NARENDRA Modi is no stranger to genocides. He acquired the moniker ‘Butcher of Gujrat’ for presiding over anti-Muslim pogroms as chief minister in 2002. By undertaking a highly choreographed official visit to Tel Aviv, Modi is both rubber-stamping the Netanyahu regime’s genocidal assaults on Gaza and cementing the alliance between the fanatical creeds of Hindutva and Zionism.
The Christian Right has already upended ‘normal’ politics in the US by projecting a millenarian vision of the world that can only be achieved by totalitarian and violent means. Trumpism is now an entrenched, grassroots phenomenon that will very likely outlive Donald Trump. Meanwhile, various shades of both secular and religious right are running riot across Europe, with fearmongering about cultural invasions by the proverbial immigrant.
Despite their best pretensions, Muslim countries do not buck the trend. Reactionary politics and repressive state nationalism are the order of the day across large swathes of the Arab world, Southwest Asia and the world’s largest Muslim state, Indonesia. The current hybrid regime in this country presents itself as a leader of this putatively coherent bloc of countries.
Some believe that this notional ‘Muslim’ bloc, along with other constituent parts of the ‘Global South’, can become a bulwark against US imperialism, Zionism and Hindutva. An ostensibly pro-people group of countries can now even rely on a superpower, China, to both resist the US-Israel-India axis and even usher the world towards a new tomorrow.
Reactionary politics and repressive state nationalism dominate.
The hypothesis is backed up by reference to some recent developments. Most notable was Pakistan’s successful deployment of Chinese-made aircraft to down India’s French-made fleet (and its armoury of Israeli drones). The subsequent defence agreement between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as the former’s growing export of arms more generally, is also present as evidence of a burgeoning security alliance to resist Zionist aggression. There is even an argument that Iran has, as yet, not suffered a major assault because the ‘Muslim’ bloc, China and other countries have stood firm in its defence.
The fundamental problem with this hypothesis is that there are just as many, if not more, examples that disprove it. To begin with, the notional bloc is united in its desire to win the good graces of the Trump White House. The calamitous ‘Board of Peace’ is just the tip of the iceberg. Military contracts and cooperation between Muslim countries and the US are old news. Pakistan’s militarised ruling class, like many of its ‘Muslim brethren’, is inking all sorts of minerals, crypto and other deals with the US. The Gulf states do big business with India, not to mention happily call it a strategic partner. The UAE even boasts annual bilateral trade with Israel in excess of $3 billion.
On the other end of the planet, Venezuela and Cuba are amongst the few states in our world that clearly articulate an anti-imperialist policy. How many countries stood up for Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro when he was kidnapped by US commandos in broad daylight? He still languishes in a New York jail.
Then there is Cuba, which, for those who do not remember, sent a team of its inimitable doctors to lead the relief effort after the massive 2005 earthquake in Azad Kashmir. Subsequently, hundreds of Pakistani students have received Cuban government scholarships to study medicine in Havana. Cuba today is literally being strangulated by a vicious US oil embargo. How many of the world’s countries are demanding a lifting of both the oil blockade and other long-running economic sanctions?
Global geopolitical change is happening. At the broadest level of analy-sis, we are living through an age of intense reaction, the Hindutva-Zionist-Christian Right nexus amongst the most prominent em-bodiments of this global moment. But Pakistan, other Muslim countries and, frankly, most of the world’s states, are anything but bastions of anti-imperialism. The religious right remains highly influential here too — the Afghan Taliban fiasco yet again proves the disastrous consequences of state patronage for militant Islamism.
More generally, money talks; ruling classes everywhere are increasingly using state nationalism as a ruse to camouflage the universal pretensions of capital, including the immense contradictions generated by neoliberal globalisation.
The only silver lining is the many Indians who oppose Modi; the many Americans who oppose Trump; and the brave few within the Zionist entity who stand for Palestinian liberation.
Progressive segments continue to resist state and class power in Pakistan too. It is these pro-people elements, across nation-state boundaries, that counter reactionaries in their own midst. This is why we can continue to hope.
The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, February 27th, 2026
