Jihad – The Misperceptions

dost-mittar (#84),

I think it has a lot to do with putting up a front. I don`t think any father or mother however poor or illiterate will ``celebrate`` the death of a child (unless it`s a dysfunctional family). That is so inhuman.

A lot of it has to do with peer pressure, of being brainwashed by the leadership of whatever ``struggle`` their child is part of that he did it in the larger interests of the cause. The parents and family daren`t say that it was meaningless that their child died for fear of letting it down.

++

#14 by Rizwan on November 6, 2002 1:11pm PT

`Permission to fight is given to those against whom war is made, because they have been wronged. And Allah indeed has power to help those who have been driven out of their homes unjustly only for saying ``Our Lord is Allah.`` And if Allah did not repel some men by means of others, cloisters and churches and synagogues and mosques would have been pulled down wherein the name of Allah is oft remembered. And Allah will surely help him who helps Allah. Allah is indeed Powerful, Mighty.` (Al-Hajj 40-1)

This passage from the Holy Quran leaves no doubt whatever that a religious war is not permitted by Islam unless it is against a people who force another people to abjure their religion; unless, for instance, Muslims are forced to abjure Islam.

++

How many islamic jihadic wars were fought in past for ``another`` people who were being attacked primarily because of their religious belief?

I need just one example.

-einsteinwallah

godot

the author, another mealy mouthed apologist for islam, says, ``It would be unfair to mistrust the dedication and valour of the jihadis ``

...... you have to be a true believer or a total imbecile to get past this and still believe that he is sincere in getting over his fascination with the glory days of badr and the conquest of mecca ..........it is a stalling tactic ......... ``let`s fix dar-ul-aman and then we we destroy dar-ul-harb``........ most muslims are so full of their own piety and righteousness that they refuse to acknowledge that there might be something inherently wrong with their faith and value system .............. that`s the reason you cannot find three people in pakistan who are willing to publically declare that the blasphemy laws are a travesty and that women are people and that the poor pigs and hindoos are simply one of god`s creation ..........not to say that muslims are the only people who suffer from this debilitating disease ...... jerry falwell and pat robertson are prime examples of the crazy christians who have it equaly bad ............ but that does not absolve the ummah ............

................ we don`t need self-serving apologists to tell us that islam is good and that the muslims are bad ......... we need someone to tell us that, regardless of what the khulafa-i-rashiden did or said, it is not healthy to share your tent with your camel and beat your wife and break idols..............

re:#71 by faisaluno
You seem to get excited very fast. Did you read the article that you posted in its entireity? Tom Friedman goes on to say that Tamil diaspora realised the futility of violent struggle and has stopped helping these militants in Srilanka after LTTE was declared a terrorist organisation.
The Tamil struggle in Srilanka is entirely political. The LTTE suicide bombers never claimed to do these acts for the glory of hindu religion. They did it for their own narrow political end. Most (>99%) Tamilians (and certainly all level headed middle class Tamilians) in India do not approve of what LTTE has been doing. LTTE`s political patronage by Tamil politicians from India rapidly vanished after Rajiv Gandhi`s assasination, which was both traumatic and embarassing and shameful for Tamilians in India.
LTTE is the most ruthless terrorist organisation that has ever come into being. It humbled Indian Army and has kept Srilankan army at bay for several decades. It is however running out of steam. Recently, V.Prabhakaran, the LTTE supremo gave a press conference and showed interest in coming to an agreement. I think there is a truce right now. If there is something Islamic terrorists can learn, it is that no violent armed struggle ever lasts for ever and there comes a time when one has to find a peaceful solution. Violence never pays in the end.
Sridhar

If the author is not a hermaphrodite – the article is….

freethinker

So many people of diverse backgrounds have written so much on jihad that it seems to have lost its meaning. It has indeed become a word of hatred, violence, radicalism, and negativism. No matter who writes on jihad, he will not succeed in restoring it to any worthy station. It is time we left it alone.

Battles are fought day and night without waging a jihad. Communal killings take place almost incessantly without a mention of jihad and not many people take any notice of them either. Terrorism is not the sole monopoly of the “holy warriors”; many of those who are fighting terrorism now had committed terrorist acts in the past and will do so again if it served their purpose. Human beings are sadly selfish and ruthless in attaining their ends by whatever means. Pointing accusatory fingers at people whom we do not like is human nature.

September 11 was a human tragedy and cannot be justified whatever way you look at it. The perpetrators were terrorists.

That said and done, let me mention that the author wrote some poignant lines in his article. For example, “Social equality might be a fundamental tenet of the theoretical Islam but virtually non-existent in all Muslim countries”. How true? What we write so frequently about Islam is indeed about ‘theoretical Islam’, which is practiced in none of the Islamic countries. Many of the authors of such perceptive articles also do not practice what they write. The closest that any country has come to practicing the theoretical Islam in its social aspects, is our USA or several other countries in the west. Majority of the Muslims do not practice what they preach; what they practice frequently contravenes what they preach and what they write. I had concluded one of my Opinion Columns at the Pakistan Link (Human Rights in the Islamic Milieu – 2, September 20, 2002) by stating, “Islam in theory is so very different from Islam in practice indeed”.

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.

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

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

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

re: Terrorism and islam
My 2 cents on this.
I see 2 main issues here:
1. Failure of Islam to change with changing times. Even though the book is the same, its message has to be put in the context of our present day living. If chopping off someone`s hand for theft was unavoidable in medieval Arabia (even then i hate to think how it could be desirable), it cannot be practised today. However, interpratations of Qoran (Shariat?) has not kept pace with the changing times. Mullahs have been living in a time warp.
2. The nexus between clergy and the ruling elite in forcing the entire muslim Ummah to a certain view to serve their narrow ends, which in case of mullahs is to perpetrate their hold over the population and in case of ruling elite, is to keep ruling. It is well known that Clergy in saudi Arabia are all in the payroll of the Saudi Royal family and it is Saudi Arabia which is becoming the focus for the extreme views that is coming out of there. Even Egypt has clergy under state payroll and have been airing extreme view points. The two, clergy and the ruling elte have a symbiotic relationship. They seem to say: you rub my back and i will rub yours.
What is needed today is a reawakening by educated muslims who should try and isolate the violent elements and bring Islamic teachings to the modern context. Only a modern prophet can do it. But then, when such a prophet comes along, the whole islamic world will reject him as Prophet Md (PBUH) has already said there will not be another prophet after him. Quiet a dilemma!
Sridhar

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

++

#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: 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

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.

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

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.