Religion of the Jahiliya - Jihadism is Kufr, not Islam
- From: Sultan Shahin <sultan.shahin@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:47:44 -0700 (PDT)
I found the following article I had written several years ago on a
website Islam for today. Though some of the statements are now
outdated, it may still bear reading and would probably prove useful
for some readers. It is also available at http://www.islamfortoday.com/shaheen01.htm.
I am posting it here just as it is on that site except that I have
corrected the misspelling of my byline:
Religion of the Jahiliya - Jihadism is Kufr, not Islam
A completely new religion seems to be catching the imagination of many
people in Pakistan. Its followers don’t, of course, consider it a new
religion. Indeed this religion insists that it is Islam, in fact it
calls itself true Islam or real Islam. But it can at best be described
as Jihadism as its central belief system is based on a wilful
misinterpretation of the Islamic concept of Jihad.
By Sultan Shahin
The Pakistan Army is determined to change the very character of
Islam, turning it into the pre-Islamic religion of the Jahiliya
[Arabia in the Dark Ages]. The army had indeed given ample evidence of
its anti-Islamic character by reminding us recently of the Battle of
Uhud where a woman of Jahiliya, Hinda, had mutilated the dead body of
Prophet Mohammad’s uncle, Hazrat Hamza The Prophet had not only
forgiven her but had made it a point to forbid the practice in every
Muslim gathering thereafter for fear that the Muslims, too, might do
something similar in retaliation.
Slowly but surely what appears to be a completely new religion seems
to be catching the imagination of many people in Pakistan. Its
followers don’t, of course, consider it a new religion. Indeed this
religion insists that it is Islam, in fact it calls itself true Islam
or real Islam. But it can at best be described as Jihadism as its
central belief system is based on a wilful misinterpretation of the
Islamic concept of Jihad. It can also be called Talibanism, as the
Taliban of Afghanistan, who studied in Pakistani madrassas run by the
Jamiat-ul-Ulema, are its most avid practitioners.
By and large, the western- educated liberal Pakistani intelligentsia,
as I found out during a recent visit, hates this religion and is
frightened of it. But as one by one all institutions of governance are
succumbing to its growing power and its capacity for evil, they are
getting scared to death. Some of them are simply planning to migrate
to some non-Muslim majority country. No one is really fighting this
malignant force, though some journalists and human rights activists
still have the courage at least to express their horror and outrage at
grave personal risk.
It is Islamicists, however, who should have been fighting this
malignant growth. Some of them indeed are. (One prominent name is that
of Maulana Haider Farooq Maudoodi, the son of Jamaat-e-Islami founder
Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi). But they don’t have the resources to
counter the powerful Jihadist rhetoric backed by vast resources.
Muslim masses are by and large ignorant and poor. It is not difficult
to either sway them emotionally using Jihadist rhetoric based on
Islamic terminology or even to buy them with promises of goodies on
earth and in Heaven. What is Jihadism
The basic belief of Jihadism is that all non-Jihadists are kafir and
deserve to be killed. As a result, they have so far killed about half
a million Muslims in Afghanistan and at least 30,000 Muslims in the
Kashmir valley. They have been killing non-Muslims in Jammu and
Kashmir recently. But their present target is the Muslims of India.
Beginning from the Bombay blasts in I993, they have made several
attempts to provoke massive anti-Muslim violence in the country.
Indeed a prominent ex-militant Kashmiri leader told me just after Zuhr
prayers in the Shah Faisal mosque in Islamabad that the first person
to attack the Babri masjid on Dec. 6, I992, was a Jihadist from POK
who had joined the VHP some time ago and was part of Shiv Sena-VHP
rally along with several of his co-religionists. My informant was also
a Jihadist once, but perhaps not completely devoid of the milk of
human kindness and thus not a true Jihadist. He retained affections
for his wife and kids stranded in the valley and his Hindu and Muslim
classmates in Delhi where he had studied up to graduation. He was
clearly not happy with the visions of an impending holocaust in India
and tried to warn me.
Another warning came to me more recently from a Jihadist on a brief
visit to England. I met him outside London’s Finsbury Park mosque
after the Friday prayers. Exultant after the Pakistani Jihadists had
downed two Indian planes in Kargil, he was more direct: "You Muslims
(Indian) are cowards. Rivers of blood will flow in India soon and you
will have just two choices: either become a true Muslim (i.e.
Jihadist) or perish." Revealing future Jihadist plans, he said: "You
are completely devoid of leadership. We will provide you leadership
under which you will become true Muslims (i.e. Jihadists)."
It is not some anonymous Jihadists alone who have been giving me these
warnings, though they were more forthright than the so-called
responsible leaders of this group. Prof. Khursheed Ahmad, vice-
president of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan, for instance, told me in
Islamabad recently that Indian Muslims have been shirking their duty
on Kashmir and they will have to answer before God on the Day of
judgement as to why they did not support the "Jihad" in Kashmir.
Hurriyat Chairman and Kashmiri Jamaat-e-Islami chief Syed Ali Shah
Geelani has, of course, been taunting Indian Muslims regularly for
their supposed cowardice on Kashmir.I believe Providence would like me
to convey these warnings to the nation. Muslims in particular must
beware: they should take care not to allow any one to provoke them
into any indiscretion, particularly at a time when the country is
involved in a bloody fight with the enemy. It must be clearly
understood that in the present case, the enemy is not only the enemy
of our country but also the enemy of our religion.
The recent bomb blast at New Jalpaiguri railway station may mark the
beginning of some sinister Jihadist plan. West Bengal Home Minister
Budhadeb Bhattacharjea has held the Jamaat-e-Islami and not the ULFA
responsible for the outrage. There are reports that the ULFA may
itself be working for the Pakistani military intelligence organisation
ISI. Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, too, has warned of the
possibility of a widespread terror campaign. These warnings must be
taken seriously.
Prophet Mohammed is our role model, not Mast Gul
Muslims must remember that they have to consult the Holy Quran for
guidance in their day- to-day affairs. The model they are supposed to
follow is that of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) and not
destroyers of mosques like Mast Gul. Islam did not allow its followers
to pick up a weapon even in their defence for the first thirteen years
even though they were facing the worst possible persecution in Mecca.
They were "permitted" to defend themselves for the first time in
Madina when they were facing aggression from Meccans. Had they not
defended themselves even then they would have been surely wiped out
from the face of the earth, thus sounding the death-knell for the
religion of Islam as well. But only a few years later, when the
Prophet had become powerful enough to wage a war with Meccans, he
chose peace even on terms that were considered humiliating by most of
his followers. He signed a peace agreement known as the Treaty of
Hudaibiya. And then when he entered Mecca victorious, a year later,
facing no resistance, he chose to grant a general amnesty for all,
even for those who had mutilated the dead bodies of his close
relatives like his maternal uncle Hazrat Harnza.
Mutilation of dead bodies is a mediaeval pre-Islamic practice, a
practice Islam came to fight against. Those who perpetrate such acts
in this day and age cannot claim to be Muslims. They must give some
new name to their Faith. In any case Muslims cannot accept them as
their co-religionists.
God , Compassion or Wrath?
The revelation of Divinity in Islam is specifically described as
compassion: God is Rahmanir Rahim - the very acme of kindness and
compassion. Then who is a Kafir, unworthy of God’s compassion - the
kafir who attracts Khuda ka Ghazab, the wrath of God? How do the
chosen believers derive the right to visit God~s wrath on the Kafirs,
their fellow beings? In a plural society such as ours how can such
tenets be upheld?
[These questions were raised by Ms. Jalbala Vaidya and Mr. Gopal
Sharma in a debate on various aspects of Islam organised by them at
The Akshara Theatre, New Delhi, following the premiere of their film
The Sufi Way in early I999. A galaxy of scholars from various
disciplines participated in the debate. The following are excerpts
from the paper presented by the author].
Although God has ninety nine names, depicting all his varied
attributes, He is known in the Holy Quran mostly as Rahman and Rahim.
Some Quranic statistics would probably help at this point. The word
Merciful, Most merciful, Most gracious (Rahmanir Rahim) has been used
124 times in the Quran. The word ’Mercy’ has been used I73 times.
Contrast this with the usage of the word ’Wrath’ (anger) and
’Wrathful’ (Angry). The word Wrath or anger appears thrice in the
entire Quran - (Sura Al-Fatiha 1.07, Al,Baqra 2.90, and AI Imran 3.11)
Then the word wrathful or angry occurs four times in the entire Quran
- Al-Mada, Al-Fath, Al,Mujadila and Al-Murntahina. I don’t think one
needs to add anything at this point. It is clear as day that God is
conceived in Islam as the personification of compassion, though, of
course, in the course of His work, helping the spiritual growth of
humanity, He may need to present Himself as wrathful. Any parent or
teacher who has tried to help his or her children or students would
testify to the occasional need for doing this. But that doesn’t make
God as an embodiment of wrath, an entity to be feared, as some Islamic
theologians, particularly the ones who are promoting this new religion
of Jihadism are prone to do.
What is Kufr?
In his monumental work The Religion of Islam, Maulana Mohammad Ali
discusses this and related subjects at great length. I will be using
his research a great deal in this presentation without being able to
invoke his authority all the time. According to him, Kufr is defined
by most commentators of the Holy Quran as ’denial of the truth’.
Basically the word means to cover, to conceal.
Primarily the term Kufr was used to describe the pre-Islamic Meccans’
denial of the truth about the oneness of God and prophethood of the
Messenger of God. Kufr is also used for concealment or withholding of
the means of subsistence, which God has created for the good of all
mankind and which He wants to be freely available to all. According to
this definition, hoarders of goods for the sake of business or
hoarders of wealth would be considered kafir. People occupying high
offices but who love their Swiss bank accounts, despite their call for
Islamisation would be considered kafir.
Who is a Kafir?
The Prophet used the word kafir in a variety of ways. Ingratitude, for
instance, is equated with Kufr. Similarly excessive eating or gluttony
is considered by the Prophet one of the attributes of a kafir. This
would place nearly all ulema, maulvis and so-called maulanas on the
list of Kuffar (the plural of Kafir). In Egypt, as Prof Ausaf Ali
pointed out yesterday, even farmers are called Kafir, as they conceal
the seeds in the earth and cover up the ground.
The Prophet once said that any one who wrongly calls others kafir is
himself a kafir. The accusation of Kufr reverts to the accuser if the
accused is innocent. This would again place nearly all ulema belonging
to different sects who routinely keep calling each other kafir in the
list of Kuffar themselves.
A Muslim killing another Muslim becomes a kafir. All the so-called
’mujahedeen’ in Afghanistan or Kashmir are thus placed in the list of
kuffar. In a strict sense even neglect of prayer, according to some
narrators of Hadees is placed in the definition of Kufr and places the
Muslim outside the religion of Islam. Someone who conforms to the
obligations of prayer yet neglects it out of laziness or the pretence
of being too busy (without a valid legal excuse) would attract the
provisions of Kufr. According to some scholars like Malik and Shafe’i,
such a person is an evil-doer and should indeed be killed, though
according to Imam Abu Hanifa, who is the most widely followed scholar
among Sunnis, he is not a kafir and should merely be given some minor
punishment and confined until he repents and starts praying.
If the "Islamic" state of Pakistan were to follow Malik and Shafe’i,
it would probably need to use its nuclear arsenal to kill 99 per cent
of its citizens, having shifted the truly Muslim one percent elsewhere
first and even if it were to follow Imam Abu Hanifa, it would need to
convert the whole of Pakistan into a jail, though there would not be
enough people left to act as jailers and not enough money to feed the
multitude of prisoners.
In common parlance a Kafir is understood as a non-believer. It is not
clear, though, if a Kafir is somebody who doesn’t believe in God or
oneness of God or both in God and the Prophethood of Hazrat Mohammad.
Christians and Jews who do not believe in the Prophethood of Mohammad
are, however, not treated as Kuffar, despite even a smattering
"idolatry" involved in some of their practices. Many non- Muslims, who
may be believers in God, in one sense or the other, take umbrage at
being called a Kafir by some ignorant Muslims. This does amount to an
insult to their belief systems.
Kafir Vs Munafiq
But this sense of grievance, though correct, also emanates from an
inadequate understanding of the word Kafir and its implications on
their part. Few people are aware that the lowest depths of Hell are
reserved in Islam, not for the Kafir, but for those people who may be
today claiming to be Muslims. For God in the Quran condemns and
consigns to the lowest depths of Hell, not the Kafir, but the
munafeqeen (the hypocrites) who profess to believe in what they do not
accept at heart: the Kafir on the other hand has at least the
forthrightness to proclaim his beliefs. So the greatest insult is not
in being called a Kafir, but in being called a Munafiq, a term that
can only be applied to someone claiming to be a Muslim.
As most Muslims today are merely hereditary Muslims and have not
really converted to Islam out of any acquired understanding of the
Deen-e-Islam, the Islamic way of life, have not submitted to the will
of God in the true sense, many of them are liable to be called
Munafeqeen in the strict sense of the word. Rational Religion
The greatest irony in the history of Islam is that though Islam claims
to be a rational religion, it would be difficult to find a prominent
thinking Muslim with the courage of his convictions who has not
attracted the fatwa of Kufr. One of the most well-known examples is
that of Sir Syed. Many ulema arrogate to themselves the right to judge
others in a purely subjective fashion.
And this is despite the clearly and repeatedly expressed view of the
Prophet that Muslims should not call any one either a kafir or a
Munafiq. In fact the Prophet himself refused to judge people as
Munafiq. Even those people who were known to be from among the
Munafeqeen were treated by the Prophet as Momineen. When the notorious
chief of the Munafeqeen in Madina, Abdullah ibn Ubayy died, the Holy
Prophet offered funeral prayers on his grave and treated him as a
Muslim. In fact his maxim was: "whoever calls the people of la ilaha
illa-Allah kafir, is himself nearer to Kufr."
One fact that will perhaps interest you most is that those Muslims who
call Hindus Kafir maybe committing Kufr themselves. In Islam, to
believe in some prophets and reject others is condemned as Kufr:
"Those who disbelieve in God and His apostles, and those who desire to
make a distinction between God and His apostles, and those who say, We
believe in some and disbelieve in others, and desire to take a course
between this and that, these it is that are truly unbelievers" (4;
150, 151).
Equal respect for all prophets
A belief in all the prophets of the world is thus an essential
principle of the religion of Islam, and though the faith of Islam is
summed in two brief sentences, there is no God but God, and Muhammad
is His apostle, yet the man who confesses belief in the prophethood of
Muhammad, in so doing accepts all the prophets of the world, whether
their names are mentioned in the Holy Quran or not. Islam claims a
universality to which no other religion can aspire, and lays the
foundation of a brotherhood as vast as humanity itself.
"And we did not send before thee any but men to whom We sent
revelation ...... (2I:7).
According to the Holy Quran, there is not one nation in the world in
which a prophet has not been raised up: "There is not a people but a
warner has gone among them" (35:24). And again : "Every nation has had
an apostle" (I0:47). We are further told that there have been prophets
besides those mentioned in the Holy Quran: "And We sent apostles We
have mentioned to thee before, and apostles We have not mentioned to
thee’ (4:I64).
It is, in fact stated in a hadith that there have been 124,000
prophets, while the Holy Quran contains only about twenty-five names,
among them being several non-Biblical prophets, Hud and Salih raised
up in Arabia, Luqman in Ethiopia, a contemporary of Moses (generally
known as Khidzr) in Sudan, and Dhu-PQarnain (Darius I, who was also a
king) in Persia; all of which is quite in accordance with the theory
of universality of prophethood, as enunciated above. And as the Holy
Book has plainly said that prophets have appeared in all nations and
that it has not named all of them, which in fact was unnecessary, a
Muslim may accept the great luminaries who are accepted by other
religions as having brought light to them, as the prophets of those
nations.
The Quran, however, not only establishes a theory that prophets have
appeared in all nations; it goes further and renders it necessary that
a Muslim should believe in all those prophets, In the very beginning
we are told that a Muslim must "believe in that which has been
revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes,
and in that which was given to Moses and Jesus, and in that which was
given to the prophets from their Lord, we do not make distinction
between any of Thee ’ (2:I36), where the word prophets clearly refers
to the prophets of other nations.
And again the Holy Quran speaks of Muslims as believing in all the
prophets of God and not in the Holy Prophet Muhammad alone:
"Righteousness is this that one should believe in God and the last day
and the angels and the books ’and the prophets" (2:I77); "The Apostle
believes in what has been revealed to him from His Lord, and so do the
believers; they all believe in God and His angels and his books and
His apostles; we make no distinction between any of his apostles"
2:285).
Like any other living Faith, controversies abound in Islam. One of
the most controversial issues is the relationship of a Muslim with
people belonging to other religions. Since in India Muslims have
always lived next to a very large non-Muslim community, this issue has
created even deeper controversies. While there are Muslims who would
insist on treating Hindus as Kafirs, there are others who would insist
that they should actually be treated as Ahl-e-Kitab, people bearing
revealed books, a people who have a special place in Islamic theology
and practice.
Hindus as Ahl’e-Kitab?
Disregarding the advice of some ulema of his time, the first Arab to
conquer parts of India, Sindh and Multan, had made a good beginning,
giving the Hindus the same status as Ahl-e,Kitab, people with whom
Muslims are allowed to have good social relations including marital
relations. Since then, the Hindu-Muslim interaction has taken place
constantly in a variety of ways. This is not the place to go into
history, but we are all aware of the differences of approach between
say an Akbar and an Aurangzeb.
The question of the place of Hindus in Islamic theology has, however,
persisted. There are Muslims who have no reservations whatsoever in
considering Hindus as Ahl-e-Kitab. In fact if the holy books like
Bhagwat Geeta found in India are not divine in origin, perhaps there
are no divine books in the world.
To me the question whether Sri Krishna, for instance, is an Avtar of
God or a messenger of God is merely an issue of semantics. It is even
possible that Hazrat Vyas is a prophet who is using allegorical
stories to drive home the message of God. The important thing is that
the message is certainly Divine. The Hindu Holy books are indeed our
Adigranth. It is only reasonable to think that they must have
undergone any number of changes, accretions, deductions, fabrications,
etc. during the millennia that they have been guiding the spiritual
growth of Indians. A Muslim, therefore, cannot treat these holy books
with the same amount of authenticity as he attaches to the Quran. The
Quran is unique among all the holy books in the world in the sense
that it is the only book to have survived exactly as it came. The
Hindus therefore must be treated by the Muslims as Ahl-e-Kitab.
This thought has been best expressed by Maulana Muhammad Ali in his
monumental work The Religion of Islam. While discussing the issue of
marital relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, he says: "As the
Holy Quran states that revelation was granted to all nations of the
world (35: 24), and that it was only with the Arab idolaters that
marriage relations were prohibited, and that it was lawful for a
Muslim to marry a woman belonging to any other nation of the world
that followed a revealed religion. The Christians, the Jews, the
Parsis, the Buddhists and the Hindus all fall within this category;
and it would be seen that, though the Christian doctrine of calling
Jesus Christ a God or son of God is denounced as shirk, still the
Christians are treated as followers of a revealed religion and not as
mushrikeen, and matrimonial relations with them are allowed. The case
of all those people who have originally been given a revealed
religion, though at present they may be guilty of ’shirk’, would be
treated in like manner, and Parsi and Hindu women may be taken in
marriage, as also may those who follow the religion of Confucius or of
Buddha or of Tao.
Another significant question that has been raised here is: How do the
chosen believers derive the right to visit God’s wrath on the Kafirs,
their fellow beings? In a plural society such as ours, how can such
tenets be upheld? These questions are arising today largely in the
context of the killings of innocent Muslims and Hindus going on in
Afghanistan and Kashmir in the name of jihad. While raising this
question, Ms. Jalbala Vaidya specifically mentioned what she termed
the ’sordid caricature of the Taliban’ and deplored the power games
going on in the name of Islam.
What is jihad?
But before we come to the phenomenon of Taliban and the related power
games, we must try to understand the true meaning of the word Jihad
that is being so misused today. According to Maulana Mohammad Ali,
Jihad, in Islamic terminology, means to strive to one’s utmost for
what to one is the noblest object on earth. There can be nothing
nobler for a Muslim than the earning of God’s pleasure through making
a complete submission to His Will. For those false deities that may
lay claim to his spiritual allegiance as well as against all those
whims and desires that may try to lure him away from the fold of
goodness and piety.
A very great misconception prevails with regard to the duty of jihad
in Islam, and that is that the word jihad is supposed to be synonymous
with war; and even the greatest research scholars of Europe have not
taken the pains to consult any dictionary of the Arabic language or to
refer to the Holy Quran, to find out the true meaning of the word.
The word jihad is derived from ’jahd’ or ’juhd’ meaning ability,
exertion or power, and ’mujahida’ mean the exerting of one’s power in
repelling the enemy (R). The same authority then goes on to say:
"jihad is of three kinds; viz.., the carrying on of a struggle: (I)
against a visible enemy, (2) against the devil, and (3) against self
(nafs)." According to another authority, jihad means fighting with
unbelievers, and that is an intensive form (mubalagha) and exerting
one’s self to the extent of one’s ability and power whether it is by
word (qaul) or deed (fi’l). A third authority gives the following
significance: "jihad from jahada, properly signifies the using or
exerting of one’s utmost power, efforts, endeavours or ability, in
contending with an object of disapprobation; and this is of three
kinds, namely, a visible enemy, the devil, and one’s self; all of
which are included in the term as used in the Holy Quran.
Jihad is therefore far from being synonymous with war, while the
popular meaning of "war undertaken for the propagation of Islam,"
which is supposed by European writers to be the real significance of
jihad, is unknown equally to the Arabic language and the teachings of
the Holy Quran.
Equally, or even more important is the consideration of the sense in
which the word is used in the Holy Quran. It is an admitted fact that
permission to fight was given to the Muslims when they had moved to
Madina. But the injunction relating to Mujahideen contained in the
earlier as well as in the later Mecca revelations. Thus the
’Ankabut’ , the 29th chapter of the Holy Quran, is one of a group
which was undoubtedly revealed in the fifth and sixth years of the
Call of the Prophet, yet there the word jihad is freely used in the
sense of exerting one’s power and ability, without implying any war.
In one place, it is said, "And those who strive hard for Us, We will
certainly guide them in our ways, and God is surely with the doers of
good" (29:69).
The Arabic word jahadu is derived from jihad or muj ahida, and the
addition of fina (for Us) shows, if anything further is needed to show
it, that the jihad, in this case is the spiritual striving to attain
nearness to God, and the result of this jihad is stated to be God’s
guiding those striving in His ways. The word is used precisely in the
same sense twice in a previous verse in the same chapter:
’And whoever strives hard (jahadu), he strives (yujahidu) only for his
own soul," that is, for his own benefit, "for God is self-sufficient,
above need of the worlds" (29:6).
In the same chapter the word is used in the sense of a contention
carried on in words: ’And we have enjoined on man goodness to his
parents, and if they contend (jahada) with thee that thou shouldst
associate others with Me, of which thou hast no knowledge, do not obey
them" (29:8).
A struggle for national existence was forced on the Muslims when they
reached Madina, and they had to take up the sword in self-defence.
This struggle went also, and rightly, under the name of jihad; but
even in the Madina suras the word is used in the wider sense of a
struggle carried on by words or deeds of any kind.
Jihadism is anti-Islam
he Jihadists are killing people and oppressing humanity under the garb
of preaching Islam and enforcing Islamic Sharia for which they really
have no authority. If they were to look at the conduct of Prophet
Mohammad in this regard, they would have got a completely different
picture. According to Maulana Mohammad Ali (The Religion of Islam),
when the Prophet grew worried that people did not pay attention to his
words and did not try to understand them, he was admonished in this
way:
"If God Willed, all who are on the earth would have believed (in Him).
Would thou (Muhammad) compel men until they are believers?" (10:99)
Prophet Muhammad often came across people who were completely
unresponsive to his words, while others were stirred, who believed and
were prepared to listen. In dealing with the former, he occasionally
grew impatient and felt frustrated. The Quran counsels him to be
patient, forgiving and tolerant. It warns him against the temptation
to impose his views on them:
"You will kill yourself with grief , if they believe not in this
message" (18:6).
No compulsion in religion
Prophet Mohammed is assured that if he has placed the true view, in
simple terms, before the people, he has fulfilled his mission. More
than this is not expected of him. It is not his duty to see that the
view is accepted by the people. His duty is only to tell them which is
the right path and which the wrong one and to acquaint them with the
consequences of following the one or the other. They are free to
choose for themselves: God does not want to force people to accept His
guidance. He has endowed man with the powers of understanding,
judgement and free choice.
So if Mohammed did not have the power to compel people to accept
Islam, even after he had acquired temporal power over most of Arabia,
who are the Taliban or any other people to try to do so? Obviously
they have no business behaving the way they are doing and need to be
condemned by all, particularly Muslims, because they are giving such a
bad name to Islam, apart from oppressing humanity in the name of a
religion that came to the world as a blessing of God. Let us try and
keep Islam as a blessing and not allow it to be turned into a tool for
oppression.
Jihadism, Taliban and Pakistan
One of the worst manifestations of Jihadism are the Taliban of
Afghanistan. The evil, manifest in the ideology of Jihadism took a
concrete shape in the form of Taliban. The world got the first
indication of the shape of things to come and the dangers inherent in
allowing this obscurantist ideology to take root when it woke up on
the very first day of the Taliban take-over of Kabul (26-27 September
1996) to see the battered body of former communist President Dr.
Najibullah in the UN compound.
One of the reasons why any Pakistan government has to tread
cautiously while dealing with the Taliban and other Jihadists in the
country is that the Taliban have firmed up their relationship with
several powerful sections of the Pakistani society. Though a creation
of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e -Pakistan, for instance, they have succeeded
in mending fences even with the rival Jihadist organisation, the
Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan. It may be recalled that the Jamaat had
called them tools of imperialist powers like the United States and the
United Kingdom, when they had first appeared on the scene. But now it
has no hesitation in endorsing the Taliban brand of politics, indeed
the Taliban version of Islam itself.
The biggest danger of the Talibanisation of Pakistan, however, comes
from the fact that the social and doctrinal roots of the Pakistani
army jawans are virtually the same as those of the Taliban. Pakistan
army officers may have trained the Taliban and may control them even
now to a certain extent in terms of finance, but they are bound to
fear them too. For there is a great difference in the secular
orientation and the progressive social roots of a majority of the
officer class and the obscurantist and mediaeval orientation of the
Taliban, even if their objectives coincide at certain points.
But while most of the Pakistan army officers are bound to remain
somewhat wary of the Taliban, even while exploiting their ideology for
their own nefarious ends, at lower levels in the army there is greater
acceptance of Jihadism practised by the Taliban. This is a cause for
great worry in the Pakistan army’s officers and they are bound to view
the possibility of a coming together of the Taliban of Afghanistan,
local Jihadis and Pakistan Army jawans and lower level officers with
great trepidation.
Who are the Taliban?
This makes it imperative that we pose the question: Who are the
Taliban? Describing the social and doctrinal roots of the Taliban,
William Maley provides the best answer to this question in his recent
book Fundamentalism reborn: Afghanistan and the Taliban. As he points
out, the Taliban did not emerge from nowhere, although the precise
milieu which nurtured them has not been widely studied. The figure of
the Talib is a relatively familiar one in the Northwest Frontier: as
long ago as 1898, Winston Churchill penned some cutting remarks about
’a host of wandering talib-ul-ilms, who correspond with the
theological students in Turkey and live free at the expense of the
people.’
In Afghanistan, the establishment in the twentieth century of state-
supported venues for religious education such as the Faculty of
Islamic Law at Kabul University, and state madrassas (Islamic
colleges), did not mean the end of private madrassas ’in which the
talib, proceeded at his own individual speed with one subject at a
time’. The advent of war in Afghanistan in the 1980s saw talibs taking
to the battlefield; they were witnessed in 1984 by Olivier Roy in
Uruzgan, Kabul and Kandahar.
These students emerged not from madrassas in Afghanistan, but from
those run by the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam, a Pakistani political party
headed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, which offered a conservative
religious education to boys from Afghan refugee camps, especially
orphans or sons of very poor families. The religious training of these
students was heavily influenced by the Deobandi school, which
originated in the Dar ul-Ulum Deoband, an institution established in
the Indian town of Deoband in I867. William Maley seeks to explain the
inexplicable Taliban behaviour in this way:
"The Deobandi school preached a form of conservative orthodoxy, and
madrassas under its influence provided the bulk of the Afghan ulema.
In this orthodoxy, evil and apostasy could be defined at least in part
in terms of departure from ritual - that is, ’action wrapped in a web
of symbolism’ and it is for this reason that the Taliban emphasise the
enforcement of modes of behaviour which to the outside observer seem
peripheral to solving Afghanistan’s major problems. It is scarcely
surprising that the most cohesive organisation in the Taliban’s
otherwise inchoate structure is the much-feared religious police force
(Amr bil-Maroof wa Nahi An il-Munkir, the department responsible for
the Promotion of Virtue and Suppression of Vice)."
The Taliban can, however, be better described as Jihadists, as jihad
constitutes the central focus around which they are oppressing
humanity and destroying Islam as we have known and practised this
religion throughout the last centuries. India may he at the receiving
end of Jihadism and Talibanism in Kashmir, but it is Pakistan that
could be the very first country to fall to this new ideology once it
has taken firmer roots in Afghanistan. It seems to me that the ruling
elite in Pakistan including the Army officers already realise this,
but are at a loss to formulate a clear-cut strategy to deal with this
threat to their own power. They have merely decided to deal with the
Taliban of Afghanistan as well as their local counterparts with great
care. In the meantime they go on merrily providing succour to the
ideology of Jihadism perhaps in the hope that as long as Jihadism is
busy elsewhere, they are safe. But no one and no situation can save
Frankensteins from their monsters for ever. Pakistan army officers
would do well to read the story of the central character of one of
Goethe’s celebrated poems Der Zauberlehrling [The apprentice magician]
who fell victim to the forces he had merrily liberated but then could
not control.
This article dates from August 1999.
My URL: myspace.com/sultanshahin
Also see:
http://rethinkingislam-sultanshahin.blogspot.com
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