Gaza to Pakistan, political Islam is at its strongest and weakest. Depends how you look at it

For a moment, take your eye off the destruction in Gaza, the disruption in the Red Sea and the Iran-Pakistan tit-for-tat bombings that were followed by an incredible equivalent of the brotherly pappi-jhappi (hugs and kisses). Now, depending on which way you look at it, global political Islam is at its strongest ever, or its weakest.

For the greatest clarity, let’s say upfront that this is not an argument about Islam, the faith. This is about political Islam, where the faith is the state religion, defines a nation and/or maintains its mostly unelected leaders in power and determines their strategic responses.

Further, there are the many non-state actors. Some of them, like the Houthis and Hezbollah, flaunt arsenals bigger than most regular states.

In fact, both are bigger than most European countries in terms of armed manpower, missiles, drones and in the case of the Houthis, tanks. There are also the numerous deadly splinters of al-Qaeda and IS, Pakistan’s mostly Sunni (from all schools, Salafi, Barelvi, Deobandi) Lashkars and Jaish-e this or that, including Iran’s latest target, Jaish al-Adl.

It is this larger group, comprising both the states and the non-state actors who are governed in the name of Islam and exert pan-national influence, that we define as the world of political Islam.

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This power has challenged and destabilised the world as never before in its history. There was the oil shock after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the two Gulf Wars, 9/11, al-Qaeda, IS and the many Intifadas. Each was limited in its geographical spread, strategic reach and intensity of violence. Today’s disruption is worldwide.

The unlikely rise of sanctions-hit Iran as a regional and sectarian power is a key point. Its influence now goes way beyond the Middle East, as even the Russians court it desperately for shipments of its drones, ammunition and cheap missiles. Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are its state-sized proxies.

Iran is rising mostly because this world of political Islam had been leaderless and powerless for decades. The 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda and IS, weakened it as these gave America a strategic and moral justification to move in militarily.

In their respective heydays, both al-Qaeda and IS attempted to wrest this leadership and failed. The Arab Spring, initially welcomed and backed by the Western powers and liberal establishment, rose in this continuing maelstrom.

The idea of a move away from dictatorship to elected democracy was heady. But as the Muslim Brotherhood or some equivalent was elected in one country after another, the Western-liberal enthusiasm vaporised. The upshot is the ‘welcome’ return of dictatorship and the old normal in Egypt and almost in Tunisia, the broken nation-states of Syria and Libya and the flood of refugees to Europe.

In parallel, a great deal of such destabilisation took place in Africa as well. The Western power was now so overstretched and exhausted that Barack Obama, after killing Gaddafi, breaking Libya and more, was talking of leading from behind.

All of this created a great vacuum of state, strategic and moral authority. Iran moved into it. Its non-state proxies are bigger than the armies of most of the other nations in this grouping of political Islam.

We are all familiar with that slogan ‘from the river to the sea’ that so energises the Palestinians and enrages the Israelis. For today’s geopolitics, it will need to be something like ‘from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea through the Red Sea…’ and so on.

The hard fact is that today, all of the American-led Western powers, with varying support from friends including India, are not able to keep their most critical sea lanes free. This, when their pretence is keeping the Indo-Pacific and South China Sea free. This rise of diverse but aligned Islamist challenges has exposed the limitations of big-power militaries.

Other powers are rising too. Qatar is the pre-eminent one, forever the ‘swing’ state, pretending to dispense favours to this and that but acting mostly on its own.

It is a remarkable entity in that it is that indispensable state for the US, Iran, Hamas and the Israelis at the same time. Egypt’s Sisi has found new ballast too, making top American diplomats wait (without him, the Rafah crossing from Gaza won’t open) and winning what he called an election, without a whimper from Washington.

All of this adds up to the strongest challenge to the Western power since the end of the Cold War.

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Then how do we build the counter-argument that this world of political Islam is at its weakest ever? First, however long this fighting and disruption goes on, it will eventually end and the ‘Islamist’ group will not win. Disruptive firepower apart, it simply does not have the cohesion to win.

Once we rule out a win by Iran and its proxies, only the Gulf states and Turkey remain in this particular Islamic world. They’re weaker than before, unable to choose sides with clarity over Gaza and attacked as American lackeys.

Erdoğan has repositioned Turkey as a deal-maker and a deal-broker, in eastern Europe more than Asia, like a mega Qatar with no oil or gas. That he now searches for influence in the Indian Subcontinent underlines the limitations to his ambitions.

Therefore, the real unwinnable wars in this universe are between its own Islamic states. The Iran-Pakistan fireworks are only the latest spectacle.

After Zia, democracy had given Pakistan — with a small but modern, educated elite — the choice of breaking away from his Islamisation and rebranding itself like Indonesia, or learning from Bangladesh. It’s built its own unique hybrid — but essentially Islamised — state. Count it among the losers in this ongoing tussle for global influence.

And finally, a category we do not talk about enough. Most of the world’s Muslims living in permanent peace belong to nations outside this grouping: Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia and India. Islam is the state religion in the first two, but they eschew militant pan-Islamism. Muslims in these and other such states add up to nearly a billion. These Muslim communities are winners too, and without fighting anybody. Maldives has just become an exception in this group, choosing full Islamisation.

These nations’ blessing is the relative non-politicisation of their faith. Therein lies a larger warning to all nations: that moulding their state and nationalism around a religion is bound to fail. It’s also the lesson of the past many centuries.

That’s why it is such an incredible irony that — while it didn’t bat an eyelid over Egypt, loves the dictators of the Gulf and cheers on the Pakistani army as it fixes its election — the only thing giving Washington a stomach ache is an imperfect election in Bangladesh. Which, by the way, does not proclaim itself an Islamic Republic despite a Muslim majority of over 90 percent.

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