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Arshad Alam: In the Wake of Killings in France, Some Questions to Fellow Muslims

All religions have inherent peace and conflict in them. To understand it in such a way that it becomes a vehicle of permanent peace really depends on the followers of the religion.

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oday, a faith system that has saved millions in the last 1400 years is held hostage by a set of cartoons. Several Muslim views, both in the social media and in the form of common articles, have raised more questions in the wake of beheadings and murders in the name of Islam than they have answered. Some of these views are clearly conservative voices, but others see themselves as moderate and liberal, and yet their articulation has a disturbing similarity. As Muslims, it’s high time for us to ask some questions about our religion. This article is a small attempt in that direction, in teasing out such common refrains through Muslim articulations.

This is not about Islam: one common refrain is that Islam has nothing to do with beheadings and murders. In this narrative, the onus shifts to the particular transgressor who is said to have committed an act of violence due to his own ‘motivations’ and a failure to ‘correctly’ understand Islam.  We are telling ourselves that Islam is essentially a religion of peace, so such killings are not sanction or endorse. This non-sense has been repeated so many times that all meaning whatsoever has really been lost. And our ‘religion of peace’ has failed to avoid such killings in its name, despite the routinisation of this nonsense. The problem is our inability to see that no religion is about peace or war, including Islam; they are simply a series of commands.

In the Wake of Killings in France, Some Questions to Fellow MuslimsAll religions have inherent peace and conflict in them. To understand it in such a way that it becomes a vehicle of permanent peace really depends on the followers of the religion. In Islam, there has been no effort in that direction so far. It flies in the face of its own history when it comes to Islam being inherently peaceful. Islam is implicated in the killing and maiming of millions (like all other religious ideologies). Most of such killings have also been glorified. We need to ask ourselves if we can absolve Islam from crimes of this kind. Why should we shy away from the fact that Islam can motivate people to kill?  There is no other way to look at the recent killings other than to relate them to an understanding of Islam that teaches the Prophet to avenge any perceived insult from his followers.

It is not permitted in Islam to draw cartoons and ridicule the Prophet:  this is largely true. While Muslims did use drawings of Muhammad in their early history as an aid to ritual remembrance. But those drawings, which in Shia Islam are still permitted, were not considered offensive. So the question is not really about drawing cartoons, but what is deemed in the eyes of Muslims to be offensive. The real question is whether Islam would allow the satirizing and lampooning of its Prophet. The unequivocal answer is no, it wouldn’t. We as Muslims, however, are making a mistake since these caricatures were not made by Muslims or in Muslim countries. They were created in France, which is definitely not a Muslim country.

We need to ask ourselves why a secular country must abide by Islam’s legal and moral expectations. Do muslim countries show any tolerance for secular viewpoints? If that was the case, then why did the Saudis punish Raif Badawi and why in Bangladesh did the Prophet’s lovers kill secular bloggers? We must note that France is a nation with a deep history of anti-clerical movement. It is so necessary that satire and the freedom to express a point of view without hesitation, including the critique of established religions, are almost the founding myth of the French republic. For the French, giving up on religious critique is what it would be like for Muslims to give up their love for the Prophet. Why is it so difficult for us to understand that in this world there are cultures whose assumptions about humanity will differ from theirs?

In the Wake of Killings in France, Some Questions to Fellow MuslimsThis is nothing but Islamophobia: Nonsense. Islamophobia is the name of something that is even mildly critical of Islam and its practices. If the Runnymede Trust had used the terminology, it would never have thought that all criticism of a way of thinking, parts of which may not gel with contemporary times, would be silenced. We would do well, as Muslims, to note that everyone who criticises Islam is not an Islamophobe and that any criticism of Islam does not count as Islamophobia.

There is definitely a racism issue in Europe, but it is also a problem in most of the Arab world. Also those who went to join ISIS recalled that only because they were Indian Muslims, they were considered fit only to clean the toilets. Nevertheless, inside most of Muslim writing, one hardly comes across any criticism of Arab racism. Why such an unique focus on Europe when these problems are common in the society itself?

French colonialism’s nemesis: Really? And beheading someone is the way in which we demand that the French confront its colonial past? Is beheading the way to tell them that they oppressed Muslim countries like Algeria and Mali? But we were still quiet about what the French have recently done in Libya. We did not make any demands that the French apologise in Algeria for their excesses.

We said nothing against the skewed monetary policy of the French with the former colonies of North Africa, designed to keep them in perpetual debt? Where is our angst, why are there no Muslim protests over these issues? It seems that the issues that define the asymmetry of power between the West and the Muslim world just do not affect us. Rather, our reason for remembering the French colonial past is yet another excuse in the name of Islam to justify such killings.

It seems that the plight of fellow Muslims does not even bother us. How do we justify to ourselves why they have chosen to remain silent about what the Chinese do to Muslims while our so-called leaders have talked about ‘French madness’? There is now ample documentation to prove that China is waging a war not just on Muslims but on Islam itself Mosques have been bulldozed, shrines destroyed and Islam itself has been called a disease. Certainly, one can understand why Pakistan and Imran Khan cannot utter a single condemnation of China, dependent, as they are, on Chinese economic and strategic support. But why is it silent for our Ulama, the real fiery red-eyed ones? In the Muslim world, how much influence and leverage does China have that it has managed to buy the silence of Muslim religious leaders around the world?

Large numbers of Muslims do not support such violence in the name of Islam: We know that the opposite is true. Granted that large numbers of Muslims are too busy worrying about daily issues of survival. However, when we see the same large numbers of Muslims rallying in Bangladesh and demanding that Shias be declared as Kafirs in Pakistan, then how do we understand it? Large numbers of Muslims, in the name of Islam, do not accept such violence: we know the opposite is true. Granted, large numbers of Muslims are too busy worrying about daily issues of survival.  When we see the same large numbers of Muslims in Bangladesh rallying and demanding that Shias be declared Kafirs in Pakistan, however, then how do we understand that?

If we recall the controversy over Rangila Rasool in colonial India, Iqbal praised Ilmuddin, the killer of Rajpal, who had published a disparaging pamphlet on the Prophet. Iqbal praised the murderer during his funeral, stating that his whole corpus of work is nothing compared to the love of the Prophet displayed by Ilmuddin the carpenter. If we are taken back to medieval morality by our intellectuals who are supposed to chart new courses for the community, then what can be expected from the common folk? Average Muslims believe what they’re told by religious leaders. The prime slogan of all such demonstrations is to kill those who dishonour the Prophet. Only when we say that Muslims do not support such acts do we delude ourselves.

It would have responded differently to the Prophet. May be. May be not. Our own theology tells us that on certain occasions, the Prophet did in fact sanction the killings of those who had insulted him.  It is important to reiterate that poets, the thinkers of their time, were the most of those killed. He is said to have looked the other way on other occasions.Till the time we do not question these texts and state unequivocally that they should no longer be applicable, by guessing what the Prophet might have done, nothing good is going to come. Unfortunately, we have built for ourselves such an intolerant system that anyone who asks for such a review is either killed or forced into exile.

We must take some responsibility as Muslims for the toxic system we have created. It is not going to help to blame the Jews, the French, the British, Islamophobia or colonialism. Let us give ourselves some agency to accept that we have brought this upon ourselves, and now it has started to affect others as well. It is only this recognition of our own complicity that will impel us to change the system.

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