Aryavartha
07-08-2005, 09:12
Ok, that was a catchy title to bring your attention to this longish article. If you are not interested in the politics and history of Indian subcontinent and the connections it has to pan-islamism ideology followed by Osama etc , please skip reading this. For everyone else, please read this patiently, I promise this is a good read.
My comments in
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=§ion=&issue=2005-08-06&id=6452
INVESTIGATION
The home of jihad
M.J.Akbar
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, aristocrat by temperament, catholic in taste, sectarian in politics, and the father of Pakistan, was the unlikeliest parent that an Islamic republic could possibly have. He was the most British of the generation of Indians that won freedom in August 1947. As a child in the elite Christian Mission High School in Karachi, he changed his birthday from 20 October to Christmas Day. As a student at Lincoln’s Inn, he anglicised his name from Jinnahbhai to Jinnah. For three years, between 1930 and 1933, he went into voluntary exile in Hampstead, acquired a British passport, set up residence with his sister Fatimah and daughter Dina, hired a British chauffeur (Bradley) for his Bentley, kept two dogs (a black Dobermann and a white West Highland terrier) [my comments: Dog saliva is considered najis - impure and to be avoided as per some schools / interpretations, especially the important school that is followed in Pakistan and India - Deobandi] , indulged himself at the theatre (he had once wanted to be a professional actor so that he could play Hamlet) and appeared before the Privy Council to maintain himself in the style to which he was accustomed. He wore Savile Row suits, heavily starched shirts and two-tone leather or suede shoes. Official portraits in Pakistan present him in a more ‘Islamic’ costume, but the first time he wore a lambskin cap and the long Indian coat known as sherwani was on 15 October 1937 when he presided over the Lucknow session of the Muslim League. He was 61 years old.
Despite being the Quaid-e-Azam, or the Great Leader of Muslims, he drank a moderate amount of alcohol and was embarrassingly unfamiliar with Islamic methods of prayer. He was uncomfortable in any language but English, and made his demand for Pakistan — in 1940 at Lahore — in English, despite catcalls from an audience that wanted to hear Urdu. His excuse was ingenious: since the world press was in attendance, he said, it was only right that he speak in a world language. The brilliant lawyer was never short of a convincing argument. [my comments: Ironic and hypocritical, because the imposition of Urdu on the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which was Bengali speaking and the remarks by Jinnah that those who put Bengali above Urdu are traitors of Pakistan - were significant factors which fuelled Bengali nationalism and led to the eventual civil war and seperation of the two]
He married a beautiful young Parsi girl, Ruttie Petit, child of a wealthy non-Muslim Bombay business family who was disowned by her parents for marrying outside her faith.[my comments: Jinnah was a 41 when she married Ruttie who was 18. Jinnah was actually a friend of Ruttie's father Dinshaw and met her first in that capacity and started courting her when she was 16 years of age! ;) ] Ruttie wore fresh flowers in her hair, silk dresses, headbands that sparkled with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and smoked English cigarettes in ivory holders. The marriage frayed, but it produced a daughter, Dina, who loved her father but was more reticent about the nation he created. Dina stayed back in India, and must have been the only Indian to wave a Pakistani flag from her balcony on 14 August 1947.[my comments: Dina Wadia married Naval Wadia, a wealthy Parsee (Zoroastrian community which fled the Arab invasion of Persian and are now living in India) against the wishes of Jinnah. Their Son and Jinnah's grandson, Nusli Wadia is the owner of a big textile firm in India called "Bombay Dyeing"]. In an incident poignant with Wodehousian overtones, Jinnah, who wore a monocle as a young barrister, recalled his first ‘friction with the police’ to his biographer, Hector Bolitho (Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan, John Murray, 1954). It was during an Oxbridge boat race: ‘I was with two friends and we were caught up with a crowd of undergraduates. We found a cart in a side street, so we pushed each other up and down the roadway, until we were arrested and taken off to the police station ...[and] let off with a caution.’ It was the only time Jinnah went to jail. [my comments: Yes, that's right. Jinnah, the "freedom fighter" never went to prison even for a single day in all of his freedom fighting against the Bristish. Add his British passport thing and the British need for a pliant state to "contain" India and be a buffer between Russia and the warm waters of Indian ocean, the whole "great game" thing and it can be safely concluded that the British needed Pakistan and Jinnah was a willing tool In contrast, the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who gave up Savile Row for unshaped homespun cotton, spent half the years between 1920 and 1947 in a series of British prisons.
By 1940 Jinnah knew what he wanted — Pakistan. What was debatable was why. The slogan that divided India was simple: ‘Islam is in danger.’ As a proposition, it was absurd. For the believer a faith is true precisely because it is imperishable. A Muslim can be in danger, but not Islam. However, if Muslims were in danger from Hindus, then they needed security and safeguards in those regions where they were in a minority, like central India. Instead Pakistan was created on the western and eastern flanks of the subcontinent, where Muslims were in a majority and if anything the Hindus were in danger.
The logic for the creation of Pakistan had, therefore, to be blown up from saving Muslims to saving Islam. The ‘defence of Islam’ needed a fortress and Pakistan became that fortress. [my comments: A very important observation. This is the psyche of Pakistani establishment. They think of themselves as protectors of Islam. This belief is so ingrained that they have no qualms of supporting the "cause of Islam" anywhere in the world. The Army also has this psyche. That is why it is reluctant to go after the terrorists in their soil.] Ironically, the religiosity of Gandhi helped sustain Muslim League suspicions. Gandhi fantasised about a ‘Rama Rajya’ in united India, a dream kingdom of the Hindu warrior-god Rama, where every citizen had equal rights and so on and so forth. Jinnah argued that this was just a deceptive term for the Hindu rule that he feared. The demand for Pakistan was accompanied by the rhetoric of a simulated jihad. A jihad is valid if Muslims are denied the right to practise their faith, or against the invasion of a Muslim’s homeland. And so Muslims were warned that in post-British India mosques would be destroyed and the call to prayer forbidden, and they must resort to violence if necessary to protect their separateness. A typical pamphlet, circulated after the Muslim League announced a ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August 1946, said, ‘The Bombay resolution of the All-India Muslim League has been broadcast. The call to revolt comes to us from a nation of heroes ...The day for an open fight which is the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived. Come, those who want to rise to heaven. Come, those who are simple, wanting in peace of mind and who are in distress. Those who are thieves, goondas (thugs), those without the strength of character and those who do not say their prayers — all come. The shining gates of Heaven have been opened for you. Let us enter in thousands. Let us all cry out victory to Pakistan.’ The themes are immediately recognisable, with Heaven, as usual, playing a prominent part. [my comments: The call for Direct Action Day was the starting point of the violence of the partition, which ultimately took the lives of around 5 million lives in a vicious cycle of revenge killings]
I owe the following quote to an excellent new book by Husain Haqqani, who has served as adviser to more than one Pakistan government, was ambassador for his country to Sri Lanka and is now a visiting fellow at Carnegie (Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). He quotes from a speech made by Jinnah in 1946 to the Pathans of the Frontier: ‘Well, if you want Pakistan, vote for the League candidates. If we fail to realise our duty today you will be reduced to the status of Sudras (low castes) and Islam will be vanquished from India. I shall never allow Muslims to be slaves of Hindus.’
The difference between ‘Islam in danger’ and ‘Muslims in danger’ is not academic. Shift the logic to a contemporary context. If Muslims, a minority in Britain, are in danger, then it is possible to work through the democratic and legislative framework to redress real or imagined grievances. (The Lebanese political system is structured around the possibly valid premise that everyone is in danger from one another.) But if Islam is in danger, then the conflict becomes a transnational world war in which an underground station in London becomes as legitimate a battlefield as Tikrit, and the appeal of an Osama bin Laden burrows its way more potently into receptive minds in Leeds.
George Bush and Tony Blair did Osama bin Laden a huge favour by extending the war against terrorism, sponsored by the Taleban in Afghanistan, to Iraq and giving it a more apocalyptic dimension. Why was the reaction to Afghanistan muted, and that to Iraq explosive? Most Muslims saw Afghanistan as a legitimate war. Iraq is perceived as bitter colonialism in addition to being an insult and a challenge to Muslims. [my comments: A very valid point. Iraq was a totally unnecessary thing and was a diversion. I am not convinced that starting the Iraq war was anyway helpful in the "war against terror" ...oops...the effort against extremism or whatever it is being labelled now. That said, now that they are there, US should complete the job and put a stable representative government with sufficient military authority to stand on its own etc, because withdrawing now would be even more disasterous. For Iraq, for US, for UK, for EU, for India, for Israel and all other targets of pan-islamist terrorism and that would include all of you in this board. I am giving my own suggestions for the Iraq situation near the end of this post. But do remember that the current fervor of the jihadis is in part due to the perceptions of having defeated one superpower (USSR / FSU ) and you can only imagine what it would be if there is a perception that the other superpower too has been defeated. ]
‘Shock and awe’ was a taunt waiting to be answered. Part of the Pentagon’s contempt lay in the memory of Arab armies fleeing from battle against Israel in 1967. This contempt extended to the people. The irony of course is that a dictator’s repressive and morally illegitimate army was never going to pick up the challenge, for Saddam Hussein’s tyranny had no support outside the thin band who benefited from it. Saddam Hussein was no danger to the West for more than one reason. As long as he was there, Iraq could only be a weakling. The Pentagon had no plans to deal with shadow armies that would rise in the name of nationalism in Iraq, and in defence of Iraq across the world.
Bush and Blair lost their legitimacy in their lies, and have become symbols of injustice in the minds of Muslims across the world. Young Muslims in Leeds or Karachi or Sharm el-Sheikh are convinced that the terrorists of 9/11 provided an excuse for the subjugation of key Muslim nations and the control of resources like energy. The intellectual basis for this conflict was laid long before 9/11: a provocative thesis like The Clash of Civilizations was published seven years before 9/11.
Bush and Blair went to Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden. If the Taleban had handed Osama to Bush, perhaps there might have been no invasion of Iraq. (This is what Pakistan believed and advised the Taleban to do.) [my comments: Well actually, the Pakistani envoy to Taliban before the US invasion included the then Paki intelligence (ISI) Chief Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad who is suspected to have said to Taliban that the US is just blustering and that Pakistan will stand by the Taliban and not to give up Osama. Sabbatis, this is the same guy who was present in Afghanistan on the day the NA commander Ahmed Shah Masoud was kiled and was present in US on 9/11 and was dismissed by Musharraf after India publicised evidence of him asking Omar Sheikh (Daneil Pearl killer) to wire $100K to Mohd Atta before 9/11]. Four years after 9/11 Osama is still alive, possibly in Pakistan.
I argued in The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (Routledge, 2002) that Pakistan had become a terrorist haven for reasons beyond the control of its present ruler, President Pervaiz Musharraf. The conventional Anglo-American view is that this is a regrettable consequence of the heavily financed jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, whose most famous by-product is Osama bin Laden. But the reason that Pakistan has become a safety net for individual cells as well as organised, regimented movements like the Taleban has deeper roots. [I]The Sunday Times reported on 24 July that villagers in Chak 477 in Punjab, Pakistan — where the suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer’s family emigrated from — held a hero’s funeral for him despite the absence of his body, and chanted slogans like ‘Tanweer, the hero of Islam’. Among the mourners were members of a banned organisation, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which normally reserves its havoc for India. The ideology of such villages was not created by Afghanistan. Osama is in Pakistan because of this parallel ideology; the ideology is not there because of him. [my comments: Hey, the title of the thread ! :D Note the presence of JeM in the funeral of a jihadi who attacked UK. JeM is one of the most virulent jihadi org active in Kashmir and it has carried out successfull attacks in the rest of India too. Actually I was under the impression that only LeT was involved in 7/7 episode, but it appears now JeM is also involved, which only strengthens my contention that there is no longer much differences between the myriad terrorist orgs. Long time back they were brought together the umbrella called Islamic International Front (IIF) and now they all share ideology, men, money, material, training grounds and yes targets too. That's why LeT cells are there in US, UK, Australia, France and God knows where else inspite of LeT being started with the objective of "liberating" Kashmir and muslims from India]
President Pervaiz Musharraf is sincere in his efforts to fight terrorism, and has narrowly escaped two assassination attempts because of them. [my comments: It is debatable how enthusiastic he is. He was the architect of the Kargil intrusion. He used the mujahideen then to occupy the peaks. Until 9/11 he had no problems in co-existing with the jihadis. It is a fact that he engineered a split in the popular Pakistan Muslim league party which made sure that the Mullah Alliance party (MMA) won more seats in the elections. It is also speculated that he staged the assassination attempts to project the idea of "I am being attacked, the bearded fundoos are gaining power, after me the deluge, so don't push me too much and give me money and arms so that I can establish my authority" thing], His problem is the state within a state, with its own infrastructure and resource base (occasionally supplemented by Pakistan’s famous intelligence agency, the ISI, which handled all the arms and cash during the Afghan jihad and now monitors the Kashmir jihad). So how did Pakistan turn from an Islamic republic to a fortress for Muslim extremists?
Jinnah had a second epiphany after the birth of his new nation. He rediscovered the self that he had left behind in Britain, the secular, democratic barrister who had, ironically, once bitterly accused the ever-prayerful Gandhi of dragging religion into politics. In his first speech to the nascent constituent assembly, on 11 August 1947, he told Pakistanis, ‘You are free, free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the state.’ [my comments: :confused: What was that all about ? If it was a secular Pakistan that he actually wanted, why raise the bogey of "Islam under threat and muslims need a seperate state to have freedom of religion"? It is clear that Jinnah himself was an opportunist and used the Islam card to get a state for himself. He did not get to enjoy it and died in 13 months after getting a country but the descendants of that country which the British helped create are now bombing Britain. Now, that is the mother of all irony.]
It was a speech he could have made as governor-general of India. It is a speech cited repeatedly by George Felix, author of Christians in Pakistan: The Battle for Justice, who campaigns for the cause of Pakistani Christians from exile in Britain. Felix has unreserved praise for Jinnah and unreserved anger for his successors.
The alternative view of Pakistan was best articulated by a cleric who considered Jinnah ‘unIslamic’. Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (1903–79) founded the Jamaat-e-Islami (the Islamic Congregation) in 1941 to instil an ‘Islamic way of life and morality’, and then to use his cadres to ‘seize power by the use of all available means and equipment’ to establish ‘Islamic rule’. His prescription for Pakistan was unambiguous: Pakistan belongs to Allah, and therefore must be ruled by Allah’s law and governed by the saleheen, or the pious ones. [my comments: recall the ideology of islamism thread started by the Holy Womble. Maududi is a source of inspiration for modern pan-islamist jihadis including Osama ]
Pakistan’s elite was not particularly pious. Jinnah’s successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, had the lifestyle of a landlord rather than a priest, and warned civil servants about Maududi. Officers like Field-Marshal Ayub Khan, who would rule for a decade, detested him. But one need worked in Maududi’s favour. The identity of a nation created to save Islam from danger had to be Islamic. The Objectives Resolution moved in the Constituent Assembly by Liaquat Ali Khan in March 1949 committed the nation to life in accordance with the requirements of Islam. When the constitution was adopted in 1956, the country renamed itself the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’.
‘The secular elite assumed that they would continue to lead the country while they rallied the people on the basis of Islamic ideology,’ writes Haqqani. This was true across the decades. It was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who preferred caviar and whisky to bread and water, who ‘nationalised’ Christian schools and colleges on 1 September 1972, made Islam the official state religion on 10 April 1973, and banned alcohol.
His successor, General Zia ul-Haq, who privately attributed his successful coup against Bhutto on 5 July 1975 to divine help, was a man without doubts. He believed that Islam was the basis of Pakistan, otherwise why had it not stayed with India? He attributed all the weaknesses of his country to leaders who had deviated from the faith. Since, as he pointed out, he could import wheat but not moral values, it was his job to institutionalise such moral values as he considered necessary. Unsurprisingly, the Jamaat-e-Islami joined his government and at various points held influential portfolios like information, power, production and natural resources. He ‘Islamicised’ the economy, turned a large number of madrasas into jihad factories, and victimised women. The real mistake that America made was not the support it gave to Osama during the war against the Soviet Union but the indispensable backbone it provided to Zia. Washington used Zia to defeat Moscow. Zia used Washington to turn Pakistan away from the Jinnah vision towards the distortions of Maududi fundamentalism. [my comments: It was under Zia that Pakistan actively pursued nuclear bombs. He denied doing so until the program gathered momentum and Pakistan indeed acquired a nuclear bomb. When asked why he lied, he famously said that "It is permitted to lie in the cause of Islam". That's how he saw the Pakistani bomb. It was for the cause of Islam because Pakistan is the fortress of Islam - the psyche mentioned above. It was also under Zia that the Paki intelligence got "islamised" and even the army to a significant extent. Musharraf, was the blue eyed boy of Zia and rose quickly through the ranks due to Zia's patronage. That is why I have doubts about his enthusiasm about fighting terrorism. ]
When Zia was a young officer in the British Indian cavalry and the Pakistan armoured corps, he chose to pray in his free time instead of drinking, gambling and dancing, which other officers preferred. Musharraf belongs to the free-spirited military school. He believes in Pakistan without believing that it should become a puritan state, which is why he has periodically to reinforce his credentials among the puritans. While admonishing Blair for blaming Pakistan during a television address, he told his countrymen, ‘I am not a scholar but no one should, either, doubt my Islamic integrity.’ He said that he had gone to Mecca six times and on one supreme occasion the ‘door of forgiveness’ had been opened to him. Musharraf is cynical enough to bait a traditional enemy like India with terrorism, but appreciates the limits of this dangerously counterproductive strategy. [my comments: I doubt this change of heart that the author asserts. There has been no change in the ground situation to indicate it. The author also says that he "appreciates the limits of this dangerously counterproductive strategy" ergo if it has been productive, then the jihadi strategy is fine. This is not change of heart. This is lying down until the storm passes over.]
But Pakistan’s problem is no longer India. Pakistan’s problem is the legacy of the man who defeated Jinnah, Zia ul-Haq, an inheritance visible in Chak 477.
Zia was careful. He was the perfect host to every visiting British MP and American senator but shared his vision with only the committed. One such confidant was the Pakistani journalist Ziaul Islam Ansari, who sketched it out in his Urdu book General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq: Shaksiat aur Karnamay (Zia: The Person and his Achievements, Jang Publishers, 1990, quoted by Haqqani): ‘Pakistan ...self-sufficient, stable, strong ...[would provide] strength to Islamic revivalist movements in adjoining countries and regions ...[from the Far East to] the region encompassing the area from Afghanistan to Turkey, including Iran and the Muslim majority states of the Soviet Union in Central Asia.’ Zia believed that by turning Pakistan into an Islamic state at the lower rungs of society through legislation, and using the collateral benefits of the Afghan jihad, he could create an ‘Islamic regional block that would be the source of a natural Islamic revolutionary movement, replacing artificial alliances such as the Baghdad Pact. This would be the means of starting a new era of greatness for the Muslim nations of Asia and Africa.’
How Zia would have enjoyed the Iraq jihad! A jihad is sustained by a conviction of injustice; and there is no injustice greater than foreign occupation. This is what gave the Afghan jihad its resonance; the claimed social benefits of Soviet intervention (including equality for women and education for girls) did nothing to ameliorate the anger. Iraq, oppressed by a brutal but secular dictatorship, has slipped into a transition phase which Zia could only have dreamt of. A state within a state is challenging the occupation. The government is divided between the few who might be sincere in their friendship for the West and the many who are happy to shield their anger with duplicity. Bear in mind that the Shia jihad in Iraq has not even begun in any real sense; but that is a different story, waiting to be told. Those who seek democracy in Iraq forget that democracy will not come without independence. An occupation will breed war, not democracy; and only democracy can provide the popular leadership that can make the state within a state irrelevant. [my comments: Hence the need for the US to swallow its pride and take this to the UN and involve other powers who can operate in Iraq under UN banner thereby giving the foreign military presence legitimacy and reduce the support for jihad amongst the sunni Iraqis and also an effective patrolling of borders with the UN troops which would clampdown on the entry of sunni terrorists from Jordan and Syria....which would all lead to security and safety and would speeden up the democratic process in Iraq. But No, the neocons would rather pursue their own agenda....] President Musharraf’s problem is not his sincerity, but the fact that he presides over a system that has not yet found the space for democracy.
The first British civil commissioner for Mesopotamia, as Iraq was still known at the end of the first world war, was Arnold Talbot Wilson, formerly of the Bengal Lancers, a Tarzan sort who once saved his fare on the ship home by working as a stoker. When he failed completely against the Iraqi insurrection that began in the month of Ramadan, 1920, he was recalled. The British Foreign Office, ever ready with a phrase, nicknamed him the ‘Despot of Messpot’. :eek: It is a phrase that might so easily dominate the political obituary of Tony Blair.
M.J.Akbar is editor-in-chief of the Asian Age.
My comments in
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=§ion=&issue=2005-08-06&id=6452
INVESTIGATION
The home of jihad
M.J.Akbar
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, aristocrat by temperament, catholic in taste, sectarian in politics, and the father of Pakistan, was the unlikeliest parent that an Islamic republic could possibly have. He was the most British of the generation of Indians that won freedom in August 1947. As a child in the elite Christian Mission High School in Karachi, he changed his birthday from 20 October to Christmas Day. As a student at Lincoln’s Inn, he anglicised his name from Jinnahbhai to Jinnah. For three years, between 1930 and 1933, he went into voluntary exile in Hampstead, acquired a British passport, set up residence with his sister Fatimah and daughter Dina, hired a British chauffeur (Bradley) for his Bentley, kept two dogs (a black Dobermann and a white West Highland terrier) [my comments: Dog saliva is considered najis - impure and to be avoided as per some schools / interpretations, especially the important school that is followed in Pakistan and India - Deobandi] , indulged himself at the theatre (he had once wanted to be a professional actor so that he could play Hamlet) and appeared before the Privy Council to maintain himself in the style to which he was accustomed. He wore Savile Row suits, heavily starched shirts and two-tone leather or suede shoes. Official portraits in Pakistan present him in a more ‘Islamic’ costume, but the first time he wore a lambskin cap and the long Indian coat known as sherwani was on 15 October 1937 when he presided over the Lucknow session of the Muslim League. He was 61 years old.
Despite being the Quaid-e-Azam, or the Great Leader of Muslims, he drank a moderate amount of alcohol and was embarrassingly unfamiliar with Islamic methods of prayer. He was uncomfortable in any language but English, and made his demand for Pakistan — in 1940 at Lahore — in English, despite catcalls from an audience that wanted to hear Urdu. His excuse was ingenious: since the world press was in attendance, he said, it was only right that he speak in a world language. The brilliant lawyer was never short of a convincing argument. [my comments: Ironic and hypocritical, because the imposition of Urdu on the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) which was Bengali speaking and the remarks by Jinnah that those who put Bengali above Urdu are traitors of Pakistan - were significant factors which fuelled Bengali nationalism and led to the eventual civil war and seperation of the two]
He married a beautiful young Parsi girl, Ruttie Petit, child of a wealthy non-Muslim Bombay business family who was disowned by her parents for marrying outside her faith.[my comments: Jinnah was a 41 when she married Ruttie who was 18. Jinnah was actually a friend of Ruttie's father Dinshaw and met her first in that capacity and started courting her when she was 16 years of age! ;) ] Ruttie wore fresh flowers in her hair, silk dresses, headbands that sparkled with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, and smoked English cigarettes in ivory holders. The marriage frayed, but it produced a daughter, Dina, who loved her father but was more reticent about the nation he created. Dina stayed back in India, and must have been the only Indian to wave a Pakistani flag from her balcony on 14 August 1947.[my comments: Dina Wadia married Naval Wadia, a wealthy Parsee (Zoroastrian community which fled the Arab invasion of Persian and are now living in India) against the wishes of Jinnah. Their Son and Jinnah's grandson, Nusli Wadia is the owner of a big textile firm in India called "Bombay Dyeing"]. In an incident poignant with Wodehousian overtones, Jinnah, who wore a monocle as a young barrister, recalled his first ‘friction with the police’ to his biographer, Hector Bolitho (Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan, John Murray, 1954). It was during an Oxbridge boat race: ‘I was with two friends and we were caught up with a crowd of undergraduates. We found a cart in a side street, so we pushed each other up and down the roadway, until we were arrested and taken off to the police station ...[and] let off with a caution.’ It was the only time Jinnah went to jail. [my comments: Yes, that's right. Jinnah, the "freedom fighter" never went to prison even for a single day in all of his freedom fighting against the Bristish. Add his British passport thing and the British need for a pliant state to "contain" India and be a buffer between Russia and the warm waters of Indian ocean, the whole "great game" thing and it can be safely concluded that the British needed Pakistan and Jinnah was a willing tool In contrast, the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, who gave up Savile Row for unshaped homespun cotton, spent half the years between 1920 and 1947 in a series of British prisons.
By 1940 Jinnah knew what he wanted — Pakistan. What was debatable was why. The slogan that divided India was simple: ‘Islam is in danger.’ As a proposition, it was absurd. For the believer a faith is true precisely because it is imperishable. A Muslim can be in danger, but not Islam. However, if Muslims were in danger from Hindus, then they needed security and safeguards in those regions where they were in a minority, like central India. Instead Pakistan was created on the western and eastern flanks of the subcontinent, where Muslims were in a majority and if anything the Hindus were in danger.
The logic for the creation of Pakistan had, therefore, to be blown up from saving Muslims to saving Islam. The ‘defence of Islam’ needed a fortress and Pakistan became that fortress. [my comments: A very important observation. This is the psyche of Pakistani establishment. They think of themselves as protectors of Islam. This belief is so ingrained that they have no qualms of supporting the "cause of Islam" anywhere in the world. The Army also has this psyche. That is why it is reluctant to go after the terrorists in their soil.] Ironically, the religiosity of Gandhi helped sustain Muslim League suspicions. Gandhi fantasised about a ‘Rama Rajya’ in united India, a dream kingdom of the Hindu warrior-god Rama, where every citizen had equal rights and so on and so forth. Jinnah argued that this was just a deceptive term for the Hindu rule that he feared. The demand for Pakistan was accompanied by the rhetoric of a simulated jihad. A jihad is valid if Muslims are denied the right to practise their faith, or against the invasion of a Muslim’s homeland. And so Muslims were warned that in post-British India mosques would be destroyed and the call to prayer forbidden, and they must resort to violence if necessary to protect their separateness. A typical pamphlet, circulated after the Muslim League announced a ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August 1946, said, ‘The Bombay resolution of the All-India Muslim League has been broadcast. The call to revolt comes to us from a nation of heroes ...The day for an open fight which is the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived. Come, those who want to rise to heaven. Come, those who are simple, wanting in peace of mind and who are in distress. Those who are thieves, goondas (thugs), those without the strength of character and those who do not say their prayers — all come. The shining gates of Heaven have been opened for you. Let us enter in thousands. Let us all cry out victory to Pakistan.’ The themes are immediately recognisable, with Heaven, as usual, playing a prominent part. [my comments: The call for Direct Action Day was the starting point of the violence of the partition, which ultimately took the lives of around 5 million lives in a vicious cycle of revenge killings]
I owe the following quote to an excellent new book by Husain Haqqani, who has served as adviser to more than one Pakistan government, was ambassador for his country to Sri Lanka and is now a visiting fellow at Carnegie (Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005). He quotes from a speech made by Jinnah in 1946 to the Pathans of the Frontier: ‘Well, if you want Pakistan, vote for the League candidates. If we fail to realise our duty today you will be reduced to the status of Sudras (low castes) and Islam will be vanquished from India. I shall never allow Muslims to be slaves of Hindus.’
The difference between ‘Islam in danger’ and ‘Muslims in danger’ is not academic. Shift the logic to a contemporary context. If Muslims, a minority in Britain, are in danger, then it is possible to work through the democratic and legislative framework to redress real or imagined grievances. (The Lebanese political system is structured around the possibly valid premise that everyone is in danger from one another.) But if Islam is in danger, then the conflict becomes a transnational world war in which an underground station in London becomes as legitimate a battlefield as Tikrit, and the appeal of an Osama bin Laden burrows its way more potently into receptive minds in Leeds.
George Bush and Tony Blair did Osama bin Laden a huge favour by extending the war against terrorism, sponsored by the Taleban in Afghanistan, to Iraq and giving it a more apocalyptic dimension. Why was the reaction to Afghanistan muted, and that to Iraq explosive? Most Muslims saw Afghanistan as a legitimate war. Iraq is perceived as bitter colonialism in addition to being an insult and a challenge to Muslims. [my comments: A very valid point. Iraq was a totally unnecessary thing and was a diversion. I am not convinced that starting the Iraq war was anyway helpful in the "war against terror" ...oops...the effort against extremism or whatever it is being labelled now. That said, now that they are there, US should complete the job and put a stable representative government with sufficient military authority to stand on its own etc, because withdrawing now would be even more disasterous. For Iraq, for US, for UK, for EU, for India, for Israel and all other targets of pan-islamist terrorism and that would include all of you in this board. I am giving my own suggestions for the Iraq situation near the end of this post. But do remember that the current fervor of the jihadis is in part due to the perceptions of having defeated one superpower (USSR / FSU ) and you can only imagine what it would be if there is a perception that the other superpower too has been defeated. ]
‘Shock and awe’ was a taunt waiting to be answered. Part of the Pentagon’s contempt lay in the memory of Arab armies fleeing from battle against Israel in 1967. This contempt extended to the people. The irony of course is that a dictator’s repressive and morally illegitimate army was never going to pick up the challenge, for Saddam Hussein’s tyranny had no support outside the thin band who benefited from it. Saddam Hussein was no danger to the West for more than one reason. As long as he was there, Iraq could only be a weakling. The Pentagon had no plans to deal with shadow armies that would rise in the name of nationalism in Iraq, and in defence of Iraq across the world.
Bush and Blair lost their legitimacy in their lies, and have become symbols of injustice in the minds of Muslims across the world. Young Muslims in Leeds or Karachi or Sharm el-Sheikh are convinced that the terrorists of 9/11 provided an excuse for the subjugation of key Muslim nations and the control of resources like energy. The intellectual basis for this conflict was laid long before 9/11: a provocative thesis like The Clash of Civilizations was published seven years before 9/11.
Bush and Blair went to Afghanistan in search of Osama bin Laden. If the Taleban had handed Osama to Bush, perhaps there might have been no invasion of Iraq. (This is what Pakistan believed and advised the Taleban to do.) [my comments: Well actually, the Pakistani envoy to Taliban before the US invasion included the then Paki intelligence (ISI) Chief Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad who is suspected to have said to Taliban that the US is just blustering and that Pakistan will stand by the Taliban and not to give up Osama. Sabbatis, this is the same guy who was present in Afghanistan on the day the NA commander Ahmed Shah Masoud was kiled and was present in US on 9/11 and was dismissed by Musharraf after India publicised evidence of him asking Omar Sheikh (Daneil Pearl killer) to wire $100K to Mohd Atta before 9/11]. Four years after 9/11 Osama is still alive, possibly in Pakistan.
I argued in The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity (Routledge, 2002) that Pakistan had become a terrorist haven for reasons beyond the control of its present ruler, President Pervaiz Musharraf. The conventional Anglo-American view is that this is a regrettable consequence of the heavily financed jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, whose most famous by-product is Osama bin Laden. But the reason that Pakistan has become a safety net for individual cells as well as organised, regimented movements like the Taleban has deeper roots. [I]The Sunday Times reported on 24 July that villagers in Chak 477 in Punjab, Pakistan — where the suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer’s family emigrated from — held a hero’s funeral for him despite the absence of his body, and chanted slogans like ‘Tanweer, the hero of Islam’. Among the mourners were members of a banned organisation, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which normally reserves its havoc for India. The ideology of such villages was not created by Afghanistan. Osama is in Pakistan because of this parallel ideology; the ideology is not there because of him. [my comments: Hey, the title of the thread ! :D Note the presence of JeM in the funeral of a jihadi who attacked UK. JeM is one of the most virulent jihadi org active in Kashmir and it has carried out successfull attacks in the rest of India too. Actually I was under the impression that only LeT was involved in 7/7 episode, but it appears now JeM is also involved, which only strengthens my contention that there is no longer much differences between the myriad terrorist orgs. Long time back they were brought together the umbrella called Islamic International Front (IIF) and now they all share ideology, men, money, material, training grounds and yes targets too. That's why LeT cells are there in US, UK, Australia, France and God knows where else inspite of LeT being started with the objective of "liberating" Kashmir and muslims from India]
President Pervaiz Musharraf is sincere in his efforts to fight terrorism, and has narrowly escaped two assassination attempts because of them. [my comments: It is debatable how enthusiastic he is. He was the architect of the Kargil intrusion. He used the mujahideen then to occupy the peaks. Until 9/11 he had no problems in co-existing with the jihadis. It is a fact that he engineered a split in the popular Pakistan Muslim league party which made sure that the Mullah Alliance party (MMA) won more seats in the elections. It is also speculated that he staged the assassination attempts to project the idea of "I am being attacked, the bearded fundoos are gaining power, after me the deluge, so don't push me too much and give me money and arms so that I can establish my authority" thing], His problem is the state within a state, with its own infrastructure and resource base (occasionally supplemented by Pakistan’s famous intelligence agency, the ISI, which handled all the arms and cash during the Afghan jihad and now monitors the Kashmir jihad). So how did Pakistan turn from an Islamic republic to a fortress for Muslim extremists?
Jinnah had a second epiphany after the birth of his new nation. He rediscovered the self that he had left behind in Britain, the secular, democratic barrister who had, ironically, once bitterly accused the ever-prayerful Gandhi of dragging religion into politics. In his first speech to the nascent constituent assembly, on 11 August 1947, he told Pakistanis, ‘You are free, free to go to your temples; you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the state.’ [my comments: :confused: What was that all about ? If it was a secular Pakistan that he actually wanted, why raise the bogey of "Islam under threat and muslims need a seperate state to have freedom of religion"? It is clear that Jinnah himself was an opportunist and used the Islam card to get a state for himself. He did not get to enjoy it and died in 13 months after getting a country but the descendants of that country which the British helped create are now bombing Britain. Now, that is the mother of all irony.]
It was a speech he could have made as governor-general of India. It is a speech cited repeatedly by George Felix, author of Christians in Pakistan: The Battle for Justice, who campaigns for the cause of Pakistani Christians from exile in Britain. Felix has unreserved praise for Jinnah and unreserved anger for his successors.
The alternative view of Pakistan was best articulated by a cleric who considered Jinnah ‘unIslamic’. Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi (1903–79) founded the Jamaat-e-Islami (the Islamic Congregation) in 1941 to instil an ‘Islamic way of life and morality’, and then to use his cadres to ‘seize power by the use of all available means and equipment’ to establish ‘Islamic rule’. His prescription for Pakistan was unambiguous: Pakistan belongs to Allah, and therefore must be ruled by Allah’s law and governed by the saleheen, or the pious ones. [my comments: recall the ideology of islamism thread started by the Holy Womble. Maududi is a source of inspiration for modern pan-islamist jihadis including Osama ]
Pakistan’s elite was not particularly pious. Jinnah’s successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, had the lifestyle of a landlord rather than a priest, and warned civil servants about Maududi. Officers like Field-Marshal Ayub Khan, who would rule for a decade, detested him. But one need worked in Maududi’s favour. The identity of a nation created to save Islam from danger had to be Islamic. The Objectives Resolution moved in the Constituent Assembly by Liaquat Ali Khan in March 1949 committed the nation to life in accordance with the requirements of Islam. When the constitution was adopted in 1956, the country renamed itself the ‘Islamic Republic of Pakistan’.
‘The secular elite assumed that they would continue to lead the country while they rallied the people on the basis of Islamic ideology,’ writes Haqqani. This was true across the decades. It was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who preferred caviar and whisky to bread and water, who ‘nationalised’ Christian schools and colleges on 1 September 1972, made Islam the official state religion on 10 April 1973, and banned alcohol.
His successor, General Zia ul-Haq, who privately attributed his successful coup against Bhutto on 5 July 1975 to divine help, was a man without doubts. He believed that Islam was the basis of Pakistan, otherwise why had it not stayed with India? He attributed all the weaknesses of his country to leaders who had deviated from the faith. Since, as he pointed out, he could import wheat but not moral values, it was his job to institutionalise such moral values as he considered necessary. Unsurprisingly, the Jamaat-e-Islami joined his government and at various points held influential portfolios like information, power, production and natural resources. He ‘Islamicised’ the economy, turned a large number of madrasas into jihad factories, and victimised women. The real mistake that America made was not the support it gave to Osama during the war against the Soviet Union but the indispensable backbone it provided to Zia. Washington used Zia to defeat Moscow. Zia used Washington to turn Pakistan away from the Jinnah vision towards the distortions of Maududi fundamentalism. [my comments: It was under Zia that Pakistan actively pursued nuclear bombs. He denied doing so until the program gathered momentum and Pakistan indeed acquired a nuclear bomb. When asked why he lied, he famously said that "It is permitted to lie in the cause of Islam". That's how he saw the Pakistani bomb. It was for the cause of Islam because Pakistan is the fortress of Islam - the psyche mentioned above. It was also under Zia that the Paki intelligence got "islamised" and even the army to a significant extent. Musharraf, was the blue eyed boy of Zia and rose quickly through the ranks due to Zia's patronage. That is why I have doubts about his enthusiasm about fighting terrorism. ]
When Zia was a young officer in the British Indian cavalry and the Pakistan armoured corps, he chose to pray in his free time instead of drinking, gambling and dancing, which other officers preferred. Musharraf belongs to the free-spirited military school. He believes in Pakistan without believing that it should become a puritan state, which is why he has periodically to reinforce his credentials among the puritans. While admonishing Blair for blaming Pakistan during a television address, he told his countrymen, ‘I am not a scholar but no one should, either, doubt my Islamic integrity.’ He said that he had gone to Mecca six times and on one supreme occasion the ‘door of forgiveness’ had been opened to him. Musharraf is cynical enough to bait a traditional enemy like India with terrorism, but appreciates the limits of this dangerously counterproductive strategy. [my comments: I doubt this change of heart that the author asserts. There has been no change in the ground situation to indicate it. The author also says that he "appreciates the limits of this dangerously counterproductive strategy" ergo if it has been productive, then the jihadi strategy is fine. This is not change of heart. This is lying down until the storm passes over.]
But Pakistan’s problem is no longer India. Pakistan’s problem is the legacy of the man who defeated Jinnah, Zia ul-Haq, an inheritance visible in Chak 477.
Zia was careful. He was the perfect host to every visiting British MP and American senator but shared his vision with only the committed. One such confidant was the Pakistani journalist Ziaul Islam Ansari, who sketched it out in his Urdu book General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq: Shaksiat aur Karnamay (Zia: The Person and his Achievements, Jang Publishers, 1990, quoted by Haqqani): ‘Pakistan ...self-sufficient, stable, strong ...[would provide] strength to Islamic revivalist movements in adjoining countries and regions ...[from the Far East to] the region encompassing the area from Afghanistan to Turkey, including Iran and the Muslim majority states of the Soviet Union in Central Asia.’ Zia believed that by turning Pakistan into an Islamic state at the lower rungs of society through legislation, and using the collateral benefits of the Afghan jihad, he could create an ‘Islamic regional block that would be the source of a natural Islamic revolutionary movement, replacing artificial alliances such as the Baghdad Pact. This would be the means of starting a new era of greatness for the Muslim nations of Asia and Africa.’
How Zia would have enjoyed the Iraq jihad! A jihad is sustained by a conviction of injustice; and there is no injustice greater than foreign occupation. This is what gave the Afghan jihad its resonance; the claimed social benefits of Soviet intervention (including equality for women and education for girls) did nothing to ameliorate the anger. Iraq, oppressed by a brutal but secular dictatorship, has slipped into a transition phase which Zia could only have dreamt of. A state within a state is challenging the occupation. The government is divided between the few who might be sincere in their friendship for the West and the many who are happy to shield their anger with duplicity. Bear in mind that the Shia jihad in Iraq has not even begun in any real sense; but that is a different story, waiting to be told. Those who seek democracy in Iraq forget that democracy will not come without independence. An occupation will breed war, not democracy; and only democracy can provide the popular leadership that can make the state within a state irrelevant. [my comments: Hence the need for the US to swallow its pride and take this to the UN and involve other powers who can operate in Iraq under UN banner thereby giving the foreign military presence legitimacy and reduce the support for jihad amongst the sunni Iraqis and also an effective patrolling of borders with the UN troops which would clampdown on the entry of sunni terrorists from Jordan and Syria....which would all lead to security and safety and would speeden up the democratic process in Iraq. But No, the neocons would rather pursue their own agenda....] President Musharraf’s problem is not his sincerity, but the fact that he presides over a system that has not yet found the space for democracy.
The first British civil commissioner for Mesopotamia, as Iraq was still known at the end of the first world war, was Arnold Talbot Wilson, formerly of the Bengal Lancers, a Tarzan sort who once saved his fare on the ship home by working as a stoker. When he failed completely against the Iraqi insurrection that began in the month of Ramadan, 1920, he was recalled. The British Foreign Office, ever ready with a phrase, nicknamed him the ‘Despot of Messpot’. :eek: It is a phrase that might so easily dominate the political obituary of Tony Blair.
M.J.Akbar is editor-in-chief of the Asian Age.