To The Chowdhuries Of Islam

Terrorism and resistance are two different things. Resistance by the people of an occupied country likePalestine, Golan and Iraq today and South Lebanon yesterday, is a sacred and fundamental right and duty in allcultures, old and new, and enjoys sanction even in international law laid down by western countries althoughthis right will be invoked only when a western country will fall under occupation. Palestinians have everyright to take recourse to all forms of resistance against the West-backed zionist zealots who have stolentheir 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 andinfluential people in Muslim majority societies, especially the Gulf and Pakistan. Insurgencies in places likethe Philippines, Pattani, Valley of Kashmir, have no meaning and have no hope of success either. Thesesenseless movements have only succeeded in butchering their own youth and offering local governments a handleto 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 themfor 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 forma guerrilla organisation and go begging for funds with concocted tales of persecution they would not bedisappointed until very recently. The correct approach should have been to tell these youth to go back totheir homelands and make adjustment with their majority communities and  governments, join civil societygroups working for non-violent change, and live as useful and law-abiding citizens and try to earn respect andrights through hard work and dedicated service to their societies and countries. But, alas, this did nothappen.
 
The Muslim press all over the world was and continues to be agog with stories of Muslim persecution, somepurely concocted. When I personally checked some of these cases, including the Valley of Kashmir, they turnedout to be incorrect and grossly exaggerated. I do not deny that there is persecution and human rightsviolation. 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 theirilliteracy and poverty. 

But this is a long and tiring Jihad which is practiced only by healthy societies like Japan and Germanyafter the Second World War. Bereft of a long-term vision, some disgruntled Muslim youths take the shorter andeasier path of "lesser jihad" and in turn bring ruin and disrepute to their religion andco-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 werelapped up first by Arab communists in the 1970s, a decade later tiny groups of "Islamists" in placeslike Egypt and Algeria emulated them bringing disrepute to Islam by killing foreign tourists and evenslaughtering their own co-relgionists. 

Algerian terrorists freely, literally, slaughter Muslims who do not share their ideology. Organisationslike Takfir wa'l-Hijra which killed the Egyptian Awqaf Minister Shaikh Dahabi in 1977 and Jihad Organisationwhich killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981 have only brought shame to Islam and pain to millions oflaw-abiding Egyptian Muslims who are not free now to offer even their basic Islamic duties as a result of thislunacy. 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 beenseverely restricted.

At the present time this lunacy has been hijacked by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaidah outfit and tiny scatteredgroups 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 inSalafi belief are not "Muslims", indeed most Muslims around the world are not "Muslims" inthe eyes of these lunatics] and condones killing even innocent Muslims since killing will hasten their entryinto Paradise [text in Al-Hayat Arabic newspaper, 12 Feb. 2004]. This perverted and insane logic whichjustifies murder is behind the senseless criminal acts of mass murder seen last Ashura in Karbala, Baghdad andQuetta.

It is high time Muslim leaders and scholars around the world take a clear and strong stand that these insaneelements are galaxies away from the Islamic message of universal peace, compassion and tolerance, that anyonefanning Shia-Sunni hatred is an enemy of Islam and friend of the enemies of Muslims. We totally disown thesefanatics, condemn their ideology and their supporters whoever and wherever they may be.

The role of Pakistan 

A word is also necessary here about the role of Pakistan in all this since General Zia-ul Haq suddenlydiscovered Islam as a tool of his foreign policy. The general, having hanged a popular and elected leader, wasin need of supporters at home and abroad. And just as Sadat had used "Islamists" in Egypt to counterthe leftists after his palace coup against Sabri faction in 1971, General Zia used Islamists at home andabroad to legitimise his usurpation of power. Pakistan overnight became the "Chowdhury," orchampion, of Islam all over the world. In a live interview on Aljazeera television on 9 June 1999, Ihad confronted the Pakistani participant (Abdul Ghaffar Aziz) and asked him if Pakistan was the "Chowdhury ofIslam"? He tried to dodge the question repeatedly but at the end had to concede that Pakistan is not andcannot be a Chowdhury of Islam.

Slowly "Jihad" became a cottage industry and Pakistan became the home and shelter of Jihadis of allcolours from all over the world. The West too for some time played an active role in helping and financingthis new industry as long as it was directed against the Soviet Union (Reagan's "Evil Empire") inAfghanistan. A lot of planning and petrodollars were involved in this enterprise. Within this congenialatmosphere, where even the state through ISI became a partner in the Jihad industry, a plethora of fanaticarmed gangs started operating within Pakistan killing its own Sunnis, Shias, Muhajirs, Pathans and soon. 

A lot of violent outfits in neighbouring countries were encouraged, financed, armed and trained to operatein Central Asia, in friendly China's Sinkiang, in enemy India's Kashmir. This enterprise has brought onlyshame and disrepute to Islam and Pakistani rulers. After causing the murder of hundreds of thousands ofpeople, Pakistan has now thrown out Arab  revolutionaries or surrendered them to the US, abandonedKashmiris and is shamelessly surrendering Sinkiang rebels to certain death at Chinese hands. 

This change took place not because Pakistan suddenly realised the futility and un-Islamic nature of this deceitfulenterprise but because the world scenario suddenly changed as a result of the American resolve after 9-11, forPax Americana's own reasons, not to allow whatever it considers "terrorism" around the world.

Despite Indian home minister Advani's unfounded claims about "Islamic terrorism" in our own country,Indian Muslims were mature and wise enough not to be lured or provoked into terrorism. Shameful events likethe martyrdom of Babri mosque and pogroms in Gujarat did influence some angry Muslim youth but this was sorare that even foreign observers like America's Mr Haas have confirmed that there was no terrorist trend amongIndian Muslims. 

We have a clear example to offer: the father of the Indian nuclear bomb is president of India today whilethe father of the Pakistani bomb is discredited and disowned by his own masters. World's largest Muslim minority,which is bigger than the population of Pakistan, has a lesson for all Muslim minorities: shun the suicidalpath of violence, adjust with your native societies, learn to live as loyal minorities and try to reach highpositions through hard work and sincere service to your home countries and the humanity at large. This will bea great service to Islam which teaches us that "love of homelands is part of faith" as the Prophet,peace be upon him, had said.

Author and journalist Zafarul-Islam Khan is editor of The Milli Gazette fortnightly and MuslimIndia monthly, New Delhi. He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Manchester.