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BOOK REVIEW
Anatomy of
Islamism
By Sreeram Chaulia
A Review of
"Political
Islam in the Indian Subcontinent" by Frederic
Grare.
Al-Islam hua Al-Hal (Islam is the solution to everything)
- Motto of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan
In merely
134 pages, international affairs scholar and the director of the Center
de Science Humaines (cultural wing of the French embassy in India),
Frederic Grare, has attempted to dissect the ideology and operations of
the principal Islamic fundamentalist organization of South Asia, the
Jamaat-i-Islami.
Grare's aim of situating his study in the larger context of the "green
peril", which many believe is steadily endangering our world, is not
feasible and over ambitious due to the shortness of the tract and the
lack of adequate background research. Nonetheless, the topic is of great
germaneness to world politics and should prompt someone else to a more
thorough investigation of the Jamaat and its kindred.
Grare rightly asserts that social science researchers of the West have
taken little interest in the Islamism of the Indian subcontinent and
confined themselves to the Arabic and Persian versions. Like Samuel
Huntington's strange omission of South America from his civilizational
fight club line-up, Grare oddly does not once mention Islamism in
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand or the Philippines and remains assured
that South Asia is the third (and last?) cultural center of radical
Islam.
Had he read V S Naipaul's Beyond Belief or reports about militant
Islamic secessionist movements in Mindanao, Kelantan, southern Thailand
or Maluku, he could have started with a different hypothesis. Proper
knowledge of the geopolitical epicenters of Islamism is important before
venturing on a publication purporting to assess whether the phenomenon
is a "peril" or, to use Daniel Pipes' characterization, "fascism".
Grare's definition of Islamism is that it is not simply mad religious
fervor, extreme moral rigor or recourse to violence, but essentially
Islam's "relationship to politics and hence the state", through which it
tries to realize a "truly Muslim society". (p.10) Jamaat-i-Islami is
most powerful in Pakistan and it is mainly in that country that its
actions are deeply interwoven into political structures. Abul Ala
Maududi (1903-1979), the Jamaat's founder, was the single most important
personage who ensured that Islam remained in the foreground of
Pakistan's politics and foreign policy since 1947.
Ironically, Maududi was opposed to Pakistan founding father Ali Jinnah's
"Muslim nationalism" before partition in 1947, although he shared the
Muslim League's views about religion constituting the basis of
nationality. What was wrong with Muslim nationalism of the Jinnah ilk
was acceptance of the principle of rule of the majority, which Maududi
considered "Western" and against the "call of Islam". The main
difference between Nizam-i-Mustafa (the system of the Prophet) and
Western democracy was that sovereignty belongs to Allah alone in the
former, and not the people.
"There is only one single law, the sharia, imposed from above by God who
is the only lawmaker and the only sovereign." (p.20) In practical terms,
Maududi's contempt for the Pakistan movement lay in the fact that "it
was clear to him that Jinnah had no intention of making Pakistan an
Islamic state". (p.28) The idea of a secular democratic Pakistan
obstructed the "religious notion of law" and was thus too feeble to
realize "required uprightness" and totality of Islam in society.
The other reason that Maududi warned his followers against Muslim
nationalism was that it promoted "sectarian interests", which destroyed
the "unity of the Muslim world", ie the ummah. Quick to concoct
conspiracies, Maududi alleged that nationalism was "a Western concept
which divided the Muslim world and thus prolonged the supremacy of
Western imperialist powers". (p.23) Islamism's obsession with the
millat, the worldwide brotherhood of believers, would later
translate into externalities such as Osama bin Laden's International
Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, an umbrella transnational
entity that knows no national, linguistic or cultural boundaries.
Once Pakistan was formed, though, Jamaat made a tactical adjustment and
started talking about "Islamic nationalism" (not "Muslim nationalism")
as the first step in the establishment of a universal Islamist
revolution. Maududi launched a determined campaign from December 1947
for the progressive Islamization of the Pakistani state and
incorporation of the world "Islamic" into the new constitution. When
India and Pakistan agreed to a ceasefire over Kashmir in April 1948,
Maududi curiously asserted that "carrying out further covert operations
constituted a violation of the sharia and attested to the non-Islamic
nature of Pakistan". (p.29) What Islam dictated was not stealthy
infiltration into Kashmir but "officially denouncing the ceasefire
agreement and resuming hostilities openly"!
Maududi did not mean to dissuade holy warriors from entering Kashmir,
for he decreed that "volunteers could fight on the basis of an
individual commitment for jihad", while the Pakistani government held
true to the ceasefire. This "individual commitment" semantic would later
come in handy for the Pakistani state, which utilized Jamaat as a cover
for its foreign policy in South and Central Asia.
Maududi was imprisoned until the end of 1949 for refusing to sign the
oath of allegiance to the state and affirming that "it was to God alone
that a Muslim owed allegiance". He won an initial victory in March 1949
when the constituent assembly recognized the principle of "divine
sovereignty" from which the state of Pakistan derived its delegated
sovereignty. Jamaat's star shone after Liaqat Ali Khan's death (1951),
as its agitations and publicity drives forced the ratified constitution
to usher in the "Islamic Republic of Pakistan", with clause 205 reading,
"No law contrary to the teachings of the Koran and the Hadith could be
adopted by parliament."
The army's takeover and Ayub Khan's emphasis on socioeconomic
development rather than religion led the Jamaat to cry hoarse that the
1958 coup was a ploy to "eliminate any possibility of electoral victory
by Islamic parties". Ayub's modernizing attitude was interpreted as a
pro-Western secular trap to sap the bases of Pakistan's "Islamic mode of
life".
Revealing an already established opportunist streak, once Yahya Khan
succeeded Ayub, the Jamaat stopped pretending as a defender of democracy
and collaborated with the military regime. Its student branch, Islami
Jamiat-i-Tulaba, turned into an armed militant body and violently
suppressed leftist movements on university campuses. Instead of halting
the arm of state brutality in East Pakistan, the Jamaat advised Yahya
that the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 was the result of "failure to apply
Islamic principles in governance". (p.36)
Confident of state support, the Jamaat contested the 1970 elections,
only to suffer big reversals. The assumption that, given a free choice,
the overwhelming majority of Pakistanis would "vote for Islam" was
shattered. Despite Maududi's animus for Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's
"socialism", he initiated massive rallies and momentum to force the
latter to rename Pakistan as an "Islamic Republic" and stipulate that
both the prime minister and president had to be Muslims (ie not impious
Muslims like Ayub). In 1973, Maududi championed the notarization and
violent suppression of Ahmadias/Qadianis as heretics and succeeded in
getting a constitutional amendment declaring them non-Muslims.
By 1976, Jamaat's street power multiplied by 150,000 new entrants when
it swore to organize marches to Islamabad for implementing sharia. In
1977, Maududi cobbled together a grand alliance of rightist religious
parties and launched a "civil disobedience campaign", leading to his
arrest. So powerful had Jamaat become in Islamist ranks by then that the
Sunni Wahhabi government of Saudi Arabia personally intervened to secure
Maududi's release by dangling the specter of "revolution" in Pakistan.
Zia ul-Haq's time was understandably the golden era for Jamaat, when
"reciprocal attempts at using each other as instruments" flourished
between state and Islam-pasand parties. Mian Tufail, Maududi's successor
as Amir, concluded a deal with Zia to be given high profile ministries
in the puppet central government. Collaboration of the Jamaat, Pakistani
intelligence and the army prevented Tufail from openly opposing Zia for
what the dissatisfied rank-and-file Jamaatis considered "tardiness in
the process of Islamization"' (p.40) By the late 1980s, Zia's relations
with the Jamaatis soured due to the excessive radicalizing tendencies of
Qazi Hussain Amhad, the new Amir. The military ruler started playing off
the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) against the Jamaat in its stronghold
province, Sindh.
During the democratic interlude of 1988-99, the Jamaat continued to act
as an "eternal opponent" of un-Islamic rulers, while grabbing
power-sharing chances, especially under Nawaz Sharif. General Pervez
Musharraf's coup in 1999 was welcomed by Qazi Hussain, but once the
former began brandishing "Kemalism" as his model of governance, Jamaat
once again donned the role of vigilante and warned that "Pakistan's
destiny lay in the Islamic revolution" and that party workers "were
ready to sacrifice their lives for the cause of Almighty Allah and His
Prophet". (p.47)
In Grare's estimate, neither the "Islamic theodemocracy" nor the
"Islamic economy" of the Jamaat have been attained, and though Qazi
Hussain rhetorically claims that "Allah will rule in Islamabad in five
years", his organization still remains on the fringes within Pakistan.
Failures on the domestic front are matched by great successes in foreign
propaganda and military actions of the Jamaat, and it is here that its
real potential for destabilization lies. Grare says that the innate
faith in jihad and terror which Jamaatis have is provided a safe outlet
by the Pakistani state in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Tajikistan and
elsewhere. Jamaat's "Islamic theory of international relations" where
the struggle between Islam and non-Islam replaces the struggle between
classes as the central force of historical progression, matches with the
so-called "Muslim school"of Pakistani foreign policy, which plans to
establish a strategic consensus among Muslim states to counterbalance
American imperialism and the "Judeo-Christian peril". Al the major
foreign engagements of the Pakistani state, presence of Muslim majority
populations or alleged atrocities against Muslims became raison d'etres
for armed intervention. Jamaat became the modus operandi.
Jamaat has had links with the Afghan Hizb-i-Islami of Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar from 1965, contacts exploited by Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistan army once the anti-Soviet jihad
started in the 1980s. Pakistan turned into a hub of the "Islamist orbit"
as Maududi's followers brought their Wahhabi allies from Saudi Arabia
and their fabulous riches for conducting jihad, and "a division of tasks
took place between the Jamaat and the Pakistan army". (p.66) Jamaat's
profession of imparting "Muslims the religious instruction that they
lack" has acted as a decoy for training and indoctrination of thousands
of mujahideen to fight not only in Afghanistan but also as far as
Chechnya, Bosnia, Sinkiang, Nagorno-Karabagh and Southeast Asia. One of
the more fascinating strategies of the ISI-Jamaat nexus in Central Asia
is to "disintegrate the Russian Federation itself and the recomposition
of a new structure dominated by conservative Islamist regimes". (p.68).
The capture of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 was a setback for the Jamaat,
especially when Qazi Hussain negotiated a deal between Hekmatyar and
Ahmad Shah Masoud factions of the Northern Alliance. Within a few days,
Jamaat lost its utility for the ISI, dramatically affecting its capacity
to influence Pakistan's foreign policy. But as there is now confirmed
information that a "strategic triangle" of Hizb-i-Islami, al-Qaeda and
the Taliban is in place to dethrone the Hamad Karzai government in Kabul
through a new jihad, the long shadow of the Jamaat will once again form
over Afghanistan.
In Kashmir, the leading terrorist group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, is the
armed wing of the Jamaat, whose Kashmir branch swears by "an Iranian
type Islamic revolution in order to achieve independence from India".
Jamaat is invaluable to the Pakistani state here because it is the only
separatist outfit in Kashmir that demands unification of the valley with
Pakistan. Jamaat's main tactic is to increase unrest in Indian Kashmir
and then convince international public opinion through its offshoots in
Europe and North America that Delhi is engaged in violation of human
rights. Jamaat camps in Pakistani Kashmir have trained not just
Pakistanis and indigenous Kashmiris but also Sudanese, Afghans,
Egyptians, Palestinians and Arabs from the Gulf. Jamaat is also the main
vector of the Islamization of those opposed to the Indian presence in
Kashmir, especially youngsters who are systematically indoctrinated
across the border. What all this amounts to in terms of state-Islamist
relations is that Jamaat allows the government of Pakistan "to keep
alive a low intensity conflict on the boil without Islamabad ever
appearing officially as the instigator of the unrest". (p.83)
Outside Pakistan, Jamaat works in non-Muslim majority countries by being
only slightly "susceptible to modernity" and open to the culture of the
predominant religion. Grare fails to explain how Jamaat-i-Islami Hind (JIH)
is at once opposed to nationalism and the modern secular state and yet
"promotes national unity in a multiracial, multi-linguistic and
multi-cultural Indian society". (p.100) JIH is suspected in Indian
circles for precisely this contradiction and its controversial links
with madrassas all over the country. In Britain, too, affiliates
of the Jamaat are blamed for fomenting separate schooling for Muslim
children and race riots, the most recent of which were in the Jamaat
stronghold, Bradford (the city from which Jamaat launched the "world
protest" for burning copies of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses).
Grare duly notes that Jamaat policy in Western countries is to "defend
the separate Muslim identity in children exposed to permissive Western
society", but ignores the wider fallouts that segregated schooling
procreates. He mentions wings of the Jamaat like the Islamic Foundation
of Leicester, which has resolved "to spread the message of Islam among
non-believers" and become notorious as major centers for the spread of
Sunni Islamist thought, and yet fails to conclude that the modernization
project is being hindered through Islamist insularity in the West.
In conclusion, Grare thinks that Jamaat cannot be a major threat to
international security due to its limited successes in taking power
inside Pakistan and its dependence on Western-style democracy and human
rights terminology to be heard by wider audiences. What Grare omits is
any reference to Jamaat's frontline participation in the "Islamist
Internationale" set up by Hassan-al-Turabi in Sudan with the blessings
of Osama bin Laden. Further, he has not explored the relationship
between Jamaat and Fazlur Rehman's Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, the mentor
of dreaded terror outfits, Harkat-ul-Ansar and Jaish-i-Muhammad. Most
puzzling, Grare does not read that Musharraf's "Kemalism" has limits
mainly because, as the author himself writes, "the destabilizing
potential of Islamism is much less powerful when it is better integrated
into a regime". (p.125)
Political Islam in the Indian Subcontinent is a theoretically
sound book with the excellent idea of researching how non-state actors
in global terrorism are often fronts for states to pursue strategic
objectives. But the thesis is not stated as such and too much weight is
given to the "limits of Islamism" by selectively ignoring a host of
evidence. The ultimate success of Jamaat is taken by the author to mean
achievement of its stated objectives ("totalizing Islam"), by which
standard it is certainly not a world peril. But he has not managed to
look at myriad unstated/under-stated objectives, unverified real cadre
strength, hidden sister organizations, covert operations and financial
networks which make the Jamaat one of the major sources of irredentism
and violent change in the 21st century.
[Political Islam
in the Indian Subcontinent, by Frederic Grare, Jamaat-i-Islami,
Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2001. ISBN: 81-7304-404-X. Price:
US$15.50, 134 pages.]
[Sreeram
Sundar Chaulia studied History at St.Stephen’s College, Delhi, and took
a Second BA in Modern History at University College, Oxford. He
researched the BJP’s foreign policy at the London School of Economics
and is currently analyzing the impact of conflict on Afghan refugees at
the Maxwell School of Citizenship, Syracuse, NY.]
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