Understand Islam and Muslims

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It’s so easy to hate Muslims these days. Similar sounding names keep coming after every bomb blasts and every day the bitterness against Islam keeps growing. IM blog had argued before why Indian Muslims are in general away from the winds of extremism but the recent involvement of Kafeel Ahmed and Haneef seems to have shaken the belief. Many Indians (both Hindus and Muslims) take pride in the fact that no Indian Muslim has so far been implicated in an act of international terrorism. Kafeel Ahmed just broke that pride. Haneef is in police custody in Australia.

While the Indian police was quick to hold the entire Muslim community responsible, the indiscriminate arrest of Muslim youth after the train blasts proves this, the Australian police seems to have handled the situation better. There were no mass arrests of people. People who were arrested were given proper treatment and released immediately if no evidence was found against them. But then its the Indian police so I am not complaining.

It’s so easy to blame the entire community for this act and why shouldn’t others blame us when Muslims kill, torture and spread terror on this planet! Iraq and Afghanistan are living hells. Palestine has become a mass grave. Lebanon keeps boiling. Iran keeps threatening the world with its nuclear capabilities. Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations curtail the rights of non-Muslims. Indonesia, Thailand and Philippines have Muslim extremist groups who would butcher at slightest of provocations. Pakistan is another hot bed of extremists. Lal Masjid has more weapons than Musallas (The prayer mats). Not just the Muslim countries but non-Muslim countries with Muslim population haven’t been spared. India, US, UK, Spain and the list continues. Well the big question is, what do Muslims want?

This question has no one line response. We have to dig deep into Muslim mentality to find answers to these questions. To start with we should understand that there exists a wide gap between pious Muslims and non-pious/non Muslims. Its not that piousness leads to extremist but its actually something else. It’s the pride of being the chosen one, it’s the contempt that one inculcates and its the hatred one generated within oneself. These superlatives are born because a Muslim feels victimized in this world. A world that doesn’t adheres to Quranic principles. A world that is slowly degrading morally. A world where ‘love’ is deliberately misspelt as ‘lust’. A world which has made its own rules, many of which are totally contrary to Shariah.A world were living the halal way is increasingly becoming impossible. A world were a pious Muslim find its difficult to preserve his belief. So what’s the solution? Eradicate from the face of planet every one who is responsible for the woes!

Jab bad-deeni phailti hai to har jagah jhalakti hai

Don’t ask for the English translation of the above. I couldn’t find a better one liner to sum up the present state of Muslim ummah. Do you really think that a ‘pious’ Muslim who adheres to such extremist ideas is really pious? Even if you don’t, the secretary of the Jamia Hazrat Tipu mosque definitely feels so

The secretary of the Jamia Hazrat Tipu mosque where the two brothers prayed said on Friday that the siblings were warned when they tried to influence the clergy and young boys to join the movement. It is not clear when the two brothers decided to enlist.

“As children, they mixed with others. But when they joined the Tabligh-e-Jamaat, they picked up a fight with some of our members. They tried to expand the group and asked many of us to join,” said Samiullah at the mosque that stands opposite the home of Kafeel and Sabeel’s parents.

After so much of background let me come to the actual point. Piousness doesn’t lead to extremism. There is this misconception that if a Muslim mixes well with the non-Muslims, a Muslim who drinks, a Muslim who is escorted and a Muslim who doesn’t give a damn about Islam would ideally be away from such extremists. Be abundantly clear about this fact that most of the Muslim youth who take up arms were previously completely away from Islam. They are inducted into extremism and made to feel that they are in a way repenting for their sins by killing non-Muslims. I know that by now you would have heard a lot about Islam being a religion of peace, blah, blah. But still Muslim indulge in terrorism so who is to blame? Islam or Muslims?

You should understand that Islam doesn’t recognize the existence of any other religion so any attempt to modify the Quran or the Hadeeth would lead to further bloodshed. Is this non-acceptance really a problem for non-Muslims when the Quran has clearly laid down the rights of non-Muslims? The onus is on Muslim community to cleanse the religion of such fanatics; fanatics who have contempt for non-Muslims, fanatics who have no respect for lives and fanatics who would ideally want to see this world destroyed rather than be under a non-Muslim ruler.

Merely providing lip service against such extremist won’t serve the purpose. There have to be concrete steps to tackle this menace. And the reforms are to be visible. Its easy to express one’s helplessness by putting the entire blame on US or the basic reasons of conflicts but then we can’t sit idle. There has to be something substantial. The basic change has to start from the grass root level, the Mosques and the clerics. The entire Madarsa education, especially in the sub-continent, needs a overhaul.

Comments will be open after the second part of this article is published.