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Taliban brand of Islam faces stern test
Marwaan Macan-Markar
1:06pm, Wed: (IPS) analysis As Afghanistan awaits a potential US military strike, the ruling Taliban is about to discover if it has any following among Muslim political leaders for a brand of Islam criticised for being "oppressive" and "intolerant".
Meantime, the Taliban's leaders have appealed to Islamic states and a global Muslim body, the Organisation for Islamic Conference (OIC), to rally around it under the flag of Islam.
"We should unite against our enemies who want to crush us because we are Muslim," the Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was quoted as having told the group's hierarchy at a weekend meeting in Kandahar, a city south of the capital Kabul, according a news report from Pakistan.
But securing solidarity from among Muslim leaders will not be easy for this predominantly Pashtun-speaking group, even if it makes a pitch for religious brotherhood by arguing that an attack on Afghanistan will be tantamount to an attack on Islam.
To begin with, leaders in Muslim countries across Asia and the Middle East have either endorsed or warmed up to the war on terrorism that the United States has pledged to wage following the acts of terror on Sept 11 in New York and Washington.
They have not been swayed by the Taliban's position - that neither it nor Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, currently living in Afghanistan and named by US officials as a leading suspect, were behind the hijacking of four planes, three of which rammed into US symbols of commerce and power.
Extremely intolerant
More importantly, the Taliban has hurt its cause by the form of the Islam it practices and preachers - a form that has been rebuked by a large swathe of Muslim scholars and political leaders as being extremely intolerant.
A high-profile event this year illustrates this divide, which resulted in the Taliban being further isolated from among Islamic leaders, despite claims by the Afghan group that it practices the "purest" form of Islam among the world's one billion Muslims.
In March, the Taliban invoked Islam to justify its destruction of two massive ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan, an act that was roundly condemned by a host of Muslim clerics and theologians from Egypt to Pakistan, some of whom called it an act of "cultural genocide against humanity".
But the Taliban dismissed condemnations and accusations about its "medieval" mentality. "According to Islam, I don't worry about anything. My job is the implementation of Islamic order," Taliban leader Omar had told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.
He added: "The breaking of statues is an Islamic order and I have given this decision in the light of a fatwa of the ulama (clerics) and the supreme court of Afghanistan. Islamic law is the only law acceptable to me."
The Taliban has maintained a similarly tough stance in imposing what it deems an Islamic way of life across the 90 percent of Afghanistan it controls.
Women worst affected
Since it emerged on the war-torn landscape of this South Asian nation in 1996 in its bid to claim political control amid the country torn apart by infighting after the Soviet pullout, women have been the worst affected by the Taliban's policies.
"Islamic fundamentalism in essence looks upon women as sub-humans, fit only for household slavery and as a means of procreation," said the Pakistan-based Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (Rawa), a women's rights group that has been monitoring the litany of abuse women have endured under Taliban rule.
The abuse ranges from women being whipped, beaten and verbally abused for not wearing the burqa (the Islamic dress that covers women from head to toe) to a complete ban on women studying at schools and universities and working outside their home, according to Rawa.
For a widow with no male relatives, the Taliban's Islamic edicts can result in a life of hunger and starvation, since it is against Taliban policy for a single woman to be seen in public, be it on the street or market. Even attempts by women to beg on the street - because of poverty - are scorned upon.
The Taliban's attempt to create a "pure" Islamic state has also seen a spate of public executions and amputations to eradicate crime. To secure purity on the cultural front, the Taliban has banned television, music, films and drama.
Little of that has impressed the bulk of Muslim nations.
Only three countries - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - recognise the Taliban regime, and they are now under pressure to distance themselves from it.
The Organisation of Islamic Conference, the global umbrella body of Muslim countries, distanced itself from the Taliban since it gained control of Afghanistan.
Iran, Afghanistan's western neighbour, views the Islamic order imposed by the Taliban as a violation of all that the religion stands for. "The distorted understanding and interpretation of Islam harshly enforced by the Taliban provides the best setting for people to be driven away from Islam," the English-language Teheran Times wrote in August.
Iran's opinion makers view the Islamic state they have created as a more genuine reflection of Islam, where, in addition to regular elections, women have more freedom and space than in other parts of the Muslim world.
Iran angered
The Taliban's harassment of the minority Shia Muslims in Afghanistan has also angered Iran, whose population belong to the Shia sect in Islam as opposed to the Taliban and majority Afghans, who belong to the predominantly Sunni sect in the religion. The two sects emerged in a battle for succession for leadership shortly after the Prophet Mohammad's death.
Little wonder, therefore, why Iran has minimal objections to the prospect of the Taliban facing a military onslaught being led by Tehran's arch foe, the United States.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi was reported as having told his British counterpart that Tehran would support the international anti-terrorist effort, but warned against hasty actions.
Similar calls have been echoed by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who sees a crackdown on Islamic fundamentalist movements as a must for the stability of Southeast Asia.
But while he has his own concerns about extremism at home, Malaysia and Indonesia - the world's biggest Muslim nation - are quite open societies and are among the most tolerant in the Muslim world.
The reality that it is bereft of goodwill does not bode well for the Taliban. If the political establishment across the Muslim world ignores its call for Islamic solidarity, it will signify a clear rejection of its brand of Islam by the political elite.
However, it may not portend the end for the Taliban's version of Islam. In neighbouring countries like Pakistan, its message resonates with sections of the public and the media.
These followers, largely conservative male Muslims, have begun echoing the Taliban's cry that an attack against its Islamic state is an attack against the Muslim world.
If that happens, a headline in an Urdu-language Pakistani newspaper warned on Friday, "the United States will face another curse from Allah."
posted by 207.181...
, Sun, 16 Sep 2001 18:01:33
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