The futile politics of Osama and religious parties
A year after his assassination in Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden is as irrelevant today to the welfare of millions of starving and suffering Muslims as he was when alive. The same holds true for almost all Islamist political movements who are singularly concerned with enforcing their ideologies on the often unwilling Muslim populace, while these movements have no plans for alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease.
Last year when I learnt of Mr. bin Laden’s assassination, I headed straight to the Parliament in Islamabad to report on the mass protests that many had predicted would erupt in case of such an eventuality. I walked up and down the Constitution Avenue but did not spot a single protester. I visited the Lal Masjid, the fundamentalist hotbed in the centre of Islamabad, hoping to capture some action there. Again, there was nothing to report. After walking through the capital for hours I realised that there may not be any mass demonstrations to protest against Mr. bin Laden’s sudden demise.
In the weeks following Mr Bin Laden’s death hardly any protests were witnessed anywhere in the Muslim majority countries. Unbeknown to most political pundits (especially in the west), Mr. bin Laden had gradually become a nonentity to the ordinary Muslims who have been busy fighting a losing battle against food price inflation, violence, and hunger. Whereas the majority of Indonesians and Pakistanis held a favourable view of Mr. bin Laden during 2002-2005, his popularity declined significantly in most Muslim majority countries by 2011.
Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project
In the recent past, religious (Islamist) parties active in the political arena have advocated using force to impose their ideologies on the populace and have evoked religion to mobilise the society against the ‘heretics’ within and the infidels elsewhere. Osama bin Laden followed the same approach. He evoked Islam to mobilise the Pashtun and Arab youths to fight first against the Soviet Union and later against America and its allies. His protégés, including the Afghan Taliban, followed the same ideology while brutally enforcing their puritan version of Islam where armed men entrusted themselves to hold sway over matters regarding vice and virtue. The Islamists projected public executions and flogging of men, women and children as the ‘true’ face of Islam.
Similar to the Taliban, the Islamists, regardless of being in Pakistan or elsewhere, are almost always busy creating mass hysteria about the ‘infidel’ killing and pillaging through the Muslim lands. Hence, the Islamists are found campaigning for pan-Islamic movements to raise Muslim armies for the doomsday Armageddon between the Muslims and the rest. Islamists not active in the electoral politics propagate this through sermons delivered from the pulpit, whereas those active in the electoral politics propagate the same on the floor of the House.
The Islamists’ political philosophy almost always is focused on first wrestling the control of governments and militaries from the ‘heretic secularists’ before the Islamists would be able to offer any relief to the populace. Their political manifestos therefore seldom list any policies about what is needed by the masses in the short run. One therefore knows a lot about where the Islamist parties, such as Jamaat-I-Islami, Jamiat-i-Ulama-e-Islam (JUI) and others stand on Kashmir, Israel and President Obama, but one knows almost nothing about how these parties would address the immediate challenges, such as dengue fever, power shortages, poor water supply and sanitation, and generating employment opportunities for millions of unemployed youth.
For decades Mr. bin Laden lived in countries where poverty, hunger, and disease were the biggest concerns of the poor and disenfranchised. However, despite having access to millions of dollars of his own money and billions more that others would have readily donated, he did not initiate any mentionable projects to address poverty, hunger or disease in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen. He could have founded hospitals, schools and vocational training institutes. Instead he sponsored military academies in the most deprived parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
If one were to look back at the communities today where Mr. bin Laden had lived in the past 25-odd years, would one see a transformed people with improved access to health and education facilities, or would one see more hunger, disease and hardship. Had Mr. bin Laden used his celebrity to address poverty, hunger, and disease, he could have transformed the very communities, which hosted him for years.
This lack of imagination also ails most Pakistan-based Islamist parties. Consider JUI, which is an astute Islamist party that has often outsmarted non-religious parties in political maneuvering. JUI does not have a policy for sanitation, water supply or primary healthcare. Apart from claims that if elected JUI will fix all of the above, it offers no blueprints or hosts expert panels to debate the same. JUI’s central leadership comprising the Rahman brothers could be seen active in Parliament’s standing committees for foreign affairs (Mr. Fazl-ur-Rahman is a member) and Kashmir/religious affairs (Mr. Atta-ur-Rahman is a member) thus conforming to the ideological bend of the most Islamist parties that see all threats being exogenous and the only internal concerns are reserved for vice and virtue.
Jamaat-i-Islami also champions issues that fail to address the immediate challenges faced by the poor in Pakistan. Jamaat’s recent drive against obscenity is one such example of using a red herring to demonstrate street power, command airtime, control political discourse, yet offer no relief to the masses on poor job prospects, or inadequate healthcare and education opportunities.
Jamaat is also a smart political enterprise whose leadership is intimately aware of its limited vote bank in Pakistan that is not sufficient to put the Jamaat in control of the federal government either by itself or in a coalition. The Jamaat uses this almost certain lack of a possibility of a Jamaat-led government to its advantage and spoils the governance for others by promising the world to the electorate. Jamaat’s manifesto is therefore filled with promises that other parties with a shot at forming the government cannot match. Since the Jamaat knows it will never have to deliver on its promises, its electoral commitments include an unsustainably high minimum wage in a welfare state that will provide for the basic needs of all. Nowhere in Jamaat’s manifesto is any mention of how these projects, requiring hundreds of billions of dollars, will be financed.
Even the most celebrated Islamists became irrelevant to the masses soon after their death. Who can forget the hundreds of thousands of mourners at the funeral of late General Zia-ul-Haq in August 1988, which suggested to some that his legacy would last well beyond his death. While General Zia’s legacy is alive in Pakistan in the form of religious violence and intolerance, however within a couple of years after his demise his family and a few close friends were the only ones observing his death anniversary.
On the other hand, political, social, and religious reformers in the subcontinent have remained relevant to the masses even decades after their death. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s final resting place in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh is always alive with visitors who shared Bhutto’s political philosophy. The mausoleum of Bulleh Shah in Kasur and Data Darbar in Lahore are evidence of lasting legacies of the reformers who have remained relevant to their followers.
A few decades from today few will remember, if at all, that on May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Abbottabad. However, most will remember the several thousand victims of religious extremists who followed in Mr. bin Laden’s footsteps.
Murtaza Haider, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto. He can be reached by email at murtaza.haider@ryerson.ca
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
Now as to who won the fight. ?
Osama may have lost it in Pakistan but he has won big in USA "everything changed since 9/11".
Actually he changed America in a fundamental way .
He has also changed Europe and indirectly influenced the lives of millions of Muslims who live in the diaspora.
USA now is closer in its psyche to the Jacksonian era rather to the Jaffersonian one. Rush Limbaugh,Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Bill O'Rielly, and of course Glenn Beck , just a few examples from radio talk shows.
It is too early to say but if my hunch is right Osama might just be considered the most influential person in the last 100 years.
VERY INFORMATIVE.
Murtaza! Bravo. U ve hit the nail at the head.U ve spoken my mind.U faltered in using the term FUTILE in the title.All they do is not without output. They ve an agenda ….agenda of acheiving heroic/celebrity status,fame,popularity and political power.And they ve got it and still going their way. And all this on the cost of our children blood.Theirs wil never hurt.So they deal n a business….Ane they NEED OUR HEADS TO RUN THEIR BUSINESS.
Osama bin laden was incapable of helping his fellow people just like the rest of the Arab world. Arab countries are still spending extravagantly for their own pleasures, while the muslim world is suffering around them. This just goes on to show the level of Self indulgence and intolerance sweeping the muslim countries. The only way forward for us is to educate the masses about their duties and responisbilities towards their fellow human beings.
I am surprised after reading the article and all the comments posted by gentlemen, that when there are so many good and educated people like yourselves whio understand everything, then why Pakistan is still in this stage…is it that we simply watch a good and meaningful movie in the theatre ..clap for few minutes and when we leave the theatre we forget very thing. Or we simply say..its not my problem.
Mutuza, you often bring up different perspective and out of box thinking and ideas. I often respect your views.
Osama was not a social welfare worker. Moaning on his lack of contribution in this field is as irrelevant as Obama's contribution to the music industry.
What Osama aimed at achieving, he managed to do it pretty well, more than he evisaged himself… either by his own strategic acumen or circustances that played in his favour by the permission of God.
I wonder what is the facination with some people to dismiss him or his efforts from history. Isn't it the same kind of extremist mentality, working in the opposite direction, as of those jihadis who want to make a Prophet out of him.
BRAVO!! BRAVO!! & BRAVO!!
If only people like you were running Pakistan…….
Difference between Osama and mother Teresa say it all. After listening all if and buts. A simple way out is to change mind set of Pakistani awaam. Seeing the anchors like Zaid Hamid or so called dr. coming on main stream tv channels and preaching hate and making conspiracy theories against Zionists, Hindu and Christian has landed Pakistan to this situation. There is hope after this dark period it is to listen to people like Hassan Nissar, Najam Sethi or Marwi memon. Calling them traitor and some ill words from any mullah is not going to do good. A hope for Pakistan is to start its priority’s by forgetting and politicalising past glory days, treating everyone at par Shia,Ahmadies, Hindu,jews and women. The reconciliation will heal the nation and make you better person too.
Great article. One thing needs to be highlighted is that OBL gained his so-called "celebrity" status in the name of violence and terror. For a long time, leadership in this country has been promoting an intolerant version of Islam to gain political mileage, and results are showing now right and left.
Well written.
Murtaza i would rather urge you to kindly read the book" Inside Al Qaida and the TALIBAN Beyond OBL and 9/11" of saleem shahzad (murdered pakistani journalist). Though i am not big fan of OBL. But the cause for which AL-Qaeda was formed and still its gross root functionaries may be operative though weakened.
1. The questions arise that HOW and WHO would respond to the hate and desperation against corrupt and despotic muslim regimes? These regimes all over the globe are subservient to US or one of its ally one way or the other. These regimes are insensitive to public and their demands.
2. How the issue of Palestine and Kashmir has been handled by OIC? and Do you think that these two issues would be resolved by the west according to the wishes of sufferers.
3. Dear writer do u think that the way the natural resources of these muslim countries are exploited and plundered by the west are hidden from now more aware desperate general public? and how these puppit regimes are responding to that right on their faces.
While sitting in USA plz avoid looking through their prism only. Masses are more aware than ever before.
A good person once said… An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
So, the common thread in your all three points is to answer hate and violence with more hate and violence. I will leave it up-to you to judge whether its the right approach. Though you can try this approach within your family, for starters, to see how it works out.
ejaz you are 100% CORRECT
a thought provoking comment
Dear Mr. Haider, your narration has highlighted facts and displaying how the Islamic parties in Pakistan exploited the name of Islam. Islam is the religion of peace , tranquility , love and helping the mankind, terrorism and extremisms have no place in Islam.
Nausheen you are right slam is the religion of peace and tranquility. But then why violence,intollerence, killings of innocent men and women are the order of the day in almost all countries inhabited by muslims? Can anyone enlighten on this querry?
Excellent article. Greatness is not measured in how many people one has killed or caused to be killed to attain a certain goal. Greatness is measured in how much a person thinks of, cares for, and helps others in need, especially those who are outside his or her circle of immediate family, extended family, school of thought, religion, locality, province, country, etc. True heros are the types of Abdul Sattar Edhi and Madam Teresa who sacrifice their own selves unconditionally for the sake of humanity.
I totally agree with the sentiments expressed by the author Mr. Murtaza Haider. It is high time the Pakistani mindset is changed. Wake up and do something for improving the lives of the common man, by good education on an international level, good scientific research, reviving the economy, job opportunities, etc. etc.
Simon, Canada.