SHOULD it need a story (real or alleged) of Quranic desecration to rouse the Muslim world to anger against the United States? Aren’t there plenty of other reasons why the politically-engaged, or the politically-conscious, in every Muslim country should raise the voice of protest, if not the banner of revolt, against the seeds of evil America is sowing across the Islamic crescent, especially in that biggest nursery of misery and evil since the end of the Vietnam war, Iraq?
Lest we forget, the strongest, most effective protests against the Iraq war have come not from the spiritless masses inhabiting the world of Islam but from thinking citizens in the Christian West. Across the golden crescent of Islam there has been nothing to match the huge anti-war marches taken out in western cities — London, New York, etc. Nothing to match France and Germany’s opposition to the war, nothing to match George Galloway’s defiant cry after being elected MP from east London: “Mr Blair, this is for Iraq.”
Iraq may have been a divisive issue in the British election but not in the world of Islam whose rulers — for the most part a striking bunch of puppets and self-seeking autocrats — are mesmerized by their own fears. Since in most cases their chief foreign backer is the US, and since they wouldn’t do anything to risk their hold on power, it is foolish expecting any decent reaction from them.
Mahathir of Malaysia was an exception, openly criticizing the US for its Iraq adventure. But he could afford to do so because of Malaysia’s economic miracle. Also because, and let’s not underestimate this, he was a tough man himself, not easily scared or browbeaten. In the second and third worlds, it is not easy replicating these conditions: economic success and tough leadership.
Certainly not easy replicating them in Pakistan which, despite its huge army (whatever is it for?) and nuclear capability (the world’s first ‘Islamic’ bomb), has made a virtue of ducking and scraping before the United States, often for no reason at all. We may be the fiercest rhetoricians of Islam in the entire world, but what’s so Islamic about ingrained subservience?
If standing up to great-power highhandedness is an Islamic virtue, as it surely is in any just interpretation of the faith, Fidel Castro, to take a random example, has greater right to a place in the Islamic pantheon than all the rulers of the Muslim world put together.
What accounts for the huge insecurity of our ruling classes? Why the predisposition to behave like American stooges? Why do most Pakistani politicians think that the road to Islamabad winds through Washington? Why does the out-of-power Benazir Bhutto still hanker to meet American officials even when the most she gets to call on are lesser fry in the State Department? Why does Pakistan’s soldier-president take such inordinate pride in his American connection?
Bowing to the dictates of realism is one thing. It’s even a mark of statesmanship. But after September 11 our military rulers, leaving the shores of realism far behind, went overboard in the frenzied scramble to line up with America, above and beyond the call of duty.
True, anything suggesting disrespect to the Holy Quran touches a raw nerve among Muslims, even those casual about their faith. But should nothing less move the Muslim world to anger? Guantanamo Bay — the entire system of incarceration and torture there — is reminiscent of torture on a Nazi scale. The Bagram base north of Kabul is also a CIA-controlled torture centre. Searching stories about both these throwbacks to the Gulag have appeared in the western press. How many in the Arab or Muslim press?
It was an American soldier who provided the humiliating pictures about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Even the Quranic desecration story, since ‘retracted’, was carried by Newsweek, a western source. If the evil visited on Iraq is American, the strongest critique of that misadventure is also American or western. The world of Islam’s contribution to this saga has come in the form of silence, timidity, acquiescence, or empty emotionalism.
In Pakistan the burden of denunciation has been carried by the mullahs of the MMA, a fact which would redound to their greater glory if not tainted by the suspicion that when put to the test they can be the greatest collection of shadow-boxers this side of Gibraltar. Who’ll believe them after they helped legitimize, courtesy the 17th amendment, Musharraf’s grip on power?
So before frothing at the mouth about western iniquity, it is only proper to examine our own condition. Humiliation can be imposed from outside but more often than not it is invited by weakness and lack of purpose. The US was bent upon evil in the case of Iraq but its path was encouraged by the knowledge that far from having to fear anything from the great world of Islam, it could count on critical support from vital sections of it. The springboard for the attack on Iraq was provided by bases strung along the Gulf. So there is only so much we can blame outsiders for our woes. What’s the central fact about the world economy today? That to a large extent it continues to be fuelled by Muslim oil, Arab and Iranian, and, in the fullness of time, Central Asian. Had there been an Islamic renaissance — an industrial revolution with its epicentre in the Middle East, Iran and Pakistan — all this wealth tapped from the bowels of the earth for almost a hundred years — the 20th century more a century of oil than of anything else — would have been converted into intellectual ferment and economic strength. Instead it has been frittered away in aimless consumption, sustaining the power of tinpot elites.
There is unease in the Muslim world at this state of affairs. But what form is this unease taking? Bin Ladenism, the most regressive and therefore the worst form of all. Instead of grasping the future, the adherents of this philosophy turn for comfort and sustenance to the verities of an imagined past.
The Americans say they are eradicating Bin Ladenism. They are doing nothing of the sort. Their misconceived adventure in Iraq is helping foster the very forces they seek to destroy. Saddam Hussein didn’t create Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Americans have. Iraq was a secular country under Saddam. Now it is a land echoing to religious overtones.
The Americans at all interested in Middle East or Muslim democracy? You must be joking. If democracy, the real article, were ever to come to the crescent of Islam, the first thing thrown out would be American influence. A string of democratic republics from Morocco to Indonesia would be too much for the Americans to endure. They know it too, which is why they peddle democracy’s wares in the larger world of Islam only when it suits their purpose.
This doesn’t of course absolve the Muslim countries of their responsibility. Democracy in the Muslim world shouldn’t be an American gift or be interpreted through the prism of American interests. The urge for it should come from within.
At present Muslim oil is married to American power, cheap oil to keep the wheels of the global economy turning, and American support for the status quo, representing the two sides of this equation. Muslim oil should be allied to democracy across the Islamic world. Only then, and not through the medium of anything like Bin Ladenism, will it become realistic to talk of a second Islamic renaissance.