Dealing with Islamic Terror : Indian subcontinent

Introduction

The latest SAARC summit ended with two concerns, food security and security from terror. The Indian PM tried to engage with his Pakistani counterpart, and tried to bring up the issue of possible involvement of the ISI (the so-called secret services of Pakistan) in the Kabul blasts as well as being the masterminds behind the continuing sequence of blasts in India. This has been an old story in the Indian subcontinent. The reason this appears to be such a stubborn and shocking or new phenomenon, is because the history of the Indian subcontinent has been carefully and meticulously reconstructed to suppress and edit out all references to the violence, ruthlessness and greed of Islamic behaviour on the subcontinent.

The primary requirement to deal with Islam inspired terrorism is to understand the sources of inspiration and ideological motivations for acts of terror. Economic motivations supposed to be originating from deprivation, are not sufficient to explain Islamic terrorism, as we will show later, since the available data shows there are segments of Indian sub-identities which are even worse off than the Muslims as a group. That the focus is more cultural subjugation of non-Muslims together with initial enforced resource transfer from non-Muslims to Muslims, is revealed in the cultural agenda of the terrorists – targeting secular schools to force Muslim children into Madrassahs for brainwashing, targeting non-Muslim cultural icons, trying to impose the cultural aspects of the Sunni-Wahabi Sahriat in the supreme obsession with the imposition of the dress-code on women, etc.

Both Pakistan and Bangladesh were faces of the search for Muslim pre-emergence as the dominant force on the subcontinent. The founders of both countries have deep roots in the Islamic orthodoxy that took root under military patronage on the subcontinent. These countries took the form of nationalism since the period was otherwise not conducive to religious fundamentalism and revivalism. Islam had not yet reorganized itself around its two principal inspirational strongholds, Saudi Arabia and Iran (we will discuss why its most radical forms developed from apparently isolated individuals in the fringe countries with a long history of strong civilizational pre-Islamic traditions – Egypt and India), as these were under quite tight colonial control. Nationalism was the only cover to make the first tentative steps towards Islamic resurgence.

These were never founded by their founders as modern, post religious nation-states, even if that was the formal face of their constitutional declarations. We have to compare and analyze their actual actions and practical affair-related statements and policy declarations rather than what they said for international and non-Muslim consumption. We have to understand and analyze the forces within Pakistani society that pushed up the relatively more orthodox groups around the Punjabi and Sindhi elite on the Western side, and the fanatically anti-Hindu during the partition riots within the Muslim League who later on became th face of Bangladeshi nationalism with the suppression of the more Left leaning, and socialist groups like those around Maulana Bhasani.

Islam needed and used the rising sentiments of nationalism, which were a fruit of a variety of complex factors including overthrow of old style direct military imperialism, as well as the competition that the successors of imperialism faced against the socialists and Communists for the control over the world. This was the primary reason that Islam found a natural ally in the post imperialist European realignment to combat Communism for world dominance. The successors of imperialism, in their blindness to tackle Communism, made a series of epic blunders, for which now not only itself, but the rest of the world having no part in this blunder, also has to suffer.

One of the major blunders was the compromise with Islamic retrogression and fundamentalism. Islam was seen as a good immunization against any Left leaning tendency anywhere – the more retrogressive and primitive and ruthless, the better. Islamic leadership were never fools. The whole history of Islam, in its theocracy, in its practical historical behaviour, in its core texts, has always shown flexibility in its tactical and strategic moves. The West’s monumental blunder was allowing the Islamists to get away with the liquidation of any modernizing or progressive force, ranging from women’s rights to educational reform and not to mention any group or force that clashed with the Islamic clergy’s medieval grasp over its community. Islamic leadership realized this weakness in the West, and utilized it to full advantage, and eliminated all modernizing, democratic forces all over the Islam majority areas of the world with the exception of Turkey, where the forces were more evenly balanced, and the authoritarian, pro-Western regime there was already more reliable as a bulwark against Communism.

After this long lasting post-imperialist Islamic consolidation, Islam was finally ready to launch its hidden long term agenda once the USSR weakened. Weakening of the USSR, removed two strategic obstacles in the rise of Islam as the sole dominant force on Asia at one stroke, it removed the West’s dominant interest in Asia and therefore led to a period of withdrawal of both Western and Soviet interventions. This was the turn around needed by Islam in its long term strategy. It did not feel strong enough to take on China, and so manipulated China’s own ambitions and shortsight in the classic Islamic pattern of using one “hated” unbeliever against another.

What we are seeing on the Indian subcontinent is an expansive phase of this strategic move by Islamic leaders.

To be continued…