Author: Balbir Punj
Publication: The New York Times
Date: January 10, 2015
URL: http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/Confused-War-Against-Terror/2015/01/10/article2611850.ece

The massacre of the entire editorial group at the Paris office of the cartoon weekly Charlie Hebdo by suspected Islamic militants follows another set of Islamic militants butchering over 150 school children and their teachers in Pakistan’s Peshawar city within a military campus.

The Islamist threat over the years has spread over bulk of Europe like a virus. The 9/11 destruction was hatched partly in Germany.  Almost all European investigating and intelligence agencies are unanimous in their view that the virus of Islamism is implanted in the speeches by visiting and resident mullahs in the mosques.

The response of the Muslim leadership in France to the butchers from his community is interesting and instructive.  Dalil Boubakeur, head of the French Council of the Muslim Faith condemning the killing, said: this “immensely barbaric act is also against democracy and freedom of the press”; its perpetrators could not claim to be true Muslims.

On the face of it no one could have any quarrel with this statement.  A little reading between the lines, however, exposes a whole lot of what is happening in the Muslim world.

Are those dying through suicide bombings and killing others in the name of Islam have any faith in values such as  “democracy and freedom of the Press?” Yet another question is who is a “true Muslim”?

On the first question, it is the claim of Islamists that the only reference point for any state in making its law, so far as followers of this faith is concerned, is the holy book of the faith.  And in all Muslim majority countries any view that is even remotely questioning anything in their holy book is punishable with death.

In the Pakistan Constitution death penalty is prescribed for such an offence and several people are on the death row in that country on the charge of offending the tenets of the book. So are not the Islamic states doing exactly, under the cover of law, what the terrorists are seeking to do through their own bloody methods?

It’s time for the rest of the world and specially the “secularists “in this country to answer some tough questions.  Suppose the “crime” that claimed a dozen lives at the hands of terrorists in Paris had taken place somewhere in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia (or for that matter in any of the Islamic countries? What would have been the outcome? And how the end result would have been different from what happened in Paris? In most of the Islamic countries, the state and public opinion would have joined hands to bring such ‘kafirs’, guilty of blasphemy , to ‘justice.’ No prizes for guessing the quantum of punishment. Death penalty in such cases is inevitable. The method of execution may vary – by hanging in Pakistan or through beheading in Saudi Arabia or by a firing squad elsewhere.

Isn’t the dividing line between the non- state actors and legally constituted states, such as Pakistan only notional? Do they not work for the same agenda? Is that gory agenda not fired by a common mindset? And from where do they obtain regular dosage of the philosophical paradigm that sustains this vicious mindset, shared by the Islamic states and their non-state actors with equal devotion and gusto.

How can the civil society hope to win this war against mindless terror when it’s stand on the issue is confused and self contradictory? On one hand you give clarion calls to fight terror and, on the other, endorse and give legitimacy to states like Pakistan. How are the likes of Pakistan different from the trio which killed journalists in Paris working for the French weekly Charlie Hebdo? 

So where is the line of distinction between the Islamic states and their ideological cousins, the terrorists? For both, what French weekly Charlie Hebdob had done was an unforgivable ‘crime’ and there was only one punishment for it – death – to meet requirements of their faith.

As for the question who is a “true Muslim”, that is exactly the reason why sectarian killing is so rampant in West Asia despite its Muslim majority nations.  Take for instance Saudi Arabia.  

There is a strong religious police in that country that enforces the precepts prescribed in the holy book to its very letter. Yet, Islamists are opposing the Saudi royal house and for long Al Qaeda boss Osama bil Laden was the most bitter enemy of the Saudi house seeking to train his militants against Riyadh.

The whole range of conflicts whether it is between Sunnis and Shias or among the Sunni or Shia factions themselves revolve round the issue “who is a true Muslim?” It forms the basis of the bitter rivalry between the Shia Iran where the religious head is the final arbiter of all issues of controversy or even state policy and Saudi Arabia where too the ruler claims to be the true faith. The conflict between the two spills over from Pakistan to the entire Gulf region and to North Africa and elsewhere.  No doubt there are different interpretations of tenets and fundamentals of every religion but in all democratic countries these issues are settled through discussion or groups are allowed to practise what they believe in.  Why is it different in most Muslim majority countries?

The majority of Muslims continue to study in the religious schools or madrasas.  Instead of promoting their education in publicly aided schools where they would be exposed to people of other faiths and views and thereby open themselves to wider horizons of knowledge and practice, some self-appointed secular politicians let these religious schools remain as main givers of literacy and even subjects like history and science. The ghetto schooling congeals the fear psychosis against people of other faiths and open discussion on human experience. “Who is a true Muslim” in itself is a dangerous dragon seed enabling others to set the standard for the common faithful to the great tenets of this worldwide religion and claim to derive the right to enforce it with arms. It is for Muslim leadership to consider why such sectarian violence against others and also much more against itself has spread with such rapidity as is evident in the ISIS and al-Qaeda sponsored massacres. The tendency to lay down the law may be incipient in other religious or political or sectarian groups too; but this is contained by an open society that does not sanction or much less justify violence.  It is for Muslim leadership to consider why such sectarian violence against others and also much more against itself has spread with such rapidity as is evident in the ISIS and al-Qaeda sponsored massacres.

- The author is national vice president, BJP.