Sunday, January 5, 2014

The Raison d'être of Pakistan: A Constructivist Rendering of Partition

Was going through my old hard drive and came across this paper I wrote over a decade ago, whose relevance has only increased, especially as the struggle between those Pakistanis who wish to see their country as an 'Islamic' state and those who argue that it was meant to be a secular polity is intensifying. 

A Constructivist Rendering of Partition

Abstract

The Lahore session of the All-India Muslim League (AIML) on March 23, 1940 marked the formal beginning of the demand by the AIML for a separate homeland for the Muslims of India. Seven years later on August 14, 1947, with the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, this demand, which until then was only an idea, became a reality. This paper explores the role of Islam as the ideational driving force behind the creation of Pakistan. It is an attempt to address the lacuna in the existing literature that has tried to explain the creation of Pakistan. Each of the existing theories offers varying accounts by focusing on different determinants that led to the partition of India. However, they cannot explain how Pakistan became a desirable norm, which was the prime motivation for the Pakistan movement. A constructivist approach furnishes a better explanation, for it is able to account for the relationships between a wide variety of actors, i.e., individuals, groups, and states. The paper’s larger implications for the study of the phenomenon of partition is that it may help envisage the success or failure of the ongoing disputes involving partition such as the ones in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, etc.

Introduction
More than half a century has elapsed since the partition of India took place, as a consequence of which Pakistan came in to existence. Pakistan’s creation characterizes the first time in history that a modern state came into being with religion as its basis. What makes this event even more significant is that it took place at a time when the rest of the world had more or less become accustomed to secular polities. Moreover, it was only two decades ago in the spring of 1924 that the newly formed legislature of the then nascent Turkish republic had formally abolished the paramount Islamic political institution of the khilafah (caliphate). At the time, it appeared as if the era of religiously based polities had finally ended. However, the emergence of the first ever “Islamic republic” proved to be a rude awakening for those anticipating such a development.
Islam as the driving force behind the demand for partition proved to be a potent unifying factor, but in the post-partition era, this very factor became a divisive element in the way of Pakistani national unity[1]. In addition, to this day Pakistanis continue to debate amongst one another regarding the ‘Islamic’ nature of their republic. This basic yet unsettled question underscores Pakistan’s arrested political development. The political history of Pakistan is a testimony to the struggle between the two sides to this debate, i.e., Islamists and secularists. Both camps are by no means monolithic, as they each have their respective factions divided across various crosscutting social and ideological cleavages. Nevertheless, both wish to steer Pakistan along the lines of their preferred ideology. Interestingly, both sides seek the legitimacy of their position in the historic movement for Pakistan.
Simply stated, the debate orbits around the question of whether the demand for Pakistan was a struggle for the creation of a homeland for the Muslims of India where they would be able to live their lives in accordance with their religio-ideological ideal, i.e., shari’ah (Islamic law). Alternatively, was it an attempt by the founders to create a separate state for the Muslims (elites and/or masses) of South Asia where their material interests would be safeguarded from the perceived threats of the Hindu majority in a united India? I claim that in the answer to this dialectical question lies the key to descrambling the reasons for the creation of Pakistan. If indeed, there was a vision of an Islamic state then that requires further elaboration and evidence. However, if the state was to be secular then this seriously calls into question the two-nation theory as well as the grounds for the mobilization of Muslims in pre-partition India to express the demand for Pakistan. The answer to this question, I contend, can also offer valuable insights into the subsequent evolution of Pakistan as a relatively unstable polity.
The purpose of this paper is to understand the antecedent reasons for the creation of Pakistan by examining the ideological impetus behind it. This task of explaining the creation of the Pakistani republic will entail an examination of the Islamic v. secular debate vis-à-vis the rationale behind the creation of Pakistan. There exists a plethora of literature inundated with competing explanations offering a host of sundry arguments as to how the South Asian Muslim separatist movement successfully realized its political objective of an independent state in the Indian sub-continent. However, each of these contending accounts at best is a partial exposition of the issue or at worst a highly reductionist narrative of history, each of which arbitrarily privileges certain factors over others. While there is much glorification of the Pakistan movement led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah and his AIML, very few studies exist that dispassionately investigate and map out the successful mobilization of masses by nationalist movements that eventually conclude in the partition of a colonial possession into two separate sovereign states. In fact, there is virtually very little research examining the role of ideas vis-à-vis the issue of partition in general. The creation of Pakistan inspite of opposition from both the main nationalist party (the Indian National Congress), as well as from the British colonial government is an event that merits serious enquiry into the complex relationships between the three sides. It also calls into question the theories on partition that emphasize violence between the two sides as a necessary antecedent to the actual partition of the land in question.
This expose is an attempt at offering a comprehensive understanding of how Pakistan came into being by examining the issue as an ideational function. The mobilization of the Muslim masses in India in the form of a movement demanding a separate state based on a religious identity poses a profound challenge to those theories that suggest that the masses were driven by the dominant element of fear. This paper is a rendition of how the Muslim League’ was able to rally Indian Muslims by appealing to their Islamic/Muslim identity, in an effort to seek a separate homeland in a post-colonial arrangement. It does not however seek to evaluate the substance or legitimacy of the AIML’s separatist call, or the group’s Islamicity; rather it presents an attempt to examine specifically the role of the Muslim League in creating, and developing Pakistan. In doing so, it puts forth two broad findings.
         First, by examining the dialectical argument over the intended vision of Pakistan, it divulges the crucial role that ideas played in initiating and sustaining the demand for partition, which in turn altered the behavior of Congress, and the British (and even the AIML itself[2]); thereby facilitating the realization of Pakistan. While the creation of states is not in any way an atypical phenomenon, however, this article illustrates how ideas can be a forceful determinant in the process of nation building. This treatise is a candid rejoinder to scholars with realist leanings, who would argue that ethnic groups adopt separatism for reasons having to do with material self-interest alone. The fact that the Muslim identity played a pivotal role in the Pakistan movement raises doubts about the realist assertions.
Secondly, and more essentially from a theoretical standpoint it demonstrates how a constructivist approach can provide greater theoretical purchase in explicating the role of Islam vis-à-vis the creation of Pakistan. The rationalist methodologies seeking to explain partition do not privilege ideas as affecting the behavior of actors such as individuals and groups in ethnic conflict. Instead, they consider groups as rational unitary utility-maximizing actors, which is why their explanatory power is severely marginalized. Furthermore, since these approaches view group behavior as directed by tapered material self-interest, they tend to downgrade the role that ideas and norms play in determining individual and group behavior. What is even more noteworthy is that they would argue that identity and norms do not affect the behavior of ethnic groups, particularly when it comes to issue of survival of the community.

Theoretical Framework

Constructivism[3] is a relatively new methodological approach, which was incorporated into the theoretical body of political science (particularly its sub-discipline international relations), from sociology. Some scholars see a similarity between the institutionalist methodology of inquiry and constructivism. Constructivism has for the most part been employed in the international relations literature; however, there is nothing that confines its application to that discipline. The very fact that scholars of international politics borrowed this paradigm from sociology provides ample evidence for its across-the-board applicability in the social sciences. In terms of the sub-field of comparative politics, its utilization has been relatively limited[4]. Therefore, in a sense this paper represents a humble experiment and adventure in a somewhat uncharted direction.
As opposed to taking an a priori view of actors and interests, constructivism regards them as being the focus of investigation. Constructivism views politics as a socially constructed phenomenon. It is based on a criticism of the more traditional neo-realist and neo-liberal theories.[5] Constructivists see both these rationalist theories as advancing a materialist understanding of politics. On the other hand, constructivism offers a more social and idea-based comprehension. Some have argued that constructivism reverses the causal arrows placed by neo-realism and neo-liberalism. Constructivism nevertheless, is a social and not a political theory, but it remains useful in the sense that it provides a technique for investigating the complex correlations between agentic and structural forces.[6]
Still other constructivist scholars take it one-step further by claiming that constructivism is not even a theory, and thus should not be compared to the rationalist theories of neo-realism and neo-liberalism. In fact, the argument is made that constructivism is an alternative ontology, which is able to explain why certain behavior is even deemed neo-realist, neo-liberalist or even constructivist to begin with.[7] Because both neo-realism and neo-liberalism assume the state as the preferred actor, and do not consider the role of ideas and non-state actors, they are unable to account for the role of ideas, individuals, and groups in the shaping of ethnic conflict. Notwithstanding this deficiency, one has to acknowledge that constructivism does not replace neo-realism and neo-liberalism, as it only complements them in the sense that it explains those factors that are beyond the scope of the rationalist theories.
Constructivism permits one to acknowledge the false assumption that states and other actors actually know what they want. It permits the researcher to entertain the thought that ideas can actually supply individuals, groups, and states with a host of preferences. Therefore, in my opinion it has much to offer in the way of understanding partition of territories as a means to terminating ethnic conflicts. While this study deals with a specific case of partition, it is obvious that issue is not limited to one particular region of the world (let alone a single-country).
Hence, by incorporating the constructivist paradigm in explaining ethnic disputes and territorial partitions, one can yield far more explanatory power, which can facilitate the task of examining micro-level activity that informs the evolution of a dispute and possible partition of a single land that both parties to the dispute claim as their own. This, I contend, is a more rigorous alternative than what is offered by neo-realism and neo-liberalism, which simplify the process as one based on interest calculations of the ethnic groups involved and/or pursue peace processes that are incognizant of the realities on the ground.
The Significance of a Vanguard Movement  
         It is highly unlikely that when the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal began corresponding with Mohammed Ali Jinnah in the mid-1930s, they (or anyone else for that matter) envisioned the birth of an independent and sovereign homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. The best possible and practical objective was no more than greater political autonomy for a Muslim entity within the confines of a future post-colonial Indian union. Pakistan at the time was not more than a term coined by an Indian Muslim student by the name of Choudhary Rahmat Ali and his comrades studying at Cambridge in 1933. Given Rahmat Ali's pan-Islamist ideological leanings and the abolition of the khilafah still fresh in memory, it can be argued that he and his friends were thinking more along the lines of a supra-national state. Pakistan at best was the dream of a handful of young enthusiastic Muslims who had taken a quantum leap with the ideas of Muhammad Iqbal and at worst a fanciful and wild idea.
However, when the British granted independence late in the summer of 1947, they gave it to two mutually independent political entities. Even Jinnah and his colleagues in the League could not have predicted this outcome when they took up the mantle of the leadership of India's Muslims roughly decade earlier. It is quite obvious that Pakistan quite rapidly moved from the status of a mere idea to that of a norm when the Muslim League led by Jinnah took up the cause after being converted to the ideology of Muslim political autonomy (if not independence). Prior to the League's indulgence and Jinnah's emergence as the exclusive leader of the Muslims of India, Iqbal was considered as the principal ideologue and theoretician of Islam and the affairs of Indian Muslims. Iqbal arguably was closer in approach to Sayyid Ahmad Khan than to Jinnah. Like Khan, Iqbal too was very sensitive to the project of an intellectual re-configuration of Islam in the modern age. He wrote and spoke extensively on the idea of Muslim renaissance in the world in general but more specifically in the context of India.
In what is seen as a pivotal moment in the history of the making of Pakistan, Iqbal articulated the first ever vision of what was later on to become Pakistan. At the annual session of the AIML in Allahabad in 1930, he stated:
"I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind, and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the consolidation of a North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me the to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India."

Even such a definitive statement made in the presidential address at the annual convention of the Muslim League by the foremost ideologue of the Muslims was not directly instrumental in mobilizing the masses towards achieving the task that Iqbal laid out. This fact was laid bare in the humiliating performance of the League seven years later in 1937.  Ideas without the agency of a vanguard group led by an astute political leadership are just aspirations that never materialize. Paul Brass, who offers a highly sophisticated explanation of how nations are formed, involving the role of religion and language, argues that it is the leading elite group, which appropriates the concepts, and values venerated by the masses and shapes the identity of the group.[8] More importantly, it furnishes its constituency with a set of preferences and defines the community's interests. Lastly, the group mobilizes its supporters to press for their demands as a route to achieving its objectives.
Its is this mitigating process engineered by the leadership of the group and not the rote consciousness among a people regarding their interests and the associated threats to these interests that transform an idea into reality. Change in public opinion requires the awakening of the masses around an idea. Here too, we can see that it was not until Jinnah had moved away from the nationalist strand of politics and had been converted to the separatist cause that the League was able to capture the imagination of a bulk of Muslim masses. The latter requires the agency of a well-organized party. Jinnah, an extremely shrewd politician, charismatic leader, and able manager upon assuming the mantle of the League's leadership was able to transform the League from 'a' defeated party with not much in the way of grass roots support into 'the' exclusive voice of Indian Muslims. Nevertheless, before he could do this he himself needed to under an ideological overhaul.
Jinnah who for the longest time had been the champion of Hindu-Muslim unity eventually became greatly influenced by the views of Iqbal. It is in the aftermath of the League's rout in the 1937 elections and the subsequent attitude of the Congress that we see a more accelerated progression of the League towards the goal of Pakistan. What further propelled Jinnah and the League on the Pakistan track was the manner in which the Congress governments exercised power. The projection of Gandhi and Congress as the exclusive leadership of Indians and the institution of several small measures (such as the new educational curriculum, the singing of Bande Matram in schools) was seen by Muslims as attempts to establish Hindu domination over India. In an ironic way it was the attitude of the Congress and other Hindu communalist groups that influenced and reinforced the identity (and interests) of the Muslim community.
There is a plethora of scholarship that discusses how nationalist movements define the objectives for the masses they are leading and that even the forces they oppose influence the objectives of such movements. What has yet to be demonstrated is how a secular group like the All India Muslim League utilized a religious identity to rally public opinion away from other competing groups from two concentric spheres of influence. The larger sphere being that of mainstream secular Indian nationalism as well the smaller intra-Muslim sphere where the faced challenges from rival Muslim groups (most notably the traditional u'lema and Maududi's Jama'at-i-Islami). While much has been written about nationalist struggles involving singular movements, but not much has been said of situations where there were parallel nationalist movements seeking to capture the loyalties of the same constituency in two mutually incompatible directions. The remainder of this paper applies constructivism in the search of answers to the questions that have been raised thus far.
A Constructivist Understanding of the Creation of Pakistan
Sayyid Ahmad Khan ---> Muhammad Iqbal ---> Mohammed Ali Jinnah[9]
Maturation of the Two-Nation Theory
The core philosophical principle fueling Muslim separatism in India was the Two-Nation theory. The protagonists of this theory incessantly argued that India did not represent a single homogenous nation. Instead, they maintained that Muslims and Hindus, on account of their acute religious, cultural, and civilizational differences were two distinct nations, which could not be accommodated in the body of a single Indian polity. The maturation of the two-nation theory from its birth during the time of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, to its reincarnation and further development by Muhammad Iqbal, and finally its translation from theory to practice under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah is directly correlated with the solidification of Muslim separatist demands. Tracing the historical evolution of this theory can facilitate a better appreciation of how Pakistan became a preference.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan was the first to draw the attention of Indian Muslims about the altered state of politics and its greater implications for them as a minority group in India. Khan was pointing to the fact that the Muslims had never encountered the loss of sovereignty until the advent of British colonialism.[10] What Khan was alluding to was the pre-1857 political history of India during which the Muslims though a minority community had been the rulers of India for over seven centuries. Muslims first began arriving in India as early as 710 CE with the expedition led by the well-known Arab military commander Muhammad bin Qasim who in a matter of a few years brought the entire area of Sind and parts of Punjab under Umayyad suzerainty. Muslim rule under Arab leadership was highly regionalized in India, and it was not until the Muslim forces of Turkic descent coming from the northwest that Muslim rule was firmly established on a sub-continental basis. Muslim rule in India was institutionalized in the form of the Delhi Sultanate (1192-1398) which was presided over by the Slave, Tughlaq (1206-90), and Khilji (1290-1340) dynasties. The breakdown of the Delhi Sultanate at the hands of the forces of Tamerlane ushered in an era of competing Muslim kingdoms. However, relative stability was restored with the rise of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) before the Mughals themselves succumbed to a combination of British colonialism and rival Muslim, Hindu and Sikh forces.
Thus, quintessentially the Muslim presence in India from their very first contact with the sub-continent in 711 up until 1857 had always been in the capacity of a sovereign group (if not the sovereign group). However, all that was to change forever with the coming of the British. With the increasing trend towards representative governance and majoritarian politics, initially under the British but more particularly in an anticipated post-colonial political arrangement, Khan wanted his constituency to consider their position as a religious minority. Numerically outnumbered, Khan argued that the Muslims had much to loose from the then new wave of democratic politics that was introduced by the British colonial administration. This line of thinking marked the first stirrings of a religion-based nationalism as an identity for Indian Muslims as separate and distinct from Indian nationalism.
The roots of Muslim separatism in the Indian sub-continent can undoubtedly be traced to the single fact that Muslims prior to the coming of the British were the rulers of India for roughly seven centuries. With the consolidation of the British rule in 1857 following the failed War of Independence in 1857, began an era unprecedented in the history of Indian Muslims. For the longest time, despite being a minority community, they had the privilege of living under Muslim/Islamic rule. Now having been removed from power there was increasing consciousness of their status as a minority group. In addition, no other Muslim was perhaps more sensitive to this new situation than Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98), the leading Muslim intellectual and educator of India during the 19th century.[11]
         Hailing from an aristocratic background during the days of the Mughal dominion, Khan did not support the 1857 war and instead was employed in the British civil service. Initially Khan devoted a considerable amount of attention to the educational uplift of Indian Muslims whom he viewed as having declined to an all-time low. He achieved this through the founding of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh in 1877. Although he had at first advocated native participation in the legislative council but with the rise of Congress, he made a volte-face on this demand. He went so far as to condemn elections and representative government as completely inappropriate for India. He displayed a similar attitude for the notion of competitive exams as means to acquiring employment. Khan saw the latter privileging those with better education and the latter as benefiting the majority to the detriment of the minority. Initially he viewed his constituency to be the Urdu- speaking Muslims and Hindus, which led to the creation of the United Indian Patriotic Association, an umbrella organization of anti-Congress Hindus and Muslims. However, the tensions over the issue of the Nagari script and cow slaughter along with the Council reform of 1892 led to the demise of the United Indian Patriotic Association.
In its place, the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Defence Association of Upper India was founded in the December of 1893. It had the same objectives as it predecessor but this organization was an all-Muslim affair. It should be noted that Khan’s loyalty to the British and his efforts to prevent Muslims from agitating against the British rule both were instrumental in changing the British attitude towards Muslims whom they otherwise viewed with suspicion. This facilitated the advent of Muslims in terms of education, as the MAO College later became a leading center of Muslim learning owing to the patronage of the British, which Khan was able to secure due to his favorable position in the eyes of the British. Khan’s efforts to bridge the gap between traditional Islamic learning and the modern western curriculum bore fruit in the evolution of the MAO University, which would later on groom the future leadership of Indian Muslims, i.e., the All India Muslim League.
Another organization that Sayyid Ahmad Khan established was the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental Defence Association in 1893, which can be seen as a predecessor to the All-India Muslim League, which was founded after Khan's death in 1906. The first translation of Muslim separatist ideas into concrete forms was the creation of the system of separate electorates for Muslims in 1909 in the shape of the Morley-Minto Reforms[12]. With the death of Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the granting of separate electorate status for the Muslims, the idea of Muslim separatism for the time being seemed to have reached its zenith. It is actually rather ironic that while Khan throughout his career tried to keep Muslims clear of any form of agitational politics, he nevertheless laid the down the grounds for the principle upon which the notion of Muslim separatism was later crystallized. The British rule in India had just begun but Khan entertaining the hypothetical scenario of a post-British India was fearful of what might happen to Muslims being governed by a Hindu majority. This is perhaps why he was not interested in democratic politics.[13]
The discourse of Muslims separatism gradually trekked along both the political as well as the intellectual spaces after Sayyid Ahmad Khan. In the fall of 1906, a group of leading Muslim under the leadership of Sir Aga Khan met with the then Viceroy of India Lord Minto to put forth the demand of separate electorates for Muslims. This was even before the birth of the All India Muslim League, which was established two months later. Three years later in 1909 the League, which had as a group taken up the demand of separate electorates, got the first taste of victory in the form of the Morley-Minto reforms. Here we see the British recognition of the idea of Muslim uniqueness even though many would argue that it was the interest of the British to treat India as composed of two major communal groups. Even if this is true, it still does not diminish the fact that the British could not have and would not have instituted separate electorates independent of the demand by the Muslims. By 1916, even the Congress had accepted the principle of separate electorates. In a sense, a national atmosphere had been generated that recognized Muslims as a distinct community within the nationalist framework.
In the next two decades, the idea of Muslim separatism was largely relegated to the intellectual plane. Surrounding the issue of the ill-fated Istanbul based caliphate many Muslims and increasing dominance of Congress by Hindu communalists brought back the fear among Muslims regarding their future as a minority. The most prominent voice among them was Muhammad Iqbal who was already dealing with the state of Islam and Muslims. As the thirties rolled on, he became more and more concerned about Islam in the Indian context. Being well aware of the divided loyalties of the Muslims, he contacted Jinnah in whom he saw the perfect man for the post of the leadership of the Muslims. Jinnah at this time had left Congress after years of trying to tread two parallel paths, i.e., that of the League (which he had joined in 1913) and the Congress. Unable to forge anything in the way of joint action and unity amongst the two groups and at the same the increasing communalist character of the Congress laid the groundwork for Jinnah's total conversion from nationalist to separatist politics. Notwithstanding that in as late as 1946 Jinnah was still entertaining the idea of a Pakistan within the constitutional framework of an Indian union, it should be realized that he was no longer a nationalist in the Indian sense. His willingness to accept the three-tiered political arrangement of the Cabinet Mission was based on how it would benefit Muslims and protect their interests. 
In deed, ideas had a profound impact on the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity that his increasingly tilt towards religion as the basis of identity betrayed his secular outlook. The answer to the question of whether Pakistan was to be a secular state or an Islamic one requires a re-working of the categories. To think in terms of the binary categories of secular and Islamic (or Islamist) only serves to obscure the reality of the founders' intent regarding the nature of Pakistan. A more useful way of looking at the variety of interpretations of Islam is to try to situate them on a continuum. In this way, one can make sense of how Islam figured in the discourse of Jinnah and the League and can be contrasted with the understanding of Islam held by Sayyid Maududi and his Jama'at-i-Islami understood it.
         After the League’s miserable performance in the 1937 elections (that too under a system of separate electorates), no one could have predicted that in the next ten years this same party would play the role of the vanguard movement and successfully establish a separate state for the Muslims of India. However, in the elections of 1946 the Muslim League proved its ability to rally the Muslim masses around its idea of a separate homeland of Pakistan. This is even more intriguing given the fact that the League, which was a secular group, had aroused the religious sensibilities of the Muslims and leveraged it into a demand on both the British government as well as Congress. It is actually quite ironic that Jinnah who in his heyday as a rising nationalist and Congressman had at the turn of the century opposed the idea of separate electorates was thirty some odd years later on his way to becoming the founder of a separate Muslim state.[14] The only way to explain this transformation and reconcile the two polar positions is through an appreciation of the process of Jinnah's ideological shift.
Existing Explanations 
The existing literature that addresses the partition of India advances several different theories about why and how the genesis of Pakistan took place. The most popular thesis blessed by officialdom in Pakistan argues that Muslims since their advent in India in the 8th century had constituted a distinct, unique, and separate community. Since they never wholly integrated into the Indian milieu, the partition of India was a natural expected outcome of the process of decolonization of India. Whereas in India the popularly held view is one which blames British colonialism for its policy of ‘divide and conquer’ that eventually led to the permanent division of India along communal lines. Among the more rigorous and scholarly analyses is the more recent thesis that the demand for Pakistan was in fact a bargaining chip exploited by Jinnah to extract the maximum concessions from both the British and Congress in a post-independence political arrangement. In fact this theory goes on to claim that in the end Jinnah actually fell victim to his own political maneuvering when the momentum he had generated among the Muslims demanding Pakistan prevented him from concluding a settlement within the confines of a greater Indian union.[15] More recently quite a few works have surfaced that apply the concepts in the international relations literature, e.g., security dilemma[16], commitment problem[17] to understanding partition and ethnic conflict.
The fact that Muslims were able to co-exist in India with other religious communities since the 8th century contradicts the first theory. As for the divide & conquer argument, historical evidence does not support it either. As for the ‘bargaining counter’ thesis, it may be able to explain the dynamics of the Pakistan movement at the group and leadership levels. However, it is unable to account for the role of the Muslim masses that rallied behind the separatist call of Pakistan and were able to provide Jinnah and the AIML with the support and political leverage that they needed to engage in the bargaining process. It privileges elites over masses and thus simplifies the long drawn out process of partition. As far as the explanations informed by the notions of security dilemma and commitment problem are concerned, they are unable to capture the complex historical dynamics that were involved in the partition of India. They tend to converge on the political events during a very short period of history, i.e., just before the actual event of partition. Whereas constructivism affords the luxury of a holistic view of partition by taking into account the various dynamics over an extended time-period. Partition itself is an ultimate byproduct of the historical evolution of ideas and actors. 
There is a decent amount of literature that addresses the motivations of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League (AIML), a propos the demand for Pakistan. However, it pays very little attention to the kind of state that Jinnah and the AIML envisioned for Pakistan. Whatever little has been written on this issue is polemical in nature as the respective conclusions are solely dependent upon the ideological persuasion of the authors. For those who wish to see Pakistan as an Islamic state will argue that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam and will point to a select set of historical statements, documents, and events to buttress their case. Similarly on the other hand are those who claim that Jinnah did not have a theocratic state in mind, instead he wanted a secular state that would safeguard the rights and interests of the Muslims of the Indian sub-continent. They too will point to a select set of evidence in order to support their claims. The fact that there exist contradictory statements made by Jinnah himself on different occasions has further exacerbated the confusion over the issue.
The problem with the existing literature is the way in which the debate has been framed by the two sides, i.e., Islamists and secularists. In order to understand the intentions of the founders, one would need to move away from the mutual exclusiveness of the secular v Islamic dichotomy, and re-frame it as two competing interpretations of Islam. If there is a dichotomy, it is perhaps about a modern v. traditional understanding of Islamic political thought. This is the only way in which to reconcile the apparent contradictory evidences posited by the two sides in the debate.

Conclusion

         This paper seeks to contribute to the existing literature on the issue of partition by offering an understanding of how ideas by shaping the identity and preferences of actors. Such actors in turn are the driving force that mobilizes the masses towards the goal of partitioning of territories, as a possible avenue towards the resolution to seemingly intractable ethnic conflict. The constructivist approach affords the researcher the tools to investigate individuals and groups acting collectively as a singular agent or a plurality of agents in the demand for partition. Critics may argue that ideas after a while take a secondary role as an incentive for the actors involved, and it is interests that ultimately influence the actors to continue to move forward with their demands and hence effect political change. While there may perhaps be some verity in this observation, it does not however resolve the conundrum of what shapes the interests of the actors and how.
This paper argues that ideas indeed played a major role in both initiating and developing the demand for the partition of India, which in turn then lead to the changes in the behavior of other parties in this conflict, Congress and the British government. Although the dominant approaches addressing the issue of partition can explain aspects of the partition of India and the subsequent creation of Pakistan, the constructivist approach provides a better framework for explaining the behavior of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Muslim League, Congress, and the British government in the process that led up to partition. This paper also furnishes a framework for analyzing the increasing number of hyper-nationalist campaigns in other areas of the world, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia. It may also facilitate in gauging the success or failure of these movements to create new states. The wider ramification is that, under certain conditions, ideas shape the identity of ethnic actors, which in turn then effect changes in the geo-political landscape of the areas under question.
One of the paper’s functional policy corollaries is that it equips policy makers with the underlying dynamics that shape a particular conflict, which can be extremely instructive in brokering agreements that can bring seemingly intractable conflicts to a final settlement. As for this particular case of partition, it is very relevant as it can possibly bring to rest the half a century debate that has seemingly polarizing the Pakistani society into two camps, Islamist and secularist. It is even more significant in the light of the fact that there is an ongoing process of Islamic resurgence on a global scale with Pakistan as one of the states, which is key staging ground for Islamic political revival. Furthermore, this paper underscores the ongoing evolution of Modern Islamic political thought characterized by the intra-Islamist debate between the moderate and extremist forces sensitized especially in the current post-9/11 global atmosphere.


[1] Wilder, Andrew. 1995. "Islam and Political Legitimacy in Pakistan." In Islam and Democracy in Pakistan, ed. Muhammad A. Syed. Islamabad: National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, 31-88.
[2] It should be noted that it was not until the last decade before partition that the AIML took up the cause of Pakistan and that too in an ambivalent manner.
[3] As a term, constructivism was introduced in Nicholas Onuf. 1989. The World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and International Relations. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.
[4] Daniel M. Green .2002. Constructivism and Comparative Politics: International Relations in a Constructed World.
[5] For a comparative analysis of constructivism with the other two approaches, please refer to Alexander Wendt. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[6] Martha Finnemore. 1996. National Interests in an International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
[7] Kenneth R. Rutherford. 2000, “A Theoretical Examination of Disarming States: NGOs and Anti-Personnel Landmines.” International Politics. (37:4) : 457-478.
[8] Frances Robinson. 2000. Islam and Muslim History in South Asia. New York: Oxford University Press.
[9] Although this sequence represents the chronological evolution of the idea of Indian Muslim nationalism, however for a comparative development of the various strands of Muslim/Islamic political thought please see Moin Shakir. 1970. Khilafat to Partition. New Delhi: Kalamkar Prakashan.
[10] Ayesha Jalal. 2000. Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam Since 1850. London: Routledge.
[11] For a detailed account of the early history and development of Muslim Separatism see Francis Robinson. 1974. Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces of 1860-1923. London: Cambridge University Press.                       
[12] Peter Hardy. 1972. The Muslims of British India. London: Cambridge University Press.
[13] Kalim Siddiqui. 1972. Conflict Crisis and War in Pakistan. (London: Macmillan).
[14] Sharif Al Mujahid. 1981. Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation. Karachi: Quaid-i-Azam Academy.
[15] Ayesha Jalal. 1994. The Sole Spokesperson: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[16] Barry R. Posen. 1993. “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict”, Survival 35:1 (Spring): 27-47.
[17] James Fearon. 1998. "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict." In The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation. ed. David Lake and Donald Rothschild. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 


Monday, December 23, 2013

Book Publication Announcement

Political Islam in the Age of Democratization, my book with Farid Senzai published five days ago.

We have used democratization theory to try and make sense of the evolution of Islamism in the Middle East and South Asia since the beginning of the 1990s. Our thesis is that democracy in the Muslim world will take root but it will be different from what we have in the west given that Muslim democracies (to varying degrees) will allow for religion to have some (as yet undefined) role in public affairs. That said, there will be countries that may not democratize given that more radical forms of Islamism are dominant there. We offer two separate 3-tiered typologies that classify different Islamist movements. The first is based on how different Islamist groups seek to establish their envisioned 'Islamic' polity and the second one is based on the different attitudes that exist among Islamists towards democracy. In addition, we offer a spectrum that identifies the various types of Islamists and secularists with regards to their views of the role of religion in politics. We then apply this framework on five case studies: Muslim Brotherhood, Salafists, Taliban, al-Qaeda, Iran, Arab Shia (Hezbollah and Iraqi Shia parties), and Turkey's ruling AK Party.

It can be ordered through the publisher or Amazon. 

http://us.macmillan.com/politicalislamintheageofdemocratization/KamranBokhari 
http://www.amazon.com/Political-Islam-Democratization-Middle-Today/dp/1137008040

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Jihadist Opportunities in Syria

A piece that looks at how a jihadist entry into the Syrian fray can complicate the upheaval in the country and more importantly the rising geo-sectarianism in the region.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/jihadist-opportunities-syria

Jihadist Opportunities in Syria

February 14, 2012 | 1208 GMT

 

By Kamran Bokhari

In an eight-minute video clip titled "Onward, Lions of Syria" disseminated on the Internet Feb. 12, al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri expressed al Qaeda's support for the popular unrest in Syria. In it, al-Zawahiri urged Muslims in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan to aid the Syrian rebels battling Damascus. The statement comes just days after a McClatchy report quoted unnamed American intelligence officials as saying that the Iraqi node of the global jihadist network carried out two attacks against Syrian intelligence facilities in Damascus, while Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi said in a recent interview with AFP that Iraqi jihadists were moving fighters and weapons into neighboring Syria.

Al Qaeda's long-term goal has been to oust Arab governments to facilitate the return of a transnational caliphate. Its tactics have involved mainly terrorism intended to cause U.S. intervention in the region. Al Qaeda has hoped such interventions would in turn incite popular uprisings that would bring down the Arab regimes, opening the way for the jihadists to eventually take power. But the jihadist network's efforts have failed and they have remained a marginal player in the Arab world. By addressing Syria, al Qaeda hopes to tap into the past year of Arab unrest, a movement in which it played little to no part.

The region's regimes have been on the defensive due to the rise of political Islamism, growing public disillusionment and the sectarian Sunni-Shiite split, though foreign military intervention has been required to actually topple them, as we saw in Libya. Growing uncertainty in the region and the gradual weakening of these regimes gives jihadists an opportunity to reassert their relevance.

Al-Zawahiri's statement, however, represents a continuation of the central leadership's inability to do more than issue taped statements from its Pakistani hideouts, much less engage in strategic planning.

Jihadists and the Middle East Unrest

Al Qaeda's extreme transnational agenda always has had limited appeal to the Arab masses. Popular unrest in Arab countries and the empowerment of political Islamists via elections in Egypt and Tunisia have underscored the jihadists' irrelevance to societies in the Islamic world. The jihadists have failed to oust a sitting government anywhere in the Islamic world, even in Afghanistan, where the Taliban's rise to power in the mid-1990s occurred in a power vacuum. Recognizing their limitations, jihadists have focused on conducting attacks intended to create crises within target countries and in those countries' external relations -- as is the case in Pakistan and Yemen. The jihadist hope has been to create enough disorder that they would eventually be able to seize power.

This approach has proved difficult because Arab governments (despite their weaknesses) have been resilient and societal fragmentation has not worked to the advantage of jihadists. A second option has been to try to take advantage of power vacuums that were created by other forces. Iraq presented one such opportunity when U.S. forces ousted the Baathist regime in 2003, allowing for the emergence of al Qaeda's then-most active node. In Iraq, the country's Shiite majority posed a daunting obstacle to the jihadists even before the jihadists alienated their Iraqi Sunni allies to the point that they began siding with the Americans, which led to a degradation of the jihadist network in Iraq. By contrast, post-Gadhafi Libya, with its proliferation of militias -- some of which have both Islamist and jihadist tendencies -- could become a more welcoming place for jihadists. But even if Libya were to descend into Islamist militancy, geography would most likely prevent it from spreading too far beyond Libya's borders.

However, given Syria's strategic location at the crossroads of so many key geopolitical fault lines, the meltdown of the Syrian state could easily result in a regional conflict. Most stakeholders oppose foreign military intervention in Syria for this very reason. Many states are eyeing the strategic goal of weakening Iran geopolitically through the ouster of the Alawite regime in Syria, but even that prospect may not be enough to offset the potential costs.

Jihadists' Prospects in Syria

With or without foreign intervention, jihadists in the region have ample room for maneuver in Syria. The most significant regional jihadist presence lies across the Syrian border in Iraq. These forces benefited from Damascus' decision to back Sunni insurgents from 2003 to 2007. The consolidation of Shiite power in Iraq greatly weakened these forces. Now that Syria is unraveling and armed resistance to the regime is shaping up, the jihadist flow is reversing direction, with jihadists now entering Syria from Iraq.

Al Qaeda in Iraq sought to channel Sunni disenfranchisement at the hands of the Shia, but now the group is looking to help Syrian Sunnis empower themselves at the expense of the Iranian-backed Alawites. Jihadist forces within striking distance of Syria are likely trying to exploit the unpopularity of the Alawite regime among Sunnis as a way to gain a foothold in Syria.

The level of factionalization among the Syrian rebels works to the advantage of jihadists. Just as Iraq's Sunni tribal forces, Islamists and Baathists cooperated with the jihadists against U.S troops and the country's new Shia-dominated security forces, many elements within Syria's Sunni population would be willing to align with jihadists given the constraints they face in battling the well-armed Alawite-dominated Syrian military.

Complicating matters, the Syrian intelligence apparatus has long cultivated ties with jihadists to insulate Damascus from jihadist attacks and to use jihadists in proxy wars with Syria's neighbors. As the state gets more and more embroiled in the internal conflict and the intelligence apparatus gets bogged down with rising distractions at home, these jihadist elements who have been on the payroll of Syrian intelligence can turn against their former handlers along the lines of what has happened in Pakistan and Yemen.

In addition to the jihadists based in Iraq and those who have long worked with the Syrian regime, neighboring Jordan and Lebanon host jihadist forces that also see opportunities in the Syrian unrest. Saudi Arabia also has Sunni militants angered by the killing of Sunnis at the hands of what they call the "infidel" Alawite regime. Just as the Saudis redirected their own jihadists toward fighting in Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh could encourage jihadist non-state actors to fight in Syria. A recent fatwa from a number of top Sunni religious scholars (including some prominent Saudis) forbidding membership in the Syrian security forces would help in this regard.

Regional stakeholders are reluctant to see foreign military intervention, leaving the option of covert support in the form of supplying weapons to the Syrian rebels. Jihadists can be expected to make use of such covert support as they work to insert themselves in Syria. Even if weapons aren't intended for jihadists, the increased flow of weapons and training into Syria provide an additional opportunity for jihadists to build on this support by offering more battle-hardened experience to a still disorganized armed resistance.

But while neither the domestic opponents of the Syrian regime nor the international stakeholders have an interest in seeing Syria collapse into sectarian conflict, jihadists want just that. As in Iraq, we could see bombings against Alawites and other non-Sunni groups, including Iranian and Hezbollah targets. This could be extended to attacks in Lebanon in an attempt to stoke a regional sectarian conflict.
The jihadists could well succeed in sparking a regional sectarian conflict that would involve multiple state and non-state actors and would see Iran and Saudi Arabia locked in an intense proxy war. Western or Israeli involvement in the conflict would please the jihadists even more.
It is therefore in the jihadists' interest to thwart a negotiated settlement in Syria. Though it is still unclear who was responsible for the Dec. 23, 2011, and Jan. 6 suicide attacks targeting Syrian intelligence, they served the jihadists' purpose as they forced the regime to crack down even harder on opponents (both armed and unarmed).

As the rebels and their supporters respond in kind, the jihadists can thus instigate a cycle of violence leading to an intensely polarized environment. The net result of such a process could be a meltdown of the Syrian state and the rise of multiple armed factions, including jihadists.
The collapse of the Syrian state in turn would allow the jihadists a wide arena in which to operate, stretching from Lebanon to Iraq and putting them very close to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories -- the best theater a jihadist could ask for. However, the nature of their capabilities, which will determine the extent of damage they can cause in the Levant and the surrounding area, remains unclear.

It is by no means inevitable that jihadists will flourish in Syria and use it as a launching pad to undermine regional security. The Syrian state is still very much holding, and rebel forces remain divided and do not appear capable of serious advances against the government.

The Risk of Regional Sectarian War

The Syrian upheaval takes place at a time of heightened geopolitical and sectarian tensions in the region, where Iran and its largely Arab Shiite allies are seeking to make inroads into the largely Sunni Arab countries.

For Tehran and its main non-state proxy, the Lebanese Shiite Islamist group Hezbollah, the survival of an Alawite regime in Syria that owes its survival to Iran is critical. Tehran and Hezbollah both have a military presence in Syria, which is assisting Damascus in its efforts to contain the uprising. This is a major cause of concern for international stakeholders, especially Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is the regional player most enthusiastic about seeing regime change in Syria to counter the threat from Iran.
For its part, the Iranian-aligned government in Iraq has a strong incentive to make sure that jihadists in Iraq are not able to relocate to Syria. Baghdad knows all too well that a collapse of the Syrian regime would lead to a revival of Sunni resistance against the Shia, the last thing the Iraqi Shia wish to see.
The United States and Turkey want to ensure that al Qaeda is unable to hijack the Syrian uprising. But neither Washington nor Ankara has the tools to ensure that jihadists don't make their way through Syria's borders with Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. The Saudis share this viewpoint, but because they are somewhat insulated they would not mind just enough chaos to bring down the Syrian regime, the closest Arab ally of Iran.

Jordan is already deeply fearful of the fallout from Syria while it deals with growing unrest at home, and has a strong interest in making sure Islamist militants on its soil do not use enter the Syrian conflict. Meanwhile, Lebanon could descend into sectarian strife, especially as the Syrian state's ability to maintain control there erodes, the Saudis see an opportunity and the Iranians feel their position becoming vulnerable.

Just how the many moving parts in this dynamic interact will determine the extent to which Syria and its environs become a jihadist playground. A potential collapse of the Syrian state greatly increases the risk of a regional sectarian war that al Qaeda could greatly benefit from. The challenge for those seeking regime change in Syria is thus how to rid the country of Iranian influence while not opening the door to transnational jihadism.

Monday, February 13, 2012

The Beginning of the End

My lengthy interview with MENA FUND Review on the electoral successes of Egyptian Islamists and what to expect moving forward - http://www.menafundreview.com/the-beginning-of-the-end/

Saturday, November 19, 2011

From Islamism to Post-Islamism

Post-Islamism

Much has been written about this concept lately, given the Arab unrest and the expectation that democratization will lead to moderation of Islamists. However, post-Islamism is something that has been addressed by some of us for many years. Here is an article in which I predicted this trend almost 7 years ago.

http://www.stratfor.com/islamism_post_islamism

From Islamism to Post-Islamism

April 18, 2005 | 1924 GMT

By Kamran Bokhari

Amid continuing efforts to resolve its post-Sept. 11 security crisis, the United States and European countries increasingly are dealing with what once would have been an unlikely array of political partners in the Muslim and Arab worlds: Islamist groups.

Because they advocate the imposition of Islamic law in national politics, Islamists — or what Westerners formerly have referred to as Islamic fundamentalists — might at first glance seem to have little, if any, role in the Bush administration’s second-term push for democratization throughout the world. But they are, in fact, among the United States’ most potent potential partners as Washington and others seek to conclude the jihadist war and lay a foundation for relations with the Muslim world.

These efforts, which mark a significant shift in Washington’s own approach — particularly in the Middle East — will impact what has been a long-running competition within political Islam: the struggle of moderate Islamists of many varieties, who make up the bulk of the Muslim world, to attain power without sacrificing their religious ideals or credentials.

As a political ideology, Islamism achieved its first major victory with the Iranian revolution in 1979. At that time, in the context of the Cold War, it was not perceived as the next great challenge for the United States or the West. That perception emerged only with the Sept. 11 attacks and ensuing war. For the past three and a half years, media attention to the issue has created a perception — correctly or otherwise — that Islamism is proliferating and poses a growing security threat.

Islamists make up a significant portion of the Muslim political landscape — supported by believers who are concerned about the fate of Islamic values and culture in the modern age, when Western and particularly American ideals and culture seem to permeate the globe. Nevertheless, Islamist groups have had little success in translating their popularity into votes and actual political power.

But that is slowly beginning to change.

Mechanics of Moderation


Though logic dictates that some forms of radical and militant beliefs will persist, Islamism on the whole increasingly is moving toward moderation. This is evident in many areas — including Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, where groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas are bidding to play a part in mainstream politics.

This shift has little to do with any external factors. Instead, it is part of a natural evolution for groups that thus far have been unable to capture the imagination of the masses sufficiently to take political power. Turkey is the only Muslim state in which an Islamist group of sorts — the Justice and Development Party (AK) — controls the government, but even the AK can be considered an “Islamist-lite” party, since it is a more pragmatic and increasingly moderate version of its predecessors, the Virtue, Welfare, National Salvation, and National Order parties going as far back as 1970.

As democracies around the world have shown before, ideology is important to voters, but not more important than the material interests of the people. Politically, ideology is a medium that allows a people to secure their interests; if it does not succeed in doing that, it will remain a peripheral concern.

For example, in the Middle East, Fatah has become an acceptable partner for the United States and Israel at the peace talks table, but support among the Palestinians is splintered because the government has not been able to build sufficient infrastructure. Conversely, Hamas commands a great deal of local support because of the social services it provides; but in order to achieve power within the mainstream, the militant group ultimately will have to compromise its ideological stance on the existence of a Jewish state.

Defining Islamist Movements


Though its intellectual roots stretch back to the social, economic and political upheavals of the late 19th century, Islamism emerged as a political movement in 1928, when the Ikhwan al Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) was founded in Egypt, and spread from there to British India, where Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Group/Association) was launched in 1941. By the 1950s and 1960s, when most of the Muslim countries had gained independence from their European colonial rulers, these organizations and their counterparts in other states became serious political entities.

Islamist groups distinguished themselves from others — which included secular, nationalist and Marxist Muslim groups, to name a few — by seeking to establish or re-establish what they argued was an Islamic state in their home countries. In other words, they wanted the state to implement Islamic law. Beyond that, however, there is no agreement even today on exactly what an Islamic state is or should be.

Not only are the reasons for this disagreement too vast to be explored here, they also are less important than the means by which the various brands of Islamists seek to achieve their goals. Though it is their attitudes toward their religion and modernity that makes Islamists “moderate,” “radical” or “militant,” it is their approach toward establishing their political goals that defines their relationships with other Muslim and non-Muslim entities.

A vast majority of Islamists in almost all Muslim states are moderates: They pursue the establishment of an Islamic polity through democratic means. At the other end of the Islamist spectrum are the militant groups who want to fight the incumbent regimes to attain power. During the 1990s, the militants went transnational and began fighting the United States — the main support behind the existing Muslim regimes — as a tactic toward this end goal. Al Qaeda and its allies around the world represent the transnational jihadists.

In the middle are several groups that can be viewed as nonviolent but that espouse a radical agenda. For example, Hizb al-Tahrir — founded in 1952 by Palestinians living in Jordan and now present in many parts of the world — rejects the use of armed struggle but seeks to overturn the political nation-state structure in order to re-establish the caliphate.

Intra-Islamist Contention


While the moderate, radical and militant labels refer to political attitudes, the behavior of various Islamist groups can be classified as either “integrationist,” “isolationist” or “interactionist.”

Moderate Islamists are integrationists, in the sense that they embrace the existing structure and function of the state — they are willing to work within constitutional bounds to establish their Islamic government. Moreover, they engage society by organizing themselves into various civil society groups and reaching out to the public. The Muslim Brotherhood, Jamiat-i-Islami and its counterparts in South Asia are key examples.

Radical Islamists are interactionists — they interact with society to foment popular revolution that would destroy the state power structure they reject as illegitimate. They also seek out sympathetic elements within existing state structures to support their efforts to oust those regimes. But most radical groups reject both democratic and the existing autocratic forms of government as un-Islamic, because they are secular systems. They seek instead to restore the old caliphal/emiratic forms of governance — though with some modifications to fit current realities. However, they also reject the use of violence to further their political interests.

Militant Islamists — most of whom are jihadists — are isolationists. Not only do they want to fight the state, but their operational needs for secrecy preclude them from engaging the masses. Moreover, militant Islamists subscribe to a top-down approach: The idea is to capture power and then Islamize the state and society, Taliban-style.

Now, there are some exceptions to these rules. For example, both the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah maintain large militias and engage in violence, but they do not direct their strikes at the Muslim state. Nor do they fit neatly into the “jihadist” mold cast by al Qaeda, for various ideological, religious and political reasons.

Their militant wings notwithstanding, neither Hamas nor Hezbollah seek to establish an Islamic authority through armed struggle. They have routinely acted as spoilers in the context of political developments from which they were marginalized or excluded — and as is now evident in the Middle East, they seek to advance their position through electoral means.

Moderation Leading to Interface


Now, with the United States actively searching for political as well as military solutions to its post-Sept.-11 security problems, the odds of success for Islamists are greater than ever before. By adopting a more democratic approach, it becomes possible for the Islamists not only to begin working with other domestic groups, but to open up a channel of communication with the United States as well. This already is occurring in Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

The Bush administration’s declarations that its war on terrorism does not constitute a war against Islam or Muslims are much more than rhetoric. Military action has been focused against transnational and local or regional jihadists that have directly targeted the United States or its interests. There is nothing in Bush doctrine per se that precludes Washington from working with moderate Islamists — but there are fears and uncertainty about how to deal with nonviolent radical groups, which have evaded the spotlight amid the manhunts for militants and political negotiations with others. The fact that these radicals eschew violence but espouse revolutions that might run counter to U.S. interests will complicate policymaking in this area for some time.

Meanwhile, it is the moderate Islamists who present Washington’s best option for the future. As history has shown, non-Islamist moderates with whom the United States initially thought to partner — for example, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and the Saudi monarchy — do not necessarily enjoy the support of the masses. Now, the strategy is to engage certain types of Islamists in political dialogue, as Washington looks to use the weight of the majority to counter the radical and militant fringes.

Toward a Post-Islamist Era?


Islamists always represented a small fraction of the more than 1 billion Muslims worldwide, and militants are an even smaller subset. This situation has been impacted, however, by the Sept. 11 attacks and subsequent events.

Now, militant Islamists are on the run, and the search for viable alternatives — as well as democracy movements — is lending itself to dialogue between moderate Islamist actors and Washington.

At the intellectual and ideological level, integrationists, interactionists and isolationists are all locked in a struggle for supremacy. The integrationists have the upper hand, since the militants are busy trying to save their skins and the radicals — though heavy on diagnosis and dogma — offer no tangible solutions to existing political problems.

However, the outcome of the struggle will depend, to a great extent, on Washington, which is fast moving away from an emphasis on military operations to one on calibrated negotiations. The U.S. contact with the moderates does risk delegitimizing them, but concrete political results and social improvements in the Arab/Muslim world would be the antidote.

The marginalization of the isolationists and the interactionists will allow the integrationists to gain the upper hand within the Islamist camp. But that does not necessarily mean that in the end the Islamist agenda will win the day. Once they have made the transition from opposition to dominance, these groups — as we are seeing in Iraq — likely will not be able to push their religious agendas too far.

As a practical matter, Islamists now are undergoing an ideological transformation. The heretofore heavy and rigid emphasis on doctrine is giving way under concerns about how best to turn doctrine into action.

When the dust settles, the Islamists likely will come to terms with the fact that the Quran and the Sunnah merely provide broad normative principles, which are applicable only through broad-based discussions, debates and negotiations — a process facilitated by a democratic framework.

As belief in a specific and timeless Islamic polity crumbles, an age of post-Islamism likely will emerge. In other words, the Muslim world is on the verge of embracing a version of modernity that is in keeping with its Islamic ethos. This would differ markedly from the periods of secularism and Islamism that followed the death of the caliphal age.

In this post-Islamist age, Islamist and non-Islamist Muslim powerbrokers will mingle. And in this environment, pragmatism will temper ideology.