I know a lovely old Christian couple who could come out of a Steinbeck novel. They exist peacefully in their simple small-town American world . They have acres of farmland. They have pets. They have wildlife visiting their land all the time. They use mostly the (organic) produce grown on their land to cook food. They are wonderfully active in their local church and do many many charitable work like looking after down-syndrome kids and adults. They have been married since they were 18 and still wonderfully loving. They spend most of their time on their land. They took their first plane in their lives ride a year ago to see the birth of their first grandchild. They have never been outside America.
In a conversation with them, the Christian man asked rhetorically “I don’t understand why people in other countries hate Americans. We have done so many good things in the world”. I had to bite my tongue. With most people, I’d have lambasted that statement as horribly woefully ignorant and would have listed down all the things America (or more accurately, the American politicians) has done in the world past and present that would explain why people hate America. But with the lovely Christian couple, I just had to stay silent. They have lived a life of pure, childlike and ignorant local Christianity and I felt oddly accepting of their peaceful ignorance because they do so much good in their local community (that I sure as hell don’t!). Who am I to criticize them for voting for Bush only because he appealed to their Christian sentiments? It’s so easy to collectively criticize the “christian rednecks in buttfuck middle america” for voting Bush in and blaming them (not us) for all the mishaps going on now. But all the publicized issues with Iraq/Afghanistan/etc today have been going on for the longest time, it just wasn’t publicized as much as say, the Soviet Union’s communism, back in the day.
That conversation happened months ago. But I was reminded of it this morning when I read this National Geographic article on the train about Pakistan. It describes how Pakistan got to be a fundamentalist Islamic state, and America’s role in it.
From the start, the founders of Pakistan intended their nation to be a refuge for Muslims, not an Islamic state. Pakistan was created when India, a British colony for nearly a hundred years, gained its independence and was partitioned into two countries along a hastily drawn border. Pakistan’s first leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and his brain trust of secular intellectuals created a fledgling democracy that gave Islam a cultural, rather than political, role in national life. Their Pakistan was to be a model of how Islam, merged with democratic ideals, could embrace the modern world. “Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense,” Jinnah said in his inaugural address, but “as citizens of the state.”
…More than anyone, it was General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq who created Pakistan’s current generation of Islamic radicals, and the climate in which they thrive. A Punjabi general with a pencil-thin mustache and raccoon circles under his eyes, Zia seized power in a coup in 1977, had the democratically elected prime minister tried and hanged, and promptly pressed for the Islamization of Pakistan, calling for more religion in the classroom and the use of punishments such as flogging and amputations for crimes against Islam. To Zia, Pakistan’s secular founders, with their emphasis on Muslim culture, had it exactly backward. “We were created on the basis of Islam,” Zia said, and he set out to remake democratic Pakistan as a strict Islamic state—despite the fact that a large majority of Pakistanis were, and remain, moderates.
Whether by temperament or tradition, most Pakistani Muslims are more comfortable with the mystical and ecstatic rituals of Barelvi Islam, a colorful blend of Indian Islamic practice and Sufism. For a Punjabi farmer whose crop has just come in, it has always been more satisfying to hang out at a Sufi shrine listening to qawwali music and watching dervishes whirl than reciting the Koran in a fundamentalist mosque. Most Pakistanis, though powerless to resist, were lukewarm to Zia’s Islamization program, as was much of the outside world.
That all changed in December 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan, driving hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees—mainly conservative Pashtun tribesmen—across the border into Pakistan. Within months Zia’s Islamist dream got a huge boost: The United States and Saudi Arabia joined Pakistan in a covert alliance to supply arms, training, and billions of dollars to an anti-Soviet insurgency in Afghanistan. The motto of Zia’s army—Jihad in the Service of Allah—became a rallying cry for thousands of mujahideen training in camps funded by the CIA in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Over time, Zia’s agenda, and that of the United States, became indistinguishable: If Zia wanted to Islamize Pakistan while mobilizing support for the anti-Soviet jihad, all the more power to him. Besides, the fundamentalist madrassas of northwestern Pakistan made excellent recruiting centers for mujahideen—young fighters who saw the struggle against the Soviets as a holy war.
…By the time Zia died in a mysterious 1988 plane crash, the Islamization of Pakistan was well under way. The following year, the Soviet Union, preoccupied with its own implosion, pulled its demoralized troops from Afghanistan. The U.S. promptly declared victory and returned home, leaving the Afghan people to the chaotic rule of the mujahideen warlords. One crucial chapter in the story of radical Islam’s ascendancy had come to a close. The one we are still living had just begun. Osama bin Laden and other leaders of the Afghan jihad now moved freely in and out of northwestern Pakistan and its Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The madrassas swelled with the children of the Zia Generation. In the rugged mountainous land shared by Afghanistan and Pakistan, the seeds of the Taliban, and al Qaeda, had been sown.
I concur with lovely Christian man that America has done many good things, but I still considered mailing this article to lovely Christian couple with a note “this is just one of the many reasons why”. But then again, maybe not. But then again, maybe I should. Ignorance is bliss, but ignorance is what got us here in the first place.
