OVER 88 PERCENT OF THE people of the Muslim world are reported to be anti-America. But the response of Muslim states and Muslim masses – the so-called Muslim Ummah – to the proposed American war plans against Muslim Iraq has been relatively lifeless. Last weekend, nearly 30 million people, mostly non-Muslims, thronged over 600 towns and cities, mostly in the Christian west, to protest the threat of war on Iraq. The irony should not be missed. In Cairo, just 600 Egyptians turned out to protest, surrounded by 3,000 policemen. In fact, by way of brave contrast, there were over 2,000 anti-war Israelis in Tel Aviv, considerably more than the anti-war demonstrators in Lahore last week.
Part of the explanation for the stunning “silence” in the Muslim world lies in the fact that the Muslim masses are not generally used to expressing their mass views by way of protest marches and demonstrations. Their repressive leaders simply won’t let them. The “Muslim world” after all mainly comprises monarchies, military dictatorships and “guided” democracies (ala Pakistan). Western-type democracies with free elections, accountable institutions and conscious civil societies in which debate, discussion, criticism and non-violent protest are essential ingredients of politico-cultural discourse, are sorely missing.
In fact, transition from the Islamic empires of yore ruled by “oriental despots” masquerading as khalifas and Zil-e-Elahikings (soldier-rulers claiming to be shadows of God on earth) has given way to nation-states without democratisingor civilianising political structures. Thus the modern Muslim state today is characterised by masses who have been so depoliticised and disempowered by the state for so long that they are “politically fatigued” and inclined to be “pragmatic” rather than politically aggressive or action oriented.
Indeed, those who seek to protest against the authoritarian state are stamped as fitna (mischief makers) because both “stability of the state” and “obedience to the ruler” are “Islamic” virtues to be rewarded, while protest and disagreement are treacheries to be rooted out. This is why street protests are invariably thwarted by armed security forces. In other words, the concept of “democratic entitlement” – we are the sovereign people – that broadly characterises the secular democracies of the west and was much in evidence last Saturday in London, Paris, Rome and New York as a defining moment in the contemporary political culture of the west is critically missing in the “Muslim world”.
Worse, the neo-colonial “Muslim” regimes in Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the Emirates, etc, are all pro-America because they are critically dependent on America rather than on their own people for economic sustenance, political legitimacy and stability. This makes it all the more difficult for relatively ineffectual and “suspect” civil groups to mount any effective challenge to the state or its foreign allies. Any domestic protest against America or American interests in much of the Muslim world is often construed by the local pro-American Muslim regime as an attack on itself that is to be countered by suitable, repressive “law and order” measures. The only noteworthy protests in the Muslim world so far have been in Baghdad and Damascus where the anti-American authoritarian states managed to whip up over 200,000 protestors apiece, or in Indonesia where there is a strong Islamic movement at odds with the pro-America national regime.
A third factor is also relevant. Many “Muslim” countries are riven by bitter and often violent disputes between various Islamic sects or ethnicities. This makes it difficult to forge a united front against commonly perceived outside foes. Similarly, the struggle between secular and Islamic forces within such countries is sometimes so marked that they cannot arrive at a common platform to protest a mutually perceived injustice.
Pakistan, of course, betrays evidence of all these factors. Its people have been “depoliticised, dis-empowered and fatigued” by long periods of authoritarianism that have undermined the impulse for freedom and democracy. Its regimes have been consistently pro-America because America still remains the most important source of military and economic aid with which to stand up to “arch-enemy” India and protect its “national interests” thus defined. And the divide between the Islamic and secular forces is still strong enough to thwart an outright poll victory for the anti-America Islamists and preclude a joint anti-American platform of the “secular and the sacred”.
Therefore it is likely that the public policies of Muslim nation-states will be guided by the defined “national interests” of the ruling oligarchies of each state and not by any mass emotional recourse to the imagined interests of the non-existent Muslim Ummah. But underlying it all, one factor will probably dominate the private discourse of Muslim nations and ruling elites: the spectre of an American war on Iraq that might lead to hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslim deaths and thereby unleash the accumulated rage of the Muslim masses not just indirectly against America but also directly against the despotic domestic regimes that support, and are propped up by, America.
This is why no Muslim ruler, whether friend or foe of America, wants this war. The dilemma for the pro-America, non-democratic, dependent Muslim nation-state is how to help avoid war without irrevocably alienating America or support it without risking the fury of the repressed masses.