Muslim Woman

The history of mankind is a story of unsuccessful experiments, trials and tribulations. Man produces a concept, gives it a trial and after centuries of dreadful conflicts, bloodshed and wars, comes to the conclusion that the concept he had produced was wrong. Then he brings forth a fresh concept, which is generally opposite to the previous one and thus begins fresh experiments on it. That also proves unsuccessful, after passing through the same unfortunate events. The life of man, political, social and economic, has reached the present stage after passing through a series of such vicious cycles. However in the following lines, we shall deal only with its political aspect.

Man is a social animal. He cannot live without a society. In a society, struggle between individuals or groups of individuals, for selfish motives, is a must. On the other hand, the resolution of conflicts needs a third party to put things in order. To begin with, the head of a family took this position which further evolved into tribal organizations, the head of a tribe assuming a supreme personality whose decisions became incumbent upon the individuals of the tribe; and thus a primitive form of government originated.

Later on, in the primitive societies, the priests became the dominant power (and this condition still continues in some societies). The priests came to be considered as representatives of deities, with superhuman powers. They became awe-inspiring and nobody could think of disobeying them. This gave origin to theocracy or sovereign power of priests.

At other places, some powerful persons began to suppress the weaker ones by their brutal force and thus gave origin to Autocracy or Dictatorship and Kingship.   Later on, the autocrats realized that it was rather difficult to keep people subjugated to their brutal force which they thought must be associated with an aspect of a sense of respect by the people for them. On the other hand, the priests realized that for them in order to maintain a respectful position is getting difficult without a force. Thus the Kings and the priests, by mutual understanding, divided the supremacy of power into two parts.  The priests accepted the Kings as the “Shadow of God” and the Kings declared that they have assumed the supreme power, by means of the intermediary of the priests. Thus in practical life the priests became the supreme power in matters related to religion and the Kings a supreme power in the worldly affairs. 

It is apparent for what has been described above that in this change in the form of governments, the concept which remained common to all throughout, was the concept of the rule of one individual or one group of individuals over another group of individuals.  The history of the rule and exploitation by kings and priests makes a tragic reading in which the humanity became crushed by their brutal force in one way or the other.