By
James M Dorsey
Jan 07,
2021
Silent
about rising sectarian violence in Pakistan, Gulf States vying for religious
soft power risk exposing the limitations of their concepts of an undefined
‘moderate’ Islam that is tolerant and endorses pluralism.
Countries
like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have so far turned a
blind eye to mounting sectarian sentiment in Karachi and Punjab province
against Shiites and Ahmadis, sects viewed as heretics by conservative Sunni
Muslims.
Saudi
Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan appears to have passed on the
opportunity to demonstrate the kingdom’s claim to leadership of a Muslim world
that adopts principles of religious tolerance and pluralism when he apparently
refrained from raising increased sectarian violence in talks with Prime
Minister Imran Khan and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi during a visit to
Pakistan last month.
The Gulf
States’ silence is the latest example of a geopolitics and economics-driven
refusal to speak out on repression of or discrimination against Muslims in
various parts of the world, including China’s north-western province of
Xinjiang and India.
The silence
is particularly noticeable given that the Gulf states have greater influence in
Pakistan than in either China or India and in some cases bare a degree of
historic responsibility for developments in the world’s second most populous
Muslim-majority country. Pakistan is home to the world’s largest Shiite Muslim
majority.
The refusal
to speak out highlights the utility of rival religious soft power efforts, not
only by the Gulf states but also by Turkey and Iran that often in the case of
the energy-rich monarchies seem primarily designed to curry favor with Western
governments and influential Jewish and Christian communities and employ their
status as models of a vaguely defined form of ‘moderate’ Islam to position
themselves as rival leaders of the Muslim world.
Gulf states
likely refrained from standing up for an Islam in Pakistan that embraces
minority strands of the faith because it may be interpreted as a goodwill
gesture towards Iran. In failing to do so, Gulf states missed an opportunity to
dial down tensions in the Middle East.
Saudi
Arabia’s refraining from raising the issue is particularly significant given
the kingdom’s past support for militant anti-Shiite groups in Pakistan and
harsh anti-blasphemy legislation that carries the death penalty.
Saudi
Arabia, in contrast to UAE and Qatar, has so far passed on providing
humanitarian aid to Iran to cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Iran has been
hard hit by the pandemic because of government mismanagement and harsh US
economic sanctions.
The failure
to speak out about sectarian violence in Pakistan also constitutes a missed
Saudi opportunity to put the kingdom’s best foot forward as US President-elect
Joe Biden prepares to take office. Mr. Biden is anticipated to adopt a more
critical attitude towards Saudi Arabia compared to his predecessor, Donald J.
Trump.
“I don’t
expect anything from Saudis. The militants are an asset for the Saudis as well
as the Pakistanis. They have no interest in cracking down on these
organizations given geopolitics,” said Jaffer A. Mirza, a London-based
researcher focused on religious minorities in Pakistan.
Saudi
reluctance to speak out against sectarianism played into the hands of Mr. Khan,
who has failed to condemn mass protests that denounced Shiites as “blasphemers”
and “infidels” and called for their beheading. Nor has Mr. Khan taken issues
with the mushrooming number of blasphemy cases being filed against Shiites in
the courts.
Orthodox
Sunni Muslims accuse Shiites of blasphemy by refusing to recognize the three
‘righteous’ Caliphs that immediately succeeded Mohammed because they believe
that the Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, was deprived of his right to lead the
Muslim community. It is that belief that gave birth to Shiism.
Pakistani
officials have blamed the mounting tension on increased militancy among Shiite
groups supported by neighbouring Iran. In August, the government banned a
little known group, Khatam-Ul-Ambia, on charges that it was recruiting
Pakistani Shiites, on behalf of the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, to fight
in Syria alongside Iranian forces supporting President Bashar al-Assad.
The
anti-Shiite campaign is waged among others by Ahl-e-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat (ASWJ),
the successor to the outlawed, anti-Shiite group, Sipah-e-Sahaba that was long
backed by Saudi Arabia in its effort to counter the appeal of Iran’s Islamic
revolution as well as its sway among Pakistani Shiites.
A ban on
ASWJ, that supported Mr. Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in the
2018 election, was lifted at the time.
Asked in
2016 about Saudi support for his group, ASWJ leader Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi
said over a lunch of chicken, vegetables and rice: “Some things are natural.
It’s like when two Pakistanis meet abroad or someone from Jhang meets another
person from Jhang in Karachi. It’s natural to be closest to the people with
whom we have similarities… We are the biggest anti-Shiite movement in
Pakistan.”
Mr.
Ludhianvi was invited three years later to attend a Saudi embassy-hosted
reception in honour of the visiting imam of the Ka’ba in Mecca, Sheikh Dr Abdullah
Awad Al-Juhany, at a time that the ASWJ leader was calling for the killing of
Shiites.
A Shiite
news network published pictures of an alleged meeting between Saudi ambassador
to Pakistan, Nawaf bin Saeed Al-Maliki, and Mr. Ludhianvi last September.
The rising
sectarian tensions in Pakistan raise the specter of the South Asian state
becoming again the venue of a low-intensity Saudi Iranian war similar to
violence that erupted in the 1980s and 1990s and in more recent years against
Hazara Shiites in the province of Balochistan that borders on Iran.
Pakistani
Sunni Muslim militants asserted in 2017 that Saudi money was pouring into
militant anti-Shiite religious seminaries that dot the triangle where the
borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet.
Hazara
Shiite protesters this week refused to bury ten coal miners who were kidnapped
and executed on Sunday by the Islamic State in a bid to force the government to
take responsibility for their protection and bringing the perpetrators to
justice.
Unconvinced
by promises made by Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmed Rasheed, the protesters
demanded that Mr. Khan personally come to talk to them.
In response
Mr. Khan tweeted on Wednesday: “I want to reassure the Hazara families who lost
their loved ones…that I am cognizant of their suffering & their demands. We
are taking steps to prevent such attacks in the future & know our neighbor
is instigating this sectarian terrorism.”
The
government, rather than acknowledging the attack as part of renewed sectarian
violence that is not only on the rise but also being further institutionalized,
blamed the violence on nationalist Baloch insurgents allegedly supported by
India.
The
government has long sought to counter Baloch nationalism and separatism by
supporting militant Sunni Muslim groups in the province.
Militants,
believed to be Baloch nationalists, raided a security outpost in the remote
Harnai district of Balochistan, killing at least seven paramilitary soldiers
and wounding several others days before the latest attack on the Hazaras.
Discrimination
of Shiites and Ahmadis was further institutionalized with a law passed in July
by the Punjab regional assembly that exclusively adopted ultra-conservative
Sunni precepts.
Critics,
including Pakistani Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry, warned
that the law would “plunge us deep into sectarianism and religious extremism.”
The critics
noted that various stipulations of the law such as the banning of allegedly
derogatory remarks against holy personages and hate speech, censorship of
publications, and the duty to refer to the finality of the Prophet when
referring to Prophet Mohammed, were already part of earlier legislation.
“There has
been a deafening silence by the elite moderate Sunnis of our country over the
increase in prejudice against Shias,” wrote a Pakistani Shiite, who is
considering seeking asylum abroad. He could have said the same thing about
major Sunni Muslim contenders for religious soft power in bids to become or
cement their status as leaders of the Muslim world.
----
Dr.
James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang
Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in
Singapore and the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute.
Disclaimer:
The views of the writer do not represent the views of the New Age Islam
Original
Headline: Gulf state religious
moderation falls by the wayside in Pakistan
Source: The WION News
URL: https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/saudi-arabia,-uae-qatar-turned/d/124015
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