Blowing Up People and Property is Not Islam

The arrests, last week in Toronto, of 17 mostly Muslim youths, some barely in their teens, should be a wakeup call for the Muslims of Canada, calling this largely tolerant, and happily multicultural country their home. It’s high time for a reality check.

The reality check should begin with a candid admission of a deep malaise gnawing at the vitals of the Muslim Ummah (community) all over the world. Denial wouldn’t serve any purpose; it hasn’t thus far and will not in the future. Likewise, the destructive proclivity to harp, ad nauseam, of a ‘conspiracy’ against Islam and Muslims should be compulsively repulsed.

Conspiracy, if any, is within the Muslim community itself, and those perpetrating it are the so-called ‘leaders’ and ‘guides’ of the community who are guilty of drumming into the ears of their ill-informed audience that there’s nothing wrong with them and they are only being victimized by their ‘enemies’ because of their faith.

The ‘enemy’ is within the community administering on its youths an opiate that’s rapidly dulling their senses and blurring the vision essential to sift the grain from the chaff. Instead of preparing the Muslim youth to compete against its opposite numbers from other faiths and religions in education, research, technology et al. these misguided ‘gurus’ are stunting their intellectual growth by poisoning their minds with the verbiage of ‘conspiracy’ and a ‘satanic scheme’ hatched by this or that ‘enemy.’

Discriminating against, and hating, the practitioners of other faiths isn’t Islamic at all. God, in His divine wisdom, recognizes that the inheritance of faith is an incidence of birth. 99.9 per cent people in this world go to their grave still practicing the same faith they were born with. Ergo, in the Koran, God explicitly forbids Muslims from discriminating against the followers of other religions, or taking pride in their own being the best of mankind.

The Verse 13, of Chapter 49 ( Al Hujurat or the Chambers ) of the Koran categorically and emphatically, without an iota of doubt, enunciates God’s logic and rationale for dividing the mankind into myriad sects, nations and tribes: “ O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know each other (Not that you may despise each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most Righteous of you…”

Muslims have been particularly discouraged from indulging in any disputation, controversy or conflict with the ‘people of the Book’, meaning, thereby, the Jews and the Christians, unless wronged at their hands: “ And dispute ye not with the people of the Book, except with means better (than mere disputation), unless it be with those of them who inflict wrong (and injury). But say, [We believe in the Revelation which has come down to us and in that which came down to you; Our God and your God Is One; and it is to Him we bow.]”(Chapter 29, Al Ankabut, or The Spider: Verse 46)

The question is, are Canadians in any way, or by any stretch of imagination, responsible or guilty of the wrong, factual or perceived, done to Muslims elsewhere in the world? Why should the minds of Muslim youths of Canada, born and bred here, be poisoned with the introverted Wahabi ideology—at odds with everyone not prepared to succumb to its message of hate and violence in the name of God—which is only a tool for the implementation of an alien power’s political agenda? What harm has Canada done to its Muslims, or their brothers-in-faith elsewhere, to deserve gangs of Muslim youths plotting to blow up its national landmarks and monuments—a bequest to Canadians of all faiths, creeds and cultures?

Violence in the name of Allah is as alien to real Islam as this earth is to a Martian. All that nonsense about Jihad being an obligation, or command, enjoined upon Muslims for the spread of Islam is just rubbish and nothing but sheer Jehl (Arabic for ‘absence of education’). Jihad, extolled in the Koran, is synonymous with a striving to purge ignorance, incompetence and insouciance; it’s the march to attain sublimity as a human being whose life is fashioned in accordance with the highest dictates of civility and decency.

Co-existence with all humanity and mankind is the message of Mohammad, the last messenger of God. Muslims prospered, thrived and attained heights of glory not reached before them as long as they practiced co-habitation with everyone, irrespective of their faith or conviction. Those were the golden times, not only for Muslims but for others too—Christians, Jews et al.—who were welcomed into the fold of Muslim dynasties and Caliphates—the Moores in Spain, the Fatimids in Egypt, the Ottomans in their vast empire straddling three continents. Ask any unbiased Jewish scholar, and he’d readily admit that Jewish scholarship reached its zenith under the Muslim rulers of Andalusia.

Muslims will continue to suffer, much more from their own myopic and distorted vision of Islam, than at the hands of any other ‘enemy’, as long as they don’t tackle the demons lurking in the shadows of their own appalling ignorance. They will have to reverse the current nihilistic course themselves. No body else is going to do it for them. The panacea is there: a return to pristine, intelligent and enlightened Islam of universal brotherhood and peaceful co-existence, and not infatuation with Al Qaeda’s destructive and corrupted Islam.

Any other concoction, dispensed under any generic name, with whatever label slapped on it, would be nothing but unadulterated poison, for this and the generations to follow.

The healing should start now, before the cancer becomes incurable.

The exercise of healing ought to begin at the so-called Islamic Centres where children are sent, sometimes under duress, by their parents and guardians to Sunday schools. The ostensible purpose of this special religious coaching is to enlighten them, at a young age, about the inherent values and disciplines of their great religion. However, experience tells a different story. Instead of enlightenment, most children end up being indoctrinated with obscurantist and radical ideology of this or that sect.

Young, immature, impressionable minds are vulnerable and fall easy prey to extremist ideas drilled into their minds in the foil of ‘true Islam.’ But true Islam that Prophet Mohammad (P.B.U.H) preached didn’t have any residue of extremism or radicalism. It didn’t preach violence, nor indoctrinated its followers to hate believers of other religions and creeds.

This scribe has heard young audience at Friday sermons being exhorted not to shake the hand of a ‘non-believer’ for fear of ‘spiritual contamination’. I was aghast at such unadulterated garbage being passed on to the uninformed youths. A young man got up and asked: ‘But, maulana, what should I do; I’m a physio-therapist and I come in contact with not only the hands but other parts of non-Muslims?’

The maulana replied: ‘but you should’ve thought of it before taking up this profession. However, now that you’ve, make sure that every time you rub a non-Muslim, you must wash your hands, reciting the kalima.’

This is the kind of appalling ignorance that the Muslim youth are being dished out, in this 21st century, in the most developed part of the world, in North America. This is what the Muslim ummah should be fighting against in the greatest jihad of their lives.

I desist from offering panaceas or healing potions, for fear of being accused of passing on my own prescriptions. But last year at a very large gathering of Pakistanis I was invited to address in San Francisco, I was asked by some youths what should be a role model for them to plug the gap between Muslim youths and their peers from other religions.

Without a moment’s hesitation, my answer was: ‘follow the example of the Jews in the United States. They’re only 3 per cent of U.S. population—hardly 7 to 8 millions in a population of nearly 300 million—and yet they have a near-chokehold on all vital segments of life in that country. Why? Only because of their skills in education.’

Muslims in North America are, by now, nearly as many in numbers as the Jews. But they will not be able to match the wits of the Jews unless, and until, they are also as advanced in learning, in education, in the sciences and technologies as their Jewish compatriots who are also, incidentally, a people of the book.

Take your pick, dear fellow Muslims of North America, and the world. The battle should be fought in the libraries and laboratories of universities and not on the streets blowing up monuments and landmarks.