 |
||
|
||
|
||
The recent recall of European Union envoys from Teheran following the conviction
in a Berlin court of eight Iranians, allegedly sent by their government to
assassinate four dissidents there and the steadfast opposition to the entry into
the EU of Turkey, are ominous signs of Western concern about the political content
and practices of jehad that are being applied outside the borders of the Islamic
world. This is perceived as a threat to the foundations of civil society, the rule
of law and democratic social and political life. While the European governments
are not saying so in actual words, there is no other logical explanation for them
to act in concert and react so swiftly and decisively on a single court decision
about an offence which was not more heinous or macabre than several others in
recent years which fundamentalists have sponsored.
Most of the incidents, be it the blasts at the World Trade Centre in New York or
the killing of 19 American soldiers at a base in Saudi Arabia which now has been
attributed to the Iranian intelligence agents, or the assassination attempt on the
Pope in 1981 by a Turk, have all been treated as criminal acts committed by
religious fanatics and not as politically-motivated crimes which had to be
countered by severe political censure.
The last Iranian premier under the Shah, Shahriar Bhaktiar was killed in 1991 by
an Iranian assassin who infiltrated the security ring around the house in Paris
where he was living after getting asylum. This was a serious and far more
humiliating act of defiance by Iran than the order for the Berlin killings. There
were no safety guarantees for the four dissidents in Berlin but Bhaktiar was
living in Paris under the specific assurance of a safe haven. His murder was
denounced in the strongest terms but no political move was made to severe links
with the then Ayatollah Khomeini rule.
Similarly, the EU is now dishing out flimsy reasons for slamming its door on
Turkey, when only a few years ago it was not censured when it invaded Cyprus. Its
soldiers committed sacrilege in Orthodox Greek churches there and brutalised the
population as per a UN report, which was suppressed, for Turkey being a Nato
member could not be embarrassed. Why is it that Europe now does not want Turkey to
become a member of the Union? Why is it that Iran has to be politically isolated
with a show of unanimity and imperiousness? In both cases, Germany is at the
vanguard of refusals and diplomatic delinkages.
When the Berlin prosecutors filed charges against the Iranian assassins over a
year ago media reports had expressed outrage at the welcome accorded to Iranian
senior ministers and bureaucrats by the Bonn Foreign Office, and not only
continuing but increasing trade relations with Teheran. At present, Germans are
the biggest investors there. Pressure had also been brought on Bonn by Washington
and Britain to minimise interaction and desist from helping development plans and
projects of the Iranian Government. But, such protests and pressures failed to
persuade the Germans. Yet, now they have led the alienation move.
The newly-found revulsion at fundamentalist-sponsored terrorism and the political
and diplomatic reactions reflect nervous alarm and bolster the impression that the
West has finally awakened to the fact that unlike other societies and also its
own, Islamist culture blends religion and politics. Consequently, when
fundamentalists talk of changing lifestyles and moral values they also ordain a
political takeover to achieve the Islamisation of the society. This is something
which the torchbearers of a united and strong Europe can hardly be expected to
tolerate. Many have started to rue that they treated the hijackings, blasts,
shoot-outs and mass killings by suicide squads as acts of terrorism which had no
political content but were a show of defiance by misguided zealots.
Such thinking in the Western mind began to change radically only recently when
fundamentalist organisations zeroed in on campuses and launched a massive
indoctrination programme to recruit the young and brainwash them into believing in
the bigotry espoused by leaders with pernicious and obscurantist ideas about
freedom and state laws. The apprehension was reflected in the spate of protests in
the media and criticism of Prince Charles when he consented to the setting up of a
Chair in his name at Oxford University for Islamic studies. This had never
happened earlier.
The series of vain and absurd, but intensely provocative, pronouncements by
self-appointed religious leaders living in the West have deepened the fear of an
alien culture and political ethos swamping European societies. lie call by
clergies that the former Bangladeshi President General Ershad and his lover of
decades should be stoned was widely published and commented upon. Until now the
old and bygone rule that an adulterer has to be stoned to death used to be
mentioned between academicians to illustrate the differences between Western
culture and the one Islamist groups aim to impose. In the Bible, when a fallen
woman was brought to Christ for sentencing by stoning, he asked that the man who
had never sinned be the one to throw the first stone. The liberal West will, with
calls like the one for the stoning of Gen Ershad and his mistress, draw nearer to
concluding that the State and Faith are two sides of the Islamist religion and a
jehad, however, much motivated religious frenzy or bigotry, has necessarily
political overtones.
When the American Professor Samuel Huntington wrote not very long ago that a
conflict between the West and Islam is inevitable, his warning was laughed away.
It seemed illogical. History negated it. The West has been a liberal and tolerant
society where religion never has had any influence on political policies and
alliances since the 17th century. The marauding Turkish armies of the Ottoman
empire tortured the Greeks in 1453, committed sacrilege in churches and
cathedrals, but Western powers like Germany, France and Britain did not come to
the rescue of the Christian state of Greece until it became politically expedient
to drive them out when they threatened the heart of Europe by intruding into
Austria and laying siege to Vienna in 1684. Much later when the Turks were
massacring the Bulgarians, the then British Prime Minister Disraeli, more
concerned about containing Russia through the Turkish presence, did not react as a
chief of a Christian state and was denounced by Glad-stone for doing nothing to
stop the outrages there. Political calculations and not any sense Of defending a
faith influenced Disraeli's policy. The approach has persisted, so far.
Religious and political considerations did not mix when the Pope was shot at in
1981 by a Turk or when another attempt by 11 terrorists including a Pakistani was
made on his life last year in the Philippines. More recently 23 bombs were
discovered when he went to Bosnia. No government took any state-level action
because the Pope has had nothing to do politically. He is the head of a faith and
preaches tolerance and forgiveness. He asked for a one-to-one meeting with the
Turk who had shot at him and forgave him when he was brought into his presence. No
Western power, therefore, had so far considered it necessary to take political
measures following the attempts to assassinate him.
But the interpretations about terrorist acts ordered or sponsored by
fundamentalist groups and the parameters for political decisions now appear to be
changing. The decision to recall the envoys and keep Turkey out of the core of
Europe are not, thus, decisions merely based on security or geopolitical
considerations. It is a subtle warning to Islamist fundamentalists that their
terrorism and brutal acts of bloody aggression, have begun to haunt the cabinet
rooms and power corridors of the West.
The West has started to remember its history and is interpreting its lessons in
the background of the happenings engineered by fanatics who have hijacked religion
to try to possess and dominate the world, admit many European politicians. It
means that the acts of vandalism under the veneer of saving a culture or faith
would not for long be left to foreign office mandarins, who have so far been
sanitising all crimes committed by the so-called upholders of faith. The
globalisation and technological advances have made peoples of all faiths
neighbours. The ordinary baker in the cobbled back alleys of Paris has come to
know what an Algerian fundamentalist thinks of the Western outlook and ethos. In
England, the placid, easy-going midlander has been witnessing riots in Bradford
and the dicta of the Imams to suppress the women in their community. The whole
country has beard the rantings by the youth of Hizb-ut Tahrir who want to throw
the depraved English men and women into the sea.
The venom-spewing "Tottenham Ayatollah", Omar Mohammad Bakri has already waged an
intellectual jehad to convert Britain and has been taking British journalists to
see his training centre for the young who might have to fight at some stage. The
vandalism in a few villages where mostly Christians lived in Pakistan by frenzied
groups was discussed in tubes and buses. Ale hijacking of four tourists,
including two from Britain and one from Germany, by Kashmiri fundamentalist
terrorist outfits has more than any other incident, affected the psyche of common
Western households who had never before comprehended that fanaticism could affect
individuals. The growing Western thinking is that it cannot remain a spectator of
fundamentalist crimes anywhere in the world for they would sooner or later be
scorched by them, in their own backyards.
When a few months ago, Prince Charles was being welcomed by the Saudi Royal family
in Riyadh and was being hailed as one of their own back home his subjects were
sending a stream of letters to The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The Independent
expressing concern at the increasing hold of Islamic fundamentalists over the
young British Muslim and the attempts to alienate them from the mainstream of
social and political life in the country. The concern has arisen not from any
antagonism towards Islam but from the fear that those who are minister-preting it
for their own ends have no regard for civil liberties.
Islamophobia has begun to haunt the Western intellectuals and, worse, the
decision-makers and if it deepens it will not be too long before the dread infects
the whole world. Most democracies and basically free societies have had a
harrowing experience of what a fundamentalist zombie can do. In Japan, a
translator of Salman Rushdie's book was killed by an assassin believed to be an
Iranian. In Sudan the Black Christians in the South have been battling against the
Arab-dominated, military fundamentalists. In Kashmir, secessionism is being
fanned in the name of religion. China is getting a taste of fundamentalism in
Xinjiang region. France Le Pen's National Front is gaining strength because of
the Algerian Islamists. These are dangerous trends even for the fundamentalists'
own future. But, the religious fanatics who have been spearheading the jehad of
hatred by twisting and misinterpreting perfectly sane and sage edicts are like the
dinosaurs who refused to adapt to the changed times.
|
||
|
||
|
||