Author: S Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: September 18, 2008
URL: http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?artid=JbjuRSrOYJM=&Title=The+holy+text+and+terror&SectionID=d16Fdk4iJhE=
Wait only for five minutes from now! Wait
for the Mujahideen and Fidayeen of Islam who will make you feel the terror
of Jihad. And stop them if you can. Feel the havoc cast into your hearts by
Allah, the Almighty, face His Dreadful Punishment, and suffer the results
of fighting the Muslims and the Mujahideen. Await the anguish, agony, sorrow
and pain.Await, only for five minutes, to feel the fear of death."Within
minutes of this e-mail finding its way into media computers, the jihadi bombs
in Ahmedabad blew to smithereens over 50 persons. By the time terror hit Ahmedabad,
such e-mails had become the pattern. The mails came ahead of the blasts in
Jaipur and Bengaluru earlier. Also now in Delhi which was blasted on September
13. All in the name of Indian Mujahideen.
See how, in its Ahmedabad mail, the jihadi
outfit unveils its Islamic agenda against the Hindus - read India.
"O Hindus!...Haven't you still realised
that the falsehood of your 33-crore mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf,
dumb, mute and naked idols of Ram, Krishna and Hanuman are not going to save
your necks, Insha-Allah, from being slaughtered by our hands? Nor is your
fictitious faith in monkeys, pigs and nude statutes going to save you from
the Wrath of Allah and His humiliating punishment.
Know that it is only the true confession of
the Oneness of Allah Alone,with no associates, that can save your blood from
being spilled on the streets of your own cities.
We call you, O Hindus, O enemies of Allah,
to take an honest stance with yourselves lest another attack of Ibn-e-Qasim
sends shivers down your spines, lest another Ghauri shakes your foundations,
and lest another Ghaznawi massacres you, proving your blood to be the cheapest
of all mankind! Have you forgotten your history full of subjugation, humiliation,
and insult? Or do you want us to repeat it again? Take heed before it is too
late!" The IM goes further, quotes the most fundamental document, the
Quran, to validate its theological stand. "Yes! We - the terrorists of
India - The Indian Mujahideen, the militia of Islam whose each and every mujahid
belongs to this very soil of India - have returned, to execute the compulsion
of Allah: "Fight them (the disbelievers), Allah will punish them by your
hands and bring them to disgrace, and give you victory over them and He will
heal the hearts of those who believe." (Quran 9:14). It goes on to quote:
"Fight those disbelievers who are near you and let them find harshness
in you." (Quran 9: 123). "Go forth light armed or heavy armed and
fight with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah."[(Quran 9:
41). So the IM claim is simply this:we are doing what the Quran commands us
to do against the non-believers, namely those who do not believe in Islam.
The jihadis have openly challenged the pure
Islamic theologians to deny that the position it takes against the Hindus
is not the position of pure Islam. No Islamic theological school, not a single
mullah or maulvi has shown the guts to tell the jihadis that non-believers
in Quran do not mean non- Muslims. The Islamist scholars have kept deafening
silence. The jihadis have thus effectively shut the Islamists' mouth by quotes
from the holy Quran.
But what about the secularists? The terrorists
are misguided youths, angered by the Hindu outfits in Gujarat and elsewhere,
they would counsel. The grievances of the terrorists need to be addressed,
they would pontificate, to dissuade them from the wrong path. But what the
secularists miss is that the jihadis claim, on the basis of their faith, the
right to kill ordinary Hindus.
Do the secularists have the guts to ask the
Islamic scholars to come out and deny that the theological position of Islam
is not what the terrorists claim it to be? But, not surprisingly, not a single
secular media or editor, nor any political party or leader would dare ask
why the Islamic theologians are silent on the terrorists' view of the holy
book. What has their grievance against Hindu outfits or the governments to
do with their claim that Islam mandates them to attack non-Muslims? The real
issue is whether the Islamic faith mandates so. If the jihadis are aggrieved
then they can take to violence against the state. Terrorism normally isolates
the terrorists from mainstream society.
But when the terrorists claim that they have
been directed by their holy text to kill people of other faiths and that view
is not challenged by the mainstream scholars or the secularists, then the
terrorists cannot be isolated. This is what the secularists seem to have preferred
to miss out.
Thus neither have the mainstream Islamic scholars
challenged the jihadis' view that their holy text authorises them to kill
the non-believers nor have the secularists asked mainstream Islamic scholars
to deny the terrorists' version of the Islamic faith. Emboldened the terrorists
have now moved a step further in the Delhi terror mail.While, in the Ahmedabad
mail, the jihadis have embarrassed Islamic theologians by quoting the holy
text, they have embarrassed the secularists in the Delhi terror mail by relying
on the secularists' view to justify their terror against the Hindus. The secular
enthusiasts had carried on a relentless hate campaign against the BJP and
Narendra Modi after the Gujarat riots. They had even trivialised the Godhra
terror attack that had roasted over 60 Ramsevaks, saying that it was an accident
or that the victims themselves had set fire to the bogey, which enraged Hindu
outfits even more. Later when acts of terror increased, the secular media
even rationalised them by citing the Gujarat riots as justification for terrorists'
anger.
This secular largesse did not assuage the
extremists. Instead it has put the Islamist terror on an escalator. Not surprisingly
the jihadis have, in the Delhi email, used the very logic of the secular media,
and very photographs carried by it a thousand times, to claim that they were
taking revenge for the Gujarat carnage! While the jihadis see terror as a
mandate of the holy book, the secular media remains juvenile in its oration.
It still cites Shabana Azmi's inability to get a fourth flat, in the building
of her choice in the place of her choice as illustrative of the failure of
constitutional equity to minorities, and asks how there could be peace with
such injustice! But, no section is more badly treated or discriminated than
the untouchables in India. If the secularists' logic for jihadi violence is
applied to them, they can legitimately turn terrorists. But mere grievances
cannot produce that deadly hate. It is the jihadi theological claim, uncontested
by the Islamist clergy and the secularists, that makes terror a religious
duty, and a deadly one at that. Injustice,minus theology, cannot breed that
deadly terror. Unless the debate on terror transcends the trivia and gets
to the root of the terror - the theological motive for terror -the secularists
will end up promoting terror, not containing it.Will they introspect?
