TERROR
STALKS LONDON
Terror has stalked London several times in its long history: (begins around 44 B.C) The Black Death of 1348; the great plague of 1664-65; the great fire of 1666; and the daily bombing of World War 2—these have been the visitations of terror in this great city. Even the London underground—as subway light rail system is called in London—has been haunted by the horror of the IRA bombings for several decades. So what is new this time that publications have not stopped commenting on the horror of the 7th of July bombings? For one thing, the invisible horror has struck, or at least tried to strike, yet again on 21 July. For another, and that is more important, this terrorist attempt has been blamed upon extremist, militant Muslims. And, what makes it even more relevant for Pakistan, is that some of the alleged perpetrators of these offences are of Pakistani origin and may have travelled to Pakistan and even spent some months in a madrassa here. So, the question is, what creates the demonic fury which values neither happiness nor life—neither one’s own nor that of anyone else—and just lashes out to kill and maim and destroy?
To answer these questions let us look at Britain, Pakistan and the world in general. In Britain, most Pakistanis are of working-class origin from the rural areas of northern Punjab and areas from the former state of Kashmir bordering them. They are ‘deterritorialized’ Muslims and live in daily and nerve-wracking competition with the British working classes. Both the British working class and the non-white working class have had a rough deal since labour is not required as much as it was in the fifties and the sixties. To the non-whites British society appears racist, unjust and oppressive. To the whites, it appears completely unjust that foreigners should have taken advantage of their welfare state, the legal apparatus, the liberal values and then multiplied fast to drive them out of jobs and neighborhoods. The only ones who stand to gain are the British industrial magnates who need cheap labour and stay aloof from the ghettoes of the feuding working classes. The Pakistani upper classes, who should have invested in their own people to make them stay in Pakistan, also think they have gained because they get hard currency from exporting workers abroad. Actually, the long-term effects on both societies, British and Pakistani, are so horrendous that nobody wants to think of them.
There deterritorialized Asians, and especially the subset of Muslims, want to cling to some identity which should distinguish them from the British. They do not know their languages well and other things, such as dress and cuisine, are both divisive and impracticable. So, in the end, they tend to fall back upon the ‘Islamic identity’. Now, in South Asia the Islamic identity is not a monolith. There are sects, sub-sects and all kinds of shades of differences which can create a healthy pluralism. Above all, our rural areas are much influenced by mysticism and the sufi saints taught accommodation and spirituality rather than an outward, this-worldly orientation. Even the conservative ulema were more inclined to concentrate on rituals and medieval texts rather than bother about what is happening in Palestine. In short, the whole bias of folk Islam was apolitical. The whole bias of deterritorialized Islam, as talked about in the West among Muslims, is political. This version of Islam rejects mysticism and the conservative, medieval jurists in favour of the fundamental texts of Islamic belief. These texts—the Quran and the hudith—are interpreted not necessarily by the traditional ulema but others whose major interest is how to empower Muslims in an obviously unjust world dominated by the West.
They create a virtual ‘ummah’ (community of believers) on the internet and visit sites which favour violence as the only legitimate response to Western injustices. This creates anger and, thus, it is not altogether surprising that British Muslims reacted the way they did. Britain, much more the United States, is conscious of a perpetual racist strife; it has lower and increasingly failing standards of personal satisfaction among the working classes; and, what is significant, is that the Muslim immigrants do not come from middle class backgrounds. In the USA, the Muslims being mostly middle class professionals, the level of violence and anger is less. Their own lives are comfortable and within the USA there is far less awareness of injustice, strife and violence than there is in Britain. Thus, unless somebody is planted for a certain purpose in the USA, the chances of a Muslim choosing the path of violence is less in that country than in Britain.
Pakistan should not feature much in this story because it deserves a separate story of its own. Briefly, to argue that some visitor was brainwashed to kill and be killed in a Pakistani madrassa is naïve, simplistic and inadequate. After all, it is with a certain commitment, having already been brainwashed, that somebody visited this country. The ordinary madrassa teaches the Dars-i-Nizami, a collection of canonical texts made by Mulla Nizamuddin who was an 18th century alim from Lucknow, which does not allow suicide bombings. The whole story of how American policies, abetted by Pakistan’s decision-makes at that time, militarized religious students and others for their short-term policies has been told many times but will be considered some other time. What must be emphasized here is how the West enters into the equation and what must be done to control it.
It must be said at the outset that several people in the Muslim world, sincerely and genuinely condemn violence against Western—or for that matter any—targets anywhere in the world. However, to prevent this violence, it is necessary to point out as to what feeds the anger which produces it. At the moment there are several causes but the most well-known are Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya. Muslim masses do not distinguish between Russians and Americans as far as Chechnya is concerned. They perceive all attacks on Muslim populations as part of the crusades which have never stopped. Indeed, much before Huntington talked of the ‘Clash of civilizations’, Muslim preachers used to mention it in terms of the crusades. They never perceived international conflict in terms of communism versus capitalism and so on. They always thought of the world as divided between the dar-ul-Islam and the dar-ul-harb (the land of war or of non-Muslim domination). I remember I once mentioned this theory in an English daily in the early nineties and all the sophisticated readers, who had never heard preachers, made fun of me. But now that these terms (crusaders) are used daily, people will agree that the Muslim masses feel besieged on all sides.
The reality, conceded by all unbiased people, is that the Muslims are being unjustly treated in many parts of the world and, therefore, Palestine and Chechnya are festering sores which do create Muslim anger. As for Afghanistan and Iraq, these are American follies. In response to 9/11 if the USA had taken covert action against its alleged perpetrators while meeting the demands of Muslims, anger against the USA would not have become endemic in parts of Pakistan. If Iraq had been left alone, a whole new crop of recruits for violence would not have been sown. So, while violence is never justifiable, its causes can be made manifest and that is what I am doing here.
So, can anything be done? Yes, but it can be done by reversing the aggressive policies championed by the USA and supported by Britain. Above all, the ruling elite of rich countries and that of countries like Pakistan must make a huge investment in the poor so that anger, a product of injustice, should simmer down. These are changes of such a basic and revolutionary kind that I doubt if decision-makers, always fond of ad-hoc, short-term policies, will go for them. But if they do not, the future will be much worse than the past.
The author is a linguistic
historian.
Dr.
Tariq Rahman