Islam and Terrorism
On March 11, Mr. Brian Kelahan gave an excellent presentation on Islam and how it is practiced in central Asia. Brian said that a number of audience members were particularly concerned about whether there are Islamic leaders in the world who are choosing to challenge the “Islamic terrorist.” Brain said there are those who do challenge the position that Islam approves terrorism or suicide bombers.
Brian has submitted a short essay on the Sociology of Islam from an Indian scholar about this very topic. He describes an “Anti-Terrorism convention” held recently in India. Brian received his permission to post the comments to the FPL blog. Perhaps some members of the audience and/or public would be interested in his thoughts.
Deoband’s Anti-Terrorism Convention: Some Reflections
By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net The mammoth ‘Anti-Terrorism Convention’ organised atDeoband late last month, which brought together ulemafrom all over the country, has received wide mediacoverage. While smaller conventions of this sort havebeen organized by other ulema bodies in recent years,this one, unlike others, caught the attention of themedia particularly because it was organized by the Darul-Ulum Deoband, probably the largest traditionalmadrasa in the world, which large sections of themedia have been unfairly berating as the ‘hub’ of‘terrorism’. The speeches delivered at the convention have beenconsiderably commented on in the press. By and large,the non-Muslim press has focused almost wholly on theresolutions that were passed that labeled ‘terrorism’as ‘anti-Islamic’, leaving out other crucial issuesthat were raised by numerous ulema who spoke on theoccasion, particularly about Western Imperialism andZionism as major factors behind global ‘terrorism’,and the hounding of Muslim youth and mountingIslamophobic offensives across the world, includingIndia, in the name of countering ‘terror’. Muslimpapers have dealt with these issues fairlyextensively, but, following most of the speakers atthe convention, they have placed the blame for‘terrorism’ almost entirely on what they identify as‘enemies of Islam’, thus presenting a very one-sidedpicture. In short, media reporting about theconvention, by both the Muslim and non-Muslim media,has been inadequate and somewhat imbalanced. The samecan be said of several of the speeches made at theconvention. The presidential address to the convention, which wasalso circulated as a printed document, was deliveredby the conference’s organizer and rector of theDeoband madrasa, Maulana Marghubur Rahman. ‘We condemnall forms of terrorism’, he insisted, ‘and in this wemake no distinction. Terrorism is completely wrong, nomatter who engages in it, and no matter what religionhe follows or community he belongs to’. ‘Islam’, heannounced, ‘is a religion of mercy and peace’. Hence,terrorism or the killing of innocent people ‘istotally opposed to Islam’. He evoked the Quran toargue that Islam exhorts Muslims to behave well withpeople of other faiths if they do not oppress them, toabide by their treaties and agreements withnon-Muslims and not to let the injustice of anycommunity cause them to deviate from the path ofjustice. Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman argued that far from being‘anti-national’, numerous ulema and madrasas were inthe forefront of India’s freedom struggle. Dismissingcharges that madrasas were used for fomenting‘terrorism’, he insisted that they ‘promote love,peace, tolerance and patriotism’. He appealed to themadrasas to provide ‘proper guidance to their studentsso that they are not misused as agents to engage inany illegal activity in the name of Islam’, an obviousreference to certain radical Islamist outfits thathave sought, largely unsuccessfully, to make recruitsamong Indian Muslim youth. He suggested that in orderto counter the misapprehensions that many non-Muslimshave about madrasas, the managers of the madrasas mustestablish good relations with government officials andpeople of other faiths living in their vicinity. ‘Wemust not unnecessarily make or consider others as ourenemies’, he stressed. ‘Instead’, he advised, ‘we mustspread our message of love’. He also suggested thatmadrasas should improve their system of functioning,maintain proper accounts and focus on thecharacter-building of their students. Indians, Muslims as well as others, the Maulanadeclared, are ‘brothers’, and they have ‘jointlysacrificed for and contributed to the country’. Heappealed to all Indians to join hands to work forIndia’s ‘peace and development’. If the government ofIndia is really serious about combating terrorism, hestressed, it should be neutral in its approach tovarious communities, not suspect or target anyonesimply because of his religion, and cease houndinginnocent people, an obvious reference to the growingnumber of cases of police arresting and even killingMuslims in the name of countering ‘terrorism’. Helambasted what he termed as ‘Zionist forces’ forspreading terrorism throughout the world as a meansfor promoting Western and Israeli expansionism andimperialism, and even suggested that these forcesmight well be behind many terrorist attacks in India,which, he insinuated, had been deliberately, butwrongly, attributed to Muslims. He refused toacknowledge that Indian Muslims might engage interrorist activities, claiming that because this wouldhurt Muslims more than others ‘it is unrealistic andeven impossible for them to be terrorists’. Several other speakers at the convention repeated manyof the points that Maulana Marghub ur-Rahman had made.Like him, all of them argued that Islam did notsanction terrorism or the killing of innocents. Someused this argument to make the specious claim that, bydefinition, Muslims could not be terrorists, thusplacing the entire burden of global terrorism on whatthey called ‘anti-Islamic forces’, particularly‘Western Crusader’ and ‘Zionist’ groups. These forces,they alleged, were engaged in a global conspiracy todefame Islam and wrongly brand it as a violentreligion, while at the same time engaging instate-sponsored terrorism on a large-scale, as in thecase of the American devastation of Iraq andAfghanistan, or masterminding blasts and violentattacks which they had, so they alleged, wronglyblamed on Muslims simply to give them and Islam a badname. This, for instance, was the burden of the argumentmade by Maulana Noor Alam Khalil Amini, editor of theDeoband madrasa’s Arabic magazine ‘Ad-Dai’, in abooklet commissioned by Maulana Marghubur Rahmanspecially for the convention, which was distributed tothose present on the occasion. In a similar vein,Maulana Khalid Rashid Firanghi Mahali, a noted Islamicscholar from Lucknow, declared that ‘America is sowingthe seeds of terrorism all over the world’.‘Anti-Islamic forces’, he claimed, ‘are scared of theincreasing influence of Islam. That is why they claimthat Islam and terrorism go with each other’.Likewise, Maulana Mahmood Madani, senior leader of theJamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, denounced George Bush as ‘theworld’s biggest terrorist’. He castigated America andother Western powers for ’spreading hatred againstMuslims and Islam’. The final declaration of the convention ran on similarlines. It denounced the killings of innocents ascompletely ‘anti-Islamic’, no matter who theperpetrators were, Muslims or non-Muslims. It insistedthat Islam ‘teaches peace, equality, justice andservice to others’. It failed, however, to recognisethe very existence of terrorism in the name of Islamengaged by some self-styled Islamist groups. Instead,it appeared to put the burden of terrorism entirely onthe shoulders of those whom it saw as inimical toIslam. ‘Governments of most countries’, it announced,‘are toeing the line of Western and imperialistpowers, and in order to please them are behaving in adespicable manner with their citizens, particularlyMuslims’. It rued the fact that India’s internal andexternal policies were being increasingly shaped bythese anti-Islamic powers, who ‘have unleashed untoldterror’ in countries as far as Afghanistan, Iraq andSouth America. It condemned the hounding of innocentIndian Muslims and their religious institutions in thename of countering ‘terrorism’, while lamenting thatthe Indian state took no action against the realperpetrators of crimes against humanity. It appealedto the Muslims of India to ‘follow their establishedtradition of love and respect for the country and bealert so that no anti-Islamic and anti-national forcescould use them as agents’. Finally, it called for allIndians to unite ‘for upholding justice, the rule oflaw and secularism’. The significance of the Deoband convention can begauged from the fact that various Muslim organizations(including several non-Deobandi groups), as well asHindu and secular bodies have welcomed it, althoughsome have rightly expressed the wish that it shouldhave been organized much earlier. The announcement bythe organizers of the convention that similar meetingswill be held across the country is indeed a veryheartening development. One wishes this step would bereciprocated by Hindu religious organizations, who,too, need to take a clear stand against the terrorismbeing actively stoked by hardliner Hindu groups. Onealso hopes that the appeals for cooperation withsecular non-Muslims that have been made at theconvention are accepted by the state and civil societygroups and movements, who can explore creative ways ofengaging with the ulema for working for Muslimempowerment, inter-communal harmony, improving India’srelations with Muslim countries (particularlyPakistan), promoting dialogue with Kashmiri groups andcountering radical Islamist forces from across theborders. That said, some burning questions still remain.Writing in the Urdu “Hindustan Express”, ShakeelRashid asks, ‘Why is it that the ulema were silent forthe last two decades when Muslim youth were beinghounded in the name of combating terrorism and whencommunal violence, which is also a form of terrorism,was being unleashed on a massive scale?’. For anexplanation, which he obviously does not agree with,he refers to Syed Arshad Madani, till recently thePresident of the Deobandi Jamiat ul-Ulema-e Hind, ashaving declared at the convention that despitewidespread anti-Muslim violence in India for the last60 years, the Deoband madrasa ‘had not brought thecommunity together’, but that now it was forced to, inthe form of the convention, because madrasas are beingincreasingly targeted. What Shakeel Rashid wasprobably suggesting was that the ulema were cominginto the open to protest mainly because now, unlikebefore, their own institutions are under attack andthat they themselves are being branded as‘terrorists’. Another critical issue raised by the commentator YusufAnsari, also in the “Hindustan Express”, is that noneof the ulema who condemned terrorism at the Deobandconvention ‘named a single terrorist organization andcondemned it’. Ansari sees it as unfortunate that theulema failed to explicitly mention, leave alonecondemn, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and similar groups inPakistan and Kashmir, some of which have also nowreportedly extended their activities into India, whoare ‘misusing the name of Islam to spread terror’.‘The question arises’, Ansari writes, ‘as to why thoseulema who condemn terrorism as anti-Islamic did notsay a thing about these groups’. ‘Is it’, he asks,‘that in their eyes their actions do not constituteterrorism?’ ‘Every speaker at the convention’, henotes, ‘condemned America for its terrorism’, but why,he asks, ‘did they not themselves also introspect andlook within?’. Further, he rightly adds, while theulema denounced the massive killings of Muslims inIraq, Afghanistan and Palestine by America andAmerican-backed regimes, they remained curiouslysilent on the massacre of Muslims by fellow Muslims,be it by the late Saddam Hussain in Iraq, or inDarfur, Sudan, where several hundred thousand Muslimshave been killed and rendered homeless in adevastating intra-Muslim civil war. In conclusion, Ansari aptly comments, ‘It cannot belogically sustained that, on the one hand, terrorismis condemned as anti-Islamic, and, on the other hand,silence is maintained about those [Muslims] engaged insuch anti-Islamic activities’. ‘It is not enough’, heinsists, ‘to denounce terrorism as anti-Islamic.Terrorist organizations must also be specificallynamed and explicitly and sternly condemned’. Theirfailure to do so, he suggests, had kept madrasas in’suspicion’. Yet, despite these apt comments by critics, theDeoband ‘anti-terrorism’ convention is indeed a verywelcome development. One hopes it is not just aone-time event, but that, as the organizers havepromised, it is but the first of a series of suchmeetings to be held across the country in order togalvanise a truly popular movement involving peoplefrom different communities jointly struggling againstall forms of terrorism, whether by the state, groupsor individuals, and irrespective of the religious orcommunal affiliation of its perpetrators. As one ofthe speakers at the convention, Maulana Abdul AlimFaruqi, very appropriately put it, the struggleagainst terrorism demands that ‘Hindus and Muslimsshould unitedly work to take the country forward in aspirit of love, brotherhood and unity’. ____________________________________________________________________________ Yoginder Sikand is the author of ‘Bastions of theBelievers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India’
(Penguin, New Delhi, 2005).
