
By Dr
Nyla Ali Khan
June12,
2019
Masood
Ashraf Raja’s book ISIS: Ideology, Symbolics, and Counter narratives attempts
to come to terms with the transnational practices of Islam and Islamism,
constituted within historically and geographically specific points of origin
and migration. The specific religion and the specific local and national
contexts within which it is practiced shape the affiliations that Migrants can
fashion with their countries of origin. For while transnational practices do
traverse two or more national territories, they are forged within the enclosed
spaces of “specific social, economic, and political relations which are bound
together by perceived shared interests and meanings” (Stock 40). This issue of
context generates an interesting question regarding relations created by
transnational practices.
Masood
Ashraf Raja intelligently argues that social tensions and weaknesses in Islamic
theocracies like Pakistan are often redressed by an essential culture generated
by Islam and by the interplay of national, sub-national, and supranational
loyalties, which end up fortifying religious fundamentalism in national and
transnational communities. In the context of the mushrooming of organizations
like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, their religious and political practices
are clearly not limited to those trans-migrants who traverse two or more
national territories. Here I quote Emmanuel S. Nelson who observes that this
transnational social field may be (and is) reproduced by “the continuous flow
of ideas and information provided by global media, ethnic tourism, and
religious or secular festivals or rituals. All these mechanisms have played a
role in the re-emergence of transnational ties” (89). Ethnic, sub-national,
supranational, and transnational identities provide an alternative focus of
loyalty to the nation-state. Raja points out, “in the 2010 floods in the KPK
(Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) province of Pakistan, the Islamist charities were in the
forefront of providing aid to the victims,” thus shifting the loyalty of the
local populace (115-116).
As I
pointed out in my book The Fiction of Nationality in an Era of
Transnationalism, the movement in Iran, for instance, accomplished its goal of
dethroning the monarchy and imposing a fundamentalist regime with the aid of
the following factors: financial contributions from its diasporised minorities;
technological changes in the means of communication; the global phenomenon of
insurgent movements in Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iraq claiming to resist
their former imperial rulers, with which it allied itself; and the growth of
social networks expediting transnational migration and its concomitant
political and economic organization.
In
discussing the growth of such social networks, Raja points out that the
“mixture of government absence, more acute after the implementation of
privatization policies, and urgency of human needs in an emergency further
provides the ideal conditions for the Islamists to create a network of
loyalties . . . .Similarly, the problem of local law and order and the local
power vacuum in many areas also enables the Jihadists groups to fill the gap and
to create parallel loyalties that erode and challenge the loyalty claims of the
governments. In Afghanistan, for example, the rise of the Taliban was
inextricably linked with the political and civic chaos that followed at the
culmination of the Soviet-Afghan war” (116). Raja reminds the reader that the
conversion of Al-Baghdadi, Islamist insurgency, JayshAhl al-Suunahwa al-Jamaah,
or the army of the people of the Sunni community,” to full-fledged radicalism
followed closely on the heels of the invasion of Iraq by the United States
(13).
For
fundamentalist organizations, religion is meant to be a hostile and vindictive
force that ignores art and tradition. For instance, impassioned appeals of the
clergy to the outdated concept of Islam have bred rancorous hate against
“outsiders” and exploited the pitiful poverty and illiteracy of the majority of
Muslims in the subcontinent, who are unable to study progressive concepts of
the religion for themselves. This strategy of fortifying fundamentalism has
created a bridge between the “believers” and “non-believers,” which, I would
argue, is rooted in contemporary politics. The ideology propounded by the
ruling fundamentalist order reflects and reproduces the interests of the
mullahcracy.
Raja argues
that organizations like Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISIL politicize local populations
and instigate them to reject derogatory representations of non-Western peoples
that have been used to validate the global expansion of the former Soviet Union
and the United States of America. The epistemology surrounding ISIS and ISIL
does not require validation either from the modern West or from other parts of
the postcolonial East. Such organizations wage a war of symbolic utterances and
brutal acts, attempting to establish a system of domination based on hegemonic
constructions of a transnational Muslim identity. The political strategy of
these organizations is to assert their power within a national structure in
order to influence identities, fields of action, and ideologies that are not confined
to the boundaries of any one single polity. He asserts that only the Wahhabi
school of thought is amenable to the ideology disseminated by ISIS.
The viable
solution that Raja advocates to counter forces of extremism is the convergence
of Islam with social and economic democratization. I would add that this needs
to be underscored by responsible scholarship, judicial processes, and social
work.
I had
previously emphasized that it is extremely important for educated Muslims to
argue for a rational Islam and to seek to reconcile Islamic teachings and
democracy. We cannot afford to disavow the space of religion for
fundamentalists to do whatever they like with it. To keep fundamentalist forces
at bay, educated and rational people must endeavour to bring about a
reformation, so that religion can be perpetuated in a modern age as a liberal
force. We can try to combine the concepts of an Islamic state with the
principles of a socialist state, advocating social equality and economic and
political democratization. We need to keep in mind that communities can grow
historically within the framework created by the combined forces of modern
national and transnational developments.
The
politics of religion as a monolith is hostile to pluralism and evolution,
because it insists on the uniform application of rights and collective goals.
Such uniformity is oblivious to the aspirations of distinct societies and to
variations in laws from one cultural context to another.
Masood
Ashraf Raja’s positionality as a former soldier, a scholar, a US academic, and
one who values his Islamic heritage is clearly spelled out. He does not smirk
at the religious, provincial, and sectarian violence or growing obscurantism in
Muslim countries, because that simply doesn’t bode well for a peaceful
resolution and developmental politics. And that’s the reason that his book,
ISIS: Ideology, Symbolics, and Counternarratives, is incredibly useful to
policy makers and decision makers, particularly in South Asia.
Dr Nyla
Ali Khan is the author of Fiction of Nationality in an Era of Transnationalism,
Islam, Women, and Violence in Kashmir
Source: The Daily Times
URL: http://www.newageislam.com/radical-islamism-and-jihad/dr-nyla-ali-khan/convergence-of-islam-with-social-and-economic-democratization-is-the-way-to-counter-forces-of-extremism/d/118870