The Clash Of Un-Civilizations And Osama-ism

http://www.escapingamerica.com/sharad_islam.htm

Fundamentalism, the Taliban, and the Indo-Pak History

11-02-2001

Sharad Bailur



I would like to put forward for the reader’s consideration a number of propositions. First, that the Taliban is NOT a fundamentalist organisation. In fact the concept of fundamentalism as interpreted in this day and age is alien to the Quran. Second, that the concept of Jihad is central to Islam. And third, that those who do not follow these Islamic principles in full are committing blasphemy in the sight of Allah (Peace be upon Him).

Let us begin with the word Taliban. The word Taleem means education, preferably an education received in a Madarsa or Muslim seminary in which students are trained to recite the Quran by rote. A Talib is therefore a student who receives his Taleem at a Madarsa. The plural of Talib is Taliban. The Taleem, which demands that students should learn to recite the Quran by rote, is because the Quran is in ancient Arabic. Most students do not know ancient Arabic. The Quran cannot be translated into a modern language because it is regarded as the actual word of God. Any translation is bound to distort it. It’s meaning is therefore expatiated upon by the learned or the Ulema.

A Muslim or true believer is one who accepts the Quran as the word of God in all its aspects, and practises what the Quran demands in its entirety. He therefore follows the precepts of Halal. Conversely any person, who accepts what he likes from the Quran and discards what he does not, is not a Muslim. By this token a Muslim who consumes alcohol or eats pork is no Muslim. The exact word for such acts in Arabic is Haram. The word Haram is interesting. From Haram comes the concept of Harb or disbelief. The land of the unbeliever or kaffir is therefore referred to as Dar-ul-Harb, while the land of the believer is referred to as the Dar-ul-Islam.

The Quran enjoins upon its believers to persuade unbelievers or kaffirs to accept the Quran as the word of God. Persuasion is the best means for this purpose of proselytisation. Unfortunately, people often refuse to be persuaded. This is seen as a fact of life in the Quran. When persuasion becomes impossible the Quran enjoins upon the faithful to wage a holy war or Jihad to persuade them by force. Jihad is therefore a means of getting followers for the religion.

Islam does not merely enjoin its people to wage a holy war. It trains them for the purpose. The holy month of Ramzan demands that the faithful eat and drink nothing during the day. At the end of this month of daylong fasting comes Ramzan Id or the festival of Ramzan. During the days of Muhammad, wars were fought during the day since at night it was difficult to see. When you wage a war you cannot say to an on-rushing enemy, “Just a moment. It is teatime. Would you care for some cake?” Nights were therefore reserved for resting, taking care of the wounded and the dying and for general repairs. Daylight signified the resumption of hostilities. Ramzan is therefore the training given to the faithful for going into battle and succeeding. The training, spread over a month, helps build endurance and the ability to stand up to the heat of battle amidst hunger and thirst. The festival at the end signifies victory over the kaffir. Nowhere does the Quran say that Jihad should not be waged against the innocent. If the innocent are unbelievers according to the precepts of Islam Jihad should be waged against them.

The Taliban of Afghanistan insist, and correctly, that all they are doing is following the Quran. It is not that they are extremists. They are merely doing what the Quran demands of them. After all, where does one draw a line that says that the neglect of an Islamic precept thus far is tolerable and beyond it is un-Islamic? The Quran does not allow the word of God to be polluted by those who choose to interpret it to their convenience. The Quran likewise enjoins upon those who live in the Dar-ul-Islam or the land of the faithful to wage a jihad on those who live in the Dar-ul-harb. This is a holy duty that helps in attaining jannat or heaven on the day of qayamat or day of judgement.

Taking this as given data let us see what Islam has done. It has waged a thousand-year jihad against the subcontinent of India and it largely succeeded in ruling over this land of kaffirs between the years 900 AD and 1857 AD, forcibly converting those who came in its path and imposing a tax known as the Jaziya on those who refused conversion. During this period, Islam and its devout followers succeeded in destroying much of Hindu culture, its religion and the precepts it stood for. It brought to a green and verdant land a faith born in the blast of desert sand and laid waste to it. Muslim rulers repeatedly and over hundreds of years destroyed temples and looted their treasures, took away Hindu women to rape at leisure and destroyed Hindu artefacts—all in the name of Jihad. At that time Jihad as interpreted did just what the Quran ordered, nothing more, nothing less.

If India today reacts with de ja vu at what happens in Kashmir it is because it has seen it happening since long before it learned how to speak English. India has suffered Islamic purgatory and seen firsthand what Jihad and Islam can do over a thousand years. Its reaction to the World Trade Center attack was not one of surprise, but one of, “Oh no. Not again!” This is something that America has not yet understood.

Whatever the domination of a largely Hindu population over ten centuries did to the local population, it did something quite different to the Muslim population of the subcontinent. Used as they were to ruling over the Kaffirs over a millennium, a feeling developed especially among Muslims in powerful positions, hardly articulated perhaps and carefully kept under wraps safe from scrutiny by kaffir eyes, that the Muslim was born superior to the Hindu. How else could Muslim kingdoms have ruled over this alien religion and culture over ten centuries? There was probably something to it, too. The Hindus deserved what they got by the mere fact of their being plain incompetent at defending themselves and having allowed their own culture to ossify and go to seed.

I have myself experienced this extraordinary feeling among my classmates in Hyderabad almost all of whom came from the families of the Jagirdars of the Nizam of Hyderabad. There was a barely-concealed but never articulated superciliousness among my Muslim classmates peeping out at unguarded moments towards their Hindu classmates. This, a full ten years after Independence had given to the Muslims the Pakistan they so craved. And except for one honourable exception, Haji Abdul Ghani, and I must add his two brothers, every single one of those Muslim classmates migrated to Pakistan by 1965. Ghani was a Kutchi from the town of Dhoraji near Rajkot in Saurashtra. My greatest rival in class Imaduddin Sayeed was brilliant, especially at mathematics. He is today working on the Pakistani nuclear bomb. I am told his brother Ehteshamuddin Sayeed is in the Pakistan Navy.

Pakistan was born out of a desire for a nation separate from the domination of the Hindus. Why did they fear the domination of the Hindus? The Muslims who went to Pakistan could never reconcile themselves to being ruled by an inferior people. That is the reason every child in Pakistan is taught from primary school that a Pakistani soldier is worth ten Indian soldiers. And that is the real reason they have never been able to reconcile themselves to the loss of Bangla Desh. President Musharraf’s justification for asking for Kashmir on a platter was that Pakistan had to have recompense for the loss of Bangla Desh.

So here is a superior people convinced of its superiority and the superiority of its religion that has little to say for itself except in terms of religion. It is a nation of converts who refuse to acknowledge the fact that they are converts. It is a state that denies that it had any culture or history before it became this artificially created nation. It follows social customs barely distinguishable from those of the Hindus they left behind. It also follows a brand of Islam known as Sufism that has strong overtones of the Hindu way of life that they once accepted. Sufism is not accepted as Islam in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam. Islam bans music. But the Sufi tradition involves the singing of traditional hymns called “Qawwali.” Baisakhi, the spring festival, is celebrated in Pakistan. It is a Hindu tradition. The 4,000-year-old Hindu blood that flows in the veins of the Pakistanis cannot help but reverberate in the music of their distant ancestors, I`m afraid. It is therefore quite common for Pakistani singers to invoke Hindu Gods and sing, “Hey Raam…” (Raam is a Hindu God and an incarnation of Vishnu) because Islam does not permit music. Mehdi Hassan and Ghulam Ali do it. So did Ustad Barkat Ali Khan and the two singing pairs Salamat Ali and Nazakat Ali, and Amanat and Fateh Ali Khan and even that grand dame of Hindustani Classical music, Roshanara Begum, who migrated a full two years after Independence to Paklstan from India. One thousand years of Islam has merely addled their brains but has had no effect on their “convert blood.”

I can do no better than to quote Robert Kaplan who wrote thus in the Atlantic Monthly in September 2000: “At the end of my visit to Pakistan, I sat with a group of journalists trying to fathom why Nawaz Sharif, when still Prime Minister, had reportedly turned down an offer of several billion dollars in aid from the United States in return for agreeing not to test nuclear weapons. A Pakistani friend supplied the simple answer: `India had tested them, so we had to. It would not have mattered who was Prime Minister or what America offered. We have never defined ourselves in our own right—only in relation to India. That is our tragedy.`”

It is for this reason that India has to always be on its guard. The fact that it is not Islamic and therefore constitutes an eyesore of a Dar-ul-harb in Pakistani eyes and that it occupies a larger part of the subcontinent than Pakistan does is reason enough.

The problem for the rest of the non-Muslim world is two-fold. This problem has been growing all the time once the Muslim world understood that it could dictate terms because it was sitting on a sea of oil. It should have been noticed after a single instance of a Salman Rushdie writing a blasphemous novel resulted in a fatwa, issued by the Iranians, calling for his death.

There have been any number of such fatwas, or “orders,” being issued for such transgressions of Islam over the years. There have been “condemnations” from all “right thinking” and “moderate” Muslims from all over the world about what happened on September 11th. The fact, however, is that not a single fatwa has been issued by a single Muslim cleric from even the remotest part of the world against the terrorists or the organisations that were responsible for the crime.

Why not? It is quite simple, really. There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim. You are either a Muslim in the eyes of Allah or you are not.

Nineteen Christians were slaughtered in cold blood in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, in a church on October 28th. When prominent Pakistani Muslims were interviewed on TV their reaction was, “Of course we condemn it, but Islam is a very tolerant religion and does not countenance such atrocities.” Why do they jump to the defence of Islam so quickly? How about issuing a fatwa against those who did it? And if not, why not? Why are the condemnations not wholehearted and why are they so obviously mealy-mouthed?

Islam is a particularly dangerous but familiar ideology. It has a prophet like Communism did—Muhammad on the one hand and Karl Marx on the other. It has a book like communism did—The Quran on the one hand and Das Kapital on the other. Both promise a paradise to its converts that cannot be attained. It even has a God like communism did—Allah on the one hand and Dialectical Materialism on the other.

Both have their fanatics: We were then afraid of the Reds; it is time we acquired a similar dread of the Greens. It should be dealt with just like communism was dealt with, an ideology run amok and threatening the lives of everyone around it. The difference, of course is that the communists were an educated lot. These people, unfortunately, are mostly not. In fact, by the very nature of the fact that the Quran is untranslatable Islam sanctions and glorifies ignorance. The problem lies with the fact that Islam offers solace in the hereafter, something Communism said did not exist. What killed off Communism was its realism. What keeps Islam going is the exact opposite—its unrealism.

When George W. Bush says that his war is against terrorism and not against Islam he is missing the wood for the trees. The individual trees are terrorism. The wood as a whole is Islam. When the Taliban says that the war by America is a war on Islam, take them at their own word. While eradicating the Taliban or Osama bin Laden is the correct step it is just a small first step. It is for this reason that I suspect that Samuel Huntington was right all along. It is a clash of civilisations.

Whether America and the rest of the civilised world has the stomach and the gumption to face up to this reality and take this battle to its logical conclusion is a matter of great doubt. America and its much-vaunted coalition could not even remove one Saddam Hussein.

This is a much bigger and more diverse enemy. Even if the entire world got together to destroy Islam and nuked the Kaaba, for example, it cannot solve the problem. The problem, ultimately, cannot be solved with bombs but with ideas. It will continue to fester till such time as the regimes of the Middle East take it upon themselves to instill a modicum of modern scientific education into their populations, especially their female populations, and till that helps to relax the hypnotic grip of this ideology masquerading as religion.

Till then, let us pray to our various Gods. Or better still, learn to understand the value of thinking for ourselves.

http://www.escapingamerica.com/sharad_islam.htm

Posted earlier on a wrong board:

While hoping for the best, I remain skeptical of President`s Musharraf`s offer of a return to democracy in 10 months. This article from The Friday Times indicates that the elections may be rigged to keep `undesirable` political opinions out of contention:

http://www.thefridaytimes.com/news5.htm

re: ylh

``Like all Indian Muslims, you are not only devoid of any objective knowledge ``

...but zafar seems pretty objective to me...

re: ylh

Dear Rsaxena,

{You are the one who is mingling issues. Your claim was `all religion based nationalisms are medieval and stupid.`}

...there is an important subtlety that you are missing...israel may have been created for a group of people who happen to be jewish, but it is far from a religion state...what matters today is that israel is a secular, democratic country...there haven`t been too many non-jews who have felt the need to move there, so it remains a largely jewish state...israelis are fighting for what they believe is their original homeland (you can argue about that, but that is a separate matter)...

It seems that the `foot in the mouth` as set in.

When I say Dr Poonawallah is `the reason Indian Muslims are backward`, I mean backward in their contribution to their country and themselves compared to their Hindu countrymen who have progressed leaps and bounds...I, as a Pakistani, wish all Indians of Muslim faith the best of luck in their endeavors for their nation.

I must retract the following statement:

`Like all Indian Muslims, you are not only devoid of any objective knowledge but are totally beyond redemption because of your hatred for Pakistan.`

There are many brilliant Indians of the Muslim faith who have contributed remarkably to India and indeed South Asia. I admire their contribution to their country and wish them the best. Dr.Akbar Ali Poonawallah is from a separate category, the category Imam Bukhari and the Deobandi fundamentalists belong to. He is the reason why Indian Muslims are backward.

I had made the earlier statement in the flow of emotions... Mr.Poonawallah had completely and utterly lied about the founder of Pakistan. There are ofcourse Indians like Zafar Al Talib, Farzana Versey, and others who have my total and complete respect.

Sincerely

YLH

Rsaxena,

`..ylh is threatening to come dressed as jinnah...`

Well you are right, I was planning on wearing a well cut suit.. but I guess I could wear jeans or something if its too intimidating for you. :)

-Yasser

Re: YLH

``...Like all Indian Muslims, you are not only devoid of any objective knowledge but are totally beyond redemption because of your hatred for Pakistan...``

YLH, in your point by point rebuttal, you made the (illogical) leap when you mistook disagreement with Jinnah`s views to `hatred for Pakistan`. The two are not the same.

INDIAN MUSLIM MIND REVEALED:

Perhaps the greatest expose of the Indian Muslim mind is how they argue... Mr.Akbar Ali Poonawallah is desperately trying to convince me to start disliking Jinnah, so naively he makes the following assumptions:

1)Since YLH is a Pakistani he is opposed to Hindu Muslim Unity. So naively he tries to play on the fact that Jinnah was an apostle of Hindu Muslim Unity hence YLH should hate Jinnah.

2)Since YLH is a Pakistani he is a Sunni (eventhough Pakistan has the second largest shia population in the world)... So he tries to build up the argument that Jinnah was against sunnis and so YLH should hate Jinnah.

3)Since YLH is a Pakistani, Jinnah`s `drinking` and `eating` habits will be scandolous to him. So he tries to build an argument that Jinnah drank Vodka (I thought it was whisky) and ate pork and that is why YLH should hate Jinnah.

And this is what `Poonawallah`, the Doctor from Jammu terms an `intellectual` argument... Between this and his calling Israelis subhuman, I think one cant make much of a case for the intellectual superiority of Indian Muslims.

Shammi,

re: Pashtun leader Ghaffar

A writer named Kurt Meyer (sp?) started discussing this disciple of Gandhi in his new book...can`t remember the name, I mentioned it on a Chowk board several weeks ago...goes like ``something of Shadows``. Meyers discusses the role of Russia and the US in Afghanistan; he also commented on a radio show he was interviewed on, that he is appalled that Americans aren`t aware of the diversity of Afghanistan, how tolerant and multireligious it used to be, and that a leader like Ghaffar has not been part of the mainstream media`s glossary...glad to see the NY Times got to it...

regards

Saxena

#389

OOOOUCH! beautiful post! Completely agree..

You have NO idea how much it hurts me to agree with you. Please dont do it too often..the pain is unbearable!

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Please look at the Arguments of Poonawallah:

Let me tell you some facts about Jinnah

YLH Ans: If these are facts then I wonder what the lies are like.

-He was a profound supporter of Hindu Muslim unity and did a volte face when he realized his popular appeal and charisma could never match that of his dashing Kashmiri Brahmin rival, Nehru or of his other rival, the scholarly Mowlana.

YLH Answer: So being a supporter of Hindu Muslim Unity is a crime? I am a supporter of Hindu Muslim Unity. Hindus and Muslims of India should give up their distinctions and become one nation as should Hindus christians and Muslims of Pakistan.

-He never gave a single Ruppee to charity or the poor. He refused to visit the poor or sick. He treated his personal staff with cruely and brutality, such that many of them suffered nervous breakdowns. His personal cook, Syed Imtiaz Ahmad Khan Dehlvi, refused to go to Pakistan, and wept at the memory of Jinnah`s cruelty.

YLH Ans: ANOTHER LIE! Have you read Jinnah`s will? Jinnah left his entire fortune to Universities and schools all over India and Pakistan. He also contributed extensively to the education programmes both of Hindus and Muslims. As for his staff being treated cruelly? I wonder why a servant by the name of `Ramu` a Hindu preferred to stay with Jinnah from the 1915-1948?

-He was a Racist and referred to the Bengali Muslims as ``black dogs``.

YLH Answer: WHAT AN F-ING LIAR! If you are worth your salt bring me one source ... just one source to verify that claim. But you cant because you are bigoted fanatical liar. Jinnah was above this prejudice. Infact racism didnt even touch him. Once a Muslim Leaguer had called the jews the sons of shylock ... Jinnah immediately rose up and declared: `Take your words back, this is not keeping with the dignity of the Musalmans.

Ladies and gentlemen this is a TRAVESTY! A complete and total TRAVESTY ... the way this individual continues to lie shamelessly is beyond my understanding.

`-He despised the Sunni Religion. In a speech in Mahmudabad, he said ``It is the Shia faith which is the essence and soul of Islam as a religion. I believe the Sunni faith to be grounded in Arabian superstition and bigotry. Shiism is Persian in its soul:philosophical, profound. Sunnism is Arabian in its soul: dogmatic, superstitious, and bound by tribal law. It is in the destiny of Indian Islam that Sunnis will eventually turn to Shiism for spiritual nourishment``.`

YLH ans: I haven`t read this speech and I doubt that Jinnah made it but I totally agree with the spirit. Sunnism is Arabian in its soul, DOGMATIC, SUPERSTITITOUS AND BOUND BY TRIBAL LAW! Infact even when Shiism becomes fundamentalist, it remains much better than Sunni fundamentalism... Look at Iran and compare it to taliban or Saudi Arabia.

`-He secretly thought Pakistan would not survive.He is reported to have told Matloob Husain, his secretary, ``Pakistan will pass like a dream. It will last only as long as I do. The old areas will once again be called by their age old name, Hindustan``.`

YLH Ans: Jinnah had said `Pakistan is here and here to stay` and if he did say that it is not true anymore. But what are you trying to prove anyway?

Like all Indian Muslims, you are not only devoid of any objective knowledge but are totally beyond redemption because of your hatred for Pakistan.

-YLH

PS Israel describes itself as `Zionist Democratic state`.

Dear Rsaxena,

You are the one who is mingling issues. Your claim was `all religion based nationalisms are medieval and stupid.`

Whether Pakistan and Israel are otherwise comparable or not, one can easily discern that Israel was a religion-based nationalism more so than Pakistan. Whereas Pakistan was formed on the basis of the assumption that South Asian Muslims of the Muslim Majority Areas form a nation, Israel was formed on the basis that Jews everywhere form a nation and hence the nation-state of Israel is necessary.

Indeed Pakistan hasnt achieved what Israel has, but then Israel was much more manageable than Pakistan.

Sincerely

Yasser Hamdani

Re: Yahooda Goldstein

Yahooda, check out this newstory:

`The Peacemaker of the Pashtun Past` (NY Times)

``...Ghaffar was renowned as ``the frontier Gandhi.`` His followers, the Servants of God, were nicknamed Red Shirts because of their brick-colored garb. All had to swear: ``I shall never use violence. I shall not retaliate or take revenge, and shall forgive anyone who indulges in oppression and excesses against me.`` For two decades, Ghaffar and his Red Shirts dominated the North-West Frontier without resort to violence, enduring prison and torture. Ghaffar`s friend and mentor, Mohandas Gandhi, called his feat ``a miracle.``...

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/07/opinion/07MEYE.html?searchpv=nytToday

I am proud to say that my great-grandfather (a non-Muslim) was a close associate of the Frontier Gandhi.

Allah O Akbar
Death to the Infidel
Death to the Taliban