KARACHI: As Muslims worldwide have just performed another Haj and are now celebrating Eidul Azha, it is perhaps an opportune moment to reflect on the current state of that abstract construct — the ‘Muslim world’.

While, indeed, the world as a whole is facing myriad challenges to the global order — political, financial, security etc — these problems are magnified manifold in most Muslim-majority states, Pakistan included.

While external players have had a role in destabilising Muslim states and regions, arguably, the greatest challenge is internal, most notably from decrepit and repressive political systems that stifle dissent, as well as from militant movements that thrive in suffocating environments and use Islamic imagery to promote a thoroughly savage agenda.

On the external front, it is impossible to defend the utter devastation that has been unleashed on Muslim states in the name of ‘liberation’, ‘democracy’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’ by external actors.

The invasion of Afghanistan to oust the hard-line Afghan Taliban has failed to produce a working state 15 years after the event.

Meanwhile, functional but autocratic regimes were ousted in Iraq and Libya, only to be replaced by a void thereafter filled by chaos and disorder.

Syria is another tragedy, where an internal movement to dislodge a strongman was seized upon by external players to fight a grinding proxy war; the result has been nearly 300,000 dead and the rise of barbaric groups such as the militant Islamic State group.

Palestine and India-held Kashmir continue to be lightning rods; in the former, Israel continues to suffocate Palestine’s people, while New Delhi has responded to calls of ‘azadi’ emanating from the valley with pellet guns and jackboots.

Indeed, all these scenarios engender a sense of victimhood in Muslim societies, and help extremists exploit people’s sentiments.

But the biggest threats Muslim societies face are internal.

The Iraqi and Syrian conflicts have exacerbated sectarian divisions within Islam, while the Saudi-Iranian relationship is at its lowest point in decades.

Moreover, we must ask how many genuine democracies can the Muslim world boast of? Princes, potentates and presidents-for-life continue to lord it over the people in many countries, while in others the generals are reluctant to share power with civilians.

Poverty and illiteracy continue to be major challenges in Muslim societies — while some statelets wallow in petrodollars, millions in poorer states struggle to put food on the table.

It is these inequities, together with the monsters of extremism and sectarianism, that are today tearing into the vitals of the Muslim world.

There is no magic formula to transform things. However, some essential ingredients — such as democracy, moderation, tolerance, social justice — are critical for there to be any positive transformation.

There may be many miles to go, but Muslim societies must themselves take the initiative to change their destiny by addressing these internal weaknesses, and give their citizens a better standard of life.

Published in Dawn September 13th, 2016