Jihad in the new millennium
Friday October 12
WORLDVIEW
Harun Rashid
12:15pm, Fri: opinion Enthusiastic young Muslims are being urged to go to Afghanistan to defend Islam against the infidel West. This is complete nonsense. The ground war in Afghanistan is much like that other Middle East war between Iran and Iraq. There is no infidel. Muslims are again fighting Muslims.
What is the sense of fighting our brother Muslims? The Taliban is fighting the Northern Alliance, and this fight is the one any new soldiers will join. The West is technologically distant, waiting patiently for enough Muslims to come together to make a decent target for a laser-guided bomb.
A few elders call it a holy war. But there is no war that can be described as a ‘holy war’. All wars are unholy. The call is for more suicide bombers, willing to give up life for Islam. A suicide mission, while often effective, is not Islamic.
Life for a Muslim is a life of total submission to the will of Allah. This calls for devoted service, doing good as one can, and fighting evil as one can. The effort begins at home, taking care of one’s family, participating in the life of the community, and acting in a civilised, law-abiding manner.
The Sufi expresses the ideal of Islam as being ‘in the world’, but not ‘of the world’. It is a subtle distinction, and perhaps difficult to comprehend at first. It is among the mystical things, only fully understood after personal experience.
We are told that terrorism offers a fast track to paradise. But suicide is not acceptable to a Muslim. Taking the life of others is also forbidden. If life is lost in defence of Islam, that is acceptable. But it must be clear that this is really the case. One must ask who is the enemy. Osama bin Laden says he has found an enemy, and that it is the US. But the US is a country which has no religious agenda.
Enlightened policy
The constitution of the US strictly forbids interference in the affairs of government by the various organised religions, and the government is forbidden to restrict the freedom of the people to worship as they please. Islam is one the beneficiaries of this enlightened policy, and America is now among the many Western countries with a significant and increasing Muslim population.
Muslims are permitted to participate equally in the political affairs of these Western countries. Osama bin Laden and his team of terrorists do nothing to promote the interests of Islam there. On the contrary, his activities are counter-productive, bringing shame and fear to Muslim communities everywhere.
There are millions of Muslims in the West, and surely Osama cannot be referring to them as “enemies of Islam”. He seems indifferent to this aspect, and over 1,500 Muslim brothers were killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center. He blames Americans for all the problems of the ‘Arab World’, and intends to keep Americans in fear until they ‘do something’ to correct all the problems he sees. His perspective is narrow, a most unfortunate representative of Islam.
In his condemnation, he gives the US too much credit. He discounts the military strength, but overestimates the economic and political strength. If the Americans could solve all the problems of the world, they would have done so long ago. He has gotten the attention of Americans, but what does he expect them to do that they have not already done? He says he would like to see foreign aid to Israel stopped, and American recognition of despotic governments removed.
This is certainly possible, and if he chose other methods of persuasion, he might get a hearing. But not now. His ability to find a sympathetic ear in Washington is aborted by his choice of terror as a method. He intends to hold America ransom. This has never worked with the Americans, going back to the days of the Tripoli pirates. Their response then was, “millions for defence, not one cent for tribute”. Nothing has changed, except now it is billions for defence.
Blind bias
The problems of Israel and Palestine have occupied the attention of the American government since the British left in disgust in 1948. Perhaps the protectorate established after World War II should have been returned to the UN, but there was little faith that anything would satisfy the Israeli terrorists but full independence. Israel was born of terrorism, that’s what drove out the British. Essentially the same methods have sustained Israel to the present day.
The Americans have never forcefully denounced Israel’s use of violence, even when it was against women and children. They have chosen to view Israel as a fledgling democracy deserving of aid, ignoring the plight of the dispossessed Palestinians. They bought the argument that in the various wars the Israeli’s were never the aggressors, but only struggling valiantly to survive on their small beachhead, surrounded and outnumbered by the great masses of Arabs vowing to push them into the Mediterranean Sea.
It is easy to fault America for this blind bias, but it is also true they have constantly attempted to help both sides find a solution. Often they have brokered a period of truce, to be followed by a frustrating lack of any permanent accord by the two contending parties. There are three areas of discord: territory, territory, and territory.
The Palestinian dispute is more territorial and political than religious. Religion cannot be the major problem because Islam and Judaism are essentially identical. Osama’s demands of immediate American action, accentuated by an attempted destruction of the economic fabric of the world, cannot motivate the Americans to resolve this dispute, simply because it is beyond their power to do so.
What is the capability of the Americans to improve the world by instituting a Pax Americana on a global scale? At the moment they would probably be happy to accept this responsibility, but no one has invited them, even now. The few attempts the Americans have made to intercede in global disputes have been criticised as bullying and arrogance by a superpower trying to be policeman to the world.
Problems will remain
But they are the enemy Osama has identified. If the Americans are not the real culprit, he still intends to keep them in fear until they find enough solutions to the world’s problems to suit him. He is to be sole judge of when the Americans have done enough. In the meantime, the terrorist acts against them are to continue.
He is wrong. America is not the enemy. Even if he manages to destroy America, the problems will remain. Even if every American is killed with an anthrax epidemic next week, that will not help. The problems will remain. The governments Osama objects to will still be in place. The Israelis will still be in Israel. The Palestinians will still be outside. And Muslims will still be killing Muslims in Afghanistan.
What he has done is make a mess of things. The modern world operates on trade and travel. If the planes cannot fly and the ships cannot carry goods, the economic world will stop. We will all be left with only the satellites and the Internet, which perhaps, is a good thing. We will be forced to communicate, detailing our complaints and considering what approaches might help resolve things. Goods will move by camel and donkey. The pace of change will slow to a creep.
Osama and his team of strategists think if the technological advance of the West can be nullified, perhaps the ‘Arab World’ can catch up. This is unlikely. The West will miss the oil. But the money the oil brings will be gone also. The price of coal will go up. The air will get worse. Global warming will increase. The automobile industry will shrink until only the wealthy can afford to own and drive a car. The size of cities will shrink because not enough food and other goods can be brought to the people living in them. Much that has been gained will be lost.
The world today is still a hospitable place for Muslims, in spite of Osama bin Laden and his team of terrorists. Muslims are being educated in Western universities. All the latest techniques and manufacturing secrets are being shared. Muslims are learning valuable laboratory techniques and other technological skills. They hold executive positions with impressive salaries and learn to use modern management tools. Developing Islamic countries are receiving much more than they are able to immediately repay. Osama and his terrorists threaten to destroy the trust Muslims enjoy in cooperation with the West.
Many major technological enterprises have established plants in countries of the ‘Arab World’ and employ Muslims in large numbers. The airplanes and ships of Muslim countries travel the oceans of the world carrying goods on the same routes that Western-owned vessels travel. Osama threatens to stop this traffic with his terrorist activity.
If he succeeds, what is gained? Will Muslims benefit from such a success? Muslims will lose along with everyone else. If Osama and his team of terrorists are successful, the lights will go out all over the world. That includes the ‘Arab World’. This is the jihad he invites us to join. To respond to this invitation is to become a terrorist in kind, and the effect will be to destroy the trust the Americans and the British have for Muslims. And more is the pity, Muslims will no longer trust Muslims.
We must not send our children to be trained in murderous skills. They will return home with these experiences etched in their hearts. Terrorism poisons the soul. Our sons will bring the ideas and techniques of terrorism back home with them. We don’t want that. Not for them, not for us.
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HARUN RASHID is a scientist avidly interested in the application of Islamic principles in international affairs. The promotion of goodwill through civilisational dialogue motivates his writing. His Worldview column is a personal analysis of Malaysian affairs from a global perspective.
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