India and Israel Against Islamic Terror

306 INDU AND ISMEL CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 19 CMLOAJIONAL FAULT LlNES 307
and the innocent believers. As brought out earlier thP ”Foreign imports are nice as shiny or high-tech’things’ But
recrudescence of the regressive impulses in some otherwise intangible social and political institutions imported from
progressive Islamic countries and recourse to fundamentalism in elsewhere can be deadly-ask the Shah of Iran. Islam tor
many others lies to a large extent in the atavistic urge of Muslim US ’S ”Ot just a religion but 3 W3y °f ’’^ W! ^^ tO
societies to seek a solution to the present day problems by cat- modernize, but not necessarily westernize.”
scanning the Koranic texts to discover hidden meanings where Tnis resurgence of Islamic awakening in personal life has
none exist. This lack of rationality has led to many incongruous

situations in the daily life of a Muslim; the issues of personal law,

penal and civil code, economic and scientific discoveries and so

on. The few voices of reform have been drowned in a general

cacophony of the extremist fundamentalists. This is particularly

true of Pakistan and India, which have the largest population of

Muslims.
America centric West is plagued with internal problems of

economic slow-down, stagnant population, unemployment, fiscal

deficit, poor work ethics, low saving rates, social disintegration,

drugs and crimes. Inevitably, the economic power and

consequential military strength is gradually shifting eastward, mostly

China and japan centric, while India is on the verge of an

economic takeoff. In consequence, the dominance of the West

would be eroded sooner than later, compounded by an

increasing hostility of Islam. In short, the balance of power is

shifting to modern civilizations, which are increasingly turning

atavistic and searching their moorings towards Cod away from

modernism. Secularism is on the retreat as fundamentalism

rapidly fills its space. With the second evangelization of Europe,

the present idiom is no longer to modernize Islam but to Islamise

”modernity’. This ’unsecularisation of the world’ will be a

prominent social fact in the new twentyfirst century. The number

of orthodox churches increased considerably in the Slavic

republics while an Islamic revival swept through Central Asia.

The number of churches, mosques and madarasas increased

manifold between 1989 till the end of 20th century. As Islamic

countries abandon western ideologies and culture, there is an

emphasis on recommitment to Islam. To quote a Saudi Arabian

official,
many facets. To quote John L. Esposito:
”The indices of an Islamic awakening in personal life are

many; increased attention to religious observances, (mosque

attendance, prayer, fasting), proliferation of religious

programming and publications, more emphasis on Islamic

dress and values, the revitalization of Sufism (mysticism).

This broader-based renewal has also been accompanied by

Islam’s reassertion in public life, an increase in Islamically

oriented governments, organizations, laws, banks, social

welfare services, and educational institutions. Both

government and opposition movements have turned to Islam

to enhance their authority and muster popular support...

Most rulers and governments, including more secular states

such as Turkey and Tunisia, becoming aware of the potential

strength of Islam, have shown increased sensitivity to and

anxiety about Islamic issues.”
In brief, the countries of Islamic civilization are re-inventing

themselves by falling back on Islamic education through

multiplicity of Islamic schools, Islamisation of the curricula,

adherence to the words of Koran and Hadis and development

of solidarity amongst Islamic states and societies. Returning to

the basis of our thesis, the important constituents of civilizational

identities are blood and belief, faith and family, common

language, religion, ancestry, values and institutions. The inevitable

result would be a reconfiguration of global politics on civilizational

basis and their conflict will lie along the fault lines separating

these groups. Though identity is generally the most meaningful

at the immediate contact level along with a single dimension,

narrower identities within these do not necessarily conflict with

the whole. The increased importance of lower level identities

may well reinforce their salience at the higher level of cultural
308 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHART
R19
identities of ethnic groups, nationality and religion of a particul

civilization. To quote Edmund Burke : ”The love to the whole ’

not extinguished by this subordinate partiality ... To be attached

to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in

society, is the first principle (the germ, as it were) of public

affections.”
In global politics with the disappearance of secular ideologies

the differences between various liberal democracies and

liberalization of civilization per se can be debated but not

resolved. To quote Huntington again:
”Differences in material interest can be negotiated and often

settled by compromise in a way cultural issues cannot. Hindus

and Muslims are unlikely to resolve the issue of whether a

temple or a mosque should be built at Ayodhya by building

both, or neither, or a syncretic building that is both a mosque

and temple. Nor can what might seem to be a straight

forward territorial question between Albanian Muslims and

Orthodox Serbs concerning Kosovo or between Jews and

Arabs concerning Jerusalem be easily settled, since each place

has deep historical, cultural and emotional meanings to both

people. Similarly, neither French authorities nor Muslim

parents are likely to accept a compromise, which would

allow schoolgirls to wear Muslim dress every other day during

the school year. Cultural questions like these involve a yes

or no zero sum choice”.
Political leaders chasing the illusion of fundamentally reshaping

the culture of their societies are doomed to failure. They can

merely introduce a cosmetic layer of Western culture, but they

are sadly mistaken if they think that they can suppress or eliminate

the core element of their indigenous culture. They can make

history but they cannot escape history. With the best will in the

world to inject Western culture into these societies, they will only

end up by creating cultural schizophrenia, which would continue

to be their defining characteristic.
Just as demography creates destiny, population movements

form the motor of history. Centuries past, economic conditions,
^t
CHAPTER 19 CIVILIZATIONAL FAULT LINES 309
,
government policies and differentia! growth rates have caused

numerous immigrations within Europe and Asia. Though some

Of these were peaceful the others were violent. However, once

the settling process was completed, civilizational identities emerged.

It will not be incorrect to say that civilizations are the ultimate

hTjrrTaTfTritJes and the clash of civilizations is a tribe conflict on

tfiefworld scene. In the emerging scenario even states and groups

from different civilizations may form opportunistic coalition to

further their interests against an inimical civilization to share

common interests. The foundations of such coalition however,

will never be strong and will remain cool and even hostile.
Arnold Toynbee describes Judaism as an ’arrested civilization’

and a product of an earlier Syriac civilization. The learned

professor is widely off the mark in not fully understanding the

developmental vitality of Judaism. It is unfortunate that by

affiliating Judaism to Christianity and Islam he has put history on

its head. He has conveniently forgotten that Christianity was

born_put of Judaism, while Isjajn mentions Judaism as its parental

faith, and Mohammed the last of the prophets of this common

genealogy dating back to Abraham.
To quote Huntington again on the expansion of Western

culture, ”It was also facilitated by the superiority in organization,

discipline, and training of its troops and subsequently by the

superior weapons, transport, logistics and medical services resulting

from its leadership in the Industrial Revolution. The West won

the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion

(to which few members of other civilizations were converted)

but”rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.

Westerners often forget this fact, non-westerners never do.”
The political ideologies of the twentieth century i.e. Liberalism,

Socialism, Anarchism, or Corporationism, Marxism, Communism,

SocTaT democracy, Conservatism, Nationalism, Fascism and

Christian Democracy were all products of western civilization.

But west has never produced a major religion. All the great

religions of the world predate and do not belong to the western

civilisation. The demographic pattern of the world forecasts a

phenomenal increase in the two major proselytizing religions of
310 INDIA AND ISRAEL
CHAPTER 19
Islam and Christianity, but in the long run, Mohammed will outpace

Jesus. Christianity spreads mainly through conversion, while

Islam by conversion and rapid reproduction. The percentage of

Christians in the world on its all time high of 30% of the world

population in 1980s has since been declining and will probably

reach 25% by 2025. But the extremely high growth rate of

Muslim population will continue to increase and will reach 30%

by the same date. This enormous population impelled by

religious fervour poses a great danger to the rest of the world

including Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism in particular and

the remaining parts in general. Westernism, which till yester year

was synonymous with modernization, is no more so. Again to

quote Huntington:
”Modernization, in short, does not necessarily mean

westernisation. Non western societies can modernize and

have modernized without abandoning their own cultures

and adopting wholesale western values, institutions and

practices. The latter, indeed, may be almost impossible;

whatever, obstacles non-western cultures pose to

modernization pale before those they pose to Westernisation.

It would, as Braudel observes, almost ”be childish” to think

that modernization or the ”triumph of civilization in the

singular” would lead to the end of the plurality of historic

cultures embodied for centuries in the world’s great

civilizations. Modernization, instead, strengthens those cultures

and reduces the relative power of the west. In fundamental

ways, the world is becoming more modern and less western.”
’ n The first fault line between Christian west and Israel against

IsLin would lie along the territorial boundaries of Middle East

and the whole of North Africa with the possible exception of

Egypt and Saudi Arabia. More likely than not these two countries

may also defect from their neutral position to join the Islamic

Middle East. North of the Middle East and below Russia, the

second threat to Western civilization may come from China. As

far as the Hindu civilization is concerned, the fault line would lie

along-the Pakistan border continuing north of Kashmir, against

Islam while the other line of conflict will lie against the Sinic
.y
CHAPTER 19 CIVILIZATIONAL FAULT LINES 311
civilization to the north along the Himalayas and in the North

Asia and further east against the rapidly Islamizing Bangladesh,

just as the Hindu civilization is hemmed between Islamic and

Sinic civilizations, so is Israel surrounded by militant Islam on all

’sides except the sea westward, beyond which may lie a friendly

Christianity with an American dominance.
The lynchpin in the Confucian-Islamic entente controls a

conveyor belt, which moves a large amount of nuclear technology

and armsjo_ Pakistan and that is a direct threat to the Hindu

civilization. Though Chinese exports do trickle, to an extent, to

North Korea, the main recipients between 1980 and 1991,

were Iran and Pakistan, Iraq being a close second.
In recent years violent conflicts between the Muslims and

local non-Muslims have taken place in a number of places. In

Bosnia, bloody conflict raged between Muslims and orthodox

Serbs and also in Kosovo between Muslims and Catholic

Croatians. Albanian Muslims carried out an underground war

against the Serbian rule, while the Albanian and Greek

Governments fought it out over the rights of their minorities in

each other’s country. The historic antagonism between Christian

Greek and Muslim Turks goes back to the times even before the

rise of Alexander and lasted till only a few decade back in the

partition of Cyprus along religious lines, the way it happened in

India. Turkey and Armenia are old enemies and Azeris and

Armenians have been constantly fighting for over 200 years for

the control of Nagorno-Karabakh. Muslim ethnic groups like

Chechens and Ingush have been fighting on and off for their

independence from the Russian Republic and the war still goes

on. The fight between Ingush and the Orthodox Ossetians

continues, as in the Volga basin the Tatar Muslims continued

their fight against the Russians till 1990s and finally settled for a

limited sovereignty under Russia, balanced precariously on an

uneasy compromise.
Consider the following scenario. Since 1958 there have been

fifteen major Muslim inspired political confrontations in the world,

resulting from the Muslim point of view, in a significant revision

of the rhetoric of revolution. There is a double speak, which
312 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTER 19
makes Geoge Orwell’s prophecy seem mild by comparison. They

fight their revolution to decolonise the world, shouting death to

the imperialists and racist governments. But these wars always

result in a new form of imperialism under Islam. While they

brand others as racists, their own dispensations are visibly more

rabidly racist. The_yotaries_qf..Islam are still dreaming of a new

version of Islamic expansion, which followed the death of

Mohammed. Its forces are poised to sweep three continents

from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, converting virtually every

nation in its path. The significant confrontation was the ArabIsraeli

conflict closely followed by the one between India and

Pakistan, and the latest accounted for tilM_993, _was the fight

between Islamic ”freedom fighters” and Government forces of

Philippines on the Island of Mindanao. In 1947 in India during

the exchange of populations, when India surrendered 400,000

sq. miles of sovereign territory to create Pakistan, which broke

up into two Muslim countries that never existed, there was a

blood- bath unparalleled in history. When in Nigeria, the

prominent Christian segment, Beaver, amongst a majority Muslim

population, attempted to form an independent state to escape

death and persecution, the Nigerians were not as human as the

Indians during the partition. A bloody war followed against the

Christian population and the Christians beaten and battered

became a second class citizenry. The same phenomenon is

happening in Bangladesh today where women are being raped

and the minority is being forced out of the country. In Algeria,

one million French Catholics had to leave after the country

gained independence. Earlier Algeria was as much a part of

France as Alaska is at present a part of the United State. Moving

eastwards, Libya, a conglomeration of local ethnic groups, pushed

out nearly 25,000 Italians resulting in the loss of some

$300,000,000 worth of property confiscated by the government.

The Sacred Heart Cathedral was converted to a mosque and

dedicated to Gammal Abdul Nasser. This gesture was to be a

reminder to the world that the Holy War of the Prophet 1000

years earlier was not for conquest but to wipe out the infidels

symbolically and materially. Libya has been at war with

Chad overrunning its northern region and continues its