sorry, no URL. kanchan sent it directly to me.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanchan Gupta
Sunday Pioneer/Agenda/Column: Coffee Break/July 22, 2007
The poison tree of Islamism
Kanchan Gupta
Teacher, I want to go London next month. I want bomb, big bomb in
London, again. I want make jihad!"
"What?" I exclaimed. Another student raised both hands and shouted:
"Me too! Me too!"
Other students applauded those who had just articulated what many of
them were thinking..."
That's how Ed Husain records his experience in the Saudi Arabian
school where he had taken up a teaching assignment after embracing
radical Islam. It was the day after the 7/7 suicide bombings in London
that killed 52 commuters and Ed Husain, his faith in radical Islam by
then dwindling rapidly after experiencing life in Saudi Arabia, was
hoping to hear his students denounce the senseless killings. Instead,
he heard a ringing endorsement of jihad and senseless slaughter in the
name of Islam.
Disillusioned, Ed Husain returned to London and penned his revealing
account in The Islamist - Why I joined radical Islam in Britain, what
I saw inside and why I left. Debunking the lib-left intelligentsia's
explanation that deprivation, frustration and alienation among
immigrant Muslims in Britain are responsible for the surge in jihadi
fervour, Ed Husain writes:
"Many Muslims enjoyed a better lifestyle in non-Muslim Britain than
they did in Muslim Saudi Arabia... All my talk of ummah seemed so
juvenile now. It was only in the comfort of Britain that Islamists
could come out with such radical utopian slogans as one government,
one ever expanding country, for one Muslim nation. The racist reality
of the Arab psyche would never accept black and white people as
equal... I was appalled by the imposition of Wahhabism in the public
realm, something I had implicitly sought as an Islamist..."
So, what does an Islamist seek? The reams of rubbish churned out by
bogus activists and windbag columnists desperately seeking to
rationalise crimes committed in the name of Islam, ranging from the
ethnic cleansing of the Kashmir Valley to the Mumbai bombings, from
the attack on Parliament House in New Delhi to the destruction of the
World Trade Center twin towers in New York, from the horrific assault
on human dignity by the Taliban in Afghanistan to the nauseating
anti-Semitism of the regime in Iran, cannot explain either the core
idea of Islamism or what motivates Islamists. For that, we have to go
through the teachings of Hasan al-Banna, the original Islamist and
progenitor of the Muslim Brotherhood, but for whom and which perhaps
we would have been spared the terror that stalks us today.
Hasan al-Banna's articulation of Islamism in the 1930s, distilled from
complex theological interpretations of Islam, was at once simple
enough for even illiterate Muslims to understand and sinister in its
implications when seen in the context of what we are witnessing today:
"The Quran is our Constitution. Jihad is our way. Martyrdom is our
desire." Imagined grievances and manufactured rage came decades later,
as faux justification for adopting this three-sentence injunction that
erases the line separating the spiritual from the temporal and giving
Islam a political dimension in the modern world, thus expanding the
theatre of conflict beyond the sterile sands of Arabia.
Hasan al-Banna died a nasty death when he was murdered in 1949,
apparently in retaliation of the assassination of Egypt's then Prime
Minister, Mahmud Fahmi Naqrashi, but the seed he had planted in his
lifetime was to grow into a giant poison tree, watered and nourished
by Sayyid Qutub (whose tract, Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq was interpreted as
treasonous, fetching him the death sentence in 1966) which over the
years has spread its roots and branches, first across Arabia and then
to Muslim majority countries; so potent is that tree's life force, its
seeds, carried by the blistering wind that blows from the Mashreq,
have now begun to sprout in countries as disparate as Denmark and
India, Turkey and Malaysia, changing demographic profiles and
unsettling societies.
The world chose to ignore subsequent events and, like those who
clamour for a gentler, accommodative approach to Islamism today by
pushing for compromise over conflict, 'enlightened' scholars and
public affairs commentators rationalised Anwar Sadat's assassination
by Islamists on October 6, 1981. Even Egypt erred in setting free
scores of conspirators, including a certain Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Similarly, the 'Islamic Revolution' in Iran with its blood-soaked
consequences was hailed as a "people's victory" over Shah Reza
Pehalvi's dictatorial regime. For Europe, which now is fast turning
into Eurabia, it was business as usual - Iran's oil swamped out
rational analyses. If any country had the farsight to sense the danger
signals, it was, ironically so, Egypt which continues to remain wary
of Iran, not least because of its export of rabid Islamism. That
Tehran has riled Cairo by naming a street after Sadat's assassin,
Khalid Islambouli, is only of partial significance.
It was in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan that Islamism acquired a new dimension and a vicious edge
when it was coupled with Wahaabism, Saudi Arabia's severely austere
version of Sunni Islam. Arab nationalism, which was unencumbered by
Islamism till then, became an expression of faith in radical Islamism.
In what passes for Palestinian territories, the intifada was born and
while the popularity of Yasser Arafat's largely secular (which
explained his hugely corrupt ways) PLO began to decline, Hamas, led by
its paraplegic spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, began its
murderous march which has culminated with Gaza Strip being declared
'Hamastan'. Yassin was killed by the Israelis for inspiring young
Palestinians to blow themsleves up in buses, restaurants and markets,
but that has not stalled Hamas or weakened it as an Islamist
organisation.
In Lebanon, the Hizbullah is now facing competition from Fatah-al
Islam in Palestinian refugee camps. In Britain, Hizb ut-Tahrir is
seducing young Muslims like Ed Husain with its acid message of
intolerance and bigotry. In India, we have the Jamaat-e-Islami and the
Tablighi Jamaat. The Deobandis are not to be scoffed at.
To neutralise the three-sentence injunction of Hasan al-Banna, we need
more than a 'War on Terror'. We need to launch an assault on the idea
that motivates terrorists. There is no scope for accommodation, nor is
there any reason to capitulate or strike a compromise.
--
Kanchan Gupta
Associate Editor,
The Pioneer,
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