Posted by 
Last Thursday the Senate voted to triple the amount of non-military aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion annually. The money is supposed to go to build democracy and aid anti-terror efforts. “We should make clear to the people of Pakistan,” explained Senator Richard Lugar, “that our interests are focused on democracy, pluralism, stability, and the fight against terrorism. If Pakistan is to break its debilitating cycle of instability, it will need to achieve progress on fighting corruption, delivering government services, and promoting broad based economic growth.”
This all sounds great, until one looks at the post-9/11 record of dealings between the United States and Pakistan. Last September, the New York Times reported that “after the attacks of Sept. 11, President Pervez Musharraf threw his lot in with the United States. Pakistan has helped track down Al Qaeda suspects, launched a series of attacks against militants inside the tribal areas — a new offensive got under way just weeks ago — and given many assurances of devotion to the antiterrorist cause. For such efforts, Musharraf and the Pakistani government have been paid handsomely, receiving more than $10 billion in American money since 2001.” However, “the survival of Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders has depended on a double game: assuring the United States that they were vigorously repressing Islamic militants — and in some cases actually doing so — while simultaneously tolerating and assisting the same militants.”
What has changed in Pakistan since then? Not much. Musharraf is gone, but much of the rest of the Pakistani leadership is the same, and above all, the core attitudes that led to the double game being conducted in the first place have not changed. One fundamental assumption that all too many Pakistani officials hold is that when something goes wrong with society, it is because the people have faltered in their fidelity to Islam, and only renewed religious fervor can solve the problem and restore prosperity to the nation and health to the society. This assumption militates against the idea that any amount of American aid will significantly alter the situation in Pakistan, or lessen popular support for the Islamic jihad of the Taliban and allied groups. For the Americans will always, no matter how much money they lavish upon the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, be infidels. The solution to Pakistan’s problems will not be seen as lying with them, but with a renewed commitment to Islam.
In Iran it was the same story. The attempts by several Shahs to follow the lead of Turkish secularist Kemal Ataturk and modernize Iran along Western lines were ultimately torpedoed by Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, which restored traditional Islam’s strict dress code and swept away “music and most other ‘satanic arts,’” as well as alcoholic beverages. Westerners were mystified by the spectacle of women wearing traditional Muslim garb, demonstrating against the Shah who had tried to give them greater rights. But those who searched for economic or political causes for this revolution, or who were puzzled by the apparent popularity of the dour, scowling Khomeini failed to recognize that, as the Muslim writer Sadeq el Mahdi put it in 1981, “in the Muslim world, Islam is the only key to the hearts and minds of the people.” When Khomeini spoke to the Iranian people, he didn’t talk about economics. His message was that it was time to restore the purity of Islam.
This pattern is repeated throughout the Islamic world. Every government that goes too far in implementing Western principles encounters religious resistance. Pakistan also has struggled since its independence with the relationship between Western principles and Sharia norms. It was founded as a secular state, but Islamic activists resisted its secular character from the beginning. In 1956, eight years after independence, it was proclaimed an Islamic Republic. Amid a great deal of ongoing unrest, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto promised in 1977 to implement the Sharia. Shortly thereafter President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who had taken power in a bloody coup, declared that the Sharia was above Pakistan’s civil law. Unrest has continued, and the small Christian community in Pakistan has suffered considerably under the Sharia.
Desire to restore the purity, and thus the glory, of the umma is also the impetus behind the rise of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists today. Setbacks in the Islamic world commonly result in the diagnosis that the defeat resulted from insufficient religious fidelity. In 1948, the Egyptian jihad theorist Sayyid Qutb surveyed the House of Islam and wrote passionately, “We only have to look in order to see that our social situation is as bad as it can be.” Yet “we continually cast aside all our own spiritual heritage, all our intellectual endowment, and all the solutions which might well be revealed by a glance at these things; we cast aside our own fundamental principles and doctrines, and we bring in those of democracy, or socialism, or communism.”
In other words, the ingredient for success is more Islam. V. S. Naipaul discovered this diagnosis to be very much alive in modern Pakistan, at least as regarding Islam: “failure,” he says, “led back again and again to the assertion of the faith.” He quotes an article in the Pakistan Times by A. H. Kardar, “the former cricket captain of Pakistan, and an Oxford man.” Says Kardar of modern Pakistan: “Clearly, the choice is between materialism and its inseparable nationally divisive political manifestoes, and the Word of God.” A new severity invariably follows.
If Islamic orthodoxy were differently constituted, it wouldn’t be so vulnerable to exploitation by fanatics and demagogues who invoke religious principles as the basis of their legitimacy — but that’s precisely the problem. And it’s a problem that everyone who believes that the House of Islam can easily be secularized and fit into place as another ingredient in a global multicultural society should examine carefully. Especially those Senators who have just showered more American billions upon Pakistan.
I agree to a degree. However, I would like to know what your answer is to fixing this problem ?
The Art of War states that if your enemy is concentrated, spread them out. As far as I am concerned, it is time for India to act like Gandhi, leave the subcontinent, move to South America, start passing as latinos, and start making the American West rich and not the Islamists East.
Hell. Maybe Atta was right and Osama was wrong. Yes. You are entitled to design your own Mosques if no Moslems are allowed to cross the Atlantic or Pacific. Really. You think we are going to loose this one?
Splitting the atom vs. “Discovery of the Number Zero!”
First in Flight vs. “The Iranian Suicide bomber on a jet ski!”
Kanzius Research vs. “Free sex changes for all!”
My God. Put Mahmoud next to the Sham-Wow guy and Billy Mays and you got the three headed pitchmen of the Great Satan!
As long as a people are blocked from encountering the world as it can be affirmed–the essential feature of any empirical science–planning and policy-making rest on deeply held myths. In their case, the cycle is a closed one: the very evidence that might disprove their position is taken to affirm it, and so the situation continues to disintegrate. The end phase is a society in collapse, whose institutional arrangements no longer meet people needs and are thus cast aside as irrelevant (something that may be happening in Iran).
I'm reminded of the research on Easter Island, which indicates that peolpe kept to their mores until the situation disingrated to the point where only a few people were able to survive in underground caves.
IMO, this situation in Islam parts of the worlrd is one that has no way of reversing itself. The best we can do in monitor the situation, keep ourselves aware of what is going on in this disfunctional area of the world, and take appropriate steps to pretect ourselves as more than a billion people descend into the chaos of a fragmented social order whose only chance of maintaining itself is to seek the emergence of one powerful person who can keep the situation under control. The irony is that such a person, in such an appreciative system, only hastens the dimise. I suspect that initating a nuclear war with the rest of the wold would draw down the wrath of God.
Pouring money into a boiling kettle isn't working because money does not bring about a solution. It rather adds to the problem.
Spiritual validation is tied into material success in Islam as in no other religion.
One necessarily validates the other. Unlike the founders of other religions, Mohammed merged the two and they are now forever intertwined in the mind of the believer. This is true even for the moderate Muslim and no reformation is possible as long as this core tenet of Islam is mantained. To repudiate this tenet is to repudiate Mohammed himself. Since that will never happen, no reformation is likely ever to occur.
Giving aid to Pakistan in 2009 to fight Islamist terror is like giving aid to Austria in 1939 to fight Naziism. The Austrians cheered and threw flowers at the Nazis as they marched into their country. Our relationship with Pakistan demonstrates cluelessness, nothing more. No openly Islamist country is ever going to be a reliable ally in the fight against Islamist terrorism. They are just milking us for money to spend on weapons to use agains India, and occasionally double crossing a few terrorists to keep the gravy train rolling.
The US should side decisively with India, a true secular democracy that is as fed up with Islamist savagery as the rest of the civilized world. With India as a solid ally in a real war against Islamist terror, we might actually get some real cooperation from Pakistan. If it goes nuclear, well, that is not a matter of 'if', but 'when'. We are not going to win this by sending our troops to be blown up by Iranian and Pakistani made roadside bombs for another ten years. It is time to take off the white gloves in this fight and get serious. This is an existential conflict. India is the only reliable ally in this fight in that part of the world. Our leaders are idiots.
Proxywar, I realize you did not ask your question of me; nonetheless, I'm prompted to respond. I substantially agree with drungar. I submit, the problems of Islamic backwardness, delusional supremacism, and outwardly directed violence (imperialism) have no solutions at all, either from inside dar-al-Islam or from outside. In my opinion, the only sensible course of action for the West in the face of the hatred, greed, and violence directed toward it from the Islamic world is one of watchful, defensive, waiting.
We leave Muslims essentially alone, other than for vigorous decisive military defense against their inevitable aggression, and then wait for the Islamic world to collapse economically. If we stop sending them jizya in the form of “aid” and payments for oil, Muslims will begin to die of starvation within five years, and in two or three decades, Islam will no longer be the threat to civilization it has constituted for the past 14 centuries.
The author claims, “One fundamental assumption that all too many Pakistani officials hold is that when something goes wrong with society, it is because the people have faltered in their fidelity to Islam…”
I fundamentally disagree with this characterization of Pakistan officials by the author. If these “Pakistani official” are really so devout, then why is it that most of them do not follow the very basic commandment of Islam that requires them to make an honest living? Why does Pakistan consistently show up as one of the most corrupt nations in Transparency International surveys?
It's simply wrong and bigoted to blame a religion like Islam, or any other religion for that matter, for the all the flaws of those profess to be followers of the religion. If we follow this logic, then you's have to hold Catholicism responsible for the excesses by Hitler and the IRA, and you'd hold Judaism responsible for the atrocities committed by the Israelis against Palestinians, etc.
Pakistan is only the tip of a larger strategic blindness of the US. The entire US establishment is like Nero fiddling, when the whole of the free world burns.
Cant the analysts and intelligence pundits of the US not watch popular TV or read mainstream newspapers in Pakistan. They will be quickly disabused of the false notion that all Pakistanis hate Fundamentalist Islam. The country itself was created on the basis of Islam being more important than historical roots or culture.Every Pakistani is ingrained with the idea of Islam, the Wahhabi type, being more important than anything else.Pakistan is the manpower provider and safe haven for all Global Jihad. Their masters are the Saudis. Tens of Thousands of Pakis illegally emigrate to the US and Europe every year, These people then become the vanguard of the stealth Jihad .
Isnt it Funny how the main drivers of Global Jihad are all funded by the US or are its partners- The US buys oil from Saudi Arabia- which funds and indoctrinates all of Islamic Jihad, It bankrolls Pakistan -which provides global Jihad its Manpower,logistics training and technology. Behind all this is China, which has become rich thanks to US greed for cheap trinkets. China is the original proliferator and abettor of Jihad- Pakistans nuclear weapons came from China, North Korea's missiles came from China and China is eagerly promoting Irans bassitic missile and nuclear program directly and indirectly by becoming its biggest oil buyer. Instead of isolating and destorying China ,Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the US Government instead makes it a point to antagonise and anger its most valuable potential allies , India,Brazil and Russia.
The US think tanks must focus on making India,Brazil and Russia wealthy and strong. And they must whole heartedly embrace these countries like they did to Israel and Japan.
There is no point in romantic idealisation of Islam. There is nothing romantic or ideal about it. Time that mainstream politics took note of this .This ostrich like mentality is uncannily similar to how the US politicians purposely chose to ignore Hitlers Nazi movement, even after Western Europe was destroyed and Britain at the brink of defeat.
Robert, Proxywar asked a pertinent question “what is your answer to fixing this problem ?”. I believe, the answer lies in insulating ourselves from Islam. This consists of: 1) diplomatic and trade boycott of Islamic states. 2) No immigration or granting of asylum to refgees from such states except if the refugees are non-Muslims fleeing persecution. 3) Apply the same policies to the Muslims already here as we apply to racists, bigots, Nazis and KKK. We are not going to benefit from trade with Islamic states because these states are inherently backward due to Islam except wherever they are blessed with abundance of oil/gas. We have to get alternative fuel even if we have to burn coal. The immigration of Muslims into the West is a ticking bomb that will explode when there is sufficient number of Muslims here. I hope, you would advocate these.