Going Deeper
The necessity of inter-faith dialogue
FRANCE'S top administrative court has recently turned down the application of a Moroccan lady for citizenship because she wears a burqa and her religious practices are not compatible with French laws on secularism and gender equality. Nicholas Sarkozy's urban affairs minister, herself a practicing Muslim of Algerian descent, views women wearing burqas as people living in prison and "an insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and is totally devoid of democracy."
Once again Islam is in the dock and the fundamental right of practicing one's religion appears to have been violated. The on-going inter-faith dialogue currently being held at Madrid, so essentially needed for social cohesion in multi-religious countries, will be put to the test by the results the conference achieves.
One cannot but wonder whether Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran who is representing the Vatican in the Madrid conference can dissociate himself from the spirit of the speech delivered by Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in Germany in which the pope had extensively referred to a dialogue between Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an unnamed Persian scholar that presented an unsavoury portrayal of Islam.
Robert Kagan in his book The Return of History and the End of Dreams considers the struggle of radical Islamists, "the most dramatic refutation of the convergence paradigm," is doomed to fail because "in the struggle between traditionalism and modernity, tradition cannot win -- even though traditional forces armed with modern weapons, technologies, and ideologies can do horrendous damage."
Ultimately, Robert Kagan feels, Islamic radicalism may have less impact on international affairs than the struggle between great powers and between forces of democracy and autocracy. French theorist Oliver Roy also concludes that globalisation has reduced Islam to Westernised cultural and ideological forms like Christianity and that a single Islamic form no longer exists.
Giles Keppel, on the other hand, is not as quick as Francis Fukuyama to declare the victory of liberal democracy and therefore mankind's end of ideological evolution and "the end of history."
Keppel in his book The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West is more cautious because the militants are no longer illiterate and disorganised but have an incredible sense of geo-politics. Even in conservative Iran, female literacy is around 80% and the marriage age is 22 years (though legally it has been brought down to 9 years).
In contrast to Oliver Roy's surmise that Westerniaation and globalisation has become pervasive in Muslim societies, Keppel fears that if the Muslim diaspora in the West decides to join hands with the radicals then the Western world may have to opt for historian Niall Ferguson's prediction about developed economies' "retreat into fortified cities … [of a] Dark Age more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century."
Such apocalyptic predictions pre-suppose a united Muslim ummah in revolt against the modernity and enlightenment that the Judeo-Christian world had ushered in centuries back. This kind of presupposition may be faulty because the Muslim society today is fractious, there are internecine conflict among different sects professing Islam including Saudi Arabia where the ruling family is fighting a precarious battle to retain their control over state machinery, a battle being waged by an educated class imbued with Western values that would like to see Western institutions of governance with greater accountability of the leaders to the people and the clerics who are hell bent to retain their leadership and would like to keep a system of Islamic faith that is "pure" in their eyes and any deviation from it would lead the Muslim society towards "degenerative Western way of life."
The very fact that Osama bin Laden has taken refuge in terrorism testifies that his brand of Islam does not enjoy the affection of the great majority of the Muslims. The unreserved condemnation of the entire Muslim world of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and its support of the decimation of the Taliban when the US-led coalition forces invaded Afghanistan are further testimonies, if any are needed.
The soft power that the US had been using after the Second World War, albeit acceding to "democracy deficit" in many parts of the Islamic world as dictated by the circumstances of the Cold War, had won the hearts and the minds of the developed and the developing worlds till the Bush administration decided to use hard power by invading Iraq.
Except that the invasion ousted Saddam Hussein's regime, the benefits accruing to the Iraqi people consequent upon his disappearance are yet to be seen. What is certainly being perceived is the dislike of the policies of the Bush administration, not only in the Islamic world, but also among the allies of the US, and, more importantly, among the people who belong to faiths other than Islam.
Harvard Professor Joseph Nye in his new book The Powers to Lead has recommended that "effective leadership requires a mixture of soft and hard power skills that I call smart power. The proportion differs with context." The admission by US defense secretary Robert Gates of "creeping militarisation" of US foreign policy and calling for further strengthening of the US State Department because in the future security threats are more likely to emanate from poor or failing states than from rising powers supports the use of "smart power" that Joseph Nye is now advocating.
One may ignore Islamophobia, but the world has been victim of Islamic militancy on innumerable occasions and Bangladesh has been no exception. A prominent economist has calculated that the net profit of institutions run by Islamists amount to about 12 billion takas annually, out of which ten percent is spent on regular party activities, providing remuneration and allowances to about half a million party cadres, and running armed training camps. He observed that while the number of primary schools since liberation has doubled, that of Dakhil madrasas has increased eight-fold.
Delhi-based South Asia Intelligence Review in one of its report linked "increasing activities of Islamist extremists with then ruling coalition" in Bangladesh and then Indian foreign secretary warned that India would not ignore her neighbours' conduct "to allowing the use of their territories for cross-border terrorism and hostile activities against India."
Our authorities, by and large, have been dismissive of Indian allegations levelled against Bangladesh. One hopes that for the sake of peace in this region all countries of South Asia would respond to the security concerns of the member states of Saarc so that terrorism does not act as an impediment on our way to further socio-economic progress.
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