It was a few weeks ago that I
went to a talk in southbank centre on the summer “uprisings” that swept across
the Middle East. Among others a Muslim academic from Egypt talked about the
“revolution”. She talked of falling in
love with revolution. That she is a proud Muslim but not an Islamist. She also
emphasized on the need for freedom for all human beings and how western
politics deptrived them by supporting autocratic regimes across the region;
here she unleashed on the west for double standards and moral corruption.
Once you summarise the speech and
look at her line of thinking you will realize that it is one of those common
thread of thinking that is prominent among “moderate Muslims” and the one that
western liberals could easily associate themselves with, because of its
universality such as all people are rational including Muslims and a believe in
things are going to eventually take a turn for the better.
This theme of thinking has been
incurring around me for the last few days and it was the other day that I come
across Marwan Muasher
article that was published in New York Times;
the response is not for Mawan Muasher but to all Muslim Liberals that argue
along the same train of thought. To summarise Marwan is saying:
Islamists are unlikely
to take over new governments in the Arab world for reasons:
first, Islamists are
not stupid. Arab countries face daunting challenges and whoever governs them
will need to tackle tremendous political and economic problems.
Second, Islamists are
not as popular as Western pundits and policy makers think. Political Islam
benefited from closed authoritarian systems.
You've heard this
"thought" expressed in one way or another, the message of the
Islamists resonates with the Islamic believes and common thinking, the common
man is not politically active but will listen to the words of Islam in whatever
format and shape delivered. The second point Marwan is making is exactly why we
should worry. The Taliban were not that popular, they started with a group of
800, the Ayatollahs of Iran were a minority but took over the revolution. The
popularity of Islamists has never been the problem but the question has been
whether it could be contained by the government or not and that is exactly the
worry about brining Taliban to the government.
Now to clear the
first point raised, (1) If Marwan knows what is in the minds of Islamists, it
is his solemn responsibility to inform us of the source of his information, and
also to share it with the authorities. (2) If he does not know what is in
Islamists minds--as seems enormously more probable--then why does he rush to
appoint himself the ventriloquist's dummy for such a faction? Who volunteers
for such a task at such a time?
Not only is it
indecent to act as self-appointed interpreter for the killers, but it is rash
in the highest degree. The fanatic Islamists have not favoured us with a
posthumous manifesto of their grievances, or a statement of claim about
Palestine, Iraq or Afghanistan, but we are nonetheless able to surmise or
deduce or induct a fair amount about the ideological or theological "root"
of their act and if we are correct in this, then we have considerable knowledge
of two things: their ideas and their actions.
I don’t think
there is the need to talk about the killings that happen by the Islamists on
daily basis or the several thousand Hazara that were massacred in Bamyan by the
Taliban or the fact that women can’t vote in Kuwait or drive in Saudi Arabia. I
think the action of the Islamists speak for itself but lets contemplate about
their thinking, to the
Wahhabi-indoctrinated sectarians of Islamists (that are not only driving the
politics of Islam in the Arab world but also in Afghanistan) only the purest
and most fanatical are worthy of consideration. The teachings and published
proclamations of this cult have initiated us to the idea that the tolerant, the
open-minded, the apostate or the followers of different branches of Islam are
fit only for slaughter and contempt. And that's before Christians and Jews, let
alone atheists and secularists, have even been factored in. As before, the deed
announces and exposes its "root cause." The grievance and animosity
predate even the Balfour Declaration, let alone the occupation of the West
Bank. They predate the creation of Iraq as a state. The gates of Vienna would
have had to fall to the Ottoman jihad before any balm could
begin to be applied to these psychic wounds. And this is precisely, now, our
problem. The Taliban and its surrogates are not content to immiserate their own
societies in beggary and serfdom. They are condemned, and they deludedly
believe that they are commanded, to spread the contagion and to visit hell upon
the unrighteous. The very first step that we must take, therefore, is the
acquisition of enough self-respect and self-confidence to say that we have met
an enemy and that he is not us, but someone else. Someone with whom coexistence
is, fortunately I think, not possible.
Now to the
question I raised at the beginning of why Islamic Liberals are irrelevant to
the political discourse of the region. The Liberals have no real ties with
their own societies, they are merely the face of Islam to the rest of the world
and that is precisely what is bothering me. The group claim for universality of
rights while advocating the Barbaric Islamic Fascists, further the liberals
would take any opportunity to unload the blame on the west. The secularists would only be successfully
once the Islamic countries address the issue of injustice and corruption that
has riddled these countries therefore removing the common cause for public
disillusionment. In such an environment the determined minority of secularists
and modernist could be able to seize the opportunity, as was the case in Turkey
by the elite officers of the army, and pull the country out of the polluted
water of Islamic Fascism that they all seem to drown currently.
