The three in-famous Kasabs of Pakistan, all of them religious crackpots!

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

02 Oct 2009, NewAgeIslam.Com

The three in-famous Kasabs of Pakistan, all of them religious crackpots!

When the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was overenthusiastically claimed and propagated by local Islamists as 'Islam's victory over atheism,' it was conveniently forgotten that the mujahiddin would have remained to be nothing more than a dusty army of ill-equipped rag-tags, had the American CIA (with covert support from Israel's staunchly anti-Soviet intelligence agencies); along with the Pakistani ISI and Saudi Arabia, not been so generous in dishing out billions of dollars worth of arms and training. Basking in the glory of jihad's victory and mindlessly buying into the notion that they alone had defeated the atheistic enemy, a wave of euphoria ran wild across the Islamist milieu; a belief that they were capable of imposing 'Islamic regimes' anywhere they wanted to. -- Nadeem F. Paracha URL of this page: http://newageislam.net/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1835 -------   The name's Kasab Nadeem F. Paracha 09 18th, 2009   What's with this name, Kasab (sometimes also spelled with a Q)? There have been three (in) famous Kasabs in Pakistan – and all of them religious crackpots! First there was one Yusuf Kasab who was arrested by the police in the early 1990s and accused of committing 'blasphemy' by proclaiming that he was a prophet. He was killed by a fellow inmate while awaiting trail in jail.   Then there is Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani terrorist and jihadi who was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Incidentally, the mass murderer was the only attacker captured alive by police and is currently in Indian custody. The third Kasab is yet another mad-faith-crank. He's Sher Muhammad Kasab, a frontline butcher of the Takreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who was recently arrested by the Pakistan Army. Of course, all these crackpots having a similar surname is no more than a coincidence, but it sure is a meaningful concurrent.   Because if one chronologically follows the exploits of all the Kasabs, he can draw a fairly interesting narrative about the madness of Islamic fanaticism that until recently had threatened to rip society and the country apart. Yusuf Kasab, the so-called 'false prophet' may have been a victim of the 'blasphemy' trend - unfolded by General Ziaul Haq's myopic laws and warped 'moral' antics in the 1980s, that has seen a number of self-righteous fanatics accusing Christians and fellow Muslims alike for committing 'blasphemy.'   But the truth is, Yusuf was reflecting yet another tendency that had developed in Pakistan's checkered post-Zia set-up.   When the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan was overenthusiastically claimed and propagated by local Islamists as 'Islam's victory over atheism,' it was conveniently forgotten that the mujahiddin would have remained to be nothing more than a dusty army of ill-equipped rag-tags, had the American CIA (with covert support from Israel's staunchly anti-Soviet intelligence agencies); along with the Pakistani ISI and Saudi Arabia, not been so generous in dishing out billions of dollars worth of arms and training. Basking in the glory of jihad's victory and mindlessly buying into the notion that they alone had defeated the atheistic enemy, a wave of euphoria ran wild across the Islamist milieu; a belief that they were capable of imposing 'Islamic regimes' anywhere they wanted to.   Such delusions were behind the creation of various puritanical and violent organizations across the Muslim world – especially in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan. This belief also gave birth to 'prophets.' Or men who believed that they were either on the verge of some kind of superhuman enlightenment or, more so, had already attained it – enough to also announce their new status.   Ever since the peak years of Zia's disastrous years as a 'pious leader,' and all across the troublesome 'decade of democracy' in which Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif semi-consciously played in the hands of Machiavellian intelligence agencies and vengeful bureaucrats – thus giving new-born Islamists the chaotic space that they required to set up shop –  numerous reports have emerged of bearded holy men suddenly claiming something that their equally fanatical opponents (from different Islamic sects and sub-sects), have labelled as being 'blasphemous.'   This level of spiritual delusion and holy grandeur emerges in societies where religiosity has become a social muscle with which to do lucrative business, plunder and prey on impressionable faith-based vulnerabilities, and twist the arms of the opponents; but it is also true that none of the hundreds of 'blasphemy' accusations made in Pakistani courts and streets have ever been convincingly proven. If delusions of grandeur like the one Yusuf Kasab seemed to have been suffering from is a madness, then the blasphemy accusation is the tool used by an opposing insanity to cure a madness they do not like the contents of.   It's madness accusing madness; and in a society where religiosity has become both an industry and a meaningless public display of identity, reason is not allowed to mediate between the two shimmering insanities.  Men like Yusuf Kasab and those who asked for him to be hanged for blasphemy, both have always been blessed with large followings. But the most worrying thing is, so-called deluded false prophets and their counterparts in opposing sectarian and fanatical organizations also have (as followers), educated middle-class men and women.   To put it simply, reason and rationality has gone missing in the debates between competing sects and sub-sects of Islam in Pakistan, rendering many sections of the urban bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie reeling hopeless in trying to find a national and religious identity through the many crackpots that frequent our mosques, drawing-rooms and worse of all, TV screens.   Now we come to the other Kasab: Ajmal – the young twenty-something gung-ho who learned Karate and Kung-Fu but did not know what to do with these martial arts. Coming from a class (petty-bourgeoisie), which in the Punjab (the province Ajmal belongs to), was the muscle behind the Islamic parties' agitation against the Z A. Bhutto regime in 1977, and backed Zia's 'Islamization' in the 1980s, is perhaps the most vivid example of public displays of religiosity that has gripped Pakistan.   Thus, it was rather natural for Ajmal to become a Jackie Chan for a holier cause: Islamic Jihad.  But this one got caught. There are still numerous Ajmal Kasabs frequenting mosques, madrassahs and martial arts training schools in the Punjab, caught between what they see in action-packed Bollywood and Hollywood blockbusters and what they hear from crackpots that masquerade as imams, maulvies and 'scholars.'   But both these Kasabs, no matter how deluded or violent, are nothing like our third Kasab: Sher Muhammad.  This Kasab would brilliantly fit in like a glove in a bad American splatter movie. An important member of the TTP, Sher Muhammad was notorious for the number of beheadings and cold-blooded slaughtering of dozens of Pakistani security men and 'infidels' that he undertook.   He would sometimes use a sword to chop his victims' heads or, worse, use a knife to literally slaughter an 'infidel' like a butcher does a cow or a goat on Bukra Eid.   Done in the name of religion, this, at best, can be defined as the extreme condition of the faith-based social psychosis that had been developing in the country for the last thirty years.   What to do with a violent, cold-blooded psychotic like Sher Muhammad? He is beyond detoxification. He must be used to reign in similar mad men that, fortunately, are now on the run due to the Army's and the government's recent operations in Swat and Waziristan.   However, optimistically musing, can one suggest that since the third Kasab - demonstrating the extreme end of the religious delusions that became part of Pakistan's religious milieu ever since the 'Afghan Jihad,' - was caught, is this symbolic of the society reaching its limit in this context?   A limit and a peak from which one can only decent into something more reflective, rational and democratic? Let's hope so … Unless there is yet another Kasab in the making.         Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com. The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group. SOURCE: http://blog.dawn.com:91/dblog/2009/09/18/the-name%E2%80%99s-kasab/ URL of this page: http://newageislam.net/NewAgeIslamArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=1835