By Usama Khalidi,

The preeminence acquired by the Jews in the West over a mere 50 years holds many lessons for large minority populations that may find themselves in adverse political circumstances, of course because of the vagaries of recent history; who isn't a victim of it? Going beyond mere envy, Muslims everywhere need to ponder how the Jews acquired their political and economic dominance in just a few decades. It was certainly not through any use of quotas and reservations in jobs or college admissions, or seats in legislatures.

The historically unprecedented rise of the Jews, a persecuted minority in the West as recently as 1945, is especially relevant for Muslims, fond as they are of screaming about a Zionist conspiracy. How did the Jews do it? A straightforward answer is: Through democratic means.

During World War II and immediately after, the Jewish immigrants and their children in the US and the UK built upon their old traditions of hard work, the pursuit of education and excellence in professions. They prospered, given some fairness and legality in the larger society. They built businesses, created a film industry in Hollywood, and achieved success as scientists, lawyers, professors, writers, industrialists and government leaders. They won the acceptance and admiration of the larger society within a few decades. With success in acquiring economic power, political power was bound to follow. Its intensive exercise helped the American Jews overcome thousand years of persecution and prejudice against them.

The Nazi holocaust, of course, played on the conscience of the ruling elites. But that was by itself not enough. Historians have recognized that Jewish intellectuals, not their religious leaders, helped America and later Europe to become more true to their own national values of equality, equal opportunity, and fairplay in politics. Jewish intellectuals, mainly professors, formulated and propagated what is known as the interest-group theory of politics. This theory holds that all groups do and should pursue their self-interest. They make partnerships with other groups to make demands in terms of what is good for the whole country, not just one or two groups. Since all societies are agglomerations of smaller groups – with everybody part of a minority of some kind – all groups benefit, and are free to compete. This theory is the rock bottom foundation of all Western societies now. Muslims in America today benefit from this system and its national principles as much as any other group.

In the Indian context, what can the Muslims do to help the country become more true its values, its national self-definition?

To start with, they can help strengthen India’s secularism, which, in its essence, means relating with each other in the public sphere on the basis of common humanity, common citizenship, a common heritage and, finally, shared national aspirations.

It seems to me that Muslims have never really appreciated the value of secularism. They have accepted it as no more than a political tactic. The major problem has been its translation into Urdu as “la deeniyat”. This is wrong. Iqbal the poet, much celebrated among Muslims of the Subcontinent, was guilty of its mistranslation. There is no equivalent in Urdu for that modern system of thought. The word secularism signifies a set of attitudes. Its implications are open to debate. A tension between private moral values and public policy is part of the whole idea of secularism. As the Islamists in Turkey have demonstrated, there is no Islamic way of running a complex economy or directing traffic or removing garbage.

To be fair, Jamaat-e Islami of India did declare in the 1990s its acceptance of democracy and secularism, and approved of Muslim participation in the political process, something its founder, Abul Ala Maududi, could not swallow before or after migrating to Pakistan. The party he founded did not have any kind of internal democracy involving debates among members.

But it is not enough to accept the democratic system as a convenient policy.

India's electoral system has matured in the past 60 years, leading to a coalition-based dispensation that encourages the idea of power-sharing with the various kinds of minorities. But in terms of democratizing society, one as structured, as hierarchical and as diverse as India's, the progress is far more evident among non-Muslims than among Muslims.

A democratic way of life, of course, starts at home, in families. Depending on the context, family relations do involve a sharing of power, of resources, various capabilities and the rights of individuals. The paradigmatic roles people are expected to play in family life are inherently unequal in some ways, particularly among Muslims. The same may seem true for the larger Indian society, too. But there are vital differences between this minority and most others in terms of tolerance for dissent, encouragement to debate, room for doubt, acceptance of varying perspectives as equally legitimate.

Urdu newspapers champion the Muslim orthodoxy day in and day out. You can’t blame them because they are not stifling any debate. There is no internal debate of any kind, not about the rights of women, nor about any new ideas of fairness and justice, or about the original bases for many of their beliefs and common practices. No social change ever occurs without debates, something desperately needed by Muslims in order to re-imagine their world, redefine their dogma in a way that would most seem to be in accord with commonsense.

The debates of early Islam provide enough material to construct any kind of Islamic theology, a catechism. The way our theology did get constructed and was handed down to us was a result of interpretations made by ulema in response to the changing needs of the community. Such a response was not offered without debates in theological seminaries. The spread of education and and easily accessible sources of knowledge to everybody today is a historically unprecedented reality. Thus, it does not make sense to argue, as the Wahhabies and the khilafat-centered ideologues do, that there is only one correct interpretation, no other, and anyone challenging the basis of that interpretation is committing kufr.

Qur'an, of course, is an eternal word of Allah. But its understanding is human. Its meaning will and should change according to human experience. Consider for a moment: Can a 7th century Bidu's understanding of the Qur'an be the same as that of a 21st century 'alim?

Sufi traditions all over the world understood that an individual's personal experience guides his or her understanding of Quranic injunctions. No one can have a monopoly on its meaning. There can be no one standard version. No one right way. All paths lead to the same place.

Tolerance for dissenting views in matters of faith is a critical part of secularism, which will always remain just an ideal for all societies that wish to abide by it. Actual performance falls short of the ideals everywhere. The test of such tolerance comes in a civilized debate. In the larger political context, those who benefit from secularism as a state policy and demand its enforcement in public life must themselves swear by it, show it in their behavior, and promote it.