Anybody who peddles the concept of 'true Islam' inadvertently gives credence to the likes of ISIS
After the UK’s youngest suicide bomber, 17-year-old Talha Asmal blew himself up while waging the jihad of ‘Islamic State’ (IS), also known as ISIS, David Cameron urged Muslim communities to do more to fight Islamist terrorism.
Accordingly Minhaj-ul Quran International (MQI), ostensibly a counter-extremism organisation, announced the launch of the first Islamic ‘counter-terrorism curriculum’.
The curriculum was launched in London on Tuesday.
The ‘Islamic Curriculum on Peace and Counter Terrorism’ was designed by a Pakistani cleric and politician, Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, renowned in the West for his edict against terrorism.
The curriculum itself addresses all the alarming parts of Islamic scriptures: the rules for setting up an ‘Islamic state’, armed Muslim rebellions, the doctrine of jihad, the violent verses in the Quran that promote killing and the authenticity of controversial hadiths.
However, the answer provided is one that we’ve heard on multiple platforms, in a plethora of instances, especially since 9/11: following the ‘real’ teachings of Islamic scriptures, the Quran and the hadiths.
While the rhetoric in the apparent counter-terrorism solution for British Muslims is self-defeating, the biggest question mark is over the man designing the curriculum himself.
In addition to promoting fascism through his politics in Pakistan, Qadri is renowned for giving contradictory statements with regards to the very laws and ideas that he’s presently challenging in London through the recently launched curriculum.
Just like his ‘Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings’ claimed that “Terrorism… has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it,” the MQI’s ‘Islamic Curriculum on Peace and Counter Terrorism’ condemns violent jihad, and antediluvian Islamic laws as being ‘un-Islamic’.
However, back home in Pakistan, Qadri proudly takes ownership of formulating Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which has been abused to suffocate and intimidate religious minorities through blatant mob violence.
When addressing western audiences, Qadri claims that the blasphemy law does not apply to non-Muslims. Back home in Pakistan he has advocated ‘killing blasphemers… like dogs’.
This video highlights his contradictory stance on the blasphemy law, and showcases his claim that he incorporated section 295-C to the Pakistan Penal Code which sanctions the death punishment for defiling Islamic scriptures or insulting Prophet Muhammad.
Qadri is renowned for saying whatever sells, whether it’s anti-government fascism through his politics and a bigoted version of Islam back home, or apologism in the garb of Islamic ‘moderation’ in the West.
With Islamist terrorism reverberating all over the world and over 700 British citizens having fled to fight along with ISIS, the need for reform among Muslims around the globe is evident.
However, ideological salesmen who change their ideas to suit the audience’s demands can never be reformists.
Reformers need to challenge the acceptable. In countries like Pakistan where bigotry is etched in the Constitution, reform would entail challenging the accepted existence of religious laws and propagating secularism.
In secular societies like the UK, where open debate on Islam (hopefully) can be held, reform would mean an honest reflection on Islamic scriptures and their role in fueling the propaganda that compels a University of Westminster graduate like ‘Jihadi John’ to leave his IT job and join ISIS.
The ‘Islamic Curriculum on Peace and Counter Terrorism’ can basically be summarised as the now ubiquitous apologia that ISIS ‘has nothing to do with Islam’, which is the laziest counter-terrorism argument that one can come up with.
To call it a reformist effort would be to reduce the long impending Islamic reformation to a couple of hours’ worth of Google search, during which one can find countless articles using ‘context’ and ‘misinterpretation’ to excommunicate Islamist terrorists.
Ironically this replicates radical Islamists’ favourite vocation: apostatising anyone with a different take on Islamic scriptures.
The reforms that we Muslims need is to accept that ISIS’ Islam is just as authentic a version of Islam as any other.
For literalism is another of the ‘multiple interpretations’ of Islam that we like to expound. Islamic reformation, thence, would mean revisiting our approach to the infallibility of Islamic scriptures, without conjuring apologia for ‘true Islam’, and accepting the idea that a Muslim can unapologetically condemn Islamic doctrines.
Anyone who peddles the concept of ‘true Islam’ – just like any other religion – no matter how peaceful and tolerant their version of Islam might be, inadvertently gives credence to the likes of ISIS.
For if there is a ‘true’ version, what’s stopping the radicals from believing that theirs is the one?
The monopoly of truth of any version of Islam needs to be replaced with the spread of plurality in Islam and the Muslim world, and accepting humanist, sceptic and revisionist Muslim identities, with varying stance on scriptural adherence.
Instead of excommunicating the radicals, and scrutinising the legitimacy of their actions through religious scriptures, true reform would mean giving humanistic ideals preference over any and every interpretation of Islam.
This in turn would ensure that the only acceptable version of Islam would be the one that is pluralistic and tolerant anyway.
If one believes that ‘true Islam’ actually is peaceful, tolerant and endorses pluralism, then there’s no better way to propagate it than challenging the very idea itself.
Just like with other religious communities, reform among Muslims will be brought about only by scrutinising religious scriptures, not by shielding them from criticism.
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a Friday Times journalist. Follow him on Twitter
21 Responses to “The author of the ‘counter terrorism curriculum’ advocates murder for blasphemy”
CGR
That’s the ‘Religion of Peace’ for you.
Alana
Dialogue? There have been many recent attempts at dialogue. Tommy Robinson is one of the few people prepared to be executed for speaking out against Islam, and has been permanently injured as a result. Actually, Muslims really like to debate with him, and are delighted to organise these events. However, each time, the fascists of the UAF ring the venue with threats, so the owner cancels. Have I got legal proof? Well no, except that they do boast about it and state it as policy.
The last time – for a debate with Robinson and Anne Marie Waters against two Muslim speakers, the venue changed THREE times, before finally ending up far from central London, in Croydon. The culmination logistical problems caused by those repeated changes succeeded in destroying the event. I feel sorry for both the Muslim and non-Muslim speakers, as I warm to anyone who values and enjoys the medium of debate.
If the Mafia were to threaten and close down venues and events, I think the police would get involved. But if Tommy Robinson is involved, perhaps they’d rather let the fascist UAF have their way.
We have entered the post-dialogue world. When Alinsky spawned his Rules for Radicals, perhaps he didn’t realise that, although gaming the system allows you to win it at the beginning, in the end people just give up on the dialogue. And we all know what comes after that.
Freedom for All
These are the facts we must spread as far and wide as possible. Most people are ENTIRELY ignorant of Islam or it’s history. Education will be the solution to pushing Islam out of civilized countries.
H_Marius40
Until muslims are willing to acknowledge that there are problematic aspects of Islam, which they need to address, muslim extremists will keep on rising. Fact is Islam, Quran and Muhammad, all are/were not perfect.
There is no such thing as infallible books or perfect human beings. Time muslims learnt this, or else they got no one but themselves to blame for their regression.
lancastrian1
“The monopoly of truth of any version of Islam needs to be replaced with the spread of plurality in Islam and the Muslim world, and accepting humanist, sceptic and revisionist Muslim identities, with varying stance on scriptural adherence.”
In essence, either Islamic ideology is a closed loop with all answers to be found in the quran or it is open with outside ideas and standards allowed. To achieve the latter, Muslims must lose the idea that all answers are to be found in the quran and Islamic texts and that requires a change in teaching. This passage is indicative of the mindset that needs to change when a moderate says that he can’t call for a total repudiation of things like stoning people to death because the punishments are “on the whole Islamic” then there is a problem.
” So when Ramadan called for a moratorium on corporal punishment, stoning and the death penalty in the Islamic world in 2005, some non-Muslims criticised him for not going further. Why didn’t he say the hudud laws should just be discarded or repealed?
He explained this by pointing out that most of the authorities “are of the opinion that these penalties are on the whole Islamic [because of textual references] but that the conditions under which they should be implemented are nearly impossible to re-establish”
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/06/saudi-arabia-sharia-muslims
Equally when a senior Islamic cleric admits that Islam wouldn’t exist without the apostasy laws then there is a problem. Any entity that has to enforce membership by threatening death if you leave has a problem. That can be seen from the outside but will it ever be seen within Islam?
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/02/qaradawi-if-they-had-gotten-rid-of-the-apostasy-punishment-islam-wouldnt-exist-today.html