I just finished Paul Berman’s ‘Flight of the Intellectuals‘ and while not a tour de force like its prequel, ‘Terror and Liberalism’, was a phenomenal read. I will give a full length review after my vacation (warning GPP is going on a two week travel break), but right now I will highlight to key part of the book’s conclusion. This section features Berman building his theme of Western intellectuals failing to stand up to the Islamist’s ideology, which he clearly lays out was partly fathered by European fascism, while at the same time spitting venom at actual liberal people with Muslim backgrounds, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The following sections immediately follow a listing of Western intellectuals (some with Muslim backgrounds) who require bodyguards to protect them from Islamist violent radicals. The list is sadly long. Enough of me, here’s Berman:

‘And so, Salman Rushdie has metastasized into into an entire social class. It is a subset of the European intelligentsia-its Muslims free-thinking and liberal wing especially, but including other people, too, who survive only because of bodyguards and police investigations and because of their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe since the fall of the Axis. Fear-mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip a bizarre ideology-has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life. And yet, if someone like Pascal Bruckner intones a few words about the need for courage under these circumstances, the sneers begin-”Now where have we heard that kind of thing before?”- and onward to the litany about fascism. In the New York Times Magazine Ian Buruma held back from hinting even obliquely at the genuinely fascist influences on [Tariq] Ramadan’s grandfather, the founder of the modern cult of artistic death-Hassan al-Banna, who spoke highly of Adolf Hitler and helped the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem escape from getting tried at Nuremburg. Yet Pascal Bruckner, the liberal-here is somebody, Buruma would have us think, on the brink of fascism!’….[Pg. 296]

‘The Rushdies of today find themselves under criticism, contrasted unfavorably in the very best of magazines with Tariq Ramadan, who is celebrated as a bridge between cultures-Ramadan, an alumnus of the anti-Rushdie Islamic Foundation in Britain. Ramadan, who, even in 2009, managed to commend in a single sentence of his book Radical Reform both Sheikh Qaradawi, the theologian of the human bomb, and the Egyptian sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, who publicly defended the assassination of Foda. And yet, if there is a menace to society, nowadays it is said to come from Hirsi Ali or some other vocal and articulate opponent of the violent sheikhs-the European intellectuals from Muslim backgrounds who, in their unforgivable departure from the child-like image of how Muslims are supposed to behave, have arrogated to themselves the right to update a few ideas from John  Locke or John Stuart Mill or Bertrand Russell. During the Rushdie affair, liberals who called for courage were applauded. Liberals from Muslim backgrounds were positively celebrated. But not today.’ [pg. 298]

Hopefully, you were able to follow Berman’s thinking in these paragraphs. If so, please give GPP your thoughts. If not, please give GPP your confused thoughts.

Rashid, a highly touted Pakistani journalist, begins the final chapter of his 2000 ‘Taliban’ by calling the country one of world’s ‘orphaned conflict’s’.  The country would quickly change from being orphaned to a month after 9/11 being the center of global politics, as the United States uprooted the Taliban government and sent them packing, unfortunately for only a short-term vacation.

Rashid’s valuable book walks its readers through a rather dense social, religious, military, and even psychological history of the group of radicalized Pashtuns, known as the Taliban.  He provides a solid regional historical overview and does not forget the many geopolitical actors involved in the fragmented country (Iran, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.).  A solid half of the book details the violent rise to power of the Taliban as they battled first fellow Pashtun groups, than the government in Kabul, and finally the Northern Alliance actors, which would never relinquish their autonomy to Taliban-ruled Kabul and Kandahar.  This book is worth reading just for those who don’t know just how fractious the Afghan society can be with many various ethnicities and sects, all with foreign partners, that have had to violently attempt to protect themselves and further their own people’s positions.  This book, just like Afghanistan today, is full of conflict and violence that shows no real sign of ebbing.

Rashid provides a telling description of the early members of the Taliban (around 1994) as Afghans born in Pakistan and raised mainly by madrassas as their parents, especially mothers, may have been lost in the years of fighting during and after the Soviet invasion and withdrawal.  These young men had ‘no memories of the past, no plans for the future’ and knew of nothing else but their Taliban leaders.  Like we have heard many times in reference to terrorist and gang groups, the Taliban offered these men, and boys, a meaning to their lives that they could embrace and fight for.

This type of camaraderie of course becomes dangerous when it is based on ignorant, stubborn, violent, yet a strong ideology and form of Islam, as they, the Taliban, surely had.  The Taliban, which by 1996 controlled large swaths of Afghan territory, including Kabul, ruled with a fundamental Islamic iron fist that showed no accommodation, not even towards UN aid providers.  The Taliban was controlling a large population and recruiting members with a version of Islam that ‘divested’ it of nearly all of its positive legacies, including Islamic philosophy, science, arts, civil society, etc.  It was the Taliban’s way or the knife.  One has never read about a more oppressive society.

The Taliban did not become the Taliban, or rule, in a vacuum.  They were of course incubated and constantly nourished by the Pakistani government and ISI.  When the Taliban needed more troops in their battles with Masud and what would become the Northern Alliance, Pakistan would just close some of their madrassas in FATA or the Northwest Provinces and send the men over the border.  Rashid, who also spends time on Osama bin Ladin’s terrorist network in Afghanistan, accurately predicted that the Pakistani state and military were creating their own nightmare with their support of the Taliban, instead of the ‘strategic depth’ they aimed for.  The author stated that the Islamic fundamentalism, drugs, weapons, and social breakdown that the Pakistani government was assisting the Taliban in performing or using, was making Islamabad ‘ripe for a Taliban-style Islamic revolution.’  While what is occurring today in Pakistan is so far, thankfully, not this extreme, it is too close for comfort.

Rashid’s ‘Taliban’ also details the human and women right’s abuses by the Taliban in great detail.  In addition, Rashid spends several chapters describing the ‘great game’ of pipeline politics in the Central Asia region and not surprisingly was correct in his assessment that Afghanistan, and the region as a whole, was just too unstable for Western groups to come in and build major gas and oil pipelines, no matter how much they wanted too.  Though these pipeline chapters were well researched, they can be passed over by most readers.

Rashid’s book provides much more than the history and make-up of a group that the powerful United States military is having a hell of a time defeating, it brings to life the challenging modern history of a people who have only known violence in their lives.  It is sad to think that one cannot imagine this changing in the near or even long-term future.  Though Rashid’s work is far from perfect, too many assumptions presented as facts (he is a journalist by trade), it brings light on a dangerous and important group, geopolitical actors and actions in a key region of the world, and on the suffering of millions.

Just as I was discussing the Pakistani state’s inability to control, yet alone dominate, the Islamic culture and religion within its borders, Islamabad announced a new deal allowing the Swat region to be ruled by Sharia law. This is yet another deal the Pakistani government has made with one of its tribal region’s that it cannot control, yet alone govern. The Taliban are strong in Swat and in return for allowing them to basically ‘govern themselves’ they have promised the Pakistan government to cease violence, at least against the Pakistani government and military.

Pakistani Taliban punished a man accused of impersonating one of them to extort money in Swat Valley-European Pressphoto Agency

When I mention that the Pakistani government ‘control’ or ‘dominate’ Islam within their boundaries, I am not meaning suppress or destroy the religion or culture. Far from it. A state needs to have legitimacy for it to rule effectively, and it is instances like this latest Swat-Sharia deal that undermine Pakistani hopes for this to occur. The situation is very complicated and autonomous regions in countries is not unheard of and can be stable, but this most recent victory for violent Taliban forces is just the latest in a string of loses for the Pakistani government and military. Sectarian forces of Islam carry more weight than the government can and it is creating great violence and instability for the whole region. Of course, Islam is far from the only problem and cause of the recent unrest in Pakistan as ethnic, social, and economic issues are vibrant throughout the country, especially in its northwest border area with Afghanistan.

The United States and the Karzai-led Afghan government will soon be entering into serious negotiations with certain Taliban elements that seem to be willing to do just that, negotiate, and there is much they can learn from Pakistan’s experiences. There will be a fine line between granting autonomy to a region, where Sharia law supercedes all state decisions, and creating enough wiggle room for local tribes to have a legitimate say in the way they are governed. In Pakistan, the Taliban have shown that once they obtain power in a region, and this becomes legitimatized by a deal with the Pakistani government, they have not only begun to rule the area like brutal totalitarians, but that they do not stop there, and their ambitions have led them deeper and deeper into Pakistan’s other regions.

What will Afghanistan’s future be? One where Islam is crucial, but partnered with the state? Or one where sectarian groups representing Islam, including radical Taliban groups, seek to dominate certain regions or the whole state?

I am reading Adeeb Khalid’s book ‘Islam after Communism: Religion and Politics in Central Asia.’ That’s it, I just thought you should know….Juuuuust kidding. Though I plan on summarizing and reviewing the book when I’m finished, I came across this interesting passage discussing Islam and the state that I would like to share. It’s a bit lengthy so bear with me (hey, I’m the one who has to type the darn thing!):

But even when states have sought to control Islam, they have don so to put it to work on their behalf. Having freed up large areas of public life from the authority of Islam and its carriers, they nevertheless have used Islam to bolster their legitimacy or to found systems of public morality based on a particular reading of Islam. The Egyptian state, for instance, derives a great deal of its legitimacy from the argument that it serves Islam. In Turkey, in an approved and properly nationalized form, Islam remains part of the moral education of all schoolchildren. In both these countries, religious higher education is under state supervision or control, but it remains uninterrupted, and the public presence of Islam is unmistakable. The Saudi state, of course, stakes all its legitimacy on Islam, but it keeps strict control over Islamic institutions. In Pakistan, in contrast, the state was never able to institutionalize control over Islam. Rather, the military, both in and out of power, has used Islamic groups for various purposes, from sponsoring the ‘jihad’ in Afghanistan, through instigating an insurgency in Kashmir, to fomenting sectarian violence within Pakistan itself.

Before this passage, Khalid emphasizes that Islam should be looked at like all other religions in the world and in history, in terms of its relations to the state. That is, that the state attempts to use it or suppress it for its own interests. This is Khalid’s main thesis of the book, that Islam is not monolithic and is strongly affected and changed by such other societal factors as governance and economics.

Back to the passage above, Khalid is accurate in that for the most part Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia have ‘successfully’ controlled most aspects of Islam while at the same time using the religion and culture for legitimacy claims. The first two, Egypt and Turkey, are mostly secular states, with Turkey’s constitution guaranteeing this, while Saudi Arabia’s government is much more tied to its Wahhabi-Islamic roots. Interestingly, these three states are all key US allies. Saudi Arabia and Egypt both run oppressive societies, but the US sides with them anyways for geopolitical, resource, and stability reasons. The US government appears to accept these repressive regimes over possible Islamist party takeovers, which it fears my have a similiar world outlook to Iran. Come to think of it, did the hostile nature of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s towards the United States ruin forever possible US support for Islamist parties throughout the Middle East?

The fourth country and only outlier that Khalid mentions, is Pakistan, and it is a state that may be the most important US ally of them all at the moment. Khalid is correct, the Pakistan military, much less its government, has never had control over Islam in the country’s short history. What amount of the blame should the current domestic and regional problems facing Pakistan should be attributed to this lack of state control over Islam? Is there anything different about the culture and religion of Islam that makes it harder for governments to control? Or are geopolitical, economic, international, and other societal factors more responsible?