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BOOK REVIEW
Anatomy of
Islamism
Political Islam
in the Indian Subcontinent, by Frederic
Grare
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
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.
(©2002 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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