Author: Sultan Shahin
Publication: New Age Islam
Date:
URL: http://newageislam.com/ArticleDetail.aspx?ArticleID=787
The so-called Indian Mujahedeen have used
in their notorious e-mails certain Quranic verses to justify killing of innocent
civilians. These are the same verses that enemies of Islam's pacific and humane
philosophy have been traditionally using for centuries to demonise Islam.
Muslims who go berserk and want to simply smite all and sundry in their crazy
stupor also routinely use these verses to justify their fanaticism and probably
also to brainwash the still-not-so-crazy to their cause.
NewAgeIslam.com urges Indian Ulema to come
out with explicit, unequivocal statements that the Quranic verses like the
following - "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite
at their necks"- are now obsolete: they were meant for a specific situation
during the Prophet's life and do no apply today".
Also, they must clarify that the Muslim perception
and belief that they alone are worthy of going to Heaven is total bunkum,
according to Muslim precepts. Muslims are no better or worse than any other
community. Islam has as much failed to create a New Man or for that matter
a New Woman as any other reformist religion or philosophy.
The best place in the world to experience
this is Saudi Arabia - the birthplace of Islam. The country takes its very
name from the name of its monarch. What kind of human equality before God
is that? Equality of all human beings before God is supposed to be Islam's
USP (Unique Selling Proposition), the reason Islam spread in the world with
the speed of wildfire. And Saudi Muslims live under a autocratic monarch who
also claims to be the Custodian of Islam's two holiest shrines in Mecca and
Medina. Also, in their racism of the pre-Islamic Jahiliya, they treat foreign
Muslim workers in their land, who are sustaining their economy, with contempt,
calling them Kharjis (foreigners) and normally even refusing to pray in the
same mosque as them.
An Islam-supremacist view of Muslims around
the world and their treatment of all other religions as inferior is causing
enormous ill-will towards them. If they were any better than others, they
won't treat others with contempt anyway. This in itself is proof that they
are not better. It is a common belief that no matter how good a human being
a person professing to any religion other than Islam maybe, he is not good
enough in the eyes of God to go to heaven and no matter how roguish a Muslim
is he is going to end up eventually in Heaven. This is absurd from an Islamic
viewpoint. Allah in Quran recognises all religions and asks Muslims to treat
all prophets of God - by one count, 124,000 - as deserving the same veneration
as Prophet Mohammad and their followers as Ahl-e-Kitab (People of the Book),
worthy of all sorts of social interaction including marital relations with
Muslims.
It is this that leads Bulandshahri - quoted
in a Jihad Watch article reproduced below as an example of how non-Muslims
react to present-day Muslim worldview - to claim:
"Even though the disbelievers may carry
out many good deeds and render great services to mankind, these deeds will
not be recognized on the Day of Judgment on account of their disbelief."
By contrast, Allah will improve the condition of the believers (vv. 2, 7,
35).
Indian Ulema have no time to lose. Our youth
are going stray. As a result of the Ulemas' indolence and worse, they are
acquiring self-destructive ways, are becoming a menace to society.
Some people are wondering today and asking
questions in Television discussions: "How can educated, sophisticated
Muslims with a career and a good life to look forward to, join Jihadi organizations
and destroy it all?" I am not at all surprised, however. I saw this coming
at least a couple of decades ago. Not out of any clairvoyance, though, just
a chance encounter with a British teenage Jihadi in the mid-1980s.
I spent a lot of time in England in 1980s.
I was alerted to the coming catastrophe by a chance encounter with a young
Jihadi in a progressive Pakistani friend's house in Nottingham. This Jihadi,
a student of Nottingham university and probably in his 20s, was talking to
my friend's teenage children in a room adjoining the one we were sitting in.
I overheard some of his talk and went in to share his discourse. He continued
when I told him I was also interested in learning what he was talking about.
He was an Ahl-e-Hadeesi. The gist of his talk was that only Muslims belonging
to his sect were true Muslims and that the rest were Kafiroon (unbelievers)
and Mushrikeen (deviants). I asked him what would he do with the rest of Muslims,
99.9 percent of the Muslims in he world who were not Ahl-e-Hadeesi and thus
really unbelievers and deviants. He replied with a nonchalance that took my
breath away. Without batting an eyelid, he said: "Kill them."
My friend was also listening in the other
room. His blood-pressure rising, he came and told him to get out of his house
and never to show his face again, even though he was a relative. He asked
his kids to stay away from him and never to invite him in again. But from
all I know I doubt if he was able to save his kids from being radicalized.
This was a period when Omar Bakri, of Al-Mohajiroon, later a spokesman of
Osama bin Laden, was a rage among Muslim students on university campuses in
Britain. He was one of the few people in the world to be able to fill the
Wembley Stadium in London with his admirers and followers.
Not to be left behind Muslim elders too were
inviting Jihadis from all over the world. I distinctly remember listening
to fiery speeches from crazy Algerian and Egyptian fundamentalists, in a so-called
Muslim Parliament meeting. Muslim exclusivism was in full flow. Islam-supremacism
had made many Muslims lose their heads altogether. These people simply did
not seem interested in living in the here and now. And, of course, there were
others interested in helping them reach the Hereafter. But in the process
many innocent people, Muslims included, suffer horribly.
It is no surprise to me, therefore, that this
killer virus has infected a section, hopefully a very small section, of Indian
Muslim youth too now. Any fashion that catches the imagination of the West
eventually reaches here. Marxism is a case in point. But the responsibility
for Islamic fundamentalist virus rests a great deal with responsible Muslims
and particularly Ulema. They have made a good beginning now by repeatedly
denouncing terrorism as un-Islamic. But they will need to go further and declare
in unequivocal terms that certain Quranic verses, being situational in nature
as all Quranic verses are, have become obsolete and can no longer be quoted
to justify violence against the so-called Kafirs.
In fact, a close reading of the Holy Quran
suggests that there are no people on earth that can truly be called Kafir,
except, of course, individuals like the revered scientist Richard Dawkins
and our own beloved writer Khushwant Singh, who insist on claiming that they
don't believe in the existence of God. But then Quran asks us to treat Kafirs
with great deal of respect and never to hurt their sentiments. Urdu poets
have, therefore, rightly used the word Kafir to denote a rather recalcitrant
beloved.
The Ulema also need to put to rest the Islam-supremacist
world view of a lot of Muslims. Any one who looks at others with contempt,
for whatever reason, cannot possibly prove a well-adjusted member of human
society. It needs to be debated openly among Muslims if they truly are a chosen
people. Muslims need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are not a
chosen people. Indeed God threatened to replace them with better people if
they did not measure up to His expectations. They didn't and it would not
be too far-fetched to say that probably God has already carried out that thereat.
He has replaced Muslim influence in the world with that of people whose societal
vision is much closer to the egalitarian, democratic Islamic worldview than
that of Muslims who are struggling with monarchy, dictatorship, military rule,
corruption and oppression of the weaker elements in their society.
