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Is it not highly
reprehensible for some of the secularist scribes and journalists in a section of
English press in our country to close their eyes to what has been written on the
subject in English press abroad?
Islamic
society accepted the Sovereign authority of god
which regards the Quran as the source of all
guidance for human life.
All
other societies were societies of Jahilya (ignorance of religious truth) whatever their principles;
whether they were communist, capitalist,
nationalist, based upon other, false religions or
claimed to be Muslim but did not obey the Sharia.
-Albert
Hourani Quoting Egyptian author Sayyid Qutb from his
book ‘Signposts of the Path’(1964)
The leadership of
Western men in the human world is coming to an end, not because Western
civilisation is materially bankrupt but because Western order no longer
possesses that stock of ‘values’ which gave it its predominance….the turn
of Islam has come.
-Albert Hourani
Quoting Egyptian author Sayyid Qutb from his book ‘Signposts of the Path’(1964)
The Europeans like
to see the reasons for it’s (Islam’s) militant intolerance in the
peculiarity of a culture and religion which appears to be diametrically opposite
to the liberal tenets of Western modernity …
Islamic societies
remained dominated by the precedence of faith over reason.
Rights of God and duties before God influenced everything.
This has led to fundamentalistic tendencies in different Muslim
countries, where no critical discussions are allowed and any dissent is regarded
as apostasy... The Islamic self image has, therefore, suffered considerably
under the superiority of a secularized world of modern economy and technical
progress.
Europeans are
mostly apprehensive about the Islamic attitude towards Christians as
non-believers. The orthodox Muslims
always quote such Koranic statement which describe Christians as dangerous
enemies. There is also widespread
distrust of the Europeans against an incomprehensible world of Islam.
In recent years several Christian leaders have been pleading for a
dialogue, but for the Muslims such a dialogue is superfluous, since the Koran is
“the most perfect form of religion”.
-Pramod Talgeri
in Times of India 13.4.1993.
The genesis of
Islamic fundamentalism is “a perverted adjustment of the Muslim notions
to political modernity”. The
missing tradition of democratic freedom in Islamic societies adds to their
frustration about political and economic conditions, which generates a constant
feeling of dependency and threat.
-Giles Kepel,
Political Scientist, Paris.
There is feeling
in Western Europe, rarely stated explicitly, that Muslims whose root lie in Asia
do not belong to the Western Family, some of whose members spent centuries
trying to drive the Turks out of a Europe they threatened to overwhelm. “Turkish
membership would dilute the European Community’s Europeanness”.
-A German
Diplomat quoted by William Madar and James Wilde in Time (Oct. 19, 1992)
Terms such as
fanatics, extremists, fundamentalists and terrorists are routinely applied to
Muslims by the Western media …Western tolerance of alcoholism, fornication,
prostitution and drugs is abhorrent to Islam.
Muslims will not adopt western Values at the cost of Islamic Values.
-Mohd. Siddique,
Maryland in Times, March 22, 1993.
The growth of
militant Islamic fundamentalism in areas adjacent to India underlines the
possibility that New Delhi and Washington will share common security concerns in
the years ahead.
-A report by
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (endorsed by 34 South Asia Experts,
including former US administration Officials)
-Cold Fury :
Terrorism Today –The Islamic connection.
-Cover
Page Heading, Newsweek, 15th March, 1993
I share your
concerns that government will be increasingly at risk because of the growth of
Muslim fundamentalism. But I am at
a loss to know why the United Nations is acting against the interests of nations
and encouraging Muslims fundamentalism by its recent attempts to impose
sanctions upon Israel for its hard crackdown on the Hamas activists.
-SE Bhastekar,
Israel, Newsweek, 15th March, 93
The Islamic
Phenomenon or movement has inspired terror among some, hope among others,
altering the lives of millions of Muslims from Algeria to Kashmir, Egypt to
Philippines. And it is dangerous
not least because of its power to move true believers to violent action, with or
without direct commands …
“The Islamic
phenomenon is an umbrella that covers an ocean of differences”, says Tahseen
Bashir, a veteran diplomat and scholar in Cairo.
It is an amalgam of impassioned zealots
and cold blooded intellectuals. Sometimes
it takes the path of violence, sometimes of democracy, and no single mullah
could claim to control the works of all believers.
-Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, 15th March,
1993.
Rarely does the
west mourn when Islamic fundamentalists die. In Bosnia they have been killed, raped and ethnically
cleansed from their lands. Muslims
see western inaction as an offence against Islam.
Sheik Omar Abdul
Rehman preachings have made him a name known from Tehran to Khartoum.
“Hit hard and kill the enemies of God in every spot to rid it of the
descendants of apes and pigs fed at the tables of Zionism, Communism and
imperialism,” He reportedly told his followers “There is no truce in Jihad
against the enemies of Allah.”
-Christopher
Dickey, “Wrath of Islam”, Newsweek 15.03.1993
In a special
feature on France, Margot Hornblower writes about Marseilles and writes that the
‘threshold of tolerance’ toward Muslims and other immigrants is crossed. There
are some 80,000 Arabs and they are hated very much. Such
Marseillies and ‘Down with the Mosque’.
A School in
Creteil expelled two Muslim girls for wearing headscarves.
The Mayor of Charvieu - Chavogneux ordered the bulldozing of a Mosque.
Paris Mayor Jaques Chirac charged: “There
is an overdose of foreignness. In
Paris’ Arab Quarters, you take a father with three or four wives and 20
children who get 50,000 francs in welfare programmes – naturally without
working. Add the noise and the
smell: The French worker on the same corridor goes crazy.”
“The immigrants
are colonizing us”, Baumann’s leaflets declare, “We don’t want to live
by the rhythm of the muezzins!”
How do French look
at Muslims? Algerian-born Tahar Rahmani says: “Now the French associate ‘Arab
with’ ‘Islam’ and Islam with
‘fundamentalist’ and ‘fundamentalist’ with ‘terrorist’!”
Last year,
BrigitteBardot went on television to assail the slaughter of 3000 sheep in
Marasellus for the Muslim feast of Aid-e-Kabir as a ‘revolting practice
unworthy of a catholic country’.
There
is a basic identity question. The
French attitude towards Muslims can be summed up in
an aside from an Arab: “To be French, must we be
named Marcel rather than Muhammed?”
-Times,
July 15, 1991.
Islamic terrorism
is a plague that all the world has to take care of .
-
Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian President as quoted
by Kevin Mc Coy and Susan Sachs in Newsday, Newyork 17.3.1993
The next enemy is
Islamic fundamentalism.
- Jean
Kirkpatrick on CNN watching the fall of
communism in Moscow on 25th December,
1991.
Concern over
Islamic radicalism or the evil fangs of Islamic terrorism.
-
Iqbal Masud referring to comments of
a national daily in the Independent, 24th March, 1993.
As Islamic
fundamentalism has become a rallying cry for opposition groups throughout the
Arab World, Christian Arabs have come under pressure the in the last two years
has vastly diminished their political, social and economic status in Egypt,
Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Syria and among Palestinians in the territories
occupied by Israel. As a result,
hundreds and thousands have emigrated to the United States, Canada, Western
Europe and Australia.
In
a striking example of the power of Muslim fundamentalists, nearly ten million
Coptic Christians in Egypt, the largest religious minority in West Asia, are
under siege. Copts from all walks
of life are being attacked, robbed and killed by roving bands of
fundamentalists. Churches are
regularly vandalized and sometimes burnt, prompting the government to place
virtually all of them under police guard.
In what many Copts
see as one of the most blatant examples of sanctioned discrimination, archaic
laws from Ottoman empire have been used to ban the construction of new churches
and the repair of ancient ones for nearly 30 years, severely constraining the
practice of Christianity in Egypt and placing a rich heritage of centuries –
old monasteries, churches and icons at risk.
-New York Times
Service published under column ‘World
View’ in Times of India, New Bombay 12.03.93.
Authoritarianism,
expansionism, terrorism: These are real dangers, but familiar ones, Described as
such, they can be dealt with dispassionately. Add the word Islam, however, and suddenly there is a Western
perception of menace out of all proportion to rational threats.
The West worries about Islam on the march.
From the close –
cropped hair and beards of the men to the dreary veils of the women,
regimentation is characteristic.
Should the West
fear Islam? Not as such But it is
worth keeping a very close eye on those who carry its banner.
- “Should We
Fear Islam?” by Christopher Dickey in
News Week’ , New York (Feb. 15, 1993)
Decades of heavy
subsidies from the Gulf Arabs helped the Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical
offshoots – including Hamas – build the infra – structure that now makes
it almost impossible to separate guerilla networks from Islamic relief agencies. The
movement threatens governments in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan and
preoccupies every other Arab country, as well as Israel.
Now aided by Iran, Sadam, the first Sunni Muslim Islamic republic – has
become the linchpin of aggressive pan – Arab Islamic Front.
The Muslim
Brotherhood, preached Jihad, called on Muslims to fight any Govt. that failed to
live by the Koran and Islamic law.
“The Saudies
bank-rolled Muslims Brotherhood and have been indiscriminate in their support of
extremist elements”, says Morton Abramowitz, the US State Department’s top
intelligence official from 1985 to 1989.
-
Tom Masland with Christopher Dickey in News week, New York, Feb. 15,
1993.
Islam.
Should the world be afraid?
-
Cover story in Time, June 15, 1992 with a rifle and a Minaret in the
foreground.
Mr. Mehdi,
Secretary General of the National Council on Islamic Affairs in US said that
there was a surge in hostility against Muslims who fear vandalism, Dr. Shaheer
Yousaf of Hughesville said that people in US think that Islam and extremism are
one and the same thing. They think
Muslims in this country are a potential threat to the country.
This is the perception.
- A report from
New York, 8.3.1993
With the death of
the Soviet Empire, some Western policymakers are concerned whether Islamic
fundamentalism may shape up as the next millennial threat to liberal democracy.
The Islamizing
movement at heart is a reaction, sometimes virulent, against simply the ways of
modernity exemplified by Western Culture … Already
France, for example is convulsed by a political backlash against the many poor,
socially unassimilated Arab immigrants who crowd high-rise tenements suburbs of
industrial cities…
Islamic thought
today is a closed system that admits no analysis, no debate of what are today
common interpretation of the revealed word.
- David
Aikman, Dean Fischer and Farah Nsyrti, Time,
June 15, 1992
Caption: “Sword
of Islam”.
As Western women
play an ever larger part in running their societies, the retrograde treatment of
Muslim women becomes obvious and difficult for the West to accept…
In fact, as the
West worries about Islam on the March, many Muslims see themselves under siege. In
Europe a renaissance of racism targets Arabs and Turks; in the Balkans, Serbian
women and children are scared by talk of Muslim fanatics, while Serbian cleanse
the villages of this ethnic blight.
- Christopher Dickey, Newsweek (New York)
February 15, 1993.
Unlike the
militant mullahs of Islam, militant Hindus pose no threat to the World at large. Their
target is the enemy within, secular Hindus and Muslims. In
fact it is an argument between secular and communal Hindus over the treatment of
Muslims. The Muslims are far too
few to prevent India from becoming a Hindu Theocracy, if it so chooses.
Why has India changed so much? Why
has militant Hinduism suddenly started looking like an idea whose time has come?
The BJP holds that Hindu nationalism is the best glue to bind India
together.
-
The Economist, London, 6
February, 1993.
Islamic states are
in confusion, unable to act as an Umma or concerted Muslim nation.
The war in Bosnia is highlighting the powerlessness of Islam to respond
to a conflict that threatens a whole Muslim community.
So, despite strident calls for arms shipments to be sent to Bosnian
Muslims, despite the appeals for a jihad, no Arab leader ventures close to
Serajevo.
The Bosnian crisis
directly affects two million European Muslims.
If it speeds to Kazoo and Macedonia, if it drags in Bulgaria, Albania and
even Turkey the tens of millions of Muslims will be at war against a Serbian
army that draws on the imagery of orthodox Church.
The inability of
the Muslim governments to develop multilateral solutions to the problems that
affect Muslim communities plays into the hands of fundamentalists.
-The Times,
London “Islam’s Powerlessness”.
In 1983, Saudi
Arabia demolished part of the holy structures in Medina to make way, of all
things, a car park! Teheran’s was
a lone voice and no one else in the Islamic world even took any notice of what
was taking place in Medina,. For many Arabs a crucial element in the legitimacy of the
Ayodhya dispute has been the fact that Babri Masjid does not face Mecca.
It does not have a minaret and has no independent source of water supply
either. In Islam these are
pre-requisites for many places of worship.
-K.P. Nayar
quoting Gulf Arabs in Times of India, January 1993.
Unlike Hindustani,
Islam is unhappy to cohabit with other faiths.
Muslims may after all pay lip service to multi-culturalism but they
behave in exclusivism. It is not a religion, which is comfortable in minority in any
given society. Throughout the
Islamic world, both modernization and democracy are at a discount.
- V. Kapoor as quoted in the Times,
London.
It is interesting
that the question of cricket test of loyalty, when some Indian Muslims cheered
Pakistan during cricket matches here found an echo in England.
“Which side they cheer for is an interesting test.
Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are? Well, you can’t have two homes.
Where you have a clash of history, a clash of religion, a clash of race,
then it’s all too easy for there to be an actual clash of violence …
Are they really integrated or are they just living here?”
-
Norman Tebitt, former chairman of conservative
party quoted by Amulya Ganguli in Times of India,
February 1, 1993.
The West’s next
confrontation is definitely going to come from
the Muslim world. It is in the sweep of the Islamic nations from the Maghreb to
Pakistan that the struggle for a new world order well begin.
-
M.J. Akbar quoted in Time (June 15, 1992).
Islam
is coming. The
question is what type of Islam- liberal or
fanatical.
-
Dr. Hassan Hanafi, Professor of philosophy, Cairo University
Quoted in Time (June 15, 1992)
There are many
reasons why Muslims are critical of the West.
It is not theological. It is
a grievance of colonialism. We have
been humiliated. The West defined
the world for Muslims.
- Ibrahim
Ibrahim, Professor of Arab Studies
At Georgetown University, Washington.
Colonialism tried
to deform all the cultural traditions of Islam. I don’t think there is a conflict between religions.
There is a conflict between civilisation.
Islamic militancy is entirely political.
Muslims reject regimes founded on transplanted ideologies.
- Abdulwahab
Belwahi, A Tunisian Lawyer
Social
dislocations in Muslim world have created a yearning for dignity.
Fundamentalist activism is nothing, if not youthful, and its young
disciples are mostly urban, unemployed and profoundly unhappy with the politics
they have known. They look back to
Muhammad’s temporal rule in Arabia in the 7th Century and the
rightly guided Caliphs whose regimes ensued, as the perfect model for statecraft
today.
- Mohammed
Arkoun, Professor of Islamic Thought at Sorbonne University, Paris.
We Muslims live
today in the cultural epoch of the 14th Century.
We need a Descartes a Roger
Bacon, an Ibd Khaldun, a Karl Popper.
- Mohammed
El-Jabry,
Moroccan Professor quoted in Time.
If Muslims today
see themselves as victimized by the West , for most of their history it was
Christendom that felt under siege. Within a century of the Prophet’s death in 632, the Moors
had conquered Spain and were knocking at the doors of France.
By 1453 the Ottoman Turks had captured Constantinople and were marching
through the Balkans towards the backdoor of Europe.
Despite their own
imperial history, Muslims focus mainly on the past two centuries of encroachment
by European powers armed with superior technology and weapons.
Today, as then, the invader is not Christanity but the entire cultural,
intellectual and political apparatus of modernity, Capitalism, discotheques and
sexy films are only part of the onslaught.
Far more threatening is the framework of rationalist superstitions,
originating in 17th Century Europe that is inimical to all
traditional ideas of Islamic Culture.
-
David Aikman, Deen Fischer and Farah
Nayeri in Time, June 15, 1992.
Radical Islam
calls for harsh code of behaviour. Afghanistan
is governed by austere dictates of Islamic law.
Western films are banned and women who flouted the new dress standards by
wearing a skirt had her foot pierced by a bayonet as punishment.
In Iran, hundreds were whipped, stoned or had limbs cut for various
offenses. In Pakistan, the Islamic
judges ruled charging of interests on loans as invalid because they contradicted
Koranic teachings against usury, threatening nation’s entire foreign and
domestic trading. New laws ban
alchohol and encourage the wearing of the hijab (veil) across Africa, the Middle
East and Central Asia. In
Afghanistan, all workers have been ordered to observe fixed prayer times.
Islamic
extremists in the former Soviet States, are eager to
follow the Afghan’s example. “We
have a model of society to offer – the very model
that has existed since the time of Prophet Muhammed
himself”, says Dalvat Usman, Deputy Chairman of
Tajikstan.
“Everything ought to be the way Allah
ordered. No deviations are to tolerated”, says Obidkhan Askarov, a
leader in Uzbekistan. Iran
still denounces US as “the Great Satan”. Apart
from jailings and executions, wocen who wear a small
amount of makeup or let a bob of hair jut out of
their head scarves are frequently whipped or
imprisoned.
1 million bounty that Khomeini decreed against Salman Rushdie is still
not rescinded.
-
Giacomo Franco, Brussels in Time (February 3, 1992)
“The Muslims are
coming! The Muslims are coming!”
-
Daniel Pipes warning an “impending danger and disaster” quoted by Dr.
John Esposito in ‘The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality” (Oxford University
Press, 1992)
Though Islam is
seen as a real threat to those who want to misinterpsret it as a threat – The
Israelis and their Western Friends – Muslims do not see their faith as a
threat because, despite everything, they do not want to threaten the Christian
West or any one else. In any case,
history shows that Islam has been far more threatened by Christendom than the
other way round.
-
Dr. John Esposito Quoted by G.H. Jansen from
Nicosia in Times of India dated 4th April, 1993.
President of
Israel, Mr. Chaim Herzog and the President of Egypt Mr. Hosni Mubarak claim that
the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York was not an isolated act of “political
terrorism’ but part of a pan-Islamic global conspiracy against the West, which
the West, along with Israel must fight as it fought the Communist threat.
-
G.H. Jansen from Nicosia in Times
of India dated 4th April, 1993.
Islamic activism
taps into straightforward Islamic devotion but it is also due to unemployment
without which there would be no “soldiers of God” to parade and demonstrate
in the streets or to fill the mosques for the Fridays prayers.
It is scare - mongers who have made out that there is a single monolithic
Muslim menace threatening the “Civilised” world.
-
G.H. Jansen from Nicosia in Times
of India dated 4th April, 1993.
A
Cradle of Terror : Expatriate Muslims have made
Peshawar a new capital of militant Islam.
-
Title of an article in Newsweek (April 5, 1993) by Steve Le Vine in Peshawar.
Investigators
trying to unravel the recent World trade Centre bombing in New York keep finding
trials that lead to and from Peshawar. Alarmed
by Peshawar’s potential as an extremist haven, several Mideast Governments
have begged Islamabad to extradite the radicals.
The city serves as a frequent stop for prominent Islamic hard – liners
from other counties. Islamabad won’t have such a easy time disentangling itself….The
connivance of Pakistani officials who support Muslim rebels in the Indian region
of Kashmir.
-
Steve Le Vine in Newsweek, 5th April, 1993.
A fundamentalist
killed a British woman tourist in Cairo because in his view the government was
demolishing or closing down Mosques in order to build tourist hotels.
- News Item with
caption “Egypt Islamist kills tourist” in
International Herald Tribune, New York.
From Bradford to
Islamabad, a certain kind of Islam’s thought police is on the prowl; and a new
gulag is opening up for the blasphemer.
Farag fouda,
Scholar was shot dead by the Islamic Jihad in Cairo in July, 1992.
His blasphemy : he sought to separate Islam from
real politics and argued that terrorism and bigotry are un-Islamic.
Egypt’s foremost
woman novelist Nawal el Saadwi is on the hit list for distorting the image of
Islam.
Alaa Hamed for his
fictional work ‘A distance in a Man’s Mind’ gets midnight knock for
mocking at Islamic Symbols.
In Pakistan the
Imams are demanding the head of Akhter Hameed Khan, a 78-year old poet for a
nursery poem for alleged blasphemy.
Kuwaiti journalist
Fouad al Hashem was sent to jail for debunking the Imams’ claims that Iraqi
invasion was God’s wrath at Kuwait’s
sins.
Dr. A.R. Bedar,
Director of Khuda Baksh Oriental Library, Patna is living under a shadow of
fatwa for his refusal to accept that Hindus are Kafirs .
Bangladeshi Poet
Daud Haider is hounded out for lampooning Islam and is in exile in Berlin.
“Islam, once a
liberator is fast becoming a weird and insane monster of extra-territorial
conceit. It is blackmailing
civilized humanity with terrorism and now with nuclear weapons.
It will not stop at one Rushdie or one Farag Fouda”, says O.V. Vijayan.
For writers who
question or attack what they regard as pernicious developments in the Islamic
World- Salman Rushdie, Nawal el Saadawi and Daud Haider – exile is a permanent
state of existence and homeland a mere dream.
Yet they continue to object and fight from with their gulag.
-
Compiled from Newsweek, Time and The Economist.
When the soviets
occupied Afghanistan and the war started, so many criminals, thieves, those who
have been sentenced in jail for several years not only in Egypt but elsewhere
were being summoned to participate in liberating Afghanistan. After
the war, Iran had begun using terrorists for its own goals and Clinton
Administration should redouble its efforts to clean out thousands of ‘veterans’
who still live in Pakistan along the Afghan border.
-
Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian President in the NewYork Times (16th
April,1993)
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