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The subject of this review is Hassan Abbas’ book, Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism: Allah, the Army, and America’s War on Terror (Pentagon Press, 2005). At the time of writing this book, he was a Ph.D candidate at Tufts University (USA), a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School and had served in the government of Pakistan for ten years during the administrations of Prime Mnister Benazir Bhutto and President Musharraf.
This book examines the rise of religious extremism in Pakistan, and analyzes its connections to Pakistan Army’s polices and fluctuating U.S. Pakistan relations. The author includes a detailed history of the various governments of Pakistan, much of which is only loosely supports the topic of the book. This review focuses on the chapter-by-chapter chronology of historical periods and events as Abass covers them.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Abbas writes in introduction about the history of Islam on the Sub-continent, starting with Mohammad bin Qasim, an Arab general who conquered part of Sindh. Then he talks about the Muslim conquerors from the north--Central Asians, Afghans, and Persians. Sufis (mystic saints) also played a vital role for spreading Islam in subcontinent.
Further down Abbas explains about Muslims being behind in political development. In 1885 the Indian National Congress was a Hindu dominated Party. Abbas said Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, was a Muslim primarily by birth and loyalty, and in all other ways was more British than British. He was not overly keen on independence, but was also aware that the Muslims of India were far too backward compared with the Hindu majority, and needed guarantees to protect Muslims against exploitation when the British were to wit...
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...y different cloth.
Conclusion
Reading this book was an eye opening experience. I found the rich historical details as exciting as the intended purpose of the book. He covered so many things about history of Pakistan which I was not aware of before. A very informative book. Abbas’ writing style was also interesting and easily readable--narrative style. It should be noted that history he tell is limited to those events that support Pakistan’s Drift into Extremism.
The topics that particularly interested me included discussions of the following:
1- Jinnah’s position change on favoring unified India to a separate homeland.
2- The problems the choice of Urdu language as the National language created.
3- That Gen. Zia had a warning before getting on the fatal air craft.
4- General Zia managed the Kashmiri issue into the central issue for Pak foreign policy.
On November 26th, 2008 a largely unknown terrorist group forced their way into the international consciousness after an armed group of 10 terrorist’s implemented a well-planned, coordinated, and complex assault on the civilian populace of Mumbai. Utilizing Ak-47’s, hand grenades, and communication equipment, the terrorist attackers killed 104 people and injured another 308. For three days the Mumbai government struggled to effectively eliminate the perpetrators of the terrorist attack, which finally ended in a gun battle between the last living attacker and an Indian Commando unit. Only one attacker was captured by police, but the size of the attack and all of the terrorist participant’s commitment to terrorizing the Mumbai population even when surrounded and outnumbered highlights the development of Lashkar-E-Taiba (LeT), an organization which has arguably become one of the most powerful global terrorist networks. Over the past 20 years, a combination of religious ideological dogma within the Lashkar-E-Taiba, and a perceived utility within the Pakistani’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), set the conditions which allowed the transnational growth and expansion of Lashkar-E-Taiba. Since its inception, the LeT has become the largest and organized group within Kashmir (Desouza and Tobin 2007, 599). The group’s broad ideological jihadi goals and their global influence make Lashkar-E-Taiba a current threat to the United States, but also the most likely group to conduct a successful large scale significant attack against the United States or Western interests.
Lewis clearly and entirely pointed out key events explaining the choices to be made by the people of the Islamic faith. This paper highlighted just a few of the many key events. Lewis says, “Most Muslims are not fundamentalists, and most fundamentalists are not terrorists, but most present-day terrorists are Muslims and proudly identify themselves as such.” He also expertly points out, “Terrorism requires only a few. Obviously the West must defend itself by whatever means will be effective. But in devising means to fight the terrorists, it would surely be useful to understand the forces that drive them.”(Lewis. Introduction) In the end, I agree with and commend Bernard Lewis on pointing out that a single religion cannot be blamed for the acts of small groups of radicals.
Currie, Stephen. "Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda." Terrorists and Terrorist Groups. San Diego: Lucent Books, 2002. 69-83. Print.
Another important way, not entirely unrelated, of interpreting what transpired on 9/11 is to explain the attack of Islamic extremists on the United States of America as a manifestation of a “clash of civilizations.” At the center of this way of looking at these unprecedented events has been an article and book both authored by the noted Harvard professor of political science, Samuel P.
Sedgwick, M. (2004). Al-Qaeda and the nature of religious terrorism. Terrorism and Policical Violence, 16(4), 795-814.
Khashan, Hilal. “The New World Order and the Tempo of Militant Islam.” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Volume 24, Issue 1 (1997. 5), 5-24.
The Islamic revival trend of the late 20th century forged the intellection that the ‘resurrected’ Muslim nations were akin to Islamic states. The region considered to make up the Muslim world indisputably comprises nations that maintain majority Muslim populations. The extent to which these nations may be labeled Islamic, however, is dubious. As the omnipresent uniformity ascribed to Muslim nations has intensified with heightened media attention, the variance among systems of governance in these countries has continued to be overlooked. The Islamic presence in these countries, in fact, ranges vastly, from Islamic social groups that strive to revive social morality and eradicate Western culture to established political systems that endeavor to enforce Islamic law.
Extremism manifests itself dangerously in the Islam religion (Palmer, Monte, and Princess Palmer, 37). The Muslim religion has some laws and believes that no one should question their design, origin or application. Good people should punish immoral people in Islam religion without showing mercy to them. In Islam, human beings have no right to offer forgiveness to others that can easily lead to and create peace to oneself in the society. The unforgiving nature makes human rights groups in many ways try to change and support governments that try to overthrow Muslim extremist governments. Such an approach creates a war never ending between the Muslim governments and other governments that fight the extremist ideals. In East Africa, Somalia presents a case example by observing how the Government is not able to control the ever fighting and dreadful Al-Shabaab. The “Al-Shabaab” is an Arab name for Muslim youth who over the years try to use enforce extremist rulers in governing the country and hence controlling the resources. Muslim fighters and rebels arm themselves with arsenals they use to fight groups that oppose them by killing and torturing them. The al-Shabaab launches attacks that kill people and openly claim responsibility for the losses and the deaths they cause. They also punish members who commit sin using the retrogressive laws of the Quran on the people they label sinners. Other extremist
Likewise, Goodwin illustrates how the use of categorical terrorism can be seem being used by Al-Qaida during the attacks of 9/11. Nonetheless, it is evident that Al-Qaida is unusual in terms of using terrorism to influence the rise of unity rather than trying to overthrow a standing state. For the purpose of instigating a pan-Islamic revolutionary movement, Al-Qaida tries to unite all Islamic people under one state to develop umma, or Muslim community. The logic of Al-Qaida remained that if their “revolutionaries” could illicit a reaction from the powerful US state, resulting in oppression of the middle-eastern region, that Al-Qaida could, as a result, unite all Muslims to counter this suggested oppression. Although the end goal of Al-Qaida clear failed, it does suggest the organization’s attempt at implementing categorical terrorism.
There is a strong belief that Islam and politics are directly tied. They are tied in the sense that the building blocks of the religion dictate how they ought to behave in the political environment. Through this mandatory follow up behavior that the religion delineates, many have come to believe that its teachings are a form of terrorism. Mandaville argues that what has challenged the Islamic link between politics and religion was the emergence of secularism, which went against the belief that politics and religion could go together. Islam has been a religion that has been accused of supporting terrorist activities in the world. Different assumptions have been brought up to understand better the linkages between what really lies behind the Islam religion and politics. Peter Mandaville argues that Islam is dynamic and that it has changed over time; situated within time and politics.
Although seemingly a discrete category, religious terrorism cannot be disentangled from other motivations for terrorist violence. To what extent do you agree?
Without casting aspersions on the people and the culture of the region, we cannot deny that the Middle East is a hotbed of fanaticism. Thousands of militants have been indoctrinated by calls for the violent destruction of entire gr...
Under its hands, we have suffered so much?it murders without regret, it knows no bounds of means to quenching its thirst for power, it throws ministers, judges, and the poorest alike into the relentless walls of prison. It says that emergency occurred to PROTECT Pakistan, since it was supposedly under threat of disunity. Emergency is replaced by a more appropriate term for the events happening there now, MARTIAL LAW, as it purely and apparently is. It has given a new face to Hitler, releasing bombs in the houses of God, little children and huffaz perishing without mercy, it has created destruction and chaos amidst a cloud of weeping citizens, straining his teacup of those who timidly agree with him and callously disposing of the remnants. It is known by titles of both President and General.
As the Hindu’s in northwest India moved south, the Muslims moved north into Pakistan; millions were displaced, thousands were slaughtered as a result of the riots and the birth of both countries was met with death and destruction. Many believe that Muslims went along with the partition and moved to Pakistan “not because they viewed it, as official Pakistani narrative suggests, as the lan...
Pakistan is the basis in the international fight against terrorism to this day. Many Pakistani terrorist groups have made many terrorist attacks around the world. Pakistan faced the choice siding with or staying against the United States during the aftermath of 9/11. Violence in Pakistan has increased for many years as terrorist groups have targeted many political leaders, tribal leaders, the military, and also schools. Pakistan is divided into people who see the country as modern and/o...