Dalrymple & Hamid - Understanding the Rage

As of late, Pakistan has been a hot topic in the Western press. Most of the coverage is the usual unenlightening blather about nukes and extremism but there have been a few good, thoughful pieces. Of course, given the tumultuous nature of current Pakistani politics, events on the ground soon overtake even the most up to date writings on the country.

I have always enjoyed reading William Dalrymple ('City of Djinns' about Delhi is my personal favorite) so I was happy to see his piece called "Days of Rage" in the July 23rd issue of The New Yorker. Even when I disagree with some of his interpretation of facts he is a consistently objective and unfailingly intelligent observer of the South Asian scene. The article is partly a profile of Asma Jahangir, the tireless campaigner for the cause of human rights in Pakistan. Dalrymple's admiration for Asma Jahangir's lifelong struggle on behalf of the vulnerable clearly comes through.

Mohsin Hamid recently wrote a piece for the Washington Post titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" In a way only a novelist can, Mohsin Hamid has intelligently explored this question which, since 9/11, is mindlessly asked in the West with a certain "wounded innocence" (Hamid's evocatively apt phrase). In his recent non-fiction, Mohsin Hamid has demonstrated increasing political maturity and seems to have finally moved on from his long lasting infatuation with Musharraf. I think the low point was his "too clever by half" review of Musharraf's atrocious autobiography. The literary device of schoolyard types that is supposed to help us understand Musharraf's psyche is merely attention-grabbing without being illuminating not to mention the inconvenient truth that no such rigid classifications exist in a typical Pakistani school where a 'cheetah' one day can just as easily be a 'chutiya' the next. As a respected Pakistani novelist writing in English, Mohsin Hamid has earned a rare bully pulpit from which he can contribute toward greater cross-cultural understanding and advance sensible ideas. Thankfully, he seems to be moving in that direction.

Islamic Reformers in the West - An interview with Tariq Ramadan

The July issue of Prospect magazine has an interesting article about Muslim reformist thinkers in the West. There is also an accompanying interview with Tariq Ramadan who is a western Islamic scholar currently at Oxford. Interestingly, he is the grandson of Hassan-al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

I have long believed that Muslim majority societies are so oppressed and intellectually stifled that it is highly unlikely that Islam's reformation will begin anywhere in the heart of the Islamic world. The intellectual vitality needed to lead Muslim thought into the 21st century will come from Muslim scholars in the west; people who are trained in intellectually curious and open societies in which free inquiry is protected and one's cozy notions are challenged in a cosmopolitan marketplace of ideas. It is people like Hamza Yusuf, Zaid Shakir (african-american imam), Tariq Ramadan, Ziauddin Sardar and Abdolkarim Soroush who are likely to lead this movement.

The quest for Justice

"Beneath the rage in the Mideast" in Sunday's New York Times is a great piece of insightful journalism. Michael Slackman gets to the heart of the problem when he cites the lack of justice, accountability and even rudimentary control over their lives as the primary reason that has the Muslim world ablaze. These conditions are in great measure responsible for the sustained rise of Islamists.

Western governments, due to a complex web of geopolitical and economic reasons, are simply unable and unwilling to do the right thing consistently. When they step in selectively for reasons that often seem dictated by their own immediate interests, they fail to win over anybody. In addition, thugocracies in the Muslim world channel the internal anger at the 'infidels' amplifying grievances real and imagined. That many of these unpopular, incompetent and oppressive regimes have leaders who are ostensibly "moderates" and allies in the western eyes only serves to discredit the very ideas that the West needs to promote (rule of law, tolerance etc.). Musharraf, Hosni Mubarak, the kingdoms of the middle east are the worst possible emissaries of western values when they themselves have cynically held on to power by hook or crook and have delivered nothing to their populations by way of institutions.

For the West to eventually win, what is simple-mindedly called, the "war on terror", its not just the promotion of freedom and democracy that is important; the West has to be seen as a friend of common Muslims not their corrupt dictators.

Excerpts from Michael Slackman's article:

"It has reached to the point where Egyptians do not feel entitled to anything, and all they want is justice," said Ibrahim Aslan, a leading Egyptian writer. "Across history, in literature, Egyptian peasants asked for justice, not for freedom or democracy. Just justice. Social justice."

Islamists promise not just piety, but an end to corruption and misrule. That challenge helps explain the eagerness of established governments to pursuethe conflict over the Danish cartoons — to increase their own credibility on religious issues and resist the Islamists' rising popularity.

The sinking of the ferry is a case study of this dynamic. More than 1,000 people drowned. By Friday, more than 600 bodies had not been recovered. At least 1,000 people continued to stand vigil on the streets outside a hospital along the Red Sea. It had taken more than seven hours to launch a rescue operation. Worried relatives had been greeted at the banks of the Red Sea by riot police who beat them back. For days, people sat on the street, under the sun, waiting for any information. And the state-run media tried to turn the whole matter into a public relations victory for President Hosni Mubarak."

Ayaz Amir in Dawn under the heading "Denmark: Wrong Target" makes a similar argument. The first half of his column reflects a confused view on the issues of free speech but the second half makes some pertinent points about the wretchedness of the status quo in the Islamic world and why the U.S. ultimately cannot afford to be serious about its "freedom and democracy" rhetoric. It costs too much in the short and medium term.

Excerpts:

"Why is there such a gulf between rulers and ruled in the Muslim world? Because both exist on different planes, rulers for the most part acting as US stooges, the masses yearning for some form of redemption. No wonder, when given the chance, the masses strike a blow against the status quo, voting for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or for Hamas in the Palestinian occupied territories.

Nothing is more fragile or more rotten in the world of Islam than the status quo. The Americans should never press their luck with democracy in the Muslim world because if democracy arrives — something on which I am not betting — American influence will go out of the door. The necessary condition for American hegemony over Muslim oil is Muslim autocracy. One serves the other."

Reactions to the cartoons - continued

Michael Kinsley in his "The Ayatollah Joke Book" basically gets it right in today's Slate. Again, as a born Muslim I find the cartoons offensive, gratuitously provocative and motivated by far less noble intentions than the defense of free speech (instigating racial hatred among its base intentions). But the principle of free expression in the West needs to be defended clearly and forcefully. The grotesque idea of cartoons of Hitler and Ann Frank in bed together (which I have not seen) shows the intellectual and emotional immaturity of the reaction but also goes to show that the West ultimately does tolerate free expression. Despite the deeply offensive nature of both the Hitler cartoon and an Iranian newpaper's shameful contest to prolong this tawdry episode, I don't see many Jews burning Iranian embassies and baying for Muslim blood.

Some excerpts:

"Meanwhile, whatever point these European Muslims were making with their cartoon of Hitler and Anne Frank is more or less disproved by their very exercise. No one tried to stop them from putting the cartoon on the Web. The notion that jokes about Anne Frank are beyond the pale is provably false. "

"Of course it is not Western values that are trampling freedom of expression: It is the ayatollah's own values, combined with the threat of violence. The other problem with his little joke about double standards, and with the whole supposedly mordant comparison between denying the Holocaust and portraying the prophet, is that the offended Muslims do not want a world where people are free to do both. They don't even want a world where people are not free to do either, which would at least be consistent. They want a world where you may not portray the Prophet Mohammed (even flatteringly, slaying infidels or whatnot) but you may deny the Holocaust all day long."

Also, here's a reasoned view (from behind a subscription firewall) from the other side. I don't wholly agree with Mr. Sethi because the self-censorship examples he provides are not a justification for curbing speech. They should be fought against even in the West. However, he is right that Muslims have become an easy target since 9/11 and the most acceptable overt prejudice in the West today is against Muslims. Ridiculous statements that people like Franklin Graham and General Boykin have made in the U.S. such as calling Islam a wicked religion would bring massive official denunciations (and sackings) if made against the Jewish people. Najam Sethi in the Friday Times in his editorial "Dangerous divides" writes:

Excerpts:

"What, we might ask, is the status of the notion of “freedom of expression” when Western journalists are blithely “embedded” with invading imperial armies and truth is the biggest casualty? What about “freedom of expression” when self-censorship is applied to enshrine new notions of “political correctness”, as for example in not describing blacks as “niggers”, or Jews as “Shylocks”? What about “freedom of expression” when the law of defamation is slapped on publications which unfairly taint someone’s reputation? What about “freedom of expression” when entrenched notions of “The Holocaust” are challenged and challengers are accused of anti-Semitism, as would doubtless happen if a rabbi had been shown in the cartooninstead of Prophet Mohammad? How can they say that their “freedom of expression” is curtailed if they are asked to desist from demonizing the Prophet of Islam when it is not curtailed by the defamation of a lay Westerner? Since when and under what law has “freedom of expression” become an absolute and sacred right regardless of responsibility, truth and the fundamental rights of other peoples? Nor do we need to reproduce the offending cartoons to determine whether it is right to print them or not under the guise of “freedom of expression”, as some newspapers have argued, when we can describe the nature of the offence (as we have done here) perfectly adequately in words and leave it at that."

"If all this is clear enough, what is the “freedom of expression” fig leaf all about? The answer must lie in what is meant to be conveyed by the cartoons. In brief, the cartoons depict the Prophet of Islam as a “terrorist” (his turban is shaped like a missile), like Osama bin Laden, meaning thereby that the 1.5 billion followers of Prophet Mohammad are also terrorists against whose “religious civilization” an unremitting war must be waged by a “secular civilization”. "

"Equally, it must be admitted that the violent reaction of the Muslims all over the world has been unfortunate. It is one thing to protest the word and quite another to burn down embassies and threaten to kill people. Once again the image on television screens feeds into the stereotype of modern day Islamic terrorism and plays into the hands of its agents-provacateur."

Muslim reaction to Danish cartoons - Rage against impotence

The Muslim reaction to the provocative cartoons published in Denmark has reached absurd levels. From this reaction one would think that the biggest problem in the world plaguing Muslims is a few ill-conceived cartoons published in an insignificant newspaper in an insignificant backwater of Europe. The New York Times today has a somewhat nuanced story about what is increasingly sounding like a dialogue of the deaf.

As a secular humanist and a cultural Muslim this has been a sad and dispiriting episode. Beyond the merits and deficiencies of the arguments on the various sides, to me, this widespread Muslim reaction is a rage of the impotent, powerless and humiliated.

This is a muddle-headed response of a civilization whose glory days are in the distant past but whose children are still raised with the conviction of the superiority of their belief system. For all the verbal emphasis on the greater importance of the after-life, the adherents ultimately also desire the benevolence of God in the here and now. However, in its bones the Muslim world knows that in every possible way Western societies have won the worldly battle. The West has delivered freedom and prosperity for its citizens. In contrast, a vast majority of Muslims continue to live in oppressive and desperate conditions. This cognitive dissonance mixed with the historic memory of the real and perceived injustices meted out to them by an assertive, confident and expanding western civilization since the 18th century are key contributors to the current state of Muslim impetuousness.

Obviously it is true that the billion plus Muslims are not a monolithic whole and there are vast differences amongst them but for all the talk about marginalized Muslim moderates, ultimately what we have here is a clash of civilizations. I believe that a majority of Muslims in the world (including in the West) are in varying degrees hostile to the West's values on moral and political grounds and this clash will continue to dominate the headlines for years and decades to come. The reaction to the cartoons just demonstrates that the cognitive dissonance in the Muslim mind is leading it toward destructive nihilism. There will be lot more rage and violence before the beginnings of a new order.

But what is to be done? The Economist is spot on in its editorial this week called "The one thing Bush got right" . Ultimately constitutional democracy is the only path which slowly, tortuously and by fits and starts will eventually chart the path toward a more stable Muslim world. My problem with the administration is that their approach has been neither consistent nor nearly energetic enough. Pakistan and Egypt are the glaring examples where the US is making a mistake by siding with unpopular but friendly strongmen, weakening the countries' political structure. This is bound to backfire. Behind the reluctance to spread the democratic message has been the concern about Islamists taking over but unless these societies are given an opportunity to grow up the current dynamic will continue to prevail. Muslim societies need to take responsibility for governing themselves and have a right to make their own mistakes so they can evolve more mature polities (even if it entails some short and medium term costs for the West) . In this context I do not necessarily despair about the election of Hamas. Given sufficient time and freedom to make their own choices but being held accountable for them (as David Brooks would say), the Muslim world will eventually find its footing. The spread of constitutional democracy in the Muslim world is the only long term antidote to its current virulence.