Let the Brightest
Be Entrusted the Task
By Faisal Ghori
UC Berkeley, CA
Since September
11, 2001 Pakistan has found itself in international
spotlight time and time again. It should come
as no surprise then that Pakistan is once again
the focus of media attention. This is the country
where al-Qaida leaders Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
and Ramzi bin al-Shibh were found. It is also
the country where Daniel Pearl was murdered. Usama
bin Laden is widely believed to be hiding here.
And most recently, it was the country that denied
a woman the right to travel after she had been
raped in order to prevent her from sullying the
image of the country.
In the weeks following the attacks in London,
Pakistan is in the news yet again. Three of the
four London bombers were of Pakistani origin and
had visited Pakistan last November; one of them
had also studied at a madrassa. While there is
certainly nothing sinister in traveling to Pakistan
or studying at a madrassa, what is troubling is
the claim made by an al-Qaeda operative in American
custody, Mohammad Junad Babar, that he took London
bomber Siddique Khan to an al-Qaida training camp.
It is well known that Pakistan became the nexus
for terrorists thanks to the work of various intelligence
agencies and governments that actively sought
out Muslim men and inculcated a doctrine of religiously
permissible and mandated violence. As long as
these men were fighting the USSR nary a person
complained, but after its fall the attention of
these men, then known as the mujahideen, turned
towards America and Britain. Pakistan has not
been neglected from this “blowback”
either: multiple assassination attempts on President
Musharraf, and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, are
evidence that Pakistan too is a target.
It was only after the attacks of September 11,
2001 that renewed attention was focused on Islam
after it had remained ignored since the Iranian
Revolution of 1979. The enemy then was Imami Shi’i-ism
and it is now Sunni Islam. The fact is that there
is a double standard when it comes to viewing
Islam; after all, the IRA attacks were never dubbed
as “Catholic terror.” But Islam is
fair game. This should not, however, detract us
from the fact that our religious community has
fanatics who should be identified as a fringe
element. Unfortunately, there are those amongst
us who feel that terrorist attacks in London,
Beslan, Madrid, and elsewhere were sanctioned
by Islam.
The recent raids on madaris in Pakistan are perhaps
a step in the right direction since many of the
madaris were founded with the explicit purpose
of indoctrinating students to fight the USSR.
Another class of madaris graduates went on to
create the Taliban and implemented their particular
religious interpretations on an entire nation
by force. Much has been made of the Hasba bill
and deservedly so as it seeks similar intrusions
in the public sphere in the NWFP as the Taliban
intrusions in Afghanistan.
The perpetrators of the attacks in London also
seek a utopian solution for the woes of the Muslim
Ummah: they would have us believe that they speak
in “our name,” in the name of Muslims
the world over. The “solution” these
criminals have in mind certainly provides an easy
exit for them - they cannot be held responsible
for their actions. But we, the supposed beneficiaries
of the criminal acts, are made to bear the collective
guilt of the foolish actions of the few misguided
zealots.
In these days of increasing global violence we
feel powerless as to the actions of our co-religionists
and a growing disdain for religion. There are
those who claim to speak out with violence in
the name of our religion for the supposed benefit
of you and me. We all know someone who fits the
caricatured image of the now pejorative “mullah.”
But this has been of our own making – we
simply have not done enough, we have left those
men that are simply bearded, or turbaned to speak
on our behalf as supposed religious authorities.
For generations Pakistanis, as a collective society,
have chosen those individuals that we recognize
to be the least intelligent amongst us to be entrusted
with our religion. What more can we expect now
that there are religious authorities – and
I use the word loosely – that support the
actions of the fringe? Those that use violence
in this century are ignorant that this is the
century of ideas and unless we can articulate
ourselves in the global vernacular we are surely
lost. In our current day and age, were al-Ghazali,
Ibn Rushd, Rumi, or even Muhammad Iqbal born in
Pakistan they invariably would have either been
doctors or engineers; we would have felt that
if they studied the religious sciences they were
less than competent. We would have asked them
what the “scope” is in doing so and
debated the merits of their chosen path. Let the
attacks of London then make clear the dire need
and urgency for the Iqbals and al-Ghazalis of
this century. Let us renew the tradition that
allowed Islam to flourish for centuries and seek
out those that are the brightest amongst us with
the thing that is most valuable to us, our faith,
and let them articulate on our behalf what we
already know – that is a faith of compassion
and mercy and abhors violence. (Faisal Ghori is
an honors graduate of the University of California,
Berkeley where he majored in history and Islamic
studies. He will begin graduate studies at the
University of Oxford in Fall)
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