Muslims in the West must reject extremist ideologies, embrace secularism, and foster coexistence and tolerance, avoiding theocratic aspirations that threaten societal harmony and gratitude to host nations.
Abdul Sattar
The late Indian Muslim religious scholar Maulana Wahid Uddin Khan would always advise Muslims to be a non-problem community in the states where they have been living. He would often wonder why Muslims of India and those living in other states, especially in non-Muslim political entities, cannot be like the Bohras or the Ismailis who respect the law of any land where they happen to be living.
Unfortunately, it seems that certain sections of Muslim society in Europe and North America have a dogged determination to follow the fanatical elements that offer a very conservative and retrogressive interpretation of Islam seeking to establish hegemony of their religion over the states and countries where they have sought shelter to avoid persecution in their own native lands or seek a better life.
It is very disturbing to see that a number of Muslims living in those regions firmly believe in the conservative interpretation of religion, openly declaring that they would turn these states into Islamic caliphates imposing Jizya on the local Christians and non-Muslims. In the UK first, it was Hizb ut Tahrir that raised the slogans of Sharia and later the extremist group Al-Mahajron also advocated for the enforcement of a theocratic rule. Such an attitude on the part of these bigots creates fears among the local communities who wonder why these brigands of extremists do not move to countries like Afghanistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia where such a system already exists.
Many local people also complain that these immigrants are ungrateful and that they are poisoning their society by spreading sectarian and religious ideas and offering an obscurantist interpretation of religion that undermines the rights of women, children, and minorities besides threatening fundamental freedoms of people. For them getting rid of the Papacy and theocracy was a step forward in the development of Western civilisation and any call to revitalise religious authority amounts to pushing the wheel of development backward.
For centuries the specter of religious wars haunted Europe where masses still have the memories of Roman Catholic and Protestant wars. The Thirty-Year War in the 17th century led to the decimation of more than three million people. The mere thought of the Spanish inquisition could still send a shiver down the spine of enlightened European people. The persecution of scientists and intellectuals is also blamed on the religious bigotry that ruled the continent during the Dark Age. After losing millions of lives and witnessing unimaginable destruction, the people in the advanced capitalist world in general and Europe in particular decided to keep religion out of state affairs but Muslims want to bring it back with a more lethal interpretation.
It is time that Muslims in the West get rid of those clerics who offer an obscurantist interpretation of Islam and seek to establish their hegemony in the name of religion
Europe learned this lesson but unfortunately, Muslims living in the West do not want to learn any lesson from their sectarian wars and massacres carried out in the name of religion. From Banu Umayyad and Banu Abbas’ wars to clashes between Ismaili Shiite and Seljuk Sunni, no lesson has been learned. They tend to forget how Jazya the Iranian Safavid empire persecuted the Sunnis and how some kings in India turned the lives of Shiites into hell in Hyderabad Deccan and other parts of India. The plunderer Mahmud Ghaznavi chased his Muslim brothers in Multan in a bid to wipe them out for having a different sect.
The rise of Wahabism and the ascendancy of Maulana Abdul Wahab Najdi led to the elimination of all traces of Brailvi Islam in the Arabian Peninsula. This lethal and poisonous ideology tore down the social fabric of various Muslim states with its Takfiri advocacy. In reality, the monstrous terrorists of Al Qaeda, Islamic States, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Afghan Taliban, Islamic Salvation Front, and Pakistani Taliban were the terrible outcome of this deleterious ideology. The Afghan Taliban and their Pakistani comrades followed this lethal ideology with a Deobandi touch putting bans on women, persecuting religious minorities, bombing mosques, markets, and shrines besides slaughtering anyone who dared to differ with their views.
The emergence of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq turned out to be even more catastrophic as it not only committed horrendous crimes against Yazidi and other non-Muslims but also targeted Shiite and other Muslim sects. They unabashedly sold Yazidi women in slave markets, beheading those who refused to convert to Islam. They also sent a shiver down the spine of the Syrian Christians who had been part and parcel of Arab nationalism and without whom the history of the Arab country is incomplete. Their ideological brothers in Iraq massacred tens of thousands of Shiites besides turning the lives of Yazidis and other non-Muslims into hell.
The Afghan Taliban with their medieval thinking are still creating the largest open-air prison in the world for women besides establishing a graveyard peace in the country. Their semi-literate clerics are sending back the country into the Stone Age by implementing a sectarian interpretation of the religion.
So, do the sections of Muslims in the West, who heap eulogies on Shariah laws and fanatics, want this type of system? Do they want to ban girls’ education, encourage child marriages, and introduce inhuman punishments? Do they want to enslave non-Muslims forcing them to wear a particular type of dress as the Afghan Taliban did during the decade of 1990s? Do they wish to see semi-literate clerics, who are accused of molesting and raping tens of thousands of children across Muslim countries, as their political and spiritual leaders? Do they want to punish their European hosts by imposing an interpretation of religion that would reduce them to the status of second-class citizens? Would that not be an act of profound ungratefulness? Do they wish to see Muslims fighting the European soil in the name of Shiite and Sunni like they did in Iraq and Pakistan? Are they dreaming of stifling Ahmedis and Bihahis in the West? (who have sought shelter here to avoid persecution as any religious government that is introduced in Europe would offer no space to these persecuted communities).
It is time that Muslims in the West get rid of those clerics who offer an obscurantist interpretation of Islam and seek to establish their hegemony in the name of religion. They need to understand the benefits of secularism and follow a policy of co-existence and religious tolerance. __Courtesy The Friday Times
