OPINION: Muslims shouldn't have to keep apologising for terrorist attacks

The general response in the West to the appalling January 7 Paris attacks show that the Western view of terrorism has barely changed since 9/11. The same themes persist - "they" are terrorising "us". "Their" moderates need to do more to stop "their" extremists from attacking "us". Why aren't more of "their" moderates speaking out? Why don't "they" respect "our" values? Why don't "they" take responsibility?

Surely holding all Muslims (one-quarter of the world's population) collectively responsible for the actions of fringe groups should be universally hounded as imbecilic. Instead, many of the "official" Muslim spokespeople have taken this exclusionary message to heart.

Each time there is a terrorist attack on a Western country, they all but trip over themselves and each other to condemn - at times not even waiting for anyone to confirm the actual motives of those ultimately held responsible.

The same set formula, the same mantras are reported. "We condemn. It has nothing to do with us or our faith."

One can hardly blame them for this. In the Australian imagination, terrorism and Islam are interchangeable.

Whether it be small evangelical and far-right groups complaining about halal certification of Vegemite or opponents of mosque developments, the spectre of terrorism is ever present.

Even after it was established that a fringe loner was responsible for the Martin Place attack, some commentators insisted "sheikh" Haron had a substantial following.

Those who scream the loudest about the alleged Islamic threat to Australia are often those complaining they aren't free to speak loudly about the threat because of "stifling political correctness" or Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Yet there's a new generation of Muslims born and brought up in Australia who better understand and are less afraid to engage with media, politics and mainstream culture than their elders.

Many of them see their elders' rush to condemn terrorist acts as having the opposite effect to that intended. They see their elders' statements as reinforcing a dominant mindset on Islam and Muslims that is patronising and at times even xenophobic.

Conventional wisdom about terrorism is certainly worth questioning.

Jihadist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State regard many, if not most, Muslims as kuffar, plural of kafir or infidel. These groups have killed a far greater number of Muslims than Jews and Christians.

In December, about 132 students and 13 staff at the Army Public School in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar were gunned down by the Pakistan Taliban. The Peshawar attacks received nowhere near as much media coverage nor pious statements from world leaders.

Nor was there much said about Boko Haram's assaults in Nigeria. In one such assault, which took place around the same time as the Paris attack, more than 1000 people were murdered. The Nigerian schoolgirls have still not been captured, though they have been immortalised in a Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting them as pregnant welfare queens demanding no one touch their payments.

Muslims are often accused of seeing themselves as victims. But when so little emphasis is placed on a far greater number of non-Western terror deaths, young Western Muslims can be forgiven for seeing this as an indication of chronic Western victimhood.

Westerners are the only victims - or at least the only victims who matter.

No one should be murdered for drawing cartoons or for working as a policeman or for visiting a supermarket. But our knowledge and consciousness of terrorism is almost always limited to our own cultural backyard. Our sense of reality is distorted.

According to the 2013 Global Terrorism Index, 80 per cent of all terrorism-related deaths occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nigeria and Syria.

In sixth place was India, where terrorist deaths doubled. And who are the most feared group in India?

Communist terrorist groups are by far the most frequent perpetrators and the main cause of deaths in India ... Three Maoist communist groups claimed responsibility for 192 deaths in 2013, which was nearly half of all deaths from terrorism in India.

The Maoist uprising, which started in 1967, has been operating in 20 of India's 29 states.

But is the hypocrisy and victimhood that pervades much of the Australian and the broader Western debate on terrorism enough reason for community spokespersons not to speak the truth and call a spade a spade?

Haters can allow their hate to compromise their beliefs. They can point the finger at Muslims for being terrorists whilst ignoring them - and others - as victims.

Perhaps the issue is not whether to condemn terrorism but rather when, to condemn all political violence regardless of who are perpetrators and who are victims. Ultimately it doesn't matter who the victims are. Unjustly killing one is equivalent to killing all humanity. Surely that's a Biblical and Qur'anic principle we can all agree on.​

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamofascist. This article was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 16 January 2015.

OPINION: Even cynics can't deny bravery

Claims among dubious Pakistanis that Malala Yusufzai is now Western puppet ignore her ongoing heroism. 

Malala Yusufzai hails from the Swat Valley, a region known as the Switzerland of Pakistan and once a popular destination for middle class Pakistani holiday makers and international tourists. Swat is home to ethnically Pushtun people known for their conservative cultural and religious mores but also for their hospitality. Washington Post correspondent Pamela Constable notes in her book Playing With Fire: Pakistan at War with Itself that ambitious Swati Pushtuns "fled to construction jobs in the Middle East; those who stayed behind were described as dreamy and tolerant".

Malala (also pronounced Malalai) is a common name for girls in these parts. It was the name of a famous heroine who spent her wedding day on the battlefield tending to the wounded men of her tribe who fought the British forces at the Battle of Maiwind in July 1880. With no one left to raise the flag, she grabbed it and sang a few couplets of freedom before being struck down by British troops. Spurred on by her bravery, the men made a final assault and defeated the British foe.

That heroic Malala rated no mention in British war chronicles, but she became a heroine for her people. 

Now things have gone into reverse. Hardly a year has passed since a modern Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman who boarded her school bus. Far from being silent about her, the British press can't seem to get enough of Malala. She now lives in the relative safety of Birmingham where she attends an exclusive school and has even been invited for tea with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

Back home, there has also been a fair amount of adulation, though mixed with strong feelings of resentment toward her Western admirers if not ambivalence toward Malala. Some Pakistanis claim the awards and accolades she has received represent a betrayal of innocent people killed by American drone attacks which have claimed the lives of more than 1000 Pakistani civilians. The West chooses to ignore (and hence implicitly applaud) these deaths as part of the so-called war on terror. Pakistanis read Western newspapers and websites, and can see Malala giving Western rightwing cultural warriors and leftwing do-gooders a new symbol with which to belittle Pakistan.

Prominent Western voices have in years past used a similar fetish to "rescue" non-white Muslim women. In her 2005 scholarly essay The war on terror and the "rescue" of Muslim women, Melbourne academic Dr Shakira Hussein mentions how in the lead-up to the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Laura Bush and Cherie Blair (the respective wives of then US President and the British Prime Minister) both used the suffering of Afghan women to justify war. The United States and its allies initially removed the Taliban from power but at the same time allowed its own tribal Northern Alliance allies in Afghanistan to carry out similar, if not identical, forms of gendered oppression. To avenge the deaths of 9/11 victims, a greater number of Afghan victims (including women) were killed.

Given Western ambivalence toward the plight of many Afghans and Pakistanis at the hands of formerly Western backed terrorists and dictators, it's natural they might be a little suspicious of a situation where a young Pakistani girl is plucked out of obscurity by the West. In their eyes, she isn't the first Pakistani to be shot in the head by terrorists, and no matter how much one hates to say this, she probably won't be the last. But now she and her family live in relative safety. Hundreds of other Taliban victims and their families aren't so lucky. Their poverty-stricken voices aren't heard by the over-nourished West, nor are they nominated for international awards. God knows how they'd be treated if in desperation they boarded a rickety boat and headed for Australia.

But one can't help detect a certain conspiratorial tone from some Pakistani cynics. As if a 16-year-old is part of a Western plot to somehow destabilise Pakistan and ruin its image. It takes some guts for a girl who has survived being shot in the head to then visit the White House and tell the world's most powerful man to stop bombing her country. Yet this is what Malala Yusufzai intends to do. It is a task even Pakistan's leaders have failed to take up. Indeed for every finger pointed at Malala, surely three must point right back at Pakistan. Middle class Pakistani critics who emulate Western culture but resent a poor Pushtun girl being congratulated for her bravery should remember that.

As always, such conspiracies are egged on by Pakistan's neighbours. Pakistan's Dawn newspaper recently published a column by Nadeem Paracha which claimed Malala's real name was Jane, that she was the daughter of Hungarian Christian missionaries and that she was left with a Pakistani couple as a gift after they secretly converted to Christianity. The article was picked up as serious news by the allegedly serious Iranian Press TV news agency. It seems some in Iran's official media circles don't recognise Pakistani satire when they see it.

So what is the meaning of Malala? She is a symbol of Pakistani girls just seeking their God-given right to an education. The Prophet Muhammad insisted women and men seek knowledge, but God only knows which prophet the Taliban are following. How ironic that by almost snatching away her life, the Taliban have given her life genuine purpose and her nation's women greater stature. No amount of Pakistani or Western hypocrisy will take that away.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the New Zealand Herald on Wednesday 16 October 2013.

OPINION: Innocent victims of evil ideology

Over the past week, there have been two devastating terror attacks. The Nairobi shopping mall shootings included many Western casualties and have been widely reported. The other attack, on a church in Pakistan, has barely rated a mention.

A cynic might suggest Western media regard the shedding of the blood of brown-skinned Catholics by the Tehrik-i-Taleban Pakistan ("Student Movement of Pakistan" or the Pakistani Taleban) as less newsworthy than the murders of Westerners by the Somali Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen ("Movement of Striving Youth" or al-Shabaab). But that is a discussion for another time.

What matters now is that we have two sets of victims struck by effectively the same perpetrator inspired by the same demented ideology. Whether the Pakistani Taleban or al-Shabaab, what we have is a global ideology seeking to impose its own demented political theology by force.

Like its al-Qaeda colleagues, the Pakistani Taleban rarely discriminates on the basis of religion. Though calling itself an Islamic group, it will happily spill Muslim blood. Shia mosques and neighbourhoods have been subjected to suicide bombings.

Sunni security personnel, soldiers and innocent civilians have been blown to bits by suicide bombers.

But its most recent attack on the All Saints Church at Kohati Gate in Peshawar deliberately targeted one of Pakistan's most disadvantaged faith communities. The service had just ended and the 400 worshippers were leaving the building when two suicide bombers detonated their devices.

Eyewitnesses reported around 100 parishioners lay in pools of blood. At least 80 were dead, more then half of them women and children.

It was the worst attack on Christians in Pakistan's history.

The church was built in 1882 on the design of a mosque, with a dome and minarets. It is one of a handful of churches that service some 60,000 Christians in Peshawar.

So why did this happen? Kamal Siddiqui, editor of the Express-Tribune, writes:

Pakistanis are dying in large numbers, mostly at the hands of religious militants who insist that their war is with America and not with us. One does not understand the logic of this. But it is an ideology that finds favour with many. 

Pakistan is a country where there is too much tolerance for intolerance. On the same day as the church bombing, a mob in the Punjabi city of Sialkot threatened to remove the minarets of an Ahmadi house of worship. The Ahmadis are a small sect regarded by law as non-Muslims. Their houses of worship cannot be called mosques.

When the mob threatened to attack the Ahmadi building, police themselves tore down the minarets.

And so a church in Peshawar can have minarets but not a Ahmadi house of worship.

Pakistan is a country in which all kinds of excuses can be found for division. The Taleban need not try very hard to sow chaos. The chaos is already there. So often Pakistanis complain about American drone attacks. And rightly so. But more Pakistanis are murdered in sectarian violence than by drone missiles.

The Taleban temporarily ruled parts of Pakistan before being driven out by the army. In this respect, they have something in common with al-Shabaab in Somalia.

According to a 2011 report by Ron Wise of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, the militia started its life aligned to a moderate (or rather, somewhat less extreme) Somali Muslim party called the Islamic Courts Union (ICU).

Before that Somalia was a basket case where competing warlords committed all kinds of atrocities against civilians.

Religious leaders in the Somali diaspora are almost unanimous in their condemnation of al-Shabaab. In Minnesota, home to the largest Somali community in the US, local imam Abdul Hashi told journalists, "This type of activity, the killing of innocents, has no basis in, or relationship to Islam," and cited the Koran: "Whoever kills one soul, kills all of humankind, and whoever saves one soul, saves all of humankind."

Which makes the actions of al-Shabaab and the Pakistani Taleban pure evil.

Irfan Yusuf is a Sydney lawyer. First published in the NZ Herald on 26 September 2013.

OPINION: Pakistan could tear itself apart

Despite the death of Osama bin Laden, Pakistan is in danger of tearing itself apart in a war on sectarian terror.

Pakistan is ripping itself apart, one minority at a time. With Osama bin Laden dead and beneath the ocean, many regard terrorism as no longer a serious international concern for Pakistan.

Whatever problems the country has are only issues for countries such as Australia and New Zealand when more asylum seekers from that part of the world head to our shores in leaky boats.

Pakistan is in the grip of a war on terror. However, it is a war that few of us in the West are taking any notice of. Perhaps it is because the victims are not white-skinned Judeo-Christian Westerners. The victims are largely Shia Muslims. The perpetrators are largely fanatics of the Sunni variety, some funded by private donors and perhaps governments in the Gulf region and Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan's minorities have always had it tough. The Pakistani flag consists of the traditional Muslim crescent and star with the green background. It also has a white strip adjacent to the flagpole. The white represents non-Muslim minorities - Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Parsees and other faith and ethno-religious communities.

The flag recognises that minorities play a key role in a state that was founded on the basis of a kind of religious nationalism (an Islamic Zionism, if you will), a homeland for Indian Muslims. It was always taken for granted that Shia Muslims were part of the green-crescent striped majority. After all, the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was of Shia Muslim heritage.

In recent times, attacks on Shia Muslims have become widespread and endemic. The perpetrators are followers of the late Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a religious scholar from Punjab who belonged to the Deobandi school, one of two competing schools of the Sunni sect in the Indian subcontinent.

During the 1970s Jhangvi, not dissimilar to most Pakistani imams, focused on religious education and preaching. Although a member of a theocratic political party organised by other Deobandi scholars, Jhangvi was more interested in preaching.

Things changed in 1979 with the emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini's Shia-based Islamic revolution in next-door Iran. The revolution posed a direct threat to the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia which regarded itself as naturally holding religious leadership and prestige as home to the two holiest sites of Islam. Saudi Arabia's interests were allied to those of the United States, which continues to fear Iran's expansionist revolution.

The Saudis funded a number of sectarian anti-Shia groups in various Muslim countries as well as minority Muslim communities.

Among these were a group founded in 1982 by Maulana Jhanvi called Anjuman Sipa-i-Sahaba Pakistan (ASSP), literally "Movement for Defending the Prophet's Companions". Many Sunni Muslims accuse Shia Muslims of defaming the companions of Muhammad, including a number of his wives. Sunni theology is built upon reports of Muhammad's sayings and actions as reported by the companions. Hence, attacks on the honour of these companions is regarded as an attack on Islam itself.

The ASSP message was simple - Shias must be declared a non-Muslim minority in the same manner as Christians, Hindus and other faith groups.

Attacks on Shias are frequently placed with attacks on the Iranian regime. In one recording handed to me during a trip to Pakistan in 1994, I heard Maulana Jhangvi declare "Khomeini peh laanat beshumar. Shia-on pe laanat beshumar" (Abundant curses be declared on Khomeini and upon all Shias).

If such sectarian preaching were limited to curses and distribution of cassette tapes, it may not be cause for concern. After all, Shia Muslims make up around one fifth of Pakistan's population. They occupy positions of influence across politics, popular culture, academia, media and other sectors of Pakistani life. Among them are current president Asif Ali Zardari and his deceased wife Benazir Bhutto.

But among them are the less visible and more vulnerable Hazara ethnic group, located mainly in the Western province of Baluchistan which borders Iran. Attacks on Hazara, virtually all of whom are Shia Muslims, have stepped up in the last year or so.

In one incident, some 100 Hazaras were murdered in Quetta. The plight of the Hazara has been largely ignored even by Shia Muslims from other ethnic groups. Sunni extremists frequently complain about Shia dominance in Pakistani media. But as Pakistani journalist Kiran Nazish wrote in Forbes magazine in January, "the media, particularly television media in Pakistan, had been ignoring the issue" while smaller-scale loss of life, cricket scores and Bollywood starlets are readily reported.

It was only when Hazaras took the extreme step of refusing to bury the victims, preferring to sit with the bodies in sub-zero temperatures, that Pakistanis took notice.

Ironically, these same coffins were draped with the Pakistani flag. Though it remains to be seen which side of the flag the Hazara will be deemed to be part of - the green and white majority or the white strip that is being bloodied and driven off the flag.

In recent days, other Shia communities have been attacked. Over 50 were killed in the most recent attack on Abbas Town, a Shia enclave in the southern port city of Karachi. Shia Muslims in Lahore have begun receiving death threats.

Unless the situation is brought under control, Pakistan could become a huge version of Northern Ireland. Imagine the refugee crisis when 20 per cent of Pakistan's 180 million people effectively become refugees.
 
Irfan Yusuf was born in Pakistan and is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years As a Teenage Islamo-fascist. This article was first published in the NZ Herald on Monday 11 March 2013.

PAKISTAN: Convert AND we'll kill you

It’s said that converts have a zeal rarely shared by those inheriting the faith. It is also argued that Islamic terrorist groups hardly deserve a religious label given that their victims tend to be other Muslims. Both factors are present in the latest brutal murder by the Pakistani Taleban of a British Red Cross aid worker in the north western Balochistan province.

But for Pakistan this latest incident was was not just another act of terror against an outsider. This was the barbaric beheading of a British medic who, some 3 decades back, had adopted the faith of the vast majority of Pakistanis.

And it wasn’t just in Pakistan where 60 year old Khalil Rasjed Dale had served. Dale’s previous assignments for the Red Cross/Red Crescent took him to some of the most dangerous destinations on the planet including Kenya, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan.

The BBC cites one source who says Dale had a fiancé who lived in Australia. It also claims Dale worked as a nurse, while the Independent reports Dale to be a “British doctor”. His employers describe him as a health programme manager.

But regardless of his title, there is little doubt that potentially millions benefitted from the programmes he managed. During one interview with PBS, Dale described the dangers he faced while working in Somalia during the famine of the early 1990’s. He described:

... I went to a town in a region ... where there was a population of about 17, 000 people.... I was the first one to get in. And I was overwhelmed, I'd never seen anything like it. There were bodies -- people who had died of starvation, there were people with gun shot wounds, there were young children, women, just lying, waiting to die, really emaciated and there weren't any nurses, doctors, there was nothing. The whole infrastructure collapsed and they were just people who had given up hope and it was horrific. One of the first jobs I had to do was start a food for work program. I got 98 people as grave diggers just to collect dead bodies, and allocated four sites and I used to drive past them and there would be mounds of dead bodies waiting to be buried.

He also spoke of ...

... a woman in one of the huts, that had been dead for about two days and her two children sat there just weeping and nobody to look after them.

Here was an ordinary Brit doing extraordinary work, trying to restore life in places defined only by terror and death. Groups like the Taleban claim justification for their actions by pointing to CIA drone attacks and US airstrikes. Even if we accept all this, the murderers are hardly worth taking seriously when one considers that the Taleban note accompanying Dale’s bullet-ridden body spoke not of foreign attacks but rather of an unpaid ransom. In the end, this allegedly religious militia would only spare the life of a fellow Muslim for the right amount of cash.

Words © 2012 Irfan Yusuf

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PAKISTAN: Can a security contractor claim diplomatic immunity?

There's a chap named Raymond Davis currently in a prison cell in Pakistan. He was in the country as a private contractor working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). David was arrested after he gunned down two men in Lahore. A third person was run over by a US Consulate vehicle.

The Hindustan Times reports:

Davis, a US official, was arrested in Lahore Jan 27 after he shot dead two youths on a motorcycle. He claimed he acted in self-defence as the armed youngsters were trying to rob him.


His arrest has sparked a diplomatic crisis and strained relations between the US and Pakistan. The US has threatened to withhold the $1.5 billion aid package promised to Islamabad for the war on terror.

Views in Pakistan are ... well ... to put it mildly, quite strong. Here is what one columnist, a retired vice-admiral and former vice-chief of the naval staff, wrote in The News.

What sort of “strategic relationship” do we have with each other if America has let loose a horde of CIA operators in this country and is working towards its destabilisation.


The US position is that international conventions cannot be subservient to the laws of a signatory country. The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations was intended to specify the privileges of a mission to enable its diplomats to perform their function without fear of coercion or harassment by the host country. It is ironic that in the Davis case this convention has been turned on its head against the host country, for use as a legal cover to protect an American who committed first-degree murder.

The New York Times reports more reaction from Pakistan:

For Pakistanis, many of whom are angry at the apparent impunity with which the C.I.A.’s drone missiles regularly kill terrorism suspects — and, at times, innocent bystanders — Mr. Davis’s case has proved galvanizing. Protesters have called for Mr. Davis to be hanged.

The US government claims that the case is clear - Davis is subject to diplomatic immunity and must be released. Davis, they argue, was in Pakistan as a diplomat. Yet as the NYT reports:

... this case also rests on legal technicalities, with confusion arising from contradictory statements by the State Department in the first days after Mr. Davis’s arrest. Those statements have called into question whether Mr. Davis was working — officially, at least — as a diplomatic official or a consular one. Consular officials are afforded somewhat weaker legal protections because they are thought of as administrators, rather than diplomats.


Initially, State Department officials described Mr. Davis as a staff member for the United States Consulate in Lahore.


Days later, however, the United States government said that Mr. Davis was actually listed with the administrative and technical staff of the United States Embassy in Islamabad — and that it had formally notified the Pakistani Foreign Ministry of his status there on Jan. 20, 2010.


The distinction is crucial. If Mr. Davis was listed as a technical staff member for the embassy’s diplomatic mission, then he would be covered by a 1961 treaty that gives diplomats total immunity to criminal prosecution. In that case, Pakistan should be allowed only to expel him. Victims’ families, however, might still be able to sue him for civil damages.


But if Mr. Davis were instead listed as a staff member for the consulate in Lahore, then he would be covered by a 1963 treaty that governs the rights of consular officials and that allows host countries to prosecute them if they commit a “grave crime.”


The contradictory statements over Mr. Davis’s assignment are just part of the evidence that Pakistani news accounts have cited in criticizing the United States’ position.

I'll have to dust off my public international law textbooks to come up with a definitive answer to this one. Treaty interpretation isn't easy. The rules of international law are not like common law where clear rules of interpretation and construction apply and where case law usually provides clear guidance. Precedents are not binding in international law but are only a guide.

What really matters is international consensus of what the legal position is i.e. customary international law.

Of course, law aside, this case illustrates just how tricky it is for countries like the US that make extensive use of private contractors for off-shore intelligence and defense work.

Words © 2011 Irfan Yusuf



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HUMOUR: Burka woman

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OPINION: Rhetoric of religious right inflames zealots in East and West

There are certain similarities between recent political shootings in the US and Pakistan, IRFAN YUSUF writes

A bitter political debate is played out in the media and among politicians about the alleged danger posed by a tiny and extremely vulnerable minority. Populist and allegedly conservative politicians pass draconian legislation at the expense of this minority, thousands of whose members are then prosecuted. Rallies are held in support of the draconian laws and threats are made against those few politicians calling for law reform to protect the minority.

Then one of these politicians is shot in a broad daylight in a public area. Evidence shows the gunman is influenced by the inflammatory rhetoric of those conservative forces supporting the new law. The gunman believes the future of the nation is at stake and that the politician had to be killed.

I could be describing recent events on a main road in Islamabad in which a lone gunman murdered Governor Salmaan Taseer in Pakistan. Then again, I could just as easily be describing events at a shopping centre in Tucson, Arizona, in which another gunman shot and wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Also killed were a US district judge and at least four others.

Taseer’s assassin was his own bodyguard. Evidence suggests the man’s religious sentiments were offended by Taseer’s calls to amend, if not abolish, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Malik Mumtaz Qadri was said to be inspired by the fiery rhetoric of Pakistan’s religious groups, whose leaders had drawn thousands to rallies calling for the mandatory death penalty for blasphemy to remain. These leaders claimed that any watering-down of the law represented a direct threat to the Muslim heritage of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The fact that these laws were often used to harass Christian minorities was of little consequence.

Evidence suggests Jared Lee Lougner, the 22-year-old who shot the Democrat congresswoman in Arizona, was inspired by the fiery gun-toting rhetoric of Tea Party elements in the Republican Party. The New York Times has described this rhetoric as reinforcing

the dominant imagery of the moment — a portrayal of 21st-century Washington as being like 18th century Lexington and Concord, an occupied country on the verge of armed rebellion.

Some may believe that comparing the two incidents is like comparing apples and oranges. Allegedly conservative politicians and pundits in Australia and other Western countries may especially be offended by the comparison between anti-immigrant and strong border protection sentiments of the Tea Party movement and the extreme Islamist sentiments of Taseer’s killer.

It’s often said by allegedly conservative commentators that Islamists are in alliance with the left. They should travel to Pakistan and see if anyone takes their claims seriously.

Salman Taseer, the progressive (albeit super-wealthy) politician, belonged to a socialist (albeit of the champagne variety) party calling itself the Pakistan People’s Party. His assassin says he acted to defend traditional values. Not only religious party leaders but also conservative pundits and small business leaders are coming to his defence.

And what are conservative opposition politicians saying in condemnation of the assassin’s actions? Not much. And why should they? After all, they are the beneficiaries of this sentiment in the long run. Not only that, but mainstream conservative parties in Pakistan almost inevitably rule in coalition with religious parties such as the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, one of whose leaders stated on Pakistani national television that Salmaan Taseer’s death was God’s verdict and nobody who loves the prophet Muhammad could or should condemn the governor’s murder.

Some readers will object that our conservatives generally don’t go around assassinating people. True, but how many Pakistani conservatives are assassins? But in both east and west we see the religious right engaging in similarly hostile rhetoric and using the prejudices of ethnic and religious zealots for their own political ends. Meanwhile, mainstream conservatives are silent, refusing to directly condemn violence and so fanning the flames of the dogwhistlers and making minorities feel vulnerable.

In both the US and Pakistan, powerful, well-funded forces are using conservative, religiously inspired political rhetoric to hijack the agenda. This is not just left versus right. In Pakistan, the allegedly socialist Pakistan People’s Party has been just as willing to enter into coalitions with the religious right. Benazir Bhutto’s government happily joined with her coalition partners to ensure religiously inspired punishments for adultery were kept.

The violent incidents in Tucson and Islamabad may be seen as being consistent with a wider struggle within both countries. There are those happy to see religious and cultural diversity maintained. Then there are those wishing to impose a form of monocultural uniformity. In the Cold War era, the latter were seen as representative of communism. Today, alleged conservatives are behaving like communists.

There is one clear difference between the US and Pakistan. People on all sides of politics in the US have come together to condemn the actions of the gunman in Arizona and to express their sympathy for his victims. Even the county sheriff has lashed out at ...

... the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out, from people in the radio business, and some people in the TV business’’ and says Arizona has ‘‘become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

In Pakistan, religious forces have effectively silenced any opposition to blasphemy laws. One group, the Sunni Tehreek, has gone so far as to say ...

We will provide legal and constitutional protection to Mumtaz Qadri.

Religious parties are threatening a more organised form of vigilantism than provided by the Governor’s bodyguard. Popular TV preacher and scholar Javed Ghamdi has been forced to move to Dubai after receiving death threats for speaking out against blasphemy laws.

Pakistan’s religious right has gone off the rails and is taking the rest of the country with it. America hasn’t quite gone down that path. At least, not yet.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals. This piece was first published in the Canberra Times in Wednesday January 12 2011.


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POLITICS: Murderous blasphemy or blasphemous murder?

The governor of Pakistan's wealthiest province was gunned down. Salmaan Taseer was killed by his bodyguard at close range. The guard claims he shot his boss due to the latter's opposition to blasphemy laws.

UPDATE I: Here is a response from Huma Imtiaz. I have no idea who she is but I endorse every word of her response.

UPDATE II: The allegedly more "moderate" Barelwi school of thought has been even more virulent in its support for the murderer of Taseer. Apparently describing oppressive laws as "black" is a crime deserving extra-judicial killing in their eyes.

UPDATE III: Here are some more supportive responses.

UPDATE IV: Taseer was a severe critic of drone attacks on Pakistan. Then again, who wouldn't be. Imagine if the US started sending drone planes to attack civilians of its other allies? It doesn't help when 98% of those killed aren't exactly terrorists.

UPDATE V: Here is a video of a press conference which Taseer had with Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who was charged under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Apologies to those who cannot understand Urdu. I'll try to translate when I get a chance.


UPDATE VI: I'm not all that good at Urdu. With a small bit of help from my mother, who has a Masters in Urdu from Punjab University, here is what I could make of the first half or so of the video.

[Addressing Aasia Bibi:]
Here you have appealed to the President.

[Aasia Bibi places a thumb print on the appeal papers. Break, then Salmaan Taseer addresses the audience with Aasia Bibi seated to his right.]
I wish to begin with mentioning the name of God who is gracious and merciful beyond limits. I have come here to meet with Aasia Bibi. She has been imprisoned for some 18 months and she has been sentenced in a manner which I regard as extreme (saqat) and oppressive (zalim). She has appealed to the President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari that she be pardoned. God-willing, the President will for the sake of humanity ... pardon this woman.

Let me also say that the Pakistan founded by Qaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah never had such a law and never could have been passed. Our religion also protects people’s conscience (aqaliyyat). The founder of Pakistan had a white ribbon placed on the Pakistani flag so that people’s differences of beliefs could be recognised and protected.

For this reason, the punishment to which she has been sentenced is, I believe, inhumane (insaniyat ke khilaf) ... She has approached me in my capacity as Governor of Punjab and has asked me to deliver her appeal to the President so that God-willing she will be pardoned.

In a country where 97% of the population are Muslim, it is impossible that any insult can be made to the purified name of the Messenger of God. Here we are all Muslims. I am convinced after studying her case that there was no such incident. She is a poverty-stricken woman who had no legal assistance or representation or the means to afford such representation. By placing such poor minorities through such legal proceedings, we are making a mockery of the foundational ideas of Pakistan and its founder.

UPDATE VII: Every time you think things can't possibly get worse in Sudanand Dhume's writing, along comes a piece to prove you wrong. Where do I start with this shocker?

Taseer's killer, a 26-year-old named Mumtaz Qadri, symbolizes Maududi's vision. In photographs, he's bearded and moustache-less, in the manner prescribed by fundamentalist Islam.

Actually, it is prescribed by certain elements in Sunni Islam. It is not prescribed in the Barelwi school of South Asian Sunnism, and it is Pakistan's Barelwi scholars who have been at the forefront of opposing Taseer. It is also not prescribed by Shia scholars. Muqtada as-Sadr has a healthy moustache. I guess that makes him a moderate in Dhume's eyes.

That Mr. Qadri could defy South Asia's usually rigid codes of hierarchy by murdering someone far above his station jibes with the contempt radical Islamists often feel for traditional elites.

What the ...? Is Dhume saying that people in Punjab never murder those richer and more powerful than them? Is he living in the world of the Ramayana?

The murder highlights anew the way in which Pakistan's English-speaking classes resemble a small island of urbanity surrounded by a rising tide of fundamentalist zeal.

So speaking English is a sure sign that one doesn't have fundamentalist zeal. Dhume dude, half my family are in the Jamaat-i-Islami. They speak fluent English and almost all have green cards. They belong to the same English-speaking class. I'm too scared to ask them what they thought of Taseer's death.

Mr. Dhume is a columnist for WSJ.com and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC.

The AEI? I guess that says it all.

UPDATE VIII: Moronic religious parties joined by equally moronic lawyers.

UPDATE IX: Here's an interesting column from Jawed Naqvi writing from Delhi in Dawn. Particularly perceptive is the comparison between the role of religious extremism in India and Pakistan.

... Rahul Gandhi in the neighbourhood. India`s Congress party scion had made a valid point about the threat to his country from Hindu extremists — just as Pakistan is being wrecked by Muslim bigots — but instead of telling his countrymen about it, he whispered his worry into the ears of the American ambassador in Delhi. Nothing could be as self-defeating as not trusting your very own in the battle to defend your core ideals.

In a curious way, the fact that the young Gandhi mentioned the Hindutva threat to US ambassador Tim Roemer, in fact, added to his credibility. A public statement would in most likelihood be pounced upon by his detractors as a populist and a potentially communal ploy to curry favour with Muslims and so forth. That particular worry should, of course, be no reason to keep the nation oblivious of an ominous possibility.

Right-wing Hindus expectedly pooh-poohed Gandhi`s remarks to Roemer, which would probably never have surfaced but for the WikiLeaks` revelations. He contended that the Hindutva upsurge posed a greater threat to India than did Muslim extremism. The view appeared to be based on a simple and compelling logic. Muslim extremists threaten Pakistan because they are or were part of the state structures thanks to Gen Zia`s policies. Likewise, Hindutva and not so much Muslim bigots challenge Indian secularism.

The reason is not difficult to comprehend. Although homegrown Muslim fanatics in India, even those having links with Lashkar-i-Taiba from across the border, have a stake in destroying India`s secularism, they remain handicapped in their mission because of their total absence from the levers of state power.

Hindutva forces, on the other hand, like their counterparts in Pakistan, have penetrated nearly all the sectors of state that matter. Parliament is the only place where so far they cannot carry out subversion. Of course, it may not take long before they are emboldened to contemplate doing just that.

UPDATE X: There was a time when assassins were considered the enemy of Muslims, fought by governments and despised by religious scholars. They were forced to live in a tall tower in the middle of nowhere. Today in Pakistan they have become mainstream. Some say it is time to hail and cheer them. OK, he's being tongue-in-cheek.

UPDATE XI: The UK Independent reports that

Twenty thousand supporters of fundamentalist parties have rallied in the streets of Karachi in support of Pakistan's blasphemy laws as they escalated threats against liberal politicians who, like Salmaan Taseer, the slain governor of Punjab, want to see them amended.

Gee, that really is a huge rally. For Wollongong. Or for Canberra. But for Karachi, a city of around 12 million? The Independent describes it as ...

[t]he biggest muscle-flexing display by the religious right for years in Pakistan's largest city ...

And what proportion of Karachi-walas turned up to the second biggest? More than 0.16667%? Yep, these manic maulanas have plenty of support.

OPINION: Cricket corruption exposes hypocrisy in Australian circles

I was watching Pakistani satellite TV at my parents' house in Sydney the other day when I saw an unusual character appear on the screen. He looked Pakistani. He dressed Pakistani. But he sounded like something straight out of Little Britain.

The young Londonistani told the Pakistani GEO cable news channel:

Dey should be sacked from da team and sent back to da motherland, innit.

Or something like that.

The GEO news crew back in the Lahore studios were clearly bemused by the passionate selfrighteousness of this and other Pakistani cricket fans in Pakistan and Britain responding to yet another match-fixing scandal involving Pakistani players and possibly officials. The sports presenter poked fun at the Pakistani team manager who had no trouble listening to the orders of his Pakistani administrators back home but had enormous trouble hearing the basic questions of international journalists in London.

But in a nation where cricket is perhaps the major religion, this is no laughing matter. Millions of Pakistanis witnessed their team suffer the biggest Test loss in its history.

And what made the loss even more humiliating was that it was at the hands of one of the world's weaker teams (England), a team that both Pakistani and Australian cricket fans have become accustomed to poking fun at.

Of course, it could never happen in Australian cricket. Certainly that's what cricket
journalist Michael Conn recently wrote in The Australian. Conn argued that the latest saga was a symptom of broader national corruption.

Cricket is widely regarded as a microcosm of the country where it is played, which offers an instant insight into why Pakistani cricket in particular and the ICC in general is such a basket case.

If it's as simple as that, how does Conn explain the incident involving Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, who happily took money from an Indian bookie in the mid-1990s? Admittedly they weren't accused of deliberately bowling no balls to throw a game away. But corruption is corruption whichever way you look at it.

Conn's argument reaches heights of hilarity when he suggests that it was corrupt nations from ...

... [t]he Afro-Asia bloc ...

... whose corrupt administrators blocked John Howard from becoming president of the International Cricket Council.

In short, having John Howard as ICC president would solve all of world cricket's corruption problems. We all know that John Howard would never oversee corruption, nor would he allow anyone involved in an administration he was in charge of to have direct links to corruption.



Those who claim the Howard prime ministership did not tolerate, whitewash or make excuses for corruption or cronyism would pause for thought if they read Caroline Overington's awardwinning Kickback: Inside The Australian Wheat Board Scandal.

They should also ask the new federal member for Denison whether Howard would treat a whistleblower on cricket corruption in the same manner as he treated the Office of National Assessments officer who blew the whistle on intelligence failures that led to a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Everyone knows corruption exists at ICC level. Corrupt governments of nations where cricket is a major sport will happily stack their national cricket boards with cronies. But while many cricketing countries may have corruption issues, others have issues with dealing with racism and parochialism.

That support still lingers for a Howard presidency illustrates a peculiar form of parochialism that continues to exist in many Australian circles.

Howard supporters argued that the "Afro-Asian" bloc that opposed Howard's nomination to the ICC presidency earlier this year did so because of his attacks on Zimbabwe's racist anti-white government. Howard wanted sanctions against Zimbabwe and was a staunch critic of Mugabe's regime. He was right.

If only he was also right when it came to the racist anti- black apartheid regime that ruled South Africa during the 1970s and '80s, a time when Howard opposed economic and sporting sanctions against the regime. Howard's attitude went against the dominant world opinion at that time.

Farid Esack, a prominent South African anti-apartheid activist and a gender equity commissioner appointed by the Mandela government, told an American audience in 2006 that the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa saw those outside the country opposing sporting and economic sanctions as being collaborators with the apartheid regime. That presumably includes John Howard.

Some would argue that all this talk of Howard's responses to apartheid, AWB, Andrew Wilkie, Iraq (and indeed Dr Haneef, Asian immigration, Pauline Hanson, asylum seekers, the stolen generation) is just ancient history. The real issue is cricket corruption.

Fair enough. Let's look at this in simple terms. One major element of corruption is that the right job goes to the wrong (and often least qualified) person. Australia and New Zealand had the opportunity to put forward a nominee for the ICC presidency.

They had a choice between Sir John Anderson, a top-notch experienced and respected New Zealand administrator, and John Howard. Australia bullied New Zealand into withdrawing Anderson's nomination, despite the fact that he was already pencilled in for the job.

And now Howard's backers have the temerity to cry corruption.

Irfan Yusuf is a lawyer and author of Once Were Radicals. His top score was 14 runs for the St Andrews' under-14s. He will not be nominating for the ICC presidency in the foreseeable future. This article was first published in The Canberra Times on 1 September 2010.

SPORT: All-Indian Superstars

Irfan Yusuf watches his cricketing namesakes hit sectarian politics out of the park in Gujurat ...

Humility is one of my strengths. Indeed, I can confidently state that I’m the most humble person I know. To confirm this, over the weekend, I took the ultimate humility test. I sat down at my computer, from whence many an article for this magnificent website has emerged, and surfed my way to Google News. There, I typed the words "Irfan Yusuf" and clicked.

As my self-effacing nature expected, the first item was an article on WYD published under my name in the New Zealand Herald. But what followed was quite instructive: article upon article from newspapers, sports blogs, cricket blogs, TV websites and e-zines about two Indian cricketers. There’s no doubt that in the online Irfan Yusuf stakes, Irfan Pathan and Yusuf Pathan are hitting me for six!

Growing up with a name no one could pronounce wasn’t the nicest experience. Was it "Eefun"? Or "Urfun"? Or "Earphone"? And if that wasn’t bad enough, people constantly misspelt my surname. "No, it isn’t ‘Y’ ‘O’ ‘U’ double-’S’ etc". Get the drift? I doubt I’ll have any more problems with spelling or pronunciation on my next trip to India. Thanks to a pair of Gujarati cricketers, millions of Indians now know how to spell and pronounce my full name correctly.

The Pathan brothers are all-Indian superstars. They hail from the north-western Indian state of Gujarat, part of which borders Pakistan. Gujarat was also the hometown of the great lawyer Mohandas Gandhi, who spent some years in South Africa fighting apartheid and went on to become the spiritual leader of the Indian independence movement.

There is a spiritual side to the story of the Pathan brothers. Until recently, their father Mehboob Khan was the caretaker at the Jammi Masjid (congregational mosque) in Mandvi, a suburb of the Gujrati town of Varodara. He had inherited this role from his father and grandfather. The mosque is 400 years old, older than any mosque — or indeed any church — in Australia. With the exception of Indonesia, India has more Muslims than any other country on earth. Yet Indian Muslims make up only around 15 per cent of India’s population. Most are relatively poor.

After the 1947 Partition, people on the "wrong" side of the India-Pakistan border left everything behind to make it to the "right" side. The Pathan family were different. Sher Jaman Ibrahim Khan, the paternal grandfather of Irfan and Yusuf Pathan, migrated from the Manshera district of Pakistan to India a few months before Partition.

Although India is officially secular, it has seen a rise in pseudo-religious far-Right Hindu nationalist politics. It isn’t alone in this regard. Until the most recent elections, two Pakistani provinces were dominated by pseudo-religious Islamist parties.

I describe such politics as pseudo-religious because I believe that no religion teaches its followers to be intolerant toward the poor and the vulnerable. The situations of millions of Hindu, Sikh and Christian Pakistanis are made to feel even more precarious thanks to misdirected blasphemy laws promoted by Pakistani politicians who only use Islam as a divisive wedge. On the other side of the border, similar wedges — of the allegedly Hindu variety — are used by Indian politicians to make millions of Muslim and Christian Indians feel vulnerable.

The Pathan brothers may tour across the world scoring runs and taking wickets with millions back home cheering them on. However, their home town in Gujarat is frequently the scene of communal violence whipped up by extremists from the governing fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Dal (BJP) party. Go to the BJP website and you’ll see that Gujarat and India’s proudest son, Mahatma Gandhi, barely rates a mention. You’ll also read essays blaming allegedly foreign "Semitic" faiths for India’s woes.

The BJP State Government of Gujarat led a massacre of religious minorities in 2002 that saw thousands of civilians murdered and hundreds of women raped by mobs armed with official records showing the residential and business addresses of Muslims and Christians. While the rest of India tossed out the BJP in the last national elections, Gujarat’s Chief Minister Narenda Modi remains the man who allegedly orchestrated much of the 2002 violence — or at the very least turned a blind eye to it.

This explosive environment even affects national heroes like Irfan and Yusuf Pathan. In May 2006, Indian journalists spent time in the Pathan family home. Don’t let the headline "Genius in the time of hatred and bloodshed" put you off reading the inspiring story of young Indian athletes who honed in their skills in an environment where their poverty-stricken families and communities were subjected to discrimination and even violence.

The religion that South Asians follow most fanatically - cricket - is, ironically enough, one which overrides sectarian exclusions. Pakistan’s national side has no shortage of Hindu and Christian players, and Muslim, Sikh and Christian players step up to the pitch for India. In both India and Pakistan, religious fundamentalism sits side by side with a blend of tolerance and pluralism that is often best displayed on sporting fields.

The good news is that the Pathan brothers were able to use cricket to rise above the sectarian bigotry. We often hear that sport - and religion - and politics shouldn’t mix. But sometimes spectator sport can become a powerful religious force in its own right allowing its practitioners and fans to overcome the obstacles set by sectarian politicians.

First published in NewMatilda on 17 July 2008.


Words © 2010 Irfan Yusuf

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VIDEO: Rabiye Kadeer's call to settle remaining Uighur Guantanamo detainees ...

Exiled World Uighur Congress leader Rabiye Kadeer told the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday:

All of the Uighurs in Albania, Bermuda and Palau are living very normal and productive lives -- so we'd be happy if Australia took the four.

Below is a documentary from AlJazeera English showing the experiences of four Uighurs living in Albania.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf






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VIDEO: A Sikh aid organisation assists internally displaced Pakistanis of all faiths ...

The conflict between the Pakistani army and Taliban insurgents has displaced hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis of all faiths. The following video shows just some of these people and their needs being partially met by United Sikhs, an international humanitarian organisation.

FILM: Pakistan's first English-language feature movie in 3 decades ...

With all this media frenzy over the Taliban and terrorism in the combined "Af-Pak" territory (as if Afghanistan and Pakistan have no right to be considered sovereign nations if it hinders Western perceptions of security!), it's important for us not to dehumanise the experiences of Pakistanis and Afghans.

The Lifting Of The Veil: Kashf is a new feature film directed by Ayesha Khan, a Pakistani film maker who grew up in Pakistan but is now based in Europe. Here's a brief synopsis of the movie:

Armaghan is born out of an oath his mother makes to a Pir priest she meets at a Sufi Shrine when she was childless. She promises the Pir who blesses her to let her first son “walk the Sufi path” when he grows up. But shortly after his birth in Pakistan, Armaghan is sent off to the US to live with relatives after his father’s death. After 25 years Armaghan returns to Pakistan a young man to discover a lost culture, a mystic religion, and a family secret.

You will find interesting interviews with Khan here and here.



Personally I have a problem with the "government-sponsored Sufism is the solution to all our security woes" analysis. I prefer the approach that Congressman Charlie Wilson called for in Afghanistan - spending money on schools and hospitals and development and creating jobs and hope. Poverty and hopelessness attract people to desperation which terrorists feed off. But I guess it isn't in some people's interest to do that.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf


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REVIEW: Ambitious cultural journey loses its way ...

A Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands
By Aatish Taseer
Text Publishing, 323pp, $34.95

WE all inhabit the same planet, yet so often we hear phrases such as "the Muslim world" and "the Western world". Do such discrete entities indeed exist? Perhaps those best equipped to answer this question are those with one foot on either side of the divide.

Aatish Taseer, a 29-year-old freelance journalist and the son of an Indian Sikh mother and a Pakistani Muslim father, should have been such a person. That he isn't so is not entirely hisfault.

The two sides of Taseer's family share the culture and language of Punjab, a region in the northwest of the Indian subcontinent shared by India and Pakistan. Islam and Sikhism have inhabited Punjab's geographical and cultural space for centuries. Sikhism is indigenous to Punjab, while Punjabi Islam has adopted the cultural symbols of the land.

My background is a mixture of Indian and Pakistani. Having been reared in a small South Asian community in Sydney, I found it almost impossible to tell Muslims and Sikhs apart. To this day it is easy for me to confuse a mosque and gurudwara (Sikh temple) until the saffron flags of the latter become apparent.

But there is a huge difference between my upbringing and that of Taseer, whose parents' relationship was kept largely secret.

Taseer's father, Salmaan Taseer, became a senior figure in the Pakistan People's Party, at present the governing party of Pakistan. He is a businessman, media magnate and governor of Pakistan's Punjab province.

Aatish's parents met in India in 1980, where Salmaan Taseer was promoting a biography he'd written of his political mentor and former Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Aatish's mother, respected Indian journalist Tavleen Singh, was then a young reporter.

At the time of his parents' brief affair, which lasted hardly a week, Salmaan Taseer was already married with three children.

After his parents' separation, Aatish was reared in his mother's Sikh household in Delhi, under the wing of his loving maternal grandfather. The grandfather had grown up in what is now Pakistan and still corresponded with his best friend from across the border.

Like other Sikhs, the Singhs had to flee their ancestral lands in what became Pakistan during the 1947 Partition, which still leaves some members of the family bitter and resentful towards Pakistan and Muslims in general. To his credit, the maternal grandfather wasn't affected by these sentiments.

'A human being,' my grandfather always asserted, when people asked whether I was being brought up as a Sikh or a Muslim. 'He's being brought up to be a human being.'

It wasn't until 1980, when he was 21, that the author met his father again. Taseer's interest in travelling through Muslim-majority states was sparked after he wrote a story on the July 7, 2005, London bombings for British magazine Prospect. Taseer's father wrote an angry letter ...

... accus[ing] me of prejudice, of lacking even 'superficial knowledge' of the Pakistani ethos. 'Do you really think you're doing the Taseer name a service by spreading this kind of invidious anti-Muslim propaganda?

Taseer was upset by his father's letter, an irreligious Pakistani politician who hardly embodied religious values.

Yet Taseer's language when describing his father is always restrained, consistent with the elegant and often hauntingly beautiful prose of the book, sadly spoiled by serious factual errors exhibiting not prejudice, which would have been understandable, but some elementary research.

In setting the stage for his travels, Taseer writes that the whole Islamic world ...

... stretched between my father [Lahore] and the place where I read his letter [London].

How does Taseer expect his reader to take his understanding of the Muslim world seriously when he excludes from it the world's largest Muslim majority state, Indonesia?

He claims his father's Pakistani Islam emphasises rejection of Hinduism. But this is hardly pan-Islam, as I discovered during a visit to the Javanese cultural capital of Yogyakarta in 2006.

There I saw Muslim artists perform the Hindu Ramayana ballet before Muslim audiences in one of Southeast Asia's oldest Hindu temples. Not all Muslims share the religious chauvinism of some Pakistanis.

Taseer's book covers his travels in Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia (including a visit to the pilgrimage centre of Mecca), Iran and Pakistan. In each country he provides us with tremendously detailed portraits of scenery, but when it comes to people our encounters are limited to the devout yet chauvinistic on the one hand or the irreligious and resentful on the other.

Are we to believe that only an insignificant unrepresentative minority exists between these two poles?

Most unfortunate for Taseer is that his paradigm for understanding pan-Islamic sentiment emerges largely from Hassan Butt, a young British man who for years claimed to have recruited British Muslims for al-Qa'ida.

Taseer brought Butt to prominence in the article that prompted his father's wrathful letter. Yet in December last year Butt admitted to a British court that he was a professional liar who had told journalists (including, presumably, Taseer) stories the media wanted to hear.

It's a shame such an elegant piece of writing is spoiled in a way that may make some dismiss it altogether.

Sadly for Taseer, this book, the product of months of travel and a lifetime of anguish, may vindicate at least some of his absent father's criticisms. It is not a vindication well-deserved.

Irfan Yusuf is author of Once Were Radicals: My Years as a Teenage Islamo-Fascist (Allen & Unwin). This review was first published in The Australian on 27 June 2009


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VIDEO: US troops handed out Bibles in both Iraq and Afghanistan ...

What's the big deal with a bit of evangelism? Better a Bible than vicious dogs at your testicles, I say.

Except that handing out Bibles confirms all the stereotypes Arabs and Afghans have of Coalition forces occupying the country just to bring Iraq and Afghanistan into the broader "Christian empire". Taliban propagandists will have an even bigger field day than they are already having with US bombardments on US civilians.

Here is the text accompanying this video:

The highest ranking military officer in the United States says it's not the military's position to ever push any specific form of religion, in response to an exclusive Al Jazeera report that showed a group of US soldiers in Afghanistan in possession of Bibles translated into local languages.

The troops discussed giving the Bibles to Afghans as gifts - despite military directives banning soldiers from spreading religion, as Al Jazeera's James Bays reports.

Words © 2009 Irfan Yusuf




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CRIKEY: Feudalism is the worst form of government there is, except for all the rest ...

We’re living in the age of bailouts, and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari knows it. During his recent meeting with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Zardari likened his request for billions of dollars in military and other aid to the US government bailout of AIG.

The implication of this, of course, is that Pakistan is being severely mismanaged in much the same way as bailed out corporations. Many Pakistanis won’t dispute this. Two nights ago during a TV debate on the independent Pakistani cable news channel Aaj TV, there was near-unanimity among pundits (including former leaders of Zardari’s Pakistani People’s Party) that the government has stuffed the whole Taliban thing up. Yet still the Obama administration has no option but to deal with the elected government.

Pakistani villagers, however, do have other options, which the Taliban is taking full advantage of. The New York Times reported last month that the Taliban were:

... engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small
group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants … [T]he militants
organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops. The approach
allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and
corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through
terror and intimidation.

Asif Ali Zaradari is scion of Pakistan’s feudal political establishment, as are many in his PPP and in other more secular parties such as Opposition Leader Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League. The vast majority of Pakistanis live in villages and certainly are not wealthy land owners. The Taliban could repeat the same strategies in other Pakistani provinces, orchestrating what could become a peasant-based revolution.

However, victory for the Taliban isn’t just as easy as pitting peasants against feudal lords. What many Western observers forget is that the Taliban’s style of Islam is deeply unpopular in a region where the indigenous Muslim culture has had centuries of interaction with (and influence by) other faiths such as Hinduism and Sikhism.

The Taliban’s narrow sectarian agenda worries Shia Muslims, who make up around 20% of Pakistan’s population. The Taliban regard Shias as non-Muslims and have already shown disdain for at least one minority.

Still, the Taliban are only within 100 miles of the Pakistani capital. As Pakistani troops march in, an army of refugees from the Swat Valley are marching in the opposite direction, many headed for refugee camps once occupied by Afghan refugees fleeing Soviet invaders.

First published in Crikey on 7 May 2009.