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INDEX

INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................................4

SURVEY OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD.......................................................................................................5

UNDERSTANDING ISLAM'S EARLY HISTORICAL EVOLUTION...................................................8

DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES AND THEIR IMPACT ON PRESENT-DAY ATTITUDES ....... ....11

THE MYTH OF MONOLITHIC ISLAM.................................................................................................19

THE 'ISLAMIZATION' OF MODERNITY.............................................................................................31

INFORMING THE DEBATE.....................................................................................................................44

THE 'GEOGRAPHIC CRUCIBLE'..........................................................................................................52

CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................................59



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Not chaos-like together, crushed and bruised,But, like the world, harmoniously diffus’d,

Where order, in variety, we see,And where, though all may differ, all agree.

-H.H. the Aga Khan III (1877-1957)India in Transition: A Study in Political Evolution (1918 )



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INTRODUCTION

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War was a momentous event in world

history. For nearly half a century, Western civilization was faced with an existential threatfrom a formidable military alliance. But the West prevailed. Soviet communism imploded.It was a euphoric moment, not just for the Trans-Atlantic Alliance, which made itpossible, but for the entire planet. The ricochets were heard around the world - fromapartheid-South Africa to Tienanmen Square.

In succeeding days, two conflicting sets of visions would be put forward to explain theemerging post-Cold War reality. The first would be that of a kinder, gentler world wheredemocracy, individual liberty and free-market economics would flourish. FrancisFukuyama at Johns Hopkins even came up with a definitive phrase in 1989 to describethis promised new era: The end of history .1 An alternate vision of a world with newdangers and new challenges coalesced around the writing of the Harvard political

scientist, Samuel Huntington who, in 1993, presented his thesis of an inevitable Clash of Civilizations.2 In the aftermath of the terrible tragedy of 9/11, Professor Huntington'stheory has gained even more adherents. But long before September 11, 2001, therewere important public figures arguing both, the need for the West to have a commonenemy (in order to preserve the Trans-Atlantic Alliance which won the Cold War), andthe actual presence of one - the Islamic world. Willie Claes, the hapless former Secretary General of NATO was one such person who spoke publicly along these lines.3

This paper, while recognizing the threat that radical Islam (or Islamic fundamentalism)poses to the West in particular and to world peace and order in general, does notsubscribe to the inevitability of a generalized conflict between the West and the Islamicworld. On the contrary, by de-mystifying misperceptions and explaining the diversity and

pluralism of the Islamic world, it seeks to highlight practical areas of opportunity andcommon interest which the West can effectively leverage to influence the peacefulevolution of the Muslim world. By introducing a new sophistication in its understandingand approach to the world of Islam, the paper argues that the West can create ametaphorical and geographical crucible to fashion, as it were, a new chapter of friendship with moderate elements in the Muslim world and prevent the world of Islamfrom becoming, by default, a united chorus of undifferentiated hatred towards the West.

This paper also recognizes that in the multi-polar world we are moving towards, theIslamic world is far from the only "challenge" the West may have to face. China is butone giant waking up and just beginning to make an impact in the international arena thatits size might imply. By having to dedicate disproportionate resources to respond to

dangers from a single potential threat, the West runs the risk of being blindsided toother, emerging, challenges. Only recently it has paid too dear a price for so doing: itsobsession with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan blinded it to the new threat of jihadistelements it was itself inadvertently nurturing.



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SURVEY OF THE ISLAMIC WORLD

The Islamic world began the third millenium as a collection of just under 50 politicalentities; all, without exception, belonging to the so-called "Third World". All, with the soleexception of Turkey, failing the test of liberal democratic governance. Politically, the

Islamic world stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific; from the heart of Europe(Albania) to sub-equatorial Africa (Zanzibar); from arid deserts to the highest mountains;and comprises one-fifth of the world's population, speaking hundreds of differentlanguages. Yet the collective output of this ocean of humanity is less than one-half of theGNP of Germany ($1.2 trillion vs. $2.5 trillion) and less than a quarter of that of thegeographically tiny nation of Japan ($1.2 trillion vs. $5.5 trillion).4 The Islamic world isalso characterized by its position at the bottom end of the world development index andby the endemic violence and civil strife that continue to wreck havoc through the lengthand breadth of its geographic space.

In a world of meritocracy and global competition, the Muslim world is the least adaptedto the requirements of free market economics and globalization. It has, within its

membership, a higher concentration of poverty, disease, ignorance and politicaldisenchantment than any other world faith.5 Collectively speaking, this grouping is oftensynonymous with the absence of the freedom of expression, of political participation, of gender equality and, depending on local politics, religious freedom for minorities(including Muslim minorities).

This collective state, whilst differing in individual dimensions from region to region, differsonly in degree. The Arab world, often presented, in a facile sense by the popular pressas synonymous with the Muslim world, too, exhibits these symptoms in spite of beingfavorably endowed economically with natural resources - primarily oil. As a recent UNDPReport, compiled by a group of Arab scholars states: "A very large investment in fixedcapital formation of over $3,000 billion, over the past 20 years, has had poor returns in

per capita income, which experienced the lowest growth rate in the world apart from sub-Saharan Africa." The Report also goes on to point out the "freedom deficit", unequalcitizenship for women (one in two women can neither read nor write), falling educationspending - all contributing to poverty of capabilities and poverty of opportunities.6

The state of the Muslim world at the start of the third millenium has, perhaps, been bestsummarized by Pakistan's President Musharraf when, in a recent speech to aninternational Islamic Science & Technology Conference, he said: "Today we are the

poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most un- enlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race".7

In the face of this sorry plight that the Islamic world finds itself in, it has been suggested

that there is something intrinsically "wrong" with the Muslim world which makes itantipathetic to modernity. In the words of Francis Fukuyama:

... there does seem to be something about Islam, or at least fundamentalistIslam, that makes Muslim societies particularly resistant to modernity. Of allcontemporary cultural systems, the Islamic world has the fewest democracies(Turkey alone qualifies), and contains no countries that have made thetransition from Third to First World status in the manner of South Korea orSingapore.8



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Stated differently, the sorry state of the Muslim world vis-à-vis modernity stems from thefact that it is Muslim. Based on anecdotal evidence stated above, this thesis appearspersuasive. The problem with the notion of modernity as applied by Fukuyama et al.,however, is that it is absolutist. Modernity, as a concept, can never be absolutist; it hasto be relative. It is, perhaps, more correct to speak of "contemporary modernity" than

"modernity" per se. Each generation, of necessity, defines its age as modern. The factthat a particular culture or society is in tune, or at odds, with its time does not make itmodern or anti-modern for all time to come. Japanese culture's "acceptance" of modernity is, in historical time, fairly recent. For most of its national existence, Japan"lagged" behind the times. How then, may one judge Japan vis-à-vis its receptivity tomodernity in the abstract?

The Muslim world's position vis-à-vis the contemporary world at the start of the thirdmillenium is in complete contrast to its comparative position at the start of the secondmillenium. Then, Islam was reaching the end of its fourth century. Islam had had a lot toadapt to during its first four centuries. From its humble origin in the deserts of Arabia,Islam had to adapt an unlettered, nomadic culture to the sophisticated needs of a world

empire spread over three continents. Of course, by the 11th century, the original ArabUmayyad caliphate had been replaced by two competing caliphates - the Fatimid (Ismaili) caliphate with its capital at Cairo and the Abbasid (Sunni) caliphate based inBaghdad.

The Abbasids, the more ancient dynasty, had been in decline for some time and had lostthe battle for power, prestige and wealth to the more parvenu Fatimids. Despite this,Baghdad was probably, on a world scale, second only to Cairo in culture, industry andscientific scholarship. The Fatimids, who controlled trade in the Mediterranean and theRed Sea, made Egypt the entrepôt for trade between Europe, Asia and Africa. Using thewealth from this trade, they entered the second millenium as probably the world's mostintellectually and materially sophisticated civilization. Cairo boasted not only the famous

Al-Azhar University, which had "metamorphosed" out of the mosque of Al-Azhar under the Rectorship of Ibn Killis, the Grand Vizier of Jewish-origin, but also the Dar al-Ilm, theAcademy of Sciences, which was to be the precursor of the medieval university.

Coming out of the deserts of Arabia, the Muslims had no tradition of politicalgovernance, of land administration, of maintaining standing armies, of a civil service, of formal learning, of urban planning, of medicine, of monetary administration, of architecture and a great deal more. Their empires functioned, survived, and thrived onlybecause they showed remarkable ability to learn from their subject peoples and applynew intellectual methods to their growing needs.

The notion that Muslim societies, per se, are resistant to modernity did not hold at the

start of the second millenium when Islam was "closer" to its historical message. If theIslamic ethos were congenitally malformed with an anti-modern "gene", it would haveexhibited its "true colors" at birth and in its adolescence. And it would have been in goodhistorical company: the heirs of the great Hellenic and Roman civilizations werecomfortably ensconced in the throes of their Dark Ages. Later in the paper we will lookat the reasons for the Islamic world's "attitudinal" change to, or retreat from, intellectualmodernity.



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Having said that, at the start of the third millenium, Islam is definitely the "odd man out"among world cultures; totally at variance with world trends. While the entire worldmoves, inexorably, towards meritocracy, liberal democracy, free market economics,Muslim societies are exhibiting theocratic tendencies with all the attendant inequities andeconomic distortions.9 Notwithstanding these "regressive" manifestations, it isintellectually and historically more accurate to describe the Islamic world's present fate

as a case of losing one's way, rather than an inherent "character flaw". Its present fate isno different from the Dark Ages in which Western civilization lunged for centuries beforefinding its way through to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. If the world'sdominant civilization - one that has, since the 1500s, been the most pervasive, influentialand ubiquitous in the history of the human race i.e. Western civilization - emerged, as itwere, from the ignorance and barbarism of the Dark Ages, there is hope for the Islamicworld: that it, too, will find its "nirvana" from its present-day confusion andbackwardness.

Because the Islamic world controls most of the remaining reserves of fossil fuel andcomprises such a large swathe of geography and humanity - with events within it havingglobal implications - the West does not have the luxury to wait for the former to put its

house in order over several centuries à la Europe. It has to seek potentially usefulinterventions and mutually beneficial partnerships with Muslim societies in order toinfluence the Muslim world's peaceful evolution towards modernity and peacefulcoexistence with the rest of the world. Recent history has shown that events emanatingfrom the Muslim world have had worldwide implications - and generally negative ones atthat: the 1973 Arab-Israeli War (and the oil crisis and stagflation that followed); the 1991Gulf War (and the global recession that followed); the 9/11 attack on the World TradeCenter (and the economic meltdown that we continue to experience). A starting point for the West has to be a keener understanding of the Islamic world - its history, evolutionand doctrinal beliefs.



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UNDERSTANDING ISLAM'S EARLY HISTORICAL EVOLUTION

The Islamic Message - the Quran - was brought to the Arabs, a nomadic people whocommanded little political significance in the then contemporary world scene, in the earlyseventh century, by Muhammad, a successful Meccan businessman. Muhammad, not

unlike Christ, did not claim the start of a new religion, but the "completion" (or "reformation") of the "Abrahamic Message". The people of the Judaic and Christiantraditions thus became kindred spirits to the faithful of the new religion - Ahl al-Kitab,People of the Book (i.e. people who shared with Muslims belief in monotheism). Thiscould have had revolutionary potential by providing a theological basis of fraternity withthe followers of Judaism and Christianity. And in practice, it did, in Islam's ClassicalAge, when many Christians and Jews held high office under Muslim rulers and generallyenjoyed the latter's protection. The Quran also declared that Muhammad was the "sealof the prophets", God's final messenger, and that the Quran was God's final revelation.In effect, the prescriptions of the Quran were to be the final guidance for Muslimbehaviour for all time to come.

The Quran was revealed over the years between AD 610 and AD 632 in the form of 6,000+ verses. The Quran speaks in allegory and parable which offer general, universal,guidance; but at times it also speaks on specific events, such as military threats to thenascent Muslim community, and offers time-specific advice on how those threats shouldbe met. During his lifetime Muhammad was the final religious authority on theinterpretations of the Quran. Even in his own lifetime, Muhammad had to usepragmatism and compromise - without violating the fundamental principles of Islam - toaddress problems faced by his community when problems could not be solved bytraditional means.

On Muhammad's death in AD 632, the Muslim community was faced with a successioncrisis. According to the majority, Muhammad's demise brought an end to divinely-

appointed religious leadership since he was God's final prophet. But, because byaccident of history, Muhammad, in his later years, had become the political ruler of Arabia as well, a political successor, who would be the chief of the community of faithful,would need to be appointed. This Amir-ul-Momineen (commander of the faithful) - or thecaliph - was to be elected on "merit" (i.e. righteousness) by the community. Religiousguidance for the community would be based on the Quran and the Sunnah (example or tradition) of the prophet. The adherents of this view came to be known as Sunnis - thetraditionalists. Today, some 80-90% of the world's Muslims are Sunnis.

Another, smaller, group, associated with the Prophet's family, asserted that the Prophet,on his return from a final pilgrimage to Mecca had, based on a divine revelation (Quran5:67), declared his cousin and son-in-law, Ali - whom he had likened as Aaron unto

Moses - as the successor of his religious and political authority. This religious authoritywas to continue in the Prophet's family through the designated descendants of Ali andFatima (the Prophet's daughter), who were to be known as Imams (lit. leaders). Thesupporters of Ali's claim came to be known as the Shia (or party) of Ali; later, just plainShias. Today Shias comprise 10-20% of the world's Muslims. Although "officially" Iran isthe only Shia-Muslim country, large local concentrations of Shias are to be found inAzerbaijan, Bahrain, Iraq and Lebanon. In addition, Shia communities, in varyingnumbers, are dispersed throughout many parts of the Muslim world.



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The problem of the Prophet's succession was resolved in favor of the Sunnis when AbuBakr, the father of Muhammad's youngest and favorite wife, Ayesha, managed to get"elected". The "pseudo-elective" principle did not last long, however, and only threeother caliphs - the last of whom was Ali - were to be "elected" (known collectively as thefour righteous caliphs) before the caliphate was to be transformed into a hereditarykingship. Ali's elevation to the caliphate did not heal the Shia-Sunni split; it exacerbated

and crystallized the fault lines. Joined by the Prophet's widow, Ayesha, Muawiyah of theUmayyad clan and the then Governor of Syria launched a military challenge to Ali'sauthority - starting the first civil war in Islam. Muawiyah, a man who, in cunning andstatecraft, was the equal of an Augustus, prevented Ali from gaining a decisive militaryand political victory. Upon Ali's assassination in AD 661 at the hands of a fanatic,Muawiyah was to successfully sweep away Sunnism's "proto-republican" principle andstart the first hereditary dynasty in Islam - the Umayyad caliphate which, in less than 100years after Muhammad, was to stretch from Spain to the borders of China.

It is important to understand Islam's early historical evolution in order to grasp present-day political contortions emanating from the Islamic world. The Shia- Sunni schism is of primordial importance in understanding subsequent historical

developments and even present-day attitudes in the Muslim world.

Ali's attitude of loyalty towards the first three righteous caliphs was to determine later Shia credo. While maintaining the right of his family to both the religious leadership (or Imamat ) and the political leadership (the caliphate), Ali, in effect, conceded that for thesake of Islamic unity, the "Alid Imams" (i.e. Imams descended from Ali) could relinquishtheir political claims, when circumstances so necessitated, although they could never ever renounce their claims to religious leadership. However, the fact that Ali managed toeventually secure the caliphate, albeit for a brief period, and the appeal the Prophet'sfamily would likely exercise in times of crises, and in the minds of the disenfranchised,made them singular threats to Sunni rulers. Starting with the massacre of Ali's son (i.e.the Prophet's grandson), Hussain and his family at Karbala (in present-day Iraq), Sunni

rulers made the elimination of the Prophet's Alid descendants a matter of state policy.Thus many early Shia Imams met unnatural deaths and their followers were activelypersecuted and often faced the same fate. To give "legitimacy" to this policy, Sunnicaliphs co-opted the Sunni ulema, the clergy, in trying to present Shiism as a “heretical”movement.

The rapid expansion of the Islamic Empire and the large numbers of non-Arabs broughtinto the fold of Islam through conversion created a two-tiered community of faithful: theprivileged Arab ruling elite; and the dispossessed newly-converted non-Arabs. For thelatter, inequities, suffering and deprivation made the appeal of a divinely-inspired ShiaImam - who was to restore equality and justice for all at an appointed hour - seductivethat, in spite of state-persecution with the active support of the clergy, Shiism refused to

go away and continued to attract adherents, particularly among non-Arabs1

. The fact that1 In AD 909, the Ismailis, then the most important branch of Shiism, even succeeded in setting uptheir own caliphate - the Fatimid - near ancient Carthage to rival the Sunni Abbasid caliphate atBaghdad. In AD 969 an Italian Ismaili general, Jawahar the Sicilian, conquered Egypt andfounded a new city Cairo, which became the new Fatimid capital. Fatimid expansion continued tocover the whole of North Africa, the islands of Sicily and Sardinia to Syria, Palestine, Yemen andIslam's holy places. In the middle of the 11th century even Baghdad fell to Fatimid arms and theAbbasid caliph was placed under house arrest for a year. Timely relief from the Sunni SaljuqTurks under their leader, Tugril Beg, turned the tide, restored the Abbasid caliph, and put paid to



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Iran, the only country with an "official" Shia government, is a non-Arab country and thatthe overwhelming majority of Shias are non-Arabs may have something to do with thishistorical antecedent.

The religious persecution of Shias forced practising Shias to practice taqiyya(precautionary dissimulation of belief): outwardly observing Sunnism, but secretly

practicing Shia beliefs. The constant threat to the lives of the Shia Imams made it difficultfor them to freely move about in public and communicate with their followers. Over timea lot of confusion ensued over who the rightfully designated heirs were, causing schismswhen different groups accepted different family members as successor Imams - in theabsence of a definitive public pronouncement by the preceding Imam. The mostimportant schism took place in AD 765 when one group accepted the elder son, Ismail ,as the Imam of the Time, whilst another group accepted the younger sibling, MusaKazim as the seventh Shia Imam. The former faction came to be known as the Ismailisand are today the second largest Shia community, spread throughout the globe, butprimarily resident in some 25 countries. The latter group, in time, came to be known asthe Ithan-asharis (lit. Twelvers because their 12th Imam disappeared in AD 873 and isbelieved to be in occultation) and is today the largest Shia sect, present in large

concentrations in Iran, Southern Iraq, South Lebanon, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, and the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. There are important Twelver Shia communities inIndia and Pakistan as well.

Fatimid dreams of uniting the world of Islam under a Shia Ismaili Imam-Caliph. The drain on theFatimid treasury started their decline until finally in AD 1171 the Sunni hero Salahuddin (Saladinof the Crusades) ended the Fatimid dynasty and eliminated Shiism from North Africa.



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DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES AND THEIR IMPACT ON PRESENT-

DAY ATTITUDES

As mentioned earlier, an appreciation of the doctrinal differences between Shias andSunnis is key to understanding attitudinal differences manifested by different parts of theMuslim world, depending on which of the two influences they draw upon.

Sunnis, by definition, believe in following the Prophet's traditions. As the Prophet did inhis time, so should the pious believer do, in every succeeding period, in order to be trueto the Prophet's Sunnah, or tradition. Many Sunnis see the demands of orthodoxy torequire not only following Muhammad's example in the practice of the faith, but also inmore mundane matters such as personal habits. For example, orthodox Muslimsconsider the wearing of a beard as a sign of religiosity because Muhammad, in his time,sported a beard. The wearing of traditional garbs (i.e. garbs supposedly worn byMuhammad and his companions) falls into the same category. This notion of legitimacyby identification with bygone tradition from a "reference period" would appear to imposea time dimension, a constraint in adaptability to changing times.

Luckily, because Sunni Islam has neither the concept of a Church nor of priesthood1 asis understood in Christianity, each individual, in theory, has the right to interpret theIslamic Message according to his or her understanding of the scriptures. The Quranwould appear to support this view because it contains several verses which say that Godspeaks to Man in allegory and parable. Thus two individuals, in good faith, may bothstudy the Quran and Muhammad's example and arrive at different interpretations - andyet both be within the pale of accepted belief and neither being in a position to consider the other as "non-Muslim". Yet it is precisely this lack of norm, this apparent freedom of conscience, which has prompted some to make attempts at imposing rigid conformity onthe entire community such as Wahhabi 2 fundamentalists are attempting at the presenttime.

In Muhammad's own life time - when the process of revelations was still ongoing - therewas a realization that many of the problems of the nascent Muslim community did not allhave pat answers in divine revelations. Muhammad applied pragmatic solutions toproblems which could not be solved by traditional means, while ensuring that they didnot violate fundamental principles of the faith. For centuries after Muhammad, Islamic

jurists pondered over issues which were not explicitly addressed in either the Quran or the Hadith - sayings of the Prophet - perhaps because these issues did not exist inMuhammad's time. Using the process of deduction, analogy, and expert consensus,Sunni Islam solved its ongoing problems as it encountered them. However, as thecommunity of faithful spread far and wide, and became distant from its original Arabroots, a loss of confidence or faith in the community's ability to solve its problems

contemporaneously seems to have taken place. Suddenly, Sunni Islam decided to"freeze" the interpretations of Quranic laws for all time.

1 The Sunni ulema, mullahs in common parlance, are not priests in the sense of interveningbetween Man and God, but more like jurists. Most tend to be little more than paid functionarieswho lead congregational prayers and teach the Quran for a fee. Some learned scholars of theQuran are called upon to pronounce an opinion - a fatwa - on an issue based on their understanding of the Holy Book.

2 The term Wahhabi Islam is also sometimes used interchangeably with Salafi Islam.



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Future generations were to be condemned to interpretations made not just inMuhammad's time, but generations and centuries later, and yet in a different and simpler time and place - and by mere mortals like themselves. The body of immutable Islamiclaws called the Sharia came to be packaged around four schools of Sunni jurisprudence- Shaf'i , Maliki , Hanafi , and Hanbali - identified with four masters called, interestingly,

Imams1. Henceforth the Sharia was to be immutable and the only choice Sunni societiesin the future were to have was the ability to pick one of the four schools of jurisprudenceas their own. In most cases, even that choice was academic as the rulers, and tradition,pre-determined that.

Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 179810 and the spread of European imperialism aroundthe world brought home to the Muslim world how its fortunes had changed. In the face of opposition from the orthodoxy, Sunni reformers emerged in the 19th century:Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida of Egypt, Sayyed Ahmad Khan of India, andJamaluddin Afghani (who belonged everywhere), who wished to adapt Islam to the timesand interpret the Quran in accordance with modern science; and discard the Hadith(Prophetic traditions) in favor of the original interpretation and reinterpretation of the

Quran.11

To this list of reformers must be added the influence of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Ataturk not only ended the Ottoman Empire, he also abolished theSunni caliphate in 1924. The Turkish Sultans had, since 1517, succeeded the Abbasidcaliphs as the leaders of Sunni Islam2. Post-1924, Sunni Islam lost its unifying centreand reference point - an institution which had existed since AD 632. Sunni Islam wouldno longer have a monolithic religious figure and thus no Sunni leader would haveautomatic pan-Islamic appeal as did the caliphs of old. The end of colonialism in thetwentieth century further eroded links with tradition and found erstwhile Western coloniesimplementing not the Sharia, but secular constitutions, bequeathed by their former Western masters.

Yet not all modern "reform" movements in Sunni Islam were secular-oriented or "progressive" in the Western sense. As John L. Esposito, Professor of Religion atGeorgetown University, in his account of the 18th century Wahhabi revivalist movementin his recent book, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, observes:

The Wahhabi religious vision or brand of Islam, named after Muhammad ibnAbd al-Wahhab, has been a staple of the Saudi government, a source of theirreligious and political legitimation. It is a strict, puritanical faith thatemphasizes literal interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah (example) of theProphet Muhammad and the absolute oneness of God. The Wahhabisdenounced other tribes and Muslim communities as polytheists or idolaters.Anything the Wahhabis perceived as un-Islamic behavior constituted unbelief

(kufr) in their eyes, which must be countered by jihad. Thus jihad or holy war

1 The term Imam in Sunnism differs markedly from that in Shiism. In Shiism, the Imam is thedivinely-inspired, infallible legatee of the Prophet's religious authority. In Sunnism, Imams areroutinely used to describe paid, mosque functionaries who lead congregational prayers ( peshimams). Less commonly, and as a mark of respect, the title "Imam" has been used for each of thefour founders of the Sunni schools of jurisprudence and for great religious scholars.2 The Abbasid caliphate had ended in 1258 with the sack of Baghdad by the Mongols, but theAbbasid caliphs continued their reign, without political power, under the protection of the MamlukSultans in Cairo until 1517.



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was not simply permissible: to fight the unbelievers and reestablish a trueIslamic state was required.12

Indeed, since the 'Seventies, economic hardship in a number of previously secular Muslim countries emboldened the religious orthodoxy to place increasing theocraticpressures to make the Sharia (narrowly interpreted) the law of the land. In other places,

such as, for example, Pakistan and Sudan, illegal military dictatorships, lacking politicallegitimacy, made unholy alliances with the religious clerics - the mullahs - to anointthemselves with a mantle of religious legitimacy (à la House of Saud). This alliancerequired, in turn, accommodation to the demands of the clergy such as introduction of the Sharia in place of secular laws and generally changing the tenor of a secular societyto the external manifestations of an Islamic theocracy.

At the same time, the oil boom gave Saudi Arabia both unprecedented influence andwealth (in addition to the "accidental" prestige of its guardianship of Islam's holy places)in the Islamic world. It has used this to fund and export its intolerant and marginal visionof Islam - Wahhabism - to the non-Arab world and, at the same time, delegitimizeindigenous non-Arab Islamic traditions. Many of these indigenous traditions were born of

the syncretic fusion of Sufi (mystical) Islam with local cultures particularly where Islamhad spread not by the force of Arab arms but through Sufi mystics and Muslimmerchants (such as the greater part of Asia and Black Africa). The effect of thisproselytizing has only begun to be recognized in the West since September 11, 2001,although its negative effects have long been felt and known in the Islamic world:Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, SE Asia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, sub-SaharanAfrica. It is a sad irony that oil - the lifeblood of the modern world - gave one of the mostbackward and regressive regimes in Islam the means to impose its medieval view onpreviously peaceful and moderate regions of the Muslim world.

*-*-*-*

Like Sunnis, Shias attest to the Quran being God's Final Message and to Muhammadbeing His last prophet. However, the Shia belief in a divinely-inspired Imam, from theProphet's family, and wielding the Prophet's religious authority, goes to the heart of thedoctrinal difference between the two communities. Indeed, Shias believe that thepresence of the Imam is indispensable to the existence of the world and that each agehas its Imam - even if the faithful may not be aware of his physical presence. Eventhough accepting the Quran as God's final revelation would make the Islamic Messageimmutable, the institution of Imamat, whereby the Imam has the final authority tointerpret the Quran according to the times (taw'wil ), would impart a built-in mechanism tokeep the faith in tune with changing times. Two important corollaries arise from this:First, the implicit recognition that the Quran has to be read, not literally, but as a guidingdocument, speaking in parables, which have to be applied according to the context and

circumstances of changing times. Second, the important role of the intellect inunderstanding faith.

Due to the almost continuous persecution that Shias faced right from the point of cominginto existence and the unnatural deaths that the early Shia Imams met, nearly all thedifferent branches of Shia Islam suffered a break in the chain of Imamat. For the majoritysect of Shias, the Twelvers, this came about in AD 873 when the 12th Imamdisappeared and was never seen again. Because the raison d'être for Shia Islam isbelief in the existence of a divinely-inspired Imam, the various Shia branches evolved



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the credo of a "hidden" Imam: seeing, but unseen; an Imam in occultation who would'return' and restore peace and justice in the world: a messianic figure, as it were. 1 This, however, overturned a fundamental premise of Shiism, i.e. the inbuilt mechanismfor change and renewal via the Imam's continuing guidance. In the absence of the Imam,Twelver Shia communities evolved a highly elaborate, heirarchical structure to regulatethe community - the closest to the idea of a Central Church Authority in Christianity.

Notwithstanding this, there was no authoritative figure with the religious authority of theImam to make far-reaching changes, should these be required. Instead, the examples of the early Shia Imams became the guiding principles (just as for the Sunnis the exampleof the Prophet served this purpose). In particular, the teachings of Ali, the first ShiaImam, and Jafar al-Sadiq, the sixth Shia Imam (who is credited with laying thefoundation of Shia jurisprudence), came to dominate later Shiism.

Not all Shia communities lost the guidance of the Imam; some, like the Shia Ismailis, tothis day have a "living" Imam who traces his descent, through 49 generations, toMuhammed. It is by observing such communities that we can gauge the promise of thethe institution of Imamat in Shia Islam. The Ismailis, although the second most importantShia branch, are a relatively small percentage of world Islam. Yet their numbers belie

their very great influence in the Islamic world. Their Imams, the hereditary Aga Khans2 ,have used their unparalleled religious authority within the Ismaili community to carry outreforms such as banning the veil, polygamy and introducing gender equity, promotingeducation and social advancement. As a result, today, the Ismailis are by far the mostsocially progressive, educated and economically-advanced community in the Muslimworld; playing a critical role in the intellectual and economic lives of their countries of residence. Ismaili women, in particular, are the most educated and socially liberated inIslam. Even in the West, where their settlement is of relatively recent origin and a resultof political upheavel, their educational attainment represents the very highest of anycomparable group. Ismaili men and women may be found in the most prestigiouscenters of learning in the West - not just in the student community, but equally, in thefaculty as well.

In a world of globalization and meritocracy, of all Muslims, the Ismailis have mostsuccessfully embraced modernity, thrive in it and, as former British Foreign SecretaryRobin Cook13 observed recently, still manage to hold onto their identity. This adaptabilityis demonstrated in both the West as in the developing world. To take but two examplesin illustration: Azim Premji, an Ismaili entrepreneur, is India's richest billionaire. In 1999(before the hi-tech meltdown), the Indian press estimated his net worth to be secondonly to Bill Gates's. A man who has been called India's Bill Gates, he has built aninternational hi-tech empire, competing in the most advanced technologies with the bestof international adversaries. Wipro, his company, is listed on the New York StockExchange and is the first company to be awarded the Software Engineering Institute's(Carnegie Mellon University) highest mark of quality, CMM (Capability Maturity Model)

1 It was to capitalize on this deeply-felt Shia belief that Ayatollah Khomeini, though just a cleric(an Ayatollah) and not an Imam, was cynically given the honorific title of "Imam" Khomeini(something akin to a sacrilege in Shia Islam) by his "handlers", to exploit the unsuspecting andmake them believe that the Imam had returned to end the Shah's "corrupt" rule and restore

justice for the believers.2 The title Aga Khan has no religious significance. It is a hereditary political title granted to the46th Ismaili Imam, Hassanali Shah in 1830 by the Persian Qajar monarch, Fateh Ali Shah, whowas also the former's father-in-law.



The Crucible 15

Level V as well as P-CMM V (People-CMM). To date, only a handful of firms (such asthe giant Motorola) have managed to achieve this distinction.

Firoz Rasul, the current President of the Ismaili Council for Canada, doubles as theChairman and CEO of Ballard Power, a small technological venture he took over in 1988and is today the world leader in hydrogen fuel cell technology. One of Canada's greatest

success stories, Ballard has managed to attract investment from two of the biggestplayers in the automotive world, Daimler-Chrysler and Ford because of its leadership indeveloping alternate, non-fossil fuel powered technology. The Scientific Program, Nova,called hydrogen fuel-cell technology "the next big thing". It's not too difficult to see why.The last "great thing", the internal combustion engine which revolutionized transportationis also the single biggest cause of the West's dependence on Mid-East oil. With newgeneration cars running not on internal combustion engines but hydrogen fuel cells, it ishydrogen (widely found in nature) and not fossil fuels which power them. Furthermore,the exhaust is not in the form of greenhouse gases (CO2), but just plain water vapor (H2O).

But Shia intellectual achievement, even among Shia sects without a "living" Imam, is

significant and far outstrips that seen among Sunnis. Even in situations where bothcommunities live side by side, such as in India and Pakistan, this fact is quite evident1.Shias, in general, it would seem have a more open attitude to modernity than Sunnis.This is borne out even when one compares extremists on both sides. Both the currentregime in Tehran and the Taliban were theocratic regimes, yet in comparison to theTaliban, Iran's Ayatollahs strike one as the very paragons of virtue, reason andliberalism. Even in comparison to Saudi Arabia (another theocratic state), women in Iranenjoy far more rights and privileges.

Contrary to the factual position of the Shia world-view, the word "Shia" in the West hasemotive baggage attached to it and conveys, to the layperson, the caricature of anunrepentant fanatic, if not an actual religious terrorist. It is not hard to see why. The

recognition and awareness of the existence of the Shia sect of Islam by the West wascoincidental with the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Khomeni's reign of terror and hiscreation and funding of proxies in places like Lebanon (Hizbollah) was, thanks tosensational reporting in the Western media, associated in the public's mind as anessential part of Shia Islam - not just a brutal politicization and exploitation of religion.The Tehran Embassy hostage crisis and the bombing of the US marine barracks inBeirut was the final straw. Conventional wisdom now associated moderation with SunniIslam and religious militancy and fundamentalism with Shiism. Not until the early'Nineties when Sunni groups were accused of terrorist plots on the US mainland (suchas the first WTC bombing) did the conventional wisdom change. More recently, the USState Department has had cause to revise its assessment of threats to US security andnow defines groups tied to radical Sunni Islam - rather than militant Shia Islam - as the

number one threat to US security.

Contrary to media representation, the Iranian Revolution had less to do with religion thanwith economics. The rapid rise in Iran's wealth fuelled by the oil boom of the 'Seventies

1 When the British replaced the Muslims as the dominant power in the Indian sub-continent, SunniMuslims, in general, boycotted British institutions and Western education. The Shias, who were,in any case, second-class citizens under Sunni Muslim rule, had had less to lose by the arrival of the British and were therefore the first among Muslims to benefit from Western learning. It wastheir example which, over time, led to a change in Sunni attitudes towards Western education.



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triggered an unprecedented development boom designed to propel Iran from the ThirdWorld to the First World within a mere span of a few decades. To achieve this, millionsof poor peasants from the countryside were uprooted in migration waves to Tehran andother urban centers to work on construction sites. Though they could see the grandmansions of North Tehran which their hands had helped build, their reality, at the end of the day, was in a barely inhabitable, temporary slum. Whilst their fate was one which

millions in neighbouring India and Pakistan would gladly have died to have, these "have-not" Iranians gauged their happiness not in absolute terms, but in comparison to howtheir country's resources were exclusively enriching the Shah and his cronies. Not onlywas there no room in the Shah's grandiose plans for a pause to correct social inequity,he had also simultaneously reduced Iran to a one-party (his party) state; muzzled freeexpression; and left no room for civil society "mediation" between the powerful few andthe powerless many. The only institution he could not control was the Twelver Shiareligious heirarchy.

It was but natural that the religious order, the only independent power structure free of the Shah's control, would be the springboard for venting the frustrations of thepowerless, millions of whom were from the countryside and, though politicized by their

sudden move to the city slums, were still deeply religious. The thinkers and intellectualsencouraged this, thinking that they could use the simple-minded clerics to play the"battering ram" for them and that, once the Shah's regime was brought down, they wouldtake over. Little did they know that they were riding a tiger. Like the Bolsheviks, themullahs railed against the absolute powers of the monarchy, not because they found itmorally reprehensible, but because they wanted to monopolize it for themselves. Manyof the liberal intellectuals who surrounded Khomeini in his exile in Paris would later paywith their lives or, in the case of the most prominent, the MIT-trained Dr Ibrahim Yazdi,suffer a lifetime of harassment and ill-treatment.

Yet, from the early days, the Iranian electorate has consistently demonstrated that it didnot necessarily share the Ayatollahs' vision of governance, by defeating conservative

candidates and electing a liberal intellectual like Abul-Hasan Bani Sadr as President1.The recent two-time election of the reformer President Khatami reinforces this view.There is nothing intrinsically in the Twelver Shia psyche to predispose them to religiousmilitancy and theocracy. It was the confluence of events which, as in the case of theBolshevik Revolution of 1917, that created conditions where the Islamic Revolutionprevailed.

In Lebanon, one generation after the French had artificially carved out a Christian-majority state from what was originally Syria, demographic changes had made theTwelver Shias, arguably, the most inequitably represented group in the political process.Their case was defended in the Lebanese civil war by Amal , a secular organization ledby an urbane, dual US-Lebanese citizen, Nabih Berri. It would not be unnatural for Iran,

a Twelver Shia state, to be concerned about the fate of its co-religionists in Lebanon.However, instead of cooperating with Amal, the Iranian clerics undercut it and created acompeting organization in their own image - the fundamentalist Hizbollah. And similar organizations were "exported" to other regions of the Muslim world where Twelver Shiaswere agitating for political rights against Sunni regimes - many of whom were US-clientstates such as Saudi Arabia. As a consequence, to the uninitiated, Twelver Shiism andreligious militancy became synonymous.

1 President Bani Sadr subsequently had to escape for his life - as a stowaway on a plane.



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Anyone familiar with the Twelver Shia religious heirarchy could have reasonablypredicted the course of events once the mullahs succeeded in grabbing andmonopolizing power. The anti-US and anti-Western rhetoric, however, would besomething that could not, necessarily, have been predicted. As Shibley Telhami, theAnwar Sadat Chair at the University of Maryland explains: "Although Khomeini employed

Islam to legitimize his rule, the primary opposition to the United States across Iraniansociety was driven not by Islamic belief but by resentment of the United States' supportof the oppressive Shah."14

Similarly, theocratic Iran's uncompromising stance on Israel is less predicated onreligion, per se, than in the disproportionate suffering of Twelver Shias in SouthLebanon (where they are concentrated) from Israel's invasion of Lebanon and itssubsequent 20-year occupation of the self-imposed "security zone". Public opinion inIran will continue to be driven and influenced by the fate and attitudes of Twelver Shiasin Lebanon vis-à-vis Israel1. The excellent relations Iran has with India, a non-Muslimstate in spite of its "illegal" occupation of Muslim-majority Kashmir for more than fiftyyears (a situation not unlike that of occupied Palestine some would argue) would seem

to support this argument. The major difference between the two situations is theabsence of a large local Twelver Shia concentration in Kashmir.

The uninformed public and journalists may be excused their ignorance of the finer doctrinal points of Shia Islam, but what about Western scholars of history; surely theycould have better informed the debate and understanding? In practice that did nothappen because much of Western scholarship's understanding of Shiism has come viaSunni historical sources. As explained above, succession and political control of Islamiclands following the Prophet's death passed onto the Sunni majority. The Sunni majority,and Sunni rulers in particular, did not take kindly to the Shia minority and many attemptswere made to 'eliminate' them. In this they had the complete support of the Sunni clergy.In the early ages, when Shias lacked political power and were fighting an existential

battle, they had no means to make their independent case to history and posteritythrough the written word. That power belonged to Sunni writers who were extremelyhostile to the Shia cause. Dr Arzina Lalani, a scholar of early Shia thought at the Instituteof Ismaili Studies in London explains this succinctly in her book Early Shi'i Thought :

The Shi'a have generally been regarded by sunni heresiographers as'deviators' from the 'norm', representing heterodoxy as opposed to anorthodoxy. Many later Western scholars of Islam, too, have adopted the samedichotomy and have treated Shi'i Islam as a heresy. Considering that we owemost of our sources to those who were in due course to become the Sunnimajority, it is not surprising that the Shi'is are assumed to have diverged fromthe 'true path'. The 'orthodoxy-heterodoxy' dichotomy gives a very simplisticview of an extremely complex doctrinal development which evolved over

several centuries. In addition, this dichotomy, when understood from aChristian context, is inappropriate because of the absence of any centralecclesiastical authority in Islam.15

1 In recent years we have heard of the cooperation between the Twelver Shia Hizbollah andSunni groups like Hamas. To the extent one attaches credibility to these reports, it may speak tothe inefficacy of Israeli policy that two distinct groups - separated by different political affiliation,worldview, religious affinity, and interests - have both been equally alienated that they shouldseek common cause in spite of their very real differences.



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Shiism has another legacy which it shares with other branches of Islam - Sufism.Sufism, the mystical movement in Islam, is a spiritual path shared by both Sunnis andShias alike. Following the death of Muhammad, it arose as an organized movementamong groups who found orthodox Islam to be spiritually stifling. It eschews conformityto external, ritualistic symbolism and instead advocates a tolerant, personal path todivine love and wisdom. Though frowned upon by orthodox Muslims, it has played a

critical role in the history of Islam by spreading Islam outside the Arab world through Sufiliterature using eclectic symbolism tolerant and respectful1 of other belief systems - inlocal (non-Arabic) languages. Most mystical Sufi orders, Shia and Sunni alike, revere Ali,the first Shia Imam as the fountainhead of esoteric doctrine (upon which Sufism ispredicated). The shared spiritual beliefs between Shiism and Sufism served Shias well intimes of religious persecution, they would clothe themselves outwardly in Sufi symbolismand escape Sunni wrath by passing themselves off as Sunni Sufis.

1 One of Hindu India's greatest pan-Indian Saint is a Muslim Mystic called Kabir the weaver ,whose mystical poetry, written in Hindi, preaches universal love and is a synthesis of teachingsfrom both the Quran and the Hindu Holy Book, the Bhagvad Gita.



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THE MYTH OF MONOLITHIC ISLAM

The previous section dealt at length with the fundamental doctrinal differences between

Shia- and Sunni-Islam. And yet, such is the power of the popular press that Islam isoften portrayed in its entirety - 1.2 billion souls in all - as a single, amorphous, monolithic,grouping. The truth is that Islam is anything, but monolithic, and except for its earlyhistory, it has never been monolithic even politically. The Islamic world is a pluralistic,diverse collection of many political entities. Entities which comprise people of diverseethnic, linguistic and religious interpretations. As the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture(AKAA)1 has demonstrated - even to the Islamic world itself - the sheer diversity of cultural expression and interpretation in the Muslim world is phenomenal. The Islamicworld's diversity and pluralism - in all spheres - has deep historical roots.

During the Umayyad caliphate (AD 661-750), the Islamic empire was one single entitystretching from Spain to the borders of China - all ruled from Damascus. The successor

Abbasid caliphate (AD 750-1258), in its early days, apart from Umayyad Spain, alsoruled over all of the Islamic lands from their capital of Baghdad. However, even then,Islamic unity was only a thin veneer. The Shia supporters of Ali, and his designateddescendants, viewed both the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates as 'illegitimate'.Moreover, the newly converted non-Arab Muslims, treated as second-class citizens, hadless of a stake in the Islamic state than the Arab elite who dominated the reins of power in the early days.

The stresses of distance and the need to co-opt non-Arab elements finally proved toomuch for a centralized Islamic state and, in time, a number of local, independent rulersset themselves up on the periphery of the empire. The arrival of the Turks was toparticularly heighten this effect. The Turks were initially brought in as slaves and

mercenaries for Arab rulers who had reason to mistrust treachery and ambition fromtheir own kind. In time, the slaves became masters and reduced the Abbasid caliphs to astatus of nothing more than glorified titular heads, with little political power outside of Baghdad. Their tribal instincts meant that Islamic lands came to be divided among anumber of rival, warring chiefs. With the establishment of the Fatimids - the first Shia(Ismaili) - caliphate in AD 909, the religious fissures in Islam had already become deepand permanent.

A seminal event in history, the Crusades, is presented in both Western and Islamicmythology as a monolithic religious2 struggle between Christianity and Islam. In truth,

1 For details on the history and objectives of the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture, refer to the

AKDN website: http://www.akdn.org2 In actual fact, objective scholarship would indicate that the Crusades had anything but areligious reason. When Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade in November AD 1095, he wasresponding to appeals from the Byzantine Empire for a brotherly joining of forces to free the HolyLand from the "heathens". Yet Jerusalem had been in Muslim hands for the past 450 yearsalready! During that time it had never served as a rallying cry for a holy war. The real reason wasexistential. After losing border territories in the Near East to Arab armies in Islam's early days, theByzantine Empire had reached a sort of accommodation and equilibrium with the Umayyad,Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates whereby the Byzantine frontiers held by and large. However, inthe 11th century, the migration of independent Turkish tribes from Central Asia changed this. As



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the military successes of the First Crusade were in large part due to the divisionsbetween Fatimid Shia Egypt (which controlled the Holy Land) and Sunni Syria under theZangid Turks. The doctrinal enmity between the Fatimids and the Turks was as bad, if not more than, that between the Crusaders and Muslims in general. Indeed, it was theindiscriminate killing of civilians of all denominations by the early Crusaders that turnedall sections of Muslim opinion against them. Saladin (Salahuddin Ayubbi) succeeded in

reversing the Crusaders' victorious tide only after he united Egypt and Syria, whichhappened when he ended Fatimid rule (and Ismaili Shiism) in Egypt in AD 1171. In theWest, Saladin is presented as a pan-Islamic hero who led a jihad (holy war) to liberateJerusalem from the Crusaders. That is a myth.

In as much as Shia groups in Syria and Palestine had equal reason to hate theCrusaders for their religious fanaticism and their early murderous orgies, Saladinrepresented a bigger threat - an existential threat. His track record in Egypt was there for all to see. He had not only ended the Fatimid dynasty but eliminated the last vestige of Shiism from Egypt; he had destroyed priceless libraries and venerable institutions suchas Al-Azhar University had ceased to teach the Shia credo16.

Consequently, two near-successful attempts on his life came not from the Crusaders,but from fellow Muslims in Syria between AD 1174-617. Indeed, once their initial religiouszeal had been tempered by realities on the ground, the Crusaders managed to reachaccommodation with Shia groups in Syria. Indeed, when in c. AD 1193, following theThird Crusade, King Richard I, the Lion Heart (Coeur de Lion) was imprisoned and heldfor ransom by Leopold of Austria, one of the accusations leveled against him was hisconsorting with Sinan,18 the formidable leader of the Syrian Ismailis. In fact, much earlier,in AD 1129, when 6,000 Ismailis perished in a generalized massacre ordered by Buri,the Turkish Sunni ruler of Damascus, the local Ismaili chieftain of the fortress of Baniyas, on the border of the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, successfully obtainedrefuge for his people in Jerusalem by writing to King Baldwin II (AD 1118-31); turningover to him his fortress in return.19

The point in making reference to a much-publicized historical event of mythic proportionsis to underline the fact that even when the event in question is relatively well-known,inaccuracies can surround it when, in the absence of careful research, superficialappearances may come to cloud judgement. In situations which are lesser known, this

zealous new converts they were encouraged to expand westward - in the lands of the "infidels"rather than the lands of Islam. They proved a formidable adversary, successfully making inroadsdeep into Asia minor, defeating imperial Byzantine armies easily. At the Battle of Manzikert in AD1071, the Eastern Roman Empire suffered its worst ever defeat losing Anatolia to the SaljuqTurks, and it was only a matter of time before the Turks would completely overwhelm theByzantine empire. By making common cause with their rival Catholics, the Orthodox Byzantinessought to push back the Turkish threat. In actual fact, the Crusades only served to further weaken

the Byzantines and, instead of regaining territory from the Turks, they were subject to the barbaricsacking of Constantinople in AD 1204 by the Latin Christians - an event which permanently drovethe two branches of Christianity apart, irretrievably (on May 4, 2001, after nearly eight centuries, itwould fall to Pope John Paul II to personally apologize to Eastern Orthodoxy for the excesses of the Crusaders). For the Western Christians, there were distinct advantages in participating in theCrusades. The incessant bloodletting through internecine feuds among Christian princes couldinstead be channeled and directed at "infidels". Success in the Crusades was also guaranteed toenhance the Church's prestige and power; for the Christian soldiers of God there would be bothpromise of booty here, and rewards and redemption in the hereafter (as the Church had led themto believe).



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difficulty can be compounded. For far too long, Western media has glibly portrayed theMuslim world in monolithic terms, in a sense suggesting that actions of Muslim countriesare collectively-driven and influenced by their religion. Serious scholars who would havebeen expected to correct the inaccuracies, have, sadly, themselves fallen prey to thissimplistic notion. Reference has already been made to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (more on this later).

More than any other world faith, Islam embodies the notion of a world community of faithful - the Umma. No other world faith has supranational groupings such as theOrganization of Islamic States (OIC) - and its sister organizations. A look at thediscourse taking place in Islamic societies also shows the extent of world Muslimconsciousness and solidarity, the like of which does not find parallel in, say, the ChristianWest. Certainly issues like solidarity with the people of Palestine find an echo in theentire Muslim world. Notwithstanding this, the Muslim world is a collection of nation-states, each with its own unique interests, needs, ethnicities, religious interpretationsand strategic imperatives. As in the case of examples from early Islamic historyconsidered above, examples of recent events will make clear that the Muslim world doesnot differ from the West or any other grouping in that each nation-state responds,

individually, to political imperatives when choosing from different courses of actions.

In 17th century post-Reformation Europe, the Hapsburgs (both the Spanish and Austro-Hungarian branches in collusion) tried to unite European Christendom under Catholicismby force of arms and thus eliminate the "heresy" of Protestantism in what became knownas the Thirty Years' War (1618-48).20 France, a proud and strong Catholic nation wouldhave been expected to support this "holy" (Counter Reformation) endeavor. As we know,under the guidance of a prince of the Church, the formidable Cardinal Richelieu, it didquite the opposite. It sabotaged the Hapsburg strategy. Although as a high-rankingofficial of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Richelieu could have been expected to be infavor of strengthening Catholicism, as a patriotic Frenchman, he realized that the unitingof the northern and southern Germanic powers under the Hapsburgs would pose a

political threat to France. Richelieu therefore invoked his famous paradigm that sinceFrance was the pillar of Catholicism, all actions done to strengthen France were in theservice of Catholicism. Thus he could consort both with the Northern Protestant powersas well as the Sultan of Turkey in order to foil the plans of his Catholic co-religionists, theHapsburgs. Today, we recognize Richelieu's state policy (raison d'état ) as laying thefoundation of the modern nation-state and of the fundamental principle of separation of Church and State.

More than 350 years later, and although he may not consciously have followedRichelieu's course of action in history, a Muslim leader expounded the same logic.Following the end of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, Pakistan turned Afghanistaninto its client state, imposing on it the Taliban regime which had been spawned in its

religious seminaries (madressas). Afghanistan became a playground for Pakistan'sintelligence agencies and an instrument of its jihadist policy which was "exported"abroad. While the entire world (including most of the Islamic world) was shocked andscandalized by the Taliban's barbarism, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia funded and stood bythe fundamentalist regime. The Taliban became an immutable part of Pakistan's foreignpolicy through all the frequent regime changes in Islamabad - including the musicalchairs between civilian and military rule.



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When, in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, President Bush gave his famousultimatum that 'you are either with us or you are with the terrorists', Pakistan had achoice to make: to ditch the Frankenstein's monster it had helped create or to join it,willy-nilly, in a suicidal fundamentalist jihad "death pact" against the "infidels". Becausepolicy analysis in Pakistan had never seriously explored a Taliban-free foreign policy,and because Afghanistan was the training ground for the Kashmiri jihadists who were

being sent to bleed the Indian army, many Pakistanis (and not just the mullahs) wereagainst dumping the Taliban cold-turkey.

Pakistan's military dictator, General Musharraf, knew that if he did not comply withAmerican demands, Pakistan could suffer the fate of Iraq. Swallowing his pride, hequickly said yes to all of the demands presented by the US in a phone call to SecretaryPowell. Explaining his decision to the nation, he evoked the same metaphor as Richelieuhad done, centuries earlier. Pakistan, he said, was a pillar of Islam; if, God forbid,anything were to happen to Pakistan, Islam would be the weaker for it. It was, therefore,his duty to do everything to preserve and protect Pakistan from harm. In spite of Pakistan's fundamentalist stance planted since the late 'Seventies by the former militarydictator, General Zia-ul Haq, and strong feelings of affinity for the Taliban, the Pakistan

establishment had no problem in fundamentally changing its orientation.

What this demonstrates is that, like other nations, Muslim states are driven by self-interest and strategic imperatives. That, notwithstanding the ideological imperatives of some, in the final analysis, self-preservation dictates following the path of politicalexpediency rather than shared religious dogma or affinity. The fact that Saudi Arabiaquickly ended diplomatic relations with the Taliban, stopped funding it, and reined in itsfundamentalists under American pressure, further adds substance to this assertion.

In chapter 12 of his book, the Clash of Civilizations, "The West, Civilizations, andCivilization"21, Professor Huntington gives a hypothetical scenario of an attack onPakistan by India which is met by Pakistan with Iranian help. This scenario of Iran

stepping into to help Pakistan against India, though hypothetical, is based on the implicitnotion that Muslim countries are a "grouping" (in a sense monolithic); that they will act inunison against non-Muslim countries. This is a simplistic notion and could not be farther from the truth. In actual fact, Iran enjoys better relations with Hindu India than SunniMuslim Pakistan. Iranian diplomats have been murdered by Sunni fundamentalists inPakistan and Iranian cultural property attacked. Twelver Shia co-religionists of Iran intheir hundreds, if not thousands, have been murdered in their places of worship inPakistan since the late 'Seventies. More recently, Twelver Shia professionals, mainlyphysicians, have been targeted by Sunni fundamentalists in Karachi and elsewhere inPakistan.

Although a theocratic regime, Iran chose to back the "secular" Ahmed Shah Masoud and

his Northern Alliance against the theocratic Taliban. This they did in spite of the NorthernAlliance's links with India and Russia, two non-Muslim countries actively "suppressing"Muslim minorities in their own lands. This also put Iran in opposition to two Islamiccountries - Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - which backed the Taliban. Clearly, even for anideological, theocratic state headed by Ayatollahs, foreign policy is informed by morethan just religious orientation, but takes into consideration pragmatic factors includingsectarian religious affinity (protecting Twelver Shias), cultural factors (affinity with thePersian-speaking Tajiks of the Northern Alliance) and balance of power (curtailingPakistan's sphere of influence in Afghanistan).



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Not too long ago, the paranoia of communism led Western governments and leaders,alike, to believe in a global communist conspiracy. Communism, in other words, wasseen as monolithic, motivated purely by ideology. It should be apparent now to even themost gung-ho Cold War warrior that the practice of viewing communism as a monolithicphenomenon misguided policymaking for several decades before statesmen finally got itright. The different and competing needs and world views of the Chinese and the

Russians were not exploited until the 'Seventies, whereas the Sino-Soviet split tookplace in the late 'Fifties. There are many statesmen today who see the US involvementin Vietnam as a direct consequence of a terrible failure to read the nationalisticaspirations (as opposed to ideological reasons, par excellence) underlying NorthVietnamese actions; that the Vietnamese were more interested in a united homelandthan in promoting communism abroad.

As in the early days of the Cold War, the West has to disabuse itself of the simplisticnotion of monolithic threats. More particularly it has to disabuse itself of the notion thatreligion is the only predictor of behavior in the Islamic world; it is one of many factors andnot necessarily the most important. The West has to enhance its understanding of thesubtleties and nuances of forces impinging on the Islamic world if its policies vis-à-vis

the Muslim world are to be effective.

Having said that, we need to be mindful that radical Islam sees the Islamic world throughthe same prism of romantic hype as the popular Western press. Given the fact that theIslamic world has a preponderance of Sunni Muslims (80-90%), Wahhabi Islam sees itas its natural constituency.1 They see the Islamic world as requiring a latter-daymonolithic caliphate encompassing the entire Muslim world - a sort of totalitarian super-state. Almost exactly five months before September 11, 2001, Bin Laden, in aconference of fundamentalists near Peshawar, Pakistan, had a video message playedurging Muslims everywhere to pledge allegiance to the Taliban cleric, Mullah Omar asthe Amir-ul Momineen (prince/commander of the faithful i.e. caliph):

O Muslim ulema. Teach the Islamic nation that there is no Islam without acongregation, no congregation without an emirate, and no emirate withoutobedience.

You are aware that at these difficult days, God has bestowed on the Islamicnation the rise of an Islamic state that applies God's sharia and raises thebanner of monotheism, praise be to God; namely, the establishment of theIslamic Emirate of Afghanistan led by the prince of the faithful Molla [sic]Mohammed Omar, may God protect him.

It is your duty to call on the people to adhere to this emirate, to support it withsouls and resources, and to back it in resisting the overwhelming currents of the world's infidelism [sic].

1 No matter what the form of Twelver Shia religious militancy, Twelver Shiism can never ever be aglobal threat to the West for the simple reason that, apart from a handful of regions, Shiism ingeneral (and, therefore, Twelver Shiism) is very much a minority sect in the Islamic world,numbering just 10-20%. It will never have the global appeal that Sunni Islamic militancy canpotentially have. If a global threat from the Islamic world were to emerge, it would have to be fromradical Sunni Islam. That is not to suggest that Twelver Shia militancy cannot be dangerous inregional settings or in isolated locales.



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Weakening the infidels and warding off their evil, and upholding principles of monotheism can only be effected through a unified approach and by theMuslim's unanimous choice of one leader from among their men.

I take this opportunity to assert that it is God's desire that I should pledgeallegiance to the prince of the faithful Molla [sic] Mohammad Omar, that I

have indeed given him my word of allegiance.

I hope that my action will serve only God the Almighty.24

It goes without saying that a centralization of the Muslim world's resources and militarycapacity under a totalitarian, fundamentalist regime would be a big blow and seriouslyundermine the post-War international order. Yet it is precisely this that radical SunniIslam seeks to achieve - the overturning of the current international order. By means of violence it seeks to create conditions in individual Muslim countries whereby the secular state collapses and is replaced by a theocratic alternative; hopefully creating a dominoeffect. In time, it would hope to achieve a coalescing of different fundamentalistmovements into a latter-day caliphate such as the one Bin Laden refers to above.Radical Sunni Islam's view of the world is binary: the lands of Islam (Dar al-Islam) andthe lands of war (Dar al-Harb); the latter being the non-Muslim world ("infidels"), but alsoMuslim states who don't meet the "standards" of Wahhabi fundamentalism i.e. secular Muslim regimes. Equilibrium would be restored when the binary world was reduced to aunitary one i.e. victory of radical Sunni Islam ("the true believers") over the "infidels".

Though the overwhelming majority of Islam belongs to the Sunni sect, this body of Sunnifaithful is not, like Roman Catholicism, bound by an overarching, all-inclusive Churchand Papacy. As we noted earlier, the symbol of Sunni unity - the caliphate - wasabolished by Kemal Ataturk in 1924. Earlier, in the reign of Ottoman Sultan AbdulHamid (1876-1909) and prior to the First World War, a policy of political Pan-Islamismwas dreamt up, whereby zealous emissaries were dispatched all over Asia and Africapreaching the reunion of Islam under the Ottomans.25 The Great War put paid to thisidea when, among others, Sunni Arab tribes, within the Ottoman empire itself, revoltedagainst Turkish rule.

Sunnism, at the first or most basic level, is a mosaic of different interpretations - rangingfrom the large-hearted toleration of the Sufi orders to the puritanical intolerance of theWahhabi fundamentalists. At the second level are qualitative variations in religiousinterpretation based on regional differences derived from historical, cultural and ethnicbases. For example, the Sunni Muslims of South-East Asia have a relatively moderateinterpretation in the donning of attire, application of laws and gender equity compared to,say, Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia. At the third level, is the system of nation-statesspanning the political sphere of the Muslim world. Each nation-state reacts in a uniqueway to jealously guard its sovereignty and national interests - based not on religious

imperatives but economic and political imperatives although religion informs how the firsttwo imperatives are defined or interpreted. To gauge how strong these three"centrifugal" forces (i.e. levels) are vis-à-vis the "pull" of religious affinity, one need onlyobserve the practical effectiveness of both the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC)and the Arab League. Beyond fine oratory there has been very little in terms of practical



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more liberal attitudes as compared to those found in the austere climate of the Arabianpeninsula. Ever since the oil crisis of the early 'Seventies, the wealth effect in the Gulf has funded fundamentalist schools and religious parties which have sought to de-legitimize the indigenous, non-Arab, expressions of Islam - in black Africa, in CentralAsia, South Asia and S.E. Asia; all areas traditionally far liberal than Wahhabi Islam. Apernicious theory suggesting a "norm" (i.e. Wahhabi Islam), contrary to historical

precedents and to the dictates of the Quran, is being forced on previously peaceful andtolerant Muslim societies. Societies which reflected, historically, peaceful coexistencebetween Muslims and non-Muslims as well as between different sects of Islam are nowtorn apart by sudden religious intolerance against minorities: in Nigeria, in Pakistan, inKashmir, in South Africa, in East Africa, in Indonesia, in Central Asia - to name butsome areas.

That diversity and cultural pluralism are "intrinsically" good (irrespective of the "nature" of diversity) and in the West's enlightened self-interest to actively promote, is underlined bythe recent war in Afghanistan. The only reason the US had a "beachhead" to attack theTaliban, was due to the linguistic, cultural and ethnic differences that the NorthernAlliance Tajiks and Uzbeks had with the Pashtun-Taliban even though they were all

largely Sunni. Although some Northern Alliance components were Shia Hazaras whowere fighting alongside fellow-Persian speaking, Sunni-Tajiks against their common foe,the Pashto-speaking, Sunni-Taliban. It was in defense of cultural pluralism that theNorthern Alliance sustained itself till the very end, against overwhelming odds, in holdingon to a sliver of land in the North-East.

Luckily, we have successful - and collaborative - examples from both the Islamic worldand the West - of private endeavors in fostering cultural pluralism and which may serveas models for future interventions. The world's largest architectural prize, the Aga KhanAwards for Architecture (AKAA) is endowed by a private Muslim NGO - the Aga KhanTrust for Culture (AKTC) in Geneva. Started in 1977 with an accomplished Canadianlady, Professor Renata Holod (an academic in Philadelphia) as the Secretary General, it

has managed to bring together Muslims of all religious interpretations to define "IslamicArchitecture" as the architecture of all Muslims, not of a particular region (e.g. the MiddleEast) or period (classical age of Islam). Thus not just mosques with domes and minaretsare authentic expressions of Islam but flat, mud-roofed village mosques in West Africaare too. This, in effect, is tantamount to rejection of an Arab-centric Islam in favour of auniversal and pluralistic Islam. An explanation is in order: If Arab architecture were to bethe only "true" manifestation of Islamic architecture which the entire Islamic world shouldmimic or aspire towards, what counter-argument may one have to "reject" the insinuationthat the Arab (wahhabi or salafi) interpretation of Islam represent the only "authentic"form of Islamic belief? The converse is true. If all forms and periods of Muslimarchitecture - and not just Arab classical forms - are equally authentic expressions of Islamic architecture, why are non-Arab forms of religious belief any less authentic Islam

than Arab religious interpretation of Islam?

Because of the international prestige attaching to the Awards, nations throughout theIslamic world vie to host the Awards ceremonies and compete aggressively for prize-winning projects. Even nations such as Saudi Arabia and Iran gloat when their projectsare selected for Awards, even though the spirit of the Awards would tend to go againstthe very ideology of the theocratic state. The Awards, over the years, have benefitedfrom collaboration with the best Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist architects



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working along side Muslim architects and intellectuals. The Awards have, therefore,created a successful intellectual forum for Muslim-Western dialogue and collaboration.

The revival in Islamic architecture that the AKAA has generated has had another major impact. Because large-scale modern industrial and hi-tech structures were the preserveof global builders and designers based in the West, all too often these structures such as

hospitals, airports, high rises were based on Western models. As the oil-boomgenerated a corresponding development and building boom, the profile of the urbanlandscape in the Islamic world stood in danger of becoming an undifferentiated copy of the Western city as old structures, representing their Islamic heritage, were broughtdown to build new buildings. This, in and of itself, may or may not have been innocuous,but for Muslim populations, still tied to their ancient roots and not yet "global citizens",this would have represented a constant visual alienation from their culture and religiousroots. By sensitizing both, the Western designers (through programs such as the AgaKhan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard/MIT), and architects in the Islamicworld itself, to the traditions and inspirations of Islamic architecture, the AKTC hasensured that the changing skyline of the Islamic city has preserved cultural legacies,without slavishly copying from the past; creating appropriate modern structures and yet

staying rooted to Islamic cultural roots. More recently, the Historic Cities Programme(HCP) of the AKTC has pioneered the conservation, re-use (re-adaptation) andeconomic revitalization of historic spaces in the Islamic world from Bosnia to Zanzibar,the most important example being the CAD $75 million Al-Azhar Park in animpoverished area of Cairo.

The other example is a Western initiative - the Silk Road Project - conceived by theworld-renowned cellist, Yo-Yo Ma. Mr Ma's idea may have been stillborn but for thepersonal intervention of the World Bank President James Wolfensohn who used hisclose friendship with the Aga Khan to get the latter interested as a lead-funder throughhis AKTC. The Silk Road Project has had tremendous success in promoting CentralAsia's pluralistic heritage. Yet in spite of the ultimate success of the Project, one has to

be concerned that what should be a major Western foreign policy objective is not left tohappenstance - to the accident of good intentions and charity of private individuals.

Next in priority has to be strengthening of civil society groups (particularly, thoughnot exclusively, women). Where strong civil society exists, it acts as a brake on thearbitrary power of the state and can mediate between the powerless individual and thepowerful state thus empowering ordinary citizens and preventing political disillusionment.When the former Pakistani military dictator, General Zia-ul Haq tried to gain politicallegitimacy, he consorted with Sunni clerics. He imposed gender-discriminatory Sharialaws such as the controversial Zina Ordinance under which victims of rape were further punished by being charged with adultery while the perpetrators went scot-free becausethe requirement of four male witnesses to the act could never be met in the real world.

Mrs Rashida Patel, the Chair of the All-Pakistan Women's Association (APWA), andPresident of the Women Lawyers' Association, was the most vocal critic of Zia'smeasures. Her efforts helped in sensitizing the international community to the travesty of

justice taking place in Pakistan and won foreign support, including that from CIDA.

A successful - and holistic - example of how civil society in the Islamic world may behelped is the Aga Khan Foundation Canada (AKFC) and CIDA's collaborative Pakistan-Canada Social Institutions' Development Program (PAKSID). This program strengthenscivil society in a comprehensive and holistic manner - comprising policy environment,



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resource development and influencing attitudes of external stakeholders (such asgovernment). Gender equity is an intrinsic part of the Program. Just recently, thisprogram won the International Co-operation Award from the Canadian Council for International Co-operation.



The Crucible 30

Next, Western governments have to achieve a change in mindset - away from putting all their eggs in the government-basket and building bridges with "like- minded" groups and institutions of moderate Islam. People-to-people contacts areabsolutely vital to overcome mistrust, misperception and plain ignorance. The battle for hearts and minds has to be won in the private, and not the government sphere. In anycase, if governments are illegitimate, they may fall at any point and with them all

investments made in them up to that point. By fostering contacts between Western andmoderate Muslim private institutions and individuals, such investments are likely not onlyto withstand regime changes but be more effective in creating links and bonds betweensocieties. Irrespective of whether they are economic or intellectual in nature, such linksare vital to the extent that they strengthen the "capacity" of moderate groups andinstitutions to inform public opinion and enlarge their circles of influence in their respective societies.

Last but by no means least, curbing the influence of Wahhabi-inspired religiousschools (madressas). Pakistan's entire jihadist culture (and the Taliban) was spawnedin these schools. Aside from the brainwashing of young minds with the poison of religious hatred, thus breeding future religious fanatics and potential terrorists, these

schools carry the seeds of societal instability. By attracting large numbers of studentsfrom urban slums and rural areas (almost a million in Pakistan) with the incentive of freeeducation and board they inject into society functionally-illiterate adults unable to earn aliving. This is so because these schools teach nothing but a recipe of religiousintolerance, anti-feminine prejudices and the Quran by rote (a curriculum the Talibaninternalized well). This is a mix that makes them incapable of fulfilling any productive rolein a modern economy other than, perhaps, serving as so-called "holy warriors". Unlessthese schools are reformed immediately, they represent a real risk to the stability of secular Muslim nation-states and to the security of the West. It is imperative that theseschools are actively monitored to curb their dispensation of hatred and are encouragedto introduce vocational trade skills such as will allow future graduates to earn a living asproductive members of mainstream society. The West should apply all the leverage it

can muster to impress upon "at risk" Muslim societies to carry out these reforms.



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THE 'ISLAMIZATION' OF MODERNITY

Many Western and Muslim historians draw a watershed moment around Napoleon's

invasion of Egypt in 1798. For centuries Arab and Turkish Muslim armies had advanceddeep into the heart of Europe and threatened the sovereignty of Christian nations. In1492 the Reconquista, the freeing of Spain from Moorish control, had been completedwith the surrender of the last surviving Muslim kingdom of Grenada to the forces of Isabel and Ferdinand. After the Turkish defeat in the second siege of Vienna in 1683, theOttomans, inexorably, found themselves having to relinquish territories, piece by piece,on all European fronts, and retreat to their Muslim provinces. But Napoleon's conquestof Egypt - a province in the very heart of the Muslim world - was of a different order. Itwas not a freeing of Christian or European lands from Muslim control, but a role reversal;after centuries of suffering Islamic imperialism, it was now Europe's turn to cross theseas to impose its will on the Islamic world.

Napoleon's victory over the Mamluk and Ottoman forces is represented by thesehistorians as a moment of awakening for the Islamic world, a shock, as it were. This ishistorically inaccurate because the moment of "truth", of "shock", had already takenplace almost half a century earlier - in India. At the Battle of Plassey, a tiny British forcehad defeated a major Muslim ruler, the Nabob (Nawab) of Bengal, in 1757, followed by avictory over the forces of the Mughal Emperor himself in the Battle of Buxtar in 1764.These were the first steps in the establishment of the British Raj in India as thesuccessors and victors over the Great Mughals, one of three great contemporary Muslimempires. Be that as it may, the argument can be made, incontrovertibly, that by 1750,the balance of power had definitely shifted to the West.

Muhammad's political successors, the caliphs, pursued an aggressive policy of military

conquest which, in the span of less than a century i.e. by the early 8th century, hadmade the Islamic empire the biggest in history up until that point - stretching from Spainto India and the borders of China, deep in Central Asia. The Arab armies whichspearheaded this conquest were the former denizens of the desert - simple, nomadicfolk. Compared to the great powers of the day - the Romans (Byzantines) and thePersians - they were relatively unsophisticated and unlettered. Yet they were successfulin sustaining great civilizations and military empires across three continents. For sixcenturies - from the seventh to the thirteenth century - Muslim civilizations dominatedworld culture.

The Muslims were able to absorb antiquity's scientific and philosophical heritage(including the best of Greek and Roman civilizations), preserve, build and add to this

body of knowledge. This would serve as foundational knowledge for all futurecivilizations.26 In particular, there were brand new fields of intellectual endeavor thatMuslims added to the legacy of antiquity: algebra, geodesy, geometric solving of cubicequations, discovery of secant and cosecant, construction of the first astronomicalobservatory and - most significantly for future European exploration - invention of theastrolabe (a kind of celestial computer to accurately determine celestial altitudes, timesand heights of mountains).27



The Crucible 32

Belief in their new-found faith and their stunning military successes gave the Arabs - inspite of their humble origins and cultural and intellectual unsophistication - the self-confidence to learn from every culture they encountered. Contact with foreign culturesand ideas never suggested to them a potential corruption or loss of their Muslim identity.Following the end of the period of the four righteous caliphs (AD 632-661), theleadership of the Islamic empire fell to the Umayyad dynasty (AD 661-750) who

established the first hereditary kingship in Islam. Considered as hedonistic, worldly, andmurderers of the Prophet's grandson and his family, many Muslims (particularly Shias)view them as impious usurpers of Islam's leadership. But it was perhaps this worldlyambition or materialistic view that inspired a pragmatic curiousity of things foreign andhow it could serve their purpose. Maria Rosa Menocal, a professor of Spanish andPortuguese at Yale University, explains it thus: "The Umayyads, who had come pristineout of the Arabian desert, defined their version of Islam as one that loved its dialogueswith other traditions.... This was a remarkable achievement, so remarkable in fact thatsome later Muslim historians accused the Umayyads of being lesser Muslims for it." 28

The early Muslims so successfully adopted foreign ideas and knowledge that, much of what was later to be associated with their name, was either borrowed, adapted or built

upon other civilizations. For example, the term Arabic numerals is really an Indianinnovation borrowed from India by the Arabs; the Muslim term for it, hindsaat (Indianscience) being an acknowledgement of this fact. What is now known as Islamicarchitecture from Islam's early days, borrowed significantly from Byzantine built tradition.The Great Umayyad Mosque of Damascus, one of Islam's earliest major monuments,and which defined the shape of Islamic monuments of the future, was largely the productof Byzantine workmanship. The notion of what was Islamic was not based on theprovenance of ideas and knowledge, but on how usefully they could be applied topractical uses without fundamentally affecting the faith of Islam. The xenophobia thatpresently characterizes large sections of the Muslim world seems to have been totallyabsent in those formative years.

Most serious historians agree that beginning in the thirteenth century, Muslim intellectualleadership entered a less vigorous phase and, by the fifteenth century, "began a periodof decline, losing ground to European economic, intellectual and cultural hegemony."Even as Muslim learning was being taught in the great seats of Renaissance Europe,Islam had started to forget its intellectual heritage from the fourteenth century onwards.Consequently, in time, Islamic culture was marginalized and its horizons narrowed; tothe point that it lost its self-respect. The intellectual and cultural search in which it hadled the world for six centuries ceased to be pursued.29

Whilst there is general consensus on the symptoms of intellectual decline, the causes of it are still being debated. For far too long Muslim historians have blamed outsiders for this turnaround - the Mongols and the Crusaders. But other civilizations, too, have

suffered external invasions and yet they managed to resurrect themselves. To this day,apologists in the Muslim world explain its continuing intellectual backwardness onexternal factors. Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistan's MIT-trained theoretical nuclear physicist and author of Islam and Science, writes: "Often, diabolical theories of international conspiracy, with varying degrees of credibility, are invoked as explanationfor Muslim Scientific backwardness. But these are not very fulfilling. Indeed, the damageto the collective self-esteem cannot be undone by such means, and thoughtful Muslimsmust seek sounder reasons."30



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In recent years some intellectuals in the Muslim world have sought to seek moreplausible reasons. Dr Hoodbhoy himself traces it to the great debates which raged inBaghdad - the debate between Reason and Revelation and between Predestination andFree Will in Islam's classical age:

Science flourished in the Golden Age of Islam because there was within

Islam a strong rationalist tradition, carried on by a group of Muslimthinkers known as the Mutazilites. This tradition stressed human freewill, strongly opposing the predestinarians who taught that everythingwas foreordained and that humans have no option but surrendereverything to Allah. While the Mutazilites held political power,knowledge grew.

But in the twelfth century Muslim orthodoxy reawakened, spearheadedby the cleric [Sunni] Imam Al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali championedrevelation over reason, predestination over free will. He refuted thepossibility of relating cause to effect, teaching that man cannot knowor predict what will happen; God alone can. He damned mathematics

as against Islam, an intoxicant of the mind that weakened faith.

Held in the vice-like grip of orthodoxy, Islam choked. No longer, asduring the reign of the dynamic caliph Al-Mamun and the great HaroonAl-Rashid, would Muslim, Christian, and Jewish scholars gather andwork together in the royal courts. It was the end of tolerance, intellect,and science in the Muslim world. The last great Muslim thinker, Abd-alRahman ibn Khaldun, belonged to the 14th century.31

The Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi adds: "We lost our pluralism, our liberalism1,000 years ago. When al-Ghazali came, it was the beginning of the Crusades. He feltthat pluralism, the enlightenment, might be risky, once you began to face the external

enemy".32 Ziauddin Sardar, a British Muslim thinker who writes on science, seems toecho Hanafi:

This is the period when the ulama [clergy] got together, and they wereextremely fearful of multiple interpretations of Islam. And they sawthat as feeding dissension in the community....So they tried to stopwhat is a key instrument of Islamic culture - namely ijtihad. Ijtihadmeans "reasoned struggle". And it was very much part-and-parcel of Muslim society, using reason in all kinds of ways - scientific method,empirical inquiry, sociological inquiry.33

When the West came knocking on the Islamic world in the eighteenth century, at the

head of imperial forces, it had behind it the achievements of the Renaissance, theScientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. It represented contemporarymodernity. Unlike in the middle ages, Islamic society did not have the self-confidencederived from successive military victories against the great powers of the day; on thecontrary, it was diffident and defensive. The West had not only imbibed the best thatIslam had to offer in intellectual achievement, but had since significantly added to theuniversal body of knowledge. In the process, it had managed to harness, via theScientific and Industrial Revolutions, significant power over the forces of nature. In



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The Islamic world has had no problem borrowing modern Western technology. BernardLewis in his recent book, What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle EasternResponse,34 reports instances of the earliest application of Western "hardware" byMuslim powers. From the penchant for the latest Western gadgets displayed byconsumers throughout the Muslim world to the eagerness Muslim governments (andreligious militants) show in acquiring hi-tech weaponry, there is ample evidence of this. It

is in accepting modern thinking that the problem arises. As Suroosh Irfani, a Pakistaniintellectual puts it: "We have access to the artefacts of modernity - which means themedia, the cable television, the tape recorder, the aeroplanes, the high-rise apartments,autobahns. But we lack the intellectual underpinning of what modernity is all about." 35

The essential features of modernity, many in the West would suggest, are concepts suchas rationalism, scepticism and individualism. Scepticism and doubt, that this implies, areanathema to conservatives who seek certainty through obedience to the revealed truth.But it is reason, as Hanafi argues, that enables human beings to interpret revealed truthin the light of modern conditions.36 Pre-empting reason is to invite obscurantism. And yetit is precisely this that the orthodoxy and the religious fundamentalists seem to beadvocating. To them all of the Islamic world's problems are the cause of flirting with

Western secularist notions such as the primacy of reason. Once the Islamic world"returns" to its roots i.e. the Quran and the Sunnah, all its problems will be solvedbecause solutions to all the problems of the Muslim world can be found there.

Such thinking which suspects the role of reason and rationality is totally at odds to thespirit of free-inquiry upon which science is based. And modernity, after all, is anchoredon science and the scientific method. It is not surprising, therefore, that science itself should be targeted by the fundamentalists. In his book, Islam and Science, Dr PervezHoodbhoy, who has been called Pakistan's conscience of secular humanism, cites apoignant example:

But their attitude towards science is often times a schizophrenic one,

particularly in those Muslim countries where orthodoxy wields statepower...This point is exemplified by the views expressed by the Saudidelegates to a high level conference held in Kuwait in 1983. Theostensible aim of the conference, attended by rectors from 17 Arabuniversities, was to identify and remove bottlenecks in thedevelopment of science and technology in the Arab world. But a simpletopic dominated the proceedings: is science Islamic? The Saudis heldthat pure science tends to produce 'Mu'tazilite [free thinking]tendencies' potentially subversive of belief. Science is profane becauseit is secular; as such in their opinion - it goes against Islamic beliefs.Hence, recommended the Saudis, although technology should bepromoted for its obvious benefits, pure science ought to be soft

pedaled."37

Dr Hoodbhoy has gone on to document extensively, in an Appendix to his book titled:"They Call it Islamic Science", how science itself was being corrupted and undermined inthe name of Islam in an important Muslim country - Pakistan - during the reign of theformer military dictator General Zia-ul Haq:

There has emerged, in recent years, a remarkable manifestation of orthodox religiosity which is, in essence, an attempt to extend the



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scope of Islamization in Pakistan beyond the sphere of social concernsand into the domain of natural phenomena. They call it IslamicScience.

Rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a long gone medieval age, thisnew science seeks to establish that every scientific fact and

phenomenon know today was anticipated 1400 years ago and that allscientific predictions may, in fact, be based on the study of the HolyBook. Once again, as in medieval times, theology is being crowned asthe Queen of Sciences.

Ordinary secular science, according to the proponents of the newIslamic science, has no business being here in the Land of the Pure[i.e.Pakistan]. Together with various other foul products of godlesssecular civilizations - such as capitalism or socialism or democracy -modern science also needs to be unceremoniously shipped back to theWest, where it supposedly belongs.38

Notwithstanding the intellectual honesty displayed by secular-minded Muslimintellectuals to seek a way out of the Dark Ages in which the Islamic world seems to bemired today, Islamic societies as a whole are increasingly turning away from 'secular'answers - in no small part because these are associated with the West. Because theorthodoxy has successfully demonized the West, they believe they can removelegitimacy from any idea 'tainted' by association with the West. And yet, secularism hadits day in the sun in the Islamic world. The Islamic world's abject collapse before theforces of Western imperialism in spite of its religiosity convinced the masses that their salvation rested with those of their kin who had sought to enlighten themselves withWestern learning. Without exception, all the leaders of the erstwhile Muslim colonies,were secular-minded individuals educated in Western institutions. They enjoyed popular support and were able to introduce secular constitutions bequeathed by their former

colonial masters. Efforts by the clerical orders to counter their appeal fell on deaf ears.

To cite a case in point, Pakistan; the only state to have been created as a homeland for Muslims and the biggest Muslim state at its birth. The struggle for Pakistan was led byMohammed Ali Jinnah, a westernized, secular, lawyer who was born in the minorityliberal, Shia Ismaili sect of Islam. According to the most objective biographers, such asStanley Wolpert, and close contemporaries, Jinnah was anything but a practicingMuslim1. Leading a largely Sunni movement, he had the Sunni orthodoxy ranged againsthim. At the height of his power he was given the title of Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader) towhich the orthodoxy, playing on a pun, responded with Kafir-i-Azam (Great Heretic). Thisdid little to dent his appeal among the overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims,including most Sunnis, who idolized him even though he addressed them in English and

not in Urdu (a language he never fully mastered), the lingua franca of India's Muslimsand Pakistan's national language. Even today, when most Pakistanis are disenchantedwith most of their past and present political leaders, Jinnah still continues to commanduniversal respect for his integrity and personal honesty.

1 Attempts have been made, particularly during the regime of General Zia-ul Haq, to rewritehistory and present Jinnah as a devout, orthodox Muslim. Jinnah's vision for Pakistan as amodern, westernized secular, democratic republic, similarly, has been distorted andmisrepresented as a theocratic 'Islamic' republic



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It took just one generation of lost opportunities, political and economic mis-mangementby the corrupt and incompetent leaders of the Muslim world for the masses to bedisillusioned with the promise of freedom and Western-style institutions. Following thecrippling oil embargo against the West during the Yom Kippur war of 1973, the forces of religious orthodoxy were ready to exploit the political disenchantment of the poor. The

global recession which was triggered by the inflationary oil crisis affected many poor Muslim countries, which, unlike the West, exported commodities and not sought-after manufactured goods which could factor the higher fuel costs into their prices. Theresulting economic misery in many a Muslim country tested the viability of politicalinstitutions on the one hand and, on the other, transferred huge surpluses to theconservative Arab Gulf states. This money was soon to find its way into funding religiousprojects, "like-minded" conservative religious political parties, and puritanical religiouseducation throughout the Muslim world.

The poor were led to believe that their plight was not a function of world conditions or paucity of economic resources, but because of the "turning away" from Islamic principlesby corrupt secular rulers. Once the Sharia was introduced and an "Islamic" form of

government (i.e. theocracy) took power, Islamic principles of social justice would comeinto play and provide immediate relief for everyone. The fact that the Islam that wasMuhammad's legacy was a frontierless brotherhood and not a political ideology wasirrelevant. The success of the Ayatollahs against the mighty state apparatus of the Shahin 1979 was to embolden the clerics even more.

Today, Western-style institutions and secular solutions associated with them have lostthe luster they had on the eve of political independence. Far from deferring to Westernmethods and intellectual superiority, the orthodoxy is tugging at the sources of politicalpower and is openly hostile to the West. Dr Akbar S. Ahmed a prominent PakistaniSunni scholar, a Fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge, writing in the Manchester Guardian Weekly, as early as August 1991 (around the time of the Gulf War), succinctly

framed the question confronting the Muslim world:

The central issue facing Muslims in the world today is what to do withthe part that is non-Muslim. It will dominate their political agenda inthe 1990s. Two opposed arguments meet head on. One rejects themodern world as dominated by the West, as corrupt and evil; the otherwishes to live with it while retaining its own sense of identity. If themedia are to be believed, the former is in the ascendant. For the latterone of the most interesting and important voices to emerge recently isthat of the Aga Khan...[who] is bringing about a quiet but far-reachingeconomic and social revolution in the lives of his followers....[andwhose] work now brings together Ismailis and non-Ismailis as never

before in history and thus provides a lead to mainstream Muslims.39

It may seem counter-intuitive that so prominent a Sunni savant as Dr Akbar Ahmedshould see the urbane, Harvard-educated "soft-spoken, even shy" Aga Khan as a "quietrevolutionary" to provide a lead to mainstream Muslims in a volatile and often-violentMuslim world. But closer reflection would reveal that this opinion is a well consideredone. The Muslim world, in its struggle to find its place in the modern world, is effectivelyrudderless. Islam's political leaders, beyond fine oratory, have done little to provide avision and leadership to their long-suffering peoples. Theirs has been an abject failure



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which has created disenchantment with secular institutions. On the other hand, far toomany of the religious orthodoxy have let themselves indulge in hate-mongering againstthe West without necessarily offering a practical alternate vision. The constraints onfreedom of speech and the precarious and nascent state of civil society in the Muslimworld preclude expectation of leadership from civil society in the Muslim world. Finally,given that the West and anything and everything associated with the West have been

demonized, make it difficult to envisage acceptance of "Western leadership" by Muslimsocieties. As former President Clinton summarizes in a recent speech:

... there is... a war raging within Islam today about what they thinkabout the modern world in general, and the United States in particular.It is rooted in the frustrations so many Muslims have with the modernworld, which they see as a threat to their values, destructive of theirway of life, hostile to their economic well-being in many places.40

Hence the reason for Akbar S. Ahmed to see promise in the Aga Khan's leadership.Akbar Ahmed epitomizes the anguished search of moderate Sunni intellectuals for a rolemodel to lead them to an intellectual renaissance. They reject the hate-filled discourse of

the religious orthodoxy and yet are aware of the dismal failures of their secular politicalleaders. Fortunately, the Aga Khan, following his immediate predecessor's example1, has been interested in the general welfare of the Islamic world and not just that of hisIsmaili followers. Unlike almost all other religious organizations, the Ismaili Imamatoperates a non-denominational institutional structure - the Aga Khan DevelopmentNetwork (AKDN) - which employs people of diverse religions and nations. This absenceof sectarianism is one reason why many Sunni intellectuals are drawn to the Aga Khanfor his leadership. The account of Ghazi Salahuddin, a Sunni journalist from Pakistan, onthe Aga Khan's official visit to Tajikistan in 1998, epitomizes this appeal:

One subject which I think should be tackled in a solemn manner andwith great care is whether someone like the Aga Khan can play a

modernising role in the Muslim world. What he said in his speecheswas very encouraging. He urged his audience to never use arms toresolve differences and stressed the importance of peace, hope and ...confidence in the future. Another refrain was to emphasise the ethicsof Islam shared by all schools of thought and the willingness to change.41

1 The former Aga Khan, H.H. Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III (1877-1957) whilst still inhis twenties, was the youngest member of Lord Curzon's Imperial Legislative Council, and aconfidant of the House of Windsor (from Victoria onwards), with close connections to the highestpolitical circles in Britain. At the dawn of the twentieth century, he was offered overall leadershipof India's Muslim community to help advance the educational and political agenda of India's

backward and languishing Muslims. The Aga Khan was able to use his political influence to winconcessions for Muslims, including the establishment of the first modern Muslim University atAligarh in North India, and guaranteed political representation for Muslims at all levels. Later hewas to be involved in the fate of many Muslim countries around the world. With the help of twoinfluential Canadians - the press baron Lord Beaverbrook and one-time British Premier, Bonar Law - the Aga Khan played a key role in defending Turkey's right to its Turkish-majority provincesfollowing the Ottoman defeat at the end of the Great War. On the eve of World War II, he servedas two-time President of the League of Nations. He also played a key role in generously funding anetwork of modern educational institutions for indigenous Muslims in East Africa in the 'Forties - aprocess which helped create a modern educated Muslim African middle-class.



The Crucible 39

Though leading a Community spread throughout the Muslim world (and the Westernworld too), unlike other Muslim leaders, the Aga Khan and the headquarters of hisinstitutional network are based in the West so as to maintain his independence and inorder not to be sucked into the volatile local politics of the Islamic world. Although he

maintains close personal contacts with the political leaders of the Muslim world, as anapolitical figure, he steers clear of passing judgement on them, and is steadfastlypolitically neutral. The Aga Khan heads the biggest private development network(AKDN) in the Islamic world (and the most comprehensive anywhere) which controlstangible assets worth billions of CAD - from schools, hospitals, rural developmentprojects, universities, banks, hotels, telecoms, airlines, various industries, and multi-national energy projects - in some of the poorest Islamic countries. These have broughtmodern techniques, advanced education and cutting-edge technologies to the some of the remotest parts of Asia and Africa. Like the World Bank, the AKDN also maintainsresident diplomatic missions in some Muslim countries from Afghanistan to Syria toTajikistan, and in some non-Muslim countries (Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique etc.),too.1

Given that many politically unstable Muslim countries are candidates for "failed-state"status, where foreign investment has shied away, the Aga Khan's social and economicassistance has been critical in preventing the disintegration of many a secular nation-state. His timely intervention in Central Asia following the demise of the Soviet Union,was instrumental in helping the precarious economies survive their early years and theexport of religious fundamentalism by the former Taliban regime. In the case of Tajikistan, the Aga Khan personally helped broker a peace treaty between thegovernment (erstwhile communists) and the Islamic opposition in 1997. He also fundedconstitutional lawyers to work with the two parties and the UN, to iron out the details. For all these reasons and more, the Aga Khan is actively courted on an ongoing basis bymany leaders of the Islamic world; often times, as a funder of "last resort".

Called variously by the global media as a "Renaissance Man" and "Visionary", the AgaKhan has consistently challenged conventional wisdom and been "ahead of the curve"by several decades2. In the last half-century, few individuals have had the impact on

1 See the AKDN website for details: http://www.akdn.org2 In 1980, the World Bank Report, for the first time recognized that health and education werebasic inputs to development, which should be viewed independently of economic growthprospects; the Aga Khan had been advocating that position for more than two decades prior tothat. In 1982, the Aga Khan coined the phrase the "enabling environment" which he defined asgood governance, fiscal incentives and a healthy partnership between the private and publicsectors. Conventional wisdom in the West and at the World Bank then favored mega-projectswhich "threw" money at the problem and which focussed development on national governments.

Four years later, in 1986, he organized a conference in partnership with the World Bank and sub-Saharan governments in Nairobi to focus attention on sustainable development for Africa. Nearlytwo decades later, the international community has signed on to these precepts, accepting thatgovernments alone, notwithstanding all the aid they have been receiving, will never succeed ineliminating the problem of poverty. In 1997/98, the current President of the World Bank, JamesWolfensohn, a long-time admirer of the Aga Khan, announced his Comprehensive DevelopmentStrategy, which, in effect, rejected the World Bank's policy of the previous half-century. Anyoneremotely familiar with the field of development would find much similarity between the WorldBank's new strategy and the AKDN's long-standing approach and mission statement, including,interestingly, the role of culture as a facet of development. The AKDN's projects are the subject of



The Crucible 41

education system. Today, as concerns regarding the role of madressas in other countries come to the fore, the AKF model in East Africa is worthy of study for transferable lessons.

Given the historical role played by European universities in the intellectual renaissanceof the West, advanced education has been at the forefront of the Aga Khan's plans for

the Muslim world. Realizing that sustainable intellectual activity is possible only in aclimate of free inquiry guaranteed by academic freedom - something which wasconspicuously absent in the Muslim world - the Aga Khan has established a number of private tertiary educational institutions both in the West and in the Islamic world. Theseinclude: an international university, nominally chartered in Pakistan but with campuses inmany countries, the Aga Khan University (AKU); the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) inLondon; the University of Central Asia (UCA), headquartered in Tajikistan, but withcampuses in other Central Asian countries; and the Aga Khan Program for IslamicArchitecture (AKPIA) at Harvard-MIT. This has provided "intellectual space" for the bestminds in the Muslim world, in cooperation with the best Western minds, to work on itsproblems, free from economic blackmail or outside interference - be it from theorthodoxy or government circles.

This has also resulted in a reversal of the "brain drain" which in earlier years had seenthe cream of the Muslim world re-locate itself in the West in a quest for an "enablingenvironment". Also, many Muslim intellectuals who, though deeply anguished about thestate of the Muslim world, had been forced into exile in the West because they weretargets for religious fanatics, have now been given a forum to employ their energies tosolving the Islamic world's myriad problems. A case in point is Dr Mohammed Arkoun,Emeritus Professor of Islamic Thought at the Sorbonne - author of Rethinking Islam andThe Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought - a Sunni Algerian intellectual, who isprobably one of the most incisive thinkers in contemporary Islam today. In the crosshairsof the Algerian fundamentalist opposition, his return to his native homeland would meancertain death. Thanks to the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture (AKAA) in Geneva and

the IIS in London, Dr Arkoun has been allowed "intellectual space" in Europe, throughhis involvement with these institutions, to continue to inform the modernity debate withinIslam and to influence budding intellectuals from across the Muslim world.

Earlier, reference was made to the Islamic world's urge to seek legitimation from the pastand from tradition. We also touched on the fundamentalist forces seeking to impose astultifying monolithic conformity on the entire Muslim world. Geography in the pastserved to act as a "countervailing" force preventing central powers from imposing their ideology or views on distant populations. In an age when neither mechanized or airbornepower was existent, natural barriers such as mountainous regions prevented nationalarmies from enforcing the empire's writ on unwilling populations. The result was aproliferation of diverse traditions, cultures, religious interpretations and customs. When

the Wahhabi fundamentalists look back into the past to clothe their agenda with alegitimacy of tradition, they pick and choose a particular tradition which reflects their brand of religious intolerance.

Encounter with European imperialism created a dichotomy between the secular and thesacred - with the intellectuals divorced from Islamic culture and the obscurantist clericsdefining Islam within the narrow bounds of theology. This state of affairs means that theIslamic world has never seriously studied Islamic culture in a holistic manner as a"civilization" rather than as a theology. The intellectual tools of critical analysis that



The Crucible 43

Today, the religious orthodoxy seem to be wielding an apparent monopoly vis-à-vis themasses and the governments of Islamic countries over the interpretation and definitionof Islamic authenticity because the introduction of Western education allowed the clericsto assign themselves sole authority over the "sacred", leaving the "secular" for Westerneducated intellectuals, who were thus divorced from the "sacred". Yet, there are fewcultural expressions more closely bordering on the sacred than architecture for it

includes the design of "sacred space" (houses of prayer); and the experience of theAKAA over the last quarter century has shown that methodical study backed by objectiveanalysis and systematic documentation can impart unassailable credibility to modernscholars as to successfully challenge long-held notions of the authenticity of sacredspace. There is reason to believe that the experience of the AKAA in the field of architecture need not be a unique situation. That, provided modern scholars aremotivated to apply a disciplined approach, using the panoply of tools of modernscholarship, they can, and will, gain credibility. Consequently, there is no reason tobelieve that the AKU-ISMC need not have the same success as the AKAA, given similar effort. If the experience of the AKAA has anything to teach the Islamic world, it is thepower of ideas. The battle between reason and dogma can be resolved in the former'sfavour; modern Muslim intellectuals can break the monopoly of obscurantist clerics on

what it is to be a Muslim in the modern world.

For the purveyors of doom and gloom; of those who speak of an inevitable "clash"between the West and the Islamic world, here, then, is proof that people of goodwill onboth sides can work together to create monumental change. And though this changemay be like a crack in a gigantic structure, imperceptible to the naked eye at first, it hasthe germ to produce earth-shattering consequences in the fullness of time. If the West is

jaded with its "partnership" with countries of the Islamic world, it is largely because it, alltoo often, has put all its eggs into the "government" basket. Like the World Bank of yesteryears, it has for too long looked to governments as its only partners. Like theWorld Bank, it, too, needs to look at NGOs and civil society as its new partners. Toeffectively influence positive change in the Islamic world, the West has to act like a smart

and savvy venture capital firm, investing in ideas with the greatest promise of "futuregain" and in groups with "proven track records", creating business relationships for thelong term with "like-minded" people who "share cherished values and ideals".



The Crucible 45

Even after the events of 9/11, Mr Comerford's advice seems to be lost on many. TheUniversity of North Carolina, a long-standing bastion of liberalism, reacting to the eventsof 9/11, decided to assign about 4,200 incoming freshmen and transfer students thereading of about 130 pages of Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations, byMichael Sells, a religion professor at Haverford College. The result was lawsuits bystudents and the Virginia-based Family Policy Network (a Christian group) to stop it. A

three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected the motion, ruling that ``the appellantshave failed to satisfy the requirements for such relief.'' No further explanation wasprovided.47

In his Fox News Network program, Bill O'Reilly, the right wing pundit, said that teachingthe Quran to US students was wrong as it was the book of "our enemy's religion".48 Of course, for a balanced understanding of the Islamic world much more than Muslimreligious belief needs to be taught; history, geography, philosophy curricula will alsoneed to be made more "inclusive". That notwithstanding, at the time of writing, theredoes not appear to be a bee-line of colleges and universities seeking to emulate eventhe small start pioneered by the University of North Carolina.

The absence of essential understanding in the Western world of Islam and thecontemporary Islamic world may explain why the simplistic notion of the "Clash of Civilizations" has so easily been accepted by so many. The terms "Islam" and "Islamic"have become pejorative by loose application to the methods and ideologies of the mostextremist Muslim groups. Violence and every sort of excess is, consequently,associated, in the lay mind, with the faith of Islam and not to groups exploiting it for political purposes. Dr Karim H. Karim of the School of Journalism at Ottawa's CarletonUniversity, has devoted an entire book to document the misrepresentation of Islam inWestern media in his book: Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence.49 Because of theglobal reach and influence of Western media, the application of "Islam" and "Islamic" tothe violence and excesses of Muslim extremists, tends to not only perpetuate a slur against an entire community of 1.2 billion souls, but also, unwittingly, serves to lend a

"normative" façade of religion (rather than political violence, par excellence) to thosewho would politicize Islam to get to power.

In the Islamic world, radical Islam has succeeded in demonizing the West by painting itas evil. Ironically, by accident or design, Islam per se, and not just radical Islam, hasbeen effectively demonized in Western media by being associated with violence andmilitancy.1 Besides being a slander on a major world faith which shares commonAbrahamic precepts with Judaism and Christianity, it is contrary to the spirit of fairness,

journalistic integrity and intellectual honesty that Western societies hold so dear. TheWest can defeat Muslim religious fanaticism not by stooping to the latter's depth, but byshining its own ideals and principles high for all to see. Once again, George Kennanmakes an apt observation:

Finally, we must have courage and self-confidence to cling to our ownmethods and conceptions of human society. After all, the greatestdanger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet

1 Shortly after 9/11, evangelist Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Quran "provides ample evidence that Islam encourages violence in order to winconverts and to reach the ultimate goal of an Islamic world".



The Crucible 46

communism is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those withwhom we are coping.50

All the major world religions provide ethical systems and an eternal moral compass,irrespective of the momentary perversions of their essential principles by those claimingadherence to them. If certain Muslims have perverted the Islamic Message for their

political ends, it does not change the peaceful premise of Islam, the religion. All religionshave been betrayed by followers, claiming to act on their behalf, at one point or another.Long after the memory of such people has passed into the dustbin of history, the eternalhumanistic principles of these religions continue to shine undimmed. Christ's eternalmessage of universal love and Christian charity did not die either with the religiousfanaticism of the Crusades nor with the cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition; it survives tothis day in the daily lives of millions of practicing Christians around the world. When Dr.Baruch Goldstein gunned down dozens of innocent Muslim worshippers in a Hebronmosque in the name of Judaism, Judaism's humanistic principles did not undergo achange; they will remain undying long after people forget who Baruch Goldstein was.

Indeed, followers have been known to glorify acts which are actively discouraged, if not

held taboo, by their religion. Today, a lot of discussion is focussed on whether "suicidebombings" have sanction in the Quran. Anyone remotely familiar with the Islamic religionwould know that taking one's own life is severely condemned in Islam. The Quran alsoaffirms (5:32) that to take a life is, as if, to kill entire humankind; and to save a life is, asif, to save humankind altogether 1. That, of course, does not prevent certain Muslims fromcarrying out murderous suicide attacks, but their actions do not justify maliciousaspersions on the teachings of Islam when they clearly, and unequivocally, forbid suchactions. Judaism does not advocate the taking of one's life, and yet Jewish Zealots,fending off Roman legions at Masada in AD c.72/73, had no problems convincing athousand men, women and children to commit collective suicide.

Much has been said about the "silence" of Muslim religious leaders in the face of the

brutality of the 9/11 attacks when some 3,000 innocent people were killed. Indeed, someof them have displayed quiet, if not open, jubilation at this heinous crime. State-controlled media in many a Muslim country have attempted to cover-up theseexpressions in a bid at damage control. Commenting on their hypocrisy and obfuscation,Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, Professor of Nuclear Physics at Pakistan's National (Quaid-i-

Azam) University, wrote recently:

Muslim leaders... have had little to say about September 11 thatmakes sense to people outside their communities. Although they speakendlessly on rules of personal hygiene and "halal" [the Muslimequivalent of kosher] or "haram" [religious taboos], they cannot eventell us whether or not the suicide bombers violated Islamic laws.

According to the Virginia-based (and largely Saudi-funded) Fiqh[Islamic jurisprudence] Council's chairman, Dr. Taha Jabir Alalwani,"this kind of question needs a lot of research and we don't have that in

1 The full text in Chapter 5, verse 32 of the Quran states, "We ordained for the Children of Israelthat if any one slew a person -- unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land -- itwould be as if he slew the whole people; and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he savedthe life of the whole people."



The Crucible 47

our budget."51

The only acceptable human - and therefore, Muslim - reaction should have beenunequivocal condemnation of the sort Hoodbhoy himself expresses in Pakistan's leadingEnglish-language daily, Dawn:

Before all else, Black Tuesday's [i.e. 9/11] mass murder must becondemned in the harshest possible terms without qualification orcondition, without seeking causes or reasons that may even remotelybe used to justify it, and without regard for the national identity of thevictims or the perpetrators. The demented, suicidal fury of theattackers led to heinous acts of indiscriminate and wholesale murderthat has changed the world for the worse. A moral position must beginwith unequivocal condemnation, the absence of which could eliminateeven the language by which people can communicate.52

All decent Muslims, of all persuasions, have to be ashamed at the behaviour of such of their religious leaders for this gross perversion of the fundamental principles of their

faith. Morally repugnant as this episode is, Muslims are, unfortunately, not the onlyreligious community to feel betrayed by their leaders. In August 1572, 3,000 FrenchProtestant Huguenots were butchered by French troops in Paris and their corpsesdumped in to the Seine (out of a total of up to 20,000 killed throughout France). Whenthe news of what became known in history as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacrereached Pope Gregory XIII and King Philip II of Spain, they celebrated with specialreligious services. The first-hand account of the Papal reaction by an eyewitness wouldbe disconcerting to any practicing Christian:

Although it was still night, I immediately sent to His Holiness to freehim from the tension, and so that he might rise to the wonderful grace,which God had granted to Christendom under his pontificate. On that

morning there was a consistory court ... and as His Holiness had such agood piece of news to announce to the Holy College, he had thedispatches publicly read out to them. His Holiness then spoke abouttheir contents and concluded that in these times, so troubled byrevolutions, nothing better or more magnificent could have beenwished for; and that, as it appeared, God was beginning to turn the eyeof His mercy on us. His Holiness and the college were extremelycontented and joyful at the reading of this news...

On the same morning ... His Holiness with the whole College of Cardinals went to the church of Saint Mark, to have the Te Deum sungand to thank God for granting so great a favor to the Christian people.

His Holiness does not cease to pray God, and make others pray, toinspire the Most Christian King [Charles IX] to follow further the pathwhich he has opened and to cleanse and purge completely theKingdom of France from the plague of the Huguenots.53

The foregoing discussion is not just idle philosophizing; nor indeed for gainingperspective: it has real, practical, implications for the security of the West and istherefore germane to the thesis of this paper: The only people who can defeat the forces



The Crucible 48

of radical Islam in the court of Muslim public opinion are moderate Muslims. As long asIslam, the religion per se, and not radical Islam, is perceived to be under attack, onecannot expect moderate Muslims to speak in defense of the West. Also, giveninstantaneous global communications, such messages in the Western media, whentransmitted to the Islamic world, play in to the hands of radical Islam's agenda of hate-mongering and sowing conspiracy theories against the West. Opinion makers and the

media have the obligation to be both responsible and accurate and to keep the bigpicture in mind when they have a need to vent their understandable anger andfrustration at the bestiality of Muslim militants. By being fair and accurate, and by treatingIslam with the same intellectual honesty that is accorded to Christianity and Judaism, theWest will have won the moral right to demand that moderate Muslims stand up and becounted by condemning in no uncertain terms the transgressions of their co-religionists.

The West is now very much a pluralistic, multi-cultural society which includes, amongothers, many Muslims. It is these Muslims, who have benefited from the values of individual freedoms: freedom of worship, freedom of expression, equal opportunity,meritocracy, equality before the law and respect for the individual, who can be both abridge to the Islamic world and informed witnesses to the West's true values as opposed

to the demonic caricature painted by Muslim fundamentalists. Most Muslims in Westernsociety are relatively recent immigrants - here by choice. Many have arrived herebecause of persecution, or discrimination or lack of opportunities in their native lands. Itis important that the inclusive values of Western society which attracted them here bepreserved, lest, inadvertently, they be alienated from mainstream society. As long asMuslims in the West can feel a sense of belonging to the larger society, society has aright to expect their full and complete loyalty and commitment.

In the tense climate post-9/11, Muslims in the West have to shake off their passivity andbe active citizens. It is but understandable that they will be under a microscope; and it isimperative that they demonstrate that their loyalties are with their countries of adoption.They should do nothing to give comfort to the extremists and if there is anything they can

do to help the forces of law and order, they should volunteer to do that. In particular,Sunni Muslim communities and congregations, where the Wahhabi fundamentalists arelikely to seek refuge, have a particular responsibility to create a "zero-tolerance"environment for people who come to recruit or spread hate against their fellow non-Muslim (and even moderate Muslims) citizens. If even a minority of Muslim communitiesabet and assist the religious extremists, all Muslims can expect to be under a cloud of suspicion. Now is the time for Muslims, like the Italians and Japanese during World War II, to stand up and be counted. Professor Hoodbhoy, who straddles two worlds - that of Islamic Pakistan and that of American Universities where he lectures regularly as aVisiting Professor, including his alma mater , MIT - is perhaps well-qualified to adviseMuslims in the West:

The problem is that immigrant Muslim communities have, by and large,chosen isolation over integration. In the long run this is afundamentally unhealthy situation because it creates suspicion andfriction, and makes living together ever so much harder. It also raisesserious ethical questions about drawing upon the resources of what isperceived to be another society, for which one has hostile feelings.

This is not an argument for doing away with one's Muslim identity. But,without closer interaction with the mainstream, pluralism will bethreatened. Above all, survival of the community depends upon



The Crucible 49

strongly emphasizing the difference between extremists and ordinaryMuslims, and on purging from within jihadist elements committed toviolence. Any member of the Muslim community who thinks thatordinary people in the US are fair game because of bad US governmentpolicies has no business being there.54

The freedoms enjoyed by Muslims in the West allow them to freely express themselves,unlike most citizens of the Islamic world. Muslims in the West need to use thesefreedoms to influence positive change in the Islamic world. Far too many Muslimintellectuals in the West tend to play the role of apologists for the faults of the Islamicworld. Also, they fall into the trap of "moral equivalency" i.e. wrongs perpetrated againstMuslims go under-reported so why draw attention to the wrongs of Muslims. Whatever the merit in their rationale, these Muslim intellectuals fail to see that their freedoms in theWest empower - and therefore oblige - them to speak up against injustices and wrongsin the Muslim world because they care about the Islamic world and the people who livethere. They need to take a cue from a prominent British author and journalist, a Muslimof Ugandan origin, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who has used her column in the Independent to expose the injustices against minorities and women in the Islamic world. A relevant

example is her article, The truth about Islam and women, written shortly after 9/11 whereshe talks about the repression of women in Islamic countries and how Muslim apologistsin the West:

...withdraw into ideals, responding to concerns with "proof" that Islamis supposed to be a religion which promotes and protects women. Thisknowledge is not used to change sexist attitudes and behaviour;instead it is used to placate or silence the real outrage many of usinside and outside the Muslim communities feel.

I don't want anyone else to enlighten me about what the Koran [sic]says on women; what I would like is a robust dialogue about what we

can do to stop the cruelties against women and girls in the Muslimworld. This oppression is not confined to Muslim countries, of course.But we have an obligation to clean up our own back yards and to telland confront the complicated truth.55

The 12th Century Renaissance in Europe was spearheaded by Spanish Christians who,having lived under Moorish rule, knew Arabic and could therefore read Muslim texts.Shortly after its liberation from Moorish control, Toledo became the intellectual center for Christian Europe when the Archbishop Raymond established a school of translation totranslate Arabic texts into Latin. It was due to the efforts of people like the legendaryGerard of Cremona (who alone translated more than 72 Arab works into Latin) thatMuslim science, medicine, philosophy and mathematics became widely available to

Christian-Europe and ignited the flame of Renaissance,56 releasing it from its Dark Ages.Today, Muslims living in the West can play an equally historic role vis-à-vis the Islamicworld and, like the Spanish Christians, help release the Muslim world from its "DarkAges" by sharing their "Western" experience with their co-religionists elsewhere. It is inthe West that Muslims are free to create a modern vision of Islam, to begin the processof reformation to free Islam from centuries of stultifying tradition and dogma - an Islamic Reformation, as it were. For Muslim intellectuals in the West to pass by these preciousfreedoms that they enjoy without engaging in the modernity debate is nothing short of atragedy, because their co-religionists in the Muslim world lack these same opportunities.



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The West - through blood, sweat, and tears - has finally arrived at its present position inits evolutionary path through history. In the process, it has made mistakes, learnt fromthese and adapted to circumstances. The West's current predominant position in theworld is based on certain strengths, "prominent among them are science and democracy(with their public mechanisms for self-correction) and also private institutions, liberal

economics, and a recognition of fundamental human rights".57 Ironically, these verystrengths of the West are what's deficient in the Islamic world. As beneficiaries of these"strengths", Muslims in the West can promote the transplanting of these institutionalizedvalues upon which the development of modern nation-states in the 21st century ispredicated.

Many Muslim conservative, autocratic nations are dismissive of Western prescriptions of democracy, rule of law and fundamental human rights as "un-Islamic". It is easier to bedismissive in the face of non-Muslim criticism; much harder when that critique emanatesfrom practicing Muslims who know that "Islam" is being used as a cover to preservetribal or military, or dynastic dictatorship. By involving Muslims in the work of projectingWestern foreign policy, the West will gain a qualitative leverage over "problem" Muslim

states. Canada shows the way by its recent appointment of the only Muslim Senator,Mobina Jaffer as Canada's Special Envoy to the Sudanese Peace Process. Criticism of Sudan's treatment of its Christian minority, for example, would be far harder to dismissas "Western bias" if made by a Canadian Muslim Diplomat than it would otherwise be,

just as Secretary Powell's criticism of Mr Mugabe cannot be brushed aside as "racistpropoganda" by Zimbabwe. The West has to draw strength from its Muslim citizensrather than marginalize them. In this way, it would be sending the strongest possiblemessage of the value of pluralism, tolerance and inclusiveness to the purveyors of hatred and religious exclusiveness.

Because of the pre-eminence of the rule of law and the democratic institutionalframework to regulate or arbitrate between conflicting political demands, Western society

is self-correcting and can make dramatic changes in direction, peacefully. Even major crises, which in other societies could entail civil war, are resolved through negotiation or through judicial or legislative processes - in a civil manner. A case in point is the USPresidential election of 2000. In contrast, peaceful conflict resolution in the Islamic worldis conspicuous by its absence. The use of violence as a means of resolving conflictwhether it is for internal political aims or for "liberation" struggles seems to be endemic.The Islamic world needs to realize that violence (or terror, by another name) isunacceptable to the civilized world and that, if it was ever condonable, post-9/11 it isunpardonable. It is true that there are genuine Muslim grievances representing festeringwounds and calling for the world's attention.

But it is also true that there are similar such grievances in the non-Muslim world too -

Tibet, Burma are two which readily come to mind and where courageous "opposition"leaders have won the world's sympathy and attention by exercising moral, non-violentleadership. In fact, two of the most successful political leaders of the twentieth century -a century more bloody than any in history - are Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. - theproponents of non-violence. Nelson Mandela's international iconic status derives notfrom his days in the early 'Sixties, when he tried his hand at armed struggle, but from hispost-prison days when he promoted peace and reconciliation among all races. WhileWestern political leaders can, and should, put this across through official channels,Muslims in the West, too, free of domestic political pressures of the "Islamic streets", can



The Crucible 51

act as a reality check for the self-defeating consequences of violence used to further political aims.

Whether with the help of Muslims in its midst, or on its own, Western society has to freeitself of the prison of perceptions. Perceptions, long after they have lost their validity,linger on, unless challenged by a constant reality check. As much as the Muslim world is

home to some of the most anti-modern, obscurantist, and fanatical beliefs anywhere onthis planet, thanks to its diversity, it is also a source of some of the most innovative ideasin the world. Many of these ideas and innovations have come as a result of efforts toovercome the particular resource constraints in which many Muslim societies are mired.Given that innovative ideas which can succeed in such "challenging terrain" haveinherent value, they have replicability universally. In as much as governments in theMuslim world have failed their people, it is the ingenuity of private entities and individualsthat is making a difference. For example, out of the tragedy of Bangladesh's War of Independence arose Professor Muhammed Yunus's idea in 1976 for a micro-creditoperation - the Grameen Bank . So successful has the model been that many inner-citiesin the States have adopted this model to help people out of Third World-like desperation.In 1997 the Grameen Foundation USA was set up to promote this model throughout the

USA.

At a time when healthcare costs are spiraling out of control in the West, the AKU Schoolof Medicine in Karachi devotes 20% of the curriculum to teaching not just theconventional patient-centered health delivery model seen in the West, but a community-centered health delivery model as well. Whilst maintaining world class standards of operation (the University hospital in 2000 became one of a small number in the world upuntil that point to receive ISO 9002 certification), it manages to run a tight financialoperation with no government funding and with a liberal welfare patient-caseload. Therecent inauguration of ArchNet , the world's largest on-line resource on architecture,urbanism, landscape design, and related issues at MIT by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture creates a global community with members from 110 countries sharing

information on architecture and design issues. This model can be replicated in umpteenother areas for a cost-effective jump over resource constraints endemic in manyeducational environments. Numerous other areas can be cited, particularly ininternational development where many of the most exciting ideas in recent years havecome from a Muslim NGO, decades ahead of global conventional wisdom. As such, theWest would be well advised to be an informed and objective observer of the Islamicworld, in all its diversity, and steer clear of viewing it through the prism of "monolithicgeneralizations".



The Crucible 52

THE 'GEOGRAPHIC CRUCIBLE'

The previous sections, in a sense, generally touched on what the West may do in order to create favorable conditions for a "metaphorical crucible" to emerge in the Islamic

world whereby relations between the West and Muslim worlds are refashioned in a morepositive light. In addition to a metaphorical crucible, which, in a sense, applies to theentire Islamic world, there are distinctive geographical areas which have the potential toserve as "geographical crucibles" for opening a new chapter in relations between theWest and Islamic countries. If one may permit oneself generalizations, the Islamic worldmay be divided into three categories (that may leave out some exceptions, but will allowmajor points to be made). These are: 1) the Arab world; 2) the former European coloniesand protectorates; and 3) the former Soviet Central Asian republics.

Each of these categories has a particular relationship with and attitude towards theWest. Of all regions of the Islamic world, the Arab world has the most complicatedrelationship with the West. It has a deep and abiding suspicion and resentment of the

West, in large part due to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the US's role as Israel's strategically. But the history of Arab resentment goes farther into time. Perhaps as early as 1882,when Britain occupied Egypt to safeguard British banking interests in the Suez Canal,making it a colony in everything but name. The role of other European powers incolonizing North Africa did not help either. But, perhaps, the biggest "betrayal" cameduring the Great War (1914-18) when conflicting "promises" were made to variousparties: the MacMahon letters of 1915 (to the Arabs), the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 (between Britain and France), and the Balfour Declaration of 1917 (to the Jews).Interestingly, Bin Laden, in one of his early videos, in stating the raison d'être for hishostility to the West, referred to the "eighty years of humiliation", an apparent allusion tothe post-World War I, post-Ottoman order.

Unlike other regions, the Arab world constitutes countries sharing a common linguistic,cultural and historical affinity, which subconsciously propels it to seek a common politicalframework. The populations of pre-united Germany, Italy, India and China went throughthe same emotional journey, before historical forces allowed a "national consciousness"to be translated into common political entities. It is beyond the call of any contemporaryobserver to predict the exact course events will take in the Arab world. Given thecollective sense of humiliation Arabs feel and their lack of influence on the world stage inspite of their oil-riches, the impulse and drive for "Arab unity" will continue to tug at theArab soul. The success of the European Union in forging a common political union inspite of the constraints of national sovereignties is a model that may not be ignored bythe Arabs. Irrespective of how things ultimately evolve, for historical and contemporaryreasons, the Arab world is going to represent for the West the most challenging of all

regions in the Muslim world for a long time to come. Consequently, the Arab world isunlikely to be a good candidate to serve as a geographical crucible as we have defined ithere.

The next grouping, former European colonies, is less homogeneous and varies greatlyfrom one country to the other. They all have, however, a common history of Westerndomination. Though they have "historical" grudges against the West, these are not of thesame order and the resentment against the West is far less intense. The West's relationswith individual Muslim countries from this grouping vary from acceptable to



The Crucible 53

unacceptable. Whilst some countries in this grouping may offer the prospect of potentialimprovement in relations with the West by the introduction of the right mix of measures,the "bang for the buck" that may result from isolated successes may not translate into a"critical mass" showcasing a new tone in relations between a major grouping of Muslimnations and the West. This is not to suggest that opportunities in individual nations,when they present themselves, should be ignored and not acted upon. Consequently,

again, this region, too, is not the best candidate to serve as our geographical crucible.

The final category, the former Soviet Central Asian republics are not as homogenous asthe Arab world, but are certainly more closely linked geographically, historically,culturally and ethnically than countries of the second group. This grouping,encompassing the crossroads of the ancient Silk Route between Asia and the West, is anew political phenomenon which only came into existence in the early 'Nineties followingthe breakup of the Soviet Union. These states, though comprising a dominant majorityof linguistic or ethnic groups, are artificial entities created at Stalin's whims.Consequently, linguistic and ethnic groups have been divided across frontiers and eachCentral Asian republic has multiple ethnic groups, including Russian transplants(immigrants) from the Soviet era. The common denominator among all these emergent

nations is their majority Muslim populations (of varying religious interpretations). Seventyyears of communist rule, too, have created a commonality rooted in shared experienceand history: high levels of literacy, gender equality, social cohesion, the absence of religion as a "state ideology", impressive gains in health and education58. Becausethese states carry no historic baggage of resentment or hatred against the West,have traditions of religious moderation, gender equity, and some of the Islamicworld's highest literacy rates, they represent the most promising terrain to serveas our geographic crucible.

Western leaders have been at pains, since September 11, 2001, to point out that the"War on Terror" is not a war on Islam or against the Islamic world, but against a part of the Islamic world. It would make sense for the West not to seek a generalized conflict

with the entire Islamic world, but instead to define precisely the targets it must pursue toensure the security of its citizens. Doing otherwise would be to fight fires on all frontswith 1.2 billion people spread on four continents. Like a good surgeon, the West mustexcise the malignant tumor, lest healthy cells become cancerous too; but, like a goodsurgeon, healthy cells and organs must not be wantonly affected by the surgery lest thebody itself become so weak as to lose its immunity against disease. The West has nochoice but engage and prevail over ideological groups in the Islamic world which seek itharm. It cannot relent now - or in the future - in this fight, lest it convey a sign of weakness to the adversary à la Somalia. But the West also has another fight - a battle infact - to engage in: the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. This it mustdo to ensure that the Islamic world does not become an undifferentiated mass of hatredtowards the West. The reasons are obvious for both current tactical and future strategic

considerations.

It thus stands to reason that preservation of healthy cells (to continue our previousanalogy) should be high on the priority of Western governments. Our geographiccrucible is that stock of healthy tissue that must be preserved and nurtured with a view tospreading its strength to the rest of the organism and help beat off cancerous growth. Inthe euphoria of the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Westquickly forgot about the constituent elements of the former Soviet Union. Long before the

jubilation had died down in the newly-created Central Asian republics, the reality of



The Crucible 54

surviving in a new world, not as part of a superpower, but as "babes in the woods", hadslowly seeped in. Shorn of the generous subsidies of food and energy supplies from theSoviet Union, they were totally unprepared for independent existence in a meritocratic,global market economy. At the same time, these countries had to grapple with the taskof creating new national identities. This meant going to pre-Soviet Islamic roots,prompting a new-found interest in their culture and religion. This provided an opportune

moment for fundamentalist missionaries from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia carrying theideology of Wahhabi Islam on the one hand and, with the help of Saudi funds, fundingfor religious projects, on the other.

In a world where neither Western governments nor multilateral institutions were ready to jump in prior to political and economic restructuring, the governments did not have themeans to turn away the "poisoned chalice" of funds channeled through fundamentalistorganizations with axes to grind. In Tajikistan, a civil war raged on up until a few yearsago; in Uzbekistan's Ferghana Valley, Wahhabism managed to find converts in the midstof economic desperation. Between their economic straits, the disinterest of the West,and the threats posed by the Taliban's Afghanistan - and inspite of their potentialpromise - the Central Asian republics may have fallen prey to radical Islam injected from

the outside. The Pakistani journalist, Ahmed Rashid, in his book, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, describes the goals of one such foreign fundamentalistorganization, the Hizb-ut-Tahrir al-Islami , which was founded in 1953 in Lebanon,59 inCentral Asia:

...the Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HT; the Party of Islamic Liberation) hasalso taken root in Central Asia.... the HT, which has also declared jihadin Central Asia, seeks to reunite the Central Asian republics andeventually the whole Muslim world... with the eventual aim of establishing a caliphate similar to that established after the death of

The Prophet Muhammad in seventh-century Arabia. But the HT [hasa] ...complete lack of a social, economic, or political plan for governing

this caliphate.60

Commenting further on the penchant of the radical Islamist groups to introduce Sharia inthe guise of a new Islamic order, Ahmed Rashid adds:

The new Islamic order for these jihadi groups is reduced to a harsh,repressive penal code for their citizens that strips Islam of its values,humanism, and spirituality... the new jihadi groups reduce Islam to thelength of one's beard and the question of whether burka-clad [veiled]women are allowed to expose their ankles.61

Given the fragility of these countries, economically and institutionally, it is not surprising

that radical Islam should have actively targeted this region as their launching pad for ultimate takeover of the entire Muslim world. But for 9/11 and the removal of the Taliban,they may well have succeeded. Even now, the threat is not gone, but the interest in thestrategic importance of the region has created a small "window of opportunity", which theWest must seize and translate into goodwill for itself.

One of the most potent weapons in the repertoire of the extremists, in their bid to convertthe impressionable to their cause, is demonizing the West as evil by weaving a narrativeof Western conspiracies and wrongs against Muslims. The West can, and should,



The Crucible 55

"interrupt" this narrative by consciously reaching out to moderate Muslim partners andusing its tremendous institutional, financial and intellectual prowess to help the peoplesof the Islamic world better cope with the challenges of the modern world. This way, theWest will gain friends who can stand up and defend it in the court of public opinion in theMuslim world. President Clinton touches a similar chord in an address to Harvard shortlyafter 9/11: "So we got to get our story out, and we have to give some ammunition to the

moderates in the Muslim world that are trying to take a different course."62

There is no better opportunity for the West to reach out than in Central Asia. Here is aregion where the West has no "historical" wrongs as baggage. Here is a region whichhas one of, if not, the highest manifestation of gender equality and religious moderationin the Islamic world. Unlike the Middle East, where the West's military presence isresented, this region welcomes the West's presence as an insurance against both i)religious extremism and ii) two Great Powers with historical designs in the region - Chinaand Russia. There is no region, therefore, which offers more promise for a successfulpartnership between the West and Islam, and, more importantly, no region where theWest's help would be more timely. The gut-wrenching transition from centralized tomarket economics in a globalized world economy, without the wherewithal that the West

has taken centuries to build up, has to be looked at sympathetically. The tremendousdislocation, during the transition, of people who have always looked to the state toprovide for everything, if not addressed in time, would be a gain for radical Islam'srecruiters who seek to profit from others' misery to advance their agenda.

And the West would not be acting altruistically; it would be working in the finest traditionof enlightened self-interest. Outside of the Middle East, this region has the largestpotential reserves of fossil fuels and the strategic goal of reducing dependence onMiddle-Eastern oil should, in and of itself, spur interest in the region. Furthermore, thecountries of the region act as a geographical buffer between China and Europe. Basedon current trends, the most likely challenge to Western dominance in this century is likelyto emanate from China. The last time a physical threat from Asia was faced in Europe

was in the 13th century when the Mongol hordes swept the Eurasian plains from Chinawhich they had conquered earlier. Before they reached Europe, they had to first takeover Central Asia. Interestingly, China has "historical" territorial claims on all its CentralAsian neighbors which, given that they are no longer parts of a superpower, make themvulnerable to potential future aggression by providing China with a "ready" casus belli .Their interest in having strong military, economic and diplomatic ties with a"countervailing" power would be natural and can be leveraged. Sometime in this century,China's growing energy needs will compete with the needs of the West and thetemptation for China to "guarantee" energy supplies in its neighborhood may becomeunavoidable.

Fortunately for the West, just as representatives of religious fundamentalism have

shown interest in the region, the institutions of moderate Islam, too, have been drawnhere. The West, hence, has potential partners already in place. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has embarked on a unique pilot project to create the foundations of anopen, tolerant and pluralistic society since 1997. Headed by a Harvard anthropologist, Dr Rafique Keshavjee, the Aga Khan Humanities Project for Central Asia (AKHP) workswith schools and universities in the Central Asian republics to create a curriculum in thehumanities. This curriculum studies the rich and diverse cultural influences of variousreligions and civilizations without premiating any. It aims to create an appreciation instudents of the strengths of other cultures. A related undertaking of the Aga Khan Trust



The Crucible 56

is the Aga Khan Music Initiative for Central Asia which is closely associated with Yo-YoMa's Silk Road Project in the USA. This initiative seeks to preserve and promote culturaldiversity and pluralism by strengthening oral musical traditions and supportingperformers and cultural institutions become economically self-sustaining.

The other more profound undertaking is the University of Central Asia (UCA), the world's

first university dedicated to mountain populations. Created by an international treatybetween Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhastan and the AKDN, UCA is a secular, co-educational, and non-sectarian university currently headed by Dr S. Frederick Starr, theChairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins School of AdvancedInternational Studies in Washington D.C. Using the latest communications technologies,UCA is expected to cover the most poverty-stricken, isolated mountain populations fromUzbekistan to Western China - a catchment area of 25-30 million people. Using English,the language of international science, commerce and communications, UCA will aim atcreating a new generation of secular leaders with a firm base in the liberal arts and incomputer technology who will ease their nations into the global economy. The strategicgoal, according to Dr Starr is to create "enlightened and principled generalists who canprovide a moderate kind of leadership for the entire region."63 To create a "supply" of

appropriately qualified candidates, the Aga Khan Education Services has already startedoperating centers of excellence - modern schools running at international standards -which have introduced English and computer technology at the earliest ages. These above initiatives, collectively, constitute the most interesting and ambitiousexperiment in the Islamic world today: seeking to answer nothing less than thefundamental question i.e. Can a society be modern, moderate and Muslim in thenew millenium? The answer to this question has to be of interest to both Muslim andnon-Muslims alike. The newly-emerging nations of Central Asia start with manydisadvantages and weaknesses, but, due to - ironically - their Soviet past, they offer aunique and propitious set of circumstances with which to engage in this experiment:High rates of literacy, gender equality, secular outlook, multi-racial/ multi-cultural/multi-

ethnic societies, religious moderation and the absence of an indigenous anti-modernfundamentalist ideology. Because centralized-economies are passé, and the communistsystem is moribund in a world of free-markets, individual initiative and globalization,these societies have, of necessity, to start the whole gamut of institutional building -educational, political, economic - from scratch which, though taxing, is a uniqueopportunity to build the "right" institutions for the future. Other Muslim societies haveneither the propitious circumstances nor the luxury of doing away with existinginstitutions and starting from scratch - even if existing institutions leave much to bedesired.

Theirs is a unique opportunity to create civil society institutions from the ground up. Tocreate, for the first time ever in the Islamic world, the use of education to inform values of

tolerance, moderation, pluralism and respect for other cultures. To create a newleadership schooled in the best intellectual traditions available anywhere, yet rooted inthe humanistic values of their cultures; proud of their Islamic roots, yet recognizingstrengths of other cultures and willing to learn from them. Unlike many parts of theIslamic world, women will be equal partners in solving society's problems and notsubjected to a discriminatory existence of the type practiced by the Taliban or SaudiArabia or even Iran. Because this is a "free", participatory experiment; not an imposedone, its results should be self-sustaining. In the past, well-meaning dictators like KemalAtaturk in Turkey and Reza Shah in Iran imposed, by fiat , modern practices and ideas.



The Crucible 57

With time these become unsustainable without the people's genuine "buy-in" and, as wesee in Turkey, can only be maintained by draconian measures.



The Crucible 58

If Central Asia succeeds in creating a model of Muslim modernity, and demonstratestangible benefits accruing to its population therefrom, the rest of Islam cannot but takenotice. The West has a stake in the outcome, not only in the case of Central Asia, butalso, more globally, as a potential example for the entire Islamic world. It, therefore,should be more than just a disinterested bystander; instead it should be an active

partner financially, intellectually, and morally in the constituent parts of this experiment.



The Crucible 60

There is a conflict between the civilized world and the forces of religious fanaticism;between modernity and obscurantism; between reason and dogma; between freedomand totalitarianism. But this conflict is not between Islam and the West per se, becausethe Islamic world is not an amorphous entity; it is highly pluralistic and many within itshare the very values held dear in the West. The pluralism of the Islamic world creates

natural allies for the West because many moderate forces share common foes in radicalIslam; and by bringing a new sophistication in approach to the Muslim world, the Westcan learn to recognize potential opportunities and partners. Effectively leveraging these,it can positively influence the peaceful evolution of the Islamic world.

It is in the West's enlightened self-interest to strengthen the forces of moderation in theIslamic world; to keep the channels of communication open with the peoples (as distinctfrom governments) of the Islamic world; and to help in economic and politicalempowerment of Muslims with a view to stemming political disillusionment with secular governments. As a former US President aptly observed, shortly after September 11,2001:

In the Middle East theocratic and secular, but non-democraticgovernments with troubling economic, social and political problemshave seen a dramatic rise in fundamentalism portraying the U.S. andIsrael in particular, and the West in general, as evil. We've got to getinto this debate. We have to strengthen the forces of moderation. Wehave to increase the capacity of those governments to deliver for theirpeople. We have to support democratic transitions. And we've got toget our story out.64

The Victorian British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, is reported to have said that"great powers have neither permanent friends, nor permanent enemies; only permanentinterests". Russia's elevation into the good graces of the West from its erstwhile status

as the "evil empire" should tell us that Victorian statesmanship still has relevance in the21st century. Though the Islamic world presents today a silhouette of danger, it is not inthe interest of the West to be in a state of conflict with the Islamic world in the long runbecause it would constrain Western foreign policy options in the face of new, and moreserious, challenges emanating from elsewhere.

To change the tone of the relationship between the West and the Muslim world, theWest should seriously consider creating a model of partnership in a 'geographicalcrucible' in Central Asia to promote the benefits of moderate, modern, Muslim society of the 21st century which is an example for the entire Muslim world.



The Crucible 61

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2 Samuel P. Huntington, "The Clash of Civilizations," Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 3, 1993.

3 The Scotsman, (February 27, 1995).

4 Zafar Abbas, "Musharraf berates Muslim world", BBC Online News: South Asia, (February 16, 2002).

5 H.H. the Aga Khan IV, "Commencement Address", (Brown University: May 26, 1996).

6 Fiona Symon, "UN report criticises Arab states", BBC Online News: Middle East, (July 2, 2002).

7 Zafar Abbas.

8 Fukuyama.

9 2000 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom: Pakistan. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor U.S. Department of State.

10 Roger Hardy, "Waiting for the Dawn", BBC Online News: Middle East, (July 12, 2002).

11 Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Time to give up false notions: Muslims and the West", Dawn, Karachi, (December 11, 2001).

12 John L. Esposito, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam, (Oxford University Press, March 2002), ch. 1.

13 Robin Cook, "The Ismaili community is a unique bridge to Islam", Speech to Ismaili Centre, (London, October 8, 1998).

14 Shibley Telhami, "American Foreign Policy Toward the Muslim World". SAIS Interview . SAIS Review, (Johns Hopkins University Press, Summer-Fall 2001), Vol. 221 no. 2.

15 Arzina R. Lalani, Early Shi'i Thought: The Teachings of Imam Muhammad al-Baqir, (London: I.B.Tauris, 2000), pp. 2-3.

16 Farhad Daftary, The Ismai'lis: Their history and doctrines, (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1990), pp. 272-3.

17 Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Isma'ilis, (London: I.B.Tauris, 1994), p.42.

18 Ibid., p.73.

19 Ibid., p.66.

20 Richard L. Greaves et.al., Civilizations of the World: The Human Adventure, Vol. B: From 1300 to 1800, (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 442.

21 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), Chapter 12.

22 Barbara Slavin, "Saudis oppress Muslim splinter sects, activists say", USA Today (June 12, 2002). See also 1999 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom:

Saudi Arabia. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor U.S. Department of State, (September 9, 1999).

23 Telhami.

24 "Bin Laden addresses Islamic radicals", BBC Online News: World: Monitoring: Media reports, (April 12, 2001).

25 H. H. the Aga Khan III, India in Transition: A Study in Political Evolution, (London: Philip Lee Warner, 1918). Rpt. in Selected Speeches and Writings of Sir Sultan Muhammad Shah Aga

Khan III. Ed. K.K. Aziz, (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998), Vol. I, pp. 570-2

26 H.H. the Aga Khan IV, Brown University.

27 Anthony M. Alioto, A History of Western Science, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987), pp. 116-18.

28 Jane Lampman, "Religious tolerance before it was hip", Christian Science Monitor, (Books: July 25, 2002).

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29 H.H. the Aga Khan IV, Brown University.

30 Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science, (Zed Books Ltd., 1991), p. 28.

31 Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Muslims and the West", Dawn, Karachi, (December 10, 2001).

32 Roger Hardy, "Islam and the West", BBC Online News: Islamic World, (August 12, 2002).

33 Ibid.

34 Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, (OUP: 2001).

35 Roger Hardy, "Islam and the West".

36 Ibid.

37 Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science, (Zed Books Ltd., 1991), p. 29.

38 Ibid., Appendix.

39 Akbar S. Ahmed, "The quiet revolutionary", The (Manchester) Guardian Weekly, (August 18, 1991).

40 William Jefferson Clinton, "Remarks to Harvard University", (Albert H. Gordon Track And Tennis Center, November 19, 2001).

41 Ghazi Salahuddin, "A Tajik Interlude", The News, Karachi, (October 6, 1998).

42 By Pranay Gupte, "The Aga Khan reflects on his legacy and on the rising need for social entrepreneurship", Earth Times News Service, (2000).

43 Aga Khan University Chancellor's Commission Report, Aga Khan University, (1994) , as published on AKU website: http://www.aku.edu .

44 George Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967), pp. 547-559.

45 Ibid.

46 Patrick Comerford, The Irish Times, (January 7, 1995).

47 The Associated Press, "Court Won't Halt Koran Course at N.C. College", New York Times, (August 19, 2002).

48 "US university sued over Koran class", BBC Online News: Americas, (August 7, 2002).

49 Karim H. Karim, Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2000).

50 George Kennan.

51 Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Muslims and the West".

52

Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Black Tuesday: the view from Islamabad", Dawn, Karachi, (n.d.).

53 W. F. Reddaway, ed., Selected Documents of European History, Vol. 2: 1492-1715, (New York: Holt, n.d.), pp. 94-95. Rpt. in Richard L. Greaves et.al. Civilization of the World: The Human

Adventure, Vol. B: From 1300 to 1800, (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp.439-40.

54 Pervez Hoodbhoy, "Black Tuesday: the view from Islamabad".

55 Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, "The Truth about Islam and Women", The Independent (UK: October 01, 2001).

56 Anthony M. Alioto, A History of Western Science, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1987), pp. 122-3.



57 H.H. the Aga Khan IV, "Commencement Address", (MIT: May 27, 1994).

58 Ibid.

59 Associated Press, "Muslims Hold Conference in London", New York Times, (September 15, 2002).

60 Ahmed Rashid, Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, (Yale University Press: February 2002), ch. 1.

61 Ibid.

62 Clinton.

63Barbara Crossette, "Central Asian University Aims to Train Next Leaders", New York Times, (August 26, 2002).

64 Clinton.