The allure of jihad

us to suppose that lack of opportunity lies behind jihadi fantasy? Is this a class bias: we can understand the poor are gullible, but not the middle class? God forbid.

We then talk about indoctrination: the spread of Salafism, Wahhabism or madrassas. But the evidence subverts any neat story: not all madrassas produce jihadis and not all great secular institutions are successful at inoculating us against the appeal of jihad. Then we look for the distinction between moderate and radical groups, but this line turns out to be a lot more permeable and contextual than we imagined. We then take solace in the fact that jihadis might be only at the fringes. But, even if true, this is solace only up to a point. Historically, most societies are ruined by their fringes, not by the mainstream. We are reminded of the fact that probably 95 per cent of the members of any community will not have truck with violence of this sort. We use this fact to take a resolve against stereotyping communities. But such is psychology, that a five per cent probability that a member of a particular community might bode you ill weighs more on our minds than the 95 per cent chance that they do not.

We then turn to memoirs, hoping that interesting accounts such The Islamist might give us some insight. In Hussain’s case, there is the context initially of the Jamiat-i-Islami, the attraction of the writings of Ghulam Sarwar whose English textbook apparently made it to the school system in Britain, the influence of friends who catalyse the dreams of a caliphate, the plausibility of a narrative that represents Muslims across the world as united in a brotherhood, but also at the receiving end of history. There is the sheer allure of groups like Hizbut-ut-Tahrir that promise not just to answer western double standards, but also a brave new future. But in the end, all of this represents a betrayal of Islam, and a concern for Islam leads him to reject fundamentalism and embrace not secularism, but “true faith.” But what does this explain?

We look for explanations because we need a political strategy to combat jihadism that is the right combination of sama, dama, danda and bheda. But often the demand for explanation is not so much a search for the necessary or sufficient causes of terrorism. It is a call to save our own certitudes and illusions: in education, in Enlightenment, in progress, in the intrinsic goodness of ‘true faith.’ But jihadism is shattering not just these certitudes, but the great political myths of our time. We are yet to come to terms with the ruins.

Jihad has exposed three fundamental crises. The first is that there is a real crisis of secular nationalism across the world. This crisis is manifested in the way the state opportunistically relies on religious groups to shore up its own power. Pakistan is an extreme example of this; Bangladesh is also suffering the consequences, and India has also experienced the murderous consequences of playing footloose with religious groups. But more ambitiously, jihadism has shown, how in an era of nation states, it is possible to invent a politics that challenges the nation state form: global in reach, premised on a conception of brotherhood that often trumps obligations to particular nation states, and operating in a political form that none of our conventional political categories capture.

Jihad has also exposed, as Faisal Devji has pointed out, a crisis of religious authority. There is often a call for recovering the ‘true teaching’ or real Islam. But what does it mean to do that in a world that has no locus of religious authority, just a series of contending wills struggling to assert their might? What religious authority can you enlist? The crisis of the nation state is simultaneously accompanied by the crisis of religious authority, and that is perhaps why they both need each other.

The third crisis jihad has exposed is the crisis of anti-imperial politics. There is little doubt that jihadism is an offshoot of the geo-strategic politics of the last two decades. There is global acknowledgment that the Promethean exercise of American power is responsible for giving jihad succour and aid, and George Bush is widely reviled. But where is the political traction for a genuine anti-imperial politics? Other nation states, due to inability or unwillingness, have been reluctant to craft a credible strategy for stopping the colossal misapplication of American power. The great tragedy of the world is that jihadism has become the only politically potent anti-imperial politics. It has filled a vacuum. And it has acquired the status of an anti-imperial politics precisely because it has forced great changes in the structure of the world as we know it.

Notwithstanding the power of American values, the prosecution of American foreign policy has blurred the distinction between the good and bad guys. Epithets applied to jihad are, with some plausibility, being applied to American policy. This is also a policy premised on a political fantasy, a policy where the end appears to justify the means, and where innocent casualties are rendered at least as invisible as the victims of terrorism. The question is not so much of explaining jihad; nor one of attributing easy moral equivalence. But violence is sustained by a cloak of self righteousness. Unfortunately, American conduct has made it easier for more people to wear that cloak.

Of course, all kinds of operations against jihadism will continue. But unless there is a credible strategy for addressing the crisis of secular nationalism, for filling the vacuum left by the demise of traditional religious authority, and for crafting a more reasoned but effective anti-imperial politics, jihad will continue to have its allure.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research