The war on terror: It's the radicals, stupid!

The war on terror: It's the radicals, stupid!
Asia Times Online
By Ehsan Ahrari

The recent bombings in Bali have resurrected a debate, not only in Indonesia, but also in Europe and the United States, about how to engage "moderate Muslims", or how to promote Islamic moderation. But the trouble with such an issue is that moderate Muslims don't blow up anything or commit suicide bombings. The radical fringe and jihadis carry out those types of activities.

President George W Bush joined the debate on Thursday: "The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia."

Even though Bush did not talk about engaging jihadis, at least in Indonesia, such endeavors are being debated. As a general principle, it is worth asking, how is one going to engage them? Is there any other way, except to eradicate them, or fill all dungeons with them?

The challenge for a number of Muslim countries is about conducting intracultural campaigns. However, no government has shown either a resolve, or, more importantly, the wherewithal to conduct such campaigns. It also is becoming clear that those governments cannot conduct such campaigns alone. The West must help. Fighting the jihadi groups is emerging as the major fight of our time.

The US, the United Kingdom and western Europe, as a unit, have some idea about how to conduct such campaigns. Their recipe is to promote Islamic moderation. The premise is that, since moderation about anything is a good premise, it should be promoted with a vengeance. In Indonesia, there have been attempts to conduct "interfaith dialogues" to carry out cultural exchanges and to implement various educational programs promoting tolerance.

That is a good start, but it is not getting to the root of the matter. The latest bombings in Bali have demonstrated that there is much more to be done, perhaps the adoption of an entirely different approach. Jihad has become a pervasive challenge for our time. It is aimed at conducting campaigns of terror in the name of a powerful religious concept of Islam. Even the Saudis are dumbfounded about how to fight it. How are they to handle a challenge that has categorically depicted their regime as very much part and parcel of jahiliyya (ignorance) that should be eradicated?

The jihadi perspective is that there can never be any rapprochement between Islam and jahiliyya. When the jihadis are so convinced about the correctness and morality of their own perspective, then any struggle that involves them has to be carried out to the bitter end.

That is one reason why the entire struggle with jihadis all over the world of Islam is becoming a deadly contest in which there is no room for any dialogue, cooperation, rapprochement or exchange of ideas. There is no operative notion of "live and let live" under such a frame of reference.

The preceding depiction is highly applicable to the terrorists who blew up restaurants and bars in Bali. Where did they get their training? Where did they develop such a frame of reference where anyone or everyone who disagrees with them must die? Even their description of a Muslim is so narrow that only a few thousand of their own kind may qualify for that label.

The closer one looks at the jihadi phenomenon that is so pervasive from Jeddah to Jakarta, the more one is convinced that it is driven by the Wahhabi-Salafi template that has deep imprints of the thinking of Sayed Qutb, Mustafa Shukri and Abdelsalam Farraj of Egypt, Abul Ala Maududi of Pakistan, and Abdullah Azzam (formerly a teacher of Osama bin Laden) and An-Nabhani of Palestine.

Indonesia's Darul Islam party, more than the frequently mentioned Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), has been in touch with all the radical Islamists who used to be called the Afghan mujahideen, without any distinction of their different nationalities. Later, a number of them also became active members of al-Qaeda. Darul Islam has emerged as the deadlier of the two Islamist organizations of Indonesia, while the JI continues to capture a lot of media attention.
What seems to be happening in a number of countries of the Persian Gulf region, South Asia, Central Asia and East Asia is that this jihadi frame of mind is being nurtured in the form of a template to carry out terrorism. A number of madrassas (religious schools) are playing an important role in fostering it. The purpose right now appears to be merely to destabilize existing governments, especially those that are fighting hard to modernize their countries and build bridges with the West.

Indonesia stands out as one such country in East Asia. It has established strong ties with Australia and is developing a highly complex relationship with China as well as with the United States.

Pakistan is carrying out similar policies in South Asia. It is also struggling to emerge as a vibrant economy, while it is continuing its domestic battles with al-Qaeda. When one examines the "Islamic enlightenment" - which was offered as a concept by Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf - it is quintessentially a South Asian phenomenon promoted by Sayed Ahmed Khan and Allama Altaf Hussein Hali of India and Allama Mohammad Iqbal of Pakistan in the 19th and 20th centuries. The whole idea of enlightenment has its roots in the Hanafi school of Islam, a more secular version that emerged in the thinking of the jadidists (modernists) of South as well as Central Asia.

The jihadis envision the policies of Indonesia and Pakistan as antithetical to what they are trying to achieve: some obscurantist notion of an Islamic caliphate that would want nothing to do with anything that is part of this globalized world.

The jihadis are helped by the fact that America's "war on terror" keeps them at the very center of the fray. Afghanistan, even though it is considerably more stable than Iraq, still appears to be at a point where it can take a turn for the worse. The Taliban and al- Qaeda nexus is very much alive and well. Iraq has become a hotbed of transnational terrorism. If the situation in Iraq were to get any worse, chances are high that political stability in Iran, Syria and Turkey also would be affected by it. That is exactly what the jihadis are hoping for.

In the meantime, the stability of Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and a number of Central Asian countries has remained highly questionable, with uncertainty ahead. Stabilize they must, but bombing incidents such as those in Bali only underscore how vulnerable these countries are. Even when there are no attacks on Musharraf, a bombing incident in Karachi or Peshawar resulting in many casualties reminds one that terrorists are still in charge, at least in the dark alleys (or even crowded places, as was the case in the Bali bombings) of those countries.

Despite these ominous signs, all is not lost. What is needed is a three-pronged approach to fight jihadis. First, there ought to be a radical revision of the curricula at madrassas from Jakarta to Jeddah, and from Karachi to Kuala Lumpur. This issue is too grave to be postponed.

These madrassas came into existence largely because governments maintained a hands-off policy in the realm of religious education. The institutions not only survived, but also never had to go begging for students, because the governments did not implement policies requiring compulsory universal education, and could not provide education to all their citizens. Consequently, the madrassas filled the need for free education of the poor and underprivileged. Since they operated by raising their own funds or by relying on funds from the Persian Gulf states, there was no official monitoring of their curricula or the qualification of their teachers.

In the case of Pakistan, the madrassas also became a tool of the government to "educate" (if one can loosely use that word) future jihadis, who were used in destabilizing Indian-administered Kashmir. The madrassas started to play that role during the 1980s, but have continued uninterrupted ever since. It is only in the post-September 11 era that the world has become aware of the role of the Pakistani madrassas in nurturing jihadis. No serious regional or global attempt to fight jihadis can afford to ignore a radical revamping of the curricula of the madrassas in a number of Muslim countries.

Second, and the flip side of the preceding, is to modernize the educational curricula of these countries, to equip youngsters to face the challenges of an increasingly complex world. The UK, Australia, as well as the US, have targeted Indonesia as one of the "priority countries" to be provided educational funds. Under a program entitled "Engaging with the Islamic World", Britain contributed US$1.8 million for such programs. Bush announced a six-year education program and committed $157 million during his visit to Indonesia in October 2003, but little of that money has been disbursed.

Third, there is a need for a Marshall Plan-like approach to modernize Muslim economies. Such programs should be aimed at industrializing these countries. In this regard, Indonesia and Pakistan are making ample progress in the realm of economic growth, but still need assistance. The brunt of such endeavors should go toward the economic development of Afghanistan and Central Asia, where economic underdevelopment is pervasive and jihad very much alive.

The US does not have to be in the lead as long as it plays a visible role. The necessity for a visible American role is there because no other country has so much at stake. Consequently, no other country has proved that it cares as much as the US. This Marshall Plan-like approach should replace the "war on terror", which has become a flopped approach because of its virtual obsession with finding a military solution to transnational terrorism.

The optimal way of responding to jihad is going to be long and slow and it will require a multi-dimensional approach for many years. While engaging moderate Muslims is a good start, it should not be considered as a silver bullet for fighting Islamic radicalism and extremism.

Ehsan Ahrari is an independent strategic analyst based in Alexandria, VA, US. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. He is also a regular contributor to the Global Beat Syndicate. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.