Musharraf's anti-jihad jihad: too late?
What's this? Pakistan's Musharraf has called upon his countrymen to stop "loving Allah above everything else and resisting worldly temptations"? Well, not exactly. He has denounced the jihadi culture, and he, his hearers, and the rest of the world know what he meant: the culture of violence and murder that justifies itself by the traditional Muslim concept of jihad -- that is, warfare against unbelievers, as it has been understood by Muslims since the seventh century. From the BBC:
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has warned religious and political parties against promoting the culture of jihad, or holy war.He said foreign nationals would not be allowed to use Pakistani territory to carry out militant activities in the region.
Speaking at a conference of several hundred clerics and religious scholars in Islamabad, the president said only by eliminating religious extremism can the growing perception about Pakistan being an intolerant society be changed.
Pakistan has arrested more than 500 al-Qaeda suspects who fled Afghanistan in the wake of US-led attacks that ousted the hardline Taleban regime in late 2001.
The president's hard-hitting and candid remarks about militancy and Islamic extremism in front of so many clerics left little doubt that the Pakistani military leader means business.
Intolerant society
His real targets were the relatively small number of militant groups that had been involved in sectarian violence within the country and were encouraging trouble in nearby countries like Afghanistan.
President Musharraf said a handful of extremists have taken the entire country hostage and were directly responsible for the growing perception in the world about Pakistan being an intolerant society.
They had been targeting religious minorities in the country, he said, and were spreading the culture of jihad in neighbouring states.
President Musharraf said there was no room for jihadi culture in the country and no individual or political party would be allowed to preach violence in the name of religion.
He said the tribesmen in the country's border region with Afghanistan have been warned against giving shelter to foreign militants and the armed forces have been instructed to take strict action against those using Pakistani territory to create trouble in neighbouring countries.
President Musharraf said even though Pakistan regards the ongoing insurgency in Indian administered Kashmir as a freedom struggle, it would like to resolve the outstanding dispute with India through the recently started peace process.
He described the elimination of extremism from the country as his biggest challenge and asked the religious scholars to support him in his mission to create a culture of tolerance in Pakistan.
Musharraf, of course, has been in up to his neck -- despite his seeming straightforwardness, that military posture, that no-nonsense tone that seems so sincere and invites Western trust -- in support of Jihadist activities in Kashmir. It must be infuriating for knowledgeable Indian military men to see the U.S. forgiving billions of dollars in debt, looking the other way as A.Q. Khan, that master Jihadist who stole Dutch secrets (a "triumph of Islamic science" that theft), was pardoned, and so on. If Musharraf has genuinely realized that the Jihad, if pursued further, will be the end of the line for Pakistan, and possibly Islam as we know it --il fait son petit Ataturk -- then the litmus test will be when the Americans demand, as demand they must, to know precisely where those 42 nuclear weapons are, and who is in control, and to demand joint control so no Pakistans, no General Mirza Gul preaching Jihad, or anyone else, can get control. If Pakistan doesn't like it -- that's too bad, because a pre-emptive strike on those nuclear facilities, Musharraf must know, is no longer out of the question. Pakistan's economy can be cut off at the knees, its population prevented from leaving (a complete ban on air traffic) and a good many Pakistanis, including Musharraf's son (no doubt the use of family members as pawns is deplorable, but nuclear weapons used against Infidels, I'm afraid, is to be regretted far more), sent home to enjoy or endure a thoroughly Islamic life in a thoroughly Islamic country. Pakistanis, including the elite that while not sharing Islamist sympathies tends to deny their basis in orthodox Islam, will suffer to -- no access to Western health care in Boston or on Harley Street, no education for their children at Yale or Oxford, no delights of the flesh in Paris or Rome. If the only way out is via Afghanistan, a large number of Pakistanis in the ruling elite will begin to clamor for surrender of control of those nuclear weapons -- not the tens of millions of fanatical or idiotized people on the bottom (for whom A. Q. Khan remains a hero), but the hundreds of thousands on the top of the Pakistani heap. Until Musharraf recognizes that the United States knows that it cannot base policy either on his physical survial, nor on the chance that any successor will share his (real or feigned) views, and that it will make plans to deprive Pakistan of nuclear weapons with or without his cooperation (and if without, it will be accompanied by economic pressures so severe that Pakistan, as a country, will implode), he who keeps Ataturk's biography for bedside reading will realize that the jig is up.
Further indulgence of Musharraf is not necessary; he knows that the implosion or destruction of Pakistan can be arranged from afar, beginning with a complete boycott of textiles, an air embargo, a cutoff of all Pakistani migration to the West (and perhaps even to the Arab Gulf states, whose rulers can also be made some American offers they will not be able to refuse --how hard would it be, after all, to help the Shi'a of al-Hasa Province to seize the Saudi oilfields for an expanded Shi'a dominion in Iran and southern Iraq?) It should not be beyond the wit of American policymakers to undo the decades of appeasement of Pakistan. Musharraf seems, in his speech about the Jihad, to sense this. Let him be put to the real test: Pakistan's 42 nuclear weapons. The handiwork of A.Q.Khan, that devout Muslim, must -- coute que coute -- be undone.
Would someone please explain how a dictator like General Musharraf can promote tolerance when the same Islamic laws that ordain jihad also ordain sharia?
There's something hypocritical about that.