The CIA-ISI showdown over Raymond Davis

The Pakistan-U.S. relationship sometimes feels more like an arranged marriage than a love match: both stay in it because of larger considerations, and begrudgingly acknowledge or even outright deride the other's concerns and priorities.

SPY for a  SPY

by C. Christine Fair

The United States and Pakistan are bound by mutual if asymmetric dependence, which generates considerable resentment among our peoples and governments alike. The Pakistan-U.S. relationship sometimes feels more like an arranged marriage than a love match: both stay in it because of larger considerations, and begrudgingly acknowledge or even outright deride the other's concerns and priorities.  

This is not new: it has been the case since the partnership was renewed in the wake of the events of 9/11. 

Governor Punjab: Latest victim to the ongoing wave of extremism in Pakistan

Governor Taseer assassinated

Islamabad—Punjab Governor Salman Taseer was assassinated here Tuesday afternoon by one of his gunman, Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadrim, of the Punjab Elite Force. Salman Taseer died when the guard had opened fire on him while he was going towards his car in Kohsar Market.

Salman Taseer, 66, appointed Governor of Punjab in 2008, was killed by one of his bodyguards, who confessed he opposed Governor’s criticism of the controversial blasphemy laws.

We at the Wonders of Pakistan strongly condemn the assassination of Mr. Salman Taseer who was one of the country's most moderate voices against extremism.

Although details as to the motive of the crime are yet to surface, this brutal murder once again raises the fundamental issue: that religious indoctrination is feeding the fires of hatred and intolerance. 

Lately, Mr. Taseer had become an outspoken champion of tolerance and women rights. He supported the rights of all minorities in Pakistan, opposed extremism and Talibanisation, and was against misuse of laws to marginalize minorities under the guise of religious beliefs and the current blasphemy law. Mr. Taseer was a brave man who along with a handful of other politicians like Sherry Rahman had called for the repeal of Pakistan's blasphemy law.

Governor Taseer's murder is simply a sign of the lack of understanding of the peaceful Islamic faith by a violent, vocal and misguided minority of people in Pakistan. This murder and many others are the result of a minority of religious clergy who continue to instill intolerance, violence and create an environment of a mob type justice without due process. Anyone who kills outside the framework of laws has not only committed a crime but a grave sin. These are signs of not only religious extremism but also ignorance of extremism. Mr. Taseer‘s murder must be condemned and repudiated, not extolled. Otherwise, Pakistan will be in a downward spiral in which intolerance and extremism may triumph.

Islam is a faith which teaches respect and tolerance for all people. There is considerable respect for the people of Abrahamic and other faiths. Prophet Mohammed (SAW) life is a perfect example of tolerance, love and respect for all people. It was by his love and character that he won the hearts of all people. Using the same faith and the same perfect personality (SAW) to justify killing the innocent and the minorities is the worst form of blasphemy against The Faith.

We urge all our countrymen to stand up peacefully yet firmly against the voices of intolerance and hate in any shape or form. This type of indoctrination is the single biggest threat to the humanity at this time. Only the larger society can get rid of this menace from all levels within the society. This is the time to unite and join forces and recover the faith of Peace and Love. We also urge the authorities to investigate thoroughly and share their full findings with the people of Pakistan.

The Prevailing Western View On Pakistan Part 2 of 2

BALKANIZING PAKISTAN- A COLLECTIVE NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY BREAKING PAKISTAN TO FIX IT

by Michael Hughes

The argument for Balkanizing Pakistan or, more specifically, fragmenting the Islamic Republic so it’s easier to police and economically develop, has been on the table since Pakistan’s birth in 1947 when the country was split out of a British laboratory. And lately, the concept is looking more appealing by the day, because as a result of flawed boundaries combined with the nexus between military rule and Islamic extremism, Pakistan now finds itself on a rapid descent toward certain collapse and the country’s leaders stubbornly refuse to do the things required to change course. But before allowing Pakistan to commit state suicide, self-disintegrate and further destabilize the region, the international community can beat them to the punch and deconstruct the country less violently.....

                               A f t e r

And lately, the concept is looking more appealing by the day, because as a result of flawed boundaries combined with the nexus between military rule and Islamic extremism, Pakistan now finds itself on a rapid descent toward certain collapse and the country's leaders stubbornly refuse to do the things required to change course. But before allowing Pakistan to commit state suicide, self-disintegrate and further destabilize the region, the international community can beat them to the punch and deconstruct the country less violently.

To quell any doubts about Pakistan's seemingly uncontrollable spiral into darkness, just recently, Foreign Policy Magazine ranked Pakistan as the tenth most failed state on earth and it would seem its leaders are hell bent on securing the number one slot - an honor it can add to their already dubious distinction as the world's largest incubator of jihadist extremism. Afghanistan will never see peace or prosperity with a neighbor like Pakistan and the U.S. will always be threatened by terrorist plots spawned in Pakistan's lawless regions - like the most recent Times Square bombing.

The most popular approach to fragmentation is to break off and allow Afghanistan to absorb Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which would unite the Pashtun tribes. In addition, the provinces of Balochistan and Sindh would become independent sovereign states, leaving Punjab as a standalone entity.

Balkanization is based on the premise that the weak central government in Islamabad is incapable of governing Pakistan's frontiers, which have become the number one source of regional instability. The governing Punjabi elite have neglected the other three major ethnic groups - the Sindhis, Pashtuns, and Baluchis, primarily because a majority of Pakistan's budget is spent on the military rather than economic development, schooling or infrastructure. Only 2% of Pakistan's GDP, for example, is spent on education despite the fact Pakistan's literacy rate stands at 57%.

Minority groups have also been underrepresented in institutions such as Pakistan's military - which is the country's most powerful entity. Punjabis who represent 40% of the population constitute 90% of the armed forces. Pakistan's own history provides a prime case study of what happens when an ethnic group can no longer tolerate political and economic disregard. After a quarter century of strife the Bengalis rebelled, seceded and founded Bangladesh in 1971.

If the Balkanization solution is ever put in motion, accusations will surely fly that it's yet another example of U.S. imperialism and neoconservatism run amok. However, this would be a diplomatic and multilateral effort, plus, it is more about reversing the iniquities of British colonialism than it is building some new world order. 

Inherent Instability

Pakistan's problems began when the British drew its boundaries haphazardly, which was primarily a product of incompetence and haste than maniacal design. According to an article in the New York Times last year, British colonial officer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe was given six weeks to carve a Muslim-majority state from British India although he had never even been there before. Radcliffe's private secretary was quoted as saying that Sir Cyril "was a bit flummoxed by the whole thing. It was a rather impossible assignment, really. To partition that subcontinent in six weeks was absurd." It would be a comical anecdote except for the fact that hundreds of thousands of people died in the ethnic cleansing that followed as a direct result of British carelessness.

Pakistan's border with Afghanistan - the poorly-marked Durand Line - had been drawn in 1893, also by the British, but it was never meant to be a long-term legally-binding boundary. The faux demarcation split the Pashtuns in half. By reinstating the original natural boundaries, Pakistan's western provinces would be returned to Afghanistan and the Pashtun tribes would be reunited. Such a move would also remove a strategic advantage for the Afghan Taliban, who can easily blend in amongst fellow Pashtuns on the Pakistani side of the border today.

The British did not only gift Pakistan with lethal boundaries, according to renowned Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan inherited a "security state" from British rule, described by scholars as "the viceregal tradition" or "a permanent state of martial law". Intellectual Christopher Hitchens asserted Pakistan has been a fiefdom of the military for most of its short existence. As was once said of Prussia: Pakistan is not a country that has an army, but an army that has a country. Hitchens also said the country was doomed to be a dysfunctional military theocracy from day one - beginning with the very name of the country itself:

But then, there is a certain hypocrisy inscribed in the very origins and nature of "Pakistan". The name is no more than an acronym, confected in the 1930s at Cambridge University by a NW Muslim propagandist named Chaudhri Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind, plus the suffix "-stan," meaning "land." In the Urdu tongue, the resulting word means "Land of the Pure." The country is a cobbling together of regional, religious, and ethnic nationalisms, and its founding, in 1947, resulted in Pakistan's becoming, along with Israel, one of the two "faith-based" states to emerge from the partitionist policy of a dying British colonialism. Far from being a "Land of the Pure," Pakistan is one of the clearest demonstrations of the futility of defining a nation by religion, and one of the textbook failures of a state and a society.

Pakistan deteriorated throughout the decades because of its focus on building the military and developing Islamic extremist groups to use as weapons in their eternal obsessive struggle against India. It's true the U.S. helped Pakistan build these groups since the beginning of the Cold War, but America learned on 9/11 they had created a Frankenstein monster that now needed to be slain.

Many analysts have suggested India is less of a national security threat to Pakistan than its homegrown terrorist groups, many of which have openly declared their mission to topple the state, which would allow jihadists to secure nuclear materials. Yet, based on its strategic decision to foster extremism and its recent public support for Taliban rule in Afghanistan, it appears the biggest existential threat to Pakistan is its own political and military leaders.

The Prevailing Western View On Pakistan Part 1 of 2

Balkanizing Pakistan- A Collective National Security Strategy Breaking Pakistan To Fix It

by Nayyar Hashmey

In the upcoming post, Michael Hughes, a virulent Islamophobe, discusses the prospect of fragmenting Pakistan by an international force. For obvious reasons he avoids defining contours of such a force. The subject as writer himself says has been from its very outset, on the agenda of powers that helped create it.

This agenda has been very much a part of the overall schematics which a disintegrating British Empire then decided to meet her future imperialistic goals, but with a different cast.   

Before I put up this essay by Hughes, here now are some aspects of this so called balkanization, [presently being theoretised yet definitely programmed to cast the area in a new shape].

The author starts his essay with a thesis that Pakistan was created by world powers to meet their own hegemonic interests. Though partly correct, for the British did not want a huge Indian subcontinent with its vast human and natural resources, a huge land mass and geographically the most strategically placed region in Asia and thus had all the potentials to become a super power, the British had from the very beginning sensed the prospects of such a power and had endeavored as their futuristic goal, to keep the two major religious communities at daggers drawn. In this regard, the several hundred years rule of Muslim Mughal emperors was cited as the tyrannical rule of Muslims against the majority Hindus in the Indian subcontinent which was then called Hindostan.

Some time true but many times concocted excesses by Muslim rulers against their Hindu subjects were exploited to poison the minds of Hindu masses. Thus by design a big gulf was created between the two principal communities when the British preferred Hindus over Muslims in respect of employment, education and industrial development. Unfortunately the Muslim intelligentsia as well as the clergy strongly despised the western education and took it as a sin as it was from the frangi kafirs [the infidels from the west]. This created a big gap between Muslims and the Hindus resulting in Muslims’ backwardness in almost every sphere of life.

The power struggles between the Mughal rulers of Delhi versus the local Hindu Rajas both of whom fought wars to retain supremacy, further exacerbated such differences. The story of a Muslim Chieftain Afzal Khan versus Shiva Ji Rao which according to history books was stabbed by the latter when he had invited Afzal Khan to a dinner turned a story of wresting power from each other into a story of enmity between the Hindus and the Muslims.

The traditional attitude of Hindu clergy also played its own role to amplify these differences. The strong caste ridden character of Hinduism and its interpretation by Hindu priests especially against the low caste indigenous communities as well as the Muslims [whether they were converts from Hinduism or were the settled Indians who had come from neighboring countries like Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, and central Asia] as the shoodras or the untouchables.

The Hindu clergy exercised a policy of apartheid against Muslims particularly during the post Muhghal British India thus widening the gulf between Muslims and Hindus - resulting in outbreak of communal riots in different parts of India. One of this kind took place after the publication of the book Rangeela Rasool by its Hindu publisher Raj Pal who was sentenced [on 18^th Jan. 1927] to eighteen months imprisonment with a fine of Rs. 1000/- for provoking enmity between the Hindus and Muslims. The book was found to be a scurrilous satire on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). On 6^th April 1929, a Muslim youth Ilam Din stabbed Pal to death. The Lahore High Court found him guilty and sentenced him to death on 1 July, 1929. Three months later the sentence was carried out in
Mianwali jail.
.

Persistent processions and demonstrations on the one hand and assurances by notables of the Muslim community on the other that peace and order will not be disturbed if his body was returned to his family and buried in Lahore, the authorities were convinced to comply with that demand. Ilam Din received a hero’s burial and was given the honorific title of Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed by the Muslims. During this period Hindu and Muslim relations were very hostile.

Some Anand, originally from Lahore, a journalist and author of ‘Lahore, Portrait of a Lost City’ provides some further clues. He remarks: the Hindu and Muslim communities lived like two streams, flowing side by side but never meeting at any point. To keep away from the Muslims’ “polluting touch” the Hindus had set up many barriers in their daily life. My mother for example, would never allow any Muslim to enter her kitchen. No cooked food was accepted from them. I remember how, if any of our Muslim neighbors even sent any special dish for my father, it never went beyond the dining table, a place where she did not take her own food. While eating she would never allow any of her Muslim friends or neighbors to touch her. During my childhood such inhibitions were generally not observed by male members of educated Hindu families. [Women have always been more conservative in these matters]. Some decades earlier these rules formed a strict code of conduct for all, no matter how educated or enlightened a person might be.

The Hindus had always complained of Muslim fanaticism but they never understood that the walls they raised themselves could have not resulted in any other attitude…

Some Anand continues: It took many centuries for the Hindus to realize how absurd and harmful their anti Muslim prejudices were. In this respect the first current of change was felt during the Khilafat movement in the early twenties. Though the spirit of Hindu-Muslim amity received many reverses in later years, at the social level the urban elite had changed its code of conduct for the better. This was due in part, to Western education. What this change meant was evident in my father’s attitude. When he was young, my mother used to recall, he would come back to change his clothes if a Muslim touched him while walking in the bazaar, but during my childhood in Model Town Lahore, father had several Muslim friends and he considered my mother’s inhibitions a sign of backwardness.

It was in these environments during different stages of history that the British exploited differences between British India’s two major communities.

Jaswant Singh’s Book, Jinnah, India-Partition, independence, gives further insight to Hindu-Muslim politics in pre-partition India.

The British exploited these differences to an extent that in 1940 the Muslim community felt compelled to move the 1940 Lahore resolution for an independent homeland for Muslims of British India.

The British imperialist designs and the stubbornness of All India Congress not to accommodate Muslim League in United India’s political and administrative structure did contribute to formation of Pakistan, this by no mean justifies, however, the writer’s contention that the creation of Pakistan as an independent homeland for Muslims was solely a British project. Though the British in the beginning did support the idea of a separate homeland for India’s Muslims, in fact they never wanted an independent, sovereign and powerful Pakistan. The real objective was to use Pakistan as a lever to extract concessions from All India Congress, which is why they tried their utmost to make Pakistan a weakling — to serve the imperial interests of Great Britannia. 

Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins have in their book ‘Freedom at Midnight’ elaborated how far the British viceroy Lord Mountbatten went to woo the All India Congress and all that at the expense of Pakistan and the Muslims. Qaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had always demonstrated his yearnings for a united India but the gulf that had already emerged from thousands years of living together but living in two different streams made the Muslims of India to seek some sort of identity. Now if the western writers including Hughes think that Pakistan is merely a product of religious frenzy fanned up by British to augment their own imperial interests in the post WWII scenario and now it is again in the interest of the same imperial forces to balkanize it, is entirely a wrong thesis, a thesis that might serve the interests of neo-imperialists but in no way suits the people of Pakistan.

The mess to which Pakistan has been thrown in to – by the same imperialists forces [but in collusion with the Pakistani politicians and the military playing a subservient role to the wishes of their masters in London and Washington, no doubt supports Hughes hypothesis but Hughes and those of his ilk should not forget, similar hypotheses were proferred, projected and propagated as words of eternal wisdom when the former Shah was in such a firm saddle. That Khomeini and his followers will be defeated in the same manner and style as they had been able to during Dr. Mosaddeg’s premiership proved those last words of wisdom were nothing but a figment of imagination that in a nu blew up in the air.

The Shah had to leave his imperial throne seeking asylum from one place to another. So things might appear as very bad, very sad and very depressing in Pakistan but we Pakistanis, the people of this country do see light after this night of darkness for the elites, the feudal lords and the privileged classes of Pakistan did not care for us then as they do it now BUT the people who throughout history have demonstrated a resilience to bear all bumps and jumps will definitely stand up to save their homeland. Light is bound to appear one day.
 If Hughes tries to recommend fragmentation of Pakistan through an international force, it is in fulfillment of the same old agenda which was set in 1947, i.e. fragment first India, then Pakistan and finally fragment the whole of South Asia so that it remains a tattering group of small states [and this includes Indian Union too for even in its present geography the state is too big to be acceptable to the Am-Brits’ ultimate imperial interests.

Next: Part 2 of 2

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Towards Understanding Islam in the Postcolonial World Order 5/5

MOVING TOWARD


A DARK CUL-DE-SAC?

by Taj Hashmi

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]

The writer [Taj Hashmi] is Professor of Security Studies at the College of Security Studies, APCSS, Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and an editorial board member of the journal, Contemporary South Asia since 1996. Currently he’s working on a book titled Islam in Postcolonial Global Setting: Beyond the Muslim Heartland.

Email: taj_hashmi@hotmail.com

-------

Concluded.  Previous 1, 2 3, 4

Source:  Wichaar

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[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, 2010http://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

 [23] Akbar S. Ahmad, Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society, Vistaar Publications, New Delhi 1990, pp. 117-40

 [24] Hafeez Malik, Moslem Nationalism in India and Pakistan, Public Affairs Press, Washington, DC 1963, pp.123-98

[25] Evelin Gerda Lindner, op cit, pp.62-3http://wondersofpakistan.blogspot.com/2010/12/towards-understanding-islam-in_4556.htmlhttp://wondersofpakistan.blogspot.com/2010/12/towards-understanding-islam-in.html

Towards Understanding Islam in the Postcolonial World Order 4/5

ISLAM AND THE WEST

by Taj Hashmi

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 Mujahideen 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.

Next: Part 5 Moving toward a dark cul-de-sac

Source:  Wichaar

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

 YOUR COMMENT IS IMPORTANT

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR COMMENT

Wonders of Pakistan supports freedom of expression and this commitment extends to our readers as well. Constraints however, apply in case of a violation of WoP Comments Policy. We also moderate hate speech, libel and gratuitous insults.