Jihad Against Terror

Two cheers for the Deoband declaration

A string of fatwas emanating from Deoband in recent years – declaring co-education, photography or watching cinema as un-Islamic, opining that a woman raped by her father-in-law is deemed to be his wife and no longer her husband’s – have only served to reinforce the image of Darul Uloom as an institution trapped in a medieval mould. What is worse, the fact that organisations such as the Taliban and many of Pakistan’s terrorist outfits trace their theological lineage to Deoband has repeatedly prompted questions about the Deoband brand of Islam.

But on February 25, 2008 Darul Uloom redeemed itself by convening an impressive gathering of several thousand ulema, including many delegates from rival sects, to speak out against terrorism in the name of Islam. A declaration adopted at the conference organised by the Rabta Madaris Islamiah (Islamic Madrassas Association) stated: "Islam is the religion of mercy for all humanity. It is the fountainhead of eternal peace, tranquillity, security. Islam has given so much importance to human beings that it regards the killing of (even) a single person as the killing of entire humanity without differentiation based on creed and caste. Its teaching of peace encompasses all humanity. Islam has taught its followers to treat all mankind with equality, mercy, tolerance, justice. Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism. It has regarded oppression, mischief, rioting and murdering among (the) severest sins and crimes."

The declaration ended with a resolve to convene meetings across the country to denounce terrorism.

Readers of Communalism Combat will be aware that this is not the first time that Muslim religious leaders have taken a stand against the targeting of innocents by terrorists. In the last few years CC has frequently reported on fatwas and or public statements issued by Muslim religious leaders from Spain, the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere, condemning terrorist acts in strong language.

Within India, after virtually every major terrorist act Urdu newspapers have been full of statements issued by the spokespersons of virtually every single Muslim sect in the country, condemning the dastardly deeds in words such as "bestial", "barbaric", "cowardly", "inhuman", "un-Islamic". The attack on the Sankat Mochan Mandir in Varanasi in March 2006 brought burkha clad Muslim women out on the city’s streets, demanding a fatwa against terrorism. Within days, three fatwas were promptly issued by the Mufti-e-Benaras and imam of the Shahi Masjid Gyanvapi, Varanasi, Darul-Ifta Firangi Mahal, Lucknow and Jamiat-ul Mominath, Hyderabad.

At a public meeting organised jointly by Communalism Combat and other groups in Mumbai in July 2006 to protest the serial train bomb blasts in the metropolis, the chief mufti of Punjab, Fuzail-ur-Rahman Hilal Usmani issued a fatwa against the "curse of terrorism".

But given the nature of the terrorist scourge, these precedents however praiseworthy were lost like drops in the ocean. What’s more, publicity of the condemnatory statements against terror remained largely confined to the pages of Urdu newspapers. This effectively meant that the message hardly reached non-Muslims who continued to wonder why even moderate Muslims remain silent in the face of terror in Islam’s name.

Here lies the significance of the Deoband declaration. For the first time, setting aside sectarian differences, thousands of ulema from madrassas across the country assembled at a symbolically significant venue to speak out against terrorism in one voice. They also resolved that the Deoband meet was not a one-shot affair but the beginning of a sustained campaign against terror. However, it is evident from the range of responses to the declaration that the Deoband meet, highly welcome though it may be, is only the first step towards meeting a major communications challenge faced by Indian Muslims in general and its religious leadership in particular vis-à-vis the problem of "Islamic terrorism".

Leading national dailies and the electronic media gave the declaration prominent coverage and accorded it a qualified editorial welcome. A bit late in the day but welcome nonetheless, said some. Interestingly, a few commented that the declaration stopped short of a fatwa against terrorism, which raises the issue of public perception. For those who understand that the word fatwa means nothing more than an "opinion" expressed by a qualified mufti, the collective declaration by thousands of ulema goes far beyond a mere solitary fatwa. But the reality of public perception will need to be addressed.

The website www.jihadwatch.org is among those who believe that Islam itself is a problem religion and that Muslims can do nothing right. Not surprising therefore that the portal lost no time in picking holes in the declaration. Said one commentator, "The question of when and whether it is legitimate to use violence to further Islamic causes is left untouched. The other is the definition of innocents. We’re expected to supply our own cultural definition of innocents and non-combatants and assume that their definition does not differ."

Added another, "But when the document itself condemns all terrorism without explaining what it considers terrorism to be and then condemns ‘state-sponsored terrorism’ in ‘Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan’ as well as ‘in Bosnia and various South American countries’, conspicuously absent from this list is any terrorism of which Muslims are the perpetrators."

It may be tempting to dismiss the criticism from jihadwatch as jibes from confirmed Islamophobes. The only problem is that some Muslims too have found the declaration wanting. Mirza Faisal is one example (http://indianmuslims.in/deoband-terrorism-is-un-islamic). Faisal offered qualified praise to Darul Uloom for "a creditable step of hosting a conference on anti-terrorism and resolutely condemning terrorism to be un-Islamic." But he added that "it is a good step which should have happened a few years back." Moreover, "the declaration could have gone a bit further by being more specific about the terror acts in India."

Faisal elaborated, "While it (the declaration) mentions Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Bosnia and South American countries regarding state-sponsored terrorism, it misses to mention the specific instances of terrorism that have happened throughout India. By being specific it would have been much easier for the common man to relate with this as to what amounts to terrorism. By being specific it could have mentioned the blasts at Sankat Mochan temple, Jama Masjid, Ajmer Sharif, Mecca Masjid, Sabarmati Express, Mumbai trains and UP courts. It could also have reiterated the points in an earlier fatwa where groups having Islamic names and involved in terror acts were condemned."

Faisal, who obviously knows what he is talking about, went a step further. "It could also have added a paragraph or a few sentences about the possible starting points (for extremism) and why they are not justifiable. For instance, the heinous acts of the Gujarat carnage or Babri Masjid demolition which are barbaric but yet they cannot justify any violence in reaction. It could have more strongly spoken about the right course of action that is allowed in Islam in the context of India if one is oppressed, which would be the legal recourse that is constitutionally allowed. In this context only, the government should have been brought to task about the inefficiencies in the whole mechanism and the rampant abuse that is going on by putting innocents in extrajudicial renditions, which is totally counterproductive in stopping terrorism."

That Faisal has a point about the declaration not going far enough or not being sufficiently explicit is evident from some of the responses from Muslim leaders from Jammu and Kashmir. These statements show that the declaration leaves room for equivocation so that one could endorse it even while condoning or justifying acts of terrorism.

The hardliner and chairman of the Hurriyat Conference (G), Syed Ali Shah Geelani, for example, endorsed the ulema’s declaration that terrorism is anti-Islamic but was quick to add that "state terrorism is the root cause of all acts of terrorism in the world. Unless we cure the cause, we cannot stem its effect. State terrorism is the cause; reaction to it by people is the effect. Ignoring the cause and terming the effect as terrorism is not just. We need to condemn the cause, not the effect." Adding that the killing of innocent people is not compatible with Islamic teachings, Geelani proceeded to stress that distinctions should be drawn between terrorism and resistance movements.

The fire breathing chief of Dukhtaran-e-Milat, Syeda Asiya Andrabi said there are no two opinions that terrorism is un-Islamic. "But we need to draw a distinction between terrorism and jihad," she added.

Clearly then, the ulema who adopted the declaration need to move beyond generalities and get more explicit about where they stand, specifically on Muslims who target innocents in the name of Islam, if they are to carry conviction. The first question that needs to be addressed is the definition of innocents. This is necessary because many terrorist outfits argue that in democratic societies where citizens vote governments to power, all citizens are accountable for the deeds of governments. This line of reasoning claims, for example, that none is innocent and all US citizens and all Israelis are responsible for what their respective governments do in Iraq or Palestine. Resisting such oppression is thus the religious duty of Muslims, a jihad, not terrorism. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda’s number two, for example, has just declared that his outfit "has not killed innocents" except as an "unintentional error" or "out of necessity"!

It could also be argued that the Deoband declaration is in fact symptomatic of the denial mode – because Islam prohibits it, no Muslim could engage in an act of terror – that flies in the face of reality and which many of today’s Muslims live in. In the entire document there is not a single reference even to those acts of terror in India or elsewhere in the world for which terrorist groups with pious sounding Islamic names have claimed "credit". If Islamophobes make terrorism synonymous with Islam and Muslims, the declaration seems to imply that terrorism only means "state terrorism" and the "tyrant West" is the real culprit.

What is implicit in the declaration was made explicit by Maulana Marghoobur Rahman, rector of Darul Uloom Deoband, in his presidential address at the meet. He said, "The world very well knows that the curse of terrorism remains alive only because of the backing it receives from the Zionist forces. That is why those commentators who keep a close watch on their methods of working argue that terrorist attacks that occur in India must be examined in detail because there seems to be a common pattern in the methods used in several of these attacks. It should not be that because of incomplete investigation or because the investigation is diverted in a different direction the real culprits are ignored and instead innocent people are branded as criminals."

The ulema in India need to take a closer look at the fatwa issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain in March 2005, categorically declaring Osama bin Laden and other members of the al-Qaeda as apostates who no longer belong to Islam. An excerpt from the fatwa reproduced here (see box) carries conviction because there is no equivocation, the fatwa is aimed directly at a Muslim and his organisation and the message is crystal-clear. Ironically, the Spanish fatwa has since been cited frequently even by Islamophobes while pointing to flaws or lack of sincerity in other fatwas or Muslim statements against terrorism.

Jihadwatch, which castigated the Deoband declaration for not defining terrorism, conveniently ignores the fact that to suit its own convenience the US administration too chooses not to define terrorism. But if one sticks to the dictionary meaning of terrorism as "a policy intended to strike those with terror against whom it is adopted" there is no reason why anyone should shy away from speaking out against state terrorism or mob terrorism (Narendra Modi-style) as much as bomb terrorism by Muslim or non-Muslim groups.