Asia Times: Musharraf: Can this man change Pakistan?


	January 18, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Musharraf: Can this man change Pakistan?
By Uwe Parpart, Editor

Following President Pervez Musharraf's January 12 address to the nation, governments and independent commentators focused on his outlawing of several militant Islamic extremist groups and the imposition of restrictions on religious schools (madrassas) that have for years imbued students with a radical brand of Islam and hatred of the West. Not unreasonably so: The immediate goal of the speech was to reduce tensions with India, which had demanded such action and which is poised to go to war lest allegedly Pakistan-based terrorists who attacked the parliament complex in New Delhi on December 13 - leaving 14 dead - are taken to task. The operative phrase of the address was, "No organization will be allowed to indulge in terrorism in the name of Kashmir." India has taken note and the danger of war has receded.

But there was a lot more to Musharraf's hour-long speech (See separate report) than castigating terrorism and religious extremism. Unhappily, most reporters and analysts missed or chose to ignore it. The general wants to transform Pakistan into a modern secular and prosperous state, and there was nothing facile or perfunctory about his statement. "The day of reckoning has come," he said. "Do we want Pakistan to become a theocratic state? Do we believe that religious education alone is enough for governance or do we want Pakistan to emerge as a progressive and dynamic Islamic welfare state? The verdict of the masses is in favor of a progressive Islamic state."

No civilian Pakistani leader has ever seen fit or dared to put the country's choices in such clear and uncompromising terms. Neither Benazir Bhutto nor Nawaz Sharif ever put Pakistan's future so knowledgeably into historical and philosophical perspective. "When Islam was at its zenith," Musharraf told the nation, "every discipline of learning, mathematics, science, medicine, astronomy and jurisprudence were taught at these [religious educational] institutions. Great Muslim luminaries such as Al-Beruni, Ibn-e-Sina (Avesina) and Ibn Khuldoon, were the products of these same madaris. And if we study history, we see that from the 7th to 15th century AD, transfer of technology took place from the Muslims to the rest of the world."

Al Biruni? Ibn Sina (Avicenna)? Ibn Khaldun? [standard spellings].

Go to any fundamentalist madrassa today, ask their teachers who pride themselves on upholding the best and purest of Islamic religion and culture, ask their mindlessly Koran-thumping pupils these names, and the best you'll likely get is an empty stare - or, should the names be familiar at all, condemnation of works of the devil. But the works of these scientists and philosophers mark high points of Islamic (and world) intellectual achievement; their original contributions and encyclopedic transmission to Europe of ancient Greek and Hindu thought - much of it only available in Arabic translation - catalyzed the Italian Renaissance which created modern Western society.

Al Biruni (973-1048 AD) and Ibn Sina (981-1037 AD) were born near, educated in, and for part of their lives worked and taught in Bukhara (present-day Uzbekistan), then a world intellectual and trade center. Al Biruni travelled to India, learnt Sanskrit and helped create modern mathematics, astronomy and geography. (Ever wonder how the all-important zero entered our number system? Or where the term (and discipline of) "Algebra" (Arabic "al Jabr") came from?). Ibn Sina is a philosopher just short of the rank of Plato and Aristotle. His scientific work helped establish the modern empirical method. His medical research laid down in his "Canon" founded modern medical science and his portrait adorns the great hall of the faculty of medicine of the University of Paris. Ibn Khaldun's (1332-1395 AD) "al-Muqaddimah" ("Introduction") stands at the beginning of modern rational historiography and sociology.

Musharraf did well to remind his countrymen and the rest of the Islamic world of the seminal accomplishments of these Islamic scholars and to challenge them to emulate these men rather than the - in equal parts - inhuman and trivial pursuits of the Mullah Omars and bin Ladens of the Islamic realm. He did well, too, putting mindless jihadis in their place: "After the battle of Khyber, the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) stated that Jehad-e-Asghar (Smaller Jehad) is over but Jehad-e-Akbar (Greater Jehad) has begun. This meant that armed Jehad, i.e. the smaller Jehad, was now over and the greater Jehad against backwardness and illiteracy had started. Pakistan needs Jehad-e-Akbar at this juncture."

Who is Musharraf, the man who would reverse decades of ascendancy of reactionary fundamentalism, clean up a corrupt administrative apparatus, and transform a semi-feudal economy to make Pakistan "emerge as a responsible and progressive member of the comity of nations".

Shortly after overthrowing the civilian government of Nawaz Sharif in an October 12, 1999 military coup, he told Turkish journalists that ''as a model, Kamal Ataturk [the founder of modern Turkey] did a great deal for Turkey. I have his biography. We will see what I can do for Pakistan.'' Religious organizations and parties immediately rebuked Musharraf's statement, but emulating Ataturk who, in the 1920s, established a secular Turkish republic from the ruins of the Ottoman empire against determined obscurantist religious opposition, has remained an abiding theme.

Ataturk was born in Salonike in Greece and his family came from Macedonia. Musharraf was born in Delhi (1943) and his family comes from eastern Uttar Pradesh. They migrated to Pakistan (Karachi) at the time of partition of British India. Musharraf received his early schooling in the Turkish capital of Ankara (1949-1956) where his father, the late Syed Musharaff-ud-Din, a career diplomat, was posted to the Pakistani embassy. In November 1999, he pointedly included Turkey (after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) among the first states to visit after taking power. On arrival in Ankara, he greeted a military honor guard in Turkish. He then visited the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, expressing his admiration, and compared himself with General Kenan Evren, who overthrew a civilian government in Turkey in 1980, but later restored civilian rule and "silently faded away".

But silent fading away does not appear high on Musharraf's present agenda - and even General Evren, of course, ruled in Turkey for nine years. Inaugurated as President of Pakistan on June 20, 2001, he regards his leading political role as indispensable to the transformation of his country and in the process of resolving the Kashmir problem and of reaching accommodation with India - and he is almost certainly right in that judgement. No present Pakistani civilian leader has the political clout, the popular support or the vision to turn the country around or make lasting peace with India.

As importantly, no other leader, civilian or military, could presently avail himself of the standing, domestically or in the international community, Musharraf has acquired as the result of the bold and high-risk, but ultimately correct decisions he took after September 11. Predictions abounded that Pakistan itself would go up in flames over his decision to offer full support to the US in the war on terror. But initial protests organized by pro-Taliban religious leaders quickly fizzled. Predictions, too, abounded among leaders of the military and intelligence services that the US-led Afghanistan campaign would turn into a long, drawn out, ultimately futile affair. It didn't, and Musharraf stands vindicated while several of his generals and religious-party critics and opponents stand with egg on their faces.

But Musharraf's own campaign to change Pakistan has only just begun. At present, he has the initiative and the momentum, but his policies will have to show positive economic results and results in the fight against corruption and incompetence quickly if such momentum and popular support are to be maintained and religious extremism is to be kept at bay.

It will prove far more difficult to unify and keep the nation unified behind the goals of Jehad-e-Akbar (Greater Jehad), the task of building a modern economy and secular nation state, than with rabble-rousing talk about the liberation of Kashmir and jihad against perennial enemy Hindu-India and the treacherous West. In this pursuit, however, and with any tangible measure of success, Musharraf not only has the chance of decisively changing the course of his own nation. "We have to become an example for the Islamic world," he has challenged his fellow citizens. If he and Pakistan succeed, it will change the present disastrous course of the Islamic world.

((c)2001 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact ads@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)