Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneeer
Date: May 20, 2003
Even if it is not immediately apparent,
the May 12 car-bomb attacks in Riyadh are no ordinary episode in the jihad
currently menacing the world. Though foreigners were the physical victims
of the well-planned horror, its political targets were the ruling house
of Saud.
It must have shaken the asinine
equanimity of the Saudi royals to realise that the policy of financing
fundamentalism abroad while buying peace with fundamentalists at home has
failed. They would have grasped that the kind of rough justice meted out
during the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca will no longer suffice
to crush the Al Qaeda-type of Islamic organisation that appears to have
struck deep roots in society. For, the issue is not merely one of law versus
lawlessness, rights versus oppression, or any such conventional conflict
that generally yields to solution.
The crux of the matter is the nature
of Islam. The serious eruption of Islamic terror in the heart of Arabia,
where Islam was born, is therefore good news for countries like India which
are being rent asunder by its bloody, unremitting and unilateral aggression.
For, this means that the resolution of issues internal to Islam will now
have to be accomplished in the Islamic heartland, where the Quran is the
legal constitution. It follows that the evasion and the fudging of issues
that take place in non-Muslim societies cannot occur in Saudi Arabia. With
the stakes so high, all issues will have to be articulated and faced squarely.
Contrary to the Western perception
which dominates the international discourse, the conflicts gnawing Muslim
society are not the same as those that erupted in Christendom some centuries
ago-namely, the separation of Church and state. Despite similarities between
the two faiths, it would be a grave fallacy to interpret Islam in the light
of the experience of non-Arab, non-Semitic societies that were forcefully
converted to Christianity in the past, and partially settled scores with
the imperialistic faith by wresting the political and secular realm from
its control.
Christian societies remain grievously
wounded on account of their failure to recover their old religious traditions,
and the sexual scandals exploding in parish after parish, nation after
nation, offer painful glimpses of the extent of spiritual impoverishment
accompanying the monotheistic scourge.
For Islam, the issues are more complicated.
Conceived by the Prophet as the special faith of Arab tribes, it remained
in control of its holy land and sites despite the political disempowerment
engendered by the colonial quest. Moreover, as a sister monotheism, it
received respect from Western Governments and intellectuals. The West only
wanted working relationships with whoever could control the strategically
and economically vital Gulf region. In the post-colonial era, this involved
propping up monarchies or dictatorships, and though this caused angst amongst
Muslims, democracy is not the burning issue in Islamic societies.
As I see it, Islam today is being
torn apart by a peculiar trilateral correlation of forces-the political
authority, the religious-spiritual authority, and intellectuals-civil society.
All three are ranged against each other, and no two sides have been able
to strike a lasting strategic partnership. This accounts for the inherent
instability of Islamic society in the modern world, and the failure (even
by Muslims) to perceive the trilateral nature of the dispute has defeated
all attempts at resolution.
Let me explain. In the Western-Christian
world, notwithstanding internal strains, civil society and intellectuals
sided unequivocally with the rising political power (monarch, state) in
challenging the Church. It helped that the Church had no political power
in the early centuries of its growth, and hence could not claim a monopoly
over political power. In its subsequent contest with the unbridled power
of the State, civil society did not give political power back to the Church,
and to this day remains broadly aligned with the secular State.
In Islam, however, political and
spiritual authority were inextricably fused in the person of Mohammad,
who wielded the sword in the famous Battle of Badr to proclaim his Prophethood.
This marriage of the political and the spiritual was maintained in the
persona of the Four Pious Caliphs, whose rule over the fledgling community
continues to be regarded as the golden age of Islam. Thus, notwithstanding
the enormous heights of power and glory subsequently scaled by Muslim empires
and dynasties through history, religious Islam (the ulema) could never
come to terms with the loss of political power that began almost as soon
as the polity achieved viability, and the ummah (populace) also did not
validate this denial.
Post-World War II, and especially
post-September 11, 2001, Muslim intellectuals comfortably ensconced in
the West have exploited Western guilt over support to dictatorial regimes
by positing the mosque as the sole viable source of dissent against hated
regimes. They have frozen the debate in terms of a bipolar model of state-monarch-dictator
versus Maulvi-intellectual-civil society.
In my view, the mosque is as much
a source of oppression of civil society as the state. But more pertinently,
far from being the source of dissent, it is the sole source of legitimate
authority in Islam. Hence, Muslim polity will always be unstable because
even an ulema-backed ruler will be less legitimate than the ulema-ruler
(a la Ayatollah Khomeini). Obviously, this will not be acceptable to monarchs-dictators-elected
autocrats; nor will it be palatable to the intellectuals- middle class.
Apologists argue that the West (read
America) must 'help' the Saudi family stamp out terrorists while pressuring
the regime to reform. Reform what? The polity? Suppose the monarchy makes
way for an elected regime based on territorial nationalism, it does not
help because national boundaries have no place in Islam even though they
cannot be done away with in the modern world, or indeed, in any viable
political arrangement whatsoever.
Perhaps the state religion-Wahhabi
fundamentalism-can be moderated and made more amenable to the modern age.
Saudi intellectuals like Mansour Al-Nogidan say the country suffers from
home-made fanaticism; Hamza Al-Muzini deplores his son is being taught
the culture of death at school by teachers with an extremist political
agenda (The New York Times, May 15, 2003). Despite this, Saudi intellectuals
do not spell out if they are with the monarchy against the clerics or with
the ulema against the monarchy. These choices can no longer be evaded;
civil society in Muslim countries must take responsibility for the nature
of those societies and polities.
Unfortunately, civil society and
intellectuals in Muslim countries fluctuate between the political and religious
ends of the spectrum. In Iran, civil society fell behind the Ayatollahs
when it failed to topple the Shah on its own, but despite its current unhappiness
with the clergy, it is unable to adequately strengthen the Government.
In Iraq, civil society was brutalised by Saddam Hussein but is already
uneasy about the possible rise of the clerics in the current turmoil. This
is particularly true of women, who have seen the fate of their sisters
in neighbouring Iran.
The mosque, therefore, is both difficult
to resist and impossible to endorse. This is the painful reality of Muslim
society. Radical Islam lacks the intellectual and spiritual ammunition
to resolve the dilemma and can only take its adherents on a one-way street
to damnation. The Saudi response will be interesting.
