The Islamic revolution could not be televised in Pakistan for a simple reason. It never happened.
Despite predictions by two hardline clerics that Pakistanis would rise to their side after President Pervez Musharraf ordered his forces to end a week-long siege by storming the Red Mosque, a radical stronghold in Islamabad, most Pakistanis ignored the clerics and their increasingly belligerent and violent followers. The assault left dead 75 supporters of those hardline clerics, two brothers who ran the Lal Masjid and who each in turn predicted that their “martyrdom” in the standoff with government forces would spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. One brother and deputy leader of the mosque, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was indeed killed in the fighting while the other brother, Mohammed Abdul Aziz, predicted a revolution during his brother’s funeral. It never happened.
Why?
It probably didn’t help that Abdul Aziz, who for months had taunted Pakistani authorities with his incendiary statements and who had encouraged a morbid and violent nihilism in his students, was arrested during the siege while trying to escape disguised as a woman covered in a head-to-toe burqa. Who can take seriously a cleric whose legion of women followers were notorious for their all-black, head-to-toe burqas and matching vigilante zealotry – and yet who tried to slip away disguised as one of those burqa-clad followers whom he was all too happy to leave behind in the mosque compound to continue flying his flag of defiance in the face of security forces? Those he left behind were mostly women and children.
Most importantly, Pakistanis ignored the call of the Red Mosque clerics because they do not want to be ruled by radical Islamists whose idea of the perfect Muslim is the Angry Bearded Muslim Man and the Covered in Black Muslim Woman.
I have long complained that the media – Western in particular – is worryingly fond of those stock figures as the visual equivalent of the perfect soundbite. Invariably, stories about Muslim issues are illustrated with images of Angry Bearded Muslim Man and Covered in Black Muslim Woman, and their garb is usually lazily described as “Islamic clothing”. Abdul Aziz’s followers belong to that section of the Muslim community that actually believes that hype. They really do believe that is the only way to be Muslim. For them, ultra-orthodox and radical is absolutely the only way to be authentic. And they wield batons and rifles and bombs that they don’t hesitate to use against those who disagree.
In retaliation for the siege and assault on the Red Mosque complex, radicals have set off a wave of bomb attacks across Pakistan, killing more than 160 – each attack is a bloody example of how all too willingly, radicals kill fellow Muslims.
So for residents of Islamabad, watching the siege and bloody denouement at the Red Mosque compound, the obvious question must’ve been: “When you have a military dictator already running the country (Musharraf), why replace him with another kind of dictator (Abdul Aziz aka Angry Bearded Muslim Man) who all too happily wields that trump card of Islamist despots: God.”
Such a choice – that between a dictator and an Islamist – is a false choice. But it is sadly the only one on offer to many across the Muslim world.
The Pakistani public has for years now been the hostage of a siege they share with many of their co-religionists across the Muslim world. Pick a country at random throughout the Muslim world and it is painfully obvious that the public there is caught between the rock of dictators – of either the military kind or of the royal kind – and the hard place of religious zealots. Those dictators, almost without exception, have stripped the political agenda of their respective countries bare of any kind of alternatives beyond the State and the Mosque. In the run up to the Red Mosque siege and assault, Musharraf had behaved absolutely according to type.
When Pakistani commandos stormed the Red Mosque, it was a fight that had been long in the making. Musharraf had for years preferred to flex his military might against his liberal and secular opponents than to confront Islamic radicals, leaving them ample room to run amok with their militant and often vigilante ideology.
And run amok they did. Long before the eight-day siege and subsequent assault, Pakistani authorities were heavily criticized for their lenient approach towards the huge complex, which Reuters news agency in April described as resembling “a rebel camp with gun-toting students on the rooftops.”
Over the past six months, Red Mosque clerics, determined to impose their version of an Islamic law they believed Pakistan should abide by – sent students to kidnap alleged prostitutes and police in an anti-vice campaign and to pressure music and video shops to close. After the July 2005 bombings in London, police attempted to raid the mosque and the adjoining seminary to investigate its link with one of the bombers. Baton-wielding women prevented security forces from entering the compound.
In April Abdul Aziz announced plans to set up vigilante Islamic courts and exhorted his followers to become suicide bombers if their Taliban-style movement was forcibly suppressed. So it was no wonder when those same students became bolder in their confrontations with authorities.
The ground for the siege and ultimate assault was laid when clashes erupted between the students and security forces on 3 July after about 150 students attacked a security post at a government office near the mosque and snatched weapons. Sixteen people were killed in the violence that continued the next day. But it was only when the radicals killed the senior army officer on the scene that Musharraf ordered his forces to crush the Red Mosque rebellion once and for all.
Seen along such a timeline, who could be surprised that the behaviour of the Red Mosque’s increasingly audacious clerics and students would lead to a faceoff with authorities? What wasn’t so obvious was what the Pakistani public would do – essentially whose side they would take. While they ignored protests in support of the Red Mosque radicals, thousands of Pakistanis have joined protests over Musharraf’s firing of the Supreme Court’s chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry – successful protests, it is now clear, since Chuadry’s reinstatement on 20 July.
Even so, how about that for choice?
I am fed up of those who say that Muslims want Islamists to run their countries for them. In Egypt, given the choice between Mubarak’s ruling party and the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood (which for the first time in years was allowed to campaign and initially contest parliamentary elections openly), less than 22 per cent of Egyptians turned out to vote. In Islamabad, given the choice to march alongside radicals who claimed they wanted to impose Islamic law, Pakistanis stayed at home.
Muslims don’t want Islamists to rule them. Muslims – like anyone else – want choice. And choice comes from having real alternatives to consider. Not just the State and the Mosque.
Even in the Palestinian territories, where elections swept Hamas to power last year – what choice was there? On one side, a weak and inept leader in the form of Mahmoud Abbas whose party, Fatah, was notorious for corruption, and on the other, the radicals of Hamas. Despite the hair-splitting dance that usually circles the question of whether Islamists can be trusted in power and exactly how much of a difference is there between Islamists and the more violent and radical types such as those who bunkered down in Islamabad’s Red Mosque, the average Palestinian will tell you there is little difference when it comes to power: Hamas, despite allegiances paid to the wonders of democracy, was all too willing to resort to violence against fellow Palestinians when it came to seizing absolute power in Gaza. Again, Fatah and Hamas were the only options because the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat made sure there were few alternatives to his rule.
Much as in Egypt, where President Hosni Mubarak has stymied the aspirations to independence of reformist judges, Musharraf has been harsher to Chaudhry and others of a liberal and secular bent, than to the radicals and those who support them. Chaudhry’s suspension on March 9 sparked protests by lawyers and the opposition that turned into a broad campaign for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. It is the most serious challenge to the authority of Musharraf since he seized power in a 1999 coup. Musharraf wanted Chaudhry out of the way because he worried he didn’t have the judge’s support in the event of constitutional challenges to the president’s election plans. Now that Chaudry has been reinstated, we will see how the political landscape unfolds.
Being harsher to the secular democrats has been an especially dangerous balancing act for Musharraf, the leader of a country whose powerful intelligence services are suspected of containing among their ranks Taliban supporters. Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, which borders Afghanistan, is home to many Taliban and their radical sympathizers. Musharraf’s tolerance for radicals is a risky game that has burned many other Muslim dictators. He himself has been the target of several assassination attempts.
His tolerance of the radicals and the religious parties that support them is a lazy way of using one stick to beat another. Pakistan’s Army has long used such radicals as fighters in India and Afghanistan, while their parties were helped to tip the scales against secular democrats. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave the Muslim Brotherhood much leeway during his time in office because they were a convenient foil against leftists and socialists. His assassination at the hands of radical army officers was one of the many examples of the dangers of using that one stick to beat the other – what’s to guarantee the stick won’t hit you anyway?
Of the many Muslim dictators who enjoy the support of the U.S. administration, perhaps Musharraf has it best. His country’s border with Afghanistan makes him an especially valuable ally. He trumps many of America’s other best friends in the Muslim world when it comes to the Islamist bogeymen he can point to as the best reason to turn a blind eye to his many abuses. Whereas Mubarak can point to the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas can point to Hamas, Musharraf can point to Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri and other such luminaries in the pantheon of the War on Terror. It’s not too much of a stretch to see that Musharraf tolerated radicals of the type that ran the Red Mosque as part of the need to keep Islamist bogeyman handy.
And like many of his fellow Muslim dictators, Musharraf hasn’t hestitated to do America’s dirty work. Egypt is the number one destination for extraordinary renditions, the process by which U.S. intelligence agents abduct terrorism suspects and scurry them away to friendly countries for interrogation that human rights groups say often includes torture and at times disappearance. According to Amnesty International, Pakistan has abducted hundreds of people as part of the U.S-led war on terror, often secretly holding them for months while they are interrogated.Musharraf’s radical and secular opponents alike have used that issue against him. The Red Mosque’s Abdul Aziz has berated the Pakistani government for “handing over Muslims to infidels like cattle”, referring to the transfer of captured al Qaeda suspects to U.S. custody and the supporters of chief justice Chaudhry say his challenge to the government on the issue of forced disappearances led to his suspension.
But Chaudhry is a welcome change to the idea that people want Islamists for rulers. His suspension on March 9 sparked protests by lawyers and the opposition that have turned into a broad campaign for the restoration of democracy. It is the most serious challenge to the authority of Musharraf since he seized power in a 1999 coup.
I often joke that Angry Bearded Muslim Man is usually Pakistani because for some reason, whenever the Muslim world is supposed to take offense at something, a ready and very vocal cadre of Angry Bearded Muslim Men takes to the streets, shouting and burning things right on cue for the television cameras. After the siege and assault on the Red Mosque, the Angry Bearded Muslim Men again turned out to protest and to yell. But the majority of Pakistanis stayed away. Most of them preferred to join protests in support of chief justice Chaudhry. Surely that is a clear choice, not least because their protests were successful.
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