Steve Cohen has witten a few books on Pakistan and was promoting his new book Idea of Pakistan. Very interesting transcript. This event took place right after Jehangir Karamat’s QA.
The questions varied on topics affecting Pakistan.
http://www.brookings.edu/dybdocroot/comm/events/20041215pakistan.pdf
Here is an excerpt from two questions.
MR. COHEN: Henry, one of the times I went to Pakistan, I was with
some army guys. And they said, well, you know, a lot of Pakistan’s problems are caused
by the Jewish lobby in Washington, or the Israelis or something. I said, “I’m Jewish,”
and they say, Oh. There was sort of a silence. And they said, well, at least you’re
People of the Book–you know, part of the Abrahamic tradition. Unlike those Hindus,
you know. And, you know, there are problems with that.
The books looks at this issue at some length. And I looked at it because
in my first book, The Pakistan Army, there was a discussion of the comparison of Israel
and Pakistan, two states founded on the basis of religious premise. And the book was
banned by Zia. He apologized to me. He said, “Professor, we have to ban your book
because we Muslims are sensitive about this issue.” And then he eventually lifted the
ban just before he died. He also said about me, he said, “Well, that’s a pretty good book
for a Jew.”
[Laughter.]
This book, really, looks at the issue at greater length. And I argue that
three countries that were formed as homelands were a persecuted religious minority.
Actually, there were four, counting Bosnia. One was Israel, of course, for obvious
reasons. The second was Pakistan, the Indian Muslims who felt they couldn’t live as
minority among Indian Hindus. And the third was the United States. It was formed as
a–really, it became a refuge for persecuted Christians, both Catholic and Protestant,
from Great Britain. In a sense, we all share the problem of that identity and also the
problem of reconciling our religious roots with the problem of governance and
secularism, or governing our lives and protection of minorities by other than religious
criteria.
And this is where the Pakistanis are really groping, and Jews don’t figure
in this at all. I think their major problem, as Akbar said, is inter-Islamic struggles between Sunis and Shiias, let alone the Ahmadias, who were simply outlawed as
Muslims in Pakistan.
QUESTIONER: Henry Sokolski with the Nonproliferation Policy
Education Center.
I know very little about Pakistan, but one of the things that impresses me
about this panel is that there a Jew and someone who is in dialogue about Mr. Pearl.
Some people have told me–I don’t know if it’s true, but there are a lot of anti-Semites in
Pakistan. Now, they may not be in the elite, or they may be in the elite. But I was
wondering, given your expertise, which is unique on this panel, some people say that a
secular state is one that is not particularly anti-Semitic. You know, the Jewish question
has been running through the thread of history for secular states. Let’s think out 50 years. What are your thoughts on how much of a problem this is and, academically,
what would you do for the educational system to steer Pakistan away from what some
critics say is a problem?
MR. WEINBAUM: Can I address this? I think it would be incorrect to
characterize Pakistan that way. I’ve worked in Pakistan for more than 35 years and I
have never once had difficulty in that regard. Now, you can say not everybody
recognizes your background. Obviously, something can become a problem if you make
it a problem. But I think most Pakistanis are very well able to separate out those who
may hold views on policies they don’t agree with from what someone’s faith is. I really
believe that the heart of Pakistani thought here is not a fanatical view. Yes, it’s held by
some elements, particularly this Deobandi tradition, which happens to be much more
virulently anti-Shiia than it is anti-Christian or Jew.
So I think it would be wrong to characterize Pakistan that way.
Obviously, the Israel-Palestinian issue has taken on a higher profile recently, but that’s in large part a function most recently of Iraq and it’s been part of the larger phenomenon
here of this view that somehow the United States has become anti-Islamic. I can
perfectly well see that if some reasonably good settlement is reached between Israel and
its Arab neighbors and the Palestinians, that Pakistan will have no trouble with this.
I think you heard General Karamat say–and indeed, it’s very interesting.
Because after President Musharraf was here, and it was in this country that he said, I
would like to open up a dialogue, a debate in Pakistan on the recognition of Israel.
When he went back, indeed a debate opened up. I was there at the time. And one might
have thought this would have been closed down very quickly. Well, he kept his word.
There were articles over the news papers. And the remarkable thing was that they were
very rational arguments. They were all based on what was in Pakistan’s national interest. I didn’t see in any of this dialogue here the emergence of any bitterness which
would reflect anti-Semitism.