Our differences are not religious, political, economic or ideological, they are cultural. After 9/11 Americans for the first time believed that terrorism was real and not just a law and order problem or border skirmishes of the developing world, but for the want of true understanding they blamed it on a primitive mindset and called it a civilizational fight.
As if hell bent to prove that their civilization can be far more primitive, if it chooses it be, it led its allies into 'a war on terror'. There were preemptive strikes on the target civilization and soon it had the first trophy - Saddam Husein. Did Saddam sent those jihadists to crash into the twin towers and the Pentagon? That seemed to be a silly question, too unimportant to answer. Did he possess the dreaded weapons of mass destruction, the WMDs? Again a silly question and hence no answers...........because after all it was the superior civilization teaching an inferior and primitive one to modernize and lead a better life!
So what happened next? Even those moderate Muslim nations, which castigated the Al Qaeda and the Taliban for 9/11, now had second thoughts and developed sympathy for those who never deserved it. Even a substantial part of liberal America started believing that invasion of Iraq was a criminal act based on colossal lie and monumental deceit and only aimed at regimen change. What is worse the Iraq invasion became a propaganda tool for the beleaguered Taliban and Al Qaeda to attract more money and more recruits. Osama made the Arabs believe that the Americans were after their land and their oil and the only answer could be to fight for a pious Islamic Caliphate free of infidels.
A good general know when the chips are down and stays out of trouble, waiting for an opportune moment to strike. The Americans got one such God sent moment when they understood the Pakistani duplicity and eliminated Osama in Abbottabad cantonment. This was a good time to leave - the Arab Spring had started and the villain of the piece was taken care of. But that was not to be.
They planned a second war on terror, this time in Afghanistan, caused a regime change and established a system of governance totally alien to the feudal society comprising of ever fighting warlords. So naturally a few came with them and a few were against them and kept the Taliban, hiding in the caves of Tora Bora fully informed and assisted them in occasional terrorist attacks. In this interesting game of diplomatic cards Pakistan was the joker of the pack. It assured the Americans of complete cooperation and provided the Taliban complete protection with utmost dedication! Not only that, it introduced Taliban to another American enemy, China and when the American stamina of overseas occupation ran out this trio took no time to overthrow the Kabul government which was lame duck without American crutches.
So you will now appreciate why I insist on calling it a cultural warfare. The Taliban from their Madarsa days, were brought up in a different cultural environment. If you choose to call it primitive and oppressive it is your interpretation and they have, by their acts and deeds, told the world that they care two hoots. Remember the destruction of the world famous Bamian Buddhas! Remember the horror stories narrated by the Taliban brides and women of Afghanistan? Remember the sexual exploitation of children and the drug economy growing in the poppy fields of the countryside? Have they ever apologized for all this? Have they ever said that they will do course correction? No, because that is the Taliban culture.
Sudan, Somalia and Lebanon have similarly faced Western sanctions. Some major Muslim countries as Iran and Syria are facing Western threat due to fundamentalism and interference into the Western affairs and benefits according to the Western point of view. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are particularly dangerous as the former is a nuclear power with a doubtful command control system and the latter is rich and exports hard-line Islamist ideas on one hand and remains a U.S ally on the other having mastered the art of running with the hare and hunting with the hound. The Western World thinks the Muslim fundamentalism, extremism, illiteracy and uncivilized manners the causes of conflicts and the disturbance of peace and threat in the western world. But I urge you to just pause here and think about the role of the most developed country in the world, the U.S so far. Since 1945 they have been bombing their adversaries right, left and centre. They have bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen! It seems they have but only one tool, the hammer and so every problem in the world looks like a nail! Is it not time to stop and think how many problems have they succeeded in solving by this wonder drug, the bomb?
The issue of Pan-Islamism
There is an unresolved tension among Muslim populations and nations between nationalism and pan-nationalism. This arises from the concept of Ummah — that all Muslims of the world are one supra-national entity. This makes them put religion before the nation, which Muslims attribute to their faith and Westerners blame it on their communalism.
The notion is pan-Islamism is in itself very strange. You would expect Muslims to fight the non-Muslims for this but many more wars are fought between Muslims and Muslim states than with others. The Iran-Iraq war was the longest, a large number of Islamic states joined the coalition against Saddam under the US, and, closer home, in the Af-Pak region, Muslims only kill Muslims and not all of them in Friday bombings at Shia mosques. The Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Arab, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadat etc. are all Muslims but find themselves insecure in Afghanistan. Similarly Ahmadis, Bahais and Parsis have never felt safe in Pakistan just as the Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jains and Sikhs could never find it secure.
Ironies galore
There is however a brutal irony with pan-Islamism. If pan-Islamism, the Ummah spirit, has worked on the ground, it is with multi-national terror groups. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are truly pan-Islamic organisations, which mostly target settled Islamic states. ISIS actually says that if you believe that all Muslims are part of the same Ummah, then they must also have a Caliphate subsuming international boundaries and enforcing the common Shariat. So you see, if Pakistan and China are celebrating today with the defeat and retreat of the Americans in Afghanistan, their happy days may not actually last for a very long time! For the Ummah this is a small victory and not the ultimate target. India knows this and is preparing for the worst.
There is another strange irony in the Muslim world which is ever so glaring. There are sharp national boundaries dividing Muslim populations and wealth. A bulk of the populations, in Asia and Africa, lives in poor economies. Whereas the world’s wealthiest nations, the Gulf Arabs, have relatively minuscule populations. They won’t distribute their wealth equally to the rest in the spirit of pan-Islamism. They won’t even accept Muslim refugees and they are instead pushed into Western nations, which are peaceful today but may ferment fundamentalism in days to come as we have see in France very recently. Following beheading of an unfortunate teacher Samuel Paty the French President Emmanuel Macron merely dared to say Islam is in crisis, and got himself into big trouble. Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked him to get his head examined. Pakistan’s Imran Khan wrote a two-page sermon to fellow Muslim nations calling for a re-education of the West about Islam and the nonagenarian Malaysian President Mahatir Mahamad nearly justified the teacher’s beheading!
But Western assumption that theirs is a superior culture does not give them the right to bomb their enemies to Stone Age. Then how are they we proving to be superior? How can the extent of opposition destruction decide the superiority of a culture? Isn’t superiority in the evolutionary ladder all about construction, achievement and aspiration? So, what should be our response? We can confront them diplomatically, and help only when asked to do so. The real casualty are two - the Afghan people, particularly women and children and a sense of worldwide insecurity with fellow Muslims who, till the other day, were fellow citizens and not objects of Islamophobia.
The Islamist rejection of progressive values and their love for medieval Islamist dogma will only open up large cultural fault lines not only with other religions but among their own as well. A large section of Muslims have the holy Quran in one hand and computer in another. Tracing a path back to the dark ages is not an option for them. But do they have the strength of character and the vision of a better future to stand against the spread of primitive thinking in their midst? Can they nudge the pan-Islamists to give up their Utopian dream of a world-wide Islamic Caliphate governed by Sharia? That is the million dollar question. The change has to come from within; non-Muslims cannot fight wars to bring this change.
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