The sheer magnitude of the terrorist attack on America has forced many Muslims to take a more critical look at themselves. Beyond reacting to the news, there is a growing feeling that it is time to address a few of those knotty questions that we have conveniently swept under the carpet. As a Muslim woman asked me in a radio program, why have we repeatedly turned a blind eye to the evil within our own societies? As Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, asked in an article written from prison – how “in the 21st century, could the Muslim world have produced a bin Laden”? Equally, many supporters of Anwar - whose only crime was standing up to the corruption and despotism of Mahathir Muhamad, Malaysia’s incumbent Prime Minister for the last two decades - are asking: why is the Muslim world so crammed with despots, theocrats, autocrats and dictators? To put it another way: Why have Muslim societies failed so spectacularly to come to terms with modernity?

Ziauddin Sardar is a writer, cultural critic and Visiting Professor of Post-colonial Studies at the City University, London. His most recent books are Postmodernism and the Other, Orientalism: Concepts in the Social Sciences (1999) and Introducing Islam (2001). Professor Sardar is also the editor of Futures, the monthly journal of policy, planning and future studies and a regular contributor to the British magazine, New Statesman. 

OLD QUESTIONS, NEW ANSWERS

These are not new questions. I have raised them many times in my books The Future of Muslim Civilisation (1979) and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1985). Other writers and scholars have asked the same questions. But after September 11, they have acquired a new poignancy and a much broader currency.

Conventionally, Muslims have blamed the ills of their own societies on outsiders. “The Americans”, “The West”, “the CIA”, “the Indians”, “the Zionists”, are always hatching yet another conspiracy – it is the “anyone but us” syndrome. Conspiracy theories are always based on half-truths and there are some whole and half-truths in these assertions. On the whole, Muslims are quick to point out the double standards of America, both in its domestic rhetoric and foreign policy. They point to its support for despotic regimes, its partiality towards the Israelis, and a long series of covert operations that have undermined democratic movements in the Muslim world. The popular perception that Americans are “against us” is amplified by a host of Hollywood movies depicting Islam and terrorism as synonymous. The recently released film “Rules of Engagement” for example, depicts Muslims as mindless terrorists whose only function in life is to kill “the infidel” Americans and their allies, including civilians, and plunder their possessions. This message is repeated again and again in a string of films such as “True Lies”, “Executive Action” and “The Siege” – going right back to the Sixties and “Khartoum”. But all this finger-pointing does not address the internal malaise of Muslim societies. Now that reality has come to resemble Hollywood fiction, the anomalies and double standards of Muslim states have come to the fore with a vengeance.

For example, Muslims are proud to state that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the West. Evangelical Muslims, from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, run about happily spreading their constricted interpretations of Islam. But Christian missionaries in Muslim countries are another matter – they have to be outlawed or imprisoned. All those burning the effigies of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair in Pakistan will fight to be at the front of the queues for American and British visas. The psychotic young men, members of such extremist organizations as Al-Muhajiroun and “Supporters of Shariah”, shouting fascist obscenities outside the American Embassy in London, enjoy the fruits of a Western freedom of expression. Their declared aim is to establish “Islamic states”. But in any self-proclaimed Islamic state, they would literally get the chop. Indeed, as recent Islamic history shows, when these individuals get into power, their first action is to denounce democracy and then proceed to ruthlessly silence all dissent.
The Muslim voices of dissent, such as my own, have also suffered from self-censorship. We have tended to ignore the internal strife in Muslim societies for two main reasons. First, in a world where Muslims and Islam are fair game in open season for prejudice and discrimination, our main task, it is said, is to defend the integrity of Islam. How can one turn one’s gaze to internal evil, when the West insists on talking of “Crusades”? Or when the only hyperpower, the US, purports to be the dispenser of “Infinite Justice”, a name we reserve exclusively for God, and when innocent civilians turn out to be victims of American bombs and missiles with mundane regularity?

The second reason for self-censorship has typically addressed the state of the ummah, the global Muslim community. We have to highlight, the argument goes, the despair and suffering of the Muslim people, the indignity and dehumanization of monstrous poverty in an increasingly affluent world, and their plight as refugees escaping the horror of war-torn societies. The fanatics who loudly proclaim and ardently wield the banner of Islam are just another horrendous dimension of these problems. In any case, they are a minority and we should pay attention to the needs of the majority.

These arguments have gripped us in an intractable stranglehold for a long time. We, the concerned Muslims with heavy burdens to bear, have made a profession of defending the usually indefensible. The ideal of unity and solidarity of the ummah, and the rhetoric of the West, have constrained us all, and made apologists of us all.

THE SILENT MAJORITY

All good and concerned Muslims are implicated in the unchecked rise of fanaticism in Muslim societies. We have given free reign to fascism within our midst, and failed to denounce the arrogance of extremists who distort the most sacred concepts of our faith. We have been silent as they proclaim themselves martyrs, mangling beyond recognition the most sacred meaning of what it is to be a Muslim. The ummah is our identity and Islam is all: this is the vantage point from which we judge the shortcomings of the rest of the world and never ourselves. Our lack of humility is our fatal flaw. We are less careful about judging ourselves by the standards set by Islam while being quick as a flash to denounce anything or anyone that is not of the ummah. 

The events of September 11 have potentially freed concerned Muslims everywhere from any further obligation to this impossible contortion of conscience. It is a major shift. The speed and outright condemnation of the terrorist atrocity by Muslims throughout the world, including some of the greatest contemporary Muslim theologians and scholars, is one indication of this. The language of unequivocal condemnation used by such community organizations as Muslim Council of Britain and Islamic Center in Lisbon to denounce the fanatics is another. The devotion with which so many Muslims, young and old alike, in Europe and America, are organizing meetings and conferences to discuss ways and means to unleash the best intentions, the essential values of Islam, from the rhetoric of daft fatwas and jihad, hatred and insularity, is yet another.

However, Muslims have to go much further and assume their position at the helm of the fight against terrorism. The main reason for this is the inescapable fact that the terrorists are amongst us, in the various Muslim communities of the world. For sure, they are the malignant antithesis of us, fashioned out of circumstances all too painfully familiar. Nevertheless, they are part of our body politic. And, it is our duty, more than anyone else, to stand up against them. 

Consider, for example, the state of terrorism in Pakistan, where sectarian and terrorist violence has become endemic. In particular, two fanatical groups have spread terror throughout the country. Sepa-e-Shaba (“Soldiers of the Companion of the Prophet”), a group of Sunni puritans, has declared war on the Shia community of Pakistan. Killings of Shia Muslims are avenged by Sepa-e-Muhammad (“Soldiers of Muhammad”), a cluster of Shia militants. A favorite tactic of both groups is to roar up on a motorbike, unsling a Kalashnikov and simply machine-gun a mosque full of worshippers. 

Then there is the warfare between the Deobandis and Brelevis, two obscurantist schools of thought that have been fighting each other for almost a century. Deobandis owe their allegiance to the academy established in Deoband, in the Uttar Pradesh (UP) province of India, in the 1860s under the influence of the great Sufi reformer Shah Walliullah. The Brelevis emerged in the 1920s when their academy was established in Berali, also in UP. They are influenced by Hindu mysticism. The Deobandis accuse the Brelevis of bida, or introducing innovation in religion. The Brelevis simply regard Deobandis as kaffirs, outside the circumference of Islam. Recently, the long-standing theological quarrel between the two groups has exploded into violence.

The Taliban have added to Pakistan’s woes. A large segment of the Afghan population, running away from the oppression of the regime, is now living in Pakistan. This includes not just the two million refugees in squalid camps near Peshawar, northern Pakistan, but also millions of Afghans roaming the streets of Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad looking for work. They have brought their ancient gun culture with them. The entire country is awash with weapons. An estimated one million take their jihad to the streets of Pakistan.

All of these groups claim to be fighting to establish an “Islamic state” in Pakistan. In every sense of the word, they have turned religion into a pathology. And while they are a minority, constituting less than six percent of the population, they entire nation has become their hostage. An exasperated President Musharraf recently told a gathering of Mullahs: “What is so Islamic about our country when Sunnis and Shias, and now Deobandis and Brelevis, are killing each other so wantonly, when we are so devoid of a sense of brotherhood and tolerance, when there is no justice for the poor and destitute, when our women are relegated to second-class citizenship? Who can blame the international community for calling us an irresponsible or failed or terrorist state when our religious leaders are quick to hurl outlandish threats? Who will invest in our country if it is constantly rocked by senseless religious strife and violence? Since no nation is an island, how can Pakistan survive in hostility to the global community?” The fight against terrorism is thus more than simply about bin Laden and the Taliban. It is a struggle to save Pakistan itself. And, in a broader sense, it is a struggle to discover a more rational and humane understanding of what it means to be a Muslim in the 21st century.

FUTURE TENSE

President Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1998, has so far handled the crisis well. First, he tried to consult as many segments of Pakistani society he possibly could, while he tried to articulate the revulsion felt by the vast majority of Pakistanis at the terror attacks on America. Second, he is positioning Pakistan where the vast majority want it to be standing: foursquare for justice, leading the way to a new Muslim social compact purged of depraved violence, brutality, hatred, intolerance and the sheer madness that parades itself in self-proclaimed “Islamic” garb. Third, he has neutralized, at least for the time being, the threat from the Pakistani army itself by sacking key Taliban supporters.

Beyond that, the fate of Musharraf depends on the length of the war. If attacks against Afghanistan continue for too long, or the ground assault gets bogged down, or the pictures of wounded and dead civilians begin to saturate television screens, the hand of the extremists will be strengthened. Nevertheless, Musharraf can take comfort from the fact that the businessmen and the professional classes, disgusted by perpetual, mindless violence, are behind him.

In tackling the extremists, Musharraf would be greatly helped by the establishment of a broad- ranging, representative government in Afghanistan. Pakistan is not going to accept a government led by the Northern Alliance, whose members are just as notorious as the Taliban. Nevertheless a coalition of all the diverse groups, under the ex-king Zahir Shah (or some sort of technocracy), could satisfy Pakistan and produce a viable future for Afghanistan. Yet a stable government in Afghanistan would not mean an end to fanatics and terrorists unless the madrassahs (Islamic schools) in northern Pakistan, including the Deobandi Madrassah Haqqania, are put out of commission. These madrassahs are like the mother monster of Alien movies: their only function is to nurture and nourish generations of young boys with the rhetoric of Otherness. The students of these madrassahs are indoctrinated into hating all non-fundamentalist Muslims. For the sake of his own survival, as well as for the good of Pakistan, Musharraf should shut down these madrassahs.

Pakistan was the first state in the modern world to be created “for” and “in the name of Islam”. Today, it has to be saved from those who, in the name of Islam, commit mass murder, spread mayhem and menace, and are hell-bent on dragging Pakistan into the barbarity of a modern medievalism. To get from where we are to anywhere better we need a more broadly defined international coalition – a coalition in which the West makes space for and demonstrates an informed understanding of the internal diversity of and debate within the Muslim World. This will allow moderate opinion to make itself heard and be recognized as distinct from militant fundamentalism. A healthier and more humane future for Pakistan and Islam now depend upon the silent majority’s loud declaration: never again!