Contemplating religious extremism

A Muslim man prays inside the Mecca Masjid complex in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad Dec. 23, 2008. (Krishnendu Halder/Reuters)

In the struggle against Islamic extremism it is especially ironic that the West is being assisted by the very nature of extremism itself.

The jihadists who seek to impose an intolerant and oppressive brand of Islam are going too far, overplaying their hand, thereby provoking a strong counter-reaction in what is essentially a struggle for the Muslim soul.

When all is said and done, if the Sunni Muslims of the world really prefer the harsh version of Islam advocated by the Taliban and Al Qaeda, then all the armies in the Western world will not be able to prevent its spread. And if Shiite Muslims everywhere want an Iranian-style theocracy, then nothing we can do will prevent that either.

But evidence is filtering in that Muslims really don’t want their faith to be forced into the extremes. Pakistan, having at first tolerated its own Islamist insurgency, is now reacting strongly against it. It is not only the army, the Pakistani people themselves are forming militias to resist. Whereas many Pakistanis once viewed the fight against the Taliban as more America’s war than their own, today Pakistanis see a mortal danger and are at last doing something about it.

The Taliban is mostly an affair of the Pashtun people who inhabit Pakistan’s northwest frontier. The people of the Punjab, Pakistan’s largest province, and the Sind, home to the country’s biggest city, Karachi, are less susceptible to Islamic extremism, although extremism has grown in recent years. But, as a former diplomat put it recently, Pakistan is made up of separate compartments — not completely water-tight — but tight enough to impede the jihadi advance. What plays well on the frontier does not in Lahore, which has felt the lash of imported extremism.

There was a time when it looked as if the jihadists were contemplating a class war in Pakistan, which might have had appeal in areas where landlords control too much political power. But having confiscated land and chased landlords out of some areas, the Taliban didn’t follow through to give land to the people.

Pashtuns also form Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, but the religious intensity of the Pashtuns is not felt among the ethnic groupings of the north. That is why the Northern Alliance was our strong ally in defeating the Taliban in 2001. As in Pakistan there is a natural firewall, not impenetrable, but impeding.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/090611/fighting-the-extremes