While northwestern Somalia, which was under the “benign” British has a
semblance of governance and law and order; the “not-so-benign” Italian
controlled (1880-1960) southeastern region, under Islamist warlords and
pirates is one of the least governable regions in the world posing grave
threat to the security of the entire region. It seems Somalian Islamist
groups, the Al-Shabab and their likes, are being inspired by the
fighting traditions of Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, the “Mad Mullah” of the
British colonial rulers up to World War I.

The unique Islamist regime of Saudi Arabia, which openly practices
and promotes the age-old Shariah code beyond its perimeter, is a Western
ally. Although scholars and leaders across the world despise the
pre-modern Wahhabism, the state-ideology of the country, the oil-rich
monarchy has love-hate relationship with the West. Ultra-orthodox
Wahhabism emerged as an alternative to the colonial Ottoman caliphate
which ran the country and the neighbouring regions of Iraq-Kuwait and
Greater Syria up to the end of World War I. Had there been some space
for liberal nationalist movements under the autocratic Turkish
caliphate, the more stringent and backward-looking Wahhabis would not
have succeeded in establishing what Saudi orthodoxy represents today.
The Saudi promotion of Sunni orthodoxy reflects the regime’s paranoia
about pro-Iranian, anti-monarchical “Shiite heresy” and the growing
Muslim Brotherhood — Iranian understanding.

Iran is very different from other Muslim-majority countries in many
respects. Although never formally colonised by any European power, this
predominantly Shiite polity remained subservient to the West until the
1979 Revolution. Iranian mullahs did not always oppose the West. The
well-entrenched formally hierarchical clergy, a class of privileged
landed gentry that virtually was “running a state within the state”
under Muhammad Reza Shah; unlike Sunni clerics, have been well-educated
in Western sciences and philosophy, including comparative religion and
Marxism. Had the Shah left the ayatollahs and mujtahids to themselves
by not adversely affecting them by his problematic land reform program
or the White Revolution, there would not have been any Islamic
Revolution.

In neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan, Islamic resurgence is a
by-product of what foreign invasions, ethno-national conflicts and civil
wars turned them into, failing if not totally failed states. Saddam
Hussein’s minority Sunni autocracy in Iraq; and more than three
decade-long civil wars – fought on ethno-national/tribal and even on
sectarian lines – caused and accentuated by foreign invasions and
interventions in Afghanistan, led to the ongoing Islamist terrorism and
ethnic cleansing in these countries. Colonial rulers’ arbitrarily drawn
lines to reconstruct the political geography; and the postcolonial
rulers’ denial of any space to civil societies and freedom of expression
in both Iraq and Afghanistan made room for Islamism, a hotchpotch of
tribal, sectarian, ethnic and other identities. al-Qaeda’s
exploitative-cum-hegemonic mobilisation of Sunni and Pashtun
ethno-national groups, respectively in Iraq and Afghanistan; and most
importantly, American (Western) sponsorship of the “jihad” against
Soviet Union in 1980 were the catalysts of Islamism in both Iraq and
Afghanistan and beyond. Islamist violence in Iraq may be attributed to
the Shiite assertion, Sunni retaliation and the invasion of 2003, the
Afghan situation is quite complex; tribalism, ethno-nationalism,
narcoterrorism and proxy wars by India, Pakistan and Iran are the main
factors behind the Afghan crisis, or “quagmire” as some analysts love to
use the expression with regard to Western intervention in the country.
Despite the hyperboles about the “success” of the “Surge” in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the fact remains that even if they emerge as stable
democracies in the distant future, the Ummah is least likely to forget
and forgive the US and its allies for directly or indirectly killing
around a million Muslims in these countries since 1991. Tom Friedman has
aptly described the bleak, undesirable situation in Afghanistan on the
CNN. To paraphrase him: “Americans’ Training Afghans to fight is like
someone training Brazilians to play soccer… Who are training the
Taliban? They even don’t have maps and don’t know how to use one…America
needs nation-building at home, spending another trillion dollars in
Afghanistan won’t work …. American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan
may be compared with an unemployed couple’s adopting a child.”

While the situation in Pakistan to some extent is similar to that in
Bangladesh vis-à-vis Islamist politics, Pakistan has probably more in
common with Afghanistan and what Algeria was going through in the 1990s
with regard to Islamist terrorism. It is rather too early to assume that
Islamist terror in these countries is going through its passing phase.
Undoubtedly, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are retreating, having very little
support among Pakistanis, and their support base has always been very
weak and insignificant in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yet, both these
countries are paying the price of state-sponsorship of political Islam.
Again, factors responsible for the growth of proto-fascist intolerance
and extremism – secular or religious – such as youth bulge, mass
poverty, illiteracy, misgovernance and corruption are very much around
in both Pakistan and Bangladesh. Last but not least, they are still
struggling over their identities. The polities are not sure if they are
primarily multi-ethnic/multi-lingual or “Islamic”.

Although India is not a Muslim-majority country, it has the second or
third largest concentration of Muslims after Indonesia and Pakistan;
some 150 million or more. Although, perennial communal conflicts between
more advanced Hindu majority and less advanced Muslim minority
eventually led to the communal partition in 1947; and occasional rioting
and even mass killing of Muslims in postcolonial India has been quite
common, yet Indian Muslims in general do not believe in carving out
another “Muslim Homeland” out of India. However, the situation in
Indian-occupied Kashmir since 1947 is anything but normal. Denying the
Kashmiris’ right of self-determination by violating UN resolutions since
1948, India has kept more than one-third of its regular army and
thousands of paramilitary troops in this Muslim-majority state where
violations of human rights has been endemic since long. Since long
leading human rights activists, including Arundhati Roy, have been
publicly asking India to stop what they call the genocide of Kashmiri
Muslims and to concede to the majority Kashmiris’ demand for
independence. The marginalisation of Muslims in India and the frequent
incidents of large-scale attacks on them by Hindu mobs – mainly
instigated by proto-fascist Hindu extremist groups such as the Shiv Sena
and RSS in collusion with communal Hindu law-enforcers – have been
breeding Islamist militancy in northern and western India. The Muslim
pogroms in the wake of the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992 and
the Gujarat killings of 2002 may be mentioned in this regard. One finds
vivid accounts of discriminations and marginalisation of Indian Muslims
in the (Justice Rajinder) Sachar Committee Report, appointed by the
Government of India. Despite their “second class treatment” and
discriminations by the Indian government, Muslim masses in general and
clerics in particular have been opposed to terrorism in the name of
Islam. In 2008, 6,000 Muslim clerics from around the country gathered in
Hydrabad to register their disapproval for terrorism in the name of
Islam. In a personal correspondence with the author, Professor Harbans
Mukhia wrote (February 28, 2009): “I think in the Indian milieu of being
surrounded by a vast majority of Hindus, who have no notion of the
ultimate truth, the Day of Judgment and therefore no notion of
proselytisation, the Indian Muslims have been far less prone to
fundamentalist manifestations than others, especially as among the
Arabs.”

Islamism in Southeast Asia has differences and similarities with the
syndrome elsewhere in the world, having its unique intra-and inter-state
variations. However, prior to the recent Islamist terrorist attacks in
Bali, southern Philippines and southern Thailand, scholars, political
leaders and security practitioners had been complacent about any
impending threat of Islamism in the entire region. They considered
Indonesian and Malay Muslims’ syncretism as the main antidote to
religious extremism, which is often a by-product of puritanism. Sukarno,
so far the most charismatic leader of Indonesia, also played an
important role in retaining its syncretistic heritage and keeping the
largest Muslim-majority country relatively secular. However, Suharto’s
ascendancy changed things almost overnight. He used Islamist fanatics in
the mass killing of actual or so-called communists to strengthen his
position; and thus legitimised Islamism and promoted political Islam for
the sake of legitimacy, taking full advantage of Western “soft corner”
for Islam during the prime of the Cold War. Later, the emboldened and
crest-fallen Islamists turned into his adversaries, turning the Jemaah
Islamiyah into the most powerful Islamist organisation in Southeast
Asia. An al-Qaeda affiliate, JI believes in global jihad and wants to
establish an Islamist state in the region, encompassing Indonesia,
Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei southern Philippines and southern Thailand.
Ethnonationalist separatist movements of Malay Muslims in Southern
Philippines and Thailand during the last two decades have metamorphosed
into Islamist movements, thanks to the growing resurgence of Global
Islam.

The so-called Globalised Islam possibly exists among the Muslim
Diaspora, refugees and marginalised people having no stable identity or
sense of belonging to a nation or community besides the elusive
transnational Ummah. These “nowhere men” do not represent any
civilisation to fight for it; they are just angry people who have fled
the “burning grounds of Islam”, carrying the fire with them and angry at
the world around them. There are, however, conflicting views as to why
Islamists among the Diaspora resort to terrorism and even suicide
attacks. As one analyst explains the British suicide attacks in July
2005:

For an earlier generation of Muslims, their religion was not so
strong that it prevented them from identifying with Britain. Today many
young British Muslims identify more with Islam than Britain primarily
because there no longer seems much that is compelling about being
British. Of course, there is little to romanticise about old-style
‘Britishness’ with its often racist vision of belonging.

If we accept the above as the right explanation of terrorism by
members of the Muslim Diaspora, one wonders as to how about 20
Somali-American young men from Minnesota “vanished” in 2008; went to
Somalia to fight for al-Qaeda and one of them, Shirwa Ahmed, last
October blew himself up killing dozens of Somali opponents of their
“jihad”. These young Somali-Americans came to the US in their early
childhood. And the US does not promote multiculturalism. It is
difficult to explain the “home-grown” Islamist terrorism; Major Nidal
Hasan’s killing 13 fellow American soldiers for example, in terms of
some cultural or economic explanations. American and its allies support
for Israel in general; and their invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in
particular have been the last straws. Muslims resort to terrorism not
necessarily due to religious factors. As Rami Khouri has explained the
Pakistani American Feisal Shehzad’s justifications for the attempted
bombing of Times Square in New York, Muslims’ sense of collective
humiliation at local, national or global level by their rulers or
foreign occupation forces may turn them into terrorists. One cannot
agree more with Evelin Lindner, renowned psychologist and founder of the
Center for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, that:

Basically all human beings yearn for recognition and respect; their
denial or withdrawal is experienced as humiliation. Humiliation is the
strongest force that creates rifts and breaks down relationship among
people….Men such as Osama bin Laden would never have followers if there
were no victims of humiliation in many parts of the world….The rich and
powerful West has long been blind to the fact that its superiority may
have humiliating effects on those who are less privileged.

Throughout history, most of the time, Muslims primarily fought among
themselves; more Muslims than non-Muslims fell victim of Muslim wrath
everywhere. The situation has remained the same; especially in the wake
of the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have wide-ranging
problems of poverty, backwardness, bad governance, and above all, the
crises of identity and integration into the modern world. Again, Muslims
are not the only people reviving their faith during the last 50-odd
years; Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus have been on the same path
to rebel against “secularist hegemony and started to wrest religion out
of its marginal position and back to centre stage”. We may agree with
Karen Armstrong that no religion has so far been able to withstand
changes over the last 400 years in science and technology, philosophy
and ideas, and socio-political and economic systems and structures.
Religious revival is not just retrogressive but an attempt to cope with
these changes and challenges of rationalism against myths and
superstitions. Again, the lines between “ethnic” and “religious” are
too blurred to locate the real factors behind many conflicts.

The Muslim World and the West have been at loggerheads for centuries.
During the 8th and 17th centuries, Muslim caliphates and empires had
been the most formidable superpowers from the Indian Ocean to the
Mediterranean World. Europeans in general either remained subserviently
awe stricken by their Muslim hegemons or hell-bent to turn the table to
their own advantage. One gets the reflection of this love-hate
relationship in the corpus of European and Turco-Arabic literature,
travel accounts and history. As Dante’s The Divine Comedy (written
between 1308 and1321) is an epitome of hatred for Islam and its Prophet,
so is Voltaire’s play, Fanaticism or Mahomet the Prophet (written in
1736). Hegel, Francis Bacon, Marx or Max Weber, among other Western
scholars, had hardly any kind word for Islam either. Hegel and Marx
through their discourse of “Oriental Despotism” portrayed the Orient,
including the Muslim World, as inferior to the glamorous and enlightened
West. The “Orientalists” only noticed despotism, splendour, cruelty and
sensuality in the Muslim World to legitimize Western colonial hegemony
in the orient. British colonial rulers used expressions like “mad
mullah” and “the noble savage” to undermine Muslim rebels and their
followers in the Middle East and South Asia.

Some Muslim leaders throughout history had been extremely prejudicial
and discriminatory to their non-Muslim subjects and adopted oppressive
policies against Jews, Christians and Hindus. The extermination of
around a million Armenians by Turks in 1915-17 may be mentioned in this
regard. Not only Muslim clerics and laymen but also sections of the
intelligentsia and politicians glorify early and late medieval “Islamic
Empires”. One just cannot ignore Europeans’ collective memories of
subjugation of their ancestors under Muslim rule as an important factor
to the growth of Islamophobia in the West. Similarly, one cannot deny
the history of Western colonial rule of almost the entire Muslim World;
and even worse, the postcolonial Western treatment of the Muslims in
general and Arabs in particular as important factors in the promotion of
Westophobia among Muslims. Only Turkey may be singled out as a
Muslim-majority country, which ran a parallel and rival colonial empire
in Eastern Europe, North Africa and Middle East for centuries. However,
the loss of Turkey’s last vestiges of its empire soon after World War I
sent two ominous signals to Muslims, especially in the Subcontinent: a)
that while the Muslim World was under European (Christian) domination,
Muslim supremacy and conquests of non-Muslim territories (often
glorified by Muslim scholars and laymen) had become history; and b) that
with the demise of the Ottoman caliphate, Indian Muslims had no one
else to “help them out of British paramountcy”.

We must not lose sight of the extra-territoriality of transnational
“jihads”. Al Qaeda, Taliban and their likes not only fight for the
“liberation” of Arabia, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir, but
they also champion the cause of establishing an alternative Global
Islamic Order. Islamists always claim to be the peace-loving champions
of justice against injustice and freedom against (Western) hegemony.
Very similar to Communism, Islam and Islamism promote transnational
camaraderie and fraternity among their adherents. Carter’s National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “formal declaration of jihad”
against Soviet Union from Pakistan, and the decade-long US sponsorship
of the mujahedeen refurbished their image as the greatest “freedom
fighters” of all times. Lessons learnt in Afghanistan and Pakistan since
the 1980s should never be forgotten. Exploiting ethno-national and
class conflicts, Islamist extremists have turned yester-years’ “freedom
fighters” into transnational insurgents and terrorists today.

Islamism is a political ideology to regulate Muslims’ private and
public affairs in accordance with Islamists’ version of the faith.
Again, it is not all about violence and terrorism; there are Islamists
who believe in peaceful and democratic means of establishing their
version of the utopian “Islamic State”. Both terrorist and peace-loving
Muslims converge on one point that it is Muslims who have been at the
receiving end of Western prejudice and exploitation since the beginning
of Western colonialism. Consequently it is essential that we know and
empathize with the Muslim discourse of “What went wrong with the Muslim
World?”, or in other words, “Is the West and its allies hell-bent on
destroying Islam and Muslims?” This is not a new discourse; Muslim
scholars, saints, poets and politicians have been posing these
soul-searching questions for the last 200-odd years, from Egypt to
Arabia and Afghanistan to India and Indonesia. Islamism got a new lease
of life in 1979. Two events that shook the world took place in that
year: the Islamic Revolution of Iran and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Never before in history, leaders, scholars and analysts in the world
took so much interest in Islam and Muslims as have they been taking
since 1979. Since then, more Muslims than non-Muslims have fallen victim
to Western and Islamist wrath and attacks. However, despite their
differences and history of bloody conflicts between Shiite and Sunni
Muslims, they often close ranks against the West. While the First Gulf
War of 1991 agitated Muslims against West; US-led invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 have simply antagonized most Muslims
towards the West. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of Muslims
who are critical of the invasions have never been sympathetic to the
Taliban or Saddam Hussein. Islamist ideologues, who espouse the cause of
“global jihad” against their Muslim and non-Muslim enemies, have
benefited most by exploiting the average Muslims’ hatred for
postcolonial Western duplicities and hegemonic designs in the Muslim
World. They love to hate anything Western, including pro-Western
governments, leaders and culture. Paradoxically, some West-bashing
Muslims also aspire for “Western-Style” democracy, justice and peace in
the Muslim World. Since Nine-Eleven both the West and the Ummah in
general are confused; and afraid of each other. By demonizing the
“others”, Western and Muslim leaders, scholars and laymen justify the
“inevitability” of the “Clash of Civilizations”. Muslim bewilderment and
fear of Western retaliation against them led to the proliferation of
denials and conspiracy theories after Nine-Eleven, which portray Jews
and American government as the masterminds behind the attacks.

Calling all ethno-national freedom fighters “terrorists” does not
resolve any issue but takes us all to a dark cul-de-sac. This is
reminiscent of how European colonial rulers used to portray armed
freedom fighters as “robbers” and “outlaws” and their armed resistance
as “disturbances” or “problems of law and order”. Similarly, since the
heydays of the Cold War we find Western policymakers, media and
intellectuals denigrating all rebels and freedom fighters fighting
Western interests as “terrorists” or “communists”. Western ambivalence
towards religion-based polities is noteworthy. While it despises the
Islamic regime in Iran; the West is prepared to go to any extent to
defend the Zionist state of Israel. An understanding of violent Islamist
extremism hinges on the understanding of what the postcolonial Third
World in general and the Muslim World in particular think of Western
hegemony and arrogance. Evelin Lindner has beautifully explained it
through her personal field work experience in Rwanda and Somalia in
1998. She conveys the perceptions of the downtrodden Rwandans and
Somalis about the West in the following manner:

You from the West, you come here to get a kick out of our problems.
You pretend to help or do science, but you just want to have some
fun….You pay lip service to human rights and empowerment! You are a
hypocrite! We feel deeply humiliated by your arrogant and
self-congratulatory help! First you colonize us. Then you leave us with a
so-called democratic state that is alien to us. After that you watch us
getting dictatorial leaders. Then you give them weapons to kill half of
us. Finally you come along to “measure our suffering. — (concluded)

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Taj Hashmi is a professor of security studies at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii.