Religion and Security in South and Central Asia

K. Warikoo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138895331
• eBook ISBN: 9781136890192
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Religion and security play an important role in traditional societies. In South and Central Asia, traditional and moderate Islamic beliefs and practices with strong indigenous and Sufi content are diametrically opposed to radical Wahabi and Taliban brands of Islam intolerant of other cultures and groups. The emergence of radical extremist and violent Islamist movements poses serious challenges to the secular and democratic polity, inter-religious harmony, security and territorial integrity of states in the region. As such, religious extremism, terrorism, drug trafficking and arms smuggling are viewed by various countries in South and Central Asia and also in the West as the main threats to their security.

Against this backdrop, this book provides local perspectives on religion, security, history and geopolitics in South Asia and Central Asia in an integrated manner. Presenting a holistic and updated view of the developments inside and across South and Central Asia, it offers concise analyses by experts on the region. Contributors discuss topics such as the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the politics and practice of Islamist terrorism in India, and the security challenges posed by religious radicalism in Bangladesh. The book makes a significant contribution to South and Central Asian Studies, as well as studies on Regional Security.

1
Introduction

K. Warikoo

Religion and culture play an important role in traditional societies. The traditional and moderate Islamic beliefs and practices with strong indigenous and Sufi content in South and Central Asia are diametrically opposed to the radical Wahhabi and Taliban ideologies and practices which are intolerant of other cultures and groups. The emergence of radical and extremist Islamist movements in South and Central Asia is the main source of instability and conflict in this region. The rise of radical Islamist groups has been influenced by the leading ideologues of Islamic fundamentalist thought – Sheikh Muhammad ibn-Abd-al-Wahab (1703–91), Jamal-ud-Din Afghani (1839–97), Ali Shariati (1933–77), Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini (1909–89) – leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Party of Iran, Hassan-al-Banna (1906–49) – founder of the Ikhwan-al-Muslameen (Muslim Brotherhood) and Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and Maulana Syed Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903–79) of Pakistan – the first Amir of the Jamaat-e-Islami. These ideologues emphasised that political power is indispensable to the establishment of an Islamic state. The emphasis by the Islamist radicals on the supremacy of their ideology and practice of pan-Islamism which is based on the concept of Ummah (community of believers), transcending national boundaries, ethnicities, creeds, race and all other distinctions, is at the root of violence, conflict and instability in parts of South and Central Asia and elsewhere.

If one goes by the strict definition of the term “Islamic fundamentalism”,it stands for a return to the doctrines of Islam in their original form as were practised in medieval times. It could also mean idealising the historical past of Islam and calling for a return to “pure and original Islam”, which can be achieved through peaceful, lawful, cultural and spiritual means. But in practice, the focus of religious radicals has been Islamisation of the state rather than the reform of individuals. Though Muslims like any other non-Muslims have multiple identities – religious, ethnic, tribal, linguistic or territorial – the emphasis by the religious extremists on the Islamic communal identity puts them on a collision course with the state and other groups. A section of Islamist intellectuals, Ulemma and activists have been seeking to blur the distinction between Islam as a religion and nationalism. They prop up the Islamic political consciousness by politicising already existing religious traditions and practices and by resisting change and modernisation. The concept of Ummah or Millat is being invoked to abet, support and legitimise the secessionist movements of Muslims living in non-Muslim states. Religious extremism poses a major challenge to the secular and democratic polity, pluralistic social order and inter-religious harmony.

The concepts of Dar-al-Islam (country where Islamic law prevails) and Dar-al-Harb (country where Islamic law does not prevail) and jihad (holy war) as advocated by the Islamists envisage a perpetual state of confrontation between Islamic and non-Islamic states. The division of humanity into two clear cut groups – the faithful (momin) and the un-faithful (kafir) and the stringent rules laid down for the aliens (zimmis) or the subjugated communities, thus drawing a dividing line between the Muslims and non-Muslims, is at the core of Islamic fundamentalist ideology propounded and practised by the extremists. While propagating puritanism and puritan life style and the meticulous observance of the prescribed code of conduct, the Islamist extremists isolate the liberal Muslims from the faithful (momin) and try to coerce them into submission. In pursuit of this ideology, stress is laid on construction of mosques, acquisition of land for congregational prayers and graveyards, building of madrassas, teaching of Islamic theology, enforcement of their injunctions at gun-point, censuring the veneration of ziarats (shrines) and sufis, closure of places of entertainment, exclusion of music and fine arts, strict observance of hadith or tradition, and indoctrination of Muslim minds at all levels, making religion and politics essentially complementary to each other and negating the achievements of democracy, secularism and modernisation.

The Islamists do not agree with the modern concept of democracy and secularism. To a jihadi, Islam is his religion and his nation. To him, Islam transcends geographical boundaries, ethnicities, creed, race and all other distinctions. Maulana Mawdudi, while describing all other systems as irredeemably flawed, floated the idea of pan-Islamic jihad and gave the call for use of arms. He believed that democracy led to chaos, greed and mob rule, that capitalism fostered class warfare and inequalities and that communism stifled human initiative and curbed freedom of religion. So, Mawdudi proposed jihad and an Islamic state as the only remedy to these ills of modern times. In theory, jihad in Islam was meant to cerate an egalitarian social order where the poor and the deprived would be treated fairly and with dignity. But what would have been a social, political or economic struggle against inequality, injustice and deprivation, has been turned into Qital (violence) by Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamist militant groups which have been spearheading extremism and terrorism.

The rhetoric of political Islam gained popularity due to its response to growing economic disparity and discontent, corruption, political failures, and the moral bankruptcy of modern and Western material culture and value system. The Cold War era witnessed the rise of Islamic fundamentalists to power – in Iran through Islamic revolution, in Sudan through military coup and in Algeria through democratic means. And the post-Cold War era saw the resurgence of Islam in Central Asia particularly in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, radicalisation of society and politics in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and the rise of Mujahideen and the Taliban to power in Afghanistan. The Islamic challenge is further compounded by the booming Muslim population, and the growing number of devout, conservative and assertive individuals making up the Muslim middle class alongwith their rising socio-economic profile.

Wahhabi social and cultural conservatism, Qutbist political radicalism, Khomeini’s ideology of exporting Islamic revolution, Jamaat-e-Islami’s pan-Islamism and Hizb ut-Tahrir’s concept of an Islamic Caliphate based on Shariah provided the ideological foundation of militant political Islam which in turn provided a fertile base for the militarised form of Islam represented by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It hardly needs to be emphasised that the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other extremist terrorist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, East Turkestan Liberation Organization, Hizbul Mujahideen, Harkat-ul-Jihad-ul-Islami (HuJI), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM) etc. have been in the forefront of violence and terrorism in South and Central Asia.

With the disintegration of the former USSR and the emergence of newly independent Central Asian states – all having a predominantly Muslim population – a new geopolitical situation arose in the region. Due to its geo-strategic proximity to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China, and being a distinct geopolitical entity, developments in Central Asia and adjoining regions have a direct bearing on South Asia. The rise of the Taliban to power in Kabul in September 1996, which turned Afghanistan into the centre of religious extremism, global terrorism, drugs and arms trafficking, brought the entire region into the focus of global attention. The establishment of a radical Islamist order in Afghanistan and the active involvement of armed Islamist militants in cross-border terrorism and jihad (holy war), whether in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or some other CIS countries, has adversely affected regional security, peace and stability in South and Central Asia.

The Afghanistan crisis influenced all the Central Asian Republics. The rise to power of the Taliban affected those countries, which were seeking to build secular democratic states. In Central Asia, pan-Islamic ideology gained popular appeal due to its rejection of moral degradation, erosion of values and corruption caused by modernisation, communism, and economic and political failures. It was also a reaction to the moral bankruptcy of modernity and alien Western values. Islam came to be projected as a better alternative to secularism, materialism and communist social and political order. Islamic revivalism offered a viable route to the Central Asian Muslims in their rediscovery of Islamic roots and cultural heritage and in their search for Central Asian identity in the post-Soviet order. However, the majority of the Central Asian Muslims who belong to the Hanafi sect of Sunni Muslims and are mostly the followers of indigenous Sufi orders, are averse to adopting the rigid puritan brand of Islam being propagated by extraneous pan-Islamist zealots. The strong national consciousness of Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Kazakh and Kyrgyz identities is deep rooted in the respective Central Asian Republics which are unlikely to allow the collective pan-Islamic Caliphate sought by the Islamists. Besides, the experience of violent conflict, bloodshed and huge economic losses suffered by Tajikistan and Afghanistan acts as a stark reminder to the Central Asian people of the worst possible implications of Islamist extremism in the region. Though the Central Asian Republics followed different approaches to the Afghan conflict, they have shown unanimity over the threats posed by the religious radicalism of Taliban, terrorism and drug trafficking.

The first wave of political Islam appeared in Tajikistan in 1992 seeking to make the country an Islamic state. Tajikistan witnessed bloody civil war and conflict during the early and mid-1990s, which fragmented the society and polity, besides causing severe economic damage to the country. In the late 1990s, the country moved forward towards reconciliation between Islamic opposition and the government. After the Tajik settlement, the Uzbek militants who fought alongside the Tajik Islamists broke away and openly linked up with the Taliban. The crisis deepened during the Taliban period when Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda turned Afghanistan into the hub of international terrorism and narco-trafficking. Even though war against terror in Afghanistan was launched over seven years ago, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are now posing even greater threat to peace and stability in Afghanistan and the entire region. The new disturbing trend is that the resurgent Taliban are adopting Iraq style suicide bomb attacks resulting in large scale death and destruction.

Since early 2004, Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Waziristan areas of Pakistan have become the havens from where armed bands of Pashtun, Uzbek, Chechen, Uyghur and Arab extremists and terrorists belonging to bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF) have been operating and striking at different places. These groups support bin Laden’s pan-Islamic ideology and work for the establishment of an independent Islamic Caliphate comprising Central Asia, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. The events in Pakistan have demonstrated that by using extremist ideology and terrorism as the tools to expand the strategic, ideological and even economic frontiers in South and Central Asia, the patron state has brought peril to itself. So much so that Pakistan’s parliament for the first time recognized the threat from extremism and terrorism, when in a joint session it unanimously passed a resolution on 22 October 2008 stating that “extremism, militancy and terrorism in all forms and manifestations pose a grave danger to the stability and integrity of the nation state”.

During 2009, a record number of Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces died in militant violence, propelling Pakistan into the ranks of the world’s most perilous places. There were over 12,600 violent deaths across Pakistan, which is 14 times more than in 2006, in the spate of suicide bombings and militant attacks by the Taliban and Pakistan-based Tehrik-e-Taliban. The Afghan Taliban, Tehrik-e-Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Al Qaeda are closely allied and have been pursuing a common anti-west and anti-India agenda. The Pakistani establishment, particularly the army and intelligence agencies, seeks to use these jihadi groups as instruments of securing Pakistan’s strategic depth in Afghanistan and Central Asia vis-à-vis India. This explains Pakistan’s military’s reluctance to take on Siraj Haqqani, the Afghan jihadi chief, who has been operating from North Waziristan. To quote the well known Pakistani analyst Ahmed Rashid,

the Pak army is loath to even acknowledge the presence of the Afghan Taliban leadership that is based in Baluchistan province and North Waziristan. The Pakistan army is likely to push Afghan President, Hamid Karzai to accept a Pakistani brokered deal to form a pro-Pakistan government with the Taliban in Kabul.

Hence, the continuing state of violence, conflict and instability in the region.

Central Asia has been experiencing turbulence, though the existing governments have managed to control the religious extremist eruptions. Historically speaking, Islam has had deep roots in Uzbekistan. Even during the Soviet period, the structural relationship between religion (in the form of Mufti) and state was retained. The clergy is strong and can influence society and politics in Uzbekistan. In Central Asia, the focus of Islamic revivalist and radical groups has been the Ferghana valley, a densely populated and Uzbek dominated territory divided between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Religious radicals and Hizb ut-Tahrir have been quite active in Uzbekistan which has been a centre of traditional Islamic learning and scientific knowledge. Way back in December 1991, some Uzbek Muslim youth led by Tohir Yuldashev and Jumaboi Khojaev (alias Juma Namangani) organised protests in Namangan. Later on, they formed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which started receiving funds from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Whereas Juma Namangani fought alongside the Islamist radicals in Tajikistan, Yuldashev went to Chechnya to fight against the Russians. After the rise of Taliban to power in Kabul in September 1996, both Namangani and Yuldashev announced the formation of the IMU at Kabul, with Namangani as the Amir and Yuldashev as its military commander. In 1998, the IMU joined the IIF of bin Laden. The IMU aimed at the overthrow of President Islam Karimov and the establishment of an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. The period 1996–2001 saw the IMU operating from Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan and stepping up its activities inside Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in particular. Later in 2001, the IMU changed its name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan (IPT), calling for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia comprising five Central Asian Republics and Xinjiang province of China. After Namangani and a number of IMU cadres were reportedly killed in a US military strike in October 2001, Yuldashev along with remaining IMU cadres shifted his base to South Waziristan in Pakistan. Though the Islamist groups have gone underground due to strong and tough government measures, the ideological influence of these groups and organizations over the people in Uzbekistan remains strong.

Islam Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan in his prognosis of the situation in Central Asia, dilates upon the “deceptive attraction” of Islamic fundamentalist Wahhabi ideology to a section of Muslims in Central Asia ascribing the same to its populist ideas of justice, rejection of luxury, greed and corruption. He, in unambiguous terms, rejects the ideas of “politicisation of Islam and Islamisation of politics”, drawing a clear distinction between the cultural and spiritual values of Islam and its misuse for gaining and exercising political power. Karimov views Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to Uzbekistan as it would disrupt peace, stability and civil and inter-ethnic harmony, and also discredit democracy, secular polity, and the multi-ethnic and multi-religious state of independent Uzbekistan. He stressed the need to promote traditional Islam in order to neutralise the threat of Islamic fundamentalists and extremists. Islam Karimov’s prognosis of the situation in Central Asia demonstrates the fact that the leadership in Central Asian states is alive to the threats to security and stability of these newly independent countries.

The void left by the setback and casualties suffered by the IMU after 9/11, has been filled up by a new wave of political and militant Islam represented by the Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party). Hizb ut-Tahrir claims to be a pan-Islamic movement seeking to overthrow the existing political order and to build an Islamic Caliphate in Central Asia. The religious extremists and terrorists have been operating under the banners of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Akromiya, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and Tableeghi Jamaat in Central Asia. President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has been expressing his concern over the existence of extremism, separatism and terrorism in the region, which he describes as “forms of war”. Nazarbayev points to the “agitation by Tablighi Jamaat and Hizb ut-Tahrir in South Kazakhstan and Zhambyl oblasts”. Religious radicals in Central Asia are reported to have joined together in 2002, under the umbrella of a new underground organisation called the Islamic Movement of Central Asia which brings together the IMU, Kyrgyz and Tajik radicals and Uyghur separatists, sharing a common objective of forming the Islamic State in Central Asia. Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) of Tajikistan joined the Tajik government after the peace accord was signed in 1997. As such the Islamic movement in Tajikistan used both its political organisation and armed wing to secure power. Today it has both the legally recognised political party and also an illegal political group which are operating clandestinely.

Religious radicals and secessionists have been challenging China’s sovereignty in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. China is concerned over the three evils of religious extremism, international terrorism and separatism, which are seen as major challenges to regional peace and security. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China occupies a pivotal position i...

Table of contents

• Central Asia research forum
• Contents
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Taliban’s resurgence in Afghanistanand Pakistan
• 3 Pakistan’s slide towards Talibanisation
• 4 Resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan
• 5 Roads to perdition?
• 6 Islamist extremism in Kashmir
• 7 Communal peace in India
• 8 Islamic extremism and the terror network in Bangladesh
• 9 Religious radicalism in Bangladesh
• 10 Hizb ut-Tahrir
• 11 Islamic radicalism in Central Asia
• 12 Islam in contemporary Tajikistan
• 13 Ethno-religious separatism in Xinjiang
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index