COMMENTARY It's the radicals,
stupid By Ehsan Ahrari
The recent bombings in Bali have
resurrected a debate, not only in Indonesia, but
also in Europe and the United States, about how to
engage "moderate Muslims", or how to promote
Islamic moderation. But the trouble with such an
issue is that moderate Muslims don't blow up
anything or commit suicide bombings. The radical
fringe and jihadis carry out those types of
activities.
President George W Bush joined
the debate on Thursday: "The militants believe
that controlling one country will rally the Muslim
masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate
governments in the region and establish a radical
Islamic empire that spans from Spain to
Indonesia."
Even though Bush did not talk
about engaging jihadis, at least in
Indonesia, such endeavors are
being debated. As a general principle, it is worth
asking, how is one going to engage them? Is there
any other way, except to eradicate them, or fill
all dungeons with them?
The challenge for
a number of Muslim countries is about conducting
intracultural campaigns. However, no government
has shown either a resolve, or, more importantly,
the wherewithal to conduct such campaigns. It also
is becoming clear that those governments cannot
conduct such campaigns alone. The West must help.
Fighting the jihadi groups is emerging as the
major fight of our time.
The US, the
United Kingdom and western Europe, as a unit, have
some idea about how to conduct such campaigns.
Their recipe is to promote Islamic moderation. The
premise is that, since moderation about anything
is a good premise, it should be promoted with a
vengeance. In Indonesia, there have been attempts
to conduct "interfaith dialogues" to carry out
cultural exchanges and to implement various
educational programs promoting tolerance.
That is a good start, but it is not
getting to the root of the matter. The latest
bombings in Bali have demonstrated that there is
much more to be done, perhaps the adoption of an
entirely different approach.
Jihad has
become a pervasive challenge for our time. It is
aimed at conducting campaigns of terror in the
name of a powerful religious concept of Islam.
Even the Saudis are dumbfounded about how to fight
it. How are they to handle a challenge that has
categorically depicted their regime as very much
part and parcel of jahiliyya (ignorance)
that should be eradicated?
The jihadi
perspective is that there can never be any
rapprochement between Islam and jahiliyya.
When the jihadis are so convinced about the
correctness and morality of their own perspective,
then any struggle that involves them has to be
carried out to the bitter end.
That is one
reason why the entire struggle with jihadis all
over the world of Islam is becoming a deadly
contest in which there is no room for any
dialogue, cooperation, rapprochement or exchange
of ideas. There is no operative notion of "live
and let live" under such a frame of reference.
The preceding depiction is highly
applicable to the terrorists who blew up
restaurants and bars in Bali. Where did they get
their training? Where did they develop such a
frame of reference where anyone or everyone who
disagrees with them must die? Even their
description of a Muslim is so narrow that only a
few thousand of their own kind may qualify for
that label.
The closer one looks at the
jihadi phenomenon that is so pervasive from Jeddah
to Jakarta, the more one is convinced that it is
driven by the Wahhabi-Salafi template that has
deep imprints of the thinking of Sayed Qutb,
Mustafa Shukri and Abdelsalam Farraj of Egypt,
Abul Ala Maududi of Pakistan, and Abdullah Azzam
(formerly a teacher of Osama bin Laden) and
An-Nabhani of Palestine.
Indonesia's Darul
Islam party, more than the frequently mentioned
Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), has been in touch with all
the radical Islamists who used to be called the
Afghan mujahideen, without any distinction of
their different nationalities. Later, a number of
them also became active members of al-Qaeda. Darul
Islam has emerged as the deadlier of the two
Islamist organizations of Indonesia, while the JI
continues to capture a lot of media attention.
What seems to be happening in a number of
countries of the Persian Gulf region, South Asia,
Central Asia and East Asia is that this jihadi
frame of mind is being nurtured in the form of a
template to carry out terrorism. A number of
madrassas (religious schools) are playing
an important role in fostering it. The purpose
right now appears to be merely to destabilize
existing governments, especially those that are
fighting hard to modernize their countries and
build bridges with the West.
Indonesia
stands out as one such country in East Asia. It
has established strong ties with Australia and is
developing a highly complex relationship with
China as well as with the United States.
Pakistan is carrying out similar policies
in South Asia. It is also struggling to emerge as
a vibrant economy, while it is continuing its
domestic battles with al-Qaeda. When one examines
the "Islamic enlightenment" - which was offered as
a concept by Pakistan's President General Pervez
Musharraf - it is quintessentially a South Asian
phenomenon promoted by Sayed Ahmed Khan and Allama
Altaf Hussein Hali of India and Allama Mohammad
Iqbal of Pakistan in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The whole idea of enlightenment has its roots in
the Hanafi school of Islam, a more secular version
that emerged in the thinking of the
jadidists (modernists) of South as well as
Central Asia.
The jihadis envision the
policies of Indonesia and Pakistan as antithetical
to what they are trying to achieve: some
obscurantist notion of an Islamic caliphate that
would want nothing to do with anything that is
part of this globalized world.
The jihadis
are helped by the fact that America's "war on
terror" keeps them at the very center of the fray.
Afghanistan, even though it is considerably more
stable than Iraq, still appears to be at a point
where it can take a turn for the worse. The
Taliban and al-Qaeda nexus is very much alive and
well. Iraq has become a hotbed of transnational
terrorism. If the situation in Iraq were to get
any worse, chances are high that political
stability in Iran, Syria and Turkey also would be
affected by it. That is exactly what the jihadis
are hoping for.
In the meantime, the
stability of Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia,
Afghanistan and a number of Central Asian
countries has remained highly questionable, with
uncertainty ahead. Stabilize they must, but
bombing incidents such as those in Bali only
underscore how vulnerable these countries are.
Even when there are no attacks on Musharraf, a
bombing incident in Karachi or Peshawar resulting
in many casualties reminds one that terrorists are
still in charge, at least in the dark alleys (or
even crowded places, as was the case in the Bali
bombings) of those countries.
Despite
these ominous signs, all is not lost. What is
needed is a three-pronged approach to fight
jihadis. First, there ought to be a radical
revision of the curricula at madrassas from
Jakarta to Jeddah, and from Karachi to Kuala
Lumpur. This issue is too grave to be postponed.
These madrassas came into existence
largely because governments maintained a hands-off
policy in the realm of religious education. The
institutions not only survived, but also never had
to go begging for students, because the
governments did not implement policies requiring
compulsory universal education, and could not
provide education to all their citizens.
Consequently, the madrassas filled the need
for free education of the poor and
underprivileged. Since they operated by raising
their own funds or by relying on funds from the
Persian Gulf states, there was no official
monitoring of their curricula or the qualification
of their teachers.
In the case of
Pakistan, the madrassas also became a tool
of the government to "educate" (if one can loosely
use that word) future jihadis, who were used in
destabilizing Indian-administered Kashmir. The
madrassas started to play that role during
the 1980s, but have continued uninterrupted ever
since. It is only in the post-September 11 era
that the world has become aware of the role of the
Pakistani madrassas in nurturing jihadis.
No serious regional or global attempt to fight
jihadis can afford to ignore a radical revamping
of the curricula of the madrassas in a
number of Muslim countries.
Second, and
the flip side of the preceding, is to modernize
the educational curricula of these countries, to
equip youngsters to face the challenges of an
increasingly complex world. The UK, Australia, as
well as the US, have targeted Indonesia as one of
the "priority countries" to be provided
educational funds. Under a program entitled
"Engaging with the Islamic World", Britain
contributed US$1.8 million for such programs. Bush
announced a six-year education program and
committed $157 million during his visit to
Indonesia in October 2003, but little of that
money has been disbursed.
Third, there is
a need for a Marshall Plan-like approach to
modernize Muslim economies. Such programs should
be aimed at industrializing these countries. In
this regard, Indonesia and Pakistan are making
ample progress in the realm of economic growth,
but still need assistance. The brunt of such
endeavors should go toward the economic
development of Afghanistan and Central Asia, where
economic underdevelopment is pervasive and jihad
very much alive.
The US does not have to
be in the lead as long as it plays a visible role.
The necessity for a visible American role is there
because no other country has so much at stake.
Consequently, no other country has proved that it
cares as much as the US. This Marshall Plan-like
approach should replace the "war on terror", which
has become a flopped approach because of its
virtual obsession with finding a military solution
to transnational terrorism.
The optimal
way of responding to jihad is going to be long and
slow and it will require a multi-dimensional
approach for many years. While engaging moderate
Muslims is a good start, it should not be
considered as a silver bullet for fighting Islamic
radicalism and extremism.
Ehsan
Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst
based in Alexandria, VA, US. His columns appear
regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a
regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate.
His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
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