The Taliban’s record of governing Afghanistan in the 1990s was disappointingly dismal. The only legitimacy they claimed to have (or their apologist say they have) is that they maintained strict discipline in social life, thus preventing petty criminals from indulging in crimes. In this way, the argument goes, they protected the ordinary citizens of major urban centers in Afghanistan.
Another feather in their cap from last tenure was the eradication of poppy cultivation in South of Afghanistan. So they seemed to be good at utilising coercive tools available to them to prevent miscreants from causing unrest in the society. It is very common to hear from their apologists that during Taliban rule there was no theft or robbery in Afghanistan.
At the back of this mechanism of coercion was the thinking that coercion is the prime task the state has to perform. The state is a set of mechanisms and religiously sanctioned laws, which either forces the citizens of a society to perform certain acts or that prevents the citizens from indulging in some forbidden acts. This mindset is a product of years rather decades of misrepresentation of Islamic political philosophy at the hands of modern religious revolutionaries or radical groups who, somehow, got under their control the machinery of a modern state in countries like Sudan, Iran and Afghanistan, to name just a few and fresh examples.
In these societies, the revolutionaries or the religious radicals invariably had to deal with political resistance to their outrageous policies and decisions, which were put down with the help of coercive mechanisms of the state. These decisions and acts of the revolutionary governments were labeled as the product of Islamic political philosophies by the western and local media generally speaking.
Taliban’s last stint as rulers of Afghanistan in 1990s was a classical example of backward and medieval political thinking coming into play in a society wreaked by a civil war like situation. Taliban as a group don’t possess any political philosophy of their own—they are an offshoot of 19th century Deobandi movement formed during British period when it was impossible for citizens of British India to undertake political activity.
So the political element was deliberately excluded from the ambit of Darul Uloom Deoband by its religious leaders. Even in later years Deobandi movement or sect didn’t produce any political thinker of repute. It rose to prominence in Pakistan and Afghanistan primarily because of religious seminaries which were funded and were converted into military training centers by the military government of General Zia-ul-Haq. The other two prominent groups associated with the Deobandi movement are Jamiat-e-Ulema Hindi (of which Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan is an offshoot) and Tabligeeh Jamat, a religious preaching organization. The religious seminaries in Pakistan and Afghanistan gave birth to the Taliban movement, according to popular stories circulating in our societies.
The Deobandi movement throughout history has a religious and social reform aspect central to its identity. Initially it focused on teaching religious scriptures and Fiqh to Muslim youth in British India. Afghan Jihad transformed the movement from a preaching and teaching movement into a movement with military and political aspects dominating its organizations. Political thought was beyond their capacity to carry out.
What we see now in the shape of the Afghan Taliban is fully a product of a process in which regional intelligence agencies and foreign offices played a crucial role. The formation of their political thinking and their attitudes, responses and policies are a product of interaction with state machineries and intelligence agencies of regional as well as international powers.
What we see now in the shape of the Afghan Taliban is fully a product of a process in which regional intelligence agencies and foreign offices played a crucial role. The formation of their political thinking and their attitudes, responses and policies are a product of interaction with state machineries and intelligence agencies of regional as well as international powers.
Although the Deobandi movement was itself a revivalist political movement of British India, it is quite distinct from those revivalist movements which had political philosophies at the basis of their organisations. For instance Jamaat-e-Islami and its founder Maulana Mudoodi produced a lot of literature on the political aspect of religion—which is mostly an incomplete synthesis of western political ideas and religious axioms as perceived by Mudoodi.
Another regional revivalist Movement in Iran led by Imam Khomeni was another synthesis of socialist ideals and religious principles. Taliban, however, never attempted any such synthesis. In fact they were simply not capable of producing a synthesis. It is not that political revivalists were any better in this regard.
An influential Iranian historian of Islamic political thought, Hamid Inayat, had opined in one of its books that Muslims had never taken political science seriously until they and their lands were overwhelmed by colonial powers. Afterwards they had an encounter with western political and social philosophies and started to write political literature of their own.
This included luminaries such as Mudoodi, Rashid Rida of Egypt, Hasanul-Banna and Sayyid Qatb. Muslims have always treated political science as a sub-heading of sharia. This has led to a situation where they could only produce normative principles about politics that simply include dos and don’ts of politics. This resulted in complete lack of analytical power to examine the political realities as they exist and not as they ought to be.
This included luminaries such as Mudoodi, Rashid Rida of Egypt, Hasanul-Banna and Sayyid Qatb. Muslims have always treated political science as a sub-heading of sharia. This has led to a situation where they could only produce normative principles about politics that simply include dos and don’ts of politics. This resulted in complete lack of analytical power to examine the political realities as they exist and not as they ought to be.
It is generally believed that Islamic political philosophy has diverse manifestations and it varied in different times and regions. But one reality is persistent in its history—the scholars and religious leaders have always interpreted Islamic teachings on politics in the light of contemporary political and social philosophies of the any given period.
Taliban are simply not in this league. Their previous rule was not only brutal but completely devoid of any capacity to govern Afghanistan on modern lines.
Coercion and coercive mechanisms hardly solve any problems. And this technique, if repeated, would firstly deprive the Taliban of the human resource that was built during the 20 years presence of Americans in this land.
