Commentary/Fuzail Jafferey
US created the Frankenstein's monster of Islamic terrorism
An extensive report recently published in Egypt's largest circulated
Arabic daily Al-Ahram, a newspaper which is widely quoted and
commented upon in the western media, reveals that the bomb attack
at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad on 19 November 1995, which claimed 19 persons and injured many, was engineered by the Al-Jihad group in Egypt, in collaboration with the Pakistani Islamic zealots.
The Egyptian intelligence agencies, which took over a year to
complete their investigations, have now come out with certain specific
details in this regard. According to the investigators, the operation
was financed by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi dissident religious leader
who has been living in exile since 1994 after he was stripped
of his Saudi citizenship on the charge of actively opposing
the present Saudi regime.
The Al-Ahram report further claims that
the three jihad (meaning "struggle" or to "strive for") leaders, Ayman al-Zawahry, Tharwat Shehata, and
Adel Abdel Mejid Abdel Bary, who had planned the car-bomb attack
at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, had been working in close cooperation
with Pakistani Islamic radicals for quite some time. Moreover, American
and Egyptian investigators attribute the bombing of the World
Trade Centre in New York and the blast in the building in Saudi
Arabia which housed American civil and military personnel to the
same network of Islamic militants.
Various media reports suggest that Pakistan has virtually become
the official, though undeclared, headquarters of the Islamic militants spread
almost all over the world. The rightwing Pakistani militant organisations,
however, refute the claim that they are promoting terrorism in
order to replace the secular and quasi-secular governments in
Muslim-dominated countries with their own version of Islamic rule.
While vehemently denying any direct or indirect involvement in
the attack at the Egyptian embassy and the American World Trade
Centre, Qazi Husain Ahmad, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan,
had issued a press statement saying that: "I do not consider him a Muslim who is directly or indirectly
involved in killing innocent people through terrorist activities."
Describing Islam as the "universal religion of peace," Qazi
Husain Ahmad has claimed that the blasts in the US, France,
Saudi Arabia, and Islamabad in recent times have little to
do with Islamic fundamentalism. He further asserted: "Muslims at large are the victims of a vigorous propaganda
by the media ... the western powers, particularly the US is implicating
Muslims in every terrorist activity committed in any corner of
the world."
Commenting upon the incident involving the Egyptian
embassy, Ghulam Raza Naqvi, the Supreme Commander of Sipah-e-Mohammad
Pakistan stated: "We do believe in Muslim brotherhood,
but we do not support violence against innocent people."
The supreme commander, however, adds a new dimension to the controversy
when he says, "We believe in jihad against unIslamic governments
which are guilty of terrorism against true Muslims."
Since, Ghulam Raza has not named any such unIslamic country,
we will not like to dig into the matter any further, leaving it
to the guess of the readers. From the Iranian point of view even
the present Saudi government is an unIslamic government as monarchy
and dynastic rule are strictly prohibited in Islam.
As far as jihad against evil forces is concerned, it is doubtlessly an Islamic concept.
It is also related with the idea of pan-Islam as propagated
by Jamaluddin Afghani and by Allama Iqbal in the 20th century.
At the same time, one should not forget that Muslims, by and large,
have not been attracted by or resorted to jihad in recent
centuries.
The concept of waging war against the non-believers had been shelved
for all practical purposes after the Middle Ages. Various Muslim
leaders such as Saad Zaghlul, Habib Bourgviba, and Gamal Abdel
Nasser, who fought to liberate their countries from monarchy and
colonialism, were diehard nationalists who never used religion
as a weapon to achieve their objectives. Even the Khilafat movement
in India, aimed at defending the Ottoman Empire against the intemperate
westernised secularism of Kamal Ataturk, had nothing to do with
jihad. The fact that the Khilafat movement was supported by Mahatma
Gandhi while opposed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, shows that it had
no pan-Islamic context. Of late, the successful revolt led by
Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini against the shah of Iran was termed
as Inquilab-e-Islami (Islamic Revolution) rather than jihad.
The present notion of Jihad International Inc, that is an armed
struggle of Muslims, often resulting in massive destruction of
life and property, is a modern phenomenon whose sponsors include
the governments of the US, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
It was America and its allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia which,
for their own political reasons, revitalised Muslim fundamentalism
in Afghanistan by converting the war against the then Soviet Union into
a religious war. The US not only sent arms and aid worth about
15 billion dollars to Afghanistan, it also encouraged Muslim countries,
including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria, etc, to
send their nationals to fight against the 'godless communism'
and establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan.
It is on record that when a delegation of the mujahideen (religious fighters) went to the White House, President Ronald Reagan described them as the Muslim world's
"moral equivalents" of the founding fathers of America.
But for the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the US would
have certainly continued its support to Islamic militants
not only in Afghanistan but in every part of the Third World where
Soviet presence could pose a threat to American supremacy.
Even today, while the Taliban are violating all norms of civilised human
rights, the United States is discreetly supporting them against
the liberal, ousted Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, simply
because he is backed by Iran.
The US government which is now describing jihad as a menace
to mankind, must realise that the growth of pan-Islamic terrorists with a
worldwide military network and collaborations in the last quarter
of the century is its own creation. Islamic universities, madrasas,
and training centres which were established in Pakistan and other
places with the funds made available by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi
agencies during the Afghan war have now become the breeding grounds
of Islamic militancy.
Moreover, as Rana Jawad, a noted Pakistani political analyst has
commented: "It is the hangover of 'defeating a superpower' that makes
the zealots believe that anything under the sun can be achieved
through the tactics employed in Afghanistan."
No wonder if the mainstream Pakistani religious parties like
the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan, which have deeply
penetrated into the army and the paramilitary since the days of the late General Zia-ul
Haq, continue to send those returning from the Afghan war (who are now
jobless) as well as new recruits to Jammu and Kashmir. Jihad combined
with lucrative monetary gains has become quite an attractive profession
for many Pakistanis, Afghans, and all those Arab nationals who
have stayed back even after the withdrawal of Russian troops from
Afghanistan.
Muslim masses who consider jihad as a holy concept
have never aligned themselves with the forces of disruption and
destruction. Americans, Egyptians, and Saudis will have to redraft
their political agenda if they want a terror-free world. America
and Egypt can also help each other in containing Muslim militancy
by stopping Israel from bombing south Lebanon and treating
the Palestinians in a savage manner. It is also rather strange
that while the US government is taking every possible step to
get rid of Saddam Hussain, it continues to support the military
rulers of Algeria.
Global terrorism is no doubt a serious menace. But in order to
overcome it, the world requires a comprehensive rather than the piecemeal
formulae that the US prescribes from time to time.
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