Divisions in Our World are Not the Result of Religion
by ANDREA BISTRICH
Karen Armstrong was a Catholic nun for seven years before leaving her order and going to Oxford. Today, she is amongst the most renowned theologians and has written numerous bestsellers on the great religions and their founders. She is one of the 18 leading group members of the Alliance of Civilizations, an initiative of the former UN General Secretary, Kofi Anan, whose purpose is to fight extremism and further dialogue between the western and Islamic worlds. She talks here to the German journalist, Andrea Bistrich, about politics, religion, extremism and commonalities.
ANDREA BISTRICH: 9/11 has become the symbol of major, insurmountable hostilities between Islam and the West. After the attacks many Americans asked: "Why do they hate us?" And experts in numerous round-table talks debated if Islam is an inherently violent religion. Is this so?
KAREN ARMSTRONG: Certainly not. There is far more violence in the Bible than in the Qur'an; the idea that Islam imposed itself by the sword is a Western fiction, fabricated during the time of the Crusades when, in fact, it was Western Christians who were fighting brutal holy wars against Islam. The Qur'an forbids aggressive warfare and permits war only in self-defence; the moment the enemy sues for peace, the Qur'an insists that Muslims must lay down their arms and accept whatever terms are offered, even if they are disadvantageous. Later, Muslim law forbade Muslims to attack a country where Muslims were permitted to practice their faith freely; the killing of civilians was prohibited, as were the destruction of property and the use of fire in warfare.
The sense of polarization has been sharpened by recent controversies — the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, over the Pope's remarks about Islam, over whether face-veils hinder integration. All these things have set relations between Islam and the West on edge. Harvard-Professor Samuel Huntington introduced the theory of a "clash of civilizations" we are witnessing today. Does such a fundamental incompatibility between the "Christian West" and the "Muslim World" indeed exist?
The divisions in our world are not the result of religion or of culture, but are politically based. There is an imbalance of power in the world, and the powerless are beginning to challenge the hegemony of the Great Powers, declaring their independence of them-often using religious language to do so. A lot of what we call "fundamentalism" can often be seen as a religious form of nationalism, an assertion of identity. The old 19th-century European nationalist ideal has become tarnished and has always been foreign to the Middle East. In the Muslim world people are redefining themselves according to their religion in an attempt to return to their roots after the great colonialist disruption.
What has made Fundamentalism, seemingly, so predominant today?
The militant piety that we call "fundamentalism" erupted in every single major world faith in the course of the twentieth century. There is fundamentalist Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, as well as fundamentalist Islam. Of the three monotheistic religions-Judaism, Christianity and Islam-Islam was the last to develop a fundamentalist strain during the 1960s.
Fundamentalism represents a revolt against secular modern society, which separates religion and politics. Wherever a Western secularist government is established, a religious counterculturalist protest movement rises up alongside it in conscious rejection. Fundamentalists want to bring God/religion from the sidelines to which they have been relegated in modern culture and back to centre stage. All fundamentalism is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation: whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, fundamentalists are convinced that secular or liberal society wants to wipe them out. This is not paranoia: Jewish fundamentalism took two major strides forward, one after the Nazi Holocaust, the second after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In some parts of the Middle East, secularism was established so rapidly and aggressively that it was experienced as a lethal assault.
The fact that fundamentalism is also a phenomenon in politics was stressed only recently by former US president Jimmy Carter when he voiced his concerns over the increasing merging of religion and state in the Bush administration, and the element of fundamentalism in the White House. Carter sees that traits of religious fundamentalists are also applicable to neo-conservatives. There seems to be a major controversy between, on the one hand, so called hard-liners or conservatives and, on the other, the progressives. Is this a typical phenomenon of today's world?
The United States is not alone in this. Yes, there is a new intolerance and aggression in Europe too as well as in Muslim countries and the Middle East. Culture is always-and has always been-contested. There are always people who have a different view of their country and are ready to fight for it. American Christian fundamentalists are not in favour of democracy; and it is true that many of the Neo-Cons, many of whom incline towards this fundamentalism, have very hard-line, limited views. These are dangerous and difficult times and when people are frightened they tend to retreat into ideological ghettos and build new barriers against the "other". Democracy is really what religious people call "a state of grace." It is an ideal that is rarely achieved, that has constantly to be reaffirmed, lest it be lost. And it is very difficult to fulfil. We are all-Americans and Europeans-falling short of the democratic ideal during the so called "war against terror."
Could you specify the political reasons that you identified as the chief causes of the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies?
In the Middle East, modernization has been impeded by the Arab/Israeli conflict, which has become symbolic to Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists and is the bleeding heart of the problem. Unless a just political solution can be found that is satisfactory to everybody¸ there is no hope of peace. There is also the problem of oil, which has made some of these countries the target of Western greed. In the West, in order to preserve our strategic position and cheap oil supply, we have often supported rulers-such as the shahs of Iran, the Saudis and, initially, Saddam Hussein-who have established dictatorial regimes which suppressed any normal opposition. The only place where people felt free to express their distress has been the mosque.
The modern world has been very violent. Between 1914 and 1945, seventy million people died in Europe as a result of war. We should not be surprised that modern religion has become violent too; it often mimics the violence preached by secular politicians. Most of the violence and terror that concerns us in the Muslim world has grown up in regions where warfare, displacement and conflict have been traumatic and have even become chronic: the Middle East, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir.
In regard to the Arab-Israeli-conflict you have said that for Muslims it has become, "a symbol of their impotence in the modern world." What does that really mean?
The Arab-Israeli conflict began, on both sides, as a purely secular conflict about a land. Zionism began as a rebellion against religious Judaism and at the outset most Orthodox rabbis condemned Zionism as a blasphemous secularization of the Land of Israel, one of the most sacred symbols of Judaism. Similarly the ideology of the PLO was secular-many of the Palestinians, of course, are Christian. But unfortunately the conflict was allowed to fester; on both sides the conflict became sacralized and, therefore, far more difficult to sort out.
In most fundamentalist movements, certain issues acquire symbolic value and come to represent everything that is wrong with modernity. In Judaism, the secular state of Israel has inspired every single fundamentalist movement, because it represents so graphically the penetration of the secular ethos into Jewish religious life. Some Jewish fundamentalists are passionately for the state of Israel and see it as sacred and holy; involvement in Israeli politics is a sacred act of tikkun, restoration of the world; making a settlement in the occupied territories is also an act of tikkun and some believe that it will hasten the coming of the Messiah. But the ultra-Orthodox Jews are often against the state of Israel: some see it as an evil abomination (Jews are supposed to wait for the Messiah to restore a religious state in the Holy Land) and others regard it as purely neutral and hold aloof from it as far as they can. Many Jews too see Israel as a phoenix rising out of the ashes of Auschwitz-and have found it a way of coping with the Shoah.
But for many Muslims the plight of the Palestinians represents everything that is wrong with the modern world. The fact that in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians could lose their homes with the apparent approval of the world symbolizes the impotence of Islam in the modern world vis-à-vis the West. The Qur'an teaches that if Muslims live justly and decently, their societies will prosper because they will be in tune with the fundamental laws of the universe. Islam was always a religion of success, going from one triumph to another, but Muslims have been able to make no headway against the secular West and the plight of the Palestinians epitomizes this impotence. Jerusalem is also the third holiest place in the Islamic world, and when Muslims see their sacred shrines on the Haram al-Sharif [the Noble Sanctuary, also known as Temple Mount]-surrounded by the towering Israeli settlements and feel that their holy city is slipping daily from their grasp, this symbolizes their beleaguered identity. However it is important to note that the Palestinians only adopted a religiously articulated ideology relatively late-long after Islamic fundamentalism had become a force in countries such as Egypt or Pakistan. Their resistance movement remained secular in ethos until the first intifada in 1987. And it is also important to note that Hamas, for example, is very different from a movement like al-Qaeda, which has global ambitions. Hamas is a resistance movement; it does not attack Americans or British but concentrates on attacking the occupying power. It is yet another instance of "fundamentalism" as a religious form of nationalism.
The Arab Israeli conflict has also become pivotal to Christian fundamentalists in the United States. The Christian Right believes that unless the Jews are in their land, fulfilling the ancient prophecies, Christ cannot return in glory in the Second Coming. So they are passionate Zionists; but this ideology is also anti-Semitic, because in the Last Days they believe that the Antichrist will massacre the Jews in the Holy Land if they do not accept baptism.
Do you think the West has some responsibility for what is happening in Palestine?
Western people have a responsibility for everybody who is suffering in the world. We are among the richest and most powerful countries and cannot morally or religiously stand by and witness poverty, dispossession or injustice, whether that is happening in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya or Africa. But Western people have a particular responsibility for the Arab-Israeli situation. In the Balfour Declaration (1917), Britain approved of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and ignored the aspirations and plight of the native Palestinians. And today the United States supports Israel economically and politically and also tends to ignore the plight of the Palestinians. This is dangerous, because the Palestinians are not going to go away, and unless a solution is found that promises security to the Israelis and gives political independence and security to the dispossessed Palestinians, there is no hope for world peace.
In addition, you have stressed the importance of a "triple vision"-the ability to view the conflict from the perspective of the Islamic, Jewish and Christian communities. Could you explain this view?
The three religions of Abraham -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- can and should be viewed as one religious tradition that went in three different directions. I have always tried to see them in this way; none is superior to any of the others. Each has its own particular genius; each its own particular flaws. Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same God and share the same moral values. In the book A History of God, I tried to show that throughout their history, Jews, Christians and Muslims have asked the same kind of questions about God and have reached remarkably similar solutions-so that there are Jewish and Muslim versions of the incarnation, for example, and very similar notions of prophecy. In The Battle for God, I tried to show how similar the fundamentalist movements are in all three faiths.
Jews, however, have always found it difficult to accept the later faiths of Christianity and Islam; Christianity has always had an uneasy relationship with Judaism, the parent faith, and has seen Islam as a blasphemous imitation of revelation. The Qur'an, however, has a positive view of both Judaism and Christianity and constantly asserts that Muhammad did not come to cancel out the faiths of "the People of the Book": you cannot be a Muslim unless you also revere the prophets Abraham, David, Noah, Moses and Jesus-whom the Muslims regard as prophets-as in fact do many of the New Testament writers. Luke's gospel calls Jesus a prophet from start to finish; the idea that Jesus was divine was a later development, often misunderstood by Christians.
Unfortunately, however, religious people like to see themselves as having a monopoly on truth; they see that they alone are the one true faith. But this is egotism and has nothing to do with true religion, which is about the abandonment of the ego.
Too often it seems that religious people are not necessarily more compassionate, more tolerant, more peaceful or more spiritual than others. America, for example, is a very religious country, and at the same time it is the most unequal socially and economically. What does this say about the purpose of religion?
The world religions all insist that the one, single test of any type of religiosity is that it must issue in practical compassion. They have nearly all developed a version of the Golden Rule: "Do not do to others what you would not have done to you." This demands that we look into our own hearts, discover what it is that gives us pain and then refuse, under any circumstances, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion demands that we "feel with" the other; that we dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there. This is the bedrock message of the Qur'an, of the New Testament ("I can have faith that moves mountains," says St. Paul, "but if I lack charity it profits me nothing."). Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, defined the Golden Rule as the essence of Judaism: everything else, he said, was "commentary." We have exactly the same teaching in Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. I have tried to show this in one of my most recent books, The Great Transformation.
The traditions all insist that it is not enough simply to show compassion to your own group. You must have what the Chinese call jian ai, concern for everybody. Or as Jewish law puts it: "Honour the stranger." "Love your enemies," said Jesus: if you simply love your own kind, this is purely self-interest and a form of group egotism. The traditions also insist that it is the daily, hourly practice of compassion -not the adoption of the correct "beliefs" or the correct sexuality- that will bring us into the presence of what is called God, Nirvana, Brahman or the Dao. Religion is thus inseparable from altruism.
So why aren't religious people compassionate? What does that say about them? Compassion is not a popular virtue. Many religious people prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They don't want to give up their egos. They want religion to give them a little mild uplift once a week so that they can return to their ordinary selfish lives, unscathed by the demands of their tradition. Religion is hard work; not many people do it well. But are secularists any better? Many secularists would subscribe to the compassionate ideal but are just as selfish as religious people. The failure of religious people to be compassionate doesn't tell us something about religion, but about human nature. Religion is a method: you have to put it into practice to discover its truth. But, unfortunately, not many people do.
Islam and the West
Discussing Western ideas of justice and democracy in the Middle East, British foreign correspondent of The Independent, Robert Fisk, says: "We keep on saying that Arabs ... would like some of our shiny, brittle democracy, that they'd like freedom from the secret police and freedom from the dictators-who we largely put there. But they would also like freedom from us. And they want justice, which is sometimes more important than 'democracy'". Does the West need to realize that Muslims can run a modern state, but it is perhaps not the kind of democracy we want to see?
As Muslim intellectuals made clear, Islam is quite compatible with democracy, but unfortunately democracy has acquired a bad name in many Muslim countries. It seems that the West has said consistently: we believe in freedom and democracy, but you have to be ruled by dictators like the shahs or Saddam Hussein. There seems to have been a double standard. Robert Fisk is right: when I was in Pakistan recently and quoted Mr Bush-"They hate our freedom!"-the whole audience roared with laughter.
Democracy cannot be imposed by armies and tanks and coercion. The modern spirit has two essential ingredients; if these are not present, no matter how many fighter jets, computers or sky scrapers you have, your country is not really "modern".
The first of these is independence. The modernization of Europe from 16th to the 20th century was punctuated by declarations of independence on all fronts: religious, intellectual, political, economic. People demanded freedom to think, invent, and create as they chose.
The second quality is innovation as we modernized in the West: we were always creating something new; there was a dynamism and excitement to the process, even though it was often traumatic.
But in the Muslim world, modernity did not come with independence but with colonial subjugation; and still Muslims are not free, because the Western powers are often controlling their politics behind the scenes to secure the oil supply etc. Instead of independence there has been an unhealthy dependence and loss of freedom. Unless people feel free, any "democracy" is going to be superficial and flawed. And modernity did not come with innovation to the Muslims: because we were so far ahead, they could only copy us. So instead of innovation you have imitation.
We also know in our own lives that it is difficult-even impossible-to be creative when we feel under attack. Muslims often feel on the defensive and that makes it difficult to modernize and democratize creatively-especially when there are troops, tanks and occupying forces on the streets.
Do you see any common ground between Western world and Islam?
This will only be possible if the political issues are resolved. There is great common ground between the ideals of Islam and the modern Western ideal, and many Muslims have long realized this. At the beginning of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual was in love with the West and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. Some even said that the West was more "Islamic" than the unmodernized Muslim countries, because in their modern economies they were able to come closer to the essential teaching of the Koran, which preaches the importance of social justice and equity. At this time, Muslims recognized the modern, democratic West as deeply congenial. In 1906, Muslim clerics campaigned alongside secularist intellectuals in Iran for representational government and constitutional rule. When they achieved their goal, the grand ayatollah said that the new constitution was the next best thing to the coming of the Shiite Messiah, because it would limit the tyranny of the shah and that was a project worthy of every Muslim. Unfortunately the British then discovered oil in Iran and never let the new parliament function freely. Muslims became disenchanted with the West as a result of Western foreign policy: Suez, Israel/Palestine, Western support of corrupt regimes, and so on.
What is needed from a very practical point of view to bridge the gap? What would you advise our leaders-our politicians and governments?
A revised foreign policy. A solution in Israel/Palestine that gives security to the Israelis and justice and autonomy to the Palestinians. No more support of corrupt, dictatorial regimes. A just solution to the unfolding horror in Iraq, which has been a "wonderful" help to groups like Al-Qaeda, playing right into their hands. No more situations like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay. Money poured into Afghanistan and Palestine. A solution to Kashmir. No more short-term solutions for cheap oil. In Iraq and in Lebanon last summer we saw that our big armies are no longer viable against guerrilla and terror attacks. Diplomacy is essential. But suspicion of the West is now so entrenched that it may be too late.
____________________
ANDREA BISTRICH is a journalist based in Munich, Germany.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions: Its time for an apology
Swami Aseemanand’s Confessions: Its time for an apology
Manisha Sethi
Swami Aseemanand’s confession before the metropolitan magistrate of
Tees Hazari Court has finally put the seal of legal validity over what
had been circulating for months now, since the surfacing of the audio
tapes seized from Dayanand Pande’s laptop. That Hindutva groups had
been plotting and executing a series of bomb blasts across the
country—including Malegaon (2006 and 08), Samjhauta Express (2007),
Ajmer Sharif (2007) and Mecca Masjid (2007).
For the past several years however, dozens of Muslim youth have been
picked up, detained, tortured, chargesheeted for these blasts—with
clearly no evidence, except for custodial confessions (which unlike
Swami’s confessions have no legal value). Report after report has
proved that the Maharashtra and Andhra police willfully refused to
pursue the Hindutva angle preferring to engage in communal
witch-hunt—or as in the case of Nanded blast—where the evidence was so
glaring as to be unimpeachable—weakening the prosecution of these
elements.
What is striking today is not the revelation contained in Aseemanand’s
confessions but that it should have taken the country’s premier and
pampered security agencies this long—four years after the Malegaon
serial blasts, and even longer since the explosions elsewhere in
Maharashtra—to unravel the Hindutva terror networks. Especially so,
when Maharshtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare had, as far back as 2008,
communicated to the Hyderabad Police the sensational claim by Col.
Purohit that he had procured RDX from an army inventory when he was
posted in Jammu and Kashmir in 2006. While the Hyderabad Police having
conveniently arrested over 70 Muslim youth, tortured them at private
farmhouses and extracted confessions, refused even to seek Puroshit’s
custody; the Haryana ATS investigating the Samjhauta Express blast
questioned Dayanand Pande but then pleaded that the trail had turned
cold, thus washing its hands off. The use of RDX in the Samjhauta
blast was touted as proof enough of Pakistani involvement in the
Samjhauta blast; the crucial piece of evidence, the suitcase carrying
the bomb was traced to Kothari Market in Indore, but the Haryana ATS,
possibly under pressure or simply incredulous about the possibility of
Hindutva terror appeared paralyzed.
Amnesia about Narco-Analysis?
What is one to make of the reports of the Narco-analysis tests
conducted on SIMI activists, including Safdar Nagori his brother
Kamruddin Nagori and Amil Parvez in April 2008, which claimed
expediently that SIMI activists “had helped carry out the Mumbai train
bombings of July 11, 2006 and the Samjhauta Express blasts of January
2007...with the help of Pakistani nationals who had come from across
the border.” India Today magazine had proudly claimed in an
‘exclusive’ that the Narco-tests revealed “SIMI’s direct links with
not only the Mumbai train bombings which killed over 200 persons but
also links with the Samjhauta Express blast of February 2007 which
killed 68 persons.” The reports of the Narco test on Nagori claimed
that he had revealed that “some persons from Pakistan” had purchased
the suitcase cover at Kataria market, Indore, while a SIMI activist
“helped them to get the suitcase cover stitched”. Nagori is said to
have named Abdul Razak and Misbah-ul-Islam of Kolkata as key people
who provided crucial support to SIMI’s Indore unit in executing the
Samjhauta train blast.
As for the Malegaon blasts, Nagori is said to have ‘admitted’ during
the Narco test that some Muslim members were involved and he was aware
of it; and he attributed the Hyderabad blast to one Nasir—who
according to Nagori disliked the owner of the Gokul Chat stall—who was
arrested a few months’ prior to Nagori’s arrest.
Other important information revealed in the exclusive story is the
Nagori claim that “most of the SIMI activists knew about other bomb
conspiracies across the country” and the presence of sleeper cells in
Hubli. (Sandeep Unnithan, India Today, 19 September 2008)
So why did Nagori decide—even if in a drugged state—to take credit for
the blasts that have now been proven to be the handiwork of Sangh
offshoots? To boost SIMI’s sagging image? Or maybe to score brownie
points over rival factions within SIMI?
Or perhaps, as several scientists, jurists and civil rights activists
have been pointing out, Narco-analysis not only robs the suspect’s
rights and dignity—amounting to third degree—but is also highly
unscientific, dubious and undependable as evidence in investigations.
It is entirely possible for the investigator to induce, communicate
his/ her ideas and thoughts to the suspect, thereby eliciting a
response favoured by the investigator and the police theory—whatever
it happens to be at the moment.
Media or Hand Maiden of the Police?
What India Today was trying to disguise as a scoop was the result not
of any painstaking investigation, but the patronage of security
agencies. This is sadly becoming too routine in supposedly
investigative stories about blasts and terror strikes: security
agencies pass on dossiers and reports such as the Narco tests to
favoured journalists, who dutifully reproduce the police version. The
public naming of individuals and groups as suspects—with little
credible evidence—is usually a prelude to detentions, arrests and
torture of ‘suspects’. No doubt, claims that SIMI members in
Maharashtra were in the know of the bomb conspiracy then afford
greater freedom to the police to launch manhunts for former SIMI
members (even when the organization was still not banned) as
co-conspirators. Mass arrests following Mecca Masjid blasts were
accompanied by stories which implicated local youth from
Muslim-dominated localities such as Moosaram Bagh (“Behind the Mecca
Masjid Bombing: Communal Violence, Organised Crime and Global Jihad
Intersect in Andhra Pradesh’s Capital” by Praveen Swami, Frontline,
May 23, 2007). Such stories lent a veneer of legitimacy to the
subversion of due processes of law—where the hype surrounding the
threats of Islamic terrorism justifies the shortcut methods of
investigation—namely illegal detentions, torture, custodial
confessions, narco-tests and the like.
On October 11, 2007 the Union Home Ministry claimed that the Ajmer
Sharif blast was the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which was
opposed to Sufi Islam, whose prime symbol was the Ajmer Sharif dargah.
And the very next day, Praveen Swami served up “The War against
Popular Islam” (The Hindu, October 12, 2007), wherein he claimed that
the bombing of the Ajmer dargah—as well as blasts at Mecca Masjid and
Sufi shrine in Malegaon—reflect a “less-understood project: the war of
Islamist neoconservatives against the syncretic traditions and beliefs
that characterise popular Islam in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” It
turns out now that Swami’s profound understanding has been turned on
its head: it was not rabid Islam’s war against popular Islam but
Hindutva’s revenge on the inherent syncreticism of India. Aseemanand
is said to have told the magistrate: “Since Hindus throng the Ajmer
Sharif Dargah we thought a bomb blast in Ajmer would deter Hindus from
going there.” (in Tehelka, 15 January, 2011). Again screaming
headlines about HUJI link created an atmosphere in which the Rajasthan
SIT could detain a dozen Imams, maulvis and madrasa teachers, without
producing the suspects in court, plucking them from their native
places and bringing them to Ajmer for interrogation without even
bothering to obtain transit remands.
More recently, the Varanasi blast occasioned yet another rash of
stories based on ‘sources’ in the Indian intelligence agencies about
Indian Mujahideen men on the run, in hideouts abroad, but whose
associates still live in places as predictable as Azamgarh and
Bhatkal. (For a fairly standard story see, “Indian Mujahudeen: The
Hunt Continues” by Vicky Nanjapa.
http://vickynanjapa.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/indian-mujahideen-the-hunt-continues/)
Gear up for more arrests, shall we?
An apology? And some compensation?
Though the Mecca Masjid blast case was transferred to the CBI, the
Hyderabad Police registered three cases related to conspiracies in
order to retain control over the investigations and indeed to push for
its line of investigation based on forced confessions extracted under
torture. This is clear demonstration of the high stakes Special
Investigation Teams (SITs) and Special Cells attach to cases such as
bomb blasts and terror attacks: terror investigations are lucrative
means of earning quick medals, promotions and awards—as long as
scapegoats (read Muslim youth) can be produced and paraded as
masterminds, conspirators and accomplices.
The Home Ministry must release a White Paper on the total number of
those arrested and in jail currently for the blasts now in every
single the blasts named by Swami Aseemanand as the handiwork of his
organization and associates. Those still languishing in prisons must
be released without any further delay.
Those whose lives have been destroyed, those psychologically scarred
and socially stigmatized by these false charges and imprisonment
deserve surely a public apology, from the state governments as well as
the Home Ministry. The former Home Minister Shivraj Patil had
expressed his satisfaction at the direction of the Ajmer bomb probe—at
the time when maulavis and madrasa teachers were being picked up—and
in 2009, P. Chidambaram had pleaded that the investigations in the
Mecca Masjid blast case had reached a dead end with the death of the
mastermind of the blast, Shahid Bilal (the same Bilal whose house
appeared prominently in Praveen Swami’s article). More recently, when
a Hindutva angle was suggested by the Maharashtra ATS in the Pune
Bakery blast, The Maharashtra Home Minister, RR Patil threatened
action against the ATS Chief.
Even the exceedingly low levels of political propriety in our country
can be no excuse for not tendering an apology to the victims of the
witch-hunt. The Andhra Chief Minister has announced grandly on the
floor of the state assembly that he would tender an apology if it was
proved that Muslim youth had been deliberately harassed by the police
in the aftermath of the Mecca Masjid blasts. The AP Chief Minister
would do well to read the reports of the National Minorities
Commission and the AP Minorities Commission, both of which laid bare
the gratuitous violence committed by the Hyderabad police on suspects.
The CM appears to be waiting for the report of the Justice Bhaskara
Rao Commission before offering an apology (newspaper reports on 17 Dec
2010). Except that he forgot that the Commission was appointed to look
into the police firing after the Mecca Masjid blasts and not into
accusations of torture and illegal detention—and the Commission
already submitted its report to the CM three months ago, in October
2010!
While we need to be vigilant that the investigations are now not
derailed by prejudice of security agencies and state governments; the
issue of compensation to those unjustifiably arrested and tortured
needs to be addressed urgently. Dr. Haneef’s case in Australia—where
the Australian government apologised and paid undisclosed large sums
of money as compensation for wrongful terror accusations and
detention—should serve as a model for us here. The Andhra Pradesh
Government’s offer of rehabilitation package of Rs 30,000 –Rs 80,000
as loans (!) to those who suffered arrests and torture can only add
insult to the already inflicted injury (“Andhra’s ‘Healing Touch’ to
‘innocent’ Muslims”, Indian Express, 14 Nov 2008). Just for the sake
of record, even these loans have not materialsed. On the other hand,
the state government is contesting the damages of Rs 20 lakhs each
being claimed by the victims in the Hyderabad City Civil Court.
Finally, all those who colluded and covered up these sham
investigations need to be brought to justice: those in the
intelligence agencies, officers of the police and security agencies,
political bosses et al. The Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police
(Administration) Harish Gupta—who presided over the Mecca Masjid
custodial confessions, torture and narco-analysis tests—must be held
accountable. As must be each and every police officer who participated
in this charade of investigation; in this large scale violation of the
rights of the accused by subjecting them to brutal torture, and in
doing so, undermined their own office. Police officers must be charged
and tried for their criminal acts of violence against the youth—whom
they knew to be innocent—as well as gross dereliction of duties for
deliberately building their investigations on falsehoods in so serious
a crime as bomb blasts.
We shouldn’t have had to wait for a change of Swami Aseemanand’s heart
to reach this far.
Sd/-
Manisha Sethi, Sanghamitra Misra, Ahmed Sohaib, Adil Mehdi, Tanweer
fazal, Ghazi Shahnawaz, Arshad Alam, Farah Farooqi, Azra Razak,
Ambarien Al Qadar, Anwar Alam, Shakeb Ahmed, Haris ul Haq for JTSA.
Manisha Sethi
Swami Aseemanand’s confession before the metropolitan magistrate of
Tees Hazari Court has finally put the seal of legal validity over what
had been circulating for months now, since the surfacing of the audio
tapes seized from Dayanand Pande’s laptop. That Hindutva groups had
been plotting and executing a series of bomb blasts across the
country—including Malegaon (2006 and 08), Samjhauta Express (2007),
Ajmer Sharif (2007) and Mecca Masjid (2007).
For the past several years however, dozens of Muslim youth have been
picked up, detained, tortured, chargesheeted for these blasts—with
clearly no evidence, except for custodial confessions (which unlike
Swami’s confessions have no legal value). Report after report has
proved that the Maharashtra and Andhra police willfully refused to
pursue the Hindutva angle preferring to engage in communal
witch-hunt—or as in the case of Nanded blast—where the evidence was so
glaring as to be unimpeachable—weakening the prosecution of these
elements.
What is striking today is not the revelation contained in Aseemanand’s
confessions but that it should have taken the country’s premier and
pampered security agencies this long—four years after the Malegaon
serial blasts, and even longer since the explosions elsewhere in
Maharashtra—to unravel the Hindutva terror networks. Especially so,
when Maharshtra ATS chief Hemant Karkare had, as far back as 2008,
communicated to the Hyderabad Police the sensational claim by Col.
Purohit that he had procured RDX from an army inventory when he was
posted in Jammu and Kashmir in 2006. While the Hyderabad Police having
conveniently arrested over 70 Muslim youth, tortured them at private
farmhouses and extracted confessions, refused even to seek Puroshit’s
custody; the Haryana ATS investigating the Samjhauta Express blast
questioned Dayanand Pande but then pleaded that the trail had turned
cold, thus washing its hands off. The use of RDX in the Samjhauta
blast was touted as proof enough of Pakistani involvement in the
Samjhauta blast; the crucial piece of evidence, the suitcase carrying
the bomb was traced to Kothari Market in Indore, but the Haryana ATS,
possibly under pressure or simply incredulous about the possibility of
Hindutva terror appeared paralyzed.
Amnesia about Narco-Analysis?
What is one to make of the reports of the Narco-analysis tests
conducted on SIMI activists, including Safdar Nagori his brother
Kamruddin Nagori and Amil Parvez in April 2008, which claimed
expediently that SIMI activists “had helped carry out the Mumbai train
bombings of July 11, 2006 and the Samjhauta Express blasts of January
2007...with the help of Pakistani nationals who had come from across
the border.” India Today magazine had proudly claimed in an
‘exclusive’ that the Narco-tests revealed “SIMI’s direct links with
not only the Mumbai train bombings which killed over 200 persons but
also links with the Samjhauta Express blast of February 2007 which
killed 68 persons.” The reports of the Narco test on Nagori claimed
that he had revealed that “some persons from Pakistan” had purchased
the suitcase cover at Kataria market, Indore, while a SIMI activist
“helped them to get the suitcase cover stitched”. Nagori is said to
have named Abdul Razak and Misbah-ul-Islam of Kolkata as key people
who provided crucial support to SIMI’s Indore unit in executing the
Samjhauta train blast.
As for the Malegaon blasts, Nagori is said to have ‘admitted’ during
the Narco test that some Muslim members were involved and he was aware
of it; and he attributed the Hyderabad blast to one Nasir—who
according to Nagori disliked the owner of the Gokul Chat stall—who was
arrested a few months’ prior to Nagori’s arrest.
Other important information revealed in the exclusive story is the
Nagori claim that “most of the SIMI activists knew about other bomb
conspiracies across the country” and the presence of sleeper cells in
Hubli. (Sandeep Unnithan, India Today, 19 September 2008)
So why did Nagori decide—even if in a drugged state—to take credit for
the blasts that have now been proven to be the handiwork of Sangh
offshoots? To boost SIMI’s sagging image? Or maybe to score brownie
points over rival factions within SIMI?
Or perhaps, as several scientists, jurists and civil rights activists
have been pointing out, Narco-analysis not only robs the suspect’s
rights and dignity—amounting to third degree—but is also highly
unscientific, dubious and undependable as evidence in investigations.
It is entirely possible for the investigator to induce, communicate
his/ her ideas and thoughts to the suspect, thereby eliciting a
response favoured by the investigator and the police theory—whatever
it happens to be at the moment.
Media or Hand Maiden of the Police?
What India Today was trying to disguise as a scoop was the result not
of any painstaking investigation, but the patronage of security
agencies. This is sadly becoming too routine in supposedly
investigative stories about blasts and terror strikes: security
agencies pass on dossiers and reports such as the Narco tests to
favoured journalists, who dutifully reproduce the police version. The
public naming of individuals and groups as suspects—with little
credible evidence—is usually a prelude to detentions, arrests and
torture of ‘suspects’. No doubt, claims that SIMI members in
Maharashtra were in the know of the bomb conspiracy then afford
greater freedom to the police to launch manhunts for former SIMI
members (even when the organization was still not banned) as
co-conspirators. Mass arrests following Mecca Masjid blasts were
accompanied by stories which implicated local youth from
Muslim-dominated localities such as Moosaram Bagh (“Behind the Mecca
Masjid Bombing: Communal Violence, Organised Crime and Global Jihad
Intersect in Andhra Pradesh’s Capital” by Praveen Swami, Frontline,
May 23, 2007). Such stories lent a veneer of legitimacy to the
subversion of due processes of law—where the hype surrounding the
threats of Islamic terrorism justifies the shortcut methods of
investigation—namely illegal detentions, torture, custodial
confessions, narco-tests and the like.
On October 11, 2007 the Union Home Ministry claimed that the Ajmer
Sharif blast was the handiwork of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which was
opposed to Sufi Islam, whose prime symbol was the Ajmer Sharif dargah.
And the very next day, Praveen Swami served up “The War against
Popular Islam” (The Hindu, October 12, 2007), wherein he claimed that
the bombing of the Ajmer dargah—as well as blasts at Mecca Masjid and
Sufi shrine in Malegaon—reflect a “less-understood project: the war of
Islamist neoconservatives against the syncretic traditions and beliefs
that characterise popular Islam in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.” It
turns out now that Swami’s profound understanding has been turned on
its head: it was not rabid Islam’s war against popular Islam but
Hindutva’s revenge on the inherent syncreticism of India. Aseemanand
is said to have told the magistrate: “Since Hindus throng the Ajmer
Sharif Dargah we thought a bomb blast in Ajmer would deter Hindus from
going there.” (in Tehelka, 15 January, 2011). Again screaming
headlines about HUJI link created an atmosphere in which the Rajasthan
SIT could detain a dozen Imams, maulvis and madrasa teachers, without
producing the suspects in court, plucking them from their native
places and bringing them to Ajmer for interrogation without even
bothering to obtain transit remands.
More recently, the Varanasi blast occasioned yet another rash of
stories based on ‘sources’ in the Indian intelligence agencies about
Indian Mujahideen men on the run, in hideouts abroad, but whose
associates still live in places as predictable as Azamgarh and
Bhatkal. (For a fairly standard story see, “Indian Mujahudeen: The
Hunt Continues” by Vicky Nanjapa.
http://vickynanjapa.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/indian-mujahideen-the-hunt-continues/)
Gear up for more arrests, shall we?
An apology? And some compensation?
Though the Mecca Masjid blast case was transferred to the CBI, the
Hyderabad Police registered three cases related to conspiracies in
order to retain control over the investigations and indeed to push for
its line of investigation based on forced confessions extracted under
torture. This is clear demonstration of the high stakes Special
Investigation Teams (SITs) and Special Cells attach to cases such as
bomb blasts and terror attacks: terror investigations are lucrative
means of earning quick medals, promotions and awards—as long as
scapegoats (read Muslim youth) can be produced and paraded as
masterminds, conspirators and accomplices.
The Home Ministry must release a White Paper on the total number of
those arrested and in jail currently for the blasts now in every
single the blasts named by Swami Aseemanand as the handiwork of his
organization and associates. Those still languishing in prisons must
be released without any further delay.
Those whose lives have been destroyed, those psychologically scarred
and socially stigmatized by these false charges and imprisonment
deserve surely a public apology, from the state governments as well as
the Home Ministry. The former Home Minister Shivraj Patil had
expressed his satisfaction at the direction of the Ajmer bomb probe—at
the time when maulavis and madrasa teachers were being picked up—and
in 2009, P. Chidambaram had pleaded that the investigations in the
Mecca Masjid blast case had reached a dead end with the death of the
mastermind of the blast, Shahid Bilal (the same Bilal whose house
appeared prominently in Praveen Swami’s article). More recently, when
a Hindutva angle was suggested by the Maharashtra ATS in the Pune
Bakery blast, The Maharashtra Home Minister, RR Patil threatened
action against the ATS Chief.
Even the exceedingly low levels of political propriety in our country
can be no excuse for not tendering an apology to the victims of the
witch-hunt. The Andhra Chief Minister has announced grandly on the
floor of the state assembly that he would tender an apology if it was
proved that Muslim youth had been deliberately harassed by the police
in the aftermath of the Mecca Masjid blasts. The AP Chief Minister
would do well to read the reports of the National Minorities
Commission and the AP Minorities Commission, both of which laid bare
the gratuitous violence committed by the Hyderabad police on suspects.
The CM appears to be waiting for the report of the Justice Bhaskara
Rao Commission before offering an apology (newspaper reports on 17 Dec
2010). Except that he forgot that the Commission was appointed to look
into the police firing after the Mecca Masjid blasts and not into
accusations of torture and illegal detention—and the Commission
already submitted its report to the CM three months ago, in October
2010!
While we need to be vigilant that the investigations are now not
derailed by prejudice of security agencies and state governments; the
issue of compensation to those unjustifiably arrested and tortured
needs to be addressed urgently. Dr. Haneef’s case in Australia—where
the Australian government apologised and paid undisclosed large sums
of money as compensation for wrongful terror accusations and
detention—should serve as a model for us here. The Andhra Pradesh
Government’s offer of rehabilitation package of Rs 30,000 –Rs 80,000
as loans (!) to those who suffered arrests and torture can only add
insult to the already inflicted injury (“Andhra’s ‘Healing Touch’ to
‘innocent’ Muslims”, Indian Express, 14 Nov 2008). Just for the sake
of record, even these loans have not materialsed. On the other hand,
the state government is contesting the damages of Rs 20 lakhs each
being claimed by the victims in the Hyderabad City Civil Court.
Finally, all those who colluded and covered up these sham
investigations need to be brought to justice: those in the
intelligence agencies, officers of the police and security agencies,
political bosses et al. The Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police
(Administration) Harish Gupta—who presided over the Mecca Masjid
custodial confessions, torture and narco-analysis tests—must be held
accountable. As must be each and every police officer who participated
in this charade of investigation; in this large scale violation of the
rights of the accused by subjecting them to brutal torture, and in
doing so, undermined their own office. Police officers must be charged
and tried for their criminal acts of violence against the youth—whom
they knew to be innocent—as well as gross dereliction of duties for
deliberately building their investigations on falsehoods in so serious
a crime as bomb blasts.
We shouldn’t have had to wait for a change of Swami Aseemanand’s heart
to reach this far.
Sd/-
Manisha Sethi, Sanghamitra Misra, Ahmed Sohaib, Adil Mehdi, Tanweer
fazal, Ghazi Shahnawaz, Arshad Alam, Farah Farooqi, Azra Razak,
Ambarien Al Qadar, Anwar Alam, Shakeb Ahmed, Haris ul Haq for JTSA.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saudi Arabia urges US attack on Iran to stop nuclear programme
• Embassy cables show Arab allies want strike against Tehran
• Israel prepared to attack alone to avoid its own 9/11
• Iranian bomb risks 'Middle East proliferation, war or both'
· Ian Black and Simon Tisdall
· guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 20.54 GMT
·
Nuclear energy campaigners in IranEmbassy cables reveal the US, Israel and Arab states suspect Iran is close to acquiring nuclear weapons despite Tehran's insistence that its programme is designed to supply energy. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to leaked US diplomatic cables that describe how other Arab allies have secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.
The revelations, in secret memos from US embassies across theMiddle East
, expose behind-the-scenes pressures in the scramble to contain the Islamic Republic, which the US, Arab states and Israel suspect is close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Bombing Iranian nuclear facilities has hitherto been viewed as a desperate last resort that could ignite a far wider war.
The Saudi king was recorded as having "frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme", one cable stated. "He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.
The cables also highlight Israel's anxiety to preserve its regional nuclear monopoly, its readiness to go it alone against Iran – and its unstinting attempts to influence American policy. The defence minister, Ehud Barak, estimated in June 2009 that there was a window of "between six and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable". After that, Barak said, "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."
The leaked US cables also reveal that:
• Officials in Jordan and Bahrain have openly called for Iran's nuclear programme to be stopped by any means, including military.
• Leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egyptreferred to Iran as "evil", an "existential threat" and a power that "is going to take us to war".
• Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, warned in February that if diplomatic efforts failed, "we risk nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, war prompted by an Israeli strike, or both".
• Major General Amos Yadlin, Israeli's military intelligence chief, warned last year: "Israel is not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the US was on 11 September 2001."
Asked for a response to the statements, state department spokesman PJ Crowley said today it was US policy not to comment on materials, including classified documents, which may have been leaked.
Iran maintains that its atomic programme is designed to supply power stations, not nuclear warheads. After more than a year of deadlock and stalling, a fresh round of talks with the five permanent members of the UN security council plus Germany is due to begin on 5 December.
But in a meeting with Italy's foreign minister earlier this year,Gates said time was running out
. If Iran were allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, the US and its allies would face a different world in four to five years, with a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. King Abdullah had warned the Americans that if Iran developed nuclear weapons "everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia".
America is not short of allies in its quest to thwart Iran, though some are clearly more enthusiastic than the Obama administration for a definitive solution to Iran's nuclear designs. In one cable, a US diplomat noted how Saudi foreign affairs bureaucrats were moderate in their views on Iran, "but diverge significantly from the more bellicose advice we have gotten from senior Saudi royals".
In a conversation with a US diplomat, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain "argued forcefully for taking action toterminate their [Iran's] nuclear programme, by whatever means necessary. That programme must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it." Zeid Rifai, then president of the Jordanian senate, told a senior US official: "Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter."
In talks with US officials, Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed favoured action against Iran, sooner rather than later. "I believe this guy is going to take us to war ... It's a matter of time. Personally, I cannot risk it with a guy like [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. He is young and aggressive."
In another exchange , a senior Saudi official warned that Gulf states may develop nuclear weapons of their own, or permit them to be based in their countries to deter the perceived Iranian threat.
No US ally is keener on military action than Israel, and officials there have repeatedly warned that time is running out. "If the Iranians continue to protect and harden their nuclear sites, it will be more difficult to target and damage them," the US embassy reported Israeli defence officials as saying in November 2009.
There are differing views within Israel. But the US embassy reported: "The IDF [Israeli Defence Force], however, strikes us as more inclined than ever to look toward a military strike, whether launched by Israel or by us, as the only way to destroy or even delay Iran's plans." Preparations for a strike would likely go undetected by Israel's allies or its enemies.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told US officials in May last yearthat he and the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, agreed that a nuclear Iran would lead others in the region to develop nuclear weapons, resulting in "the biggest threat to non-proliferation efforts since the Cuban missile crisis".
The cables also expose frank, even rude, remarks about Iranian leaders, their trustworthiness and tactics at international meetings. Abdullah told another US diplomat: "The bottom line is that they cannot be trusted." Mubarak told a US congressman: "Iran is always stirring trouble." Others are learning from what they describe as Iranian deception. "They lie to us, and we lie to them," said Qatar's prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim Jaber al-Thani.
• Israel prepared to attack alone to avoid its own 9/11
• Iranian bomb risks 'Middle East proliferation, war or both'
· Ian Black and Simon Tisdall
· guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 20.54 GMT
·
Nuclear energy campaigners in IranEmbassy cables reveal the US, Israel and Arab states suspect Iran is close to acquiring nuclear weapons despite Tehran's insistence that its programme is designed to supply energy. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme, according to leaked US diplomatic cables that describe how other Arab allies have secretly agitated for military action against Tehran.
The revelations, in secret memos from US embassies across theMiddle East
, expose behind-the-scenes pressures in the scramble to contain the Islamic Republic, which the US, Arab states and Israel suspect is close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Bombing Iranian nuclear facilities has hitherto been viewed as a desperate last resort that could ignite a far wider war.
The Saudi king was recorded as having "frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme", one cable stated. "He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008.
The cables also highlight Israel's anxiety to preserve its regional nuclear monopoly, its readiness to go it alone against Iran – and its unstinting attempts to influence American policy. The defence minister, Ehud Barak, estimated in June 2009 that there was a window of "between six and 18 months from now in which stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons might still be viable". After that, Barak said, "any military solution would result in unacceptable collateral damage."
The leaked US cables also reveal that:
• Officials in Jordan and Bahrain have openly called for Iran's nuclear programme to be stopped by any means, including military.
• Leaders in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egyptreferred to Iran as "evil", an "existential threat" and a power that "is going to take us to war".
• Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, warned in February that if diplomatic efforts failed, "we risk nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, war prompted by an Israeli strike, or both".
• Major General Amos Yadlin, Israeli's military intelligence chief, warned last year: "Israel is not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the US was on 11 September 2001."
Asked for a response to the statements, state department spokesman PJ Crowley said today it was US policy not to comment on materials, including classified documents, which may have been leaked.
Iran maintains that its atomic programme is designed to supply power stations, not nuclear warheads. After more than a year of deadlock and stalling, a fresh round of talks with the five permanent members of the UN security council plus Germany is due to begin on 5 December.
But in a meeting with Italy's foreign minister earlier this year,Gates said time was running out
. If Iran were allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, the US and its allies would face a different world in four to five years, with a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. King Abdullah had warned the Americans that if Iran developed nuclear weapons "everyone in the region would do the same, including Saudi Arabia".
America is not short of allies in its quest to thwart Iran, though some are clearly more enthusiastic than the Obama administration for a definitive solution to Iran's nuclear designs. In one cable, a US diplomat noted how Saudi foreign affairs bureaucrats were moderate in their views on Iran, "but diverge significantly from the more bellicose advice we have gotten from senior Saudi royals".
In a conversation with a US diplomat, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain "argued forcefully for taking action toterminate their [Iran's] nuclear programme, by whatever means necessary. That programme must be stopped. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it." Zeid Rifai, then president of the Jordanian senate, told a senior US official: "Bomb Iran, or live with an Iranian bomb. Sanctions, carrots, incentives won't matter."
In talks with US officials, Abu Dhabi crown prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed favoured action against Iran, sooner rather than later. "I believe this guy is going to take us to war ... It's a matter of time. Personally, I cannot risk it with a guy like [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad. He is young and aggressive."
In another exchange , a senior Saudi official warned that Gulf states may develop nuclear weapons of their own, or permit them to be based in their countries to deter the perceived Iranian threat.
No US ally is keener on military action than Israel, and officials there have repeatedly warned that time is running out. "If the Iranians continue to protect and harden their nuclear sites, it will be more difficult to target and damage them," the US embassy reported Israeli defence officials as saying in November 2009.
There are differing views within Israel. But the US embassy reported: "The IDF [Israeli Defence Force], however, strikes us as more inclined than ever to look toward a military strike, whether launched by Israel or by us, as the only way to destroy or even delay Iran's plans." Preparations for a strike would likely go undetected by Israel's allies or its enemies.
The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told US officials in May last yearthat he and the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, agreed that a nuclear Iran would lead others in the region to develop nuclear weapons, resulting in "the biggest threat to non-proliferation efforts since the Cuban missile crisis".
The cables also expose frank, even rude, remarks about Iranian leaders, their trustworthiness and tactics at international meetings. Abdullah told another US diplomat: "The bottom line is that they cannot be trusted." Mubarak told a US congressman: "Iran is always stirring trouble." Others are learning from what they describe as Iranian deception. "They lie to us, and we lie to them," said Qatar's prime minister, Hamad bin Jassim Jaber al-Thani.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Towards Understanding Islam in the Postcolonial World Order
Towards Understanding Islam in the Postcolonial World Order
Taj Hashmi
Honolulu, Hawaii
Email: taj_hashmi@hotmail.com
Overview
As the discord between modern and traditional Muslims is ideological by nature, so is the conflict between Islam and the West. And ideology is more about power, influence and identity than a mere reflection of culture and belief system. While modern Muslim elites are unwilling to concede power and privileges to the mullahs, most mullahs and their followers – mostly rural and small town lower elites with traditional Islamic or “vernacular” education – are also unwavering about not conceding any ground to non-traditional “Westernized” Muslims. The Iranian Revolution and the Taliban/al-Qaeda experiment in Afghanistan have inspired mullahs and their followers to go the Khomeini or Taliban way. Meanwhile Western duplicities and open support for Islamists during the Cold War had further emboldened Islamists within and beyond the Muslim World. State-sponsorship of Islamism by Saudi Arabia, Gulf States and Pakistan, among other states, has also been a contributing factor to the rise of political Islam. Arab autocrats promote Sunni orthodoxy to contain Shiite Iranian influence; and Pakistani rulers sometimes promote Islamists to bleed archrival India and to neutralize secular democratic opposition at home.
For distancing ourselves from any pseudo-history of Islamism, we need to understand that postcolonial Islamist re-assertion is a legacy of defeats and humiliation for the Ummah. “The death of Nasserism… in the Six-Day War of 1967”, one analyst observes, “brought Islamism as the alternative ideology in the Muslim World.” We also need an understanding of the Muslim psyche vis-à-vis the Muslim experience in Palestine, Kashmir, Iran, Algeria, Egypt, and among other places, Iraq and Afghanistan. How the Cold War allies – Muslims and the West – turned into adversaries or competitors in an uneven “elite conflict” in the Globalized World for conflicting hegemonies and ideologies demands our attention.
We also need to discern the Cold War Islamism from the post-Cold War one. While during the Cold War, Muslims considered the West a “suspect-cum-ally”. Nevertheless, Muslims regarded the West as a friend against their common enemy, communism. Although the end of the Cold War following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan had heightened Muslim optimism, they were soon crestfallen by the not-so-benign role of the West. Instead of ushering in a new dawn of hope and empowerment for Muslims, the New World Order did not bring anything new to the Muslim World. By 1991, almost all the Muslim-majority countries – barring Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia – had remain autocratic; and by 2003 three of them – Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan – had been invaded by Western troops. In short, the cumulative unpleasant post-Cold War Muslim experience has led to the beginning of another Cold War. “Islam vs. the West” has become the new catchword. Meanwhile, pre-modern ultra-orthodox obscurantist forces had gained upper hand in many Muslim-majority countries. Interestingly, enamoured by the concept of transnational Muslim solidarity, Muslims in postcolonial societies are grabbing the elusive Ummah as their security blanket as weak and marginalized people find security in number. We may impute the prevalent obscurantism among sections of Muslims to their backwardness, lack of education and opportunities for various historical factors, but we cannot turn a blind eye to Western duplicities and hegemonic designs in the Muslim World. One can at best consider the Western lip-service to “democracy and freedom” in the Muslim World as condescending, insincere and deceitful; its insistence on bringing peace without justice from Algeria to Iraq and Palestine to Kashmir is simply shocking and terrifying.
Islamism, a Postcolonial Syndrome
Since most Muslim countries with a handful of exceptions were European colonies, the Muslim-West conflict is at least as old as colonialism. One may trace the roots of the conflict to early medieval era, even predating the Crusades. The inter-state conflicts between Muslim neighbours are by-products of colonialism. European colonial powers’ arbitrarily drawing lines “across the desert”, which created artificial states like Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia and truncated entities like Syria and Iraq; have further accentuated the conflict. The postcolonial ascendancy of the Pax Americana, which coincided with the beginning of the Cold War, divided the Muslim World between pro-American and pro-Russian camps. However, the end of the Cold War signalled the beginning of another between the Muslim World and the West. In the wake of the Cold War, the overwhelming Muslim majorities globally turned anti-Western in general and anti-American in particular. They were disillusioned with the West for its continued support for Israel and regimes hostile to their interests in the Muslim World. As substantial part of the global disempowered people, they also believe the West-sponsored Globalization process has not been beneficial to their interests at all. We must contextualize Islamic reforms, resurgence and Islamist militancy and terrorism to the dilemma of postcolonial Muslim community. They can neither forget their pre-colonial and colonial pasts, nor can they fully integrate themselves into the modern world due to various cultural and economic constraints.
The Ummah represents a racially, culturally, politically and economically diverse global Muslim community. As Muslims have economic, political and sectarian differences, they also have different ways of resolving problems, organizing dissent and protest, violently or peacefully, in the name of Islam or with secular agenda. Algerian Muslims, for example, fought a protracted bloody war of liberation against France. Algerian Muslims having the tradition of fighting a people’s war against oppressive regimes are more likely to take up arms against their enemies than Muslims in some other countries. They are not that different from Afghans. As the French colonial rulers did not allow representative self-governing institutions and relatively free press, unlike what the British experimented in its colonies; Algerians lack the tradition of organizing protests and demonstrations against their rulers in a peaceful constitutional way. The French allowed no Gandhis in their colonies either. Consequently, as Fanon has argued, the “colonized, underdeveloped man” in Algeria metamorphosed himself into a “political creature in the most global sense”. Unlike the “colonized intellectual”, the relatively free peasants posed the biggest threat to the French in Algeria. [1] The postcolonial Algerian government’s maintaining the colonial hierarchical systems, especially in the realm of education by continuing with the French and Arabic medium schools to create the employable and under-employable, French and “Vernacular” elites respectively. According to Roy, Algerian Islamist “lumpen-intellectuals”, mostly with science or engineering background, had been striving for “lumpen-Islamism”. He has demonstrated how corrupt autocracy in Algeria was responsible in culturally Islamizing the polity by toying with Islamism for the sake of legitimacy.[2]
The situation in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia is not that different from Algeria; the only major difference being their different colonial experiences. Unlike Algeria, Egypt was notsharply polarized between Western and Vernacular elites, as the titular heads of state or the khedives (later glorified as kings up to 1952) ran the administration with both Western and Arabic elites. By gagging the freedom of expression, proscribing all opposition parties and even executing dissenting politicians, postcolonial rulers have left no space for constitutional politics either in Egypt. As under Nasser and Sadat, Hosni Mubarak’s government also does not allow political dissent. Since April 2008, there has been a crackdown on the anti-Mubarak “Facebook Revolution” by Ahmed Maher. This youth movement through Facebook and Twitter has been mobilizing support for boycotting sham elections under Mubarak.[3] Dissident Muslim Brotherhood and others also face persecution on a regular basis. This has paved the way for clandestine organizations, especially the Jihadists. It is noteworthy that Pan-Islamist thinker Jamal al-Din Afghani’s Egyptian “great-grand-disciple”, Hassan al-Banna was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; and Banna’s disciple, Sayyid Qutb directly inspired Ayman al-Zawahiri “who in 1967 established the first jihadist cell in the Arab world”. [4]
It is noteworthy that Indian (Pakistani after 1947) Islamist Maulana Maududi (1903-1979), who founded the Jamaat-i-Islami (Party of Islam) in 1941, was both influenced by the Brotherhood and his writings also influenced the latter. However, Jamaat and Brotherhood were (are) different as well; while Maududi admired fascism, Banna had admiration for socialism and wanted social justice for the poor. Interestingly, although the Egyptian Brotherhood holds a supranational ideology, the FIS in Algeria has been primarily an Algerian nationalist movement for “Islamo-nationalism”.[5]
Islamism is not a new factor in Sudan. In 1881 Muhammad ibn Abdallah proclaimed himself the Mahdi or Messiah and declared “jihad” against Ottoman rule. The Mahdi, and after him his son Sadiq al Mahdi, ran a theocratic Mahdi State (1883-1898) in northern Sudan. The country became a military-backed theocracy during 1989 and 1999 while General Omar Bashir and the “de facto ruler”, militant cleric Hassan-el-Turabi, were in good terms. Since its relatively smooth transition to democracy after the first multi-party elections in April 2010, we may see the end of Islamist resurgence and militancy, which dogged the country for almost two decades. Sudan provides an example of how international pressure to de-Islamize the polity and the fear of total disintegration of the country worked towards democratic transition. Then again, we must not lose sight of the fact that Western biased media, leaders and people with extreme prejudice against everything Islamic or Muslim represent did not miss the opportunity to misrepresent the tribal civil war in Darfur as an “Arab and Islamic” onslaught on “non-Arabs” – Muslim and Christian – in southern Darfur.
Somalia is another example of colonial misgovernance and plunder. Once resourceful and fertile, Somalia went through about a century of Egyptian, Italian, British and French colonial rule. Italy and Britain controlled the country for eighty years up to 1960. While northwestern Somalia, which was under the “benign” British has a semblance of governance and law and order; the “not-so-benign” Italian controlled (1880-1960) southeastern region, under Islamist warlords and pirates is one of the least governable regions in the world posing grave threat to the security of the entire region. It seems Somalian Islamist groups, the Al-Shabab and their likes, are being inspired by the fighting traditions of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the “Mad Mullah” of the British colonial rulers up to World War I. [6]
The unique Islamist regime of Saudi Arabia, which openly practices and promotes the age-old Shariah code beyond its perimeter, is a Western ally. Although scholars and leaders across the world despise the pre-modern Wahhabism, the state-ideology of the country, the oil-rich monarchy has love-hate relationship with the West. Ultra-orthodox Wahhabism emerged as an alternative to the colonial Ottoman caliphate which ran the country and the neighboring regions of Iraq-Kuwait and Greater Syria up to the end of World War I. Had there been some space for liberal nationalist movements under the autocratic Turkish caliphate, the more stringent and backward-looking Wahhabis would not have succeeded in establishing what Saudi orthodoxy represents today. The Saudi promotion of Sunni orthodoxy reflects the regime’s paranoia about pro-Iranian, anti-monarchical “Shiite heresy” and the growing Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian understanding.[7]
Iran is very different from other Muslim-majority countries in many respects. Although never formally colonized by any European power, this predominantly Shiite polity remained subservient to the West until the 1979 Revolution. Iranian mullahs did not always oppose the West. The well-entrenched formally hierarchical clergy, a class of privileged landed gentry that virtually was “running a state within the state” under Muhammad Reza Shah; unlike Sunni clerics, have been well-educated in Western sciences and philosophy, including comparative religion and Marxism. [8] Had the Shah left the ayatollahs and mujtahids to themselves by not adversely affecting them by his problematic land reform program or the White Revolution, there would not have been any Islamic Revolution. [9]
In neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamic resurgence is a by-product of what foreign invasions, ethno-national conflicts and civil wars turned them into, failing if not totally failed states. Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni autocracy in Iraq; and more than three decade-long civil wars – fought on ethno-national / tribal and even on sectarian lines – caused and accentuated by foreign invasions and interventions in Afghanistan, led to the ongoing Islamist terrorism and ethnic cleansing in these countries. Colonial rulers’ arbitrarily drawn lines to reconstruct the political geography; and the postcolonial rulers’ denial of any space to civil societies and freedom of expression in both Iraq and Afghanistan made room for Islamism, a hotchpotch of tribal, sectarian, ethnic and other identities. Al Qaeda’s exploitative-cum-hegemonic mobilization of Sunni and Pashtun ethno-national groups, respectively in Iraq and Afghanistan; and most importantly, American (Western) sponsorship of the “jihad” against Soviet Union in 1980 were the catalysts of Islamism in both Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond. Islamist violence in Iraq may be attributed to the Shiite assertion, Sunni retaliation and the invasion of 2003, the Afghan situation is quite complex; tribalism, ethno-nationalism, narcoterrorism and proxy wars by India, Pakistan and Iran are the main factors behind the Afghan crisis, or “quagmire” as some analysts love to use the expression with regard to Western intervention in the country. Despite the hyperboles about the “success” of the “Surge” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact remains that even if they emerge as stable democracies in the distant future, the Ummah is least likely to forget and forgive the US and its allies for directly or indirectly killing around a million Muslims in these countries since 1991. Tom Friedman has aptly described the bleak, undesirable situation in Afghanistan on the CNN. To paraphrase him: “Americans’ Training Afghans to fight is like someone training Brazilians to play soccer…. Who are training the Taliban? They even don’t have maps and don’t know how to use one….America needs nation-building at home, spending another trillion dollars in Afghanistan won’t work …. American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan may be compared with an unemployed couple’s adopting a child.”[10]
While the situation in Pakistan to some extent is similar to that in Bangladesh vis-à-vis Islamist politics, Pakistan has probably more in common with Afghanistan and what Algeria was going through in the 1990s with regard to Islamist terrorism. It is rather too early to assume that Islamist terror in these countries is going through its passing phase. Undoubtedly al-Qaeda and the Taliban are retreating, having very little support among Pakistanis, and their support base has always been very weak and insignificant in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yet, both these countries are paying the price of state-sponsorship of political Islam. Again, factors responsible for the growth of proto-fascist intolerance and extremism – secular or religious – such as youth bulge, mass poverty, illiteracy, misgovernance and corruption are very much around in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Last but not least, they are still struggling over their identities. The polities are not sure if they are primarily multi-ethnic / multi-lingual or “Islamic”.
Although India is not a Muslim-Majority country, it has the second or third largest concentration of Muslims after Indonesia and Pakistan; some 150 million or more. Although perennial communal conflicts between more advanced Hindu majority and less advanced Muslim minority eventually led to the communal partition in 1947; and occasional rioting and even mass killing of Muslims in postcolonial India has been quite common, yet Indian Muslims in general do not believe in carving out another “Muslim Homeland” out of India. However, the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir since 1947 is anything but normal. Denying the Kashmiris’ right of self-determination by violating UN resolutions since 1948, India has kept more than one-third of its regular army and thousands of paramilitary troops in this Muslim-majority state where violations of human rights has been endemic since long. Since long leading human rights activists, including Arundhati Roy, have been publicly asking India to stop what they call the genocide of Kashmiri Muslims and to concede to the majority Kashmiris’ demand for independence.[11] The marginalization of Muslims in India and the frequent incidents of large-scale attacks on them by Hindu mobs – mainly instigated by proto-fascist Hindu extremist groups such as the Shiv Sena and RSS in collusion with communal Hindu law-enforcers – have been breeding Islamist militancy in northern and western India. The Muslim pogroms in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the Gujarat killings of 2002 may be mentioned in this regard. One finds vivid accounts of discriminations and marginalization of Indian Muslims in the (Justice Rajinder) Sachar Committee Report, appointed by the Government of India. [12] Despite their “second class treatment” and discriminations by the Indian government, Muslim masses in general and clerics in particular have been opposed to terrorism in the name of Islam. In 2008, 6,000 Muslim clerics from around the country gathered in Hydrabad to register their disapproval for terrorism in the name of Islam.[13] In a personal correspondence with the author, Professor Harbans Mukhia wrote (February 28, 2009): “I think in the Indian milieu of being surrounded by a vast majority of Hindus, who have no notion of the ultimate truth, the Day of Judgment and therefore no notion of proselytisation, the Indian Muslims have been far less prone to fundamentalist manifestations than others, especially as among the Arabs.”
Islamism in Southeast Asia has differences and similarities with the syndrome elsewhere in the world, having its unique intra- and inter-state variations. However, prior to the recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Bali, southern Philippines and southern Thailand, scholars, political leaders and security practitioners had been complacent about any impending threat of Islamism in the entire region. They considered Indonesian and Malay Muslims’ syncretism as the main antidote to religious extremism, which is often a by-product of puritanism. Sukarno, so far the most charismatic leader of Indonesia, also played an important role in retaining its syncretistic heritage and keeping the largest Muslim-majority country relatively secular. However, Suharto’s ascendancy changed things almost overnight. He used Islamist fanatics in the mass killing of actual or so-called communists to strengthen his position; and thus legitimized Islamism and promoted political Islam for the sake of legitimacy, taking full advantage of Western “soft corner” for Islam during the prime of the Cold War. Later the emboldened and crest-fallen Islamists turned into his adversaries, turning the Jemaah Islamiyah into the most powerful Islamist organization in Southeast Asia. An al-Qaeda affiliate, JI believes in global jihad and wants to establish an Islamist state in the region, encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei southern Philippines and southern Thailand. [14] Ethno-nationalist separatist movements of Malay Muslims in Southern Philippines and Thailand during the last two decades have metamorphosed into Islamist movements, thanks to the growing resurgence of Global Islam.
The so-called Globalized Islam possibly exists among the Muslim Diaspora, refugees and marginalized people having no stable identity or sense of belonging to a nation or community besides the elusive transnational Ummah. [15] These “nowhere men” do not represent any civilization to fight for it; they are just angry people who have fled the “burning grounds of Islam”, carrying the fire with them and angry at the world around them.[16] There are, however, conflicting views as to why Islamists among the Diaspora resort to terrorism and even suicide attacks. As one analyst explains the British suicide attacks in July 2005:
For an earlier generation of Muslims their religion was not so strong that it prevented them from identifying with Britain. Today many young British Muslims identify more with Islam than Britain primarily because there no longer seems much that is compelling about being British. Of course, there is little to romanticise about in old-style Britishness with its often racist vision of belonging.[17]
If we accept the above as the right explanation of terrorism by members of the Muslim Diaspora, one wonders as to how about twenty Somali-American young men from Minnesota “vanished” in 2008; went to Somalia to fight for al-Qaeda and one of them, Shirwa Ahmed, last October blew himself up killing dozens of Somali opponents of their “jihad”. These young Somali-Americans came to the US in their early childhood.[18] And the US does not promote multiculturalism. It is difficult to explain the “home-grown” Islamist terrorism; Major Nidal Hasan’s killing thirteen fellow American soldiers for example, in terms of some cultural or economic explanations. American and its allies support for Israel in general; and their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in particular have been the last straws. Muslims resort to terrorism not necessarily due to religious factors. As Rami Khouri has explained the Pakistani American Feisal Shehzad’s justifications for the attempted bombing of Times Square in New York, Muslims’ sense of collective humiliation at local, national or global level by their rulers or foreign occupation forces may turn them into terrorists.[19] One cannot agree more with Evelin Lindner, renowned psychologist and founder of the Center for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, that:
Basically all human beings yearn for recognition and respect; their denial or withdrawal is experienced as humiliation. Humiliation is the strongest force that creates rifts and breaks down relationship among people….Men such as Osama bin Laden would never have followers if there were no victims of humiliation in many parts of the world….The rich and powerful West has long been blind to the fact that its superiority may have humiliating effects on those who are less privileged.[20]
Throughout history, most of the time, Muslims primarily fought among themselves; more Muslims than non-Muslims fell victim of Muslim wrath everywhere. The situation has remained the same; especially in the wake of the US- led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have wide-ranging problems of poverty, backwardness, bad governance, and above all, the crises of identity and integration into the modern world. Again, Muslims are not the only people reviving their faith during the last fifty-odd years; Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus have been on the same path to rebel against “secularist hegemony and started to wrest religion out of its marginal position and back to center stage”. We may agree with Karen Armstrong that no religion has so far been able to withstand changes over the last four hundred years in science and technology, philosophy and ideas, and socio-political and economic systems and structures. Religious revival is not just retrogressive but an attempt to cope with these changes and challenges of rationalism against myths and superstitions.[21] Again, the lines between “ethnic” and “religious” are too blurred to locate the real factors behind many conflicts.
The Muslim World and the West have been at loggerheads for centuries. During the 8th and 17th centuries, Muslim caliphates and empires had been the most formidable superpowers from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean World. Europeans in general either remained subserviently awe stricken by their Muslim hegemons or hell-bent to turn the table to their own advantage. One gets the reflection of this love-hate relationship in the corpus of European and Turco-Arabic literature, travel accounts and history. As Dante’s The Divine Comedy (written between 1308 and1321) is an epitome of hatred for Islam and its Prophet, so is Voltaire’s play, Fanaticism or Mahomet the Prophet (written in 1736). Hegel, Francis Bacon, Marx or Max Weber, among other Western scholars, had hardly any kind word for Islam either. Hegel and Marx through their discourse of “Oriental Despotism” portrayed the Orient, including the Muslim World, as inferior to the glamorous and enlightened West. The “Orientalists” only noticed despotism, splendour, cruelty and sensuality in the Muslim World to legitimize Western colonial hegemony in the orient.[22] British colonial rulers used expressions like “mad mullah” and “the noble savage” to undermine Muslim rebels and their followers in the Middle East and South Asia.[23]
Some Muslim leaders throughout history had been extremely prejudicial and discriminatory to their non-Muslim subjects and adopted oppressive policies against Jews, Christians and Hindus. The extermination of around a million Armenians by Turks in 1915-17 may be mentioned in this regard. Not only Muslim clerics and laymen but also sections of the intelligentsia and politicians glorify early and late medieval “Islamic Empires”. One just cannot ignore Europeans’ collective memories of subjugation of their ancestors under Muslim rule as an important factor to the growth of Islamophobia in the West. Similarly, one cannot deny the history of Western colonial rule of almost the entire Muslim World; and even worse, the postcolonial Western treatment of the Muslims in general and Arabs in particular as important factors in the promotion of Westophobia among Muslims. Only Turkey may be singled out as a Muslim-majority country, which ran a parallel and rival colonial empire in Eastern Europe, North Africa and Middle East for centuries. However, the loss of Turkey’s last vestiges of its empire soon after World War I sent two ominous signals to Muslims, especially in the Subcontinent: a) that while the Muslim World was under European (Christian) domination, Muslim supremacy and conquests of non-Muslim territories (often glorified by Muslim scholars and laymen) had become history; and b) that with the demise of the Ottoman caliphate, Indian Muslims had no one else to “help them out of British paramountcy”.
We must not lose sight of the extra-territoriality of transnational “jihads”. Al Qaeda, Taliban and their likes not only fight for the “liberation” of Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir, but they also champion the cause of establishing an alternative Global Islamic Order. Islamists always claim to be the peace-loving champions of justice against injustice and freedom against (Western) hegemony. Very similar to Communism, Islam and Islamism promote transnational camaraderie and fraternity among their adherents. Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “formal declaration of jihad” against Soviet Union from Pakistan, and the decade-long US sponsorship of the mujahedeen refurbished their image as the greatest “freedom fighters” of all times. Lessons learnt in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 1980s should never be forgotten. Exploiting ethno-national and class conflicts, Islamist extremists have turned yester-years’ “freedom fighters” into transnational insurgents and terrorists today.
Islamism is a political ideology to regulate Muslims’ private and public affairs in accordance with Islamists’ version of the faith. Again, it is not all about violence and terrorism; there are Islamists who believe in peaceful and democratic means of establishing their version of the utopian “Islamic State”. Both terrorist and peace-loving Muslims converge on one point that it is Muslims who have been at the receiving end of Western prejudice and exploitation since the beginning of Western colonialism. Consequently it is essential that we know and empathize with the Muslim discourse of “What went wrong with the Muslim World?”, or in other words, “Is the West and its allies hell-bent on destroying Islam and Muslims?” This is not a new discourse; Muslim scholars, saints, poets and politicians have been posing these soul-searching questions for the last 200-odd years, from Egypt to Arabia and Afghanistan to India and Indonesia.[24]Islamism got a new lease of life in 1979. Two events that shook the world took place in that year: the Islamic Revolution of Iran and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Never before in history, leaders, scholars and analysts in the world took so much interest in Islam and Muslims as have they been taking since 1979. Since then, more Muslims than non-Muslims have fallen victim to Western and Islamist wrath and attacks. However, despite their differences and history of bloody conflicts between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, they often close ranks against the West. While the First Gulf War of 1991 agitated Muslims against West; US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after Nine-Eleven have simply antagonized most Muslims towards the West. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are critical of the invasions have never been sympathetic to the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. Islamist ideologues, who espouse the cause of “global jihad” against their Muslim and non-Muslim enemies, have benefitted most by exploiting the average Muslims’ hatred for postcolonial Western duplicities and hegemonic designs in the Muslim World. They love to hate anything Western, including pro-Western governments, leaders and culture. Paradoxically, some West-bashing Muslims also aspire for “Western-Style” democracy, justice and peace in the Muslim World. Since Nine-Eleven both the West and the Ummah in general are confused; and afraid of each other. By demonizing the “others”, Western and Muslim leaders, scholars and laymen justify the “inevitability” of the “Clash of Civilizations”. Muslim bewilderment and fear of Western retaliation against them led to the proliferation of denials and conspiracy theories after Nine-Eleven, which portray Jews and American government as the masterminds behind the attacks.
Calling all ethno-national freedom fighters “terrorists” does not resolve any issue but takes us all to a dark cul-de-sac. This is reminiscent of how European colonial rulers used to portray armed freedom fighters as “robbers” and “outlaws” and their armed resistance as “disturbances” or “problems of law and order”. Similarly, since the heydays of the Cold War we find Western policymakers, media and intellectuals denigrating all rebels and freedom fighters fighting Western interests as “terrorists” or “communists”. Western ambivalence towards religion-based polities is noteworthy. While it despises the Islamic regime in Iran; the West is prepared to go to any extent to defend the Zionist state of Israel. An understanding of violent Islamist extremism hinges on the understanding of what the postcolonial Third World in general and the Muslim World in particular think of Western hegemony and arrogance. Evelin Lindner has beautifully explained it through her personal field work experience in Rwanda and Somalia in 1998. She conveys the perceptions of the downtrodden Rwandans and Somalis about the West in the following manner:
You from the West, you come here to get a kick out of our problems. You pretend to help or do science, but you just want to have some fun….You pay lip service to human rights and empowerment! You are a hypocrite! We feel deeply humiliated by your arrogant and self-congratulatory help! First you colonize us. Then you leave us with a so-called democratic state that is alien to us. After that you watch us getting dictatorial leaders. Then you give them weapons to kill half of us. Finally you come along to “measure our suffering.[25]
[1] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Grover Press, New York 2005, Ch V, pp.181-234
[2] Oliver Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, London 1994, pp. 75-88
[3] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The April 6 Youth Movement”, September 22, 2010 http://egyptelections.carngieendowment.org/2010/09/22/the-april-6-youth-movement (accessed November 22, 2010)
[4] Fawaz A. Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy, Harcourt, Inc. New York 2006, p.37
[5] Ibid, pp. 129-30
[6] Ioan Lewis and Anita Adam, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History and Society, C Hurst & Co, London 2008, p.5
[7] Oliver Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, London 1994, pp.120-21
[8] Ibid, pp.172-3
[9] M. Reza Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century: A political History, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder 1989, pp.192-230
[10] CNN, Fareed Zakariya GPS, June 27, 2010
[11] Arundhati Roy, “Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord”, NYT, November 8, 2010
[12] Government of India, Ministry of Minority Affairs, Sachar Committee Report, New Delhi 2006
[13] Harbans Mukhia, “Indian Muslims: One of a Kind”, Times of India, 20 December 2008
[14] See Greg Barton, Indonesia's Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah And the Soul of Islam, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2005
[15] Oliver Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, Columbia University Press, New York 2004, pp.67-9
[16] Fouad Ajami, “The Clash”, New York Times Sunday Book Review, January 6, 2008;
[17] Kenan Malik, “multiculturalism has fanned the flames of Islamic extremism”, The Times, July 16, 2005
[18] Dan Ephron and Mark Hosenball, “Recruited for Jihad?”Newsweek, February 2, 2009
[19] Rami Khouri, “Terrorists AreAlso Spawned by Humiliation”, NYT, June 29, 2010
[20] Evelin Gerda Lindner, “Humiliation as the Source of Terrorism: A New Paradigm”, Peace Studies, 33(2), 2001, p.59
[21] Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, Ballantine Books, New York 2001, “Introduction”
[22] Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York 1979, passim
Taj Hashmi
Honolulu, Hawaii
Email: taj_hashmi@hotmail.com
Overview
As the discord between modern and traditional Muslims is ideological by nature, so is the conflict between Islam and the West. And ideology is more about power, influence and identity than a mere reflection of culture and belief system. While modern Muslim elites are unwilling to concede power and privileges to the mullahs, most mullahs and their followers – mostly rural and small town lower elites with traditional Islamic or “vernacular” education – are also unwavering about not conceding any ground to non-traditional “Westernized” Muslims. The Iranian Revolution and the Taliban/al-Qaeda experiment in Afghanistan have inspired mullahs and their followers to go the Khomeini or Taliban way. Meanwhile Western duplicities and open support for Islamists during the Cold War had further emboldened Islamists within and beyond the Muslim World. State-sponsorship of Islamism by Saudi Arabia, Gulf States and Pakistan, among other states, has also been a contributing factor to the rise of political Islam. Arab autocrats promote Sunni orthodoxy to contain Shiite Iranian influence; and Pakistani rulers sometimes promote Islamists to bleed archrival India and to neutralize secular democratic opposition at home.
For distancing ourselves from any pseudo-history of Islamism, we need to understand that postcolonial Islamist re-assertion is a legacy of defeats and humiliation for the Ummah. “The death of Nasserism… in the Six-Day War of 1967”, one analyst observes, “brought Islamism as the alternative ideology in the Muslim World.” We also need an understanding of the Muslim psyche vis-à-vis the Muslim experience in Palestine, Kashmir, Iran, Algeria, Egypt, and among other places, Iraq and Afghanistan. How the Cold War allies – Muslims and the West – turned into adversaries or competitors in an uneven “elite conflict” in the Globalized World for conflicting hegemonies and ideologies demands our attention.
We also need to discern the Cold War Islamism from the post-Cold War one. While during the Cold War, Muslims considered the West a “suspect-cum-ally”. Nevertheless, Muslims regarded the West as a friend against their common enemy, communism. Although the end of the Cold War following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan had heightened Muslim optimism, they were soon crestfallen by the not-so-benign role of the West. Instead of ushering in a new dawn of hope and empowerment for Muslims, the New World Order did not bring anything new to the Muslim World. By 1991, almost all the Muslim-majority countries – barring Turkey, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia – had remain autocratic; and by 2003 three of them – Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan – had been invaded by Western troops. In short, the cumulative unpleasant post-Cold War Muslim experience has led to the beginning of another Cold War. “Islam vs. the West” has become the new catchword. Meanwhile, pre-modern ultra-orthodox obscurantist forces had gained upper hand in many Muslim-majority countries. Interestingly, enamoured by the concept of transnational Muslim solidarity, Muslims in postcolonial societies are grabbing the elusive Ummah as their security blanket as weak and marginalized people find security in number. We may impute the prevalent obscurantism among sections of Muslims to their backwardness, lack of education and opportunities for various historical factors, but we cannot turn a blind eye to Western duplicities and hegemonic designs in the Muslim World. One can at best consider the Western lip-service to “democracy and freedom” in the Muslim World as condescending, insincere and deceitful; its insistence on bringing peace without justice from Algeria to Iraq and Palestine to Kashmir is simply shocking and terrifying.
Islamism, a Postcolonial Syndrome
Since most Muslim countries with a handful of exceptions were European colonies, the Muslim-West conflict is at least as old as colonialism. One may trace the roots of the conflict to early medieval era, even predating the Crusades. The inter-state conflicts between Muslim neighbours are by-products of colonialism. European colonial powers’ arbitrarily drawing lines “across the desert”, which created artificial states like Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia and truncated entities like Syria and Iraq; have further accentuated the conflict. The postcolonial ascendancy of the Pax Americana, which coincided with the beginning of the Cold War, divided the Muslim World between pro-American and pro-Russian camps. However, the end of the Cold War signalled the beginning of another between the Muslim World and the West. In the wake of the Cold War, the overwhelming Muslim majorities globally turned anti-Western in general and anti-American in particular. They were disillusioned with the West for its continued support for Israel and regimes hostile to their interests in the Muslim World. As substantial part of the global disempowered people, they also believe the West-sponsored Globalization process has not been beneficial to their interests at all. We must contextualize Islamic reforms, resurgence and Islamist militancy and terrorism to the dilemma of postcolonial Muslim community. They can neither forget their pre-colonial and colonial pasts, nor can they fully integrate themselves into the modern world due to various cultural and economic constraints.
The Ummah represents a racially, culturally, politically and economically diverse global Muslim community. As Muslims have economic, political and sectarian differences, they also have different ways of resolving problems, organizing dissent and protest, violently or peacefully, in the name of Islam or with secular agenda. Algerian Muslims, for example, fought a protracted bloody war of liberation against France. Algerian Muslims having the tradition of fighting a people’s war against oppressive regimes are more likely to take up arms against their enemies than Muslims in some other countries. They are not that different from Afghans. As the French colonial rulers did not allow representative self-governing institutions and relatively free press, unlike what the British experimented in its colonies; Algerians lack the tradition of organizing protests and demonstrations against their rulers in a peaceful constitutional way. The French allowed no Gandhis in their colonies either. Consequently, as Fanon has argued, the “colonized, underdeveloped man” in Algeria metamorphosed himself into a “political creature in the most global sense”. Unlike the “colonized intellectual”, the relatively free peasants posed the biggest threat to the French in Algeria. [1] The postcolonial Algerian government’s maintaining the colonial hierarchical systems, especially in the realm of education by continuing with the French and Arabic medium schools to create the employable and under-employable, French and “Vernacular” elites respectively. According to Roy, Algerian Islamist “lumpen-intellectuals”, mostly with science or engineering background, had been striving for “lumpen-Islamism”. He has demonstrated how corrupt autocracy in Algeria was responsible in culturally Islamizing the polity by toying with Islamism for the sake of legitimacy.[2]
The situation in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia is not that different from Algeria; the only major difference being their different colonial experiences. Unlike Algeria, Egypt was notsharply polarized between Western and Vernacular elites, as the titular heads of state or the khedives (later glorified as kings up to 1952) ran the administration with both Western and Arabic elites. By gagging the freedom of expression, proscribing all opposition parties and even executing dissenting politicians, postcolonial rulers have left no space for constitutional politics either in Egypt. As under Nasser and Sadat, Hosni Mubarak’s government also does not allow political dissent. Since April 2008, there has been a crackdown on the anti-Mubarak “Facebook Revolution” by Ahmed Maher. This youth movement through Facebook and Twitter has been mobilizing support for boycotting sham elections under Mubarak.[3] Dissident Muslim Brotherhood and others also face persecution on a regular basis. This has paved the way for clandestine organizations, especially the Jihadists. It is noteworthy that Pan-Islamist thinker Jamal al-Din Afghani’s Egyptian “great-grand-disciple”, Hassan al-Banna was the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood; and Banna’s disciple, Sayyid Qutb directly inspired Ayman al-Zawahiri “who in 1967 established the first jihadist cell in the Arab world”. [4]
It is noteworthy that Indian (Pakistani after 1947) Islamist Maulana Maududi (1903-1979), who founded the Jamaat-i-Islami (Party of Islam) in 1941, was both influenced by the Brotherhood and his writings also influenced the latter. However, Jamaat and Brotherhood were (are) different as well; while Maududi admired fascism, Banna had admiration for socialism and wanted social justice for the poor. Interestingly, although the Egyptian Brotherhood holds a supranational ideology, the FIS in Algeria has been primarily an Algerian nationalist movement for “Islamo-nationalism”.[5]
Islamism is not a new factor in Sudan. In 1881 Muhammad ibn Abdallah proclaimed himself the Mahdi or Messiah and declared “jihad” against Ottoman rule. The Mahdi, and after him his son Sadiq al Mahdi, ran a theocratic Mahdi State (1883-1898) in northern Sudan. The country became a military-backed theocracy during 1989 and 1999 while General Omar Bashir and the “de facto ruler”, militant cleric Hassan-el-Turabi, were in good terms. Since its relatively smooth transition to democracy after the first multi-party elections in April 2010, we may see the end of Islamist resurgence and militancy, which dogged the country for almost two decades. Sudan provides an example of how international pressure to de-Islamize the polity and the fear of total disintegration of the country worked towards democratic transition. Then again, we must not lose sight of the fact that Western biased media, leaders and people with extreme prejudice against everything Islamic or Muslim represent did not miss the opportunity to misrepresent the tribal civil war in Darfur as an “Arab and Islamic” onslaught on “non-Arabs” – Muslim and Christian – in southern Darfur.
Somalia is another example of colonial misgovernance and plunder. Once resourceful and fertile, Somalia went through about a century of Egyptian, Italian, British and French colonial rule. Italy and Britain controlled the country for eighty years up to 1960. While northwestern Somalia, which was under the “benign” British has a semblance of governance and law and order; the “not-so-benign” Italian controlled (1880-1960) southeastern region, under Islamist warlords and pirates is one of the least governable regions in the world posing grave threat to the security of the entire region. It seems Somalian Islamist groups, the Al-Shabab and their likes, are being inspired by the fighting traditions of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the “Mad Mullah” of the British colonial rulers up to World War I. [6]
The unique Islamist regime of Saudi Arabia, which openly practices and promotes the age-old Shariah code beyond its perimeter, is a Western ally. Although scholars and leaders across the world despise the pre-modern Wahhabism, the state-ideology of the country, the oil-rich monarchy has love-hate relationship with the West. Ultra-orthodox Wahhabism emerged as an alternative to the colonial Ottoman caliphate which ran the country and the neighboring regions of Iraq-Kuwait and Greater Syria up to the end of World War I. Had there been some space for liberal nationalist movements under the autocratic Turkish caliphate, the more stringent and backward-looking Wahhabis would not have succeeded in establishing what Saudi orthodoxy represents today. The Saudi promotion of Sunni orthodoxy reflects the regime’s paranoia about pro-Iranian, anti-monarchical “Shiite heresy” and the growing Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian understanding.[7]
Iran is very different from other Muslim-majority countries in many respects. Although never formally colonized by any European power, this predominantly Shiite polity remained subservient to the West until the 1979 Revolution. Iranian mullahs did not always oppose the West. The well-entrenched formally hierarchical clergy, a class of privileged landed gentry that virtually was “running a state within the state” under Muhammad Reza Shah; unlike Sunni clerics, have been well-educated in Western sciences and philosophy, including comparative religion and Marxism. [8] Had the Shah left the ayatollahs and mujtahids to themselves by not adversely affecting them by his problematic land reform program or the White Revolution, there would not have been any Islamic Revolution. [9]
In neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamic resurgence is a by-product of what foreign invasions, ethno-national conflicts and civil wars turned them into, failing if not totally failed states. Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni autocracy in Iraq; and more than three decade-long civil wars – fought on ethno-national / tribal and even on sectarian lines – caused and accentuated by foreign invasions and interventions in Afghanistan, led to the ongoing Islamist terrorism and ethnic cleansing in these countries. Colonial rulers’ arbitrarily drawn lines to reconstruct the political geography; and the postcolonial rulers’ denial of any space to civil societies and freedom of expression in both Iraq and Afghanistan made room for Islamism, a hotchpotch of tribal, sectarian, ethnic and other identities. Al Qaeda’s exploitative-cum-hegemonic mobilization of Sunni and Pashtun ethno-national groups, respectively in Iraq and Afghanistan; and most importantly, American (Western) sponsorship of the “jihad” against Soviet Union in 1980 were the catalysts of Islamism in both Iraq and Afghanistan and beyond. Islamist violence in Iraq may be attributed to the Shiite assertion, Sunni retaliation and the invasion of 2003, the Afghan situation is quite complex; tribalism, ethno-nationalism, narcoterrorism and proxy wars by India, Pakistan and Iran are the main factors behind the Afghan crisis, or “quagmire” as some analysts love to use the expression with regard to Western intervention in the country. Despite the hyperboles about the “success” of the “Surge” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact remains that even if they emerge as stable democracies in the distant future, the Ummah is least likely to forget and forgive the US and its allies for directly or indirectly killing around a million Muslims in these countries since 1991. Tom Friedman has aptly described the bleak, undesirable situation in Afghanistan on the CNN. To paraphrase him: “Americans’ Training Afghans to fight is like someone training Brazilians to play soccer…. Who are training the Taliban? They even don’t have maps and don’t know how to use one….America needs nation-building at home, spending another trillion dollars in Afghanistan won’t work …. American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan may be compared with an unemployed couple’s adopting a child.”[10]
While the situation in Pakistan to some extent is similar to that in Bangladesh vis-à-vis Islamist politics, Pakistan has probably more in common with Afghanistan and what Algeria was going through in the 1990s with regard to Islamist terrorism. It is rather too early to assume that Islamist terror in these countries is going through its passing phase. Undoubtedly al-Qaeda and the Taliban are retreating, having very little support among Pakistanis, and their support base has always been very weak and insignificant in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yet, both these countries are paying the price of state-sponsorship of political Islam. Again, factors responsible for the growth of proto-fascist intolerance and extremism – secular or religious – such as youth bulge, mass poverty, illiteracy, misgovernance and corruption are very much around in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Last but not least, they are still struggling over their identities. The polities are not sure if they are primarily multi-ethnic / multi-lingual or “Islamic”.
Although India is not a Muslim-Majority country, it has the second or third largest concentration of Muslims after Indonesia and Pakistan; some 150 million or more. Although perennial communal conflicts between more advanced Hindu majority and less advanced Muslim minority eventually led to the communal partition in 1947; and occasional rioting and even mass killing of Muslims in postcolonial India has been quite common, yet Indian Muslims in general do not believe in carving out another “Muslim Homeland” out of India. However, the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir since 1947 is anything but normal. Denying the Kashmiris’ right of self-determination by violating UN resolutions since 1948, India has kept more than one-third of its regular army and thousands of paramilitary troops in this Muslim-majority state where violations of human rights has been endemic since long. Since long leading human rights activists, including Arundhati Roy, have been publicly asking India to stop what they call the genocide of Kashmiri Muslims and to concede to the majority Kashmiris’ demand for independence.[11] The marginalization of Muslims in India and the frequent incidents of large-scale attacks on them by Hindu mobs – mainly instigated by proto-fascist Hindu extremist groups such as the Shiv Sena and RSS in collusion with communal Hindu law-enforcers – have been breeding Islamist militancy in northern and western India. The Muslim pogroms in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and the Gujarat killings of 2002 may be mentioned in this regard. One finds vivid accounts of discriminations and marginalization of Indian Muslims in the (Justice Rajinder) Sachar Committee Report, appointed by the Government of India. [12] Despite their “second class treatment” and discriminations by the Indian government, Muslim masses in general and clerics in particular have been opposed to terrorism in the name of Islam. In 2008, 6,000 Muslim clerics from around the country gathered in Hydrabad to register their disapproval for terrorism in the name of Islam.[13] In a personal correspondence with the author, Professor Harbans Mukhia wrote (February 28, 2009): “I think in the Indian milieu of being surrounded by a vast majority of Hindus, who have no notion of the ultimate truth, the Day of Judgment and therefore no notion of proselytisation, the Indian Muslims have been far less prone to fundamentalist manifestations than others, especially as among the Arabs.”
Islamism in Southeast Asia has differences and similarities with the syndrome elsewhere in the world, having its unique intra- and inter-state variations. However, prior to the recent Islamist terrorist attacks in Bali, southern Philippines and southern Thailand, scholars, political leaders and security practitioners had been complacent about any impending threat of Islamism in the entire region. They considered Indonesian and Malay Muslims’ syncretism as the main antidote to religious extremism, which is often a by-product of puritanism. Sukarno, so far the most charismatic leader of Indonesia, also played an important role in retaining its syncretistic heritage and keeping the largest Muslim-majority country relatively secular. However, Suharto’s ascendancy changed things almost overnight. He used Islamist fanatics in the mass killing of actual or so-called communists to strengthen his position; and thus legitimized Islamism and promoted political Islam for the sake of legitimacy, taking full advantage of Western “soft corner” for Islam during the prime of the Cold War. Later the emboldened and crest-fallen Islamists turned into his adversaries, turning the Jemaah Islamiyah into the most powerful Islamist organization in Southeast Asia. An al-Qaeda affiliate, JI believes in global jihad and wants to establish an Islamist state in the region, encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei southern Philippines and southern Thailand. [14] Ethno-nationalist separatist movements of Malay Muslims in Southern Philippines and Thailand during the last two decades have metamorphosed into Islamist movements, thanks to the growing resurgence of Global Islam.
The so-called Globalized Islam possibly exists among the Muslim Diaspora, refugees and marginalized people having no stable identity or sense of belonging to a nation or community besides the elusive transnational Ummah. [15] These “nowhere men” do not represent any civilization to fight for it; they are just angry people who have fled the “burning grounds of Islam”, carrying the fire with them and angry at the world around them.[16] There are, however, conflicting views as to why Islamists among the Diaspora resort to terrorism and even suicide attacks. As one analyst explains the British suicide attacks in July 2005:
For an earlier generation of Muslims their religion was not so strong that it prevented them from identifying with Britain. Today many young British Muslims identify more with Islam than Britain primarily because there no longer seems much that is compelling about being British. Of course, there is little to romanticise about in old-style Britishness with its often racist vision of belonging.[17]
If we accept the above as the right explanation of terrorism by members of the Muslim Diaspora, one wonders as to how about twenty Somali-American young men from Minnesota “vanished” in 2008; went to Somalia to fight for al-Qaeda and one of them, Shirwa Ahmed, last October blew himself up killing dozens of Somali opponents of their “jihad”. These young Somali-Americans came to the US in their early childhood.[18] And the US does not promote multiculturalism. It is difficult to explain the “home-grown” Islamist terrorism; Major Nidal Hasan’s killing thirteen fellow American soldiers for example, in terms of some cultural or economic explanations. American and its allies support for Israel in general; and their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in particular have been the last straws. Muslims resort to terrorism not necessarily due to religious factors. As Rami Khouri has explained the Pakistani American Feisal Shehzad’s justifications for the attempted bombing of Times Square in New York, Muslims’ sense of collective humiliation at local, national or global level by their rulers or foreign occupation forces may turn them into terrorists.[19] One cannot agree more with Evelin Lindner, renowned psychologist and founder of the Center for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, that:
Basically all human beings yearn for recognition and respect; their denial or withdrawal is experienced as humiliation. Humiliation is the strongest force that creates rifts and breaks down relationship among people….Men such as Osama bin Laden would never have followers if there were no victims of humiliation in many parts of the world….The rich and powerful West has long been blind to the fact that its superiority may have humiliating effects on those who are less privileged.[20]
Throughout history, most of the time, Muslims primarily fought among themselves; more Muslims than non-Muslims fell victim of Muslim wrath everywhere. The situation has remained the same; especially in the wake of the US- led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have wide-ranging problems of poverty, backwardness, bad governance, and above all, the crises of identity and integration into the modern world. Again, Muslims are not the only people reviving their faith during the last fifty-odd years; Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus have been on the same path to rebel against “secularist hegemony and started to wrest religion out of its marginal position and back to center stage”. We may agree with Karen Armstrong that no religion has so far been able to withstand changes over the last four hundred years in science and technology, philosophy and ideas, and socio-political and economic systems and structures. Religious revival is not just retrogressive but an attempt to cope with these changes and challenges of rationalism against myths and superstitions.[21] Again, the lines between “ethnic” and “religious” are too blurred to locate the real factors behind many conflicts.
The Muslim World and the West have been at loggerheads for centuries. During the 8th and 17th centuries, Muslim caliphates and empires had been the most formidable superpowers from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean World. Europeans in general either remained subserviently awe stricken by their Muslim hegemons or hell-bent to turn the table to their own advantage. One gets the reflection of this love-hate relationship in the corpus of European and Turco-Arabic literature, travel accounts and history. As Dante’s The Divine Comedy (written between 1308 and1321) is an epitome of hatred for Islam and its Prophet, so is Voltaire’s play, Fanaticism or Mahomet the Prophet (written in 1736). Hegel, Francis Bacon, Marx or Max Weber, among other Western scholars, had hardly any kind word for Islam either. Hegel and Marx through their discourse of “Oriental Despotism” portrayed the Orient, including the Muslim World, as inferior to the glamorous and enlightened West. The “Orientalists” only noticed despotism, splendour, cruelty and sensuality in the Muslim World to legitimize Western colonial hegemony in the orient.[22] British colonial rulers used expressions like “mad mullah” and “the noble savage” to undermine Muslim rebels and their followers in the Middle East and South Asia.[23]
Some Muslim leaders throughout history had been extremely prejudicial and discriminatory to their non-Muslim subjects and adopted oppressive policies against Jews, Christians and Hindus. The extermination of around a million Armenians by Turks in 1915-17 may be mentioned in this regard. Not only Muslim clerics and laymen but also sections of the intelligentsia and politicians glorify early and late medieval “Islamic Empires”. One just cannot ignore Europeans’ collective memories of subjugation of their ancestors under Muslim rule as an important factor to the growth of Islamophobia in the West. Similarly, one cannot deny the history of Western colonial rule of almost the entire Muslim World; and even worse, the postcolonial Western treatment of the Muslims in general and Arabs in particular as important factors in the promotion of Westophobia among Muslims. Only Turkey may be singled out as a Muslim-majority country, which ran a parallel and rival colonial empire in Eastern Europe, North Africa and Middle East for centuries. However, the loss of Turkey’s last vestiges of its empire soon after World War I sent two ominous signals to Muslims, especially in the Subcontinent: a) that while the Muslim World was under European (Christian) domination, Muslim supremacy and conquests of non-Muslim territories (often glorified by Muslim scholars and laymen) had become history; and b) that with the demise of the Ottoman caliphate, Indian Muslims had no one else to “help them out of British paramountcy”.
We must not lose sight of the extra-territoriality of transnational “jihads”. Al Qaeda, Taliban and their likes not only fight for the “liberation” of Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir, but they also champion the cause of establishing an alternative Global Islamic Order. Islamists always claim to be the peace-loving champions of justice against injustice and freedom against (Western) hegemony. Very similar to Communism, Islam and Islamism promote transnational camaraderie and fraternity among their adherents. Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “formal declaration of jihad” against Soviet Union from Pakistan, and the decade-long US sponsorship of the mujahedeen refurbished their image as the greatest “freedom fighters” of all times. Lessons learnt in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the 1980s should never be forgotten. Exploiting ethno-national and class conflicts, Islamist extremists have turned yester-years’ “freedom fighters” into transnational insurgents and terrorists today.
Islamism is a political ideology to regulate Muslims’ private and public affairs in accordance with Islamists’ version of the faith. Again, it is not all about violence and terrorism; there are Islamists who believe in peaceful and democratic means of establishing their version of the utopian “Islamic State”. Both terrorist and peace-loving Muslims converge on one point that it is Muslims who have been at the receiving end of Western prejudice and exploitation since the beginning of Western colonialism. Consequently it is essential that we know and empathize with the Muslim discourse of “What went wrong with the Muslim World?”, or in other words, “Is the West and its allies hell-bent on destroying Islam and Muslims?” This is not a new discourse; Muslim scholars, saints, poets and politicians have been posing these soul-searching questions for the last 200-odd years, from Egypt to Arabia and Afghanistan to India and Indonesia.[24]Islamism got a new lease of life in 1979. Two events that shook the world took place in that year: the Islamic Revolution of Iran and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Never before in history, leaders, scholars and analysts in the world took so much interest in Islam and Muslims as have they been taking since 1979. Since then, more Muslims than non-Muslims have fallen victim to Western and Islamist wrath and attacks. However, despite their differences and history of bloody conflicts between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, they often close ranks against the West. While the First Gulf War of 1991 agitated Muslims against West; US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after Nine-Eleven have simply antagonized most Muslims towards the West. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of Muslims who are critical of the invasions have never been sympathetic to the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. Islamist ideologues, who espouse the cause of “global jihad” against their Muslim and non-Muslim enemies, have benefitted most by exploiting the average Muslims’ hatred for postcolonial Western duplicities and hegemonic designs in the Muslim World. They love to hate anything Western, including pro-Western governments, leaders and culture. Paradoxically, some West-bashing Muslims also aspire for “Western-Style” democracy, justice and peace in the Muslim World. Since Nine-Eleven both the West and the Ummah in general are confused; and afraid of each other. By demonizing the “others”, Western and Muslim leaders, scholars and laymen justify the “inevitability” of the “Clash of Civilizations”. Muslim bewilderment and fear of Western retaliation against them led to the proliferation of denials and conspiracy theories after Nine-Eleven, which portray Jews and American government as the masterminds behind the attacks.
Calling all ethno-national freedom fighters “terrorists” does not resolve any issue but takes us all to a dark cul-de-sac. This is reminiscent of how European colonial rulers used to portray armed freedom fighters as “robbers” and “outlaws” and their armed resistance as “disturbances” or “problems of law and order”. Similarly, since the heydays of the Cold War we find Western policymakers, media and intellectuals denigrating all rebels and freedom fighters fighting Western interests as “terrorists” or “communists”. Western ambivalence towards religion-based polities is noteworthy. While it despises the Islamic regime in Iran; the West is prepared to go to any extent to defend the Zionist state of Israel. An understanding of violent Islamist extremism hinges on the understanding of what the postcolonial Third World in general and the Muslim World in particular think of Western hegemony and arrogance. Evelin Lindner has beautifully explained it through her personal field work experience in Rwanda and Somalia in 1998. She conveys the perceptions of the downtrodden Rwandans and Somalis about the West in the following manner:
You from the West, you come here to get a kick out of our problems. You pretend to help or do science, but you just want to have some fun….You pay lip service to human rights and empowerment! You are a hypocrite! We feel deeply humiliated by your arrogant and self-congratulatory help! First you colonize us. Then you leave us with a so-called democratic state that is alien to us. After that you watch us getting dictatorial leaders. Then you give them weapons to kill half of us. Finally you come along to “measure our suffering.[25]
[1] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Grover Press, New York 2005, Ch V, pp.181-234
[2] Oliver Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, London 1994, pp. 75-88
[3] Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “The April 6 Youth Movement”, September 22, 2010 http://egyptelections.carngieendowment.org/2010/09/22/the-april-6-youth-movement (accessed November 22, 2010)
[4] Fawaz A. Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy, Harcourt, Inc. New York 2006, p.37
[5] Ibid, pp. 129-30
[6] Ioan Lewis and Anita Adam, Understanding Somalia and Somaliland: Culture, History and Society, C Hurst & Co, London 2008, p.5
[7] Oliver Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, I.B. Tauris, London 1994, pp.120-21
[8] Ibid, pp.172-3
[9] M. Reza Ghods, Iran in the Twentieth Century: A political History, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder 1989, pp.192-230
[10] CNN, Fareed Zakariya GPS, June 27, 2010
[11] Arundhati Roy, “Kashmir’s Fruits of Discord”, NYT, November 8, 2010
[12] Government of India, Ministry of Minority Affairs, Sachar Committee Report, New Delhi 2006
[13] Harbans Mukhia, “Indian Muslims: One of a Kind”, Times of India, 20 December 2008
[14] See Greg Barton, Indonesia's Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah And the Soul of Islam, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2005
[15] Oliver Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, Columbia University Press, New York 2004, pp.67-9
[16] Fouad Ajami, “The Clash”, New York Times Sunday Book Review, January 6, 2008;
[17] Kenan Malik, “multiculturalism has fanned the flames of Islamic extremism”, The Times, July 16, 2005
[18] Dan Ephron and Mark Hosenball, “Recruited for Jihad?”Newsweek, February 2, 2009
[19] Rami Khouri, “Terrorists AreAlso Spawned by Humiliation”, NYT, June 29, 2010
[20] Evelin Gerda Lindner, “Humiliation as the Source of Terrorism: A New Paradigm”, Peace Studies, 33(2), 2001, p.59
[21] Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, Ballantine Books, New York 2001, “Introduction”
[22] Edward Said, Orientalism, Vintage Books, New York 1979, passim
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