In the April 1968 edition of a now defunct English daily, Business Post, one Yaqoob Sultan wrote an article in which he described a conversation he had had with a member of an Islamist political party. Sultan identified himself as a progressive student activist who was involved in the time’s protest movement against the Gen Ayub Khan dictatorship. 

Sultan wrote that, when he met the Islamist at a wedding reception in Karachi, the Islamist told him that he (Sultan) and his like were ‘puppets of communist forces’ that were being used to destroy Islam in Pakistan. He then went on to admonish the ‘liberals’ as well, who he accused of being navigated by Western powers to promote secularism in the country. Sultan wrote that he retaliated by calling his accuser a hypocrite, because “Islamic [sic] parties were clearly being funded by the US to work against progressive forces.”

I stumbled upon this pithy piece 50 years later, during a research project in 2018. I found it rather interesting because whereas the accusation like the one made by the writer of the article became somewhat common in progressive/leftist circles, most people could not get their heads around it. 

After all, how could those who were always raging against ‘Westernisation’ and secularism ever be supported by the US? Yet, there is now enough evidence to suggest that the US (as well as the UK) were doing just that. 

The notion that the West has tried to impose Westernisation and secularism in Muslim regions in the past few decades is largely flawed. In fact, the West has done everything it could to ‘Islamise’ and, in some cases, radicalise the populations of these regions for specific geopolitical purposes

During the Cold War, Western powers, led by the US, cultivated Islamist outfits in Muslim-majority regions — especially in........

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