Muslim world & the West

WITH each passing day, it seems that the gulf between the Muslim world and the West is widening. Apprehensions and misgivings on both sides are growing and at times reality is being supplanted by distortion. Unfortunately, little is being done in the Muslim world and the West, either by the political or religious leadership or by the news media to reverse these dangerous trends.

Indeed, the media is often pouring oil on a spreading fire by resort to sensationalism and biased analyses. The signs are, therefore, pointing increasingly towards the dreaded clash of civilisations.

Some recent comments made by leading western political figures suggest as much. In an article dated September 13, 2006, Dr. Kissinger warned that Europe and the US must unite to head off a ‘war of civilisations’ arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East. By a coincidence, the same day, Pope Benedict chose to attack the Islamic concept of jihad.

Gordon Brown, Britain’s Prime Minister-in-waiting, stated during a recent visit to India that ‘radical Islamism’, like Communism, needed to be fought at all levels. President Bush said in his last State of the Union address that Islamic extremists posed a ‘totalitarian threat.’ Bush has often compared the ‘war on terrorism’ with the struggles against Nazi Germany and Soviet Communism. President Chirac, who is not otherwise rated as hawkish, warned on January 19, 2006, that France would be ready to use nuclear weapons against any state that carried out a terrorist attack or used weapons of mass destruction against it.

In the Islamic world, the Al Qaeda is in the forefront of the terrorist campaign against the US and the West. The jihadi groups of various hues are not far behind.

Muslim religious extremists breathe fire and hatred in every statement they make. If it were up to them, the clash of civilisations could take place now rather than later. A top leader of the MMA, the late Maulana Noorani, while addressing a rally in Lahore on March 23, 2003, after the US invasion of Iraq, had asked tauntingly as to why Pakistani rulers had not yet launched a nuclear attack against the US.

The hard reality, of course, is that the Islamic world is in no position to launch a nuclear or conventional attack against the West or, for that matter, other perceived enemies like Russia, India or Israel. The latter have an overwhelming superiority in nuclear weapons and missiles. Moreover, the West is far ahead of the Muslim states in technology, economic strength and organisational capability. As things stand today, it would be suicidal for the Muslim world to opt for any outright military confrontation with the West.

At present, the jihadi groups and the various religious parties in Pakistan, and their sympathisers of various hues, want the Pakistan government to help the Taliban in their jihad against the Karzai government, which is backed by the US and Nato forces. They clearly think that President Pervez Musharraf or any Muslim not supporting the Taliban must be weak-hearted or lacking in faith.

These religious fanatics seem unconcerned with the fact that any such support for the Taliban would bring Pakistan into direct confrontation with the West and could lead to the most serious military disaster and economic devastation.

Indeed, Pakistan could be ‘bombed back to the stone age,’ as was once famously said. Would such a course of action be in the interest of 160 million Pakistanis or in any way benefit the world of Islam? Why should Pakistan commit suicide in order to help the Taliban?

And what exactly do the Taliban represent? During their five-year rule over Afghanistan, they imposed a tyrannical, narrow-minded, backward-looking version of Islam that shocked the whole world. The Taliban put women more or less under house arrest, banned television and cinema, and all kinds of entertainment. They gave sanctuary not only to the Al Qaeda, but also to Pakistani terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, etc. They massacred Hazara Shias and dynamited the 2000-year old statues of Buddha at Bamians. In short, the Taliban did the gravest harm to the image of Islam in the world.

Apart from some Afghan Pashtuns, all other ethnic groups in Afghanistan oppose the Taliban. Afghan women would certainly be the biggest losers if the Taliban were to return to power in Kabul. It should also not be forgotten that the Karzai government did secure the majority of votes, even in Pashtun areas, during a UN-supervised election three years ago. How then can the Taliban be regarded as the true representatives of the Afghan people?The rise of the Taliban in 1994 brought to surface the current tensions between the Muslim world and the West. Since then, one development has led to another in a vicious cycle. The Al Qaeda found a strong sanctuary in Afghanistan and started a worldwide campaign of terrorism against the US. It was responsible for the attempted bombing in 1994 of the World Trade Centre, the Dhahran bombing of 1995 and the destruction of two US embassies in Africa in 1998. And then came the traumatic 9/11. Hundreds of innocent people died in these outrages. It was this sustained campaign of terrorism by the Al Qaeda that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan and not the other way round.

Ever since 9/11, the Al Qaeda is believed to have been involved in terrorism in a wide area from Indonesia to Spain and Morocco. Suicide bombing has become a trademark of Al Qaeda operations. Islam forbids taking one’s own life; and killing innocent people is totally contrary to Islamic teachings. But the Al Qaeda and its sympathisers, who swear by Islam, find no contradiction in their violation of basic Islamic injunctions.

The question arises as to how the Al Qaeda and the various Islamic extremists have managed to recruit members who are willing to sacrifice even their lives in pursuit of the cause. The likely explanation is that the extremists have exploited some genuine grievances of the Muslims, notably on the Palestinian issue, to carry out a potent propaganda campaign that proceeds on two counts. One is to demonise the US and try to prove that it is the enemy number one of the Muslims; and that the US is behind all the woes of the Muslim world. The other proceeds from this particular hypothesis, namely that since the US is doing all these bad things against the Muslims, the latter have got to retaliate. The extremists seek to cajole and incite the faithful to hit back in any way they can. And if that means terrorism, so let it be.

In fact, the Islamist extremists quibble over the very meaning of terrorism. They claim that there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. They argue that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. To their mind, this absolves the Al Qaeda and the other jihadis of any charge of terrorism.

It is notable that in the widening gulf between the West and the Muslim world, non-state actors are playing an increasingly important role in setting the political and diplomatic agenda. In addition to the Al Qaeda, these non-state actors include the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the many resistance groups in Iraq, the jihadis in Pakistan and Kashmir, the anti-Russia fighters in Chechnya, etc. Their political sympathisers like the MMA in Pakistan, Hamas in Palestine and the Ikhwan in Egypt are involved in a campaign to seize power through the electoral process.

No doubt, the overwhelming majority of Muslims are moderate and do not want confrontation, violence or any kind of clash of civilisations. But they are getting sucked into an increasingly desperate situation because of the actions of a minority consisting of terrorists and jihadis.

There is clearly a need for the West and others to see matters in perspective and try to strengthen the hands of the moderates rather than overreact repeatedly, as the US has done since 9/11. The Bush administration has, in effect, been acting like a bull in a china shop, hitting around wildly without a concerted plan of action. The result has been that there is more Islamist extremism today than existed before 9/11.

The current pressures on the Musharraf government by the US and Europe to ‘do more’ in the fight against the Taliban illustrates this particular mental block in the West that is hampering a coordinated strategy to stamp out the curse of extremism from Muslim societies.

The writer is a former ambassador.

A blessing in disguise?

ONE is not surprised at the presidential reference against the Chief Justice of Pakistan. Something like this was bound to happen one day as a bitter harvest of the “doctrine of necessity” sown by the Federal Court in 1955 (Tamizuddin Khan’s case) and in 1958 (Dosso’s case). Why did it happen the way it did on March 9, 2007? To understand this we need to consider the following questions. What happened? Why did it happen? Is it likely to happen again?

We do not know the whole answer to the first question. The five-hour secret drama at the Army House and the substance of the in camera hearings of the Supreme Judicial Council are not yet known to us. All we know is that there has been an embarrassing sequence of events — public accusations and official denials, manhandling of the non-functional Chief Justice, rage of the legal community, a police raid on the media, the delayed release of the reference’s contents and the bar’s boycott of the oath-taking ceremony of Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas.

We also know that Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry had lately grown in public perception for attempting to find relief for the citizens when the state had left them to the mercy of visible and invisible mafias. But that is all we know till now.

The answer to the second question lies in the style of governance since 1958. A close reading of President Ayub Khan’s book Friends, not Masters and the testimony of his 11-year rule show that the sole objective of such governance was to give a permanent role to the army in the socio-political structure of Pakistan. As the thrust of subsequent military regimes grew, the objective was transformed into a “permanently exalted role.” The message for the four pillars of state (the legislature, executive, judiciary and the press) was that “you” should be either “with us”, serve our interests and be rewarded in spite of your deficiencies; or “against us”, dare to differ and be punished in spite of your merit.

The pace for such governance was set by President Ayub Khan with the little-publicised “Rules of Further Usefulness”. Under these rules, a civil servant could be unceremoniously sent home after completing 25 years of service, if the sitting government did not consider him “useful” for its interests. Some top bureaucrats were quietly sent home sending shivers down the spine of serving seniors, who found themselves reduced from “state servants” to “government servants”.

After the dismissal of 303 officers by Gen Yahya Khan the process continued till the administrative structure was demolished with “devolution” in 2001 and reoccupied in all its strategic areas by military personnel. This was the first successful assault on the civilian executive by the military executive to secure the flanks.

The second assault was mounted against the legislature to convert it into a legal instrument for legitimising the ever-expanding military presence and giving it a permanent seat atop all the four estates. The King’s party was discovered as an effective recipe. Prolonging the use of this recipe by all four military regimes produced the desired results in the pseudo-elections of 2002. The new robot is programmed to keep the president-in-uniform alive even when its own battery is about to die.

The third front of the judiciary did not require an assault, because the doctrine of necessity was quite obliging. It worked well till the suo motu jurisdiction of the Supreme Court in the recent past caused a deviation. The top brass started to feel the need for “course correction”.

The fourth estate (the media) proved to be a tricky front. It was undermined and ambushed. It suffered many defeats but finally succeeded in snatching away a small morsel of freedom. The loser declined to listen, covered his ears and boasted that he had “graciously given” that voice to the media. Such was the vague, undefined, uneasy and uncomfortable relationship between the two sides on March 9, 2007.

These peculiar conquests of the four pillars of our own state have given an equally peculiar mindset to our military dictators. It was reflected in General Zia’s boast that the Constitution was a mere piece of paper which he could tear with impunity. It was also reflected in Gen Musharraf’s speech in Gujranwala that the episode of March 9 was a “very small thing” which was being maliciously magnified by the opposition.

For this kind of mindset the only sacred thing is the status quo. The thinking goes that any challenge to it should be ruthlessly suppressed to spread awe and fear. The suo motu notice of socio-political aberrations and the misadventures of those who chose to be “with us” had not only the potential of disturbing the status quo, but also of undermining the doctrine of necessity in the days to come. To punish the culprit, therefore, a reference to the SJC was inevitable. The media also deserved to be punished for its role in this.

The precise answer to the third question will be determined by the ripple effect of the current situation. In the meanwhile, the above-mentioned ruthless mindset is likely to do it again in some form or the other with a view to restoring the pre-March position. Gen Musharraf badly needs the endorsement of the forthcoming elections (including his re-election in uniform) from the Supreme Court, unless some other mechanism can be devised under emergency laws, or martial law, to either postpone the elections or to bypass the judiciary.

It is relevant here to examine the ripples produced by March 9, 2007. Quite a few are visible while others are in the making.

First, except for some poorly engineered protests against each other by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, Pakistani civil society has remained in a state of hibernation for about a quarter of a century. It was being controlled, besieged and exploited by military interests. Mismanagement, blunders and the incredible plunder of national resources would not evoke any protest beyond empty talk. This was taken for granted by the rulers.

The ruling elite did not feel threatened by the people and selfishly divided the loaves of power and privileges among themselves. It seems, however, that civil society suddenly woke up when delivered an over-confident punch by the top echelon and is now shouting at the most powerful ruler in our history. This looks like a qualitative change in the public’s chemistry.

Second, whatever the findings of the Supreme Judicial Council in this reference, things will not be the same for General Musharraf, as is indicated by universal condemnation for him within the country and the letter from abroad by four US senators. His level of over-confidence is likely to be re-adjusted. An exonerated respondent will certainly be bolder than before, while conviction would not go well with the protesting lawyers and the public. The findings of the SJC, therefore, will generate a new set of ripples.

Third, about a dozen resignations of law officers at various levels and judges at the higher and lower tiers of the judiciary suggest new possibilities. Will such protests enlarge? This will be a good indicator of whether or not the judiciary has registered the message that the military top wanted to send it through all that happened on March 9. If not, what next?

Fourth, if the bar councils retain the initiative and continue to provide leadership, this has the potential of exposing and discrediting political parties, which are making secret deals with the establishment, instead of developing roots in the masses.Fifth, the protest is against the military dictator who symbolises the permanent role of the army in our socio-political set-up. A dispersed civil society, diverse lawyers’ bodies, opposing politicians’ groups, mutually intolerant religious sects and scattered citizens have all joined hands spontaneously. It is like a human body after an organ transplant and which slowly learns to reject a foreign body.

The conclusion is that the spontaneous outburst of the legal fraternity has given rise to a new development. So far our betrayed people used to blindly follow insincere political leaders and parties. Suddenly we find the same political leaders and parties following the people’s initiative, symbolised by the enlightened citizens of the bar councils.

Let us hope our people begin to develop an alternate political leadership from their own ranks, especially now that they have found the right direction and are discovering the benefits of taking charge of their own destiny. If they continue in this direction then March 9, 2007, will be considered a blessing in disguise.

mmufti@apollo.net.pk

Sacrificial Lam

THE Bush administration’s firing of eight US attorneys has returned to center stage with Senate testimony by D. Kyle Sampson, the former aide to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Whatever one thinks of the administration's conduct in this affair, one of its self-justifying arguments is bizarre for reasons that have nothing to do with possible obstruction of justice. Is it possible that Carol C. Lam was a casualty of the nation's broken immigration policy?

The dismissal of Lam, the US attorney in San Diego, has inspired speculation that she was fired because she had prosecuted former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe) and was closing in on other politically connected targets. The supposed smoking gun is an e-mail message in which Sampson referred to the "real problem we have right now with Carol Lam." The administration essentially counters that the "real problem" it had with Lam wasn't her prosecution of Cunningham.

—The Washington Post