 |
| John Kerry and King Salman. |
It is an incontestable fact that the real culprit behind the
rise of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism all over the Islamic world has
been Saudi Arabia. The Bani Saud (the tribe of Saud) were the most primitive
and marauding nomadic tribesmen of Najd who violently defeated the Sharifs of Mecca
after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. Their title to
the leadership of Saudi Arabia is only de facto, not de jure; since they
neither have any hereditary claim to the Saudi monarchy, nor do they hold
elections to ascertain the will of the Saudi people.
Thus, they are the illegitimate rulers of Saudi Arabia and
they feel insecure because of their illegitimacy; a fact which explains their
heavy-handed and brutal tactics in dealing with any kind of dissent, or movement
for reform in the Gulf States.
The phenomena of religious extremism and jihadism all over
the Islamic world is directly linked to the Wahhabi-Salafi madrassahs (religious
seminaries) that are generously funded by the Saudi and Gulf’s petro-dollars.
These madrassahs attract children from the most impoverished backgrounds in the
Third World Islamic countries because they offer the kind of incentives and
facilities which even the government-sponsored public schools cannot provide:
such as, free boarding and lodging, no tuition fee at all, and free of cost
books and stationery; some generously-funded madrassahs even pay monthly
stipends to their students.
Apart from madrassahs, another factor that promotes the
Wahhabi-Salafi ideology in the Islamic world is the ritual of Hajj and Umrah
(the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.) Every year millions of Muslim men and
women travel from all over the Islamic world to perform the pilgrimage in order
to wash their sins.
When they return home to their native countries after
spending a month or two in Saudi Arabia, along with clean hearts and souls,
dates and zamzam (purified water), they also bring along the tales of Saudi
hospitality and their supposedly “true” and puritanical version of Islam, which
some Muslims, especially the backward rural and tribal folk, find attractive
and worth-emulating.
Authority plays an important role in any belief system; the
educated people accept the authority of the specialists in their respective
field of expertise; similarly, the lay folk accept the authority of the
theologians and clerics in the interpretation of religion and scriptures. Apart
from authority, certain other factors also play a part in the psychology of the
believers: like, purity or the concept of sacred, and originality and
authenticity, as in the concept of being closely corresponding to an ideal or
authentic model.
Yet another factor which contributes to the rise of
Wahhabi-Salafi ideology throughout the Islamic world is the immigrants’ factor.
Millions of Muslim men, women and families from all over the Third World
Islamic countries live and work in the energy-rich Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE,
Kuwait and Oman. Some of them permanently reside there but mostly they work on
temporary work permits.
Just like the pilgrims, when they come back home to their
native villages and towns, they also bring along the tales of Saudi hospitality
and their version of supposedly “authentic Islam.” Spending time in Gulf Arab
States entitles one to pass authoritative judgments on religious matters, and
having a cursory understanding of Arabic, the language of Quran, makes one
equivalent of a Qazi (a learned jurist) among the illiterate rural folk; and
they simply reproduce the customs and traditions of the Arabs as an authentic
version of Islam to their communities.
The Shi’a Muslims have their Imams and Marjahs (religious
authorities) but it is generally assumed about Sunni Islam that it discourages the
authority of the clergy. In this sense, Sunni Islam is closer to Protestantism,
at least theoretically, because it prefers an individual and personalized
interpretation of scriptures and religion. Although this perception might be
true for the educated Sunni Muslims, but on the popular level of the masses of
the Third World Islamic countries, the House of Saud plays the same role in
Sunni Islam that the Pope plays in Catholicism.
By virtue of their physical possession of the holy places of
Islam – Mecca and Medina – they are the ex officio Caliphs of Islam. The title
of the Saudi King: “Khadim-ul-Haramain-al-Shareefain” (the Servant of the House
of God), makes him a vice-regent of God on Earth; and the title of the Caliph
of Islam is not limited to a single nation state, he wields enormous influence
throughout the Commonwealth of Islam: that is, “the Muslim Ummah.”
Notwithstanding, when we hear slogans like “no democracy,
just Islam” on the streets of the Third World Islamic countries, one wonders that
what kind of a simpleton would forgo one’s right to choose their government
through a democratic and electoral process?
This confusion about democracy is partly due to the fact
that the masses often conflate democracy with liberalism without realizing that
democracy is only a political process of choosing one’s representatives through
an electoral process, while liberalism is a cultural mindset which may or may
not be suitable for the backward Third World societies depending on their existing
level of cultural advancement.
One feels dumbfounded, however, when even some educated
Muslims argue that democracy is somehow un-Islamic and that an ideal Islamic
system of governance is caliphate. Such an ideal caliphate could be some
Umayyad or Abbasid model that they conjure up in their minds, but in practice
the only beneficiaries of such an undemocratic approach are the illegitimate
tyrants of the Arab World who claim to be the Caliphs of Islam, albeit
indirectly and in a nuanced manner: that is, the Servants of the House of God
and the Keepers of the Holy places of Islam.
The illegitimate, and hence insecure, tyrants adopt
different strategies to maintain and prolong their hold on power. They readily
adopt the pragmatic advice of Machiavelli to his patrons: “Invent enemies and
then slay them in order to control your subjects.”
The virulently anti-Shi’a rhetoric of the Gulf-based
Wahhabi-Salafi preachers, who are on the payroll of the Gulf’s
petro-monarchies, appears to be a cunning divide-and-rule strategy on the lines
of Machiavelli’s advice. The illegitimate autocrats of the Gulf States cannot
construct a positive narrative that can recount their own achievements, that’s
why they espouse a negative narrative in order to vilify their political
adversaries for regional dominance in the Middle East.
The Sunni-Shi’a conflict is essentially a political conflict
which is presented to the lay Muslims in the veneer of religiosity. Saudi
Arabia has the world’s largest proven petroleum reserves, 265 billion barrels,
and its daily crude oil production is more than 10 million barrels (equivalent
to 15% of the global crude oil production.) However, 90 % of the Saudi
petroleum reserves and infrastructure are located along the Persian Gulf’s
coast, but this region comprises the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia which has
a significant and politically active Shi’a minority.
Any separatist tendency in this Achilles’ heel of Saudi
Arabia is met with sternest possible reaction. Remember that Saudi Arabia sent
thousands of its own troops to help the Bahraini regime quell the Shi’a
rebellion in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in the Shi’a-majority
Bahrain, which is also geographically very close to the Eastern Province of
Saudi Arabia.
Al-Qaeda inspired terrorism is a threat to the Western
countries but the Islamic countries are encountering a much bigger threat of
sectarian conflict. For centuries the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims have coexisted in
relative peace throughout the Islamic World but now certain vested interests
are deliberately stoking the fire of inter-sectarian strife to distract
attention away from the home front: that is, the popular movements for democracy
and enfranchisement in the Arab World.
Islam is regarded as the fastest growing religion of the
20th and 21st centuries. There are two factors that are primarily responsible
for this atavistic phenomena of Islamic resurgence: firstly, unlike Christianity
which is more idealistic, Islam is a more practical religion, it does not
demands from its followers to give up worldly pleasures but only aims to
regulate them; and secondly, Islam as a religion and political ideology has the
world’s richest financiers.
After the 1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West
in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war, the price of oil quadrupled; and the
contribution of the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs towards “the spiritual well-being” of
the Muslims all over the world magnified proportionally. This is the reason why
we are witnessing an exponential growth of Islamic charities and madrassas all
over the world and especially in the Islamic World.
Moreover, it’s a misconception that the Arab sheikhs of
Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and some emirates of UAE generally sponsor the
Wahhabi-Salafi brand of Islam, because the difference between numerous sects of
Sunni Islam is more nominal than substantive. Islamic charities and madrassas
belonging to all the Sunni denominations get generous funding from the Gulf
Arab states as well as private donors. Consequently, the genie of petro-Islamic
extremism cannot be contained unless that financial pipeline is cut off. And to
do that we need to promote the moderate and democratic forces in the Arab World
even if they are moderately Islamic.
The moderate and democratic Islamism is different from the
monarcho-theocratic Islamism of the Gulf variety, because the latter is an
illegitimate and hence insecure regime; in order to maintain its hold on power
it needs subterfuges and external rivals to keep the oppositional internal
threats to its survival in check. Takfirism (labelling others as infidels) and
jihadism are a manifestation of this Machiavellian trend.
In the nutshell, Islam is only a religion, just like any
other cosmopolitan religion, whether it’s Christianity, Hinduism or Buddhism;
we don’t have to find any exceptionalist justifications to explain the
phenomena of Islamic resurgence; it’s the petro-Islamic extremism and the consequent
phenomena of Takfirism and jihadism, which are like the collision of continental
tectonic plates that have engulfed the whole of Islamic World from the Middle
East and North Africa to the Af-Pak and Southeast Asia regions.
No comments:
Post a Comment