Islam, Terror, and the Failures of the Intellectual Left

As was only to be expected, people on the Left and Right are reacting to the blasts in Bombay with the usual cliched and tired explanations. Any number of experts on terrorism and political terror will now crowd out of the woodwork. I suspect we will see many such experts on cable television in the days to come. Arguments on the Right will paint all Muslims as terrorists, Islam as a violent faith, Indian Muslims as invaders and so on. Here is a classic example of such a perspective.

In contrast, the standard argument on the Left is that economic disaffectation, global capitalism, US foreign policy, and the actions of states have led to an environment in which disenfrachised Muslims are compelled to resort to terrorism out of desperation. A prime example of Leftist apologetics is to be found in Tariq Ali's recent piece in Counterpunch, which pretty much suggests that India needs to look in its backyard to understand why the blasts occured and what motivated the terrorists to do what they did. Ali also rejects the Indian state's position that outsiders were involved in the blasts. That may well turn out to be the case, but Ali offers absolutely no explanation for how he arrives at this conclusion.

Ali parrots a well-worn Marxist line in his article. Aside from any number of grounds on which the vulgar Marxist reasoning that permeates the article (and any number of such articles on Counterpunch) can be questioned-- such as simplistic assumptions about economic base and cultural superstructure--- there is one major problem with this argument: it completely fails to explain why other disenfranchised groups or communities in India or elsewhere are not compelled by environmental or structural causes to act in the same way as those who committed the Bombay blasts.

Tariq Ali's crudely argued polemic, however, is an easy target. But similar arguments (though far more sophisticated) on religious terror and violence and Islamic terrorism are advanced by any number of distinguished thinkers, including political scientists, historians, social theorists, anthropologists, and scholars of religious studies. The general argument here is that so-called Islamic fundamentalism, organizations that call for an Islamic state, violence committed by terrorists (for instance in Palestine), supporters of conservative Islamic movements, etc., need to be understood in their complexity, with attention paid to socioeconomic causes, contextual factors, inequalities of global power, the excesses of the War on Terror, and so on.

For an example of some arguments that follow this line of reasoning, read the excellent collection of interviews gathered in The Present as History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power, edited by Nermeen Shaikh (Columbia University Press: New York, 2007). See in particular, interviews from Part 2, "Postcolonialism and the New Imperialism," Part 3, "Feminism and Human Rights," and Part 4, "Secularism and Islam." Many of the arguments offered by these scholars are persuasive and valid, for example, the hollowness and hypocrisy of the tenets of Western liberal thought, the complicated legacies of colonialism as they play out in the postcolonial modern, and the mode in which the War on Terror seriously undermines the claims of the West to stand for rights, international law, and, in general, for universal values. (I will save a more detailed reading of agreements and disagreements for another time).

But the major problem with many such arguments lies in their selective call for looking at the complexity behind the actions of certain agents but not the actions of others. Indeed, those who ask us to acknowledge the complex reasons why Muslims in India, Britain, Iraq, or West Asia may take to violence do not necessarily acknowledge that the actions of the American (or Israeli or Indian) state, or the actions of non-Muslim communities, also need to be looked at in their complexity. To the contrary, in this line of reasoning, the US, Israel, or India are described as monolithic brute hegemons and handmaidens of global capitalism and the actions of these states are often analyzed, somewhat simplistically, as reflections of a simple will-to-global domination, thirst for oil, or thirst for markets.

Now, one Left position (which I heard in pretty classic form from a distinguished Indian political scientist and historian at a seminar in the context of a discussion on the Hindu Right) is that such inconsistencies are exactly what being political is about. One has to make 'difficult political choices,' and this necessarily means criticizing one side more than another after taking the complexities of power relations into account. It also means engaging strategically in self-censorship or refusing to criticize x or y community or actor keeping in mind the larger political issue.

Advocating or taking this position does not make anyone an apologist for terrorism or violence, of course. In fact, in other forums, some of the scholars and activists who take this view may be quite outspoken in criticizing the actions of so-called Muslim states, fundamentalist organizations, etc. But their analyses of fundamentalism, violence, and terror committed by Muslims seem marked by a deep anxiety that the Right (American or Indian, as the case might be) will 'coopt' any critical generalizations about Muslims that they might offer. The same anxieties can also be seen in the views of many Indian Leftists on issues of Muslim fundamentalism, terrorism, questions of rights etc. as they play out in the Indian context. And to deviate from this Left line means exposing oneself to the charge of being a supporter, closet or otherwise, for American imperialism, capitalism, or Hindu nationalism.

Another fairly standard Left-liberal line is that atrocities such as the Bombay bomb blasts are merely the actions of a few individuals and that Islam has nothing to do with these heinous acts. In this perspective, Islam can never be criticized for any excess committed by Muslims. Interestingly, the exact same argument is often made about the Hindu nationalists and fundamentalists who destroyed the Babri Masjid: that they were just a few misguided souls who do not have anything to do with 'real' Hinduism and that other Hindus, even if sympathetic to Hindutva ideology, would never really have destroyed a mosque, rioted, or burnt Muslims alive.

But the problem with this line of reasoning is that it rests upon a narrow, selective, and untenable-- even if laudable and idealistic --- conception of Islam or Hinduism. The mob that destroyed the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 consisted of Hindus who were every bit as authentic as Gandhi or any other Hindu who condemns religious violence in the name of Hinduism. The terrorists who attacked New York on September 11, 2001 and Bombay on November 26, 2008 were Muslims, and they were every bit as Muslim as those Muslims who condemn these actions.

As one of my teachers puts it in the context of a discussion about the invocation of Islam in justifying violations of rights, the problem is not with Islam per se but Islam does have something to do with it. It is that something on which we need more voices to comment meaningfully.

Contrary to what the CPI(M) as well as sections of the non-political Left will have us believe, there is a deepseated malaise among sections of India's Muslim communities that cannot be explained away by Indian state policies, nor by the impact of Hindu-Muslim violence, nor by the Shah Bano judgment, nor by the Salman Rushdie affair, nor by the US invasion of Iraq or the War on Terror, nor by a combination of all of these factors. Communalism Combat co-founder, Javed Anand's articles on SIMI in the Indian Express, "Suspect SIMI? Of Course" and Tehelka, Truth has Two Faces: SIMI's radicalism is of deep concern for Indian Muslims" are a case in point.

Some other commentators, such as Yoginder Sikand, for instance, have also been writing about these issues for years, including the doublespeak of prominent Islamic organizations on secularism and rights, the discourse about Hindus or 'other' Muslims (Shias, Sunnis, Ahmaddiyas) produced in Indian madrassas, the project of Islamic organizations to expand the reach of Shari'a as a substitute for the Indian legal system, the aspirations, no matter how unreal, of global domination or reestablishing an Islamic caliphate. An example of some of these views is to be found in an interview with SIMI President, Yasin Patel, on Tehelka.

Some of Yogi's writings may be accessed on his blog). I suspect that these writings make both Left and Right uncomfortable in that they disrupt the stock narratives of each side, which may be one reason why Sikand's work has not received greater attention.

Finally, in the Indian political field, there are, unfortunately, only a limited number of positions one can take in responding to matters concerning Islam--- especially in offering any critique of Islam or Muslims--- if one does not want to be labelled an apologist for an overt or covert brand of Hindu nationalism. Either one has to be a Muslim, more precisely, a particular type of 'authentic' Muslim who can claim to speak for that abstraction called 'community'. Failing which, one can always be accused of being a 'sarkari mussalman' (a Muslim in the service of the state) or a professionalized or excessively Hinduized Muslim who has lost touch with his or her true Islamic self or roots. Or one has to prove and perform one's 'secular' credentials, which more or less translates into endorsing the political Left position that Muslim fundamentalism is a reaction to Hindu nationalism, while making some noises about India's syncretic identity, the once pristine character of Hindu-Muslim coexistence, and so on.

It is not the case that there is a lack of diversity of opinions among India's Muslim communities. But it begs asking why some voices-- such as Syed Shahabuddin, Imam Bukhari, maulvis issuing fatwas against Taslima Nasreen-- carry more legitimacy and influence than other voices among members of these communities. Why, for instance, does the word of Maulana Wahiuddin Khan not carry as much weight? Or why, more importantly, do the voices of ordinary Muslims not carry as much weight?

I have not commented in this reflection about the right-wing demonization of Muslims in the US or in India because (a) that has been the subject of extensive comment and (b) the vileness and absurdity of those claims are transparent. It seems to me though that many Left perspectives on Islamic terrorism and violence committed by Muslims do not shed any more light on the subject, constrained as these perspectives are by their cherished ideological blinkers.

A final thought. It is worth inquiring how and why Islam and Muslims have taken centerstage in public and academic discussions on difference, minority rights, groups and the state, both in the Indian and American contexts. The obvious answer that comes to mind is that we live in a post 9/11 world. Islam and Muslims are, of course, deserving of study and attention in any case. But it is worth making the fairly obvious point that there are other kinds of groups and communities (including, one may note, in Muslim countries) whose claims, histories, causes, and grievances demand the same level of urgency and attention: Dalits, workers, women, differently Abled individuals, Americans, sexual minorities, elderly people, Copts, Jews, indigenous communities, and countless others.