I just want to clarify - in this blog I am not trying to justifying
the anti-Muslim backlash in Europe and North America after every terror attack
in these countries rather trying to explain the reasons and what can we do to change this.
This is common rhetoric among most
of our Muslim fellows and especially
confused young generation - that Hitler,
Stalin, Mao bla bla bla killed millions of people but nobody blame Christianity
or some other religions for that AND why heat for the killing by Taliban or
ISIS is coming towards Muslims/Islam. This kind of argument is not the way to
understand the history of world conflicts and wars. Sometime when we simplify complicated
issues, it just contributes to confuse audience even more. We as Muslims need
to get out of this apologetic attitude for terrorists. We need to understand
that these terrorists are using rigid interpretations of Islam where holy war
(Jihad/Qataal) is the way to glorify Islam.
Historically speaking when Christians
did Crusades (12th - 14th Century) under the sanction of Catholic
Church history did blames on Christianity. But Hitler never justify war from
his Bible; Stalin and Mao were none believer to begin with. The reason people
are blaming Muslims/Islam is: Terrorists are using Quran as source of inspiration
and unfortunately some of the most authentic religious scholars and groups of
Islamic world are also saying the same things from years (e.g. Jamat Islami,
Dewbandi, Salafi etc. scholars). I just want to remind, before Pakistan Army launched
major operations against Taliban, Mullahs from those school of thoughts used to
appear on Pakistani TV channels and openly shown there tilt for Taliban and other
terrorist who killed over 80k innocent Pakistanis …….. but they were glorifying
those killers and calling those terrorists “Shaheed”.
What we need to do?
We have to accept the reality, so
far we are not successful to separate Islam from these so called Jihadi
terrorist ideologies. I believe moderate/liberal Muslims and the followers of traditional
interpretations of Islam need to bridge the gaps and come to some conclusion to
separate religion from power politics. If we never address this issue people
will always exploit Islam for any crazy or ambitious motives and the blame will
go on every Muslim. Problems created by world imperialistic powers is political
issue and we should probe that from political perspective instead of
interpreting and understanding from religious point of view.
