The Turkish television show Ertugrul has led to some interesting criticism from the country’s liberal intelligentsia. Predominant is the charge that Ertugrul airs history that belongs not to Pakistanis or Muslims in general, but the Turkish state. This argument is rooted in the premise that a homogenous Muslim community, what’s described in the Islamic tradition as the Ummah, empirically does not exist given the infighting between Muslims dating right back to just after the Prophet’s (PBUH) death. This view, held by a long list of oriental scholars has been co-opted by liberals to make the case for Pakistan as a secular nation sate. If the ummah does not exist, then Pakistan can have no cultural or historical roots in the Arab or middle eastern world based on shared faith. Its political history is therefore not that of Islamic conquest, expansion and progress, but confined within the geographical region of South Asia. Glorifying the founders of the Ottoman empire, instead of say, Baghat Singh, is therefore pandering to and importing a foreign culture with which the Pakistani state or population bears no relation.
There are several flaws within this perspective. Firstly, denying the existence of the ummah based on historical or contemporary infighting between Muslims is to fundamentally misunderstand the very concept of the ummah. The Arab word ummah is loosely translated to a community of followers. As we approach the conclusion of Ramadan, there is no other time that this community of followers is more conspicuous, as a billion Muslims across the globe observe a month of fasting followed by collective festivity. In general, the uniformity of practice within the Muslim ummah is almost incomprehensible. Muslims around the world in all their dazzling diversity worship the same God, perform the same prayers, eat the same halal food, celebrate the same Islamic holidays, flock to the same holy site for the Hajj pilgrimage and perform the exact same rituals there. They read the exact same holy book, the Qur'an. Step into a mosque anywhere in the world and there you will find, cutting across hundreds of nationalities, sects and schools, the obligatory salah being observed in an almost identical form. The preservation of such consensus over several hundred years is unprecedented among of all the world’s major faiths and undeniable evidence of the existence of an ummah. Christianity for example is split into thousands of different sects, with prayer methodology between most of them being unrecognisable from each other.
Another flaw within the liberal narrative is that despite their insistence on shutting out Islamic history based on geographic rendering, their own ideas are mostly derived from the European enlightenment. Furthermore, the existence of a shared western civilisation is never questioned based on infighting amongst European states during or prior to World War 2, which has left a bloodier trail in history than anything Islamic infighting can come close to.
It is an error therefore to confuse the political state of the ummah with its entire existence. Ironically, the immense popularity of the show is itself testament to the existence of an ummah, given that contemporary Muslims in Pakistan feel an affinity towards 13th century warriors in a land they have never known or seen. In fact, the single biggest irritant within the Ertugrul saga might just be that it reaffirms a reality that Pakistani liberals have long known and resented: that the intractable religious undercurrent within this society will always resist secular reform.