Mullahs – Enemy of Islam?

VIEW: The fountainhead of religious extremism —Yasser Latif Hamdani

Pakistan will have to undo the Maududian infiltration of its state and
society. It means liberating our campuses of organisations like the
IJT. It means purging the state and its machinery of elements that are
furthering the Jamaat‟s hate-filled agenda
My article last week on Faisal Shahzad‟s radicalisation elicited
unprecedented response on the issue of Islamic organisations
operating in the US, thereby necessitating this sequel. There are
things that need to be said before it is all too late.

Faisal Shahzad‟s e-mail to the “peaceful ummah” as published in the

New York Times (http://documents.nytimes.com/e-mail-from-faisal-
shahzad#text/p1) leaves no doubt about Shahzad‟s state of mind. It
was his association with Islamic organisations in the West that
transformed him into a global jihadist in the classical Qutbian mould.
His language, his denunciation of the West and of hypocritical
governments in Pakistan, his appeal to “Khilafah” had all the
fingerprints of a campus or a local Islamic body, possibly one
infiltrated by the Hizb ut-Tahrir and/or global activists of the Jamaat-e-
Islami (JI).

All this however should not mean that we should shut ourselves off
from the reality of religious extremism in our own neck of the woods.
The lashkars and the mujahideen Pakistan‟s cynical and wretched
establishment prepared against the Soviets, with American blessing,
are obviously one part of the overall story. Religious extremism in
Pakistan has a sordid history, one of the state‟s constant retreat in the
face of religious parties — the same religious parties that had opposed
the very creation of Pakistan — and horrible compromises with
extremist and fascist elements.

To recap, Islamic religious organisations have been part of the

political landscape of the subcontinent ever since Indian
independence leader Mahatma Gandhi brought them into politics under
the guise of the Islamist „Khilafat Movement‟. It bears repeating that
when Gandhi first encouraged Islamic religious clerics for his own
anti-imperialist goals, the lone dissenting voice of reason was that of
Pakistan‟s founding father Jinnah who told Gandhi not to bring
“unwholesome elements into public life”. Yet it is Pakistan — ironically
— that has come to be associated with the same unwholesome
elements today.

After partition, religious extremism in Pakistan reared its ugly head

when Majlis-e-Ahrar, a vociferously anti-Pakistan Islamic party during
pre-partition days and an erstwhile ally of Gandhi, in 1953 started its
campaign of terror against a hapless sectarian minority with the help
of another witchdoctor of dubious history, i.e. Maulana Maududi, who
till then had become completely irrelevant after his opposition to
Jinnah and the Muslim League. To the credit of Pakistan‟s judiciary, it
swiftly handed down a death sentence for the person who is
singlehandedly responsible in providing the ideological foundations for
not just the Islamisation in Pakistan but the global Islamic jihad.

Nevertheless the Maulana‟s sentence was commuted and it is

Pakistan that has suffered as a result. Subsequent to commutation, his
book, Islam and Communism, was picked up, reprinted and distributed
allegedly by CIA‟s JI desk all over the Muslim world. The idea was to
use Maududian extremism to stiffen resistance against Soviet
expansionism. It is therefore ironic that the JI, Maulana Maududi‟s
enduring creature, which in 1977 received funds from quarters in the
US to overthrow the increasingly pro-Soviet Bhutto, is today the
bastion of anti-Americanism. Wonders never cease.

The fountainhead of religious extremism in our country is Mansoora,

the headquarters of the JI, in Lahore. Unless Pakistan and the US
seriously take a look at the activities of the JI, any meaningful
progress in stopping extremism feeding this terror will be impossible.
The JI actively works on Pakistan‟s largest university campuses to
spread its doctrine of hate and bigotry not just against other countries
such as the US but religious and sectarian minorities in Pakistan. Its
student wing, the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba (IJT) is modelled after the
National Socialist Party. The JI seeks to infiltrate the army, the air
force and the civil bureaucracy to weaken the state‟s resolve against
extremism in Pakistan. Key members of the JI sit in departments such
as education introduce nothing but poison in Pakistan‟s young minds.

The JI‟s mouthpiece, the Daily Ummat, is full of (fifth) columnists who
advocate not just extremism but open violence against minorities.
Maududi has inspired a generation of Islamists globally. His exegesis
of the Holy Quran is widely read and followed by the Salafi Islamic
order, predominantly found in the West and the main source of
terrorism in the name of religion. Along with Sayyid Qutb of Egypt,
Maududi remains the most widely read Islamist ideologue for relatively
more affluent Muslims in the west. Within Pakistan too, the target
audience is the middle class. It is, therefore, not uncommon to find
inter-city bus services advertising during their in-coach entertainment
the publications containing “sagacity and wisdom that defeated
Communism, Secularism and Capitalism, which flowed from the pen of
Sayyid Qutb and Sayyid Maududi” (direct translation). In the
triumphalist Islamist narrative, Qutb and Maududi are prophets without
parallel.

Pakistan — if it is serious about tackling terrorism — will also have to

undo the Maududian infiltration of its state and society. It means
liberating our campuses of organisations like the IJT. It means purging
the state and its machinery of elements that are furthering the
Jamaat‟s hate-filled agenda instead of doing their job. The time has
come to take stock of the damage this body of conspiratorial and
bigoted men has done repeatedly to the body politic of Pakistan.

It must be remembered, for those who still care about the reasons why
we made this country in the first place, that Jinnah‟s Pakistan and
Maududi‟s Pakistan are mutually exclusive. Pakistan must decide here
and now: do we wish to make Pakistan a prosperous and democratic
state, which is at peace home and abroad ala Jinnah? Or do we wish
to make Pakistan a violent dystopia run by maniacs and religious
extremists with twisted ideas about religion ala Maududi?

The former route shall save us a lot of heartbreak and humiliation. The
latter will ultimately lead to our destruction.