Will the Darul Uloom now declare war on “Islamism”?
As the Darul Uloom maintains that its fight against terrorism will continue, read this thought-provoking essay by M. Zuhdi Jasser* on what are the ideological standards required to confront militant Islam.
In view of the points made by Lt Commander Jasser, are the scholars of Darul Uloom at Deoband prepared to take the next step and declare/accept:
1. The rejection of Islamism as a political ideology.
2. A rejection of the concept of the “Islamic state” …or (the) vision of a Muslim majority society led by theologians (imams and clerics) who run government through their interpretation and enactment of Islamic law (sharia).
3. Identification of radical Islamist organizations by name …that utilize terrorism as a tactic for political change…While these organizations may at times “condemn terrorism,” they often offer apologies (if not justifications) for terrorism and seek the establishment of both individual Islamic states and a global or regional caliphate of them.
4. The acceptance that the root cause of terrorism is political Islam.
5. …the toxic role that Wahhabism (a radical Saudi Arabian interpretation of Islam) has had upon the radicalization of some members of the Muslim community.
6. To unequivocally recognize the state of Israel and its right to exist.
7. (the) separation (of) faith (spirituality) and nationalism.
8. …individual freedom and liberty.
9. To advocate for the rights of dissidents and liberty-minded Muslims in Muslim majority nations against the dictatorships and monarchies which oppress them
10. To acknowledge that much of current Islamic jurisprudence (sharia) is in dire need of ijtihad (reform)
***
* M. Zuhdi Jasser is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander and founder/Chairman of the Board of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Related Posts:
Islamism – not Islam – is responsible for terrorism
India’s Islamist Groups – Extracts
Islam’s “uncomfortable truths”
Other voices of reason: “We Muslims Have Work To Do” – Salim Mansur
Another excerpt from Sandhya Jain’s column in The Pioneer – “Deoband’s Dar-ul Islam“, 10th June ’08:
Very good points raised
While Darul Uloom’s efforts seem to be very promising I have certain lurking feeling of discomfort. I remember their fatwa stating Islam doesn’t believe in violence against innocents – a statement which appears to be highly subjective, given that one simply needs to proclaim anyone guilty of being enemy of islam and by-pass this fatwa – we need to go into details and hold them accountable to the nation on their actions
Indian Muslims will complain that they need to continuously prove themselves as Indians but such is the nature of their co-religionists that they need to be overtly and openly confidence-builders or else face the obvious discrimination of an mistrustful majority
Hrishi: Good point….I believe the statement also says “Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence”…something which is again open to interpretation…and I think needs to be articulated more clearly
See here and here.
Ranjan Das (Letters, “The Pioneer”, 8th June) and Hari Shankar Vyas (“Sunday gup shup”, “The Pioneer”, 8th June) welcome as “pathbreaking” the recent fatwa against terrorism. Sandhya Jain too has argued in its favour (“Deoband’s Dar-ul Islam”, June 10). Whatever the merits of her reasoning that it is “official Islam’s most significant departure from the phase of unproductive violence”, she is is factually incorrect in claiming as “evidence …Indian Muslims refraining from violence when Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published cartoons insulting the Prophet”.
Muslims rioted in Delhi, forced a bandh in Srinagar, extensively damaged Hindu private property in Hubli, two Sharia courts in UP called for the cartoonist’s death with fatwas issued by the Irada-e-Sharia Darul Qaza and the Ifta Firangimahli Taksal and, to anyone killing the Danish cartoonist, UP’s Minister for Minority Welfare announced a bounty of Rs 51 crore with gold as much as the assassin weighed. These are only some instances but are sufficient to question the credibility of Ms Jain’s claim.
In all our mainstream media and politically correct hype over this fatwa, drowned out is the fact that it explicitly distinguishes between terrorism, which it criticizes, and jihad, which it endorses. Readers should recall that those whom our media and “secularists” call “terrorists” or aatankvadis, in fact always call themselves mujahid. It is we as dhimmis who make this distinction, not the killers and their faith that drives them, and welcoming this deceptive fatwa instead of recognising it as an adaptation of the Islamic strategy of taqiyya is an expression of our dhimmitude.”
From S Gurumurthy’s rebuttal to Javed Anand re. “hatred against Muslims”
….
Javed Anand reduces my article to two propositions. First, “Injustice minus theology cannot breed deadly terror†and second, “Muslims are terrorists because theology (Quran) commands them to kill.†He is right on the first and wrong, even malicious, on the second. He has not rebutted what I had said, which is okay; but he has accused me by saying,‘ Muslims are terrorists’, which I cannot ignore.
I quote here the central concern of my article. “So the IM (terrorists) 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.†The core of my concern — yes, it is concern, not hate as Javed Anand says in anger — is what is stated in bold letters.
And this is precisely what Javed Anand side steps. Every time, anywhere, they strike, the terrorists — whichever Islamic group they belong to — invariably claim that they are targeting the ‘non-believers’. And every time they claim so, the Islamic theologians issue a standard statement that ‘Islam does not countenance terror against innocent people’ and it is a ‘religion of peace’. It is true that the Jamiat-ul Ulama-i-Hind and other organisations held the ‘Anti-terrorism Global Peace Conference’ at Deoband.
It is commendable that a large gathering of Muslims at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi took an oath against terror. …
Nevertheless it is a great move in the national, and Muslim, interest. But the move is in no small measure due to the increasing crescendo of the globally led debate about whether Islam supports acts of the terrorists as they claim. This debate has been started in India and sustained by many who had to face hostile criticism and calumny for expressing their concern at the claim of the terrorists that Islam commanded them to act.
…
Now let us examine the fatwa against terror issued from Dar-ul-uloom Deoband which Javed Anand sees as the Islamic theological counter to the terrorists’ claim of theological support. The conference defined terrorism as: “Any action that targets innocents, whether by an individual or by any government and its agencies or by a private organisation constitutes an act of terrorism.†It also said, “Terrorism negates completely the teachings of Islam as it is the faith of love and peace and any terrorist activity which targets innocent people directly contradicts Islam’s concept of peace.†And finally, it said, “We reject all forms of terrorism and do not allow any discrimination.
Terrorism is a completely wrong and unthoughtful act whoever commits, irrespective of his association to whatever religion, community and class he belongs to.†Can one fail to notice the qualification of “innocent people†attached to the fatwa in the already abstract move. So “Targeting to kill the innocent people†is alone terror according to the fatwa. If the terrorists target those who are not innocent — normally the police, army personnel or others, while they are sleeping or eating, fall in this category — is that not terror? Let not this side issue, though significant, detain us. Now, on to the core issue.
The core element of the terrorists’ claim is, as I have said in my article and emphasised it here earlier, this: they are commanded by the holy text to kill the ‘non-believers’. The question is who are non-believers? It needs no seer to say that, for the terrorists, non-believers are those who do not believe in Islam. This is what attracts even highly educated techies and motivates them to turn terrorists in the cause of Islam against nonbelievers — read non-Muslims. This is the theological magnet for mobilisation.
This is what Deoband has not rebutted.
It has not said, nor has any other Islamic School, that ‘don’t read non-believers in the Quran as non-Muslims’. If the Islamic clergy declares that “non-believers does not mean non-Muslims†and issues a fatwa against those who consider non-Muslims as non-believers, then, and only then, the terrorists cannot use theology as a magnet to attract the Muslim youth kill the non-believers! That the terrorists make use of Islamic theology for their actions cannot be denied, and has not been. Why then do the Islamic scholars not openly declare that ‘non-believers do not mean non-Muslims’? But they seem to find it difficult.
Here is my personal experience of their difficulty. In the late 1990s, a wellmeaning social worker from Calcutta and lawyer friend of mine (a Muslim) had organised a Hindu-Muslim dialogue in Madras, as Chennai was then, to discuss and sort out differences. In my brief intervention I asked the Islamic scholars present whether according to Islamic texts ‘Hindus’ were non-believers (Kafirs) and said that if the Hindus were not, then the problem between Hindus and Muslims would be just political, not theological.
After some silence a very prominent Muslim leader declared that Hindus were, as per Islam, non-believers.
While a majority howled him down, a theologian came to his rescue, though in a convoluted manner. This is the theological gap in the Islamic discourse. The terrorists are exploiting it. A clear statement from Islamic schools that the ‘nonbelievers’ does not mean ‘non-Muslims’ in Islam will fill the gap. The Islamic theologians seem to avoid a confrontation with the terrorists on this point. This is what my article points out, and this is what Javed Anand misses or side steps. It is clear that Javed, the Muslim, not Javed Anand, the secularist has dominated the response. Anyway he should have read my article once more, before responding.
QED: When angry, don’t write.
*** End of Excerpts ***
Good article by Gurumurthy. Thanks for posting this one, Shantanu.
LUCKNOW: After 2006 Mumbai blasts, the US embassy conducted an informal survey of Muslim contacts from Lucknow and some other cities to assess the ‘communal tension’ in the Hindi belt of north India, particularly Uttar Pradesh.
The survey found that Muslims were uneasy over the silence of their leaders and feared a backlash from Hindu extremist organisations. According to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, Charge d’Affaires of US embassy, Geoffrey Pyatt on July 13, 2006, wrote, “We conducted an informal survey of Muslim contacts from Lucknow and other cities. Respondents included several Maulvis (both Sunni and Shia), Urdu language journalists, political and community leaders, scholars and academics. Their responses revealed a remarkable unanimity on “Islamic terrorism”.
All expressed disdain for what they characterized as the “weak response” of India’s Muslim leadership to the Mumbai attacks, accusing such leaders of taking a “head in the sand” approach and denying stark realities. Pyatt also wrote that a leading Barelvi community leader and journalist questioned why the media, especially the Muslim and Urdu media, has not been more condemnatory of those supporting terrorism. A Lucknow Shia and Urdu newspaper editor expressed shock that Muslim leaders in UP have largely remained silent about the Mumbai attack.
A Shia Lucknow Maulvi compared terrorism to a deadly disease that requires strong medicine to overcome and pointed out that it will persist as long as the majority of India’s Muslims remain silent.
From < ahref="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/9873974.cms">a ToI news-report