Whenever I hear yet another call for establishing an Islamic Caliphate that will govern the Muslim ummah from Indonesia to Morocco, I shake my head in wonder at such ignorance of the real world.
Consider: the Muslim world is divided as never before as Shias fight Sunnis; secular modernists battle fundamentalists; Deobandis blow up Barelvis; mainstream Muslims consider anyone with a slightly different belief to be a non-Muslim; and Arab Muslims regard other believers as their inferiors on racial grounds. How would one group possibly accept a Caliph from another?
If we can’t agree on the precise manner of praying, how could we be on the same page about who the Caliph should be? In an earlier and simpler tribal period, a handful of elders could choose their leader. But when over a billion and a half Muslims are spread across the globe, how is a consensus to be achieved? The sad truth is that Muslims are divided — not united — by their faith.
If you think I am exaggerating, just look at what is happening here in Pakistan, and across the Middle East and North Africa. In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring was first sparked off, Salafist extremists have almost paralysed a nascent democracy. An acute polarisation has built up between hard-line militants and secular Muslims in perhaps the most Westernised Arab country.
Libya is being torn apart due to tribal and sectarian tensions as allies of the Muslim Brotherhood seek to carve out an Islamic state based on the Sharia. Opposing them are the democrats who spearheaded the battle against Colonel Ghaddafi’s tyranny. Armed groups fight the shaky government for control over territory and petroleum revenues. Meanwhile, the country has virtually ground to a halt as anarchy and violence become the norm.
In Syria, a vicious civil war has now entered its third year as government forces fight jihadis, many of them foreigners, as well as democratic rebels. Simultaneously, the Islamists are battling secular groups who were the first to begin the struggle to topple the Assad regime. Alarmingly, the fighting is also increasingly between Alewites and Sunnis, with ethnic cleansing going on in areas either side controls.
Iraq is suffering from relentless terrorist attacks as an Al Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), slaughters thousands across the country. According to a recent Time Magazine report, nearly 8,000 civilians have been killed in the country in 2013 alone. The report also quotes American officials who suggest that in two and a half years, Syria has drawn “as many fighters to its battlefields as Afghanistan did in two and a half decades of war”.
Egypt is split down the middle between the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters on the one hand, and the military and its liberal backers on the other. Although President Morsi was democratically elected, he alienated much of civil society by his crude attempts to Islamise a liberal Egypt overnight. The ongoing standoff between the two sides has eroded democratic values and given legitimacy to a military coup. The wounds inflicted on the Arab world’s most important country by its own people will take a long time to heal.
Despite a nominal end to its civil strife, Yemen remains a country at war with itself. Tribal rivalries and tensions between fundamentalists and military-backed modernisers have created large spaces that have been filled by Al Qaida in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP).
Several Sunni sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia on the Gulf have substantial Shia minorities that are oppressed and angry. In Bahrain, a Sunni ruling family has marginalised the majority Shia community. Months of unrest and rebellion have been quelled with Saudi assistance. How long the present uneasy status quo will last is unclear.
In Pakistan, we know only too well how Shias have been targeted by extremist Sunni groups, with Hazras being specially singled out because of their distinctive features. In Afghanistan, too, the Taliban killed hundreds of these unfortunate people because of their Shia belief.
While much of the tension dividing the Muslim world can be traced back to the original split between Islam’s two major communities, another factor has contributed to the recent flare-up in violence. This is the Wahabi/Salafi strain of Islam followed in Saudi Arabia. Since the country hit the jackpot following the oil embargo of 1973, it has deliberately exported its intolerant beliefs across the Muslim world by financing madressahs in poor countries, and mosques as well as chairs for Islamic studies in the West.
A generation later, its hard-line version of the faith has taken root in many Muslim countries, suppressing gentler, more tolerant strands of Islam. Sufi thought and traditions, centred around the shrines of revered saints from Libya to Mali to Pakistan, have been selectively targeted.
By dint of its money and its position as the custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, Saudi Arabia exerts great influence across the world of Sunni Islam. Sadly, it is also the most retrogressive Muslim state in the world, and over the last four decades, other Sunni countries have followed its example of intolerance and backwardness.
In a bid to neutralise Iranian influence, it is allegedly financing some of the most nasty jihadi groups fighting in Syria where many Saudi fighters are reported to have taken up arms to topple Assad. Money from the Gulf emirates and Saudi Arabia is reported to be financing Al Qaeda, the Taliban and sundry Salafi groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
One reason oil-rich Arab royal families are underwriting the global jihad is that they hope to export this poison out of their societies and placate their clerics. Thus, they seek to preserve their thrones and their perks while reshaping more progressive Muslim societies into their repressive mould.
If there is to be a Caliph, I have little doubt the Saudis would like to have their monarch appointed to the position. And petrodollars could go a long way in achieving this goal that is being pushed by many extremist groups.
