Rise of Political Islam in Iraq?
By Dr Iftikhar H. Malik
Dawn
28 April,2003
Seeing multitudes of impassioned, chest beating yet totally orderly Shia pilgrims converging in Karbala so soon after the demise of Saddam Hussein's regime have sent shivering messages to different sections of global populace. While Muslims of various doctrinal and ethno-national backgrounds may retrieve a greater sense of unity and pride from the spectacles of elderly and young, men and women defying heat and dust walking barefooted to celebrate the Chehlum of Imam Husain's assassination in 680 AD, the Anglo-American alliance finds itself in a quandary.It appears as if the floodgates of energy and pent-up feelings have been suddenly removed to usher a new-found solidarity among those who have suffered the most heinous bombings, destruction of infrastructure and a total disappearance of any semblance of civic authority. Rather than fighting their fellow Sunnis and garlanding the Arbrams and Challengers, or emptily gazing at a cruel sky, these masses may represent a new Iraq, a new phase of Political Islam and, maybe, a more robust rebuke to daisy cutters, cluster bombs and Moabs.
Here is the people's defiance at its best - something that reveals the inadequacies of the Western intelligence agencies and their opinionated pundits in once again understanding the dynamics and tribulations of the world of Islam. No wonder, a totally decimated Iraq with its looted heritage and broken economy is rising Phoenix-like, as rightly predicted by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal (1875-1938) several decades back. Every Karbala - the most traumatising tragedy - to the great poet-philosopher, was to be the harbinger of a new Islam!
No wonder, this massive outpouring of hope and collectivity coincided with Iqbal's own 65th death anniversary on the 21st April. But, wait a minute: are we being carried away by this spontaneity, or is it really a new chapter in this saga of tragedies all the way from wars, ethnic cleansings, self-flagellation, Islamophobia, sectarianism, Chechnyas, Mazar-i-Sharifs, Jenins, Ayodhyas and Gujarats, gnawing poverty all piled upon an enduring legacy of exploitation, humiliation and betrayals! Is Iraq waking up to another Hulago-like post-1258 stampede or is it a typical emotional outburst where fanaticism comes in handy to opiate a crest-fallen nation? Or, is this a sustained Islamic fervour, a mere temporary outburst, and just a sheer balm or there is more to it?
Notwithstanding the Anglo-American double standards, penchant for oil and easy victory, immorality and illegality of invasion despite the non-discovery of weapons of mass destruction, peripheralisation of the UN and a continuing humiliation of the Arab-Muslim world, the fall of Saddam Hussein is equally welcome. Once again, the millions heave a sigh of relief over the demise of one more dictatorship, whose own quick removal managed through an external intervention still cost them so much of havoc and destruction.
If the Iraqis could have done this by themselves, the event would have assumed a revolutionary status in the Arab history and there is no doubt that a more judicious help especially from the global civil society should have enabled them to do so. Ends, however, do not justify the means when they involve massive killings and destruction of heritage and ecology; thus the fall of the Taliban and that of Saddam is no heroic victory either for Blair and the American neo-conservatives.
The simple lesson from these two gory events is that authoritarianism, no matter how much rational it may sound, is itself a bad news and it is only the democracy and universal empowerment, which offer the greatest assurance against internal or external threat.
The fall of Saddam Hussein may afford Shia Muslims a sought-after chance to rebuild an Islamic democracy avoiding the extremes of dogma and dictatorship, as has been sadly seen in several other cases. The Anglo-American forces will be understandably weary of such a polity and will apply every power and instrument to avoid it. They cannot allow another Khomeinite-style Iraq to raise its head in a crucial area where oil, economy and pro-Israeli considerations reign supreme. However, rather than descending into a typical witch-hunt and a medievalised version of Taliban-style theocracy, the educated Shia clerics are well-placed to offer a unique synthesis of democracy and pluralism, away from violence, unilateralism and coercive dogmas. It is only the time that will tell.
However, seeing the crowds in an angry, devastated and marooned land of Mesopotamia still optimistically displaying a rare and peaceful consensus for a Muslim state across the country without rancour to anyone is amazing. It is a different thing that ironically they may not get their objective. Still, all those dictums of the failure of Political Islam by authorities and specialists such as Olivier Roy - the French scholar - and others stand rejected by this sea of humanity sharing grief and fraternity.
Islam continues to enthuse, aggregate and mobilise masses even where food, water, medicines, shelter and electricity may have been absent or even the basic civic amenities, otherwise available under a usual occupation, are non-existent.
The spontaneity of people's power and their adherence to mutual respect and peaceful coexistence is not a minor feat, though it remains peripheral in the news or is cursorily displayed as an overdue religious ritual that has the usual anti-American undertones. The Karbala assembly could be seen as a new Bastille, a new Hyde Park, a new Long March, a new 23rd of March at Lahore and a mass rally for a new country at Dhaka's Paltan Maidan. Dream may still take years and many efforts before its realisation.
While some of us cynics may see in these chest beating, self-flagellating and bleeding Muslims a recourse to mullahism and Talibanisation - history repeating itself -, to the Neo-Orientalists it is unnerving. 9/11 has resuscitated this endangered breed brandishing Huntingtonian sabres. Professor Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes and Reverend Frank Graham are puzzled at this populous yet so disciplined outburst though they would only read in it the mob psychology of some inferior, primitive and pre-modern community stuck in the time wrap.
To Pipes, as is evident from his numerous writings including Militant Islam, the greatest threat to the United States has been from Islam, nebulously eating away its prized heritage. Lewis, of all, whose recent works only betray his superficial reading of contemporary Muslim history and politics, is certainly not a Francis Fukuyama, to whom a hyped-up end of history never came to dissolve in Western liberal democracy and market-based universalism.
Bernard Lewis, in his What Went Wrong? finds Islam still yonder from its overdue reformation and renaissance whereas Pipes and Graham are too crude and supercilious to deserve any serious comment though potently dangerous their views are.
Lewis's recent work, Crisis of Islam, based on an extended version of his piece in The Atlantic Monthly, is a harangue lacking any substantive arguments amply revealing his being out-of-touch with the wider Muslim world. Every global development reminds him of an ongoing crisis of Islam, posited between a holy war and unholy terror. The arguments of yesteryear - two decades back - of Islam being similar as well as dissimilar to the Western touchstones of modernity-do not make much sense today and Lewis will be well-placed to spare his readers from a simplistic othering of a complex civilisation. Already his work on Turkey, comparatively a good scholarship, is due for revisions.
Interestingly, Oriana Fallaci, like her Prime Minister Berlusconi has joined the bandwagon with her The Rage and The Pride that might have been written by one of the secretaries in the media baron's office in Rome. The former liberals abound the corridors of power as neo-conservatives, shrouded by racism and hooded by uprighteousness.
The former lefties scoff at the contemporary rainbow coalition of anti-war and anti-racism alliances across the world. Trained on an erstwhile ritualistic dose of a dialectical world torn between an always right Red and everyone else, they have failed to understand how Muslims, peaceniks, church goers, atheists, old and young, socialists and anarchists could come together chanting "not in may name". Though 'repented' they fail to understand that the variables of class, colour, creed and community can also work together for common good.
Despite the western political and intellectual sceptics and critics, Iraq may offer a chance for one more attempt to establish a participatory polity 'from below' where empowerment, education, economy and egalitarianism run supreme in their universal connotations. It may also turn into another familiar buzkashi with mullahs, tribal chieftains and surrogates taking it out on one another ruining their opportunity to rebuild Iraq as a role model for all.
Neither a theocracy nor the dictatorship will take Islamicists anywhere, it is only through democracy, peace and guarantees for pluralism, away from unilateralism and militarism, that Political Islam with all its anti-colonial, anti-hegemonic, anti-racist and anti-violence traditions can come to the rescue of have-nots.
If the Muslims of Iraq are unable to establish such a paradigm then their chest beatings and verbose pronouncements will simply reiterate the contention that Political Islam may not be dead as a mobiliser and motivator yet is still far from maturing into a systemic ideology. Its Huqooul Ibaad (rights and duties to the people) may offer a greater hope for Iraqi civil society and could transform itself from a mere ideology of displacement to a fully-fledged mechanism of replacement.