Are We Facing A Grand Islamic Schism?

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Courtesy Of: The Daily Times

(Pakistani Editorial)

Friday, January 12, 2007

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President General Pervez Musharraf says that Pakistan must unite and address the challenge of sectarianism, ‘not just for the country’s security, but for the entire Muslim world’. He thinks there might soon be ‘a sectarian catastrophe in the Muslim world’. He expressed these thoughts at the 24th Convocation of the Army Medical College (AMC), and warned Pakistan to lay off sectarianism. This was a good place to talk about sectarianism because the disease was contracted under General Zia-ul Haq when the army ruled supreme. The other party he has to address is the mullah with whom the military has long had a cosy relationship and who keeps the fire of schism burning.

After the hanging of Saddam Hussein there were many protests against the verdict. Everybody thought these protests were against the United States. In India, where demonstrations were far bigger than in Pakistan, angry Muslims would not let go even after two days. In Indian-held Jammu & Kashmir the protest was most intense. In Lucknow, the traditional centre of Shiaism, the protest was loudest and it was led by Sunni mullahs. Noting that the Muslims were finally cursing the United States, the Communist Party of India (CPI) joined in with other normally anti-US leftwing Indian politicians.

But no one paid heed to what the protesters were saying. They were actually cursing the Shias of India who didn’t think hanging Saddam was such a bad thing after all. The All India Shia Personal Law Board declared that Saddam was a tyrant loved by ‘Saddami Muslims’ (read Sunnis) who destroyed cities and killed millions of people whom he called kafir. In Kashmir, after years of domination by Deobandi jihadists, a once mystical society that was close to the sprit of Shiism, now threatens the other sect.

That is not all. In the United States where the Muslims are supposed to be better assimilated than in Europe and the United Kingdom, the hanging of Saddam Hussein brought about acts of sectarian vandalism. Two Shia mosques and five Shia-owned businesses in Detroit, Michigan, were damaged by angry Sunnis. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Sunni Muslims were offended by ‘the way local Shias had celebrated Saddam’s death’.

Why is the Muslim world becoming increasingly sectarian while it is ostensibly confronted by common enemies? When you ask the devout ones, the answer is that ‘it is all a conspiracy against Islam’. When you ask who is conspiring, pat comes another answer: ‘The Jews and the Americans’. The argument cannot be debated because of the short attention span of the devout. Wasn’t Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda chief in Iraq, before his death last year, posting opinion on the Internet that the Shia were behind the conspiracy against Islam, that they were in fact descended from a Jewish blacksmith?

Not long ago the Arabs — Shia and Sunni — were united under the banner of Arab nationalism. When that failed under the cruel lash of Wahhabism and dictators like Saddam Hussein, the Arabs had no one to seek guidance from. So they turned to the clergy and joined Islamist parties because they promised liberation from ‘dictators and kings’. And when the clergy leads, it is compelled to regurgitate the old schism that has dogged Islam for centuries. The modern needs of Muslim societies are set aside and medieval disputes are revived and young men persuaded to kill in the name of faith.

The same kind of thing has happened in India. Indian Muslims have been marginalised to such an extent that they have decided to depoliticise themselves and retreat into religion. Today the best orators come out of India. The late Maulana Palanpuri used to enthral the Tablighi Jama’at gatherings in Lahore; today Dr Zakir Naek is the most-watched Islamic orator on Pakistani TV channels. At the lower levels, however, the clergy simply cannot avoid getting into the sectarian polemic. For instance, Lucknow’s Nadwatul Ulema, which was set up to get rid of the sectarian narrow-mindedness by Maulana Shibli Numani, is today the hotbed of Sunni hatred of the Shia for both India and Pakistan. The poisonous tomes compiled there have led to killings in Pakistan.

The ‘venture’ of Islam based on ‘dawa’ (invitation) is greatly undermined by the hatred of the sects. Pakistan is more endangered than the other Islamic states because it has been the arena of sectarian war in the past 20 years despite the fact that the Shia are not oppressed here as they are in many parts of the Arab world. We killed on orders from the Arabs who fought the Afghan war for us and paid our youth to kill Shias. Now that Al Qaeda has overtly joined the Sunni war against Iran we get reports of how Lashkar-e Jhangvi has been charged by Osama bin Laden in Waziristan to kill Shias in the country. Tragically the powerful clerical alliance MMA too has not been able to save its Shia members.

General Musharraf’s words must be matched by deeds. If we are confronted by the menace of sectarianism it is only because we have brought religion into the business of the state. He must now lead from the front and use his power to pull it out from the embrace of the state.

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