I heard the address of the U.S. President Obama speaking from the White House on the terror attack on San Bernardino. The headlines in the Washington Post said that it reflects a struggle to be heard. Ironic, is it not? This is a person who won two presidential elections mainly by out talking his opponents. Just for his elocution skills, he got a Nobel Peace prize. If this happens to him then, there is something seriously wrong with the message itself.
He, just like many other politicians and opinion makers, is not willing to seriously discuss the issue of terror arising out of Islamic religious thought. Terrorists are time and again claiming that they are following Islam. The larger Muslim community is saying at least in public theirs is a religion of peace and does not preach violence. Then why some Muslims are indulging in serious terror and claim that they are following Islam. Many of the terrorists come from well-to-do families. Victims of terror personally did nothing to deserve this from the terrorists. So there are no personal reasons for these heinous crimes. Terrorists are just indulging in random killings of innocent people because of their religion or national identity. These people are either mad or have a strong reason for doing such things.
We all know that Islam and Christian religions were horribly violent for a long time. This violence resulted in destroyed many ancient religions and great civilizations. Such long and offensive conduct shows there is no central of peaceful behavior or tolerant conduct in these two religions.
However, many Christian-majority nations are now secular democracies. Most of them even profess multiculturalism. As a result, Christianity lost most of its violent nature. At least, for now. Islam, on the other hand, has not reformed with the passage of time. On the contrary, it became more conservative in nature with many schools like Wahabis now influencing religious thought more and more. Almost all Islamic nation states are not secular and not democracies. Muslims, as people, also are mostly peaceful in nature. However, Islamic ideology in remains to be violent. There are several passages in Quran, which support, incite and justify violence on non-Muslims. The conduct of Mohammad, the best person among men according to Islam, is also violent. Muslims are required to emulate him. It is, therefore, difficult for Muslims to denounce these fundamental tenants of Islam. The social structure of most of the Islamic societies is feudal or tribal in nature. Religious dissent or reform is not possible in such societies. Hence, it may take a long time for Muslims to reform. Meanwhile, the attacks on non-Muslims and the Jihad will continue. Political leaders and other opinion makers world over are not ready to admit this problem. According to them, Islam is a peaceful religion and terrorist are just confused people. The entire history of Islam shows otherwise. No major reform in Islamic thought suggests that it changed its nature in any significant way. In fact, the Wahabis want to make it more literal, more repressive and violent. This movement now called a Wahabi School receives huge funds from donations. There are thousands of madrasas teaching this ideology world over. Most of the present set of terrorists come from this school. However, we cannot blame every terror attack or violent action done by followers of Islam in this school alone. Wahabis do not do genocide in Armenia, Bangladesh, etc. The people with same ideas did these things. Wahabis may be a school of thought. However, they seem to be saying nothing new to Islam. Wahabis are not proposing any new interpretation or ideas on fundamental Islamic doctrine.
It is here opinion makers around the world need to play a role. It shall point out the problems in Islam to Muslims and urge them to change. Now they are not doing it. For that, it shall admit the part violence plays in the Islamic ideology. They are failing in their duty by denying the existence of this the problem itself. To say that Islam is peaceful, and the terrorists are misguided is politically correct to do. It would be suicidal to say otherwise. However, slowly the non-Muslims are seeing the violent reality of Islam with their own eyes. Unless the political leaderships accept the fact in public, they will be swept away in the public anger. The Nationalist Party of France got about 30% votes polled in the provisional elections held recently. It emerged as the biggest party in 6 out of 13 regions of France. Donald Trump is now leading the pack for the Republican Presidential nomination. There is tremendous opposition in US and Europe on their governments’ steps in allowing Syrian refugees into their countries. The political leadership around the world shall at least now recognize that image of Islam suffers seriously as some of its followers involvement in terror. How can they say Islam is peaceful when your people are seeing Islamic beheadings on their Televisions day after day? Soon people stop believing their leaders, just like they stopped accept as truth in many others things these leaders say. It is required to confront Islam ideologically to stop the terror emulating from it. It is impossible to wage an ideological struggle with Islam without stopping these lies.
In India alone, over 800 years long Jihad killed an estimated 120 million people, mainly Hindus. With such background, it is hard to convince Hindus of the supposed peaceful nature of Islam. The Genocide on Kashmiri Pundits and the violence during partition along with many other riots etc. mostly initiated by violent Muslim mobs since independence show that almost nothing changed in Islam from the medieval period.
It is time for people to look seriously at the ideas that are fundamental to Islam. Self-delusions and political correctness will only lead to destruction.
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