SEPTEMBER 5 — One of the frustrations about travelling across the historic parts of the Islamic world — strolling through architectural marvels, hearing evocative stories about their inhabitants, and stumbling across evidence of the economically advanced, intellectually developed and culturally superior polities they presided over — is that one can’t help but make a comparison to parts of the Muslim world today, and feel sad as a result. 
Muslims the world over yearn for a repeat of the Golden Age of Islam, when our ancestral co-religionists were pioneers in every field of human endeavour.
The great problem now is that there are endless disagreements about whether or not, and if so how, this can be achieved after so much decline; tragic imagery provided by events such as the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the Christian conquest of Al-Andalus in 1492, the end of the Muslim monarchies in India (especially the deposition of the Mughal Emperor in 1857) and the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924.
These debates, fused with particular historical narratives, have resulted in Muslim-majority states experiencing the whole gamut of constitutional combinations in the post-colonial period: totalitarian military dictatorships, monarchies absolute to constitutional, presidential systems of assorted varieties; each featuring councils or parliaments of varying powers; each justified by uncompromisingly secular formulae to explicitly theocratic ones, or some hazy area in between.
Other Muslim communities have existed in majority non-Muslim countries, longing for autonomy or statehood, or vacillating between multiculturalism and assimilation.
If the Islamic State (previously of Iraq and the Levant) were to have its way, all of this complexity would be replaced by a single polity under the authority of one Caliph. This objective alone appeals to many Muslims, even as religious and political leaders (including our own, last week) condemn the wannabe state as a terrorist organisation.
After shocking the world with the speed of their advance, they recently declared that they would take Al-Andalus back for Islam.
I was just in Andalusia, visiting what remains of the mosques and palaces built by the Umayyads, Almoravids, Almohads and Nasrids following the initial invasion by Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711.
The subsequent centuries saw a dizzyingly complex and fluid political situation, visually encapsulated in the Mosque of Cordoba, which was built using recycled Roman and Visigothic materials on the site of an old church, expanded several times, and then converted into a church after Ferdinand III of Castille conquered the city in 1236. However, its tenth century mihrab features mosaics from Byzantium — a gift from its Christian Emperor to Caliph Al-Hakam II, five centuries before Constantinople fell to the Ottomans.
From the perspective of today’s conflation of politics and religion, it may seem odd that the Byzantine Empire would make friendly overtures to the Cordoban Caliphate — but even after the disintegration of the latter, local Muslim emirs would ally with Christian princes to defeat rivals: religion and politics to them were separate.
It was after a series of such conflicts that the Emirate of Granada was formed by the nascent Nasrid dynasty, paying tribute to the Crown of Castille. Plastered thousands of times on every wall of their Alhambra is wala ghaliba illallah — there is no conqueror but Allah — and then I saw the imposing Lion Fountain, and wondered what an invading army of the Islamic State would make of the animal representations.
Later, I visited Jerez, which under Muslim rule was known as Sherish, and during which it produced an alcoholic beverage exported to England which become known as sherry, later to be celebrated by Shakespeare. Trade and apparently “medicinal reasons” led the Moorish rulers to continue tending the vineyards.
Tariq, our proficient guide in Granada, proud of his namesake of 711, was horrified by the idea of the Islamic State’s intentions to reconquer Andalusia, convinced that Spain’s tourism demands would more likely preserve these wonders for the world (and his job).
As I walked through the sites I spotted Muslims from all over taking photos, proud of past Muslim achievements in the western tip of Europe.
At the same time, I read about Malaysian women alleged to have gone to serve as comfort women for Islamic State fighters. No doubt, some Malaysians will also be attracted by the prospect of “capturing Al-Andalus for Islam”.
The fact that the Emirate and Caliphate of Cordoba was in direct competition with the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and Ar-Raqqah will trigger no irony for them. But perhaps the greatest frustration is that, 57 years after Merdeka, the many accolades our nation enjoyed as being an exemplary Muslim nation in the world whose Prime Minister once became Secretary General of the OIC, is meaningless to them too.
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
