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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| The home of jihad |
| 2005-08-07 |
| By M.J.Akbar But the reason that Pakistan has become a safety net for individual cells as well as organised, regimented movements like the Taleban has deeper roots. The Sunday Times reported on 24 July that villagers in Chak 477 in Punjab, Pakistan — where the suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer’s family emigrated from — held a hero’s funeral for him despite the absence of his body, and chanted slogans like ‘Tanweer, the hero of Islam’. Among the mourners were members of a banned organisation, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which normally reserves its havoc for India. The ideology of such villages was not created by Afghanistan. Osama is in Pakistan because of this parallel ideology; the ideology is not there because of him. |
| Posted by:john |
| #1 Fascinating. It is often claimed that Jinnah was secular but the call to Jihad predates the creation of Pakistan itself. By 1940 Jinnah knew what he wanted — Pakistan. What was debatable was why. The slogan that divided India was simple: ‘Islam is in danger.’ As a proposition, it was absurd. For the believer a faith is true precisely because it is imperishable. A Muslim can be in danger, but not Islam. However, if Muslims were in danger from Hindus, then they needed security and safeguards in those regions where they were in a minority, like central India. Instead Pakistan was created on the western and eastern flanks of the subcontinent, where Muslims were in a majority and if anything the Hindus were in danger. The logic for the creation of Pakistan had, therefore, to be blown up from saving Muslims to saving Islam. The ‘defence of Islam’ needed a fortress and Pakistan became that fortress. Ironically, the religiosity of Gandhi helped sustain Muslim League suspicions. Gandhi fantasised about a ‘Rama Rajya’ in united India, a dream kingdom of the Hindu warrior-god Rama, where every citizen had equal rights and so on and so forth. Jinnah argued that this was just a deceptive term for the Hindu rule that he feared. The demand for Pakistan was accompanied by the rhetoric of a simulated jihad. A jihad is valid if Muslims are denied the right to practise their faith, or against the invasion of a Muslim’s homeland. And so Muslims were warned that in post-British India mosques would be destroyed and the call to prayer forbidden, and they must resort to violence if necessary to protect their separateness. A typical pamphlet, circulated after the Muslim League announced a ‘Direct Action Day’ on 16 August 1946, said, ‘The Bombay resolution of the All-India Muslim League has been broadcast. The call to revolt comes to us from a nation of heroes ...The day for an open fight which is the greatest desire of the Muslim nation has arrived. Come, those who want to rise to heaven. Come, those who are simple, wanting in peace of mind and who are in distress. Those who are thieves, goondas (thugs), those without the strength of character and those who do not say their prayers — all come. The shining gates of Heaven have been opened for you. Let us enter in thousands. Let us all cry out victory to Pakistan.’ |
| Posted by: john 2005-08-07 11:16 |