Dawn: POST-Peshawar the need to rethink our national security policy and terminate the state’s patronage of jihadists has been under focus. Also under spotlight has been the state’s capacity deficit that partly explains the gap between law and its implementation (obsession with military courts being a misconceived response to this issue). But what is not being acknowledged or debated candidly is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’s religion problem: terror is being preached, justified or tolerated in the name of religion and we are doing little about it.
President Obama was both right and being smart when he argued during the anti-terrorism summit convened at the White House last week that, “we are not at war with Islam, we are at war with those who have perverted Islam.” Imagine the outrage across the Muslim world had the American president insinuated that there is something intrinsic about Islam that encourages violence and extremism or even that our religion lends itself more readily to abuse by terrorists.
The surest way to rile up Muslim societies and sabotage the prospect of introspection within the Muslim world is for the West to allege that the fault is not just in the terrorists but also in the faith they profess to abide by. It is thus in the West’s own interest as well to resist Islamophobia and not define the threat of terror emanating from self-proclaimed Islamists in terms of clash of civilisations. Such description of the problem could very well become prophetic.
Categories: Accepting Islam, Answers to Anti-Islam, Asia, Pakistan
There is a news item in “The Nation”. I present it below. It is telling about the weakness of the Pakistan government in taking action against a well known Mulla who wants to implement the Law of Sharia in Pakistan. He does not believe in the importance of the constitution. Please read.
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The Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan has given a puzzling explanation for not arresting Maulana Abdul Aziz, the Lal Masjid cleric who publicly supports religious terrorists operating in Pakistan: since the Musharraf regime was forced to reinstate the Maulana at Lal Masjid after the 2007 military operation against the mosque, the present government does not want to take a similar decision that would need to be reviewed later. In light of the government’s emphatic resolve to weed out terrorism in the name of religion, this explanation only suggests strategic weakness, either in relation to Maulana’s religious convictions or his ties to terrorists.
Maulana Abdul Aziz is no ordinary Maulana. In addition to his long-standing affiliation with Lal Masjid and support for the Pakistani Taliban (as well as for ISIS), he is clear-headed, eloquent, and committed to the cause of imposing the Quran and Sunnah on to Pakistan. In more peaceful times, he could easily have been a brilliant jurist refining the laws for the betterment of his people. However, as for many other capable minds in our midst, Maualan finds himself the one-eyed king of a blind nation. To make matters worse, Maulana’s blind nation feels divinely ordained and financed to gouge out everyone else’s eyes too.
No doubt, the Maulana’s case needs to be handled carefully. However, the Government’s efforts so far have failed to construct a vision or a narrative that can effectively answer the violent convictions of the likes of Maulana: Operation Zarb-e-Azb utterly lacks the kind of transparency necessary to boost the morale of civilians against religious terrorism; the National Action Plan does not offer a single moral proposition to dissuade an intelligent believer from becoming the next Maulana Abdul Aziz. At best, the Government seems to be treating the patient and not the disease.
It is high time that the Government takes more refined and constructive steps towards the elimination of religious terrorism: it must be clarified as a matter of state policy that Islam and the shariah will only be allowed to work in Pakistan within the democratic and federal framework established by the Constitution; that the existing Constitution provides more than enough Islam to the people of this country; and that advocating the promulgation of the Quran and Sunnah at the expense of the Constitution will not be tolerated.
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I will soon send my comments to highlight the reason for the misguidance that is prevailing amongst many Mullas and through those Mullas, it is affecting the simple minded poor Muslims all over the world.
Accordin to the Quran, The Mullas have no case for enforcing the law of Sharia in any part of the world. It is their misreading of the Quran.