interesting reflections on mumbai attacks

As the only surviving gunman of the Mumbai attacks in November is about to go on trial, I've come across some interesting comments about the attacks on the website of novelist Gregory David Roberts ("Shantaram") who spent many years living in Mumbai. First of all he refuses to refer to the likely attackers as "terrorists", but calls them "jihadists" instead. He explains:

 I use the term Jihadists, rather than the purely Arabic term Jihadi, which is used in Arabic news media and in other Arab forums, because I think it is important that we – meaning all those who want Jihadist attacks to stop, as much as we want the injustices done to Muslims that provoke the attacks to stop – do not provide the attackers with intellectual or emotional support. By using their own term for themselves, we reinforce their sense of their own justice and power. By using the term “terrorist”, we reinforce our own sense of their power over us.

I find this a very compelling argument. Roberts says a major reason for what is called terrorism is that it has worked in many cases:

Many times, individuals and even nations – through their elected representatives – argue that Jihadists will not achieve their aims through these acts of violence. But this response comes from a failure to understand the Jihadists. The fact is, if one of their 3 main objectives is to avenge the injustices done to Muslims around the world, then they don’t expect to survive their attacks, and they don’t make claims or demands. The violence is an end in itself, because the violence done is an act of revenge. If we don’t acknowledge this, and respond to it rationally, we can never stop the mindset that inspires such attacks. Furthermore, if we don’t acknowledge the fact that sometimes, against the best wishes of people of good will, the terror attacks actually provoke the results intended by those who use terror, we’ll never develop a comprehensive, rational, and effective response that eventually stops the attacks. We have to acknowledge that sometimes terror works, because we allow it to work, through our responses.

Roberts argues that Jihadists are not as powerful and well-organized as it might seem to many, and get stronger because of repression and anti-Muslim policies. He has many reasonable things to say about Pakistan and democracy, but in his list of remedies also points out one important issue which is totally neglected in the public debate these days:

Almost all the money that pays for Jihadist attacks comes from Saudi Arabia. This is a historical reality. When the British government created the nation of Saudi Arabia, and created a royal family to rule it, The House of Saud, the Bedouin Wahabbists – who follow an extreme form of Islam, that underpins Jihadism – were recruited to support the weak royal family. In exchange for the support of the warrior Wahabbis, the Saudi royal family agreed to support the Wahabbist Jihad agenda across the world. Almost every Koran carried by a Jihadist is printed in Saudi Arabia, and almost every dollar in their pockets comes from Saudi Arabia. If we want the attacks to reduce, and finally to sop, we have to choke off this supply of money from Saudi Arabia (...)

islamic fundamentalism and western imperialism

A day after another horrible suicide bomb attack, this time at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, I'd like to quote here some of the last words of a book I just finished: "The Last Mughal" by William Dalrymple. It's a remarkable work about the uprising in India, in Delhi 1857 against the British, which failed and in the end brought down the Mughal dynasty. Dalrymple points out that the British (wrongly) branded this revolt as a kind of global Muslim conspiracy, whereas it was in fact an uprising within the British Indian army which was mostly made up of high-caste Hindus. But this idea of the "Muslim conspiracy" and its fallout have, in hindsight, had dramatic implications for Hindu-Muslim relations in South Asia and probably also for the global relationship between the West and the Muslim world. I cannot go into all the details - you have to read the 500 pages yourselves - just one more explanation before the quote: Dalrymple contrasts the narrow-minded British approach with the tolerant ways of the Mughal court and its last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Today, West and East again face each other uneasily across a divide that many see as religious war. Jihadis again fight what they regard as a defensive action against their Christian enemies, and again innocent women, children and civilians are slaughtered. As before, Western Evangelical politicians are apt to cast their opponents and enemies in the role of 'incarnate fiends' and conflate armed resistance to invasion and occupation with 'pure evil'. Again Western countries, blind to the effect their foreign policies have on the wider world, feel aggrieved to be attacked - as they interpret it - by mindless fanatics. 

Against this bleak dualism, there is much to value in Zafar's peaceful and tolerant attitude to life; and there is also much to regret in the way that the British swept away and rooted out the late Mughals' pluralistic and philosophically composite civilisation.

As we have seen in our own time, nothing threatens the liberal and moderate aspect of Islam so much as aggressive Western intrusion and interference in the East, just as nothing so dramatically radicalises the ordinary Muslim and feeds the power of the extremists: the histories of Islamic fundamentalism and Western imperialism have, after all, often been closely, and dangerously, intertwined. There are clear lessons here. 

a witch-hunt of indian muslims?

Five bombs exploded in the Indian capital Delhi on Saturday. The attackers targeted well-known markets where the well-off middle class citizens go for their weekend shopping and entertainment. No wonder, then, in a way, that the mainstream Indian media put pressure on the government to do more against terrorism. But on the other hand, there's a growing sense that the fear of terrorist attacks is being used to target the Muslim minority in India. Asghar Ali Engineer, a leading Muslim social scientist and activist from Mumbai, writes:

This is alienating the community besides allowing real culprits to escape and it has grave consequence in the sense that bomb explosions continue as real culprits are never nabbed.

As Yogi Sikand writes on the website The South Asian,

it appears that powerful elements within the state apparatus are deeply implicated, along with Hindu terrorist groups, in a witch-hunt of India's Muslim citizens.

Ajit Sahi, a journalist with Tehelka magazine, recently did a three-month investigation into SIMI, the "Students Islamic Movement of India", which has been routinely accused of masterminding terrorist attacks in India. But, writes Sahi:

The government had seven years to bring proof of its claims about SIMI, but it hasn’t yet done so and it appears doubtful it will bring some dramatic proof anytime soon.

Tehelka has published Sahi's findings about the "SIMI fictions" in great detail on their website. There are touching stories about youngsters such as a doctor, who have quite obviously been falsely implicated in terrorism cases, but continue to be stigmatized. But why don't the mainstream media talk about all this? In a recent interview, Ajit Sahi said:

I am just a simple journalist. Doing these investigations into the SIMI affair and exposing the heaps of lies of the police and the state about the blasts and the arrested persons has made me feel purposeful as never before. I am 42 now, and so far I have been chasing money and highly-paid jobs. But now, after going through all this in the course of the investigations I have been doing into charges against innocent Muslims, I have more clarity as to my purpose in life... Every decent journalist should ... investigate the truth. I have to speak out the truth and expose the lies that the government and its agents are so blatantly spreading.

Well said, and not only for India...