Making, Un-making political Islam

The roots of terrorism in the modern world do not necessarily lie in the expression of anti-imperialist sentiments, but rather in their suppression by the US and its puppet regimes

Javeed Alam Hyderabad

A surge of anger is sweeping the Muslim world against the West. But it is particularly focussed on the US and is also increasingly becoming widespread. Even countries that earlier considered themselves only nominally Muslim, such as Indonesia or Malaysia or Nigeria, are now experiencing religiously centred anti-Americanism. This has taken three forms: a resurgence of Islamic identity; growth of fundamentalism within this identity; and rise of terrorist networks and activity within some of the Muslim societies or ones with large Muslim populations like India. The case of India, though interesting, can be left out here because its specificity requires separate treatment. Instead, let us examine terrorism, as a degraded form of political activity, to unravel one important connection of the Muslim world with imperialism and its efforts to gain hegemony in the world through reactionary political regimes.

'Terrorism', in its modern form, began in 1972 when, during the Munich Olympics, some people belonging to an organised political force, the Palestinians, took recourse to killing innocent, unarmed Israeli athletes. Since then, such activities have continued and multiplied. Alongside this has also occurred the spread of political Islam—a form of fundamentalist assertion through religion for the fulfillment of secular political goals. Today, this has become the dominant form of politics of a large number of political organisations in many Muslim countries, so much so that they not only target the symbols of the US and its allies but are also at loggerheads with their own governments for being pro-US.

How and why did this come about? The answer is important because prior to 1972, in fact in the wake of de-colonisation, many leading countries like Egypt and Indonesia played a major role in anti-imperialist struggles. Of the four founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement, the leaders of two — Naaser of Egypt and Sukarno of Indonesia — together with Nehru and Tito, were in the forefront of creating this anti-imperialist front of newly independent countries. The anti-colonial struggle and the post-independence struggle against neo-colonialism (imperialism) were secular, democratic forms of anti-West sentiments. So, the suggestion that colonialism was the prime cause for the creation of political Islam is somewhat shaky. Orthodox versions of Islam with political impulses did emerge during colonialism but these were only ideological and not militant and given to violence like the terrorists of the times now.

The majority of terrorist groups, and those individuals who are recruited or join these groups, are from countries that are puppet regimes of the US. Note that no terrorist organisation like the Al-Qaeda operates from countries like Syria, Iran, Libya, Algeria and other such countries. Why? It's not because the governments in these countries are radical, but simply because they are not pro-US — they consistently take an anti-US position as a matter of policy even though some of them may be internally conservative and/or repressive like Iran. The bases of most of these organisations are found in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan, Indonesia, and/or their adherents are recruited from countries like Saudi Arabia — countries that are pronouncedly pro-US.