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“The Challenge of Fundamentalism and Imperialism: Can
Secular and Liberal Muslims Work Together?” by Tarek
Fatah: My Commentary
Taj Hashmi
Professor Security Studies
APCSS, Honolulu
I am thankful to Pervaiz Salahuddin for sharing with me Tarek Fatah’s
piece on if secular and liberal Muslims can work together against
imperialism and “fundamentalism”. I have simply good things to say and
write about this exceptionally inspiring and dazzling essay not because I
am friends with Tarek but because of the intrinsic
value of this piece for secular/liberal as well as orthodox/conservative
Muslims who despise imperialism and Islamist obscurantism, militancy and
terror. On a personal note, I have got very positive feedback on this piece
form both Muslim and non-Muslim academics who are very renowned in their
respective fields of expertise. My old friend, the renowned Indian
historian Professor Harbans Mukhia,
is one of them. To him, “this is brilliant, absolutely outstanding piece….
I will circulate it to all my friends.”
As Fatah has
stipulated, it is time that Muslims across the board realize that as
Western imperialism is baneful to human progress and global piece so is the
dogma of hate and intolerance that invokes Muslims to hate everything the
West represents through democratic and secular values. Most importantly, Tarek’s razor-sharp critique of some leftist
intellectuals condoning Taliban atrocities and portraying them as merely “Pushtoon nationalists” is very timely and insightful.
He has aptly cited the yawning gap between the “indigenous” and “foreign”
secular/liberal/leftist Muslim perceptions of the so-called Global Jihad.
While the former group of Muslim intellectuals, due to their first-hand
experience of Islamist terror and intolerance in Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries consider the Islamists as
backward-looking monsters, their secular/liberal counterparts mostly living
in the West, romanticize the Islamists simply as “friends” out of sheer
lopsided logic and understanding. He has rightly singled out Pervez Hoodbhoy and Tariq Ali
as representatives of the “indigenous” and “foreign” Muslim secular/liberal
intellectuals, respectively.
Considering all
enemies of your enemy as friends could at most be cynical, at worst counterproductive
and dangerous, so goes the main thrust of Fatah’s argument. As innocent
victims of Western imperialism in Iran
and Afghanistan have
been suffering today for preferring Islamists as lesser evils to the
pro-Western Shah and pro-Soviet communists respectively, Tarek’s warning is very pertinent and timely,
especially for the secular/liberal Muslims in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. He has
appropriately congratulated Pakistani and Bangladeshi (Muslim) voters for
their en masse rejection of mullahs as their representatives. What he wants
to see in the Muslim secular/liberal camps is solidarity against all forms
of imperialism, intolerance and terror, Western and Islamist.
Registering his
contempt for many Westernized bourgeoisie in Pakistan, who in his inimitable
style, are “infatuated by the Islamists, romanticizing them in the same way
a yuppie drives a BMW while wearing a Che
T-shirt”, Fatah has provided an eye-opener for us all. His citing Hoodbhoy to warn the unaware is incisive: “A Taliban
victory would transport us into the darkest of dark ages. These fanatics
dream of transforming the country [Pakistan] into a religious
state where they will be the law. They stone women to death, cut off limbs,
kill doctors for administering polio shots, force girl-children into burqa, threaten beard-shaving barbers with death…. Even
flying kites is a life-threatening sin.”
One could not agree
more with his insightful syllogism drawn from the lessons of history:
Thus when Japan attacked the US, its
anti-American stance could not be and was never understood to driven by an
anti-imperialist doctrine. Similarly, when Hitler’s panzer divisions fought
advancing American and British troops in Western
Europe, only a fool would have placed Nazi Germany into the
camp of anti-imperialism.
Today, just because
the Taliban or Hezbollah or Iran attack Americans or blow up their
embassies and fly planes into the New York Towers, does not mean their
anti-Americanism translates into anti-imperialism [italics mine].
Tarek
Fatah has demolished the Trotskyist Tariq Ali’s
position that Islamist Iran could be considered as “anti-imperialist” while
the country practices “unbridled capitalism”, where even the sea ports are
privatized and trade unions banned. He has appropriately cited Mark Twain
as an example of anti-imperialist intellectual in 19th century America,
lamenting the fact that there are not that many Mark Twains [let alone a
Bertrand Russell or a Noam Chomsky] in the Muslim World; and hardly any
voice among Arab Muslims to speak out against “the occupation by Arab
countries of Kurdistan, Western Sahara and dare I say, Darfur.” He is also
critical of Pakistan’s
sixty-year old military operations in Baluchistan.
His “maverick” (from
the conservative Muslim view point) albeit constructive ideas for a
rapprochement between the Western and Muslim worlds are timely and
commendable. His bridge-building ideas are noteworthy: “The Western
tradition is not Western in any essential sense, but only through an
accident of geography and history. Indeed, Islamic learning provided an
important resource for both the Renaissance and the development of science
[in the West]. The ideas we call ‘Western’ are in fact universal, laying
the basis for greater human flourishing.”
The inherent optimism
in Fatah’s writings about secular/liberal Muslims uniting to fight Western
hegemony without compromising with the Islamists in the long run is
noteworthy. One may cite his path breaking book, Chasing a Mirage: The
Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State (Wiley, Toronto 2008), in this regard.
His stern warning against supporting the Islamists who in the name of
fighting the West (which has been both hypocritical and opportunistic) want
to establish fascism in the name of religion is very well-timed and
laudable. Most definitely, Tarek Fatah is the
voice of “liberal Islam” – for Muslim regeneration, enlightenment, progress
and above all, “peace within and peace without”, the cardinal principle of
Islam.
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