| RECONCILIATION Islam, Democracy, and the West Benazir Bhutto New York: Harper, 2008 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-10 0-06-156758-2 | 320pp. | HC | $27.95 | |
Benazir Bhutto was twice prime minister of the nation of Pakistan, twice deposed, imprisoned, exiled. She held true to one goal: returning to the land of her birth and continuing to lead it toward democracy. This book attests to her dedication to that goal. Its first chapter, The Path Back, starts with her arrival at Quaid-e-Asam International Airport in Karachi on 18 October 2007 and the events that followed. Her account vividly illustrates the contending forces at work in Pakistan, indeed, throughout the Muslim world. In subsequent chapters, she develops her case for reconciling those forces — not only why it should be done, but how it can be done. Each chapter marshalls her arguments on a major facet of the problem.
Chapter 2 is a lengthy and scholarly discussion of the nature of Islam. Mrs. Bhutto's point here is that her religion is not inherently repressive of women, hostile to other faiths, or intolerant of science and democratic values. She makes her argument well, for the most part. The chapter ends with a brief description of the dictatorship of General Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq, who she contends fomented the current antagonism between the Sunni and Shi'a sects of Islam for political purposes.
Chapter 3 examines Western interventions in the Muslim world that, either deliberately or inadvertently, blocked local progressive movements. It gives a country-by-country history of the 45 Muslim nations in the world today. It concludes with case histories of four non-Muslim nations: Guatemala, Greece, Argentina, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The point here is to document the pattern of intervention by former colonial powers, including the United States, which resulted in distrust of Western intentions.
The problem politicians the world over have with virtue is that it is so easy to make people believe they don't have it, even when they do. Charges of corruption against Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, are of long standing. Indeed, the word is that all politics in Pakistan is corrupt. A recent survey put the current leader, General Pervez Musharraf, at the top of the corruption pyramid.
The question then becomes: Was Mrs. Bhutto guilty of corruption, or were these charges trumped up by her opponents?
Mrs. Bhutto makes a good case for her virtue in this book, as she did in life. And her brutal murder adds impetus to the desire to believe in her.
But there does appear to be more to the corruption charges than just smears by her opponents. I examine this in more detail when I explore just who this complex woman was.
Chapter 4 describes the turbulent political history of Pakistan from before its creation in 1947 through the end of 2007: a series of battles between progressive politicians, exemplified by Mrs. Bhutto and her father, and repressive forces including Generals Mirza, Zia-ul-Haq, and the current president Pervez Musharraf.1 That history is convoluted, with multiple contending factions each promoting its version of the truth, and marked by seesaw swings from dictatorship to democracy and back again. Mrs. Bhutto makes no attempt to hide her distaste for Zia-ul-Haq, who imprisoned her and her mother for several months after executing her father, or for Musharraf, who placed her (briefly) under house arrest after her return from exile in 2007. But there is no melodrama in this chapter; Mrs. Bhutto provides a straightforward account of her two terms as prime minister, both of which ended in her being removed on charges of corruption. She is equally straightforward in accusing Musharraf's government of complicity in the bombing that disrupted a rally in Karachi the day she returned to Pakistan.2
Chapter 5 is devoted to disproving the concept, growing out of the historical analyses of Spengler and Toynbee and codified in Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, that such clashes between civilizations — specifically secular Western and devout Islamic civilizations — are inevitable and must increase now that the Cold War no longer suppresses them. Mrs. Bhutto draws on contemporary sources from both Muslim and Western nations to support her argument. References to three empirical studies3 of world conflicts are a highlight of the chapter. Taken together, they conclusively demolish Huntington's thesis. Not much has changed since the end of the Cold War: Nations initiate conflict against other nations out of self-interest, and democracies do this far less often than authoritarian governments. Civilizations, or supranational groups, acting together for a common purpose are very much the exception.
Finally, in Chapter 6, Mrs. Bhutto lays out a series of practical measures that will help achieve the reconciliation she sought.
In the end, I judge that Mrs. Bhutto accomplishes two things with this book. The first is to prove her case that Islam — as much as Christianity or Judaism — is a religion compatible with peace, pluralism and progress. The second is to establish her own bona fides: That her wish to bring democracy to her people was genuine, and that she had the dedication and political acumen to carry it off.4 It is a sad testament to the state of affairs in Pakistan that she will never get the chance to do so. She was assassinated after addressing a rally in the garrison town of Rawalpindi on 27 December 2007.
RECONCILIATION includes a foreword written just after the assassination by Mark Siegel, a longtime friend and Mrs. Bhutto's collaborator on the book, and an afterword from her husband and children. It contains no index; this lack somewhat reduces its usefulness. But the authors were thorough about identifying their sources in the text, and they provide an extensive list of endnotes in which all quotations used are properly attributed. Despite a small number of errors5 (either understandable or arguable, in my opinion), this is a work of impressive scholarship and persuasive argument. It is in addition a truly important work, one that I hope will help bring about the reconciliation that is its goal.
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