Author: Balbir K Punj
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 15, 2000
Terrorism and jihad are
absolutely different, says the military ruler of Pakistan, General Pervez
Musharraf.
`You in the West are
allergic to the term `jihad' but it is a tolerant concept,' he says in
defence of the existence of some 10,000 madarsas (Islamic religious schools)
in his country training young minds for religious wars. Jeffrey Goldberg,
who interviewed the General for The New York Times magazine recently, says
that the madarsas are factories of jihad; that there is at any time a stock
of one million trainees, jihadis, in these schools. That these jihadis
are willing to die at the call of their faith, in its battle with any other
faith, is now an accepted fact.
In his pursuit to see
Islamic education in practice, Goldberg toured Pakistan intensively and
spent time at Haqqania Madarsa, one of the bigger ones in the country.
In Goldberg's words at any given time, there are several hundreds Afghan
students at the madarsa, along with dozens from such former Soviet republics
as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and a handful from Chechnya,
too. To those who see wars like the one in Chechnya as expressions
not only of nationalist aspirations but of pan-Islamic ones as well to
those who see a new Islamic revolution on the horizon, a Sunni revolution
a generation after the Shia revolution that shook the world the foreign
presence at Haqqania is not comforting.
Quoting Gen. Musharraf,
Goldberg says, The General defended the activities of groups the US State
Department has labeled terrorist, particularly the Harkat ul-Mujahideen
of Fazlur Rahman Khalil, which is waging a violent jihad against India.
It is believed to be behind the hijacking last December of the Indian Airlines
plane. The State Department has labeled the HUM, as it is known,
a terrorist organisation. The group keeps training bases in Afghanistan,
but Khalil, its leader, has an office in Rawalpindi, not far from General
Musharraf s house, and he moves freely through Pakistan. The General
s answer to these explicit facts was: These people are not terrorists,
they are fighting a jihad. And jihad is a tolerant idea.
Let us examine whether,
as Gen. Musharraf says, jihad is a tolerant idea. Jihad has
two meanings in Islam. Apart from the popular concept of jihad bil-saif
(striving with sword), the term also implies discovering the truth within,
that is, jihad bin-nafs (striving with oneself). While the former
jihad has been ranked as a jihad-e-asghar (that is, to say, a lesser struggle),
the latter has been given the status of jihade-e-akbar (greater struggle).
The latter is an intra-Islamic idea; but the former is the basis of Islam's
approach to people of non-Islamic faiths.
There was never any doubt
about the meaning of jihad in Islamic theology or history. Since
the birth of Islam, the term jihad (striving, in the cause of God) has
been uniformly interpreted as signifying a holy war against the infidels
(kafirs). The jihad had five distinct objectives: (1) Forcible spreading
of Islam. (2) Destruction of the kafir population against which the
jihad is mounted. (3) Imposition of tax (jaziya) on the defeated
infidels. (4) The wresting of war booty. (5) The enslavement
of the females and children of the vanquished kafirs.
Both types of jihads
are equally crucial in Islam but in Islamic history, the emphasis always
almost exclusively is on jihad bil-saif (lesser struggle). This is
because for the true believers of Islam the entire humanity is divided
into two hostile camps. One is the world of Islam (dar ul-Islam),
consisting of countries where Muslims are in majority and the society and
state are run as per Islamic injunctions. The other is the non-Muslim
world, called dar ul-Harb (the land of conflict) where kafirs (infidels)
dominate and the state is governed under non-Muslim laws. Believing-Muslims
are ordained to treat dar ul-harb as a potential seat of conflict till
it has been converted into dar ul-Islam.
What does the Quran say
about jihad? The expression used in it is jihad fi sabilillah (effort in
the way of Allah). When closely examined, the eighth surah (chapter)
of the Quran, the surah Anfal, and the ninth entitled Taubah are the truly
jihadic surahs. But jihad is enjoined in many other chapters as well.
Perhaps the most significant verse in this connection is Quran 8/39, which,
in meaning, is almost identical with Quran 2/193. These declare:
Fight them until persecution is no more and religion is all for Allah.
In addition to the Quran,
the practice and words of the Prophet, called the Hadis, constitute the
second source of the Islamic law. Of the six compilations of Hadis
regarded as canonical, two, Bukhari and Muslim are most respected and adhered.
The idea of jihadi bil-saif
was meticulously practiced in history. The Fatawa-i-Alamgiri compiled
on the orders of Aurangzeb lays down that jihad is the noblest of professions.
Hedaya of Sheikh Burhann id-din Ali (1198 AD) is the most accepted source
of Islamic law in India. This was translated by Charles Hamilton
in 1791 by order of Warren Hastings. It forms the bedrock of what
is known as Muslim law in India at present and restates Allah s injunction
to slay the infidels. It commands; if the kafirs do not surrender
to Islam, if they do not pay the capitation tax, invoking Allah, the Musalmans
must then, with God s assistance, attack the infidels with all manner of
war-like engines and must also set fire to their habitations and must inundate
them with water, and tear up their plantations, and tread down their grain;
because by these means they will become weakened, and their resolution
will fail, and their force be broken. These means are therefore all
sanctioned by the law.
This, according to, Gen.
Musharraf, is a tolerant concept and jihadis who kill in the cause of their
faith are, therefore, not terrorists. He is right because the Islamic
idea of tolerance is limited to those who are already Muslims. So
jihad against India, being jihad against non-Muslims, is not terrorism.
Recurring violence in Kashmir and killings of the innocent speak for the
peaceful nature of jihad.
The ethnic cleansing
of Pandits from the Valley and of Hindus from Afghanistan and Pakistan
is compassionate part of the jihad, as instead of killing them as kafirs,
it seeks to expel them from lands dominated by Muslims.
Unfortunately, it is
not the impressionable minds of about one million in Pakistan alone that
are being poisoned against kafirs in madarsas. The disease has spread
to India as well. A large number of madarsas have mushroomed all
over the country, particularly in UP and Bihar in the last few years, sowing
seeds of hatred.
Only secularists in India
who regularly walk to the Indo-Pak border with lighted candles in search
of the elusive affectionate hugs from the Pakistani side and the uninitiated
to the pure form of Islamic approach to non-Muslims, will possibly buy
the General s proposition that jihad is a peaceful concept.
It is not important whether
the curriculum in these madarsas includes training in arms or not.
Once the mind is poisoned, against non-Muslims, it will procure the arms
to execute the hate. This is how teenagers have taken to arms in
Afghanistan and Kashmir and turned into brutal killers. Jihad and
peace are totally at variance with each other.
