The futile politics of Osama and religious parties
Murtaza Haider | 1 hour ago
A year after his assassination in Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden is as irrelevant today to the welfare of millions of starving and suffering Muslims as he was when alive. The same holds true for almost all Islamist political movements who are singularly concerned with enforcing their ideologies on the often unwilling Muslim populace, while these movements have no plans for alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease.
Last year when I learnt of Mr. bin Laden’s assassination, I headed straight to the Parliament in Islamabad to report on the mass protests that many had predicted would erupt in case of such an eventuality. I walked up and down the Constitution Avenue but did not spot a single protester. I visited the Lal Masjid, the fundamentalist hotbed in the centre of Islamabad, hoping to capture some action there. Again, there was nothing to report. After walking through the capital for hours I realised that there may not be any mass demonstrations to protest against Mr. bin Laden’s sudden demise.
In the weeks following Mr Bin Laden’s death hardly any protests were witnessed anywhere in the Muslim majority countries. Unbeknown to most political pundits (especially in the west), Mr. bin Laden had gradually become a nonentity to the ordinary Muslims who have been busy fighting a losing battle against food price inflation, violence, and hunger. Whereas the majority of Indonesians and Pakistanis held a favourable view of Mr. bin Laden during 2002-2005, his popularity declined significantly in most Muslim majority countries by 2011.
Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project
In the recent past, religious (Islamist) parties active in the political arena have advocated using force to impose their ideologies on the populace and have evoked religion to mobilise the society against the ‘heretics’ within and the infidels elsewhere. Osama bin Laden followed the same approach. He evoked Islam to mobilise the Pashtun and Arab youths to fight first against the Soviet Union and later against America and its allies. His protégés, including the Afghan Taliban, followed the same ideology while brutally enforcing their puritan version of Islam where armed men entrusted themselves to hold sway over matters regarding vice and virtue. The Islamists projected public executions and flogging of men, women and children as the ‘true’ face of Islam.
http://dawn.com/2012/05/02/the-futile-politics-of-osama-and-religious-parties/
Murtaza Haider, Ph.D. is the Associate Dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto. He can be reached by email at [email protected]
