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Article 1:
"Gandhi,
Gandhism and Terrorism" by Antony Copley
Helen Steven concluded her recent Gandhi Foundation
Annual lecture by raising the question, how would Gandhi have
dealt with today's terrorism? If she raised the question too
late to formulate any kind of sustained answer, given the strong
emphasis in her lecture on the need for dialogue, she suggested
that Gandhi would certainly have wanted to enter into some kind
of conversation with the terrorists. The appalling case of Ken
Bigley was then in everyone's mind. It occurred to me later
that Gandhi would in such circumstances have had no idea where
the kidnappers were hiding him. (Later, we learnt that Scotland
yard and MI6 had had some idea, but chose to act through an
intermediary and it was his attempt to spring him that triggered
his beheading). At the time of the lecture I thought a response
from the floor that Gandhi would have entered on a fast would
have been his more likely strategy. But of course beyond these
gruesome particulars the question is very close to Gandhi's
life's work Arguably satyagraha and the strategy of non-violence
was targeting as much as any other phenomenon an alternative
violent tactic of terrorism.
This paper will have two parts to it: one, dealing with the
known aspects of Gandhi's own life and attitudes in relation
to terror, the second, raising the far more speculative question
as to how he might have responded to the terrorist threat of
today. The first part will begin by setting the context within
which Gandhi was forced to address the issue of terrorism. We
have to discuss both state terrorism as well as private. Definitions
of state terrorism are bound to be controversial. At the outset
of his career there was at least one terrorist movement, that
in Tsarist Russia, which attracted mixed responses and, indeed,
for many these Russian revolutionaries were heroes and heroines.
Was there not a real risk that a like-minded movement in India
would attract an equal cult following? It was a risk that Gandhi
had always to face and tragically he was himself to die at the
hands of a terrorist. It will then discuss the character of
Gandhi's response to the threat of a terrorist movement in India.
The second part entails stepping back and trying to make sense
of Islamic terrorism. Is it rooted in traditional Islam? Alternatively,
does fundamentalism not paradoxically emerge from modern European
thought and, as John Gray has interpreted it, Islamic terrorism
is in fact a product of western influence on Islam? It clearly
is important to establish whether the current terrorist threat
is driven by the traditional cultural values of Islam or of
the west for this will leave us in a better position to judge
just how Gandhi might have responded. After all, whatever his
own mixed response to the west, his own private quarrel lay
with the violent tendencies in western imperialist culture.
To elucidate Gandhi's response to terrorism is one possibility.
To suggest that Gandhism has an answer to terrorism is another.
Maybe here we are running up against the limits of satyagraha.
State terrorism
A dictionary definition - that of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary
- begins with reference to the reign of Terror in France, March
1793-July 1794: 'a state of things in which the general community
live in dread of death or outrage'. Any subsequent example of
the coerciveness of extreme state power has been branded as
terrorism. Possibly radical governments are more likely to acquire
this label than reactionary. The most obvious recent example
would be the Terror as practised by Stalin's Russia. If Nazism
is rightly likewise branded terrorist it maybe because of its
own radical reconstructive programme. Maybe regimes with overt
millenarian aims tend more horrifically towards terror.
But of course attribution of terror has been used in far more
generalised ways. Just about any authoritarian state can be
accused of terror. For the anarchist the state is by definition
an instrument of terrorism. And state terror breeds private
terror. Here is John Pilger: 'only by recognising the terrorism
of states is it possible to understand, and deal with, acts
of terror by groups and individuals which however horrific are
tiny by comparison'. Israel, for example, he brands as a perpetrator
of 'its own, unrelenting planned terrorism for which there is
no media language'. Another contemporary example he cites is
Russian state terrorism in Chechnya. States which exercise undue
force reap the whirlwind of terrorist reprisal. But, of course,
we could almost indefinitely extend the list of states practising
terror against their subjects.
The way Gandhi challenged state authority is at the heart of
satyagraha. First, he had to meet the repression of colonial
authority in South Africa and the proto-apartheid state governments
of Natal and Transvaal. Here was experience he could turn to
advantage in the struggle for national independence from the
Raj. Just how far this encounter suggests the appropriateness
of a Gandhian response to the more repressive and totalitarian
terrorist regimes of the recent times is open to question, for
Gandhi was indisputably helped by having in Smuts an opponent
open to the spiritual dimensions of satyagraha and in the raj
a regime rhetorically committed to the rule of law together
with an official class conditioned by public school values of
fair-play. It took the horror of the Amritsar massacre to open
Gandhi's eyes to the readily available state violence behind
that legal façade. The massacre released in Gandhi a
readiness to move beyond constitutionalism and dialogue to non-cooperation
and non-violent civil disobedience. In the response to colonial
repression Gandhi worked out a strategy of political resistance
which could equally be deployed to meet the challenge of other
evils of his time as he saw them, such as industrial capitalist
exploitation of labour, landowner oppression of the peasantry
and communalism. How did this political agenda relate to terrorism?
Terrorist Movements in Gandhi's Lifetime
The histories of modern Russia and India have much in common
and the struggle of the Russian intelligentsia to liberate Russia
from serfdom and autocracy was an obvious role model for India's
own emergent radical intelligentsia. It began with the Decembist
movement and from the beginning here was a radical protest movement
divided between a constitutional liberal approach and a recourse
to a Jacobin-style terrorism. The same tension appeared in its
successor, populism, with the alternatives of a 'going to the
people', a non-violent propaganda movement, and a falling back
on acts of extreme terror, with the assassination of officials
and landowners and in 1881 the murder of Tsar Alexander 11.
A section of the intelligentsia turned nihilist. In the mind
of the leading exponent of anarchism, Bakunin, a positive cult
of the cleansing power of revolutionary, millenarian, violence
took hold. In the final phase that led to 1917 the same tension
prevailed between a Marxist social democratic movement and a
social revolutionary one which remained wedded to the practice
of violence by a revolutionary elite.
Maybe what would have alarmed Gandhi the most about Russian
terrorism was the extent to which public opinion was on its
side. Take for example the support for Spridovna, the 20 year
old assassin of General Luzhenovsky in 1906 where public opinion
forced a commutation of her death sentence to life imprisonment,
crowds returning again and again outside her detention quarters
in Moscow. 'Comrades, we shall meet again in a free Russia'
were her words as she was put on the train to her prison in
Siberia. To quote Lesley Branch's account:
But what should have been a prison journey became a triumphal
progress. Mysteriously, at each stop, cheering crowds were assembled.
At Omsk and Krasnoyarsk the frenzy mounted. The engine-driver
was stoned, the marseillaise was sung and red flags waved; the
prisoner addressed the crowds from behind her bars as offerings
rained through them, kopecks, five-rouble gold pieces, flowers
and fruit. At each halt it seemed more likely she would be rescued
and the guards were trebled. But they too seemed infected by
the extraordinary circumstances and soon Spridovna was holding
receptions, regally, from the steps of her wagon. Yet she did
not try to escape, nor did the feared rescue take place.
A parallel could be drawn with Irish nationalism, another movement
split between a parliamentarist and a terrorist approach, and
one which exercised an almost equal spell over Indian nationalists.
Might a terrorist movement become just as attractive in India?
It is sobering to discover just how far sections of the nationalist
leadership and of India's radical youth were won over by the
rhetoric of terrorist violence at the very time Gandhi was working
out his own theory and praxis of non-violence. Whilst still
in touch with events in India and making periodic returns there,
in South Africa Gandhi's main concern, however, was with terrorists
outside India. Through his visits to London to petition the
Colonial office on behalf of the Indian minority he became aware
of them. Their ideas drove him to write Hind Swaraj. But terrorism
within and without India was all part of the same terrorist
conspiracy and both have to be considered if we are to set Gandhi's
philosophy in context.
Terrorism was centred on Maharashtra, Punjab and Bengal. Two
nationalists coming to prominence as the leading Extremists,
Tilak from Maharashtra, Aurobindo Ghose, Bengali by origin but
through his English education still mastering his own language,
in the 1890's employed in the state administration of Baroda,
were to be closely associated with terrorism. Had he lived beyond
1920 Tilak would have posed probably an insuperable barrier
to Gandhi's taking over the leadership of the nationalist movement
and Aurobindo was, by all accounts, the most brilliant prime-minister
India was not to have. The continually teasing question of this
terrorist movement is whether it was driven by a revivalist
nationalism or merely adopted the outer trappings of a traditional
culture whilst in fact being inspired by a wholly modern nationalist
and terrorist agenda.
In Maharashtra the initial lead came from a rural Chitpavin
Brahmin, Waredeo Balwant Phadke, who dreamt of a rising on behalf
of Hinduism against foreign rule but was to get no further than
a series of wild west gangland robberies prior to his flight
to Hyderabad and capture in July 1879, followed by transportation
to Aden and death in 1883. A more conspicuous act of terror
came with the murder in Poona of the intolerably heavy-handed
Plague Commissioner, W C Rand, by two Chitpavin Brahmins, Damodar
and Balkrishna Chapekar, 22 June 1897.Their grudge had been
as much against Hindu social reformers as foreigners, with their
inculcating the ferocious Mother Goddess, Bhowani (Durga/Kali
)for their cause. They were certainly known to Tilak and he
helped both at the time of their trial. There is no evidence,
however, of his collusion with Rand's murder and it was for
tendentious newspaper articles that he was sentenced to a year's
imprisonment for sedition. Jail was already becoming the pathway
to political reputation.
Bengal became the centre of the terrorist movement. It is
a highly dramatic story, worthy of opera, with the deeply mysterious
Aurobindo as the figurehead. Its membership is almost a roll
call of the nationalist elite. In the nature of any underground
movement its narrative has to be uncertain. Within the Bengali
intelligentsia and in a sense no more than undergraduate societies
revolutionary cells, inspired by the Carbonari and Mazzini,
began to coalesce. One Jatindra Nath Banerjea, a bit of a loner
and by character a martinet, had contacted Aurobindo in Baroda
in his search for a military training. This became an obsession
with the terrorists and various countries, including Japan,
were tried till Switzerland came up with an offer. Jatindra
was to join the Anushilan Samiti (Cultural Association) in Calcutta
and this, to become the most prominent revolutionary cell, was
formally launched 24 March 1902. Meanwhile, a leading acolyte
of the late Vivekananda, Sister Nivedita, the Irish woman Margaret
Noble met Aurobindo in Baroda and became actively involved in
the movement. Vivekananda's brother, Bhupenesh Dutt, also joined
the Anushilan Samiti. Links were a made with Tilak in Bombay.
Aurobindo met him for the first time at the Ahmedabad Congress
meeting in 1902, seeing him as 'the one possible leader of a
revolutionary party'. If Maharashtra was to give way to Bengal
as the centre of terrorism there was Thakur Saheb's secret society,
aimed at subverting loyalty in the Army. Jatindra was later
to turn sanyassin but his preaching on the North West Frontier
was in time to recruit Har Dayal, a Punjabi Hindu, to the terrorist
movement and he in his turn won over Bhagat Singh, the most
impressive of a later generation of the movement.
The terrorist movement was momentarily eclipsed by the populist
Swadeshi revolt, Bengal's outraged response to its division
in 1905 but as that protest waned terrorism once again took
centre stage. Meanwhile Aurobindo's bother, Barin Ghose had
usurped Jatindra's role as leader and set up a kind of ashram
in the garden of a suburban house in Maniktola. The most outstanding
new recruit to the cell was the explosives expert, Hem Das,
recently returned from Europe. Now began a series of attempts
to assassinate prominent officials, first choice being the highly
unpopular Lt-Governor of East Bengal, Sir Bamfylde Fuller -'the
unsuccessful attempt to kill Fuller was probably the first serious
attempt to commit a political murder in Bengal's modern history'
-next choice, likewise abortive, his successor, Sir Andrew Fraser
through the blowing up of his train, but District Magistrate
D C Allen was shot by the Dacca branch of the Anushilan Samiti
December 1907, then a Chandernagore cell failed in their attempted
assassination of the French mayor of the city, M Tarnivel -he'd
effectively cut off the arms traffic between French and British
India - but finally the Calcutta cell got a victim if not its
chosen target, Douglas Kingsford, Calcutta's Chief Presidency
Magistrate recently transferred as Judge to Muzaffarpur in Bihar,
March 1908, the terrorists murdering, instead, a Mrs Pringle-Kennedy
and her daughter, the assassins, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla
Chaki. The hand held bomb, christened 'the bomb of Mother Kali',
had become the symbol of violent revolution.
All these events became the focus of the Alipore Conspiracy
trial held in 24 Parganas, Calcutta. The government's main aim
was to incriminate Aurobindo. If he had become increasingly
absorbed by his journalism, editing the Bande Mataram, he had
never lost contact with the terrorists and had yet to renounce
violence. In large part through the brilliant advocacy of CR
Das, his case being how anyone as clever as Aurobindo could
have become associated with such an crackpot amateur outfit
as the Anushilan Samiti, he was to be acquitted. As Peter Heehs
puts it, 'he had just escaped imprisonment for an offence that
he unquestionably had committed. Not only was he a conspirator,
he was the originator and the first organizer of a conspiracy
whose declared aim was to drive the British from India'. His
brother and Hem Das were not to be so fortunate, Barin condemned
to death though on appeal this was commuted to a life sentence,
and together with Hem Das and others, he was deported to the
Andaman Islands. They were not freed till February 1920.
Aurobindo took up the cudgels again, editing another radical
newspaper Karmajogin, but it was obvious that the authorities
were determined to get him and he was to enter on a lifetime's
internal exile, fleeing via Chandernagore to Pondicherry. But
Aurobindo had undergone a seachange, renouncing the Russian
and Irish path of terror as unsuitable for India, and he embarked
on his yogic quest for the supermind. Tilak, likewise heavily
compromised by these events, was charged with sedition for an
article in Kesari , its allegedly justifying the terrorism of
the Muzaffarpur murders, sentenced to six years imprisonment
and deported to Mandalay. He was only released in Poona on 17
June 1914.
But violence had not yet had its day. The CID officer involved
in the trial, Inspector Shamsul Alam was murdered, there was
another attempt on the life of Fraser, and a new terrorist group,
Juguntar took up the running, climaxing with the attempted assassination
by Rash Behari Bose of Viceroy Hardinge on his entry into the
raj's new capital, 23 December 1912. The terrorists had almost
matched the Russian assassination of Alexander 11 in 1881.
Gandhi had been more immediately concerned by the terrorists
in London. On July 2 1909 Sir Curzon-Wyllie, Secretary of State
for India, had been shot at the Imperial Institute in Kensington
by Madanlal Dhingra,'a tall,gangling Mahratta with thick curly
hair and a square chin, with something languidly byronic in
his manner'. Here was a revolutionary terrorist movement which
goes back to one Shyamji Krishnavarma (1857-1930), a rich Inner
Temple trained barrister, Dewan of several Indian princely states,
who used his wealth to finance the cause of Indian nationalism,
with lectureships and scholarships, and also founded India House
in Highgate in 1905, a home for Indian students, which all but
became a cell for terrorists. He edited a journal much influenced
by the ideas of Herbert Spencer, The Indian Sociologist whose
reading Gandhi oddly encouraged in his own Indian Opinion. Payne
states that 'Gandhi genuinely liked and admired him'. He took
himself and his journal off to Paris in 1907.
If, as Anthony Parel writes, Krishnavarma was 'the organising
genius of the Indian expatriates', V D Savarkar (1883-1966)
was 'the brain of the group'. He had been awarded one of Krishnavarma's
scholarships and briefly resided in Highgate House. Savarkar
proved to be a major force in Indian political life, inspiration
for Hindu nationalism, that communally divisive hindutva movement.
At this stage Savarkar encouraged terror, took Dhingra under
his wing, grooming him for political martyrdom. Initially the
target was the former Vice-roy Curzon, but an opportunity was
botched. On the day Dhingra was to murder Sir Curzon-Wyllie
Savarkar allegedly gave Dhingra a nickel-plated revolver and
said 'Don't show your face if you fail this time'. Gandhi was
surely right to see Dhingra as acting under the influence of
others. He was sentenced to death and hung August 17. Rather
strangely Gandhi on Dussara day 24 October then engaged in public
debate with Savarkar, Gandhi taking up the theme of the exemplary
role of Rama, emphasising his peaceful courage and devotion
to duty, Savarkar dwelling on the goddess Durga,'the bringer
of sudden death'. Astonishingly, Savarkar remained free, only
to be involved with planning terrorist acts in the Presidency
of Bombay, providing the murder weapon that killed the District
Magistrate of Nasik, A M T Jackson, 29 December 1909. He was
staying with Krishnavarma in Paris at the time of his arrest
warrant 22 February 1910, inexplicably surrendering himself
to the authorities, was sent for trial to Bombay, briefly escaping
in Marseilles en route. Savarkar was the arch-conspirator of
the Nasik Conspiracy trial. There was a chance that the Hague
Tribunal might decide Savarkar had been illegally arrested in
France and hence acquitted. But the Hague Tribunal had no sympathy
for terrorists, turned down the appeal, and 23 December Savarkar
was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Andaman Islands. In
1924 the Labour goverment released him: 'at forty one he looked
sixty and resembled a lean and hungry hawk, with bitter mouth
and eyes that seemed hooded'. He was to inspire Ghodse, Gandhi's
assassin, and lived on till 83, only dying 26 February 1966.
Gandhi's Response
At the very time Gandhi had embarked on a programme of non-violent
civil disobedience the murder of Sir Clifford-Wyllie was a disturbing
reminder that he was up against a potentially hugely influential
alternative strategy of terrorist violence. Indeed, Gandhi's
entire political life was to be overshadowed by this alternative.
Admittedly in some ways it advantaged him in the subcontinental
freedom struggle, for, to quote Heehs, Gandhi realised 'that
much of his strength came from being regarded by the British
as a lesser evil'. But it was a challenge he had to confront
and on his return to South Africa on board Kildonan Castle,
in an almost inspired way between 13 to 22 November he wrote
the Gujurati version of Hind Swaraj. Anthony Parel has persuasively
shown how Gandhi's critique of so-called 'modern civilisation'
was in large part driven by what he saw as its violent pursuit
of power. Madan Lal Dhingra's crime, to quote Parel's interpretation
of Gandhi's response, 'was a modern political act par excellence-terrorism
legitimised by nationalism'. Gandhi admittedly separated out
from western civilisation a modern and a Christian dimension.
Not all had been corrupted. But in industrialism and imperialism
there was clear evidence of violence within this modernity.
Gandhi was profoundly committed to a view that ends did not
justify means, that a violent means could only have a violent
outcome, and it was vital for an ancient civilisation such as
India's not to allow these western values to take hold. Taking
a stance against the violence of terror became part of a larger
defence of Indian values, though Gandhi was all too aware there
had to be a transformation from within, a revitalisation of
dharma, if India was to advance. It is in this continuing tension
between tradition and a kind of vulgar modernity that we will
find best the answer to how Gandhi would have reacted to today's
Islamic terrorism.
There is, however, another way of critiquing terrorism. It can
read as a form of political immaturity. The way forward for
the nationalist movement lay in reaching out for greater popular
involvement and indeed in that very democratisation of the struggle
that Gandhi was to introduce. Tilak and Aurobindo are faulted
by the JNU historians for their failure to point the young revolutionaries
of Maharashtra and Bengal in this direction. Only when Tilak
came to see the need for a broader based democracy did he come
of age as a politician. Exactly the same debate had of course
gone on within the Russian revolutionary movement, but its turning
away from the democratic route and falling back on the idea
of a revolutionary vanguard elite appears to have had a fatal
attraction. This was to have a baleful long-term appeal.
But the terrorist movement continued within and without India
to surface as an option. Abroad its centre passed to Canada
and the American west coast in the Ghadr (Revolt) movement.
Here was a Punjabi and Sikh involvement in terror, Lala Har
Dayal its inspiration. It spread back into India and but in
1915 with the CID on its trail a planned rebellion under the
leadership was Rash Behari Bose was stifled at birth: 'an entire
generation of the nationalist leadership of Punjab was thus
politically beheaded'. Still, in terms of the secularism of
the movement 'the Ghadarites certainly', the JNU historians
believe, 'contributed their share to the struggle for India's
freedom'. In its aftermath the lesson of democracy was seemingly
in the short run learnt and many former terrorists played their
part in the non-cooperation movement only to revert to terror
after its withdrawal. Most famously, there was Bhagat Singh,
seen as 'a giant of an intellectual', active in the Hindustan
Socialist Republican Association (Army). He was one of the terrorists
who murdered a police official, Saunders, reprisal for the death
of Lal Lajpati Rai in a lathi charge, and then became a national
hero with his lobbing a bomb into the Central Legislative Assembly
8 April 1929. Admittedly his intention had been to attract publicity
through a trial, little damage had been done and subsequently
Bhagat Singh renounced terror in favour of mass action. He was
hung March 1931.
Within Bengal terror flared up again at much the same time as
the salt satyagraha. The Yugantar and Anushilan groups merged,
a Chittagong group their most active and on 18 April 1930, a
day chosen to coincide with the date of the Dublin Easter uprising
, seized the police armoury and embarked on a rebellion with
a full scale military encounter on the neighbouring Jalalabad
hill 22 April: its leader Surya Sen was not to be captured till
16 February 1933.
If , as the JNU historians claim, revolutionary terrorism gave
way to the radical leftist parties in the 1930's Gandhi could
never relax his grip. There was always the fear of its resurgence.
He might try to wean such activists as Jayaprakash Narayan off
terror by absorbing him within the ashram movement. He desperately
and not unsuccessfully tried to contain the appeal of Subhas
Bose, still locked into the terrorist tradition in Bengal. The
risk was to become all too apparent in the upsurge of violence
in the Quit India satyagraha, Narayan highly active if terror
against property rather than persons prevailed, and, far more
sinisterly, in Subhas Bose's fascist-style Indian National Army.
It seemed all too horribly appropriate that Gandhi was in the
end to lose his life to a terrorist.
The Origins of Muslim Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism does not inevitably lead to terror. But they
are closely associated and it's here we have to begin the exploration
of terror and Islam. Given Gandhi's sympathy for traditional
culture and antipathy for the modernising west it makes sense
to try to establish whether fundamentalism is rooted in the
past of Islam or is a relatively recent and modern phenomenon.
Not that such generalisation about Islam is without difficulty.
Samuel Huntingdon's theory of a clash of civilisations , with
its massive over-simplifications about Islam, may have served
the need for the west to have an alternative 'other' to demonise
with the collapse of the Soviet threat, but quite quickly this
has been seen to be 'sloppy and dangerous language'. Jason Burke
states: 'It is facile and dangerous to talk of "a clash
of civilisations". The West and the Islamic world are not
monolithic blocs where identity is based around religion or
secularism, tyranny or democracy, human rights or repression,
as all who have travelled in the Middle East know. Even the
most devout do not define themselves by Islam alone.' In other
words, we all have multiple identities. Islam clearly is a chameleon
faith and expresses itself differently according to historical,
socio-economic, political and cultural circumstances. Maybe
what is so distinctive about the present wave of fundamentalism
is just its attempt to take on a more monolithic character..
There are two paradigms for situating contemporary Islamic fundamentalism
and terror, one that interprets it as a consequence of a wounded
civilisation and sees at work here a revivalist movement, and
those who view it as an entirely modern phenomenon, perversely
drawing on modern western concepts to attack the west. To make
sense of the first approach we have to undertake a kind of survey,
if without the detail, of the story of Islam itself.
In her bravura account of the world's main religions, A History
of God, Karen Armstrong can find little in the origins of Islam
which legitimises today's fundamentalism. It was a faith which
emerged out of a recently urbanised Bedouin Arab society, experiencing
at the time 'widespread dissatisfaction and spiritual restlessness',
and, surrounded as it was by monotheistic faiths of Judaism
and Christianity, subject to 'a feeling of spiritual inferiority'.
One way in which Mohammed answered those needs was through the
extraordinary beauty of the revealed text of the Koran. Those
who do not know Arabic can, Armstrong claims, have little idea
of its power. It translates so poorly. (One of the reasons why
the statements of current fundamentalists can seem so alien,
one suspects, lies in just this same difficulty of translation.)
Here was a faith which broke all the social rules, appealing
to outsiders and the oppressed, women and slaves, and in crossing
tribal boundaries, breaching an ultimate taboo in Arab society
of an all embracing loyalty to the tribe. Islam reached out
to the whole community or ummah. Mohammed in no way made exclusive
claims for his faith, being perfectly happy to work with Jews
and Christians. Unfortunately in Medina, where he came more
into contact with Jews than he had in Mecca, the dialogue broke,
the Jews feeling threatened by the new faith, and this led to
a divide. Mohammed now turned to Mecca rather than to Jerusalem
in prayer. Here was a faith driven by social compassion, by
ideals of brotherhood and justice, and one initially sympathetic
to women though this was quickly lost sight of in the Abbasid
period. It was from the start a political movement and Mohammed
proved himself a gifted political leader. There was, however,
but one brief occasion when in the defence of the new faith
Mohammed resorted to jihad. Armstrong sees nothing threatening
in the emergence in the 8/9th centuries of the shariat and the
hadith: 'they have proved able to bring a sacramental sense
of the divine into the life of millions of Muslims over the
centuries'.
It is always said of Islam that it lacked a Renaissance yet
that is patently untrue. In the 9/10th centuries Arab scholars
engaged with Hellenism, studying astronomy, alchemy, medicine
and mathematics, and the Mutazalis believed the faith was wholly
compatible with reason. An elite sect, the Falsafah, a kind
of equivalent to the much later French philosophes, engaged
with Greek philosophy and religion. Here is the explanation
for the high achievements of Arab science and the flourishing
culture of Almovarid Spain. But doubt set in as to the worth
of this kalam or theology and the traditionalists and Azaharis
led a fight back against reason. In his endlessly inventive
and engagingly picaresque autobiographical account of his own
journey through Islam Desperately Seeking Paradise Ziauddin
Sardar would agree that the sources of Islam come across as
`more critical and less certain of their opinions' but likewise
sees the role of reason under threat. To quote his interpretation:
Indeed, to a very large extent the history of Islam during
the classical period, from the seventh to the fourteenth century,
can be seen as one gigantic struggle between the Mutazilites
and the Asharites. It was the clear-cut victory of the Asharites
that sealed the fate of secular humanism in Islam; and hurled
Muslim civilisation on its present trajectory.
Islam was also to have its Reformation and its Luther was Muhammed
ibn al -Wahhab (1703-1784). Here was a very Protestant attempt
to return to the roots of Islam, to 'the first ummah of the
prophet and his companions', as Armstrong puts it, together
with a rejection of mysticism, Sufi saints, Shiah Imams, a cleansing
of all accretions to the original revelation. Al-Wahhab converted
Muhammad ibn Saud, ruler of a central Arabian principality.
It was however a religion of social compassion. They fought
a briefly successful jihad against the Ottomans. Wahhabism became
ever more influential - it played a part in the 1857 rebellion
in India - and one might ask if it is here that the iron entered
the soul. Sardar is far more worried by this expression of Puritanism.
Maybe it was 'a message of humility, unity, morality and ethics
motivated by equality and justice' but by radically denying
the complexity and diversity of Islamic history over time and
vast areas of the world, and rejecting diverse, pluralistic
interpretations of Islam, Wahhabism has stripped Islam of its
ethical and moral content and reduced it to an arid list of
do's and don'ts.
It is seen as foreshadowing totalitarianism. But the malaise
only really sets in with the assault on Muslim states from Napoleon's
conquest of Egypt onwards, together with the long decline of
the Ottoman empire. Under the impact of colonialism and an orientalism
which is seen as disparaging Islamic values-deemed 'a fatalistic
culture that was chronically opposed to progress' - and the
later challenge from a western materialist and secular culture
through globalisation 'people felt disoriented and lost'. 1920
was seen as the year of disaster, when Britain and France took
over the Middle East.
Fundamentalism is in large part a reaction to this humiliation
and a retreat into the past, both to rediscover a former greatness
and in search of strength. One major strategy was to bolster
the sharia - the word in fact translates as 'the parh or road
leading to water' - breeding, as one of Sardar's conversationalists
puts it, 'a totalistic notion of Islam'. In many was all that
was going on here was an appropriation of the shariat by the
mullahs, a means of shoring up their own elite status through
a monopolistic claim to the truth. Sardar has a frightening
account of a visit to a maddrasah near Peshawer with its exclusivist
Sunni outlook, in his view a veritable `hatchery of hate' towards
all other branches of Islam and other religions.
Another conversationalist explained fundamentalism in terms
of Islam for the first time closely linking itself to the nation
state: 'cultural and social spaces are totally homogenized,
everything is bull-dozed into a monotonous uniformity and that's
why the end product so often mirrors fascism ... that's why
dictators and tyrants all over the Muslim world love the Shariah
so much'. From the Iranian revolution onwards, with western
reaction to Khomeini's fatwa against The Satanic Verses, the
Gulf War of 1991 the Muslim world began to experience 'an isolated,
terrified siege mentality'. 'Shell-shocked, they were making
a journey back to Islam, seeking a refuge of sanity in their
original identity'. But Armstrong only sees here, as she puts
it, 'a dangerous brew'. Political activism she interprets as
'in retreat from God'. Here was 'a belligerent righteousness':
'the idols of fundamentalism are not good substitutes for God'.
Islam and Terror
The reason for privileging Muslim terrorist groups over others
is that they peculiarly throw up the connection between religion
and politics, a connection with which Gandhi was greatly concerned.
Obviously almost any liberation struggle has attracted a terrorist
element. There may be cause also to draw comparisons between
terror in developing areas with those in developed. Or is it
the case as some would argue that terror is peculiarly a product
of modernity?
Whilst the connection between fundamentalism and the original
spirit of Islam has been shown to be dubious, the connection
between fundamentalism and terror is less difficult to demonstrate.
There is probably little mileage in trying to show some historic
link between the movement known as the Assassins, an 11th to13th
century sect, holed up in the Alamut valley north of Teheran,
an Ismaili sect committed to the violent overthow of a Sunni
Saljuk Persian dynasty. I suspect the Assassins have been glamorised
out of all recognition in much the same way as the thuggees.
But it does point to a suicidal tendency amongst the Shias,
one of the hallmarks of contemporary Muslim terrorism. Looking
at TV cover of September 11 Sardar reflected: 'the terrorist
in general and the suicide bomber in particular are a special
breed. They stand outside normality, beyond reason. They justify
their rage and actions with perverse self-righteousness and
twisted religious notions - utterances and pieties as impenetrable
to me as they are to many Muslims'. But he does attribute some
of the blame for their existence 'to the Shariah-obsessed champions
of the Islamic movement and the authoritarian thought of the
mystic gurus who so dominate the Muslim world'. 'Muslim civilisation',
he concludes of September 11, 'was being offered suicide, both
as method and metaphor'.
Other interpreters, however, insist on an entirely modern provenance
for Muslim terror. 'No cliché', asserts John Gray, 'is
more stupefying than that which describes Al Qaeda as a throwback
to medieval times'. His is a provocative interpretation which
sees the roots of modern terror in the Enlightenment, with its
messianic belief that science can transform humanity, a project
taken up by Positivism, Marxism, Communism and Nazism, and so
on into both radical Islam as well as the outlook of the neo-cons.
If the Counter-Enlightenment is to be embraced within modernity,
then the concept can seem slippery, for of its leading protagonists,
the Vicomte de Bonald was surely narrowly traditionalist, though
there is a Sadean and hence modern feel to De Maistre, his seeing
the hangman as the necessary symbol for today's authoritarian
societies, and if Felicite de Lammennais looked back to an ultramontane
catholicism he likewise had a modern flavour in his defence
of democracy. John Gray sees in the rejection of reason and
an emphasis on the will - Nietzche a critical influence here
-the essential character of these modern chiliastic movements.
'The gas chambers and the gulags', he insists, 'are modern'.
Muslim terrorism can be dated from the founding of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al Banna, an elementary
school teacher, with its emphasis on military training and his
belief that the Koran and military jihad were one and the same
(curiously close in time to the founding in 1925 of the very
similar RSS in India). The luminary of the movement proved to
be an educational administrator and literary critic, Sayyid
Qutb, born 1906. It was a two year stay in America in the 1940's
that convinced him. American liberalism had engendered a selfish
individualism which was rotting the moral foundations of society
and that at all cost the Muslim world must escape its pernicious
influence. No doubt a prudish attitude to sex, for it was attending
a church-sponsored dance in Colorado with smooching couples
that did much to induce this hostility. In his best known work
Social Justice in Islam he promoted jihad as the only way of
overcoming the privileged groups that stood in the way of economic
justice. It can be seen as all of a piece with the movements
of Che Guevara and the Red Brigades and Bader-Meinhof. In December
1948 the Brotherhood assassinated the prime-minster of Egypt.
Hassan al Banna was killed February 1949. Sayyid Qutb had hopes
of Nasser taking up his cause, only to find Nasser, a secularist
and pragmatist, flirting with the Americans. So the Brotherhood
attempted to murder Nasser 26 October 1954. It was as a result
of the appalling torture he received in prison that Qutb in
his next influential work Milestones came up with a damning
account of Muslim society, its being infected by jahiliyya (absolute
ignorance), and his declaring all-out war. He even had plans
to flood the Nile. Now emerged the idea of a revolutionary jihadist
vanguard. He was once again arrested for conspiracy and hung
29 August 1966.
But a new generation took up his ideas. A Cairo paediatrician,
from a rich aristocratic Egyptian-Saud family, Ayman Zawhiri,
had been converted and was in time to plan the assassination
of President Sadat, trial judge of Qutb in 1966, whose American
inspired readiness to enter into negotiation in 1979 with Israel
was seen as a total betrayal. But the masses did not rise up
as the Brotherhood had anticipated and Zawahiri now saw Muslim
society as itself so corrupted that it also became a legitmate
target for murderous terrorism. Only this way would they be
shocked into a recognition of the true path: you had to kill
your way to perfection. Meanwhile Ayotallah Khomeini had put
Qutb's ideas into practice in Iran.
All of this directly links to Al Qaeda. (The Base) Osama bin
Laden was the 17th of 52 children of a rich Saudi dynastic family
who had made their wealth as property developers in the hideously
reconstructed holy cities of Mecca and Medina. At the University
of Jeddah he had been taught by Mohammed Qutb, Sayyid's brother.
It was an experience of the fleshpots of Lebanon that led to
a kind of conversion to a Puritanical fundamentalism. He came
under the influence of Dr Abdullah Azzam, a Jordanian Palestinian,
a leading proponent of jihadism who drew up Al Qaeda's founding
charter 1987-8, though he may have played a part in his murder
in 1989. One could entertain psychological explanations for
Bin Laden's fanaticism, in terms of outrage at the humiliation
of his Syrian mother who was shabbily divorced by his father.
Sardar met Bin Laden in Afghanistan -'he carried himself with
a certain majesty and decorum' - and was not surprised by his
being behind September 11 -'it was the glint in his eyes, all
those years ago, when I first caught sight of him in that fateful
meeting of Mujahidin groups in Peshawar'. Zawhiri became his
number 2.
Gray sees Al Qaeda as international, different from such regional
terrorist groups as the PLO and Hamas, and only made possible
by globalisation. It functions in much the same way as an international
drug cartel. It can only flourish however through the weakness
of states. He summarises it as 'a peculiar hybrid of theocracy
and anarchy ... a by-product of western radical thought. Each
of the protagonists in the current conflict is driven by beliefs
that are opaque to it'. Such terror movements will not go away,
he warns, and we will have to come to some kind of long-term
accommodation with such a threat as part of our imperfect society.
Is there a Gandhian response to Muslim terrorism?
There were obvious limits in any Gandhian response to extreme
state terror. All he could suggest to European Jews confronted
by Nazi genocide was recourse to non-violent passive resistance.
Are their equally apparent limitations in satyagraha were it
to address contemporary terrorism?
Part of any answer lies in how Gandhi dealt with terror during
his own lifetime. Gandhi sought to wean Indian nationalists,
above all its youth wing, from the appeal of terrorism. Persuading
Jawarharal Nehru not to go along the same route as Subhas Bose
was a huge symbolic triumph. Reining in this temptation to resort
to violence required a constant effort. And if in 1942 he may
have made a partial surrender to violence it was to be one he
deeply regretted as his February 1943 fast unto death against
the raj's claim that he had condoned violence makes clear.
There is no evidence that Gandhi had any truck with the RSS
and the rise of a new threat of violence from Hindu fundamentalism.
Members of the Hindu Mahasabha were excluded from Congress.
And Gandhi absolutely set his heart against the communal violence
of terrorist groups from both communities that so stained independence.
He was to undertake another fast unto death in Calcutta in August
1947.
So one senses Gandhi's was a position of no compromise. He would
not even sit down with the terrorists.
In more speculative mode, Gandhi would surely have been sympathetic
with that element in Muslim fundamentalism that reflected a
painful sense of wounded pride and a need to recover the original
moral vision of Islam. It makes sense to see Gandhi as himself
in a line of great Hindu religious reformers from Vivekanada
to Aurobindo. He met something akin to this Muslim fundamentalism
in the Khilafat movement. But equally he would have found distasteful
all those trappings of modernity that has led fundamentalism
towards chiliastic violence.
The refusal, however, of present-day governments to negotiate
with terrorists has the feel of hypocricy. Such governments
have, whenever it suited their purposes, done so in the past,
with the IRA, Mau Mau, EOKA and other terrorist organisations.
If approached in a spirit of compromise Gandhi was always ready
to lift civil disobedience and enter into negotiations and this
would still seem in today's circumstances an appropriate readiness.
But up against the likes of the Jordanian terrorist, Abu Musah
al-Zarqawi and his Tawhid wal Jihad group, the murderers of
Ken Bigley, Gandhism seems stymied and once again the limits
of satyagraha become apparent. May be Gandhi's ultimate weapon
of the fast unto death is the only recourse he could have adopted.
Just possibly the suicide bomber would recognise here an equal
and matching intent.
But Gandhism is above all a message of hope. We would be wrong
to exaggerate the threat of Islamic terrorism. We are indeed
now being persuaded that this may be a deliberate political
ploy by certain political leaders. There are transparently,
for a start, other ways in which Muslim societies can experience
revival. Admittedly secularism in the shape of Baathism in Iraq
and Syria turned aggressively dictatorial. One of the more promising
experiments in multiculturalism inspired by Ibrahim Anwar in
Malaysia was cruelly stifled by his imprisonment on trumped
up charges. The autobiography of Ziauddin Sardar is proof however
that there are brave ambitions of Muslim intellectuals to fashion
pluralist, tolerant and Islamic societies.
Terrorism is anyway driving itself up a blind alley. Osama bin
Laden is holed up somewhere in Waziristan. Terrorism has not
on the whole won over Muslim public opinion though in the extreme
conditions of Gaza and the West Bank it is winning the moral
high ground. Gandhi answered the terrorism of the swadeshi period
by democratising the Congress movement. Democracy still holds
out the best prospect of countering the appeal of self-appointed
revolutionary vanguard elites.
- The Gandhi Foundation sponsors an annual lecture each October
2. This year the lecture was jointly given by Helen Steven
and Ellen Moxley, both active CND workers in Scotland. They
are best known for their campaign against the nuclear submarine
base at Fasblane. The title of their lecture was "Our
world at the Crossroads:Nonviolence or Nonexistence".
- For a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding
Ken Bigley's murder see Tom Walker and Stephen Grey, Countdown
to Murder, The Sunday Times 10 October 2004
- John Pilger News Statesman 20 September 2004 pp 23-24
- This is Lesley Blanch's account in her Journey into the
Mind's Eye Ist published 1968 London: 2001 pp 297-99
- I have compiled the brief account of Indian terror from
Bipan Chandra et al India's Struggle for Independence New
Delhi: 1999, Gordon Johnson Provincial Politics and Iindian
Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian National Congress 1880-1915
Cambridge:1973, Peter Heehs The Bomb in Bengal; The Rise of
Revolutionary Terror in India 1900-1910 Pondicherry: 1993
(and still the best book on the subject) Robert Payne The
L ife and Death of Mahatma Gandhi New York: 1969
- Quoted Heehs p 46
- Heehs p 86
- Heehs p 216
- Payne p 202
- Ed Anthony Parel Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and Other Writings
Cambridge:1997 p xxvi
- Payne p 204
- Payne p 208
- Heehs p 255
- Parel p xxvii
- Bipan Chandra p 154
- There is an interesting discussion of the Irish influence
in Purnima Bose's account of the Chittagong Armoury raid in
Organizing Empire:Individualism, Collective Agency and Empire
Durban and London: 2003
- Samuel P Huntindon The Clash of Civilisations and the Making
of the New World Order London: 1997
- Editorial The Observer 10 October 2004
- Jason Burke We must ask why Ibid
- Although I had to read quite extensively on Islam for my
study of the clash of Protestant Mission and Indian religions
for my book Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Conflict
and Conversion in Late Colonial India OUP: New Delhi 1997
here I have relied on three recent texts, Karen Armstrong
A History of God (1st published 1993) Viking, London: 1999,
Ziauddin Sardar Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of
a Sceptical Muslim London; 2004 and John Gray Al Qaeda and
What it Means to be Modern London: 2003
- Armstrong p 187
- Sardar pp 49,254
- Armstrong p 391
- Sardar, pp 144,149
- Armstrong p 414
- Sardar p 243
- Sardar p 224
- Sardar p 247
- Sardar pp 282, 295
- Armstrong p 422
- Armstrong p 457
- Sardar p 334
- Sardar p332
- Gray pp 1-2
- There was much useful information on Sayyid Qutb and his
successors in Adam Curtis's TV programme, The Fear of Nightmares
BBC 2, 20 October 2004
- Sardar pp 221, 334
- Gray p 117
- I am in part indebted here to ideas in a piece by William
Pfaff, This Futile Fundamentalism, The Observer 17 October
2004
Article 2: The Rise
of the Suicide Bomber by Omar
Hayat
To understand the recent suicide attacks that have occurred
in London,
Madrid, New York and Bali we need to understand how the Muslim
suicide
attacks originated and objectively determine if religion played
a
significant contributory factor. This understanding may be able
to prevent
further attacks.
The Palestinian use of suicide terrorism is a good starting
point in
understanding this phenomenon.
After the initial futile traditional war of 1948-49 the Palestinians
in
the 50s and early 60s tried unsuccessfully to approach world
institutions to
overcome the initial Israeli land capture. The pre-emptive strike
by Israel
in 1956 and 1967 and the final Arab attack of 1973-74 resulted
in further
capture of Palestinian lands by Israel and increasing marginalisation
of
Palestinian rights. These events led directly on to the early
Palestinian
terrorists of the 70s (Munich 1972, hijacking of Pan Am flight
110, etc.).
These were the traditional nationalistic terrorists with a secular
outlook.
The first Palestinian suicide attack in Israel did not occur
for a
further twenty years till April 1994 (8 people killed) in the
town of Afula.
This attack, according to Hamas, was a direct response to the
killings with
a Galil assault rifle of Muslim worshippers at the Machpelah
Cave by Dr.
Baruch Goldstein in February 1994 (29 dead and wounding 125).
It is a point
worthy of note that the Palestinians did not engage in suicide
attacks till
1994 despite of the fact that their struggle had continued since
the early
1950s.
However, the first suicide attack in the Middle East pre-dated
the
Palestinian suicide attack by some ten years. Following Israel's
invasion of
Lebanon (June 1982, first invasion in March 1978) and the international
community's connivance, or at best ambivalence, to that invasion,
Arabs of
that region experienced further humiliation and desperation
culminating in
the massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in September
1982
(killing of up to 3,000 men women and children). This act and
other acts of
aggression, this time on the part of the US navy led directly
to the first
suicide attacks in October 1983 against the USA and French marine
compounds
(242 US and 54 French marines killed, scores injured).
The suicide attack was carried out by Shia Muslims as opposed
to Sunni
Muslims. This attack followed in the wake of a conflict that
had been
continuing since the early 1970s and political/economic tensions
that had
existed in Lebanese society since the early 1960s.
During roughly the time that the Shia Muslims had started to
engage in
suicide attacks in Lebanon, in a conflict that was basically
nationalistic,
Afghanistan was fermenting a Sunni Jihadist movement created
with the
financial, military and ideological support of the USA. The
USA was calling
for a "Muslim Holy war" against the Soviet Union invasion
of December 1979.
It is ironic that at the time the USA was actively helping to
create an
Islamic Jihadist movement in Afghanistan it was also opposing
another
Islamic revolution namely the Shia Islamic Revolution that occurred
in Iran
(November 1979).
One of the heads of the Afghani foreign Muhajadeen was, our
very own,
Osama bin Laden. However, there were no incidents of suicide
attacks
against the Soviets over and beyond the suicidal attacks that
soldiers
commit in gaining ground and by the way our perverse society
world-wide
decorates such acts of violent suicidal heroism with medals
of honour
posthumously given. In Afghanistan no suicide attacks were happening,
mainly
because the Muhajadeens were rightly thinking that they were
winning and
their struggle was being recognised. No suicide attacks were
happening
despite the fact that the resistance had an overtly Sunni Islamic
Jihadist
ideology and over 100,000 recruits from all over the Muslim
world had
entered to fight and do "God¹s work". Meanwhile,
as Iran and Lebanon gained
their political independence Shia suicide missions quickly went
out of
favour.
As the Soviet Union was forced out through this "Holy war"
against the
Soviet infidel, other events in the Sunni Muslim world were
now causing
tensions with the once favoured friend, the USA.
In India, the Kashmir armed insurgency gained ground in 1989.
The
majority of the population did not want independence or to secede
to
Pakistan but wanted better economic prosperity and greater political
autonomy. The ham-handed approach of the Indian Government coupled
with the
religious fighters that had entered from the Afghanistan conflict
succeeded
in making this conflict another one of "God's work".
The even greater
suppression of the average Kashmiri's basic rights by the Indian
soldiers
played into the hands of the religious extremists and alienated
large
sections of society. Twelve years into the conflict in May 2000,
Afaq Ahmad
Shah, a 12th class student blew himself up along with his Maruti
car
attacking the 15 Corps Headquarters in Badamibagh Cantonment
and became the
first suicide bomber in Kashmir.
In 1991, after the occupation of Kuwait by Iraq, the USA led
a coalition
of countries to evict Iraq out of Kuwait. However, amongst the
Muslim
populace (and many others) this was less a war of Liberation
and more a war
to gain control over the Middle East. The continued presence
of the US army
in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (recently removed to Qatar) only
strengthened
that feeling and gave support to the religious right claim that
the Muslim
"holy lands" were under occupation.
In 1991, Chechnya declared independence from Russia in the wave
of other
such declarations. However, this independence declaration was
not accepted
and through internal misrule Chechnya became a lawless territory.
In 1994,
President Boris Yeltsin ordered 40,000 troops to take back Chechnya
in what
he thought would be a quick, politically advantageous and popular
move. In
fact, it turned out to be a quagmire and another fertile ground
for
religious extremists who came over again from the Afghan conflict
to do
"God's work". Russia was again fighting the same enemy
but now in its own
back yard. The Russian military use of heavy weaponry and extreme
violence
against the already traumatised populace only created greater
resentment and
violence. In May 2003 two female suicide bombers attacked Chechen
Administrator Mufti Akhmed Kadyrov during a religious festival
in Iliskhan
Yurt and became the first Chechen suicide attackers. Kadyrov
escaped
injury, but 14 other persons were killed and 43 were wounded.
Chechen rebel
leader Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility. As in Palestine,
Lebanon and
Kashmir this conflict had been continuing for over ten years
before the
recourse to suicide attackers and still only military/political
targets were
chosen by the suicide bombers and again the ultimate goal was
secular.
In 1992 Algeria went to the polls and a religious party FIS
won over half
the seats in the first round of elections but not enough to
form a
government. The second round of elections was called off as
the Army took
over and banned FIS. Although FIS's democratic credentials were
dubious at
best they had nevertheless won in a democratic ballot. The response
of the
West, in effect, was to support the Army takeover. Again, although
many
Muslims did not support FIS the fact that the West did not strongly
protest
against a military junta taking control of a country and annulling
elections
proved in the minds of many Muslims that the West had a deep-seated
hypocrisy towards Muslim countries. The religious extremists
were then able
to claim that they tried the democratic route but this was denied.
In 1996 the Kosova war began after former Yugoslav republics
wanted
independence, starting with Croatia. However, the Serbs were
not willing to
loose "their country". In this conflict the Bosnians
who enjoyed a
multi-religious society became classed as the Muslim Bosnians
and were
prevented by the West from arming themselves to defend against
Serb
aggression. For their own part the Bosnian political leaders
had their own
ambitions of leading "their own country". The policy
of denying arms
eventually led to the shameful genocide of over 7,000 men and
boys, under
the noses of the Dutch UN soldiers, by General Ratko Mladic
and Dr. Radovan
Karadzic's forces (the two men later were to receive an award
on behalf of
the Serbian Orthodox Church for doing "God's work").
This genocidal event
was not only the most shameful in modern Dutch or UN history
but also served
the cause of the religious extremists who argued that "Muslims
must protect
and defend themselves" and only a Muslim Khilafat (state)
could do this. Of
course, they are incapable of acknowledging that the "West"
also came to the
aid of Bosnia they only see a homogenised Christian West
and a homogenised
Muslim world.
Political failures rather than religion
These events laid the seeds of hostility, humiliation, desperation
and a
kind of "occupation of the mind" even amongst people
not living in occupied
lands and the view that the West is complicit in subjugating
the Muslim
world and is highly hypocritical. Of course, the finer details
that every
society is heterogeneous by nature and that millions are fully
committed in
Western democracies to root out exploitation is often forgotten
in the heat
of a debate. However, the fact that all these conflicts have
a political
basis and that religious extremists are able to highjack these
for their own
causes reflects the failure of politics and conflict resolution
and not the
attraction and persuasive abilities of the religious right or
the cult of
the suicide attacker. We have seen that in each incidence the
suicide
attack is a weapon of last and not first resort despite the
alleged promise
of heaven and heavenly pleasures.
The recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through the use of highly
sophisticated, though largely indiscriminate, high altitude
weaponry
against, in one instance, a basically unarmed country and in
the case of the
other a primitive army has further fuelled resentment against
the USA and
its coalition allies. This despite the fact that the Taliban
government was
deeply unpopular with most Muslims worldwide as demonstrated
by the
proclamations of horror at the mindless destruction of the Bamyan
Buddha
statues. The Iraq war and the false reasons given to justify
it has
conclusively proven to many Muslims that the USA and its allies
cannot be
relied upon as being honest brokers and are only in Iraq for
its natural
resources. Again, the deposing of a hated ruler, Saddam Hussain,
did not
bring any plaudits from the Muslim world as the intentions of
the allies
were fundamentally questioned and the hypocrisy of supporting
Saddam in the
Iranian conflict and now deposing him was apparent. In both
these countries
where occupation exists and life is intolerable the political
and religious
extremists have found plenty of recruits who are willing to
become suicide
bombers (roughly 1 a day in 2004 in Iraq). Again, this reflects
the
desperation of the situation and the failure of the occupying
forces rather
than some fatal attraction on the part of the populace to the
cult of
suicide bombers. Further, in both these countries conflict has
been
occurring for more than twenty years and only now have they
both resorted to
suicide attacks. A more subtle point coming out from the use
of force by
great powers is the rationalisation on the part of the disadvantaged
that
only through violence can political aims be achieved.
The continuing injustice in Palestine and the double standards
in
pursuing Osama bin Laden aggressively but not General Ratko
Mladic and Dr.
Radovan Karadzic (who after all have killed far more innocent
people) is
seen as hypocrisy and further assisting the religious extremist¹s
mono-spectacled view of the world.
Surely, as we have seen an end to Shia suicide attacks in Lebanon
as it
started to determine it¹s own political future through
a multi-party
democracy and we even see not just the theocratic state of Iran
not
supporting suicide missions but also the general population
not being drawn
towards such extremes as they themselves now control their own
political
future, we need to politically address the fundamental reasons
behind the
Sunni suicide attacker.
The cause of recent Sunni Muslim suicide attacks are purely
political and
result from a feeling of desperation, alienation, "occupation
of the mind",
poor understanding of political realities, especially on the
part of the
actual suicide attacker, and not from theology. The religious
element in
the current wave of Muslim suicide bombers is used as a justification
but if
there was not a religious justification then it would be justification
in
another guise and the attacks would still continue. We only
need to see the
Tamil Tigers' suicide attacks to realise that there is no religious
foundation to suicide attacks. In fact the numbers killed by
Tiger suicide
attacks suggest that they are the most adept at this form of
terrorism with
the first attack occurring on July 5, 1987, with the objective
of preventing
Sri Lankan troops from advancing to Jaffna town, the political
and cultural
capital of Tamils. Again this attack was out of desperation
(the attack
killed 40 government troops). The fact that this attack occurred
in 1987
some seven years before Sunni Muslim suicide attacks and only
four years
into the Tamil conflict again highlights the point that resorting
to suicide
attacks is fundamentally a political and not a religious action.
Further,
in Tiger folklore, human bomb volunteers (as they are called)
are held in
high esteem. He or she is extended the 'privilege' of having
the 'last
supper' with LTTE chief Prabhakaran before setting out on the
mission. This
is very reminiscent of the Palestinian bombers' cult and is
worthy of note
that each group hold in high respect the suicide bomber and
their
"sacrifice".
Of course, those religious clerics who justify and encourage
suicide
attacks do play a role in the minds of the actual attackers.
Here we do
need to make a distinction between suicide attacks that occur
in a conflict
zone, be it Palestine or Chechnya, and those that occur outside
a conflict
zone such as New York, Madrid, Bali or London. This is not to
say that the
pain and suffering caused by such acts is less in a conflict
zone but that
the mentality that is at play is certainly different since the
problems
facing the attackers' community is more immediate.
An eye for an eye
Taking the case for attacks only in non-conflict zones we see
that the
latest trend in the suicide attacks is to choose "soft"
targets, i.e.
hotels, public transport systems and buildings mainly
because the "hard"
targets are just too difficult to reach, e.g. the protection
offered to say
President Bush or Prime Minister Blair or other senior political
figures and
institutions. The extremist religious clerics have therefore
reinvented the
teachings of the Koran by taking out of context a few lines
thereby
perverting it¹s meaning to justify attacks on purely civilian
targets, e.g.
the Bali bombings. Their political rational is that all targets
are
justified as all targets are political and economic (even young
people
having a drink at a tourist location) and that "we will
hit you if you hit
us" "an eye for an eye" making the whole
world blind, paraphrasing the
words of that great soul Mahatma Gandhi. Their view of "us"
and "them"
includes anyone who fully agrees with them or slightly disagrees
with them
respectively, irrespective of religious affiliation ("You
are either with us
or against us"). Their ideology is basically fascist in
nature and they
offer a simple, often violent, solution to the prevailing injustices
and are
able to "play" with the minds of young people whose
minds are already under
a perceived "occupation" very similar to other
fascists around the world,
be they religious or secular.
These extremist clerics need to be challenged directly and forcefully
by
right thinking people worldwide including Muslims. Muslims living
in
pluralistic countries (and these are not just in the West) in
particular
need to give a lead in redefining what it is to be a Muslim
in a multifaith
society (after all the first Islamic state of Medina was a multicultural,
multiethnic and multifaith society). One method may be to insist
that
Mosques and all religious institutions have democratic procedures
in place
before local authorities give planning permissions for mosques,
churches,
synagogues, etc. to be built or even further that their licence
may be
revoked if democratic procedures are not implemented. Also,
such religious
institutions should not receive public funds unless such democratic
procedures are in place. This will have the impact on at least
reducing the
ability of extremists to take over religious institutions, but
this will
need to be done to all religious institutions.
However, just redefining Islam will not be enough for it needs
to be
coupled with an understanding of politics and personal identity,
and
governments can play a very crucial role in this process by
creating a
greater dialogue between institutions to enable people to understand
the
"other point of view" and see the complexity of each
society. Otherwise, we
will remain in a religious cycle with no reference to the prevailing
conditions of the actual world. It is only through this process
of education
that those who feel alienated against the West for injustices
in the
"Muslim" world will recognise that there is no homogeneous
West or a
homogeneous Muslim world and that within the "Muslim"
world injustices are
being perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims and non-Muslims
alike. They
will recognise that the root causes of conflict are not religious
by nature
or nationalistic but economic and all our hands are dirty if
not bloodied
and no simple violent solution exists. Banning of extremist
clerics is a
short term solution (fraught with issues of freedom of speech
and is also
full of hypocrisy) but will not undermine extremist ideology
as this can be
transmitted through other networks and in cyberspace. Their
ideology needs
to be confronted by positive constructive counter-arguments
for if we cannot
win the debate against such fundamentally flawed views then
our society
itself must be fundamentally flawed.
However, to lay the emphasis of the present crisis firmly at
the
extremist clerics' door would both be an insult to the innocent
victims of
their attacks and remove reason from the debate on how to counter
such
behaviour. After all, most religious texts have references to
the use of
violence (Old Testament, Exodus 22:20, Bible, Matthew 10:34,
Quran, 4:89)
and all societies use such references when justifying their
political deeds.
One only needs to look at Jews being blessed for occupying Palestinian
lands, Christian soldiers being blessed for going to war, Muslims
being
blessed for driving out non-Muslims, to appreciate how religious
texts are
so widely misused.
If we are ever to resolve this conflict then we need to appreciate
that
religion is not underpinning these conflicts and be vigilant
against falling
into the trap set by the extremists that all conflicts are fundamentally
religious and can only be resolved through religion. It seems
that the
world is ever moving closer to dividing itself along religious
lines, eg
Iraq divided along Shia and Sunni lines, Lebanon along Sunni,
Shia and
Christian lines, the USA is being increasingly controlled by
evangelical
parties, Israel is dominated by religious political parties,
as is Pakistan,
and secular India has a Hindu fundamentalist party as the main
opposition.
We need to address the fundamental politics behind the attacks
so that
political reasons underpinning exploitation, greed and power
are exposed and
at least moderated if not removed altogether. We further need
to appreciate
the inherent contradictions within the global economy and the
increasing
hypocrisy required to justify its present model and the increasing
disparity
of power between the State and the individual. Only then can
the world "dry
up the swamps of discontent" that lead to alienation and
rid itself of the
cycle of violence and counter-violence in which the most innocent
are
killed.
If we fail in addressing these fundamental issues then young
minds that
see the hypocrisy but do not understand the root causes or solutions
will be
further drawn towards desperate measures which will become more
and more
desperate and the violence increasingly random.
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