflicted deep wounds on the
body of Islam. No apology is due from a wounded heart. No
apology is needed for calling a spade a spade !

The ideal which inspired the present humble attempt has been a
positive one. It is to give a true picture of the devastation which
Communism has already wrought and to awaken the Muslims,
especially their leaders, to the realisation of the bitter truth that the
same drama might soon be enacted in other parts of the Muslim
world, if they fail to rise to the height of the opportunity.

Before closing, a very important fact, which is usually lost sight of,
may be stated for earnest consideration by every Muslim. The
political success of Communism is not due to the foundation of
Marxist philosophical and social ideology on any infallible truths. In
fact, the fundamentals of Marxist ideology, like the passage of
quantity into quality (giving rise to the production of surplus value
according to Marx), the negation of the negation, the withering
away of the state, the creation of a classless equalitarian society, are
all false doctrines. They are utopian fictions and not scientific facts.
Fundamentally and basically the Marxist ideology is false. Yet
Communist propaganda is successful in attracting the exploited and
the down-trodden. That is because the Communist party is the only
party which apparently raises a masculine voice against the
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

inequities of Colonialism and Imperialism and Capitalism, even

though it later on plunges people into worse forms of slavery, and
carries on a powerful propaganda with all the force of the
missionary zeal. At its best, what it actually gives to the people, in
the field of economic betterment, is not Marxism ‫ـــ‬which is
unworkable and impracticable‫ـــ‬but a compromise between Marxism
and Capitalism, coupled with total spiritual impoverishment. The
Soviet Union itself supplies the best illustration in this respect. The
differentials in pay, the social decorations for achievement, the
recent emphasis on the family, the rule of the all-powerful
bureaucracy, all prove that Russia is not moving towards Marxism
but towards an industrial social democracy ‫ـــ‬a realistic Socialism
which recognises gradation of ability.

Thus, in the field of the socio-economic betterment of man,

practical Communism has achieved something not higher than what
Islam aims at. Of course, Islam achieves the elimination of
exploitation on the basis of a different set of economic principles
and without foisting a ruthless and dogmatic dictatorship like that of
Soviet Russia, without sapping human freedom, without employing
iron regimentation, without imposing tyranny in any form ‫ـــ‬and,
without destroying the religious and moral values. The Communist
philosophy ‫ـــ‬if it can be called a philosophy ‫ـــ‬is a philosophy of the
stomachs. The Islamic philosophy is a philosophy of values,
comprehending the totality of human life.

For the Muslim, therefore, the problem is very simple. He has no

need to burn the richness of his being to achieve what he can find in
a better form in the harmonious and all-round development of his
personality in Islam. What he needs is the resolve to establish the
Islamic social order in place of the present un-Islamic systems.

224
 Communist Challenge to Islam

May God guide the Muslim people, especially the Muslim

statesmen, to the right path and inspire them to set their house in
order before it is too late. Amen !

225
Communist Challenge to Islam

226
 Communist Challenge to Islam

ISLAM
VERSUS

MARXISM
Being an Essay written for the Muslim-Christian Convention
held in Lebanon in 1954

227
Communist Challenge to Islam

228
 Communist Challenge to Islam

ISLAM VERSUS MARXISM

THE PREAMBLE

The Marxist menace has been growing in the Muslim

world, the political measure lately adopted by certain Muslim
state notwithstanding. It has been growing and it must
continue to grow so long as the social and political condition
remain what they are ‫ـــ‬so long as poverty, ignorance, disease,
exploitation and tyranny hold their sway in Muslim lands and
die-hard imperialists like the French continue to keep large
Muslim populations under their heels.

That is, however, the political aspect of the menace, with

which persons of academic sphere can hardly interfere with
any tangible result. But the academic aspect also has suffered
considerably. For instance, there has been no organized
international move on behalf of the Muslim world which
could pool all its intellectual resources and give it a
specialised lead in this regard. Certain religious organizations
have been doing some valuable literary work, for which every
Muslim should feel grateful. But nothing substantial has been
done to build up a genuine international movement which
could undertake to fight the Marxist menace at least
academically.

The present essay was written for the world convention

sponsored by the “American Friends of the Middle East” and

229
 Communist Challenge to Islam

held in Lebanon in 1954. The following four fundamental

problems were laid down for exposition :

(1) The spiritual assets in Islam and their significance for the
individual, The Family and society;

(2) Social work based on religious concepts like Zakat ;

(3) The social challenge of Communism and Islam‟s answer to

it ;

(4) How can Islam transmit its spiritual values to the younger
generation ? Hence the following line of discussion.

THE BASIC PIONT OF DIFFERENCE

It is a truism, as the Holy Prophet Jesus (Allah‟s blessings be

upon him!) is reported to have said: “Man does not live by
bread alone”. It is this fact which is vital to every religion, ‫ـــ‬in
fact, to Religion as such, ‫ـــ‬and it is this which distinguishes
and separates Religion from Marxism for all time.

Marxism negates the belief in the existence of God, denies all

the higher values of life and challenges the dignity of man.
Grounded as it is in a Mechanistic philosophy and a
Behaviouristic Psychology, it refuses to regard Man as
anything more than an automaton, ‫ـــ‬a vanishing speck on the
firmament of matter, or a mere playthings on social
chessboard. It refuses to recognise Man‟s higher yearnings
‫ـــ‬his yearnings for communion with God, his yearnings for
Truth, Love and Beauty, his yearnings for spiritual perfection,
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

moral earnestness and social refinement ‫ـــ‬except as

aberrations and sublimations of his economic wants, thus
raising Psychological perversion to the dignity of a Moral
Principle. It recognizes only the validity of the economic value
and of naked materialism; and its Dialectic, though it appears
to be endowed with what might only paradoxically be called
self-consciousness is, in the final analyses, actually a blind
process. Thus Marxism stands poles a part from Islam. In fact,
it is its very anti-thesis.

THE SPIRITUAL ASSETS OF ISLAM

As regards the spiritual assets of Islam, they can be

particularised only academically, because, practically
speaking, the entire super-structure of Islam is spiritual in the
sense of being God-conscious. The word “Islam" means
“Submission to the Will of God”, or in other words, living a
life for the sake of God. Thus a Muslim is he, every aspect of
whose behaviour and every cross-section of whose activity
‫ـــ‬without any such distinction as that of “secular” and
“religious” ‫ـــ‬is for the sake of God and in obedience to His
will and Commands. This is what we read in the Holy Qur‟an:

َ ِ ‫يۖ ي َبِ ََٰذا‬

‫يي‬ َ ِ َ ‫ِ ي َ َ ْ َ َاي َ َ َ ِاي ِ َّ ِ َير ِ ّ ي ا ْ َ َا ِ َ ي َ ي‬
ُ َ ‫ييا‬ ُ ُ َ ‫ُ ْ ي ِ َّ ي َ َ ِاي‬
﴾163-162 :‫ْ ِ ِ َ ﴿ أل م‬ َ َ ُِ
ُ‫أ ْ ُ ي َأ َ يأ َّ ُ ي ْا‬
“Say (O Muhammad!): Truly, my prayer and my
sacrifice, my life and my death are (all) for Allah,

231
 Communist Challenge to Islam

the Cherisher of the Worlds: no partner hath He:

This I am commanded and I am the first of those
who bow to Allah‟s will”. (VI: 162, 163).

However, from the point of view of the problems before us,

certain spiritual assets of Islam might be stressed:-

(a) In the first instance, Islam regards the basic of all

life as spiritual, and, though its approach to the
problem of Mind and Matter is non-dualistic, i.e.,
unitary, in the realm of values it gives primacy to
the spiritual, thus standing in violent opposition to
Marxist Dialectical Materialism.
(b) While Marxism conceives life only in respect of
its un-folding from the lower to the higher forms
‫ـــ‬just as, in the case of the individual, it gives
primacy to Hunger and Sex and makes the entire
life revolve round them ‫ـــ‬Islam stresses the
fundamental diffusion of life from the higher to
the lower values. Thus, it regards God not only the
Ultimate reality but the Really Real and orientates
entire life in the concept of Love for Him. In the
realm of human values, Islam conceives the
economic value emerging from the moral and the
moral from the spiritual.
(c) This necessitates a belief in the Universe as a
Moral Order, which Islam affirms with all the
emphasis possible. According to Islam, the
contradiction which exist on the material plane of
existence harmonise themselves on the spiritual
plane; and in its teachings concerning life-after-
death and moral retribution in the form of Heaven

232
 Communist Challenge to Islam

and Hell, it proclaims that Virtue must ultimately

triumph.
(d) The universe being a Moral Order, Man can-not
but be a Moral Being primarily and essentially,
‫ـــ‬and that he is in Islam. Far from being a blind
atom whirling in the storm of cosmic confusion or
an impersonal mark on the unfolding tape of the
cruel Dialectic, he is the possessor of an
Individuality and a Personality, basically built up
on the elements of Goodness, Truth and Beauty, as
the Holy Qur‟an says :
﴾٤ :‫ا َ َ ْ ي َ َ ْ َ ي ْ ِا َ َ ي ِ يأ َ ْ َ ِ ي َ ْ ِ ٍي ﴿التين‬

“We have indeed created man in the best of

form.”(XCV :4)

Essentially, he is not the slave of the instincts of Hunger and

Sex but a being to whom the angels were ordered by God
Almighty to pay homage, as we are told in the Holy Qur‟an:

﴾٣٤ :‫َ ِذْي ُ ْ َ يا ِ ْ َ َ ِئ َ ِةي ْس ُج ُ ِيِلدَ َميفَ َ َج ُ ﴿البقرة‬

“And behold, we said to the angels : „Bow to

Adam‟, and they bowed down”. (II :34).

He is the apex of creation and the master of all around him. So

says the Holy Qur‟an:

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

‫ُ ْيي ِ َ َ ُ ي‬ ‫ِ َسب‬ ِ ‫َ سخ‬

ْ َ َ ‫أا َ ْيي َ َ ْ يأ َّ ي َّ َي َ َّ َ يا َ ُ يي َّ ي ِ ي ا َّ َ َ ي َ َ ي ِ ي ْأل َ ْرضي َأ ْ َ َغيع‬
َ

ٍ ِ ُّ ‫ٍ ي‬
‫ْيي‬ ِ ْ َ ‫َظ ِه َ ةًي َبَ ِط َةًي َ ِ َ ي ا َّ ِسي َ ُيُي َ ِد ُ ي ِ ي َّ ِ يبِغ‬
َ ‫ْييعِ ْ ٍيي َ َ ُيه ًىي َ َ ي ِكت‬
﴾٢٠ :‫﴿لقمان‬

“Do you not see that Allah has subjected to your

(use) all things in the heavens and on earth, and
has made His bounties flow to you in exceeding
measure, (both) seen and unseen? Yet there are
men who dispute Allah, without knowledge and
without Guidance, and without a Book to
enlighten them!” (XXXI: 20).

And again

‫بي َ اْب َ ْح ِ ي َ َرزَ ْ َ ُهيي ِّ َ ي َّاط ِيّب َ ِ ي‬ِ َ َ َ ‫َا َ َ ْيكَ َّ ْ َ يبَ ِِنيآدَ َمي‬
ّ َ ْ ‫َح ْ َ ُه ْيي ِ ي ا‬
﴾٧٠ :‫ض ً ﴿اإلسراء‬ ِ ْ َ ‫ْيي ِّ َّ ْ ي َ َ ْ َ ي‬
ٍ ِ ‫َفَ َّض ْ َ ُه ْييعََلَ َٰي َك‬

“And certainly We have honoured the children of

Adam; provided them with transport on land and
sea; given them for sustenance things good and
pure : and conferred on them special favours
above a great part of Our Creation.” (XVII: 70).

Islam has indeed raised Man to the highest pinnacle of

greatness in Creation by calling him the vicegerent of God on
earth, to which the Holy Qur‟an refers in these words:

234
 Communist Challenge to Islam

﴾٣٠ :‫ضي َ ِ فَةًي ﴿البقرة‬

ِ ‫ييا ِ ْ َ ِئ َ ِةي ِِِّن َيج عِ ٌ ي ِ ي ْأل َ ْر‬
َ َ ُّ‫َ ِذْي َ َ َيرب‬
“Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: „I will creat a
vicegerent on the earth‟.” (II :30).

(e) This being the dignity of Man, Islam gives him the
ideal of harmonizing himself with the Divine Life.
Thus we have been told by the Holy Prophet
Muhammad (God‟s choicest blessing be upon
him!):-
)444:‫ص‬,4:‫ ج‬:‫قي هلل (التفسير الکبير‬ ‫يبأ‬ ‫خت‬

“Imbue yourselves with divine Attributes.”

(f) Islam is the religion of Balance, Proportion and

Harmony, to which numerous verses of the Holy
Qur‟an bear testimony, as for instance :
﴾١ :‫يي ْألَعَْلَ ي ا َّ ِذاي َ ََقيفَ َ َّ َٰىي َ ا َّ ِذاي َ ّ ََريفَهَ َ َٰىي﴿األعلى‬
َ ِّ‫َسبِّ ِحي ْس َي َيرب‬

“Glorify the name of thy Lord Most High, Who

hath created and, further, given order and
Proportion; Who hath ordained laws and granted
guidance”. (LXXXVII: 1-3).
And, again:

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

‫ََقي ْ ِا َ َ يع َ َّ َ ُ ي اْب َ َ َ ي ا َّش ْ ُسي َ ا ْ َ َ ُ ِ ُيِب ْ ب َ ٍ ي‬

َ ‫َح ُ يع َ َّ َيي ا ْ ُ ْ آ َ ي‬
ََٰ ْ َّ ‫ا‬
‫َ ِ ي َ ا َّ َ ءَ َيرفَ َهَ ي َ َ َض َعي ْا ِ َز َ يأ َ َّ ي َ ْطغ َ ْ ي ِ ي‬
‫َ ا َّ ْج ُيي َ ا َّش َج ُ ي َ ْ ُج‬

﴾8-١ :‫ْا ِ َز ِ ﴿الرحمن‬

“God Most Gracious! It is He Who has taught the

Qur‟an. He has created man: He has taught him
speech (with intelligence). The sun and the moon
follow courses (exactly) computed and the herbs
and the trees do adore (Him). And the firmament
has He raised high, and He has set up the balance,
in order that ye may not transgress the Balance.”
(LV: 1-8)

Thus Islam commands Man to affirm all the values of life

‫ـــ‬spiritual, Moral, Intellectual, Aesthetic and physical ‫ـــ‬and to
pursue them in a balanced way, aiming finally at Harmonious
Development.

(g) The Principle of Harmony at the highest social

level transforms itself into the well-known Islamic
doctrine of Human Brotherhood, which in its turn,
throws into broad relief the principle of Co-
operation in contradistinction to the Marxist
ideology of Class-War.

These, in brief, are the spiritual assets of Islam from the point
of view of the present discussion, and they reveal the utter
incompatibility which exists between Islam and Marxism.

236
 Communist Challenge to Islam

INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

As regards the relations of the Individual and the Society,

Islam gives to the Individual what belongs to the individual
and to the Society what belong to the Society. The Individual
and the society have been conceived in it not as antithetic but
as complimentary, the former realising himself through the
latter and the latter through the former. Indeed, in its unique
system, Islam has steered clear of the shortcomings of both,
cruel Individualism and brutal Collectivism, giving us a
synthesis which is natural and rational.

Marxism is Collectivism in its brute form, with an iron

regimentation bordering on slavery. As a theory of Social
Atomism, it regards the Individual as the primary unit of the
Social Whole. But very soon it absorbs him in the concept of
class-war and finally drowns his identity in the whirlpool of
Social Expediency where the loyalty to the Politbureau over-
rides all other loyalties, including that to the family-ties.

In Islam, the Individual is the spiritual unit of the Society,

while the family forms the social unit. Thus the individual has
been regarded as basically a free being with a permanent
identity and his moral struggle has been conceived as directed
to the enrichment of his own Personality as well as that of
other individuals, contributing, in the final analysis, to the
enrichment of the human Society as a whole. As regards the
Family, it occupies, in the elaborate code of Islamic ethics, a
privileged position above all challenge, and Marriage, which

237
 Communist Challenge to Islam

forms the corner-stone in the superstructure of family life, has

been declared to be a vital means, not only as regards the
individual‟s social self-realisation but also in connection with
his spiritual perfection. Thus, for instance, the Holy Prophet
Muhammad (Allah bless him!) says:

)1836 :‫رقم الحدیث‬:‫ا ِ ّ َ ُاي ِ ْ ُيس َّ ِ (سنن ابن ماجه‬

)4675 :‫رقم الحدیث‬:‫فَ َ ْ َير ِ َ ي َ ْ ُيس َّ ِ يفَ َي ْ َسي ِ ِ ِّن(صحيح البخاری‬

“Marriage is of my way, and whoever turns away

from my ways is not from me, i.e., is not a
Muslim!”

Also:

)7862:‫ي صفي امي (المعجم األوسط للطبراني‬ ‫ي ز جيف ي ست‬

“Marriage is half the Faith.”

The teachings of Islam concerning the individual and the

Family are directly and logically related to the principles
stated in connection with spiritual assets. Islam stresses the
principle of Co-operation in contrast to the Marxist philosophy
of Conflict, and genuine Co-operation cannot be possible
except between free beings. Again, there can be no better
training ground and no better nucleus for Co-operation than
the family. Hence the assurance of the basic freedom of the

238
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Individual and the sanctity of the institution of the Family in

Islam.

SOCIAL SERVICE BASED ON RELIGIOUS

CONCEPTS

As already stressed, Islam is not merely a Religion but an

elaborate Social Order, a self-contained culture and a full-
fledged Civilisation. Consequently, the entire Islamic system
of faith and practice ensures “Social Service based on
Religious Concepts” by assimilating all the three basic
concepts, namely, Man, Society, God into a harmonious
Whole, in contradistinction to Marxism which confines itself
purely to the problem of “Man and Society” , and also in sharp
contrast to the general religious thought which confines itself
to the problem of “Man and God” indeed, even the purely
devotional practices in Islam, like prayers and fasting and the
pilgrimage to Mecca, are social institution and serve social
ends.

Besides this basic characteristics of Islam, there is also a

specific Social Code in which social service has been raised to
the dignity of the highest form of virtue, just as the Holy
Prophet Muhammad ( Peace be on him!) says:

‫ي ىلي ا‬
﴾7194:‫﴿شعب االیمان‬ ‫ي خل قي ىلي هللي يأ‬ ‫يفأ‬،‫ي هللي‬ ‫خل قي‬

“The best of you is he who is best to God‟s family,

i.e., mankind.”
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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Thus, while, besides the “Duties to God,” “Duties to self,”

“Duties to the Creation in General,” we find a magnificent
elaboration of “Duties to Others” (Individual as well as
Collective) in the Islamic Moral Code, we also come across
among the basic “Five Pillars” themselves an institution like
the “Zakat,” enthroned there as the very essence of Islam.

Zakat is the obligatory “Social Betterment Tax” ‫ـــ‬obligatory to

the extent that its denial turns a person out of the fold of Islam
‫ ـــ‬and it gives to Islam the distinction of giving to the world a
system of “Organised Well-doing” in contrast to the
haphazard form of Charity found generally in the practice of
religious people. Compressing 2 1 2 % on all hoarded and
productive wealth, it is essentially a state-institution and is
meant solely for the benefit of the poor and for the general
weal, as the Holy Prophet Muhammad (may his memory be
ever green!) says:

)1967:‫ُ ْؤ َ ُذي ِ ْ يأ َ ْ ِ ِئ ِه ْيي َ ُ َ ُّدي ِ ي ُف َ َ ِئ ِه ْيي(مسند االمام احمد‬

َ
“(It is) taken from their well-to-do persons and
given to their poor people.”

Unfortunately, during the present age of Muslim

disorganisation (due to various causes which may not be
recounted at the present occasion), the institution of Zakat has
become a private affair and is being practiced by very few
Muslims. But, during the glorious period of Muslim history, it
existed with all the splendour of its revolutionary glory.
240
 Communist Challenge to Islam

Indeed, as all students of Islamic history know, it succeeded

even in the earliest stages of its establishment in transforming
a veritable desert of poverty, destitution and suffering into a
paradise of plenty for all. And it can be said without the least
shadow of doubt that it can perform the same miracle even
today if it is organised properly by the Muslim governments.

Zakat is not, however, the sole institution which Islam has

given to us for the eradication of social evils. Rather, there is a
whole set of laws which aim at the establishment of a healthy
economic adjustment in society.

ISLAM’S ANSWER TO THE SOCIAL

CHALLENGE OF COMMUNISM

And this brings us to “Islam‟s answer to the Social Challenge

of Communism.” Let it be said at the very outset that the
challenge of Communism was born and has maintained itself
up to this day solely because of the existences of the
maladjustment of economic relations. The situation has been
rife with unlimited exploitation and unbridled oppression of
man by man, leading to wide-spread misery and helplessness
and frustration, and finally giving birth to the fire of
vengeance and revolt. The more fortunate among us have
worshipped wealth, instead of worshiping God and serving the
higher values, until the science of Economics itself has
become virtually divorced from morals and other higher
considerations. This is what indeed the majority of
Economists of the modern world (excluding, of course, the
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protagonists of Welfare Economics) themselves admit. For

instance, according to Marshall: “Economics is neutral
between ends: the ends may be noble or ignoble, an economist
is not concerned with it.”

Islam‟s answer to the challenge of communism may be

conceived in a two-fold perspective. Firstly, Islam stands for
linking up economic with the moral and spiritual values. It
does not believe that economic maladjustment can be
genuinely resolved without taming the brute in man, namely,
without bringing about a general moral and spiritual
reformation. It holds that economics must be guided by such
moral principles which are grounded in the highest Spiritual
Truths.

Secondly, Islam regards „Destitution‟ as a positive vice, and

this is what the Holy Prophet Muhammad (Allah bless him)
says:

)237:‫ص‬،7:‫ج‬:‫(الکامل البن عدی‬ ‫يك‬ ‫ك دي ا ي ي‬

“Destitution is conducive to infidelity (i.e., the

suppression of higher values”)

This being the case, Islam directs its entire spiritual and moral
force into the economic sphere with a view to eradicate the
economic miseries of man through the widest possible
distribution of wealth. The Holy Qur‟an lays down the
principle:

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﴾٧ :‫َك ْ ي َ ي َ ُ َ ُيد اَةًيب َ ْ َ ي ْأل َ ْ ِ ءِي ِ ُ ْي ﴿الحشر‬

َ
“Wealth should not be permitted to circulate
among the wealthy only.” (LIX: 7).

It is this principle, and the economic structure built upon it,

which alone can be regarded capable of providing the answer
to the challenge of communism on the social plan, ‫ـــ‬of course
practiced in the light of Islam‟s spiritual and moral outlook.

ISLAM, CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM

The unfortunate conditions obtaining in the Muslim world

today have misguided some to regard the Islamic economic
system as a form of “Capitalism.” Nothing can be further from
truth. Exactly speaking, Islam is a class by itself. But if it can
be likened to any of the modern ideologies, that is socialism.
A brief analysis of the economic teachings, of Islam in the
light of this fact may, therefore, be given, in order to bring into
broad relief the role which Islam can play in defeating the
challenge of communism.

(1) Islam is not “Capitalism” because, although it

allows private property and gives the scope for
personal initiative, it is definitely opposed to the
concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
Islam achieves that end by different means, the
most important among which are :-

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(a) Islam stands for the state-ownership of such

“means of production” as the mineral wealth, thus
eliminating from its society the steel-barons and
the oil-magnates.

(b) Islam prohibits usury and interest in all forms. All

students of economics know that the greatest
impetus which Capitalism receives today is from
the modern system of Banking which functions on
the basis of interest. Islam does not permit the rate
of interest to rise above zero and conceives the
bank primarily as the medium of commercial
transactions.

(c) In the field of Agriculture, Islam does not favour

feudal absentee Landlordism. Its ideal is the
creation of a society of peasant-proprietors.

(d) Among all the system of law, the Islamic law of

inheritance is the most anti-capitalistic. It stands
for the distribution of inherited wealth among the
largest number of persons on the basis of the
widest margin of relationship.

(e) Islam condemns the hoarding of capital in very

strong terms. It imposes a fairly heavy tax on all
capital, above a certain minimum standard, for the
benefit of the less fortunate.

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(2) The Islamic economic system is “socialistic”

because:-

(a) From the ultimate point of view, Islam regards the

interest of the society above the interest of the
individual.

(b) Islam makes it an obligation of the Islamic State to

provide for the basic necessities of life, including
such „modern necessities‟ as health services and
free education, for all of its citizens. With that end
in view Islam levies a Social Insurance Tax on all
persons possessing more than a certain minimum
of wealth.

(c) Islam stands for free trade. It is averse to

monopolies and favours the participation of the
largest number of people in commerce, for which
it advocates the creation of Mutual Alliance
Societies-Islam‟s substitute for Capitalistic
Banking.

(d) In the field of Industry, Islam‟s ideal is the

creation of the “Co-operative Guilds of Workers”
where all forms of exploitation as well as unrest
and bad blood are eliminated.

(e) Islam, however, does allow private enterprise in

industry even as it allows private trade. But than it
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propounds a socialistic principle of wages. In that

connection: (i) It gives freedom to the wages-
earner to fix his wages at whatever reasonable
level he desires. Simultaneously with this
prerogative it safeguards the wages-earner against
all possible harm which the „Capitalist‟ might do
to him by closing the doors of livelihood, and for
that purpose it creates a fund for the maintenances
by the state of all unemployed wage-earners; (ii)
The standard of wages which Islam has ordered all
the Muslim employers to adhere to is that in which
the employee gets the “same to eat” which the
employer eats and the “same to wear” which the
employer wear. That means equalisation of
economic status between the employer and the
employee in the basic necessities of life.

(f) Islam does not only demarcate clearly the

legitimate (socially good) and the illegitimate
(socially evil) means and methods of income but it
also limits the legitimate items of expenditure in
such a way that in a truly Islamic society it must
become (and it did become in actual fact in the
glorious period of Muslim history) impossible to
find glaring inequalities in the basic manifestations
of economic life. It is in the field of luxuries that
most of the social heart-burning is to be found, and
Islam sets healthy limits to them. For instance,
household articles made of gold and silver have
always formed an integral part of aristocratic life.
Islam prohibits them definitely. Similarly, Islam

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prohibits the use of certain types of aristocratic

clothes by men. Islam has permitted the Muslim to
spend only on such things which have some real
utility for the development of human life and it
lays down the comprehensive principle that all
spare money which one has, after spending on the
basic and healthy necessities of life, is a trust of
God meant for the improvement of the social
health.

(g) As all students of Islam know, Islam establishes

“spiritual democracy,” “social democracy” and
“political democracy” of the most perfect type.
The teachings of Islam relating to these three
aspects of human life, combined with its economic
teachings, if followed in letter and spirit, guarantee
the establishment of a classless society where all
social conflicts must remain in abeyance.
Only one question pertaining to the present
discussion now remains to be answered: How can
Islam transmit its spiritual values to the younger
generation?

PROBLEM OF THE TRANSMISSION OF ISLAM’S

SPIRITUAL VALUES TO THE YOUNGER
GENERATION

Practically speaking, there can be only two media for

transmission besides the home, the pulpit and the press,
namely: the State and the Educational Institutions. Therefore,

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

on the one hand, the entire system of popular education

prevalent in the Muslim countries should be reformed and
reconstituted in such a way as to make every education
institution a vehicle for the transmission of, mainly, the
theoretical aspect, and partially, the practical aspect of the
Islamic philosophy of life; while, on the other hand, every
Muslim State should reform itself and its constitution in such a
manner as to become capable of fulfilling all the obligations
which Islam places on it shoulders and of establishing the
practical model of Islamic political, economic and social
teachings. Unless these two media are reformed, the obstacles
in the way of the transmission of Islamic values shall continue
to remain so overwhelming as to render virtually futile all the
influence that might be engendered from the home, the pulpit
and the press. This is a truism which hardly needs any proof
beyond the examination of the present sad state of affairs
obtaining in the Muslim world, where the plant of Islamic
values is drying up for want of organic nourishment from the
educational and political side.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

I slam

Verses

C ommunism

A lecture delivered in South Africa

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Communist Challenge to Islam

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Islam vs. Communism

There are two ways of looking at Islam versus
Communism. One is the academic aspect, which is how far
Islam agrees or disagrees with Communism, is tenets and its
outlook. The second aspect is how far Muslims are in alliance
with Communism.

As far as the academic problem is concerned regarding how

far Islam and Communism agree with one another, I might say
at the very outset that they cannot agree. As we very well
know, the founder of Communism is Karl Marx and his book
Das Kapital is the foundation of Communism. Although
Communism claims to be a socio-economic ideology, Karl
Marx began his philosophy of Dialectic Materialism and then
applied it to the social phenomena. It is only in the latter part
of his book that he comes to those problems, which are
actually socio-economic. But Karl Marx had a history behind
him. It is not Karl Marx who established materialism as a way
of life but those thinkers who preceded him. Charles Darwin
set the ball rolling. He presented his hypothesis of mechanical
causation to dispel the notion of God. This hypothesis was
given by him not out of objective consideration, but out of
subjective demands which he felt were there at the time. He
wanted to do away with the hypothesis of God and
consequently, he brought forth the hypothesis of "mechanical
causation" which he applied in the field of biology.

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It took the form of the principle of transmutation. This theory

was adopted later by Husserl and Spencer who applied his
materialistic theory in the field of Sociology. John Stewart
Mill applied it in the field of ethics and law - and Feuerbach
applied it in the field of Metaphysics. Finally, Karl Marx came
but I do think he was more honest and thorough than his
predecessors.

They tried to sail in two boats, whereas he tried to sail in one.

In that regard he was sincere. The conditions which prevailed
in Europe at that time, such as social injustice and other evils
demanded a reaction to remedy the situation. Karl Marx took
the opportunity and thought it honest on his part not only to
stand up against capitalism, but also against all those forces
which he felt were supporting capitalism. I think that it was
one of the main causes which made him anti-God and anti-
religion.

The human mind does not always work very well in a vacuum.
It is very difficult, if not impossible for human beings to
ignore their emotions or environmental stimuli. However great
a thinker a person might be, that person is affected by those
developments. Karl Marx's philosophy started with dialectic
materialism and he regarded philosophical materialism as the
"Utopia" which should be established in every walk of human
life and not merely as an academic pursuit. Thus, he took the
idealism (the dialectical or logical argumentation method) of
Hegel and turned it upside down. Marx's theory of dialectical
materialism offers no room for God or any supra-rational

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moral values. These are higher values for which Muslims,

Christians and Jews stand for, thus there can never be any
harmony between Communism and Islam.

Islam stands definitely and positively for the purest form of

monotheism and builds its entire philosophy on the belief in
one God. Islam is a thesis, communism is an anti-thesis. Islam
has given the proper place to social justice as far as the social
point of view is concerned. In Surah al-Maidah, chapter five
of the Holy Qur'an, we are expected to be just - even if it
conflicts with our own interest and the interests of our own
family. We must even be just when dealing with our worst
enemy. Unless human beings are treated with justice, there can
be no proper godliness in Islam for godliness is justice. Islam
distinguishes clearly between ritual piety and practical piety.

The Qur'an and hadith emphasise that love for God must
correspond with love for fellow human beings. One cannot
claim to love God and at the same time not do good to one's
fellow human beings. Such a claim would be farcical and will
not be accepted by God. Islam was conscious of the fact that if
basic human needs are not fulfilled, then the higher values
would be impossible to attain. Thus, the Holy Prophet (s)
proclaimed:

)237:‫ص‬،7:‫ج‬:‫(الکامل البن عدی‬ ‫يك‬ ‫ك دي ا ي ي‬

Poverty, want and deprivation of basic needs here on earth can

lead to infidelity to God.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

I think that communism is the best proof of this. Unlike the

capitalist economy which encourages a concentration of
wealth in a few, Islam is socialistic in its economic concept in
the sense that it stands for the welfare and the good of the
maximum number of human beings. Neither does Islam
support the greed which supports this world order called
capitalism.

Islam's egalitarian concept of a social order rests on the belief

in God, and in an ethical basis of life. Materialism does not
respect moral values, for if the world has not been created by
God, then it would mean that the world has come into being
by itself or by chance. It is only when we postulate God, then
it is possible for us to believe that there is a plan and a
purpose. If it has not been created by an intelligent Being and
it came into existence by chance or without any law, then this
world is a chance order and a blind order and is then purely
material and has no God.

According to modern thinkers human beings don't have a

mind and a soul. If the world is purely physical and human
beings merely biological automatons or physical beings, what
can be the ideal for them? We know very well that it is human
nature to avoid pain and acquire pleasure. What type of pain
and pleasure would a human being wish to acquire if he is
only a biological automaton?

Naturally, that happiness which he would like to acquire

would be sensuous pleasure. If that should be his ideal, then

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the moral sympathy for fellow beings falls to the ground. If I

am a millionaire and I meet a fellow human being who is
starving, and I give him one dollar to buy food and save his
life, this would be considered to be an immoral act on the
basis of the materialistic theory. According to this theory I am
depriving myself of the opportunity of acquiring or purchasing
the maximum amount of sensuous pleasure for myself.

Mind you, it has to be purchased for myself because there is

no moral bond of unity amongst human beings. If all human
beings come into this world by chance, enjoy and suffer by
chance and die out by chance, then naturally there will be
absolutely no moral bond of unity. A moral bond of unity only
comes under the fatherhood of God. If God has created all
human beings and all human beings are one family, then alone
there is a moral bond of unity - otherwise not.

Under the materialistic theory there is no scope for all those

moral values for which humanity stands. Consequently, the
social life and the individual's life is enshrined in two mottoes
under materialism. The individual is told to "eat, drink and be
merry, for tomorrow we die." Naturally, if this world order is a
blind process and my life is a blind process then there is no
other way out for me but to enjoy myself as best I can in the
immediate present and not care about the future.

On the social level the motto which emerges from materialism

is: "Everyone unto himself and the devil takes the hindmost."
Similarly, in Darwin's theory of mechanical causation the

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maxim of 'survival of the fittest' is natural and, therefore, he

was trying to do away with the idea of God. It is exactly the
same. Darwin was, of course, speaking in terms of biology,
but the same will have to be said in terms of morals, social
organisation and social life.

Only those who are fit to live here in this world should be
allowed to live, because the law of this world is a blind
process. The only law that can be rationally adoptable in terms
of these theories should be the law of the jungle. Why should
we care for all the human values, like compassion, mercy,
love, sincerity, genuineness, honesty and moral integrity?
Logically there is no room for that.

From the point of view of expediency there may be room, but

expediency is always on shifting ground and cannot be the
rule of life. If expediency is made the rule of life, then there
can be no healthy social order because there is no healthy
communication on principles. My expediency may be
different to that of X, Y or Z and should be different because
every human being is a mutually exclusive human being - an
individual who is not part of another human being. Therefore,
this materialistic philosophy is the very opposite of what Islam
teaches. The only common ground between Islam and
materialism is that the welfare of the ordinary person should
be the concern of every human community. However, the
methods that Islam and materialism adopt are diametrically
opposed to one another.

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 Communist Challenge to Islam

Communism believes in the dictatorship of the proletariat

which is actually the dictatorship of a select few. People are
treated as robots and placed under the worst form of slavery -
the slavery of those who from above dictate, downwards such
as the Kremlin to the Soviet parties and then all over the
Soviet Union. There is also no room for private enterprise or
personal initiative. Everything is spoon-fed and if the daily
bread is guaranteed under these conditions, I doubt very much
that it is any achievement. Somehow, daily bread is
guaranteed everywhere - even in a poor country like mine.

Of course, much can be done if we are more honest. We have

absolutely no need to turn to Marxism because this philosophy
turns life upside down. Marxism takes away all our values, our
highest yearnings and ideals. There are more ways other than
the daily bread which is guaranteed via the dole.

Islam wants us to accomplish its ideals by keeping spiritual

and moral values intact. During the reign of the second
khalifah, 'Umar (ra), the social welfare department was
perfected to the maximum degree. There were official records
about every family in the empire - their needs, every birth and
death. The state undertook to ensure that every human being
who lived in the empire received his basic needs honourably.

Islam did that without inflicting that which Marxism has

inflicted on the people. I find it very unfortunate that those
who could have resisted its challenge - Christians, Jews and
Muslims - who belong to one monotheistic family, behaved in

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a very wrong manner towards one another. The house is

divided. The Muslim world has not been allowed to stand on
its own feet and has been the playground of politicians for
international politics and a sort of chess game. None of our
states are allowed to freely act as Muslims. There are strings
on all sides around our necks. Consequently, when injustice is
being perpetrated in the Muslim world - as it is being done in
the Middle East where America and Britain play a leading role
- the Arabs have had to accept an alliance with the Soviet
Union. It is not that they want to be communists - not at all!
Look at Pakistan. When Pakistan came into existence, the
U.S.A. came forward and we signed a treaty of alliance, but at
the same time, the U.S.A. was wooing India - our enemy. At
the time when India attacked us, America refused to help; they
were not even prepared to supply any spare parts for the jets
which they sold to us. Naturally, bombers cannot function
without spare parts. So they abandoned us. If our soldiers and
Muslim nation had not been steadfast, we would have been the
slaves of India today. This was done to us by the so-called
leader of the free world.

At that time, China, a communist country, offered help and

acted as a shield for Pakistan - an Islamic country. It is not that
Pakistan has gone to China or Soviet Union for protection
freely. The western powers were treacherous towards Pakistan
who had no other way. The politics of the Superpowers is
based on expediency and that expediency always turns against
the Muslims. The natural reaction would be that they would

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seek alliance elsewhere - for as you know, there are only two
power blocks the communist block and the so-called
democratic block. If the democratic block is underhand with
us, we have got to survive and grab hold of any straw. So don't
think that these Muslim countries which now appear to be in
the orbit of the Marxist world are Marxist. No, they are not.
The Muslim masses can never be Marxist. It may be that there
are a few people who are at the helm of affairs or who have
been de-Islamised or deculturalised or demoralised, but the
heart of the Muslim world is sound. It depends on the power
politics of the superpowers whether the east turns red or
remains red and white or becomes anything else.The same is
the case on the African continent. As far as I know, a great
injustice has been done to the Muslims on this continent by
the western colonial powers, and they might also turn towards
Marxism. Do you know that Africa is a continent where
Muslims are a majority? Sixty percent is Muslim, and if this
sixty percent becomes absolutely frustrated and finds that
those who should be their natural allies are stabbing them in
the back all the time, millions of Muslims of Africa will turn
towards Marxism. But that does not mean changing Islam for
communism; it will only be a fight for survival.

I hope that from this seminary their will emerge spiritual

forces that will remain togther and that this spiritual front
should not be broken, otherwise the future will be Marxism.

All praises belong to Allah, Lord of all the worlds.

259