In the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed something startling appearing on the Muslim ‘net: conservative Muslims attacking the Pakistani Taliban. These include a series of posts from Abu Eesa ([1], [2] with links to four more) and the news that a great-grandson of Maulana Qasim Nanotwi, a founder of Darul-Uloom Deoband, has condemned the Pakistani Taliban as “more jahiliyya than Islam” (here is the BBC report in Urdu; not sure if there’s an English translation anywhere). This is a surprising turn, as I converted in a town where the Muslim community is dominated by Deobandis, and support for the Afghan Taliban was strong at the time.
I first became aware of it when I was sitting with a group of Sufi brothers who told me that their shaikh had said that there was no Islamic state anywhere except Afghanistan, clearly meaning the Taliban-controlled areas. They had answers to every objection, either denying or justifying everything the media was reporting them as doing. Making women wear burqas (real burqas, not niqabs)? That’s the Shari’ah. Encouraging the opium trade? All just propaganda from the kafir press, and they were probably paying the Afghan farmers to pretend they were growing the opium poppy anyway.
I found it ironic that they dismissed what even the more respectable western reporters were saying, when they would have readily believed them if they were saying that Muslims were being massacred by non-Muslims, and they had no record of lying and no reason to lie; they had reputations to protect, after all. The excuses were astonishing: “you can’t believe what she writes; she’s a Jewish woman” (both words emphasised); “our shaikh met their amir in Madinah”; “I read it in Dharb-e-Mu’min”; “even the secular Pakistani press call Mulla Umar ‘Amirul Mumineen’”; “they even have a ministry for enjoining good and forbidding evil” (this type of institution originated in Saudi Arabia). Dharb-e-Mu’min was a pro-Taliban propaganda sheet in Urdu and English printed in Pakistan and handed out at various Deobandi mosques, including the one I attended, and contained the false claim that the people the Taliban were fighting were communists (a minority of them may have been, but most were Muslims who had a long record of jihad against the Soviet occupiers).
The well-reported fact of the Taliban closing girls’ schools was excused on the grounds that, when the country had been “secured” (in fact, almost all of it had been by that time, except for the far north — and the presence of “enemy” forces in Badakhshan is no reason to keep girls and women out of work and school in Kandahar), the Taliban would introduce the best Muslim schools and universities in the world; but the chief argument in their favour always was that they brought peace and security and got rid of the warlords and warring factions, as even the western press acknowledged. Of course, if the Taliban really wanted to open Islamic colleges that were the envy of the Muslim world, they would have only had to announce it and scholars would have come from all over the world. It was no coincidence that the Taliban’s chief obsessions were doing away with music, making sure Muslims’ beards grew to the required length and making sure women covered themselves completely — exactly as was the case with so many western Deobandis, many of whom refused to accept that there were any valid differences of opinion on these issues.
Deobandis were not the only guilty party; “salafis” also published apologia for them (such as one in al-Jumuah justifying the pointless destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, which were a tourist attraction, which were not being worshipped and which previous Islamic rulers had not seen fit to attack). If they criticised them, it was for not going far enough, or for having Maturidi aqida and not demolishing any graves in Afghanistan. On the eve of the invasion, a number of English-language “salafi” websites, among them Salafi Publications, published a declaration from the Saudi scholar, Rabi’ al-Madkhali, calling the Northern Alliance “greater kafirs than the Jews and Christians … a vile alliance, a gathering of Baatiniyyah, Rawaafid (two categories of Shi’ites, the former more extreme), Communists, Atheists, Secularists and Socialists”, again conveniently forgetting the old mujahideen.
It would not have bothered me so much if the support had been justified on the grounds that the opposition were worse, which is debatable; the support was essentially partisan and unquestioning. This was well before 9/11, but they approved of the Taliban’s sheltering of Osama bin Laden; I am not suggesting that they would have approved of 9/11 itself, but the attitude of denial that many Muslims clung to for years afterwards is well-known (there were also those who approved of the Taliban principally because of their connection to Bin Laden, whom they believed was “doing jihad”, even though they may have disapproved of the Taliban’s behaviour towards women). Ironically, one of the “Sufi” group that first introduced me to the marvellous Taliban worked for GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters, a British government security agency) and another worked for a state weapons development centre.
Fast forward to 2009 and the disputed Iranian election, and I notice that many Muslims still have a reflexive anti-western attitude; anyone who appears to be “supported by the west” must be bad, and they disbelieve western journalists whose writings they enthusiastically believed, and flagged up on blogs and forums, when he was writing about enemies of Muslims (e.g. Robert Fisk) and newspapers which are not generally uncritical of western governments, such as the Guardian and Independent in London. They tell themselves that the whole opposition is just an invention of the CIA or Mossad, often recycling material from non-Muslims with their own agenda, harping endlessly on British and American plots to destablise the régime in Iran, as if that meant that this particular movement was a product of one of those. One of these articles alleged that the protestors were playing into the hands of the CIA, as if people should hold off challenging a rigged election to satisfy the designs another group of foreigners have on their country. In any case, the man they support is liberal only in comparison to Ahmedinejad and is a post-revolutionary establishment figure of long standing, so the dismantling of the Islamic Republic was not on the agenda.
Why is this? I always suspected, even though most of the pro-Taliban Muslims I met wore turbans and long white clothes, and their wives dressed in black and wore niqab, that none of them would ever have wanted to live under such a régime themselves, and now that a similar movement has stirred beyond the Afghan-Pak border mountains and into regions east of Peshawar, the thought of these people bringing their version of Shari’ah into Rawalpindi or Lahore was too much to bear. I am sure most of those who cheer on Ahmadinejad, call his opponents CIA dupes and insist that he won the election fair and square would not like him ruling their country. Could it be that to many of them, what they perceive as “the cause of Islam” is more important than the well-being of actual Muslims?
This perception is strenghtened by the reactions of Muslims to insults, such as the Danish cartoons, compared with that to actual persecution: there was a campaign to boycott Danish products, and there were demonstrations, riots and even incidents of arson, while with the exception of the long-running boycott of Israel, I have not heard of any campaign having been mounted against countries where Muslims are being persecuted, or killed by mobs, or where Islam cannot be practised freely, or where Muslim women or girls are being harassed. Consider the “campaign”, such as it was, against the French anti-hijab law; the street protests were tiny (and split), and I can’t recall any call to write letters to the French embassy or any other French institution, let alone to boycott French products; yet an insult to the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) from a privately-run newspaper results in a backlash against an entire nation.
Of course, historically Muslims were loyal to the Muslim ruler regardless of whether they were just or not, because they ruled according to Islam and, in any case, no ruler would live and rule forever. However, I believe that there is a difference between supporting the Muslim ruler against the Roman or Persian emperor and falling over oneself to excuse or justify the crimes of ignorant religious fanatics when they tyrannise Muslim women and deny them work, education and even medicine, or support a tyrant when he decides to rip up his own state’s rule-book just to maintain an anti-Western posture. I am not suggesting that Muslims should have supported the Western action to remove the Taliban, let alone that British Muslims should have supported British involvement in it (I didn’t support either), just that some Muslims (and it was not just ordinary brothers I am talking about) should have adopted a more critical and less partisan stance towards the Taliban the first time around, as it may have led to a moderation of their behaviour and fostered greater goodwill among Muslims and probably others; it could have become a great hope for the Muslims, rather than a source of terrible oppression for some and a dreadful embarrassment for the rest of us. If you do not want them running the place where you live, be it Lahore or London, don’t cheer them on in Iran or Afghanistan.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Qadri’s fatwa breaks no new ground
- “Hijab gates” bring out the bigots
- Attempt to link Islamic societies to terrorism
- Opposition to the war wasn’t just about anti-Americanism
- Muslim women driving, and contrasts on niqab
I often wonder how uniform the Taliban group are. It may be easier to judge higher ups based on their public deeds, but can the average Taliban member be considered a complete monster or hero? Do they all agree on how deal with their fellow countrymen and women? What are their true motivations: Islam, self-preservation, survival, power?
Until you live with the people, it really is impossible to say. It’s makes little sense to base one’s opinion on third party reports that always contain some amount of bias.
It is often said, but I really do believe that only Allah knows best. Which is why I do not envy anyone who has to make decisions that affects government foreign policy. How do they sleep at night? I couldn’t.
“If you do not want them running the place where you live, be it Lahore or London, don’t cheer them on in Iran or Afghanistan.”
Btw, completely agree there.
I never liked such groups or their sponsors. These people need health care, food, water and education. Why are the poorest Muslims whether they be in Afghanistan or Somalia the ones who are being bombed by Americans, while Al-Jazeera follows news on Michael Jackson’s death?
Personally, I wish they ban the Burqa in the whole of Europe and America cos the west will loose the moral arguments they use to bash us 24/7 on freedom. What difference will they be from Saudi hoodlums who police fashion in SA?
Leeds lad: You sound like a naive child. Do you reanning the ‘burka’ will result in the ‘west’ losin its moral argument? You don@t suppose the hijab will follow?
** do you really mean
“What difference will they be from Saudi hoodlums who police fashion in SA?” Still quite a lot, actually. There is a big difference between being forbidden to do one thing and forced to do one thing. Enjoining good leaves a lot fewer choices than forbidding evils.
Pakistani support for the Taliban in Afghanistan is reasonable, if not admirable, if you accept their belief and fear that any other government would be pro-Indian because of past Pakistani support for the Taliban. Among muslims in general it is very easy to approve of what you will not have to undergo yourself. That doesn’t only apply to muslims- Stalinists and Maoists were very enthusiastic about the exercising had no desire for foreigners to be able to use.
” if the Taliban really wanted to open Islamic colleges that were the envy of the Muslim world, they would have only had to announce it and scholars would have come from all over the world.” You overestimate the dedication of scholars and underestimate the cost of physically equipping such a university. That’s apart from the fact that such a university would probably have taught only what the Taliban had alreay ecided was islamic. Indeed, I suspect the Taliban’s attitude to knowledge would be that it is islamic, in which case they already know it, or it isn’t, in which case they don’t need to know it, and that many of their admirers have a similar comforting attitude until faced with the actual prospect of doing without unislamic comforts and conveniences.
I think what Yusuf is missing here is that the opponents of the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) now include the leadership of the Afghan Taliban. The latter have long argued that their supporters in Pakistan should (1) avoid waging war in Pakistan itself, (2) stop targeting civilians and (3) concentrate on the task of resisting NATO forces in Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have repeatedly urged TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud to adopt this line, but he has rejected their advice. One result was the emergence of an opposition within the TTP around Qari Zainuddin, who was recently assassinated, presumably under instructions from Baitullah Mehsud. Qari Zainuddin publicly declared himself to be aligned with the Afghan Taliban and promoted their strategy against that of the TTP leadership. The Afghan Taliban have no doubt concluded that the TTP under Baitullah Mehsud’s command cannot be dissuaded from a course of action that is highly damaging to their own interests and now regard him as an enemy. So it is not surprising that Deobandis with historic links to the Afghan Taliban should come out in condemnation of the TTP.
I broadly agree with the premise of what your saying the moral myopia is something I have often riled agsinst in our community it shows a lack of moral clarity.
However one point of contention with this piece though your right I find Mr Ahmadi Nejad a detestable man and indeed would not like to live in Iran, I think your buying into a bit of groupthink regarding the recent Iran election. While I wont discount the idea of fraud I ahve seen absoloutely no evidence at ALL of any wholescale fraud especially on the scale needed, its a bit of wish fulfillment of the oppostion and people who sre sympathetic to its cause.
In essence are you just not displaying the same habit you just were criticising just because you dislike Ahmadi Nejad you have bought hook line and sinker the oppostion story even with the glaring lack of credible evidence.
Salaam Alaikum,
Masha Allah, spot on as always, especially the last paragraph.
The Iranian people are getting out of control. It is an irreversible phenomena. The new generation is tired of the rule of ayatollahs and are attracted to the West. Their women wear semi-hijabs.
The mistake the Muslims keep repeating in history is that they keep supporting Muslim personalities and organizations even after they have seen signs of their straying from Islam.
There is a story of Salman Al-Farsi saying to Omar (may Allah be pleased with them) when Omar went up to the minbar: “You have no right to make us listen to you or oblige you!” because Salman saw him wearing two pieces of cloth when everyone else had received one piece. This is the example of how people should think of their leaders, always making sure the leader is following Islam fully, instead of supporting him when he is against Allah’s command. (Omar had borrowed the second piece from his son.)
“So it is not surprising that Deobandis with historic links to the Afghan Taliban should come out in condemnation of the TTP [for tryong to take over Pakistan).” Those that do some for tactical reasons and who look forward to the day a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan supports their Pakistani equivalents in taking over the country are honest if unpleasant. However, I would not be surprised if quite a few deobandis think the Taliban are good enough for Afghanistan and Afghans but would certainly not want such ignorant fellows running Pakistan.
“While I wont discount the idea of fraud I ahve seen absoloutely no evidence at ALL of any wholescale fraud especially on the scale needed, ” Obvious pieces of evidence: the fact that results were announced within hours of the count beginning, rather than days, as had happened with previous elections with lower turnouts; the exclusion of representatives of other candidates from poliing stations and from the count; the fact that in a country as large and ethnically and linguistically diverse as Iran Ahmenijad received about two thirds of the vote everywhere, including provinces where he had received less than twenty percent of the vote at previous elections. It’s notable that all three nonelected candidates have made claims of fraud.
” Obvious pieces of evidence: the fact that results were announced within hours of the count beginning, rather than days, as had happened with previous elections with lower turnouts; the exclusion of representatives of other candidates from poliing stations and from the count; the fact that in a country as large and ethnically and linguistically diverse as Iran Ahmenijad received about two thirds of the vote everywhere, including provinces where he had received less than twenty percent of the vote at previous elections. It’s notable that all three nonelected candidates have made claims of fraud.”
Well no not obvious pieces of evidence pure insinuation and conjecture actually, only a biased mind would call that forensic evidence, remember the burden of proof you need to overturn a poll. Otherwise you would have any group ( mostly self styled elites) with a sense of entitlement rampaging in the vain notion that they MUST have won. No the vote of Ahmadi Nejad shifted by 1%, additionally nearly every pre election poll predicted an Ahmadi Nejad win, the Wahington Post poll incidentally predicted a 2/1 win to AM.
Dealing with your points
1) Speed of the count: well if you had been observing the election the ministry had announced new measures to greatly speed up the count weeks before the count. Also even if we accept the notion the speed of the count must point to fraud then explain why Mousavi’s greatest contention is that he was told a mere 3HOURS AFTER the polls had closed that he had won in fact he was the first one to claim victory. How could he have known he had won in such a short time? Again conjecture not proof.
2) Ethnic provinces: Actually another falsehood he never won by a two thirds majority everywhere for example in Tehran province he only just scraped it. Also the ethnic issue is another false flag, the main contention seems to be because Mousavi is Azeri the Azeri must have votee for him, well no . Ahmadinejad was a one time governor of West Azerbaijan so you would assume he had significant support amongst Azeri’s to defeat an Azeri candidate there, additionally AM passed legislation to give greater prominence to the Azeri language in the civil, educational and leagal spheres.
3) Exclusion of Oppossition reps: Again no evidence just a case of ” he said, she said”.
Again I dont discount the idea that fraud occured but I am waiting to see Forensic incontravertible proof beyond the usual anomalies that takes place in a mass poll ( RE: Indian elections)
What are the Taliban? They’re not Deobandi, or Salafi - so what exactly are they? Not a good example, I can see!
A man who holds a degree in politics who don’t understand ‘Colour Revolution’ phenomenons that swept across Central Asia? Unheard! Or maybe not… Upton Sinclair once said:
Change the word ‘salary’ with ‘race’, and BINGO!
And double BINGO! if you can see through why White Liberal Imperialists (Robert Fisk, Lenin Tomb’s, Juan Cole) cheer for Gucci Revolutions. …. Hint, The White Man’s Burden.
gess: You mean, I don’t sign up to your particular dogmatic interpretation of politics. There has only been one other so-called colour revolution in Central Asia, namely in Kyrgyzstan. All followed rigged elections (the ex-president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, was notoriously corrupt and the man who initially ‘won’ was his anointed successor). The other two were in the European parts of the former USSR: Georgia and Ukraine. Iran is not part of the former USSR.
Every white commentator is a “white liberal imperialist” to you, no matter how obviously different their politics are - Richard Seymour (Lenin) is a communist, Juan Cole and Robert Fisk aren’t and I suspect Cole and Fisk don’t agree on an awful lot either. The fact is that Fisk is not normally one to parrot a western government agenda and if he suspected that the protests were a CIA-orchestrated show, he would have said so.
Of course, salary does not equate to race, and I have nothing to gain by opposing or supporting Ahmadinejad. I have no particular favouritism between Persians (like Nejad) and Azeris (like Musavi). I could go on but it will probably go in one ear and out the other.
Oh please, don’t put words in my mouth if you want to continue this topic.
Yusuf
You seem to be making unfounded allegations regarding the events surrounding the cso called colour revolutions, there has not been conclusive proof that the Ukranian elections were rigged at all. What there has been is the claims that they were rigged by the requisitely ” pro western ” candidates being parroted ad nauseum in the western media until it becomes a truism.
For example the recent elections in Moldova another US backed attempt at a colour revoltion, where the Commies actually won the election fair and square as it has transpired but did that stop the apparatchiks in the western medai painting it as democartic protestors asserting themselves against un democartic autocrats, NO. The internatioal observers did not even indictate concern over the elections but that did not stop the ” self styled ” opposition claiming fraus, as is the case with Iran amazingly EVEN BEFORE the election had taken place.
These people obviously feel they were cheated but that does not mean that they actually were, no amount of posts on youtube or twitter will change that fact. So here is to all those Iranians to poor to spend their days tweeting!
Your post is typical of the defeatist mindset found among many Muslims in the West, especially the Neo-Sufis and converts who want to project their Western prejudices onto Islaam. No doubt the Taliban have many mistakes and committed many errors. Yet, does that justify colloborating with the enemies of Islaam against them. To dismiss the sympathy that some Muslims might feel as pandering or partisan shows the death of the aqeedah of Walaa’ and Baraa’ among your kind. To colloborate with the kuffar against the Muslims, as the Northern Alliance, did is from the kaba’ir. Many of those who condemn the jihadist groups from the Muslims almost never condemn the secularists, liberals, and the tyrants who rule the Muslim world. Look at the reaction when some of the Sufi du’aat were attacked and the excuses that were made for them and your attacks on the Taliban.
“I ahve seen absoloutely no evidence at ALL” “I am waiting to see Forensic incontravertible proof ” You do know there is a difference between evidence and proof, don’t you?
What new measures were introduced to speed up the count? Casting the votes before the election would certainly help do so.
Ahmenidjad’s supposed popularity in Azerbaijan because of his role as a governor didn’t help him in 2005. Why should it do so now? Perhaps distance made the heart grow fonder and Azeris preferred him to stay well away in Tehran.
The fact remains that the figures this time are far more evenly spread throughout Iran than in previous elections. The claim that polla predicted 67% support for Ahmenijad is also inaccurate. Over a quarter of the people surveyed either had not decided or would not say which candidate they would support.
“Again no evidence just a case of ” he said, she said”.” As the Iranian government were the he and she that said representatives of other candidates [not opposition candidates- all four candidates had to have the approval of the Supreme Leader, so they cannot be described as opposition candidates] from polling stations and from the count it’s pretty good evidence that something odd was going on.
This has nothing to do with Yusif’s ideology (Neo-Sufis, Wala&Bara, Neo-Taliban, or whatever you call it), but my problem with this guy is his attitude; all knowing, all wise White Man and saviour of the Muslim world, the Great White Man! So Yusif, just because you have Pakistani friends (most likely fled from their tyrannic landlord, from the feudal system) does that make you an expert on the region? You wrote, that you were surprised by the u-turn from “conservative Muslims”. Have you thought about that your friends or bloggers are not the decision makers but people from their ancestor tribe region? And the issue is not religion, but tribe and power-sharing? There is alot sh!t going on that region; far beyond you can comprehend and accommodate in your tiny White Brain. Just an advice, stay out of it or at least drop your patronizing attitude! About the Cartoon and media, are you claiming that all Muslims from every corner of the world are only occupied on news from BBC? Do you know everything what is going on every Muslim’s mind? How many foreign languages do you speak? As someone said, North Tehran is not Iran, so is South London not the Ummah my friend. Regarding Central Asia, the issue is not geography.Is Africa or Middle East part of Central Asia? Why do we have the term Silk Road? Because there exists a physical Silk Road?
I’ll leave the quote up to you to figure out who wrote it. Show us what your degree is use of. About Juan Cole, Robert Fisk and the other White Liberal Imperialists, you only need to read their works. It is called the art of rhetoric. Being a white man and someone who has not lived through the White Man’s colonialism is harder to decode the rhetoric used by White Liberals. Or maybe you know these rhetoric but in denial?