Who says it's not a war on Islam?
Abid Ullah Jan
It is painful to watch old news-reels of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini
making speeches and crowds cheering. Mussolini's posturing seems so
transparent that one wonders how adults could have taken him seriously. With
Hitler, what comes across is crude, passionate intensity and the rapture of
his audiences, sharing his feelings, with minds turned off. What is chilling
is knowing how many tens of millions of human beings lost their lives
because of these almost musical-comedy performances. The seemingly shallow
stuff can have deep roots as well as deep consequences. Few things today are
more shallow than the reasons most people have for supporting Bush and Blair
war on "terrorism" and accepting their claims that it is not a war on Islam.
To understand if it is a war on Islam, we need to honestly and impartially
scan the horizon since 1990.
Apart from the massive air strikes, commando raids and a prolonged "dirty
war" against Islamic movements, the police repression, deportation, torture,
censorship and death squads that we are certainly going to face are
certainly not planned after the September 11 attacks. The US "war on terror"
is no more than translation to the physical level, of the systematic
approach that started with (1) introduction of the rancid notion of "Islamic
fundamentalism," (2) classification of Islam; (3) equating "fundamentalism"
with extremism and then terrorism; (4) removal of governments, like Mr.
Erbakan in Turkey, for having affiliations with Islam (5) support of
governments' cracking down on "Islamic extremists" such as Egyptian and
Algerian regimes; (6) development of agendas for government's like
Musharraf; (6) initially supporting the Taliban and then demonising them to
show the world the failure of Islam. The coming physical horror is simply
execution of the judgments passed by the western intellectuals upon Islam in
the past decade or so.
Just have a look at how the ground has been prepared for the coming "dirty
war." Musharraf came to "moderate" religious schools and take Jihad related
Quranic verses from school curricula in 2001. However, the Economist sensed
"The Islamic Threat" way back in its March 13, 1993 edition whereby it
declared: "It is the mightiest power in the Levant...Governments tremble
before it. Arabs everywhere turn to it for salvation from their various
miseries. This power is not Egypt, Iraq, or indeed any nation, but the
humble mosque." Mosques would probably be the next targets after dealing
with madrassa. Similarly, since the establishment of Israel, no one had
talked about "fundamentalism," yet Yitzhak Rabin suddenly started calling
the world in December 1992, "to devote its attention to the greater danger
inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. [W]e stand on the line of fire against
the danger of fundamentalist Islam."
Mr. Bush with a slip of tongue tells his mind in 2001 by describing the US
recent missions in the lands of Islam as "crusade." Peter Rodman, senior
editor of the National Review, however, saw in 1992 that the West being
challenged from the outside by a "militant, atavistic force driven by a
hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old grievances
against Christendom....the rage against us is too great..." (May 11, 1992).
Charles Krauthammer summed up the expected resistance by the Islamic
civilisation to the hegemonic designs of the US in one word: "Global
Intifada," (Washington Post January 1, 1993). He tried to suggest that the
world is now "facing a mood and a movement...a perhaps irrational but surely
historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage,
our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both." The New York
Times went one step ahead and confirmed on January 21st, 1996: "The Red
Menace Is Gone. But Here's Islam." The open war against it, however, had to
be delayed until a perfect excuse like the September 11 attacks.
Intellectuals like Samuel P. Huntington played a key role in making Islam an
enemy of choice. He declared: "Islam is the only civilisation which has put
the survival of the West in doubt." Web page of the Montclair State
University in New Jersey reads: "The West today is losing irretrievably its
former global hegemony and is increasingly challenged economically and
culturally by East Asian and Islamic civilisations." Irving Kristol, Council
on Foreign Relations, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, editorial August 2,
1996: "With the end of the Cold War, what we really need is an obvious
ideological and threatening enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can
unite us in opposition."
Bernard Lewis In his influential essay, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," writes:
"Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless
and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses" (Atlantic, September
99). Islamic "fundamentalism," according to Amos Perlmutter (Insight in the
News, February 15, 1993), is "a plague" which has infected the entire
Islamic world and whose goal is to topple secularist military regimes in
Egypt, Syria and Algeria and replace them with [unacceptable] Islamic
states."
Daily Express, ran an article "Islam Is a Creed of Cruelty" on January 16,
1995, which concluded that the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism was
haunting Europe and the world power should enter into a holy alliance to
exorcise this spectre. The underlying assumption has always been that Islam
is primitive, underdeveloped, retrograde, at best stuck in the memory hole
of a medieval splendour out of which it could not disentangle itself without
a radical transformation; and this could only be based on Western,
"rational", "progressive" values. The long proposed "holy alliance" is now
in making.
A above mentioned examples show that during the past 11-12 years systematic
efforts have been directed to relegated Islam from its holistic perspective,
encompassing all facets of human conduct and behaviour to a mere set or
rituals, something what the west has done to Christianity itself. According
to Lt-Col Trinka of US Army, "[Muslims] must work to fashion the shariah
into a modern blue print for change." In a similar vein, one of the CIA
experts counselled that those Muslims who do not believe that world of God
is law, should be found and supported. "The Arab rulers," he thinks, "have
to create a new identity of [Muslim] seductively fusing Islam and the West."
This so-called expert added: "Though the Saudi rulers may be guilty of ugly
authoritarian behaviour and consistent stupidity in foreign affairs, they
are at least fervent hypocrites, and that [in] Middle East Affairs, a
fervent hypocrite is always safer than a fervent puritan." He had the
audacity to make such humiliating remark because there was truth in it.
These are in fact general policy guidelines that we see in operation during
lifting of democracy related sanctions against Pakistan and visit of the
British Prime Minister who could not bear an undemocratic government in
Pakistan at any cost.
Over the last decade the western propaganda successfully divided Muslim into
"Moderates," "Liberals" and "Fundamentalists" for whom there is no basis or
justification in Islam. There has been no definition offered even in the
Western propaganda. Salman Rushdie, however, lists in his October 2, article
in Washington Post what he believes fundamentalists are against:
"homosexuals, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, evolution
theory, sex." He believes such "fundamentalists are tyrants, not
Muslims...yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are worth dying for." He
further argues, "kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, cutting-edge
fashion, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love," should matter and
"these will be our weapons." The moderates among us should decide for
themselves as to what kind of Islam allows kissing in public places, bacon
sandwiches, homosexuality, etc.
Besides mass propaganda, efforts were underway to support Hosnie Mubarak
like regimes for their crackdown on Islamic opposition and remove Erbakan
like elected governments for exactly the same reasons for which the US wants
to support religious groups in China. With false propaganda, the Taliban
have been demonised to the extent that even majority of the Muslims who have
never set a foot on the Afghan soil to verify the grand lies, speak in the
anti-Taliban, CNNised language. The US has established that a country can
never be ruled with Islamic principles. Now the war is only left to be
carried out by individual Muslim countries by collecting information on its
citizens as to who is involved with the banned religious parties, who is the
extremist, how to arrest and try the fundamentalism and if necessary remove
them from the scene.
Apart from the above-mentioned factors, the US, UK recent moves are part of
an undeclared war on Islam because:
1. Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and
Ed Harriman reported on September 22, 2001 in the Guardian that attacks on
Afghanistan were planned before September 11. The US planned the attacks as
soon as it considered it's demonising the Taliban project as complete.
2. Islam is the only challenge to American hegemony with its
claims to be a complete code of life with panacea for ills in economic,
political, moral and spiritual systems, and thus only Islam can pose a
threat to the civilisation considered superior by the West.
3. The West reasons that the source of terrorism is not its
terrorism but Islamic teachings and history. Naturally, the real campaign is
against the teachings of Islam from the original sources at Madrassa.
Mustafa Kamal destroyed Islamic teachings 85 years ago in Turkey and dried
up the swamp. We however are expected to follow the suit sooner than later.
4. The US is planning to impose its brand of democracy or
autocracy - whichever may be suitable -- on Muslim countries by force. The
US put forward many symbolic personalities over the years to undermine the
roots of Islam. These advocates preach unconditional assimilation into,
support of, sympathy toward, and whole-hearted participation in the social
and political system espoused by the US.
5. Transmissions of BBC and CNN testify to the fact that it is
a war on Islam. On their part they put forward unqualified individuals or
groups as representatives of Islam who may be unethical, deviants, or
outright heretics from the religion with no subjective measures being used
to ascertain the qualifications of such people. Rushdie's recent article in
the Washington Post is an excellent example. They present Islamic Shariah as
antiquated, irrelevant, authoritarian, unsophisticated, and limited.
6. By making public statements like: Taliban are not the real
Muslims, the American leaders, like Karl Inderfurth, have long been creating
a nationalistic or ethnic view and approach to Islam, or more accurately,
creating a new religion that cannot truly be called Islam but rather has
some outward aspects of it. It will certainly be one that would not pose a
challenge to the US domination or offer anything that will make Islam seen
as a viable alternative to the US uni-polar world.
7. The evidence suggests that it is the US government that has
been playing a leading role in the media crusade against Islam. As early as
fall 1994, PBS aired a documentary by journalist Steve Emerson Titled "Jihad
in America." Evidence within the programme suggests that Emerson has access
to official government intelligence. Some clips appear to be from home
videos confiscated from Muslims in FBI sweeps. A decade of this kind of
programming has set the climate for a war on Islam.
The facts do not change with the denials of Bush and Balir. The strength of
Islam lies in the fact that despite having far less military and economic
power, the western war-makers do not have the courage to declare it an open
war on Islam. They would certainly fail as long as they want to cover their
ulterior motives and undermine Islam under the guise of looking for
"infinite Justice." Ending terrorism through eradicating its root causes may
not take more than a few months. However, defeating Islam may cost them many
generations before finally realising that it was a wrong war.
Concluded.
Abid Ullah Jan
It is painful to watch old news-reels of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini
making speeches and crowds cheering. Mussolini's posturing seems so
transparent that one wonders how adults could have taken him seriously. With
Hitler, what comes across is crude, passionate intensity and the rapture of
his audiences, sharing his feelings, with minds turned off. What is chilling
is knowing how many tens of millions of human beings lost their lives
because of these almost musical-comedy performances. The seemingly shallow
stuff can have deep roots as well as deep consequences. Few things today are
more shallow than the reasons most people have for supporting Bush and Blair
war on "terrorism" and accepting their claims that it is not a war on Islam.
To understand if it is a war on Islam, we need to honestly and impartially
scan the horizon since 1990.
Apart from the massive air strikes, commando raids and a prolonged "dirty
war" against Islamic movements, the police repression, deportation, torture,
censorship and death squads that we are certainly going to face are
certainly not planned after the September 11 attacks. The US "war on terror"
is no more than translation to the physical level, of the systematic
approach that started with (1) introduction of the rancid notion of "Islamic
fundamentalism," (2) classification of Islam; (3) equating "fundamentalism"
with extremism and then terrorism; (4) removal of governments, like Mr.
Erbakan in Turkey, for having affiliations with Islam (5) support of
governments' cracking down on "Islamic extremists" such as Egyptian and
Algerian regimes; (6) development of agendas for government's like
Musharraf; (6) initially supporting the Taliban and then demonising them to
show the world the failure of Islam. The coming physical horror is simply
execution of the judgments passed by the western intellectuals upon Islam in
the past decade or so.
Just have a look at how the ground has been prepared for the coming "dirty
war." Musharraf came to "moderate" religious schools and take Jihad related
Quranic verses from school curricula in 2001. However, the Economist sensed
"The Islamic Threat" way back in its March 13, 1993 edition whereby it
declared: "It is the mightiest power in the Levant...Governments tremble
before it. Arabs everywhere turn to it for salvation from their various
miseries. This power is not Egypt, Iraq, or indeed any nation, but the
humble mosque." Mosques would probably be the next targets after dealing
with madrassa. Similarly, since the establishment of Israel, no one had
talked about "fundamentalism," yet Yitzhak Rabin suddenly started calling
the world in December 1992, "to devote its attention to the greater danger
inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. [W]e stand on the line of fire against
the danger of fundamentalist Islam."
Mr. Bush with a slip of tongue tells his mind in 2001 by describing the US
recent missions in the lands of Islam as "crusade." Peter Rodman, senior
editor of the National Review, however, saw in 1992 that the West being
challenged from the outside by a "militant, atavistic force driven by a
hatred of all Western political thought, harking back to age-old grievances
against Christendom....the rage against us is too great..." (May 11, 1992).
Charles Krauthammer summed up the expected resistance by the Islamic
civilisation to the hegemonic designs of the US in one word: "Global
Intifada," (Washington Post January 1, 1993). He tried to suggest that the
world is now "facing a mood and a movement...a perhaps irrational but surely
historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judaeo-Christian heritage,
our secular present, and the worldwide expansion of both." The New York
Times went one step ahead and confirmed on January 21st, 1996: "The Red
Menace Is Gone. But Here's Islam." The open war against it, however, had to
be delayed until a perfect excuse like the September 11 attacks.
Intellectuals like Samuel P. Huntington played a key role in making Islam an
enemy of choice. He declared: "Islam is the only civilisation which has put
the survival of the West in doubt." Web page of the Montclair State
University in New Jersey reads: "The West today is losing irretrievably its
former global hegemony and is increasingly challenged economically and
culturally by East Asian and Islamic civilisations." Irving Kristol, Council
on Foreign Relations, wrote in the Wall Street Journal, editorial August 2,
1996: "With the end of the Cold War, what we really need is an obvious
ideological and threatening enemy, one worthy of our mettle, one that can
unite us in opposition."
Bernard Lewis In his influential essay, "The Roots of Muslim Rage," writes:
"Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless
and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses" (Atlantic, September
99). Islamic "fundamentalism," according to Amos Perlmutter (Insight in the
News, February 15, 1993), is "a plague" which has infected the entire
Islamic world and whose goal is to topple secularist military regimes in
Egypt, Syria and Algeria and replace them with [unacceptable] Islamic
states."
Daily Express, ran an article "Islam Is a Creed of Cruelty" on January 16,
1995, which concluded that the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism was
haunting Europe and the world power should enter into a holy alliance to
exorcise this spectre. The underlying assumption has always been that Islam
is primitive, underdeveloped, retrograde, at best stuck in the memory hole
of a medieval splendour out of which it could not disentangle itself without
a radical transformation; and this could only be based on Western,
"rational", "progressive" values. The long proposed "holy alliance" is now
in making.
A above mentioned examples show that during the past 11-12 years systematic
efforts have been directed to relegated Islam from its holistic perspective,
encompassing all facets of human conduct and behaviour to a mere set or
rituals, something what the west has done to Christianity itself. According
to Lt-Col Trinka of US Army, "[Muslims] must work to fashion the shariah
into a modern blue print for change." In a similar vein, one of the CIA
experts counselled that those Muslims who do not believe that world of God
is law, should be found and supported. "The Arab rulers," he thinks, "have
to create a new identity of [Muslim] seductively fusing Islam and the West."
This so-called expert added: "Though the Saudi rulers may be guilty of ugly
authoritarian behaviour and consistent stupidity in foreign affairs, they
are at least fervent hypocrites, and that [in] Middle East Affairs, a
fervent hypocrite is always safer than a fervent puritan." He had the
audacity to make such humiliating remark because there was truth in it.
These are in fact general policy guidelines that we see in operation during
lifting of democracy related sanctions against Pakistan and visit of the
British Prime Minister who could not bear an undemocratic government in
Pakistan at any cost.
Over the last decade the western propaganda successfully divided Muslim into
"Moderates," "Liberals" and "Fundamentalists" for whom there is no basis or
justification in Islam. There has been no definition offered even in the
Western propaganda. Salman Rushdie, however, lists in his October 2, article
in Washington Post what he believes fundamentalists are against:
"homosexuals, pluralism, secularism, short skirts, dancing, evolution
theory, sex." He believes such "fundamentalists are tyrants, not
Muslims...yes, even the short skirts and dancing -- are worth dying for." He
further argues, "kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, cutting-edge
fashion, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love," should matter and
"these will be our weapons." The moderates among us should decide for
themselves as to what kind of Islam allows kissing in public places, bacon
sandwiches, homosexuality, etc.
Besides mass propaganda, efforts were underway to support Hosnie Mubarak
like regimes for their crackdown on Islamic opposition and remove Erbakan
like elected governments for exactly the same reasons for which the US wants
to support religious groups in China. With false propaganda, the Taliban
have been demonised to the extent that even majority of the Muslims who have
never set a foot on the Afghan soil to verify the grand lies, speak in the
anti-Taliban, CNNised language. The US has established that a country can
never be ruled with Islamic principles. Now the war is only left to be
carried out by individual Muslim countries by collecting information on its
citizens as to who is involved with the banned religious parties, who is the
extremist, how to arrest and try the fundamentalism and if necessary remove
them from the scene.
Apart from the above-mentioned factors, the US, UK recent moves are part of
an undeclared war on Islam because:
1. Jonathan Steele, Ewen MacAskill, Richard Norton-Taylor and
Ed Harriman reported on September 22, 2001 in the Guardian that attacks on
Afghanistan were planned before September 11. The US planned the attacks as
soon as it considered it's demonising the Taliban project as complete.
2. Islam is the only challenge to American hegemony with its
claims to be a complete code of life with panacea for ills in economic,
political, moral and spiritual systems, and thus only Islam can pose a
threat to the civilisation considered superior by the West.
3. The West reasons that the source of terrorism is not its
terrorism but Islamic teachings and history. Naturally, the real campaign is
against the teachings of Islam from the original sources at Madrassa.
Mustafa Kamal destroyed Islamic teachings 85 years ago in Turkey and dried
up the swamp. We however are expected to follow the suit sooner than later.
4. The US is planning to impose its brand of democracy or
autocracy - whichever may be suitable -- on Muslim countries by force. The
US put forward many symbolic personalities over the years to undermine the
roots of Islam. These advocates preach unconditional assimilation into,
support of, sympathy toward, and whole-hearted participation in the social
and political system espoused by the US.
5. Transmissions of BBC and CNN testify to the fact that it is
a war on Islam. On their part they put forward unqualified individuals or
groups as representatives of Islam who may be unethical, deviants, or
outright heretics from the religion with no subjective measures being used
to ascertain the qualifications of such people. Rushdie's recent article in
the Washington Post is an excellent example. They present Islamic Shariah as
antiquated, irrelevant, authoritarian, unsophisticated, and limited.
6. By making public statements like: Taliban are not the real
Muslims, the American leaders, like Karl Inderfurth, have long been creating
a nationalistic or ethnic view and approach to Islam, or more accurately,
creating a new religion that cannot truly be called Islam but rather has
some outward aspects of it. It will certainly be one that would not pose a
challenge to the US domination or offer anything that will make Islam seen
as a viable alternative to the US uni-polar world.
7. The evidence suggests that it is the US government that has
been playing a leading role in the media crusade against Islam. As early as
fall 1994, PBS aired a documentary by journalist Steve Emerson Titled "Jihad
in America." Evidence within the programme suggests that Emerson has access
to official government intelligence. Some clips appear to be from home
videos confiscated from Muslims in FBI sweeps. A decade of this kind of
programming has set the climate for a war on Islam.
The facts do not change with the denials of Bush and Balir. The strength of
Islam lies in the fact that despite having far less military and economic
power, the western war-makers do not have the courage to declare it an open
war on Islam. They would certainly fail as long as they want to cover their
ulterior motives and undermine Islam under the guise of looking for
"infinite Justice." Ending terrorism through eradicating its root causes may
not take more than a few months. However, defeating Islam may cost them many
generations before finally realising that it was a wrong war.
Concluded.
and move on. It wastes time and creates alot of misunderstanding as the readers read only thefirst 5 lines and starts thier rants!!
I don't know why, but most of pro-khilafa (HT) brothers post the ENTIRE article instead of providing its summary and link to the detail. I hope that the poster can read the article by himself/herself first then post the summary.
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