By: Qazi Hussain Ahmed

One strategy being adopted by the US against Islam, Muslims and Muslim culture is to weaken them by dividing them and making them fight each other. The US has already begun to work on this plan, by classifying Muslims as ‘Shia’/’Sunni’ and ‘extremist’/’non-extremist’. At present, the bloody situation in Iraq is being called a clash between Shias and Sunnis, and thus the Shias and Sunnis are being encouraged to kill each other. This is a US conspiracy, which they want to extend to the Middle East, Iran and Pakistan. American scholars are emphasizing the need for US forces to leave Iraq, but not before they succeed in creating such discord among Shias and Sunnis that they willingly kill each other in large numbers, Iraq be broken into several parts as Yugoslavia had been, Sunnis leave Shia areas, Shias leave Sunni areas, Kurds leave the areas of the Arabs, and Arabs leave the areas of the Kurds—in short, migration take place on as large scale as at the time of Partition in the subcontinent. Then, this hatred in Iraq would be used in every place where Shias and Sunnis live together. Also part of the plan is to encourage the Sunni minority to rise against the Shia majority in Iraq, and the Shia minority against the Sunni majority in Pakistan, thus creating chaos in both countries, and to prepare them both to use their nuclear power against each other. We should see the bomb blasts and suicide attacks in the month of Muharram in Pakistan from this perspective.  Imperialist forces are constantly trying to divide Pakistani society into extremists and non-extremists, and reawaken the Shia-Sunni prejudice which the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal has been keeping a check on.

The present situation in Iraq and the unsuccessful attempts of the US to strengthen sectarian prejudice in Pakistan reminded us of an article written last year by James Kurth, (Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, where he teaches American foreign policy, defence policy, and international politics), in which he outlined such a divide. In his article, he has tried to convince his government that the US faces great and long-lasting danger from Islamism, and their fight against Islamism, may, like their fight against Communism continue for several generations. To deal with the danger, the US should have a policy similar to the one with which they faced Communism. James Kurth writes in his article ‘Splitting Islam’, written for The American Conservative:

“During the Cold War, the most consequential splitting strategy used by the United States was that directed at the Sino-Soviet bloc … and it was a major factor in the ultimate victory of the United States over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. The contemporary analogy is the division between Sunnis and Shi’ites in the Islamic world. The ongoing sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iraq provides a daily reminder of the intensity of the division in that country, but the division, suspicion, and conflict between the two versions of Islam is a feature of many other Muslim countries as well, especially Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. … [I]f the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict became not only intense and widespread but also prolonged, perhaps as much so as the Sino-Soviet conflict during the last three decades of the Cold War, the global Islamist movement might have almost no meaning or attraction at all. In the Muslim world there might be Sunni Islamists and Shi’ite Islamists, but each might consider their greatest enemy to be not the United States, but each other. …

“Iraq represents a test case and potential crucible for the Sunni-Shi’ite split. It is easy to imagine the current sectarian suspicion and violence in Iraq descending into an actual civil war between the Sunni and the Shi’ite communities. … Shi’ite and Kurdish militias, if well trained and well armed by the United States, would be fully capable of destroying Sunni insurgents in the Shi’ite and Kurdish-populated areas of Iraq. … The Sunni population might be reduced to a rump territory in central and western Iraq, along with sections of Baghdad and Mosul. … In the end, Iraq, like Yugoslavia, is likely to split into several hostile ethnic states… [In] an Iraqi civil war, or a war between separating Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish states… for each ethnic community, the immediate and operational enemy would be the other communities now engaged in killing them… If a war between the states should expand and persist in Iraq, the Sunnis will be in grave danger of being ground to powder between the two millstones of the Shi’ites and the Kurds. …

“[A] war between the states in Iraq might do much to render Islamism irrelevant, at least in Iraq if not other countries of the Middle East. What meaning will Islamism have if Sunni Arab Muslims are killing Shi’ite Arab Muslims (along with Sunni Kurdish Muslims), and vice versa? …What would the global Islamist movement look like then? It would have a rather different meaning and attraction than it does today. An Islamist identity might still appeal to some Muslims, but it might well become less salient than the warring Sunni and Shi’ite identities.”

If we look at the situation in Iraq, it seems as if the US government has taken up James Kurth’s ideas as their own policy.

In the same article, it is further stated that if these clashes succeed so that the Shias and Sunnis kill each other, the nuclear problem can also be addressed by generating a nuclear war between two nuclear powers, Iran and Pakistan:

“If both countries [Pakistan and Iran] are nuclear powers, there will also be ample potential for nuclear threats and crises between them. The likelihood of conflict between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iran and Pakistan will be heightened if the conflict between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iraq descends into an intense and prolonged civil war. This would likely accentuate and energize Sunni and Shi’ite identities and hostilities in Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Pakistan. A widespread Sunni-Shi’ite split could issue in a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Pakistan confronting each other in a very dangerous and destructive way. … A nuclear and Sunni Pakistan sandwiched in between a nuclear and Shi’ite Iran and a nuclear and Hindu India, might be in as grave a danger of being destroyed as the Sunnis of Iraq.”

This will be a very dangerous situation for the Ummah, and for Pakistan and Iran themselves, and if ‘slaves’ of the US remain our dictating rulers; there is nothing that cannot be expected of them. If some people are calling Pervez Musharraf’s recent trip to the Middle East, part of the US plan to create a Sunni block against Shia Iran, with this background, such a theory is plausible.

And it won’t stop at Shia-Sunni clashes. James Kurth writes:

“The history of the Cold War shows that, when dealing with an opposing political ideology, a strategy of separating its moderate adherents from its extremist adherents can sometimes be successful. In Europe in particular, the United States was very successful in separating moderate Marxists—socialists and social democrats—from extremist Marxists—communists”.

In a similar way, Muslims are divided into four types, in a report published by the RAND Corporation, ‘Civil Democratic Islam’.

1.      Modernist: These are defined as those who go with the times, and believe that everything the West loves is truly Islamic. In other words, they present such an Islamic edition which is compatible with Western values. As an example, General Musharraf after making alterations in the Hudood Ordinance said that this is the Women’s Rights Bill, and it is not against Islam, but completely according to it. The proof is that we are no less Muslims than others—even though Islamic scholars from all sects agree that the Bill is an alteration in Allah’s Hudood, and rebellion against the Prophet (SAW).

2.      Secularist: These people say that religion and the world are separate matters. We respect religion, but religion has nothing to do with state and social affairs.

3.      Traditionalist: These are the people who still live in the age of degeneration—they believe that State and government have nothing to do with religion. In other words, religion is a tradition for them, and they have forgotten the Deen that the Prophet (SAW) had brought, and the example he had set of struggling against wrong.

4.      Fundamentalist: The ones who want Islamic government and laws based on Quran and Sunnah. These are the people who they call extremists, and single out as their enemies, against whom they have to fight. They say these are the people who should not unite with any other group; in fact all other groups should stand up against them.

Today, when we see General Musharraf exhort people to stand up against extremists, and not vote for them in every speech he makes, it is easy to understand who he is serving. Furthermore, things such as campaigns against Madaris and mosques, Ulema, and people who love Islam, making a mockery of religious emblems and changes in laws based on Quran and Sunnah, can also be seen and understood with this background in mind. It is necessary to awaken the Muslims, in order to fight against such plans and intentions. Such unity is a great challenge at this time. Our national poet Allama Iqbal said that the reason of the Muslims dispersal is that they have forgotten their centre of