Terrorism: Is Exporting Indian Islam The Solution?

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Mirza Faisal Beg and Mohib Ahmad co-authored this article for Indian National Interest.

The pre-requisite of finding an impactful solution is to first understand the problem. Nitin Pai, identifies the problem as ‘radical Islam’ and offers a solution by exporting syncretic ‘Indian Islam’. Malaysia is doing something similar on its part when it is talking about ‘Islam Hadari’. In the US some groups are attempting to promote their own version of Islam (by supporting Irshad Manji) or even launching a frontal attack (by promoting Ayan Hirsi Ali).

Before looking into the effectiveness of exporting Indian Islam we here first redefine the problem. Hamid Mir recently wrote “Al Qaeda was operating only in few countries before 9/11, now it operates in more than 62 countries”. The militant ideology espoused by Al Qaeda emerged during the twilight of the cold war. It was in the strategic interests of US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Various Madarsas were established that took traditional Islam head on. The fighters poured in from various places in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation. But once the Soviet Union withdrew the genie was already out of the bottle and there was no plan to put it back.

Just twenty years back there was no problem of ‘militant Islam’. Just a little over ten years back there was no problem of suicide bombing, other than that pursued by LTTE. Many observers are commenting that that the Wahhabi system is responsible for the growth. Even this assumption is not true as even though the Wahhabi idea is regressive in many ways yet it is not militant. The Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia have been condemning suicide bombings and terrorist attacks for many years even before 9/11.

What is the reason of the growth of militant radicalism? Why is it that it was not pursued just a few decades ago? Why is it that there were no suicide bombings by radical Islamist militants just over a decade ago? These questions are important because it breaks our thoughts that are superficially mapped by incessant invocations that ‘perhaps Islam itself is the problem’. This growth has actually been due to a mix of imperialistic tendencies of US, radical and extremist religious ideas and lack of freedom under dictatorships and its unflinching support by powerful western governments. In fact Robert Pape, an eminent Political Science Professor at University of Chicago, in an academic research on suicide bombings concluded that they are directly linked to political struggle rather than religion.

The place where we stand today is facing two problems which are two sides of the same coin. Just looking at one and ignoring the other will not make our world more at peace. The radicalism of a section of Muslim youths is a problem. The militant Islamist ideology being espoused by them is a problem. But this problem has been fed by imperialistic tendencies and by lack of freedom. And the animal has been fed well.

It has been fed by the continued brutal occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands which Jimmy Carter calls ‘apartheid’, by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and now by the US invasion of Iraq. It has also been fed by lack of freedom under dictatorships where the iron hand of dictators in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Algeria, etc has made the radical and militant religious position as the only one having any impact. We now stand at a point where both are feeding each other, though the supporters on either side may not acknowledge the contribution of their side in the conflict.

Any solution that begins with ‘Islam is the problem or a version of Islam is the problem’ is a non-starter. Because the radicalism is growing primarily due to the injustices that many people are facing. It has taken a global face because of a very uniquely Islamic religious precept of caring for the other Muslim in the wider Ummah. This has caused Muslim youth from very different places and backgrounds to get involved with the militant ideology. Unless there is a simultaneous two pronged approach towards stopping the injustices at one hand as well as stopping the rising tide of extremism on the other hand the things will not get much better. There will continue to be disgruntled youth. Along with that they will now have an execution model to pursue the militant path.

With this in perspective, we look here on one of the prongs of putting the genie of militant Islamist ideology back in the bottle. Pratap Bhanu Mehta in an incisive column recently wrote, “Jihad has also exposed…a crisis of religious authority. There is often a call for recovering the ‘true teaching’ or real Islam. But what does it mean to do that in a world that has no locus of religious authority, just a series of contending wills struggling to assert their might? What religious authority can you enlist? The crisis of the nation state is simultaneously accompanied by the crisis of religious authority, and that is perhaps why they both need each other.”

It is important to understand the role that this religious authority has to play. In the cacophony of ideas ranging from ‘Islam is the best solution’ to ‘Islam is the biggest problem’ and ‘Islam needs an overhaul and revolution’ to ‘Islam lies in the glorious past’ we need to bring peace and sanity through a discourse which the 1.2 billion Muslims can relate with. If we want to promote the Indian Islam let us first look at what we want to achieve and what it has to offer. We would want to achieve peace, a higher level of tolerance in the Muslim countries towards other religious and non-religious ideas and would want to achieve a state where all humans living in a country are considered equal.

An assumption often made is that the struggle is between the extremists and the moderates and the state needs the latter. But the word ‘moderate’ has different meanings for different people. The same person has been branded as extremist as well as liberal by different groups. This phenomenon of considering someone ‘moderate’ has resulted in promoting people, particularly in US, whose promotion itself alienates many Muslims. But strange as it might sound the extremists are not trying to defeat the so called ‘moderates’ who are often promoted in the Western media. Despite the media coverage they receive, they are but a tiny minority in the larger Muslim world and possess limited or no influence. The fight is between the extremists and the traditionalists.

Traditionalists have dictated the direction of Islam for more than a millennium. In the traditional Sunni Islam, there are four major schools of thought and in the traditional Shia Islam there are some more. The difference in these schools is because of the different interpretive methodologies that they follow. The majority opinion of the scholars following a particular school is taken to be the most optimal interpretation. This ensures that any extremist or outlandish ideas are challenged. The ‘fatwa’ that is given by a particular scholar is by its very meaning just an ‘opinion’ which is non binding on anyone and can be challenged by other scholars of that school of thought. Due to this they have divergent views on many issues but still do not claim that the other school is wrong. These schools accept that people can look at the same sources (Quran and Hadith) and come up with totally different but valid interpretations.

The extremists (who tend to agree most with the Wahhabi thought) are trying to discredit the traditional Islam and preaching one single interpretation of every issue. Young Muslims bred in modern education, unable to find new insights in the traditional Islam for many centuries now, find this new idea of unity and back-to-the-basics attractive. The traditionalists recognize the importance of this ongoing battle of ideas and many of them consider this ’single interpretation’ approach as a major threat to Islam.

In this war of ideas going on in the larger world of Islam, success can only be achieved theologically and hence only by Muslim scholars. Any intervention by the state in such a debate, even if it is positive, will not be welcomed by Muslims. An extremist Muslim is not going to listen to a liberal Muslim but he may be willing to lend an ear to the traditionalist Muslim. In a recent experiment in Yemen, Islamic scholars have been going in prisons to debate with incarcerated extremists and convince them theologically. This experiment has been quite a success and many reformed extremists have been released. Extremists, as we know, do not necessarily have a deep understanding of theological beliefs but only a superficial understanding. In their world-view things are in black and white and no shades in between. To get out of the current turmoil, supporting the traditionalists is the best bet. UK has already taken the lead by engaging with some leading traditionalists in fighting back the extremist thought.

One can very validly argue that supporting the traditionalists would mean supporting lesser rights of women, non-Muslims and lack of freedom of speech. This is a real challenge but the glimmer of light is that there is a traditionalist thought emerging (which is more prominent outside India) that is reasserting the equal rights of women and revisiting the position of non-Muslims and controversial concepts such as apostasy. It is important to engage them more and more. Secondly, in a secular society there stand on many of these issues does not matter as they are handled by the law of the land and the more important issue is about having a control over violence. This new emerging thought is, mind it, not from the ‘liberals’ but from the ‘traditionalist’ quarter.

Let us now look at the utility of promoting Indian Islam in this complex scenario. Is it correct to presume the existence of a certain syncretic Islam in India? In fact, there is no single syncretic version of Islam in India as there are at least four major strains of the religion: Deobandi, Barelvi, Wahhabi and Shia. Except for Wahhabism, it can be argued that the remaining three strains are unique in their own sense.

They have been shaped and enriched as a result of centuries of cultural interactions. The marsiya (elegies) rendered by Ustad Bismillah Khan to commemorate Muharram, the reverence of Sheikh Moinuddin Chishti across religions, the acceptance of qawwalis as folklore, and even the Tablighi Jamaat movement have a certain Indianness to them. But at the same time it is impossible to single out one strain out of the three to represent the syncretic Indian Islam.

But every country has its own story of traditional – as well as syncretic – thought. While we have our own syncretic Indian Islam there is diversity and examples in other parts of world too whether it is in syncretic Chinese Islam among its 20 to 50 Million Chinese Muslims, or the Indonesian Islam, or the Malay Islam, or the sub-Saharan Islam, or the Iranian Islam, or the Central Asian Islam. The traditional thought, though conservative, is vehemently against the brazen violence that we see today. The various countries have their own indigenous heroes as examples. Omar Mukhtar when leading the fight against Italian imperialism and coaxed by his followers to retaliate in the brutal tactics shot back “We will not let our enemy be our teachers�?.

At the same time many Muslims in India don’t consider the religion followed by other Indian Muslims as true Islam. They accuse the rest of indulging in shirk (associating partners with God) which is the biggest and unpardonable sin in Islam. This phenomenon is vividly manifested in the practices of many new generation Muslims where they consider their ancestors as deviant Muslims and some even try to embrace the Arabized version of Islam. So much so, a friend recently signed off an email with Uthman instead of Usman, which is his original name. On being inquired, he argued that the real transliteration of the name is Uthman (the Arabic version instead of Usman which in South Asian). This disdain is not limited to South Asia but is increasingly noticeable in hitherto culturally tolerant nations like Malaysia.

So where does it leave us with our goals that we stated earlier. One assumption that is often made is that Muslim lands have never lived with people of other faiths. This assumption is far from truth. It is an established fact that when Jews were persecuted throughout Europe they lived safely in Muslim lands. Also significant Christian population has existed in Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. In almost every Muslim country outside the Arabian Peninsula one can find churches and synagogues. These countries have histories of more than thousand years of living together though one can always site inter-communal issues as one can in India too.

That said it is also a fact that from modern standards many of these countries do not give sufficient freedom of religion particularly to new migrants like Hindus and Sikhs as well as to some extent to Christians and Jews. It is here that Indian Muslims can play a role. The Indian Islamic scholars should be supported as well as they should take the lead, as they did when they opposed partition of India, in showing a more syncretic co-existence in this newly globalized world.

India still has a few things to offer to the world. When powerless millions long for change in the middle-east monarchies and dictatorships, they can learn a lot from India instead from its neighbor Pakistan. India can show how a country where religion has a prominent place in people’s lives can still build strong modern democratic institutions that ensure that law of the land stands supreme. Moreover, it can show how Muslims have lived with a majority where on the face of it the beliefs appear to be totally divergent.

The work on the other prong is another story but equally necessary to bring peace and stability.

Tagged as: Indian-Islam, Indo-Islamic Culture, Islamic Terrorism, Muslim-terrorist, Pakistan