Jihad – The Misperceptions

Samina (110),

Preconceived notion seems to be your forte. 12-head is not wrong about you.

now that you mention chechnya:

“as a candidate, george w. bush was asked by larry king what he thought
of russia`s actions in chechnya. ``not acceptable,`` replied bush. ``and that`s why we need to cut off foreign -- the aid to russia.`` ``now?`` king asked. ``yes, absolutely,`` bush insisted, adding, ``the nations of the free world [must] condemn the -- you know, the killing of innocent women and children”

fareed zakaria, wp, nov 5, 2002

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/a5348-2002nov4.html

“for months now i have thought about an eight-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by russian soldiers in chechnya after watching her mother go through the same. the child apparently did not cry at all and let the men push her on to the next, then the next rapist. she told her aunt she did not want to upset further her bleeding and screaming mother. her father had been shot and her two brothers had disappeared, and like the african american writer maya angelou, who was raped as a child, this girl is now wilfully dumb”

yasmeen alibhai-brown, independent, oct 28, 2002

http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/yasmin_alibhai_brown/story.jsp?story=346500.

On a lighter note:

A jihad every day

Hafizur Rahman
The News, Nov 6, 2002

If I had the authority I would ban the use of the word `jihad` except for jihad proper. Which means that a committee of the most reputed Islamic scholars would decide whether the campaign or movement or activity for which it was intended to be employed warranted it to be called jihad or not. Since I can never hope to be such in authority, I hope the MMA, the party of maulvis, will do this for me if it joins the government.

It is not only the public which misuses this sacred expression; every ruling regime is constantly announcing the launching of jihad to weed out corruption, lawlessness and violence from society, or some other social ill. A cynic, and a wag to boot, once asked me, ``Does this means the government is going to do jihad against itself?``

Since we, the Muslims of Pakistan, are apparently incapable of living up to the noble ideals of Islam -- jihad included -- we try to pull the ideals down to our prosaic and material level. Islam is not too demanding a faith, but it does ask for morality of a high order, and a sense of sacrifice based on love for mankind and unselfishness of a rather sincere sort.

Being disinclined to rising to the occasion, we make the occasion climb down to our limited capacity for doing good. In this process we trot out our individual versions of Islam. But I am not here to write about the treatment that we and our political and religious leaders have meted out to our faith. That is too vast a subject for the likes of me. Let me confine myself to jihad as a plaything in the hands of tub-thumping orators and cheap slogan-mongers.

In the history of Pakistan we have had three full-scale wars with India. All three were referred to as jihad. I am not scholar of Islam, but I would like to know from those who are whether a war that ends in a cease-fire, sought by the Muslim contestants themselves, can be called a jihad. I remember Maulana Maudoodi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami, arousing the anger of Pakistani Muslims when he refused to see the Kashmir was as Jihad. I don`t know what his views were about the two other wars.

The fourth `jihad` that we have seen from close quarters was in Afghanistan, in which we Pakistanis enjoyed free participation. By free I mean without actually joining the struggle (except for private volunteers). It was a kind of vicarious participation. It was almost like saying, ``We shall not rest till the last drop of Afghan blood has been shed.``

And what about the pseudo-jihads that we have conducted? There have been many over the last half a century. We have fought a jihad against illiteracy and lost it. Then we`ve had one twice a year for tree plantation. There was a jihad against irreligious socialism, and since it was aimed at the poor man`s welfare it succeeded. There have been jihads in support of charities, to promote vaccination and national savings, against wasting water and electricity, even one for elimination of mosquitoes, and others too numerous to mention.

The common factor in all these jihads was that, by and large, they were dismal failures. Not one of them succeeded completely despite the fact that in our misconceived zeal we tried to make them worthy of the noble sentiment associated with this sacred word. The only jihad in which we have always come out successful is lip service to Islam.

A senior police officer of Punjab told the press some time ago that a jihad had been launched to counter crime. Well, the past experience of the public shows that apparently this is not the job of the police, but it was good of the officer to say so. He did not take the press into confidence as to what the police had been doing so far. But it is most comforting to know that from now on the police will tackle crime too. I only hope the men haven`t been put on this new duty without some kind of training, because, from what we read about other countries, dealing with crime and criminals can be pretty dangerous.

Some ten years ago the Lahore police conducted an operation (most improperly given the name of jihad) in Hira Mandi, the city`s red light district. The newspapers were not able to tell us what the policemen did there, but it was given out that the officers were satisfied with the results. What form these `results` took was not disclosed. However I remember an Urdu daily writing in its light column that the men wanted to go there again the next evening but a strong protest from police wives stopped the operation.

Today the religious parties are united politically and call themselves MMA. Good luck to them for putting their ideological differences aside. But long before this unity came about there was an association of theirs called the Milli Yakjehti Council. One day it decided that a jihad should be launched against obscenity, vulgarity and shamelessness, but it wanted the government to conduct it. Apparently the government was unable to espy obscenity, vulgarity and shamelessness anywhere, so the whole thing fizzled out. But I notice that the MMA too talks about it `if we come into power.`

The field for our type of jihad is so vast that you can have a new jihad every day and remain busy with it all the year round. If the new government would only appoint me as its adviser on the subject (preferably in Grade 22) I promise to suggest ever-new jihads which can be undertaken at a moment`s notice.

It is said that a jihad against an interfering and nosey press was on the anvil many times during the military regime, but somehow the regime could never bring itself about to begin it. Then, according to the government`s advisers from the World Bank there is need to launch a jihad against the low rates of petrol, gas, transport, etc. The only way to discourage the use of these luxuries is to bring about a sudden and substantial rise in their rates and solve the problem once and for all.

The Ministry of Education is quietly but persistently engaged in its old jihad against literacy. Its day and night efforts have managed to contain the national percentage of literacy at 20. Some unthinking critics of the government believe that the ministry can`t tell the difference between literacy and illiteracy, but that may be an exaggeration. Meantime the jihad against the teaching of un-Islamic subjects like science is proceeding apace.

Of course the final and biggest jihad -- the mother of all jihads -- is against that chronic cancer, democracy. They very mention of the word gives sleepless nights to some important sections of the population. It began soon after Pakistan came into being on the strength of democracy itself, and has been going on unabated ever since. From what the people have seen during the last 55 years, there seems to be a fair chance of its success.

#111 by dost-mittar
//...It was not only the muslim who eulogised the jihadis back then, the white man did so too....//

true. The Jihad child born out of unholy union between the white master and the islamic whore has grown up now and viciously biting back the master and the whore. If the situation wasn`t so tragic - the horrible hindoo would have been laughing its a** off. Now give the credit to the horrible hindoo when it is due - he did told you so.

And horrible hindoo is not as ``spineless`` as you think.

Here are some other articles with spirit similar to this one:

My Rath Yatras --- Some Misperceptions
by L. K. Advani

Good Governance === Some Misperceptions
by Narendra Modi

I wonder when they will appear on Chowk?

You get the idea. Here we have a concept that is being used in the most horrific way to torture non-muslims (and of course, naturally muslims as well). Instead of saying: we have gone mad, we need to reject comletely this whole business and its foundations from our history, we have this apologia for murder.

#104 by sadna on November 9, 2002 0:19am PT
//...armed jihad was a compulsion until 911 when a number of whites got killed and some angry whites got nasty. Daisycutters have elicited an `introspection` among noncave dwellers which millions dead and devastation in a neighbouring country could not manage to elicit in 20 years...///

Amen. Sadly for the non-cave dwelling believers - the Jihad chicken has come home, in more ways than one. The white masters are really mad and the ``cave-dwelling`` brothers are even madder. Visas and goodies from white masters have dried up and the islamic ``brothers`` have threatened to impose sharia, islamic banking and other assorted glorious islamic ``value systems``.

The ``introspection`` is too late now.

Godot,

I disagree with you completely. Perhaps you can extend your ideas on why you think that unflinching introspection is self loathing?

hamidm2 (90),

For you one sentence, as you interpret it, is a blot and nullifies the rest of the article. The author is not an apologist for Jihad. The understanding of this article, just as everything else in life, is open to interpretation. Your interpretation is diametrically opposite of mine. That`s all I have to say about it.

I don`t know any Pakistani, and I know quite a few, who approves the blasphemy law in Pakistan, considers women beneath men, or looks down on Hindus as a mere idolaters. Perhaps that is the fundamental difference between you and me: the company we keep. And you know what they say about company one keeps: a man is known by it.

Also, your agreeing with Jay (another form of company,) for me, defies rational thought and logic. Jay is, as you once very eloquently put it, a ``one legged syphilitic whore`` who claims to be a virgin and for him others are morally corrupt; he is a one-eyed hunchback who shamelessly calls others ugly without looking into the mirror. And you agree with him! To me, then, anyone writing on jihad is a lot more credible than those with your chain of thoughts and logic!!!

sadna

....... let`s not confuse jihad with a war of liberation or just any old plain old war fought for a just cause ...otherwise we will end up condemning folks like muhammad, patton, macarthur and sivaji .............war, in its purest form, is a nobel human endeavour ........... jihad, in any form, is bad ...........now if the guys in kashmir stopped bringing god and his prophet into their battles with the occupation army i would be all for supporting them ........ if only they were decent, hard drnking guys who went to church on sunday and fought monday through saturday ..........so let`s not generalize and confuse a just war with god-induced lunacy ............pretty soon our president bush is going to launch a just war to get rid of a mad man and knock some sense into the ummah ..... ar you going to label him a jihadi ? ............ remember- war can be good, jihad is always bad, and there is nothing wrong with killing your enemy as long as you don`t invoke god`s name while doing it ..................

re:#102 by ferozk
Thanks for your kind comments
Sridhar

The plain fact is that armed jihad was a compulsion until 911 when a number of whites got killed and some angry whites got nasty. Daisycutters have elicited an `introspection` among noncave dwellers which millions dead and devastation in a neighbouring country could not manage to elicit in 20 years.

Similarly Mr White Putin only said after the recent Moscow theatre incident `Russia will attack any country which offers even moral support to terrorists` and lo and behold a couple of days later Mr Najam Liberal Sethi wrote an editorial about how `nonstate actors` had unnecessarily involved themselves in the Chechen war, their selfish agenda leading to increased human cost of the Chechen war and persecution of the poor Chechens. Meanwhile, in other news those who continue to throw grenades at civilians and their elected chief ministers in J&K are still `dedicated and valorous` and on an average 20 die every day.

Jihadi rationalists are basically hynenas and jackals who have no problem scavenging for pickings until the White Lion comes out to hunt, at which time these hynenas and jackals suddenly acquire policy and the need to introspect. India should learn something from this.

The harsh truth is jihadi killing and dying has exactly the earthly consequences which any other killing and dying have, even if, brace yourselves, the killed is nonMuslim and the person dying is a Muslim jihadi. Those who indulge or condone killing and dying for any reason need to fully comprehend the consequences of these inhuman acts in this world, from which consequences stories of rewards in the next donot offer escape.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

freethinker: Islam is best, Muslims are bad is not acceptable logic. Muslims are bad because they followed Islam believing it the best while rest of the world followed evolution path of progress, justice and morality. Muslims followed a fixed path whereas others followed dynamic path, at least for the last 500 years. What stopped Muslims from following the same evolutionary path except Islam? If they followed the wrong meanings of theoretical Islam, wouldn`t it be better to not follow it at all thus excluding the probability of mistakenly following the wrong interpretation? This is what hamidm, nasah and myself are advocating - to seek solution elsewhere. Assuming you and author correct, the danger of mistake has terrible consequences in the case of Islam as the current state of affairs of Muslims exhibit. then you said:
[Another thought provoking line is, “Only by recognizing that the long term dividends of emulating the MIT, Harvard, and Oxford exponentially surpass….. Jihad Academies at Khost, Muridke, or Arora Khattak, we can make progress”. True, this indeed is noteworthy. ]
To me this is a terrible statement. First it talks of long term dividends as if short term dividends could be in favor of Akora Khattack and Muridke. There are no dividends for such Academies. Secondly author does not have the option of stating otherwise because that would be utter nonsense. Think about other options with regard to the above statement, such as “Only by rejecting the long term dividends of emulating the MIT, Harvard, and Oxford exponentially surpass….. Jihad Academies at Khost, Muridke, or Arora Khattak, we can make progress” or “Only by recognizing that the long term losses of emulating the MIT, Harvard, and Oxford exponentially surpass….. Jihad Academies at Khost, Muridke, or Arora Khattak, we are bound to retrogress”. They are absurd options and nobody would like to say them.
Islam is dangerous for Muslims due to the built in high probability of misinterpretation. There is no guarantee of things turning to good by following true and right interpretation either. As they say in Urdu: ``Musalmano, Iman kee rassi ko mazbooti se thamey raho............and keepyourself suspending directionlessly and aimlessly until pulled up by the rope to heavens and eternal life after death.

Re: rsidhar # 99

I agree with most of your observations and as a post-script, it should be added that the present crisis, in Islam, is a political crisis cloaked within religious arguments.

Islam and its interpreations have to understood in the context of the prevailing situation. It is like studying case law and creating precedents; each situation is different and cannot be decided on the basis of what happened in the past, but taking nuances of the situation into account, a better understanding is created towards solving the problem. To pursue this legal metaphor a bit more, Islam, like jurisprudence, has to interpretative based on the prevailing mores and values of the society it is existing within. It cannot be literal, because it is impossible to re-create the societial values, which existed nearly 1400 years ago and gave Islam its early ethos. It should be pointed out that Islam`s Golden Age resulted as a response to applying the teachings of Islam within a contempoary world and the early rulers of Islam did not hark to the past, but tried to deal with the issues facing Islam in a contextual framework of the day.

In this sense, Islam and its adherents cannot regress, because that will not solve the problems of Islam. It simply will not solve the problems, because the problems facing Islam 1400 years were different than the problems, which Islam is facing today. Problems, by their defination, are dynamic and have to resolved within their own merits and do not subscribe to simplified, formulaic and instant solutions. They have to be understood in their individual contexts and the nature of the problem has to disciphered in light of its own contradictions. For Islam to answer the questions facing it today, it has to start discovering what those questions are; if it cannot ask the right questions, it will never understand the problems facing it and thus, will be incapble of solving them.

Yes is much to be said about the statement that ``the past is the prologue``, but the past helps in understanding the future by offering insights or by shedding light on past experiences, which ease the task of the present. However, despite all the benefits of studying the past and learning from it, the future cannot be lived in the past! That is what Islam has to decide; it should look to the past for gaining inspiration for the future, but it must not look to the past as a subsitute and a remedy for the ills of the present ushering in a tommorow`s utopia.

I applaud you, Rsidhar! Your post was one of the more sane, rational and unbiased posts I have had the pleasure to read on Chowk in long time on serious issue!

Ciao

++

#25 by AmericanExpress on November 6, 2002 8:11pm PT

Do you really think Kashmir problem,political intricasies history of independent Princely state is the same as GUJRAT ??????

++

No they are not same. The Princely state you mention was ruled by a Hindu ruler who had signed an instrument of accession in which India had agreed to give special treatment to it.

In Gujarat there was provocation to kill. In Kashmir there was no provocation to Pakistan to attack Kashmir.

-einsteinwallah

re post 90:

when have papers like friday times and dawn spoken in favor of the blasphemy law or the hudood ordinance? do you have any idea of the physical threats journalists face when they speak out against such lunacy? easy to make statements like these when hidden behind the screens of a computer. much harder to stand up on pakistan chowk and say these things