As a boy I often got angry on reading the newspaper in the morning. Often the provocation lay in our cricket team’s inability to win a certain match against Pakistan. The coverage of the Bishan Singh Bedi-led team’s Pakistan tour in 1978 and the loss at the hands of the genius of Imran Khan agitated my young mind for days on end. As did frequent headlines, “Amritraj goes down fighting” or “Krishnan gallant in defeat”. Why could not Vijay Amritraj go up fighting or why could not Ramesh Krishnan be gallant in win? Why did Indians have to lose, I asked to no one in particular.
Occasionally though there were more serious issues which occupied my young impressionable mind. For instance whenever Imam Bukhari pronounced a fatwa on any socio-political issue that occupied the Muslim community, which itself was a huge exaggeration considering the imam’s vision of Muslims was limited to those staying near the historic Jama Masjid built by Shah Jahan. Of course, he talked in terms of ‘ummah’ and the newspapers faithfully reproduced his words in daily reports. Often in the run up to elections our newspapers wrote about the so-called fatwa in favour of Congress or Janata Party as the case may be or later Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party, etc. Often I rushed to my father for his views on the fatwa supposedly pronounced after the Friday prayers. A mufti by qualification, my father would drive away my fears saying, “Yeh sab kam ilm waalon ki baatein hain. The imam was not qualified to issue the fatwa. He had no scholarly credentials.” His pronouncement of the alleged fatwa was akin to those quacks practising in jhuggi clusters as medical professionals.
Those days when ‘kam ilm’ reigned spilled over to my youth and beyond. In fact more misnomers were added. For instance, the term Islamic terrorism. Again I fumed when I first heard the term a little under two decades ago. Terrorism did not have a religion when the U.S. destroyed Vietnam or when Japan was bombed. It didn’t have one when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated. Or when Afghanistan and later Iraq were destroyed. Why associate a religion’s name with acts of terror, I often asked in my social circle. Many nodded in agreement, yet the terms continued to gain currency even after a distinguished author like Dilip Hiro openly found fault with the usage, and even sought to provide alternatives. Unfortunately, when he spoke a few years ago at the Sapru House in New Delhi, few turned up to listen.
Recently, I found an answer, an answer stemming not from shared faith or viewpoint but from men whose width of vision far exceeded that of lesser mortals. The answer came not from an Islamic scholar alone but from two others following their own faiths in the book appropriately named “Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings” by Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri with foreword by Professor John Esposito and introduction by our own Sudheendra Kulkarni.
Now Dr. Tahir, hailed by those given to the moment as Pakistan’s Anna Hazare, is a scholar whose words command attention wherever he goes. When he came to New Delhi three years ago, there was not an empty seat in the auditorium and no space for parking on the road leading to the India International Centre. He spoke, we all listened. And now I read. What a wonderful book, easy to read, simple to comprehend! He does not hold back, he goes for the jugular whether talking of suicide bombers or the so-called Islamic terrorists, demolishing the arguments of those gone astray with direct and indirect references to the Quran and Hadith. It is an elucidation that forced Kulkarni to go all the way to Canada to meet Dr. Tahir at his modest but hospitable home.
Without naming the Islamic State terrorists now wreaking havoc on the faithful in West Asia, he talks of the unlawfulness of violence against Muslims. Reproducing an oft-quoted verse from the Quran, “Whoever kills a person (unjustly), except as a punishment for murder or (as prescribed for bloodshed, robbery and spreading) disorder in the land, it is as if he killed all of humanity,” he writes, “Islam not only outlaws the mass killing of Muslims but the whole of humanity, without any discrimination on the basis of caste, colour, race or religion.” With such simple words, he pronounces his verdict on suicide bombing, something which was defended by some scholars in the case of Israel’s aggression in Palestine. Then in a move, while will ring a bell with those who have had soft corner for terrorists of any denomination, he states, “Becoming an accomplice to terrorists is also a crime.” Here he reminds us that Prophet Muhammad “categorically forbade people to provide help material support to terrorists. He ordered to isolate them and deny them any numerical strength, financial assistance and moral support”.
A little later, Dr. Tahir takes on those who attack mosques –– and such activities are known to happen frequently these days –– and reminds them of the verses of the holy book wherein such people as those forbid the remembrance of Allah’s name are called as “unjust”. On similar lines not only does he condemn suicide bombers but also their leaders. Importantly, he does not get into a verbal slugfest, or stooping to one man’s word against another. He uses his vast knowledge of hadith, sunnah and Islamic history to drive home the point in an irrefutable manner.
Little wonder, his words get Esposito to dig up a Gallup World Poll, the largest and most systematic poll of Muslims of 35 Muslim countries. According to the poll, a majority of respondents who were asked in an open-ended question to explain their views on 9/11, those who condemned terrorism cited religious as well as humanitarian reasons. By contrast, not a single respondent who condoned the attacks used the Quran or Islam as justification. Instead, they relied on political rationalisations like the U.S. as an imperialist power, and so on. Similarly, Kulkarni writes that the U.S. war on terror is counter-productive and the death of the innocent in the drone attacks cannot be defended. He goes on to talk of legal commands about protecting non-Muslims in an Islamic state, writing, “Neither violence nor compulsion in religion vis-a-vis non-Muslims is permitted in Islam.”
The noted BJP leader came back enlightened after his Canada trip a few years ago. I got a ray of similar enlightenment reading “Fatwa…”. Now, if the imams, the Bukharis, and indeed, a good section of the media, could read it as well! The days of ‘kam ilm’ could well be over.
