Qadri's 'fool them twice' curriculum

No curriculum could have saved this family from radicalization. source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/missing-muslim-bradford-family-parents-missing-sisters-do-not-support-their-actions-1506913

 

 

 

Families fleeing the UK to join ISIS is no joke. But recruiting a rent-a-cleric to issue new fatwas shows the naivete of the UK establishment trying to deal with this crisis. The infamous Dr. Tahirul Qadri has been the go-to fatwa guy for some Whitehall pen pusher or a very incompetent think tank. A few years ago, he issued a fatwa against terrorism, which is in the same league as fatwa against snowmen. Those who ordered the fatwa should at least have changed the title of the memo that was circulating in the internal emails.

 

They could have asked for a 'fatwa against evil', overarching all bad things.

 

Now comes the latest gimmick. A curriculum to combat radicalization in Muslim children. According to Tahirul Qadri, this should be made compulsory in British schools. Apparently this publication contains all the counter-arguments to successfully combat the poisonous ideology of ISIS.

 

Only if things were that simple. It is easy to churn out booklets and articles on any subject. Internet is full of such expert blogs and websites which are always used as vehicles for advertising other products. The product in this curriculum is not peace or counter-terrorism, it is the author himself.

 

Mr. Qadri is a proven liar and cheat, who has also been hired by the Pakistani establishment for his rabble rousing skills in his native country to pressurize the democratically elected Sharif government into subservience.

 

Qadri addressing a crowd of his followers from his 'container' during the 2014 anti-government sit-in. (source:http://journalismtimes.com/actual-pm-pakistan-shahbaz-sharif-dr-tahir-ul-qadri/#prettyPhoto)

 

 

He doesn't live in Pakistan, but his livelihood appears to be based on the Minhaj foundation network of educational establishments in Pakistan. He is a skilled orator, and a master manipulator; bread and butter for the evangelical clerics from southern Punjab. He is extremely ambitious and has rose to prominence thanks to the superstitious nature of the 'sufi' Barelvi Islam. Qadri is famous for sharing spiritual experiences and dreams which somehow result in increased revenue for his Minhaj foundation.

 

Barelvis form the majority of the Pakistan diaspora in the UK. Most of the immigrants who came to the UK decades ago belong to this sect which takes its name after the city of Bareli in India where the founder of the sect, Ahmad Raza Khan was born. Ahmad Raza spent most of his life fighting a sectarian battle against the Deobandi and Wahabi clerics. His fatwas against these sects make an entertaining read; full of floral language and meticulously outlining all possible scenarios where the heresy of those infidels could be identified and shunned. Takfir was a favourite pass time of an average cleric in pre-partition India. It became a vocation after Saudi influence reached the newly found laboratory of Islam, Pakistan.

 

Mr. Qadri is a follower of Ahmad Raza, although many of his co-religionist Barelvis also have declared him an infidel and a crook.

 

Qadri was too much of a maverick to stick with the crowd. He carved out his own little sect which revolves around his person; a pseudo-sufi cult which has a religious face, Minhajul Quran foundation and political face, the PAT (Pakistan Awami Tahreek). His followers consider him to be the Sheikh-ul-Islam, a grand title for an intellectual pygmy. Some even elevated him to the title of the 'Mujaddid', the reformer of this era, but this claim would have been a step too far. To date, he has abstained from proclaiming this title for himself.

 

Mr. Qadri has been busy producing booklets on various contemporary and classical Islamic issues, none worthy of any scholarly merit, especially nothing to shift the Pakistani Muslim mindset to a better more enlightened understanding of the world. His spiritual and intellectual heritage is based on meaningless debates on matters of history and dogma which have no relevance to the modern world. He has tried to break free from that mould to appeal to a more educated audience with some success, but he  still belongs to  the same tradition which has given nothing to the Muslim world but endless schisms and divisions. They can't even agree on sighting of the new moon on the same day!

 

Mr. Qadri's tolerance mantra is not only superficial, it is a deception. As a young cleric of rising fame during General Zia's dictatorship, Qadri claims to have forced the dictator's hand to create the infamous blasphemy laws. According to Qadri himself, not even children or insane people could be spared their life if they had insulted the Prophet of Islam.

 

Qadri taking the credit for introducing the death penalty for Blasphemy in Pakistan (source http://www.downvids.net/mullah-tahir-ul-qadri-caught-red-handed-telling-the-most-blunt-434499.html)

 

 

Freedom of religion and expression is a fundamental human right and the Quran enjoins all Muslims to establish and safeguard this right for all mankind. Tahirul Qadri's ideological foundations are still deeply rooted in the small-minded distortion of Islam that indoctrinates all its followers to keep the avenue of violence open, albeit theoretical. It is this fundamentally flawed ideology which he cannot correct without reneging on his own claims and more importantly, to go against the very core of his barelvi beliefs.

 

The most recent ISIS recruits, three Bradford sisters and their children are a typical example of the impotence of this so-called sufi Islam. Barelvis have long been loosing ground to the more puritanical Wahabi beliefs in all over the world. First and second generations of many immigrant families have been abandoning their highly ritualistic, traditional Pakistani Islam to join the more puritanical and seemingly more intellectual wahabi/salafi Islam.

 

They keep what is common between the two sects; lack of tolerance for those who criticise Islam and absolute rejection for those who chose to leave Islam. According to them death is the only Islamic punishment for those who insult Islam or become apostates. Why do they act surprised when some of their children take such horrendous beliefs to their logical conclusion and travel to Syria?

 

Islam is need of reform and a return to the fundamental truths and principles of freedom and respect as outlined in the Quran. And for that to happen, selfish and opportunist clerics like Qadri must be challenged. They have fooled their followers for too long. Will the British public, including the British Muslims continue to play fools for such charlatans?

Jihadi Johns and Jihadi Janes

The so-called 'Jihadi' John. image courtesy telegraph.co.uk

As long as the narrative of Muslim victimization by the West will prevail among the Muslim youth , cases like that of Jihadi John and of absconding would-be-Jihadi-brides will keep on happening.

 

It is easy for organisations like CAGE to blame the security agencies for exploiting Emwazi and others like him for some vague, half-baked undercover operations. But this stance only reinforces the view that many bright, young Muslim men and women are being viewed as the enemy without any justification. I for one cannot believe this narrative.

 

We can see a thriving and diverse, young, Muslim subculture in all major cities of the country. Teenagers, university students, graduate workers and young skilled migrants from all over are thrown together in Islamic societies, mosque study circles, sheesha lounges, snooker clubs etc.

 

Some of these gatherings are either run by or are frequented by politically motivated Islamists. Add to this mix the poisonous Salafist/Wahabi preaching and you get a generation of cultural narcissists who have lost their minds to the myth of a global Islamist state.

 

IS may be condemned in these circles, but there will be some who will marvel at its successes. Israeli atrocities, the massacre of the Rohingya people, the Chinese suppression of the Uyghurs and the drone attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Afghanistan are also hot topics in such gatherings.

 

Young girls wishing to be empowered look to break free from a South Asian/Middle Eastern patriarchy only to fall prey to the promises of an even more misogynistic radical cult.

 

We did not lose these teenagers after the intervention by MI5. In fact, a majority of these gap-year Jihadis have surfaced in Syria to the shock and horror of their families as well as to their respective governments.
 

 

We had lost them between their mosques and University campuses.
 

 

MI5 picked on only the most rotten ones. I do not say that the over-zealous security agencies are not to blame for pushing a few psychopaths over the edge; but that they are also guilty of entrapping some dimwit fantasists and in doing so, providing the media with an all-you-can-eat buffet of potential Islamophobic headlines.

 

Parents, Imams and charismatic preachers are the main culprits. If your faith does not offer you reconciliation between your spiritual needs and the world you live in, and pitches you against the very society you inhabit, that faith needs to be discarded. These young people have been fed this dogmatic faith at home, at their mosques and in their university's Islamic society.

 

Regardless of what the 'moderates' among the Sunni and Shia clerics say to condemn ISIS and the wayward youth who go and join them, the real problem still remains.

 

Why is that hundreds of Islamic Organisations in the UK have failed to gain consensus on the most basic of issues. i.e., freedom of conscience. Those who have spoken against the issues of apostasy and blasphemy have been sidelined. The mainstream is pretending its best to reform, but there is no evidence of actual reform taking place. If over 20% of Muslims feel some kind of sympathy for the Charlie Hebdo murderers, many would have only condemned it conditionally.

 

I say this because the 'Preacher Circuit' of Muslim clerics around the UK is overwhelmingly represented by political Islamists. People who can produce moderate views for the consumption of the others, but for their own congregations they speak about the Utopian 'Islamic state' where punishments for apostasy, blasphemy and adultery/homosexuality would be carried out. Such preachers are routinely barred from university campuses but their notoriety only helps their impact online.

 

As long as we have such preachers who are deluding their audiences about the ideal Islamic state we cannot feel safe. We need to challenge these people publicly, in their congregations, on their TV channels and websites and twitter-feeds. A robust and aggressive theological debate which should be led by reasonable Muslims themselves is the best way forward. When they are defeated ideologically at home, we will be able to defeat them overseas as well.
 

 

Guardian's Blogging the Quran: One of the most effective ways of bringing the debate within Islam to the public.

 

 

Our Media can help by allowing the reformists to have their say against such hate preachers and by hosting and publishing such debates for all to make up their own minds about Islam and Islamism.

Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, One of the leading reform movements in Islam is based in the UK. The current head of the movement, Hazrat Khalifatul Masih, Mirza Masroor Ahmad has called for greater scrutiny of the content of what is being said by the clerics. Also, he has advised that law enforcement agencies should be armed and ready for any attacks on the targets at home. In his speech at a major peace symposium last year, his Holiness also pointed out to the fact that ISIS has a continuous and robust supply line of arms and other resources.

 

Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Khalifatul Masih V

 

 

Hazrat Khalifatul Masih V will be speaking again at a similar event on 14th of March this year.

Cluedo for the lamenters of Asma Bint Marwan

 

It appears that a few historians and critics of Islam have yet to understand the value of the Islamic scholarship on history and its transmission through the ages. Islamic historical sources can be divided into three categories.

 

Seerah (Sira) or the biographies of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). These contain orally transmitted history of the life and times of the Prophet. Ibn Ishaq's Sira is the earliest known record of Holy Prophet's life, but no known transcripts survived. We rely on Ibn Hisham's rendering of Ibn Ishaq's manuscripts for reference.

 

 

Hadith and their commentaries. All narrators of these prophetic sayings and incidents from his and his companions' lives are recorded in chronological order before narrating the story or quotation.

 

 

Tafseer and other early scholarly works: Early books on Quranic exegesis also contain some historic materials not found on other books.  

It has been well established principle of Islamic scholarship that in the matter of Shariah (laws, do's and dont's) Sira books cannot be relied upon due to the poor transmission of the events from the time of the Prophet. That is why Imam Hanbal, one of the first jurist Imams specifically indicated his mistrust of Ibn Ishaq Sira for deciding on the matters of jurisprudence.

 

Quran remains the unaltered and unadulterated Word of God in a Muslim's eyes; the source of dispute within Islam is not the words of Quran, but what they mean? And to the more literalistic, Orthodox Sects, these words cannot mean anything more than what the Prophet or his companions or some esteemed Imams have already said.

 

This not only provides ammunition to the endless ongoing schisms within Islam, but also helps fuel the Islamophobic propaganda by the bigots.

 

From the most violent Shia-Sunni war to the ridiculous debates on whether God has hands and feet, all disputes are deeply rooted in a bunch of texts which require constant scrutiny and criticism.

 

I keep hearing and reading about the vengeful killings of some 'esteemed' satirist poets in Medina and Makkah ordered by the Prophet Muhammad.

 

Tom Holland and Douglas Murray have both mentioned Asma bint Marwan, a Jewish poetess of Medina who lampooned the Prophet and was executed by one of his companions.

 

The argument goes that Charlie Hebdo attack was not so out of character, considering the founder of Islam himself did not tolerate any satire aimed at him.

 

But the fact is that what these commentators and scholars consider to be a fact, isn't actually true.

 

When you read the story of Asma's alleged killing, it becomes clear that this was a poorly fabricated tale. Firstly, this incidence was only reported by Ibn Ishaq and Waqidi in their Sira and not in the more authentic books of Hadith.

 

One may say that this was a deliberate omission by the Hadith collectors, but then you will find many other Ahadith in their collections which could have been discarded for the same purposes. This is simply not the scholarly tradition of the collectors of Hadith. They tested all narrations based on two criteria.

 

a. Chain of narrators, which must be continuous and sound.

 

b. The content of the story. Which must match between different chains of narrators.

 

Even then, the Hadith scholars would class the narrations as weak, doubtful, reliable, authentic etc., based on their own opinions. Debates on individual hadith reports have raged on ever since; usually it is one of the links in the 'chain' which is found unsound, unreliable, old, suffering from amnesia or just a habitual fabricator. Very few Ahadith have been spared this criticism.

 

In the presence of such an unforgiving evaluation, most of these sensational stories about magic, jinns, blasphemous poets and poetesses and imagined satanic verses can be proved as fabrications or misheard, misremembered or confused accounts.

 

Take the tale of Asma bint Marwan. According to the Sira literature she is said to have been killed barely a year and half into Hijrah, by a blind man, in the middle of the night, in her own home.

 

The blind man was Umair ibn Adiyy according to Ibn Ishaq.

But Al-Qastalani states that according to Ibn Duraid the assassin was called Ghashmir.

Another source Suhaili reveals that she was murdered by her own husband.

Yet Al-Qastalani also opined that she may have been killed by her own people.

 

But lets for once imagine that it was the blind Umair who killed Asma the poetess with the sword, in her house.

 

But another historian states that Umair did not kill Asma, but his own sister, Binte Adiyy.

 

The murdered was blind. The most popular version of the story says that he felt his way into Asma's house, found her, identified her and then plunged a blade into her chest. Or was it his sister? Indeed he was blind.

 

But so are those who actually believe that this event took place.

 

OK, say that in the presence of such contradictory stories, one or two mavericks still wish to rely on this story as fact.

 

Consider this..

 

It is year 2 After Hijra. Muslims are in a bitter conflict with the Meccans. The battle of Badr has already taken place.  Banu Qanuqa, one of the Jewish tribes of Medina have denounced the treaty with the Muslims and have been expelled.

 

But why would Muslims start a conflict with their fellow Jewish citizens who remain their allies barely a year into their treaty of Medina. Such murders would certainly have antagonised the proud Jewish tribes and given them a reason to rebel.

 

We know for a fact that Kaa'b bin Ashraf was executed for treason around the same time. He was a leader Banu Nadir Jews in Medina, but his guilt was so obvious that no one dared to defend him or dispute the decision.

 

In short, Hadith books do not mention the assassination of Asma or Abu ifak (another alleged satirist), there is no concrete evidence of the event every taking place. All the circumstantial evidence is against it.

 

And above all, the Prophet of Islam, May peace be upon him, would never have punished those who attacked his character. If you know the man, you will also come to respect and love his nobility, forgiveness and sense of justice.

 

Charlie Hebdo Terror Attack: Nothing to do with Islam, but something to do with the Imams.

You can read and hear a range of reactions from the public on the Charlie Hebdo terror attack. All sane voices, Muslims and others have condemned it.

 

Muslims will say that this is a terrible atrocity. Some will use it as yet another proof that ISIS and Al-Qaeda have nothing to do with Islam.

 

 

Our moderate leaders and organizations will condemn it as an attack on free speech. Most of them will also say that this has nothing to do with Islam. Far-right groups, religious bigots and populist columnists will blame Islam, Muslims and Immigration policies for the attack.

 

 

And then there are two groups which will use this as another ‘told you so’ moment to further their agenda of hatred and intolerance.

 

 

On one hand, we have the perpetrators of the attack and their supporters, who believe that their religion justifies such violence. They would say that Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists had crossed all bounds when they mocked the Prophet of Islam and their religion in such derogatory cartoons over the years. They had it coming.

 

 

The other group, the militant atheists will say that all religion including Islam are backward and superstitious. Their pontiff-in-chief Richard Dawkins says that not all religions are violent, only Islam is. And yes, Charlie Hebdo and their likes had it coming because our society is too scared to insult or ban Islam.

 

 

Blame the religion of course. How logical! 

 

 

I am going through the back catalogue Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon covers. I never saw one of them before, and do not wish to be subjected to such vulgarity again. It is a veritable collection of cheap humour masquerading as journalism. Graffiti has a place in human history, but it belongs to the doors and walls of public toilets, not on your local news stand.

 

 

Why would anyone need to insult a religion is beyond me. But if they want to do so, I would rather be reading, viewing or listening to something less offensive.

 

 

But there are those who are compelled to mock and ridicule the ideas they don’t like. 

 

You can mock politicians for their behavior or policies. You can ridicule a celebrity for the latest fad they are into. Or you can make poignant observations through the medium of cartoons to draw your viewer’s attention to a controversial subject. And there are no limits to what you want to express. From the sublime to the blasphemous, you can do what you like. As a viewer or a reader, I can choose not to read or view such works. As a Muslim, this is what Quran tells me to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will be very curious to learn the views of certain Imams of mosques of various denominations in the UK on this subject. I suspect that a majority of them would rather not express themselves honestly in the media. The truth is very uncomfortable to both these Imams and those politicians who go to them begging for votes every election season.

 

Most orthodox Muslim scholars do support very draconian punishments for the act of blasphemy. 

 

This has to change. Quran does not consider blasphemy as a crime. It is a sin of course, the punishment of which if not repented, will be in the afterlife.

 

 

 

But if you look at certain interpretations of some well-known scholars, and you will be surprised that their opinions contradict the Quran.

 

Mufti Obaidullah Qasmi of Darul Uloom Deoband  writes

 

‘The death punishment assigned for blasphemy is agreed by all Islamic scholars of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jama’ah and, is normally covered in Kitabul Hudud in Islamic juridical texts’.

 

 

Deoband school of though is followed by a large number of Muslims from the Indian sub-continent.

 

The more ‘moderate’ Barelvi sect which makes up a large proportion of the Immigrant Pakistani Diaspora in Britain is no different.

 

Sadanand Dhume of the Wallstreet Journal observes in a recent news report

 

‘ Clerics from Pakistan’s majority Barelvi stream of Islam—widely regarded as more tolerant than the rival Deobandi school associated with the Taliban—are among the loudest defenders of the country’s blasphemy laws.’

 

 

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws condemn the accused to death by hanging.

 

 

Same is true for the wide range of Sunni and Shia sects which have sway over the Muslim world.

 

 

Such interpretations of Quran which ignore its actual content but rely on the various medieval interpretations imposed upon it through the centuries have to be rejected. Ahmadiyya Muslim movement has denounced such notions of violence in the name of religion for many decades now. And it is heartening to see more and more Muslims coming closer to our way of understanding the Quran.

 

 

I am happy that our Muslim friends will stand up and condemn this horrendous and murderous attack, but please also ask the Imams and clerics in your mosques to denounce the ideas of punishments for blasphemy and apostasy in their Friday sermons.

 

 

For Muslims, this is another opportunity to think and question their faith leaders. This menace and hatred ISIS and Al-Qaeda have manifested in their extreme acts may need to be rooted out form their own mosques and homes first.

To kill the Swine..

قصہ سات خنزیروں کا http://t.co/buwN5JgC0s #PeshawarAttack

— Lutf (@Lutfislam) December 18, 2014

From the book 'Revelation Rationality, Knowledge and Truth'

The real task assigned to the Promised Christ in this prophecy was to purify the human society from inhuman behaviour and some evil habits which the swine symbolizes. There are many animals and birds which steal the fruits of the farmer's labour for the sake of their survival but do not destroy the crops and trees just for the fun of it. The swine stands out among all the animals in this destructive tendency. The swine is also notorious for eating the corpses of its young ones. No other non-marine animals are known to devour their young ones when they die. A bloodthirsty lion, or even a ferocious wolf, will rather die of hunger, woefully sitting beside the dead bodies of their brood, than to even dream of eating their flesh. Dogs do not eat the corpses of their dead puppies either. Pigs and boars, it should be remembered, are vegetarians, yet by some devilish instinct they relish eating the corpses of their young ones. Evidently therefore, the message implied in this prophecy has to be to wage a Holy War against the perverted habit of humans to be inclined to genocide and to feel free to usurp the rights of the weak. The pig's habit of eating its own piglets could be likened to the child abuse of the modern age. Child abuse may be directed against one's own children or against the children of others, either way it is swinish in character. Recently it has become a subject of common talk in modern society, so needs no further elaboration. No other animal can match humans in this ugliness.

Peshawar Massacre: Who will avenge our children, and how?

In Peshawar, the Army Public School must have been a prestigious institution. A place in the school will ensure good education fit for middle-class children. Today the school was attacked by seven Taliban terrorists who probably never saw the inside of a proper school. They went around asking who were the children of Army personnel and shot them dead. This must have been tiresome and slow as many children were not from  military families. Then, they killed indiscriminately.
 

In anger and desperation, I followed the twitter feed and various websites for more details. With each update, the count increased, my heart sank lower and lower.

 

I  remembered today a retired Christian officer from Pakistan Army and two civilians who I met a long time ago. He was a proud cavalry man if I remember correctly, the two civilians were much more intriguing.
 

In the early-1990s, in my college days I had the opportunity to spend some days in a Pakistan Army guest house in Rawalpindi. It was adjacent to the 'Artillary Mess' which offered lounging and dining for the officers. Here I met Major Anthony. He must have been in his late 60s then. He told me the stories of his younger days, when he used to study at Gordon College, run by the Christian missionaries in Rawalpindi. He used to be a long distance runner in his college days. The college was famous for its sporting and academic excellence. He remembered fondly how the students finally persuaded an ageing professor to get married. They found him a match, another teacher from Lahore. They celebrated the marriage in style. The whole college went to Lahore and brought Mrs Professor back in the best wedding precession he Anthony ever took part in.
 

'Those were the good old days'. He used to say.

 

He never mentioned the nationalization of the college in the 70s and its inevitable decline. Anthony also remembered vividly his great luck, when as a young officer in the Army, he was appointed as the protocol officer to the visiting Queen Elizabeth during the Ayub Khan dictatorship.

 

'Those were the good old days', he would say.

 

Then his conversation would move to how he lives his retired life in peace and how his wife is still enamoured with the Royal family and collects all the memorabilia she can get her hands on.
 

I remember him well, because I never met anyone like him since. I met other Pakistani Christians, mostly from disadvantaged backgrounds. And I felt ashamed to see their plight. Post-Islamization era Pakistan is no place for minorities. No respect, no life.


In the same Army mess, I once saw two young men. Confident, educated and civilians. One day, they dropped by for a cup of tea with a friend, and they found me in the sitting room watching TV. Greetings were exchanged. They wore shalwar qameez and waist-coats and had beards. I knew the type from my personal experience. Middle class, religious types. 'Jamaat-e-Islami' types. I sat with them while they chatted away with their friend. One of them mentioned the conspiracies being hatched against the Ummah by the Jews. It was a common excuse for all the misfortunes of Pakistan.

One of the bearded gentlemen mentioned the Protocol of the elders of Zion. 'They (Jews)  buy out all the copies of the book as soon as it is published'. I had heard of the book and must have read about its content by that age, but never took it too seriously. But this man was making his argument with such force that I still remember the whole meeting. Both of the visitors believed in a global conspiracy, Pakistan being its prime target. They left after tea. Their friend who remained behind mentioned that both his friends were in ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence agency.
 

There was a Pakistan where Major Anthony thrived, made a life and retired with honour and dignity. And then there was a Pakistan of conspiracy theorists, religious zealots who fantasized themselves to be playing a great game.

And these middle-class Jamaatia types had now a foothold in Pakistani deep state. ISI was swamped by such ideological zealots, both uniformed and civilians. Zia era Islamization had a profound impact on the composition of the ranks in Pakistan Army. Megalomaniacs like ISI's DG, Gen. Hameed Gull inherited the hubris of Afghan 'Jihad' victory and created a monster which no one could tame, even the ISI.

As a college and university student, I witnessed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan and its slow creep into Pakistan from the frontier region. Like a damp patch on a wall, it keeps growing, gathering mould. Taliban  were now accepted as genuine and rightful rulers of Afghanistan. ISI had its allies providing the much needed strategic depth against India, while they kept mutilating and maiming the minds of a whole generation of Afghans and Pakistanis.

The generals who resisted a coup during the successive, spineless democratic governments had kept a strong control on all the things that mattered to them. They nurtured a poisoned generation which fought a proxy war in Kashmir. I knew another middle-class Jamaatia-type in university who trained for Jihad over the summer holiday and was killed while crossing the line of control in Kashmir. I knew many more who didn't want to go, but were happy to glorify those 'brothers' who went and became martyrs.

There are Jamaatia types and then there are the Taliban types. Jamaatias are middle-class, educated, from the urban centers of Punjab and KPK. They are happy to facilitate the lesser classes to pick up the gun and fight for whichever Jihad is underway at the time, the Taliban types; from the tribal belt or rural Punjab. They are the side product of a village welfare system, where the Madrassah takes on the surplus child from a poor family. The child eats leftovers, gets abused and radicalized.

The same abused, radicalized children grew up, and in the name of a fantasy cause, murdered over a hundred middle-class children in cold blood in Peshawar yesterday.

Pakistan seems to have woken up after this massacre. Only a year ago, the same city saw over 120 Christian worshippers killed in a similar attack on All Saints Church. But no one cares for them. No revenge for the Christians. Almost 100 Ahmadis perished in Lahore in 2010, and it went unpunished even when one of the assailants was handed over to the police.

There will be revenge for the children, for right or wrong reason. This will bring an end to the Taliban fundamentalist at least in the tribal areas for now.

But who will punish the middle-class Jamaati types who have caused this mess in the first place?

--------------------------




Follow me @lutfislam 

Quran and the West - A history of prejudice.

When UKIP’s Lord Pearson says that Muslims should address the violence in the Quran, he is most definitely not pretending to be ignorant. He should know that there is a counter narrative available for those who wish to listen; that of a peaceful, non-political Islam in which Quran and the Sunnah (conduct of the Prophet of Islam) still hold a central, fundamental position.

Even Lord Pearson’s critics can’t help but defend his ‘intellectual’ message.

Andrew Brown says that in a ‘literal sense’ the Quran does contain an ‘unpleasant and violent political message’. I wonder what exactly he means by the phrase ‘in a literal sense’. What is literal? Is it ‘taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or exaggeration.’ as Google informs us?

Or in the case of the Quran it must mean contextomizing the text?. i.e., the literal reading of the Quran which teaches its readers a violent political message can only be done if each ‘problem’ verse is read in its usual and most basic sense… without any context: Both historic and textual.

Let us discuss a bit of historic context.

The first contact of the Muslims with the West was a hostile one. The Byzantine Empire shrank and eventually retreated under the onslaught of Muslim armies from the time of Umar, the second Caliph. Since then, misrepresenting Islam has become an age old western tradition.

We have a Greek-Syriac text from the time of Umar which informs its readers of a ‘false prophet of the Saracens’ whose armies have invaded Palestine.

That was an inevitable, unavoidable war. Empires did not suffer barbarian tribes for too long before sending armies to neutralize them. But these were no barbarians. They were a society of converts to a religion which taught morality and required its followers to proselytize it to the world. A clash was inevitable. And for the Byzantines, it resulted in a defeat.

By now you must be wondering why I am digressing from the issue of context to the problematic Quranic verses. If you want that discussion, pick up a copy of the Quran and a book on the Sira of the Prophet.

I want to discuss the historical context of these periodic statements put out by politicians and academics about revising the Quran, discarding some of it, denouncing it, even banning it. That is the real problem here.

So where were we? Yes, Islam’s encounters with the Byzantine empire...

Centuries later, by the time Islamic civilization was in decline, Orientalist missionaries started producing literature on Islam. They belonged to many denominations of the Christian faith, but had one thing in common. They could not bear to accept any virtues in the Holy Prophet or his message.

According to them the rise of Islam had nothing to do with the actual message of the Quran. Socio-economically speaking, Islam was a product of an Arab renaissance of sorts. With a culture in love with its language and tribes taking pride in their poets – A nation was aching to unite under a cause to challenge the Byzantine and Persian Empires who had dismissed them as illiterate nomads for too long.

Add to the mix a poet who aspired to be a prophet the same as those who came to the Israelites.

D C MacDonald writes about how Quran came into being;

‘Muhammad’s brain had for long been treasuring up such things (sic. segments of Old Testament); but treasuring them up with the most singular, most unparalleled inaccuracy; and then making them over with the utmost freedom of imagination.’

Take SW Koelle for example, another 19th century Orientalist who faithfully reproduces passage after passage from Ibn e Ishaq’s Sira while commenting on the person of the Prophet with the aim to negate any heroic quality that was apparent or implied in those writings.

In the 17th Century, George Sale translated the Quran into English and in his opening notes introduced it as ‘the Book what that false prophet very grosly invented’.

Title page of Sale's translation of the Quran

With such a rich history of academic prejudice, no wonder that the western scholarship never could look at the Quran in a neutral light. They hated and feared both the book and its bearers.

The same thought process has been inherited by the present day Orientalist-Historians. No longer burdened by Christian faith, they do not want to glorify Christ the Saviour and demean all the false prophets who came after him. But because Islam challenges the perceived notions of those who research it with an open mind, it does take a lot of effort to oppose it.

The first reaction is to reject the text as a forgery; something post-scripted to fit a changing geo-political landscape of Arabia. Any parallels with the older scriptures are considered plagiarisms and interpolations by unknown editors of the Quran. Any departures from the Bibilical narratives are just mistakes and evidence that the author of the Quran must have taken any apocryphal stories and adopted them for their new book.

Patricia Crone accepts that the Quran was indeed uttered by a person called Muhammad, but she is not convinced if Mecca ever existed. Similar doubts have been raised by Tom Holland in his recent work. Another attempt to discredit the Quran was made by Luxenberg,who thinks that it originated as a Syriac text outside of Arabia and transformed into classic Arabic over a period of time.

One of the new theories states that Islam was in fact a doomsday cult which just carried on growing. Early Muslims were awaiting the Armageddon imminently. Maybe this explains the fanaticism of the Muslim armies who conquered the world.

 

However, the message of the Quran, its conviction on absolute justice, equality of human kind, rights of women and social justice, has all been ignored due to prejudice. Muslims did not come out of Arabia with a nationalist cause; they came out because they had something to share with the world. And they made sure the world knew of this treasure - the Quran.

We cannot deny that there is a problem with the Muslim world today. It is a problem of literal reading: but not of the Quran itself. It is of the disparate Hadith texts which require even more context and validations than the Quran. The creed of Salafis and Wahabis, the two factions of Sunni Islam providing almost all the fighters in ISIS and Al-Qaeda, are Hadith-centric. i.e. They believe the Quran to be the word of God, but they dare not understand its words without a Hadith reference. This means that if a verse’s explanation is not accompanied by an alleged explanation by the prophet himself or his esteemed companions, or those who came immediately after them - it is not a valid interpretation.

In fact, in Orthodox Sunni Islam, the Quran has been the secondary source of doctrinal authority for many centuries.

This approach restricts the understanding of the Quran to a particular era of history which is only remembered for its violence. Nations were at war with each other, slavery was still a common practice and society was still being ruled by very tribal traditions. The ideas of citizenship, loyalty and national identities were very different then.

 

In fact it was the Quran which spurred on the Muslim civilizations around the world to take huge leaps in philosophy, science, arts and culture which benefited the whole of mankind.

How strange it must be to live in the 21st century; in the era of the Internet and smartphones and idealizing a medieval lifestyle at the same time.

So the next time someone blames Quran for the punishment of beheadings and hanging for apostasy, blasphemy and heresy, or stoning to death for adultery or homosexuality, please remember that Quran does not prescribe such punishments at all.

This debate on how to interpret Quran has been going on among theMuslims for many centuries, and it will continue for the time to come. But if history has taught us anything, it is that reform is an ongoing process which may take centuries.

The problem is not the Quran, it never has been. The problem has been those who twisted the meanings of the Quran to create suspicions, and those who ignored its message. And above all, those Muslims who were given this gift and they chose to replace it with the opinions of men.