The New Politics of Islam

THE NEW POLITICS OF ISLAM With the end of the Cold War and the unfolding of unprecedented acts of transnational terror, representing perhaps new civilizational cleavages, Islam has attained renewed prominence in Western political reflections. Too often viewed from ethnocentric or sensationalist perspectives, how is Islam, as a strategic entity, to be understood in contemporary political analysis? The New Politics of Islam is a timely study of Islam in international relations. In detailing both theory and practice, it approaches Islam both as a norm of policy-making and a discourse of policy- presentation. Its primary empirical investigation is centred on the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a unique pan-Islamic international regime consisting of fifty-seven member states. Work- ing from the premise that contemporary Islam cannot be adequately understood without considering classical Islam, this book highlights the normative narrative of classical pan-Islamism and its implications for the foreign policies of contemporary states in the Middle East and South Asia. Its comparative study of the international politics, and national polemics, of Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan serves to illustrate the elusive balance between religion and realpolitik. In its theoretical deliberations, The New Politics of Islam reconstructs contemporary International Relations theory to facilitate a better understanding of how ideas and identity influence foreign policy in the Islamic world. Naveed S. Sheikh is Honorary European Trust Scholar at Churchill College and doctoral candidate at the Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. THE NEW POLITICS OF ISLAM Pan-Islamic Foreign Policy in a World of States Naveed S. Sheikh First published 2003 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2003 Naveed S. Sheikh All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Sheikh, Naveed S., 1975– The new politics of Islam : pan-Islamic policy in a world of states / Naveed S. Sheikh. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Panislamism. 2. Islamic countries–Politics and government. 3. Islam and politics–Islamic countries. 4. Organisation of Islamic Conference. I. Title. DS35.7 .S53 2002 327 Ј.0917 Ј671–dc21 2002075103 ISBN 0-203-22033-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-27527-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-7007-1592-4 (Print Edition) To Mawlana al-Shaykh Muhammad Tahir ul Qadri and Ustadh Abdal Hakim Murad in whom Providence has fused exoteric erudition and esoteric altitude: Homo non prorie humanus sed superhumanus est. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Foreword xi 1 (Re-)Introductory Remarks: Pan-Islam: Whence and Whither? 1 SCHOLARSHIP & STATESMANSHIP: A MILITARY–ACADEMIC COMPLEX 2 “PAX ISLAMICA” REVISITED: POLITICS AND POLEMICS 8 WHERE FROM HERE? THE IDEATIONAL IDIOSYNCRASY OF THE OIC 13 2Pan-Islamic Paradigms: Adjusting to the Post-Caliphatic World Order 20 THE TRANS-ISLAMIC UMMA: POLITICAL TAXONOMY AND EPISTEMIC COMMUNITY 20 THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE: CATALYST, CONCEPTION, AND INCEPTION 33 THE CHARTER OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE: ÉTATISM AS FAIT ACCOMPLI 37 3 A Geopolitical Genealogy of the OIC: The Secular Rationale 43 THE OIC AND SAUDI FOREIGN POLICY: DEPOLITICIZING INTERNATIONAL ISLAM 44 THE OIC AND IRANIAN FOREIGN POLICY: UNILATERAL MULTILATERALISM 60 THE OIC AND PAKISTANI FOREIGN POLICY: THE SEARCH FOR SECURITY 82 vii CONTENTS TRIANGLE OF NEUTRALIZATION: A COMPARATIVE INQUIRY 100 4 Self-Identity in Foreign Policy: Bringing Islam Back In 105 THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS: REINVENTING “GEO-CULTURALISM” 107 “RHETORICAL ISLAM”: THE DIALECTICS OF RATIONALE AND DISCOURSE 112 POSTMODERN PAN-ISLAMISM: THE SYNTHESIS OF RATIONALITY AND “ASPIRATIONALITY” 122 5 Summary and Concluding Reflections: A Mighty Myth—Rise, Demise, and Resurrection 130 OLD WORLD ORDER: THE OIC AND THE “WAR ON TERROR” 133 ON THE VIA MEDIA: THE ENDURING RESONANCE OF ISLAM 137 Appendix A MEMBER STATES OF THE OIC: TERRITORY, DEMOGRAPHY, ECONOMY 142 Appendix B THE INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE OIC: A COMPREHENSIVE LISTING 144 Appendix C TRIANGLE OF NEUTRALIZATION: A SCHEMATIC OVERVIEW 147 Notes and References 148 Select Bibliography 183 Index 201 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The present study owes a debt of gratitude to both individuals and institutions. First and foremost are my parents who both in a self-evident biological sense and a less genetic, and more generic, psychosocial sense have been responsible for my cultivation. In terms of academic blessing, both established authorities and fellow- disciples have proved catalytic, very much since my first encounter with the wizardry of pen and paper. On balance, though, I should be inclined to identify some of the agents by name. Professors Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Timothy Niblock, directors, respec- tively, of the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Durham and the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, deserve particular mention. All those who have ever taught me the intricacies of international affairs know how exhausting that experience can be. Thus a note of appreciation for their gracious, even graceful, endurance. I should also like to express my heartiest gratefulness to Professor J. Bæk Simonsen, formerly Director of the Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Copenhagen, for providing initial support, as well as to the prominent lawyers and intellectuals Drs Khalid al-Mansour and Robert Dickson Crane for advice, encouragement, and benign attention. I am grateful also to my “crisis consultant” at Harvard Law School, Imraan Mir, for commenting on earlier drafts—as did Drs Sohail Hashmi of Mount Holyoke College (Massachusetts) and Neil Quilliam, last seen heading for a UN-position in Amman. From the general secretariat of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah, Mr M. Abdel-Haq (Special Adviser to the Secretary General), and Mr A. Aboughosh (Director of Coordination with Palestine) in various ways aided the project, unaware, of course, that they would have severe difficulties with the conclusions of the very enterprise. In ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS addition, personnel at the American Center (Islamabad) and Quaid- i-Azam Library (Lahore) together with the International Relations Section of the Iranian Embassy (London) must be granted due credit. I also thank, with due trepidation, my doctoral supervisor at Cambridge, Dr Paul Cornish, for departing from his self-professed job profile of being “a bully” and allowing me multiple months away from American foreign policy, nuclear proliferation, and post-Soviet strategic equations to finish a long-standing, but half-completed, project. I am indebted also to Dr T.J. Winter of the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge for resolutely intervening to prevent this book from turning into “a Third-World disaster” at the hands of an Asian publisher. At Harvard, I am grateful to the administration at the Department of Government, where I was a Visiting (and then Teaching) Fellow in the academic year 2001–2, for allowing me electronic privileges; in a wired world peripherals come to count in fundamental ways. Last, but God knows not least, I thank—with a thousand wishes of bliss—my consort, Kiran Fatima, who allowed this study to intervene in our initial stages together. To critics who disapprove of such anti- social cynicism of supposedly single-minded academic fundamen- talists like myself, we shall point to Nour as-Sahr, our new daughter: in earnest, thus, the neglect was not entirely uncompromising. In this book, as in our progeny, any shortcomings (in form or content) will have derived only from myself. x FOREWORD Islam has figured prominently in post-Cold War paradigms of international politics. Given the disappearance of the Communist threat, leading scholars within the discipline of International Relations have described Islam as the “next ideological threat” vis-à-vis the current world order. Indeed, Samuel Huntington, Francis Fukuyama, Joseph Nye, R.D. Kaplan, and numerous other scholars have painted a picture of Islam as a “monolithic” and “unified” threat to Western interests. Western media, the policy-making élite, and the general public in many Western countries have, collectively, been swayed by the negative image of Islam as conveyed by theoreticians of international politics. Other schools of thought, representing a minority viewpoint— John Esposito, Graham Fuller, Ian Lessor, Leon Hadar, and others— believe that the Islamic threat is a “myth,” sustained by certain scholars with vested interests, corrupt and despotic governments in Muslim countries, and a tiny extremist element within the Islamic world. Islam, in their view, is neither “monolithic” nor unified and, therefore, lends itself to multiple interpretations. “Fluidity,” as opposed to “rigidity,” characterizes the

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