Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West By Irfan Husain, HarperCollins, Rs 299

Irfan Husain is a garrulous man. While his friends had thought it would not take more than two pages to list why Muslims hated America, Husain has taken 232. Of course, he has also raised America’s difficulties with the community — poor assimilation, lack of trust and growing extremism. But having taken so many pages to draw the fault lines between the West and Islam and between Pakistan and the United States of America, Husain has little space left to explain why he does not believe that these are not as ‘fatal’ as they are thought to be. His conclusion — that despite being dangerous, jihadi groups have never “posed a serious threat to America, its democracy, or its way of life” — is left hanging in the air.

All through, Husain, a civil servant and a well-known journalist of Pakistan, tries to walk the middle ground. He cites instances of American magnanimity every time he is accosted with virulent anti-Americanism, be it to gum-chewing university students or to his readers. He reminds them of American intervention that stopped the Serbs from killing Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims, US rehabilitation efforts after the massive earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir, its huge donations for the refugees of the Swat valley and victims of the 2008 flood. Husain’s audience is largely unmoved, although some of them do sometimes send him congratulatory letters for his outspokenness. America is seen to have left indelible marks on the Muslim mind by propping up repressive, dictatorial regimes in Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt and pre-revolution Iran, by its unjust war in Iraq, its championing of Israel’s rights over those of Palestine. And Husain concurs.

Husain’s reading — be it of history or of recent trends — is much more nuanced than that of his audience. He points out that jihadists are raking up centuries-old memories of animosity between Muslims and Christians to further their cause, they are using the unregulated cyberspace to prey upon the fears and insecurities of Muslims inhabiting a foreign land. He shows how the unresolved contradictions in the Quran and ahadith are fanning the jihadist fervour, how racism has also become an integral part of the apparently egalitarian pan-Islamism.

Husain, in fact, does not shirk from saying the unpleasant. He comes down heavily on the West for its Islamophobia and its vilification campaign against Muslims who are presumed to be guilty unless proven innocent. But it is his courage to speak out against the Pakistan government, its self-defeating strategy of “cherry-picking” one group of jihadis over another to retain regional edge, its complicity in the drone strikes in Pakistan, the army’s links with jihadists through shadowy retired servicemen, the country’s irrational fear of India and its destructive education policy in what is believed to be the “riskiest of times”, is what makes this book outstanding. Coming from a civil servant and a journalist who has seen others like him hounded and killed for speaking the truth, Husain’s plainspeak is awe-inspiring. The lucid prose, the rich bag of anecdotes and the ease with which Husain moves between the Biblical past and the harsh present allow him to carry a difficult subject lightly on his shoulders.

Husain acknowledges that he would have ended with dire predictions about the future along the lines of Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations had it not been for the advent of the Arab Spring. He believes that the spread of true democracy will thwart global jihad and tone down anti-Americanism, but much of the future will once again depend on how the West reacts to the changes and whether it is able to keep itself away. Keeping the fall guy ready at hand?