Kuala Lumpur summit points to split in Muslim world

By HASAN ALHASAN

The Kuala Lumpur Summit beginning on Wednesday will bring together the leaders of Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Iran and Qatar with 450 Muslim intellectuals from around the world. It will also raise eyebrows. An initiative of Malaysia’s outspoken prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, the summit’s guest list indicates a clear preference for Muslim states of a certain type: supporters of political Islam who portray themselves as champions of global Muslim causes.

Yet the attempt to consolidate such a group will face stiff resistance from a deeply divided Muslim world. And its credibility as a champion of global Muslim causes ranging from Kashmir in India to Xinjiang in China, especially those that clash with members’ national interests, will be put to the test.

Conceived on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this year, the summit emerged out of frustration with the underwhelming response to India’s clampdown in Kashmir. When India announced its revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and placed the region under lockdown, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation deplored the move and echoed Pakistan’s call for a UN-supervised plebiscite.

However, the OIC’s criticism was hollowed out by a lack of consensus among its members on how best to deal with the issue. So while Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia locked horns with India over Kashmir at the UN, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi toured Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, where he was feted. Despite being a core member of the OIC’s contact group on Kashmir, Saudi Arabia took a subdued approach to the issue outside the organization, calling on India and Pakistan to resolve their disputes peacefully. To Pakistan’s dismay, so did the majority of Muslim states.

Beyond the issue of Kashmir, however, the summit also reflects the violent split between supporters and opponents of political Islam across the Muslim world. Muslim-majority states have backed rival sides in civil conflicts that have often pitted Islamists against secular nationalist forces in the Middle East.

In Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia backed the military’s move in 2013 to oust president Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader whose government enjoyed Qatar’s and Turkey’s patronage. In Libya, both Egypt and the UAE have lent support to Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army in the onslaught against Qatari/Turkish-backed Islamist groups. Iran has long thrown its weight behind Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and more recently the Houthis in Yemen, while recruiting thousands of young men into Shiite religious militias to wage war on its behalf in Syria and Iraq.

Amid such differences, then, Malaysia’s attempt at rallying the global patrons of political Islam faces a host of challenges.

The gathering cannot claim to be representative of the wider Muslim world. The six states invited to the summit make up a fraction of the 49 states represented at the OIC. They include not a single African or Arab state apart from Qatar

For starters, the gathering cannot claim to be representative of the wider Muslim world. The six states invited to the summit make up a fraction of the 49 states represented at the OIC. They include not a single African or Arab state apart from Qatar. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, was initially put forward as one of the summit’s key sponsors. However, its name has disappeared from recent press statements, casting doubt on its participation.

In addition, key Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia – which considers itself a natural leader of the Muslim world – Egypt, and others will also view the summit with suspicion. The divisive nature of the summit may eventually temper the enthusiasm of Pakistan, Indonesia and Qatar. All three are likely to want to avoid antagonizing Saudi Arabia.

According to a former senior Pakistani official to whom I spoke, Pakistan felt obliged to honor Malaysia’s invitation after the latter’s vocal stand on Kashmir. Pakistan’s participation, he insisted, is not meant as a challenge to Riyadh, which Islamabad considers a strategic partner. In February, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman visited Islamabad, where he pledged US$20 billion in investments.

Indonesia also is keen on attracting investments from Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has announced plans to invest $6.7 billion, a figure that Jakarta would like to see increase. In a signal of closer ties, the two sides signed in 2014 their first ever defense cooperation agreement. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz led a delegation of 800 people on a visit in 2017, injecting further momentum into the relationship.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also made progress toward mending ties in recent weeks. Although diplomatic relations remain severed, Qatar’s foreign minister made an unannounced visit to Riyadh in November. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain have also dispatched teams to the Arabian Gulf Cup soccer tournament in Doha, although a complete resolution to the dispute still seems elusive.

Finally, the summit’s sponsors face a significant test of their credibility. In contrast to its stand on Kashmir, Malaysia has tiptoed around China’s treatment of Uighur Muslims out of fear of drawing Beijing’s ire. During a trip to Xinjiang in July, Malaysia’s Islamic affairs minister, Mujahid Yusuf Rawa, drew criticism for describing China’s controversial re-education facilities as “training centers.” In September, Mahathir admitted that Malaysia could not afford to antagonize China over the Uighurs.

Likewise, Turkey has dialed down its criticism of China after a visit by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Beijing this year. Meanwhile, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan went so far as to deny knowledge of the Xinjiang issue in an interview with the Financial Times in March. Iran has also taken a soft line on both India and China, on which it relies to weather US sanctions.

Geopolitical realities impose considerable costs on would-be champions of global Muslim causes. The Muslim world is split, often violently, on the question of political Islam. The exclusion of Muslim heavyweights such as Saudi Arabia will inevitably dampen the summit group’s leadership claims, while Muslim-majority states keen on standing up to India over Kashmir, or China over Uighur Muslims, face the prospect of serious repercussions.

Islamic movements and the struggle against authoritarianism

Crescent International

The fact that virtually every regime in the Muslim world, except the Islamic state of Iran, is a dictatorship of some kind or other is widely recognized. In the last month, we have seen high-profile protests against the authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Pakistan. Similar protests, usually on a smaller scale, are commonplace in both countries and in many other Muslim countries. Other countries are even more repressive, so that even such ineffective protests are impossible. Confronting this authoritarianism is inevitably the starting point for virtually all political activism in such countries. Unfortunately, experience suggests that such activism is currently largely ineffective; Mubarak, for example, has been in power since 1981, when he succeeded Anwar Sadat after the latter’s execution, and no-one expects him to surrender power any time soon. If this activism is to be more effective, therefore, some key points need to be understood.

The first is the main reason for the prevalence of authoritarian rule in our countries. There are several explanations for this phenomenon. One, which underpins much Western discussion on the topic, is that there is something in Islamic values and political culture that makes Muslim societies more prone to authoritarianism. This, however, is no more than blaming the victims of dictatorship for their own repression, especially as Islamic movements are both the main political opposition movements in most Muslim countries, and the greatest victims of state repression. This paradox is ignored by Western intellectuals and politicians, who routinely turn the argument around to suggest that the defeat of “political Islam” is an essential prerequisite for the democratisation of Muslim countries.

This formulation takes us closer to the reality of the situation: that the prevalence and popularity of Islamic movements is the main obstacle to democratisation and the main reason for the survival of the dictators. Why? Because virtually every dictator in the Muslim world is an ally of the West, and depends on the West for survival. (This includes even Syrian ruler Bashar al-Asad, who is publicly vilified by the West for their opposition to Israel and relationship with Iran and Hizbullah; remember, for example, where the US sent Mahar Arar for torture after his arrest in New York in 2002.) The real reason for the prevalence of authoritarian rule in Muslim countries is that the West fears any real political liberalisation because it would inevitably mean the rise of Islamic movements and the establishment of governments that represent their own peoples’ values and interests rather than those of the West.

The West claims, of course, to champion democratisation and political reform in Muslim countries. But these claims need to be examined critically. Those of Western politicians like USsecretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who last month lectured Egypt on the need for political reform, can be dismissed as hypocritical, self-serving double-talk that fools no-one. Then there are the claims of many Western non-governmental institutions, which claim to be promoting civil society, political reform, human rights and democratisation, and often offer help and support to opposition movements in Muslim countries. Often they lobby for political prisoners and offer support networks for opposition groups. But this support is seldom without strings: it is offered to those who are willing to set aside any Islamic commitment and accept broadly secular, pro-Western notions of democratic government. Thus marginal figures with little popular credibility are supported and promoted, such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim in Egypt, while far more popular Islamic movements, even those that work within existing systems, such as the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, are seen as part of the problem.

Islamic movements seeking to oppose authoritarian regimes commonly make two errors. The first is to soften or moderate their Islamic approach in order to find common ground with others who also oppose the government but are less Islamically oriented. These often include secular groups with Western connections. The second is to try to oppose the dictators from within the political systems that they establish. But these systems, even where they have apparently ‘democratic’ elements, such as parliaments and elections, are designed to secure the regime in power, and have rarely been used successfully against their creators; and never when the dictators have had outside support to crush opposition groups if and when they threaten to become too independent.

All dictators recognise that they must allow a degree of political activism and opposition to absorb popular political passions; and so they do, to the greatest extent possible before their essential interests are threatened or they fear losing control of the situation, at which stage the restrictions kick in, usually with tacit Western support in the name of maintaining stability. The opposition demonstrations and activism that we are seeing in Egypt and Pakistan must be understood in this framework. In both countries, the dictators are secure in the knowledge that their own positions are reasonably strong; and the powers behind them are secure that even if the dictators fall there is no risk of genuinely popular, Islamic and anti-Western alternatives emerging.

While Islamic movements must continue to maintain political pressure on the dictators of our countries, therefore, they must also look beyond this immediate imperative. If such opposition is to be meaningful, Islamic movements must offer strategies for the total transformation of Islamic societies, rather than working within existing systems, and build popular bases for more effective political opposition in the future. Such movements are, of course, the ones that are most heavily repressed. But nothing less will achieve the ultimate object of the liberation of our societies from both the West and the dictators.