31 Jul 2006: ISS Today: Who is Afraid of the Islamic State?

31 July 2006: Who is Afraid of the Islamic State?

 

It has not been that long since the days of phrases like “Coolie Christmas” were used to explain the Muslim festival of Eid ul Fitr to Afrikaner farmers in my grandparents` adopted hometown of Brits in the old Transvaal. Aside from the obvious pejorative reference to Indian South Africans, that the only similarity between Eid (which marks the end of the Muslim fasting month) and Christmas is that both are religious festivals; somehow this was lost in translation.  But if there was a dearth of information on Islam before, the past few years have made the topic something of a cash-cow for ‘experts’ and ‘political analysts’ on Arabism, Islamism and of course the obligatory T-word.

 

As one expert explained recently, “my interest in Islamic studies started way before 9/11, so it is not new to me”. And while Muslims rile at the connection made between their faith and acts of terrorism, they are increasingly angered by what seems like an ongoing attempt to use that false association to undermine legitimate social movements in large parts of the Muslim world.  Hamas is only the most recent addition to the long list of opposition social movements to have been brushed with the all-purpose “terrorist” paint.

 

The inherent short-sightedness of this strategy is yet to be appreciated by our global superpower, driven largely by its own oil-guzzling national interest. That support for Hamas, and now Hezbollah, continues to be bolstered through the arrogance of US imperial overstretch, fails to register on Washington’s radar screen.  All that seems to be blinking is the word “Islamic”.

 

The coverage of the most recent events in Lebanon and Palestine attests to the knee-jerk response to Muslim-dominated movements. This phobia is also exemplified in the unfolding drama in Somalia, which is being described as a fight between the internationally bolstered secular Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the religious Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). Despite the high level of grassroot support for the UIC, not least because of their role in rehabilitating health, education, security and welfare in the war-devastated region, the international community’s main concern is their stated aim of establishing an “Islamic state”. In a country made up almost exclusively of Sunni Muslims, one has to ask what other kind of state there could possibly be? Certainly, the interpretation of Islam and, indeed, the expression of political Islam varies from region to region, but to make this the focal point for international intervention gives the ‘war on terror’ a dangerous twist.  In the context of Somalia one would think that establishing a state would be a good starting point in itself.

 

And yet as the analysts talk up the so-called “clash of civilisations”, there are very few who can actually explain the meaning of an Islamic state once they have got past the “folklorisation of Islam” in the form of the Huduud or penal code aspects of Sharia law. And this is largely because there is no single truly “Islamic” state in the world today. What we do have in many countries is an uneasy marriage of colonial era laws with the addition of the Sharia penal code system. Even in Sudan, the country most notorious for its “Islamist” project, legal experts admit that Sharia is unevenly incorporated into the judicial system. What is not appreciated by the plethora of talking heads is that the very idea of the need for an Islamic state has long lost its gravitas in the Muslim world. It is no so much the capturing of the state through religion that is driving support for movements like Hamas, but the return to socio-economic justice that finds it real expression in the principles of Islam as a form of governance.

 

In his critique of Oliver Roy’s thesis on the ‘failure of political Islam’, Francois Burgat encapsulates what is perhaps the biggest failing of scholars and politicians alike when he asks,

“Is Roy not a little hasty in his conclusion? Or is it a way of stressing that the Islamist discourse should never have been, and should never be, taken literally….Instead of a failure by the Islamists, perhaps we will one day have to accept that it is the outsider’s dominant view which has failed, because it has chosen to ignore, if not to fight against, the possibility that Islamism could evolve.”

 

Mariam Bibi Jooma