Is Pakistan a Failed State? An Assessment of Islamist Ideals, Nationalist Articulation and Ground Realities.

• Author: Al-Ahsan, Abdullah
• Position: ARTICLE - Essay

Introduction

The Times of India noted in an article published in February 2005 entitled "Pak Will Be Failed State by 2015" that:

Forecasting a "Yugoslavia-like fate" for Pakistan, the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a jointly prepared Global Futures Assessment Report have said "by year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and complete Talibanisation." (1) The chorus of Pakistan being a failed state was followed by many "experts." (2) But the view has been challenged by others. (3) In this essay we examine Pakistan's historical foundation and its state of affairs today.

Pakistan today stands at a crossroads of history. Prior to the British rule in India, Islam was spread by means of Arab merchants and Sufi teachers and many Muslims came with invading armies from the West and Central Asia. Muslims established political domination in India and during over thousand years of Muslim rule not only Muslims flourished in India, the majority Hindu community too participated and benefitted from the economic growth of the country. However, a distinct Muslim identify consciousness began to take root during the European colonial rule of the Indian sub-continent which began around the middle of the 18th century. This awareness emerged partially in response to the Orientalist/Christian missionary attack on Islam and partially due to the high probability of domination of Hindu Brahmanism in an independent Hindu-majority united India. The Muslim leadership anticipated a threat to their identity and dignity within a post-colonial India, one which contained a Hindu majority. The raison d'etre of the Pakistani nation, according to the founders of Pakistan, involved preserving and upholding humanism and Islamic universalism as opposed to narrow nationalism in India. (4) In this essay we will examine the growth of Muslim nationalist aspirations and their consequences. We discuss the growth of Muslim identity sensitivity under the British rule, the Islamic state controversy in independent Pakistan, educational developments, impacts of the rise of linguistic nationalism, the Kashmir dispute and the probable role of external forces in political developments in Pakistan.

Growth of Muslim Identity Consciousness under the British Rule

The Muslim perception of a distinctive identity in India began to appear in the 1860s through the question of language, which has generally been known as the Hindi-Urdu controversy. This controversy originated when Muslim modernist scholar-activist Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) established a translation society with the intention of translating books from European languages into an Indian language for the benefit and growth of the Indian youth. For Khan, the suitable Indian language was Urdu, but some Hindus opposed his idea insisting on translating materials into the Hindi language. (5) For Khan, the argument for Urdu was logical and simple: Muslims had abandoned the Persian language, which was the official language under the Muslim rule, in favor of Urdu for the sake of all Indians. Some Hindus, he thought, were only interested in wiping out the Muslim characteristics from India by imposing Hindi, (6) which was not a very developed language at the time and was not used by any community in India.

Sayyid Ahmad Khan continued with his efforts of establishing educational institutions: he first founded a Scientific Society to translate European books into Urdu and then established the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental School at Aligarh, UP, which was then turned into a college (1877) and a university (1920). When in 1885 the Indian National Congress (INC) was founded by an Englishman with the aim of promoting Indian nationalism, Khan discouraged Muslims from participating in such activities.

Another such scholar was Sayyid Amir Ali (1849-1928). His involvement lies mainly in the area of the intellectual growth of the community. His first contribution to scholarship was A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammad (1873) which he later developed as his masterpiece The Spirit of Islam (1922). This and his other major work, A Short Story of Saracens (1891), were written in refutation of Christian missionary assaults on Islamic ideas and the person of the Prophet. The primary focus of Ali's writings was to demonstrate the similarities between Islamic values and those of nineteenth-century liberal Europe so as to establish the foundation for reforming the society.

Both Khan and Ali were proud of the place of reason given in Islamic philosophy. Ali persuasively argued that the Prophet of Islam never traveled out of the province of reason. (7) This was necessary for Khan and Ali because the nineteenth-century European liberal thought was based solely on scientific theories which were closely identified with the human faculty of reason. Therefore, the main thrust of their argument was to demonstrate every aspect of Muslim belief in the light of those scientific discoveries.

Their interpretation of Islamic teachings created a sense of self-reliance, pride and confidence among the English-educated young Muslims in India. This was a developed stage for Indian Muslims. Most Western-educated Indian Muslims like Khan and Ali came into contact with the English environment in their personal capacity. However because of their privileged place in the former political and economic settings under the British rule they became victims of an inferiority complex. Although they admired Western civilization and the scientific advancement of Europe, psychologically and rationally they neither abandoned their conformist faith nor did they accept the hatred of Muslims by some colonial officials and the Christian missionary propaganda against Islam. (8) Ahmad Khans activities acquainted them with Western civilization and scientific tradition, but could not provide them with a sense of pride. On the contrary, his apologetic works on Islam seemed to have increased their sense of inferiority. While European-educated Indian Muslims were in this frame of mind, Ali appeared armed not only with a defensive, but an offensive attitude. Ali's aggressive intellectual approach along with his high official position in the British Indian government, (9) provided this generation with a new self-assurance. It encouraged Indian Muslims to be liberal in the manner of a Victorian Englishman, and at the same time to be proud of their Muslim identity. They seemed to have been prepared for some form of reform of their society.

In politics, Indian Muslims founded the All-India Muslim League (AIML) in December 1906 with a stated goal of safeguarding their civil and economic rights. In 1909 the British Indian government recognized minority demands and introduced a separate electorate system under which the existence of different communities was recognized and only the members of respective communities could vote for their representatives to the Legislative Council. The ideological foundation for the demand of an independent and sovereign nation-state for Muslims in India came much later from the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1873-1938). (10) A Universalist Iqbal was already disturbed with the growth of nationalism in Europe but the INC-led Indian nationalism appeared even more fanatic to him. He seemed to have become worried about Muslims losing their dignity under the caste-ridden Hindu leadership. Therefore he suggested dividing India by creating a Muslim nation-state where they could practice Islamic universal values such as human dignity, universal equality and justice. He proposed the formation of a state constituting the Muslim majority areas of India. He argued:

It is not the unity of language or country or the identity of economic interests that constitutes the basic principle of our nationality. It is because we all believe in a certain view of the universe... that we are members of the society founded by the Prophet of Islam. Islam abhors all material limitations, and bases its nationality on purely abstract ideas objectified in a potential expansive group of personalities. (11) Keeping in view the background of Iqbal and his time, it may be suggested that his main concern was to establish the legitimacy of the demand for a separate nation for Indian Muslims vis-a-vis Indian nationalism. In doing so, however, Iqbal encountered a new problem, i.e. the problem of the relation between this new nationality and other Islamic nationalities. (12) Iqbal resolved this question by saying:

For the present, every Muslim nation must sink into her deeper self; temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true and living unity, according to the nationalist thinkers, is not so easy as to be achieved by a merely symbolical overlordship. It is truly manifested in a multiplicity of free, independent units whose racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the unifying bond of a common spiritual inspiration. It seems to me that Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations which recognized artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members. (13) One must note here a unique characteristic of Iqbal's view of nationalism: While Europe during this period, under the impact of Social Darwinism, was moving toward totalitarianism, Iqbals perception of nationalism was humanitarian and universal which recognized natural divisions within the human family. Iqbal wanted to achieve unity of the Muslim Ummah through the Pakistani nation. In fact, in his thought one may find a sound response to the crisis of European thought highlighted by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He believed that Islam could provide solutions to...