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STRAIGHT TALK

The war within Islam

ZAFAR SOBHAN
AMERICANS can be so obtuse sometimes. Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times last week, entitled Letter from Tikrit, is a case in point. The column is in the form of a rhetorical device that Friedman frequently uses -- an imaginary memo from one political personage to another. Letter from Tikrit is an imaginary memo from Saddam Hussein to President Bush.
The entire column was filled with Friedman's typically annoying simplisticness, but what really caught my eye was a paragraph near the end of the column in which "Saddam" waxes philosophical on "the war of ideas" that the US is ostensibly waging in the Middle East:
"Yes, Bush, you and Blair have kicked off something very big -- a war of ideas with, and within Islam. It's as big as the cold war. But to win, you have to mobilize your whole society, as you did in the cold war. You are talking about trying to change a whole civilization, whose backward, fanatical elements -- when combined with modern technology -now threaten you."
Let's leave aside for the moment Friedman's apparently Freudian slip in writing that Blair and Bush have kicked off a war of ideas with Islam. Friedman can usually be relied upon to keep to
the official line that the US is not at war with Islam -- over ideas or anything else. Perhaps he miswrote -- or perhaps he meant to say that Saddam thinks that the US is waging a war against Islam -these imaginary memos to the president Friedman ghost-writes can get confusing that way.
My real point of contention with Friedman's column is with the assumption contained in the statement that the invasion of Iraq has kicked off a war of ideas within Islam and that it can thus bring about reform in the Muslim world.
Please bear in mind that Friedman won a Pulitzer prize for his supposedly penetrating analysis of the Muslim world following 9/11 and is generally considered to be the pre-eminent MiddleEastern affairs commentator in the US.
But what his Letter to Tikrit demonstrates is how utterly clueless Friedman is when it comes to understanding the Muslim world.
This is a principal reason why Muslims around the world are frustrated by US foreign policy and the Bush administration's simplistic prescriptions for peace and security.
It is the ignorance and the presumption that people like Friedman bring to any political discourse. The idea that the US and the UK -- that George Bush
and Tony Blair of all people -- have kicked off a war of ideas within Islam.
I have news for Tom Friedman. The war of ideas that is raging within Islam -- between moderate progressive Islam and fanatical fundamentalist Islam -- has been raging for a lot longer than since the US and the UK invaded Iraq.
In Bangladesh we have been waging this war for over 30 years, at least since the time of our Liberation War, when religious extrem-ists assisted the Pakistani army in their genocidal attack on the population and formed para-military death squads to terrorise the countryside.
Thankfully, in Bangladesh I would say that the forces of moderate Islam are winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the Muslim majority. We enshrined secularism in the constitution, and religious fundamentalists have never enjoyed widespread popular support, as evidenced by their consistently poor showing in national elections.
This is not to say that we have no extremists or that they are not dangerous or that they have not caused serious damage to the nation. In recent years there have been atrocities such as bomb blasts killing dozens at a cultural event and who can forget the
bombing at Ramna Park on the first day of the Bengali new year a few years ago?
There have been ferocious acts of carnage committed against the Hindu minority in the country -the most recent being the atrocity in Banhskhali where 11 members of a Hindu family were burned alive by persons unknown.
And religious extremists have lately stepped up their attacks on the country's Ahmadiya population for following a heterodox strain of Islam.
But, by and large, most Muslim Bangladeshis do not support the intolerant actions and ideas of the religious extremists, and subscribe to a more tolerant and moderate interpretation of Islam. The situation is far from perfect, but things are going reasonably well on this front in the war within Islam.
And Bangladesh is not the only Muslim country in which this war for the soul of Islam is being waged. From Indonesia to Pakistan to Turkey to Algeria to Iran -there is a war being waged for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world that has been going on for decades.
This war didn't start on September 11, 2001 and it most certainly didn't start when George Bush invaded Iraq nine months
ago.
Americans may not have known much about fundamentalist Islam before 9/11 -- except as a staunch ally in the cold war -- but we in the Muslim world sure did.
Bush and Blair didn't kick anything off -- they have just now belatedly realized what has been going on in the Muslim world for the past few decades.
What America learned on 9/11 was what we in the Muslim world have known for a long time. There is a small but deadly minority within the Muslim community who are dedicated to remaking the world in their image of Islam and are willing to go to any length of carnage to achieve their goals. And they have been waging a bloody war on the rest of us all these many years. Welcome to our world.
This understanding should be the context through which Americans view the invasion of Iraq. If people like Tom Friedman had even the slightest insight into the Muslim world, they would be able to understand just what the stakes are in Iraq -- for the West and for the Muslim world.
Far from kicking off something big, what Bush and Blair have in reality done is to blunder into an extremely delicate and finely-balanced political situation and
caused incalculable damage.
The fact is that that the US-led invasion of Iraq has made things tremendously difficult for those of us on the moderate side of the divide.
If Bush and Blair understood that the war within Islam predated their invasion of Iraq, they might be able to comprehend just how devastating the invasion has been to moderates in this war.
They would have known that invading Iraq would accomplish nothing beyond strengthening the hand of the extremists and undermining the moderates.
They would have understood that they will never be able to bring about the change they desire in the Muslim world through force.
It is true that massive reform is needed in the Muslim world -- but for this reform to take place, it must come from within. It cannot be imposed by the West.
The more they try to impose their ideas of reform on the Muslim world, the more Bush and Blair undermine the very reform they claim to seek.
It would be bad enough if the only casualties of this misguided foreign policy were the US and the UK. But the real long-term casualties are the foot-soldiers in the war within Islam.
The invasion has done nothing more than to stoke the anger and bitterness and resentment that permeates the Muslim world, and the fury and frustration that Muslims feel about the invasion is breeding a new generation of fundamentalists.
The invasion of Iraq has been a disaster for the war for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.