| 02 February 2005 | Wednesday | 22 Zilhaj 1425 |
To sin or not to sin
Addressing Baloch grievances
Still haunted by Hitler
The announcement by the Salafis (traditionalists) in Kuwait, on the eve of the historic elections in Iraq next door, to launch Kuwait's first-ever - in fact, the Gulf's first-ever - political party has stunned the rulers of Kuwait. The Kuwaiti mavericks have also taken the political pundits, who had their eyes glued on Iraq, by complete surprise.
It isn't surprising at all that an initiative of this nature breaking a ground never before traversed in Kuwait or any other Gulf country has come from the Salafis. They started digging themselves into Kuwait's esoteric and highly selective (the franchise is still restricted to male Kuwaitis tracing their roots in Kuwait to the early 1920s) political terrain back in the 1950s.
Kuwait was, then, still a British protectorate but political ideas from across the Arab world were filtering with relative ease into its hospitable ambience. Gamal Abdel Nasser's Pan Arabism was the mantra exciting the imaginations of most of the Arab intelligentsia.
Imbued with that heady idealism, the Palestinians found in Kuwait an ideal breeding ground to culture their revolutionary fervour against Israel. Yasser Arafat was a prime example of one who earned his laurels in Kuwait of that era. But the Kuwaiti sons-of-the-soil were more impressed by the rightist agenda of the Egyptian Ikhwans then being persecuted by Nasser and driven into exile.
The Salafis, a more radical off-shoot of the Ikhwan, came into real prominence after the Gulf War of 1991 that made Kuwait into a virtual outpost of American expansionism in the region, inviting a swift backlash from those traditionalists who feared a total erosion of their values under the American onslaught.
Their message spread rapidly and popular following mushroomed. The call went out to rally around the flag of those motivated by a concern to preserve traditional Kuwaiti social and political moorings.
The Salafis have been a force to reckon with in the prosperous Gulf emirate with its culture of wasteful indulgence in wealth and opulence. They have at least 15 deputies sitting in a Kuwaiti National Assembly of just 50 members.
Their grassroots support springs largely from the Beduin tribes with a strong attachment to land. But in the years since the Gulf War their appeal has cut across all tribal barriers to get a solid footing among the urbanized middle class and the intelligentsia.
There is no way their clout could be ignored, especially because of a firm foothold they have acquired in Kuwait's mercantile culture. The Salafis today control more of the country's economic fortunes in the private sector than any other group. But it is the sheer timing of the move to launch a Kuwaiti political party, and enter a terra incognita, that is causing more of a surprise. It couldn't have been better timed to coincide with a historic and bold new venture into political pluralism and representative democracy in a country as intrinsically divided as Iraq.
There is no gainsaying that Iraq has loomed larger over Kuwait than any of its other neighbours since the oil-rich principality gained its independence from Britain in 1961. It is just like India being the dominant influence and calibrator for Pakistan.
The love-hate relationship between Kuwait and Iraq is a historical reality. Saddam Hussein's invasion and occupation of Kuwait in August, 1990, brought this factor into its sharpest focus.
The Kuwaitis, with all the help from their American patrons, may have regained their lost independence and pride from Iraq but they have not succeeded, and are unlikely to triumph ever in taking the Iraqi factor out of their political reckonings.
So the Kuwaiti Salafis, apparently lying in wait to strike when the iron was hot, have struck a tune that couldn't but succeed in making their point with a telling impact.
In heralding the birth of their nascent political party, called the Ummah (nation), they have proclaimed that the party aimed at encouraging "popular participation, pluralism and peaceful rotation of power."
All these are noble sentiments characterizing their political agenda. Who could challenge a party standing for pluralism and popular participation? Isn't this what democracy and representative government is all about?
It is obvious that the Salafis of Kuwait have thrown a challenge to the court of their country's ruling family and elite. Their political manifesto, on the face of it, contains nothing that could be objected to, or disputed as being anathema to pluralism.
Kuwait has toyed with political representation and people's participation of sorts since 1962. Its assembly has been a carefully calibrated and managed off again, on again, marked by regular hiccups and interruptions, at the whims of the ruling Sabahs, who have traditionally reserved the right to provide whatever measured doses of controlled democracy they deemed appropriate for their otherwise well-fed and contented people.
But the Salafis now seem poised to put an end to this form of a patronized democracy that has served the Kuwaiti rulers as well as the people of Kuwait. What they seem to be saying to their rulers is that if Iraq, with all its in built and inherent contradictions and centrifugal forces, can still be a democratic society with a free expression of their will by its people, why can't Kuwait be the same with its highly composite social and political fabric?
However, much as this gambit may seem simple and uncomplicated in the eyes of the world, it places the Kuwaiti rulers on the horns of a dilemma, for largely two reasons.
For one, there is no tradition of a political party in Kuwait. Informal political groups, based largely on tribal, ethnic or sectarian affiliations, have operated on the sidelines of the Kuwaiti parliament for years without ever crystallizing into formal parties.
The Kuwaiti constitution is silent on the presence or nature of political parties. So is the government, largely because of the fact that no political party was ever formed in the country.
Political aspirants were, obviously, discouraged, until now, from taking on the traditional power base of the ruling Sabahs and their traditional acolytes, because all organized political activity was frowned upon. But the Salafis have decided to put an end to it and test the will of the rulers.
But it is the other factor that could make this maverick move so much more worrying and troublesome for the rulers: a political counsellor of the American embassy in Kuwait was present at the launching of the Ummah Party and didn't flinch from being so flashed in the news media, beaming alongside the party office bearers.
To the outside observers of the new political reality in the Gulf the US interest in ushering in a representative political culture in these traditionally conservative countries is not surprising at all.
George W. Bush has been tilting at all possible windmills, in the months since his occupation troops in Iraq became locked in a shooting spree with the Iraqi resistance, to emphasize that his primary mission in the region is to bring democracy to its people.
He reiterated it at the inauguration of his second term recently. He and his spokesmen have been frank to the effect that he would like to make as much progress as possible in his remaining term to accomplish this mission. So, after Iraq, what better place to put his concept of democracy at work than in the Gulf?
The move by the Kuwaiti Salafis, with obvious American blessings, should cause a good deal of worry in Kuwait's ruling circles. It is too early to say how the rulers would react to the demand for genuine democracy, of which political parties are an essential ingredient.
Their spokesmen have, initially, reacted negatively to the move and said the rulers wouldn't entertain the demand for political parties. But the fact remains that the Kuwaiti rulers, especially since the Gulf War, have had to cede surrender much of their prerogative to the Americans, for obvious reasons.
They are no longer free agents or masters of their own free will. They may have succeeded in deflecting the American pressure, in the wake of the Gulf War, to broaden the base of their putative 'democracy.'
Women of Kuwait, for instance, are still struggling to gain their right to vote, or run for parliament. However, Bush Jr. is made of a different substance than Bush Sr. who relaxed his determination to make Kuwait democratic in the real sense.
The son has obviously more of a messianic spirit than his father and has been giving all indications of following through on his agenda to 'bring the light of democracy' to every nook and cranny of the world. The success of the Iraqi experiment in democracy may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the Iraqi people but seems destined to bode ill for the rulers of Kuwait, next door.
The writer is a former ambassador to Kuwait.
To sin or not to sin
It is certainly good to be modest and humble, but the way we Muslims go on saying ad nauseam "I am a sinner. I am a sinner. May God forgive me!" is really overdoing the contrition bit.
And sadly, along with this bizarre claim, which is merely verbal and formal and nothing but lip service to the all-too-common morality, there is no corresponding effort to give up sinning and vow to transgress no more.
Whenever I come across anyone who is parrot-like repeating this confession, I am tempted to ask, "If you are so worried by your sense of guilt why don't you stop sinning and become a good Muslim? Who stops you from earning God's grace? I am sure the Almighty will be very pleased if you can reform." But decent manners prevent me from doing so.
On the few occasions when I was at a level of fellowship with such self-styled sinners I did ask these questions. My queries seemed to go over their heads and they looked at me indignantly as if I was blaspheming.
Apparently this needless admission of sin is taken by most people as a ritual, like praying and fasting. Otherwise none of them actually believes he is a sinner. This hypocritical stance apart, everyone has his own concept of sin and its various categories and grades - the unforgivable, the major, the minor and the little peccadillo.
In the eyes of our elders fifty years ago it was a sin to eat with the left hand or make water while standing. Satan seemed to be alert all the time to show us the numerous and attractive ways to a state of sin.
Here is a new interpretation of sin from Britain, the land of liberal priests who look at Christianity as much with common sense as with the heart. It came some months ago.
Reverend John Pap worth of the Church of England laid down in a reported sermon that notwithstanding the Biblical commandment "Thou shalt not steal" it is no sin to shoplift as long as the shop is a big supermarket.
Said Pap worth, "Jesus said love thy neighbour. He didn't say love Marks & Spencer." With this precept the reverend now joins the community of Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest and our own legendary Sultana Dakoo and Jagga Dakoo who robbed the rich to help the poor.
The only difference is that Mr Pap worth is all for the poor helping themselves - to whatever lies in Harrod's and other giant emporiums. I liked his description of superstores and it reminded me of our own big industrial establishments which are supposed to bolster the national economy by ruining the economy of the common man.
He said, "With these superstores all that you are confronted with are these boardroom barons plotting how to take the maximum amount of money out of the people's pockets for the minimum of return. These giant retailing corporations have run little stores out of business and harmed local communities."
Some of you who subscribe to the market economy instead of the Quran and the Bible may think that Rev. Papworth was talking nonsense, but you will not say so if you have the good of the poor at heart.
But a member of the British cabinet had no inhibitions in this regard and, in one word, expressed his opinion of the priest's unorthodox views. "Disgusting," he said, adding, "how can we teach moral principles to our children when those in the church make such remarks."
The point for us to ponder is: will the self-confessed sinners among us Muslims be inclined to follow the advice of Rev. Papworth, and, if they are not well-to-do, will they start pilfering from the Utility stores which are big enough to match the superstore chains in Britain?
If they do so they might be confronted by a trauma. The Utility stores are a public venture and therefore owned by the people. Would shoplifters not be bothered by scruples that if they steal from these stores they will be causing loss to themselves?
It's a pity that the radical British priest has confined himself only to defining sin in relation to stealing from big marts. A man of his experience (in the sixties he was jailed along with the great Bertrand Russel for demanding unilateral disarmament) should have been able to expound on sin in other fields of human activity too.
For instance, there is the commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife" which offers countless variations on the theme of sexual liberalism and the rights and privileges of neighbours.
Although in the West this commandment is observed more in the breach, perhaps Mr Papworth could have allayed the conscience of many a licentious Briton by prescribing the kind of neighbour's wife who can be coveted.
It would have been like the Board of Trade saying that, from now on, such-and-such imports and exports will not be liable to duty. Then, in these days of terrorism, Mr Papworth could have given his own dispensation about the commandment.
"Thou shalt not kill" by specifying which kind of murder was not a sin. Maybe for this deviation he would have targeted the very boardroom barons who impoverish the not so prosperous through their chains of superstores. That would mean killing two birds with one stone.
While we in Pakistan have not yet started taking liberties with sexual mores on a mention able scale, we are far ahead of the British in the matter of murder. Some of our maulvis have left Rev. Papworth far behind by laying down that it is no sin to kill a member of a particular sect. In fact it is described as the one way to win a passport to paradise.
But seriously, the question is, who will teach us what is sin? With the passage of time, and the meaning of religious tolerance changing fast, will it be thought sinful to indulge in some apparently decent acts, like being considerate to the heretical minorities? A maulvi sahib has been telling his followers that those who went out of the pale of Islam by joining the funeral of a pious and charitable Qadiani woman, could re-enter the fold by reciting the kalima in his presence. He also offered to revalidate their nikahs with their wives free of charge. How generous of him!
Addressing Baloch grievances
As the crisis in Balochistan deepens, frequent references have been made to the East Pakistan tragedy of 1971 and it is recalled how the army action there led to the break-up of the country.
Sardar Sherbaz Mazari, a veteran Baloch politician, said the other day that he didn't want to sound bitter but he felt that the problems in Sui and Gwadar have made the people of Balochistan feel the same way as the people of East Pakistan felt in 1971. He was speaking at the launching ceremony of Brig A. R. Siddiqi's book, East Pakistan: The End Game.
Another analogy drawn by the analysts is that the Baloch have been denied their share in political power as the Bengalis were in the fifties and the sixties and this is alienating them as it had alienated the Bengalis.
There is a lot of truth in these observations. But the fact is that Balochistan is a great deal more complicated than East Pakistan ever was and promises to be much more messy were it to take a turn for the worse.
First of all, the Bengalis were a highly developed people in terms of political consciousness and social awareness. They had participated in the freedom movement - gaining political experience in the process - had well organized and strongly entrenched political parties and a leadership with a substantial popular following.
The Awami League, the party representing the people of East Pakistan, won a massive vote in the 1970 polls. Socially, the East Pakistanis were very advanced, in some ways more than their compatriots in the western wing. Their literacy rate was higher and they were better educated than their countrymen in West Pakistan.
The rate of literacy in East Pakistan in the 1961 census was recorded as 23.8 per cent when it was only 16.4 in West Pakistan. The problem of East Pakistan was fundamentally one of the economic exploitation of the provincial resources and the exclusion of its people from the corridors of power.
True, this is also the problem of the Baloch. But the analogy ends there. While the Bengalis were highly developed - socially and culturally - the people of Balochistan have been kept in a state of backwardness, deprivation and illiteracy all these decades.
It was only in the seventies that democracy - albeit with all its imperfections as has been the wont in Pakistan - came to Balochistan which got an assembly for the first time.
Thereafter, the tribal leaders got a free hand to operate under the political system as the feudals did in other provinces. In spite of the abolition of the sardari system, the sardars remained entrenched in their position of power and pelf.
For the people, it has been exploitation all the way. Democracy has not brought them any benefits. Illiteracy is high, social services are poor and the standard of living is abysmal - most villages have no electricity or gas. Not that the sardars have been starved of funds.
As the head of a tribe, a sardar enjoys many perks and privileges. Take the case of Akbar Bugti who owns the land where the Sui gas fields are located. He is paid a handsome sum - anything between Rs 60 to Rs 120 million is anybody's guess - by the PPL for the "use" of his land.
All this money has reportedly gone into his personal exchequer and has not been ploughed back into the land and the people to uplift them and improve the quality of their life.
The irony is that these are the leaders who claim to speak for their people although they have never tried to improve their lot in areas where their writ is absolute. In the absence of any other credible leadership, the sardars are accepted as the spokesmen of the Baloch - good or bad.
The alternative is no better. The political leaders, who are subservient to Islamabad and by virtue of that relationship hold office, exercise very little influence as they are seen as stooges of the federal government.
This situation is quite unlike that of East Pakistan in 1971. The Bengalis had a well developed political leadership which enjoyed the confidence of the people. Without a stable and structured representative leadership, the Baloch are worse off as there is no one to speak on their behalf.
The present situation where the sardars are locked in a grim battle with Islamabad amounts to the elephants fighting each other and the grass being trampled by them.
It is a pity that those at the helm have failed to use imaginative political and sensible economic approaches to find a way out of the quagmire. Neither has the leadership in Quetta tried to use its position and the funds made available to it to bring about socio-economic development of the people. For Islamabad, the simplest strategy appears to be a military one.
First, there was talk of army action. When there was a hue and cry against this - again East Pakistan was cited as an example of a study in failure - the government backed out and declared that it did not plan to use military force.
It was thereafter that the president and the prime minister began to speak of a dialogue with the Baloch leaders. But so far the talks that have been held with various Baloch leaders in Karachi and the all parties conference organized in Quetta have only helped to take attention away from what is happening on the ground in Balochistan itself.
After the rocket attacks on the gas purification plant in early January, the government has declared that it will protect the installations at Sui at any cost because they are state property and must be guarded against violence by the "miscreants".
On this pretext, the government is clearing a belt of land around the gas fields and 1,500 people have been uprooted from their homes and moved five kilometres or so away from the installations.
It is also now known that a cantonment is being set up at Sui and a brigade is being stationed there. All this was preceded by a house-to-house search. Since the government chooses not to define such measures as military action, it is under the false belief that the situation is improving.
It is not. Were a full-fledged confrontation to break out between the two sides, there would be no avenue for conflict resolution. The sardars, who are not exactly the darlings of the people, would this time hardly find themselves in a position to speak on behalf of the people - a very dangerous situation.
The Balochistan conundrum cannot be resolved in a hurry. There are no quick fix solutions available. The government can help by avoiding the use of force so as not to provoke the Baloch any more.
It would also help if many of the facilities denied to the Baloch are extended to them to pacify them. But most important of all, Islamabad should allow an indigenous Baloch leadership, independent of the sardars to emerge.
Balochistan does have a minuscule middle class which has professionals and educated people in its ranks. Some of them are in politics too and have managed to get elected.
But they are sidelined when there is talk of a dialogue. It is time they were allowed to come forward and speak for their people. They do not have to be patronized as that would rob them of their credibility. But their way must not be blocked either.
Still haunted by Hitler
When dignitaries and survivors from across the world gathered in Oswiecim, Poland, last Thursday to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, the preponderant message of the day was that the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis against European Jews must never be forgotten. Or repeated.
There's a hollow ring to such pledges in the light of all that has happened since 1945. And all that continues to happen. US Vice-President Dick Cheney, for instance, remarked (evidently without any sense of irony): "The story of the (Nazi death) camps reminds us that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted."
Who could possibly disagree with him? Who could possibly have wished to contradict Josef Goebbels had he chosen to self-incriminate himself in a like manner?
There are no death camps today, and no gas chambers. And it is incumbent upon everyone with even a flicker of humanity inside their breast to hope that the judaeocide of the 1930s and early 1940s will never be replicated in any form, on any scale.
But Tony Blair wasn't wrong when he pointed out that "the Holocaust did not start with a concentration camp. It started with a brick through the window of a Jewish business, the desecration of a synagogue, the shout of racist abuse on the street."
He should have been aware, perhaps, of the plight of Leon Green man, a 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor who lives in the English city of Ilford. On his living room wall there is a picture of a two-year-old child with curly hair and adorable features.
That's the son whose loss Green man can never get over, the son who would never reach the age of three because the SS guards at Auschwitz considered him a suitable candidate for the gas chamber.
That was then, and the devastated Green man dedicated the rest of his life to combating racism. This is now: two years ago Green man received a Christmas card from fascists in Ilford. It said that he would make a nice lampshade.
Latter-day European anti-Semitism isn't by any means an exclusively British phenomenon, of course. Not long ago Jean-Marie Le Pen, the perennial French presidential candidate (he won 18 per cent of the vote in 2002) and National Front leader, claimed that the Nazi occupation of France was "not especially inhumane".
Germany's neo-Nazi problem has intensified since the nation's reunification. Last week, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, to his credit, pointed out that it wasn't enough to blame Adolf Hitler for the past, because "the evil of Nazi ideology didn't come out of nowhere.
The brutalization of thought and the lack of moral inhibitions had a history. One thing is clear: the Nazi ideology was willed by people and carried out by people." That's a significant admission, because these days it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact that majority support cannot serve as a justification for vile acts.
European anti-Semitism often emanates from the same sections of society that account for harsh views against immigration and, increasingly, anti-Muslim sentiment.
Last week the Muslim Council of Britain excused itself from a Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration, and Arab states stand accused of having hitherto prevented the United Nations from expressing an unequivocal opinion on such occasions. This year Kofi Annan evidently broke with tradition to proffer a reminder that "the horror of the Holocaust helped to shape (the UN's) mission".
Across the Muslim world, however, there is an ingrained tendency either to support the discredited and prejudiced historians known as Holocaust deniers, who devote their energies to "proving" that the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis is a myth, or - worse still - to imply that Hitler's so-called "final solution" was in some way justified.
Many of those who subscribe to the obscene latter opinion would be surprised to discover that at an intellectual level it places them in proximity to none other than Bal Thackeray.
Some years ago, when asked by an American journalist whether Indian Muslims were beginning to feel the way Jews did in Nazi Germany, the Shiv Sena supremo nonchalantly responded that, well, if their behaviour corresponds to that of the Jews under Hitler, then they deserve the same fate.
Muslim prejudice against Jews (anti-Semitism is an inappropriate term in this context, say the pedants, because most Arabs are also Semites) may have its origin in Islamic history, but its contemporary manifestation is largely a reaction to Israel. That does not justify it, of course: however despicable Israeli actions might be, they ought not to be conflated with Judaism.
And in order to understand why none of the so-called great powers could have opposed the imposition of Israel on Palestinian territory without appearing utterly heartless, it is vital to appreciate the combination of repugnance and guilt that overtook Europe once the scale and depth of Nazi savagery became clear.
At the same time, Hitler's defeat did not spell the end of European anti-Semitism, and there were those - among them leaders and statesmen - who looked upon Israel as a means of ridding the continent of the Jews who survived Auschwitz, Belsen or Dachau.
And no one could be bothered to spare a thought for the Palestinians who would be displaced or otherwise inconvenienced by this grand project for a Jewish homeland. This, too, was a racist approach.
Six decades later, Israel still uses the Holocaust as an excuse for "self-defence" by any means possible, including the relentless and systematic violation of human rights. That surely suggests that the most obvious lesson of the Nazi era remains unlearned.
The most shocking and reprehensible part of Hitler's project was that most of those who participated in it were convinced they were engaged in a noble enterprise. The same sort of moral blindness afflicts Israeli soldiers who kill or maim Palestinian children without any qualms.
It equally afflicts Palestinians who strap themselves with explosives and seek salvation by blowing themselves up in a crowded marketplace or on a bus packed with Israeli students.
It is high time that at least non-fanatical Muslims learned to draw a distinction between the Israeli state and ordinary Jews, wherever they may live. Ultimately, racism of any kind diminishes its practitioners.
The Middle East isn't by any means the only repository of conflict where the Nazi notion of Aryan superiority finds an echo. Rwanda and Bosnia are commonly cited as instances where the ghost of Hitler reared its head.
But Adolf's spectre is better-travelled than that. It roamed the streets of Dhaka in 1971, took up residence in Cambodia in 1975, paid a visit to Mumbai in 1992 and was spotted in Ahmedabad a decade later before crossing the ocean to make its presence felt in Sudan.
But that's not all. It also hovered around Vietnam for more than a decade. It reared its head in Chile under Pinochet. And these days it keeps popping up in Iraq. And not just in the prison system; after all, it wasn't the victimization of Jews or any other group that led to the Second World War, but unprovoked military aggression.
Internal repression by the Nazis was, after all, common knowledge years before the war. A detailed report dated March 10, 1933, in The Manchester Guardian, as it was then known, spoke of an "active outbreak of anti-Semitism" in Berlin, which included a Storm Troop-induced boycott of Jewish businesses.
It also described a violent raid against socialist trade unions and concluded: "At Trier 150 Nazis broke into Marx House, where Karl Marx was born, and hoisted on it the Swastika flag."
Less than a week later, another report dilated on "a systematic Terror organized and directed by the authorities with the object of exterminating communists", adding that "nothing like [it] has been known in Europe within living memory".
"The president of the Munich police," says a news item datelined March 21, "has informed the press that the first concentration camp holding 5,000 political prisoners is to be organized within the next few days near the town of Dachau in Bavaria. Here, he said, communists, 'Marxists' and Reichs banner leaders who endangered the security of the state would be kept in custody."
On January 1, 1934, the Nazi passion for homeland security was reiterated in a comprehensive report on Dachau - a report that seems to establish beyond reasonable doubt where the architects of the camps at Guantanamo Bay looked to for ideas.
In view of what has been described as the "Holocaust industry", it is not always easy to remember that, although Jews enjoyed a certain primacy in the hierarchy of hatred, they were by no means the only ones who suffered.
The million or more victims at Auschwitz included communists, trade unionists, gypsies, partisans of every stripe, Soviet PoWs, homosexuals and the handicapped.
For humanity at large, perhaps the single most important lesson to be drawn from the Nazi nightmare was summed up in the lament attributed to Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller, who famously said that he didn't speak up when Hitler's troops came for the communists and the Jews and the trade unionists and the Catholics, because he didn't identify with any of those groups, concluding with words to the effect: And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak up for me.
Email: mahirali2@netscape.net.