In 2009, when I was working as the Islamabad correspondent for a Karachi based political magazine, I was asked by my editor to work on a story about how Pakistanis viewed the United States. I was asked to interview some of the local political elites in Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The political atmosphere in those days was charged. In neighboring Afghanistan, stories about American forces' high handedness and the consequential collateral damage caused to Afghanistan’s population, occasionally used to make headlines in Pakistan. This caused a general sense of distress in society.
Anti-American feelings were palpably high. My editor was particularly interested in knowing how the local political elite viewed the American political system, built on the premise of democracy, civil and political freedoms. I was expecting highly anti-American answers to my questions during the survey in Rawalpindi.
To my astonishment, Rawalpindi’s local political elite was full of praise for the American political system and the civil liberties and political freedoms it granted to citizens. I was particularly astonished by the responses of a local Jamaat-e-Islami leader—a religious party known for its Anti-American rhetoric in the post-Zia period—who went out of the way to praise political freedoms, which according to him were the hallmark of the American political system, “we need American style political system and freedom in Pakistan,” he said in response to my questions.
A sense of euphoria was disseminated widely through the intellectual sloganeering that Western liberal democracy represented the “end of history,” and that the debate over the ideal political system and the ideological foundations of society had been settled due to America’s victory in the Cold War.
It seemed that the Pakistani political elite was either influenced by Western media and had been indoctrinated, or was genuinely smitten with the culture that had prevailed over the might of the Soviet Union in the Cold War. There was no doubt that in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, American triumphalism was broadcasted over the air waves globally. A sense of euphoria was disseminated widely through the intellectual sloganeering that Western liberal democracy represented the “end of history,” and that the debate over the ideal political system and the ideological foundations of society had been settled due to America’s victory in the Cold War.
Pakistani intellectuals and political elites were no exception to the generally accepted impression that the West, led by the United States, was the unequivocal winner in the ideological debates over the ideal political system during the Cold War. It was American foreign policy that Pakistanis hated, but they loved its political system.
Pakistanis are therefore not averse to listening to American Presidents’ speeches, when they praise their country as a freedom loving democracy” Pakistanis don’t feel alienated when they listen to this kind of rhetoric. Why do they then hate the foreign policy of their favorite freedom loving country? Most Pakistanis, in their simplicity, think that America is anti-Muslim and anti-Islam. After all, why would a freedom loving country like the United States oppose the freedom movements of the Palestinians and Kashmiri people? The need to seek an intellectual answer to these questions is obviated by the general lure of American culture. Its soft power is all pervasive. Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift and others are more popular among Pakistani youth and Pakistani middle classes than the entire battalion of Pakistani actors combined. It is cliché to mention that you will hardly find a youngster without jeans and American clothing in their wardrobe—irrespective of whether they are a devout Muslim or secularist.
Pakistanis mostly have little idea why Americans poke their nose in every issue in every part of the world. They are satisfied with the answers that Americans are Muslim haters.
But beneath this colorful and exciting veneer of our American influenced political and social life, there exists a dark side of Muslim society—a dark side which emerged and manifested itself in the formation of terrorist groups across Muslim societies. We hardly have any tangible information about this dark side. We don’t know what is happening beneath the surface in our society when our youth watches the Israeli occupation machine mercilessly massacre Palestinians in Gaza. And they watch American political leaders extend their full political and military support to the state of Israel.
I got a glimpse of what kind of extremist thoughts are taking root in our society when I visited a close family friend for dinner a few weeks ago. There was a sumptuous dinner, stylishly decorated at the dinner table. But all hell broke loose when the lady of the house placed a bottle of Coca Cola on the table. Their teenage son just refused to share the table with us after a long spell of shouting at the top of his lungs, “Congratulations, you have just killed six Palestinian kids,” he shouted at his parents. His shouting continued for at least 10 minutes after which he walked out of the dinner room. His father tried to convince him that Coca Cola is a locally produced cold drink, but to no avail.
For many, this is likely to register as a trivial incident in a household, but it indicates the anger that could be channelized into something much bigger. My experience of watching that kid shouting at his parents and accusing them of supporting Israel for simply buying a bottle of Coca Cola was the main catalyst which compelled me to write this piece. I am sure my friend’s family will control and manage the anger of their child. But that kid’s reaction was the base material out of which many of the extremists and lone wolves of the last decade took birth.
Pakistani televisions, just like news channels across the Muslim world have been broadcasting the Gaza situation live for the past three months with graphic footage. I have seen the anger build up in Pakistani society. I am sure other Muslim societies must also be seething with a similar level of frustration and anger over the Gaza situation. Although we don’t know yet how all this is going to play out in the future, we do have lessons from the past in front of us.
Most Muslim fundamentalist movements rose to prominence in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. How many fundamentalist parties will get a new lease on life now, it is not yet clear. Maybe the anger this time will manifest in a totally different way.
Abdullah Azzam, the Jihadi ideologue of Al-Qaida, who spent most of his life in Peshawar during the Afghan war, was a Palestinian and got his inspiration for writing pro-Jihad tracts—that inspired Al-Qaida—for Israeli atrocities in Gaza and West Bank. Osama Bin Laden was himself trained in Afghanistan, but got part of his ideological inspiration from the situation in Palestine, as is evident from his video messages. We don’t know how many have been influenced in our midst by the story of the helplessness of Palestinian Muslims. And how many more have been exposed to the message of Jihad of Abdullah Azzam, who was killed in the 1980s in Peshawar? We do know that this is a dangerous situation: there is no dearth of idle young men seething with anger in our society, and there is no dearth of violent ideologues who are waiting to exploit the situation.
Western democracies have put us in an unenviable situation. For them, it is the guilt of the Holocaust, that is compelling them to support the Jewish state of Israel in their indiscriminate onslaught against Palestinian Muslims. For us in Muslim societies, this is a situation which could be described as ending back in square one—we will have to deal with extremists on a large scale again. How many lone wolves will take birth - nobody yet knows. The Americans might be sitting in a citadel protected on all sides by oceans, but they don’t have any idea how far they have pushed the ideal of normal life out of reach for people in Muslim societies. Most Muslim fundamentalist movements rose to prominence in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. How many fundamentalist parties will get a new lease on life now, it is not yet clear. Maybe the anger this time will manifest in a totally different way.
Pakistanis mostly have little idea why Americans poke their nose in every issue in every part of the world. They are satisfied with the answers that Americans are Muslim haters. They never bother to intellectualize the strategic aspect of the American worldwide network of interests and strategic compulsions. The best answer they can offer is that Muslim lands are rich in oil and natural resources. That's why Washington always wants to keep control of these lands.
When they are told that America no longer relies on Middle East oil, they turn to the “they hate us” theory. Once, I told one an Islamist intellectual about the geopolitical theory that Americans would never allow a single power to dominate the Eurasian landmass, he immediately retorted back that this is an opportune time for us in Muslim societies to join the Russian and Chinese bloc so that they could dominate the Eurasian landmass. I told him Muslim Societies are at war with themselves. Unless they find a viable strategy to deal with extremism, they won’t be of any good for anybody. The more hurt extremists cause in Western societies, the greater the militarily dominant West will squeeze Muslim societies in turn. The more the West will squeeze Muslim societies, the more extremists these societies will produce.
In this cyclical process, there is a chance that Muslim societies will self-destruct. But if the West thinks they can escape unscathed from this spiral, they are terribly mistaken. Historically, the Muslim world and Western world have had cultural, historical, social, political and economic linkages, and these two entities will continue to affect each other.