Bracketing Pakistan with Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan is anomalous and shows the danger of generalisation in a situation that calls for a cool-headed study of the political realities in the countries concerned. Afghanistan has virtually no government, its entire security responsibility devolving on foreign forces. Saudi Arabia is a monarchy where even the facade of democracy does not exist. Pakistan, in spite of the aberration of its army chief also being the head of state, has more than mere symbols of democracy. Political parties are relatively free to operate, within certain limits the press is free — thanks to the late Mohammad Khan Junejo — and the electronic media enjoys a degree of freedom that even foreign diplomats in Pakistan compare favourably with that in all established democracies. The problem in Pakistan lies with the government’s failure to pursue the war on terror as a national commitment rather than as something that is the military’s sole prerogative. Thus, the absence of a broad national consensus on the fundamentals of foreign policy and the war on terror, enable aid-givers to apply pressures when they like.

Examined closely, the draft bill is not a disaster, for it recognises Pakistan “as an important partner” in the war on terror and grants the president the powers to forge a “strategic partnership” with Islamabad provided he certifies each year that Pakistan is doing all it can to prevent the Taliban from operating in this country. Evidently, Pakistan’s view fails to get across to Congressmen, which is a failure of our diplomacy. Our security forces have suffered a minimum of 700 dead, prompting the US Homeland Security Department to acknowledge that the war on terror has been “costly” for Pakistan. Yet, as Ambassador Mahmoud Ali Durrani put it, there is nothing more that Islamabad can do for “we are already standing on our head”. Pakistan should remain unruffled by such pressure tactics. It must be guided by its own interests which cannot be secured by reliance on brute force alone. If the Bush administration had not relied entirely on force, it would not have had 150,000 American troops trapped in Iraq with over 3,000 dead. The basic challenge for the Musharraf government is to move towards democracy and avoid the mistake of having the existing assemblies re-elect President Musharraf for another term.

THE struggle to establish the domination of Islam is one of our basic, though unfortunately forgotten, duties. The system of social justice of Islam was established by Prophet Muhammad (saw) along with his companions, after a relentless and unyielding revolutionary struggle of twenty years and many sacrifices of men and material.

In the same way, the system of Islam shall be established in the world once again, by the true believers of Islam, according to the sayings of the Prophet.

In this regard a confusion was created that had to be addressed here. It was why pure Islam lasted only for a period of thirty years when it was given by God and was in harmony with human nature? An answer to this objection could be that Islam was in place in its ideal form at least for thirty years, whereas none of other systems and ideologies developed by men, were ever practised in its ideal and original form. An ideal democratic system for example is still in the process of idealisation and may never reach its final stage.

Similarly, the “classless and stateless” communism of Marx and Engels had already vanished without much appreciation. The system of Islam was there for at least thirty years in its complete and ideal form. It was in fact an out of proportion jump that took place only for the sake of a demonstration, otherwise the human race was not ripe at that time to sustain the system in its highest form as given by God. However, as said the system of Islam shall be established on earth once again before the end time in the same way as it was established at the hands of the Prophet (saw).

Similarly, it is also wrong to assume that after the Khilafat-e-Rashidah, Islamic system came to an end all of a sudden. Though the process of decline did start after Khilafat-e-Rashidah but the system did not collapse at once as a whole. Rather, it was the political system where the highest democratic standards of mutual consultation (Shura) were compromised first and it gradually came under the influence of tribal clans (Asabiyyah). As far as monarchy or kingship is concerned, it took at least 90 years to become fully operative.

The Umayyad period was a transitional phase. It was in-fact the later period that displayed all the corruption and exploitation that belonged to the kingship. Gradually and steadily, Islam was demoted from the position of Deen al-Haq to a mere “religion” that deals with minor details of worship and rituals and not in the affairs of government or of politics. Soon it was accepted by all concerned, almost as if it were an axiomatic certainty that the state can function only on the basis of tribal loyalty and allegiance to the clans and that the only feasible and practicable principle in this domain is that of “might is right.” As a logical and necessary outcome of this degenerative change in the politico-socio-economic setup, the very concept of Islam as a complete code of life also began to disappear from the collective consciousness of the Muslims.

The concept of religion of Islam that dominated the Muslim minds during kingships was that an armed rebellion is strictly forbidden in Islam no matter how wicked, cruel, and corrupt the ruler may be. According to this concept, armed rebellion is allowed only when the ruler commands a flagrant violation of the Shari’ah or orders to commit Kufr. The most balanced opinion in this regard was that of Imam Abu Hanifa (RA) according to which, an armed rebellion against an un-Islamic system was permissible with the condition that a success is almost certain and it is not an exercise in futility. Yet, no such movement could ever take place as it was crushed by the rulers of that time in the very beginning on the plea that it was un-Islamic.

Thus the so-called system of Islam continued to be the system of tyranny, totalitarianism, and oppression and those in authority were afforded with all sorts of luxuries and extravagance at the public’s expense. At the same time, religion was turned into a “profession.”

The ulema or scholars of Islam were “free” to serve in the civil service of monarchy as sermonisers in mosques or as jurists and judges and had all the privileges granted by the rulers. Those considered more talented could contribute their intellectual input in the various burgeoning Islamic sciences, like Qur’anic exegesis, Hadith, jurisprudence, scholasticism, and theology. If capable, they could adopt the mystic path of purification of the soul and establish monasteries to help others purify their souls as well.

But as far as the affairs of government and politics were concerned, the idea was implanted among the people that these “profane” things belonged to the “worldly” folks, and that to try and change the whole system by means of armed struggle is almost as prohibited as outright apostasy.

It was Allama Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938) who gave the radical idea of Islam and a forceful call for an Islamic revolution. His most significant achievement was that he rejected the idea of an inherent distinction or dichotomy between the “religious” and the “secular” fields of human existence, and proved that they are, in fact, inseparable components of an organic whole. He achieved this goal by reclaiming the scientific method of inquiry as a manifestation of the Qur’anic spirit, and by showing that all the higher values of social justice that are believed to have been “born” in the West were actually borrowed from the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (SAW).

AS PRESIDENT BUSH took the podium to deliver his State of the Union address onTuesday, there were five American families receiving news that has become all too common: Their loved ones had been killed in Iraq. But in this case, the slain were neither “civilians,” as the news reports proclaimed, nor were they US soldiers. They were highly trained mercenaries deployed to Iraq by a secretive private military company based in North Carolina — Blackwater USA.

The company made headlines in early 2004 when four of its troops were ambushed and burned in the Sunni hotbed of Fallujah — two charred, lifeless bodies left to dangle for hours from a bridge. That incident marked a turning point in the war, sparked multiple US sieges of Fallujah and helped fuel the Iraqi resistance that haunts the occupation to this day.

Now, Blackwater is back in the news, providing a reminder of just how privatised the war has become. On Tuesday, one of the company’s helicopters was brought down in one of Baghdad’s most violent areas. The men who were killed were providing diplomatic security under Blackwater’s $300-million State Department contract, which dates to 2003 and the company’s initial no-bid contract to guard administrator L. Paul Bremer III in Iraq. Current US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who is also protected by Blackwater, said he had gone to the morgue to view the men’s bodies, asserting the circumstances of their deaths were unclear because of “the fog of war.”

Bush made no mention of the downing of the helicopter during his State of the Union speech. But he did address the very issue that has made the war’s privatisation a linchpin of his Iraq policy — the need for more troops. The president called on Congress to authorise an increase of about 92,000 active-duty troops over the next five years. He then slipped in a mention of a major initiative that would represent a significant development in the US disaster response/reconstruction/war machine: a Civilian Reserve Corps.

“Such a corps would function much like our military Reserve. It would ease the burden on the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them,” Bush declared. This is precisely what the administration has already done, largely behind the backs of the American people and with little congressional input, with its revolution in military affairs. Bush and his political allies are using taxpayer dollars to run an outsourcing laboratory. Iraq is its Frankenstein monster.

Already, private contractors constitute the second-largest “force” in Iraq. At last count, there were about 100,000 contractors in Iraq, of which 48,000 work as private soldiers, according to a Government Accountability Office report. These soldiers have operated with almost no oversight or effective legal constraints and are an undeclared expansion of the scope of the occupation. Many of these contractors make up to $1,000 a day, far more than active-duty soldiers. What’s more, these forces are politically expedient, as contractor deaths go uncounted in the official toll.

The president’s proposed Civilian Reserve Corps was not his idea alone. A privatised version of it was floated two years ago by Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, conservative owner of Blackwater USA and a man who for years has served as the Pied Piper of a campaign to repackage mercenaries as legitimate forces. In early 2005, Prince — a major bankroller of the president and his allies — pitched the idea at a military conference of a “contractor brigade” to supplement the official military. “There’s consternation in the [Pentagon] about increasing the permanent size of the Army,” Prince declared. Officials “want to add 30,000 people, and they talked about costs of anywhere from $3.6 billion to $4 billion to do that. Well, by my math, that comes out to about $135,000 per soldier.” He added: “We could do it certainly cheaper.”

—Dawn/Los Angeles Times Srvice