Muslim angst in the modern world

GLOBAL JIHAD AND AMERICA
The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan
Taj Hashmi
Sage Publications; 324 pages; Rs 995

Images of Islamic militants beheading Western hostages over the past few days have horrified world opinion and dramatically reminded us that radical Islam is flourishing across West Asia, challenging established states and placing captured territories under its own governance. In this book, Taj Hashmi has made a valiant attempt to explain Muslims' estrangement from the West and the rise of radical Islam to a bewildered and angry audience.

Mr Hashmi believes that the present Islam-West confrontation is part of an ongoing 100-year war that began in 1948 with the West-sponsored creation of Israel. Since then, there have been the invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya by Western forces, and threats of attack on Syria and Iran. According to Mr Hashmi, "American duplicity" is at the centre of almost every attack on Muslim interests, paving the way for a new Cold War between the West and the Muslim world. America and its allies, Mr Hashmi says, have been "ignorant, opportunistic, myopic and Machiavellian with regard to diplomacy and war". He concludes on a pessimistic note, predicting "sustained conflicts" rather than "long-term understanding" between the two contenders in the coming decades.

While Mr Hashmi's reading is extensive and his prose assertive, I am afraid he gets most things wrong. He is guilty of the same broad-brush delineation of diverse and multi-faceted groups of which he accuses Western and Islamist writers. Throughout the book, there are references to "the Muslims" and "the West" in generic, undifferentiated terms. Thus, he asserts: "The four Arab-Israeli wars since 1948, the Indian occupation of Kashmir, and western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq embittered Muslims against Jews, Hindus and Christians"; surely a gross over-statement.

Again, while castigating the United States/Western role in various conflicts involving Muslims, the author fails to point out that the actual picture on the ground was much more complex than the simplistic Islam-West encounter. Thus, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were enthusiastic partners of the United States in the "global jihad". The Arab Gulf countries backed the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980. Most Arab countries backed the United States-led coalition against the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Large sections of the international community, including the Muslim world, also supported the attacks on the Taliban after 9/11.

Finally, the United States and the West can hardly be blamed for the failure of the Arab Spring to take root in the Arab world: Morsi was removed in a military coup backed by Arab Gulf states; the latter intervened militarily to crush the reform movement in Bahrain. They also backed the Sunni insurgency in Iraq after 2003, which evolved into the Islamic State (IS) 10 years later, while making sectarian cleavage the central aspect of regional politics. At least two Gulf countries participated in the assault on Libya to effect regime change. Gulf countries have backed various groups in Syria, encouraging the proliferation of Salafi and jihadi militia in the bloody conflict.

Mr Hashmi sees a dichotomy between the liberal and peaceful message of Islam, contrasts it with the "illiberal, dogmatic and irrational" discourse of the Islamists, and categorically ostracises the latter since "they do not uphold any Islamic tradition or teaching of the Quran". Here, Mr Hashmi simply exhibits his ignorance of the history, complexity and variety of 150 years of Islamist discourse, when several writers steeped in Islamic learning have supported a rationalist approach to traditional Islamic texts on the basis of ijtihad, and, above all, popular participation in governance.

Mr Hashmi divides Islamists into non-violent believers, militant revivalists and revolutionaries, and anarchic-nihilists. While scholars may create their own categories, it is difficult to understand how Al-Qaeda and its top leadership can be included in the anarchic-nihilist grouping, having no vision or plan for an alternative Islamic society, when in fact they do have a clear idea of the Islamic order they are seeking and pursue a pragmatic action plan to realise it. Mr Hashmi is also wrong in asserting that the Muslim Brotherhood is the "mother" of Al-Qaeda, or that almost all other Islamist outfits in the Muslim world are "offshoots" of the Brotherhood. The factual position is that independent Islamist organisations, many of them radical and jihadi, proliferated from the 1970s, when the Brotherhood itself became quietist and moderate.

The book is strewn with serious errors of fact and judgment. Thus, Mr Hashmi asserts that "most Islamic terror is about secular issues"; that Islamists flourished under autocracies since these regimes "promoted Islamism"; and, astonishingly, that the Wahhabi movement in 18th century Arabia was primarily an "anti-Turkish Arab nationalist movement"! He contends that India backs the Pakistani Taliban, and that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization both supports and fights Al-Qaeda! Mr Hashmi concludes that we are now in the "post-terrorist phase of History", a cruel irony given the unabated violence of the IS and Al-Qaeda.

Yes, there is a broad Muslim-West cleavage; and, yes, there is need for a book that would explain this divide and the wellsprings of Muslim radicalism. This sadly is not that book.

The reviewer is a former diplomat