Extract from The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict Between Islam and Christianity

by M J Akbar
Courtesy Publisher: Lotus/Roli

In an age of despair the need for a hero who can inspire pan-Islamic victories becomes acute. The situation today is akin to a thousand years ago, when Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and Christians established powerful states in the heart of Palestine, in territory approximate to where Israel exists today. Revival by Zengi, Nuraddin, and above all Saladin lifted Muslims from a morass then. There is no such hero on the horizon now. Despair can become a breeding ground for mavericks who believe in themselves and their version of the faith.

Osama bin Laden is in the tradition of another famous name from the eleventh century, Hasan i Sabbah, the Old Man of the Mountains, who has given the English language the word 'assassin'. The year of his birth is not known, but he died in 1124: that, presumably, is what fame is all about. He was born in a Shia family in Qum in Persia and travelled restlessly when young, serving many masters. In 1090, he finally found a base for his militant creed in the castle of Alamut, on a high rock in the middle of the Elburz mountains, perched above a fertile valley. He did not leave this mountain for 34 years, until he died. From there he commanded a network of missionaries and terrorists who became the most feared force of their time.

For more than a hundred years the cult of assassins spread terror among both the Christian crusaders and the Arab emirs who had permitted Christians to triumph. Hasan i Sabbah promised paradise to martyrs in his cause, apparently with the judicious use of hashish, hence hashishin and then assassin. They perfected the strategy of suicide missions, and their secrecy was legendary. It reached a point where a sultan like Saladin could not be certain if his own bodyguards had not become assassins, waiting for a signal from their lord. Assassins made two attempts on the life of Saladin, once in the winter of 1174-5, when he was besieging Alleppo; and then on 22 May 1176 when, disguised as his soldiers, they attacked him with knives. After that Saladin slept under special protection, and only those who knew him personally were allowed to approach him.

When the Old Man would hear of a threat to his own life, he would laugh it off with a proverb: Do you threaten a duck with the river?

The cult's greatest success came at a critical moment during Richard II's Crusade. It was carefully planned and brilliantly executed. Two assassins entered the service of Marquis Conrad of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, as Christian monks and, after securing his complete confidence, killed him on 28 April 1192. It was the 11 September of its time. The assassins added ingenious salt to this would by 'confession' that Richard II had instigated the murder.

However, the romance of the assassin withered when the Arab establishment protected the victories of Saladin. Having found Saladin, Muslims did not need terrorism. The movement drifted into appalling heresy, and ended up on the margins until it was scattered into oblivion by the Mongol Hulegu. (It prospered in oblivion. The modern Aga Khan, head of the Ismailis, is a direct descendant of the Old Man of the Mountains.)

There may be a lesson here for modern times. When Saladin gave a call for a jihad against Richard II, response came from as far away as India. The street is still ready, but there is not Saladin. Dictators like Saddam Hussein exploit this disenchantment to divert some of the anger against their own tyranny. The United States, most Muslims believe, only dispenses with those dictators who fall out with Washington; in other words, it is Washington's interest that must always be served, not theirs. The Saud family remains the outstanding example of Washington's tolerance for obedient kings. 'King' is not the most important of the titles of the Saudi monarch; he is also custodian of the holy places. To many Muslims, the Saud family is on the custodian of American oil.

In May 1932 an American and a British explorer-agent had lunch at Simpson's restaurant in the Strand. The American, Francis B. Loomis, former under-secretary of state during Theodore Roosevelt's administration, and now foreign affairs consultant to Standard Oil Company of California (Social), had invited Harry St John Bridger Philby, just back from a Saudi Arabia that was broke because of falling revenues and the rising royal expenditure of Abdul Aziz bin Saud. According to the unreliable Philby, all the oil concessions of Arabia were available to anyone with a million dollars.

In 1928, American, British, Dutch, and French oil companies had shared the concessions in the conquered parts of the dead Ottoman empire: Standard Oil Company of New York (now Mobil); Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (Exxon); Anglo Persian (British Petroleum); Royal Dutch Shell; and Compagnie Francaise des Petroles. Socal was not in the cartel but had begun to explore in Bahrain (it hit pay dirt on 1 June 1932). Within a year of that lunch in 1932, terms were settled with the Saudi government: 30,000 gold sovereigns (literally, on the table of the manager of Netherlands Trading Society) on 25 August 1933 for the title to explore an area four times the size of Britain, and for a further 1000,000 pounds gained the rights to Nejd and Kuwait Neutral Zone. By the end of the year Americans were in Hasa, with cranes, girders, cars, lorries, electric fans, showers, and water closets. The rest, as they say, is history. By March 1938 Dammam No. 7 was spewing some four thousand barrels of oil a day. On 18 February 1943 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued executive Order 8926 to under-secretary of state Edward Stettinus in which he summed up America's position: 'I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.' Lend-lease funds were made available to the government. Britain was slowly eased out of the way. American troops were stationed at Dhahran. The interdependence of Washington and Riyadh was established.

There is a saying of the Prophet familiar to those Muslims who have read about their religion: if an imam does not protect his people, he shall never smell the perfumes of paradise. In his first speech after being named caliph, Abu Bakr had said: 'I have been given authority over you but I am not the best of you. If I do well, help me, and if I do ill, then put me right . . . Obey me as long as I obey God and His apostle, and if I disobey them you owe me to obedience.'

Thirteen of the 24 caliphs of the Ottoman empire were removed from office after a fatwa from the Sheykh ul Islam, declaring that they were no longer able to protect the Muslim because they had forgotten how to serve Allah. The Islamic code has left space for dissent and means for redressal. Dissent may be suppressed in Saudi Arabia but it still travels. Elements of the ulema are often the champions of change. One reason why Saudi authorities are generous to religious causes is their anxiety to appease the clergy. It does not always work. In the middle of America's war against Al Qaida and the Taliban, Saudi authorities summoned a highly respected, blind, 80-years-old cleric, Sheikh Hamoud answered simply: 'Whoever backs the infidel against Muslims is considered an infidel.' The Prophet had said, let there not be two religions in Arabia. The Saudis have altered that; it is now, let there not be two opinions in Saudi Arabia.

At Britain lost its eminence to the United States after the Second World War, the rage shifted from the pre-eminent colonial power to the 'neocolonialism' of America. With the creation of Israel, all three sides of a monotheistic faith, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, became enmeshed in this conflict. It is less a clash of civilizations and more a struggle for political space, economic power, and national pride underlined by religious differences. The Muslim anguish at departed glory contrasts sharply with Jewish revival after some two thousand years of exile. Muslims need someone to blame, apart from themselves. America is necessary.

The Muslims of undivided India did find their Saladin in the 1930s, although he would have recoiled from such an analogy. There is not a single reference to Saladin in the 421 pages of Stanley Wolpert's Jinnah of Pakistan (Oxford University Press, New York, 1984), the most comprehensive English biography of the man who created a nation out of a minority demand. Jinnah did not believe in the traditional heroes of Islamic history; if he had a role model, it was Mustafa Kemal, the Turk who ended the Caliphate.

When did the Muslims become a minority in India? The question is rhetorical, because Muslims in India have always been a minority. However, particularly after the conversions in Bengal, India also had the largest Muslim population in the world, principally converts from the nether regions of the Hindu caste system attracted by the egalitarian promise of Islam. At no point in their long presence in India did Muslims ever demand a specifically Muslim kingdom, or a province exclusive to them. They never felt any need for protection from Hindus.

At what point of their history, then, did they become a 'minority'? The process began with the loss of the Mughal empire and the decimation of the old nobility after the defeat of 1857. The language of power changed from Persian to English, and systems of authority were altered to suit the British interest. New ideas like elections came into play. A complete misunderstanding of elections was unsurprising for no one clearly understood what this animal called a vote was all about; whether it would walk, run, or turn and bite the hand that fed it.

However, when Jinnah got his promised land, he became radically different to the man who had wrested that prize. His speech at the opening of the Constituent Assembly on 11 August was troubled. While he asserted that history would vindicate Partition, he was uncertain now about the last laugh: 'Any idea of a United India never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster. Maybe that view is correct; maybe it is not; that remains to be seen.' Maybe?