Book Review-V 

Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection
 

Mariam Abou Zahab and Olivier Roy

Published in 2002, Paris, pages: 88, Price: $ 49.50

Mariam Abou Zahab, a specialist on Pakistan, is a researcher affiliated with the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) and a lecturer at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), both in Paris. Olivier Roy is a known writer on Islam and politics. He is a professor at EHESS, the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris. He has to his credit books like The Failure of Political Islam, The New Central Asia, and (with Mariam Abou Zahab) Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection (Columbia, 2004).

Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection is an effort to provide an incisive analysis of the new transnational movements and globalized responses that have developed in the past two decades or so in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Pakistan. The book is replete with data and facts. The authors discuss the growth of interlinked radical Islamist networks since almost a quarter century, which provided fertile ground to Al-Qaeda to emerge and operate. Taking into account the contradictory histories and ideological differences, the authors claim that the political contingencies had enabled these radical Islamist movements to coordinate with the aim of attacking the United States, their common adversary.

The book under review is divided into six chapters and every chapter helps in understanding of the issue. The first chapter introduces the issue to the reader while the second chapter gives a brief history and functioning of the political parties in the ex-Soviet states. The third chapter discusses the transition of Afghanistan from political parties to Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The religious groups in Pakistan and their role in Afghanistan and Kashmir are analysed in the fourth chapter. In the fifth chapter, the authors articulate the connection between Islamic extremists and Pakistan. This chapter is slightly controversial as it discusses what they perceive as the role of Pakistan military intelligence services in radicalising the Islamic movements. Insufficient references on this issue undermine its credibility. In the sixth and final chapter the authors analyse President Pervez Musharraf’s policies against terrorism and comment that Pakistan continues to be the centre point for mobilising Islamic radicalism. However, the ongoing operation against Islamic radicals in Wana by Pakistan army negates this argument.

Though some of its contents are debatable, the book on the whole provides an understanding of the issue. The writing style is convincing and easy to understand as the authors even explain the terms they have used and give a comprehensive background of the events they have mentioned. However, their effort to provide detailed information about the Muslim radical groups at times seems appears unnecessary. They also relate the relationship between Muslim theology and politics while arguing that the passage to “Jihadism” is linked to a strategic and political context, and with the designation of a particular state as the pre-eminent adversary of the Muslims.

This book can be termed as an extension of the authors’ earlier work on political Islam. The analysis of the development of immigrant groups in the west is the highlight of the book. They argue that the revival of Islam among Muslim populations is often wrongly perceived as a repercussion against westernization rather than as one of its consequences. Neo-fundamentalism has been gaining momentum among the Muslim youth particularly among the second and third generation migrants in the West. Actually this phenomenon is feeding new forms of radicalism, ranging from support for Al-Qaeda to the absolute rejection of amalgamation into Western society and culture.

Olivier Roy argues that Islamic revival, or re-Islamization, results from the efforts of westernized Muslims to assert their identity in a non-Muslim society. A gulf has emerged between conventional Islamist movements in the Muslim world including Hamas of Palestine and Hezbullah of Lebanon and the deracinated militants who strive to establish an Ummah, or Muslim community, not entrenched in any particular society or territory. Roy provides a detailed comparison of these transnational movements, whether peaceful like the Tablighi Jama'at and the Islamic brotherhoods, or violent like Al Qaeda. He shows how without vagueness neo-fundamentalism acknowledges the loss of pristine cultures, and constructing instead a universal religious identity that transcends the very notion of culture. They consider the Pakistani Jamaat-I-Islami (JI) and the Tajik Party of Islamic Renaissance (PIR) as parties consisting largely of intellectuals with a modern education, who are related to the ideologies, militant and modern framework of the Muslim brotherhood and follow the footsteps of Maulana Maudoodi (a Pakistani Islamic scholar). They also mention that the Pakistani religious-political organization Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) and its imitators are linked to an older religious tradition of conservatism, which was radicalized following the Afghan war.

Overall the book Islamist Networks: The Afghan-Pakistan Connection is a scholarly and worth reading addition to the on this issue. The authors substantiate their arguments with copious references, which makes the book most credible.
 

Asma Shakir Khawaja
Assistant Research Officer, IPRI