Crisis in the Muslim world

By Shahid M. Amin

Part 1

IT is becoming increasingly apparent that the Islamic world is passing through a period of crisis, which is both external and internal. Externally, there is a growing distrust, which is developing into an actual or potential clash, between Muslim countries on the one side, and the West, particularly the US, on the other.

The internal crisis in the Islamic world is apparent in the growing cleavage in Muslim societies, and which is assuming the shape of a battle for the soul of Islam. A relentless struggle is taking place in Islamic societies between the traditionalists and extremists on the one side, and the moderates and modernists on the other.

It is also notable that the external crisis is fuelling the internal crisis and vice versa. Moreover, the crisis has now acquired global dimensions, particularly after 9/11. The future of the Muslim world is at stake and it is important for all Muslims to make a close study of this phenomenon as dispassionately as possible with a view to separating fact from fiction and myth from reality.

First, let us examine the external dimensions of the crisis, which is perhaps assuming the shape of a clash of civilisations. Here, one has to go back into history to understand the nature of the crisis. The historical records suggest that Islamic countries did, by and large, coexist peacefully with the non-Muslims. Ottoman Turkey had formed alliances with Christian countries and this was also the case with many Muslim rulers in India. Within Islamic states, Muslims were generally tolerant of those not of their faith and living inside their country.

For instance, Muslims ruled over India, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria for five centuries or more. But, at the end of their rule, these countries still had large non-Muslim majorities. On the other hand, when Muslim states in Spain and Crimea were reconquered by the Christians, Muslim populations were almost totally annihilated in a short period of time. During the Middle Ages, many Jews found sanctuary in the Muslim world as they fled persecution in Christian Europe. Muslim rulers often appointed Jews (and Christians and Hindus) to important positions in their administrations. The best Jewish religious literature was written by scholars living in Muslim countries like Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere. Muslim tolerance had its source in the teachings of the Holy Quran, where one surah states “there is no compulsion in religion” and another surah says “to you your religion and to me mine.” The Holy Prophet (PBUH) signed his first peace treaty with the Jews of Madina. In the golden period of Islam from the 8th to 16th centuries, Muslims excelled in science, philosophy, the arts and literature, taking inspiration from the writers of ancient Greece, Rome and India. They developed a truly holistic civilisation.

The decline of Muslims started from the 16th century as Muslim societies lost their vibrancy. From the 18th century onwards, the decline in political fortunes was even sharper when the Ottomans lost ground in Europe and the Mughals in India. The distrust between Muslims and European Christians, which had taken strong roots during the Crusades, increased during the Ottoman domination of East Europe from the 14th century onwards. The rise of the West after the 17th century saw European powers taking global control as imperialists and colonialists. In this period, the Muslims lost ground mainly to European Christians. This was a key reason for simmering Muslim resentment against the West, which has now come out in the open.

In more recent times, the implantation of Israel in the heart of the Arab world, and the loss of Jerusalem, turned Muslim and Arab anger initially against Britain and subsequently against the US, which assumed the mantle of protector of Israel. The Palestinian issue has ever since remained a festering wound in the body politic of the Muslims. More than any other cause, this has generated Muslim anger and resentment against the West.

In a paradoxical manner, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan contributed also towards the growing chasm between civilisations. For geo-strategic reasons and as a part of its own rivalry with the Soviet Union, the US decided to support the Muslim jihad in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation. However, an unintended consequence of this Jihad was that Islamic extremists and fundamentalists gained strength and have ever since made Afghanistan their sanctuary and training ground.

I was Pakistan’s ambassador to Moscow during the 1980s and remember the Soviet warning that these Islamic fundamentalists, who were being nurtured by the US and Pakistan, would at some stage turn against the latter as well. It is evident that the jihadists have emerged as a kind of Frankenstein and are threatening to destroy their own creators. Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda, apart from the Taliban, are very much a product of the Afghan war.

Their anti-US campaign started around 1995 when US facilities in Saudi Arabia were attacked and some damage was done to the World Trade Centre in New York. This was followed by the bombing of two US embassies in Africa, in which hundreds of African bystanders were killed, followed by an attack on an American ship in a Yemen port. Then came the horror of 9/11 that really changed the course of world history.

To take revenge for 9/11, the US and its allies attacked and occupied Afghanistan in late 2001 but this did not ended the fighting in Afghanistan where the Taliban are now staging something of a comeback. Similarly, the network of the Al Qaeda has been weakened but has survived the US-led onslaught.

The US military invasion of Iraq in 2003, carried out on the pretext that the Saddam regime possessed weapons of mass distinction reinforced the belief that the US is targeting one Muslim country after another. This perception has brought new recruits to the ranks of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups. The Islamic extremists are in the forefront of the guerilla warfare in Iraq against the occupation forces. The growing possibility of a US attack on Iran, in order to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons capability, will further inflame the situation and radicalise Muslim public opinion.

It is also worth noting that the Islamic extremists are currently engaged in a relentless hate campaign and have been seeking to demonise the US in every possible way. Since 9/11, the extremists have gained from the wave of anti-Americanism in Muslim societies, in which even the more moderate sections have joined, to paint an unbalanced and one-sided interpretation of events.

Any objective analysis would suggest that the impression that the US has an anti-Muslim policy is misconceived. In the 1990s, it was the US that secured the liberation of the oppressed Muslims of Bosnia and Kosovo by taking military action against Yugoslavia. The emergence of six independent Muslim states in Central Asia in 1991 was the outcome of the collapse of Soviet communism which had been opposed tooth and nail by the US for decades.

In the Middle East, it was the US that had forced Israeli withdrawals from Sinai, both in 1956 and in 1978. The return of the PLO to the West Bank after the Oslo accords in 1993 was largely due to US efforts. In our own region, according to authoritative accounts, it was the US that had saved West Pakistan from an Indian invasion after the surrender of Pakistani troops in Dhaka in 1971. Similarly, when there were war fears between India and Pakistan in 1999 and again in 2002, it was the US that played the main mediatory role to dissuade India from any kind of military adventure. Continued US diplomatic and economic support has always been and remains a key factor in Pakistan’s quest for security against India.

As for the US invasion of Afghanistan, it was the Al Qaeda, operating from safe sanctuaries in that country, that first attacked the US, and not the other way around. The US attacked Afghanistan to dismantle the terrorist network there and not as a part of any global plan to conquer a Muslim country. Afghanistan is an impoverished country and there is no evidence that the US has exploited any of its negligible resources.

Moreover, the Taliban regime was very isolated in the world and was disliked even by its immediate Muslim neighbours including Iran, which at one time was threatening to go to war against it. It is a fact that the Taliban regime was practising a narrow-minded version of Islam that was anti-women, anti-entertainment and anti-education. Its ouster has been welcomed by large sections of Afghan society, above all, by Afghan women who had been virtually under house arrest during its rule.

The US invasion of Iraq that followed in 2003 has been rightly condemned by most observers as a unilateral use of force, based on false pretexts. Its real objective was the ouster of the Saddam regime. However, it is worth noting that a recent poll in Iraq shows that nearly three-fourth of Iraqis approve the US action in removing Saddam. The Shia majority had been badly suppressed by the Saddam regime, as were the Kurds, and it is understandable that they would welcome the change. These two groups are now ruling Iraq for the first time in history.

The resistance to the US military occupation seems to be coming from Islamic extremists like Al-Zarqawi and foreign suicide bombers. They have killed far more Iraqis than the US-led coalition forces in a ferocious guerilla war in which many innocent foreign hostages, including Pakistanis, have been executed.

It is notable that the Iraqi government, elected in free elections and recognised by the Arab League, the OIC and the UN, has not demanded the withdrawal of US forces. Nor has this demand been made by either the Kurds nor any top Shia leaders like Ayatollah Sistani or Al-Hakim. For these reasons, one must question the impression of many people in Pakistan, particularly the Islamic extremists, that the fight in Iraq is a war of national resistance and that most Iraqis are engaged in fighting the foreign troops.