NO ROOM FOR TERRORISM IN ISLAM
Terrorism and resistance are two different things. Resistance by the people of an occupied country like Palestine, Golan and Iraq today and South Lebanon yesterday, is a sacred and fundamental right and duty in all cultures, old and new, and enjoys sanction even in international law laid down by western countries although this right will be invoked only when a western country will fall under occupation. Palestinians have every right to take recourse to all forms of resistance against the West-backed zionist zealots who have stolen their lands and do not let them live in peace in even the remaining 22 per cent of their historic homeland.
Apart from this there is senseless violence by some Muslims which is justified in various ways, political, religious and historical. This violence has received moral and material support from some wealthy and influential people in Muslim majority societies, especially the Gulf and Pakistan. Insurgencies in places like the Philippines, Pattani, Valley of Kashmir, have no meaning and have no hope of success either. These senseless movements have only succeeded in butchering their own youth and offering local governments a handle to unleash a reign of terror against their innocent Muslim populations.
It is a matter of shame for people in Muslim majority states that when sons of Muslim minorities approach them for help to build modern institutions like colleges, universities, research and media houses and the like, there is no response except for funds meant to build mosques and madrasahs. But if a few insane hotheads form a guerrilla organisation and go begging for funds with concocted tales of persecution they would not be disappointed until very recently. The correct approach should have been to tell these youth to go back to their homelands and make adjustment with their majority communities and governments, join civil society groups working for non-violent change, and live as useful and law-abiding citizens and try to earn respect and rights through hard work and dedicated service to their societies and countries. But, alas, this did not happen.
The Muslim press all over the world was and continues to be agog with stories of Muslim persecution, some purely concocted. When I personally checked some of these cases, including the Valley of Kashmir, they turned out to be incorrect and grossly exaggerated. I do not deny that there is persecution and human rights violation. But rights are denied to Muslims not just because of their religion but because they are the weak, uneducated and poor in their societies. They need to wage a long-term “greater jihad” against their illiteracy and poverty. But this is a long and tiring Jihad which is practiced only by healthy societies like Japan and Germany after the Second World War. Bereft of a long-term vision, some disgruntled Muslim youths take the shorter and easier path of “lesser jihad” and in turn bring ruin and disrepute to their religion and co-religionists and only add new problems. This is not the Islamic path. Indeed this is imitation of leftist movements led by Mao and Che Guevara in the 1950s and ’60s which were lapped up first by Arab communists in the 1970s, a decade later tiny groups of “Islamists” in places like Egypt and Algeria emulated them bringing disrepute to Islam by killing foreign tourists and even slaughtering their own co-relgionists. Algerian terrorists freely, literally, slaughter Muslims who do not share their ideology. Organisations like Takfir wa’l-Hijra which killed the Egyptian Awqaf Minister Shaikh Dahabi in 1977 and Jihad Organisation which killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981 have only brought shame to Islam and pain to millions of law-abiding Egyptian Muslims who are not free now to offer even their basic Islamic duties as a result of this lunacy. Today all mosques in Egypt have been nationalised and imams receive official khutbas (sermons) to deliver, rather recite, on Fridays. Harmless Islamic activities, including freedom of expression, have been severely restricted.
At the present time this lunacy has been hijacked by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaidah outfit and tiny scattered groups allied to him. Very recently, Abu Mus’ab Al-Zarqawi [real name: Fadeel Nizar Al-Khalayleh of Jordan], said to be one of Osama group’s ideologues, has issued a statement which justifies killing Shias [who in Salafi belief are not “Muslims”, indeed most Muslims around the world are not “Muslims” in the eyes of these lunatics] and condones killing even innocent Muslims since killing will hasten their entry into Paradise [text in Al-Hayat Arabic newspaper, 12 Feb. 2004]. This perverted and insane logic which justifies murder is behind the senseless criminal acts of mass murder seen last Ashura in Karbala, Baghdad and Quetta.
It is high time Muslim leaders and scholars around the world take a clear and strong stand that these insane elements are galaxies away from the Islamic message of universal peace, compassion and tolerance, that anyone fanning Shia-Sunni hatred is an enemy of Islam and friend of the enemies of Muslims. We totally disown these fanatics, condemn their ideology and their supporters whoever and wherever they may be.
A word is also necessary here about the role of Pakistan in all this since General Ziaul Haque suddenly discovered Islam as a tool of his foreign policy. The general, having hanged a popular and elected leader, was in need of supporters at home and abroad. And just as Sadat had used “Islamists” in Egypt to counter the leftists after his palace coup against Sabri faction in 1971, General Zia used Islamists at home and abroad to legitimise his usurpation of power. Pakistan overnight became the “Chowdhury,” or champion, of Islam all over the world. In a live interview on Aljazeera television on 9 June 1999, I had confronted the Pakistani participant (Abdul Ghaffar Aziz) if Pakistan