Two Ticks in the Box

"Final Printing of my Paper"

Two in the box in one go. Phew!! Finally, I deposited two of my major works to the faculty today. It was my Individual Research Paper and our Group Research Paper. I am not required to defend my IRP, but for the GRP we will be presenting it this Saturday. Our only hope is that the faculty and course participants suffer some form of "exercise fatigue" so that they refrain from asking too many questions.

The Thesis statement of my Paper is as follows:
In the post-Cold War era, most regional countries especially Southeast Asian nations, give priority to their economic development, which is considered vital to their national interests. The presumed existence of large oil and gas deposits in the South China Sea and the strategic importance of shipping lanes between East Asia, the Middle East and Europe have increased the risk of confrontations over disputed areas in Southeast Asia.
The South China Sea dispute is the most complex maritime dispute in the world and is fast becoming a common source of conflict in the post- Cold War period. There are fears that the South China Sea disputes, if not properly managed, may disrupt the freedom of navigation in the area, in turn, trigger a great power rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. There is an urgency of averting these possible confrontations through a peaceful settlement.
In the current geo strategic environment, the roles of all the stakeholders in the issue are very critical. China being the central focus of this issue, stakes its claims to almost the entire portion of the sea, including the Paracel and Spratly group of islands, based on historical factors and occupation. Other claimants based their cases on jurisdictional rights for coastal states over offshore seabed resources as set out in the 1982 United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea. ASEAN, being a regional organization and having four of its members as claimants, is very much interested to see a peaceful settlement for the sake of regional stability. Finally, the United States has vital interests at stake, including maintenance of freedom of navigation and protecting the credibility of its forces as a balancing and stabilizing presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Military skirmishes have occurred numerous times in the past and currently, efforts are being made to find peaceful solution to this dispute. A range of preventive diplomatic mechanisms and approaches are being used to dampen tensions, forestall the outbreak of conflict, and provide the basis for a political settlement. Nevertheless, despite all these efforts, the dispute remains a principle irritant in the region.
With the above backdrop, the paper will attempt to discuss and analyze the dispute, vis-Ã -vis the interests of all the claimants and other stakeholders. At the end, the paper will offer some useful recommendations.

A portion of my spoken text for GRP is as follows:
An Overview

1. A great deal has been written on madrassahs in the West, in the wake of the 9/11 and U.S. war on terrorism. An impression has been created that madrassahs in Pakistan are a source of Islamic extremism and the breeding ground of terrorism. Madrassahs have been dubbed as ‘dens of terror,’ ‘jihad factories,’ etc. The media campaign has led to a general perception, where madrassahs have become synonymous with terrorism and terrorist training camps. It has also been suggested by many Western scholars that there is an inherent relationship between what is taught in the madrassahs and religious extremism, Talibanism, militancy and even terrorism.

2. The London bombings have been a recent incident that gave fuel to the cause of anti-Islamists. One of the accused in the case is said to have visited Pakistan prior to the incident where he is said to have been somehow brainwashed in a few sessions – his lifelong education in British schools notwithstanding! Pakistan has had to pay a heavy price, because of the perceived linkage of madrassahs with militancy. A general view has thus prevailed, that spread of Islamic extremism and terrorism cannot be controlled, unless madrassahs are closed down strictly. However, our research showed that these assertions lose weight, in the face of following facts:-

a. Firstly, if the madrassah education is the only or the main cause of Islamic militancy and radicalism, why did these tendencies not manifest themselves before the 1990s? After all, the curriculum of the madrassahs has remained the same for about 150 years.

b. Secondly, madrassah curriculum is pacifist in its orientation. Its approach to Islam is ultra-conservative, literalist, legalist, and sectarian, but not revolutionary, radical, or militant.

c. Thirdly, there is absolutely nothing in the madrassah curriculum that can be deemed as promoting or encouraging militancy or terrorism.

d. Next, recently, the New York Times made a study on educational backgrounds of terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against Westerners. It was found that the majority of them were college-educated, often in technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks, firstly, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, secondly, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, thirdly, the 9/11 attacks, and lastly, the Bali bombings - 53 percent of the terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. The terrorists in the study, on average appear to be as well educated as many Americans, as evident from he following:-

(1) The 1993 World Trade Center attack involved 12 men, all of whom had a college education.

(2) The 9/11 pilots, as well as the secondary planners identified by the 9/11 commission, all attended Western universities, a prestigious and elite endeavor for anyone from the Middle East. The lead 9/11 pMohammedohamed Atta, had a degree from a German university in urban preservation, while the operational planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. It was also found that, two-thirds of the 25 hijackers and planners involved in 9/11 had attended college.

(3) Of the 75 terrorists that were investigated, only nine had attended madrassas and all of them were involved in only one attack - the Bali bombing. Even in that instance, five college-educated ‘masterminds’ - including two university lecturers - helped to shape the Bali plot.

e. And lastly, the following few incidents would help put the matters in even clearer perspective:-

(1) Charles Whitman, the university student who climbed up the university tower in Texas in 1966 with an arsenal of weapons, and then killed 17 of his fellow students and teachers, was not a product of madrassahs.

(2) The Columbine school massacres were committed by schoolboys, who did not receive their primary education in madrassahs.

(3) The followers of Charles Manson, who believed that he was God and blindly obeyed his orders to go on a killing spree, were not educated in madrasahs.

(4) Timothy McViegh certainly did not attend a madrassa.

(5) The thousands who accepted without question orders given by Rev. Jim Jones to commit suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, were not educated in madrassahs.

Reasons for Madrassah Militancy

3. Notwithstanding what I have just presented, presence of radicalism in a few madrassahs cannot be ruled out. The question is, how did that radicalism come about even in that very small number of madrassahs? Here we present two considerations.

a. Western Interests. The matter has been investigated at length by many scholars, Government agencies, think tanks etc., and the general conclusion is that, “radicalism in some madrassahs in Pakistan was an extraneous phenomenon. It was brought into madrassahs by international and domestic political actors who wanted to use the religious capital and manpower of these madrassahs for their own objectives. It was only after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 that some madrassahs on the northern and southern border areas of Pakistan, which always had a majority of their students from Afghanistan, came to be associated with the Afghan jihad movement.

b. Afhgan Refugees Factor. It is estimated that out of the five million Afghan refugees in hundreds of refugee camps in Pakistan, forty percent were school-age children, and many of them orphans. A number of organizations were formed to provide them with free food, shelter, and basic skills of how to read and write, along with some Islamic education. Most of these organizations came about in the 1980s, with active funding from the West. These were in fact military training camps, where some religious education was also imparted, and were established with active US support to strengthen the fight against the Soviets. The fact that they were, from their very inception, conceived as militant training camps and were given a cover of madrassahs to legitimize their operations and solicit funds from all over the Muslim world, has conveniently been relegated to the collective amnesia that our Western friends have so often demonstrated!

4. The story of these madrassahs is thus integrally linked with the story of Afghan jihad of the 1980s and of the Cold War that created the political conditions for this jihad. Therefore, the answers to the questions, one, who established these militant guised as madrassahs, two, why were they created, and three, who sustained them financially - have to be found in the West. Unfortunately for Pakistan these militant tendencies also found their way from the tribal belt of the NWFP to the rest of the country and linked up with sectarian violence. Like what was said by Mr. Moin Uddin Haider during his lecture, this is one of the “gifts” for Pakistan.

5. Some of the militant groups that are alleged to be products of madrassahs are:

a. The Taliban. The Taliban may be an Afghan movement, but because of the strong Pakistani component, their rise is associated to madrassahs. The Deobandi madrassahs are considered to have inspired this movement.

b. Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. The Harkalul Mujahideen was the successor of the Harkat-ul-Ansar after it was declared a terrorist organization by the United States. A Deobandi-Wahabi group, it was believed to be under the influence of Maulana Samiul Haq's Jamiat-ul-Ulema-lslam as well as the Sipahe Sahaba Pakistan.

c. Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Lashkar is the militant wing of the Markaz Dawa wal-Irshad, an Ahle Hadith-Wahabi organization based near Lahore. It emerged as a major guerrilla group in the late nineties.

d. Hizbul Mujahideen. This group is said to have operated in Kashmir and was alleged to have links with the Jamaat-i-Islami. Most of its members however were considered to college and university graduates and not madrassah educated.

e. Hizbe Wahadat. A militant Shia organization having its power base is in the Hazara region of Afghanistan. It had links with Iran as well as Shia organizations in Pakistan including the Tehrik-e-Jafria Pakistan and Sipahe Mohammed.

f. Sipahe-Sahaba Pakistan. A hard-line Sunni political-cum-militant organization with an anti Shia bias. It was alleged to have been supported by certain Arab donors.

g. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. It was a separate militant wing of the Sipahe Sahaba Pakistan.

h. Sipahe Mohammad Pakistan. A militant Shia organization.

Madrassah Point of View

6. The madrassahs naturally take exception to the vilification that they are subjected to. The madrassahs representatives at large have seldom claimed that the madrassahs as an education system does not have limitations. The lack of opportunity to study modern subjects, the dated teaching methods and the sectarian biases are some areas needing improvements despite substantial work done in this regard. It is however said that the West had no reason to deem madrassahs as a threat for its cultural identity. Some arguments are:-

a. Firstly, the International Crisis Group itself has concluded that, out of the thousands of madrassahs operating in the country, only 10-15% are alleged to be involved in sectarian violence or in acts of international terrorism. The assumption of involvement of Madrassahs in terrorism or in its glorification is based mainly on reports that Taliban were mostly the students of Pakistani Madrassahs. Madrassahs have also been quite categorical in condemning terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and their stance against sectarian violence and militancy is likewise clear.

b. Secondly, policy makers in US and Europe know little about the manner in which institutions of Islamic learning function and what they stand for. There is a requirement therefore for more interaction to enhance awareness. As a case in point, a US Ambassador in Pakistan having visited a madrassah remarked, ‘whatever she had been told and whatever - she herself saw were two entirely different things’.

c. And lastly, in the sub-continent during the last three hundred years, many of the voices calling for Madrassah reforms and appropriate changes in its syllabi were raised from within the Madrassah itself.

Perceptions and Reality

7. The linkage between madrassahs and terrorism is now almost a ‘given in’ so far the West, or even part of our own intelligentsia is concerned. In fact whereas the West is mainly concerned with terrorism, own citizens are also apprehensive about sectarianism, and the nation has a much higher stake in eradicating related causes. The apparent finality of the conclusion of ‘madrassah - terrorism linkage’, betrays a ‘denial mode’, to face the fact that there may very well be other causes, most due to West’s own creation. But such conclusion would amount to adopting the same approach that the West is criticized for. Clearly there is chasm, and a sense of self righteousness, and there is a need to ascertain as to why the same facts lead to differing perceptions. Three reasons stand out:-

a. Role of Religion. Muslims concept of religion is substantially different than the West. Whereas Muslims consider religion to pervade all spheres of life, the West restricts religion to personal life only. This secular approach has its roots in the Europe of Middle Ages when the Papacy was responsible for widespread coercion, suppression and extremism in the society. The bitter experiences resulted in reform movements, named varyingly as like the 'Renaissance', 'Reformation' or 'Modernism.' The role of religion in society was considered a threat for humanity that had to be ruthlessly eliminated, through force if necessary.

b. Western mindset. There seems to be a deep rooted concept among the West that the cultural gulf between the East and the West cannot be bridged. The ready acceptance of the so-called theory of ‘The Clash of Civilizations' propounded by Huntington, affirms this perception about cultural incongruity. There has hardly been any debate on his assertions that following the demise of Communism, Islam poses the greatest threat to the West and that the West has to be prepared to counter it. It is natural, that such damning declarations color judgments and drive public opinion. The word terrorism is now subconsciously synonymous with Islam - public pronouncements to the contrary notwithstanding. The deduction that it is an inevitable priority to do away with all those institutions, which promote Islamic learning, or at least reform them in a manner as to change their mission and character then becomes a natural one. The cartoon debacle, proved our point of the western mindset linking Islam with terrorism. In the interest of press freedom, they portrayed the Prophet (pbuh) as a terrorist. “nauzubillah”. Indeed, the most heinous crime imaginable against Islam.

c. Globalization. Globalization is both a unifying and disrupting force at the same time. It will thrive on compassion and understanding of cultural differences. It has empowered the individual but also threatened cultures as Western societies aggressively pursue their commercial interests. This combination generates fear of asymmetric reactions especially from the Muslims who are perceived as somewhat obstinate in defending values and cultural identity. In the eyes of the West therefore, Islamic countries need more attention for promoting modernism.