Imam Bukhari is hijacking
jehad to suit his own purpose
Farooq Sheikh tells
Arnab Pratim Dutta that there is no person
among Indian Muslims fit to be their leader
New Delhi, October 24
How do you react to the terrorist attack on America?
You cannot find enough number of words or enough strong words to condemn what happened in America. Nobody can justify those attacks for any reason whatsoever.
Would you say it is all right for America to retaliate in the way it has done?
Subsequent to the attacks, we can understand that a very powerful nation, a rich nation, the presiding nation of the world today, will feel that it is a big jolt to its own ego or to its own image. In the last 150 years or so, nobody had attacked a city in America as the way it has been attacked now. So, with all these factors coming into play, a knee-jerk reaction is quite understandable.
But a knee-jerk reaction from a common man would be understandable; a knee-jerk reaction from the president of a country is not understandable. If the president says that there is a poster out that (Osama bin Laden is) wanted dead or alive, if says that this is a crusade that has to be fought, if says that this an attack on all civilised nations and that this is crash of cultures, this kind of irresponsible statements do not befit a nation of the stature of the USA. It does not befit the president of the United States. What was being done when we were being attacked in Kashmir? At a conservative estimate, we have lost more than 30,000 people. So are we uncivilised people? So are we prehistoric people? Were those not attacks on our civilisation? Why was America not making a sound when we were being attacked? What happened in Kosovo and Bosnia?
You sound pretty upset about the American attack on Afghanistan…
It makes me shudder when I think of what happened when the Tutsis attacked the Hutus in Rwanda. They did not shoot them or bomb them, they hacked 68,000 people. What (America is) doing is dropping a bomb from 40,000 feet. But in places like Rwanda, you actually see the people coming with hatchets and they kill your family in front of you. Was that not an attack on civilisation? This non-sagacious behaviour does not befit America.
Speaking as a layman who has no special knowledge of the political scenario, I would think that what you did with Slobodan Milosevic would be apt for this case - collect evidence against the person and bring him to trial. If he had established guilt against Osama bin Laden and then brought him to trial, that would have be a much better way to go about things. It would have been better to have gone about doing things in a legal-political manner. After all, bin Laden is an infinitely smaller personality than the prime minister of Yugoslavia.
It is possible that it will take a few years for the trial to be concluded and it is also possible that you may not gather enough evidence against the man. But everybody, including the Serbs, loved Milosevic and thought that he did to the Bosnians what the Bosnians would have done to them. If you did that with bin Laden, no one would have raised an objection. You are not providing any proof, in the first place; then, how can you replace one form of terrorism with another form of terrorism?
So you are completely against the strikes on Afghanistan?
Yes, absolutely.
What you're saying is that the strikes should focus on bin Laden…
It is not possible to pinpoint any strike on a single person. We form our opinion on the information that we get from the media. We used to see the images of the crashes on the World Trade Centre 24 hours a day. But has there been any coverage of a 5,000-pound bomb on a shanty structure in Afghanistan? Has anybody shown the dismembered limbs of the innocents in Afghanistan?
Suppose there are four terrorists holed up in a building. To catch those four terrorists, do you have to bring the whole building down? You in America actually created the Taliban and lauded Osama bin Laden, and now you are not in a position to control them. You expect the poor famine-ridden Afghans to control what bin Laden does and what the Taliban does. If, on the other hand, you do not expect them to control (bin Laden and the Taliban), then why do you punish them? You are reacting to one form of terrorism by an individual or a group by another form of state-sponsored terrorism. You have sanctioned one billion dollars to the CIA to do whatever is required to kill Osama bin Laden. I think that in one-hundredth the amount, you could have got somebody from Afghanistan to hand him over.
Where do you see the anti-American protest that slowly building up in the Islamic world heading?
Until they started bombing Afghanistan, there was no such protest. Nobody stood up and said that Osama had done something good. Everybody was condemning Osama bin Laden, presuming that he was behind the attacks. If he, who is sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, has managed to attack the most advanced nation in the world, then he is some kind of a genius. And Americans are some kind of abject idiot to allow a cave-dweller sitting in the back of the beyond to create such a situation. Nobody is talking about that. Nobody speaks about that. And till you started bombing, no one, not the Saudis, no other Muslim society in the world, protested. But the moment you said that it was a clash of civilisations, a crusade, things changed. You can say things - such as "I will bash his brains out" - in the privacy of your home. But in the international forum, you cannot say such things. And this has been the turning point for the anti-America protests spilling out on the streets.
The Americans do not even realise that almost seven million people are going to face starvation in Afghanistan.
Do you agree with Imam Bukhari's call to the Indian Muslims for a jehad against America? Is he justified?
In the last five or 10 years, people have been hijacking certain concepts and perverting them and distorting them to use for their own gain. Whether it is the concept of nationalism or patriotism, jehad is first to be understood. First of all, jehad is not what he thinks at all. But even if it did mean what he thinks it to be, then he is hijacking it suit his own purpose. My response to that would be that he knows these are demagogues that will strike emotional chords among the Muslims. These people are masquerading as leaders and they do not have any real ideologies. |
