V V: A potpourri on jihad
Jihad as an idea is central to Islamic faith and ethics but its meanings have been highly contested with the rise of militant Islam in recent years. These have ranged from the philosophical struggle to live an ethical life to a political injunction to wage war against the enemies of Islam. Today, with all the turmoil in the Islamic world stretching across West Asia down to Afghanistan and Pakistan, jihad signifies the political opposition between Islam and the West. It isn’t surprising then that Dilip Hiro, a London-based writer and journalist who has written extensively on the Islamic world in the Middle East and Central Asia, should also come up with Jihad on Two Fronts: South Asia’s Unfolding Drama (Harper Collins, Rs 699): one front within Pakistan and the other without in India.
Let it be said straightaway that the book is a quickie based on Hiro’s past reportage on the Middle East and the Islamic Central Asian republics with a few dressings to update the material. Hiro had written probably the first book on Islamic fundamentalism from the Muslim Brotherhood to Al Qaeda in 1988 for the common reader that has now been patched up with a background on the Great Game in Central Asia and recent happenings in the Af-Pakistan region.
There is nothing new here; in fact, it is clearly overshadowed by recent Pakistani scholarship: Ayesha Jalal’s Partisans of Allah, Ahmed Rashid’s Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia and Amir Mir’s The True Face of Jehadis and several others on Islamic fundamentalism by French scholars. All have been addressed to the serious common reader who is basically interested to know why all terrorists turn out to be Muslims and whether there is something in Islamic ideology that lends itself to extreme forms of violence. Hiro doesn’t tackle these basic issues probably because of his background — he was born in Larkana in Sind, Pakistan, migrated to India before moving on to London — and his anxiety to project himself as an unbiased reporter who provides a balanced picture of the Islamic world. With the more critical studies of Pakistani scholars, Hiro’s feeble attempt to show up the ugly face of militant Islam doesn’t wash any more.
To come to the book itself. The central thesis of Jihad is that it is a continuation of the Great Game, a phrase immortalised by Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, that drives the Afghan policy of the various players — Pakistan, India, Central Asian republics, Iran, Russia, America and now China. Each power wants a piece of the cake for its own reason: Pakistan as strategic depth against India, land-locked Central Asian republics as an outlet to the sea, and others for mineral resources and probably untapped gas. Basically, it is Afghanistan’s geo-political location that drives different powers to try and control the region; there is nothing else this barren land and high mountains has to offer.
Hiro doesn’t spell out the considerations why the different players have meddled in Afghanistan and made it “a melting pot of history” and therefore, original as his thesis might well be, it doesn’t hold. How and why has the instability in Afghanistan and now the imminent withdrawal of American troops led to the rise of militant jihadism (suicide bombers) is not explained, which makes you wonder whether it is not just padding up of a very complex situation that is deeply mired in the history of a region. It has never been subdued by a foreign power in nearly two hundred years, first by the British in the 19th century, then the Russians and now by the Americans.
In the original 19th century Great Game, it was a struggle between two great powers of the time, Great Britain and Russia, for the control of India. It has now become a metaphor for “a power struggle” in Central Asia for the control of gas and as a strategic point to check both Russia and China. But just how the Great Game thesis fits in to explain the rise of Islamic extremism is anybody’s guess. Many reasons have been advanced for Islamic militancy, including its own inadequacy to meet the challenges of the modern world, but none that remotely suggests that it is the failure to control the future of Central Asia and its periphery that has led to the growth of militancy.
Hiro then meanders off to explain the basic tenets of Sufism with which, in fact, he opens his book. How this fits in with a study of jihad is another matter, but Hiro is at his best here. He takes us to his native Sind, where Sufism thrives, and to the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan and his evocative descriptions of the holy place. But here again, Hiro treats his subject casually because in Oriental Mysticism, Sufism occupies a central place as the spiritual side of Islam.
According to Sufism, “the perfect man is he who has fully comprehended the Law, the Doctrine, and the Truth; or, in other words, who is imbued with four things in perfection: Good words; good deeds; good principles; the sciences. It is the business of the Traveller to provide himself with these things in perfection, and by so doing he will provide himself with perfection.”
Jihad on Two Fronts is a potpourri that could have been better with some cutting down and tighter editing of language, style and subject matter.