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States under Siege
Pervez Hoodbhoy
V
iolent religious extremists are challenging the authority and legitimacy of
several Muslim states. In some countries, the state‘s writ has weakened. In
others — such as Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yemen — it barely exists. A vast
swathe of humanity stands at the edge of perilous chaos.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is under daily attack by Islamic groups armed
with bombs and suicide jackets. About 14 percent of its territory is controlled by
the Pakistani Taliban and other groups, and over 50,000 Pakistanis have been killed
in this conflict over the last decade. This nuclear-armed country, with the world’s
seventh largest army, endlessly debates whether to negotiate with terrorists or
retaliate. But it ends up doing nothing.
The fundamental dispute is whether Pakistan was created in 1947 to be a Muslim
majority state or, instead, an Islamic state to be run by Islamic law — the sharia.
Lost in thick ideological fog, the state lacks strong arguments that could rouse its
soldiers and citizens to fight Taliban terrorism. The core question — one that may
never be asked publically — is who are truer Muslims? Bearded militants who
seek to destroy the state and its citizens, or equally bearded soldiers who die while
seeking to protect their state? Only a razor’s edge separates the thinking of Pakistani
soldiers from the men they must fight.
Radical Islamists, marginalized in earlier decades, have also recently come into
the political mainstream in Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and other Muslim countries. An
interesting question is whether democracy can moderate their Islamist zeal.
In Pakistan’s case, it has not. The Jamaat-e-Islami, which participated in the 2013
national elections, may now appear less extreme. But this is only because rival
organizations are so much more extreme. In fact, the Jamaat’s ideological stance has
not softened. It still stridently calls for jihad in Kashmir and against India, refuses to
condemn Taliban attacks upon civilians and soldiers, protects al-Qaeda members,
insists that Pakistan must be governed by sharia law, and remains resolutely
opposed to birth control.
Nevertheless, as the case of Egypt shows, one must be cautious in drawing general
conclusions from a specific case. Shortly after the Arab Spring took off, many
predicted that the Muslim Brotherhood, now populist vote seekers, would move
away from their violent past. Indeed, drawing severe criticism from al-Qaeda, the
pragmatic Brothers dropped the call of their revered philosopher, Sayyid Qutb,
for armed jihad and the revival of the caliphate. But the Brotherhood could not
compromise beyond a point and were bloodily removed by an Egyptian military
coup in 2013. Religious and personal freedom, women’s rights, and religious
pluralism remain anathema to its core beliefs. A restored Mohamed Morsi would
probably trample on these no less than before. Nevertheless, the excessive use of
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force by the Egyptian military was, in my opinion, unwarranted. Glancing at Algeria
20 years ago — where 200,000 lives were lost in a brutal civil war — one can see
truly terrifying possibilities for Egypt as Islamists retaliate.
The weakening of the Muslim nation-state across the world, and multiple civil wars,
owes to the sudden rise of political Islam. In much of the 20th century, Muslims had
understood their religion largely as a normative system whose role was to govern an
individual’s personal life and act as a moral compass. In contrast, “political Islam”
insists that Muslims can live out their faiths only in an Islamic state. This could take
the form of a national state, sultanate, kingdom, or caliphate.
Political Islam’s ultimate goal is to weld all Muslims together under the rubric of a
supra-national Islamic theocratic state, the caliphate. In principle, the caliphate is
a Sunni Islamic state without national borders, ruled by a male caliph who would
command the allegiance of the entire ummah. As head of state, the caliph would
govern as prescribed by the sharia, and would command allegiance from all living
Muslims as their supreme religious and political authority.
Unity of the ummah has been an elusive ideal from the very beginnings of Islam.
The death of the Prophet Mohammed created an enduring schism on the question
of who would be the next leader of the faithful. Although Muslim empires in
the Middle East and Southwest Asia had been called caliphates, they were never
accepted by all Muslims, and at times rival caliphs have existed contemporaneously.
After Turkey’s Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate in the 1920s, few Muslim
countries wanted it restored.
In modern times, the caliphate is a non-starter. How 1.6 billion Muslims could agree
on a leader — or even to electoral rules — boggles the mind. What mechanism
could judge a candidate’s piety? Even the election of a pious shura or council would
run against multiple definitions of faith. The illusion of an Islamic political utopia
must be shed. But until that happens, it seems likely that Muslim societies will
continue their destructive, fratricidal conflict.
Pervez Hoodbhoy, is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, essayist and defence analyst.
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