:: Balbir Punj

Muslim orthodoxy needs reform

By Balbir K. Punj

As Pakistan begins to warm up in the glow of the rebirth of democracy through a popular movement, there appears to be signs of some hopeful changes in the Muslim world as such. The popularly elected government in Islamabad could make radical changes for the better because it is a coalition of the two major political parties, PPP and PML-N, who enjoy an overwhelming majority in the National Assembly. The new Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, a longtime Bhutto loyalist, has within minutes of his swearing-in freed sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and other deposed judges from house arrest.

International attention in Pakistan would now be on how the new government is going to tackle religious extremism and the terrorist breeding grounds. Both political parties are sworn to restrict the President’s powers to dismiss the elected government and the Prime Minister has ordered a reshuffle in the Army. The people’s representatives know that it was the overarching presence of the Army in Pakistan’s politics that repeatedly led to instability of earlier civilian governments. Unless they tackle the economic clout of the armed forces in the business of running Pakistan, the Army’s political clout cannot be curbed. Reports emanating from the United States have revealed how deep the roots of the Army officers are in a whole range of businesses in Pakistan. Even recently, US congressional reports reveal how the Pakistani Army misused anti-terrorism campaign funds from the Americans for the enrichment of its own officers and finance the arms that the military acquired.

Also, the nexus between the Army and the religious extremism that it used against the political class and the terrorist movements that the Army had sponsored earlier and tutored, still remains as another power arm of the military class against the politicians. If the political class has to make the strategic move to end both the military’s dominance and savagery of extremism, the government has to move now, when its support base among the people of Pakistan is at its peak.

In the courage the people of Pakistan showed in going to the polling booths despite the threats of the terrorists and extremists against the elections, one hopes that the first nail has been driven into the coffin of terrorism. The whole spectrum of extremist and jihadi parties has been defeated, even in the terror-dominated Frontier province. The terrorist strikes against election rallies, including the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, may have intensified the popular revulsion against jihadi-ism.

The fratricidal war within Islam between Sunni and Shia groups fuelled by terrorist weapons of suicide bombers might have added to this revulsion. On the other hand, these feelings might be just a passing phase and terror might once again attract young Pakistanis. But analysts going through the recent voice tapes of Al Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Yousuf Al-Zawahari asking Muslim youth to join the business of terrorism feel that a turning point in the support base of Al Qaeda has arrived, with fewer and fewer young Muslims responding to the call for jihad. The Al Qaeda leaders were specifically asking for recruits for the Iraq terror strikes — significantly, the intensity of these strikes have been decreasing in the last several weeks.

As Left leaders take up the extremist Muslims’ call for an anti-Israeli foreign policy by the UPA government, we find one courageous voice of sanity within the community. One leading imam has set foot in Israel responding to the invitation of Jewish leaders and met Israeli leaders, including that country’s President. He is Maulana Jameel Illyasi, who is the cleric in charge of an important mosque on New Delhi’s Kasturba Gandhi Marg. His position as chief of the apex body of imams in India, AIAI, gives this bold act significance much beyond the person.

Illyasi made the response to the Israeli and Jewish invitation despite the strong opposition of other Muslim leaders to this step. "The Muslim world does not want to recognise the Jewish state. What is the use of living in denial?" Illyasi told the Hindustan Times. Unfortunately, many of his co-religionists and their political leaders have been living in denial far too long. In Palestine itself the Fatah leader, the late Yasser Arafat, made up with the Jewish state long ago.

Egypt was once the leader of the Arab states’ opposition to Israel’s very existence; but the statesman in then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat saw the advantages of living in peace with Israel — the second-largest technology spewing country in the world for its tiny size — and embraced his Israeli counterpart. His successors have kept up this peace whistle against the devastating dirge of Islamic terrorism in his own country. But to some Indian Muslims and the Left and other pseudo-secularists who support Islamic orthodoxy, Israel is still enemy number one. The incongruity of such a stand when Palestinians will soon realise a separate state does not seem to bother these Rip Van Winkles.

One more chink in the armour of Muslim orthodoxy, which has been resisting all reforms, was found the other day when the All India Muslim Women’s Personal Law Board drew up a model contract for marriage to oppose divorce through the telephone or electronic media and also gave Muslim women the right of oral talaq on the same lines of the right enjoyed by Muslim men. Muslim orthodoxy has come out hammer and tongs against this model contract, but a noted Muslim intellectual Tahir Mahmood, historian and former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, has taken the pain to endorse this and attack the purveyors of orthodoxy.

The pace of reforms in Muslim society that would release them from the ghetto mentality and isolationist policies would have picked up in the 1980s if only Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister allowed the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Shah Bano case to prevail against the opposition from this orthodoxy. Instead of supporting his Cabinet colleague Arif Mohammad Khan in this battle with orthodoxy, Rajiv Gandhi threw his entire weight behind the orthodox Muslims. Since then, the spark of reform had died down, making the terror merchants rule the roost. The hope that no Indian Muslim would respond to the (false) charms of jihadism has also died out.

The Deoband school has recently passed a resolution claiming that terrorism with its killing of the innocents has no justification in Islam’s holy book; but the Deoband resolution on close scrutiny does not ask Indian Muslims to cooperate with security agencies to track down the terror mongers from outside the country who shelter in Muslim areas, even while the Islamic leaders are accusing the government of targeting innocent Muslims. When young activists of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India are found to be acting as the local support base of outside terrorists, a mere condemnation of terrorism as un-Islamic would hardly suffice to take the eyes of suspicion away from the whole community. The people of Pakistan are now seen to have effectively isolated the merchants of extremism and terrorism, but an attempt at a similar isolation in India is yet to surface.