| 28 May 2004 | Friday | 08 Rabi-us-Saani 1425 |
Future plans for Iraq
What will it be: 145 or 250?
It is not uncommon for a person to be assailed by doubts or feelings of confusion during the study or practice of his or her religion. When some misgivings arise, or one feels troubled by certain cogitation which one finds "unacceptable", one sets about earnestly to tackle these.
However, some of us, when faced with a religious precept or practice that we fail to comprehend properly, reject it out of hand and, what is worse, may criticize or even ridicule it. The proper and safe thing to do, particularly when it pertains to some well-established teachings or practices of Islam, would be to consult some books or an enlightened religious scholar.
A couple of articles appearing in newspapers in recent months have raised some interesting, if confusing, questions about certain aspects of Islamic worship.
The first issue that was raised by a Pakistani lady residing abroad pertained to the inability of a woman to go for Haj or umrah (major and minor pilgrimage to Makkah), in spite of a sincere desire to do so, merely because there was no mahram (one's spouse or a close relative with whom marriage is permanently prohibited) to accompany her.
One can understand the frustration and sadness felt by a Muslimah faced with this situation, because Haj is not only obligatory for those whose financial, physical and mental conditions and family obligations permit it, but is also the heartfelt desire of devoted Muslims, and one that is often cherished for years before it is fulfilled. Without being a religious scholar, one can offer the following guidance, based on one's understanding of Islam.
A cardinal principle of our religion is that, "actions will be judged according to intentions." In other words, the reward will depend upon the intention.
This means that if a person had intended to do a good deed, but was thwarted by factors beyond his or her control, the reward would still be admissible for the good intention itself. If one is also able to perform the intended work, there will be an additional reward for that.
According to an aalim (religious scholar) of the Hanafi school that I checked with, it is not compulsory for such a woman to perform Haj even if she meets the other criteria listed above.
However, he added that the Shafi'i school allows the individual to proceed along with a group that has a majority of women in it. Furthermore, if that lady or her mother, sister or brother's wife has nursed a particular man during his childhood, he could accompany her.
But that is not all. There is a saying of the Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him) narrated by Hazrat Ibn Abbas (R.A) according to which any pious offspring who look at their mother and father lovingly will be granted the reward of Haj that has found acceptance with Allah.
What is more, if the son or daughter do so a hundred times, he/she will earn the reward of a hundred (acceptable) pilgrimages. Isn't that wonderful? So, there is really nothing for that lady to worry about.
Another argument that was recently raised is that what is the use of reading the Holy Quran in Arabic if we do not understand what is meant by it. One agrees that it would be much better if we knew the language and could, therefore, grasp the message.
Failing that, translations, which are available in numerous languages, could also serve the purpose. Nevertheless, the benefits of reciting the Book without comprehension must not be depreciated.
Many readers must have noticed how moving the recitation of the Holy Quran is, even when one is listening to somebody else reading from the Book.The beauty of the sound that results from the recitation and correct intonation of the verses can and does make listeners ecstatic.
The same is also true for the person who is reciting it. It has been aptly said, the "Remembrance of God" (zikr) is like breathing deeply in the solitude of high mountains.
The morning air laden with the purity of the eternal snows dilates the breast and heaven enters this space in our heart. What could be a better way to remember Him than through a beautiful recitation of His own words, leading to a virtual union?
The renowned Orientalist and convert to Islam, Frithjof Schuon, has called the Arabic text of the Holy Quran "majestic" and its resonances "almost magical", which exhaust human disquiet, infusing into the believer silence, serenity and peace.
Behind the literal text is a concrete and active spiritual presence, which goes beyond the words and the mind. He says it is by virtue of this power that certain verses can chase away demons and heal the sick - even when they can't understand Arabic.
Since this is a vital topic and the misunderstanding appears to be particularly widespread amongst those educated in western-oriented institutions, it seems necessary to explain it in some detail.
The recitation of a scripture, like anything else, involves sound and breath. The mystics of all religions are especially aware of the supreme importance of these two.
Breath links the spirit and the body; it is the life current. Our voice is the most living of sounds since its origin is in the breath. From this it follows that when we modulate our breath through sound, specifically with divine words, the impact that it has on our spirit should be obvious, even if we do not comprehend the language. The sound and vibration immediately touch our heart. Thus, our soul gets attuned to God.
The last point of contention is that the khutba (sermon) of the Friday prayers should be delivered in a tongue understood by the worshippers, rather than in Arabic.
Here, it ought to be noted that the talk lasting 30 minutes or so, preceding the khutba in Arabic, be it in Urdu or a regional language, is very much a part of the sermon, and it is obligatory to listen to it.
The imams do this in English in the English-speaking countries. The unchangeable Arabic part is less than ten minutes long and nobody should grudge it. Anyone desirous of knowing its meaning can easily read it somewhere.
Many of the controversies arising in the minds of people are because of a lack of knowledge and, more importantly, a lack of understanding of Islam. It would behove us to engage in a deeper study of religion to be able to perceive its merits, which are real and enormous. Many contemporary converts to Islam have attained a profound understanding of religion and have put this into practice.
Some writers residing in the West have lamented the difficulties faced by them in learning about or practising Islam. They need not lose heart, for, Allah Almighty will surely reward their good intentions. A great deal of missionary work is being done there and Islam is, for good reasons, the fastest spreading religion.
Emma Clarke, a great-granddaughter of Lord Asquith (who was the British premier during the First World War), and more than 14,000 other compatriots from the upper strata of British society have recently acknowledged their conversion to Islam, while many more of their peers are keeping it confidential. It will certainly become the religion of the 21st century worldwide.
Future plans for Iraq
Speaking at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania at his first post-Saddam speech on Iraq, President Bush outlined the steps for the rehabilitation of the strife-torn country.
With his diminishing popularity and his approval rating said to be at an all-time low, he also unwittingly brought to the surface his differences with Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair in respect of the future role of the multinational occupation forces in Iraq.
He gave no indication of the likely timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation force but was apparently of the view that the American troops would not be placed under control of the interim Iraqi administration which would be inducted on June 30. Britain's prime minister is said to be of the view that the final political control of the coalition forces would vest in Iraq's political authority.
Asked at a press conference whether the Iraqi ministers would have a veto over the coalition forces' military operations, Tony Blair said that this was going to be the case.
The British prime minister stressed that was what sovereignty would mean. He further elucidated his statement saying: "if there is a political decision as to whether you go into a place like Fallujah in a particular way that has to be done with the consent of the interim Iraqi government."
On the contrary, officials in Washington regard the placing of American forces under foreign control as altogether unacceptable. What the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, indicated in his press conference on Tuesday was substantially at variance with Tony Blair's view.
When asked whether the future Iraqi government would be in a position to veto the coalition forces' operation, in a place like Fallujah, he went on record to say that whatever the Iraqis might have to say at a political or military level, ultimately it would come down to the US forces protecting themselves or accomplishing their mission in a way that might not be in total consonance with what the Iraqi interim government might want to do at a particular moment in time.
Prime Minister Tony Blair also made it clear that foreign troops would stay in Iraq on a long-term basis with the consent of the Iraqis. But, perhaps to soften the bluntness of his observation, he said it did not mean that the foreign troops could be forced into an unwanted operation.
It is obvious that neither President Bush nor Prime Minister Blair wish to jeopardize their political future. According to reports, the objective of President Bush's speech was "to shore up flagging support for his Iraq policies."
According to an opinion poll published in the widely influential The Washington Post, the US president's public approval ratings have sunk to a "new low" five months before the presidential poll.
Fifty per cent of the Americans surveyed "disapproved of the job Bush is doing," with 47 per cent approving his performance - the lowest overall figure recorded by The Washington Post.
Likewise there has been a marked drop in Prime Minister Tony Blair's popularity rating. On top of all that, Amnesty International has described President Bush's global anti-terror policies as "bankrupt of vision."
It has also taken to task Washington's partners in Iraq, charging them with pursuing a "self-declared" war on terror, and of jailing suspects unfairly, stamping on legitimate political and religious dissent and of squeezing asylum-seekers.
It is not unlikely that the differences in the approach to post-Saddam Iraq between the US and Britain may have resulted from the disclosures about the gruesome abuses committed on Iraqi detainees by American servicemen.
The commanding officer of an American military police unit in Iraq has offered to testify before an official inquiry to the fact that the top US general in Iraq, Lt-Gen Ricardo Sanchez, was personally present when some of the acts of torture were committed on the Iraqis.
Not all the allies of Washington would be willing to share with the Americans the guilt and disgrace of being involved in the cruel and inhuman crimes perpetrated on the Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison.
In his speech President Bush also announced that the Abu Ghraib prison would be pulled down as it had become "a symbol of disgraceful conduct by few American troops who dishonoured our country and disregarded our values." It would be replaced by a US-funded modern facility.
The most notable victim of the Abu Ghaib episode is General Ricardo Sanchez whom the Pentagon plans to replace with the army's second-in-command, General George W. Casey.
To preempt the possibility that Sanchez could be seen as being punished for his role in the Abu Ghraib abuses, a senior US defence official has said that Sanchez's being replaced had been on the plan for some time as he had been there for 14 months.
Another senior official was quoted as saying: "Anybody trying to draw a line between the natural progression of looking for somebody to rotate into that position to the alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib would be just wrong; there is absolutely no connection whatsoever."
However, the fact is that the general's next assignment has not yet been notified. In fact, the command of the Southern Command which was said to be kept in reserve for General Sanchez on his return from Iraq has now been given to someone else.
Moreover, Brig-Gen Janis Karpinski who was in charge of the prison guards, accused of perpetrating abuses on the Abu Ghraib prisoners, and some other officers charged with neglecting their duties - "paying too little attention to their day-to-day operations and not setting strong enough standards of discipline for soldiers under her command had been suspended from service." However probably to save her from public disgrace her suspension has not been formally notified.
To add to President Bush's anxieties, Iraq's most sacred Shiite shrine in Najaf in which Hazrat Ali's tomb is located was damaged in the US troops' battle with crowds loyal to Moqtada Al Sadr on Tuesday.
At least 13 Iraqis were killed in the fighting at the shrine. The outrage will cause agony to Muslims the world over. President Bush is repeatedly and personally targeted in press comments on the US-led coalition's handling of Iraq.
Anthony H. Cordesman of the US Centre for Strategic and International Studies, who recently attended a conference on the Iraqi situation in Kuwait, has expressed the view that much of the Arab and Islamic world sees America as "imperialist and anti-Islamic with friendly regimes becoming steadily more uncertain about the risks in supporting Washington."
The Gulf News of Dubai in an editorial comment on President Bush's speech at Army War College has expressed the view that he gave every impression "of not knowing what is going on in Iraq."
It is of the view that "it is alarmingly clear that the US president does not have a strategy and in the lack of a viable cohesive strategy hope for a peaceful, stable Iraq diminishes every day." It also says that "Bush has failed abysmally on all counts."
To make matters worse, the long awaited US-British draft resolution presented to the UN Security Council appears to have deeply disappointed the Iraqi leadership.
Ghazi Mashal Ajil Al Yawer, head of the coalition-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, has categorically stated that the draft falls short of Iraqi expectations.
Mahmoud Othman, a member of the Council, in a press statement has deplored the absence of any Iraqi input in the draft and objected to provisions granting immunity from prosecution to US, British and other foreign soldiers for crimes allegedly committed during occupation.
The French foreign minister, Michel Barnier, in an interview also expressed his disappointment with the draft. He maintained that the Iraqi government which emerges after the handing over of sovereignty to the Iraqis should also affirm the return of authority to the UN. Iraq has to be engaged in a process of political reconstruction.
The Iraqi Governing Council would want full Iraqi control over the activities of Iraq's armed forces as well as all oil reserves and the Iraqi Development Fund established by the US last year using Iraq's oil revenues.
At the Third Conference of Donor Countries for the Reconstruction of Iraq, sponsored by the UN and the World Bank, which opened in Doha last Tuesday, Dr Mehmoud Hafedh, Iraq's minister of planning and development coordination, made an impassioned plea for funds to ensure concrete improvements in the lives of the Iraqi people. He emphasized that the government to be inducted after June 30 would be credible only when it was given real powers after the transfer of sovereignty.
As Dr Hafedh stressed, with only 36 days to go before sovereignty is vested in the Iraqi people, there are countless challenges to be met. President Bush's speech at the Army War College did not quite indicate how this would be done.
What will it be: 145 or 250?
Twenty years ago this week, the most powerful Sikh in India was Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Giani Zail Singh was the president of India but he was merely in a Delhi palace; Bhindranwale, seated on the roof of Langar Sri Guru Ram Das Sahib in the winter sun, or in the shade when it got warmer, with a durbar of devotees and flitting journalists, had the country on an edge.
I remember vividly the taunt in his eyes when he laughed and told me in February 1984 that if the prime minister of India wanted to talk to him she could come to the Golden Temple.
His guns had shaken the confidence of India, and journalists spoke helplessly of the Vietnam syndrome: if it was a dull day you could always count on a few corpses from Punjab to make the lead story.
From London Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan, the self-styled 'president of Khalistan' coordinated with Bhindranwale about when to announce a provisional government of Khalistan that would nominate a Sikh parliament and collect taxes, while Chauhan would open a Khalistan House in London to work for international recognition of this state.
On June 1, there was formal hostility between Bhindranwale's armed men, firing from the roofs of the buildings in the temple complex and the police outside: 11 died.
On the evening of June 2, Mrs Indira Gandhi addressed the nation on Punjab. Her speech was preceded by Iqbal's "saare jahan se achha, Hindustan hamara" and the Saraswati Vandana.
Even while she was speaking two infantry divisions from Meerut and Secunderabad moved into Amritsar. The next morning Lieutenant General Ranjit Singh Dayal, a Sikh and decorated war hero of 1965 and 1971, was made an adviser (security) to the governor of Punjab, B.D. Pande.
On the night of June 3, a 36-hour curfew was imposed around the Golden Temple. On the morning of June 4 at 4.45 a.m. the battle to end the Bhindranwale threat to India began; it was only on the morning of June 7 that he died. The heavy price that Mrs Gandhi herself paid, in martyrdom, is too well known to bear repetition.
Who could have predicted in May 1984 that in May 2004 a Sikh would be sworn in as India's prime minister? Could there be a more marvellous tribute to India, to Indian democracy and to the Indian people, the bedrock of both the nation and its leadership?
The most important aspect of this decision is that it has been made without any fuss. Mrs Sonia Gandhi chose to make Dr Manmohan Singh prime minister not because he was a Sikh, or from this caste or that, but simply because he was the best person for the job.
It is an interesting fact that while electoral politics has been prey to caste and community considerations, the prime minister's office has remained above such zero-sum games.
So to the obvious question: how uneasy will this head be? In theory, there is no reason why the government should not last five years. If the NDA could get along for more than five years with only an occasional flash of silliness from the likes of Mamata Banerjee, then there is no reason why Dr Manmohan Singh cannot take what he wants with a reasonable amount of give.
Given the colour that they bring to the environment, and the attendant media projection, it is perfectly understandable that we tend to confuse politics with politicians. But however temperamental they may be, it is not politicians who will be Dr Singh's problem but the larger play of politics.
The allies will reconcile themselves to whatever they get because it would be suicide to rock a Manmohan Singh government even before it has been sworn in. One of the great strengths of this government is going to be Dr Singh himself, since his integrity (not just financial but also political) is considered to be beyond reproach. The fact that he is not, and has never been, a politician could be his best asset.
The great liability he inherits is that this alliance was born out of compulsion rather than an allotment of shared space. Nothing was discussed, and much was assumed.
The Congress did not inform Laloo Yadav before the elections that he could not become home minister, for instance. He has been a bit stunned to discover that he is being treated on par with Nitish Kumar.
Ram Vilas Paswan had obvious problems with the portfolio assigned to him. Sharad Pawar kept his views to himself, but delight was not his first emotion last Saturday.
The allies have a point when they claim they propped up the Congress, for this election was a victory and defeat for partnerships. The most significant statistic is that both the BJP and the Congress lost two per cent of their vote share: one alliance worked and the other did not.
Check out another fact: apart from Delhi-Haryana, and to an extent Gujarat and the northeast, the Congress was decimated wherever it contested alone. The list of such states is a long one: Kerala, Karnataka, Orissa, Bengal, UP, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Punjab.
If anyone is doing any thinking amidst the euphoria of power, this should go into the category of sobering thoughts. A single, passionate desire to defeat the BJP brought the allies together, but such glue is vulnerable to conflicting agendas.
An obvious concern is the demand for a separate Telangana by one of the constituents of the alliance, Telangana Rashtra Samiti. Without the TRS the Congress could never have pulled off such a decisive victory in Andhra.
But while UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh were divided by the mutual consent of all parties, there is no such consensus on Telangana. Chandrababu Naidu has fought an election against the division of Andhra Pradesh, and he could seek resurrection on the streets.
The CPI(M) will be wary of concessions in Telangana, since it fought a difficult battle to spike the demand for Gorkhaland. The Congress itself will worry about the impact such a decision would have on Vidarbha and the rest of Maharashtra, where assembly elections are due in a few months.
Ironically, issues of governance never break up such a government. Politics does. Mrs Sonia Gandhi made an important statement when she told the Congress Parliamentary Party that she did not consider 145 seats to be a mandate; she added that she would consider 250 seats a mandate.
This is a legitimate ambition for a national party, and Mrs Gandhi had every right to tell her MPs that they should trust her to take the party to that level.
But that leaves the allies with an uncomfortable question: when does Mrs Sonia Gandhi want those 250 seats? Is she willing to wait till the general elections of 2009? This is the question that will control the politics of the alliance, because most of the partners in Delhi are competitors in the states.
This is why the Marxists kept out of government. If the Congress wants to grow in Bihar, then it can only do so by displacing Laloo Yadav's party, because Laloo has absorbed the space that once belonged to the Congress. The situation is absolutely the same in Maharashtra.
Alternatively, the Congress might offer its allies the option of a second strategy: let us cash in on the rising popularity of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and the depression within the BJP by a second general election on the same terms, except that the Congress will try and increase its presence in the states where it does not have allies, or at least a significant one - the 180-odd seats of Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and UP.
But to do so you must cash in early, before the sheen has rubbed off. The BJP won handsomely in MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh only because it did not wait for too long after its assembly victories. In pow-er, sheen disappears very quickly.
The rational thing to do of course will be to let Dr Manmohan Singh run a good government for its normal term. But that would leave the Congress static at 145 seats, with every chance of a large chunk of this disappearing in 2009.
That does not seem very helpful, does it? For the Congress to gain any further ground, an election within a year is the only real option. Would the allies be ready for another general election? The allies gain nothing by haste.
There are too many imponderables, the most crucial being the assembly elections that are due in states like Maharashtra, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. Power in the states is vital for the allies.
Laloo Yadav may swallow a bit and accept what he gets in Delhi, but he is going to dictate terms in Bihar. So does the Congress remain content with its marginal role in Bihar? And if it wants more how much more? The interplay of such tensions will be a continuing headache.
Well, at least there is going to be more than one head to share that ache. Manmohan Singh is in office, but Sonia Gandhi is in power.
The writer is editor-in-chief of the Asian Age, New Delhi.