Separating Muslims from Islam

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What does the “war on terror” mean for the Muslim and non-Muslim World?

Abid Ullah Jan A WAR ON ISLAM? 2

NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM, BY ANY MEANS, INCLUDING MECHANICAL, ELECTRONIC, PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDING, OR OTHRWISE, WITHOUT PRIOR PERMISSION FROM THE PUBLISHER.

PUBLISHED BY

Maktabah Al-Ansar, UK

PUBLISHED IN UNITED KINGDOM

ABID ULLAH JAN NOT A WAR ON ISLAM / ABID ULLAH JAN – IST EDITION. ISBN. 0-953-9847-7-X

1. FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 2. THE PLOT THICKENS AS THE MYTH DEEPENS 3. THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY. 4. FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR. 5. FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE. 6. SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM. 7. SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK. 8. EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM. 9. CONCLUSION NOT A WAR ON ISLAM? 3

Acknowledgements

No book has a single author, and this one is no exception. In writing it I have incurred enormous debts of gratitude. Particular thanks go to Naseem Ahmed, who helped this book take shape and provided useful criticism and support. I sincerely appreciate the input from Dr. Israr Ahmed and General Hamid Gul. Equally valuable to appreciate are the efforts of a friend in Canada, whose prodding, perseverance, word-processing and moral support enabled me to produce this book in a timely manner. I am also thankful to Ray Woodcock, a lawyer in the American Midwest, who shared supporting and opposing views on a number of issues and whose contribution made me put different concerns in proper perspective. All this good assistance accounts for whatever merits the book may possess. For its flaws, I alone bear the full responsibility. A WAR ON ISLAM? 4 NOT A WAR ON ISLAM? 5

Contents

Foreword 11 Preface 13 Setting the context 19

1 FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 25 1.1 Setting the stage for a war on Islam 29 1.2 The war is on 35 1.3 Pre-war Propaganda 41 1.4 Misnomerism adds to vagueness 44 1.5 The plot thickens as the myth deepens 50

2. SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 55 2.1 Faith, fundamentalism, and facts 59 2.2 The self-created fear of Islam 61 2.3 The real roots of Islamic resistance 72 2.4 Islam not a threat 79

3. THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 85 3.1 New lexicon for sensitised times 90 3.2 Spreading the fear of Islam 93

4. FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 106 4.1 Scared of Jihad? 109 4.2 Wishing death to Islam? 114

5. FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 118 5.1 Muslim violence 123 5.2 Target: terrorism or Islam? 130 5.3 Violence, Islam and the US 132 5.4 Who is fighting whom? 136 5.5 Solution: combat anti-Americanism 137 A WAR ON ISLAM? 6

6. SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 142 6.1 The dread of Taliban’s authoritarianism 152 6.2 Imposing totalitarian governments 156 6.3 Democracy & authoritarianism 162 6.4 Double standards for democracy 166 6.5 Imposing a way of life 173 6.6 Relativity of democracy 178

7. SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 188 7.1 Islamophobia: a tool for interventions 195 7.2 Terrorism: another tool for intervention 201

8. EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 205 8.1 Does anti-terrorism need secularisation? 209 8.2 Twisted secularism 213 8.3 Secularism: not the solution 219 8.4 Lessons from the paradox of secular Turkey 221

9. CONCLUSION 225 9.1 The unfolding final clash 226 9.2 The real problem 231 9.3 The only solution 247

POST-WORD by Dr. Israr Ahmad 253

References 257 INTRODUCTION 7

Some comments that represent the intellectual horror that laid the foundation for the anti-Islam policies and prepared the public psyche for undermining Islam.

“I wish I were Commander-in-Chief in India. The first thing I would do is to strike that Oriental race with amazement should be to proclaim to them, in their language, that I considered my holding that appointment by the leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the strain of the late cruelties rested [referring to the uprising of 1857]; and that I begged them to do to me the favour to observe that I was there for that purpose and no other, and was now proceeding, with all convenient dispatch and merciful swiftness of execution, to blot it out of mankind and raze it off the face of the Earth.’ Charles Dickens

‘Islam must be destroyed, as Carthage was destroyed’ Peregrine Worthshorne

“Our struggle against murderous Islamic terror is also meant to awaken the world, which is lying in slumber... We call on all nations, all peoples to devote their attention to the greater danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism [which]...threatens world peace in future years... [W]e stand on the line of fire against the danger of fundamentalist Islam.” Yitzhak Rabin, December 1992

Rodman sees the West as being challenged from the outside by a “militant, atavistic force driven by a hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old grievances against Christendom....The rage against us is too great, as is the concrete threat of nuclear, conventional, and terrorist weapons it continues to marshal in the service of its rage.” Peter Rodman, senior editor of the National Review National Review, May 11, 1992, pp. 28-29

It is the mightiest power in the Levant and North Africa. Governments tremble before it. Arabs everywhere turn to it for salvation from their various miseries. This power is not Egypt, Iraq, or indeed any nation, but the humble mosque. The Islamic Threat, The Economist, March 13, 1993, pg. 25.

“It should now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilizations—a perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.” Charles Krauthammer, “The New Crescent of Crisis: Global Intifada,” Washington Post, January 1, 1993. A WAR ON ISLAM? 8

“We are not dealing with the NATO at all. We are dealing with the UN. The UN are not going to do anything advantageous for the Muslim side. We are always glad when the UN is deciding.” Radovan Karadzic: Serbian Leader, Daily Telegraph, Feb. 16, 1994, pg. 10.

“The Red Menace Is Gone. But Here’s Islam,” New York Times, Headline, January 21st, 1996 edition, section 4.

“Islam for the Europeans remained as the belief of the enemy, the anti-Christian and the non-Europeans. When an idea or a perception has taken root and becomes an article of faith it is difficult to change.” Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohammad Business Times; Kuala Lumpur; Mar 25, 1998

“No one will be allowed to tamper with the new world order, and we are determined to use force against that.” James Baker

“Islam is the only civilisation which has put the survival of the West in doubt…. Statesmen can constructively alter reality only if they recognise and understand it. “ Samuel P. Huntington Clash Of Civilisations And The Remaking of The World Order

“The West today is losing irretrievably its former global hegemony and is increasingly challenged economically and culturally by East Asian and Islamic civilisations,” Internet web page by the Philosophy and Religion Department of Montclair State University in New Jersey. Called “Philosophy and Civil Society,”

“With the end of the Cold War, what we really need is an obvious ideological and threatening enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can unite us in opposition.” Irving Kristol , Council on Foreign Relations Wall Street Journal, editorial August 2, 1996

The instinct of the masses is not false in locating the ultimate source of these cataclysmic changes in the West and in attributing the disruption of their old way of life to the impact of Western domination....Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood....And since the United States is the legitimate heir of European civilization and the recognized and unchallenged leader of the West, the United States has inherited the resulting grievances and become the focus for the pent- up hate and anger. The “Israelists” Propose the Islamic Threat In his influential essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage” (Atlantic, September 1990, pp. 47-60), Bernard Lewis INTRODUCTION 9

“The proliferation of state-sponsored or assisted terrorist groups and of weapons of mass destruction in the region threatens the United States, as well as Israel, Egypt and other allies. The United States would be hard pressed, given American domestic politics and its long-standing commitment to Israel, to remain aloof from a conflict that endangered the Jewish state....Moreover, the aftermath of the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York City, the United States must acknowledge now that Islamic fervour nurtured overseas is bound to come home.” Judith Miller, Challenge of Radical Islam Foreign Affairs, Spring 1993, pp.43-56

Islamic fundamentalism, according to Amos Perlmutter is “a plague” which has infected the entire Islamic world and whose goal is to topple secularist military regimes in Egypt, Syria and Algeria and replace them with Islamic states. Distinctions between “moderate” and ‘radical’ fundamentalists are meaningless, since the goals of both are radical. Although the rise of fundamentalism is fed by local and immediate events, it is rooted in Muslim society and represents the anti-Western, anti-modern forces in the Islamic world. Amos Perlmutter, “Islamic Threat is Clear and Present” Insight in the News, February 15, 1993, pp. 22-23

The Trade Tower bombing “was a terrorist act complete with symbolic overtones, a characteristic Islamic fundamentalist perpetration, probably inspired by the Sheik Omar....I thought then and do now that the bombing was only the first in a fundamentalist assault on America, that the target was rife with symbolism as an example of everything fundamentalist preaching sees as evil in the West....Their targets are Jewish-Christian capitalist evil, democracy, non-Muslim religions and the West, whose ways...are bankrupt and corrupt, who must be crushed and punished.” Amos Perlmutter, Washington Times (March 1, 1993) Statement made before any suspect was arrested.

“The Iraqis are publicly cutting off the ears and limbs and branding the foreheads of thieves and army deserters. They claim that this barbarity is sanctioned by the Koran. Moslems elsewhere behave with equal savagery: they behead criminals, stone to death female – only female – adulterers, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to wear the chadar, mutilate the genitals of young girls, and ritually abuse animals. Nor are non-Muslims immune from this depravity – they conspired to kill the Pope, placed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for writing things they did not like, murdered several of his supporters, threatened the life of a Moslem author who said, rightly, “Islam treats women as second class citizens”, and indiscriminately murdered Western holiday makers in Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere – just because they were Westerners. No matter. We have to treat their religion with respect. Of course we must. That is what the new dogma of political correctness demands of us.... They must be joking!” “Islam Is A Creed Of Cruelty” Daily Express, January 16, 1995. A WAR ON ISLAM? 10

It’s Not the Economy, Stupid: What the West Needs to Know about the Rise of Radical Islam. The Washington Post, July 2, 1995

A spectre is haunting Europe – and the world in general: the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism. All the world powers have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the pope and the President of Russia, Helmet Kohl and Francois Mitterrand, French radicals and German police agents, and of course the CIA and right-wing Israeli politicians… The underlying assumption has always been that Islam – as a culture and not only a religious creed – was primitive, underdeveloped, retrograde, at best stuck in the memory hole of a medieval splendour out of which it could not disentangle itself without a radical transformation; and this could only be based on Western, “rational”, “progressive” values. Ex Occiendente lux. Avineri, Shlomo 1973. “The Return to Islam” in Global Studies: The Middle East. (Guilford, Connecticut. The Dushkin Group, Inc.) 167-170.

One can’t generalize over such a large canvas. But one can note two common points: Islam is, more than any other major religion, deeply political, in the sense that it pushes its adherents to hold power; and once Muslims do gain power, they feel a strong impetus to apply the laws of Islam, the shariah. So Islam does, in fact, contain elements that can justify conquest, theocracy, and intolerance. Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias City Journal, November 2001

“[Islam] is not a peaceful religion that wants to coexist…they want to coexist until they can control, dominate and then if need be destroy… Ladies and gentlemen, I have taken issue with our esteemed president in regard to his stand in saying Islam is a peaceful religion…It’s just not. And the Koran makes it very clear, if you see an infidel, you are to kill him.” Pat Robertson, “700 Club” TV Program, February 21, 2001 INTRODUCTION 11

Foreword

The post September 11 era has produced the most powerful and the most brutal military alliance the world has ever seen. The only blessing amid the horrors perpetrated by the Coalition against “terror” is the exposure of an intellectual alliance behind it. This alliance is comprised mainly of political analysts, who profess devotion to “objectivity,” but are self-deluded victims of a curiously inverted “subjectivity,” indulging in an intolerant zeal for “tolerance,” a passionate attack on passion, and a bigoted denunciation of “bigotry.” “Objectivity” is being confounded with ideological preference and the “objective” ideologues demand Muslims’ conformity to their notion of reality – or what ought to be the state of Muslim societies. I found this book to be a quick review of the intellectual horrors perpetrated by the media and press in the western world. It also reviews the major reasons that make the US-led war on terror doubtful and underlines the response needed on the part of the western public as well as the oppressed Muslims both in occupied and so-called independent Muslim states. We need awareness and mobilisation of the masses through coordinated efforts on the part of intellectuals on this side of the growing divide to tell the people that terrorism and fundamentalism are the misnomered sources of our survival as Muslims. These are, in fact, Da’wa and Jihad, which are being demonised as fundamentalism and terrorism. Remove these two wheels and no one will be able to tell the difference between Islam and any other religion. The war is certainly directed at these two wheels. Un- doubtedly, the life and death struggle in many parts of the world demands as much a just war as the sixty leading intellectuals (Wash- ington Post, February 12, 2002) who consider the American war after the September 11th incident. It does not make a difference if they call it “Just War” and the Muslims call it Jihad. These days, any curious Muslim mind will rightly ask: Do not the calamitous acts of occupation, violence, hatred and injustices in Palestine demand as much a “war to defeat evil” as much the occupation of A WAR ON ISLAM? 12

Kuwait or an attack on the World Trade Centre demanded? The sixty scholars who authored the American fatwa declare that the “primary moral justification” for the US-led “just war” is “to protect the innocent from certain harm,” who are “in no position to protect themselves.” They state, “the moral principle of love of neighbour calls us to the use of force.” Again the Muslim mind questions: Why do these authors think that this principle does not apply to Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya? How long should the Palestinians, for instance, wait for justice when the US itself could wait no more than 26 days in the case of the attack on the World Trade Centre, and five months in the case of the Gulf War, to retaliate with all the resources at its disposal? If human dignity and rights is what leading American intellectuals “believe” they are “fighting for” then: Why do they not fight for the rights of the millions of oppressed Palestinians suffering for the last thirty-five years as they fought for the rights of the 2,800 dead in the last five months? Do they intend to kill thousands upon thousands of Is- raelis for Israel’s thirty-five years of occupation as they are doing to Iraq for its few months occupation of Kuwait? Certainly not. Why then, this double standard? This book provides answers to such questions. However, I believe, the only answer to such hypocrisy is mass awareness and mobilisation of the Muslims to struggle for themselves, in all possible ways, for their rights as equal citizens on this planet.

General (R) Hamid Gul Former Chief ISI, Pakistan INTRODUCTION 13

Preface

Throughout the Muslim world, questions lead to further questions. Definite answers are lacking to some basic questions, like: how an alliance of some forty of the most powerful nations with all their wealth, military might, intelligence and propaganda resources, was needed against one man in a cave with a few hundred followers? Was this magnitude of force required to defeat a lightly armed force such as the Taliban? Were the Taliban really so evil, engaged in some unprecedented kind of activity, to be wiped out with such brutal force? G. W. Bush has been provided with a budget of $40 billion and the intelligence, military and diplomatic resources of other nations to fight a new war, called a “war on terrorism.” Now that the Taliban are gone, which army, government or system, are they fighting that requires such immense resources? For the “war on terrorism,” the most stringent and restrictive laws in the history of Western democracies have been introduced. Political activity is restricted and support of liberation causes or any resistance to occupation and oppression is now classed as terrorism. Laws on internment in Britain and military tribunals in the US mean indefinite detention without trial of suspects (leading to death sentences in the US). Even at the height of the Cold War such acts were not approved, nor were resources mobilised against the perceived threat of Communism. Concerned people around the world ask: Who is all this aimed at? Which religion has been on trial in the media since September 11, 2001? Which religion is being denounced for endorsing violence and terror? Which religion are politicians, statesmen, academics, dictators and royals trying to redefine? Muslims living in the West are accused of treason and oaths of allegiance are demanded from them; something that Western governments never demanded from anyone else, not even from die- hard Communists. Whose legitimate charities, organisations and banks, are being unlawfully seized without any evidence, to pay for this war? Whose media and websites are being monitored and closed A WAR ON ISLAM? 14 down to prevent the truth of events from emerging? Before the drumbeat of triumphalism in Afghanistan deafens us all, we need to understand the ideological and geopolitical realignment that is now occurring all over the world. The US and Europe armed with a perfect ruse after the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, Russia facing instability in Chechnya and the former Soviet Republics, India facing insurmountable uprising in Kash- mir, Israel facing an unending Intifada, China worried over the discontent of ethnic minorities in Xingjiang Province and dictators, sheikhs and kings in the Muslim world looking for self-per- petuation in power; all are allied under the banner raised by Bush without giving a second thought to the fact that the “war on terrorism” was planned long before its launch on October 7, 2001. The geopolitical shift shows that this is the beginning of the end. Where once nation states were arrayed against each other, now the conflict—right from the start—is between broad, loosely allied, coalitions of states and elements of their own populations. Surely it will continue to develop in this direction unless the root causes of anti-Westernism – mainly anti-Americanism — are seriously addressed. But is anyone working towards that end? While global politicians and some religious leaders struggle desperately to ensure that this is not perceived as a fight between Islam and the West, the suffering Muslim world is gradually realising that this is hardly something else. If the US, out of its arrogance and power, does not take heed and events proceed as they are under US command, almost all the countries are likely to fall unequivocally on one side or the other. The pressure of newly realigned global interests—and the inevitable military action—is likely to tear open the many divisions within and between countries that have appeared in the past. Contrary to the tall claims of some dictators, like General Musharraf, that 85 percent of the population is behind their decision to join the “war on terrorism,” the Gallup poll published in February 2002 clearly shows what Muslims think of this ever widening war. The question to ask is: why do 67 per cent of Muslims think the US campaign in Afghanistan is unjustified, with only 9 per cent thinking it is?1 According to Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank INTRODUCTION 15

Newport, respondents overwhelmingly described the United States as “ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked, biased.”2 The question is: Why? And what is the solution? In fact, the US attacks on Afghanistan to install a pro-West puppet regime and the “war on terrorism” have provided a wakeup call to people in the East and West. Interview after interview, the CNN has gradually shifted its target of war from “terrorism” to “the way of life.” One of the respondents said: “this is an ideological struggle with Islam and we need to make sure our way of life prevails.”3 An article in the Jerusalem Post said, “terrorism is a tactic, not an enemy,” which is “militant Islam.”4 Earlier on September 20, 2001, Bush said, “the enemy’s goal is not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life.” Then there is an effort to link Islam as a whole with violence, extremism and terrorism. For instance, a prominent American analyst, Daniel Pipes, says, “The President dismissed Al-Qaida’s version of Islam as a repudiated ‘fringe form of Islamic extremism.’ Hardly. Muslims on the streets of many places - Pakistan and Gaza, in particular - are fervently rallying to the defence of al-Qaida’s vision of Islam. Likewise, the President’s calling the terrorists ‘trai- tors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam’ implies that other Muslims see them as apostates, which is simply wrong. Al-Qaida enjoys wide popularity; the very best the US government can hope for is a measure of Muslim neutrality and apathy.”5 If the ongoing bloodshed in Afghanistan is the result of earlier intellectual escapades, what will be the implications of present efforts at demonising Islam? What is the future of the oppressed in Muslim countries under western sponsored totalitarians, like in Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and what is the future of the oppressed in places such as Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya? The US might succeed in dismantling “the infrastructure of terrorism,” the question however is: How will the US respond to the greatest challenge of countering the ethical arguments raised by the “terrorists”? Do not the actions of US and its allies speak louder than their words? This book is an effort to show how the West can rebuild the middle space in which contradictions are muted by tolerance and well being than the social tensions from which terror- A WAR ON ISLAM? 16 ism grows. However, if defeating “the way of life” of Islam remained uppermost in Western minds, misunderstanding the nature and causes of anti-Westernism and development of policies that further in- flame such feelings in the Muslim world will keep on growing. Manifestations of the rise of Islam and anti-Westernism otherwise can roughly be divided between those with objective, and those with subjective, causes. The latter is an imprecise category but includes the anti-Westernism that derives from value differences. Muslim criticism of foreign policies revolving around military occupation, bombing and genocidal sanctions against civilians, double standards of freedom of opinion, adolescent standards of the popular culture, genetic manipulation of views on human rights, the right to freedom and democracy and so forth, can all be put down to value difference, and little or nothing can be done about it. Is going to wars to impose the American “way of life” the solution? Is ignoring the objective causes of anti-Westernism — the policies and actions seen by the majority of Muslims, as damaging to the legitimate interests of Muslim countries or to international norms of conduct, or which encourage international lawlessness – a solution to any problem? Contemporary writers, media specialists and politicians in the West have grasped only a fraction of the reality of the Muslim world. Satisfied with this partial knowledge, they have proceeded to represent this part as the whole with their theories like “Clash of Civi- lisations” and “End of History.” Since the whole consists of many fractions, the result is bound to be false and one-sided. Moreover, each result, according to the fraction on which it is based, is different and each contradicts the others. Such vague descriptions and analysis of the whole lead to anti-Muslim biases in Western societies on the one hand and sow the seeds of anti-Americanism and anti-West feelings on the other. Anti-West feelings are developed among Muslim populations around the world because the US media labels US and UK actions as “Western.”6 Only those who know the relation between the fractions – the parts – can therefore, arbitrate the battle of political opinions and these are the impartial observers – the esoteric seers – who, live in INTRODUCTION 17

Muslim societies and have preserved or acquired the ability to see the whole. A man may possess certain sound knowledge, and yet fall into error by representing one part or aspect of the matter known to him as the whole and the exclusive truth. Many analysts are faced with the same dilemma while they comment on Islam and Muslim societies. We should not let their conceptions and theories lead us to anthropomorphic conceptions, but must accept them as something alien to the reason and facts on the ground. Discussions on the threat of Islam and its “ways of life” have brought Western scholars and politicians into the situation of the blind who can only comprehend a single part of an elephant, yet believe that they can determine the whole from the one part. This book is an effort to clarify the confusion that has been created partly by the intentional distortion of facts and partly by the unintentional belief of researchers and analysts who think they know all about Islam and Muslims. The negative propaganda and biased approach on part of such media specialists could lead to more disastrous policies and actions of the West and more anti- Western feelings among the majority of Muslims than what we have seen so far. Instead of reviewing its policies, it is foolish on the part of the US-led allies to declare a war on the feelings of a majority of Muslims under one or another label. The advocates of a “Clash of Civilisations,” who pit the West against Islam, base their arguments on the following points: 1. followers of Islam are “fundamentalists” and extremists; 2. Islam is anti-democratic; 3. “fundamentalist” Muslims practice terrorism and violence to achieve their goals; and 4. secularism is a panacea for all ills. These are, in fact, parts of the main armoury used to undermine Islam without any knowledge that an undermined Islam could pose more of a threat to the American Empire than an Islam left alone to deal with its own internal problems. Thomas Friedman declared on December 13, 2001 that “we do not want a war with Islam, we want a war within Islam.”7 “War within Islam” is simply a strategy to make the “war with Islam” successful. This book is an A WAR ON ISLAM? 18 attempt to highlight problems with the “war on terrorism,” which confirms to Muslims around the world that this is nothing but a war on Islam. Based on the problems with the “war on terrorism,” the book is divided into eight major parts and an effort has been made to explain how yet another catastrophic World War can be avoided simply by understanding the problems prevalent in Muslim societies and the suffering that Muslims are going through due to American and European insistence to maintain the status quo in the arena of their foreign policy. As the foregoing enumerated points indicate, many Muslims around the world are uneasy with: (1) the vague and open-ended nature of the war against terrorism – vagueness; (2) the thought that the US may be reacting against a religion rather than merely against an organisation – targeting Islam; (3) the reality that ever fewer corporations, all thinking alike, provide the bulk of Americans’ information about the world to ordinary Americans – irresponsible me dia; (4) instances when important actions by the US govern ment are based on fear or cowardice; (5) the extent to which violent attitudes permeate Ameri can thinking – culture of violence; (6) Applying nationally practiced authoritarianism at in ternational level and imposing governments that serve US interests regardless of their being democratic or dictatorships – authoritarianism; (7) the objective to check the imaginary resistance posed by Muslims to a US-dominated world and the barri ers to honesty and sincerity in American government – realpolitik; and American efforts to separate Muslims from Islam through the process of militant secularisation. INTRODUCTION 19

Setting the Context

Muslims around the world are seriously suspicious about the US and the intentions of its allied forces vis-à-vis their war on terrorism. The stated purpose of the post-September 11 war on Af- ghanistan was to bring to justice those who had helped to mastermind the atrocities of September 11, and eliminate the bases where the terrorists had acquired their skills. The world however, witnessed that all the lethal force was directed at replacing the Taliban government rather than achieving the stated objective. The evidence that the persons who attacked World Trade Centre and the Pentagon had any connection with the Taliban or had any training in Afghanistan has been verging on nil. No suggestion has ever been made that any of the Al-Qaida network were the Taliban. The motives of US and its Allies are doubtful not only in the eyes of Muslims but also non-Muslims. That Osama bin Laden, the founder of Al-Qaida, had lived in Afghanistan for over five years was well known. That he had inspired the concept of a high-profile attack on US targets of symbolic national significance was a reasonable suspicion. But where does that put the Taliban? There has been much indignant talk about ‘people who harbour terrorists’. Unload the emotion, and this is not much more useful than describing European states which decline to deport murder suspects to the US as ‘people who harbour killers’. 8 Then there are many other questions that make the US objectives more doubtful, like: Was Mullah Omar like Saddam Hussein, who allegedly “runs a war machine”? If toppling the Taliban was the war aim, why did it come from Tony Blair as late as October 30 – three weeks into the imposed “war”? Was it due to realising that finding Osama might prove impossible, that the war leaders turned their sights on the Taliban instead, or dislodging them was prede- termined and Osama was used a cover for achieving this objective? Did the two UN resolutions, which preceded the military strikes, permit an attack on the Taliban as opposed to Al-Qaida? Did the fall of the Taliban and the imposition of a puppet regime solve the A WAR ON ISLAM? 20 broader set of factors, associated with anti-American hostility in the Islamic world? All these questions need to be addressed before it is too late. The planned indiscriminate retaliation in other countries by the US and its allies on the one hand and the stubborn insistence that Kashmiris, Palestinians and Chechens are terrorists will soon bring the Muslim public to boil and destabilise the American sponsored puppet regimes in the Muslim world. If such a scenario were to unfold, the initial stakes would be Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and Middle Eastern oil. To avoid either or both falling into the hands of “fanatics,” the US will again make a knee-jerk reaction and detonate the ticking bomb into a global conflict. Recruiting more foot soldiers to the war against the perceived threat of political Islam and keeping the sell-out regimes forever at bay from the simmering rage at the grassroots, are outdated solutions to maintaining remote control colonialism. It was not its innocence or naïveté that the United States lost on September 11. It was the myth of its might that was shaken. Blinded by its own propaganda, the Americans have tended to believe that in the eyes of others the United States has lived up to the boastful clichés propagated during the Cold War; as the champions of freedom against Fascism and Communism, as the advocates of de-colonisation, economic development, and social progress, as the technical innovators whose mastery of technology, science, and advanced education was going to unify the world. In fact, among the suffering Muslim communities, the US is viewed more and more as the undisputed Master of International Terrorism. Some officials and academics explained to the American public that US hegemony was the best thing for a troubled world and unlike past hegemonies would last—not only because there were no challengers strong enough to steal the crown but, above all, because the Americans were benign rulers who threatened no one. But together with the US establishment everyone has avoided looking at the hegemon’s clay feet, at what might neutralize the much- vaunted American soft power and undermine its hard power. Like swarming insects exposed when a fallen tree is lifted, millions who dislike or distrust the hegemon have suddenly appeared after Sep- INTRODUCTION 21

tember 11, much to the Western leaders’ horror and disbelief. America became a great power after World War II, when it faced a rival that was portrayed to stand for everything the US had been fighting against—tyranny, terror, brainwashing—and the Ameri- cans thought that their international reputation would benefit from their standing for liberty and stability; not knowing that their government is involved in sponsoring tyranny and terror more than any other nation in the world. Not only were the Americans aloof from the pain inflicted on others by their great government, they were also not sufficiently marinated in history to know that, through the ages, nobody—or almost nobody—has ever loved a hegemon. The unpopularity of the hegemonic power has been heightened to incandescence by the irruption of the public, the masses, in international affairs. Foreign policy is no longer, as Raymond Aron wrote in ‘Peace and War,’ the closed domain of the soldier and the diplomat. Domestic publics either dictate or constrain the impera- tives and preferences that governments fight for. This puts the hegemon and its puppets in other states in a difficult position. The US attack on Afghanistan and the support it looks for this purpose in Pakistan is a good example. An imperial hegemon often must work with governments that represent but a small percentage of a country’s people, like Egypt under Mubarak and Pakistan under Musharraf — but if it fishes for public support among the masses, it risks alienating puppets whose cooperation it needs. The United States paid heavily for not having had enough contacts with the opposition to the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. It discovers today that there is an abyss in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Indonesia between the American official puppets and the populace in these countries. Diplomacy in a world where the masses, so to speak, stayed ignorant, was a much easier game. A disease that attacks the state system itself now accompanies the collapse of the barrier between domestic and foreign affairs in the state system. Many UN member “states” are pseudo-states with shaky or shabby institutions, not real representatives of their people, and always at the mercy of the US. Thus the hegemon — in addition to reaping the fruits of its anti-state policies (like Cuba, Iraq, and North Korea) and of the public in others (like, in varying A WAR ON ISLAM? 22 degrees, Pakistan, Egypt, and even France) — can now easily become both the target of organised groups inspired by a common cause and ideological sympathies, vowing to fight for justice. The world where Empires could impose their order, their institutions, has been supplanted by the world where no one is ready to take the needless beating from some imperial power. It must be clear that unlike Rome, the US cannot simply impose its will by force or through puppet regimes. The smallest and weakest state, like Afghanistan, can defy and frustrate the hegemon indefinitely. It is not the question of winning Afghanistan from the powerless Taliban; the worst is yet to follow. And chaos can easily result from the new role of non-state actors, like the multiplication of Osama into countless Osama bin Ladens – a process already in progress. Instead of taking simple steps to correct the course of its foreign policy and stop imposing its will on the rest of the world, the US establishment has decided to take on the Herculean task of “liberalising” and “moderating” 1.5 billion Muslims, policing their activities, “nation building,” “democratising,” and changing their “way of life” that stokes both more resentment and hostility. Just getting out of the fear of Islam could solve all the problems for the US and its Allies, but they have chosen a path that leads to sure disaster for both worlds. It must be clear that among the Muslims at least no one attacks the US, or for that matter the West, for what it is, but for what it does. Perhaps the principal double standard is of the contrast between the American ideology of universal liberalism and policies that have all too often consisted of supporting and sometimes installing singularly authoritarian and repressive regimes. The problem is that whatever the US practiced in Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Chile, Santo Domingo in 1965, Greece of the colonels, Pakistan, the Philippines of Ferdinand Marcos, Indonesia after 1965, the Shah’s Iran, Saudi Arabia, Zaire and, of course, South Vietnam, is collectively being applied to the Muslim states alone in the post Cold War world. This Machiavellian scheming behind the façade of “war on terrorism” has alienated many Muslims, as well as potential friends, and bred strains of anti-Americanism around the Muslim world. INTRODUCTION 23

Although the complaints about the hidden agenda of the US vary in intensity; different cultures, countries, and parties emphasise different flaws, but the criticism is never unfair, irrational or simply emotional, nor are their fears baseless. The following sections will review the problems with the American led war on terrorism, which many in the Muslim world believe is a war on Islam. A WAR ON ISLAM? 24 1 First Problem: Vagueness

The first problem with the US and its allies’ war on terrorism is its vagueness. The Western Alliance has not defined the war on terrorism or the definition of terrorism very clearly. In general terms, Messrs. Bush and Blair and other officials in their respective administrations have repeatedly said it will be long-lasting and unconventional, using military means, financial pressure, espio- nage, and virtually every other trick, device, threat, or incentive available, to the full extent of the resources and imaginations of those who prosecute it. What, then, are the limits of this war? Its declared purpose is to eliminate terrorism. However, to understand the undeclared objectives, we need to deeply analyse many issues and related factors. Some have suggested that the focus is limited to state-sponsored terrorism, as distinct from an individual act like Timothy McVeigh’s destruction of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995. McVeigh was captured, investigated, and prosecuted. That was the government’s response to any act of terrorism. Why did the US government not target all the militias for McVeigh’s crime? And since these militias are operating in certain states of the US, why not target the states for harbouring terrorists? This is a perplexing limit, however. The US did not recognise the Taliban as a government; US officials repeatedly commented that they considered the Taliban more like a renegade gang that took power in the absence of a real government. Yet those officials have also made it clear that their effort in Afghanistan were directed specifically at the Taliban as well as Osama bin Laden. Of course, nations frequently refuse to “recognise” other governments but that does not give them the right to attack and overthrow the unrecognised government. That is a matter of diplomacy. Formal FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 25 recognition brings certain consequences that a nation may decide, for various reasons, to postpone. Already, at the beginning, it develops that “state-sponsored” terrorism can include terrorism committed, supported, or perhaps merely encouraged by a so-called gang possessing political power. Again here the “gang” is ambiguous. Who is to set a standard for it? Would the Taliban be considered a good gang, like Karzai, Dostum and company, if they had toed the US line? The Colombian cartels that control part of their nation and target politicians and other civilians, would certainly qualify; does the perpetual American “war on drugs” thus become a subpart of the war on terrorism? Or it continues to be a war for dominance, interference and national interests by other names? If it were a war on insurgents for pursuing Soviet Style government at the expense of American interests, is the US not viewing them as unwelcome vestiges of the Cold War, and is attacking them in various ways, a form of state terrorism? Plainly, the war could extend to any organised effort to resist American domination and interference in the internal affairs of a state; and not just American, but also European, Indian, Israeli and Russian. Now that Bush has drawn a line in the sand and has said that nations are “either for us or against us,” presumably every government on Earth, democratic or tyrannical, can — indeed, must — declare itself to be on the side of the United States to avoid its wrath against those who honestly criticise its foreign policy and thus “incite violence.” It would be wrong on the part of the Americans to assume that people around the world are cheering the US for taking this dramatic step to prevent “bad people” from doing ‘bad things” to “innocent civilians.” Simply because “bad things” are happening to “innocent civilians” in Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq, Chechnya and other places for decades, against UN resolutions. Who are the “bad people” doing all this to innocent civilians? The Americans might think that Bush “has stood up for Afghans and Indians and other private citizens who want to live their lives in peace, without being tyran- nised by angry young killers,” but, in fact, he killed and displaced more innocent civilians in Afghanistan in a relatively short period of time than the Russians during their years of occupation. Bush A WAR ON ISLAM? 26 installed a CIA sponsored puppet regime, which is simply a replacement of the KGB-sponsored regime headed by Dr. Najibullah. But is this not what the US did in Iraq and Yugoslavia, when it targeted power grids and other facilities serving civilians as well as the military? One struggles to think of how the Boston Tea Party in 1776, had anything to do with the British military. What kinds of acts are prohibited — that is, what constitutes a “terrorist” act? American responses to attacks on US interests and personnel in recent years make clear that an attack can be “terrorist” if it hits a military target (e.g. the USS Cole), a diplomatic target (e.g. the US embassies), a governmental target (e.g. Okla- homa City), or a civilian and economic target (e.g. the World Trade Centre). One cannot be certain, then, how terrorism differs from war. In Vietnam, for example, the United States waged a terror campaign against civilians to force them to stop assisting the “sneaky adversaries” for many years without ever declaring them “terror” and “counter-terror” activities. Those adversaries killed American civilians as well as military personnel just as the resistance posing factions in Afghanistan are doing these days. In Vietnam, did American soldiers commit acts of violence against Vietnamese civilians? It was not just the massacre at My Lai; it was every platoon that “had to destroy a village in order to save it”; it was every soldier who threw food or money off the back of a troop truck, wondering whether the Vietnamese kids would be able to snatch it without being run over by the next truck in the convoy. Do any of these attacks upon civilians qualify as “terrorism”? However, the precise definition of “terrorist” is an interesting academic exercise, though it does not seem very important in the context of September 11. Few speakers of English are going to deny that the attack upon the World Trade Centre was a terrorist act. But so is the US direct threat to be “with us or against us.” It is terrorising nations into submission and arm-twisting into accepting dictates. If the power grids and transportation lines of Yugoslavia and Iraq did not support only the citizens of those countries, so was not the World Trade Centre supporting civilian projects alone? The FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 27

Twin Towers were also supporting armies in the field that were actively pillaging and raping people and properties of peaceful countries. As pointed out, terrorism can include actions against civilian and governmental targets, particularly when innocent civilians are involved. If that was the case in both the World Trade Centre and Oklahoma City, so it is the case in sanctions against Iraq and the unending bombings in Afghanistan, against all the ethics of war. Timothy McVeigh was particularly interested in killing certain federal law enforcement personnel. The deaths of children in the building’s Day Care Centre, he said, were “collateral damage,” so is Bush, his commanders and puppets, like Musharraf, calling the deaths of thousands of innocent Afghans as “collateral damage.” But merely saying that is not good enough — certainly not when the targets are the innocent people who have nothing to do with the US agenda to have a resistance-free world to its domination. It is true that not all wars have been formally declared, in the history of America or numerous other nations. In some cases, there are political reasons for that. Declared or not, however, wars are governed — in the eyes of international lawyers, at least — by specific principles of honourable warfare. The US has never attempted to abide by these principles, which is evident from bulldozing Iraqi troops and burying them alive in ditches, or from the use of depleted uranium, or the genocide in Qila-e-Jhangi in Mazar- e-Sharif, or from the arrest and torture of diplomats. War is hell; virtually every army commits atrocities, if the conflict grows long and real. Presumably the US does not mean to declare every nation’s army a terrorist organisation as soon as it becomes embroiled in a serious and continuing war. One may also note that, when the US committed genocide at Qila-i-Jhangi in Mazar-i-Sharif in its “war on terrorism” that appeared certain that this act will not instantly convert the whole affair into a terrorist enterprise. Washington presumably considers it terrorism only if it is primarily directed at civilian as distinct from military targets; and yet there has been no hint that America distinguishes the Sep- tember 11 attack against the Pentagon (a plainly military target) from the attack against the largely civilian World Trade Centre. If A WAR ON ISLAM? 28 a hostile action must be conducted by a regular army in order to qualify as non-terrorist, then are not the CIA’s non-military opera- tives terrorists? With these areas of mystery, it appears that the best definition of terrorism is, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” This is a rather discreditable guideline, coming from a land that prides itself upon the rule of written, specific laws and upon the preservation of freedoms against government. No American court will sit in judgment of the acts that Western troops and undercover opera- tives will take to prosecute this war, and apparently few principles of law or justice will overrule the subjective judgment of military and political leaders gallivanting around the world, choosing their target du jour as they see fit. We are already witnessing the massacre of prisoners of war, the arrests of diplomats, no respect for those who intend to surrender, distributing prisoners of war like Christmas gifts – more than 150 Pakistanis have been handed over to India — and seeing them off to unknown destinations and islands. Jokes circulate around America every day, orally and by e-mail, describing Arabs and Muslims and Afghans interchangeably. Ameri- cans are learning more about how these groupings differ from one another, but there remains much inanity and callousness. Indeed, even Sikhs – who are from an entirely different land, and observing a non-Semitic faith — have been attacked and killed by vigilantes who take the Sikh turban as a sign of affiliation with Islam or Af- ghanistan! All of these groupings are equally strange to the average American. Thus, virtually all children from these varied groups are likely to be targeted for insult, threat, and assault while they live in the United States. The world dare not underestimate the vastness of American ignorance of the world at large, nor the propensity of many Ameri- cans to rely upon racial and religious lines to distinguish the holi- ness of their religion or the purity of their race from the other races and religions of the world’s other peoples. Inside the United States, police officers continue to practice racial profiling, targeting blacks and Latinos rather than whites, despite the limits of the Constitu- tion that those officers supposedly serve; and law enforcement agents FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 29

in the US are busily detaining and questioning thousands of Mus- lim males, keeping many in confinement for indefinite periods of time. With circumstances like these, no one should be surprised that brown- or black-skinned Muslims in the rest of the world are disappointed, and worried, at the vagueness surrounding the entire so-called war on terrorism. The situation would have been different, if it were limited to confining Muslims in the US for the reason that after a day like September 11, with disasters allegedly caused by a score of highly similar individuals of a specific age, gender, and race. But unfortunately, the story does not come to an end. All the vocal critics of the United States are being rounded up all over the world, regardless of their past and present associations and activities. Investigat- ing persons of that description very carefully is one thing, but systematic oppression and silencing opposing views is totally another. Some Americans argue that for every highly visible Muslim, like Mohammed Ali, there have been thousands who have been welcome to attend American universities and become their fellow citizens. By contrast, they consider ways in which Saudis and other Muslims have treated visiting American military personnel with hatred and rejection. The simple answer for this is that no Muslim soldier from any Muslim country has ever come to the US to support a specific kind of government. This vagueness has been the result of a deliberate attempt to cover the “war on Islam” as a “war on terrorism.” The more the vagueness is removed from the US war on terrorism, the more it becomes clear that it is, in fact, a war on Islam. Let’s see how.

1.1 Setting the stage for a war on Islam We have crossed the threshold of the formal 21st century only to see the translation of the intellectual horrors of the last 10 years into reality. The stage for action was carefully prepared in the last decade of 20th century. The theoretical and opinion building world is complete. The action to attack Islam from all possible fronts is now practically underway. In the process, the alleged attributes of the Islamic order of things are being effectively neutralised and depoliticised. A WAR ON ISLAM? 30

A brief look at a set of statements collected, almost at random, from the Western media at the beginning of the book, shows clearly how a link was constructed between Muslims and the notions of fundamentalism and terrorism long before the final assault on Is- lam in the post September 11 world. A majority of analysts in the mainstream media are openly calling for a war on the ideology of Islam. Now that the West is already in action, any attempt to investigate the root causes to avoid getting into any further problems in the 21st century seems to be a bit late. Nevertheless, a study for de- framing Islam and neutralising anti-Islam feelings in the West could play a central role in postponing the ultimate tragedy of human history. For the past two decades, the commonest frame within which to portray Islam has been one based on a crisis that is sub- sumed under the categories of terrorism, violence, extremism and anti-Western hatred. Such a frame focuses on the innocent victims of brutal violence committed by Muslim Arabs against Israelis, or by Muslim extremists against their opponents in other parts of the world. It is not easy to find anyone writing an alternative storyline in the mainstream Western media – one that shows the confrontation of Muslim activists with their governments as a legitimate struggle for human rights, equal participation and freedom of expression. The rise of Islam as a result of the Iranian revolution was a primary component in the construction of an image of Islam in the Western media, which culminated with the rise of the Taliban to power, giving the Islam-bashers (Islamophobes) a perfect opportunity to destabilise them and consequently prove that Islam is unfit to govern. Muslim activists and any government in the name of Islam were generally reported as having taken a stand against all things Western. The Taliban were then on the front pages depicted as monsters – and portrayed as a direct product of Islamic thought and practice. Indeed, certain Muslim and Western writings on the subject have led to the reification of conceptual structures and cultural values on both sides, by adopting those of the West as the only perceptual framework within which the phenomenon of Is- lamic revival is reported and understood. This framework then pro- FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 31 vides the ground upon which an image of Islam is culturally can- onised. To take issue with this process is not to deny that the West has occupied some space in the Muslims’ discourse. The argument is rather that influential elements in the Western media reports and certain Muslim writings have portrayed Islamic revival as existing only in relation to Western hegemony, and as the antithesis of Western cultural values and way of life. As a result, there has been hardly any attempt to view it as part of a system of relations in whose evolution the West was one of many components, not the sole determining factor. Gradually the situation in many Muslim countries has become so confounded due to outside interference that despite the much vaunted democracy and democratic values, the Muslims see with their own eyes corrupt and dictatorial regimes suppressing them ruthlessly, with the active support from Washington and other Western capitals. Anti-Islamic propaganda, with the current active action in Afghanistan and plans and threats to attack others in the background, acts as a fuel to further spread the needless fire of anti-Westernism. For the last 10-12 years, the media’s discourse on Islam’s revival has tended to be completely binary. The two categories – Islam and the West – come to exist only within a construction of reality in which things Islamic and things Western are defined by their mutual contrariety. The world is mapped out in terms of West and non-West. In the media coverage, we can trace a logic of equivalen- cies at work: a frontier is drawn up, along which a number of positive and negative qualities are sorted between the ‘West’ and Islam. Thus a contrast is shown between modernity, with the West as its epitome, representing civilisation, democracy, rationality and freedom; and non-modernity — Islam, represented by barbarism, irra- tionality, despotism and slavery. Many writers, in assessing the feeling of Muslims, Islamic revival and the West, have placed the emphasis on the Muslims’ rejection of things Western as the central theme in their discourse. Some Western analysts make the western public believe that the centrality of anti-Western themes is due to what they describe as the ‘trauma’ of the West’s impact on Muslim societies. This in turn A WAR ON ISLAM? 32 has led Muslims to question the usefulness of their vocabulary and their sacred meta-narratives. In such a discourse the image of Islam is constructed as the radical “other” that cannot be “embraced.” And such a discourse demonise Muslims to the extent that the death of millions of Iraqis and thousands of Afghans is brushed aside by Westerners as a trivial matter. Such a negative painting of the picture of Islam ignores that Islam should be viewed as part of a system of relations and conflicts with other actors with whom it has to contend for consensus and power. While it is true that Muslim activists have set some of their boundaries in relation to the West – mostly in the sphere of morality – yet the bulk of their struggle has been a contest over the extent of state control, the boundaries of legitimate state activity, and the definition of public and private spheres. The objective of Islamic movements is not to defeat the US and its allies, but to overthrow the puppet regimes, end remote-control colonialism and make the imperialists realise that the time has come to say enough is enough. The hypocrisy, injustice and double standards in West- ern policies are completely exposed. American political analysts such as Daniel Pipes took a long time to come to the stage of calling Bush to openly declare a war on Islam. The reason being that for a crisis, like the portrayed crisis of Islamic “fundamentalism,” to be visible to the wider public, it cannot merely occur: it has to be staged in collaboration with many actors. Such an operation, Armando Salvatore9 argues, requires a significant event that has to be clearly connected with the struc- tural crisis of development, and which can be narrated according to simple, culturally available patterns, where the role of the ‘bad guys’ can be identified with the widest possible consensus. There seems to be good grounds to argue that three events have been central to staging the propaganda of “Islamic fundamentalism” as a crisis in the Western media: the Iranian revolution in 1979, fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Taliban in Af- ghanistan. This staging in turn led to significant changes in the ways in which Islam could be used, transculturally, to define West- ern identity. It has been quite rightly argued that the West’s interest in covering the rise of Islam was not primarily due to an “objec- FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 33

tive” assessment of which political acts were being performed in the name of Islam in Muslim societies, but rather to the fact that it provided a contrastive image which could help redefine Western political subjectivity at a time when it was going through its own crisis. Consequently, “Islamic fundamentalism” became a phenomenon only when authorised Western observers – the media and foreign policy-makers – felt the urgency to reflect on it. Thus, Islam was no longer a civilisation of the text and law, and as such closed in on itself, but a global issue looming large on the Western political agenda to be dealt with force or chicanery and deceit. Such a representation of Islam, as a constant advocacy of a certain course of action – violence, terrorism and extremism – was proved extremely effective in influencing public opinion to deal with issues like Osama bin Laden, attacks on US interests, the Taliban, repression in Algeria and state repression in Egypt. In the media, one can thus trace the construction of an Islam whose properties have disrupted and posed a threat to the continuity and harmony of the liberal value system of the modern world. Such a construction relies upon the dense presence in media discourse of category labels. To name but a few, “Islamic terror,” “Islamic militants,” “Islamic holy warrior,” “Islamic dictator,” “Islamic attacks,” “fanatical Islamic terrorism,” “Islamic bomb,” etc., have all proved enduringly popular. In setting the stage for a war on Islam, the main thread running through most stories has been to hold up Western ideals as the only benchmark and place them in explicit opposition to those attributed to Islam. As a result, the Muslim world is approached in terms of how it differs from and conflicts with the West, instead of being considered in its own right. Islam has also been assimilated into Western historical imagination through reports of the fanatical expression of religious fervour, from which all consideration of social, political and economic factors, which may have given rise to it, are excluded. “Islamic fundamentalism” is thus constructed as a fanatical wave rising far beyond the pale of the comprehensible, rational politics of “liberal” democracy.10 One particular attribute that serves in this context to exclude Islam from the Western humanist tradition is the notion that “Is- A WAR ON ISLAM? 34 lamists” have shown a total disregard for the value of individual human life. This perception plays itself out against the background of the state as the embodiment of constitutional practice. It is precisely at this point that the problem of legitimacy arises. For the picture of a benign state versus evil terror can be challenged by introducing the concept of state repression or state terror under the guise of democracy or anti-terrorism. The issue of repressive regimes sponsored by the West has been rendered insignificant in the media coverage. Islam is thus not seen within a system of relations, but is rather completely de-contextualised and declared as incompatible with the rules and regulations of the “civilised world.” Indeed, the tendency to separate discrete facts from the social context, which gave rise to them, has been the norm in Western media coverage. In this way, the fact that the rise of violence in Algeria or Egypt, for example, has gone through a number of successive phases, which have progressively transformed political protest into continuous and intensive carnage, has largely been ignored. Thus, the coverage of Algeria has focused on the number of victims of the violence and the state’s reaction. Perhaps there will be at most one or two sentences explaining that the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which was “poised to win the election”, committed the acts in question in reaction to the Western support of military rule and state terrorism. In the case of the Al-Gama’a Al-Islamiya of Egypt, the sole phrase explaining the motivation behind the attacks would usually attribute to them the desire “to topple the secular government and establish an Islamic state,” not mentioning the root causes of the genuine grievances of the masses. The newspapers thus follow an “inoculation” approach, which presents imbalances without dis- cussing causes. Such a procedure serves to dehistoricise and depoliticise the discourse, by viewing the rise of ‘Islamic attacks’ or ‘Islamic violence’ as something inherent to Islam. This absence of explanation, therefore, naturalises the situation, by making it part of a common sense. Violence is committed, sanctions are justified and killings legitimised, just because these groups are Muslims, and are out to topple the ‘secular’ governments or support terrorism. In this way, violence has come to be constructed FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 35

as an essential element in the creation of an Islamic order of things. In this way, the politics of the Muslim world is reduced to an irrational religious regression beyond the pale of comprehensible rational politics of Western liberal democracy. This obscures the root causes of anti-Western feelings in Muslim societies. No wonder then that most people in the West are unable to understand how such violence has emerged, and what it means for the societies in question. This book is an effort to de-frame Islam, explain the root causes of anti-Western feelings among Muslims, ways to address them and prove that Islam is not an enemy of the West. It is the misconceptions propagated by the Western media that are paving the way for the final World War. All the above-mentioned factors are adding up, making the ticking time bomb more and more dangerous. The pent up prejudices against Muslims11 have already exploded in the Western attack on Afghanistan. It is now time for reaction of the Muslims pushed against the wall that is bound to explode in the near future. It is sad to note that partly fooled by ‘experts’ and journalists, and partly because it is in America’s ‘national interest’ (as we shall see in the later sections), we may soon witness something much more sinister than the usual media jibe at the ordinary Muslim’s expense – bombing Afghanistan and installing a puppet regime in Kabul is just the beginning.

1.2 The war is on. It is painful to watch old newsreels of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini making speeches and crowds cheering. Mussolini’s pos- turing seems so transparent that one wonders how adults could have taken him seriously. With Hitler, what comes across is crude, passionate intensity and the rapture of his audiences, sharing his feelings, with minds turned off. What is chilling is knowing how many tens of millions of human beings lost their lives because of these almost musical-comedy performances. The seemingly shallow stuff can have deep roots as well as deep consequences. Few things today are more shallow than the reasons most people have for supporting Bush and Blair’s war on “terrorism” and accepting their claims that it is not a war on Islam. To understand if it is a A WAR ON ISLAM? 36 war on Islam, we need to honestly and impartially scan the horizon since 1990. Apart from the massive air strikes, commando raids and a pro- longed “dirty war” against Islamic movements, the police repression, deportation, torture, censorship and death squads that the Muslims are certainly going to face were certainly not planned after the September 11 attacks. The US “war on terror” is no more than a translation to the physical level, of the systematic approach that started with (1) introduction of the rancid notion of “Islamic fundamentalism,” (2) classification of Islam; (3) equating “fundamentalism” with extremism and then terrorism; (4) removal of governments, like Mr. Erbakan in Turkey, for having affiliations with Islam (5) support of governments’ crackdown on “Islamic extremists” such as Egyptian and Algerian regimes; (6) development of agendas for governments like Musharraf’s; (7) initially supporting the Taliban and then demonising them to show the world the failure of Islam to govern. The coming physical horror is simply the execution of the judgments passed by Western intellectuals upon Islam during the past decade or so. Just have a look at how the ground has been prepared for the coming “dirty war.” Musharraf came to “moderate” religious schools and take Jihad-related Qur’anic verses from the school curriculum in 2001. However, the Economist12 sensed “The Islamic Threat” way back in 1993 when it declared: “It is the mightiest power in the Levant…Governments tremble before it. Arabs everywhere turn to it for salvation from their various miseries. This power is not Egypt, Iraq, or indeed any nation, but the humble mosque.” Mosques will probably be the next targets after dealing with the madrassa. Similarly, since the establishment of Israel, no one had talked about “fundamentalism,” yet Yitzhak Rabin suddenly started calling the world in December 1992, “to devote its attention to the greater danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. [W]e stand on the line of fire against the danger of fundamentalist Islam.” Bush with a slip of tongue spoke his mind in 2001 by describing US missions in the lands of Islam as “crusade.” Peter Rodman, senior editor of the National Review, however, saw in 1992 that the West being challenged from the outside by a “militant, atavistic FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 37

force driven by a hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old grievances against Christendom....the rage against us is too great...”13 Charles Krauthammer summed up the expected resistance by the Islamic civilisation to the hegemonic designs of the US in one word: “Global Intifada.”14 He tried to suggest that the world is now “facing a mood and a movement…a perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both.” The New York Times went one step further and confirmed: “The Red Menace Is Gone. But Here’s Islam.”15 The open war against it, however, had to be delayed until finding a perfect ruse like the September 11 attacks. Intellectuals like Samuel P. Huntington played a key role in making Islam an enemy of choice. He declared: “Islam is the only civilisation which has put the survival of the West in doubt.” The web page of the Montclair State University in New Jersey reads: “The West today is losing irretrievably its former global hegemony and is increasingly challenged economically and culturally by East Asian and Islamic civilisations.” Irving Kristol, Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the Wall Street Journal: “With the end of the Cold War, what we really need is an obvious ideological and threatening enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can unite us in opposition.”16 Bernard Lewis, in his influential essay, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” writes: “Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses.”17 Islamic “fundamentalism,” according to Amos Perlmutter, is “a plague” which has infected the entire Islamic world and whose goal is to topple secularist military regimes in Egypt, Syria and Algeria and replace them with [unacceptable] Islamic states.”18 Daily Express, ran an article “Islam Is a Creed of Cruelty” on January 16, 1995, which concluded that the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism was haunting Europe and world power should enter into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre. The underlying assumption has always been that Islam is primitive, underdeveloped, retrograde, at best stuck in the memory hole of a medieval splen- A WAR ON ISLAM? 38 dour out of which it could not disentangle itself without a radical transformation; and this could only be based on Western, “rational”, “progressive” values. The long proposed “holy alliance” is now in the making. The above mentioned examples show that during the past 11- 12 years systematic efforts have been directed to relegate Islam from its holistic perspective, encompassing all facets of human conduct and behaviour to a mere set or rituals, something what the West has done to Christianity. According to Lt-Col Trinka of the US Army, “[Muslims] must work to fashion the shariah into a modern blueprint for change.” In a similar vein, one of the CIA experts counselled that those Muslims who do not believe that word of God is law, should be found and supported. “The Arab rulers,” he thinks, “have to create a new identity of [Muslim] seductively fus- ing Islam and the West.” This so-called expert added: “Though the Saudi rulers may be guilty of ugly authoritarian behaviour and consistent stupidity in foreign affairs, they are at least fervent hypocrites, and that [in] Middle East Affairs, a fervent hypocrite is always safer than a fervent puritan.” He had the audacity to make such a humiliating remark because there was truth in it. These are in fact general policy guidelines that the Muslims see in operation during the lifting of democracy related sanctions against Pakistan and visit of the Brit- ish Prime Minister who before September 11th could not bear an undemocratic government in Pakistan at any cost. Over the last decade western propaganda successfully divided Muslims into “moderates,” “liberals” and “fundamentalists” for whom there is no basis or justification in Islam. There has been no definition offered even in the propaganda. Salman Rushdie, however, lists in his article what he believes fundamentalists are against: “homosexuals, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, evolution theory, sex.”19 He believes such “fundamentalists are tyrants, not Muslims…yes, even the short skirts and dancing — are worth dying for.” He further argues, “kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, cutting-edge fashion, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love,” should matter and “these will be our weapons.” The moderates among us should decide for themselves as to what kind FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 39

of Islam allows kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, homo- sexuality, etc. Besides mass propaganda, efforts were underway to support Hosnie Mubarak-like regimes for their crackdown on Islamic opposition and remove elected governments like that of Mr. Erbakan for exactly the same reasons for which the US wants to support religious groups in China. With false propaganda, the Taliban have been demonised to the extent that many Muslims who have never set foot on Afghan soil verify the grand lies and speak in the anti- Taliban, CNNised language. The US has established that a country can never be ruled by Islamic principles. Now the war is only left to be carried out by individual Muslim countries by collecting information on its citizens as to who is involved with banned religious parties, who is extremist, how to arrest and try fundamentalists and if necessary remove them from the scene. Apart from the above-mentioned factors, recent moves by the US and UK are part of an undeclared war on Islam because: 1. Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and Ed Harriman reported in the Guardian that attacks on Afghani- stan were planned before September 11. The US planned the attacks as soon as it considered its demonising of the Taliban project as complete.20 2. Islam is the only challenge to American hegemony with its claims to be a complete code of life with panacea for ills in economic, political, moral and spiritual systems, and thus only Islam can pose a threat to the civilisation considered superior by the West. 3. The West reasons that the source of terrorism is not its terrorism but Islamic teachings and history. Naturally, the real campaign is against the teachings of Islam from the original sources at madrassas. Mustafa Kamal destroyed Islamic teachings 85 years ago in Turkey and dried up the swamp. The Muslims however are expected to follow suit sooner rather than later. 4. The US is planning to impose its brand of democracy or autocracy - whichever may be suitable — on Muslim countries by force. The US has put forward many symbolic personalities over the years to undermine the roots of Islam. These advocates preach unconditional assimilation into, support of, sympathy towards, and A WAR ON ISLAM? 40 whole-hearted participation in the social and political system es- poused by the US. 5. Transmissions by the BBC and CNN testify to the fact that it is a war on Islam. On their part they put forward unqualified individuals or groups as representatives of Islam who may be unethical, deviants, or outright heretics from the religion with no subjective measures being used to ascertain the qualifications of such people. Rushdie’s recent article in the Washington Post is an excellent example. They present Shariah as antiquated, irrelevant, authoritarian, unsophisticated, and limited. 6. By making public statements like: Taliban are not real Mus- lims, American leaders, like the former US Assistant Secretary of State, Karl Inderfurth, have long been creating a nationalistic or ethnic view and approach to Islam, or more accurately, creating a new religion that cannot be called Islam but rather has some outward aspects of it. It will certainly be one that will not pose a challenge to US domination or offer anything that will make Islam be seen as a viable alternative to the US uni-polar world. 7. Evidence suggests that it is the US government that has been playing a leading role in the media crusade against Islam. As early as Fall of 1994, PBS aired a documentary by journalist Steve Emerson titled “Jihad in America.” Evidence within the programme suggests that Emerson had access to official government intelligence. Some clips appear to be from home videos confiscated from Muslims in FBI sweeps. A decade of this kind of programming has set the climate for a war on Islam. It is a campaign against the Islamic world. Apart from other undeniable evidence, consider the following fact to fully understand the argument that contrary to all the claims by the American government, this is a war on Islam. According to well placed sources, in the Fall of 1993 at the initiative of the Clinton-Gore government, a secret conference of anti-Islam forces was called in Wash- ington, D.C. area to develop a long-term strategy of defeating Is- lamic resurgence worldwide. It lasted for three days and many papers were presented. Naturally, no serious Muslim was represented at the conference. The main resolution was to fight and defeat Islam even if it takes FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 41

70-80 years, the way the West fought Communism. At least one of the resolutions was to remove “fundamentalist Islam” from the West and fight Islam in Muslim majority countries. Islamic movements like those of Tanzeem-e-Islami, Jamaat-e-Islami, Ikhwan al- Muslimoon and similar movements are their main targets. All recent developments are simply directed to bring this war from Wash- ington to the real front, to the doorsteps of Muslim countries. The facts do not change with the denials from Bush and Blair. The strength of Islam lies in the fact that despite Muslims having far less military, economic and organisational power, Western war- makers do not have the courage to openly declare it a war on Islam. They will certainly fail as long as they want to cover their ulterior motives and undermine Islam under the guise of looking for “Infi- nite Justice.” Ending terrorism through eradicating its root causes may not take more than a few months. However, defeating Islam out of the fear that it might alter the western “way of life” may cost them many generations before finally realising that it was a wrong war.

1.3 Pre-War Propaganda. Just to give a glimpse of how Western propaganda has demonised Islam in a systematic manner, the Taliban were the prime target out of the many scapegoats. Here we look at just one issue of anti- Taliban propaganda — the treatment of women. All the women rights activists, who shrilly lament that Afghan women must go veiled, were silent when between 1979-1989 the Soviets slaughtered close to 2 million Afghans - half of them women; silent about the 500,000 Afghans maimed by Soviet mines since then; silent about thousands of women raped during the period of anarchy that preceded the Taliban’s restoration of order in the country. Who else can better describe the factual situation than the author, who lived with his family both in Afghanistan under the Taliban and in Pakistan under the “liberal” rule of Benazir and “moderate” rule of Musharraf? Other than instructions for women to go veiled in public the rest is pure fabrication. There has been absolutely no beating of women in public and no ban on women education, except the restriction on co-education. Wearing burqa A WAR ON ISLAM? 42 is a tradition and part of the Islamic culture. Schoolgirls, even in modern cities like Peshawar, wear burqa and almost 98 per cent of them are veiled in chadar, if not the burqa. One can easily spot buses with painted windows, and sheet-clad Tanga (horse-drawn carriages) taking young girls to schools and colleges in Pakistan. There is no Taliban regime in Pakistan forcing them to do so. There are hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Pakistani women around the world wearing burqa and other types of veils. Are they doing so because of the Taliban? There are websites with sickening mess of lies and fabrications, about the suffering of women in Afghanistan, without any references to dates, places, persons or any other possibility form of veri- fication. The “revolutionary” Afghan women protesting in western capitals are from the Khalq and Parcham factions of Afghan Com- munists. Khalqis had to literally walk on the Qur’an to be granted membership.21 Under Communist rule, the Kabul regime used to put out propaganda similar to what RAWA-like organisations feed to the western media today. They cannot “liberate” Afghan women by taking them out of burqa, removing their head covers and putting them into skirts. The horror stories about Taliban rule have only this much basis in fact. When the Taliban took Kabul, they destroyed the bottles of wine found there and imposed strict restrictions on women’s movement in the streets for some time. In the last two years, I personally found women outnumbering men in the streets as well as mar- ketplaces in Kabul. Historically Kabul has been the centre of Af- ghan Communism. The Taliban were extra strict with those “revolutionary” women. Apart from wearing burqa in the city streets, women were free to dress however they wished within the bound- ary wall of their houses and workplaces. My wife personally witnessed and interviewed women wearing mini-skirts at the main hospital in Kabul in August 2001. A comparison with other occupations of enemy cities in recent history (Berlin by the Russians, Nuremberg by the Americans, Je- rusalem by the Zionists, Algiers by the French, Delhi by the Brit- ish 1857, Mahdi’s Khartoum under the Mahdi by the British, Tripoli by the Italians, etc.) indicates that the Taliban have been FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 43 very civilised and well-behaved in their treatment of both men and women. Even the friendly presence of American troops in Saigon turned that city into a vast brothel. Contrary to reports in the western media about the education of girls, figures obtained from the education sector in Afghanistan before the American attacks, revealed that girls education in rural Afghanistan was increasing. According to a survey conducted by the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA), almost 80 per cent of girls schools located in rural areas under the administration of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan were operating in full swing. Ms. Pia Karlsson, Education Advisor at the Education Technical Support Unit (ETSU) of SCA, said in an interview published by the Frontier Post, that only in Ghazni province, where the Islamic Emirate under the leadership of TIMA had control for the last two years, approximately 85 per cent of the girls were still in schools. In Kunduz province alone, 122 schools were operating with 390 female teachers. Health facilities for women increased 200 per cent under the Taliban. Prior to the Taliban taking control of Kabul, there were 350 beds in all of the hospitals in Kabul. In August 2001, there were more than 950 beds for women in women-only hospitals. Some hospitals, which were specifically allocated to women, included the Rabia Balkhi Hospital, Malali Hospital, Khair Khana Hospital, Indira Gandhi Child Health Hospital, Atta Turk Hospi- tal, Kuwait Red Crescent Hospital, Contagious Disease Hospital and T.B. Hospital. Moreover, there were 32 mother and child health clinics. In addition to this, women received treatment at ICRC and the Sandy Gal Orthopaedic Centres. In all these hospitals and clinics, women worked as doctors and nurses to provide health services to female patients. All the above-mentioned factors could not be smoke-screened with the propaganda for a long time to come. There was no valid, effective and organised opposition to challenge the Taliban’s power, which became evident after the opposition’s failure to retake the Taliban-controlled areas even after many days of intense bombing and other support provided by the US and its allies. The question lurking in Western minds was: who, if anyone, is A WAR ON ISLAM? 44 willing or able to challenge the Taliban’s absolute power? Barring a political miracle, the Taliban were considered destined to retain power for the foreseeable future. Sanctions were imposed to do the miracle of domestic economic disaster. Ahmad shah Masood was called in to Paris in a bid to launch an internationally armed and financed destabilisation campaign. Efforts were made at fragment- ing the Taliban into competing groups, or some combination of these elements. With the death of Masood, the US and its allies were left with two choices: either to come to terms with the model of an Islamic state, or to wage a full scale war to dislodge the Taliban and with them any expectations of reviving the political power of Islam. The US and its allies considered the events of September 11 as a golden opportunity to go for the second option.

1.4 Misnomerism adds to vagueness. After years of attacking Islam in the media and academic fronts, when the war on Islam was physically launched, Bush and Blair told the world on numerous occasions that they are attacking terrorism and its supporters, not Islam. That may be. Many Mus- lims fear, however, that the alliance intends more than that. As the campaign unfolds beyond the borders of Afghanistan, their fear is fast turning into reality as all the media, academic, political and military guns are directly targeting Islam to reduce it to merely a set of private rituals. Thomas Friedman came out with a total declaration of war on Islam calling it a “real war” that has just started after replacing the Taliban in Afghanistan.22 What the Muslims observe is a total, al- beit misnomered, war on Islam, in which Thomas Friedman is a frontline soldier of the media alliance against Islam. He declares: “if 9/11 was indeed the onset of World War 3, we have to understand what this war is about. We’re not fighting to eradicate “terrorism.” Terrorism is just a tool. We’re fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism. World War 2 and the Cold War were fought to defeat secular totalitarianism — Nazism and Commu- nism — and World War 3 is a battle against religious totalitarianism…,” which, he believes, cannot be fought by armies alone: “it FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 45

has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.” This is the daisy cutter bomb of intellectual arsenal, filled with pure lies for creating rifts and confusion among Muslims. Unlike democracy, liberalism and Americanism, Islam is, undoubtedly, a code of life. However, there are no classes in Islam. Any war declared on “extremist” Islam is simply a war on Islam. Those who claim themselves to be “moderate” do not even know how to define “moderate Islam.” The best example, suffice to end this confusion, is the description given by General Musharraf in his interview to Carla Power. He said: “I’m a Muslim. [Gesturing at a general on a nearby couch] He’s a Muslim. He may pray five times a day, and I may have a different approach, but the voices of the moderates are not heard.”23 Leaving aside an obligation, for which the Holy Qur’an has instructed no less than 70 times, certainly is a “different approach,” but definitely not a “moderate” or any other kind of fake Islam. Just imagine the value of the least repeated Qur’anic injunctions in the eyes of self-proclaimed “moderates” to whom anything instructed 70 times in the Holy Qur’an is a trivial affair. Does it make the Qur’an redundant for a “moderate” Muslim? Or does it mean “moderates” simply pick and choose from the Holy Qur’an what they like, and disregard what they do not? This partial interpretation of the Holy Qur’an for personal interests is not Islam at all. This example clearly shows that no matter how the West may label it, the Muslims, at the very least, have to follow the Holy Qur’an in full and any war declared on them under the label of fighting “totalitarianism” or “extremism” is a war on Islam. Friedman’s war is already on — on all fronts. Jihad related verses from the Holy Qur’an have already been removed from the school curriculum in Pakistan. Government officials are tightening the noose around religious institutions. Islamiyat, a compulsory course subject on Islam, has been made optional. Leaders of the religious parties were imprisoned during the American bombing of Afghani- stan. Banning religious organisations is already in progress. Long before General Musharraf’s January 12 declaration that Islam has no role in politics and governance, The News reported on its front A WAR ON ISLAM? 46 page that a government plan and policy is “in the offing to curb extremism in Pakistan” – without defining what axactly extremism is all about.24 Does it mean that anyone who criticises the government or its policies will be treated like Bush’s doctrine that “he who is not with us is against us”? In this complex world opinions vary widely. Requiring everyone to react the same is simply unrealistic. It is patently unfair for Muslim and Western leaders to ignore the genuine grievances of the Muslim masses and simply overrule the root causes with a demand that, regardless of one’s living conditions, one must either be “for” or “against” the American way of doing things. The Muslims most directly affected by US policies have the right to reserve judgment without immediately qualifying as “totalitarians.” American analysts frequently speak as if Islam were a cult with a single purpose in mind. This attitude tends to encourage the thought that Muslims are “them” versus “us.” Interestingly, the American opposition to Islam seems to have grown much fiercer in recent years. The Americans certainly found the world easier to understand when every nation seemed either “Communist” or “free.” Thus the so-called “rise of Islam” is something of a relief to the lonely experience of being a sole superpower. Now they know who the enemy is: now they can gear up for the next war. Islam has been rising for more than a thousand years, but suddenly — as during the Crusades — it has caught the attention of the West. Can anyone be surprised that Muslims are somewhat anxious about how Washington plans to handle this new ideological conflict? Are any Islamic nations volunteering to be the next Vietnam, the next theatre for a clash of big-power theories? One would think that the Western media would be seeking out ways in which to defuse the tension between Islam and the West. Sadly, this is not the case. Much to the contrary, the media in the US and Europe continue to depict Islam as an “ism.” It is as though the same writers who wrote about “godless Communism” in the past are writing about Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan today. They despise the Muslims’ godliness as much as they despised the god- lessness of the Communists. Perhaps one cannot expect better than this from a market-driven press. It is not that the American public FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 47 wants to hear about Muslims mostly in the context of terrorism, fundamentalism, holy war and other extremes. It is simply that the media addicts them to hear such stuff. Until the American public gains a greater awareness of the world, it will continue to support the anti-democratic urges of its power- hungry leaders in the media, politics and military-industrial complex. Friedman knew like other American leaders that the Shah of Iran, for instance, was a bad ruler; the US saw the Iranians demonstrating against him; and yet somehow the US persuaded itself that all was well. A comparable situation now exists in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, and once again America is putting itself on the wrong side of history under the pretext of fighting “totalitarian Islam.” Thus, despite the good intentions of its people, the United States becomes a force for evil in the world. The American media represents only a fraction of the weaponry that the US employs in its new crusade against Islam. Military might is another such tool — not only when used invasively, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also as a shadow across the entire Middle East. Will a Palestinian boy live until tomorrow? It depends in part upon the weaponry, possibly American in origin, used by the Israelis. Will Iraqi children obtain food? The answer to that may be no, if the American naval forces blockade the ports through which the country might earn foreign exchange. Have Saudi rulers become corrupted by the funds proffered in exchange for allowing American military bases on their soil? If so, they would not be the first, nor will they be the last. Islam is blamed to be totalitarian in nature if followed to the full extent. How much, really, does the average American media- person care about whether the rulers of a Muslim country display any concern for the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free? If I say that most pro-Western governments in Muslim countries do not represent the beliefs and attitudes of a majority of their citizens, does the average American know whether that is true? Would he or she care? If he or she knew, and cared, would that produce any visible change in American policies toward totalitarianism in the Muslim world? The evidence is pretty clear on all these questions. A WAR ON ISLAM? 48

Friedman’s attempt to mislead the American public is not new. The situation in Afghanistan reminds us of well-intentioned Ameri- can boys, ignorant of the world at large, who believed they were fighting totalitarianism in Vietnam; and besides maiming themselves psychologically and physically, they also helped to destabilise neighbouring Cambodia. Those well-intentioned boys were, in the end, the pawns who enabled a rogue government to seize power and to murder a million of their own citizens including its Muslim minority, the Chams.25 At that late date, unfortunately, the Ameri- can energy was spent, so that while tens of thousands died to ravage Vietnam, virtually none gave their lives to bring peace to Cam- bodia. Similarly, America came out to wage a war on terrorism; moved on to eradicate the Taliban; and now plans to eradicate “totalitarian Islam.” For the sake of eliminating a people, the US has once again destabilised a whole region. In Afghanistan, Washington’s hypocrisy and the media’s selective ignorance combine to give the world an image of a poor, benighted country badly in need of superior Western help, both material and philosophical. The tune is familiar; viewers have heard it before, and they will dance to its tune once again. Islamic Sudan is poor; it would be better off without its “totalitarian terrorists,” and to prove this point the US will bomb a pharmaceutical plant that helps countless of those poor Sudanese stave off disease. Islamic Algeria is violent, the Americans know it, but the part they will not hear is that perhaps, as they did earlier in Central America, they have implicitly supported the ruling butchers’ totalitarianism as long as they do not threaten US interests. In short, it is Islam that keeps Muslim countries poor, totalitarian and violent. If other Third World nations, from the Caribbean to the Caucuses, are also experiencing poverty and violence, the West attributes that to their failure to achieve complete capitalist democracy, and everyone hopes they will someday come to be as smart and enlightened as the Americans are. Nobody blames his or her religion for that. But in the case of an Islamic nation, the discussion quickly degenerates to a patronising imitation of concern for “those people.” The concern is not real — if it were, the FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 49 world would have seen a decade of American assistance in Afghani- stan after Russia’s humiliating withdrawal. Over the years, the US, not Islam, has demonstrated its willingness to buy totalitarians and betray the people in nations around the globe. It seems fairly certain that no other government or ideology in the history of the world has been so subversive. Unfortu- nately for America, this is the path of weakness. Make real friends, and they will be there when you need them; but if you rely on bribes and deception, you had better fear the day of reckoning. Afghanistan is a case in point. The warriors who have lately turned on America were once America’s allies against the Soviet Union. Plainly, they did not see a convincing and attractive demonstration of American principles of peace and justice, as distinct from Ameri- can methods of war making. Why should it be “totalitarianism” when, at long last, the peoples of Egypt and Pakistan remove the cruel dictators who could not rule over them without American support? One can only wonder whether advocates of war on Islam, like Thomas Friedman, must see a replay of Iran and Afghanistan in every Muslim nation, before the Americans finally remember the principles that once made their country great. It is simply appalling to see that, at this very moment of opportunity, the US seeks to give second-hand justice to Taliban prisoners of war by subjecting them to a military tribunal rather than allowing them a civilian trial. The US could hardly choose a more visible way to demonstrate its own lack of faith in the justice and anti-totalitarianism mantra. Islam is proved to be totalitarian by linking it to the Taliban’s rule. Once again, if Americans were honest with themselves and curious about the facts, they would quickly arrive at the conclusion that almost any political structure—particularly after 20 years of war and anarchy — requires some instances in which the ruling power uses force to control the behaviour of its citizens. Democ- racy certainly does, especially in the US. Nobody who has lived there can deny that it is a deeply authoritarian country. The weapons wielded by its hundreds of agencies are frequently more painful and deadly than the sticks of the Taliban, and they are still employed disproportionately against minorities and the poor. Yet, A WAR ON ISLAM? 50

Islam breeds totalitarianism. Of course, the Taliban’s rules came from religious scriptures, while the rules governing the American police come from legislators elected with the help of corporate donations, and from the courts whose brand of justice has received such a rousing vote of confidence from Bush. Again, the theory is that religious strictures are medieval and counterproductive, while the rules of secular authorities are more even-handed and intelligent — to which one might reply, again, with the realities of American rates of crime, divorce, and litigation. Not even the Roman Empire or the Catho- lic Church, in the darkest centuries of their bureaucratic histories, ever employed remotely as many agents, cranking out so many laws, as the United States does today. Rarely, if ever, have lawyers and judges enforcing any empire’s laws been so overwhelmed and baffled by their complexities and inevitable contradictions; rarely have ordinary people had to wait so long, on average, for justice; rarely have the citizens of any nation been so afraid to speak freely (and yet so convinced that they enjoy freedom of speech) for fear of being attacked or sued (consider the litigation following Septem- ber 11). This, unfortunately, is the mentality with which such a generation now approaches the accused of the Muslim World. Do Mus- lims say and do things the Americans find offensive? Then they must be punished. That is the face that America now presents to the world’s Muslims. It is strange that the Western mindset towards Islam has changed so little since the Crusades. One can only hope that now, as then, wise Muslims in Baghdad and in other centres of Islamic culture will be able to remind Europeans, who had long since lost any consciousness of Aristotle, that not even he, a European, was entirely confident of the democratic system so much in fashion now. But perhaps American leaders sense this already; this might explain their eagerness to reinstall an old king in Afghanistan.

1.5 The plot thickens as the myth deepens How naïvely some of us might feel relieved with the fall of the Taliban government. Awaiting peace and economic stability to fol- FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 51

low, they will also expect the demoralised “Islamists” not to ever look into American eyes and say no to its dictates. It simply shows that the plot against Islam has further thickened amid the deepen- ing myth of American might. Those who initially believed the war is on some “terrorists” must have seen the crisis in Afghanistan as a sideshow, where the objective is not merely to end the “terrorist Taliban”, but also to end a way of life in the Muslim world. The US has shown no illusions that its objective is the eradication of the very existence of Muslims and Islam in the present form. In Af- ghanistan, the Muslims see the American vision for the Muslim world, one that applies no less to other Muslim countries than to Afghanistan. The worst is yet to come. In the post-Taliban world, the Muslims are not even expected to have sympathies with anything remotely linked to “traditional” Islam. Demonisation of the Taliban has already attached a stigma to everything associated with Madrassa, Talib, Maulvi, Maoulana, Imam, Mufti, Islamiyat, Hadith, Jihad and Shariah. The Muslims are disliked for what they believe in, not for what they do; short of giving up Islam, Muslims cannot please or appease the US and its allies. And helping us to give up the Islamic way, which is believed to be the cause of Muslims not accepting American policies, is the core of future strategies of the war on Islam. In this regard, Thomas Friedman predicts that the pending “real war” in this region “is in the schools.” In the first phase he proposes a quick “military operation against Osama” but for the longer war on Islam, Friedman proposes: “when we return, and we must, we have to be armed with modern books and schools — not tanks. Only then might we develop a new soil — a new generation as hospitable to our policies as to our burgers…Until then, nothing pro-American will grow here.”26 This is the finest example of a frozen mindset that never thinks of reviewing US policies to make them acceptable. Instead it suggests grooming new generations to accept US policies (hegemony). In 1994, the call was to “cultivate a pro-American Kuwait,”27 now the call is to cultivate a pro-American Muslim world.28 Since working on others is the strategy, the next phase of the war will thus target Islamic identity more intensely than before. The media-guided A WAR ON ISLAM? 52 propaganda bombs will target the: legitimacy of religious parties; existence of religious institutions; presence of Islamiyat in the school curriculum; role of religion in the state affairs; presence of bearded personnel in the armed forces; availability of Islamic literature; religious restrictions on alternative lifestyles; and open criticism of US policies in the Muslim world. This process will continue until the simmering rage and passive resistance intensify the already ig- nited final conflict of human history. With the deepened myth of American might, the US intends to seize the opportunity and deal with the threat identified long ago as, “The Muslims are Coming! The Muslims are Coming!”.29 It is time to deal with the issue of Islam which the said magazine described as a “profound and ancient fear [which] is far from imaginary.” What used to appear occasionally, like Leon Uris warning in his novel The Hajj (1984) — “the West and Western democracies…you can’t keep your head in the sand about this situation any longer…we have an enraged bull of a billion people on our planet, and tilted the wrong way they could open the second road to Armageddon” — has become a regular feature of the West- ern media for the rest of the war period. Unfortunately, we look at the issues in isolation and embrace comfortable solutions. War on Osama is approved, for he is alone. Evidence against Osama is accepted for the US says so. The coalition is supported because it is good for Pakistan’s economy and dictatorial governance. War on the Taliban is acceptable for they have turned from an asset to a liability. Refugees are no problem because assistance is forthcoming. The crisis in Afghanistan is acceptable because the US says a broad based government would resolve it. But the allies in terror do not look at issues like this. Peter Jenkins, a leading British commentator, for instance, sees today’s problem in light of a conflict going back six and a half centuries: “keeping Islam at bay was Europe’s preoccupation from 1354, when Gallipoli fell, until the last occasion on which the Turks stood at the gates of Vienna in 1683. It is once more a preoccupation in the face of the Islamic Revolution.” Visualising the Islamic threat, editorial writers in London’s Sun- day Times back in the 1990s found “the concept of containment” as FIRST PROBLEM: VAGUENESS 53

valid. “Almost every month the threat from the Warsaw Pact di- minishes; but every year, for the rest of this decade and beyond, the threat from fundamentalist Islam will grow. It is different in kind and degree from the Cold War threat. But the West will have to learn how to contain it, just as it once had to learn how to contain Soviet Communism.” The US has provided them with a perfect opportunity to not only contain but also eradicate Islam wherever necessary. These are not eccentric thoughts of a few commentators; such fears, inculcated by the media have touched a nerve deep in the Western psyche long before the fall of Soviet Union. To cite one piece of survey research, a poll conducted in mid-1989 asked French citizens “Which of the following countries appear to you today to be the most threatening to France?” In response, 25 per cent an- swered Iran, 21 per cent the U.S.S.R., and 14 per cent the Arab countries in general. More than half of the respondents – 57 per cent to be exact — believed that one or more of the Muslim states are most threatening to France. Similar opinions have touched the peak in the twelve years since then. In the first round of the French Presidential Elections in April 2001, the Far Right candidate Jean Marie Le Pen came second reinforcing the backlash against France’s communiies.30 The Sunday Times called on the West and the then Soviet Union jointly to “prepare for the prospect of an enormous and fundamentalist Islamic wedge, stretching from Morocco to China.” Accord- ing to William Lind’s geopolitical assessment, the Soviet Union’s “role as part of the West takes on special importance in the light of a potential Islamic revival.... The Soviet Union holds the West’s vital right flank, stretching from the Black Sea to Vladivostok.” After the Soviet Union, Walter McDougall, the Pulitzer-prize winning historian, saw Russia holding the frontier of Christendom against its common enemy. The world has wrongly assumed that the US and its allies are against terrorism, not Islam. If it were so, there would have been no attempts to interpret Islam in ways acceptable to the West. An American magazine, City Journal, describes Islam as “deeply political, in the sense that it pushes its adherents to hold power; and A WAR ON ISLAM? 54 once Muslims do gain power, they feel a strong impetus to apply the laws of Islam, the Shariah. So Islam does, in fact, contain elements that can justify conquest, theocracy, and intolerance” (No- vember 2001). The allies have now shouldered the responsibility to prevent Muslims from becoming “intolerant,” gaining power, applying Islamic laws and interpreting Islam as they have been doing so during the past 1400 years. Moreover, advisors to the American government such as Denial Pipes, suggest “shutting down Internet sites that promote Islamist violence … reaching out to moderate non-Islamist Muslims for help” and holding “experts on Islam and Muslims — academics, journalists, religious figures, and government officials — to account for their views” in the next phase of the war on Islam.31 Attempts are underway to define acceptable Islam and Muslims. For instance, “Islam (a religion) is not the problem, but Islamism (a totalitarian ideology) is…It politicises the religion, turning it into a blueprint for establishing a coerced utopia. In many ways, its programme resembles those of Fascism and Marxism/Leninism.”32 Efforts are underway to further intensify the vagueness of the war on terror and classify Islam into “Islam” and “Islamism” – rejected and banned. According to the National Interest, “Islamism has three main features: a devotion to the sacred law, a rejection of Western influences, and the transformation of faith into ideology…Islamism represents an Islamic-flavoured version of the radical utopian ideas of our time, following Marxism-Leninism and Fascism.”33 The new twisted theories define Islam as “a personal credo” emphasises individuals, whereas Islamism as a “political ideology,” emphasises communities. According to National Interest34, in the hand of Islamic fundamentalists, “Islam is transformed from a personal faith into a ruling system.” The Los Angeles Times also tried to boil down the discussion to a declaration: “It Matters What Kind of Islam Prevails.”35 SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 55 2 Second Problem: Targeting Islam

It would be bad enough if the vagueness just described were to leave Muslims wondering whether the US intends to target their religion and their fellow Muslims. Unfortunately, there are some strong reasons to conclude that the vagueness is part of a deliberate attempt to conceal an underlying agenda against Islam. It is not that Western governments have convinced themselves that they can suppress Islam. Even during the Crusades, Europe- ans sought primarily to recover control of Palestine, rather than to exterminate or convert all Muslims. Admittedly, attempts to suppress a religion may succeed when they wipe out the leaders, headquarters and many of the followers of a minor cult, as American law enforcement agents did when their actions led to the deaths of David Koresh and his followers, and the destruction of their Branch Dravidian compound, near Waco, Texas in 1993. But a majority of people in the West probably realise that Islam and other major non-Christian religions are here to stay. Even so, America contains a politically powerful, highly motivated evangelical Christian movement that considers non-Chris- tian religions (and even a number of Christian sects) to be basically wrong, if not evil and would like nothing more than to convert all of the world’s non-Christians. This political element has been hard at work, attempting to force non-Christian parents and children to let them post or recite the Lord’s Prayer or the Ten Command- ments in public schools and other public buildings. Such people wrap themselves in the American flag and consider themselves good citizens, and yet few groups in America work harder to weaken the American principle that religion and government should not mix. A Muslim might wish that such people would be equally willing to contemplate a state comparably influenced by Islamic rather than A WAR ON ISLAM? 56

Christian principles. Beyond those especially committed Christians, a great many other Americans consider various Christian manifestations to be essentially harmless. Thus, when Jewish vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman appeared on the Democratic ticket next to Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election campaign, Americans gra- ciously acknowledged that theirs is, after all, a “Judaeo-Christian” heritage. These words came easy, but there was no corresponding broad realisation that the Jewish-American heirs of this Judaeo- Christian heritage might have a right to be uncomfortable with the placement of Nativity statues (depicting the birth of Christ) on courthouse lawns and in other public spaces around the country. Now, as ever, millions of Americans are apt to have limited patience for non-Christians who do not share their enjoyment of sweet little songs about the Baby Jesus, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If these are the difficulties experienced by Jews, who have enjoyed political power in the US for generations, one can only imagine the uphill road confronting Muslim-Americans, not to mention Mus- lims in the Third World who have virtually no influence on Ameri- can policy. Bush frequently exhibits his Christian orientation. This wins support from voters who want to believe that he sees the world as they do; but it also limits his options, such that he must hesitate to take actions that those voters disapprove. Unlike Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, who cut himself loose from Christian influence and support by declaring that organised religion is “a crutch for weak-minded people,” Bush seems to seize every opportunity to strengthen the Christian reach into the American government. For instance, his “faith-based initiative” allows American religious organisations, overwhelmingly Christian, to provide governmental services to private citizens, and as a practical matter allows them to direct religious messages to those people as well. Thus, services once provided by non-religious government officials may hence- forth come from proselytising members of a church. The Muslims do not want Bush should be more like Governor Ventura. All the Muslims want is that they be left alone so that they may become what they want to be and not what the US decides that they should SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 57 be. The Muslims do not argue that the US is waging a war on Islam in defence of Christianity. As we shall see later in the book, all the US efforts are directed at separation of Church and State in the Muslim world, which makes practicing Islam virtually impossible in the real sense of its objectives. The Muslims do not argue that there is any kind of religious extremism in the United States. In- stead, it is secular fundamentalism that is crossing all limits in imposing its values, not only in the US but all over the world. It was odd until September 10 to observe that Americans seemed to care more about violent actions against military targets, allegedly performed by Muslims in Asia, than about violent actions against civilians right in their own backyard, in places like Colom- bia and Guatemala. Why did Americans not work themselves into a frenzy at the sight of organised, state-sponsored death squads that have repeatedly killed US citizens in Catholic nations in Latin America during the past two decades? Americans have paid more attention to actions by a handful of Muslim extremists, directed at a single American military ship in tiny Yemen, half a world away, than to powerful, violent criminal enterprises that threaten to undermine the peaceful government of Costa Rica, the lovely little “Switzerland of the Caribbean,” just a few hours south of Miami. Is this really what one would expect from a superpower that hates terrorism? It would be wrong to assume that the aforementioned objection pays too much attention to the headlines. That troops who blow up caves in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, received daily coverage because that was more exciting than a step-by-step explanation of how a government investigator explored bank records of financial transac- tions between criminals. The US government might be doing a tremendous amount of work relevant to criminal enterprises in Latin America, and most of it is inglorious — watching drug runners, arresting lieutenants of the kingfish, trying to close in on elusive individuals who rarely mount high-profile attacks like those of Sep- tember 11, and who therefore rarely stimulate a comparable level of patriotic fervour. However, it is important to note that these crimes have not been raised to the level of “Clash of Civilisations,” A WAR ON ISLAM? 58 nor did the US go in to overthrow governments to catch a few criminals. The American responses to such events have nothing to do with religion. Of course, Catholics from Cuba and Colombia are quite capable of investigating and arresting their Catholic countrymen who are on the wrong side of the law, but the US does not intervene to say, “no, we don’t believe in your justice, you have to hand them over without us showing you the supporting evidence of their crimes.” The events in Yemen made headlines not because they were new but because they were providing a window of opportunity for interference and dominance. Long after Yemen is fully dominated and controlled to play by US rules, the struggle for law enforcement in Latin America will still be grinding onwards with a totally different US attitude towards tackling the problems. For some, the status of the US as the sole superpower has been somewhat uncomfortable. Communism may no longer pose as a world-class threat, but some have the sense that the enemy still lurks out there somewhere, and that it is up to us to find him. Islam may fill that void for these people — even though it is nearly as absurd to talk about a single “Islamic” enterprise, as it would be to speak of a single “Christian” undertaking that could unite Chris- tians around the world, from South Korea to Ethiopia. Islam is now as alien and monolithic to these Americans as Communism once was, and therefore, to these people, it is just as threatening. Apparently it seems that the US has adopted different policies towards Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait, but the objective is the same: not to allow any of these run in the name of Islam, particularly if the government refuses to accept dictation from Wash- ington. Every sign is that the war on terrorism will next be directed, not at the drug lords in Catholic Mexico, but at Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere. Bush meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to coordinate this war — Sharon, the Jewish general who bears firsthand responsibility for permitting the slaughter of hundreds of peaceful Muslims in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon, as determined by Israel’s own Kahan Commission. The international Human Rights Watch organisation called for a criminal investiga- SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 59

tion of Sharon months ago; and yet Bush dare not utter a peep on the subject, for fear of alienating Israel’s politically powerful supporters in the United States. Is the war on terrorism indeed a war against terrorists of all kinds, or does the choice of targets depend principally upon their religion? It can be argued that there are practical limits to the US going after all foreign leaders accused of war crimes including the reason that US leaders are themselves knee deep in innocent blood. How- ever, arguing that if Israel was as great a threat to international peace as Iraq is, then perhaps Ariel Sharon would indeed be the next target. Is Israel not that kind of a threat because it is not occupying Arab land, it is not enslaving millions of Palestinians; it has not displaced and dispossessed millions from their homes? Kill- ing millions as a result of sanctions and now killing as many more through an imposed war is not the solution to the alleged “substantial investment” of Saddam Hussein in the development of biological weapons that might someday wipe out millions of innocent people. How much justified is the US war on Iraq based on a perceived threat at a time when thousands of the innocents are already dying in Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere due to direct and indirect involvement of US weaponry and moral and political support? Brainwashed by the propaganda apparatus, many Americans might hope, not merely that Bush targets Iraq, but that he does so quickly and thoroughly. Unfortunately, very few question the consequences of such James Bond fantasy and the fact that this is certainly not the solution to combat anti-Americanism. The following section describes how Islam was labelled as fundamentalist, fundamentalism was linked to extremism, and extremism was linked to terrorism to create a psyche, which indirectly relates terrorism with Islam. Moreover, as Thomas L. Friedman con- fesses: “We do not want a war with Islam, we want a war within Islam,”36 the US wants a “war within Islam” which is simply a strategy of the war on Islam. And the tools are to classify Islam into “fundamentalist,” “moderate,” and “liberal” classes.

2.1 Faith, Fundamentalism, And Facts During the 1990’s, the media remained fond of the phrase, “Is- A WAR ON ISLAM? 60 lamic fundamentalism.” The concept also remained clear enough: an Islamic fundamentalist is a person who insists upon strict adherence to the Islamic scriptures and is not interested in a dialogue or in a workable compromise with those who do not share their precepts. During the propaganda campaign western analysts forgot the point that if the West learned a great deal about Christian fundamentalism during the Reformation, it does not mean that it is applicable to Islam as well. Religious wars between Catholics and Protestants provided a useful reminder of the atrocities that Euro- pean Christians had committed against various heretics a thousand years ago. Places like Rhode Island in the 1640s decided to insist upon the toleration of diverse religions and the separation of Church and State, because they wanted no part of their ancestors’ unpro- ductive religious wars. Is this what Thomas L. Friedman and others want to see after igniting “a war within Islam” after dividing Mus- lims into “fundamentalists,” “reformers,” “moderates,” etc.?37 There have been no clashes among competing versions of the faith in Islam – never on the issue of the kinds of Islam. Nowa- days, it is only the western media that presents the pro-American regimes practicing as “more moderate and tolerant versions” and anti-US governments as “overly harsh Islamic regimes.” If it was the Taliban’s totalitarianism under attack in Afghanistan, why is not a similar effort made to liberate Riyadh, from where the teachers of the Taliban came to train their Ministry for enforcing virtue and forbidding vice? There is no concept of “extreme” or “moderate devotee” to faith in Islam. After a period of anti-American sentiment, Vietnam found itself wanting more, not less, contact with America. The same thing is now occurring in Iran. But it does not mean that those Iranians want to dilute their religion just because the US has stood for their freedom from tyranny. In any conflict, most people eventually seek a middle way that almost everyone can live with, this theory however is incompatible with Islam, which is a complete code of life and is a religion of peace as the word ‘Islam’ signifies. The US may not like some aspects of Islam what it sees as hurdles in the way of its total global domination and may label it SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 61

Islamic fundamentalism, but this is really not a matter to be determined by the West. America may justifiably fear the damage that could be done by a powerful “Islamic fundamentalist” to those he considers alien, just as the Japanese came to fear Harry Truman who could order the killing of a hundred thousand civilians at Hi- roshima. But we see that such events are rare, that conscience and political realities impose many limits upon them, and that the world manages to get past them somehow. Moreover, the Japanese did not bomb Truman, but changed their own foreign policy. Just as it would have been terribly short- sighted and self-defeating for Japan to refuse to deal with America in the post-war world, so it would also it would be foolish for the West to treat Islam as distasteful or unacceptable.

2.2 The self-created fear of Islam “Extremists are out there, and they’re dangerous, but their numbers seem disproportionate to sensationalised reporting, which I and others are tempted into by the notion that we need a clear cut enemy. (Muslim) fundamentalism is an emotive headline, plugging the gap left by the Commies.”38 Right after the demise of the Soviet Union, most Western scholars, political leaders and media tycoons started equating Islam uncritically with extremism. Initially it was an unplanned effort aimed at judging Islam only by those who wreak havoc—a standard not applied to other religions like Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism. Gradually, it became part of an organised campaign that has now taken the shape of a crusade to root out any possibility of the establishment of an Islamic State. Just as the fear of a monolithic Soviet threat blinded the United States and its allies to the Soviet bloc’s diversity, the fear of an Islamic alternative to the American Empire and western domination in the post Cold War era led the West to uncritically support any propaganda against a proposed or declared Islamic State. The fear of Islam also pushed the West into supporting “anti- fundamentalist” dictatorships. Together it enabled the “free” and “civilised” world to tolerate the suppression of legitimate dissent and massive human rights violations by governments in many A WAR ON ISLAM? 62

Muslim countries. The Communist monster by now has been perfectly transformed into the spectre of “Islamic fundamentalism” and all kinds of repression, human rights violations, anti-democratic regimes, genocides and wars are legitimised, just on the pretext of combating fundamentalists. In an organised effort to malign, divide and weaken Islam, at the close of 20th century, two words, “Islam” and “fundamentalism,” were intimately linked in English usage. The “Concise Ox- ford Dictionary of Current English” now defines fundamentalism as the “strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines of any religion, especially Islam.” The fact, however, is that “Funda- mentalism” was a term that was once popularly used to describe strict adherence to Christian doctrines based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. This usage derives from a late-19th- and early- 20th-century trans-denominational Protestant movement that opposed the accommodation of Christian doctrine to modern scientific theory and philosophy. With some differences among themselves, fundamentalists insist on belief in the inerrancy of the Bi- ble, the virgin birth and divinity of Jesus Christ, the vicarious and atoning character of his death, his bodily resurrection, and his second coming, as the irreducible minimum of authentic Christian- ity. This minimum was reflected in such early declarations as the 14-point creed of the Niagara Bible Conference of 1878 and the 5- point statement of the Presbyterian General Assembly of 1910. The term fundamentalist was coined in 1920 to designate those “doing battle royal for the Fundamentals.” Also figuring in the name was “The Fundamentals,” a 12-volume collection of essays written in the period 1910-15 by 64 British and American scholars and preachers. In the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, however, fundamentalism again became an influential force in the United States. Promoted by popular television evangelists (see Religious Broad- casting) and represented by such groups as the Moral Majority, the new politically oriented “religious right” opposes the influence of liberalism and secularism in American life.39 The nature of fundamentalist Islam, and even the use of the term, is hotly debated. But this debate is largely a self-indulgent exercise of analysts. Within Islam there is no “-ism,” and there are no Muslims who have cre- SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 63

ated an “-ism” out of Islam. Fundamentalism in Islam is presented as a new religiosity, re- affirming faith in a transcendent God, which, in fact, is the basic pre-requisite for being a Muslim. To the contrary, it is now presented as a militant ideology, demanding political action now. It has been given the form of a populist party, asking for ballots and surging forth as an armed phalanx, spraying bullets. For the sake of weakening Islam through a “war within Islam,” Islam and Muslims are intentionally classified into different groups. The basic classification appears in many different terminological guises, in grada- tions of subtlety. “We need to be careful of that emotive label, ‘fundamentalism’, and distinguish, as Muslims do, between revivalists, who choose to take the practice of their religion most de- voutly, and fanatics or extremists, who use this devotion for political ends.”40 So spoke the Prince of Wales in a 1993 address, summarising the conventional wisdom in a conventional way. The belief that these categories really exist, and that experts can sort fundamentalists neatly into them, is the sand on which weighty policies are now being built. The so-called “Fundamentalist Islam” has purposely been turned into an enigma with the intention to confound all attempts at clari- fying the fact that there are no classes, but one Islam. “Revivalist” becomes “extremist” (and vice versa) with such rapidity and frequency that the reality has little place in the discourse. However, it is interesting to note that on the one hand Western analysts try to classify Muslims and Islam and on the other admit that what is remarkable about fundamentalist Islam is not its diversity. It is the fact that this idea of power for Islam appeals so effectively across such a wide range of humanity, creating a world of thought that crosses all frontiers. Fundamentalists everywhere must act in narrow circumstances of time and place. But they are who they are, precisely because their idea exists above all circumstances. Over nearly a century, this idea has evolved into a coherent ideology, which demonstrates a striking consistency in content and form across a wide expanse of the Muslim world.41 The fear of religious parties taking power in Muslim countries A WAR ON ISLAM? 64 is uppermost in Western minds. In an article, Martin Kramer argues that to gain state control, “of course, Islamism must first come to state power. Given the strength of existing regimes, its leaders must build coalitions with other groups if they are to stand any chance of breaking out of encirclement.”42 He called it the “purge before power.” Therefore, all attempts have been focused at not allowing Islamic parties to either win elections or establish stable governments. Egypt has been successfully supported in suppressing its Islamic opposition. Turkey is being rewarded for throwing out any elected Islamic government and banning popular parties with any degree of religious affiliations. And the Taliban have been made a perfect example of a failed Islamic state with all kinds of propaganda, sanctions and finally with what Bush called a “Cru- sade.” Many western analysts like Kramer are still trying hard to in- culcate the idea that unlike Khomeini, “today’s Islamists, certainly in the Arab world, are unwilling to suspend enough of their belief to find a common ground with potential partners. Their words and deeds frighten many Muslims, even those who long for change. The reason is violence—not against the West, but against other Muslims. ….The kind of purge Khomeini carried out once in power is being attempted by Islamist movements today, when it only serves to isolate them.” Regimes invoke the threat of Islamist “terror” not because there is a genuine dread of it in society at large but because such corrupt and dictatorial regimes want western support for extending their rule – Hosnie Mubarak is a prime example in the Middle East. As a result, the “Islamists” have many allies and sympathies of the masses, whereas the corrupt and repressive rulers are hanging on to power at the mercy of Western support. It is, however, encouraging that without popular support, sustaining such remote control colonial regimes is becoming increasingly difficult for the anti-Islam forces. The question is: how many unpopular governments will the West support and for how long? From Ayatollah Khomeini to Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, from Lebanon to the attack on World Trade Centre, government leaders and opinion makers in the West have warned of the dangers of SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 65

“Islamic fundamentalism” and revival of “political Islam,” which is nothing but an opposition to Western double standards and injustices at all levels. If the 1980s were dominated by images of embassies under siege, American hostages and hijackings, the 1990s brought prophecies of insurgent movements wielding nuclear weapons and employing urban terrorism. We have entered the 21st century with newspaper headlines that announce the possibility of a worldwide Islamic uprising and a clash of civilisations in which Islam may overwhelm the West. The alarmist concerns reflected are in publications and conferences with titles like “Roots of Muslim Rage,” “Islam: Deadly Duel with Zealots,” and “Awaiting God’s Wrath: Islamic Fundamentalism and the West.” For others it is an Islamic world whose 1.2 billion Muslims form a majority in more than 50 countries and a rapidly growing minority in Europe and America. Some view Islam as the only ideological alternative to the West that can cut across national boundaries and perceiving it as politically and culturally at odds with Western society; others consider it more a basic demographic threat.43 The 1990s, however, revealed the diversity and complexity of Islamic societies and pointed to the new century that is going to shake the assumptions of many. While a minority of Islamic organisations engage in violent protests, seeking to topple governments, others spread their message through preaching and social services and demand the right to gain legitimate power through the ballot box rather than bullets. But what of the so-called militant Islam? Is there really an international Islamic threat? There is no militant Islam but there is an Islamic challenge to the way US wants to reshape the world in its own image. To eliminate this challenge, we are witnessing Bush’s “crusade,” against the assumed threat and rise of a “new Comintern” led by “religious Stalinists” poised to challenge the “free world” and impose Islamic republics through violence, or through an electoral process that enables Is- lamic movements to “hijack democracy.” Instead of correcting its policies, the US is out to fight a war against its fears. For almost half a century, the United States talked of a horrible war to end the Cold War; but its policies at the end of that war have a terrible motive of breaking up the old international order A WAR ON ISLAM? 66 and precipitating its American culture – which is considered by some as civilisation – onto the “rogue” and “antagonist world,” sundering the bands of established communities on speculations of a contingent improvement, and condemning other societies to madness, discord, vice, confusion and unavailing sorrow. The motive is to impose American culture on the rest of the world – particularly the Muslim world — through puppet governments established in the name of “liberal democracies,” which would not outlaw religion, but would sap the human spirit and set up a new pseudo-religion, the worship of the State. It would smother human initiative in a well-meaning but deadly array of regulations and stipulations. In the guise of “moderatism,” secularism of such democracies would help initiate a malady of moral decline that would gradually gnaw at order in the persons and at order in the states. Until Muslim societies recognise the nature of this affliction, they must have sunk ever deeper into the disorder of their soul and state. Fortunately, every civilisation and every society has its anti-bodies, which help them not to fall far too away from old truths. But American scholars, like Samuel P. Huntington, view that this natural resistance of every civilisation will lead to “the Clash of Civilisations.” However, this is not true. The truth is that it is the American will of imposing its sick culture in the name of a civilisation on others that will lead it to clash with other civilisations. There has never been a clash of independently evolving civilisations, until one of them starts considering its own the absolute, and tries to submit others to its false gods. Views of the Italian Prime Minister in the wake of attacks in the US are reflection of the grand misconception in the Western mind that Western civilisation is superior to all. The Cold War ended so emphatically and decisively that there was little political and intellectual preparation for the post-Cold War era. Politically, the term “New World Order” was coined at the end of the Gulf War, to fill the vacuum created by the fall of the Soviet Union. To save such hopes from total dissipation, Ameri- can scholars have been putting forward theories that international relations will soon be characterised by the emergence of several SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 67

civilisations, and that the major conflicts of the future will be between these civilisations. Although, Huntington in his book, “The Clash of Civilisation and The Remaking of the World Order,” tries to conceal the fear of so-called “Islamic fundamentalism” with the assertion of a broader vision and bold recognition of other major civilisations – Sinic, Japanese, Russian, Hindu and Western – but the book is simply an example of many reminders and warnings of the rising tide and “threat of a “clash” with “Islamic fundamentalism.” Sinic, Hindu, and other civilisations, no doubt, are the oldest and well-grounded civilisations. Resistance from Islamic civilisation, however, is of paramount concern to political and intellectual figures in the US, because it is the only civilisation that has the capacity to hold others from defying the truth of nature, which cannot act on false assumptions, and which does not allow the invention of norms. The force of Islamic civilisation to reawaken consciousness to the existence of permanent norms and the Muslims’ belief that there are enduring standards superior to the American petty private stock of rationality have been condemned with the rancid notion of “fundamentalism” in order to make Muslim states targets for cultural terrorism. Like the New York Times blaring headline, “The Red Menace is Gone, but Here is Islam,”44 the American and Western press is riddled with ominous anti-Islam headlines and much blarney un- derneath to support them. The policies of the US administration and the frightening speed with which American scholars are misleading the public and world opinion with the negative connotation of the term “fundament-alism” and phrase “Clash of Civilisa- tions,” are not a disconnected phenomenon at all, as it seems at first glance. Islam, as a threat to US national security, has already been registered in the books of the CIA and Defence Department, and a war is already underway. A struggle to install puppet “liberal democracies” in Islamic states will help the US promote and impose its civilisation on native societies. It will gradually impoverish moral imagination of its people and root out resistance to the way US A WAR ON ISLAM? 68 wants to rule the world. The war on Afghanistan and efforts to install a puppet regime is the best example of a war waged after years of propaganda and groundwork. For reaching at some solid conclusions, the Muslims need to clarify that there is no fundamentalism or liberalism in Islam; liberal democracies are a sham; embracing or imposing American – or for that matter a major part of Western — culture is nothing less than suicide for any community. The schism between Islam and the West has been manufactured by Washington and is being developed for the achievement of its own malicious motives of dominating and Americanising the world; which will, undoubtedly, lead to violent and bloody clashes around the world. Without any real knowledge of Islamic societies, the Western public falls prey to Washington’s old games of deception, once played against the exaggerated threat of Communism. The first time the Red Army was deployed outside the Warsaw pact i.e. Af- ghanistan – it lost against mountain tribesmen. Problems of states declaring themselves Islamic are also globalised, their capacity to threaten the West inflated and diverse and complex nature of Islam oversimplified. The Taliban have been made the perfect scapegoats for their declaring Afghanistan the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan and Shariah being the supreme law of the land. Every wrong was associated with the Taliban and exaggerated that to an unimaginable extent. For instance, the deaths of a dozen innocent Palestin- ians on a daily basis is an acceptable state of affairs but the destruction of two stone statues in Bamiyan became an unpardonable crime of the Taliban. The games played in the name of fighting the “fundamentalist threat of Islam” are numerous and will become bloody in nature as time goes by. To gain support for Benazir Bhutto’s corrupt government in Pakistan among the US administration; for example, The New York Times called her government a “secular bulwark against Islamic radicalism.” Someone, who belongs to Pakistan, only knows that nothing has changed since the mid 1970s, but the then Prime Minister, Z.A. Bhutto, was not considered as a “secular bulwark” against the American-funded Pakistan National Alliance movement for establishing Nizam-e-Mustafa (strict Islamic rule), nor was that SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 69

crippling movement called “Islamic radicalism” on march in Paki- stan. Instead, when the opposition in Pakistan was quelled by force – half of it legally charged, judicial appointments manipulated in the government’s favour, and only about four or five seats out of 217 in the National Assembly occupied by Islamic parties – Benazir Bhutto told Bill Clinton that “the threat to [her] government comes from globally linked fundamentalism.” Why? Simply because she knew the mindset of the US administration in Washington! Similarly, in Egypt, Islamic Brotherhood, according to Sami Zubaida, a sociologist of the Middle East at London University, “was really the first modern political party in Egypt.” And its leader Hassan-al-Banna “ to his credit was able to get his message across to ordinary people and also to convince the elites.”45 But even until four decades after his death, nobody labelled him “fundamentalist,” nor even until 1990 was his non-violent political movement called as such. Until 1993, Cairo was the only Israel-friendly capital in the whole Middle East. So, despite knowing the fact, as conceded by the Wall Street Journal, that “Mr. Mubarak’s government presents itself as a modern Western style democracy; [but] in fact, it more closely resembles a military dictatorship,” the shoop-de-doo media specialists and political analysts unanimously declared “Mubarak’s regime” as “an indispensable breakwater holding back the tide of Islamic radicals, who seek political power in the name of religion. Similarly, The New York Times editorialised, “ The Islamic Chal- lenge in Turkey,” and called the winning party “the militant Is- lamic Welfare Party,” from which the “secular parties understandably feel threatened.”11 What was the evidence of militancy? None. The same day the Wall Street Journal in its editorial message under- lined, “most disconcerting is the spectre of fundamentalist Tur- key.”47 There was no mention of any democratic process and fair election throughout the American press. In 1990s, the government in Algeria went far towards finishing the wrecking job on western-style democracy it began five years ago. The newly amended constitution outlaws any party that has any kind of connection with Islam. There is no independent con- A WAR ON ISLAM? 70 firmation that 86 per cent of Algerians have actually approved the amendment. The Europeans and Americans have not only winked at the suspension of real democratic and fair election of 1992, but people, such as the Director of Publication of Freedom House, Mr. Kaplan, noted after the recent referendum that Algerians “having tasted democracy, are unlikely to give up its fruits, even if they are sometimes rotten,” as if the 1992 elections were undemocratic and the public should accept the changes brought about by the government through a fraudulent referendum. All that has been surfaced from the agony of Algeria in the last five years, is the fact that a negative blanket term is used as a short- est cut to avoid explaining what the Muslims in Algeria – or in other parts of the world – are really about. All these events are nothing but an indication of the tunnel vision approach towards Muslims and Islam. Eric Hoogland, Editor of a journal on Middle Eastern issues, calls it “pure, unadulterated ignorance of the West.” He says, “we say we support democracy. Then we oppose the democratic process.” Democracy has never been a priority for good foreign relations to Washington. The problem is not that the US is scared of another Tehran in Algeria, as Tehran would have been as dear as Tel Aviv, if it had promised to serve Uncle Sam; the problem actually is to empower obedient-to-the-US regime in Islamic states, no matter be it in the name of Islam, democracy or any form of dictatorship. They blare “Islam at Crossroads!’ Actually, it is not Islam but Islamic societies at the crossroads, where Muslims are struggling against their own corrupt governments and incompetent rulers; who, taking advantage of Western support and hoopla, deliberately present the genuine grievances of their impoverished and oppressed public as a threat of “Islamic fundamentalism.” Meanwhile Ameri- can leaders and scholars present it as the “rise of Islam,” a new monolithic enemy of choice. Some of the Muslims may not be under the state of tyrannical thraldom of their rulers and their sponsor – Uncle Sam—and the inhuman conditions to which most Muslim societies have been condemned; but, in fact, the storm and stress today rocks the Mus- lims’ little boats on the mad water of international politics. Ameri- SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 71

can scholars and leaders purposely ignore that there is within and without a sound of conflict, the burning of bodies and rending of souls in Muslim societies; where inspiration strives with doubt and the highest Islamic ideals of the past, in turn, have vexed and waned. The leaders, which the US supports as “secular bulwarks” against the imaginary threat of “Islamic fundamentalism,” neither see, hear, nor feel the woes of their people, from whose painful labour all their wealth proceeds. Leila Ahmed, a History Professor at the University of Massachusetts, rightly clarifies: “Only Islam represents an ideal against a lot of corruption; a legitimised form of opposition to the political status quo. So except through this, there is no way of opposing the government.”48 Leila Ahmad further explains that the US must not make it a threat to its national security, as “many of these young people who join [Islamic parties], join because they believe in justice, a just society, something that will take care of the poor, that will make jobs available...”49 They are absolutely not at war with the US or the West. And how can they be, when their only concern is to somehow make both ends meet. But the US presents them as religious zealots, fanatics, bent upon destroying the West. And this propaganda went to the extent that even the former US Vice President, Dan Quayle50 and the former Secretary General of NATO, Willy Claus, declared Islam as a great threat as Communism had ever been.51 There are some people, rather violent from every society, every religion, but labelling Islam as a “Green Menace” indicates something far serious than a seemingly innocuous label of “fundamentalism.” Islam is facing a propaganda war at its climax, as once was it against the Communist threat, which Strobe Talbott later confirmed “the real point, however, is that [the Soviet threat] never was.” In- terestingly, the same threat of Islam is attributed selectively to different societies in different degrees. American politicians and scholars are simply inconsistent in their application of the new term “Islamism,” less for cognitive and more for political reasons. They like to profess their relativistic compla- cency in cases that they prefer, on political grounds or because of cowardice, to treat with civility and to reserve their moral intransi- A WAR ON ISLAM? 72 gence and “absolute values” for other cases. For example, they like to be secular and democratic in problems concerning Iran, but Realpolitik and courteous relativists when dealing with Saudi Ara- bia or Kuwait. They simply fabricate gods for an ad hoc use in political power game. A shift of focus from “Islamic fundamentalism” to Islamism is simply an attempt to show there is something wrong with the teachings of the Holy Qur’an, which turns Islam into a global threat. These efforts reinforce the tendency to equate Islam with violence, and the failure to distinguish between the illegitimate use of religion by individuals and the faith and practice of the majority of the world’s Muslims who, like adherents of other religious traditions, wish to live in peace. To equate Islam uncritically with extremism is to judge Islam only by those who wreak havoc—a standard not applied to Judaism and Christianity. Thus despite the track record of Christianity and Western countries when it comes to making war, developing weapons of mass destruction, and imposing their imperialist designs, Islam and Muslim culture are portrayed as somehow peculiarly and inherently expansionist and prone to violence and warfare. There are lessons to be learned from a past in which fear of a monolithic Soviet threat often blinded the United States to the Soviet bloc’s diversity, led to uncritical support for anti-Commu- nist dictatorships, and enabled the “free world” to tolerate the suppression of legitimate dissent and massive human rights violations by governments that labelled the opposition “Communist” or “So- cialist.” The risk today is that exaggerated fears will lead to a double standard in the promotion of democracy and human rights in the Muslim world as can be witnessed by the Western concern about and action to support democracy in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe but the muted or ineffective response to the promotion of democracy in the Middle East and the defence of Mus- lims in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Chechnya. Treating Islamic experiences as exceptional is an invitation to long-term conflict.

2.3 The Real Roots of Islamic Resistance What is projected as Islamism is in fact resistance posed by SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 73

Muslim societies to the status quo of American intervention in their internal affairs and continued domination over all aspects of their existence. Any direct Western intervention in Muslim countries – even at the behest of the government in power – invariably creates a hostile reaction among the masses boosting the appeal of resistance movements, which most often are the only voices of political dissent in the Muslim world. Islam becomes a legitimate target because it is rightly considered a motivating force for mass mobilisation against injustice, repression, aggression and domination. However, it has been wrongly assumed by many in the West that rooting out Islam is possible and with it would end all resistance to western domination and interference in the Muslim world. So far, the indirect war on Islam has been contributing to the appeal of a call for return to Islam. There is hardly any empirical data available on the subject, but it is quite plausible to believe that the Western posture towards revolutionary Shi’a Iran has contributed tremendously to the Islamic call in Sunni Muslim countries. Likewise, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on Christmas Eve in 1979, created an anti-socialist backlash even among leftist intellectuals in Pakistan, Algeria and even in such avowedly Marx- ist countries, such as Southern Yemen.52 Besides, the chronic problem of Palestine, Bosnia and Muslim states under the former Soviet Union (Tajikistan, Chechnya), have undoubtedly been tremendous contributing factors in this direction. But, under the rising sun of the 21st century two momentous developments are taking place, one of them in the Muslim world and the other in the West. First, Islamic revivalism is fast taking root in the newly independent Muslim countries, especially among the intelligentsia many of whom received their higher education in some of the most renowned seats of learning in North America and Europe. Towards the end of the first half of the 20th century, there was only one visible Islamic revivalist movement in the Muslim world – Jamaat Islami of Pakistan. The Ikhwan al Muslimoon of Egypt was already in ruins and scattered at the behest of the Brit- ish in 1948. At that time undoubtedly there were many in the Muslim world who would subscribe to the views of these two movements. However, by 1950, Jamaat was the only organised move- A WAR ON ISLAM? 74 ment of its kind left in the Muslim world. Today nearly all major Muslim countries have active Islamic movements. Additionally, Iran (a Shi’a state) and Sudan (Sunni state) are already functioning Islamic states. Algeria, Egypt and Yemen seem to be next in line. Should this happen, other Muslim states may not necessarily fall like dominoes. Which and how many other Muslim states will adopt Islamic polity shall to a great extent depend upon how already Islamic states behave and are allowed to survive. In any case, in as much as the Westernised political elites have so far spectacularly failed in seeking solutions to the chronic problems of their respective societies, Islamic revivalists armed with the most advanced education and training that the modern world can offer, seem to be the most formidable and able adversaries to their brittle regimes. The last forty years saw the emergence of two Islamic states (Sudan and Iran), and two (Algeria and Afghanistan) nearly succeeded in doing so. The next forty years may see the emergence of four or five more such states. It means that by the 2030’s, there may be six or seven functioning Islamic states in the world. Two patterns of international relations may be predicated regarding this development. First, provided Western ambivalence towards Islam is not abated, these Islamic states, like Shi’a Iran and Sunni Sudan today, will go out of their way to cooperate among themselves and support one another politically, economically and otherwise, notwithstanding their sectarian differences. Secondly, despite Iran’s hostility towards the West, which is more situational than ideological, these Islamic states would love to create a happy symbiosis with the West (as well as with others) i.e. unless others continue to attack and subvert Islamic revivalism. None of the Is- lamic revivalist movements, not even the hated Ikhwan of Egypt and the Jamaat of Pakistan, have been inherently anti-Western in the same sense as the socialist ideology or the Soviet Union. The second event of great significance that is going on at the time of writing is the transformation of the Western religious land- scape. With a worldwide migratory movement from technologi- cally less developed countries of the so-called Third World towards the industrially developed nations of the West, both Europe and SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 75

North America are homes not merely to Christians and Jews. They are also now hosting Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and scores of other large and small belief systems. Of these, Islam undoubtedly is the fastest growing community. This growth of Islam in the West is not due to immigration alone. In significant respects, it is also because of Da’wa (missionary activity invitation to Islam) and conversion to Islam.53 The future of this community in the West on the one hand, and quite significantly, the nature of the relationship between the West and future Islamic states on the other hand, shall to one degree or the other depend on the resourcefulness, organisation and political and social savvy with which Muslims in the West compose themselves. With their high level of education, professionalism and income, especially in America and Canada what is needed is unity in organisation, resource mobilisation and social and political policy before they could be perceived as “model minorities” recreating the correct image of Islam, making their presence felt and wisely exercising their political clout. The reality is that Islamic revivalism is not the product of the Iranian revolution but of a global reassertion of Islam that has already been under way and that extends from Libya to Malaysia. The causes of the resurgence are many and differ from country to country, but common catalysts and concerns are identifiable. Secu- lar nationalism or liberalism has not provided a sense of national identity or produced strong and prosperous societies. The governments in Muslim countries—mostly non-elected, authoritarian, and dependent on security forces—have been unable to establish their political legitimacy. They have been blamed for the failure to: achieve economic self-sufficiency; stem the widening gap between rich and poor; halt widespread corruption; liberate Palestine; and resist Western political and cultural hegemony. The disastrous defeat of the Arabs by Israel in the 1967 war discredited Arab nationalism and triggered soul-searching in the Arab world. In South Asia, the 1971 civil war in Pakistan leading to the creation of Bangladesh undermined the idea that nationalism alone could act as the glue to hold together an ethnically and linguistically diverse Muslim population. One finds similar cata- A WAR ON ISLAM? 76 lytic events or conditions in Lebanon, Iran, Malaysia (the riots of 1969) and many other countries. Islamic revivalism is in many ways the successor to failed nationalist programmes. This phenomenon, however, is replaced by the exposure of US intentions to wage a war on Islam under different labels. The founders of many Islamic movements were formerly participants in nationalist movements: Hasan al-Banna of the Mus- lim Brotherhood in Egypt, Rashid Ghannoushi of Tunisia’s Ren- aissance party, and Abbasi Madani of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria. Islamic movements have offered an Islamic alternative or solution, a third way distinct from Capitalism and Communism. Leaders of the new movements will be those who are convinced of the US and its allies’ intentions behind the war on terrorism. This is a valid argument that the US imposed secularism and dependence on Western models of development have proved politically inadequate and socially corrosive, undermining the identity and moral fabric of Muslim societies. Asserting that Islam is not just a collection of beliefs and ritual actions but a comprehensive ideology embracing public as well as personal life, they call for the implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law, as a social blueprint. While a significant majority of leaders within the Muslim world seek to work within the system, a vast majority of the population believes that the rulers in their countries are anti-Islamic and that they have a divine mandate to unseat them and impose their vision. On the other hand, demonisation of Islam proceeded throughout the last two decades, but by the close of the century a more nuanced, broad-based, diverse Islamic world was increasingly evident. Beneath the radical facade, apart from the small, marginalised extremist groups, a quiet revolution has taken place. While a secularist, pro-Western minority had sought to impose change from above in the name of liberalism and secularism, many others reaffirmed their faith and pursued a bottom-up approach, seeking a gradual transition towards Islamic society through words, preaching and social and political activity. In many Muslim countries Islamic organisations had become energetic in social reform, establishing much-needed schools, hospitals, clinics, legal societies, fam- SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 77 ily assistance programmes, Islamic banks and insurance companies, and publishing houses. These Islamically oriented groups offered social welfare services cheaply and constituted an implicit critique of the failure of the regimes in the countries to provide adequate services. Along with social activism went increased political participation. In the late 1980s, economic failures led to mass demonstra- tions and food riots in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Jordan. Moreo- ver, the demand for democratisation that accompanied the fall of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe touched the Middle East as well. Throughout the decade many governments in the Muslim world charged that Islamic activists were merely violent revolutionaries whose lack of popular support would be evident if elections were held, but few governments showed themselves willing to put this claim to the test. When political systems were opened up and Islamic organisations were able to participate in elections, the results stunned many in the Muslim world and in the West. Although Muslims were not allowed to organise separate official political parties, in Egypt and Tunisia they emerged as the leading opposition. In the November 1989 elections in Jordan they captured 32 of the 80 seats in the Lower House of Parliament and held five cabinet-level positions and the office of Speaker of the Lower House. Algeria, however, was the turning point. The repressive and corrupt governments in Muslim states and their supporters in the West can blame themselves for the rise of Islamic movements. In societies intolerant of dissent, the mosque is the only place where people can speak freely and organise. In Turkey, Egypt and other nations, Islamic movements appeal to the common man – “non-fundamentalists” – disgusted with the corruption and inefficiency of traditional parties. Governments often use bans to eliminate the opposition. There is reason to ban movements that have a track record of using terrorism or seeking to seize power so as to impose dictatorship. But many do not. The Islamic Action Front in Jordan, for example, competes in elections. Similarly, Turkey’s Islamic party followed all democratic norms and rules. It won 21 per cent of the vote and governed in coalition with a secular party. There was little A WAR ON ISLAM? 78 danger that Mr. Erbakan would have made Turkey an Islamic State that could have posed a serious threat to its own stability and to the survival of the West. Yet the military, which has staged three coups since 1960, pressed Mr. Erbakan to shut down Government- sponsored religious schools that have been open for years and to crack down on religious expression, such as the wearing of headscarves in government offices. In a bid to target Islam, efforts of pro-American regimes to suppress Islamic movements are common. The risk of banning Islamic movements and expression is that such steps can end up radicalising them. Like most political groups, Islamic organisations do not dis- appear when they are banned. The emotional and frustrated young elements simply turn to methods other than politics. The cruellest example is Algeria, where the government cancelled elections in 1992 rather than allow victory by an alliance of Islamic groups. The alliance was then outlawed and its leaders jailed. Its radicals turned to armed conflict with the military junta in response to the government’s terrorism. The ensuing bloodbath has killed more than 80,000 people. No government should sit back while violent groups or those promising dictatorship seek to take power. It is not always evident when these dangers exist. It is clear, however, that governments in the Middle East and North Africa have often used this excuse to club the opposition. They should instead compete with Islamic parties by making their own administrations more competent and honest. In the face of repression, however, the Western world stands silent – a world that showed too much concern about the bloodless military takeover in Pakistan in October 1999. The conventional wisdom had been blind-sided. While most feared and were on their guard against “other Irans,” the Islamic Salvation Front’s victory in Algeria raised the spectre of an Islamic movement coming to power through democratic elections and ballots worried many world leaders even more than bullets. The justification for accepting the Algerian military’s seizure of power was the charge that the FIS really only believed in “one man, one vote, one time.” The perceived threat from revolutionary Islam was intensified by the fear that it would SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 79

capture power from within the political system by democratic means. In general, movements are both rural and urban-based, drawing heavily from the lower middle and middle classes. They have gained particular support among recent university graduates and young professionals, male and female. The movements recruit from mosques and on campuses where, contrary to popular assumptions, their strength is not so much in the religious faculties and the humanities as in science, engineering, education, law and medicine. Organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Jor- dan and Sudan as well as South Asia’s Jamaat-i-Islami consist in large part, of university graduates and professionals. The Islamic Salvation Front’s Abbasi Madani, for example, obtained his doctor- ate in education from a British university, while his younger col- league Abdelqader Hachani is a petrochemical engineer and a doc- toral candidate at a French university. Seventy-six per cent of the Front’s candidates in municipal and parliamentary elections in 1990 and 1991 held postgraduate degrees, and a significant portion of the leadership and membership can be described as middle-class professionals. In many Muslim countries an alternative elite exists, its members with modern education but self-consciously oriented towards Islam and committed to social and political activism as a means of bringing about a more Islamic society or system of government. This phenomenon is reflected in the presence—and often dominance—of Islamic minded people in professional associations of lawyers, engineers, professors and physicians. Where permitted to participate in society, devoted Muslims are found in all sectors, including government and even the military.

2.4 Islam not a threat Despite all the given facts, even if all the Muslim countries turn into Islamic states, they would still not pose a threat to the US or its allies. If no Muslim country is occupied or oppressed, and there is no interference in the affairs of Muslim states, then there is no question of any Muslim thinking of undermining western interests. However, a threat remains, regardless of the-just-Muslim or A WAR ON ISLAM? 80

Islamic states, as long as Muslims are treated worse than animals and as long as the present international apartheid order remains intact. The growth of Islamic movements has drawn much attention from the mass media and academia. The focus of the American Crusade “Infinite Justice” is also on religious opposition, termed as Islamic extremism in Muslim countries. Various theories have been put forward due to deep-rooted western interest in the issue. Most of these are products of the minds, which are detached from ground reality in Muslim world. The problem is that Muslims copy alien ideas and try to present them in their own way without understanding the actual phenomenon or the motives behind such theories. Suggestions like integration of religious seminaries (madrassa) with western oriented education system and change in the curriculum of these madrassa are product of the thinking that these schools are breeding grounds of “extremism” and “militancy.” There are growing calls from abroad and from “moderate” cir- cles in Pakistan to seriously tackle head-on the “fundamentalist” opposition and modernise their madrassas. Before falling into the trap that has long been set for Muslims, they need to clarify some of the misconceptions, like considering that people with religious views are in a minority. The number of elected representatives from the religious parties may be limited to a few, but when it comes to their views on international relations or Pakistan’s foreign policy, at least two out of three Pakistanis share the same views with the leaders of the religious parties. Another misconception is that the Is- lamic lobby comprises for the most part, of young men from the poorer segments of society and their frustrations are expressed through active resistance to westernised lifestyle. The “liberal” idea now is to somehow make modernity attractive for the masses because “the kings of Iran and Afghanistan and Ayub Khan of Pakistan did nothing to make modernity attractive for the masses.” Modernity is not associated with mass schooling and construction of hospitals as argued by the author. Nor is it the root cause of friction and “fundamentalism”.54 The tension arises when world opinion makers and Muslim rulers sideline a sizeable chunk of the Muslim population and their views in a bid to impose SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 81

what is dictated to them from London or Washington. The reason that people like Musharraf and Mubarak take popular will for granted is that they make the world believe, the opposing views belong only to the religious leaders who with their best efforts cannot win more than a few seats in general elections, as when dictatorships allow “free and fair” elections to take place. It is argued that the madrassas are changing from conservatism to revivalism because of the texts which refute western doctrines; the pamphlets about the Crusades in Afghanistan and Kashmir; and the interaction of madrassa students with Jihadi elements. This is not the matter of interaction or pamphlets. Unlike most ignorant Americans, who cannot tell if Pakistan is in the Middle East or South Asia despite a Masters degree, the beauty of formerly colo- nised societies is that almost everyone – from a cab driver to the sweeper and street vendors – is fully aware of all the trends of national and international politics. The outside world appears alien and hostile to not only the madrassa but also almost everyone who understands the loss of Muslims’ independence and freedom in decision-making. Living in a Muslim country gives us an opportunity to meet people from all walks of life and know about their views in this regard. In the post September 11 situation, General Musharraf tried to make everyone believe that only 10-15 per cent minority, be- longing to religious parties, is against his policies. But talk to anyone in the streets of Pakistan and the answer would be: The real minority is not just the rich and powerful but also the sell-outs who sacrifice the overall interest of the State for their narrow personal interests or the interests of foreign powers. As for the western doctrines of capitalism, liberalism, human rights, etc., are concerned we see far more active resistance to them in the West than in Mus- lim countries due to the lack of understanding about their negative consequences. Why then put all the blame on the madrassa? Another misconception is that poverty is translated into Islamic zeal. Poverty is a relative term. The Taliban, for instance, were perfectly content with what they had. However, their dreams to own Mercedes cars, posh bungalows, Surrey palaces, expensive dressing, countless servants, etc would have not only psychologically hurt A WAR ON ISLAM? 82 them but they would also have resorted to plundering public funds to satisfy their greed. Their poverty did not turn into Islamic zeal. It was US indifference and insensitivity with which others, including the UN, treated them while they were in power. It is wrong to bring in class hatred as an element in Islamic movements. This is a theory that simply degrades these movements to the level of the revenge of the have-nots from the haves. There is no doubt that most Muslim countries are heading towards anarchy. However, its root causes do not lie in poverty or “fundamentalism.” At this point we need to clarify the revival of underlying fear from madrassa and the incorrect approaches to sub- due Islamic movements. In a broader perspective, it seems that operation “Infinite Jus- tice” is going to give the Islamic movements a global dimension. The defining moment in this trend was no doubt the overthrow, in 1979, of the pro-western monarchy in Iran, and the establishment of the modern world’s first Republic in the name of Islam. Since then, the world has seen the ascendancy of a variety of new political Islamic groups in various parts of the Muslim world: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, FIS in Algeria, Taliban in Afghani- stan, NIF in Sudan, Refah in Turkey, Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, etc. The Islamic resurgence has been mainstream not extremist, pervasive not isolated. The US is fearful of any movement and government that claims to be Islamic. It wants to relegate religion to the private sphere to end any possibility of such States standing in the way of its hegemonic designs. Islam was a political religion from the very beginning. The Prophet Muhammad, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, preached messages threatening the interests of the Establishment of Makkah at the time. So he came to challenge the ruling aristocracy, and he finally won the over and set-up an Ummah or religious community. He was a political as well as a religious leader, and all his successors — the Caliphs, took the same positions in the Islamic community. So Islam is essentially a religion that combines political and religious architecture in itself. Political Islamic groups nowadays defy the secularisation policies of their governments, and advocate restoring the pure form of SECOND PROBLEM: TARGETING ISLAM 83

Islamic governance. They criticise their ruling elites as deviants from the true path of Islam, and criticise modernisation projects – such as gay, lesbian, and prostitutes’ rights under the broad banner of human rights — as puppet mimicry of Western imperialism. Even further, they contend that such modernisation efforts lay the foundation of social decay and economic retardation of Muslim states. Today, all the political Islamic groups in various Muslim countries share more or less similar basic ideas, even though their expression and means of applying those ideas in reality show some differences. Yet the gathering storm of tyranny will unify them to save the core of Islam and reduce their differences to a negligible extent. Classification of these movements as radical, moderate and legal fundamentalists depends on the political environment in their respective countries. They are all peaceful movements until they are pushed against the wall. Islamic movements are not produced in the madrassa alone. They are the direct product of recent historical development rather than the remote past. So in this sense there is no connection between pre-colonial Islamic trends and the movements we observe today. Even in Pakistan, the response of political parties to the changing situation varies considerably from what it used to be a decade or so ago. On issues such as sanctions and the attack on Afghanistan, all the religious parties find themselves in unanimous agreement, but isolated by the military junta. Their combined force will turn into a collective movement of unimaginable intensity. Such movements are not only the product of cultural and intellectual stagnation, western colonialism, and the failure of secular models, but also of the efforts directed at marginalising the views and aspirations of a sizeable chunk of the population. It is a direct response to the external pressure on and internal crisis of Muslim society, and the change indicates that the pressure and crisis have become stronger than ever. To some extent, it is a social movement of introspection and self-salvation. Their membership is neither formal nor limited to the Taliban in the madrassas, not even we see their silent supporters in street protests. It is wrong to assume that the well-educated intellectuals join Islamic movements because they cannot find positions or profes- A WAR ON ISLAM? 84 sions that corresponds to their expectations or visions of themselves. This under-evaluation of motives ignores the sympathies of many successful people like former ISI Chief, General Hamid Gul and former Chief of Staff, Aslam Baig. Joining an Islamic movement does not require membership of a religious party either. For instance, it is sufficient for Imran Khan, leader of Tahrik-i-Insaf (justice movement), to share the same views as the “fundamentalists”. The dangerous trend is to grossly exaggerate the Islamic threat, simplify the causes of Islamic movements, and annoy the majority with repressive measures. Islamic movements are a spontaneous response of the Muslim masses, irrespective of their political affiliations, economic status, education level and social background, to strive against the lack of prospects of genuine power sharing and equal opportunity in national and international affairs. As long as Muslim states are faltering to have a say in their internal affairs; as long as they are not free in expressing their free will in foreign policy; and as long as they are faltering to give confidence to their people on the future of their life, these movements will continue to grow. Without a significant breakthrough from American-inspired domination, economic stagnation and social disruption, it will be very difficult to reverse this trend. Freedom and democracy is not the monopoly of the corrupt ruling elite of the American club of dictators and despots in the Mus- lim world. If social peace and harmony is to accompany the path of progress in the Muslim world, the religious groups and institutions should not be driven into a corner. The Western mind and policy makers have to accept the right of other peoples to independence, freedom and cultural autonomy, especially those who have behind them, a long history and a great civilisation. Diversity and variety in our world, within a framework of mutual recognition and co-operation, is in a sense, a guarantee for the future. THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 85 3 Third Problem: Media Irresponsibility

One cannot hesitate to praise the reporters who work for the major international media organisations. These reporters seek to find the truth on both sides of controversies around the world, and to present that truth as fairly as they can. For the most part, the people who report from the field for organisations, such as BBC and CNN, do attempt to explore the facts; they take great risks to do so; and we should mourn those who die in the attempt. Nonetheless, they are human. Their questions, their assumptions — even their styles of dress — show that they ultimately tend to have Western attitudes toward the subjects they cover. And the behaviour of reporters is nothing compared to that of their bosses, the editors and the media executives and the overall policies of their institutions. These bosses are driven, not only by a pursuit of truth, but also by an awareness that their organisation will not survive, in a competitive capitalist economy, if it does not show viewers what the establishment and the policy makers want. One may argue that this phenomenon is not limited to capitalist news organisations. Al-Jazeera, too, is popular not only because it shows Muslims what they would prefer to see. The difference is that Al-Jazeera broadcasts what the Western media has been ignoring for decades. There is a major difference between the news executives failing to recognise what interests the viewers and what they decide to put on air to support a specific government policy. The so-called mainstream media in the West is not broadcasting all the material only to stop viewers from switching to other channels but also to create consensus and mass acceptance of a particular doctrine. Al-Jazeera is a tyro in this regard. All it has been focusing on is exposing the facts deliberately ignored by the western media. Of course, people do tend not to be very interested in eliminating A WAR ON ISLAM? 86 their own errors and ignorance, but that is a fact of human nature with which all dedicated journalists must contend. The problem is of the career pathing that turns dedicated journalists into promot- ers of a specific point of policy. Most Western journalists tend to become the advocates of their government policies rather than objective and dedicated reporters of the facts. People from one religion or culture are not normally in the habit of trying to understand the ways in which another religion or culture might be better than their own. Even when the religion or culture is as highly oppressive as medieval Christianity was, its citizens would frequently prefer to fight and die for it rather than attempt to understand the other side. This is a principle of human behaviour, equally applicable to Muslims and to Westerners. The difference, in this case, is that Westerners tend to control the media. Al-Jazeera, a notable exception, came under consider- able pressure, from Washington, to stop telling the full truth that it was able to uncover about Osama bin Laden, including his videotaped presentations. The arguments from Washington rested, essentially, upon the fear that his words might incite anti-Western sentiment, and might even contain code instructions to his followers — although there was, and is, no evidence of any such thing. These were vague fears that no self-respecting court, even in America, would have upheld. Most people consider it wiser to understand one’s enemy than to censor him. Thus, books about Timothy McVeigh and his terrorist act in Oklahoma City have sold many thousands of copies. One cannot help feeling that the whole Al- Jazeera episode illustrated the extent to which Bush will prefer security over freedom in a pinch — the shallowness, that is, of his faith that truth is powerful and unstoppable. The US intends to open a new satellite channel for the Middle East in particular to counter Al-Jazeera and win hearts because it has realised that it is losing its so-called war on terrorism. There are many newspapers, magazines, websites and other sources of information in the Middle East. Many are available only in Arabic or other languages of the Muslim lands. These are not under the control of the western media. Even in the US, many people prefer to read a local newspaper, even if the major newspapers (e.g., New THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 87

York Times) do provide a more polished and professional appearance. Surely this is true in Asia and Africa as well. All this is making the US propaganda machinery redundant and oppression is in the air as a result of its not seeing any other way to win hearts and minds. Internet sites are blocked regularly and writers are forced, cajoled, purchased or persuaded to toe the US official propaganda line. Al-Jazeera has learned from CNN’s example and when the US found traces of its own tricks in Al-Jazeera’s reporting, it started crying that Al-Jazeera’s presentation was not balanced. Taking a political stance is no more helpful to BBC, CNN, and it would not help Al-Jazeera if it followed Western propaganda lines. The public needs accurate information. CNN has lost its respect, in the US and elsewhere, by hiding the news and increasing the political attitudes one can readily see on small, all time propaganda channels. Similarly, Americans are in a sad position of hoping and believing that crime is someone else’s problem – until it attacks their own lives, at which point they suddenly careen off to the opposite extreme, finding themselves victimised not only by vicious criminals but also by a law enforcement apparatus and legal systems that seem terribly ineffective in protecting the innocent. At such moments, the American who happily lets crime be someone else’s problem discovers that the rest of his society still sees it that way – which is to say, he is on his own. How can America devote more money than any other nation to crime control? How can it have one of the world’s highest rates of incarceration – and yet simulta- neously suffer such high rates of violent crimes? Why are so many Americans so angry? Why must so many of their children take Ritalin in order to survive a day at school? Do Islamic nations have such problems? The American media does not say and therefore American citizens do not know. What they do know is that some Islamic nations cut off your hand for stealing and stone you for adultery – or something like that, anyway – and that sounds too extreme, so Islam must not have anything to teach us in the areas of crime and justice. This is the simple-minded extent to which the wealthy media conglomerates help ordinary Americans out of their terrible dilemma. A WAR ON ISLAM? 88

The levels of violence experienced by ordinary citizens depend upon many factors. The US might be much more diverse a country than, say, Pakistan, but the situation in Pakistan is no less complex than the US. The American may learn from their media’s pass- ing comments that Muslims in Pakistan have expressed their extreme intolerance by killing fourteen Christians in a church. They, however, may never know who was behind the attacks – “extremist” Muslims or Indian agents to give a bad name to Pakistan that could help the Indians seeking to give Pakistan a bad name, and thereby help the Indian government convince its Western counterparts in declaring Pakistan an extremist and terrorist state. It might be odd to attack the media in this regard. Undoubt- edly, all facts about low crime rates in Continental Europe and the Far East (e.g., Japan, Singapore), none of which are predominantly Muslim, are reliably reported throughout the American media. The gap, nevertheless, appears when it comes to reporting about a country demonised by the US, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. Al- most 99.99 per cent of Americans had formed a preconceived idea that the Taliban government were tyrannical and who oppressed the Afghan people beyond human imagination. Crime in the US is not a simple matter of religion. Nor, for that matter, do Iran and Afghanistan prove that Islam is necessarily violent. What is wrong is to associate everything wrong with Islam or Islamic practices and making it an acceptable fact merely through ceaseless repetition. Its attention snared by this latest crisis, the media have simplis- tically presented two conflicting and inaccurate extremes. On the one hand, there is Afghanistan, the poorest and most devastated Islamic nation on earth; and on the other hand there is the United States, the largest and in some ways the wealthiest non-Islamic nation. Such a contrast invites the conclusion that “we” should go “over there” to help “them” with their problems if not through sanctions, then through war, occupation, regime change and pro- longed military stay. This US versus Afghanistan contrast also ignores the other reality, which is that if you could find an Islamic region that had not been devastated by imperial colonialists, armies and slave-traders during the past two centuries, you might discover a moderate, tol- THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 89 erant, world-class source of culture and knowledge. Certainly that was the case during the Middle Ages, when scholars in Baghdad were preserving works of Aristotle, something that Christian monks in Europe would gladly have burned. One hopes the world never forgets why the little figures governing the American financial, mathematical and scientific worlds are called “Arabic” numerals. From Berber carpets and Persian rugs in New York, to the Moorish architecture of southern California, Americans owe more than they know to ancient and intelligent cultures of the Middle East. Those cultures could still make an outstanding contribution to the West, given half a chance. Seeing such realities, one can only shake one’s head at the pathetic caricature of “news coverage” that today’s media provide to the inhabitants of the most powerful nation on Earth. It is not that Islam is not what it once was. It is as much tolerant as it was when the Vikings were able to trade in relative safety with Baghdad a thousand years ago. Jews could live safely there too. To find the reasons for the general Islamic inability to trust the western world, European and Americans need to look in the mirror. It is wrong to assume that as the generations pass, those experiences fall into history particularly when the colonialists come back with refined colonialism and try to interfere in the internal affairs of Muslim countries and impose social, political, economic and military solutions that only suit imperial interests. Islam has nothing to do with the Muslims’ attitude towards the West. The Western media makes the people believe that allowing religion to run government is just a bad idea; that it sometimes makes life a little happier for its own believers, but it does so at the price of setting itself up as a life-or-death adversary of everyone else. The fact, however, is that Islam is not running governments in Egypt, or any other country from Algeria, to Pakistan, further East to In- donesia and Malaysia. All the problems with the Muslim countries are the product of the western policies. If Islam were responsible for dictatorship and poverty, there would never have been any cos- mopolitan centres such as Cordoba and Baghdad. Islam survived for all these centuries, not by running around the world making enemies, but rather by presenting a perspective that helps ordinary people in their daily lives. If Americans were A WAR ON ISLAM? 90 more familiar with Islam, they might be less inclined towards the fearful, counterproductive, anti-Muslim steps just mentioned. One must regret that the Western media have not done more to portray Islam as a collection of diverse, interesting cultures and philoso- phies. It is as though the same editors who wrote about “godless Communism,” seeing no difference between the U.S.S.R. and “Red China” in the 1960s, were writing about Saudi Arabia and Afghani- stan today. Perhaps one cannot expect better from a press driven by profitability. If the American public wants to hear about Mus- lims mostly in the context of terrorism, holy war, and other extremes, then that is what the media will give them.

3.1 New Lexicon for sensitised times. A careful study of the irresponsible Western print and electronic media reveals some awful euphemisms and double speak with the appearance of some interesting terms for the sensitised times. In a bid to avoid hurting other people’s ego, homeless are now called “non-goal-oriented,” kickbacks are “after-sales-service,” nudism is “clothing-optional life-style,” childless are “child-free,” topless women are simply “top-free,” and artificial insemination is “alternative insemination.” The problem, however is that this brave new lexicon does not apply to Muslims; neither do they qualify for the same standard of free speech. Sensitised euphemisms become negative connotation and free speech is defined differently when it comes to Islam. The issues of free speech and religion as it affects Muslims are very interesting. At the heart of the matter is a struggle for political recognition by Muslims on the one hand, and maintenance of political dominance over international affairs by a pro Israel lobby, on the other hand a David and Goliath battle for a political voice in foreign affairs. The absence of Muslim response reflects the status quo of silent Muslim communities, which have accepted to acqui- esce to media inaccuracy, stereotypes and downright bigotry against Islam. The new sensitised lexicon tries to avoid offence at all costs – even imaginary offence. Lepers have become “people with leprosy,” slaves have become “enslaved people,” even “right hand” has been THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 91

deleted in the Bible text to make it “southpaws.” However, negative stereotypes towards Muslims and Arabs continue to marginalize their views and force silence upon them in political and media spheres. History has set a precedence for anti Muslim stereotypes in Europe since the appearance of Islam in the seventh century. In her book, “Europe and the Mystique of Islam,” Maxime Rodinson comments, “...derogatory and abusive myths about the Saracens were widespread among the Christian and Jewish masses.” According to former Congressman Paul Findley, due to negative connotations associated with Muslims, most Westerners “view Is- lam with concern, if not alarm... Muslims are seen as the most common source of terrorism and senseless violence... Muslims are...portrayed as the bad guys, Jews as the victims... Muslims are...intolerant of other religions and eager to use physical force to expand Islam...[and]...are often cited as a sinister threat to...democracy and the US Constitution” This sort of stereotyping, up until now, has quashed accurate Muslim portrayal to non-Muslims. More importantly, it discounts the legitimacy of Muslims’ rights in the political process. Books, such as “The Lucifer Principle,” scientifically explains the Muslims penchant for violence (it seems to lie in the genes) and inability to lead governments. In a JAMA publication, Israeli doctors provide reasons for why Arabs stab Israelis; apparently, Arabs are under an Islamic haze that obscures rationality and clear thinking.55 News- papers and magazines, like the New York Times and US News and World Report, regularly feature the anti Muslim vitriol of propaganda specialists like A. M. Rosenthal and Mortimer Zuckerman. Unfortunately, free speech has become hostage to an ugly form of politics, where the demand for equity and justice is overshad- owed by special agendas. It is typical for anti-Islam authors to con- veniently hide behind the banner of democracy and free speech when protesters criticise their works. And if Muslims criticise such works, they are labelled as “fundamentalists” or “Islamists.” It is interesting to note that if Muslims criticise work that explains violent behaviour and “killer cultures” in terms of race, culture and genes, they are “zealots” or “Islamists” (a term carrying derogatory connotation) merely because it relates to Arabs and Islam. On the A WAR ON ISLAM? 92 other hand, if one makes similar statements about Jews, they are considered an “anti Semite” regardless of the fact that Arabs and Jews are Semites. Free speech has become a political football. When Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” was banned in most Muslim countries, Western governments, press and authors raised the banners of free speech. Yet in Britain, literary works authored by Northern Irish writers who are critical of Britain’s conduct are banned regardless of free speech. The Israeli government tried to ban the sale of books in America for a book recounting the tactics of Mossad in Israel. In the US, Christian organisations tried to ban the release of the movie “Last Temptation of Christ.” These very same religious organisations routinely try to ban books like “Huckleberry Finn” or “Slaugh- terhouse Five” from the public school curricula. Yet, when Islam is the issue, protests are considered censorship. The double standards and hypocrisy of the media is everywhere. The Palestinians are the victims of mass expulsions, people who have lost their land, three million of them, and who are now refugees in Diaspora, prevented from the universally accepted right of return. How is it that they are portrayed collectively as terrorists bent on killing Jews? Israel, the US, and Arab countries pursue terrorists aggressively when they are Arabs but the Muslims somehow let state terrorism off the hook. Even individual criminal acts and terrorism committed by others go unpunished. Over 12 years ago, a letter bomb killed Alex Odeh, regional director of an Arab organisation in California. Two suspects fled to Israel and the FBI has a reward, but no political pressure is applied on Israel to extradite them. Why could the US not send its commandos to abduct the alleged killers or enforce economic sanctions on Israel to comply with UN resolutions? On the other hand, a Wall Street Journal editorial, “Why Stere- otypes Are So Hard to Eradicate,” stated: “Virtually every overseas act of anti American terrorism in recent memory has been committed by an Islamic group in the name of its religion,” and “Most anti American terrorists are Muslim.” On the contrary, according to the State Department’s Patterns of Global Terrorism 1997 report, there were 123 anti US attacks in that year: 97 occurred in THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 93

Latin America, seven took place in Europe and six in Asia. The Middle East ranked fourth as a location of anti American attacks.” The 1996 statistics showed a similar pattern. The effects of anti Muslim rhetoric should not be underesti- mated. A language arts teacher in Torrance, California, included “bomb” in a vocabulary list and provided the illustration, “Mus- lims bombed Oklahoma City because Allah (God) told them to do so.” Because of such propaganda, Muslims around the world experience a variety of civil rights violations from verbal harassment to violent hate crimes, government repression and discrimination. Muslims may not be able to change the attitude and perceptions of Western writers, but at least they can watch their own language to avoid unconsciously repeating the same derogatory connotations such as, “radicals,” “militants,” “fundamentalists,” “zealots,” “Is- lamists,” “Islamism,” “Islamic terrorists,” etc. If zoo can no more be called a zoo, because it has a negative connotation as a place where animals are jailed, and should now be called “International Wildlife Conservation Park,” why should Muslims allow negative terms to be associated with Islam? If the animal-rights people could fight to prove that “wild” is a nasty, specieist adjective implying that all non-human animals are fierce or out of control, why should Muslims allow themselves to remain without rights and speechless in the face of a multitude of belit- tling terms for Islam? Why should Muslims remain the only category of living species to be offended by anyone at will and excluded from the inclusive language altogether?

3.2 Spreading the fear of Islam The only blessing amid the horrors perpetrated by the most brutal post September 11 military coalition is the exposure of the intellectual alliance behind it. This alliance is comprised mainly of American political analysts, who profess devotion to “objectivity,” but are self-deluded victims of a curiously inverted “subjectivity,” indulging in an intolerant zeal for “tolerance,” a passionate attack on passion, and a bigoted denunciation of “bigotry.” “Objectivity” is being confounded with ideological preference and the “objective” ideologues demand Muslims’ conformity to their notion of A WAR ON ISLAM? 94 reality – or what ought to be the state of Muslim societies. Just for political reasons, US officials repeatedly claim that the issue is terrorism, not Islam. On the contrary, its media, academia and political analysts never stop presenting Islam as another “ism” and a replacement for the “Red Menace.” Talking on the Larry King show, Bill Maher, a veteran host at ABC, turned the conversation from Afghanistan and Iraq to Islam and aired the contemporary complaint about Islam that it is a religion “but it is also an ideology, the way Communism was an ideology… I do not separate Muslim fundamentalism from terrorism. They’re two wings on the same bird…”56 Due to such irresponsible remarks, every time a terror strikes, non-Muslims and Muslims alike suspect an Islamic connection. Of course, the disclaimers abound, but a lingering suspicion about Muslims is becoming permanently engraved in the general views of terrorism, even if other groups are identified as the main culprits for a particular incident. All the Muslims need is to settle the issue whether it is a systematic, pre-determined effort to somehow undermine Islam by presenting its followers as rogue, stubborn, insensitive and terrorists, or are such views expressed by Western specialists and anti-Islam policies framed by government officials, just coincidences? A simple observation of events clearly shows that the American media and foreign policy go hand in hand. Either the media takes an initiative for manufacturing consent and the government follows it up through the UN and cruise missile attacks, or the government takes an action and the media comes out with support and moralistic triumphalism. Images and terminology influence public opinion, and a bitter taste is left the way Islam is reported in the daily headlines. The term “Islamic fundamentalism” is so often repeated in relation to violent incidents that naturally a relation with terrorism comes to mind whenever the term “Islamic Fundamentalism” is used. Moreover, these terms have been made so interchangeably that when the US declares a war on terrorism, it seems and means less against terrorism and more against Islam. The problem stems from purposely-propagated negative images about Islam. Western planners are successful in the sense that in THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 95

the court of public opinion, Islam is guilty until proven innocent. Muslims only understand force; brutality and violence are part of Arab civilisation; Islam is an intolerant, segregationist, ‘medieval’, fanatic, cruel, anti-woman religion. The context, framework and setting of any discussion are limited, indeed frozen, by these ideas. Negative images of Islam presented by the media creates a climate within which inhuman sanctions, terrorist missiles attacks and cow- ardly covert operations seem to make sense and get ready approval from the public. Emboldened by the fall of the weakest government in the world – the Taliban – media specialists are now calling the US to openly declare war on Islam. The New York Post ran an article, “A deadly error.” The author pointed one “glaringly weak spot” of the war on terrorism and that is the Bush’s team refusal “to acknowledge that there is an ideology that inspires America’s enemies, preferring to ascribe its motives to simple ‘evil.’ Evil it is, but it follows from the specific set of radical utopian ideas known as militant Islam.”57 Reaching this stage of calling for a declaration of war on Islam took a lot of earlier effort on part of the American media. US corporate news features kept on using Islamic religious symbols to frame stories about violent political events throughout the 1990s. For example, a 1994 story about the end of the disastrous American intervention in Somalia begins with the reporter intoning ominously “night falls on Mogadishu” over the Islamic call to prayer and a backdrop of a mosque silhouetted by a dark, cloudy sky. The report segues to picture bits of destroyed American helicopters and corpses of US marines. The call to prayer in this case, as in many others, forebodes death and terror. Furthermore, this is the only Somali voice in the piece. Some media portrayals of Muslims are reminiscent of the con- trived sense of inevitability that Native American scholar Ward Churchill brings out in his comments about the Orientalist ex- travaganza epic film, “Lawrence of Arabia”: Its major impact was to put a ‘tragic’ but far more humane face upon the nature of Britain’s imperial pretensions in the region, making colonisation of the Ar- abs seem more acceptable — or at least more inevitable — than might have otherwise been the case.58 A WAR ON ISLAM? 96

The US media often relies on pre-existing images of Muslim barbarity in order to explain the need for intervention or to help the US military save face when things do not go as planned. When US Marines were escorting members of the UN out of Somalia in February 1995, ABC News televised a report of a multiple amputa- tion, featuring a man who presumably had just been convicted of theft in an Islamic court. The piece was pure emotion and imagery, seeming to say, with Churchill’s tragic self- righteousness, “look how easily the natives revert to their barbarity once we leave.” According to John Mueller and Karl Mueller: “On average far fewer Americans are killed each year by terrorists than are killed by lightning, deer accidents, or peanut allergies. To call terrorism a threat to national security is scarcely plausible.” The Muellers add, “Economic sanctions may well have been a necessary cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”59 Graham E. Fuller, former vice chairman of the National Intelli- gence Council at the CIA, says, “it is dangerous to divorce terrorism from politics, yet the US media continue to talk about an ab- stract war against terrorism without mention of the issues or context that lie behind them.”60 The negative association of Islam with terrorism exists, but no one has ever asked “Why?” It is simply because the US cannot overcome the Islamophobia. Most Muslim countries are run by tyrants who kill more of their own people than those outside their countries. The military junta in Pakistan and Algeria, and the so-called democracy of Hosnie Mubarak in Egypt are far worse human rights violators than the Taliban. The presumption that only Islamic State would represent a threat to American interests is indeed generous. The issue is not that Islamic states would be oppressive and involved in terrorism. The issue is to eliminate any chance of Islamic revival and Islamic countries’ independent say in their own affairs. The fact remains that US policy does not serve the peoples’ interests; it protects its cop in the Middle East — Israel — and friendly Arab dictators even when they violate human rights, while it slaps sanctions on and takes military actions against countries whose dictators do not comply with Washington’s orders, resulting in suffer- THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 97

ing, starvation and even slaughter, all in the name of teaching tyrants a lesson. Nowhere are the priorities for the US, human rights and democracy, but rather the elimination of the suspected threats to its hegemony by Islamic movements. Consequently, anti-Ameri- can sentiment increases. This mood of the general public is then characterised as “Islamic fundamentalism”, even though the resentment is not rooted in religion but in the US attitude towards their religion. When it turns violent, it is termed “radical Islamic fundamentalism” or “Islamic terrorism.” The various “terrorism experts” promote linkage to the Middle East every time terrorism is specu- lated. They exploit the human suffering of victims, their families, and the fears of the American public. The US and its Allies’ terror is justified in the name of fighting “Islamic terrorism.” The whole world is told that the oppression of the Chechens, Kashmiris and Algerians is part and parcel of a cos- mic struggle against ‘Islamic extremism’ that rages from Gaza to Algeria, from Tehran to Khartoum. Russians, Israelis, Indians and the dictators in Algeria seek Western sympathies and assistance in undermining the roots of Islam. The issue is not terrorism, Taliban or Osama. Debates about terrorism only distract us from the real issue: the powerful US wants to continue dominating the powerless Muslims, manipulating facts to influence public opinion and hence maintaining the status quo. For undermining the roots of Islam the US puts forward those personalities who advocate unconditional assimilation into, support of, sympathy towards, and whole-hearted participation in the social and political system of the US They make virtually no distinction between Muslims and others and they indeed emphasise the commonalities i.e. nationality and race between them before religious considerations. Even Muslim intellectuals never present or explain the principles of Islam in a simple and cogent manner. For its part the western media put forward unqualified individuals or groups as representatives of Islam who may be unethical, deviants, or outright heretics from the religion, with no subjective measures being used to ascertain the qualifications of such people. They present Islamic Shariah as antiquated, irrelevant, authoritarian, unsophisticated and limited. The notion is being popularised A WAR ON ISLAM? 98 that even people who deny the Prophethood of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant peace, and his finality or who commit open shirk (associating partners with the Divine Creator) can be Muslims without knowing it. Other efforts are geared towards removing references to any po- tentially “offensive” terms and institutions, i.e. Madaris, Jihad, de- viance, disbelief heresy, disbeliever, particularly the Arabic terms Kaafir, Kufr, Bid’ah, from their language or speech. Criterion for scholarship or leadership has been changed — insisting that the “real” scholars (Ulamaa) are the politicians, scientists, doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects thus underplaying the role of religious scholarship within society and making it unappealing by portraying it as limited. By making public statements like:” Taliban are not following Islam, or they are not the real Muslims,” the former US Assistant Secretary of State, Karl Inderfurth, US Assistance Secretary of State for South Asia, and other American officials in Islamabad intended to create a nationalistic or ethnic view and approach to Islam, or more accurately, create a new religion that cannot truly be called Islam but rather has some outward aspects of it. It will certainly be one that does not pose a challenge to US domination or offer anything that will make Islam be seen as a viable alternative. Muslims need to respond to the attacks by the opponents of Islam intelligently using authentic proofs and consistent or practical examples. Non-Muslims should be provided with cogent and accurate information and if necessary, engaged through intellectual and effective argument and exposition, to stop making blanket judgments based upon a biased picture or isolated events. Even editorialists in the Muslim world are trying to find faults with the Taliban and others, forgetting at the same time that what is being magnified in their character and policy is the soul and bedrock of American existence. The Muslims have been forced to look into the problems that Afghan society inherited from the decades of war, whereas an honest and critical look at Western societies would reveal a multitude of even more horrendous crimes and tremendous problems in almost every facet of life. US terrorism is so swiftly ignored while the Taliban have to face the wrath of sanctions for THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 99 committing no crime on their own. Muslims should be media-aware and savvy at least to the extent that they know how to effectively contact news organisations and other information outlets in order to challenge what these organisations may propagate that is incorrect or inaccurate and provide them with correct information. Muslims need to guard against accepting handed down notions and incorporating them into one’s work without first subjecting them to critical analysis. The US ambassador to Pakistan and other high level officials, including Bush and other officials in Washington repeatedly claim that the war is not on Islam but on terrorism. However, evidence suggests that it is the US government that is playing a leading role in the media crusade against Islam. For instance, in the Fall of 1994, PBS aired a documentary by journalist Steve Emerson titled “Jihad in America,” followed on the heels of other recent works that put forth the thesis of an elaborate, secret, and centralised network of “Islamic terrorists.” Evidence within the programme suggests that Emerson had access to official government intelligence. Most of the programme either consisted of interviews staged by Emerson, or clips from Mus- lim conferences. However, some clips appear to be from other sources, such as home videos confiscated from Muslims in FBI sweeps during the Oil War and in the wake of the first World Trade Centre incident in 1993. A year or so of this kind of programming set the climate for terrorist strikes such as those against Afghanistan and Sudan. The lesson from the Oklahoma bomb is that once a white Chris- tian American “good old boy” stood accused of the crime, programmes like “Tragedy in Oklahoma” replaced the earlier titles “Terror in the Heartland.” While a white American Christian acts alone, Muslims always work together. In such a discourse, Muslims are guilty merely by association with the vast menagerie of imagery that government and corporate outlets use to undermine Islam. The tactics that are now being widely used across the globe to undermine Islam were initially used in 1970 against the Arabs. In order for the dispossession of Palestinians to be supported by ordinary Americans, Arabs had to be written off as either backward A WAR ON ISLAM? 100 barbarians or violent terrorists, who deserve to be eliminated. This was a time when no one used the term “Muslim fundamentalist.” Even the Islamic revolution in Iran was seen as some kind of wild and crazy Persian phenomenon.61 At the same time, with the gradual acquiescence of Arab regimes to either American or Israeli demands throughout the 1980s and 1990s, there was a shift from “Arab terror” to “Muslim terror.” The infrastructure of imagery, already in place from decades of anti- Arab propaganda, simply had to be transferred to Muslims, the new “enemies of peace.” In fact, many of the same political problems still persist, but the “terrorists” are now conceptualised as Muslims, since Arab regimes were now obedient allies. There are parallels to this discussion in US history. When Mexi- cans resisted US expansion in the 19th century, they were called “bandits.” Texans had a policy to shoot on sight any bandits, and sometimes marched as far as Mexico City to root out banditry. However, a systematic process of enclosure and depopulation, followed by mass ranch ownership, accompanied the “war against banditry.” Within 2 years, over a million acres were conquered, while the “bandits” were relegated to the realms of American popular culture. Conventional American public discourse utilises images of Is- lamic resistant movements as intolerant and predisposed towards violence. While many contemporary movements do have a strong anti-Western sentiment, it is often qualified and in any case is a fairly recent phenomenon. If Arabs and Muslims are extremists in anything, it is in the patience and tolerance they have shown towards persistent Western interventions, until very recently. Islamic movements have much more important characteristics than intolerance and violence. By imposing sanctions against numerous Muslim countries, today, the US is triumphalist internationally and seems in a febrile way eager to prove that it is Number One. But all this is to offset the recession, the endemic problems posed by the cities, poverty, health, education, production and the Euro-Japanese challenge. In this lopsided state of affairs, militarism has gained far too many privileges in the US moral economy. But is the only answer to the THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 101

American sense of insecurity, unjust sanctions, military force, bloody promises, brassy slogans and along with that endless concrete instances of international terrorism. There would hardly be any one who would demur in private, or who would not readily agree that the US monopoly on coercion has almost completely eliminated democracy in the Muslim world, introduced immense hostility between rulers and the ruled, placed much too high a value on conformity, opportunism, flattery and getting along rather than on risking new ideas, criticism or dissent. For decades, in America there has been a cultural war against Islam and the Arabs; appalling racist caricatures of Muslims suggest that they are all either terrorists or sheikhs and that Muslim countries are large arid slums, fit only for profit or war. The very notion that there might be a history, a culture, a society – indeed many societies – has not held the stage for more than a moment or two, not even during the chorus of voices proclaiming the virtues of ‘multiculturalism.’ A flow of trivial instant books by journalists flooded the market and gained currency for a handful of dehumanising stereotypes all of them rendering Muslims essentially as one or other variant of Saddam. Desert Storm was ultimately an imperial war against the Iraqi people, an effort to break and kill them as part of an effort to break and kill Saddam. The following UN sanctions against Iraq and Afghanistan are part of the same anachronistic and singularly bloody aspect which is largely kept from American television audiences, as a way of maintaining its image as painless Nintendo exer- cises, and the image of Americans as virtuous, clean warriors. One of the basic reasons for this extraordinary example of an almost unimaginable collective violence unleashed by the US against distant Islamic ‘enemies’ is the absence of any significant domestic deterrent. There is a need to counteract the effects of a generation of Cold War indoctrination and a long history of American self- adulation. American intellectuals need to open their eyes to the tradition of naiveté and self-righteousness that disfigures American intellectual history and paves the way for continued anti-Islam policies. So pervasive has the professionalisation of intellectual life in the US A WAR ON ISLAM? 102 become that the sense of vocation has almost been lost. Policy- oriented intellectuals have internalised the norms of the state, which when it understandably calls them to the capital, in effect becomes their patron. On the one hand, no one in the dominant public space pays much attention to Islamic societies, culture, or history, then the outpouring of quick fix books and television, anti-Islam programmes could hardly be stopped. For instance, “The Republic or Fear” appeared in 1989, unnoticed. Its author later became a celebrity, like Ahmed Rashid who wrote “TALIBAN - Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,” not because their books make a scholarly contribution – they do not pretend otherwise – but because their obsessive and monochromatic ‘portrait’ of Iraq and Af- ghanistan perfectly suits the need for dehumanised, ahistorical, and demonological representation of countries as the embodiment of an Arab Hitler and Afghan monsters. To be a Muslim is ontologically thus to be unfortunate in nearly every way, before the facts, to be at worst a maniac, and at best a follower, a lazy consumer, who can use but could never have invented the telephone. The fear and terror induced by the exaggerated images of Is- lamic ‘terrorism’ and ‘fundamentalism’ – call them the figure of an international or transnational imaginary made up of Islamic devils – hasten the individual’s subordination to the dominant norms of the moment. Thus to oppose the abnormality embedded in terrorism and fundamentalism is to uphold the moderation, rationality, executive centrality of a vaguely designated Western/American ethos. The epic scale of US global power and the corresponding power of the national domestic consensus against Islam created by the electronic media have no precedents. Never has there been a consensus so difficult to oppose nor so easy and logical to capitulate to so unconsciously. The raids on Libya, Sudan and Afghanistan are instructive not only because of the spectacular mirror reflection of the bombing of US embassies, but also because both the bombers of the embassies and the US combined righteous authority and retributive violence in a way that was unquestioned and then often replicated. The US attacks led to bloodcurdling appeals to Islam, which in turn provoked an avalanche of images, writings and pos- THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 103

tures in the West underscoring the value of ‘their’ Judaeo-Christian (liberal, democratic) heritage and the nefariousness, evil, cruelty and immaturity of Islam. Like the oversize champions of the Cold War like Reagan and Thatcher, the post-Cold War champions, Clinton, Blair and now Colin Powell demand, with a righteousness and power that few clerics could match, obedient service against the “Green Menace” which has replaced the Empire of Evil. In the words of William Dalrymple: “Prejudices against Mus- lims - and the spread of ludicrously inaccurate stereotypes of Mus- lim behaviour and beliefs - have been developing at a frightening rate during the past decade. Indeed anti-Muslim racism seems in many ways to be replacing anti-Semitism as the principal Western expression of bigotry against ‘the other’.”62 Instead of blindly believing and following Western propaganda, Muslims need to take the time to work through the Qur’an and the Sunnah to locate and re-discover the profound guidance that is embodied in these fundamental teachings. To counter Western efforts to undermine Islam, Muslims must seize control of ontology, epistemology and methodology, because they underlie Islamic studies and struggles in the political, economic and social realms. Who is the Muslim? Define it by Islam and try to find out if there really is a classification of “fundamentalist,” “moderate” and “liberal” Muslims, or is this part of the Western attempt to divide and rule Muslims? The nature of Jihad? What does Islam say? This is what all Islam demands, one way or another. What do they say about the meaning and purpose of being human? What do they say about what is knowledge and what is superfluous? And then methodology: how does one go about doing things? The results of two hundred years of direct colonisation and the millennium of murder on top of that, has been that the West is defining these areas for us. If Muslims could address these issues with an Islamically grounded set of criteria, they would not march off blindly after the West into the thicket of ignorance; they could proceed with their own vision of the world with sufficient knowledge and understanding to counter Western propaganda about Islam. Quick reviews of the latest attempts on part of leading American intellectuals and media specialists would help both the Western public and Mus- A WAR ON ISLAM? 104 lims identify the real problem and the much-needed response on the part of the Muslim world. For instance, Samuel P. Huntington writes: “The Age of Mus- lim Wars.” The first sentence sums up the thought: “Contempo- rary global politics in the age of Muslim wars. Muslims fight each other and fight non-Muslims far more often than do peoples of other civilisations. Muslim wars have replaced the Cold War as the principal form of international conflict.”63 The Washington Post published the text of an open letter on why the “war on terrorism” is necessary and just. The letter was signed by sixty leading political analysts and prominent figures, most of whom are high-powered academics who study ethics, religion and public policy at American universities and think tanks.64 Under the section “A Just War” the letter from America says: “Yet reason and careful moral reflection also teach us that there are times when the first and most important reply to evil is to stop it.” The letter goes on to put the blame, as usual without any evidence, on the shoulders of Al Qaeda, which “in turn, constitutes but one arm of a larger radical Islamicist movement, growing for decades…openly professes its desire…to use murder to advance its objectives.” As far as terrorism and fundamentalism are concerned, they are the misnomered sources of our survival as Muslims. These are, in fact, Da’wa and Jihad, which are being demonised as fundamentalism and terrorism. The life and death struggle in many parts around the world demands Jihad. Jihad it becomes when it is waged with true belief in and understanding of Allah. Jihad is not waged for victory alone. Jihad in many parts of the Muslim world is as much morally necessary as the 60 scholars from the US consider a war permitted after September 11. Doesn’t the calamitous acts of occupation, violence, hatred and injustice in Palestine not demand a “war to defeat evil” as much as the occupation of Kuwait or an attack on the WTC demanded? Authors of the American fatwa by the 60 scholars declare that the “primary moral justification for war is to protect the innocent from certain harm. If one has compelling evidence that innocent people who are in no position to protect themselves will be griev- THIRD PROBLEM: MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY 105 ously harmed unless coercive force is used to stop an aggressor, then the moral principle of love thy neighbour calls us to the use of force.” Why do the authors think that this principle does not apply to Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya? Mr. Huntington must understand that the Muslims do not fight. Fighting is imposed on them. How long, for instance, should the Palestinians wait for justice when the US itself could not wait for more than 26 days in the case of the WTC and more than five months in the case of the Gulf War, to retaliate with all the force at its disposal? The American fatwa authored by the 60 scholars tells the Mus- lims: “Your human dignity, no less than ours - your rights and opportunities for a good life, no less than ours - are what we believe we’re fighting for.” May we then ask: Did you fight for the rights of the millions of oppressed Palestinians as vigorously in the last 30 years as you fought for the rights of 2,800 dead in the last five months? Do you intend to kill thousands upon thousands of Israelis for Israel’s thirty five years of illegal occupation as you are doing to Iraq for its few months of occupation of Kuwait? Cer- tainly not! Why then this double speak? The only answer to such hypocrisy is not mere education, but education with the mass awareness and mobilisation of the Muslims to struggle for themselves, in all possible ways, for their rights as equal citizens on this planet. A WAR ON ISLAM? 106 4 Fourth Problem: Fear

Americans do themselves the most damage when they allow fear to govern freedom. Such was the case during the Vietnam War, when policymakers relied on a vague hunch that Communist oppression, if unopposed in Vietnam, would topple one Southeast Asian nation after another in an unstoppable “domino effect.” The US thus inflicted devastating expenses, in both financial and human terms, upon both itself and Southeast Asia, and yet failed to change the outcome for the better. It is important to note that despite fear mongering of “domino effect” by officials in Washing- ton, the world didn’t observe any communist attempt to topple one South Asian country after another when US lost Vietnam war. There is a difference between fear and self-preservation. It is not that many consider the American self-preservation as a “fearful” action. In that case a great many fearful actions could be called normal and reasonable self-preservation. The much condemned Taliban were thus doing nothing but self-preservation. If fear in this sense is different from cowardice and if even the bravest people and nations try to preserve themselves, why should the Muslim world not feel it is a war on Islam, when they are attacked on all fronts through many different kinds of coalitions – military, social and economic at the forefront. If for the US, not taking appropriate actions to preserve itself against Khruschev’s threat to “bury” free nations, would have been foolish; then why should Muslims not consider it a war on Islam, when Bush uses the word “crusade”; the Italian prime minister declares that Western civilisation is a “superior civilisation”; and the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman clearly declares that “we want a war within Islam”? Almost everyone in the US agrees that the Vietnam experience did not work out as the US had hoped. So was the US experience in FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 107 many other places around the world, where it claims to have been “successful in opposing Soviet and Chinese military adventures.” Even with the Communist in power in those places, and without killing millions of condemned Communists, the result on the ground would not have been too different today. The same is true of its fear of “Muslim fundamentalists.” The media has turned Is- lam and “fundamentalists” into a spectre, whereas in reality, the situation would not be much different if instead of secular leaders, Erbakan rules Turkey, and instead of dictator Hosnie Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood leads Egypt in international affairs. Muslim writers and outspoken critics of American policies are being harassed in Muslim countries these days. Likewise, the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, invading private individuals’ privacy and persecuting them for their political beliefs, was intended to root out Communist sympathisers in America; instead, its harsh- ness and meanness sent a message that intensified the radicalism of young Americans years later. In 1973, in the name of security and stability, American law enforcement agents aided in the assassination of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, for fear of his politics. The US knew that the Shah of Iran was a bad ruler; the US saw the Iranians demonstrating against him; but the US was unwilling to experiment with the unknown, and therefore it was up to Ayatollah Khomeini to lead the Iranian revolution in 1979. In 1992, the US did nothing to prevent the Algerian military from disrupting elections in which the Islamic Salvation Front looked likely to emerge as winners. In 1996, afraid of getting bogged down in an African war, the US stood by during the genocidal murders of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans; and then, fearing global opprobrium for his inaction, Clinton implau- sibly claimed that he had not fully realised the scope of this tragedy that had been playing itself out on the front pages of the New York Times. Throughout recent decades, Americans travelling in or reading about the Third World have discovered, to their sad amazement, that while America is theoretically dedicated to freedom, in reality it allows butchers and brutes to stay in control around the world. Fear inspired the US to excessive aggression in Vietnam, and A WAR ON ISLAM? 108 fear inspired excessive cowardice when Rwanda needed a hand. Fear is unflattering when observed on the face of the world’s mightiest nation, and it is a bad guide for policy. No one can do the right thing every minute of every day; but individuals and nations must strive, to the best of their abilities, to do the right thing whenever they can, even when they are afraid. Few Americans, after a moment’s reflection, would consider the examples of the preceding paragraph to be instances in which America really tried to do the right thing. Certainly these are not among the shining instances of courage and honour to which one hears frequent reference to in speeches lauding the American character. Yet the US experience in Somalia showed the possible outcome of US intervention in Africa. How many African nations threw their full support behind the US in Somalia? How many US soldiers would have been needed to stop the large-scale civil war in Rwanda? How many of them would have died, and how much would they have been appreciated? The US complaint that the world did not strongly support US intervention is not justified because it could act the way it wanted to remove the Taliban. If Americans might reasonably ask, why the nations of Africa are unable to assemble their own multinational peacekeeping force and do their own housekeeping; they then also need to ask, why Muslims did not assemble their own multinational peacekeeping force for housekeeping in Afghanistan. It is not merely a matter of leaving a proud legacy for the next generation. It is also a matter of practicality. At present, angry young Muslims in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia are promising another Iran, another dismissal of Western influence and another ascendance of Islamic government. It is doubtful that those young Muslims speak for everyone in their nations; but even if they do, the peoples of those countries have a right to self-determination. If some of them are foolish enough to elect dictators that is their prerogative. In the long run, it may serve as an example to others. Whatever the outcome, America dare not inject itself into their internal attempt to find their own best form of government. Doing so simply makes America the issue. The fear of creating another Iran, if chosen as the guiding principle for American policy in the FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 109

region, will prove to be self-fulfilling. During World War 2, the United States suspected and detained thousands of people of Japanese ancestry, solely because of their race. This occurred because of fear of what a small number of those people might do. No proof ever emerged that they had any disloyal plans or ideas whatsoever; and yet it took forty years for a Japanese-American named Fred Korematsu to obtain, in an Ameri- can courtroom, a final judgment that that the detention had been wrong. Several years ago, Mr. Korematsu told of an occasion when, speaking at a university, a group of young Muslims thanked him for speaking out on the discriminatory treatment those Japanese people had received. That was prophetic, as shown in the current detention of young Muslims for no reason other than their religion. One might sympathise with police interest in groups of young Muslims enquiring about flight training schools, crop dusters, an- thrax or bombs. Attention to such matters might have enabled American law enforcement agencies to make more effective use of the direct, credible warnings they had received before September 11. That kind of intelligent, targeted investigation is very different from a blanket suspicion of all Muslims that encourages discrimination. One hopes that, this time, it will not take forty years for the authorities to acknowledge that their fear has produced another disgraceful and counterproductive error. Some Americans argue that whole families of Muslims are not being sent off to camps in the desert and only about 1,000 are currently being detained — that is one out of every nine thousand! The numbers are irrelevant. The fact that Muslims are detained in thousands is all that matters.

4.1 Scared of Jihad? “The Chilling Goal of Islam’s New Warriors”65 is a typical example of how the Western media paints a misleading picture of Islam to spread fear among the general public. It suggests that Islam is an aggressive religion that encourages war as a way of spreading the religion. This is absolutely false. However, in the face of such propaganda onslaught and American terror, we have yet to A WAR ON ISLAM? 110 find a head of a Muslim state to respond in such a bold, brave and thoughtful manner as Musharraf did in an interview to the New York Times. Musharraf rightly said: “You in the West are allergic to the term Jihad…there is no question that terrorism and Jihad are absolutely different.” Jihad is one of the Islamic concepts that have been inadvertently misconstrued or deliberately distorted by apolo- getic Muslims or Western terrorists. In the face of widespread media stereotypes, it is indeed an uphill task to educate non-Muslims regarding the true meaning of Jihad. The word Jihad and the verb that goes with it means to struggle against some opposition. Thus, each Muslim is engaged in Jihad, in the sense that everyone has to struggle for his existence. How- ever, the kind of Jihad the terrorist oppressors are scared of should be qualified as fi Sabeel lillah (in the way of Allah), that is to say, trying and exerting one’s utmost in the path of Almighty Allah. It is an earnest and ceaseless activity involving the sacrifice of physical and mental resources, wealth, property, and even life, only for the sake of attaining the pleasure of Almighty Allah. The terms “freedom fighters,” “liberation army,” “humanitarian war,” “just war,” or “Holy War” are irrelevant, if a particular war and struggle is just or not. The West has deliberately created the confusion so that it could label its own acts of terror as “humanitarian interventions” and others’ struggle for their rights as terrorism. For instance, labelling Kashmiris as terrorists is a latest move to justify Indian claims. A clear distinction between the concepts of “terrorism” and “national liberation” has come to the fore in various official pronouncements at different times. For instance, the fifth Islamic summit meeting in Kuwait, at the beginning of 1987, stated in its resolutions that: “The conference reiterates its absolute faith in the need to distinguish the brutal and unlawful terrorist activities perpetrated by individuals, by groups, or by States, from the legitimate struggle of oppressed and subjugated nations against foreign occupation of any kind. This struggle is sanctioned by heavenly law, by human values, and by international conventions.” 66 The Foreign and Interior Ministers of the Arab League reiter- ated this position at their meeting in Cairo in April 1998. In a FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 111

document entitled “Arab Strategy in the Struggle against Terror- ism,” they emphasised that belligerent activities aimed at “liberation and self determination” are not in the category of terrorism, whereas hostile activities against regimes or families of rulers will not be considered political attacks but rather criminal assaults.67 If this is an attempt to justify the “means” in terms of the “end,” the US and its Allies’ war on Yugoslavia, Iraq and Bosnia also fits into the same category. Regardless of the nature of the operation, when we speak of “liberation from the yoke of a foreign occupation” this will not be terrorism but a legitimate and justified activity. Senator Jackson was quoted as saying, “the idea that one person’s ‘terrorist’ is another’s ‘freedom fighter’ cannot be sanctioned. Freedom fighters or revolutionaries do not blow up buses contain- ing non-combatants; terrorist murderers do. Freedom fighters don’t set out to capture and slaughter schoolchildren; terrorist murderers do.”68 In the light of this definition, the millions of children dying in Iraq are also non-combatants and the people who are enforcing these sanctions are armed terrorists. The unarmed, innocent Pales- tinians who are being butchered in their camps, schools and homes since 1947 are also non-combatants like their Kashmiri counterparts who are being slaughtered on a daily basis. In addition, those who carry out these murderous attacks are as much terrorists as the Americans think that Osama bin Laden or Aimal Kansi is. The terms are irrelevant. Why were Slobodan Melosevic’s forces considered to be engaged in terrorism in Kosova, whereas the Indian forces in Kashmir and Russian forces in Chechnya are considered as innocent defenders of Russian and Indian right to oppression and subjugation? The so-called humanitarian wars waged by the US and its allies are no less than plain terrorism even if we look at them through the definitions given to us by the ones dearer to the West. According to Netanyahu, “Terrorism is the deliberate and systematic assault on civilians to inspire fear for political ends.”69 So, what is Israel doing with the Palestinians and what are the Indian forces doing in Kash- mir? What did the US and Allies do in Iraq, Bosnia and Yugoslavia? And what are they still doing in the name of enforcing no fly zones A WAR ON ISLAM? 112 and economic sanctions? Are they not starving innocent civilians to death to inspire fear for political ends? Whether we call it terrorism, sanctions, or humanitarian war, it is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or military targets in order to attain political aims. Any kind of struggle or resistance to defend against such aggression is Jihad, which is often mistranslated into the term “Holy War”. Yet, there is no place in the Qur’an or teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, where these two terms are used together. In fact, the term “Holy War” was a term used by Christians during the Crusades. Islam never views war as something “holy.” Jihad is a necessity that is reverted to in extreme cases such as self-defence or to stop oppression. As in the case of Afghanistan, Palestine and Kashmir, where an invasion or occupation of Muslim territory by non-Muslim forces occurs, Jihad ceases to be a collective obligation. Instead, it becomes the personal obligation of every Muslim man, woman and child, whether old or young, infirm or well. Given the disproportionate force enjoyed by the invading army over that possessed by the individual believer, upon whom waging Jihad becomes a religiously obligation, a greater allowance may be extended to the individual, in effect exempting him or her from the usual limits placed on lawful warfare. Compared to the limited struggle of Kashmiri and other Mus- lim people around the world, the modern wars waged by the US and its Allies are sources of injustice rather than a means of fighting injustice. Going to war against oppression theory has been confounded by Western propaganda these days. However, the circumstances clearly suggest that a war or resistance is just or unjust. The West makes a marble-cake situation out of every conflict – it makes the war or struggle of the people look to be just or unjust according to its own vested interests. Think back to World War 2: does one decide that, because US and British bombing policy is not morally acceptable, one cannot take arms against the Nazis? That is the kind of confusion the West is creating by declaring the struggle of Kashmiris, Palestinians and Chechens as “terrorism” and morally unacceptable, thus taking sides and giving a chance of survival to FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 113 modern day Nazis. Waging wars in the name of intervention — sugar coated with the word “humanitarian” — is far worse than the concept of Jihad. Military intervention normally raises questions of justification and authority. Who decides when a war is likely to be necessary and effective? What objectives make a war morally right? Can the same objectives make Jihad morally acceptable? What are then the just reasons for going to war rather than acting as disapproving bystanders or opportunists looking to gain from the disasters of others? The just reasons are: First, the conflict should be local because of factors specific to it (its location, serious impact on the interests or even the survival of a nation state), and present the likelihood of significant damage to the party engaging in the conflict. Second, a Nation State should intervene in response to human rights violations when these are sufficiently grave. In this sense, the Muslims involving themselves in Afghanistan or Kashmir makes more sense than the US war in Vietnam, Kosova or Kuwait. If the US and its Allies took thousands of lives in Iraq and Kosova to correct human rights violations, at present it would be comparatively easy to establish an obligation for them to make corrections in India, Israel, North Korea, Myanmar, Indonesia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Zaire, Kenya, Nigeria, Liberia, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Turkey, Georgia, Russia and China. In all these places, there is either ongoing bloodshed or the persist- ence of entrenched patterns of repression that the current regimes show little or no willingness to end. The fact is that even the most zealous advocates of terrorism in the name of human rights inter- ventionism rarely look at the places where the US and its Allies’ interests are not at stake. Unlike the concept of Jihad, it is absolutely clear that the US and its Allies do not opt for fighting oppression without seeing any benefit for themselves. All these so-called just wars, thus, are no more than terrorist campaigns for achieving mischievous objectives. Who would, in reaction to the horrors perpetrated by the Indians, Russians and Israelis, use force to intervene and rescue the victims of war, tyranny and racism? These are the places where oppressive regimes do not hurt the interests of the US and its Allies and thus A WAR ON ISLAM? 114 no humanitarian intervention is needed or justified. Even a resistance struggle by the indigenous population is termed as terrorism. When a repressive regime turns genocidal against a politically significant community of Muslims that it attempts to extirpate, then there is a good cause for us to intervene. Calling it unnecessary intervention, aggression or terrorism is irrelevant. All the Muslims know is that this struggle against oppression is justified and they call it Jihad.

4.2 Wishing death to Islam? The chilling theme of leading American newspapers in the first week of April 2002 revolved around the problem with Islam. Wash- ington Post’s editorial, “Islam’s death wish”70 was preceded by New York Times editorial “The Cancer of Suicide Bombing”71 and followed by a series of articles from “Why Suicide Terrorism Takes Root,” to “Kids with Bombs,” and “Suicidal Lies.” In a well orchestrated hate campaign, Islam is presented as an individual who wishes death and destruction. The reality, however, is that the world mastering demi-gods, recently energised by the impotency of the Muslims, are wishing death to Islam. What really hurts leading opinion makers in the US is the recent resolution passed by Muslim states, which specifically rejected the idea of equating Palestinian resistance with terrorism. Washing- ton Post writes the word resistance in quotation marks, because unlike Saddam’s incursion into Kuwait, it does not view Israel’s occupation as illegitimate. In such a situation, is it extremism to doubt impartiality of such opinion makers? Such blatant rejection of Israel’s occupation and terrorism is, in fact, prolonging the conflict. It is senseless to brush aside 50 year’s of Israeli repression, beginning with a discussion on a suicide bombing, and then turning around to hold Islam responsible for the ongoing bloodbath in the Middle East. Israel and the US are not out there to combat terrorism; they are there to combat resistance to their totalitarian designs. Accord- ing to the Washington Post, the Muslim countries’ approval to resist any external domination is “self-destructive and morally repugnant.” To the same great minds of the editorial board, the Israeli and FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 115

American terror campaigns, which lead to such resistance, are fully justified and morally acceptable. There is no “extremist Islamic ideology” which the Washington Post wants the Muslims to renounce; nor is the Palestinian cause a “terrorist cause.” There is no need for the Muslim media to incite anti-Semitism. The news from Israel is sufficient to help everyone make an opinion. The reason why Muslim governments are not ready to label Palestinian resistance as terrorism is because they do not only see Israelis dying in pizza parlours or discotheques, but also the Palestinians throughout the occupied Arab land for the last fifty-five years. If it is a “shameful evidence of their [the Mus- lims] own moral and political corruption,” so is justifying Israel’s occupation, a shameful evidence of the double standards employed by leading American papers. The Washington Post wants us to believe that Palestinian resistance has damaged the peace process and cost them American favours. Why should ending Israeli occupation require a 12-year long process of negotiations, when Iraqis were repeatedly told that there would be “no negotiations” until they withdraw from Ku- wait? If Bush Senior could draw a “line in the sand” for Saddam, why does Bush Junior not draw a line for Sharon? If Judaism is not responsible for Israel’s terrorism and Jewish fundamentalism, why should Islam be blamed for the Palestinian resistance? The New York Times’ editorial “The Cancer of Suicide Bombing” is a clear sign of Israel and its supporters’ weariness with suicide bombings. There is hardly anything else that makes Israel pay the price of its occupation. Hence, Israeli supporters need Muslims from around the world to distance themselves from the weapon that hurts Israel dearly. It is easy for other Muslims, sitting on the sidelines, to decide any way they may like, but the final decision is for the Palestinians to make between getting killed by the Israelis or to get killed while killing Israeli colonialists. It is hard for the New York Times to accept the reality of Pales- tinian desperation under Israeli occupation, than to easily denounce an 18-year-old Palestinian girl, who blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket. Can anyone living a free and happy life even imagine dying such a horrible death? Why does the New York Times not feel A WAR ON ISLAM? 116 the pain of the suicide bomber when it editorialises the pain of Israelis? Definitely, Islam is against repression and clearly instructs its followers: “Allah does not like that the evil should be uttered in public except by him who has been wronged.” (4:148). “And those who, when oppressive wrong is done to them, take revenge.” 42:39). “And indeed whosoever takes revenge after he has suffered wrong, for such there is no way [of blame] against them. The way [of blame] is only against those who oppress men and revel in the earth without justification; for such there will be a painful torment.” (Qur’an 42:41-42). However, those who have tried to associate suicide bombing to religious doctrines have been proved wrong. These and other Jihad-related verses from the Holy Qur’an are equally applicable to all Muslims. Why do we not commit suicide for the Palestinians? Shibley Telhami, while writing in the New York Times admits the fact that Islam has no major role in suicide bombings because “from non-religious young women to members of the semi-Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the secular Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, groups and individuals have begun emulating the suicides of Hamas.”72 The reason is simple: they did not see anyone coming to their rescue so far. The teenage girl “suicide bomber” left a taped message speaking of “sleeping Arab armies” and impotent Muslim governments. Had anyone, the Muslims, the UN, the US or its super-humanist allies taken a meaningful step to end Israeli occupation, as they did in the case of Kuwait, the teenage girl along with hundreds of other Palestinians would have been alive and well today. Nevertheless, there is no denying the fact that the totalitarians would face the same kind of resistance anywhere they go because our liberal and secular mind makes us see the validity of the Qur’an only when we are personally oppressed. The woman who blew herself, to kill American soldiers in Kabul, is a glaring example of this attitude. Thomas Friedman declared in his New York Times column that the Palestinians have a “tactical alternative to suicide: non-violent resistance, á la Gandhi” to overcome their desperation.”73 It is amazing that Mr. Friedman did not give this advice to Kuwaitis, or the FOURTH PROBLEM: FEAR 117

Americans after September 11 or to the Israeli occupiers after the suicide bombing. He believes the Palestinians “have not chosen suicide bombing out of ‘desperation’,” they “have adopted it as a strategic choice.” Why did the Kuwaitis not adopt suicide bombing as a strategic choice? Because they knew the American had become more Ku- waitis than the Kuwaitis. Why do the Americans not adopt this strategic choice? Because they know they can drop bombs from 40,000 feet, kill others and remain safe. The US is unleashing terror without any desperation. Imagine what would be the American response if they were dying in as many number as the Palestinians on a daily basis for more than 35 years and had no other weapon than their bodies. Islam or the “narcissistic rage” did not blind the Palestinians. The super humanists have betrayed them. There can never be peace in the Middle East and in the world as long as people like Fried- man are sitting in the New York Times and the Washington Post offices, personifying Islam and labelling Muslims as “Devil.” Mr. Friedman writes: “The Devil is dancing in the Middle East, and he’s dancing our way.” Giving Muslims a lecture on the sacredness of human life does not suit Mr. Friedman who cannot see Israel bulldozing the basic truth civilisation is built on: the same sacredness of every human life. The American pundits’ unflinching support to the Israeli occupation and wishing death to Islam shows that the Devil is already in their minds. Instead of wishing death to Islam, we hope the West would follow its noble tradition of drawing a line in the sand for Sharon, implement an economic embargo on Israel for its “naked aggression,” occupation and amassing — and using its weapons of mass destruction against innocent civilians, call Israel to withdraw immediately or get ready to face a coalition of 32 countries for throwing it out of occupied Arab lands. Sounds crazy? Must be! At least, to the hypocrites, following multiple standards for the basic truths and spreading a fear of Islam. A WAR ON ISLAM? 118 5 Fifth Problem: The Culture Of Violence

American political thinkers commonly parrot the convenient dogma that democracies are peace loving. This is an odd doctrine, coming as it does from a place that is, in some ways, the most radical and violent country on earth. America is, for example, the world’s largest exporter of weapons, including the massive sales of land mines that have now been scattered by tyrants and murderers to the four corners of the Earth. From its early days as a tool of deceit and slaughter against Mexicans and Indians, America’s military has grown to become the world’s most violent organisation — which is exactly what it wants to be. Many different countries attempt to corrupt or overpower the rulers and citizens of other lands; but while Iran may have interests in the Near East and China may have interests in the South China Sea, the US has interests worldwide. America has demonstrated its willingness to buy rulers and betray the people in nations around the globe. It seems fairly certain that no other government or organisation in the history of the world has been so subversive of other governments and traditions. Internally, America has become a place to which Spain — once known as the land of the Inquisition — now hesitates to extradite suspected terrorists because Spain no longer has the stomach for the death penalty. America’s gun death rate far exceeds that of any other industrialised nation; it is nearly three hundred times higher than the rate in Japan. America is a place in which police officers can be videotaped kicking and beating an unarmed man named Rodney King, hitting him more than fifty times with their nightsticks, and yet the police officers can be found not guilty of assault; it is a land in which people sharing the victim’s race can best express their outrage by launching riots that killed fifty peo- FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 119 ple and destroyed whole neighbourhoods. It is important to note that this was not the only case of police brutality. It is routine. Unfortunately, for the American police, this incident was videotaped, to be watched by millions of African-Americans and the whole world. Some Americans compare these riots with the Palestinian uprising. Just imagine if the African-Americans were oppressed like the Palestinians. Imagine if US military tanks were parked in Bronx, New York, or Chicago. Imagine if the US were killing about a dozen African-Americans on a daily basis. Violence comprises a big part of how America sees itself and the world. Perhaps it should not be surprising, then, that American media corporations are so preoccupied with violence in Islamic countries. It is now blamed that “Islamic Afghanistan” produced “Al-Qaida terrorists”; “Islamic Libya” sponsored terrorists; “Islamic Algeria” is primarily responsible for its growing body count; “Is- lamic Somalia” is remembered as the place where some US soldiers died; and so forth. America has acquired and maintained its power through institutionalised violence, and now it cannot help valuing the countries of the Muslim world in those same terms. Violence of the US is taken for granted, whereas the violence of others is exaggerated not only to help the American media corporations to profit from dwelling upon it, but also to pave the way for needless US interventions abroad. The TV networks show violence, in the US and elsewhere, not because violence is the opposite of what Americans want for the world, but because they want to justify the American presence in every nook and corner of the Muslim world. It is interesting to note that while, in places like Egypt and Algeria violence is growing because of the US and other Western countries’ backing the wrong horse and sponsoring the oppressors, violence continued in places like Rwanda. All the humanist countries that were too busy demonising the Taliban for their alleged atrocities, stayed on the sidelines until the genocide in Rwanda was complete. To take just one example, Kuwait does not receive much coverage now because Americans mostly assume that things have been set aright, the country is returning to normal, and it is business as usual. In short, Kuwait’s current lack of violence is not a problem A WAR ON ISLAM? 120 crying out to be fixed. But, in fact, a regime far worse than the Taliban is in place in Kuwait. There is no democracy. Despite having written agreements with the Kuwaiti government, those Ku- waitis who paid millions of dollars to sponsor the US war on Iraq have not received their money back following the withdrawal of Iraqi forces. Instead they were thrown into jails and tortured beyond imagination. When a few of them were released from prison with the help of international human rights organisations, and went to the US to file cases against the Kuwaiti government, they were then thrown into American jails. Such facts are not exposed in the US media because the Kuwaiti sheikhs are not like the Taliban refusing to serve the US. On hear- ing such criticism of the US government, the common man in the streets in New York may ask: Does anyone criticise Saudi Arabia for failing to be concerned with the affairs of Guatemala or of other small nations located halfway around the world? Of course not! The reason being that Saudi Arabia never interfered in far away lands to the extent the US tries to be the globo-cop, but with double standards. This is a sad legacy for a land that was allegedly conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men have certain inalienable rights — including the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For all that the US could be offering to the Islamic world, it has made its most vivid (and unhappy) impressions during the past ten years by slaughtering Iraqi conscripts, basing its troops in the Arabian Peninsula, providing military assistance to the Israelis who continue to kill Arabs, dangling the offer of military assistance before the eyes of un-elected dictators in Pakistan and Egypt, and bombing Afghans. Those are not merely the most significant complaints. They are, in fact, the main impressions that the US has made upon the Is- lamic world. It is not that the complaints have no validity; but when presented by the Western media in a vacuum, without acknowledging the negative contribution by the US government, the media gives the impression that the complainants are engaged in a possibly never-ending effort to find fault, without any corresponding desire or ability to give praise, encouragement, or constructive FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 121 advice. Does the Peace Corps have a single volunteer anywhere in Mus- lim Asia? Maybe, may be not. The average American does not know, and the media is not saying. The ethic of the Peace Corps has no significant role in American policy toward the region, nor in American thinking about it, and there does not even exist a Federal Corps for Liberty or Happiness. Everyone can plainly see what is most important to American policymakers. American planes started dropping food not before their colleagues started dropping bombs in Afghanistan. All the humanitarian agencies repeatedly informed that this symbolic food dropping is not going to meet the demand of ever-growing numbers of displaced Afghans as a result of US operations. Through distortions like these, the generous American people come to believe that they should withhold their assistance and friendliness from Islamic nations in need, until some unspecified political change occurs by magic at some unspecified time in the future. How long would it have taken for America to make serious overtures to Iran, if there had been no September 11 bombing in which both could consider uniting behind their dislike of the Taliban? How long will the blockade of supplies to Iraq continue to kill children in that country, while having no discernible effect upon Saddam Hussein’s ability to generate biological weapons and support terrorism? At what point will ordinary Americans tire of the violence that so permeates their TV: movies, songs and attitudes toward foreigners? The Americans are currently not torn by the same impulses that bother Muslims around the world. On one hand, we are told not to believe that violence ever produces good; and on the other the Americans are told that most of the times it does. Generally, the most successful movies handle this by allowing the good American guys to win, and by portraying violence as something that stimu- lates patriotic passion, the feeling that the US is right, and that violence leads to the desired results. A movie that merely showed random death and destruction would probably not sell as many tickets as the one ending with victory for the good Americans and killing others for justice. A WAR ON ISLAM? 122

Again, Vietnam provides an object lesson. During that war, well- intentioned American boys, ignorant of the world at large, believed they were fighting for their country; and besides maiming themselves psychologically and physically; they also helped to destabilise Vietnam’s neighbours. Those well-intentioned boys were ultimately the pawns who enabled the Khmer Rouge to seize power and murder a million Cambodians. By the end of the war, unfortunately, Americans had spent their energy, so that while tens of thousands of them died to ravage Vietnam, virtually none gave their lives to bring peace to the Khmer nation. Similarly, the US now attacks everything related to the Taliban. The Taliban is “a straw man.” Few Muslims consider the Taliban the sole representatives of Islamic beliefs or attitudes. But for the sake of eliminating this straw man, the United States is once again in the process of destabilising Afghanistan and neighbouring countries. Due to the American war on Afghanistan, at the time of writing, beyond parts of the capital, Kabul, there are signs that the country is starting to succumb to ethnic rivalry and insecurity. Regional warlords are reasserting themselves, posing challenges to the authority of the interim government. Chaos reigns and disorder is of the same magnitude that thrust the Taliban on the scene. Despite creating this much instability, the New York Times says in its editorial: “The US military says that while it has several thousand combat troops still in Afghanistan finishing off the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, it cannot take part in the international security force. That seems reasonable for now.”74 It is now the responsibility of other nations to bring peace to Afghanistan while it is headed by the CIA-groomed leader. To avoid any trouble and loss of precious American lives, the New York Times suggests: “The United States must, however, remain closely involved and should help to pay for an international peacekeeping force as well as agree to provide it air cover and some logistical support.”75 As far as the neighbours are concerned, Washington pays little attention to the question: Will Pakistan survive this Afghan war and the US’s full support of a dictator and his secular agenda, or will the resulting internal turmoil cause it to collapse, possibly sending its nuclear arsenal into the hands of someone like Osama bin Laden? FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 123

Washington does not know. Yet it blunders onwards. Violence may sometimes be useful or necessary. But it can also become the primary tool of policy, when the nation wielding it fails to foresee and prepare for situations. Better to keep the candy away from the child in the first place, than to beat the child after it has done what children do. It is not merely that the FBI should have taken more seriously the clues it had in advance of September 11; it is that American policy should long since have been more attentive to the things that Muslims have been saying to it. An America more educated in the world of Islam, and more concerned about the welfare of Islamic people, would not have allowed its ambassador to send Saddam the false signal that he could freely invade Kuwait, and it would not have allowed the situation to de- generate so terribly, for so many years, in Afghanistan. In Munich, the West made the mistake of being lazy in its deal- ings with Hitler. In fact, the West praised Hitler and Mussolini as being bulwarks against Communism and this fact is known downplayed as ‘appeasement.’ The West paid dearly for this error. There is no substitute for a concerned, proactive attempt to understand and address the legitimate rights and needs of people, whether in the Czechoslovakia of 1938 or in the Egypt of 2001. An America that remembers this lesson of history may find that the world will love it for relying less upon its ability to destroy, and more upon its ability to create.

5.1 Muslim Violence “We no longer have the Soviet Union or Communism to serve as enemies justifying expensive and extensive military apparatus. It was in the mid-1980s at the very latest that the search began for new enemies to justify arms budgets and offensive military policies, at first as part of the Communist threat and then in its place.”76

Who are the extremists? The aforementioned facts reveal that as a consequence of the American culture of violence, the US tries to solve every problem with the use of force. Contrary to this reality, extremism and violence has now been perfectly associated with Islam. A quick look at A WAR ON ISLAM? 124

Muslim societies brings one to the conclusion that all the violence there is the direct result of western intervention and support of despots and dictators. In contrast to the occupation of Afghanistan to install a broad- based government, calls for greater political participation and democratisation in the Middle East have been met by empty rhetoric and repression at home and by ambivalence or silence in the West. Middle Eastern governments have used the danger posed by “Is- lamic fundamentalism” as the excuse for increasing authoritarianism and violations of human rights and the indiscriminate suppression of Islamic opposition. In countries, like Pakistan, corrupt rulers are being supported to extend their rule as they are thought to be the ones stemming the tide of “religious extremism.” All this support of violence breeds further violence. Fear of fundamentalism, like the fear of Communism, has made strange bedfellows. Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt join Israel in warning of a regional and international Islamic threat in their bids to win Western aid and justify their repression of active Muslims. Is- rael, which for years won American and European backing as a bulwark against the spread of Communism through the Middle East, is now projecting itself as the West’s defence against “militant Islam,” a movement it is portraying as an even greater danger.’’77 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin justified the expulsion of 415 Palestinians in December 1992 by saying that “Our struggle against murderous Islamic terror is also meant to awaken the world, which is lying in slumber... We call on all nations, all peoples to devote their attention to the greater danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism, [which]...threatens world peace in future years... [W]e stand in the line of fire against the danger of fundamentalist Is- lam.” Israel and its Arab neighbours have warned that a resurgent Iran is exporting revolution throughout much of the Muslim world, including Sudan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Algeria, and Cen- tral Asia, as well as to Europe and America; indeed, Hosnie Mubarak has urged the formation of a “global alliance” against this menace. Islam is often portrayed as a triple threat: political, civilisational and demographic. The fear in the 1980s that Iran would export its FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 125

revolution has been superseded by the larger fear of an international pan-Islamic movement with Iran and Sudan at its heart. In the last decade of the 20th century, despite Iran’s relative failure in fomenting revolution abroad, visions of a global Islamic threat have proliferated, combining fear of violent revolution and of Algerian- style electoral victories. French writer Raymond Aron’s warning of an Islamic revolutionary wave generated by the alleged fanaticism of the Prophet Muhammad, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s concern over the possibility of an Islamic-Western war have been succeeded by columnist Charles Krauthammer’s assertion of a global Islamic threat of “fundamentalist Qur’an-waving Khomeniism” led by Iran. Khomeini’s edict on Salman Rushdie for blasphemy combined with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s call for a holy war against the West during the 1991 Persian Gulf War have been magnified by some who, like Krauthammer, reduce contemporary realities to the playing out of ancient rivalries: “It should now be clear that we are facing a mood and a movement far transcending the level of issues and policies and the governments that pursue them. This is no less than a clash of civilisations —a perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage, our secular present, and the world-wide expansion of both.”78 Muslim-Western relations are placed in the context of a confrontation in which Islam is again pitted against the West —”our Judaeo-Christian and secular West”— rather than specific political and socio-economic grievances. Thus the assault on the West is seen as “irrational,” mounted by peoples peculiarly driven by their passions and hatred; not by people simply reacting to the violence perpetrated against them, and approved and supported by the West. Amid the culture of violence, one of the many painful sights of the deterioration of the Western – particularly American – education is that there are more and more people who seem incapable of using logic, or even of being aware of what logic is. This makes them easy prey to demagogues – and to their own emotions. For those who cannot think, today is the best time to analyse and find out who are the real extremists – the religious leaders in Iran, Su- A WAR ON ISLAM? 126 dan, Pakistan, etc., or the secular US administration in Washing- ton, supported by media pundits and other fanatically secular forces from different walks of life. The media champions of secularism are spreading the fear of Islamic revolution all across the Muslim world and this fear has pushed many secular liberal leaders of the West into bitterly opposing virtually every act and effort of any religiously motivated group, party, or government, to influence any public or foreign policy debate simply because they are religious. And this particular group of secular fundamentalists desperately want the whole world to think they speak for them all. They are opposed to any idea of rethinking the public role of religion and want the Western public to live in a culture that seems to have lost any sense of its own validity. And although they almost always advance the wrong answers and present an ugly picture of the social and political condition in Muslim countries, religious leaders in these states do often raise important questions that the proponents of violence, called Hawks, have either dismissed as obscurantism or trivialised with woolly analysis of the revival of Islam. With the global reach of the message of Muslim religious leaders from around the world of market economies, the great religious traditions remain one of the few repositories of peace and an alternative worldview. As we are being strapped into an economic roller coaster propelled by the logic of infinite growth, the faith traditions remind us that we are finite creatures on a finite planet. Reli- gion never supports violence, except in self-defence. The champions of secularism, on the other hand, try their best to prove that religions do not have a transcendent dimension that could help human beings, now dimmed by western media overload, to imagine creatively different ways of managing nation states, organising economies and politics. The harsh truth is that with the secular utopians having made a mess in the previous century with their zeal to crush Muslim countries, the great leaders of Islam certainly have achieved something to offer for comparison and analysis as well. Iran, for instance, has proved that it is not necessary to purge the public square of religion and cut the roots of the values that nourish the fondest causes FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 127 of a nation. In comparison the US government in an effort to stifle religious dissent have muffled one of the few remaining institutions that mediate between individuals and the towering, imper- sonal structures that envelop them. The secular establishment in the US has ruled out religious imagery and thus ignored a discourse that at its best can speak out powerfully against greed, ennui and coldness of heart. In such an environment, violence flour- ishes and obtaining public support to keep on killing millions of Iraqi children as a result of 12 years of sanctions, or killing thousands of civilians in Afghanistan to eliminate just one person, or again planning to kill as many people as necessary to remove Saddam, becomes as easy as asking them if they would like to have the heavens on earth. The question arises, just who are the product of a culture of violence? The ones who want to re-establish the concepts such as right or wrong in the society through peaceful means; or those who kicked out the Bible and put in condoms and weapon detectors in schools, and imposed their values with the help of daisy cutters and carpet bombing? The ones whose base of unlimited knowledge takes human beings beyond the status of angels or those whose ideas have given the nation functional illiterates, who can barely distinguish between right and wrong? The standard of right or wrong might be “relative” as the liberals and champions of secularism may claim, but which extreme is to be blamed for moral bank- ruptcy, teenage pregnancy, rising rates of out-of-wedlock births and divorces and the ever rising crime rate? The American culture of violence and extremes is responsible for “no-fault” divorces along with prenuptial agreements and co- habitation. Islam does not give rise to any kind of extremism. If we compare extremes in western society with what are perceived to be extremes in the Muslim world, it would be easy for us to answer questions like: Which extreme is responsible for the growing underclass? The religious leaders whose idea of compassion is to redistribute income based on religious guidelines, or those poverty merchants who see no poverty resulting from bad lifestyle choices encouraged by a sick and secular popular culture? Which extreme created cities whose streets are unsafe to walk at A WAR ON ISLAM? 128 night? Which extreme is responsible for a judicial system that has been transformed into a servant of opinion polls and secular social engineers? Which is the more extreme family role model: Beavis and Butt-head or Madonna and her trainer? Which extreme has been in charge of culture and academia for the past two decades and which was busy in an international terror campaign? The so- labelled “extremist” Mullahs of Iran did not respond when Saddam Hussein’s army attacked two of the holiest shrines of Shiite Mus- lims in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala in 1991. Similarly, Iran has shown no inclination to take on Moscow by supporting the Muslims of Chechnya. Unlike Iranian so-called religious extremism, the secular extremists of the US administration have wreaked havoc throughout Iraq first with its unjustified Gulf-war and then through the genocidal economic embargo. American secular extremists have unanimously supported the Israeli carnage of innocent civilians in Lebanon and are staunch supporters of Zionism’s racist crusade against Palestinians. Which extremist is supporting Israel’s terrorist activities by vetoing United Nations resolutions? Who proves themselves to be the real extremist, those who co-exist peacefully with other nations, or those who reject the will of the international community though the exercise of veto power in favour of aggressors? If history can be our guide in judging extremism and violence, America’s record in Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Japan, Lebanon, Indo- nesia, Guatemala, Vietnam, Congo, Dominican Republic, Iran, Nicaragua and El Salvador with millions and millions of dead and maimed civilians, is the best evidence to prove that no one can beat the American government in brutality, double standards, extremism and sponsorship of terrorism at home and abroad. It does not make any difference to the American image of a savage killer, when the New York Times magnifies the eyes of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s picture to half-a-page and blares “The Red Menace Is Gone. But Here’s Islam.”79 The so-called imaginary “green-menace of Islamic fundamentalism” pales in comparison to the real menace of secular-extremism that has taken millions of lives around the world for real. The 19 years experience of the Iranian revolution proves that the reli- FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 129 gious leaders of Iran have been on the defensive all along against the aggressive secular leaders of the West. Over these years US leaders and the media have overstated the threat of Islam, deliberately misunderstood the role of religion in politics and thus played into the hands of the secular extremists by portraying Islam as the enemy. The real extremists are those who publish explosive headline events to make it tempting to view Islam through the prism of religious extremism and terrorism. All of them are part of the global secular conspiracy against Islam. In places like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt they council in the guise of friendly faces, but when it comes to Iran, Iraq, Sudan or Libya, they show their real ugly face to fuel the paranoia in the West that Islam is determined to destroy the “peaceful,” secular society of the West. Twenty-one years of the Iranian revolution has proved that it is not bound to export any kind of terrorism, nor is it a form of extremism. Instead, the militant, extremist secularisation we have been subjected to now is basically a campaign to create a uniform global culture without religion. It wants the educational systems to obliterate the memory of religion by filtering it out of history courses as much as possible; keep the young unaware of the forma- tive role of religion in Western, Islamic or any other history, as well as in the great literature of the past. The Muslims cannot follow orders of secular extremists because religion defines the limits of politics as of any human actions. If God has ordained the sanctity of human life, the roles of sexes, the duties of parents and children, and the laws of morality, the powers of the state are necessarily circumscribed, and the category of politics is subordinate to more important things. For politically obsessed secularists, this is an intolerable limita- tion as for them, nothing can be more important than politics. But the Iranian experience has shown that even the politicians can be restrained not to instinctively hate the role of religion in politics. Apart from proving the allegations of extremism absolutely wrong, the Iranian revolution has further confirmed that nothing defines a culture so clearly as its religion and every culture is organised around some transcendent sense of reality, some metaphysical order, some sense of the divine, which it aspires to harmonise. A WAR ON ISLAM? 130

5.2 Target: Terrorism or Islam? The problem is that all those who see violence in Islamic teachings, do not see their own culture of violence. Mr. William Robert B. Milam, former US ambassador to Pakistan, is one of the many political and intellectual leaders who claim that the US is against violence in the Islamic ideology, which leads to Islamic terrorism. That’s why, Washington Post’s — one of the major mouthpieces of US propaganda, columnist Stephen Rosefield had the audacity to say, “our such a reaction is not the outcome of any ignoble prejudices. This is not an issue of the picture of Islam. It is based on facts [i.e. fault lies with the Muslims]. Muslims indulge in acts of terrorism, consider it as legitimate and Muslim governments back terrorist activities.”80 Pakistanis die in many countries around the world in some indescribable manner – some in robberies, some as victims of hate crimes, and so on. However, when two Americans were killed in Karachi, America cried hoarse. The FBI landed at Karachi, and without any evidence the weekly Time magazine did not feel shy in putting a caption “Islamic terrorism claims two lives.” Like other political leaders, Milam says that the US “is against terrorism, not Islam.” But then terrorism is linked to fundamentalism and that in turn to Islam. It is not as simple as Milam has put it in one sentence. These terms are used very vaguely and indiscriminately according to their own distorted views of Islam. What they present to the public is that Islam is the etiology of crime, which leads the average reader to believe that Islam is based on terrorism. It is not a matter of “some [unknown] individuals” as Milam puts it. Western scholars and leaders have openly expressed their fear of Islam and planned patiently their strategy to contain it by differentiation – not an open denomination. According to the As- sociated Press, Western diplomats have sent urgent messages to their foreign ministry contacts that something “has to be done to calm Muslim fundamentalism.” Before giving us another lecture on terrorism and Islam, Mr. Milam and other leaders should do us a favour and explain why they think the US is not against Islam and Muslims. Is it so be- FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 131 cause: the considerate US government did its best to arm Israel up to its teeth and prevent any Muslim country from becoming a nuclear power; or it has punished India and Pakistan differently after their respective nuclear testing; or the US provides nuclear-Israel with all kinds of financial and technical assistance but has imposed sanctions against Pakistan and also deprived it of the millions it paid in advance for the purchase of F-16 fighter planes; or the US is so kind to the Afghan nation that it helped them defeat the Russians; assisted some of its faction to engage in a civil war; and then destabilised the country and removed the Taliban; or instead of helping the Afghans rebuild their country, it en- forced economic sanctions to frustrate the only opportunity the country had in the form of the Taliban government’s effort for re- habilitation and stability; or it has effectively sidelined the UN in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the process to resolve the more than half a century old dispute; or ignoring UN resolutions on Kashmir; or regimes that can serve US interests and are against so-called fundamentalism are acceptable to it in Muslim countries like the military backed dictatorship in Algeria, the military back secular government in Turkey, the pseudo democracy of Hosnie Mubarak, and the sham democracies of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto and now Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan; or it has vetoed in the Security Council almost all the resolutions which were in favour of Muslims; or it allowed the killing of almost 300,000 Muslims in Europe before stepping in and dividing Bosnia against its people’s wishes and in favour of the minority Bosnian Serbs; or it quickly moved to bomb Yugoslavia for months, but refused to chastise Russia for more severe violations of Muslim rights in Chechnya; or it has sponsored all the Zionist conspiracies against Islam and its institutions (BCCI, Iraq’s nuclear reactor, etc.); or there is no end in sight to the decade long genocidal sanc- A WAR ON ISLAM? 132 tions imposed on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait and not respecting UN subsequent resolutions passed by the US in a hurry, but at the same time not allowing the UN to even condemn Israel for its massacre at the UN’s compound in Qana, Lebanon? This is not a “dangerous idea,” a “temptation” or misconception, but an established fact that the US sees Islam as a potential threat. There is no confusion at all about the fact that the US has done and is still doing too much to divide and destabilise Muslim countries, which ultimately leaves very little room for building mutual trust and uniting the Muslims with the US. The Muslims will surely rise to the challenge of rejecting “the temptation” to regard the US as an enemy only if they do not see the so obvious anti-Islam policy of the United States. Undoubtedly, there is no confusion about the fact that the US will never allow Muslims to grow and prosper if they refused to submit to its diktat in this post bi-polar world era. US agents will keep on haunting Muslims in the name of fighting terrorism and fundamentalism.

5.3 Violence, Islam and the US Commenting on the US sponsored United Nations sanctions against Afghanistan in 2001, the former US ambassador to Paki- stan, William B. Milam, said on many occasions that “the US is not at war with Islam; it is at war with terrorism.” At that time, the US had not even the excuse of September 11, let alone evidence of any terrorist activity. Contrary to post September 11 era in which American politicians and political analysts are openly calling for a war on Islam for its teachings inciting violence, Milam used to say during his stay in Pakistan that those Americans “who fear Islam and those Muslims who see the US as the enemy confuse Islam with terrorism,” whereas “the US government does not share this confusion.” At this point it is important to clarify three issues: 1: who exactly is inciting and carrying out violence as a policy; 2: who is fighting whom, and 3: are the Muslims justified in considering the US as its enemy? Successive US administrations have been trying to make the world believe that as they are civilised protectors of human rights that it is simply impossible to get involved in any violence or commit any FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 133 terrorist activity. Israel and the US are the only two countries in the world, who as a matter of official policy oppose “terrorism,” but actually sponsor and unleash terror and at the same time anx- iously shield themselves from arguments about and perceptions of their own barbaric and violent behaviours. Blaming Islamic teachings for violence, or concealing the long history of American worldwide subversion, aggression and state sponsored international terrorism can only momentarily divert public attention. In the long run whatever the facts may be, will come to surface before Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The literal meaning of terrorism is “the systematic use of violence, terror and intimidation to achieve an end.” Judging all the US interventions abroad and its policies and systems at home through this definition proves the US to be the Master of Interna- tional Terrorism. Starting from Afghanistan, we can analyse history to discover who are the actual terrorists and the victims of terrorism. According to the US definition, Osama is a terrorist because he allegedly bombed US embassies in protest of the US presence in Saudi Arabia and masterminded the events of September 11. Ac- cording to Milam, Osama and his friends had so little support for their point of view that “they [could not] press their demands through the political process or appeal to popular opinion.” The same was the case when the Soviet Union “occupied” Afghanistan. Like the Saudi king, the Afghan government invited the Russians for their defence. The Soviet Union was formally invited; it did not invade Afghanistan nor overthrow a sitting government. None of the Mujahideen groups, or their supporters in Washington, could take the Russians out through the “political process.” The US sponsored a more “systematic use of violence, terror and intimidation” than Osama has done so far to force US troops out of his country. At that time Jihad was legitimate in the eyes of Washington and all the political analysts who are now involved in hair splitting in a bid to prove that Jihad is a form of terrorism. Even if we apply the same standard for defining terrorists, if Osama is the terrorist for two alleged bomb attacks, then successive US administration are no more than a bunch of super-terrorists for sponsoring terrorism A WAR ON ISLAM? 134 for years in Afghanistan. Even if we agree that Osama was the mastermind behind all the attacks on the US without the US putting forward any plausible shred of evidence, one may ask: what about the US indiscriminate raining down missiles on Afghanistan and Sudan, killing innocent civilians and destroying the infrastructure. And what about sanctions against a whole nation: is this not a “systematic use of violence and terror” to achieve objectives which the US cannot achieve through the “political process”? It is not to justify terror but to compare “terrorism” with terrorism. Osama’s role can be considered equivalent to the role played by rebels against the Sukarno government in 1958. The US pilots who took part in the terror campaign against the established government (like the Saudi monarchy), were not labelled as terrorists but as “soldiers of fortune” by President Eisenhower, who also claimed “we have no legal obligation to control the activities of Americans of this character.” It means if one is a CIA operative involved in “using systematic terror and violence”, like Allen Law- rence Pope in Indonesia, he is a “soldier of fortune” or “freedom fighter,” otherwise he is Osama the terrorist, for whom genocidal sanctions can be imposed on a whole country, an established government can be removed, thousands upon thousands can be killed without any evidence of anyone’s involvement and emboldened by the success, other countries can also be targeted for attack. If terrorists are those who “have so little popular and moral support that they cannot press their demands through the political process,” so support-less was the US-sponsored Indonesian military who forced Sukarno out of office in 1965. Once in power, the US ambassador, Marshall Green, provided the Indonesian military junta with lists of 5,000 potential opponents. The CIA official revealed for the first time in 1990 that the military butchered all of them. Robert J. Martens, who served in the embassy’s Political Section stated that the lists provided by the US ambassador were “of great help to the army.” As the Indonesian army killed its political opponents, the US embassy checked the names off, to see if the opposition was being effectively eradicated. Was this largest political bloodletting in history not a US-sponsored and assisted FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 135 terrorism to achieve through violence what was not possible through “popular or moral support”? On the other hand, according to the definition of terrorism, the US-led action in Kosova was plain terrorism carried out in a systematic manner to achieve the objectives, which it could not achieve through the “political process” or “popular or moral support.” If it were a war against terrorism, why is it not waged against Israel for its occupation of Arab territory and population for the last 35 years, and in contravention of UN resolutions? Why is it not waged against Russia for its far more serious destruction and mass slaughter in Chechnya, or for Indian repression in Kashmir? If daily bombing is not terrorism, what else is the US and UK doing in the self-declared northern and southern no-fly zones of Iraq? The US claims to be fighting terrorism. What was it sponsoring in El Salvador and Guatemala other than murderous gangster states run by US-backed military regimes but considered as democracies. Dropping as many bombs they may like to kill and terrorise the local population is not terrorism. For instance Israel’s actions in Lebanon, its shelling of PLO headquarters in Tunis and Iraqi nuclear installations and American heavy bombardment on a small Cambodian island that outclassed the bombardment during the Second World War is neither violence nor terrorism. Why is forcing a whole country, including its women and children, to suffer from protracted hunger and disease, as they are doing in Iraq, not tantamount to systematically achieving objectives that cannot be achieved without this horribly slow but sure genocide? It is hardly likely that the US will accept invasion, destruction and killings in South Vietnam and Dominican Republic as terrorism. The systematic use of terror and devastation in Cambodia and Laos is all but terrorism to the US administration. All the CIA’s covert operations throughout the world, its re- cruitment of mercenaries, its training of security police organisations in terror tactics, bombing the presidential quarters in Libya, shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane, burning and burying alive of thousands Iraqi conscripts, killing innocent civilians in A WAR ON ISLAM? 136 tthousands while kidnapping their president (Panama), is plain terrorism that have been concealed as a struggle for strategic interests.

5.4 Who is fighting whom? The pro-war camp argues that the US is fighting terrorism. Unlike the plain, evidence-less allegations against Osama’s involvement in the events of September 11, shiploads of evidence can easily be produced to prove that the US is the Master of International Terrorism and its terrorist activities far outnumber — both in devastation and frequency — the activities of those who the US claims to be terrorists. The alleged terrorists claim that they are carrying out these acts to force the US to abandon its terrorism, injustice, and sponsorship of repression. The question now is: who is fighting whom and how will it end? The answer is simple and clear: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction and terror begets terror. The Muslims do not believe in the argument that “your committing a crime sanctions our committing it.” Though the activities of Muslims, which the US considers as acts of terrorism, are, in fact, pinpricks compared to the real terrorist activities of the US itself. The Muslims, however, do not think such a comparison would be of much use here. It is simply to mention those policies and actions of the US beget terror for it at home and abroad. Why do terrorists not bomb the embassies and installations of Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, or any other country for that matter except the US? There must be something wrong with the US that begins with it and would not last for a moment if it renounces intervention in Muslim countries, imposition of cruel and dictatorial regimes, and support of violence against Muslims. To American political analysts and their colleagues in the US administration, violence, which serves US interests, should be regarded as legitimate while the one, which does not serve this purpose, is illegitimate and a heinous crime — terrorism. Today’s liberation fighter is tomorrow’s terrorist and today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s Prime Minister, for example: Yasser Arafat, Afghan Mujahideen, Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurian, Kenyan Presi- dent Jomo Kenyata, Nelson Mandela, etc. If terrorists are from FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 137

amongst the US ranks, the violence they perpetrate is viewed with sympathy and efforts are undertaken for a way out and solution. The crime is considered as that of an individual and the community is not held responsible for it. This is the attitude when the terrorists are, for instance, Americans like Timothy McVeigh or Israeli like Baruch Goldstein. However, when the violence goes against US interests, the perpetrators become civilisational adversaries. They are declared formidable terrorists, liable to severe punishment. Their culture, their religion and their nations become culprits. This view is adopted when the perpetrators are alleged to be from amongst Muslims. Since the authority of defining terrorism also lies with the world mastering Pharaohs in Washington, they not only manage to keep their actions out of the definition of terrorism despite being acts of overt state terrorism, they consider them to have been taken in the name of justice, and fair-play and for the welfare of humanity. On the other hand, acts of hijacking, occasional bombing and killings done by the oppressed, who have no other means to register their protest and draw the world’s attention to atrocities perpetrated upon them, are zealously projected as the worst forms of terrorism and all efforts are made to rally world support in favour of such a biased propaganda. Therefore, the large scale massacre and arson committed by hundred of thousands of Indian forces in Kashmir, by the Russian army in Chechnya, by Israeli forces in Beirut and occupied Arab land are considered normal and legitimate. Terror- ists are Kashmiris, Palestinians, Chechens and Pakistanis if they support the oppressed Kashmiris in their justifiable cause of attaining the right to self-determination as promised to them by the world community through UN resolutions.

5.5 Solution: combat anti-Americanism In response to the bloody attacks in New York and Washington, American leaders and their media commentators have immediately started an intense campaign to rally global indignation against “terrorism,” which to many around the world is the only avenue available for expressing their grievances against US hegemonic designs. Muslims share the pain of aggrieved families and condemn the at- A WAR ON ISLAM? 138 tacks. The loss is irreparable. However, this is an opportunity to understand the pain of those who are victims of the same “crimes” elsewhere. The difference is that such “crimes” at other places are covered with philosophical and political rationalisations to veil and present the perpetrators’ more fundamental greed and bloodlust as “justice.” It would indeed be sad if even the latest horrible incidents could not help the US government and media commentators to search for the root causes of anti-Americanism. Combating anti-Americanism is far more important and of long lasting value than simply going to war against its symptom i.e. terrorism. Many flawed reasons are being put forward and the focus has shifted to anti-terrorism, instead of understanding anti- Americanism, which, in fact, fuels such an unexplainable rage and determination to expose the US feet of clay. Some attribute it to “failure of will and credibility on the part of the US.” Others argue that the US administration “is gun shy” and most commentators link it to the “enemies of democracy and freedom.” But no one has come forward with a plausible analysis to explain what exactly has the US done to turn individuals into breathing missiles and bombs, and why America alone is the target. Innocent Americans do not realise that the foreign policy of their government deviates far from the lofty universalist principles of freedom and democracy, nor is it easy to let them understand it at this moment of grief. Again, it is important to point out that combating anti-Ameri- canism is not possible without understanding and eliminating the prevailing culture of violence in the US. The culture of violence is the happiness the American opinion-makers, military and political leaders derive from their going for slaughter and their imposing death and destruction on the poor and the weak. Since Bush’s State of the Union address and his calling the “Axis of Evil” as the next target, the press and electronic media are joyously debating “the next war” as if war is child’s play or a football game they watch on their TV sets. If it were not a culture of violence prevailing in the West, particularly the US, the situation would have been quite different. The media is responsible for promoting this culture of violence. For example would it report in the same manner if Iraq were preparing to declare war against America or Britain, both arch- FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 139

enemies of Iraq? No, I am sure if that were the case the media would have jammed their outlets with rhetoric and many times we would have read the absurd term “Islamic Fundamentalism” in it to further convince the already biased American public against Iraq, Islam and Muslims. The media in the West is supposed to take a strong anti-war stance or, if that is not possible, at least it should tell its leaders that Iraq should be armed to the teeth in the face of war threats by steadily increasing threats from Christian Fundamentalists and Ter- rorist states of America and Britain. Those are the terms the West’s enlisted media uses when they describe Muslim countries that they wish to subjugate. The media shall not let down Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, or North Korea the way it let down the Bosnians by imposing an arms embargo so that the “Christian Serb Fundamentalists” or “Extremist Christians”, or shall we settle for the term the western analysts use “Serb Nationalists,” could slaughter the Muslims with impunity? Well, the Muslims will settle for the western terminology in this case even though they have seen pictures of Serb war criminals making the sign of the Cross and kissing the Bible so many times while slaughtering Muslims. At one point Slobodan Melosevic stated that his only mission was to eradicate what western political and opinion leaders call “Muslim Fundamentalists” from Europe. And look at what he did! The western media need not tell the world that the West did not back him because it did. The culture of violence in the West is so evident that while the media champions the cause of the above-mentioned countries, it shies away from the Palestinian cause. The western media tone sel- dom shows to be agreeing with an overwhelming number of the world’s population that Palestine is occupied and Palestinians are subjugated through violence and brutal repression by Israel and America with tacit British support. No-one talks about arming the Palestinians to fight their war of resistance like the Afghan Mujahideen or just the same way the French Resistance Movement was in its fight against the Nazis. Unlike the Afghan Mujahideen, the Palestinian Jihad is a curse; it is terrorism. They need to stop resistance and need not fight back and send off the occupying Is- A WAR ON ISLAM? 140 raelis and Americans like the Iraqis from Kuwait or Russians from Afghanistan. The reason why Israelis and Americans are persecuting the Palestinians is because they are sure they cannot fight back in a meaningful way. It is interesting to note the attitude of Ameri- can and Israeli Allies, who can see occupation and repression in Kuwait and Afghanistan but they are blind to the daily carnage in Palestine. The Americans and British are leading the world in the war against weak Muslim nations and preparing public opinion in a number of ways that make war their only defence. However, if the Americans or the British were actually brave people willing to root out “evil,” they would have gone to war with Russia at the height of the Cold War (funny term, isn’t it?). Why they did not do that is because they knew they would be hit pretty hard. It is much easier to bully unarmed and defenceless civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan or Palestine, and then call it a war to defend ‘West- ern Civilisation’. So that papers sell and the owners of the vast war machinery make their trillions! And more importantly the culture of violence sustains until the next war on the weak. Islamic teachings are blamed for inciting violence. Well if that is the case, shift your mind back to recent European history and count the number of Europeans killed by fellow Europeans. The figure runs into tens of millions - you might need a twelve-digit calculator. Then the killing stopped. The reason? The other guy stocked himself with an equal array of deadly arms as his enemy. After that the Europeans took to modern sports to divert their energies in a past time that caused no deaths: the proxy wars. And now once more, comes the age of Christian wars in the post Sep- tember 11 period, which Samuel P. Huntington strangely calls “the age of Muslim wars.” It is easy to pile up excuses for removing a Muslim head of state and replacing him with the CIA-groomed person like Hamid Karzai. If excuses were enough to justify declaring war and removing an established government, the Muslims would come with a library of American or Israeli crimes to justify not only removing sitting governments but also exterminating their leaders the way the US went after Al-Qaeda without a single piece of convincing evidence against it. But that is not the way of non- FIFTH PROBLEM: THE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE 141 violence; that is not the way of peace. As long as the West does not deal with its violent temptations to rule the world with force, so long the oppressed will resist occupations and repressions and so long the oppressors will call it terrorism. The starting point of this vicious cycle is the mostly American culture of violence that is fully supported by the Europeans. A WAR ON ISLAM? 142 6 Sixth Problem: Authoritarianism

Islamic teachings are blamed for producing authoritarian regimes, which need to be bombed out and replaced with liberal democracies. The fact, however, is that authoritarianism is the first principle to run governments like the United States. America’s military and law enforcement agencies are so violent because the American government, and a majority of America’s politically very conservative citizens, wish to exercise ever more control over every- day life. In this regard, America has something in common with the Taliban, who it alleged to be authoritarians. Both have produced order out of what might have been chaos — the US, by creating domestic and international frameworks that will facilitate its preferred commercial and military relationships, and the Taliban, by overcoming the Afghan factions that had previously been at each other’s throats. There is, of course, a substantial difference. The Taliban’s rules came from religious scriptures, while the rules governing America’s institutionalised violence come from legislators elected with the help of corporate donations, and from courts whose brand of justice is so slow, complex, and unpredictable that even Bush prefers to prosecute Taliban prisoners of war in military tribunals that will deny them all the rights available under the US Constitution. Most Americans have more faith in the corrupt mechanism of politics than in the guidance of scriptures — even the familiar scriptures of Christianity or Judaism, never mind the unfamiliar holy book of Islam — and therefore they generally obey whatever their authorities decide. Yet despite this behaviour, Americans profess to be amazed that Afghans put up with stringent rules imposed by the Taliban. It is a remarkable sentiment, coming from people whose practical SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 143

freedoms are utterly buried under the greatest outpouring of laws – 69,000 pages of federal regulations — ever produced by any nation in the history of the world. According to American myth, Islamic religious teachings are medieval and ignorant, while the rules of America’s secular authorities are even-handed and intelligent — to which one might reply, again, by citing the realities of crime, divorce and family crisis in the US. Not even the Roman Empire or the Catholic Church, in their darkest centuries, ever employed remotely as many people, cranking out so many regulations and decrees, with so little scientific knowledge of how those rules would affect the public, as the United States does today. Rarely, if ever, have lawyers and judges enforcing any empire’s laws been so overwhelmed and baffled by those laws’ complexities and contradictions; rarely have ordinary people had to pay so much, fight so hard, or wait so long for justice. According to Tony Snow, the US has “assembled the largest regulatory workforce ever.”81 According to the 1995 statistics collected by Melinda Warren and Barry Jones, scholars at the Washington University Centre for the Study of American Business, rule-making agencies employ 130,929 people, the highest level in American history and a 28 per cent jump from the 1985 level of 102,192. Imagine the number of recruits after September 11 and well into 2002. In 1995, tax-payers handed $15.6 billion to support this force, also an all-time record. And Bill Clinton wanted an increase of 6.3 per cent.82 Imagine the level of increase by Bush until the next statistics are available. In 1995, the total cost of authoritarian government in America was nearly $3.3 trillion. Using these figures, Americans must work 52 per cent of the calendar year, or from Ist January to 9th July, just to pay for the government. Of the nearly $3.3 trillion that taxpayers spent on government way back in 1995, approximately $720 billion was hidden in federal regulatory taxes, according to a 1992 Rochester Institute of Technology study of federal regulatory costs. That is nearly $2,800 for every man, woman and child in America.83 All this money goes to sustain the authoritarian American government. Walter Williams, an Economics professor at George Ma- son University, says: “Our government has massive power to do A WAR ON ISLAM? 144 evil. Murderers like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Tsetung and Pol Pot would have loved to have the kind of information about their citizens that agencies like the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have.”84 If we could carry out a honest opinion poll, we would have come to the conclusion that more Americans hate their government than the Afghan who were portrayed as having hated the Taliban.” Soon after the Oklahoma bombing, an article in the Washington Times observed: “Bill Clinton chastised those Americans who loved their country but hated their government. That is a blind statement at best. After all, would Clinton have said that to the Ger- mans who loved their country but hated the Nazi regime or the Russians, who loved their country but hated Moscow?…Washington tyrants, like anywhere, view abrogation and confiscation as the preferred alternative…if we ask whether we’re heading toward more liberty or more totalitarianism, it’s clearly towards the latter – tiny steps at a time.”85 Linda Bowles in her 1995 column, “The Crowd running the show,” in the Washington Times, admits: “Many people fear that the rights guaranteed to them by the constitution are no longer safe. They fear the Constitution has been killed by declaring it a living document. The tattered old document is full of holes large enough for Attorney General Janet Reno to drive a tank through.” Americans tell the world about their freedoms of speech and religion. Yet America is the land that has prosecuted the polygamy of the Mormons and the anti-war beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In free-speaking America, everyone knows they can be sued for what they say, even if it is entirely truthful, and that the expense of defending a free-speech case usually outweighs the urge to identify wrongdoers. Hence fools speak out, while the most knowledgeable and experienced people frequently decline to share their wisdom with the public, unless they think they can do so via some sneaky, anonymous medium. Washington actually had to pass a law to protect “whistleblowers” who seek to cast a light upon bureaucratic corruption — which is to say, freedom of speech within the government itself is not the general rule, but rather is an exception that may be safe only when it falls within the limits of the SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 145 whistleblower statute. J. Edgar Hoover’s abusive FBI was not an aberration; it was American justice as usual. Even in the prosecutions of Timothy McVeigh and O.J. Simpson, in two of the most carefully watched, time-consuming, and detailed criminal cases in recent American history, it developed that Americans could not entirely trust their own law enforcement agents to handle evidence professionally and to refrain from distorting the case against the accused. The police forces of Los Angeles, Illinois and other jurisdictions have lately discovered that many so-called convicted murderers were, in fact, innocent people framed by false evidence supplied by crooked cops. Those people were freed only after spending, in some cases, years in prisons where the American concept of justice left them at risk of homosexual gang rape and AIDS. Such things continue to occur every day, at the hands of police and prosecutors wielding the tremendous power of the state against private individuals who cannot or will not bankrupt themselves in order to prove their innocence. All too frequently, the only practical option for decent people is to accept a corrupt plea bargain, in which they will accept reduced punishment and the lifelong inferior status of “criminal,” in exchange for falsely claiming to be guilty of a lesser charge. One can only marvel at the American belief that powerful prosecutors and harsh prison terms provide the best way to build a future. These are the methods that leave a black man more likely to be in prison than in college. This is the “enlightened” approach that converts all real or alleged criminals into misfits who will be even less able to build a future for themselves, in an increasingly judgmental society that has access to every significant fact about their lives. No other nation spends so vastly much more per capita to shelter its criminals in prisons that are, essentially, colleges for criminal training, than it is willing to spend to help those people find a legitimate place for themselves in the world. Constructive responses to unapproved behaviour have rarely appealed to the majority of Americans. It is much easier — and more self-gratifying for a fearful, guilty generation — to find someone to blame and then punish them harshly, even if it does generate lifelong hatred in some of those convicts. America is, more A WAR ON ISLAM? 146 than ever, the land in which a Harvard scientist in the 1960s was able to persuade people to deliver jolts of electricity — jolts that they believed might be life-threatening — to punish actors who pretended to be trying, but failing, to perform as instructed. There is a meanness and anger underlying American thinking towards those who do not fit within the ordinary structure of things. Minorities of all varieties have experienced this hostility — not only racial minorities, like the Chinese coolies who laid the railroads across Montana, or the African slaves sold by New York slave traders to southern plantation owners, but also cultural minorities, like the hillbillies of Appalachia or the long-haired teenagers of the 1960s. While one may appreciate the extent to which many Ameri- cans spoke out, after September 11, in support of ordinary Ameri- can Muslims, the fact remains that many of those Muslims were the target of words and acts that provoked fear for the safety of their homes and families and homes. The world should recognise the difference between the authoritarian Taliban that might oppress its own subjects and the authoritarian United States that might eventually prefer to oppress anyone, inside and outside of its borders, who cannot or will not or cannot comply with its ever-rising tide of regulations. The rule of law, as exemplified by the US, is a tyranny that not even the large majority of Americans can understand or afford; it is a velvet glove by which the steel fist of governmental power hopes, gently at first, to crush all who do not follow their orders exactly, to the letter. It is, in the end, a fundamentalism undiluted by the humane principles found in any major religion. At the very least, Muslims may rightfully say to the US: show us your alleged freedoms in full bloom, and we may well change our minds; but until then, we are not entirely crazy for noticing a great difference between what your army claims to stand for and what it actually brings about in the Third World. The fact remains that authoritarianism has never been the problem. The Taliban were targeted and removed from power not because they were authoritarian, but because they established a government in the name of Islam. Let us see what is the issue: Islam, terrorism or the Taliban? SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 147

In the New World Order what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. Sanctions were imposed on the Taliban government for hosting Osama bin Laden. The Taliban were denied a seat in the UN and their government was not recognised just because their friend was a “terrorist.” Others Muslim countries have been purposely forced to remain stuck in their political and economic problems, so that they do not have enough time to give deep thought to the whole phenomenon geared to erase their Islamic identity in the guise of fighting for human rights and combating international terrorism. Whether we believe it or not, but the core issue is a fight against Islam – the Taliban happened to be just a single victim on a long list of potential challenges that the Islamic world can pose to US hegemony. Let us find out if it was really the issue of authoritarianism, human rights abuses and terrorism, that became a hurdle to the recognition of the Taliban government or was it just the fear of Islamic identity that played an important rallying role in challenging the Western onslaught on Islamic culture and civilisation. If Afghan refugees were not returning to Afghanistan, there was not something wrong with the government of Pakistan or the government in Kabul. The UN and the world community might be willing to provide material facilities for the repatriation of refugees but the same UN and Western countries created an insurmountable psychological barrier by portraying the Taliban as monsters and made living in Afghanistan difficult due to unnecessary sanctions. Home was no longer home to them because of UN sanctions and extremely few opportunities for development due to the cold- shouldered attitude of Western nations who could pour billions of dollars for defeating the former Soviet Union but not rebuilding post-war Afghanistan. Some of our commentators saw the Taliban as the reason for not returning Afghan refugees to their homeland. Why do they not see the Israeli government responsible for driving 800,000 Palestin- ians from their homes, 500,000 of whom are still living in refugee camps in Southern Lebanon, and still facing the wrath of Israeli bombing and shelling? If the removal of the Taliban was necessary for peace and repatriation of Afghan refugees, then whose govern- A WAR ON ISLAM? 148 ment needs to be dislodged to make the return of Palestinian refugees possible? The Taliban, at least, had not invaded Pakistan to attack refugee camps nor were they violating UN resolutions like India and Israel. It is good to hear that the world community will recognise only those who accept the moral principles, standards and obligations that the “world community” holds as sacred and inviolable. But why is the world community silent over India and Israel’s fifty years of systematic repression and terrorism within and outside their borders? Their rule is far worse than any definition or test of authoritarianism. And how about the violations record of the Mas- ter of International Terrorism — the USA? The wrong committed by one does not justify another’s actions to do wrong. However, the Taliban’s human rights record pales by comparison when seen in the context of the human rights record of the US and its Allies. This shows that human rights are taken for granted when interests of the so-called international communities are at stake. Whereas the same are blown out of proportion when the need arises to punish others in the name of human rights, aggression or terrorism. The Taliban had not shot down passenger planes killing hundreds of innocent civilian passengers. They had not sent thirty- three bombers to light up the skies over another country and kill dozens of innocent civilians, including the adopted daughter of a head of state. The Taliban had not yet organised “hit teams” to assassinate foreign head of State. The Taliban had not slaughtered 50,000 people like the US-backed El Salvador regime. It was not simply ter-rorism but “international ter-rorism”; still there was no condemnation, no Amnesty International Report and no war against terrorists, as the US itself was involved. The United States instituted a government in El Salvador, exact-ly as the Soviet Union instituted a government in Afghani- stan. They created the army, a terrorist army; they supplied, organised and directed it. Fresh from their training, the American- trained elite battalions carried out the worst atroci-ties. The US Air Force participated directly in coordinat-ing bombing strikes — the terror was not ordinary killing. The US terrorists first muti- lated, tortured, raped, cut them to pieces — it was hideous tor- SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 149 ture, Pol Pot-style. That was neither terrorism nor human rights abuse. The Taliban were not supposed to fight those who were fighting them. However, the US has every right to intervene beyond its borders particularly in the Western Hemisphere, where it immediately stands up and denounces the rest of the world for trying to get involved. So, it will veto Security Council resolutions calling for an end to hostilities on the grounds that this is a Western Hemi- sphere affair and the Americans can do it themselves. This is true, case after case. In its International Totalitarian-ism, under the guise of democracy, the US invaded Panama on a day of shame and despair for Latin America, which was truly in pain for its incapacity to protect its independence from the tyrant in the North. Until the Panama invasion, the US could easily justify every use of violence and terrorism on an in-ternational level as a defence against a perceived the Soviet threat. For example, when the US invaded Grenada in 1983, they were defending the US against the efforts of a Soviet attempt to strangle them by conquering such powerful outposts such as Grenada, South Yemen, etc. We know it was comical, rather more than comical, but that kind of story was enough to develop public support for the in-vasions and violations of international law. Did the Taliban commit any crime of that magnitude? The attack against Nicaragua was justified by claiming that if the US did not stop the Russians there, they would soon be pouring across the border at Texas, only two days drive away! These examples go way back. The overthrow of the democratic capitalist government of Guatemala; Americans were defending themselves against the Russians because their existence was threatened. Cuba has been crippled for the same reasons. It is worth a moment’s con-templation that with the land-scapes of Rwanda and Bosnia running red with innocent blood, Washing- ton’s attention was fully fo-cused on tiny Haiti, whose stran-gulation was the prime objective. Her economy was destroyed; her population was without work; her people were dying of disease; many of her babies were being born retarded because their mothers were malnourished; and perhaps thousands had drowned trying to es- A WAR ON ISLAM? 150 cape the US-created hell on earth. The US-sponsored embar-go and blockade had made things much worse and life more miserable for the innocent civilians than what are we witnessing in Afghani- stan. Compare the Taliban’s record on human rights with the following: Assisting the Indonesian army in killing several hundred thousand people during the 1965 purge, which is one of the largest political bloodlettings in history. Organising its own army in Laos under “White Star Opera- tion,” running 800 sorties a day, dropping 1.5 million tons of bombs, and depopulating the Plain of Jars of its 150,000 inhabitants. Killing more than two million people and leaving 23 million craters turning Vietnam into swamps. Assisting the Congolese army in taking over Lumumba’s government, abducting Lumumba from a UN-protected house and shipping him off to his death. Dropping 108,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia, destroying hundreds of villages and killing thousands of civilians under the pretext of killing National Liberation Front soldiers. Building the most repressive security organisation (Savak) to keep the Shah of Iran in power. Carrying out terror campaigns in Nicaragua, where the use of CIA’s sabotage manual is a classic example of how the US sponsored and organised terror acts that would simply make a society cease to work. US State Department and the CIA’s working with the death squads in El Salvador who were chopping up people and running trucks over their heads. US unwavering support to keep the Israeli terror machine in action by pouring more than 100 billion dollars since 1948. No one country gets $1000 per capita for every man, women and child and an average of $10,000 per soldier subsidy from the US. Is it not more than ironic that after its own indescribable track record at home, in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Gre- nada, Guatemala, Haiti, Hon-duras, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Nicara- SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 151 gua, Panama, Somalia, Vietnam, etc., still, only the US has the right and authority to declare others ter-rorists and deny them the right to recognition and life? Russia has a right to cleanse Chechnya of Muslims; India has the right to cleanse Kashmir of Muslims, Israel has the right to repress Palestinians forever but the Taliban are the monsters if they defend themselves against an enemy sponsored by external powers such as the US, France, India, Iran, Tur- key, Israel and the former Soviet states. The crux of the issue is that it was not a matter of human rights or terrorism. There are worst kind of human rights violations going on around the globe and the UN itself is a tool in US-sponsored terror campaigns, one of which kills close to 5,000 babies a month in Iraq. The US itself supports authoritarian, mostly repressive governments and military juntas that are not a threat to American hegemonic designs. Nicaragua of Anastasio, Cuba of Fulgenica Batista, Dominican Republic of Rafael Trujillo, and India and Is- rael since their inception are the best examples of human rights violators supported and sponsored by the US. Yet the Taliban government was not supposed to be recognised ever, not even if they had brought down the moon and stars for their women and serve the Northern Allians like slaves. The reason is simple: the US did not want Muslim self-assertion – an Islamic identity to remain and flourish that could inspire people to stand up against injustice and global domination by a globo-bully. If there is no difference between the moral, social, political and religious values of an American and an Afghani, it will not matter if Mullah Omar is heading them or George Bush. Islamic identity has become the last threat to US designs and it will use all the resources at its disposal, including force to rob Muslims off every principle, standard, norm, value and tradition that is associated with their Islamic identity. Irrespective of their success, the Taliban were the flag bearers of establishing a true Islamic system that would have highlighted Islamic identity. As a result, they had to with- stand the worst of US wrath as Mufti Karl Inderfurth declared them non-Muslims.

6.1 The dread of Taliban’s authoritarianism A WAR ON ISLAM? 152

The US media and establishment were busy for a long time demonising the Taliban and spreading a morbid dread of their government by labelling them as an authoritarian regime of murderous thugs. Keeping aside the fact of US authoritarian ambitions to rule the world with force, efforts were directed to demonise Islam and prove it unfit for ruling a nation in the name of Islam. The Taliban government was an easy scapegoat. During the height of propaganda, the former US Assistant Secretary of State, Karl Inderfurth, told Voice of America that the kind of Islam “practiced by Pakistan is not that which is practiced in Afghanistan.”86 The “enlightened” Inderfurth further explained the American theory that “there is a difference between militant Islam and moderate Islam.” With their shallow knowledge, American government officials were busy explaining the so-called types and kinds of Islam in a way to make these classifications as legitimate expressions for us. Such statements on part of the US government were intended to kill two birds with one stone: one was to legitimise the negative connotation of the term “Islamic fundamentalism,” and the other was to further create a morbid dread of a government established in the name of Islam. We need to look at both aspects of Inderfurth’s statement for an elaborate analysis. As far as Afghanistan and the US morbid dread of the Taliban’s alleged authoritarianism was concerned, contrary to US propaganda just spending a week in Afghanistan was enough for someone not too dull of a soul to conclude and testify that whatever the media told the world about the Taliban was a campaign of absolute disinformation based on some twisted facts, half truths and plain lies. It was not the so-called exaggerated difference in Pakistani and Afghani Islam, but other reasons based on which the US and its Allies refused to recognise the Taliban government. To prove people like Inderfurth wrong, there are a thousand and one solid facts that proved that Taliban rule in Kabul was the most deserving government in the last twenty-one years that needed international recognition. Although the US was instrumental in the rise of the Taliban, their return, especially at the time when murder, rape and genocide by US-funded warlords was rampant, sounded more like SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 153 a cavalry arriving to rescue the trapped people of Afghanistan and they were hailed with great enthusiasm and support by the people of Afghanistan. The Taliban delivered just what the people of Af- ghanistan were looking forward to for many years – law, order, justice and security. One of the pretexts cited for not extending recognition to the Taliban government was that their government was not “broad based.” For that matter, which of the previously UN and US recognised governments were broad based? Or for that matter, is Karazai’s government broad based? Everyone in Kabul knew that never before had so many ministries been so widely allocated to different minority groups, as was the case under the Taliban. The whole Ministry of Planning was in the hands of Persian speaking Badakhshanis. Similarly, the Persian-speaking minority was leading the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare. Someone from outside had never ruled the province of Paktia with a majority of Pashto-speaking communities, but then a Persian-speaking Badakhshani was governing it. The same were responsible for the whole infantry division in the army, which also had Shi’a divisions fighting side-by-side the Sunnis. The Taliban government had given share in power to almost every Afghan community. What they did not want among their ranks were former Communists and so-called liberals who were interested in bringing former King Zahir Shah’s family back to power. And that is exactly what the post-Taliban US game plan is all about. If Afghanistan needed anything then, it was a strong recognised government to sustain and build upon the peace and security established by the Taliban. Before the arrival of the Taliban, the situation in Afghanistan was much worse than in Kosova and it needed some serious measures to disarm the heavily armed factions and public. NATO troops are doing just the same in Kosova and increasingly more and more troops are demanded by the coalition forces in Afghanistan for the same reason. Since the US could not capitalise on the rise of the Taliban or influence their decision making, some of the Taliban’s actions were declared despicable and unacceptable and the anti-Taliban campaign was spread to the extent that every other nation followed suit A WAR ON ISLAM? 154 in calling Taliban’s rule as totalitarian. They were blamed for “harbouring Arab terrorists,” “women apartheid,” “technology phobia” and a Big Brother approach to every aspect of Afghan life. As a result, the Northern Alliance of the late Ahmad Shah Masoud and Rabbani took every opportunity to portray themselves as more liberal and tolerant on the Afghan scene. In fact, the protection that the Taliban had provided to women, was considered as a denial of their basic rights; whereas Ahmad Shah Masoud and Rabani’s oppression of women by unleashing a horrible reign of rape and murder (especially women of ethnic groups other than their own) when they were in power over a part of Kabul city, had been totally ignored. And the numerous stories of rape of Pashtoon women under the noses of the US-backed Karzai regime do not even make their way to the front pages of mainstream media in the West. A discussion with Taliban government officials, including the faculty members and the Chancellor of Kabul University during the Taliban period revealed that no one was against women education or their working outside their homes. The only restriction the Taliban wanted to enforce was the proper hijab. If universities in Turkey have the right to enforce the no-scarf law, then the Taliban had every right to enforce no-one-without-scarf law in Afghan universities. It was easy to raise slogans than to practically do something for women. At that stage, the cash-strapped Taliban were in no position to arrange separate facilities for women. According to the Minister of Industries and Mines, Maulvi Eid Mohammed, “any foreign donor should come forward and show us just one example where they have tried to provide funds for reviving a defunct girls school by reconstructing the building or making arrangement for paying its staff.” Other than propaganda, no one had even offered any skill development packages for women despite repeated requests by the Taliban who clearly stated that they were not against women education or jobs, as it was better for them to make both ends meet rather than begging in the streets. The only problem was that the government had no funds to carry out the rehabilita- tion work within the available resources. The Taliban were then blamed for harbouring Osama – “the SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 155 terrorist.” All the US-funded Afghan Mujahideen were terrorists of the same kind for the Soviet Union. They were demanding the So- viet withdrawal from Afghanistan just as Osama is demanding the US to withdraw from the Arabian Peninsula. The Taliban were blamed and punished for harbouring just one Saudi “terrorist” Osama, whereas the US so proudly groomed and crowned more than a dozen Afghan Osamas — “freedom fighters” — for years. These freedom fighters are now called “warlords” needed to be removed from the scene to make the CIA-installed regime in Kabul stable. Does this not prove how easy it is for Washington to crown and depose people as and when it needs? The Europeans blindly follow suit. When the same Afghan Osamas with $3 billion worth of arms from the CIA, began to fight amongst themselves for control of the country, the US quietly sidelined itself and waited for the country to disintegrate. There was widespread hunger and malnutrition. Civilian casualties of war continued to die due to lack of medical attention. With the proliferation of land mines, maimed children with amputated limbs were a common sight. The prevalence of unclaimed corpses lying in the streets was further evidence that the people in Afghanistan have lived a surreal, horrific existence during the past few years of foreign-sponsored factional fighting. All those changing governments, controlling just a few streets in Kabul, were acceptable to the US and its Allies, but not the Taliban government who controlled 95 per cent of the country. Before the Taliban, an atmosphere of anarchy reigned in Af- ghanistan, where different factions looted homes and indulged in an orgy of killings, beatings and torture. The raping of women was rampant. As Amnesty International attested, “rape was condoned by faction leaders as a means of terrorising conquered populations and rewarding soldiers.” It reported the case of a young widow in Kabul, who in early 1994 left her three small children at home to search for food outside. Two soldiers abducted her from the street and took her to their base where 22 men raped her for three days. When she was released, she returned home to find that her three children had died of hypothermia. The global silence during that time suggests that all this was acceptable to the US, its Allies and A WAR ON ISLAM? 156 human rights activists. No one tried to call for sanctions against Afghanistan at that time. And Karl Inderfurth did not warn Paki- stan of any threat from warlords in neighbouring Afghanistan. If the Taliban had no right to force their own people for wearing the burqas and keeping beards, the US and its Allies also had no right to punish them for wearing the burqas and keeping the beards. Afghan people needed much more than a right to throwing off burqas and shaving their beards. Afghanistan needed recognition of a government of their own making, not a government imposed by the US and run by CIA agents. It needed UNDP and other do- nors’ generous assistance to initiate programmes for harnessing Af- ghans potential to alleviate their poverty and make them self-reli- ant. Instead, sanctions were slapped on the Taliban for being “totalitarians.”

6.2 Imposing totalitarian governments The US seemed to be very anxious to overthrow the Taliban because they were totalitarians. After the “fall” of the Taliban, the first thing the US did was to impose an unrepresentative, puppet regime on Afghanistan and initiate the process of launching new TV channels to enslave Muslims by somehow convincing them that what they see with their own eyes is not true. The new attempt to halt the free flow of information is just one among the many desperate American acts directed at ruling the world with force and experimenting with secular universalism in the Muslim world. This experiment of replacing particular institutions of a people’s own gradual creation over centuries with the help of local and imposed totalitarians will soon backfire into the new battles of the final World War. The New York Times ran an unusual 6172-word article, criticising Al-Jazeera for allegedly using all the tricks that incidentally are employed by the BBC and CNN since their inception.87 It is not Al-Jazeera’s popularity that damages the American image. What in fact sow the seeds of hatred among peaceful people around the world are the words and deeds of the American government. Irre- spective of whichever channel Bush and Powell may use, unchanged will remain the effects of their defiant words, “the American policy SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 157 will not change,” and insensitive policies. So will remain unchanged the reaction of Muslim souls dulled by the pain of repressive regimes imposed by the US and its Allies. Contrary to the expectations of the Muslim masses and statements of the American government, US policies have definitely changed but for the worse. A thick smoke of confusion still sur- rounds the word “terrorism.” In November 2001, India and the EU declared to take “decisive measures” against “all countries harbouring terrorists.” What does it mean if not imposing specific interpretations of “terrorism” and solutions that would deepen the crisis all around? It simply sets the targets in line: Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, or Oman. What would be the consequences of supporting chosen kings and dictators or political universalism the US and its friends have embarked upon since September 11? Would yet another propaganda TV station be able to justify the suicidal disregard with which the Allies are treating the root causes of unrest in the Muslim world? Why are the existing channels not sufficient? Simply because the crime rate of the super terrorists has gone beyond the capacity of their existing propaganda channels to justify, and because the double standards have intensified with the new wave of planting pro-American regimes. Vows of the “coalition” dictators to root out “Islamic opposition” and statements of “coalition” terrorists, like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Ariel Sharon calling for “resolutely” rooting out “terrorism anywhere and in any form,” smacks of utter hypocrisy and makes one wonder about the nature of the impending disaster. One of the Taliban’s unpardonable sins was not forming a broad based government. Before September 11, we used to hear calls that the US would not do “business as usual” with the military regime in Pakistan. The British Commonwealth was on the verge of declaring Pakistan a pariah state. But now their joint venture with the General seems to have gone to the extreme of unusualness. There are no further calls for democracy in Pakistan. Even if elections are held, the system would be hijacked in such a manner that dislodging Hosnie Musharraf would remain a dream of the masses for decades to come. A WAR ON ISLAM? 158

The consequences of US-sponsored Egyptianised Muslim states are not hard to perceive. Many leaders and non-leaders are already behind bars in Pakistan. In Egypt, as recently as November 18, 2001, ninety-four people were charged with forming “an underground terrorist group,” to “target the lives of public figures and security officers.” Such repressive measures directly lead to anti- Americanism. Cultivating pro-Americanism through repressive regimes will never help the US win hearts. How many websites would the US have to block to conceal its crimes? How many critics would it silence? For how long would it support pro-American puppets? The animosity grows with every wrong move the US makes and the intensity of hatred grows with all the steps the US takes to justify its wrongs. Terrorism will never end as long as the US does not feel the pain of others. Hosnie Musharraf like his bosses in Washington believes events in Afghanistan have vindicated his policy. Terrorism does not vindicate anyone’s policy. It is only the use of intellectual, media and military terrorism that has changed the situation in Afghanistan for worse. Contrary to the statements of the dubiously elected, self-proclaimed president of Pakistan, the shift in US policies vin- dicates the position of his critics. It is not only Afghanistan. The General might be looking at only one aspect of the issue and that is to save and legitimise his government. What else can best describe the failure of his policy than his planning to pressure India into a dialogue on Kashmir with American backing, and the Americans turning on him and publicly declaring the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination as terrorism? Even for Afghanistan, Powell declared on October 24, 2001 before the House International Relations Committee that the “next government of Afghanistan cannot be dictated by Pakistan.” Paki- stan’s enemies are now in Kabul. Efforts are underway to install a pro-US government in Kabul. These are the measures that will backfire for the US and its backers. A prudent government is not an artificial contrivance, no invention of propaganda-channels-intellectuals, got up abstractly to suit the intellectual whim of the hour. Governments hastily designed upon theories of vested interests ordinarily are wretched and short-lived dominations. SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 159

A good government, very different from the one envisaged for Kabul or in place in Islamabad and Cairo, is the tree that grows slowly from years of social experience. For political institutions of a people grow out of their: religion, moral habits, economy, and literature; political ways are but part of an intricate bed of civilisation, into which the roots of social order are turned deep. Attempts to impose borrowed institutions upon an alien culture, however well intentioned, generally are disastrous – though sometimes decades, or even generations, may be required for the experiment to run its unlucky course. It is too premature to declare that events in Afghanistan vindicate the puppet or his master’s policy and claim that imposing American policies on an Egyptianised Muslim world will not backfire. American foreign policy is still is plagued by the delusion that some domination of American institutions and manners and aspirations will be established in every Muslim land – the American imperial conviction, in Santayana’s phrases, that the nun must not remain a nun, and China shall not keep its wall. The American obsession is not new. Perennially, the US establishment seeks for liberal, gradualist, middle-of-the-road, rational political leaders in Vietnam, or the Congo, or Algeria, or Yugoslavia: people who would disavow what the US dislikes and behave as if they had graduated from some American state university. Yet somehow the US fails to find these precious people, in Asia or Africa or Europe or Latin America; and it is vexed. But its hope springs eternal. General- Issimo Chiang Kai-shek, Marshal Tito, President Diem, Bung Sukarno, General Zia, Noreiga and other men of mark successively fall for US favour: they have strayed from the paths of righteousness; they have not been good Americans. The US, however, has been blessed with some statesman like Musharraf or a party like the Northern alliance, endowed with sufficient common sense to install the American Way instantly. The American fond hope of political universalism will never will be realised. For individuals, as Chesterton said, are happy only when they are their own potty little selves; and this is as true of nations. The imposition of the American way upon the Muslim world will not make it cheerful. The American institutions will function tol- A WAR ON ISLAM? 160 erably in just a few lands. States, like men, must find their own paths to order and justice and freedom; and those paths ordinarily are ancient and twisting routes, upon which the signposts are Tra- dition, Prescription and Authority. The world should become one immense copy of American society is a dream that may not be imposed quite simply upon the ancient cultures of the Muslim world. Whatever lives, tries to make itself the centre of the universe; and it resists with the whole of its power the endeavours of competing forms of life to assimilate it to their substance and mode. Every living thing prefers even death, as an individual, to extinc- tion as a species by absorption into other species. So if the lowliest alga struggles fatally against a threat to its peculiar identity, we ought not be surprised that men and nations resist desperately – often unreasoningly – any attempt to assimilate their character to that of some other body social. This resistance is the first law of one sure way to make a deadly enemy; and that is to propose to anyone, “submit yourself to me, and I will improve your condition by relieving you from the burden of your peculiar identity and reconstituting your substance in my image.” Yet this is precisely what Bush and his colleagues proclaim as a rallying-cry for American policy makers in this unipolar world. To be sure, they do not use precisely these phrases, and they seem to be unaware of the arrogant assumptions behind their own nation- building projects; yet naiveté does not alter the character of the first principles upon which the design is erected. Take up the American Way, abstractly, and set it down, as an exotic plant, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, or Sudan, where the literature and customs by which the Americans have been nurtured are quite unknown – why the thing cannot succeed. The US cannot create secular societies in the Muslim world, as it believes. It cannot create Congresses and White Houses, where the bed of justice rests upon the Qur’an. Such undertakings are going to disrupt the old systems. At the moment, the secular system might seem to be working well in Turkey, but myth is going to be shat- tered very soon. There is a growing malaise in the Turkish body politic. A feeling among many that the Kemalist project has run its course, the secular parties have run out of ideas, and now it is time SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 161

for the country to return to its roots in Islam and the East. Writing in the English-language Turkish Daily News, Dr. Nilufer Narli, author and sociologist, described “a crisis of identity, a belief that ware in a state of moral decadence and political decline in a non- Islamic system, and the feeling of being lost.” Turkey’s Islamic movement is a response to the anxiety of modernity, she writes. “It has found fertile ground because of the shared belief that Turkey is in a state of decline - its cause, its departure from Islamic path; its cure, a return to Islam in private and public life to restore its Is- lamic identity and values.”88 This return, to the values of the Qur’an instead of Kemalism, would, Islamists believe, see Turkey return to the golden era of the Ottoman Empire and take its rightful place as a world power. In the long run, the traditional morals, habits and establish- ments of a people, confirmed by their historical experience, will reassert themselves, and the innovations will be undone, if Islamic civilisation has to survive at all. The US tends to assume that Muslim states, which it conde- scends to call “underdeveloped,” are mere primitive aggregations of population, lacking only the American political practices and as- sumes it can build pro-American regimes of sweetness and light. But this is to ignore history. Each of these nations must be allowed to work out its own reforms; and their reforms must be in the line with the prescriptive ways and traditions of the respective countries. The UN or US imposed solutions through daisey cutters and sanctions will always backfire. Anyone who promises to convert himself or his nation, abruptly and thoroughly, to Western ways must end disillusioned with his sponsors. The US and its Allies must be fortunate if the puppet or the people he tried to convert do not react violently. Sooner or later there will be no attractive dictators, no feudal sheikhs and no sham democratic champions to whom leaders like Blair and Bush could go on begging missions, looking for common grounds. What would they do to convince those who overthrow them? Carpet-bombing all of them would be the only solution when the dangerous experience of parting theory from experience comes to an end. The US still has time to leave the Muslim world alone. A WAR ON ISLAM? 162

6.3 Democracy & authoritarianism: Irrelevant labels “... we have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population ... Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity ... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality ... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratisation.”89 It is interesting to note that “totalitarian” Islam is accused for not being compatible with democracy, yet authoritarianism is acceptable if it is to check Islam. If Muslims are supposed to epito- mise this case they might be referring to an interesting example that is quoted by Hunter: “…according to Amos Perlmutter: …the issue is not democracy but the true nature of Islam. Is Islam, fundamental or otherwise, compatible with liberal, human rights oriented Western-style representative democracy? The answer is an emphatic ‘No’.”90 On the contrary, some other critics believe that it is possible to develop an Islamic version of democracy. However, those Western analysts who see an inherent incompatibility between Islam and democracy tend to define the latter as meaning a secular system of government with complete separation of religion and state. De- fined in this sense, democracy is indeed incompatible with Islam, according to which, at least in theory, there is no separation of religion and politics, sovereignty belongs to Allah (Glorified is He the Highest), and the Qur’an and the Shariah are the only sources of law. But the discussion on compatibility of Islam with democracy is totally irrelevant because of the Western attitude towards Islam. The objective is to thwart Islam irrespective of it being compatible with democracy or not. The direct Western support for keeping a transparent institu- tional framework absent for political opposition in Muslim countries to work within society not only hinders the development of opposition of all kinds but also magnifies the profile and broadens the constituency of “rejectionist” or “disloyal” parties. Besides, the SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 163

“illegalisation” of the “Islamist” opposition fosters radical and violent backlashes and programmes on the part of such parties or movements.91 In practical terms, the exclusion of Islamist movements from the electoral process has added to the confusion and ambigu- ity of their platforms, which have never been given an opportunity to be tested, at the polls or in power. Disenchanted by their historical experience of mistrust, duplicity and failed institutions, Anderson writes, “few of the disappointed were natural constitu- ents of democratic programs or parties.”92 In a similar vein, all opposition is treated as dangerous and dealt with harshly by the ruling regimes supported by Western governments. This is, Anderson argues, the cruel paradox that these regimes have created for themselves and their opposition in Muslim countries. Investigating Algeria’s civil war, Dirk Vandewalle argues that this conflict typifies the identity crisis of a country coming to terms with its past. The “Islamists” now challenge secular nationalists rule, which has been unopposed since 1962. The 1988 riots pre- cipitated a crisis of legitimacy, culminating in an identity crisis, or as Vandewalle puts it, “a crisis of national culture.”93 Economic crisis alone, he argues, does not explain the nature of the conflict there. The civil war is ultimately about the nature of the modern state and what precisely the state should do for its citizens. Algeri- ans are faced, Vandewalle continues, with “an intensely nationalistic debate that involves political, economic, and highly symbolic issues and references that have been left unresolved since independence.”94 Focusing on the Gulf region in the aftermath of the Gulf war, John L. Esposito argues that the rise of “Islamist” movements in the heartland of the Arab Muslim world has increasingly challenged, if not threatened, the security of Gulf states in terms of US interests. While Kuwait and Yemen have allowed Islamists to participate in elections and serve in Parliament and cabinet positions without having any problems as presented by western analysts, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have denied such opportunities. The Gulf Coop- eration Council states have yet to find a way out of the impasse: whether to suppress or expand civil society.95 On the other hand we have examples of the repressive regimes, A WAR ON ISLAM? 164 like Hosnie Mubarak in Egypt, which is being supported by the US and its Allies for its war on “Islamic fundamentalists.” To the contrary, in Egypt, Raymond William Baker asserts, Islamic revivalism has been based on a more centrist social and political role. The Islamists’ success in providing social services has constituted quiet an indictment of the government’s inability to do so. Advo- cating programs of peaceful reform, the “centrist Islamists” have mobilised social and political action for the larger purposes of freedom, development and sound ecological policies.96 Despite all this, religious parties are totally excluded from the political process. There is a smouldering indignation amongst them at their exclusion from political life - exactly the sort of indignation that in the end leads people to countenance violence. In response to whether they had given any thought as to what they would do if they ever came to power, a well-known journalist responded: “How can they think about the future? They have been banned for 40 years. Muslim Brothers are sent to prison for 15 years, 17 years. They are not even legally allowed to have discussions amongst themselves. All Islamic groups are illegal therefore they are invisible.”97 When asked, “Does that mean they are everywhere?” He re- plied, “If there were a free election, they would win it. This is the last battle of the secularists.” Most of the secularists, from the Nasserist Left to the liberals, fear free elections for precisely that reason - the “Islamists” would win. More often than not in taxis nowadays the driver will be listening on his radio to a mosque service - something uncommon till recently. According to John Casey, “new mosques practising a militant Islam on the puritanical Saudi model and with highly regimented, almost identically dressed wor- shippers are springing up all the time.”98 How strange words like these sound to the ear of a Muslim. What has the growing number of mosques and worshipers have to do with “militancy” that is so readily associated with everything related to Islam? More strange is the fact that many corrupt and military regimes in Pakistan and other Muslim countries have been supported by the US only for their proclamation that they are liberal and secular bulwarks against “Islamic fundamentalism” just as they were supported by the US for being bulwarks against the So- SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 165

viet threat. On the other hand, Pakistan’s religious parties served as a valuable case study of the inclusion of Islamic movements in the political process, which had prevented their marginalisation at the cost of their losing direction. The religious parties involved in mainstream politics are lost in the sense that they want to struggle for establishing an Islamic state, but the course they have adapted it not leading them anywhere. Recently, the Egyptian kind of authoritarian policies are in the offing and very soon S.V. R. Nasr, would be forced to rethink his statement who aptly concludes: “... one of the most Islamic countries is also one of the most open and democratic.”99 Events since the mid-1970s have proved that when it is season, democracy in countries like Pakistan, is more dear to the US and its Allies than the ruling families in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who have held power for decades if not centuries. However, when the democrats fail to serve Washington’s imperial interests, dictators are even more welcome, like General Zia and now General Musharraf. The Al Saud family consolidated its power from 1902-1934; the Al Khalifa took power in Bahrain in 1783; the Al Thani consolidated power in Qatar in 1878; the Al Said took power in Oman in the mid-18th century; the Al Sabah became hereditary rulers of Kuwait in the 18 th century; and the emirate members of the UAE consolidated power at various times in the mid-18th century. Virtual dictatorship in these countries is supported in the name of stability of these countries, which is hardly perfect. Terrorism, often directed at the US is more often due to genuine grievances of the suffering masses in US-sponsored and supported authoritarian regimes. In the September 11 attacks, as many as 15 of the alleged perpetrators were from Saudi Arabia, but the cause of their concerns has been totally ignored. Coup attempts occurred in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and in Bahrain in 1981. In 1994-1996, Bahrain suffered a series of protests and riots that led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests. Nevertheless, these governments have held firmly onto power. The stability, peace and perfect law and order situation under the Taliban in Afghanistan was not appreciated because they did not serve US interest like the A WAR ON ISLAM? 166

Gulf monarchies. This double standards on the issue of democracy leads to anti-western feelings in many Muslim countries where millions are suffering at the hands of either repressive regimes in the name of stability or corrupt leaders in the name of democracy. In a conference organised by the UN University on the “Chang- ing Nature of Democracy” (Oxford, July 24-27, 1996), A.K. Norton made a forceful plea to understand young Muslims’ yearning for full economic, political and cultural inclusion. He documented his arguments by fresh field observations from a number of Arab Mus- lim countries (e.g. Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon). On the issue of Islamic tolerance, Professor Ali Mazrui reminded the conference that nowhere in even the most established western democracies could a country elect a president from a tiny religious minorities as happened in Senegal several years ago. Senegal is 97 per cent Mus- lims, yet the people freely chose a Roman Catholic President, Leopold Sengor, for repeated presidential terms, until the man wanted to retire from politics. The plea by Norton, Mazrui, Kazemi and others in recent conferences on Islam was to give religious leaders an opportunity to participate peacefully in public life. They should and could be nurtured into Islamic Democrats, just as their Chris- tian counterparts in Europe have evolved into “Christian Demo- crats”. According to Esposito and Voll: “If we in the West fail to perceive the democratic quality of the Islamist movements, the fault, suggest, lies in the ethnocentricity of our perceptions. Advocates of the styles of democracy found in Western Europe and the United States . . . believe themselves to be the true heirs to the only legitimate democratic tradition,” but in truth there are “many possibili- ties for defining democracy that are closer to long-standing conceptualisations within the Islamic world.”100

6.4 Double Standards for Democracy For Western leaders, democracy in Muslim countries in general and in the Middle East in particular, raises the spectre of old and reliable friends or client states transformed into more independent but less predictable nations. This generates worries that Western access to oil could become less secure on the one hand and reduced SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 167 influence on the internal and external policies on the other. Thus stability in the Middle East has often been defined in terms of preserving the status quo and democracy elsewhere is stressed for keeping those in power who are the most effective sell-outs. In the Middle East, the lack of enthusiasm for political liberalisation has been rationalised by the assertion that Arab culture and Islam are anti-democratic (an issue never raised to a comparable degree with regards to the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, or South America). The lack of a democratic tradition, and more specifically, the glaring absence of democracies in the Muslim world is offered as proof but no effort is made to turn those sheikhdoms and kingdoms into democratic or broad based states. It is being argued that the history of the Middle East has not been conducive to the development of democratic traditions and institutions. European colonial rule and post-independence governments headed by military officers, ex-military men, and mon- archs have contributed to a legacy in which political participation and the building of strong democratic institutions are of little concern. National unity and stability as well as the political legitimacy of governments have been undermined by the artificial nature of these modern states whose national boundaries were often determined by colonial powers and whose rulers were either put in place by Europe or simply seized power. As a whole, the weakening economies, illiteracy and high unemployment, especially among the younger generation in Muslim countries, aggravates the situation, undermining confidence in governments and increasing the appeal to overthrow corrupt and incompetent governments. The resultant phenomenon to overthrow client sheikhs has been labelled as “Islamic fundamentalism’’ or “anti-Westernism.” It is the case with other countries like Pakistan as well. There the threat to weak democracy is considered to be “Islamic fundamentalism” and to American sponsored dictatorship as “religious extremism.” Experts and policymakers who question whether Islamic movements will use electoral politics to “hijack democracy” often do not appear to be equally disturbed that few rulers in the Muslim world have been democratically elected and that many who speak of democracy believe only in the risk-free variety: political liberalisation A WAR ON ISLAM? 168 so long as there is no danger of a strong opposition (secular or religious) and loss of power. Failure to appreciate that the issue of hijacking democracy is a two-way street was reflected in the West’s responses to the Algerian military’s intervention and cancellation of election results on the one hand and approval of Hosnie Mubarak’s mock elections and Pervez Musharraf’s dictatorship on the other. The perception of a global Islamic threat can contribute to support for repressive governments in the Muslim world, and thus to the creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thwarting participatory politics by cancelling elections or repressing populist Islamic movements fosters radicalisation. Many of the active Muslims harassed, imprisoned, or tortured by puppet regimes supported by the West, will conclude that seeking democracy is a dead end and become convinced that force is their only recourse. Official silence or economic and political backing for regimes by the United States and other Western powers is read as complicity and a sign that there is a double standard for the implementation of democracy. This has created conditions that lead to political violence that seemingly validates contentions that Islamic movements are inherently violent, antidemocratic, and a threat to national and regional stability. Unlike the Middle East, in other parts of the Muslim world, the dream of imposing American culture through puppet governments in the name of democracy has gone to the extent that most American scholars and political leaders consider “liberal democracy as the “end of history.” Francis Fukuyama in his book “The End of History” argues that history has at last produced an optimum form of human government: “The universalisation of West- ern liberal democracy.” But the logic and reason for the same democracy goes up in smoke when they find a good dictator like General Musharraf in Pakistan. Huntington in his “Clash of Civilisations,” however, called for a precautionary approach in Americanising the world, so as not to foster a resurgence of native cultures with an anti-US cast. Huntington warns of Islamic societies in particular, where in the last 15 years an Islamic revival has come to the forefront in every single Muslim country as an antithesis to the American-sponsored SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 169 anti-people regimes. The spectacular collapse of the Soviet Empire has strengthened the American vision that the ideology of liberalism can be combined with democracy, and it is this combination that has actually triumphed, and is thus universally valid. To counter the threat of Islam, the US, with its missionary zeal, believes that Muslim states — should enthusiastically embrace secularism in a package with democracy — or with dictatorship where it is favourable to the US — free markets, human rights, individualism and self-gratification according to the American point of view. If the materially weak, Third World societies are ever again to be shaped by “liberal democracies” and secular agendas, says Huntington, it will only happen as a result of expansion and deployment of American power in alliance with its Western Allies. A practical example of this theory is before us in Afghanistan. For culture follows power, so the US sermons of secularism needs brutal force to impose them, and it is doing so with cruise missile attacks and UN-imposed genocidal sanctions according to particular situations. This is a demonstration of authoritarian impulse at its peak. Richard Grenier complained way back in 1995 in his Washing- ton Times column that it is extremely unfortunate that only “few of the idealistic supporters [of American values] would support the militarisation and immense coercive efforts necessary to westernise the entire globe. And those who desire such a humane Westernisa- tion of course, are among those least willing to take the coercive measures.” On the one hand Huntington advised, “to abandon the illusion of universality,” but on the other hand he suggested that the US must “promote” the strength, coherence, and vitality of its own civilisation. And this promotion is only possible through so called “liberal democracies” and support of its European Allies, whom Huntington warned to hang together to avoid hanging separately by the “Islamic fundamentalists.” Whether it is Fukuyama soaring into the greatest super-civilisation in history, or Huntington trying to hold off the Great Decline and promoting strength, coherence and vitality of American civili- A WAR ON ISLAM? 170 sation, the fact remains that all such theories are based on bringing a worldwide liberal-democratic revolution with a special kind of secularism for holding Islam at bay. In his new book “Freedom Betrayed” (AEI), Micheal Ledeen, also, stresses that the US should not retreat into its cosy little continent, hoping that the giant oceans will protect it from the ever increasingly threatening world. Ledeen calls it the “Second Democratic Revolution,” and emphasises the point that if the US did not help to build true “liberal” democracies “new tyrannies will inevitably rise to challenge us.” It is interesting to note that none of these scholars, or US leaders, tries to elaborate what “liberal” democracy actually means and what will be its long-term effects on foreign societies. In simple words, it means to “liberate” Muslims from traditional and religious authority. Knowing that reasonable men do not want to be “forced to be freed,” liberalism has consistently followed the strategy of co-opting or seizing power of central governments in order to make war on countervailing institutions (family, marriage, representative assemblies, etc.) of that society and then to attack the very ideas of the revealed religion, objective truth and the immutability of God’s moral order. Liberal democracy aims at an atomised society whose members accept moral anarchy in exchange for totalitarian control and the loss of all legitimate liberties that were once protected by traditional institutions in the East and West. Whatever the incidental benefits sometimes conferred by liberalism, its basic nature as a parasite within the American and European traditions means that its perniciousness becomes all the greater all the while and all the more evident as its saps the health from its host. To make it sugar coated for us, liberalism has been linked and made part and parcel of democracy in the post Cold War era, as if democracy can never survive if it does not follow the separation of church and state – then of course it will not be “liberal.” To see the results of liberalism, we shall have to consider the state of American values and democracy, which has given way to a Leviathan, whose statutes, taxes, bureaucratic diktats and judicial whimsies would shock any medieval monarch by the depth of their reach into the lives of the American people. SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 171

The free market in goods and services of real value retreats before the regulations and management of government, while the purveyors of legalised infanticide, obscenity and nihilism receive the protection of the same liberal government in the form of their “rights.” The church retains a precarious freedom until the day when the government uses “hate crimes” or some similar pretext to persecute its members and seize its assets. The individualism that once encouraged intellectual and moral excellence has been replaced by dreary homogeneity of a “dumbed down” and decadent mass society. Is this “liberal’ democracy? And if it is, who needs it? Are the Muslims ready and willing to live in a liberal democracy, where if a clergymen talks about any actual political contro- versy, he could wind up sharing a federal prison cell with a murderer or rapist? This is what happens in the liberal and secular United States of America. Kevin Hasson runs the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, dedicated to preventing the US federal government from suppressing people’s freedom of conscience. He complains, “for the first time in American history, priests, ministers, rabbis and imams are being told under threat of criminal prosecution how they must preach.” The liberal administration in Washington has tried to deny charges of censorship on religious sermons, etc., by invoking a clever conceit: It defines partial birth abortions as a political rather than a moral or religious issue, because it comes up for a vote. So you cannot speak about it in religious terms. The interpretation forces every man or woman of cloth to take a vow of silence since liberal lawmakers feel compelled to meddle in every aspect of the lives of the American public. No one — particularly among the Islamic societies — would submit to living under such a liberal democratic state after realising its true meanings and functions to the full extent. The recent US quest to impose American civilisation on others is Cultural Marxism. This is the failed Marxist economic model transferred to culture and civilisation, where more damage can be done to the soul of targeted society than was ever rendered by 70 years of the Communist experiment in Russia and elsewhere. The US administration knows that the Muslims are not going A WAR ON ISLAM? 172 to surrender all of their liberties to the tyranny of American cultural imperialism. It would be extremely ironic if Muslims, having sacrificed so much of their lives and wealth fighting colonialism, then Communism in the past dark and bloody century, only to fall to the tyranny of a “liberal” democracy under US diktat. Muslims cannot afford to live under a liberal secular state where individuals are not to be judged according to what they have done before God and other individuals. Rather they are to be judged by what positions they take with regard to artificially constructed groups. This is particularly impossible in states, which are overwhelmingly Muslim populated. At the heart of American “liberal” civilisation — which is to be imposed as planned, through liberal democracies — is the idea that the self-appointed political elite will determine what may or may not be advocated, how language may be used, and which ideas are welcome and which are not. These elites reject the absolutes of religion. They, in fact, reject the notion of objective truth. In- stead, they substitute their version of what they call truth, which is subject to change without notice. George Mellon of the Wall Street Journal notes that Bill Clinton’s missile strike against Iraq is an example of how much the Islamic world is united and resents US actions. He says: “Islamic countries in particular will continue to have sharp clash with each other…but the widespread unanimity in its criticism of a US military move is nonetheless significant.... [as] the disaffection of the Islamic world are probably more related to religious and cultural factors than the disparities of wealth and power.”101 It clearly shows that the US will, undoubtedly, find a violent opposition throughout the Islamic world to its plans of America- nising their societies. Realising this, they gave it the fine label of “Clash of Civilisations,” instead of clashing with other civilisations, knowing full well that civilisations never clash unless one of them starts considering itself universally valid, super-civilisation, worthy of dominating all native cultures in distant lands. What they have called “liberal” democracy and liberal policies; exert powerful influences upon private character and upon the polity of a nation. Sound and responsible political theory and prac- SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 173

tice make it possible to maintain and improve private virtue; de- based politics must debase human character. If ethical understanding is ignored for liberalism in a quest for Americanisation, Mus- lims will be left at the mercy of consuming private appetite and oppressive political power. They will end up in darkness as a result of American authoritarianism using all the forces at its disposal to impose governments and cultures of its liking on the Muslim world.

6.5 Imposing a way of life The authoritarian impulse forces the US to impose its own brand of government system and a way of life on other countries. In Feb- ruary 2002, while speaking at Beijing’s prestigious Qinghua Uni- versity, Bush urged China to draw on the American ideal of liberty, faith and family.102 However the world of Islam is the specific target with select countries being forced to adapt “liberal” democracy and follow secularism. But if the doors of perceptions were cleansed, “liberal” democracy would appear, as it is — an academic rubble and a fractured moral framework. Liberalism is used to make a nation blind and numb so that it ought not to look to its soul. The so-called moderate and liberal society constantly pressure its people to tolerate sin and value those, who do not inhabit a civilised world, even though they consider and call it a “civilised world.” The way of life that is being thrust upon Muslims is all about results. Means justify the ends. The US national conscience has long been numbed by liberalism. Signs of social disintegration of the family, the spread of cheap vulgarity, racial polarisation and soaring crime rates are its main features. The smug elite, whose trendy notions are not only behind much of the social disintegration, but also behind slogans of exporting and imposing American civilisation abroad, lead the show. These liberal elites speak for women for example. The majority define women rights in a liberal, secular state. But what women are they talking about? Western lesbians, feminists, or the mothers and sisters of Islam sitting unaware of the life styles in vogue thousands of miles away? How can they pretend to speak for all of them? Yet the arrogance of these self-appointed tyrannical liberals actually permits them to suggest that when they make a pronounce- A WAR ON ISLAM? 174 ment on an issue, they are the only voice for real women. Anyone who dissents has betrayed womanhood and is an unforgivable “radical Islamist” or untouchable “fundamentalist.” When leaders of vision in Muslim society find the culture and direction unsupportive of their struggle to act and live in accordance with right, they then change the culture and the direction of its course. They do not call it super--civilisation and go out to impose it on other societies by every foul method available. Even the coming generations of American society cannot grow up to act responsibly, when the prominent political and social forces of their civilisation are acting irresponsibly and failing to make the case for correct conduct and a life of values. And how would the Muslims expect their children do what is right, if the ever increasing and crusading forces of American culture challenge them to be shame- less and do wrong even when others are watching? Muslims do not claim that they are any more spotless than the rest of Prophet Ad- am’s (peace be upon him) descendants, but at least they know and they can keep with them the recognition of what is ultimately — spiritually — important. They know how to find the balance between soul and the world. At this point we can ask: “Do Muslims really need a “liberal” democracy so that it can gradually Americanise/Westernise them and take religion out of their public life?” What if Muslims refuse and resist this cultural terrorism? Will there be a “Clash of Civilisa- tions” as Huntington predicts? If so, let it be; as no nation has the right to dictate to others and challenge ways they ethically dis- criminate against as a nation. The US simply cannot force others to make distinctions between absolutes of right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral and to appreciate the infinite shades of grey that cross the spectrum, exactly according to the secular US perspective of the liberal agenda. Of course, what we are dealing with here is grotesque double standards created for the sole purpose of protecting American interests worldwide. Promoting “liberal” democracy abroad is a new term that can save the US administration for a long time to come, as all the Muslim states can be democratic but never liberal, particularly liberal in the sense America wants them to be. This would, SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 175 thus, become a legitimate excuse for unnecessary intervention in the internal affairs of those states and also for possible military strikes. Religious believers in a “liberal” democracy are faced with a clear choice. They should abandon their political interests and ambitions to have a say in the national affairs, and claim an alien status in a land that will forget their God, no longer concerned about the fortunes or misfortunes of a flawed democracy and sinister liberalism, no longer considering their land their country. Or they can continue in frustration to try and restore a moral order from top down, which seems like building the house before the foundation is laid. Or stand convicted of unspeakable crimes in the eyes of Uncle Sam and his media commentators — particularly for seeking to connect public policy with a transcendent moral order. The ultimate answer is an inevitable “clash” if it comes to open hostility against Muslim countries. The Muslims are not alone. Even within the US there are oppressed believers of God, who are called by different names by the liberal media and elite. Charles Colson, the former Nixon aide in his essay103 writes that non-liberal Ameri- cans have not yet reached the point of grabbing guns. But he thinks, “a showdown between Church and State may be inevitable. This is not something which Christians should hope. But it is something for which they should be prepared.” And so should Muslims be prepared to defend their families and their souls. At the moment Muslims must let the American government understand that it is really not up to them to look down upon the Islamic world and find all countries with distinct Islamic culture and civilisation weird. In the Muslim world, for example, it is felt that women, responsible for raising the young, are custodians of the culture. From jeans to hamburgers and rock music, Muslim youth imitate Americans a great deal these days, but they do not imitate Americans in licentiousness that soon enough breeds tyranny. When it comes to “pandering to the woman’s vote,” and what radical feminists led by a small gang of snarling lesbians were allowed to do to the US Navy over Tailhook, or what they did at A WAR ON ISLAM? 176

Beijing Women’s Conference, it is the Muslims, that find American behaviour grotesque. In their view it is America that is weird. They cannot switch their culture, traditions and beliefs just to please Washington and start growing sexual predators in Muslim society. Muslims cannot afford individualism that has gone awry veering from self-reliance to self-indulgence in the United States. Muslims do not consider “liberal democracy fit for their society, whereas its proponents themselves can not differentiate liberty from liberalism. Muslims do not want Americans to sponsor confusion and chaos in Muslim society by promoting “liberal” democracies. When such confusion begins, it is hard to do much to resolve the cultural war between relativistic modernists and those who believe there are firmer foundations for how Muslims should live their lives. Ameri- can propaganda specialists know that such conflicts in premises, even if unacknowledged by combatants, are surely at the heart of a moral confusion that has led to a moral catastrophe in the West. If Islamic societies are not selective about the messages and diktats from the US they consume as culture, and if they do not clarify the concept of “liberal” democracy and liberalism to their people, they might end up in the same predicament as other nations in which immorality has become the law of the land. For example, Michael Jackson and Madonna’s out-of-wedlock parenthood — a conscious choice to have a child without legitimate marriage, has been exhibited by the most prominent and celebrated personalities in the US. Thus young people, woefully ignorant of the hardships associated with having a child outside marriage, get the message that premarital sex is glamorous and empowering. The same kind of insanity is in danger of permeating Muslims’ legal and social structure in a variety of ways, if it continues to be drilled into the conscience of Muslim youth, with unflinching determination on part of the American media and statements of political leaders to support their Crusade of Americanising the world through “liberal” democracies. In short, no nation needs to be Americanised to be modern, or liberalised to be democratic. The American sponsored image of a homogeneous, universally accepted American world is misleading, SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 177 arrogant, false and dangerous. The notion that “liberal” democracy is the optimum that human civilisation can achieve, or that the triumph of American civilisation can certainly extinguish all other civilisations, at its best, is childish. More constructive and democratic strategies are possible. The strength of Islamic organisations and parties is also due to the fact that they constitute the only viable voice and vehicle for opposition in relatively closed political systems. The strength at the polls of Tunisia’s Renaissance party, the Islamic Salvation Front, and Jor- dan’s Muslim Brotherhood derived not only from a hard core of dedicated followers who backed the groups’ Islamic agendas but from the many who wished simply to cast their vote against the government. Opening up the political system could foster competing opposition groups and thus weaken the monopoly of Western sponsored democrats and liberals on the voters. The realities of a more open political marketplace—having to compete for votes, and once gaining power having to govern amid diverse interests—could force pro-Western groups to adapt or broaden their ideology and programs. The United States and Europe should not in principle object to the involvement of Islamic activists and Islamic parties in government if they have been duly elected. Islamically oriented politicians and groups should be evaluated by the same criteria as any other potential leader or opposition parties. It is naïve to be preconceived and consider leaders of Islamic parties as rejectionists. Most of them will be critical and selective in their relations with the West, generally operating on the basis of national interests and showing a flexibility that reflects understanding of a globally inter- dependent world. The West should demonstrate by word and action its belief that the right to self-determination and representative government extends to an Islamically-oriented State and society, if these reflect the popular will and do not directly threaten Western interests. Western policy should accept the ideological differences between the West and Islam to the greatest extent possible, or at least tolerate them. Western analysts and policymakers should bear in mind that democratisation in the Muslim world proceeds by experimenta- A WAR ON ISLAM? 178 tion, and necessarily involves both success and failure. The transformation of Western feudal monarchies to democratic nation states took centuries, and trial and error, and was accompanied by political as well as intellectual revolutions that rocked Church and State. It was a long drawn-out process among contending factions with competing interests and visions. The important thing to note is that no external forced intervened in the internal affairs of Western governments and Muslims would appreciate it if they are left alone to sort out among themselves as to what kind of government they would like to have. Today we are witnessing a historic transformation in the Mus- lim world. Risks exist, for there can be no risk-free stability and peace for mutual coexistence. Those who fear the unknown, wondering how specific Islamic movements will act once in power, may have legitimate reasons for doing so. However, if one worries that these movements might suppress opposition, lack tolerance, deny pluralism, and violate human rights, the same concern must apply equally to the plight of those Muslim activists who have shown a willingness to participate in the political process in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria. Governments in the Muslim world that espouse political liberalisation and democracy are challenged to promote the development of civil society—the institutions, values, and culture that are the foundation of true participatory government. Islamic movements, for their part, are challenged to move beyond slogans to programmes. They must become more self-critical, and speak out not only against local government abuses but also against those elements that are interested in exploiting the situation in the name of Islam without any coherent policy or framework for governance. They are urged to present an Islamic rationale and policy that extend to their opposition and to minorities the principles of pluralism and political participation they demand for themselves.

6.6 Relativity of Democracy The Taliban were dislodged from power with an unprecedented use of force in human history for having a “repressive,” undemocratic and authoritative government. Democracy and broad-based SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 179

government, in this regard, have become relative terms, applied to selective Muslim countries by the US according to its needs and interests. The following discourse explains how the US is oblivious to the living conditions, representation and repression of the Mus- lim masses in these countries. The US only supports and rejects different governments merely on the basis of their utility to US interests. It takes at least two candidates to contest and give voters a chance to elect one of them in a real democracy. But just like General Zia ul Haq’s one time “yes or no” style referendum, Hosnie Mubarak was “re-appointed” with an unbelievably high percentage of votes in chain of an unending one-candidate sham elections. Still he is an acceptable democratic leader, congratulated by leaders of the “international community” in every renewed clean sweep in elections. Such events raise some serious questions in the minds of those who are suffering from US intervention in their internal affairs in the name of democracy. One wonders: Why are the Ameri- can and European press silent over Hosnie Mubarak’s “re-appointment,” with 93.6 per cent when it was making fun of the late Hafiz ul Assad’s licence to rule for another term with 94 per cent of the votes? Why did the US stance of not doing “business as usual” with a dictator in Islamabad suddenly change after September 11? Does it mean the interest of the Americans is more sacred than the interests of Pakistanis? Why is democracy in Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq dearer to the US and its Allies, than real democracy in Egypt and other Middle Eastern states? What is the state of emergency in Egypt about, or against whom, when virtually everyone in the country supports it? Let us take the example of Egypt to explain the Western attitude towards democracy in Muslim countries. To understand the acceptable-to-the-US-and-its-Allies state of democracy in Egypt, one has to keep in mind that the state of emergency has been in place since October 1981 and is regularly extended every six-month as the constitution allows imposition of emergency for a period of only six months. Emergency Law has eroded the constitutional foundation of the government and has undermined its legitimacy. It gives the government the justification for acting in an arbitrary A WAR ON ISLAM? 180 manner towards its citizens, and in response, citizens modify their behaviour and moderate their criticism accordingly. Apart from emergency, there is Law number 93, passed in May 1995. Dubbed the ‘Press Assassination Law’, it severely curtails freedom of the press. People are free to praise the President to their heart’s content but if they dare point out any failings of the regime, government ministers, bureaucrats or even their offspring, the accuser ends up in jail. The champions of democracy, who are killing thousands of Iraqi children because they do not have a democratic government in place, are not concerned about the stifling political atmosphere in pro- American Muslim states that allow no legitimate means of expressing dissent. Many political parties are banned. Anyone who dares to think of an alternative is immediately branded a subversive and thrown into jail. This leaves no room for peaceful political change in these societies. Terrorism is the pretext for all repressive and undemocratic measures taken by pro-American Muslim regimes. The objective remains to stifle dissent. The prevailing theory is that of authority. The lack of democracy is the first cause of terrorism and the purge of terrorism will not be achieved except through real participation of all stakeholders in Muslim societies. No Arab country has made greater claims to democratisation than Egypt. Yet, there are no signs of it except some sham elections to perpetuate the dictatorship. Furthermore, it has been flawed by a blanket refusal to allow democracy to intrude upon certain elements of the Egyptian elite. Even as Mubarak enters his fourth term, there is no pressure from Egypt’s Western supporters for real democratisation. The Egyptian People’s Assembly exemplifies the dilemma of the Egyptian political system, which is the wide gap between the ideal forms of constitution and law, (which are largely democratic in principle), and the reality of political practice, which is authoritarian at best. Part 5, Section 2 of the 1971 Constitution, and by Law 38 of 1972 vests the People’s Assembly with enormous legislative and supervisory powers. These powers are rarely exercised and the People’s Assembly is widely viewed as a puppet institution with SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 181

no independent legislative or supervisory capacities. Moreover, it does not perform the function of representation either, since the government manipulates legislative elections. Thus, the results of elections are rendered suspect and the legitimacy of the institution as an established democratic framework through which peaceful political, social and economic change could be enacted, is limited. According to the Constitution, the People’s Assembly is the main legislative organ of the State, and the President’s execution of some legislative tasks, such as issuing laws through a presidential decree, is limited as stipulated in the Constitution (Article 108). Ideally, the Assembly’s right to debate the proposals, introduce amendments and then issue laws complements the government’s right to present legislative proposals. However, the reality of the lawmak- ing process demonstrates the hegemony of the Executive. Statis- tics show that 214 laws proposed by the Executive were passed in 1990, whereas the assembly proposed seven laws, of which only one was adopted. Similarly, in 1991, 451 government-proposed laws were adopted, and only one proposed by the Assembly was passed out of a total of seven originally presented.104 Furthermore, the Assembly did not oppose any laws presented by the government or any presidential decree issued. Laws are adopted very quickly and smoothly with very little debate over their contents or amendments proposed by Assembly members. The Peo- ple’s Assembly is further marginalized by the restriction on the scope of issues open to parliamentary debate, which focuses on services such as “public utilities, housing, food, and supplies” and completely ignores issues related to “foreign policy and national security”.105 In addition, any proposal to which the government is adverse is blocked automatically. The Assembly has never formed committees to investigate government policies or projects, nor does it exercise its constitutional prerogative to control the government’s budget (Articles 115 to 123). The Assembly’s supervisory role can never be performed to its full potential as long as the National Democratic party (NDP) of Hosnie Mubarak controls a majority of its membership. Overwhelming NDP victories are largely accounted for by four factors that bode ill for Egypt’s democratisation. First, there have A WAR ON ISLAM? 182 been widespread electoral irregularities in every modern Egyptian election. In addition, every election since 1979 has been conducted under different electoral laws.106 Second, the NDP’s dominance is also due to its monopoly of state resources, including the media, for employment in the large public sector, social security, and health and public services. The power of patronage has both direct effects, as public sector employees are mobilised to support the NDP, and indirect effects, as voters know that to receive any services the NDP candidate must win. Despite well-sounding constitutional tenets, based on their results, conduct and participation levels, Egyptian elections continue to be a sham. In other words, Egyptian elections fail the acid test of democracy - they are not free, open, and fair. In a variety of ways, elections are manipulated and rigged in favour of the NDP. There are many complaints of voting irregularities, some election- related violence, and confusing new electoral rules that are advantageous to government candidates. Most serious is the conduct of elections. Despite the fact that Article 88 of the Constitution states that voting should be super- vised by the judiciary, Article 25, Section 2 of Law 73 of 1956 limits judiciary supervision to the main voting locations and not the subsidiary voting stations. The directors of these subsidiary voting stations are chosen from public sector employees, and Arti- cle 24 requires that they be appointed by the Ministry of Interior, which raises the possibility that elections are not administered impartially. Furthermore, according to Article 32 the director of the voting station has to sign the voting certificate validating a person’s vote and the station secretary has to sign the voting list, yet the candidate himself does not have to sign the list in order to prevent forgery. The continued extension of the Emergency Law has an adverse effect on the political climate during election time, as it allows the government to undertake exceptional procedures, which suppresses the freedom of speech, movement, and campaigning, and thus in effect prevents non-government candidates from open electioneer- ing. Finally, in 1995 the government refused to allow international election observers, and the People’s Assembly subsequently SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 183

ignored the decisions concerning election suits made by the High Administrative Court in 1996. All of these problems with the conduct and outcome of elections reduce people’s confidence in the electoral process and contribute to generally low participation. The percentage of the population who actually participate in the elections or public referen- dums is very low. In the 1995 parliamentary elections the voter turnout was below 50% out of 21 million registered citizens (the government claimed voter turnout was 50%), a figure that is even smaller when we consider the total number of non-registered citizens (30 million).107 Nevertheless it is still slightly higher than the 46% voter turnout in the 1990 parliamentary elections. Freedom of speech in Egypt has been damaged or constrained in several ways. First, although the printed press is relatively free and opposition newspapers do exist, the 1995 Press Law sent a clear message that criticism of the government and public figures can only go so far. Radio and television still remain closely controlled by the government. Various ministries conduct official censorship of all media.108 One of the prominent examples is fate of a London-based newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, which closed its Cairo offices in September 1997 after several years of operation and having spent more than US$20 million. Its 60 employees including 18 journalists in Cairo were laid off. The reason? Mubarak’s sons, Alaa and Gamal, had sued the paper for defamation. The newspaper had announced in May 1997 that Al-Jadida, a magazine owned by the Saudi Research and Marketing, the group which also owns Asharq al-Awsat, would publish an article impli- cating the Mubarak offspring in a corruption affair. Under pressure, the story was withdrawn and on July 12, the paper even apolo- gised for its ‘mistake’. Three Egyptian journalists working for the paper who had un- earthed the wrongdoing were sentenced to long prison terms. The Saudi publisher said that the paper was prevented from defending itself, a privilege granted even to common criminals and thieves. In fact, in Egypt, common criminals have greater rights than those who dare oppose the regime or unearth its malpractices. A WAR ON ISLAM? 184

The President’s sons are not the only ones who enjoy such privileges. Interior minister Hasan al-Alfi, a retired general, threatened to sue Al-Shaab newspaper after it published documents about the minister’s involvement in corruption. An Egyptian bureaucrat, Abdel Wehab al-Habbak, currently serving a 10-year jail term on corruption charges, was intimately linked with Alfi. Even the minister’s son has threatened to sue the paper. Police powers are also immense and the average citizen is provided with no meaningful protection from it. There have been reports of extra-judicial killings, torture of suspects, detention without charge or trial, and police brutality or incompetence.109 The continued low-intensity conflict with the “Islamist” fringe, now primarily localised in Upper Egypt, perpetuates an attitude within the regime that the police should be allowed wide latitude to eliminate this threat. In such an atmosphere, any of the regime’s opponents can be targeted, as the harassment of moderate Muslim Broth- erhood leaders during 1995, culminating in their arrest just prior to and during the late 1995 legislative elections, showed.110 Freedom of association is still restricted with regard to political matters. Permits from the Ministry of Interior are required for political gatherings and rallies, based on a 1923 law, and it is generally difficult for the opposition to have public meetings. As discussed above, Law 32 of 1964 and Law 40 of 1977 also limits the organisation and activities of NGOs and parties; several human rights organisations are still not officially legal entities in Egypt. If the US government is not responsible for delivering democracy in Egypt, so is it not responsible for any country in the world. Does not it not see that its foreign aid funds are used to support authoritarianism in Egypt? The Egyptian government receives the second largest amount of the US foreign aid budget. Does it not see that Mubarak of Egypt has never - not once in all his 18 years in power - appointed a vice-president? But not once has the US ever encouraged a democratic state in the Middle East, which would allow Arab citizens to choose their own leaders. Because it likes dictatorships, Washington knows how to do business with kings and generals - how to sell them tanks and fighter-bombers and missiles - unless they disobey Washington, like Nasser, Qaddafi SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 185 and Saddam Hussein. It is a bizarre feature of the West’s present relations with the Arab world that Saddam is the only leader whose overthrow successive US presidents have called for in the name of “democracy”, demanding that the Iraqis should have a government that “represents its people and respects them”. How many other Arab governments with their secret police and their torture chambers - “represent” their people? And how many of them has the US sought to depose? Not one. However, the European champions of democracy are supposed to believe that the US really - really - wants democracy in Iraq. How fortunate, then, are the starving, dying civilians of Iraq. The truth is that the US and its allies have produced and maintained this archaic drama of crown princes and beloved sons, of Gulf sheikhdoms that are no more than the private property of individual families. They were happy to ease king Farouk out of Egypt and king Idris out of Libya (Qaddafi was their hero then) and to depose the Sultan of Oman in favour of his public-school son. The coalition of Western powers wants strong leaders who will be loyal to them in all respects. It is amazing that the authoritarian US, supports too many authoritarian regimes, yet the propaganda against the “authoritarian Islam” is at its peak. Islamic parties are banned simply to prevent any possibility of any Islamically oriented leader coming to power. There is no choice for the people in US sponsored regimes. Even King Hussein never bothered to consult his citizens about their future leader. They were given no chance to decide whom they wished to rule them. His Majesty ordained that it would be his son Abdullah; that power would be kept in the family and all the democracy-loving western leaders embraced him. Did anyone expect anything else? It takes a brave Jordanian to call for a real constitutional monarchy. Indeed, the only man who consistently does just that - Leith Shubeilat - finds himself inside Amman’s state security prison. In other states, like Saudi Arabia for instance, direct succession suggests a struggle to come among the defence minister, Prince Sultan, Prince Naif and Crown Prince Abdullah. Washington, aware A WAR ON ISLAM? 186 of Abdullah’s growing criticism and dislike of the American presence in the Gulf - he is said to have told the US Defence Secretary William Cohen that not only could the United States not use Saudi air bases to bomb Iraq, but that America might have to leave those air bases altogether - might favour Prince Sultan. His son, it should be noted, is the influential Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, who in 1990 was reported in Washington to be almost as powerful in President George Bush’s office as the secretary of state, James Baker. When the US and its allies are asked as to why they do not support democracy in Egypt and other states, they say, the Islam- ists will try to take over. Can you not understand, their diplomats point out, that “whatever their failings,” these “friends of the West” are fighting Islamic fundamentalism? But this is a self-serving delusion of western authoritarians. True, some of the local dictators allow a careful measure of freedom; upright Arab citizens may complain about power cuts, poor transportation, even demand the sacking of a corrupt governor or two. But any serious freedom of speech has been so brutally suppressed across the Middle East - and anyone suggesting a democratic change of leadership so ferociously treated - that real opposition in these countries has been driven underground. So, the so-called Islamic fundamentalism becomes the only real opposition to dictatorships in the Arab and Muslim world. The West supports these countries in their undemocratic tactics and battles against “fundamentalist terror” - and shore up their regimes. And, of course, just to complete the beauty of this circular argument, it cannot encourage in these totalitarian states the democracy that would rid them of fundamentalist violence. Democracy and broad based governments have become relative terms. It is evident that like Iraq, where the Americans are looking for a good old-fashioned Iraqi brigadier-general, a military man who knows how to keep his tribes in order, the US and its Allies are ready to apply the same formula all over the Muslim world and that is to support democracy or dictatorship according to their vital interests. It must be a powerful man, someone who does not allow dissent to rock the Washington-friendly regime, someone with SIXTH PROBLEM: AUTHORITARIANISM 187 a powerful security service and a family that might provide a successor. This approach to undermining Islam thwarts social and political development in the Muslim world, retards planning for the future, and squanders valuable opportunities for an Islamic renaissance in all areas. If Muslims remained hostages to US domination, then they not only risk the destruction of their potential and their civilisation, but also run the risk of deep internal divisions. What is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan may be repeated in Libya, Su- dan, Palestine, and elsewhere is testimony to that. It is wrong to assume that even if the Muslims achieved unity and prevailed in this conflict, it would still be a pyrrhic victory: Muslims would have paid for it with their civilisation, their future and their lives. Victory, in no way, would exact the same price as defeat. The goal of authoritarian US policy is to bring about a world increasingly subject to the rule of law. But it is the US that must set the rules. The US imposes ‘international interest’ by setting the ground rules for economic development and military deployment across the planet. The US sets the rule for Pakistan’s behaviour in Afghanistan, Iran’s behaviour in Lebanon, Egyptian behaviour in Palestine and Sudan’s behaviour in Egypt, etc. The post Cold War policy is expressed by a series of directives on such extraterritorial matters as whether Pakistan may trade with Iran, or Iran may trade with China, or whether the Afghan government in Kabul may have a Taliban leader to run it. It was the domain over which Rome enjoyed the legal right to enforce the law. Today America’s self-appointed writ runs throughout the world, including Russia and China, over whose territory the US government has asserted the right to fly military aircraft. The United States stands above the international system, not within it. The most disappointing factor, however, is that the US has an active policy of direct and announced intervention in the affairs of Muslim countries: their public have had attacks made on their sovereignty ranging from violation of their air-space to outright commando actions on the ground; proclaimed subversion, from assassination of their leaders, directly like Zia ul Haq to indirectly like Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; and the financing of anti-government elements. A WAR ON ISLAM? 188

Securing the release of a major criminal like Nawaz Sharif and endorsing a dictator like Musharraf are just additional feathers in the US cap with numerous others for interventions in Muslim countries: whether democracies or otherwise. Although Muslims have the fundamental right to equality before the law, they need to have sincere leaders and systems to keep a check on their anti-state decisions, but it is not possible as long as the insular US domination continues in Muslim countries. The US has no long-standing tradition of direct rule overseas, as was the case with the British and French. Hypocritical Muslim leaders are bought over with a few million dollars released from the World Bank and IMF just to keep their suffering masses alive on the death- bed. A nation or a religion, however, lives not by bread alone, but by beliefs, visions and specific identity, which the US wants Mus- lims to surrender for a few million dollars or for saving them from the wrath of UN sanctions. The truly acceptable Muslims are only those who like Anwar Sadat, Benazir Bhutto or Musharraf seem purified almost completely of their bothersome national selfhood. Foreign policy based on such an authoritarian attitude would never help the US win hearts and minds in the Muslim world and these are the areas which the US cannot conquer with all the economic and military resources available at its disposal. SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 189 7 Seventh Problem: Realpolitik

The Americans are made to believe that the United States, being an old and established power, generally favours stability and the preservation of the status quo. This is frequently true apart from the fact that others consider the US as a new upstart – Brit- ain, France and Germany are considered old and established. At the same time, however, the US has often worked against stability in one place, in the belief that doing so might increase stability elsewhere. Thus, the US has been the single most important force for disruption of tradition, in places as diverse as Mexico, South- east Asia, and Palestine, when the outcome seems likely to impress American voters in the short term. People in Washington choose stability or instability, not because of a philosophical belief that one is better for human beings, but simply according to a cynical calculation of what will enhance their own power. Wrap this hard- nosed realism in glowing terms of freedom and peace, and you have what many in the Muslim world call hypocrisy. Unfortunately for America, this is the path of weakness. Make real friends, and they will be there when you need them; but if you rely on bribes and deception to win re-election, you had better fear the day of reckoning. Afghanistan is a case in point. The warriors who have lately turned on America were once her allies against the Soviet Union. Plainly, they did not see a convincing and attractive demonstration of American principles of peace and justice, as distinct from American methods of war making. Why should it be any different when, at long last, the peoples of Egypt and Pakistan remove the dictators who cannot rule over them without American support? Apparently it seems that Egypt has made peace with Israel; Egypt enjoys good ties with the US and so does Pakistan. Certainly there A WAR ON ISLAM? 190 are those who consider themselves opposed to their own governments, even to the point of violence. But this opposition is totally different from what the Black Panthers and student radicals were taking against various US policies in the 1960s and 1970s because they were against the policies of their governments and the opposition in the Muslim countries is against the policies dictated to and imposed on Muslim governments from abroad. Egypt and Pakistan are now going through a different kind of trouble. Their governments and the attitude of their citizens may not change significantly as a result, just as occurred in the US. To avoid the possibility of Islamic governments emerging in Muslim countries, Western propaganda is at its best telling the world that in the wake of Sep- tember 11, and in light of the Taliban’s alleged record in Afghani- stan, there is virtually no prospect that the citizens of those countries, their neighbours, and the nations of the world will allow another Taliban-like regime to oppress its own people and endan- ger the safety of people around the world. The truth, however, is that the Taliban were kept struggling against internal and external threats and challenges. Although they declared an Islamic government, they could not implement it in the true sense due to many hurdles created by the West. The allegations of Western propaganda against the Taliban are now presented as facts. Only those, who lived under the Taliban, know the reality. It is absolutely wrong to make the world believe that a government ruled by Islam would be a “fundamentalist theocracy,” – and a very bad idea. One can only wonder whether the US must see a replay of Iran and Afghanistan in every Muslim nation, before Americans finally remembers the principles that once made their country great. The supposedly unconventional war in Afghanistan confirms that Bush has fallen back upon the tired, familiar formulas of military attack and siege warfare against any government that refuse to follow American diktats. His administration is new; one can hope, perhaps, that he will eventually recognise the extent to which his father’s use of such tools only hurt the people of Iraq, while making its pseudo-Islamic ruler more powerful and extreme within his own borders. Certainly it has become painfully clear that bombs and embargos are tools of very limited utility. SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 191

In the short run, US policy in Afghanistan seems successful but the folly of the USSR’s occupation of Afghanistan or the US adven- ture in Vietnam was not exposed in the first forty days of their interventions. It takes time for the aggressor to taste the bitterness of its cruelty. It is wrong to argue that the use of force against Iraq did not merely hurt its civilians; it also hurt the power of its military and of Saddam Hussein such that he is no longer able to threaten Kuwait, much less Saudi Arabia. All this seems plain nonsense when compared to Israeli efforts to sustain and legalise its occupation. Threat of invasion and actual occupation are two different things. If embargos and wars can be imposed upon Iraq simply on the basis of an exaggerated threat of its intentions to invade Saudi Arabia, why can’t Israel be punished for its real occupation and repression over so many decades? Just as Washington errs in its use of punishments, it also errs in its choice of incentives with which to tempt the rest of the world. People will sacrifice their assets, time and even their lives to support a cause they believe in, be it “America” or “Islam” or “Justice.” Of all the causes that encourage self-sacrifice, however, few inspire less devotion than the raw drive to make money. It is an urge that rarely compels a person to sacrifice for anyone other than him/ herself and perhaps his or her immediate family; and even then, the vast majority of people are not interested in accumulating significant wealth. After achieving some level of security, most people would rather devote their time to something else. To a regrettable extent, American policy towards Islam is now founded upon this weakest of all motives. To dictators and the rich, Washington offers incentives that only increase the gap between their luxury and their citizens’ misery. Of course, the US devotes tremendous amount of resources to aiding the poor in the Third World, including a number of Islamic countries. So do other Western nations. However, the types and quantities of aid depend less upon the conditions of those nations and more upon their willingness to work with the US to implement its social, political, economic and military agenda. Needless to say, Sudan and Afghani- stan would have received far greater attention had they dropped the agenda of making their state structure purely Islamic. Further- A WAR ON ISLAM? 192 more, even the Islamic system does not bother the US as long as the government is ready like Saudi Arabia to follow every right and wrong direction dictated by Washington. America’s multiple standards toward various Islamic states show, again, that there definitely is an anti-Islamic agenda in Washington. It is as clear as daylight. To the poor in the Muslim World, the US holds out the promise of an improved lifestyle. There was a time when that promise would stimulate great energies; in truth, it still does, if the lifestyle improvement includes basic health care, housing and food. But there is great doubt as to whether the US will deliver that sort of thing for the masses, even among its own citizens; and even if it did, low-income people of Islam and elsewhere are more apt to recognise that material comfort is not the only thing of value in life. The most money-oriented individuals continue to fly to the land of money, like moths to the flame, but the rest of the world increasingly looks askance at a violent, unhappy culture in which even most important things in life — home, for example, family and friends — are so easily cast aside by other governmental, corporate and personal forces. This is not merely the objection of Muslims. The predominantly Buddhist people of Singapore enjoy a combination of pros- perity and peace unknown to most Americans. They reject the anti-community, anti-authority, excessively selfish and individual- istic doctrines preached by the culture of America today, as do the rising nations of Confucian East Asia and, for that matter, Chris- tian doctrine itself. “Sell what you have, and give to the poor ... and come and follow me,” said Jesus (Matthew 19:21). “The man is the glory of God ... and the woman is the glory of the man,” according to St. Paul (I Corinthians 11:7). The people of America would be much happier if they paid more attention to such teachings; certainly they would understand Islam better. Americans lost much of their confidence in their own government after the Vietnam and Watergate debacles of the 1970s. They have since recovered some of that confidence. Even now, though, a great many doubt that their government can be trusted, or that it will work on behalf of the common man when big business wishes otherwise. If Americans frequently doubt their own government in SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 193

this way, who can blame an Arab or Pakistani for casting an equally jaded eye upon foreign military adventures undertaken by people like George W. Bush, in places like Afghanistan? People around the world are sick of what Bush’s father might have called “bull-doodoo.” Not only among Muslims in Africa and Asia, but also among the people of the US itself, there is increasing dissatisfaction with an American government that does not keep its word, with impenetrable bureaucracies, with courts that are too slow and expensive, and with corporations whose sole purpose is to take as much of their money as possible while giving as little as possible in return. By its very name, “hard-nosed realism” is just not very attractive to most people. This is an age in which America, if it will remain a superpower, must provide leadership dedicated to the propositions upon which the country was founded. America’s so-called “greatest generation” was able to distract a significant portion of the Third World with trinkets and baubles; but now fundamentalism is on the rise, in every religion, because a growing number of people see that there is more to life than the cheap enticements that beguiled their parents. The West still has a choice in the matter: it can bend all its energies to the task of capturing the imagination of the world, or else it can live in the past while other, more energetic ideologies reach out to the billions whom the huge corporations and bureaucracies have used so poorly for so long. In practical terms, the question is not whether the US can continue to maintain the support of undemocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and elsewhere by offering financial incentives to the controlling elites and by hoodwinking the public. In some places, no doubt it can; and in other places, history suggests, the attempt will fail. The real question is whether the US wishes to become permanently associated with that sort of nonsense — whether, in essence, few Muslims of the 21st century, anywhere in the world, will consider the United States anything but an incorri- gible thief or a pathological liar. Those certainly did not seem to be the traits of the Americans who responded with such warmth, generosity and sincerity to the disaster of September 11. Perhaps the expensive, mass-market, poll- A WAR ON ISLAM? 194 driven electoral politics of the US can no longer find and advance people of quality to positions of power; or perhaps, in a place like the District of Columbia, honest men and women cannot function well once elected. President Gerald Ford, a decent man, came to that office without being elected, and common wisdom says that former President Jimmy Carter, honest by all accounts, was not very effective within Washington’s standard ways of doing things — certainly much less effective than the dubious Bill Clinton. If this is the case, then perhaps the permanent, unchangeable nature of American government destines it to be remembered, down through history, as a den of unprincipled manoeuvring for the sake of petty gain, at the long-term expense of the nation. In that case, the intellectuals of future centuries may conclude that the Ameri- can Declaration of Independence was simply naïve and unwork- able. Before reaching that conclusion, many in the world would like to see a more earnest and honest attempt to promote life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the broadest senses of those terms — even if that is not very “realistic” or “practical” in the political climate of Washington today. This comment may seem to assume that such priorities would be a radical departure from ordinary American life, where many Americans believe, they are pretty much free in America, to have their ideas and religions; to spend their time doing what they want; to pursue the kinds of jobs and business opportunities that matter most to them; to marry whom they choose when they want, or to remain single, or to get out of bad marriages if necessary; and generally to pursue their interests in life with just about as much freedom as a person could imagine. There is, however, a need for radical departures in foreign policy for an earnest and honest attempt to promote freedom. The people in Palestine are under a far worse tyrannical regime than the people in Kabul against whom the US considered using tactical nuclear weapons. Sadly, there appears to be no chance that this transition will occur without a major shift in American thinking. It is difficult to see any impetus for such a change within America, which has long dedicated itself to maintaining a high lifestyle at the expense of the SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 195

rest of the world — indeed, at the expense of its own future generations. Rather, it appears that new ideas in this new century will be coming from outside the West, and that the US and its allies will continue their established habit of seeking to suppress, control, or — if necessary — catch up with those external innovations. In short, nowadays the Muslim man in the street may reasonably expect non-Western sources to provide his most realistic and relevant sources of education, advice and philosophy.

7.1 Islamophobia: a tool for interventions In terms of realpolitik, to many western scholars the 21st century has brought a new world order with it. NATO’s war on Yugo- slavia is cited as a process that “needs to be backed up by a new global security arrangement,” as it was NATO’s “first war” with “a truly inaugural quality.”111 As a consequence of the subsequent Rus- sian assault on Chechnya and the silence of the US and its Euro- pean Allies, and the US war on Afghanistan and the silence and participation of all, however, proved it very clearly that the causes, methods and aims of the Allies’ war on Yugoslavia and Afghanistan had nothing in common with those to which we have been accus- tomed. All it did was to set precedents to go to war against a country on the grounds of unjustified moral considerations. According to the former pro-Zionist French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, the values of civilisation itself were at stake.112 But values of the same civilisation remained silent when the Russian carnage followed NATO’s war on Kosova, the Israeli carnage continues in the occupied Arab territories and Indian terrorism is on the rise in occupied Kashmir and now Gujrat. Western governments have suddenly made history, culture and politics – the causes of conflict since time immemorial - obsolete, so as to target any nation they want punished. This is not “a revolution in our way of thinking” as Ignacio Ramonet and other media specialist from the West put it. It is rather a strategy for dominating Muslims nations who refuse to follow the norms of the New World Order. Pity, in the name of humanitarian intervention and war on terrorism, is now being posited as an overriding moral imperative only in the countries where the US and its Allies want to intervene. The A WAR ON ISLAM? 196 so-called international community has breached two fundamental principles of international politics: the sovereignty of states and the statutes of the United Nations Organisation only to set a precedent for future interventions in other Muslim countries. The Director General of South Asian Strategic Studies, Farooq Hassan, dismantled the so-called legality of what the US and Al- lied forces were propagating since the September 11 attacks and later in hot pursuit of Osama bin Laden. Addressing a seminar titled “Terrorism and new challenges for the Islamic world,” Hassan said that the US design was meant to destroy the twin towers of Islam, i.e. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. He deplored the arm-twisting on the part of US when Pakistan was unnerved to tackle the situation. “For action we need to know and learn…unfortunately none of them exists in our case.”113 Many of the speakers in the said workshop deplored participation in the US war on Afghanistan without UN backing. They questioned entirely the war against Afghanistan on the pretext of ‘vague and non-existent” mandate. International law could not endorse attacking a country and replacing its government while pursuing an individual or a group. Many Muslims explicitly mention that article 51 of the UN charter seeks no collaboration while exercising the right to defend. Article 3 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, promulgated in August 1789, states that “the principle of sovereignty resides essentially in the nation”. It is that principle that entitles governments to settle conflicts within states according to their own laws, without any outside interference. When on 24th March 1999 and 7th October 2001 that principle was broken, it was highly appreciated by Western scholars, political leaders and media analysts. Ignacio Ramonet states, “such sovereignty does not deserve to be respected, especially when the dictator breaches human rights and commits crimes against humanity.” The fear is that it is up to the US and its Allies to justify or label an act a crime against humanity. If Turkey chases the Kurds deep into Iraqi territory, it is just a “hot pursuit” but if Saddam tries to discipline the CIA-sponsored rebels, it becomes a “crime against humanity.” When Saddam SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 197 attacks Kurds, he commits a crime, but when Vladimir Putin butchers the Chechens, or Vajpayee butchers Kashmiris, or Sharon butchers Palestinians, it is their internal affair. And Muslim countries are going to be the victim of this double standard in the 21st century, more than any other nation. All these plans have been facilitated through the UN wherever necessary and carried out with the UN if they must. Since the beginning of the 1990s, on many occasions the UN has been sidelined and held from playing its founding role. Boutros Boutros- Ghali’s mandate was not renewed. Instead, Kofi Annan, reputedly more amenable to pressure from Washington, replaced him as Sec- retary-General. The Dayton accords on Bosnia were signed under the aegis of the US rather than the UN, as was the Wye River memorandum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The decision to bomb Iraq was taken unilaterally by the US and not by the UN. It is clear that the US and its Allies no longer wish to be restricted by the UN. The US in particular is no longer prepared to let the organisation’s legalistic procedures stand in the way of US hegemony. Together they breach the international order - no respect for state sovereignty and non-acceptance of the authority of the UN. But how is the humanitarian or terrorism concern to be reconciled with the use of force? Is there such a thing as ethical bombing, especially when persistent targeting errors cause thousands of civilian deaths and displaces millions of the poorest of the poor? Is there any such a thing as humanitarian sanctions in the name of holding Saddam from producing weapons of mass destruction – it does not matter if sanctions lead to mass killing? Is it possible to speak of a “just war” when there is such a colossal military and technological gap between the two sides? And by virtue or what moral principle must the legitimate defence of the Kuwaitis or Americans involve the destruction of the Iraqis and the Taliban? These questions are troubling the consciences of most Muslim scholars and political leaders. But raising any voice instantly labels them as “fundamentalists” to degrade the value of their thinking and valid objections. Not even Western journalists or scholars can criticise American and its European Allies’ policies – let alone the Muslim “funda- A WAR ON ISLAM? 198 mentalists.” Britain’s former Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, for example, called John Simpson, the BBC’s correspondent in Belgrade, an “accomplice of Milosevic” simply for drawing attention to the destruction of schools, etc. The British government even tried to pressure the BBC into calling Simpson home, which it refused to do. Ennui Remondino, an Italian television correspondent who strongly criticised the bombing of Belgrade and especially the Ser- bian television building, was fiercely attacked by journalists and intellectuals in uniform, who called him an “agent of Milosevic”. And in France, Régis Debray was practically lynched for comments he made after a short trip to Kosova, which did not gel, with the official truth.114 This was the situation in Serbia. When it comes to places like Afghanistan it becomes very hard for scholars, intellectuals, political leaders and other activists to raise their voice and point out the Western hypocrisy. In this age, the strategic importance of a country lies in its potential to export Islamic culture and values outside its boundaries. The EU and US still want their own kind of governments to function in Muslim populated countries. When foreign intervention and backing the wrong horses produces negative results, western Allies are alerted and start criticising Islam for breeding and exporting political chaos, chronic insecurity, illegal immigration and delinquency. Viewed in this light, three regions have been of prime strategic importance to Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. They are the Middle East, Balkans and South Asia. Where geographically possible, the military planners have turned increasingly to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, which former US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright described as “our institution of choice.”115 NATO is not “hostage” to UN resolutions, one “strategic analyst” said. A US “official” explained that the UN “figures in this as far as possible,” but that the new definition of NATO is meant to include the possibility of action without UN mandate.116 A Times editorial warned against “transforming the alliance into a global strike force against threats to American and European interests.”117 But Secretary Albright reaffirmed that the shift is from collective defence of the NATO members’ territory to “the broader SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 199

concept of the defence of our common interests.”118 This means, in practical terms, the US forcing the NATO imprimatur on military interventions in the internal affairs of sovereign states that are not members of the alliance.119 Even if NATO is not ready to play a crucial role the US is ready to act alone against its own created enemies or form a Coalition by arm-twisting and illogical approach of “if you are not with us you are against us.” Former CIA Director Robert Gates hinted about future wars when he wrote: “Another unacknowledged and unpleas- ant reality is that a more militant approach toward terrorism would, in virtually all cases, require us to act violently and alone. No other power will join us on a crusade against terrorism.”120 But, terrorists are being created and the crusade goes on. Albright referred to the August 1998 missile assaults against Sudan and Afghanistan (allegedly in retaliation for the US embassy bombings in Africa two weeks earlier) as “unfortunately, the war of the future.”121 And Bush proved her right. She was actually la- menting the alleged retaliation of various Islamic forces against US targets out of their genuine grievances, which the US effectively ignored in the first place. The US strategy, to implement the administration’s self-appointed role as global policeman, is now defined by its evolving military unilateralism against Islam, at home and abroad. Though Washington had always been possessed of a rapacious ambition to control the world, there is now the conviction in many Islamic nations that it is developing strategic subversive plans to do so. The former Secretary of the Air Force, F. Whitten Peters, described the development long ago as “learning a new kind of military operations [sic] in a new world”.122 One critical element of the US plan to dominate the Muslim world is its redefinition of the “enemy,” in order to disguise its greed for power and dominance as a dispassionate desire to spread western “democracy.” Its complement has been the development of a military strategy for employing that definition to globalise US power. It is commonplace to say that “Islamic fundamentalism” has replaced Communism as the new enemy of Western democracy. But so far this replacement has been selectively applied, geared A WAR ON ISLAM? 200 to the goals of US global hegemony. Washington’s characterisation of a Muslim country can change radically when little or nothing has changed in that country. The Clinton administration’s pledge of more billions for defence in 1999 came as the Pentagon up- graded North Korea, Iran and Iraq, which they call “rogue” states, as no longer “distant” threats of possible nuclear missile attacks.123 Of course, when this happens, it ought to raise eyebrows among the Western public but it does not because of the remarkable ability of the media to accept new policies, new “enemies,” new “threats,” without ever acknowledging their prior, unquestioning acceptance of old ones. For instance, the CIA-financed, armed and trained freedom fighter “friends” in Afghanistan, are now believed to be the greatest threat to the US that justify not only genocidal sanctions but also creating a new military command at home to fight Afghan terrorism, and then actually going to war against the poorest and te most defenceless country in the world, to replace its government and install a CIA stooge without any reservation from any country. The government and its media spin artists have incited Western fears by tarring enemy states like Iraq with the brush of “weapons of mass destruction” and terrorism so repeatedly that it is now current jargon and every Muslim country is a potential threat. Part of the “new vision” for NATO and the so-called coalition partners is to focus on terrorism as a justification for military strikes anywhere, either as deterrence or as “pre-emptive retaliation.” The campaign around terrorism is described as “a microcosm for the new NATO, and for its larger debates and dilemmas.”124 None of the analyses, however, point out that every terror activity is directly or indirectly linked by the media with Islam and the US is the only nation that has used all of these weapons–chemical, biological and nuclear for creating as much terror as possible. Terrorism is linked to Islamic fundamentalism and that in turn to the responsibility of keeping strategic weapons by Muslim nations. Meanwhile the US has employed biological weapons for 200 years, from smallpox in the blankets of Native Americans to spreading plagues in Cuba; from chemical weapons like mustard gas to cripple and kill in World War 1 to Agent Orange to defoliate Viet- nam and to create a generation of deformed children. It is the only SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 201

nation that has dropped nuclear bombs, and one that now makes, uses and sells depleted uranium weapons.

7.2 Terrorism: another tool for intervention The US and British war on Afghanistan in the name of getting Osama bin Laden dead or alive, and their threats to attack any other country of his alleged Al-Qaida refuge are making daily headlines in the print and electronic media. As a phenomenon with nearly hysterical descriptions and pronouncements that routinely adds to its name a mobilising theme for US and British politicians, terrorism once again regained a good deal of its power. Apart from the news and political statements, the arguments for the connection between it, Islam, Osama and Taliban have rarely been opposed for the reasons of realpolitik. The point is that there is hardly any way to oppose US arguments about terrorism without also ap- pearing to support it. At the risk of being seen as accomplices of “terrorists,” Muslim intellectuals are scared to expose the root causes of terrorism. Ig- noring these causes have led the US and its Allies to purposely sustaining terrorism to a dangerous point. Terrorism in the West is by now permanently, almost subliminally associated in the first instance with Islam. Indeed in many discussions on terrorism, there is often a ritual dismissing as irrelevant, soft-headed, or in other ways suspicious, anything that might explain the actions of terrorism: “Let’s not hear anything about root causes,” runs the righteous litany, “or deprivation, or poverty, or political frustration, and international exploitation, since all terrorists can be explained away if one has a mind to do it.” What the US, UK and Muslim governments should be after is understanding the root causes of terrorism that helps them defeat it, not an explanation that might feel sorry for the terrorists. Terrorism, however, has been stripped of any right to be considered as other historical and social phenomena are considered, as something created by human beings in the world of human history. Instead, the isolation of terrorism from history, from the government and attitudes of outside forces has had the effect of mag- nifying its ravages. Terrorism has been shrunk from the public world A WAR ON ISLAM? 202 into a small private world reserved tautologically for the terrorists who commit terrorism and for US and UK experts who study and punish them. The appearance of isolation given to terrorism has almost always been misleading. As a consequence US leaders have come to a point of warning that the barrage of missiles that fell on Afghani- stan and Sudan was but a small battle in a war without a foreseeable end. “This is, unfortunately, the war of the future,” Madeleine Albright said. The former National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, said: “This is an evil that is directed at the United States. It’s going to persist.” And Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering said, “We are in this for the long haul.” Apparently they are bracing for Osama, but their enemy is neither a man, nor a state, not even armies of an enemy. In fact, the US is fighting a war against those who are fighting repression perpetrated by US-backed regimes – the dissidents with much smaller ambitions of cultural independence and self-expression. US propaganda declares them to be driven by a millennial vision of destroying the US. Rarely does one hear the tonic reminders of the disparity in violence between individual terrorists and trained armies, air force, warships and cruise missiles, given by Gillo Pontecorvo to Larbi Ben M’Hidi in The Battle of Algiers, “Give us your bombs and you can have our women’s baskets.” These techniques of decontextualisation and dehistoricisation are not new and have occurred elsewhere in colonial and postcolonial situations. British writers, for instance, routinely classed Irish resistance to British rule, as terrorism, who then built on the classification a theory of retributive response that ignored historical specificity, proportion and concrete analysis. Terrorism is nothing but a violent way of expressing long-felt, collective grievances. When legal and political means fail over a long period, a minority of the aggrieved community elicits the sympathy of the majority with violent acts. Anger and helplessness of both the powerful and the oppressed produce compulsions towards retributive violence. What turned Osama into a “terrorist” when according to a retired US official he was “one of the Saudi benefactors who took care of widows and SEVENTH PROBLEM: REALPOLITIK 203

orphans” of US-backed Afghan freedom-fighters who fought off Soviet invaders in the 1980s?125 “He had a common cause with the United States,” said Zalmay Khalilzad, a former State Department and Pentagon official of Afghan descent, who monitored the war. He, then, became a “terrorist” because most of what counts about Saudi society has been reduced into 60-second items followed by the question of whether it is a pro- or anti-American country. Since it is pro, the dissidents must be terrorists. Osama returned to his native Saudi Arabia in 1989, and began to oppose the American presence on Saudi soil and its influence on government policies. His criticism against the United States took root during the 1991 Gulf war, with the continuing presence of US troops on the sands of his native Saudi Arabia. “He regarded that as an occupation of the Islamic holy places by the United States,” Khalilzad said, and Osama swore vengeance against what he called “the Crusaders” of Christianity. The Soviets called him a terrorist when he was fighting against their invasion of Afghani- stan. Now he is a “terrorist” as he is fighting US domination of his homeland. In this case, the Americans understand very well the root cause of the violent reaction of Osama and others. “What this man thinks about every day is: How do I get the US out of my home in Saudi Arabia, and how do I get those corrupt pharaohs out of power?” said Kenneth Katzman, a former CIA analyst who is the Congres- sional Research Service’s resident expert on Middle Eastern terrorism. If Osama were in Iran, Iraq or Libya, he would have been a dissident, but in Saudi Arabia he is simply a terrorist. Under US sponsorship all such terrorist activities were part of a Holy War by noble Mujahideen. The camps at Khost were built with US assistance. Afghan rebels, who received about $3 billion from the CIA, constructed them in the 1980s. It was not state sponsorship of terrorism against the Soviets. The Polish Solidarity movement was approved, Nicaraguan Contras were assisted, Angolan rebels and Salvadoran regulars were supported. But any voice of protest against unpopular and US friendly regimes is terrorism. It is a remarkably steady hostility toward the legitimacy of native nationalism, most of which is compressed in the word “terrorism.” A WAR ON ISLAM? 204

The US can see the undemocratic regimes of Qaddafi, al-Assad and Saddam. But it ignores Hosnie Mubarak, King Hassan of Mo- rocco, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Amir Isa of Bah- rain, Crown Prince Saad of Kuwait and his older cousin, the Emir. All of them are as undemocratic as al-Asad or Abdullah. All are kings and coup leaders. According to Thomas L. Friedman “While the rest of the world is empowering its people to thrive in the information revolution, Arab leaders are still trying to buy stability by empowering their sons” and oppressing their public.126 Who is their protector and benefactor if not the United States of America? The massive and senseless violence of these dictatorships has enabled the spread of terrorism. Such repression is conducted at a high level of organisation, effectiveness and cruelty. The emulation of this violence by poorly organised small groups are attempts to imitate the legitimisation asserted by these states for dubious and unclear ends. No matter how much support the US gives to these dictatorships, the best one can say today is that they have finally entered their Gorbachev phase: They are trying glasnost without Perestroika. They are opening up to the world externally through satellite TV and Internet but without much real internal restruc- turing. The bottom line is that there has been terrorism, there has been cruel, insensate, shameful violence, yes, but who today can stand before us and say that violence is all, or even mainly, on the side of the labelled “terrorists,” and virtue on the side of civilised states who in many way do tend to represent decency, democracy and a modicum of “the good”? The entire arsenal of words and phrases that derive from the concept of terrorism is both inadequate and shameful. Instead of curbing, in fact sustaining, terrorism by running after individuals and raining down missiles on innocent civilians, the US and its Allies must understand and eradicate the root causes of human violence. They have to set a clear standard for how much identity, nationalism, sovereignty, dissension, self-expression and local aspirations they are willing to tolerate in the name of their cause, their culture and their state, so that the children of the lesser god could obey them according to these guidelines and save themselves from being chased from country to country and avoid EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 205 8 Eighth problem: Separating Muslims from Islam

Every war begins with the identification of an enemy, planning, preparation, propaganda and then a declaration of war. General Musharraf’s speech to the nation on January 12, 2002 was a formal declaration of “the real war,” for which all the necessary steps up to propaganda were already undertaken by the real actors of the war. No matter how odd it may sound but this war was well on its way regardless of September 11 or December 13, when the Indian Par- liament was attacked. Symbolic attacks were well underway since Pervez Musharraf’s arrival on the scene. The basic theme of Wash- ington’s newly found, beloved dictator’s speech simply formalised the launching of “the real war” demanded by no less an authority than the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman. The most threatening aspect of American efforts under the banner of combating terrorism is its separating of Muslims from Islam. Half way through the campaign to dislodge the Taliban, Friedman declared, what he called the “Real War” in the following words: “If 9/11 was indeed the onset of World War-III, we have to understand what this war is about. We’re not fighting to eradicate “terrorism.” Terrorism is just a tool. We’re fighting to defeat an ideology: religious totalitarianism. World War-II and the Cold War were fought to defeat secular totalitarianism — Nazism and Communism — and World War-III is a battle against religious totalitarianism…[which] can’t be fought by armies alone. It has to be fought in schools, mosques, churches and synagogues, and can be defeated only with the help of imams, rabbis and priests.”127 Like Friedman, many US policy makers and analysts believe that the West is “not fighting to eradicate ‘terrorism.’ Terrorism is just a tool… [it is] fighting to defeat an ideology.” So was the theme of General Musharraf’s speech. It was a good attempt to prove that A WAR ON ISLAM? 206 every ill afflicting our society and the world is just because of the “misinterpretation” of Islam and if it is chained, the curricula “improved” and a wall erected between mosque and state, Pakistan would become a heaven on the earth. Friedman’s declaration of war is not the first in the war on Islam from all possible fronts. Throughout the 1990s, western analysts focused their energies on proving the theory that Islam is not a complete religion that can deal with all aspects of life. Those who strictly follow it are fundamentalists and the best way to live individual lives and running state affairs is secularism. According to Western analysts, fundamentalists are those for whom “whatever the problem, “Islam is the solution.” In their hands, Islam is transformed from a personal faith into a ruling system that knows no constraints. They scrutinise the Qur’an and other texts for hints about Islamic medicine, Islamic economics, and Islamic statecraft, all with an eye to creating a total system for adherents and corresponding total power for leaders. Fundamen- talists are revolutionary in outlook, extremist in behaviour, totalitarian in ambition.”128 The Islamic sacred law “contains a vast body of regulations touch- ing every aspect of life, many of them contrary to modern practices… it forbids usury…which has deep and obvious implications for economic life…calls for cutting off the hands of thieves, which runs contrary to all modern sensibilities, as do its mandatory covering of women and the separation of the sexes.”129 Daniel Pipes considers Islam offering “an inclusive and alternative way of life for modern persons, one that rejects the whole complex of popular culture, consumerism and individualism in favour of faith-based totalitarianism.”130 Burgat says that infected by the twentieth-century disease, fundamentalists make politics “the heart” of their programme.131 They see Islam less as the structure in which individuals make their lives and more as an ideology for running whole societies. Declaring, “Islam is the solution,” they hold with Khomeini of Iran that Islam “is rich with instructions for ruling a state, running an economy, establishing social links and relationships among the people and instructions for running a family.”132 For fundamentalists, Islam represents the path to power. As a very EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 207

high Egyptian official observes, to them “Islam is not precepts or worship, but a system of government.”133 Olivier Roy finds the fundamentalist inspiration to be far more mundane than spiritual: “For many of them, the return to religion has been brought about through their experience in politics, and not as a result of their religious belief.”134 After giving this description of Islamic fundamentalism, it has been proposed by different analysts since the mid 1990s that those who adhere to their faith and try to implement Islam outside their personal sphere of life shall be treated as untouchable or like the Jews under the Nazis. The instructions to the US government by American analysts are: Do not cooperate with fundamentalists, do not encourage them, and do not engage in dialogue with them. Rather, oppose them. Of course, practical reality sometimes creates circumstances when this rule needs to be bent (during the Kuwait War it made sense to seek Iran’s help against Iraq). Use the many instruments of leverage to pressure fundamentalist states - Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan-to reduce their aggressive- ness. Celebrate and support Muslim individuals and institutions that stand up to the fundamentalist scourge with the immense prestige of the United States as well as funds in its information and development agencies. Stand by those Muslim governments in combat with the fundamentalists. In the case of Algeria, join the French in making it clear that we do not want the fundamentalists to take power.135 After September 11, 2001, this tendency of separating Mus- lims from Islam has become more obvious. For instance, an article in The Daily Telegraph “Protecting Muslims, while rooting out Is- lamists” is a blatant attempt to divide Muslims into acceptable and untouchable.136 The acceptable Muslims would be Muslims by title alone, believing only in secular ideologies and living western ways of life. According to Daniel Pipes, Muslims other than secularists are “not just Muslims but also Islamists. Islam (a religion) is not the problem, but Islamism (a totalitarian ideology) is, [which] politi- A WAR ON ISLAM? 208 cises the religion, turning it into a blueprint for establishing a coerced utopia.”137 There is no utopia about it, except that the US has declared the government style of its liking as the “end of history” and cannot see another model flourish in the name of Islam. The US and its Allies have no problem with totalitarianism or utopias, provided they are serving American interests. Daniel Pipes and his Western colleagues believe that in many ways, “its [Islam’s] programme resembles those of Fascism and Marxism/Leninism.” The Islamic government does not envisage ruling the world by force. The US, however, is demonstrating how it does want to rule the world by force. Its ideology is exposed to be ultra-secular totalitarianism. This ultra-secularism is justified with spreading the nonsense that: “One cannot generalise over such a large canvas. But one can note two common points: Islam is, more than any other major religion, deeply political, in the sense that it pushes its adherents to hold power; and once Muslims do gain power, they feel a strong impetus to apply the laws of Islam, the Shariah. So Islam does, in fact, contain elements that can justify conquest, theocracy, and intolerance.”138 For promoting secularism, some illogical and un-informed as- sertions are made to create confusion among the followers of Islam and the gullible public in Europe and America. It states that “traditional Islam” places the “responsibility on each believer to live according to God’s will, Islamism makes this duty something for which the state is responsible.” Of course, the state is responsible for enforcing Islamic systems. It is beyond the capacity of an individual to enforce Islamic laws, social, political and economic systems, or live life according to the injunctions of Islam if the state does not fulfil its responsibility to provide its subjects with a conducive environment. To make secularism attractive for diluting Islam, it is being said that “Islam is a personal belief system that focuses on the individual; Islamism is a state ideology that looks to the society.” Is- lam, in fact begins with the self, moves on to the household, neigh- bourhood, and encompasses principles and procedures to address order in the society at large. And finally, to secure a hold of the few EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 209

secular bulwarks in the governments, the myth that “Islamists constitute a small but significant minority of Muslims in the US and worldwide, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent,” is repeated time and again. Anti-Islam propaganda specialists, like Daniel Pipes contradict themselves in their discourse about Islam. He says, “apologists would tell us that Islamism is a distortion of Islam, or even that it has nothing to do with Islam, but that is not true; it emerges out of the religion, while taking features of it to a conclusion so extreme, so radical, and so megalomaniacal as to constitute something new.”139 This statement contradicts what the same author states earlier. He says, Islam places responsibility on “each believer” individually to “live according to God’s will.” Here the author says that universal principles emerge out of the same religion.

8.1 Does anti-terrorism needs secularisation? Instead of reviewing its policies the US is promoting secularism as the only long term option and effective weapon for waging an effective war on terrorism. It is being argued that religious scripts, curriculum at religious institutions and religious affiliations breed anti-Americanism, which then leads to terrorism. The “war on religious extremism” in Muslim countries is directed at neutralising religious institutions and diluting religion. It is being stated that the US would promote only secular democracies in the Muslim world. The “secular democracies,” are, in fact, tyrannical dictatorships – the direct offspring of scientific materialism and philosophical secularism, which frees man from ecclesiastical slavery only to betray him into the tyranny of political and economic bondage. If, as alleged, tyranny reigned in Afghanistan due to the “extremist Taliban,” there is an equal effort in Turkey to build an ideological Jacoben-Kemalist dictatorship. The only difference is that in Ka- bul women were forced to put on the headscarves and in Istanbul they are forced to remove them from their heads. It is the same situation in the super-secularist US, where, according to Joseph Sobran, “the militant secularisation...is basically a campaign to create a uniform national culture without religion…[the US] educational system obliterates the memory of religion by filtering it out A WAR ON ISLAM? 210 of history courses as much as possible.”140 Thus, it is easy to say that there is religious prosecution in Pakistan, but it is very difficult to observe confinement of religious practice to a shrinking area of privacy and turning religious practice into a suspect activity in the US. It is absolutely wrong on the part of secularists to assume that in secular states there is absolute freedom of faith and a delicate balance between free market, social justice and human rights. There are more threats to political and economic freedom, and democracy in such secular states than the much-dreaded “theocracies.” Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw one of such threats more than 150 years ago. Tocqueville called the US government a velvet tyranny of mindless, numbing bureaucracy. He was right in predicting that it would not only outlaw religion, but would also sap the human spirit, and set up a new pseudo-religion, the worship of the state. In fact, the liberal secular democracy is neither “the end of history” nor the solution to anti-US sentiments in the Muslim world. Not even a war can impose such kinds of governments in Muslim countries. Knowing that reasonable men do not want to be “forced to be freed” in the name of human rights, secularism has consistently followed the strategy of co-opting or seizing the power of central government in the US, first to make war on countervailing institutions and then to attack the very ideals of revealed religion, objective truth and the immutability of God’s moral order. The Taliban’s rule is quoted as an example of Islamic totalitarian rule, whereas some Muslim scholars argue that “modern secular state” is obtusely said to be “a step on the way to the realisation of the true Islamic state.” In fact, the US is the prime example of such a real totalitarian, secular state which has given way to a Leviathan whose statutes, taxes, bureaucratic dictates and judicial whimsies would shock any medieval monarch by the depths of their reach into the lives of the masses. The free market in goods and services of real value retreats before the regulations and management of government, while the purveyors of legalised infanticide, obscenity and nihilism receive the protection of that same government. Church and mosque retain a precarious freedom until the day when the government uses “hate crimes” or some other “terror” related pre- EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 211 texts to persecute its members and seize its assets. Human rights and the rule of law? Ask a parent who has seen his child’s murderer freed on a technicality. Or ask someone who has fallen foul of the Internal Revenue Service or the “wetlands” police in the US. Or even ask US Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas who was persecuted for his private Christian belief and for the expression that his religious beliefs compelled him to seek to be just, rather than use his power to remake the nation as he sees fit. If the Taliban and others like them declare people to be apostates, so are the secular-fundamentalists in secular states. The press reaction after Clarence Thomas’s comments, for instance, was an eye-opener to see the fear generated by evidence of genuine religious belief lurking in the heart of a pubic official. It proved that there is no place for private faith in a public official of a secular state. Remember the forced resignations of Turkish army officers who perform Hajj or grow beards. We can see the bloodbaths created by the religious “fanatic and extremists” in Algeria, but ignore the torture, repression and killings by the secular and illegitimate governments in Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan and Algeria. We could see the Taliban not abiding by international laws and conventions but not the architects of those laws and standards that fund atrocities of its puppet regimes and protecting them at the World Body. The indiscriminate killing of the Taliban in Mazar Sharif at the hands of the secular alliance, once in the 1990s and again in 2001 at Qila-i-Jhangi are just additions to the many genocides carried out by secular governments around the world. Why did the US oppose the establishment of an International Criminal Court? Be- cause it is a secular and righteous nation, or simply because its refusal to sign the treaty for ICC would bar the prosecution of its soldiers and government officials for crimes worse than the Taliban could ever imagine. If secularism could not hold the US and its Allies from violating many laws to uphold their kind of international world order, how could Islam prevent a thug or some criminals from their acts? Almost all of the US genocidal interventions since World War 2 have been in direct violation of the much-vaunted international law and human rights conventions. Is it not appropriate to bring secularism to account, just as Islam is being held accountable A WAR ON ISLAM? 212 for some crimes associated with Muslims, without any evidence at all? The human rights record for this champion of secularism is as worse at home as it is abroad. To keep the virtual police state in place the federal rule-making agencies employ 130,929 people.141 Taxpayers have to hand over more than 15.6 billion dollars to support this force. The average American household gets slammed with hidden regulatory taxes of about $6,083 a year. The federal regulation register that controls every aspect of private life has grown from 41,000 pages a decade ago to 69,000 pages in 1995. This is happening at a time when the US has built the largest prison system in the world with more than 4,500 jails and 1.7 million prisoners.142 Due to necessity, the Taliban had to go to some extreme limits, but they were “too bad” because their crimes were blown out of proportion. No one bothers comparing their acts with the crimes committed by secular regimes. Iran is labelled as a “theocracy,” whereas Boris Yeltsin ran a democracy despite dumping his cabinet time and again. Yeltsin, the modern day Czar, was happily allowed to run a shambling, unpredictable autocracy under the auspices of Western secularists and Vladimir Putin is a partner in the coalition against terror with hands bloodied in Chechen blood. Ariel Sharon is an ally as well with his record awash with so much Arab blood. If the bones of those who died at the hands of secular regimes in 20th century could be piled in one place, the pile would be larger than the pile of those who died at the hands of all the “theocracies” put together since recorded history. Without God, without religion, scientific secularism can never co-ordinate its forces, harmonise its divergent and competing interests, races and nationalisms. The secularistic human society, notwithstanding its unparalleled materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating. The chief cohesive force resisting this disintegration of antagonism is nationalism, which is the chief barrier to world peace. Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God, neither freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace. The intentions of the US trying to impose secularism on the Muslim world can be summed up like this: Without EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 213

Islam in its present form, we’ll have Muslims, but not for long.

8.2 Twisted secularism It is interesting to note that US propaganda about the fruits of secularism pays off, but no one knows that the present kind of secularism that is being proposed for Islamic countries is totally different than what was envisaged for the US by its founding fa- thers. The kind of secularism proposed for Muslim countries is no less than the worst kind of Communism when no one could even think of going to church or mosque. More surprisingly, most of us do not know how much the public is suffering from the less cruel kind of secularism in the US. Keeping that in mind, one cannot even imagine the miseries that the proposed secularism would bring about for Muslim countries. Most Muslims consider the US tactic to impose secular elites, like Pervez Musharraf in Muslim countries, a tactic of war on Islam because, as a result of Western propaganda, it is fashionable across Muslim societies to blame everything on religion and either heap invective upon it or treat is as a joke. Morality is taken to be something fictitious, superficial, and passe, fitted to man like a straight jacket or a mask. The frequency of statements like, “democracy cannot flourish if it is not separated from religion,” “internationally recognised human rights cannot be established in an Islamic state,” and “if a secular entity can deliver these objectives, religion would automatically withdraw into the home and the person,” is on the rise in the electronic and print media. Some writers go to the extent of suggesting that the Muslims follow the US Constitution. To save the general public from confusion due to the secularists’ dog- mas of negation, one has to go behind and expose the fancies of the advocates of private religion. “Nobody has the monopoly of truth; that if human beings don’t solve their problems, then nobody — no God or gods — will. Christian theologians and educators talk eloquently about America’s Christian heritage, about America as a ‘City upon a Hill,’ and about a personal and caring god; but if we have to be honest to our students, we must tell them that there is not an iota of scientific evidence that such a being exists. The universe also seems to be a godless universe. As A WAR ON ISLAM? 214

Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking have pointed out, it is a universe ‘with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, and nothing for a Creator to do.’ The Department of Educa- tion, if it survives the present onslaught by Christian Repub- licans, must show its commitment to science and reason by allowing secular humanism to be part of every scientific and educational program in the country.” TVI community college newsletter spring 1999. This rush to secularism, mostly under the label of liberalism, or moderate Islam immerses nearly everyone and has become a consciously organised effort. It shapes its own: pseudo-religion; economics, language and art. It destroys nature and community without giving a chance of understanding its true nature by its believers and bystanders. The following is an example of the extreme to which the secularists have gone in the US on the one hand and the way they want to silence pro-religion groups and enforce their agenda through schools on the other. According to Kaz Dziamka, an in- structor in the Arts and Sciences Department at the Technical-Vo- cational Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, secular humanism means: Authority and prescription are derided as a sign of being modern or advanced. “Authority” in the vocabulary of what has been called “the Freudian ethic” is implied arbitrary restraint; and prescription is equated with cultural lag, maintenance of status quo, and superstition. But the consequences of these emancipated notions have been unpalatable in places where these experiments started long ago. A generation of young people reared according to “permissive” tenets has grown up bored, sullen and in revolt against the very lack of order which was supposed to ensure the full development of their personalities. Most advocates of secularism live in societies lulled by slogans about absolute liberty, places where perpetual peace has found itself devoured by thoroughgoing tyranny and increasing violence but instead of getting a lesson, they start pulling others into the same mess. The American Constitution is being glamorised by some as an ideal for establishing secular rule in Muslim countries. Courts in the United States do indeed enforce a separation between church and state, and it is backed by some very impressive legal philosophy, EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 215

but one must be careful not to misunderstand what the doctrine and the First Amendment of the US Constitution that is said to embody it, were designed to do. Simply put, the metaphorical separation of church and state originated in an effort to protect religion from the state, not the state from religion. The religion clauses of the First Amendment were crafted to permit maximum freedom to the religious. It means that the government should neither force people into sectarian religious ob- servances, nor favour some religions over others, as by erecting crèche paid for with public funds, nor punish people for their religiosity without a very strong reason other than prejudice. It does not mean, however, that people whose motivations are religious are banned from trying to influence the government, nor that the government is banned from listening to them. Religion is the first subject of the First Amendment. The amendment begins with the Establishment Clause (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...”), which is immediately followed by the Free Exercise Clause (“or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). Although one might scarcely know it from the zeal with which the primacy of the other First Amendment freedoms is often asserted, those protections come after the clauses that were designed to secure religious liberty, which Thomas Jefferson called “the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights.”143 Culled from the writings of Roger Williams and Thomas Jefferson, the concept of a “wall of separation” finds its constitutional moorings in the First Amendment’s firm statement that the “Congress shall make no law respecting any establishment of religion.” Although it begins with the word “Congress,” the Estab- lishment Clause for decades has been quite sensibly interpreted by the Supreme Court as applying to states as well as to the federal government. For most American history, the principal purpose of the Estab- lishment Clause has been understood as the protection of the religious world against the secular government. A century ago, Phillip Schaff of Union Seminary in New York celebrated the clause in his church and state in the United States (New York: Putnam, 1888), as “the Magna Carta of religious freedom,” representing as it did A WAR ON ISLAM? 216

“the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control over religion.” Note the wording: not religious control over government — government control over religion. Over the years, the US Supreme Court has handed down a number of controversial decisions. And although most Americans revere their Constitution, the Supreme Court has not been reluctant to tamper with it. Starting 36 years ago, they began to turn the First Amendment upside-down, using it as a weapon against religion. In 1962, the Supreme Court said it did not matter if it was voluntary, students could not pray together during school. School “Bible Clubs” remain tolerated only if they never meet while classes are in ses- sion, but gather exclusively before or after school. They are put under restrictions that are not applied to any other student groups. In 1980, the Supreme Court said the Ten Commandments could not be on the wall at school, because the students might “read... and obey” the Ten Commandments. In 1985, the Supreme Court said even a moment of silence was forbidden to pray silently. In 1992, the Supreme Court said a rabbi broke the law by offering prayer at a public school graduation. In 1995, the Supreme Court, which has ruled that a Nazi swastika is protected on public property, ruled that a cross could not be included in a group of symbols on a city seal, to depict the heritage of a community in Oklahoma. In 1997, they ordered the taking-down of a cross that stood for almost 70 years in a park in San Francisco. ACLU (The American Civil Liberties Union) is suing in West Virginia to halt prayers at football games; they are suing in Ohio to stop the use of the Ohio State Motto, “With God All Things Are Possible.” In California, the IRS told workers they cannot have a Bible, or a Nativity scene, or a religious picture or symbol at their desks; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in Washington tried to say workers on the job cannot talk to co- workers about their faith; a federal judge in Galveston, Texas, threatened to arrest anyone who mentions Jesus at a school graduation. The post office has removed its “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Hannukah” banners. A federal judge in Alabama has hit schools with an order outlawing any vocal prayer at school or any school- EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 217

connected events. In addition, he has appointed monitors to roam the hallways and enter classrooms, to make sure there are no secret prayers. Religious expression in the US is being singled out for suppression, even as explicit lyrics, movies, and other negative influences are protected. According to Rep. Ernest Istook, schools have been intimidated to silence the singing of Christmas carols, and to limit holiday programs to tunes such as “Frosty the Snowman” and “Here comes Santa Claus.”144 After one lawsuit over songs at a Utah school, the Washington Post questioned whether it is permitted to sing “America the Beautiful” at school anymore. After all, the chorus says, “God shed His grace on thee.” All these events and decisions are exercising control over the religious aspect of life for American people — precisely what the Establishment Clause was written to forbid. The separation of church and state might be essential to the success of a vibrant, pluralistic democracy; the doctrine does not entail all that is done in its name and what is expected by the secularists in Pakistan to be done. No one among the framers of the US Constitution doubted that the churches should and must be harsh moral critics of politics; but they did not believe that the state should be engaged in trying to regulate religions. Indeed Madison proclaimed with some pride that the obligation of man to God was prior to the obligation of man to the State, which meant, he said, that the State was subordinate to God. Simi- larly Madison is frequently quoted for the following passage: “Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence that has convinced us.” But the very next line is striking: “If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man.” 145 The secularists who are trying to secularise the Constitution of Pakistan by giving examples of the US constitution, must not forget that although Americans are less likely than in the past to respond rigidly to hierarchical commands of religious authority, their religious beliefs tend to be deep and, on many moral issues, seem to be A WAR ON ISLAM? 218 controlling. There is little evidence to support the idea that most Americans prefer to think of religion as remaining outside the public arena. If the secularists have not succeeded in relegating religions to second-class status in the US, they will never be able to do so in Pakistan. Many groups are trying to oversimplify the human mind by making religious conviction a ground for invalidating law and moral standards but they forget that a majority of Pakistanis are Muslims, who not only believe in Allah and an afterlife, but derive their sense of morality from spiritual sources — not from rules drafted by the UN or Amnesty International. Yet the offspring of the so- called Enlightenment (dalliances with postmodernism aside) omit that reality from their professional and political blueprints. They insist on viewing religion as a kind of mass delusion, a set of absurd ideas used to rationalise multiple atrocities to body and mind. Antagonism towards those who stress religious norms crop up frequently in pieces by secularists impressed with the secular philosophy that can be summarised in Katha Pollitt’s (Nation columnist quoted in New York Times) words as: “Religion is a farrago of authoritarian nonsense, misogyny and humble pie, the eternal enemy of happiness and freedom.” Such kind of antipathy toward religion is both myopic and self-defeating. It fails to make distinctions between types of beliefs and believers. And, worse, it fortifies, with polemical concrete, the gap between the few professed secularists and the majority of Muslims. To rail against the popular religion violates the first principle of the secularists much vaunted democratic politics. It is being said that all the wrongs are being committed in the name of religion. Near the end of the last gory century, one should not need to draw up a balance sheet of atrocities. But the fact is that godless tyrannies and so-called democracies, the bulk of them spawn out of secularism, have, since the 1920s, produced a body count so huge it makes scattered “pariahs” (Ayatollah and cross totting ethnic cleansers) seem like a bunch of street corner thugs. The problem is that some men discover what they take to be a great truth about the world and then force it on millions of other people. The medieval Crusaders provided one model, with their EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 219

dreadful attempts to “rescue the Holy Land from Islam” and the secular fundamentalists are providing another by imposing their views on the rest of the world through its media and missiles — whichever is convenient according to the situation. If men are to associate at all, some authority must govern them; if they throw off religious authority, then very soon find themselves subjected to some new and merciless authority. If authority is godless and unjust, then the social order will have a small place for freedom. Genuinely ordered freedom is the only sort of liberty worth having; freedom made possible by order within the soul and order within the state. Liberty defiant of authority and prescription and anarchic freedom, as propagated by secular fundamentalists under the banner of internationally recognised human rights, is merely the subhuman state of the wolf and the shark, or the punishment of Cain, with his hand against every man’s hand, and every man’s hand against his. Secularism in itself is an ill; it does not have any solution for any problem.

8.3 Secularism: not the Solution There is no basis for the thesis put forward by secularists that Muslim “nations are facing a great dilemma” because there is a “secular state vs. Islamic state conflict” and it has “become a real threat to modernisation, progress and economic development in Muslim countries.” In the case of Pakistan, for instance, it is a historical fact that Pakistan is the product of the “Two Nation Theory.” Every nation needs to relate to an ideology for a clear identity. In Pakistan, the ideology cannot be anything other than Islam. And hopefully there will be no “ war between the liberal, democratic and progressive forces on one side and the extremist, obscurantist and retrogressive armies on the other,” as presented by the secularist groups. The reason is that the “the extremist, obscurantist and retrogressive armies” far outnumber the directly or indirectly Western-funded “liberal and progressive”-minded agents of secularism. It is being wrongly propagated that the crucial issues, like what kind of state do Pakistanis really desire, have not been resolved. The key element in the Constitution regarding Pakistan being an A WAR ON ISLAM? 220 ideological state (as opposed to secularist) is that no laws will be framed which are inconsistent with the Qur’an and Sunnah. The central point of the secularists is that all the prevalent ills in Paki- stan are because of its “ideological” Constitution, and these ills can only be corrected by making Pakistan a Secular Democratic State. This is a very superficial perception. Socio-economic injustice and rampant corruption in Latin America, South Asia, Central Africa, Russia and Africa — that fall outside the so-called industrialised countries — are not due to Is- lam. Most of the governments in these developing and semi-developed countries are secular. Why, then, blame the wrongdoing of greedy and immoral politicians and decrepit system in Muslim countries, on Islam? Is there really something wrong with Islam or is it just a readily available scapegoat for American frustration and pleasing the reigning powers? Conversely, a number of Muslim countries, which are not “Islamic theocracies” and are secular e.g. Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, etc., have also not shown any marked economic and social development — in fact they are no better than Pakistan, if not worse. Turkey receives far more IMF bailouts than Pakistan. The story of a few industrialised countries is very different and not necessarily comparable with under-developed countries like Pakistan because of numerous factors — historical, religious, geo- graphical and exceptional organisational ability to secure resources from all over the world. Secularism does not explain their economic progress except in one respect: the outlook of the masses in those states has been made wholly materialistic by the secular political establishment at the cost of moral and ethical depravity. Will the masses in Muslim societies accept that? It may be argued that secularism does not mean that “moral values” should be abolished. Can secular law even enforce “ethical values”? Theoretically, it is possible. Practically, it is unachievable because a socio-politico-economic system without an ideology, a value system and a spiritual content is incomplete and cannot satisfy the individual and collective material and spiritual needs of the masses. The US is the most advanced secular state, perhaps the ideal of the secularists. But it suffers from various social ills EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 221

and has accepted many vices as normal. Secularists living and preaching from the US can elaborate on it much better than anyone sitting in the targeted Muslims countries.

8.4 Lessons From the Paradox of Secular Turkey All the great leaders of the past were men and not god as any of their successors today. And like other men they had their weaknesses and made mistakes. But where in England, young historians are busy chipping away at Winston Churchill, trying to topple him from his pedestal, like Marx and Lenin in the former Soviet Republics, and expose him as a man of many weaknesses and errors; in Turkey the military leaders have made themselves self-appointed guardians of Kamal Ataturk’s secular remains. They do not allow any re-examination or reassessment of past assumptions and their experience of living under a secular government for more than 70 years. As a result, Turkey’s highest court dissolved the Welfare Party, the largest in parliament, for its alleged activities against the secular regime and not only stripped its leaders, Necmettin Erbakan, and two of his party aides of their seats in the parliament, but also barred them from politics for five years. This latest turn in Turkey’s political turmoil, in which the grand Western conspiracy played no less part than the Turkish armed forces, clearly proved Mr. Erbakan’s far sightedness, when he declared in early 1990s’ in the US that “the West regards Islam as an enemy [and after the Cold War, NATO] has replaced on its maps the red areas denoting the Communist enemy with the green of Islam.” Western leaders and the media together with the Turkish security apparatus left no stone unturned in its war of attrition against the beleaguered Mr. Erbakan – not even when he resigned from office. It is not difficult to prove that the West, particularly the US, played a serious role in banning the Refah Party and bringing its leader from the highest position of State to that of a defendant in a court of law on some trumped up charges of subverting secularism. From day one, Western alarmists started predicting that the country would follow a repressive lead, despite the fact that Refah’s record showed its capability of governing competently. The party’s rise to A WAR ON ISLAM? 222 power was sufficient to bode ill for “vital US interests in the Middle East” for under Refah Turkey was “bound to become a better friend of the Islamic East, and a less accommodating partner of the West.”146 So, Washington, “concerned about Islam’s increasing influence in” Turkey quietly tracked Turkish military’s moves and probably assisted them in planning a “quiet coup.”147 The American press was hostile to Erbakan from the day his party won a majority of seats in the 1995 elections. The Wall Street Journal declared that “most disconcerting is the spectre of a fundamentalist Turkey” and suggested “an alliance between the Motherland and True Path Party” for “blocking fundamentalists.”148 The same day the New York Times editorialised “The Islamic Challenge in Turkey” and indirectly suggested a military coup in case of Erbakan’s accession to the secular throne in the following manner: “They [secular parties] are now scrambling to put together a broad left-right coalition and hint that the military could somehow step in to defend Ataturk’s secular legacy.” Just a few months later, Newsweek blared that generals in Tur- key are “fed up with Islam [so the] military wants a new government.”149 The magazine reported that during a visit to Jerusalem by the Turkish Chief of Staff General Ismail Hakki Karadayi, “there was mutual railing against the threat of political Islam.” Which means that Turkish generals and all the Western leaders and political scholars could live happily with political Judaism and fundamentalist Jews but not with Mr. Erbakan in power. Is it not a matter of shame for Turkish generals to sit across the table with fundamentalist Jews wearing Yarmulke and at the same time fire hundreds of officers from the Turkish army just because they made pilgrimage to Makkah? It is indeed shameful on the part of Turkish generals that they became furious with Mr. Erbakan when he discussed the possibility of greater military cooperation between Turkey and Iran but at the same time dined and conducted training with the worst racists and fundamentalists in the world – the defenders of Zionism. While discharging 69 soldiers for their participation in Islamic activities, the Turkish generals probably forgot to remember hundreds of their EIGHTH PROBLEM: SEPARATING MUSLIMS FROM ISLAM 223 training counterparts with long beards, locks and Yarmulkes. If Iran and Mr. Erabakan are not secular, then neither is: Israel, the Israeli army and the European Union, which Turkey is so eager to join. More than seventy years of prostration and embarrassing obse- quiousness to the Europeans will never bear fruits, unless the Turk- ish generals and other champions of secularism clearly and openly renounce Islam and start going to church, because going to church is not fundamentalism, but going to a mosque or Hajj certainly is. That is how they can have a chance to join European civilisation in which, according to Wilfried Marters, a member of the European parliament, “Turkey has place.” These repeated soft and hard coups and forging different alliances are not solutions to Turkey’s problems, nor can Turks be accepted in a Union, which a Dutch politi- cian has clearly described as a “Christian Club.” Of course it is easy for the American media to highlight a two column block with a photograph of Mr. Erbakan and a bold headline that “he’s a fundamentalist,”150 or publish an article by James Baker, the former US Secretary of State, expressing shock and sur- prise at Turkey’s recognition of Refah and its supporters to contest elections and, thus, paving the way for a coup and subsequent ban on the party. But they have no solutions for Turkey’s triple digit inflation, rising corruption, nepotism and other social and political ills. The West can effectively use Ankara as a principal bulwark against perceived threats from Iran, Iraq and Syria, but cannot pull it out of its own problems. There are lessons in the paradox of a modern, secular Turkey for the rest of the Muslim world and some of their leaders who are busy in projecting themselves as secular bulwarks against “religious fundamentalism.” One fact that surfaces from such developments is that the champions of democracy and human rights in the West are making people like Mr. Erbakan look really moderate and democratic by comparison. They are neither concerned with democracy nor with human rights violation when it comes to the interests of these secular fundamentalists. The West has proved through its attitude towards the Algerian and Turkish crisis that it would rather deal with an authoritarian regime than with a democracy if the word Islam were associated with that democracy. The only reason is that A WAR ON ISLAM? 224 some of the so called “Muslim” leaders present Islam as a spectre, like Mrs. Tansu Ciller warned the electorate in a pre-poll blast at the Refah Party in the words that: “Your decision is to choose civilisation or darkness.” The effort to banish religion for politics sake has led the Turks and other secular Muslims astray: In their sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating politics in Muslim countries, the secularists have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them. On the one hand, in dealing with China and the former Soviet Union, a magnificent respect for freedom of conscience, including the freedom of religious belief and practice runs deep in the political rhetoric of the West. On the other hand, an unjustifiable fear of Islam presses Western governments and they are wary of those who take their religion serious. They cannot ask Muslims to split their public and private selves, telling them in effect that it is fine to be religious in private, but there is something askew when those private beliefs become the basis for public action. This is ridiculous. The West must not expect Muslims to practice either the US-approved version of Islam or to practice Is- lam with the prior permission of the EU and USA. In all countries, particularly the Muslim states, religion can never be relegated to second-class status, but should, at the very minimum, be allowed to compete side by side with the secular groups for the largess of the welfare state. This is the only way of ensuring that one vision of the meaning of reality – that of the powerful group of secular individuals called the state – is not allowed a political role all by themselves. It used to be known as tyranny, now they call it secularism. In short, no matter how much certain Muslims may claim to be the secular bulwarks, the West will never accept Turkey or the other Muslim-majority states as full-fledged members of their community. The Muslims’ interests lie in growing cooperation with other Muslim countries, not with NATO, EU or any other Western club. CONCLUSION 225 9 Conclusion

Muslim objections to Washington’s war on terrorism reflect concerns shared by many Americans. As the foregoing enumerated points indicate, many Muslims around the world are uneasy with (1) the vague and open-ended nature of the war against terrorism, (2) the thought that the US may be reacting against a religion rather than merely against an organisation, (3) the reality that ever fewer media corporations, all thinking alike, provide the bulk of America’s information about the world, (4) instances when important actions by the US government are based on fear or cowardice, (5) American policymakers’ use of the term “Islamic fundamentalism” despite the fact that there is no varieties in Islam (6) the extent to which violent attitudes permeate American thinking (7) the objective to check the imaginary resistance posed by Muslims to a US-dominated world and the barriers to honesty and sincerity in the American government. The war against terrorism is not the problem. It is merely a symptom that can be cured overnight provided that the US changes its double standards and let others live in peace and the much-vaunted freedom. Muslims and non-Muslims, in America or elsewhere, might disagree on which of the already mentioned areas of concern are most important, or on what examples best illustrate these concerns. Nevertheless, the less wealthy individuals around the world share much common ground on the general concept that America must improve, in its structure and its responsiveness, before it can present itself as a true friend of those underprivileged billions who would like to enjoy the principles embodied in the American Declaration of Independence. Meanwhile, the world does not sit still. During these years when America has been unable to get busy and make the necessary improvements, the door has been open to views that may not always place the highest priority on things that Americans value. A WAR ON ISLAM? 226

9.1 The unfolding Final Clash Meanwhile, the optimists around the world, who await an end to the post September 11 crisis, will end up as much disappointed tomorrow as the pacifists are today. Those who exaggerate the fear of “fundamentalist” Islam but underestimate the resistance in the Muslim world will soon realise that not only the world is not as it was; the war also is not as simple as the US makes them believe. Out of a multiple fear of American wrath, direct and indirect military attacks, economic embargo and international isolation, the various regimes in Muslims countries let the world feast on the innocent civilians in Afghanistan. However, these regimes have for- gotten they might not even get enough time to digest the shower- ing dollars for which they have sold their consciences, dignity and unknowingly their existence as independent state. The highly dis- guised intentions of Blair and Bush have turned their hasty decision to join the “coalition” into a time bomb, ticking to detonate with horrible consequences in the near future. The chickens of the their instant surrender are already gradually coming home to roost. It is now dawning on the Muslim masses that their leaders are simply pawns in the global anti-Islam coalition. Some of the Mus- lims ask, what other alternatives their leaders had at their disposal? Instead, they must ask about the consequences of their meek surrender, which instantly nullify all the expected benefits. Let us look at a brief list of consequences that Pakistan faced in the first months of cooperation with the US: democracy has been indefinitely postponed; the US may bomb us but Muslims may not criticise it; dissent and protest have no place in the rewritten human rights; Muslims must stop “terrorism” in Kashmir, or face the consequences (Joe Biden, Chairman Senate Foreign Relations Com- mittee); Washington mulls “neutralising” Pakistan nuclear facili- ties151; Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are at risk from US and Israeli plans to destroy them;152 US Special Unit ‘Stands by to Steal Paki- stan’s Atomic Warheads’;153 Pakistan’s war machine is in action against its own citizens; its just like another West Bank and Gaza strip in tribal areas of Pakistan; illegal and unconstitutional detentions are on the rise; and “Pakistan is in danger of falling apart.”154 The Statesman reports in its front-page story that in search of CONCLUSION 227

Al-Qaeda men “army and law enforcement agencies are capturing every bearded person who has some contact with religious people of mosques’ affairs.” 155 A tribal elder of Wana, South Waziristan, told Baluchistan Times that it seems as if “the Army is not operating in its own country rather it is fighting a war in a hostile country.” According to Baluchistan Post, the infuriated army commanders herded people out of their houses and blasted their houses by artil- lery and mortar fires to revenge the killings of their fellows.156 It seems the story of another West Bank: another factory of desperate “suicide bombers” in making. The nation helplessly watched PTV News that called 10 army men, who died for America in an en- counter in tribal areas, as “martyrs.” This is what Thomas Fried- man of New York Times calls a “war within Islam,” and this is for what spokesman of the State Department very proudly thanks Gen- eral Musharraf. No one asks, what is this nation fighting for, or what is the meaning of our existence? Some might question, if these are the fruits of cooperation, how could the Muslims afford the horrible consequences of defiance? The answer is: with or without cooperation the Muslims are the next victims anyway. They have simply given the US time to take us out one by one. Remember the origins of World War 2, when appeasement was based on the illusion that Hitler only wanted to reverse the wrongs, which Germany felt had been done to her. The West assumed that if the German claims were granted, peace in Europe would automatically follow. Muslims have also wrongly assumed that the US is after Al- Qaeda alone. However, they dislodged the Taliban and are setting the stage for attacking Iraq and “neutralising” Pakistan. This is just the beginning. To justify their decision made out of fear, Muslims might justify US terrorism as retribution for the September 11 attacks, but in fact there is no calculus of injustice. If the US is behaving unjustly, it should stop. It does not help its case to contend that others are acting “even more” unjustly. If the September 11 event is a crime, then the principles of justice must be followed in meting out punishment. Inventing another category called war and making it the special province of the US is not the answer. If Bush and Blair postulate that the principles of justice are A WAR ON ISLAM? 228 suspended whenever they are at war, then every state can throw off the shackles of justice and do whatever it wants, including deliberately killing thousands who were not responsible for the initial injustice. Jumping into coalition with the US was a comfortable alternative. However, unfolding events show that the Muslims have to reconsider their options for in this war there is very little room for mistakes and the situation could well lead to the final world war. The Muslim world’s policy of appeasement is similar to what Britain and France embraced in vain in the 1930s in a bid to reach a peaceful understanding with Germany. Just like the forced retire- ment of some senior military officials in Pakistan, Anthony Eden, Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary, who did not agree to give Hitler a free hand was replaced by Lord Halifax who fully supported Brit- ain’s policy of appeasement. In February 1938, Hitler invited the Austrian Chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, to meet him at Berchtesgarden. Just like the US demands to place Pakistan’s nuclear facilities and fate in “safe” American hands, Hitler demanded similar concessions from Austria. The then “fundamentalist” Schuschnigg refused and was replaced by Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the leader of the Austrian Nazi Party – “moderate” by Nazi standards. On 13th March, Seyss-Inquart invited the German Army to occupy Austria. Just like the present suggestions to transform Afghanistan into a UN-run state (UN being an extension of the State Department), Hitler began demanding control of the Sudetenland in Czechoslo- vakia. In an attempt to solve the crisis, the heads of Germany, Brit- ain, France and Italy met in Munich. On September 29th, 1938 the Munich Agreement was signed to transfer to Germany the Sudetenland. Just like Pakistan and other Muslim states’ unwill- ingness to defend their Afghan brothers and sisters, when Eduard Benes, Czechoslovakia’s head of state, protested at this decision, Neville Chamberlain told him that Britain would be unwilling to go to war over the issue of the Sudetenland. Just like some initial positive response to Musharraf’s quick surrender, some people in Britain also appreciated the Munich Agree- ment because it appeared to have prevented German wrath. Just CONCLUSION 229

like the US changing objective from war on terrorism to war on the Taliban, Germany also seized the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 after getting a nod from the Munich Agreement. The policy of most Muslim heads of state on Afghanistan is no different than what Chamberlain expressed in a radio broadcast on September 27th, 1938. He said: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country.” Churchill had the time to admit in 1948 that for the West “to leave its faithful ally Czecho- slovakia to her fate was a melancholy lapse from which flowed terrible consequences.” The present Muslim governments may not even get sufficient time to admit their folly of not calling a spade a spade when the US began its military intervention in Afghanistan and tried to dominate the whole Muslim world. Just like the Pakistani liberal col- umnists and PTV spreading the myth of American might and consequences of provoking American wrath, the Chamberlain government nurtured the fear of war in the British public, so that it would accept the policy of appeasement. Like today’s twisted reporting by the BBC and CNN, after Munich, the British public opinion was the victim of joint Anglo-German propaganda. Just like the present Anglo-American Alliance and the Muslim leaders busy in pleasing Uncle Sam, British politicians actively worked before World War 2 to bring their country closer with Hit- ler’s Germany. In January 1938, Neville Henderson, Britain’s ambassador to Germany, told Von Ribbentrop, the German For- eign Minister: “I would view with dismay another defeat of Ger- many which would merely serve the purposes of inferior races.” In September 1939, as he spoke in front of a group of Lords, the Duke of Westminster, known as an anti-Semite and an admirer of Germany, stated that he opposes the mutual shedding of British and German blood,“ the two races which are the most akin and most disciplined in the world.157 In Europe, Islamophobia has replaced anti-Semitism and Ameri- can appreciation has taken the place of German admiration. Just like the Muslim states’ missing opportunities to become united and enter into formidable alliances, Chamberlain and the other A WAR ON ISLAM? 230 western heads of Government sabotaged the possibility of reaching an agreement with Soviet Union to a common struggle against Hit- ler. Just like our misconceptions that it is only Iraq or Afghanistan that the US intends to force into submission, even after the invasion of Poland, France and Britain managed “the phoney war”, with the hope that, after Poland, Hitler would turn his troops towards the Soviet Union. At a very late stage, they realised that Hitler’s intention was to conquer all of Europe, if not the entire world. Documents published in 1969, including the full protocol of the conversations between Chamberlain and Hitler prove that Chamberlain thanked the Fuhrer “for his clear presentation of Ger- many’s position.” The beginning of the ultimate tragedy of human history is similar to World War 2 in many ways. The beginning then was best expressed by Chamberlain as an “Anglo-German understanding” for “the two pillars of European peace and buttresses against Communism.”158 The beginning today is an Anglo-Ameri- can understanding against Islam, labelled as fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism in a sequence of correlations. The world tends to ignore that Hitler’s “Final Solution” was no different than the US’s “Infinite Justice” or Israeli “self-defence.” The Muslim leaders’ policy of giving a free hand to the US today derives naturally from their collective mindset, concerned above all of what they consider the pre-eminent threat to the security of their personal interests. For Western leaders, the “green menace” involves as much a fundamental threat to the most sacred tenets of capitalism and colonialism as the “red menace.” Their giving a free hand to the US for the fear of Islam is similar to the freedom handed out to Hitler as a direct overt choice of Fascism over Communism, which consistently rejected direct proposals by the Soviet Union to act against Germany’s aggression. Just like the US exploitation of the UN, the free hand to Hitler permitted consistent violations of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Just like a free licence to US and its Allies in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the free hand to Hitler did all of this in the full knowledge of the most organised and violent repression of human rights in history. European nations might console themselves with the idea that the US is out there to eradicate the threat posed by Islam, forget- CONCLUSION 231

ting that the US is out to eradicate every resistance to the kind of domination it wants over the world. If the world could not stand to say no to US injustice now, then when? If appeasement has led to an escalation of disasters in the past, can it do otherwise in the future? Should the others wait until it is their turn to face US onslaught? The Muslims’ struggle now is not a struggle against a country, whose yearning for security could be satisfied or denied. The world should refrain from assisting the US in killing innocent people who are not involved in any crime – nor have they been proven guilty of any crime. To postpone the ultimate tragedy of human history – that is already in progress and will gain momen- tum with the fall of a few puppet regimes — we must stop all cooperation with the US in its war on Islam, not because the Mus- lims are anti-American, but because such killing is wrong. The masses in the Muslim countries believe that their pro-US ruling dictators should stop it even if it meant there would be no US or Western assistance, or they might be attacked like Afghanistan.

9.2 The Real Problem Nothing—neither the culture of grievance, nor the sense of Pales- tinian abandonment, nor the resentment of American policies or pre- eminence—can justify or excuse the September 11 attacks. Any search for root causes must keep that reality foremost in mind.159

It seems that Western analysts are creating and becoming cap- tives of their own denigrating jargon. Huntington’s “Clash of Civi- lisations” is not a prophecy but a prescription on which US policy makers, military specialists and media pundits are sincerely and devotedly acting to wipe away the enemy and do away with the impending clash. But as they are acting on it, it is indeed becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The real problem is that no one, particularly those who can influence the US and its allies’ policies, is ready to consider the root causes of anti-Westernism and subsequent terrorism. The above-mentioned quote is just a representation of this kind of thinking. We are not here to justify or excuse the September 11 attacks. Nevertheless, it is wrong to attribute the root causes to something that is again a symptom, as a war on A WAR ON ISLAM? 232 symptoms will never end. Irrespective of calls from the Muslim world that this is a war on Islam, it is becoming evident to almost everyone that the US has set an extremely dangerous precedent of playing the prosecutor, the judge and executor at the same time in its war on symptoms of its own policy. India and Israel quickly followed suite to replay Washington’s role of going to all out war on the symptoms of their deeds. A nation cannot plan or follow a policy but it judges itself. With its will, or against its will, a nation draws its portrait to the eye of its people and other nations by every word and deed. Every policy and every principle reacts on the nation who supports it. The recent US policy, in particular, has become a harpoon for countries like Pakistan hurled at the whale of “symptoms,” unwinding, as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat, and if the harpoon is not good, or not well intentioned, it will go nigh to cut the steersman in two, or to sink the boat. The question is: Would the US, India and Israel succeed in their current techniques for eradicating the symptoms of their policies and leaving the main issues intact? The main symptom of domination, occupation and repression is resistance shown by their victims. This resistance, when it turns violent, becomes “terrorism.” So, eradicating the symptoms means eradicating the feelings of being repressed and exploited. In short, it is eradicating the victims, who harbour anti-aggressor feelings, one by one as we see in Afghani- stan, Palestine and in Kashmir. Will the US and its partners in terror be able to eradicate all of their victims? Yes, they can, but they will not be able to do so, because the seeds of hatred they sow do not germinate and grow at one time and the “terrorism” against repression does not unfold all at once. So, the war on symptoms will never end. It will go on and on for generations, until the policies of both direct and remote control colonialism are not changed and the wrongs are not redressed. Arrogant as usual, Bush challenged the world from his Texas ranch on 28th December 2001. He said: “The world must know that those who harm the US would not go unpunished.” It is not the US alone that is harmed. The wholesale terror unleashed to CONCLUSION 233 further a nebulous concept called the “national interest” is not the answer to those, who also feel harmed. The American public particularly needs to realise that if they multiply by 800-1000 times the amount of pain, angst, and anger they felt after September 11, they might begin to understand how much of the Muslim world feels as it continuously suffers from the US occupations, sanctions and from US-sponsored repressive regimes. To expose the fact that terrorism is a symptom of the US and its Allies’ policies of interference and domination is not to justify terrorism. Many American, Israeli and now Indian people are calling for “revenge” or “vengeance” and comments such as “kill them all” have been circulated on the BBC and CNN. There is no attempt to define either terrorism or set the limits to what a few more poten- tially benign comments call as “justice.” If indeed it is Al-Qaida, Hamas, or people from Lashkar-e-Taiyaba, the world must not deal with them through the language of war on other countries and killing thousands of innocent civilians, but eliminate the conditions that create the injustices and war crimes that will inevitably lead to more of these types of attacks in the future. The phrase “No Justice, No Peace” is more than a slogan used in a march; it is an observable historical fact. It is time to end the policies of horror followed by the US and its partners-in-terrorism. After raining down almost twice the amount of death and destruction the Americans witnessed on September 11, they must now be able to think in rational terms that what after all could possibly drive so many people to such a fever pitch of rage and anger to kill themselves for making a point. In order to eradicate “terrorism,” the questions they raise deserve answers. Genuine concerns of the Muslim masses need as much attention as those of their sell-out leaders. Stability and protection of oil fields in the Middle East and safeguarding other interests around the world are legitimate US concerns and the main pillars of its foreign policy, but these aims can be achieved without being selfish and without the hypocritical stands on human rights and democracy. Even to a layman in the streets of the Muslim world, US hypocrisy is apparent: human rights, but not for Muslims oppressed by US-sponsored regimes; democ- A WAR ON ISLAM? 234 racy, but not where the US does not want it. The world will not be stable, the oil fields will not be secure, and America will not be free of the fear of terrorism unless Americans identify with the aspirations of Muslims to live under the governments of their own liking without any outside interference and domination. The US needs to understand that even the worst kind of the much dreaded Islamic state would never be as much a threat to its interests, as is its current war on the symptoms of its misdirected policy. The exaggerated fear that radical “Islamist” parties will gain popular favour, win elections and establish anti-US theocratic states is baseless. If that risk exists today, imagine how much higher it will be tomorrow when the puppet regimes collapse and if the present trends of war on Pakistan’s stability; war on the religious and cultural roots in Afghanistan; war on Palestinians and Kashmiris’ aspirations for self-determination; war on religious institutions and war on anything related to “fundamentalist” Islam, continue to be the main objectives of US foreign policy. The situation after September 11, 2001 is that all the norms of international relations and all international laws have been set aside. It is up to the US to bomb suspects in Yemen or in Pakistan or prepare its public opinion for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein after gaining the experience of overthrowing the Taliban with the help of dollars and daisey cutter bombs. Terrorism is pointed out to be the problem, but the problem is not terrorism. The real problem is the root causes of the terrorism, which have been perfectly sidelined in all kinds of debate and discussion since September 11, 2001. Leading Western analysts like Kurt M. Campbell and Michèle A. Flournoy believe, “the single most important driver of Islamic rage is the failure of many ‘moderate’ Islamic states to create modern governments responsive to the needs of their people and viable civil societies where even minimal levels of debate and democracy are tolerated.”160 Again, who is sponsoring these so-labelled “moderate” Islamic states against the wishes of their people and why? There is no recommendation coming forward from any western quarter for revising unjust US stands that have alienated the Mus- lim masses and exacerbated their suffering. CONCLUSION 235

The US and its Western Allies are taking advantage of ignoring the root causes of discontent both in Eastern and Western societies. However, public other than the ruling majorities are very scep- tical of US motives and the Muslim world in particular can no more afford the US to misread or wrongly tackle the root causes of discontent and subsequent anti-Americanism, which in fact leads to the violent outburst of rage as we witnessed on September 11. Anti-Americanism is a consequence of the injustice perpetrated on the weak and marginalised directly by the US or under its auspices. Irrespective of it being brushed aside as an excuse for justifying terrorism, the fact remains that part of the anger directed at America emanates from the $6 billion a year it gives to keep the Israeli terror machine in action. It also emanates from the Ameri- can sponsorship of undemocratic and repressive regimes for safeguarding its interests. It has its roots in the US application of double standards of freedom, democracy, human rights and even terrorism. As has been mentioned in other parts of the book, the wrong conclusion drawn by the American media is that the “enemies” of America “do not believe in democracy.” According to Mr. Powell: the perpetrators of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pen- tagon “would never be allowed to kill the spirit of democracy.” The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair described the event as “an attack on free, democratic world” and labelled it as: “democracies against the rest” just as former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak called the tragic incident “terrorists vs civilisation.” In his first reaction, Bush said: “Freedom was attacked and freedom would be defended.” A BBC commentator reporting on live events taking place at the World Trade Centre and Pentagon said time and again that it is time for “democracy to pay the price.” Is not “democracy” paying the price to protect occupation, repression and state terrorism directed at people who love freedom as much as the US and its Allies do? There is a need to realise that freedom is as dear to Muslims as they are to the Americans and their European Allies. Similarly, British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, told BBC’s John Humphries on December 11, 2001 that the attack on the Indian parliament was “an attack on democracy.” However, the suffering A WAR ON ISLAM? 236

Muslims do not hear the same expression being used when Catho- lic terrorists attack British institutions on the mainland or the “mother of parliamentary democracy,” nor do we hear the same expression being used when the Indian government suppresses democracy in Kashmir. Interestingly, Jack Straw did not utter a word that under current UN resolutions the people of Kashmir have the right to resist occupation. If India is the epitome of democracy as Jack Straw claims then why does the Financial Times have to refer to the Indian government as having fascist leanings? “The semi-secret Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) - the shadowy mother organisation of the BJP was founded in the 1920s and influenced by Italian Fas- cism. The RSS is so extreme that it has been banned three times since India’s independence.”161 And according to Eric Margolis - a Canadian journalist, ‘The RSS was founded in the 1930s as a Hindu revivalist movement influenced by Germany’s Nazis and Mussolini’s fascists. Some In- dian critics call the RSS “Hindu brown shirts.” A RSS gunman, Nathuram Godse, assassinated modern India’s great man, Mohandas Gandhi, for advocating coexistence with Muslims. If India is a democracy then why are Muslims, Sikhs, Dravidians, Christians, being attacked and their places of worship being destroyed e.g. the destruction of Babri Mosque; the killing of Chris- tian missionaries, the burning of churches? The same month (De- cember 2001) quite surprisingly, the BBC Radio 4’s religious programme “Sunday” mentioned the lengths that the ruling party in India will go to in order to prevent the rising conversions to other faiths by low caste Hindus and the re-writing of India’s history in favour of Hinduism. Why does this not sound like Nazism to western politicians? The double standards, which are one of the root causes of Mus- lim angst, are not limited to a few instances or issues. For instance, if Jack Straw thinks that India’s democratic credentials are something to write home about or bamboozle Radio 4 listeners with, would anyone explain what on earth is his boss, Tony Blair is doing meeting with a traditional Third World tin-pot dictator like Gen- eral Musharraf of Pakistan? None of the western media pundits CONCLUSION 237 picks up on this stinking hypocrisy, but the Muslim World being sensitised to the western double standards, is watching and nothing surprises the Muslims about the BBC or CNN anymore. When it comes to reporting on issues in which Muslims are the victims, the quality and objectivity of Western broadcasts are on par with Robert Mugabe’s broadcasts i.e. third-rate one-sided propaganda. It is awful – media editors should listen to their own propaganda while considering themselves to be the victims of American- sponsored atrocities for a change, to realise how bad it sounds. The story is not limited to supporting the Indian position against UN resolutions only to counter Pakistan, in real sense, none of the American-sponsored Middle Eastern regimes is a free-democracy. Simply to secure its oil supplies, the US has stationed forces in Saudi Arabia against the will of its freedom loving people. To protect Israel from the consequences of its evil doings, it is sustaining Hosnie Mubarak’s military dictatorship at the cost of freedom and democracy in Egypt. For the same reason it has no objection to the unaccountable monarchies and sheikhdoms in the region or the absence of democracy in Algeria. To return favours to the Saudis and to please Israel, the US has been keeping Iraq under constant embargo, regardless of the countless un-televised deaths. For their support, the US turns a blind eye to the unsavoury activities of its Allies, in places such as Bahrain and Tunisia. Iraq had to end its occupation before any negotiations could take place, whereas there cannot be any dialogue with the Palestinians until they heartily accept occupation and fully submit themselves to Israeli rule. Iraq’s punishment does not come to an end for the same crime for which rewarding Israel is a never-ending process. It is not astonishing to find out that all the alleged suspects in the September 11 attacks in the US were from the Middle East where duplicity of the Ameri- can claims for freedom and democracy has no bounds. The real problem is not terrorism but US policy to dominate the world complemented by appeasement by Muslim and Euro- pean leaders, which is realising many of the US’s ambitions against international laws and UN mandate. For the same reasons like establishing another Israel in Asia to counter China and put a lid on the Islamic bomb, the shift has purposely been turned from the A WAR ON ISLAM? 238

Middle East to Afghanistan. The media is silent over ulterior Ameri- can motives and hesitates to expose the real problem, which has turned educated, intelligent, resourceful and sane human beings into taking such extra-ordinary inhuman steps only to hurt US interests and let it know that what it is doing is against human rights under any definition of human rights. Instead of focusing on “why” or “how” death has become the bottom line for so many across the Muslim world, all efforts are directed at getting Osama at all costs. Opinion makers like Tho- mas Friedman of the New York Times realize the fact that the US is pitted “against all the super-empowered angry men and women” from the “failed” states. However, they skilfully cover the root causes of this “anger” with some twisted reasons. This “anger” and “failure” is wrongly associated with “the failure of their societies to master modernity.” Why would someone take thousands of innocent lives simply because he does not like to be “modern?” Similarly, Ronald Steel, also explained the causes of Muslim rage as: “Trapped between the traditional and the confusing world of modernity. They seek a single cause for their confusion, their resentments, their frustrated ambitions and their problems of cultural identity. They would focus on the world’s most powerful state as the object of their resentment.”162 The ever-growing “anger” is, in act, only due to the suffering inflicted on successive Muslim generations by American-sponsored repressive regimes due to interventionist US policies. Concealing the real problem or dealing with the symptoms alone would only increase the problems not only for the US but for the whole humanity. The US needs to reduce the demand for terrorism. Bombing Afghanistan, throwing out the Taliban, assassinat- ing Osama, recruiting more CIA agents in Pakistan and elsewhere, and propping more dictatorships would be of little use if the US establishment refuses to take a lesson and say adios to its discriminatory policies. To be fair, any attack against the US is not new. Its “enemies” have not been shy about transmitting their grievances, nor is Mossad or the CIA above all doubts that they would not destroy minor American interests for achieving greater goals. As far as the Muslims are concerned, time and again they have announced CONCLUSION 239

that they despise US foreign policies; time and again they have called for justice. How often have the US seen Muslims burn Ameri- can flags? After insensitively disregarding their pain, it seems easy to declare America’s New War than to ask: “Is eradication of the deep-rooted hatred of American policies possible with bombing, assassinations, starvation and occupations?” An impartial assessment would reveal that it is not a specific geographic location or a government that breeds “terrorists.” It is actually a specific feeling; a psyche that turns the oppressed into believing that blowing themselves into pieces is advantageous than going through daily physical and psychological degradation. Such a feeling can never be erased even if the US flattens Afghanistan to the ground, leaving nothing living behind becuse it would have to do the same to all Muslim countries and even to most of the United States. Besides Afghanistan, Robert McFarlance stressed that Pakistan “must be held accountable for what has happened.”163 Robert Levine suggested, “invasion, seizing of capitals and rooting out of the evil might be appropriate.”164 Such kinds of jingoists forget that no amount of death and destruction will eliminate the legitimate grievances felt by the Muslim world. There are genuine reasons behind genuine grievances. Villages of Palestine as well as in occupied Kash- mir, Chechnya and Afghanistan are going through the same pain for decades as the US recently went through on September 2001. The US needs to improve its image in the Muslim world, which is not possible with cruise missiles, daisey cutter bombs or the outright lies and half-truths by the BBC and CNN. The minimalists who insist that the enemy is only “a small band of fanatics” in Afghanistan severely underestimate the widespread hatred of US policies. American professors who invoke the clash of civilisations have further widened the circle of enmity to large parts of the Islamic world. No one is out to “destroy Americans because they are Americans.” Why doesn’t anyone attack the Swiss or Nor- wegians or anyone else for the sake of their nationality? No one is against American values, as long as they are not imposed on others. However, the US may never reconsider its policies when the Econo- mist and others think with the words: “Thanks to America, and A WAR ON ISLAM? 240 only thanks to America, the world has enjoyed these past decades an age of hitherto unimagined freedom and opportunity. Those who would deflect it from its path must not, and surely will not, succeed”.165 For keeping the US on “its path,” many human rights abusers are reinforcing and repackaging existing prejudices and motives by exploiting this enormous tragedy. Expressions of sympathy by the Israeli, Indian and Russian leaders carry an undertone of self-justification for their war on “fundamentalists.” Their statements smack of an appeal for a Crusade against Muslim “extremists.” The United States must be wary of such opportunism. No matter how much western analysts may call them “twisted reasons” of the “terrorists,” genuine grievances will prevail and fuel more anger. Anti-Americanism and the subsequent anti-Westernism is the direct result of US foreign policy. Combating anti-Americanism is far more important and of long lasting value than simply going to war against its symptom, i.e. terrorism. Many flawed reasons are being put forward and the focus has been shifted to anti-terrorism, instead of understanding anti-Americanism, which, in fact, fuels such an unexplainable rage and determination to expose the US feet of clay. Some attribute it to “failure of will and credibility on the part of the US.” Others argue that the US administration “is gun shy.” And most of the commentators link it to the “enemies of democracy and freedom.” But no one has come with an analysis to explain what exactly has the US done to turn a people into breathing missiles and bombs, and why America alone is the target. Innocent Americans do not realise that the foreign policy of their government deviates far from the lofty universalist principles of freedom and democracy, nor is it easy to let them understand it at this moment of grief. Whether the Americans try to face it or not, there are genuine reasons behind the feelings and violent acts of those, who consider America as a legitimate target to vent their anger against. Instead of telling the horrified Americans that they are once again innocent victims of evil – mindless and abominable terrorism – they must be told that they are paying a just part of the price of needless US involvement in the turmoil of other nations. The US government CONCLUSION 241 has openly admitted to seeking and funding the overthrow of other governments, some of which are democratically elected, like the government in Tehran. It is an open secret that the US has repeatedly tried and, in fact, did assassinate leaders of other nations for impudently challenging American hegemony. Is not this international state sponsored terrorism? It is wrong to assume that “terrorism” in the current form grew primarily out of some socio-psychological developments, whereby there is a dramatic decrease in the ability of small interest groups or nations to affect the policies of the major powers and their client states. In fact it is terror and injustice that beget terror. For tracing possible suspects, US investigation teams must keep all those parts of the world in mind, where Washington has directly or indirectly assisted in unleashing terror, misery and wretchedness. US agents, however, may not find a place in the world where the US is not being perceived as an overbearing bully trampling on the will and sensitivities of other nations with abandon. In ancient times, armies used to slaughter and rape civilian populations in conquered city states; in the medieval era, armies used to starve civilians with long and staring sieges; during the sev- enteenth century, mercenary forces used to undermine the authority of princes by preying on their subjects; during the golden age of “privateering,” roving ships used to threaten the ability of civilians to travel safely and of private corporations to conduct international business securely. Is the US not following a combination of the same policies against Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Cuba, Pakistan, Af- ghanistan and many other nations? Does it not amount to a declaration of total war when a country is asked to sign a cooperation agreement or get ready for war? In ancient times, warfare against civilians stopped being viewed as an unfortunate and dishonourable side effect of conflicts between nations by arrogant leaders. Today US policy makers have consciously expounded the same horrible act of terrorising and starving civilians to death as a useful policy tool. The US government is engaged in many wars against civilian populations in an effort to change the policies of their governments, and yet it complains of inciting and propagating “anti-American feelings” if someone tells A WAR ON ISLAM? 242 the truth and points out US hypocrisy. Iraq has been held hostage since 1991, starved half to death and toyed with like a cat toys with a mouse. How easy it is for the US to criminalise so many innocent civilians. Of all the accusations the American regime has heaped upon Saddam Hussein, be they true or not, they apply more accurately to the US government itself. This regime is a bigger threat to its own citizens, its neighbours, and to world peace than all of the tyrants in the world combined. The recent attacks have given the Americans yet another opportunity to stop and reflect on the true causes of the evident rise in the hatred of America by the world’s oppressed. The possible “terrorist suspects” could be former “freedom fighters,” who fought the former Soviet Union, but now branded as “terrorists” to be hunted down by American and Pakistani agents. It was the US, after all, which helped create the “monster” of present- day Afghanistan. They could be the Kurds of the PKK, for whom the US is the main supporter of their blood enemies in Turkey. They could be the Chechens, to punish the US administration for financing Russia’s destruction of their tiny nation, and slaughter of 100,000 people. They could be the Palestinians who have been forced into subjugation by Israel for the last 34 years. They could be the Egyptians who have been silenced under the heavy boots of Hosnie Mubarak. They could be the Saudis who resist American troops on their soil. They could be anyone out of a long list of nations who directly or indirectly suffer because of unjust US foreign policies. If not today, tomorrow they could be Colombian, Mexican, Bo- livian or Peruvian nationalists, angry over the CIA’s phoney drug war that has cost their nations millions of lives. They could be the Congolese, for revenge against the US orchestrated overthrow of their late leader, President Mobutu. In the future, it could be the act of Angola’s UNITA movement - an old ally ditched and lately besieged by the US, which now backs Angola’s Communist regime for reasons of petro-politics. It is surprising to hear British and other western leaders calling the new war a war for saving democracy. Yet the CIA, FBI and US military intelligence and armed forces are extremely active in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Persian Gulf in protecting the un- CONCLUSION 243 democratic rulers of these nations from being overthrown by their own aggrieved citizens. For some strategic reasons, Washington does not feel any obligation to promote democracy and human rights in these countries. The CIA never considered Afghan Mujahideen tactics against the Soviet Union as illegitimate, but the tactics of Middle Eastern Mujahideen is a “crime” to be dealt with American justice. It has been observed that in many discussions on anti-Ameri- canism, there is almost a ritual of dismissing as irrelevant anything that explains its root causes. The common understanding in the US is that what they should be after is an understanding of anti- Americanism that helps them defeat it, and not an explanation that might make them feel sorry for those who suffered and are still suffering from US terror and injustice, and breed anti-American feelings. Thus anti-Americanism is stripped of any right to be considered as other historical and social phenomena are considered, as something created by the Americans themselves in the hearts of their victims. “Terrorism” is just a violent symptom of expressing these long felt, collective grievances, in the absence of legal and political means to either end US support for ruthless regimes occupying Muslim lands or the dictators suppressing mass sentiments in order to please the US. It is a stage when the people pass from pounding their chests to shooting at what stands in the name of America before them. India, Israel, America and Russia are the countries in the world, who officially oppose “terrorism” but are anxious to shield themselves from arguments about and perceptions of their own barbaric and violent behaviours. The disproportion between their state violence that gives rise to anti-US and anti-Israel feelings, and private violence, has always been vast, but the government-sponsored outpouring against “terrorism” has helped both countries to legitimise their state violence. The pain and suffering of other people is supposed to be nonexistent until it erupts into confrontation with the US and then it is labelled as terrorism. The ultimate choice facing professional media interpreters is to tell the public whether what is happening is good for America or not, and then to recommended a policy for action as potential secretaries of states. A WAR ON ISLAM? 244

One part of US policy is to ignore rationale argument and any voice, which constructively criticised US actions abroad. It makes the Muslims argument futile and they lose any hope for a better future, except if they start practicing Islam the way Bush and Blair interpret it for them. Over the years, numerous individuals and organisations have tried to objectively analyse the causes and ways to ward off terrorism. Irrespective of one is with the US or with “the terrorists”, one has to admit that the use of direct or indirect pressure by the US has forced countless people into believing that expressing their views and grievances is of no use at all. It is right to target terrorism, but it is absolutely wrong to waste all energies into addressing its symptoms alone. For instance, how naïve it is on the part of NATO’s Secretary General, who identified the “root causes of terrorism” as “financial networks of the terrorist groups.”166 Much has been written to rightly describe the attacks as a “repercussion of unjust US policies”; a “consequence of killing thousands of innocent civilians” in Iraq, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc; a “retaliation to state terrorism” and a practical example of what goes around, comes around. However, an effort is made here to explain the consequences of removing rights of men from the rights of states, which is one of the root causes which helped establish organisations like Al-Qaida to make the voiceless heard. The talk of a long-terms war is “a short-sighted approach” to the explosive problems that needs long-term solutions. Washing- ton’s selective approach will not allow it to get even closer to understanding terrorism, let alone eradicating the root causes of a wider phenomenon of anti-Americanism. The world today stands at a critical crossroad. Logically speaking, the forces at the disposal of the US would sooner or later capture or assassinate Osama. How- ever, it will not put an end to the possibility of the impending “clash” and widespread destruction. There is no escape from it by refusing to look into the mirror or assuming that silencing the critics will help solve the problem. What did it mean to be independent and an African, Asian or Arab state? It was not simply the trappings of statehood. The right to raise an army and issue postage stamps was not the real issue. Not even the right to be accepted as an equal at the UN was the CONCLUSION 245 point of the struggle, although that might be part of it. There was more to it than that, and those who had been the outcasts of the world were peculiarly fitted to define what that “more” might be. Unfortunately, almost all of these nations have once more been forced into what they dislike the most: submission. The US tends to assume that it will take up the American way of thinking, abstractly, and set it down, as an exotic plant in any country, where others have their own common law and where literature, customs and traditions are quite different compared to what have nurtured the Americans. They are still under the misconception that supporting a few leaders will help them change the way of thinking and behaviour of whole nations. Such undertakings of sidelining the majority of the people to impose American decisions never took into consideration the fact that it would disrupt the whole system in these societies. In the long run, the traditional morals, habits and establishment of a people, confirmed by their historical experiences and religion, will certainly reassert themselves and the innovations will be undone – through revolutions, or “clash,” or war, or terrorism if their civilisation has to survive at all. Terrorism is not only a consequence of US foreign policies, but also of horrific intellectual thoughts translated into reality that come home to roost. States are, of course, the legitimate national authorities of the world’s various peoples. However, supporting states to use violence for stifling dissent within and without their borders denigrates them to exactly what the states have repeatedly condemned: the illegitimate use of force in the international system. What is remarkable about this endeavour by the states is the acceptance of their own terrorist tendencies and their persistent attempt to devise an ethical code and an international system to legitimise their use of force against perceived opposition. The most extended and elaborate bits of hypocrisy on record are the assumption of complete autonomy and inviolability of pro-American states, like Egypt and upholding the right of intervention in case of countries like Afghanistan. Adding to a general sense of grievance is the fact that any opposition to US-backed regimes is labelled as “terrorism,” whereas there is no effort to workout the moral basis for “friendly” state behav- A WAR ON ISLAM? 246 iour. The way the international system is constituted, it is simply an invitation for the strongest powers to impose their own definitions. Everyone is equally convinced that there has to be standards by which to judge the behaviour of states, and there are some standards, but their selective application makes matters worse. Forcing women to wear burqa in Afghanistan is considered repressive but killing about a dozen Palestinians every day is not something to be seriously considered. Individuals must have rights in Afghanistan, but Egypt and Israel are free to treat their subjects as pawns and ninepins. “Territorial conquest is not a basis for rule” (Francis Vendrell, UN Assistant Secretary General) in Afghanistan. Israel, however, is free to kill and expel the indigneous population and establish its rule in the occupied territories. We deceive ourselves if we set our hopes on states rushing ea- gerly to combat undefined terrorism with a hope to further stifle dissent at home or to label a people’s struggle for self-determination as terrorism. As the evidence on the ground suggests, the US would be very much interested in Muslim countries’ selective crackdown on religious factions under the banner of eradicating “extremism.” Nevertheless, when the positive rules of law in society become inoperative or arbitrary as a result of either a deficiency or an excess of power, people are prompted by their unfailing sense of justice to look higher, to put their hopes in salvation in those superior and permanent precepts that the ancient Greeks called ‘un- written laws’ or in the actions of organisations that the Americans call “illusive.” The rights and duties of states and their people go hand in hand. The liberation movements in Asia, Middle East and Africa were part of a drive by people to take a full, active and independent part in the international system. Once again, there will be rebellion if the blatant double standards of the US and UN makes the masses feel voiceless in the world, as has been the case for the last few generations. They will react violently when they feel they are regarded as worthless and are sidelined. Supporting authoritative regimes and concealing their acts of terror are not an answer to a humiliated people’s rage for whom decisions are made by others whose interests are paramount. CONCLUSION 247

All attempts at establishing remote control colonies will definitely backfire. The speed with which the UN Security Council has approved recent resolutions speaks volumes of its ineffective- ness. Throughout the UN’s effort to create a code of international ethics, the states have paid close attention to self-definition. What, then, of the people on whose behalf the states are presumed to be acting? Here the definitions are as fuzzy or nonexistent as they are about terrorism. In the 1920s and then in late 1940s, while states were engaged in working out new international approaches and habits of cooperation, human beings collectively in relation to these cooperative endeavours were seen as “the public.” Public opinion was to be both the guiding and legitimising force for international action by the states. But what has happened to the much-vaunted public opinion? The relationship between public opinion and state action was one of collective supervision by the public and, when necessary, admonition. It is a thing of the past. In the New World Order, like the deities of old, the public will no more keep a watchful eye, administer reproof if needed, and by approval, give sanction to international proceedings. The Muslims have observed in Pakistan, that the majority have been labelled as the “15 per cent minority.” The government sponsored processions on “Solidarity Day” proved its tall claims of having majority support in Pakistan. The school children brought out on the roads, when interviewed by CNN also expressed their opinion that was totally against government policy. With this goes the much-assured assumption that members of the public will make their views known and bring pressure to bear on the states of which they are a part. Uselessness of opinion and argument comes to fore in situations like these where US might, not the public opinion, dictate our policies.

9.3 The only solution A felicitous conversation between two characters of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” goes like this:

Sir Thomas More: The Law, Roper, the Law, I know what is legal not what is right. And I will stick to what’s legal… A WAR ON ISLAM? 248

William Roper: So now you’ll give the Devil benefit of law! More: Yest. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil? Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that! More: And when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, nor God’s – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? In real life, Thomas More would have been decidedly of the view that there was something called the law of nations, which was prior to and above the laws of England. Since September 11, 2001, no such awareness seeps through the thicket of ignorance in the West. Ever since, the media prosecution has proven Muslims guilty of terrorism and all justifications are being put forward in support of cutting down all international rights, laws and codes of ethics to eliminate “the evil.” A war on every aspect of Islamic civilisation under the banner of “war on terrorism” is considered a panacea to all ills afflicting the United States. But, is it the only solution? The post September 11 experience further forces us to ask: has the US occupation of Afghanistan reduced the chances of any attack on its interests? Would support of dictatorships in the Muslim world eliminate threats to US security? Would the US-backed drive for secularisation substantially reduce anti-Americanism in the Muslim world? The answer to all these questions is an emphatic “NO.” The only solution to eliminating anti-Americanism and the subsequent anti-Westernism and associated violence for the establishment in Washington is to live and let the Muslims live with the same rights to liberty, independence, sovereignty and dignity as it wants to enjoy for itself. This solution can never be materialised as long as the US does not feel concerned about the rights of Pakista- nis, Egyptians, Algerians, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Kashmiris, Chechens, etc., as much as it is concerned about the rights of Mus- lims to throw off burqa, shave off their beards and adopt any of the lifestyles from straight to bi-sexual, homosexual, transsexual and omnisexual. The Muslims’ collective rights as independent nations are as much important as individual human rights of their public. CONCLUSION 249

The implementation of the aforementioned solution depends on overcoming the following basic hurdles of misconception on the part of the US and its Allies. These misconceptions can be discussed, debated and implemented in one go or in phases, but the idea to continue living with them will never help the US achieve the objectives that it expects to achieve through its “war on terrorism.” 1. Global apartheid will survive: The first misconception of the US and its Allies is that Muslim nations will ultimately learn to live with the pervasive inequality, unlimited double standards and domination. Calls from the Muslim world for equal rights, as enjoyed by other “civilised” nations, are labelled as the voices of extremists and terrorists. The American “war,” if it is indeed launched for peace and not domination, can only succeed if it is free of the hypocrisy, cynicism and partisan exploitation that surround it. Lib- erty and independence is as dear to the Palestinians and other Muslims around the world as they are to Americans. If other countries do not have the right to impose or overthrow governments in the US, UK, then neither do they have the right to overthrow populist governments in Muslim countries. Twentieth century colonialism has led to international apartheid. However, quelling Muslims’ resistance to repression and domination is a short-term policy, because regardless of their military, technological and organisational weakness and political instability; Muslim nations will never surrender their rights to live as equal nations in the world. It is a fact of political life and history that terrorism is the weapon that oppressed populations have always employed against those they consider their oppressors, usually because it is the only weapon available to them. As long as the Muslims feel that they are treated as second-class nations without hope or recourse to justice, they will resist domination regardless of who rules them. Ask the Irish what liberated Ireland from England, or the Serbs what liberated Serbia from the Turks in the 19th century, or the Vietnamese what freed them from French colonialism? As for war against civilians, one may ask the Americans in Georgia and Caro- lina about how William Tecumseh Sherman broke the Confederacy. Just as domination and apartheid has become global, so borderless A WAR ON ISLAM? 250 will remain all resistance to it until the managers of apartheid come to their senses. 2. Authoritarianism is bliss: This misconception leads to yet another myth that US interests can be safeguarded forever through imposing, sponsoring and sustaining pro-US authoritarian regimes in Muslim countries and that is a lesser evil. Just a year ago, the US could not do “business as usual” with “dictator” Musharraf, but suddenly all the principles went up in smoke and he is now the most beloved “President” of Pakistan. Considering authoritarian regimes as bastions of US interests is one of the main impediments to the US understanding the suffering of the Muslim masses. The unrepresentative governments like Hosnie Mubarak, Islam Karimov’s and Pervez Musharraf will not remain a blessing for the US for too long. Once they start backfiring, the global apartheid will crumble just like the colonial empires of the 20th century. 3. Secularisation will dilute the Islamic threat: It is an extremely disappointing fact that the US and some opportunistic Muslim leaders have started presenting the establishment of an Islamic government as a threat to civilisation. Global efforts are underway to secularise all Muslim states, keeping Turkey as a role model before them. Such attempts ignore the fact that Islam is not an “ism”; nor any degree of manipulation can make it so. By dislodging the Taliban government in the most illegal and inhuman way, the US is trying to establish that all the propaganda against the Taliban regime was based on facts and that any government established in the name of Islam will be a copy of the Taliban government. To make secularism palatable, the war against the Taliban was underway since long. Long before the final showers of cluster bombs, the US was raining down dollars to buy out Muslim scholars and the close associates of Mullah Omar, for influencing major decisions. All these efforts paved the way for demonising the Taliban as much as possible, and the idea of an Islamic state. The fact, however, remains that the task of diluting Islam in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc., is daunting and its consequences will be far worse than allowing Muslims to form and run governments of their own liking. For this to happen, the US has to get rid of its morbid dread of Islamic states. If allowed to flourish on an equal footing, such governments CONCLUSION 251 would be more sincere and friendly to the US than self-centred despots. 4. The root causes can be ignored: The fourth hurdle to realising the only solution is the wrong assumption that the US will win the “war on terrorism” without specifically addressing its root causes or defining the meaning of terrorism. Taking advantage of the am- biguity, politicians and governments worldwide have expanded the war against terrorism by re-designating their own enemies as terrorists and extremists. This has been easy because Washington’s definition is elastic and arbitrary, and it has cut down many laws that could hinder the smooth implementation of occupation and repression of Muslim states. Indian exploitation of the politico-religious conflict, Russian reinterpretation of its war on the Chechens, and Israeli attempts to consummate its occupation are but the initial pinpricks compared to the impending horrible consequences of the US’s ambiguous war on terrorism. The US needs to stop its disregard of the plight of the oppressed by labelling it as propaganda of the terrorists. Life is not so different under the direct occupation of Israel in Palestine and indirect US domination in Egypt or Pakistan. The marginalized masses are growing entirely insensitive to violence and the value of life. There must be some reason that they not only dance at the death of Americans but also when their own brothers and sons blow themselves up. 5. Propaganda and lies will endure: The recent success of West- ern news channels to lie about almost every aspect of the Muslim world has embolden American policy makers that they will forever maintain their supremacy by concealing the facts from their public and make them love and hate personalities, nations and different issues according to the strategic priorities of Western capitals. They ignore the fact that people on both sides of the artificial divide are seriously looking for change. Vietnam veterans, for instance, are disgusted that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a lie and a fabrication that resulted in so many good people on both sides being killed because of a big lie and lying politicians. The US came close to a revolution at that time, and many Americans regret that they did not have one because that would have brought about some of A WAR ON ISLAM? 252 the necessary changes when the time was right. Muslim states are no Soviet Unions. And the time has changed. Trying to fool too many for too long will be so disastrous than the US administration can ever imagine. Even in the US, many people know that Muslim countries have been treated unfairly and would like to see this changed to promote peace. They know that “puppet” regimes have been installed to benefit oil and other strategic interests. 6. The UN can be exploited indefinitely: For maintaining the status quo in the international apartheid, the US believes that it can enjoy forever the unchallenged, one-against-all position with its veto power; that it will continue to use the UN as an oppression-legitimising agency; and that its managers of genocide will indefinitely bow down to US pressure. Keeping the growing resentment against US policies in mind, one can safely predict that an upheaval in the Muslim world could soon trigger a rejection of the unjust and undemocratic UN mechanism. For peace, the US has to make a war on injustices. Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa has been a proponent of what is probably the best way to fully reconcile differences and expose injustices. In this age of global apartheid, we now need his “truth and reconciliation commissions” on an international level for exposing and acknowledging all the bad, dishonest and evil things, done by all sides, with the hope of getting justice, making restitu- tion, and trying to prevent them from ever happening again. This is consistent with the statement, “the truth will set you free” and this is one of the ways towards the only solution. The proposed international “truth and reconciliation” commissions need to be independent and without any power, with anyone, to veto the truth. There are too many good Muslims and good Americans, that would hate to see an escalation of war between people who should be best partners in peace, except for the acts of a few terrorists, dishonest leaders and broken promises on all sides. Unfortunately, any future acts of terrorism against the people of the United States or the continued unequal treatment, occupation, repression and killing of Muslims around the world will not lead to greater understanding of the problem or justice for people who do have genuine grievances. The US cannot make the world a better place by cutting down all the laws while crusading against the devil in others. All of us need to honestly face the mirror, no matter how hard it may be and how long it may take. CONCLUSION 253

Post-word by Dr. Israr Ahmad. Amir Tanzeem-i-Islami Pakistan.

Irrespective of the hard evidence presented from the public record in the preceding pages, recent developments have made it crystal clear that the US-led coalitions’ “war on terrorism” is nothing but a concerted Judaeo-Christian effort at the very top levels of the administration in Washington and other western capitals to wage a war against Islam. It is important to emphasise, early on, that casting the whole blame on the conspirators in the West for the wretched condition of our Ummah would be quite misdirected. Individually we, undoubtedly, are Muslims but collectively we have become worse than non-Muslims. We have none to blame but ourselves. That being said, we must know our enemies. Along with the war of guns on all fronts in the Muslim lands, the war of words is at its peak and collaborators in the Muslims world are enthusiastically supporting the enemy camp in this war on Islam. Much of the modernist attack against Islam centres around the theory that “Qur’an breeds violence” and “tales of the ancients” argument, in which the doctrines and laws of Islam are regarded as history. In other words saying that certain Islamic practices or customs no longer apply to our society or in our age. “And when Our verses are recited to them, they say, “We have heard this (the Qur’an); If we wish we can say the like of this. This is nothing but the tales of the ancients.” Holy Qur’an 8:31. No matter how bleak the situation may look like for Muslims today, in the post-September 11 world, these seeming “tales of the ancient” are fast turning into reality before our eyes. Let us see how. The world has turned into a global village. Countries have shrunk to the status of provinces of a state. Efforts are underway to govern the whole world under one system, under one authority, under one set of moral, ethical and political standard and norm. The US quest to dominate and dictate to the world in every sphere of life has put A WAR ON ISLAM? 254 it on a collision course with the rest – particularly the Muslim world, simply because Islam is a complete code of life, which needs no human rights, women rights or animal rights declarations, nor does it need any borrowed political or economic system to govern Muslim societies. The war is only aimed at removing Islamic resistance to complete global dominance. A global system has become sine qua nun for the present day world to function properly and either of the systems, Islamic or the rest, has to prevail to govern the world. The Holy Qur’an referred to this need and inevitability of total global rule fourteen hundred years ago. Both the Qur’an and Prophet Mohammad, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, unam- biguously predicted that the anti-Islam conspiracies of the Jews and their supporters would ultimately fail and Khilafat ala Minhaj- un-Nabuwat (Khilafa on the pattern of Prophethood) would be established all over the world. “They intend to put the light of Allah [i.e., the religion of Is- lam, this Qu’ran and Prophet Mohammad] with their mouths. But Allah will complete His Light even though the disbelievers hate [it]. He it is Who has sent His messenger [Mohammad] with guidance and the religion of truth [Islamic Monotheism] to make it victorious over all [other] religions even though the Mushrikeen [polytheist, pagans, idolaters, and disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah and His Prophet Mohammad] hate [it].” Qur’an- 61:8,9. And Allah (Glorified is He the Highest) repeats the same words with slight variation in Chapter Nine, verses 32 - 33 of the Holy Qur’an after the issue of Judaeo-Christian doubts regarding the Oneness of Allah (Glorified is He the Highest). Allah (Glorified is He the Highest) repeats His promise again in Sura-An-Noor: “Allah has promised those among you who believe and do righteous good deeds that He will most certainly make them rulers in the land as He made rulers those before them, and that He will most certainly establish for them their religion which He has chosen for them, and that He will most certainly, after their fear, give them security in exchange; they shall serve Me, not associating aught with Me; and whoever is ungrateful after this, these it is who are the transgressors.” (Qur’an 45:55) CONCLUSION 255

So, there must not be any doubt left that the present circumstances are leading to the rise of Islam despite the intense efforts to repress its followers. This war on Islam was predestined. The more the administration in Washington and the Crusader-Zionist organisations tighten the noose around the neck of the Muslims, the more they wake up to the reality of things and the more the resistance grows. The great misconception of all empires has been that they can exterminate those who oppose their unjust rule. The US and its supporters in their war on Islam are suffering from the same delusions. The same will lead them into taking unprecedented steps in human history, which will crumble their power right before our eyes. The great predictions in the words of Prophet Mohammed, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, in this regard go like this: “Undoubtedly, Allah has rolled back the earth for me. Thus I saw all its Easts and Wests. And the rule of my followers would reach as far as the world has been rolled for me.” (Reported by Hazrat Soban and mentioned in Muslim, Tarmazi, Abu Daud and Ibn-Maja.) On another occasion Prophet Mohammed, May Allah bless Him and grant Him peace, is reported to have said to his companions: “The period of Prophethood will remain among you as long as Al- lah wills, then He shall cause it to end. After that, there will be Khilafah among you on the pattern of Prophethood, and this will last as long as Allah wills, and then He shall cause it to end. After that, there will be a reign of oppressive monarchy, and this will also last as long as Allah wills, and then He shall cause it to end. After that there will be a period of enslavement, and this will last as long as Allah wills, then He shall cause it to end. Finally there will again be Khilafah on the pattern of Prophethood. And then he (Prophet Mohammad, May Allah bless Him and grant Him peace, kept silent,” (reported in Ahmad by Nauman bin Bashir). Imam Ahmad has narrated, on the authority of Miqdad Ibn Aswad, that the Prophet of Allah is reported to have said: “There shall be no house left on the entire earth – neither of bricks nor one made of camel’s skin – but Allah will cause the word of Islam to enter it, either with the honour of the one who deserves honour, or with the subjugation of the one who is defeated.” In the light of these predictions, the readers of this book, whether A WAR ON ISLAM? 256

Muslims or non-Muslims, must understand that irrespective of the unprecedented allocations to defence spending and sponsorship of repressive regimes in Muslim countries by the US government, the awakening of the Muslim Ummah is certain. That awakening of the Muslims will follow in time, no unprejudiced student of history can doubt it. The question now is: Shall the awakening of these sleepy 1.5 billion be in accordance with, and aided by, the “great ideals” of the “civilised world,” or in spite of them and against them? Force and Fear have until this time marked the American and its Allies’ attitude toward Muslim nations; shall this continue or be replaced by understanding and peace? The wise course for Muslims would be to truly abide by Islam and for non-Muslims to leave the Muslims to rule themselves according to their book, the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah of their Prophet, May Allah bless him and grant him peace, without any undue interference. The idea of cov- ertly waging a war on Islam and an overtly promoting a “war within Islam” will simply hasten the worldwide rule of Islam as prescribed by the Holy Qur’an and Prophet Mohammad, May Allah bless Him and grant Him peace. REFERENCES 257

References

Preface 1 Gallup poll, USA Today, February 27, 2002, reported by BBC Feb 27, 13:16 GMT 2 Ibid, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/default.stm 3 CNN, December 18, 2001, 07:00 am GMT 4 Jerusalem Post, September 26, 2001 5 Daniel Pipes, Jerusalem Post, September 26, 2001 6 New York Times, Headline news, Iraq Threatens Retaliation for Western Attacks, Reuters, February 17, 2001. 7 The New York Times, December 13, 2001

Setting the Context 8 Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, Tuesday December 11, 2001.

First Problem: Vagueness. 9 Armando Salvatore, Islam and the Political Discourse of Modernity, International Politics of the Middle East series, Ithaca Press London, 1997 10 Programmes like the one aired by Stephen Scott (BBC World Service) on October 10, 2001 and Roger Hardy: Islam: Faith and Power, Radio BBC series 1996 show how the western thought is manipulated with the out of context statements and events regarding Islam. 11 “Prejudices against Muslims – and the spread of ludicrously inaccurate stereotypes of Muslim behaviour and beliefs – have been developing at a frightening rate during the past decade. Indeed anti-Muslim racism seems in many ways to be replacing anti-Semitism as the principal Western expression of bigotry against ‘the other’.” William Dalrymple, The Observer, April 21, 1996. 12 The Economist, March 13, 1993 issue. 13 National Review, May 11, 1992. 14 Washington Post, January 1, 1993. 15 The New York Times, January 21st, 1996 16 The Wall Street Journal, editorial August 2, 1996 17 Atlantic, September 99. 18 Insight in the News, February 15, 1993 19 Washington Post, October 2, 2001 20 The Guardian, September 22, 2001 21 See “Afghanistan Under the Red Flag” by Robert Neumann, American Foreign Policy Institute, 1979. 22 By Thomas L. Friedman, “The Real War,” the New York Times, November 27, 2001. 23 Newsweek, March 4, 2001. 24 The News, Pakistan, November 28, 2001. 25 The Economist, Page 12, 18th May 1996 – Cambodia Bloody Reckoning – a review of ‘Pol Pot Regime’ by Ben Kiernan, Yale University. 26 The New York Times, November 13, 2001. 27 Wall Street Journal (Feb. 25) 28 Thomas L. Friedman, the New York Times, Nov. 13, 2001 29 National Review Nov. 19, 1990. 30 Financial Times, April 26, 2002 – http://globalarchieves.ft.com/globalarchive/ article.html?id=020426001454&query=1e+pen A WAR ON ISLAM? 258

31 City Journal, Nov. 2001. 32 The Daily Telegraph London, Sept. 14, 2001. 33 Daniel Pipes, National Interest, Spring 2000. 34 Daniel Pipes, National Interest, Fall 1995. 35 Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1999.

Second Problem: Targeting Islam 36 New York Times, December 12, 2001 37 Thomas L. Friedman, “Dear Saudi Arabia,” The New York Times, November 12, 2001. 38 Simon Hollington writes in a piece on his visit to Egypt (Observer’s Weekend magazine, March 16, 1996. 39 Paul Merritt Bassett, Grolier’s Academic American Encyclopaedia 40 H.R.H. The Prince of Wales, Islam and the West: a lecture given in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 27 October 1993 (Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, 1993), p. 16. 41 For the two most comprehensive explorations of fundamentalist ideology, see Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theory and Modern Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985); and Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991). 42 Martin Kramer, “Fundamentalist Islam at Large,” Middle East Quarterly, June 1996 43 John L. Esposito, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? (NY: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992. 44 New York Times, January 21, 1996, Section 4, page E-1. 45 Roger Hardy, Islam: Faith and Power, BBC series, transcripts, 1996 46 The New York Times, Editorial, January 27, 1995. 47 The Wall Street Journal, December 27, 1995, editorial. 48 Roger Hardy, Islam: Faith and Power, BBC series, transcripts 49 Roger Hardy, Islam: Faith and Power, BBC series, transcripts, part-I, page 4. 50 Esposito, L. John, The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality, OUP, 1992, Oxford, p. 324. 51 Spencer, Claire, ‘Europe and Political Islam: Defining Threats and Evolving Policies’, in Kramer, Martin, (ed.), The Islamism Debate, Tel Aviv University, 1997, Tel Aviv, p. 93. 52 Ahmed bin Ali, The Arab Reaction to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in Al- Wast. Vol.21, No.3 (Summer). 53 Ba-Yunus, Ilyas and Moin Siddiqui “Muslims in North America: A Demographic Report”, East West Review. Vol.1, No.1 (58-70). Cole, Stewart G. 54 The Dawn, Sept 8, 2001, Tariq Rehman.

Third Problem: Media’s irresponsibility. 55 JAMA, Vol. 276 (5), August 7, 1996. 56 CNN, Larry King Live, February 15, 2002. 57 Daniel Pipes, The New York Post, January 21, 2002. 58 Ward Churchill, Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians, Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1992, 245. 59 “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 1999, p. 43. 60 “Air strikes Aren’t the Endgame,” Los Angeles Times, August 24, 1998. 61 Edmund Ghareeb, ed. Split Vision: The Portrayal of Arabs in the American Media, Washington, DC: 1983; Jack Shaheen, The TV Arab, Ohio, 1984. REFERENCES 259

62 The Observer, April 21, 1996 63 Samuel P. Huntington, Newsweek, January, 2002. 64 Letter From America, the Washington Post, Feb. 12, 2002.

Fourth Problem:Fear 65 Robin Wright, “The Chilling Goal of Islam’s New Warriors,” LA Times, Dec. 28, 2000. 66 Tishrin, Syria, November 17, 1986. 67 Haaretz, April 21, 1998. 68 Terrorism: How the West Can Win, p-18. 69 Benyamin Netanyahu’s, Fighting Terrorism, NY: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995, p. 8. 70 Washington Post, “Islam’s death wish,” Editorial, April 05, 2002. 71 The New York Times, “The cancer of suicide bombing.” Editorial, April 03, 2002. 72 Shibley Telhami, “Why Suicide bombing takes root,” The New York Times, April 04, 2002. 73 Thomas L. Friedman, “Suicidal Lies,” The New York Times, March 31, 2002.

Fifth Problem: Culture of Violence. 74 For a Secure Afghanistan, Editorial, The New York Times, February 27, 2002 75 ibid. 76 Hippler, J. and Lueg, A. (eds.), The Next Threat (translated by Friese, L.), Pluto Press, 1995, London, p. 4. 77 Emad El Din Shahid, “The Limits of Democracy,” Middle East Insight, vol. 8, no. 6 (1992), p. 12. 78 Charles Krauthammer, “The New Crescent of Crisis: Global Intifada,” Washington Post, January 1, 1993. 79 The New York Times, January 21st, 1996 edition, section 4. 80 The News, Pakistan, April 30, 1995.

Sixth Problem: Authoritarianism 81 Tony Snow, The Washington Times, July 21, 1995 82 Ibid 83 Tom Delay, It’s Our Money, The Washington Times, July 10, 1995 84 Walter Williams, The Most Menacing Institution of Man, The Washington Times, August 18, 1995 85 Walter Williams, Grapes of wrath for the government, The Washington Times, December 08, 1995. 86 VOA on Friday, September 1, 2000 87 Fouad Ajami, The New York Times, November 17, 2001 88 Lebor, Adam. (1997). A Heart Turned East - Among the Muslims of Europe and America. London : Little, Brown and Company. ISBN : 0 7515 2291 0. Brettenham House, Lancaster Place, WC2E 7EN. 89 George Kennan, Policy Planning Study 23 (From a Top Secret study for the US Dept. of State. Mr. Kennan was awarded The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.) 90 Hunter, T. Shireen, ‘L’ascesa dei Movimenti Islamisti e La Risposta Occidentale: Scontro di Civiltà o Scontro D’interessi?’, in Guazzone, Laura (ed.), IlDilemma Dell’Islam, Franco Angeli, 1995, Milano, pp. 246 91 Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform? Edited by John L. Esposito. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997. page-19 A WAR ON ISLAM? 260

92 ibid page 28 93 ibid page 33 94 ibid page 49 95 ibid page 72 96 ibid pager 128-129 97 John Casey, The Spectator, London, March 28, 1998, ISSN 00386952, page 17. 98 ibid, page 18 99 Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism, or Reform? Edited by John L. Esposito. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1997. page 154 100 John L. Esposito and John Voll, Islam and Democracy, Oxford University Press. P-232 101 The Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1996, page A 19 102 Mike Allen and Philip P. Pan, The Washington Post, February 23, 2002. 103 Published in the November 1996 issue of First Things. 104 Kandeel, Amany. The Process of Democratic Transition in Egypt 1981-1993. Cairo: Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Development Studies, 1995, p-62. 105 El-Mikawy, Noha. “The Egyptian Parliament and Transition to Liberal Democracy”, Arab-American Affairs, no. 36, spring 1991, pp. 18-21. 106 Zaki, Moheb. Civil Society and democratisation in Egypt, 1981-1994, Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Centre, 1995, pp-92 107 Al-Ahram, 1996, 385 108 US State Department, 1996. 109 US State Department, 1996 110 Al-Ahram Weekly, Nov. and Dec. 1995.

Seventh Problem: Realpolitik 111 Ignacio Ramonet, New World Order, Le Monde diplomatique, June 1999. 112 Le Monde, 22 May 1999. 113 The News, Friday, December 21, 2001, Page 10. 114 Guardian Weekly, 30 May 1999, for the translation of Régis Debray’s article in Le Monde, 13 May 1999. His full response to the storm of protest evoked by the article is published in the French edition of Le Monde diplomatique , June 1999, also available on the paper’s website: http://www.monde-diplomatique. 115 Roger Cohen, “NATO Shatters Old Limits in the Name of Preventing Evil,” New York Times, Oct. 18, 1998, Sec. 4, p. 3. 116 William Pfaff, “Washington’s New Vision for NATO Could Be Divisive,” Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5, 1998. 117 “New Visions for NATO,” New York Times, Dec. 7, 1998, p. A24. Alexander Vershbow, the US representative to NATO, immediately responded, in a letter to the editor, that there are “no such proposals.” The new strategy, he said, “will not turn the alliance into a global police force, but will affirm NATO’s adaptability in tackling new risks, like regional instability, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism.” 118 Steven Erlanger, “US to Propose NATO Take On Increased Roles,” New York Times, Dec. 7, 1998, p. A12. 119 “The Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement on Kosova in October was accurately described by Richard Holbrooke as an unprecedented event. NATO had intervened in an internal conflict inside a sovereign non-NATO state, not to defend its own members but to force that other state to halt repression of a rebellious ethnic minority.” Op. cit., n. 14. 120 Robert M. Gates, “What War Looks Like Now,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 1998, p. 15. 121 New York Times, Aug. 23, 1998, p. 21. REFERENCES 261

122 “The Pentagon After the Cold War,” Aerospace America, Nov. 1998, p. 42. 123 The New York Times, Jan. 21, 1999, p. A7. 124 The New York Times, Steven Erlanger, “US to Propose NATO Take On Increased Roles Dec. 7, 1998, p. A1. 125 The New York Times, August 21, 1998. 126 The New York Times, February 12, 1999.

Eighth problem: Separating Muslims from Islam 127 Thomas L. Friedman The New York Times, November 27, 2001. 128 Are No Moderates: Dealing with Fundamentalist Islam, National Interest, Fall 1995 129 “Islam and Islamism - Faith and Ideology,” The National Interest, Spring 2000. 130 ibid 131 Burgat and Dowell, Islamic Movement, p. 21. 132 Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 7 June 1995. 133 Usama al-Baz, The Washington Times National Weekly Edition, 24-30 April 1995. 134 Roy, Islam and Resistance, p. 80. 135 Daniel Pipes, “An Islamic Internationale?” Forward, July 22, 1994 136 Protecting Muslims while Rooting out Islamists, The Daily Telegraph (London), September 14, 2001. 137 ibid 138 Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias, City Journal, November 2001 139 Daniel Pipes, Fighting Militant Islam, Without Bias, City Journal, November 2001 140 Washington Times June 29, 1997 141 1996 estimates. 142 US News and World Report, Dec. 17, 1997 143 The Complete Jefferson, Saul K. Padover, ed., New York: Duell, Sloan & Pierce, 1943, p.958. 144 Washington Times, June 02, 1998. 145 Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785) by James Madison. 146 US News and World Report, Feb.26, 1996. 147 The Newsweek April 28, 1997, p-48. 148 The Wall Street Journal, Editorial, Dec. 27, 97. 149 The Newsweek, April 97. 150 The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 1996.

Conclusion 151 The Statesman, Peshawar, October 28, 2001 152 The New Yorker Magazine, November 5, 2001 153The Telegraph, October 29, 2001 154 William Dalrymple, The Guardian, October 23, 2001 155 The Statesman, Peshawar, Pakistan, June 30, 2002. 156 Baluchistan Post, Quetta Pakistan, June 29, 2002. 157 See, The Chamberlain-Hitler Deal by Clement Leibovitz, Les Editions Duval, Alberta, Canada, page 283, 496. 158 Sept. 13, 1938, in a letter to King George VI. 159 Kurt M. Campbell and Michèle A. Flournoy, “To Prevail,” 2001, page-319 160 Ibid, page-320 A WAR ON ISLAM? 262

161 David Gardner, Financial Times, “Indian parliament in disarray over Hindu nationalists.” 25th February 2000, page 11. 162 Ronald Steele, the New York Times, September 14, 2001. 163 Robert MacFarlance, Washington Post on September 13, 2001. 164 Robert Edvin, International Herald Tribune, September 14, 2001. 165 Economist, Sept. 13, 2001 edition. 164 BBC World Service, September 26, 2001. 263 A WAR ON ISLAM? 264