Is
it a War on Islam?
The
News, Islamabad
16 January 2003
Islamabad, Pakistan
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Street opinion in Pakistan, and probably most Muslim countries, holds
that Islam is the sole target of America's new wars. Even moderate
Muslims are worried. The profiling of Muslims by the INS, the placing
of Muslim states on the US register of rogues, and the blanket approval
given to Israeli bulldozers as they level Palestinian neighborhoods
appear dangerous indicators of a religious war. But Muslims undeservedly
award themselves special status and imagine what is not true. America's
goal goes much beyond subjugating inconsequential Muslim states. Instead
it seeks to remake the world according to its needs, preference, and
convenience. The war on Iraq is but the first step.
Aggressive militarism has been openly endorsed by America's corporate
and political establishment. Mainstream commentators in the US press
now argue that, given its awesome military might, American ambition
has been insufficient. Max Boot, editor of the Wall Street Journal,
writes that "Afghanistan and other troubled lands today cry out
for the sort of enlightened foreign administration once provided by
self-confident Englishmen in jodhpurs and pith helmets". The
Washington Post calls for an "imperialist revival" and the
need for Americans to "impose their own institutions on disorderly
ones". The Atlantic Monthly remarks that American policy makers
should learn from the Greek, Roman, and British empires for tips on
how to run American foreign policy.
Although many Americans still cling to the belief that their country's
new unilateralism is no more than "injured innocence", and
a natural response of any victim of terror, the Establishment does
not suffer from such naivety. Empire has been part of the American
way of life for a long time. The difference after 911 - and it is
a significant one - is that America no longer sees need to battle
for the hearts and minds of those it would dominate; there is no other
superpower to whom the weak can turn. In today's Washington, a US-based
diplomat recently confided to me, the United Nations has become a
dirty word. International law is on the way to irrelevancy, except
when it can be used to further US goals.
Still, none of this amounts to a war on Islam. Some will disagree.
The fanatical hordes spilling out of Pakistan's madrassas imagine
seeing Richard the Lion Hearted bearing down upon them. Sword in hand
they pray to Allah to grant war and send the modern Saladin, one who
can miraculously dodge cruise missiles and hurl them back to their
launchers. On the other side, Christian-Jewish extremists, extending
from the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons to the leaders of Israel's
Likud, yearn for yet another crusade. They too are convinced that
inter-civilizational religious war is not only inevitable but also
desirable. Belief in final victory is, of course, never doubted by
the faithful.
But the counter-evidence to a civilizational war is much stronger.
Between 1945 and 2000 the US has fought 28 major, and countless minor,
wars. Korea, Guatemala, Congo, Laos, Peru, Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador,
Nicaragua, Yugoslavia, and Iraq are only some of the countries which
the US has bombed or invaded. The Vietnam War alone claimed a million
lives. By comparison America's wars on Muslim states have been far
less bloody. Iraqi deaths during the Gulf War, and the recent victims
of bombing in Afghanistan, amount to fewer than 70 thousand. Even
if one throws in casualties from the Israeli-Arab wars of 1967 and
1971 and attributes them to the US, Muslim deaths are only a few percent
of the Vietnam War total.
Material self-interest, and not antipathy to Islam, has been the
driving force behind US foreign policy. A list of America's Muslim
foes and friends makes this crystal clear. America's foes during the
1950's and 1960's were secular nationalist leaders. Mohammed Mossadeq
of Iran, who opposed Standard Oil's grab at Iran's oil resources,
was removed by a CIA coup. Ahmed Sukarno of Indonesia, accused of
being a communist, was removed by US intervention and a resulting
bloodbath that consumed about eight hundred thousand lives. Gamal
Abdul Nasser of Egypt, who had Islamic fundamentalists like Saiyyid
Qutb publicly executed, fell foul of the US and Britain after the
Suez Crisis. On the other hand, until very recently, America's friends
were the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, all of whom
practiced highly conservative forms of Islam but were the darlings
of Western oil companies.
Nevertheless, Washington has occasionally misunderstood American
self-interests - sometimes fatally so. "Mission myopia",
as the CIA now wanly admits, led to the network of global jihad in
the early 1980's. With William Casey as CIA director, the largest
covert operation in history was launched after Reagan signed the "National
Security Decision Directive 166", calling for American efforts
to drive Soviet forces from Afghanistan "by all means available".
US counter-insurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistani ISI
in bringing men and material from around the Arab world and beyond.
All this is well known. Less known is the ideological help provided
by US institutions, including universities.
Readers browsing through book bazaars in Rawalpindi and Peshawar
can, even today, find textbooks written as part of the series underwritten
by a USAID $50 million grant to the University of Nebraska in the
1980's. These textbooks sought to counterbalance Marxism through creating
enthusiasm in Islamic militancy. They exhorted Afghan children to
"pluck out the eyes of the Soviet enemy and cut off his legs".
Years after the books were first printed they were approved by the
Taliban for use in madrassas - a stamp of their ideological correctness.
The cost of America's mission myopia has been a staggering one. The
network of Islamic militant organizations created primarily out of
the need to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan did not disappear after
the immediate goal was achieved but, instead, like any good military-industrial
complex, grew from strength to strength. Nevertheless, until 11 September,
US policy makers were unrepentant, even proud of their winning strategy.
It took a cataclysm to bring them down to earth.
But militant organizations have done far greater harm to Muslims,
whose causes they claim to promote, than to those who they battle
against. Killing tourists and bombing churches is the work of moral
cretins and is not just cowardly and inhumane, but also a strategic
disaster. Indeed, fanatical acts can sting the American colossus but
never seriously hurt it. Though perfectly planned and executed, the
911 operation was a strategic blunder of colossal proportions. It
vastly strengthened American militarism, gave Ariel Sharon the license
to ethnically cleanse Palestine, and allowed state-sponsored pogroms
of Muslims in Gujarat to get by with only a squeak of international
condemnation.
The absence of a modern political culture and the weakness of Muslim
civil society have long rendered Muslim states inconsequential players
on the world stage. An encircled, enfeebled dictator is scarcely a
threat to his neighbors as he struggles to save his skin. Tragically,
Muslim leaders, out of fear and greed, publicly wring their hands
but collude with the US and offer their territory for bases as it
now bears down on Iraq. Significantly, no Muslim country has proposed
an oil embargo or a serious boycott of American companies.
What, then, should be the strategy for all those who believe in a
just world and are appalled by America's war on the weak? Vietnam,
to my mind, offers the only viable model of resistance. A stern regard
for morality, said their strategists, is the best defense of the weak.
Even though B-52s were carpet-bombing his country, Ho Chi Minh did
not call for hijacking airliners or blowing up buses. On the contrary
the Vietnamese reached out to the American people, making a clear
distinction between them and their government. By inviting media celebrities
like Jane Fonda and Joan Baez, Vietnam generated enormous goodwill.
On the other hand, can you imagine the consequences of Vietnam's leadership
being with Osama bin Laden rather than Ho Chi Minh? That country would
surely have been a radioactive wasteland, rather than the unique victor
against imperialism.
Only a global peace movement that explicitly condemns terrorism against
non-combatants can slow, and perhaps halt, George Bush's madly speeding
chariot of war. Massive anti-war demonstrations in Washington, New
York, London, Florence, and other western cities have brought out
hundreds of thousands at a time. A sense of commitment to human principles
and peace - not fear or fanaticism - impelled these demonstrators.
But why are the streets of Islamabad, Cairo, Riyadh, Damascus, and
Jakarta empty? Why do only fanatics demonstrate in our cities? Let
us hang our heads in shame.
The author teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, and
is a member of the Pugwash Council. The views expressed above are
those of the author, and not the Pugwash Council or the Pugwash Conferences.
