India, China and Myanmar are three Asian countries where Muslim minority populations are believed to be persecuted in some form. While the plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims and China’s Uighur Muslims is well known, the introduction of a law in 2020, which some said could potentially be used to dispossess Indian Muslims of their citizenship, has led many to accuse India’s ruling BJP party of running a government that sees itself as Hindu first and foremost.
Questions such as, “Why aren’t the rich Arab countries saying anything?” have come up, with the implicit inference that rich Muslim-dominated countries are supposed to stick up for Muslims everywhere in the world. Others have pointed out that despite suffering oppression in some parts of the world, Muslims are also responsible for brutal acts of oppression against other minority groups elsewhere, which allegedly negates the sufferings of the prior group.
Oppression is a matter of perspective
As a general rule of thumb, the only limiting factor on whether or not a religion functions as an oppressive tyranny in a particular jurisdiction is the proportion of the population that practises it there. Similarly, the only thing stopping any religion from being an oppressed and downtrodden identity is whether it is a small enough minority for that to be possible.
While Muslims in India, Myanmar and China complain about being persecuted because of their religious identities, Muslims in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Malaysia and Northern Nigeria are simultaneously accused of visiting the exact same persecutions of Baha’i, Shia, Christians, Budhists and other religious minorities in those areas. It turns out that the mere fact of belonging to a religious identity does not in fact, confer unqualified global victimhood.
This point is important because it disproves the notion held by every major religion that its adherents follow a single set of standards and do things in the manner of a global “brotherhood.” In reality, Islam, according to a Rohingya Muslim hiding from the Burmese military, and the same religion according to an itinerant herder in Kogi State, bears almost no similarity to each other save for the most basic tenets. Environmental factors in fact have a bigger influence on how religions are practised than their own holy books.
In plain English, my argument is that nobody actually practises a religion in the pure sense they imagine they do. Everyone who subscribes to a religion merely practises a version of it that is subject to the culture and circumstances of their environment and era. This is directly connected to the next major insight raised by these events.
Geopolitics is all about self-interest…everyone gets it except Africa
While perceived anti-Muslim sentiment has continued apace for years in China, Mynammar and India, the question has often been asked: “Why are the wealthy Arab nations not saying anything?” There is a perception that since the Arabian peninsula is the birthplace of Islam and Arabs – particularly Saudis – are viewed as the global gatekeepers of the faith, they must be at the forefront of promoting the interests of Muslims worldwide.
To many, the fabulous wealth and international influence that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE enjoy, in addition to the presence of two of Islam’s holiest cities – Mecca and Meddinah – in Saudi Arabia, means that they have a responsibility to speak for the global Muslim Ummah and stand up for them when they are unfairly targeted and mistreated. Unfortunately for such people, the wealthy nations of the Arab Gulf region tend to respond to such questions with little more than an irritated silence – and with good reason.
To begin with, these countries are not democracies led by the wishes of their almost uniformly Muslim populations. They are autocracies led by royal families who came to power in the colonially-influenced 19th and 20th century scramble for power and influence. Saudi Arabia, which houses Islam’s holiest sites, is named after the House of Saud, its royal family which came into power in its current form at the turn of the 19th century. The priority of the regimes in these countries first and foremost is self-preservation.
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Self-preservation means that before throwing their significant diplomatic and economic weight behind any attempt to help out fellow Muslims, the first consideration is how doing so will benefit them. India, for example, is a country that has close diplomatic ties with the UAE, and supplies most of their cheap labour for construction and low-skilled functions. India has even coordinated with UAE special forces to repatriate the dissident Princess Latika when she made an audacious escape attempt in 2018.
What does the UAE stand to gain if it napalms its close and mutually beneficial diplomatic relationship with India by criticising Modi’s perceived anti-Muslim policy direction? It might win a few brownie points with Islamic hardliners and possibly buy some goodwill among poor Muslims in South Asia, but how much is that really worth? The regime and nation’s self-interest is best served by looking the other way, so that is exactly what Abu Dhabi has done.
The Saudis make a similar calculation. At a time when they are investing heavily in military hardware to keep up with their eternal rivals Turkey and Iran, and simultaneously preparing for the end of oil by liberalising their society and economy, does it pay them to jump into an issue in India that does not particularly affect them? As the status of their diplomatic relationship with the US remains unclear following the Jamal Khasshoggi incident and Joe Biden’s oil price sabre-rattling, are they going to risk alienating Beijing because of Uighur Muslims?
In fact, self-interest like that mentioned here is the basis of the considerations that underpin all international relations. Well, I say “all,” but what I really meant to say was “all except African countries.”It is only African countries that take diplomatic decisions based on little more than flimsy emotions and feelings of religious affinity. In 2020, for example, Gambia dragged Myanmar before the UN and filed a genocide case against it on behalf of the Rohingya Muslims.
This would be commendable and great were it not that Gambia itself was hardly a human rights luminary, and generally had little business fighting an Asian battle when its own worse African battles lay unfought. The only thing Gambia stood to gain from fighting a diplomatic war that the rest of the world was unwilling to touch was the temporary goodwill of a few Muslims in Asia and around the world – goodwill that would not translate into anything tangible for it.
To coin an aphorism from social media lingo, you could call it ”diplomatic clout chasing.”
