The Indian Mujahideen holy text and terror

Wait only for five minutes from now! Wait for the Mujahideen and Fidayeen of Islam who will make you feel the terror of Jihad. And stop them if you can. Feel the havoc cast into your hearts by Allah, the Almighty, face His Dreadful Punishment, and suffer the results of fighting the Muslims and the Mujahideen. Await the anguish, agony, sorrow and pain.Await, only for five minutes, to feel the fear of death."Within minutes of this e-mail finding its way into media computers, the jihadi bombs in Ahmedabad blew to smithereens over 50 persons. By the time terror hit Ahmedabad, such e-mails had become the pattern. The mails came ahead of the blasts in Jaipur and Bengaluru earlier. Also now in Delhi which was blasted on September 13. All in the name of Indian Mujahideen.

See how, in its Ahmedabad mail, the jihadi outfit unveils its Islamic agenda against the Hindus — read India.

"O Hindus!...Haven't you still realised that the falsehood of your 33-crore mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb, mute and naked idols of Ram, Krishna and Hanuman are not going to save your necks, Insha-Allah, from being slaughtered by our hands? Nor is your fictitious faith in monkeys, pigs and nude statutes going to save you from the Wrath of Allah and His humiliating punishment.

Know that it is only the true confession of the Oneness of Allah Alone,with no associates, that can save your blood from being spilled on the streets of your own cities.

We call you, O Hindus, O enemies of Allah, to take an honest stance with yourselves lest another attack of Ibn-e-Qasim sends shivers down your spines, lest another Ghauri shakes your foundations, and lest another Ghaznawi massacres you, proving your blood to be the cheapest of all mankind! Have you forgotten your history full of subjugation, humiliation, and insult? Or do you want us to repeat it again? Take heed before it is too late!"

The IM goes further, quotes the most fundamental document, the Quran, to validate its theological stand. "Yes! We — the terrorists of India — The Indian Mujahideen, the militia of Islam whose each and every mujahid belongs to this very soil of India — have returned, to execute the compulsion of Allah: "Fight them (the disbelievers), Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and give you victory over them and He will heal the hearts of those who believe." (Quran 9:14). It goes on to quote: "Fight those disbelievers who are near you and let them find harshness in you." (Quran 9: 123). "Go forth light armed or heavy armed and fight with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah."[(Quran 9: 41). So the IM claim is simply this:we are doing what the Quran commands us to do against the non-believers, namely those who do not believe in Islam.

The jihadis have openly challenged the pure Islamic theologians to deny that the position it takes against the Hindus is not the position of pure Islam. No Islamic theological school, not a single mullah or maulvi has shown the guts to tell the jihadis that non-believers in Quran do not mean non- Muslims. The Islamist scholars have kept deafening silence. The jihadis have thus effectively shut the Islamists' mouth by quotes from the holy Quran.

But what about the secularists? The terrorists are misguided youths, angered by the Hindu outfits in Gujarat and elsewhere, they would counsel. The grievances of the terrorists need to be addressed, they would pontificate, to dissuade them from the wrong path. But what the secularists miss is that the jihadis claim, on the basis of their faith, the right to kill ordinary Hindus.

Do the secularists have the guts to ask the Islamic scholars to come out and deny that the theological position of Islam is not what the terrorists claim it to be? But, not surprisingly, not a single secular media or editor, nor any political party or leader would dare ask why the Islamic theologians are silent on the terrorists' view of the holy book. What has their grievance against Hindu outfits or the governments to do with their claim that Islam mandates them to attack non-Muslims? The real issue is whether the Islamic faith mandates so. If the jihadis are aggrieved then they can take to violence against the state. Terrorism normally isolates the terrorists from mainstream society.

But when the terrorists claim that they have been directed by their holy text to kill people of other faiths and that view is not challenged by the mainstream scholars or the secularists, then the terrorists cannot be isolated. This is what the secularists seem to have preferred to miss out.

Thus neither have the mainstream Islamic scholars challenged the jihadis' view that their holy text authorises them to kill the non-believers nor have the secularists asked mainstream Islamic scholars to deny the terrorists' version of the Islamic faith. Emboldened the terrorists have now moved a step further in the Delhi terror mail.While, in the Ahmedabad mail, the jihadis have embarrassed Islamic theologians by quoting the holy text, they have embarrassed the secularists in the Delhi terror mail by relying on the secularists' view to justify their terror against the Hindus.

The secular enthusiasts had carried on a relentless hate campaign against the BJP and Narendra Modi after the Gujarat riots. They had even trivialised the Godhra terror attack that had roasted over 60 Ramsevaks, saying that it was an accident or that the victims themselves had set fire to the bogey, which enraged Hindu outfits even more. Later when acts of terror increased, the secular media even rationalised them by citing the Gujarat riots as justification for terrorists' anger.

This secular largesse did not assuage the extremists. Instead it has put the Islamist terror on an escalator. Not surprisingly the jihadis have, in the Delhi email, used the very logic of the secular media, and very photographs carried by it a thousand times, to claim that they were taking revenge for the Gujarat carnage! While the jihadis see terror as a mandate of the holy book, the secular media remains juvenile in its oration.

It still cites Shabana Azmi's inability to get a fourth flat, in the building of her choice in the place of her choice as illustrative of the failure of constitutional equity to minorities, and asks how there could be peace with such injustice! But, no section is more badly treated or discriminated than the untouchables in India. If the secularists' logic for jihadi violence is applied to them, they can legitimately turn terrorists. But mere grievances cannot produce that deadly hate. It is the jihadi theological claim, uncontested by the Islamist clergy and the secularists, that makes terror a religious duty, and a deadly one at that. Injustice,minus theology, cannot breed that deadly terror. Unless the debate on terror transcends the trivia and gets to the root of the terror — the theological motive for terror —the secularists will end up promoting terror, not containing it.Will they introspect?

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About the author:
S Gurumurthy is a well-known commentator on political and economic issues.