`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master — that’s all.’

also, I am furthermore impressed at his capacity to hold on to both a ‘liberal attitude’ (albeit a Pakistani one) and a particularly ‘Sunni-sectarian form of reasoning’. More impressive for a historian though is his inability to discern historical change, which leads him to hold on to an ‘unchanging and already known character of “fundamentalism”, itself surely a “fundamentalist” mode of reasoning.’

Now that my snarky side is out in the open, let me ask two quick questions on Faisal’s main points:

first, generally, co-ed means boys and girls studying in the same institution. Why use it as a vernacular shorthand for something else and give rise to misunderstanding?

second, on a more substantive issue, what is new and novel about the use of the language of development and NGO ’speak’ by fundamentalists? Isn’t this seen throughout the twentieth century, on all (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Christian) sides of the aisle?

I am afraid that re-stating your points do not make them any more factual. If the Red Mosque was the very first female madrasa in Sunni Pakistan (it wasn’t) or if it was the only one to teach science and technology (it wasn’t) or if no other organization in Sunni political history had spoken in the language of civil society and ngo (it isn’t; one can begin with the ikhwan and continue with the jama’at) than I would surely be more responsive to the rest of the edifice you build.

Having said that, I confess that my interests, historical and otherwise, are provincial, local and rather quaint. I am not an “expert” on Islamic militancy such as yourself. Also, I do not presume to quantify you in any number of determined categories such as you ably demonstrate above - the “speculative scholarship” is a direct quote from you - so, I will let my thoughts on your piece stand on its own.

And if you are really curious about your centrality to this forum, remember - the database never lies.

I was recently directed to your blog by a friend who said that I was frequently criticized in it. Flattered though I am at this attention, I’m also a bit puzzled at why my few writings, miserable as they appear to be, should deserve such repeated notice. I am nevertheless grateful to be mentioned in this important forum for debate and discussion now and then, and only hope that you will allow me to add to all this weighty debate by making a few observations on your treatment of my Public Culture piece, “Red Mosque”.

My short essay made three baisc points, all of which you unaccountably left out of your review. The first was that the presence and participation of women in large numbers in the Red Mosque controversy was highly unusual for any group of Sunni “fundamentalists” (as you call them) in Pakistan, such behaviour being more familiar from Shia revolutionaries in Iran. It was in this sense that the Red Mosque events can be described as “co-ed”, and not because I was so foolish as to think that the male and female students within its complex of buildings studied or moved around together. On the other hand one of the mosque’s leaders did, after all, emerge from the complex together with its women students and even dressed like them.

My second very basic point was that the language deployed by the mosque’s teachers and students during the controversy was strongly marked by the vocabulary of development, transparency and accountability that is the stock in trade of NGOs and such civil society organizations. Whether or not these men and women were anti-Shia (as you quite correctly suggest) I found it interesting that they made use of this common and also “secular” language during the controversy rather than the usual sectarian tirades. This language, I tried to suggest, was matched in its “secularity” by the fact that the female students in the complex were taught English and science, thus departing from the usual stereotype of a radical madrassa–English and science being the very subjects that “secularists” insist upon when talking about madrassa reformation.

My third point was that we might be able to account for these phenomena by seeing the Red Mosque crisis as a crisis of traditionally organized “fundamentalism” of the militant kind, by its gradual opening up to the forms and vocabulary of civil society actors like NGOs, especially in the kind of part-time and extra-curricular activism that differs so radically from the closed and cult-like character that is so often said to mark radical groups. I don’t see why you think this is a particularly offensive thing to say, unless, like the Takfiris, you’re interested in drawing clear lines between “good” and “bad” Muslims–or rather between Muslims and apostates.

Perhaps the problem stems from the fact that you’re interested primarily in Muslim movements and Pakistani politics, while I’m interested in globalization more generally, and therefore want to look at such movements in a larger theoretical context. Even so, I can’t imagine why you think that the efficiency of Miss Bhutto’s assassination should invalidate my claim that militancy is increasingly the work of “amateurs”, or that it is pointless stressing the civil society aspect of the Red Mosque because it was after all an educational institution. For one thing we don’t know who was responsible for the assassination, while efficiency does not determine professionalism. And for another your acknowledgement of a militant civil society seems to contradict the offense you felt when I described it as such, while my own description was of course deployed against the image of “fundamentalists” living in some closed world of their own.

What I find most revealing about your review, though, is the fact that it insists so strongly on the unchanging and already known character of “fundamentalism”, itself surely a “fundamentalist” mode of reasoning that allows you to dismiss my own writing as “speculative” in the sense of being without fundament or foundation. Naturally this means that you do not account for the novelties I point to, including the mobilization and non-religious education of women as well as the use of NGO language among the Red Mosque’s residents, though you will I am sure acknowledge the “Westernized” rhetoric of militants more generally. And this is to say nothing of the radical change in political allegiance of the mosque’s authorities themselves. So much for your claim to pay attention to history–which you seem to define as changelesness rather than change. But then this is the usual attitude of Pakistani liberals playing at being Leftists.

More sinister than the liberal attitude on display here, however, is the disturbing emergence of a particularly Sunni-sectarian form of reasoning. For IN THE PAKISTANI CONTEXT to argue that the Red Mosque’s inhabitants were simply displaying some kind of facade masking their true intentions is to make use of a common and indeed the pre-eminent form of anti-Shia stereotype, whatever the sectarian identity of the person so arguing. Here then is yet another example of the Takfiri orientation that so marks your reasoning, which in this way is so much in tune with the kind of argumentation to be found among your professed enemies and countrymen.

Faisal Devji

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