Lately, Hafiz Saeed of the Jamatud Dawa (JuD)
seems to have emerged as one of the stars of Pakistan’s media, giving
interviews to anchors, all set to eat out of his hands. Many in the
print media have also joined hands in selling the JuD as if it was
always peaceful. On social media, which is infested with youth, who have
little sense of history, an artificial distinction is drawn between the
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) that brings a militant image of Mumbai to mind,
and the JuD, presented as a welfare organisation. The unprofessionalism,
lack of training and ignorance of the media is to the JuD’s advantage.
Without getting into the ‘dos and don’ts’ of the claim regarding the
JuD being nothing else but a welfare institution, there is a concerted
effort to fashion a new image of the militant outfit and make Saeed look
like Santa Claus. More importantly, this narrative-change is happening
in the West as well. The Pakistani deep state
may have its need to fashion a new image of the JuD, but it is tougher
to understand why this dressing up is being done by the West. For
instance, in the past couple of years, two publications — which are
essentially doctoral theses done at top British universities such as
Oxford and Cambridge — were produced that aimed at rationalising the JuD
and its activities. While Humaira Iqtidar has projected the
Jamaat-e-Islami and the JuD as entities, which will eventually
secularise society, Masooda Bano in her book has presented the JuD and
other religious zealots as “Rational Believers”. Bano has tried to
awkwardly fit new institutional economics with her study of madrassas
and in doing so, tried rationalising militants including that of the
JuD. Both ladies are well anchored in British academia.
In the media, there are several British and American journalists who insist on focusing on the JuD’s welfare work
as if this could be an alternative activity that could become more
central to the organisation than jihad. Many inside and outside Pakistan
seem impressed with the JuD’s assistance during the 2005 earthquake and
the 2010-11 floods. This new narrative tends to put the JuD’s jihadism
on the back-burner. These journalists are happy to buy the argument,
which is peddled by the ISPR or even some people in Pakistan’s Foreign
Office, regarding the JuD being a necessity as it has tremendous
capacity to deliver during a crisis.
Saeed’s recent interview by
CNN
was pretty intriguing. He comes out in the interview as radical but
principled and human, offering the US help after Sandy despite the
bounty on his head. He is also shown as fairly flexible, a man who has
agreed to give an interview to a woman despite the fact that he would
not break bread with her as she is a woman. We are also told that he
doesn’t even hide despite the bounty. No probing questions are asked and
we don’t even get a sense that the anchor has a grip over the evolution
or history of the LeT/JuD discourse. The question was what was being
said to a foreign audience, which was the main target of this
CNN programme?
Why is the Western media and academia willing to give Saeed a
positive spin? Why is he being given greater intellectual space that
would make him more palatable? It is as if there is a willingness to
deal with most of his idiosyncrasies and explain it as intrinsic to his
religious belief as long as he promises to stay away from violence.
We could actually be witnessing a process of détente between the West
and the JuD for two obvious reasons. First, the strategic community in
the West may consider it important to isolate al Qaeda from its other
partners around the world. Since LeT/JuD is considered a potential al
Qaeda partner, it would make sense to lure it into a conversation and
establish certain rules of the game that may allow the organisation to
continue with radicalism, as long as it does not graduate into violence.
Second, this is actually coming to grips with the most important
reality that the Muslim world is drifting towards the religious right
even in Turkey, Tunisia and many other countries. The West has probably
also realised its limitation to change this reality. For example, look
at some of the Western countries like Britain, where university campuses
are brimming with Hizb-ut-Tehrir (HuT). The agreed upon rules of the
game in the UK are that as long as HuT does not engage in violence, it
will be allowed to exist. However, the British state will also remain
vigilant that it does not allow the kind of violence that happened in
2007.
Returning to Saeed in Lahore, perhaps, the West will now not have an
issue if the JuD chief manages to get the majority behind him and gets
into power just like the recent happenings in Egypt. But that is not
likely to happen in the foreseeable future because the religious right
or political right wing is not Saeed’s monopoly. All prominent parties
in Pakistan today are right wing in their operations if not thinking.
Resultantly, the voters have a range of choices and not one. Even within
the radical-militant-political framework, there are other entities
contesting for power like the Sipaha-e-Sahaba Pakistan. In any case,
Saeed would have to cover a lot of ground converting people from the
Deobandi and Barelvi schools of thought to the Ahl-e-Hadith school of
thought.
The head of the JuD may not be electable but he could still help in
steering public opinion, especially amongst the radical element.
Perhaps, the West thinks it is worth engaging with Saeed as many have
engaged with another latent-radical leader like Imran Khan.
The search is probably for someone who could neatly organise what is
suspected to be a radical population under a banner and helps negotiate
with them. The US would certainly not like to be caught on the wrong
foot as it was in 1979, at the time of the Iranian revolution.
Washington was caught supporting a pro-West Shah when the population was
on the opposite side. A better option may be to have partners as Muslim
societies drift towards a non-pluralist culture.
A war between the West and the Islamic religious right might not be a
logical direction. The religious radical leadership could be as
susceptible to negotiation with the West as others, as long as some
power adjustment was made. It is just a matter of finding the right
radical.