- Ajit Doval, KC - Former Director, VIF
Conflict Of Islamic Radicalism And Secular Humanism-Evolution And Causes
Islam within five hundred years of its birth held sway over Middle East, Caucuses, North Africa and parts of Europe, South Asia and South East Asia. By the end of twentieth century, its size had substantially shrunk, its military and political power degraded, and Muslims left far behind in their social, economic and economic progress. Rather than take responsibility for the fall and find the causes within, which militated against their faith system, they tried to find them outside. Muslims suspected a global conspiracy against them and a serious threat to their faith from western ideas and interpretations of democracy, secularism, socialism, rule of law etc. It was perceived that West in its ruthless pursuit of a political and economic agenda, was out to destroy Islam and hit at its fundamentals. After the First World War when the Western powers carved out of the Ottoman Empire small non-Muslims states under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, their fears got further strengthened. Radical secularisation of Turkey under Kamal Ataturk, who was inspired by rationalist and secular ideas of Zia Gokalp and the abolition of Caliphate were widely resented dubbing Attaturk as a Western stooge. The emergence of Bahai faith at the end of the nineteenth century was suspected to be a part of conspiracy to undermine Islam.
This started a debate within Islam; Why the Fall and what was The Remedy? The modernists attributed this decline to inability of Islam to keep pace with changing setting and environment and pleaded for fundamental changes to modernize the Islamic society. The radicals differed. They attributed departure from the original path, as shown by the Prophet and Shari’a, as the root cause and demanded going back to the fundamentals of ‘glorious past’ to achieve the ‘glorious future’. Both fundamentalists and terrorists today draw sustenance from the thought that modern society is rotting, and the cause of rot is drift from the only true God and religion which Muslims were ordained to establish-Nizam-e-Mustafa (the sovereignty of God). In their view, “The only lasting sustainable solution lies in turning to the word of God in its purest form – the Quran and Sunna. Muslims must turn to the original core texts and interpret them in a way that makes them relevant to the needs of today”.12 As Islam historically when threatened, has tended to embrace orthodoxies laying emphasis on Jehad-fight to defend the faith, expectedly, fundamentalists opted for this route.
Moderate thinkers, such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, felt that Islam’s problems were consequented by superstitious beliefs and unscientific practices which had crept in the medieval times. They wanted Islam to adopt western-style scientific education, relate social progress to the betterment of the common man and acquire scientific temper. The medieval Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) was considered to be unfit to meet new requirements of the society and the individuals. They also advocated disconnect between worldly and spiritual matters wanting the religion to confine itself to religious matters.
They faced stiff resistance from the conservative Islamic clergy. Western educated moderates were dubbed as puppets in the hands of western powers- who failed to exert enough to assert themselves and opted for the policy of calculated non-confrontation leaving free space to the Islamic conservatives in religious matters. Well established in the fields of politics, trade, education, high skill professions etc., they developed a vested interest in avoiding confrontation with the Ulema’s (Scholars of Islam-usually including the clergy) whose rancor threatened to weaken their standing in the Community.
Muslim Brotherhood, A fundamentalist organisation, inspired by the teachings of Ibn-Taymiyya, an eighteenth century ideological successor to Mohammad Ibn Abu Al-Wahhab, was formed in Egypt in 1928. Some Muslims, owing allegiance to Muslim Brotherhood, spearheaded a violent campaign against the British opposing their presence in Egypt in violation of 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. The Movement waned and waxed and gradually lost its momentum but was soon replaced by its more strident successors. In early fifties, Sayyid Qutub emerged as the group’s principle ideologue who propagated that the decline of Islamic world “could be reversed” only if a small group of real Muslims emulated the ways of the Prophet Muhammad and worked to “replace the existing governments in Muslim lands with Islamic ones”.15
Qutub’s ideology brought about radical redefinition of Islamic postulates in modern context. He advocated establishment of a true Islamic society based on Quran and Shari’a in which every Muslim was required to submit only to the will of Allah and not to the man or the laws made by him. He proclaimed that the way to bring about this transformation was only through Jehad. He announced Jehad was “Islam’s tool to exercise it divinely – ordered right to step forward and establish political authority on earth. Islam had the right to attack and destroy all obstacles in the form of institutions and traditions if it was required to release mankind from their pernicious influence and to engage in Jehad for this purpose”.14 Qutub characterized secularisation of law, philosophy of socialism, liberalism and modernisations as un-Islamic and tools of oppression. He justified Jehad against them. Qutub’s ideology had a seminal affect on Islamic extremist thought. Though he was tried and executed in 1966, his followers made him a martyr and he became an inspirational icon for later day radicals and terrorists. Every Islamic terrorist movement today swears by Qutub’s ideology. No credible school of Islamic theologians in last half a century has come forward to seriously contest his formulations.
At the political front, following the Second World War, nationalist struggle for independence began in many parts of the world including Muslim societies. However, while in non-Muslim societies, it remained a secular political initiative, in newly independent Muslim states, like Pakistan, Egypt, Algeria etc, it got intertwined with religious identity of the people and the mullah. Even moderate Islamic political leaders considered it tactically expedient to play the religious card, unmindful of its long term consequences. This led to religion becoming central to the polity of these countries, providing space to the radicals to expand their influence. The moderate political leaders, though in private, were contemptuously critical of their teachings, publicly never wanted to be seen on wrong side of the Ulema’s. They also provided financial and other state support to these institutions who started producing a new breed of radicals and potential foot soldiers for Jehad.. All this gave legitimacy and dedicated support base to the radicals which had long term political and security implications.
The economic interests of West in the Middle East, particularly after the oil boom, made them not only to overlook but even strengthen unpopular, non-democratic regimes whom they could manipulate with ease to sub serve their economic interests. Most of these regimes for their survival at home were dependent on the conservative Islamic clergy and used them to counter the moderates and pro-democratic elements by dubbing them as un-Islamic. In the dichotomy that ensued, while the secular West was busy through theocratic dictatorial regimes manipulating its foreign and economic policies internally the conservative radical forces, opposed to democracy, secularism and pluralism were getting strengthened. The people in power while subservient to the West when outside the country were critical of them at home to curry favour with the conservatives. Emergence of religious institutions and madrassas at large scale, was another supporting factor in rise of radicalism.
The creation of Israel, without adequately addressing the Palestinian question and adjusting the refugees, proved to be the biggest contributory factor in growth of Islamic radicalism. It caused wide spread alienation among the Muslims throughout the world.
The Soviets finding Palestine issue strategically advantageous to extend its influence and add to West’s discomfiture, developed linkages with Palestinian hard line groups opting for resolution of conflict through violence. It selectively equipped and trained them to bleed the West. This provided Islamic extremist access to modern weapons, tactics, and expertise to engage regular professional forces in unconventional warfare, an expertise for which all had to pay a heavy price later.
Lastly, US response to the marching Soviet troops in Afghanistan in 1979; was a critical development in the evolution of modern Islamic terrorism. Mobilising Muslim youth from all over the world in the name of Jehad, equipping, training and logistically supporting them to fight the Soviets had four important adverse consequences;
- It brought about a physical interface and unity among scattered radicals at global level, later developing into a global net working and the consequent menace of international terrorism;
- The trained and religiously motivated Jehadis on return to their homelands after the Afghan war created modules of terror in their native countries;
- It validated the radical doctrine that Jehad, which was blessed by ‘Allah’, could subdue the mightiest. Victory of Jehad not only vanquishing a super power but eventually leading to its dismemberment and freeing of Islamic Central Asia came as a great moral booster to the Jehadis;
Pakistan, a highly unstable Islamic state with nuclear capabilities, saw in Jehadis a potent force which could be effectively leveraged for asymmetric warfare and achieving its politico-military objectives. It patronized the new soldiers of Islam using it with a politico-military agenda in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Central Asia etc. The spill over effect was soon to be felt all over the world including the West.
Originally Posted in: vifindia.org
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