Like the Palestinian Intifada, the recent Kashmiri uprising has  nothing to do with bombs, kidnappings, beheadings and assorted  terrorist tactics. Instead, it is now unfolding in the streets with  stones, flags, speeches and slogans confronting bullets, arrests  and teargas.

I`ve never been much of an enthusiast of the Kashmir issue though I`ve held an academic interest in it.

But the way it evolved in the 1990s when the militant side of the struggle overshadowed the more moderate All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) and the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), I was convinced the movement would run into snags.

Like most movements of the 20th century that adopted political Islam as their calling card, the Kashmir militancy too collapsed under its own weight. Now compare this with the recent uprising of Kashmiris led by the APHC and the JKLF against the Indian state. One can clearly notice the difference.

Like the Palestinian Intifada, the recent Kashmiri uprising has nothing to do with bombs, kidnappings, beheadings and assorted terrorist tactics. Instead, it is now unfolding in the streets with stones, flags, speeches and slogans confronting bullets, arrests and teargas. This movement has put the Indian government under more domestic and international pressure than militancy was ever able to. The latter had mutated and mangled the look of the whole issue, attracting condemnation rather than sympathy.

The condemnation did not come only from countries that are expected to play a more sympathetic role towards Kashmiris` legitimate demands for self-determination. The bulk of Kashmiris too were left feeling exhausted and cornered by the actions of the militants. In other words, the recent non-violent uprising and agitation are not only a conformation of Kashmiris` resolute commitment to look for their own destiny as a people, but also a bold act of stamping a seal of disapproval on the armed groups` tactics.

This was also the premise one gathered from the recent interviews the APHC leader Abdul Ghani Bhatt and Yasin Malik of the JKLF gave to the Pakistani media. So what went wrong?

The movement that revived itself in 1987 when Kashmiris accused the Indian government of rigging that year`s polls in the valley was soon overtaken and infiltrated by elements advocating an armed uprising against the state. The inspiration in this respect was the success of the mujahideen against the Soviet-backed regime in Afghanistan, who constituted an armed movement of various Islamist groups driven by philosophical, political dictates of Islam. Or so they were projected by the West.

According to political historians, the years between 1988 and 1997 were a vital period in the history of movements advocating political Islam. But it was a paradoxical event as well because it was also the period in which modern political Islam witnessed an upsurge that eventually led to its own mutation.

Modern Political Islam is closely associated with three central figures Pakistan`s Abul Ala Maududi, Egypt`s Syed Qutb and Iran`s Ayatollah Khomenini. Political Islam, also called “Islamism”, is a collection of ideologies advocating Islam as a political ideal. It must be noted that there is a difference between political Islam (whose advocates are also called Islamists) and Islamic fundamentalism.

Islamists do not shun western science and philosophy like fundamentalists do. Instead, Islamists have been known to advocate a thorough study of western intellectual, political and cultural trends in an attempt to challenge them through their understanding and interpretation of Islam. This has made the writings of Islamists rather fascinating. However, the discourse between Islam and western secularism that they present eventually mutates from being an absorbing intellectual event into a somewhat frail ostentation when Islamists turn the discourse into a suggestive political programme.

For example, at the culmination of their otherwise well-informed intellectual discourse, Abul Ala Maududi (who also inspired Syed Qutb and Khomeini) ended up suggesting the reinstatement of the traditional caliphate system in place of western political and economic systems like democracy and socialism. Of course, in spite of the sound intellectuality behind their discourses, it was rather forgotten that the caliphate, save under the four righteous caliphs, too, was riddled with cut-throat intrigues, corruption and violence.

When questioned about this historical actuality, Islamists suggest that implementation of Islamic law will take care of such an eventuality. It`s just like saying that had Stalin not distorted Marxism, communism would have been the finest political/economic system. It`s a vague and a utopian assumption at best.

The truth is that the founding fathers of modern-day political Islam were first and foremost positioning Islam against Marxism and socialism. This was because at the time of these learned gentlemen, socialism and Marxism were the two ideologies that were most influencing Muslim nationalists in the 1950s and `60s.

For example, Syed Qutb`s Muslim Brotherhood was opposed to Gamal Abul Nasser`s Arab-nationalist socialism in Eygpt and Ba`ath-led socialism in Iraq and Syria. The Islamic socialism behind the Algerian independence movement against the French too was looked down upon. On the other end, Maududi`s political Islam became the basis of movements against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto`s Islamic socialism in Pakistan and against the left-leaning dictatorship of Sukarno in Indonesia in the 1960s.

It was ironic that because of the dynamics of the Cold War, Islamists found themselves in the American camp due to Nato and the United States` opposition to Muslim leaders who were considered to be anti-West, “socialist” and thus pro-Soviet Union. As a result, throughout the Cold War, Islamists` radical anti-West angle largely remained nothing more than an intellectual exercise, whereas the political and active sides of the ideology were mostly reflected through movements against the left (Marxism, socialism, Arab socialism, Islamic socialism, etc.).

This is at least one reason why when political Islam, even in countries where it managed to find some implementation, (such as Pakistan and Sudan in the 1980s and Afghanistan in the 1990s), only managed to generate superficial changes in customs and laws.

What`s more, due to the ethnic, tribal and religious pluralism of societies in which political Islam aspired to implement itself as a singular concept, it caused huge social and political fissures and fractures. The failure to produce the desired results, and also its doctrinal involvement in jihad in Afghanistan, generated the creation of modern-day Islamic militancy. This militancy too faced the same problems in trying to triumph with a singular concept in the face of the social and religious complications that cut across Muslim societies. By the 1990s, political Islam, minus its founding intellectuals, gave way to what we now call Islamic fundamentalism. It is stripped clean of its intellectual moorings and reduced to being an ideology of coercion, having a limited understanding of Islam and of the West. Entities like Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the many militant outfits that were active in Kashmir (Harakatul Mujahideen, Jaish-i-Muhammad, Lashkar-i-Taiba, etc.), are clear examples.

So it was heartening to hear Kashmiri leaders like Bhatt and Yasin distancing themselves from those aspects of the movement that have caused more bloodshed, pain and chaos, and more so at the cost of Kashmiris themselves rather than their tormentors.