Ever since the massacre of children in Pakistan I have been thinking about the mindset of the people who carried it out. I was trying to understand what sort of a narrative could have made the assailants so barbaric and how could events have been so perversely interpreted for them as to make these Taliban radicals consciously decide that killing innocent children is somehow justified. I was trying
to place myself in the shoes of the bereaved parents and trying to guess how I would have felt if my children -- who have given me so much pleasure, happiness, pride, satisfaction, stability and a sense of security as I grew older -- would have been so brutally taken away from me when they were children. Obviously, I would have been overcome by a sense of rage and obsessed by a sense of revenge. But at the same time I would have been heavily burdened by the fact that all this had been done by people who professed to build a society, a nation, a country and a future in light of the religion that was mine, and of whose contribution to civilisation I was acutely aware and extremely proud. So how could some people, who claimed to follow my religion, kill my children? For I know what my religion says. I would also be acutely aware that condemnation for an act of this nature -- indiscriminate killing of children -- was not as widespread and universal as it should have been. It is slightly consoling that most governments of Muslim countries and their leaders have condemned the killing. It is a heartening departure from the past. However, there is a disturbing silence from the religious leaders -- the guardians, so to speak, of our religion -- of these countries. Islam has a great tradition of religious scholarship. Our Ulema have over the centuries guided the followers with a correct interpretation of Islamic values and have defended the faith from misinterpretation by those who wanted to distort it. In the current state of affairs, it is my view that the Islamic religious scholars must come into the open and take a far stronger position than they have so far done, against those who are using Islam for their own political and violent ends. This has become acutely necessary under the present circumstances. However, I am also aware that it is not quite as simple as that. There is a lot of latent anger in the Muslim hearts and minds against the West, particularly against what they see as its duplicity. This anger is rooted in the injustice meted out to the Palestinians ever since 1948 and the unquestioned support extended to Israel to carry out all sorts of brutalities against the people of Palestine. Over the decades many other instances of double standard have added to the feeling of anger which transformed into hatred with the launching of the so-called “war on terror” resulting in the invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, the latter on the pretext of destroying the WMDs, which the Western powers knew did not exist. However, an angry reaction to the duplicity of the Western power cannot be allowed to distort the values of the religion that we hold close to our heart. Advertisement It is my view many of us hesitate to condemn violence and atrocities from our co-religionists, including those indulging in terrorist acts, because we have a vague sense that somehow they are promoting the 'Muslim cause.' In fact they are doing the exact opposite. When the twin towers were destroyed there was a vicarious pleasure in many of us that the US has finally been taught a lesson for the injustices it had committed against the Muslims, especially the Palestinians. We did not see the loss of more than three thousand innocent lives as something that our religion did not permit and our “Islamic values” should have unhesitantly condemned. From then on, each act of terrorism by Muslim extremist groups went either un-condemned or very mildly so by the Muslim world with the Muslim religious scholars generally remaining silent. Take the Madrid train bombing of 2004 killing 191 and wounding 1,800; multiple bombing in London underground killing 53, injuring 700; series of bombings in Delhi in 2008 that left 30 people dead and 130 injured; series of bombings in Mumbai the same year that killed 166 and wounded many more. In addition there have been smaller instances of terrorism in Pakistan, Afghanistan and in many other parts of the world. Silence in the above instances was unconscionable, including when most of the Muslim governments, their leaders and the scholars kept mum when Boko Haram kidnapped 276 school girls of non-Islamic faith last April and forcibly converted them to Islam. Later, 57 escaped. Since then they have kidnapped about 500 women and children. In early November, in a video message, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said: “The issue of the girls is long forgotten because I have long ago married them off.” What did the Muslim world do to save these children? There were hardly any words of condemnation. Why? Just because it was done by those who profess to be Muslims? How can this be acceptable? The recent beheadings by the so-called Islamic State have been among the most reprehensible of acts which we feel have not sufficiently been condemned. And now we have the massacre of school children in Peshawar. It is true that many justifications of sorts can be put forward about US, Israeli and other Western powers' atrocities against the Muslims. The destruction of Gaza, not too long ago, at Israel's whims can definitely be cited as a mindless killing of civilians and destruction of their homes which were directed against Muslims. But can one wrong justify another? Didn't our Prophet say “Killing one innocent person is like killing a part of Humanity”? The point we are trying to make here is that we need to protect the values of our religion from both our external enemies and from those within. Those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam must be as strongly condemned by us as those who are trying to physically annihilate us. We have to look into the fact that within some of us a tendency may be taking shape which is blindly critical of the West, and only of the West and not of those who are using our religion to justify violence and terrorism. In that 'blindness' we are becoming willing spectators of atrocities just because they target the West. This, knowingly or unknowingly, is shifting us from our own values and occasionally makes us acquiesce to the violence. We do not seem to realise that accepting violence in one instance brings violence to our own doorstep, leading to fratricidal terrorist acts. How else can we explain the Taliban killing children of fellow Muslims in Peshawar? Time has come for the emergence of a strong “Moral Voice” within Islam that condemns violence and terrorism of all sorts and by everybody. This condemnation has to be unambiguous, universal and total and not one of convenience. We have to not only tell the world but also show through deeds that we Muslims are just as firm to protect our rights as we are in condemning the killing of innocent people under whatever guise or under whatever banner or cause. There is no 'acceptable' killing of the innocent. Such killing is against Islam, and those who are proud of our religion must protest against it in the loudest voice. We extend our heartfelt sympathy to the parents whose heart is now empty and whose life has been rendered unbearable, and tell them that we share their sorrow and pledge to eliminate these elements from all our societies. The writer is Editor and Publisher, The Daily Star.
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