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Nonviolence, Muslim Style: From Ghaffar Khan to Tahrir Square

4 Aug

August 4, 2011

Religion Dispatches

“Islam” Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today
Amitabh Pal
Praeger (2011)

When the mass nonviolent movements that brought down longtime U.S.-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt this year captured the world’s attention, The Progressive’s managing editor Amitabh Pal joked that it made his new book, “Islam” Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today, both “more topical and dated at the same time.”

While many books will no doubt be written about the momentous events that are unfolding in the Middle East, many of them will doubtless leave out the prehistory. By exploring the rich tradition of nonviolent resistance in the Muslim world—from Palestine and Pakistan, to Kosovo and the Maldives—Pal dispels the oft-repeated misconception that what we are witnessing in the Arab Spring is without precedent. He recently spoke with Religion Dispatches about why Islam has been so maligned in the West, what makes the religion compatible with nonviolence, and the important role that women are playing in the ongoing struggles for democracy and social justice in the Middle East.

What first made you want to write a book about nonviolence and Islam—as neither a Muslim yourself nor a scholar of the religion? 

I didn’t initially approach the subject as that of Islam but as nonviolence. When the events of September 11 happened and the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, I remembered as a young man hearing about an associate of Gandhi named Ghaffar Khan. So I thought I’d write about him. Through a series of contacts I was able to actually speak to his family in Peshawar, where they control a political party. They are not exactly living up to his ideals—they claim to, but it’s dubious. His grandson was happy to speak with me. I wrote an article about him, and that is how I got interested in Islam and nonviolence.

What was it about him that made you want to explore the subject more?

Ghaffar Khan was an incredible personality. From the 1920s through at least the 1940s, he led a movement of 100,000 Pashtuns for independence from the British and social reform, religious tolerance, and women’s rights—maybe not complete equality, but very progressive for his time.

How well known is he in Muslim world? 

I wish he were better known in the Muslim world, although some people have tried to popularize his ideas. After the partition of India, he evolved (or devolved) into becoming a Pashtun nationalist—nonviolent, I must emphasize, to the end—but that did not exactly endear him to the Pakistani authorities. Fifteen of the thirty years he spent in jail were under the Pakistani government. He was almost erased from official Pakistani history as a result, except in the Pashtun areas, where he is still known as a Pashtun nationalist, mainly. In India, rather that being seen as someone who was an amazing figure in his own right, he is seen as an adjunct of Gandhi, which sort of belittles him in my opinion. He drew his inspiration primarily from Islam, not from Gandhi.

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Is there no other way in Libya?

25 Mar

March 25, 2011

Waging Nonviolence, Common Dreams, The Indypendent

One of the arguments that is being forwarded by proponents of military intervention in Libya is that Qaddafi is literally crazy and therefore cannot be reasoned with or expected to step down without force.

In an article for Tikkun, entitled “Libya: Acid Test for Nonviolence?,” Metta Center for Nonviolence president Michael Nagler, who I deeply respect and have personally learned a great deal from, makes an argument for war along these lines:

We in the nonviolence field will recognize this as a “madman with a sword” analogy. Gandhi said flatly that if a madman is raging through a village with a sword (read: assault rifle — or Glock Automatic) he who “dispatches the lunatic” will have done the community (and even the poor lunatic) a favor. Here are Gandhi’s exact words, from The Hindu, 1926:

Taking life may be a duty…. Suppose a man runs amok and goes furiously about, sword in hand, and killing anyone that comes in his way, and no one dares capture him alive. Anyone who dispatches this lunatic will earn the gratitude of the community and be regarded as a benevolent man.

Later in the piece, he goes on to say essentially that in this “acid test” for nonviolence, nonviolence has come up short.

Our options are very thin because we have not explored more creative options than brute force, which always operates after conflict has already flared. Military intervention is now the least bad solution from the point of view of nonviolence, but it is bad. What else is left to us?

To be honest, I was very disappointed to read this. Military intervention can by definition never be a solution from the point of view of nonviolence. Killing people is not nonviolent.

It has truly been amazing that so many progressives, even in the nonviolence world, have given up on nonviolence so quickly, especially on the heels of the incredible victories for nonviolent action in Tunisia and Egypt. Can anyone argue that Libyans or the international community really exhausted every nonviolent alternative in the last few weeks?

“People try nonviolence for a week,” as Theodore Roszak says, “and when it ‘doesn’t work’ they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries.”

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Pro-Democracy Forces in Bahrain Face Unique Challenges

17 Mar

March 17, 2011

Waging Nonviolence, Sojourners

After a month of largely peaceful pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, the situation has taken a dramatic turn for the worse this week. On Monday, 2,000 soldiers from Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region entered Bahrain at the request of King Hamad al-Khalifa.  The king then announced a three-month state of emergency and yesterday his security forces moved on Pearl Roundabout, where the protesters have been encamped since the movement began on February 14. At least 6 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured. The violent crackdown has continued today, with the arrest of six leading opposition figures.

The pro-democracy movement in Bahrain faces challenges that those in Egypt and Tunisia did not. The Sunni-controlled Bahraini government systematically discriminates against Shiites, who make up more than 70 percent of the country’s population. And as last week’s very insightful episode of Al Jazeera’s People & Power (above) explains, virtually no Shiites are not allowed in the police or army, and the “king brings Sunni immigrants from abroad to police the streets, giving them citizenship and housing.”

This makes dividing the loyalty of the security apparatus – which is often a key to the success of any nonviolent movement – in Bahrain far more difficult than it was in Egypt. While they are all Muslim, because of the sectarian split, Bahrainis will have a harder time appealing to the army and police on religious grounds.

Moreover, since many are brought in from other Sunni countries, the opposition can’t even appeal to them as citizens of Bahrain. This fact makes them in some ways comparable to mercenaries, in that the financial motive is likely more central to their thinking than anything else. They are totally dependent on the current regime for their livelihoods, which would potentially be jeopardized if the predominately Shiite pro-democracy movement emerges victorious.

Given this reality, and the presence now of Saudi troops in the country, the opposition may want to consider changing gears. While the police and military are always an important pillar of support to any regime, in this case it would appear to not be very vulnerable. Therefore, the pro-democracy movement may want to consider focusing on undermining other sources of the ruling family’s power. Rather than focusing on mass demonstrations to register their dissent, for example, Bahrainis could shift towards tactics – like strikes, boycotts and tax refusal – that will put economic pressure on the regime and disrupt the day-to-day functioning of the state without providing such an easy target for repression.

Lessons from the election

17 Dec

December 2010

Platypus Review

In a strange way, the debate over whether the American left should support the Green Movement in Iran resembles the arguments that took place in progressive circles before the 2008 presidential elections in the United States, and that reemerged in the recent midterm elections. Those in the Obama camp either believed him to be their savior, taking his every word as gospel, or, if they had a more sober political outlook, simply resorted to some version of the tired “lesser of two evils” argument. If elected, this crowd contended, Obama would at least be more open to the progressive perspective than McCain, which was reason enough to vote for him. It was argued that the threat posed by a Republican victory was so great that the various factions on the Left needed to put aside their differences until after Obama was elected. At that point, he would reveal his true progressive self, and if that did not happen, at least there would be a more reasonable partner to negotiate with in the White House, who could be pressured to move to the Left. Meanwhile, anyone who decided to critique Obama from the Left by saying that his proposed policies—which left much to be desired, to put it mildly—should have had a greater bearing on one’s behavior in the voting booth than his elocution, were seen by Obama’s supporters as traitors or idealists totally out of touch with political reality.

In the end, many on the Left begrudgingly cast their ballots for Obama even though he consistently moved to the right during the campaign—backing the massive, hugely unpopular bailout of Wall Street, withdrawing his support for a single-payer universal health care system, and calling for a larger military, with more troops in Afghanistan and more Predator drone attacks in Pakistan. The results of this compromise are now evident. Since Obama was elected he has, not surprisingly, continued down the treacherous path he campaigned on and the sense of hope and change that was ever-present during his ascent is now difficult to find. Indeed, as seen during the midterm elections last month, most leftists fell into a pattern of recrimination and resignation similar to the lead-up to the presidential election, only this time a widespread melancholy had replaced the euphoric hope of 2008.

The differences between the candidates in Iran’s presidential election last year were far starker than the differences Americans faced when voting for Obama or McCain in 2008. President Ahmadinejad is a world-class demagogue and his government has been extremely repressive, committing widespread human rights abuses and imprisoning, torturing, and killing those who voice dissent. Mir Hossein Mousavi, on the other hand, has generally advocated for greater political and social freedoms for all Iranians. Given this contrast, many argued that the Green Movement should be uncritically supported because, if nothing else, getting Mousavi in power would at least give the Iranian left some “breathing room” to organize. In turn, little tolerance has been shown by many supporters of the Green Movement for those who chose to point out the faults of Mousavi or the other presidential contenders. When it comes to economic policy, the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi is particularly opaque. Though 60 to 70 percent of the Iranian economy is still nationalized, there is little evidence to support the position, argued by some on the American left, that Ahmadinejad is a bulwark against the destructive forces of neoliberalism. On the contrary, as critics have documented in extensive detail, since assuming the presidency in 2005 Ahmadinejad has crushed organized labor, enthusiastically privatized state assets, and courted foreign investment.

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Jon Stewart’s Misguided Rally to Restore Sanity

16 Nov

October 29, 2010

Waging Nonviolence, Sojourners, The Indypendent

While I regularly watch The Daily Show and think its political satire is second to none, the Rally to Restore Sanity that will be held on the Mall in Washington D.C. tomorrow is problematic on many levels.  Of all the critiques I’ve seen, Daniel Denvir over at Alternet best captured my sentiments:

When he announced the rally, Jon Stewart made a concerted effort to appear politically unaligned, screening clips that imply an equivalence between the wacky right and the wacky left. As Jon Stewart has it, the problem is “loud folks” and a tone of political debate that has become untempered: too many crazies yelling and screaming, comparing people they don’t like to Hitler.

But yelling is not just a matter of loud noise expelled through the human throat. It matters what’s being yelled. When it comes to the Republican Party — and Democratic fellow travelers — they are shouting in favor of corporate exploitation and war.

The Tea Party far right leans on made-up things, also known as lies — “ground zero” Mosque, illegal immigrants purposely causing highway accidents, death panels killing grandma — to win political power. The left has a different problem. We could have used a little more hysteria in recent years, as Wall Street robbed Main Street and the most powerful military on earth invaded multiple countries. Instead, a real anti-war movement never materialized to challenge one of this nation’s most violent presidencies. The people “who have shit to do” that you cited as your fan base, Jon Stewart, should have been out in the streets protesting and putting our 1960s radical parents to shame. But we’ve got “shit to do.” On the Internet, I suppose.

Rather than writing off Code Pink as crazies, which is unfair, Stewart would have been much more constructive if he had acknowledged that they are right to be upset with the ongoing wars that have cost so many lives, but challenged their tactics.

I agree that screaming “war criminal” at government officials isn’t a wise approach strategically and will not likely draw many new people into the peace movement. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Moreover, I was very disappointed when Stewart made the argument that most Americans are legitimately just too busy to protest. It really reminded me of the folks who think they are clever and original when they tell demonstrators to “get a real job.”

The truth of the matter is that activists are often some of the hardest working people, participating in protests and other forms of political action on top of their day jobs and family obligations, because they believe it important to speak out and challenge power when it is abused. That sentiment and the true dedication of so many activists to building a better world themselves should be held up as a model for what is necessary to have a healthy democracy, not dismissed and insulted as a waste of time.

Bringing down Serbia’s dictator, 10 years later

8 Oct

A conversation with Srdja Popovic

by Eric Stoner and Bryan Farrell

October 5, 2010

Waging Nonviolence, Truthout, Yes! Magazine, The Indypendent

Ten years ago, on October 5, 2000, hundreds of thousands of Serbian protesters descended on the streets of Belgrade and pushed past the indifferent security forces to seize control of the Parliament building, effectively ending the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosovic. It was the final act of a two-year nonviolent struggle led by the youth movement known as Otpor, or “Resistance,” whose iconic clenched-fist led the way toward free elections and newfound democracy.

One of the leaders of this movement was 27-year-old Srdja Popovic, who after Milosevic’s overthrow was elected to the Serbian Parliament. In 2004, Popovic left politics to found the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) in Belgrade, an organization that has trained activists in dozens of countries around the world – from those involved in the successful pro-democracy movements in Ukraine and the Maldives to the ongoing struggles in Burma and Iran.

We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Popovic and ask him about the role that humor played in the struggle against Milosevic, how they were able to win over his feared security forces and the ways in which Otpor lives on today.

Waging Nonviolence: Why was it important that resistance to Milosevic be nonviolent?

Srdja Popovic: Nonviolent discipline is one of the key principles of success in nonviolent struggle. Once violence is unleashed, a movement will lose numbers, momentum and credibility—putting the overall goals of a struggle in danger. It was crucial for Serbs, being labeled as “violent” during the 1990s, to prove to themselves and the world that we are more than capable of changing our government in a civilized manner, through elections and nonviolently protecting election results.

Also, if you look to the great Freedom House study published in 2005 called “How Freedom Is Won”, it analyzes political transitions covering 35 years of the last century—some by violent means, some by nonviolent means. It clearly proves that those transitions won by nonviolent struggle are far more likely to guarantee human rights, democracy and long-term political stability.

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Interview: A Journalist Not Scared to Speak the Truth

5 Jun

June 5, 2010

Celebrity Dialogue

CelebityDialogue: Which news publications do you write for?
Eric: I’ve written for The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Nation, Huffington Post and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, among others.

CelebityDialogue: What is your beat?
Eric: I don’t have one beat in any traditional sense. My interests are quite varied. I generally critique US foreign policy, our outrageous military budget, the privatization of war, including the use of mercenaries, and the growing use of robotics, both on the ground and in the air, in modern warfare. I also regularly write about nonviolent movements around the world for Waging Nonviolence, a blog that I helped start last year.

CelebityDialogue: What would you say to the critics who may view your writing as mostly anti-government?
Eric: I would say that would be an inaccurate way of characterizing my work. I’m not against all government. I’m against government that is destructive, dysfunctional and unresponsive to the will of the people, and that’s unfortunately where we’re at in the United States. On issue after issue the policies of the US government are in direct opposition to the demands of social and economic justice. To take just one example, we spend upwards of a trillion dollars every year on the Pentagon and war while tens of millions of Americans live in poverty and have no access to health care. That is immoral and unacceptable.

CelebityDialogue: Have you ever been labeled “unpatriotic”?
Eric: I’m sure many people have thought I’m unpatriotic. And truth be told, that doesn’t really bother me. While some on the Left like to make the case that dissent or peace is patriotic, that argument has never really moved me. Appeals to patriotism I’ve found are generally made to stifle free thought and to get people to conform to the status quo.

I don’t think anyone should put the interests of their country above those of any other. Instead, we need to realize that all borders are artificial lines and that we are all part of the same human family. If we saw the average Pakistani as no different and of no less value than our brother or sister, we would never be able to bomb them. Patriotism, like nationalism, is a bankrupt concept that has led to untold suffering and death.

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Documentary Brings Anti-Apartheid Movement to Life

2 Apr

March 31, 2010 issue

The Indypendent, Truthout, ZNet

In 1996, only two years after Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president of South Africa, acclaimed filmmaker Connie Field began working on an epic seven-part documentary series about the global campaign to end the racist apartheid regime that plagued the country for more than four decades.

Have You Heard From Johannesburg chronicles three generations of that struggle — from the early freedom fighters and African National Congress (ANC) leader Oliver Tambo to the international campaign to boycott corporations operating in South Africa and impose economic sanctions on the regime — through some 135 interviews spanning 12 countries, encounters with former apartheid officials and profiteering corporate executives, and archival footage from around the world.

After attending a recent screening at the Ford Foundation of one part of the eight-and-a-half-hour series, The Indypendent’s Eric Stoner spoke with Field about whether nonviolent action played the decisive role in bringing down the apartheid regime, why economic justice has eluded post-apartheid South Africa, and what activists today can learn from the anti-apartheid movement.

Eric Stoner: Tell me a bit about how the story developed.

Connie Field: This is an untold story that didn’t exist in any medium. When I started, I had very little information about it. It was a huge process just gathering the story from all over the world, like doing original historical research.

ES: I understand certain parts of the series can be viewed separately?

CF: Three of the stories I call stand-alones. They are about specific campaigns that were waged from outside of South Africa to help topple apartheid there. Viewed individually, each tells the story of a particular campaign. One of them, From Selma to Soweto, shows how African-Americans changed U.S. foreign policy in South Africa for the first time in history. Countries that were more heavily involved in the Cold War or had serious economic interests in the system of apartheid, such as Britain and the United States, were steadfastly “protecting” the regime by not acting against it. So when people in our country literally forced the government to enact sanctions against South Africa over President Reagan’s veto, it was incredibly significant. The resistance within South Africa really relied on support from the United States. The other two stand-alones are about the sports boycott and the economic boycott that forced companies to pull out of South Africa.

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A Lesson on Nonviolence for the President

18 Dec

December 17, 2009

Foreign Policy In Focus, Common Dreams, Antiwar.com, ZNet

In Oslo last week, President Barack Obama ironically used his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize to deliver a lengthy defense of the “just war” theory and dismiss the idea that nonviolence is capable of addressing the world’s most pressing problems.

After quoting Martin Luther King Jr. and giving his respects to Gandhi — two figures that Obama has repeatedly called personal heroes — the new peace laureate argued that he “cannot be guided by their examples alone” in his role as a head of state.

“I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people,” he continued. “For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Unfortunately, this key part of Obama’s speech, which the media widely quoted in its coverage of the award ceremony, contains several logical inconsistencies and historical inaccuracies that tragically reveal Obama’s profound ignorance of nonviolent alternatives to the use of military force.

The Power of Nonviolence

Almost immediately after acknowledging that there is “nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King,” Obama equated nonviolence with doing nothing.

To live and act nonviolently, however, never involves standing “idle in the face of threats.” Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Dave Dellinger, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and countless other genuine peacemakers have put their lives on the line in the struggle for a more just world. Advocates of nonviolence, like Gandhi, simply believe that means and ends are inseparable – that responding in kind to an aggressor will only continue the cycle of violence.  

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A Conversation About Nonviolence

13 Nov

November 13, 2009

Yes! Magazine, Truthout, ZNet

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Former Polish President and Solidarity founding leader Lech Walesa speaks to workers during a strike at the Gdansk shipyard in this August 8, 1980. (REUTERS/Forum/Erazm Ciolek)

Despite the amazing string of victories that “people power” movements have chalked up over recent decades, it’s surprising how little-known many of these stories still are, even to folks who are politically aware in many other respects.

That is why “Weapons of Mass Democracy,” Stephen Zunes’ article in the Fall 2009 issue of Yes! Magazine, is so important, especially for those just discovering the hidden history and potential of nonviolence. He cogently lays out why nonviolent tactics—such as strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations—are the most effective way to resist oppressive regimes, and backs up his case with considerable evidence.

Lately, however, my thinking about how we should most honestly discuss many of the success stories that are regularly cited by advocates of nonviolence has been evolving.

Whether we’re talking about Gandhi and Martin Luther King, about the nonviolent movements that brought down dictators or repressive governments in South Africa, Poland and many other countries, or about the recent “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine, the stories are actually far more complicated than we often admit.

While these nonviolent campaigns were undeniably successful at kicking the British out of India, gaining civil rights for blacks in the United States, and installing governments that were, at least on the surface, more democratic, we tend to overlook the economic effects of these victories.

The sad truth is that when it comes to fundamentally changing the distribution of resources or wealth in a society, these nonviolent movements were less successful.

In each of these cases, the economic elite that controlled the country before the nonviolent movement gained power continued to do so afterwards, and the plight of those at the bottom was in many cases exacerbated.

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