Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: November 18, 2003
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage hit the nail on the head when he declared to the Al Arabiya television
network that the real target of the November 9 suicide attack on the Muhaya
compound in Riyadh was the Saudi royal family and monarchical system of
government. Both Washington and the House of Saud are unanimous that Osama
bin Laden and his Al Qaeda are behind the latest outrage which killed at
least 18 persons and left another 120 injured. If this is true, as seems
likely, it is evident that notwithstanding the Taliban's failure to establish
itself in Afghanistan, bin Laden feels compelled to take his struggle to
establish his brand of Islam right into the heartland of the Islamic world,
viz, Saudi Arabia, where Hazrat Muhammad first declared his Prophethood.
The realisation that bin Laden means business, notwithstanding the recent
withdrawal of American troops from Saudi soil, must have a sobering effect
on Washington and Riyadh. It means that the renegade billionaire is not
avenging a supposed insult to the Islamic holy lands, nor is he after the
Americans or Westerners in general; rather, he is waging an all-out war
for power and glory.
It is a delicious irony that bin
Laden is determined to topple the ruling House of Saud, which espouses
the most orthodox form of Islam-Wahabi Islam-and actively finances fundamentalism
all over the world. The grounds for his opposition to the regime are simply
that it is not puritanical enough, oil wealth having made the sheikhs cling
to lives of ease and western-style comforts. Thus, though bin Laden will
garner support among disaffected sections of Saudi society, who want more
democracy and development, he himself shall not be called upon to deliver
either as he hustles the monarchy out of the gates of history.
Osama bin Laden will only marshall
the forces of discontent towards apocalypse; he cannot lead people back
from the brink towards sanity, stability, and normal human progress. Had
he the ability or the desire to do so, he would have learnt some valuable
lessons from the tragedy that visited the Afghan people under his inhuman
Taliban regime. Yet sections of Saudi society which can be expected to
gather around bin Laden have also failed to learn from the Afghan calamity,
and will now be complicit in the catastrophe that devolves upon their own
lives when the monarchy is overthrown. Tribalism, gangsterism, warlordism
et al shall be Saudi Arabia's lot, as in the case of Afghanistan.
The Saudi regime's attempts to contain
the threat from bin Laden may serve only to exacerbate the crisis of its
political legitimacy. Crown Prince Abdullah, who is in- charge of issues
of day-to-day governance, is trying to soften the growing domestic opposition
to the monarchy by ushering in reforms. Last month, elections were announced
to municipal offices, and will be held next year. The Prince also allowed
television coverage of the deliberations of the Consultative Asse-mbly,
whose members are appointed by him.
However, these measures towards
democratisation are unlikely to provide meaningful relief to the royal
family, precisely because of Islam's quixotic approach to issues of power
and governance. Islam does not accommodate itself to established forms
of government, such as monarchy or democracy, and remains mesmerised with
that brief Pristine era in which the Prophet was both religious preceptor
and political ruler. Unlike other creeds, Islam has been unable to accept
the separation of the religious and the secular realms, and the non-dominance
of the faith in the public arena.
This has bequeathed a peculiar paradox.
Though no successor could match the unique status of the Prophet-three
of the four Pious Caliphs were murdered-Islam through the centuries retained
a craving for the unity of the religious and political realms. While monarchy
was a reality of the Islamic world, it was not consistent with Islamic
precepts, and the ruler was ever wary of the clergy. The Islamic craving
for a unified religious-political order intensified as Islam faced the
challenge of the West and lost its domination of the high seas in the era
of conquest and colonialism.
Post-World War II Islam has been
uncomfortable with modern democracy. The establishment of pro-Western regimes
in much of the Muslim world further exacerbated Muslim unease with non-Islamic
forms of governance. This made opposition a paradox in Muslim countries-governments
were hated for being dictatorial and oppressive, but no Islamic country
could yield a credible political democracy. To be viable, the opposition
to the regime had to be couched in a religious idiom, but when the clergy
seized political power, there was no legitimate idiom with which to express
or resist oppression by the Ulema. Thus, though the travails of Iranian
society under Ayatollah Khomeini are fairly well-documented, the Muslim
world has failed to learn the appropriate lessons and to this day there
is no credible movement to demarcate the religious and secular spheres
in Islamic society.
Perhaps it is just as well, therefore,
that the incredibly well organised and tenacious bin Laden has taken his
fight into the heartland of Islam. The fear of the Saudi royals is quite
palpable, and is no doubt aggravated by the fact that the growing stress
of events in Iraq has taken the swagger out of their American allies. Of
course, the Saudi regime is moving fast to uncover and eradicate the terrorist
cells. Huge hauls of arms, explosives and ammunition have been seized,
the sheer scale and volume of which have sent shock waves through the country.
In the end, however, it will take
more than efficient police or military action to combat bin Laden and the
Al Qaeda. What is needed is an ideology that will counter radical Islam's
corrosive appeal and offer the people of the kingdom a way of life consistent
with their desires and aspirations in the modern world.
Unfortunately, Islam does not provide
such an ideology; nor does it adjust toevents or developments that were
unknown or unmanifest at the time of the Prophet's revelation. The tragedy
of the Muslim world is not that the Quran is not an all-encompassing document
on the philosophy of life and politics, on the lines of India's epic, the
Mahabharat. The tragedy is that the Muslim world has failed to generate
a consensus on the need to pontificate over and decide upon contemporary
issues, themes and challenges that the Quran is silent about.
It is only natural that the religious
clergy should resist such change and innovation as it would result in the
eventual dilution of its power. What remains inexplicable, however, is
that despite the repeated lessons of history, particularly over the last
hundred years, the Muslim community remains wedded to the destructive notion
of facing the contemporary world with solutions from the Stone Age. The
Islamic world has so far proved incapable of evolving a social and political
theory that will enable its adherents to build viable and stable societies
and governments. Instead, it remains eternally hostage to charismatic agent
provocateurs such as Osama bin Laden, whose only promise to his people
is that he will lead them to Apocalypse Now. Truly, it is a sad commentary
on the Saudi people if they are willing to embrace such a man even after
the disastrous consequences of 9/11.
