Separating the Terror and the Terrorists

 
By CLARK HOYT | NEWYORK TIMES

WHEN 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels.

They were “militants,” “gunmen,” “attackers” and “assailants.” Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city’s largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital — were described as “coordinated terrorist attacks.” But the men themselves were not called terrorists.

Many readers could not understand it. “I am so offended as to why the NY Times and a number of other news organizations are calling the perpetrators ‘militants,’ ” wrote “Bill” in a comment posted on The Times’s Web site. “Murderers, or terrorists perhaps but militants? Is your PC going to get so absurd that you will refer to them as ‘freedom fighters?’ ”

The Mumbai terror attacks posed a familiar semantic issue for Times editors: what to call people who pursue political, religious, territorial, or unidentifiable goals through violence on civilians. Many readers want the newspaper, even on the news pages, to share their moral outrage — or their political views — by adopting the word terrorist, with all its connotations of opprobrium. What you call someone matters. If he is a terrorist, he is an enemy of all civilized people, and his cause is less worthy of consideration.

In the newsroom and at overseas bureaus, especially Jerusalem, there has been a lot of soul-searching about the terminology of terrorism. Editors and reporters have asked whether, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, the paper bends itself into a pretzel or risks appearing callous to abhorrent acts. They have wrestled with questions like why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.

The issue comes up most often in connection with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and to the dismay of supporters of Israel — and sometimes supporters of the other side, denouncing Israeli military actions — The Times is sparing in its use of “terrorist” when reporting on that complex struggle.

The reluctance carried over when the Mumbai attacks began. Graham Bowley, who was writing for a Times blog, The Lede, said, “I’m aware very much of the sensitivity around the word, so I knew they had to be ‘attackers’ ” until the paper knew more. One of his editors, Andrea Kannapell, told me she was much more focused in the early hours on who the people were and what they were doing than on what to call them.

Readers like “Bill” were having none of it, and as Jim Roberts, the editor of the Web site, read their comments, he began to think they had a point. “Indiscriminately shooting civilians seems on its very face to be an act of terror,” he said. How, Roberts wondered, could you separate the act from the actor?

He conferred with Kannapell, Paul Winfield, the news editor, and Phil Corbett, Winfield’s deputy. Winfield talked with Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor. “Terrorist” became an acceptable term in the Mumbai story. “We jointly decided we didn’t need to be throwing the word around flagrantly, but we didn’t need to run away from it, either,” Roberts said.

Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, whose father, Leon, was shot and thrown from a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, wrote a letter to the editor asking why The Times was referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the shadowy group that apparently orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, as a “militant group.” “When people kill innocent civilians for political gain, they should be called ‘terrorists,’ ” the sisters said.

Susan Chira, the foreign editor, said The Times may eventually put that label on Lashkar, but reporters are still trying to learn more about it. “Our instinct is to proceed with caution, not rushing to label any group with the word terrorist before we have a deeper understanding of its full dimensions,” she said.

To the consternation of many, The Times does not call Hamas a terrorist organization, though it sponsors acts of terror against Israel. Hamas was elected to govern Gaza. It provides social services and operates charities, hospitals and clinics. Corbett said: “You get to the question: Somebody works in a Hamas clinic — is that person a terrorist? We don’t want to go there.” I think that is right.

Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem bureau chief, said, “Our general view is that the word terrorist is politically loaded and overused.” But he said that sometimes, “when a person’s act has been examined and its intent and result clearly understood, we call him a terrorist.” Thus, a front-page story last July called a Lebanese man about to be exchanged for two dead Israeli soldiers a terrorist. The man, a fighter for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had slipped into Israel nearly 30 years before and murdered a man and his 4-year-old daughter.

James Bennet, now the editor of The Atlantic, was The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief from 2001 through 2004. After his return, he wrote a two-page memo to Chira on the use of “terrorism” and “terrorist” that is still cited by editors, though the paper has no formal policy on the terms. His memo said it was easy to call certain egregious acts terrorism “and have the whole world agree with you.” The problem, he said, was where to stop before every stone-throwing Palestinian was called a terrorist and the paper was making a political statement.

Bennet wrote that he initially avoided the word terrorism altogether and thought it more useful to describe an attack in as vivid detail as possible so readers could decide their own labels. But he came to believe that never using the word “felt so morally neutral as to be a little sickening. The calculated bombing of students in a university cafeteria, or of families gathered in an ice-cream parlor, cries out to be called what it is,” he wrote.

The memo said he settled on a rough rule: He would use the words, when they fit, to describe attacks within Israel’s 1948 borders but not in the occupied West Bank or Gaza, which Israel and the Palestinians have been contending over since Israel took them in 1967. When a gunman infiltrated a settlement and killed a 5-year-old girl in her bed, Bennet did not call it terrorism. “All I could do was default to my first approach and describe the attack and the victims as vividly as I could.”

I do not think it is possible to write a set of hard and fast rules for the T-words, and I think The Times is both thoughtful about them and maybe a bit more conservative in their use than I would be.

My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl’s bedroom, I’d call it terrorism — by terrorists.

Mumbai was not our 9/11 :Arundhati Roy

 
By Arundhati Roy 

Azam Amir Kasab, the face of the Mumbai attacks. Photograph: Reuters

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.

The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.

If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.

We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.

That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.

There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.

Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.

The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."

And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."

But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don't care if I'm hanged ... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay ... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die ... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."

And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."
Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here ... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."

(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)

All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.

Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.

If that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.

So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.

In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.

By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.

This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).

In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.

So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.

In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)

Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.

Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.

If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.

On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.

While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.

The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.

Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.

One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"

"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.

If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.

Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.

We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.

Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.

Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.

Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)

It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.

More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.

Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.

This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.

On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.

While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.

So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters". This in a country that boasts of the highest number of custodial deaths in the world and yet refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Torture. A country where the ones who make it to torture chambers are the lucky ones because at least they've escaped being "encountered" by our Encounter Specialists. A country where the line between the Underworld and the Encounter Specialists virtually does not exist.

How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?

Homeland Security has cost the US government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It's not that kind of homeland. We have a hostile nuclear weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbour, we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalise, end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world. If ten men can hold off the NSG commandos, and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India?

Nor for that matter will any other quick fix. Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they're for people that governments don't like. That's why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They're just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go. Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It's what they want.

What we're experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet's squelching under our feet.

The only way to contain (it would be naïve to say end) terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We're standing at a fork in the road. One sign says Justice, the other Civil War. There's no third sign and there's no going back. Choose.

LeT Terror Module : By Haidar Naqvi

The terrorists attacked my city because of its wealth

By Suketu Mehta

The first time I went to the Taj in Bombay, it was on a date, but not my own. I was 12, and the third wheel between my uncle and his fiancee; I had to be taken along for propriety's sake.

We sat in the Sea Lounge, overlooking the harbour, amid the Parsi matrons arranging marriages and the British bankers drinking gin with American aid officials. My uncle had brought my future aunt here because he wanted to impress her with the hotel's opulence, and I had the most expensive bhelpuri of my life. The Taj is to Bombay what the Empire State Building is to New York: it is what you see on a postcard of the city, a building that does not need to be further identified. It is, simply, "Bombay".

People who are seeking position or money in Bombay often use this one hotel, this one citadel of empire, as a mark or measure of their progress upward through the strata of Bombay.

The Taj was born out of a slight: because a man was turned away from a fancy hotel. When the prominent Parsi industrialist Jamshetji Tata was refused entrance into Watson's hotel in the 19th century because he was a native, he swore revenge, and built the Taj in 1903. It is less a hotel than a proving-ground for the ego. The Taj lobby and its adjoining toilets are where you test your self-worth; theoretically, anyone can come in out of the heat and sit in the plush lobby, or relieve themselves in the gleaming toilets. But you need that inner confidence to project to the numerous gatekeepers, the toilet attendants; you need to first convince yourself that you belong there.

The terrorists who swarmed the hotel on Wednesday ignored the gatekeepers, or shot them dead. They marched into the lobby with confidence, and in a rage. If, as seems likely, they are Muslims, then they are only the latest manifestation of the original sin of modern south Asia: the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan.

India has been congratulated, and has congratulated itself, for not supplying recruits to al-Qaida. India's 150 million Muslims are different, it was thought. During partition, they voted with their feet; until recently, there were more Muslims in India than in Pakistan. But Muslims are poorer, and less educated, than other Indians. Urban Muslims have a poverty rate of 38% - much higher than any other segment of the population, including the lower castes. The 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, just north of Bombay, made many Muslims think that if the state could not or would not protect them, they would have to take matters into their own hands.

In 1999, a quarter century after I went to the Taj to chaperone my uncle and aunt, I was in a small, dingy room in a guesthouse just behind the Taj, in much less romantic company. I was interviewing a young Muslim man whose family had been attacked by Hindu rioters, and who had subsequently joined the Muslim underworld. He told me about the coming worldwide war of Islam against its enemies, and its local manifestation in Bombay. "This time we will be fully prepared. We have all the equipment. The bhais (dons) will send ships with containers full of weapons." I asked the gangster why he stayed in Bombay, if he thought it was so bad for Muslims. He peered out the one window at the grey and white walls of the Taj, and remarked: "The main thing in Bombay is money. There's lots of it."

And this, when all is said and done, is why the terrorists keep attacking Bombay, and picked the top business hotel of this most commercial of cities to stage their spectacular: it is where money is made. Lots of it.

• Suketu Mehta is author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found and a professor of journalism at New York University

IT’S WAR ON MUMBAI :TOI 27NOV

NIGHTMARE: Taj, Oberoi, CST, Santa Cruz, Colaba & Three Hospitals Among 12 Places Attacked By Terrorists, Killing Over 100. ATS Chief Hemant Karkare, DIG Among Killed. 15 UK Nationals Held Hostage At Taj. Army, NSG Called In 
TIMES NEWS NETWORK 


Mumbai came under an unprecedented and dastardly night attack as terrorists used heavyduty guns, including AK-47s and grenades to strike at the city’s most high-profile targets — CST (formerly VT) rail terminus, the fivestar Taj and Oberoi hotels at Gateway and Nariman Point, the domestic airport at Santa Cruz and Cama and GT hospitals near CST, killing over 100 (there were conflicting reports of the toll) and sending more than 250 to hospital, according to preliminary reports at the time of going to press just past midnight. There were unconfirmed reports that some of the terrorists came in by sea, by speedboats. 
The attacks occurred on the busiest places, including starred hotels (Taj and Oberoi), hospitals (Cama Hospital and G T Hospital), one of the country's busiest stations (CST), at a petrol pump (in Colaba) and on roads (Colaba, the Metro Junction, Crawford Market, Wadi Bunder and on the Western Express Highway near the airport). Several of these places are within a onekm radius of the commissioner of police's office. 
A vehicle that looked like a police van was reported to be moving around south Mumbai spraying bullets indiscriminately. Reports indicated that it may have been hijacked. The entire board of a multinational giant was reported to be holed up in the Oberoi hotel. Some media reports attributed the attack to Lashkar-e-Taiba. 
"This is definitely a terrorist strike. Seven places have bee attacked with automatic weapons and grenades. Terrorists are still holed up in three locations — Taj and Oberoi hotels and GT Hospital. Encounters are on at all three places,” said state DGP A N Roy. 
St George's Hospital and G T Hospital were said to have received 75 bodies and more than 250 injured people, additional municipal commissioner R A Rajeev said. Bombay Hospital got two bodies and 30 injured people were admitted there; Cooper Hospital, Vile Parle, got three dismembered bodies. 
Three of the deaths occurred inside the Taj and one G T Hospital attendant died in a shootout inside the hospital. There were reports of people cowering under tables and chairs at both the Taj as well as G T Hospital. 
Metro Junction resident Manoj Goel said: ``My brother, Manish, died in the firing at Colaba's Hamaal Galli.' 
Cops fired back at the men --probably from one of the Lashkar groups, dressed in black and with backpacks — and SRPF, Crime Branch, ATS and teams of military commandos were summoned to the spot. Train services at CST were suspended and all roads leading to and from south Mumbai were blockaded. 
Chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh promised ``stringent action'' against the assailants but the mood across Mumbai was not so optimistic. 
There were reports of firing around several landmark buildings in the Colaba-Nariman Point area, including the Taj hotel, Oberoi and other tourist attractions and pubs like Leopold's. The top floor of Oberoi was said to be on fire amid reports of blasts in the area and blood-smeared bodies were being brought out of the Taj lobby. Terrorists were said to be holed up at the Taj as well as G T Hospital and cops scampered to cordon off these places. A white flag was seen fluttering from an Oberoi Hotel window around 11.20 pm, where a blast was said to have occurred. 
The blast on the Western Express Highway -- near Centaur Hotel outside the airport -- occurred in a taxi, deputy commissioner of police Nissar Tamboli said. 
The firing and bombing started close to the Gateway of India. The gunbattle then moved on towards CST and raged on for over an hour from 10 pm, sending commuters running out of the station. 
The assailants also fired into the crowd at CST and people on the trains and then ran out of the station themselves and into neighbouring buildings, including Cama Hospital, after being challenged by cops. 
SRPF personnel then entered the iconic BMC building -- just opposite CST -- to take aim at the assailants, BMC commissioner Jairaj Phatak said. 
`We fear some of the assailants are still inside the station and we want to catch them if they come out,'' a police official said. 
Vikhroli police station senior inspector Habib Ansari was on his way to work from his Colaba home when he saw two armed men, with sophisticated weaponry, trying to run into bylanes near the Gateway of India.``I rushed back to Colaba and all policemen, including GRP and RPF personnel, were called up,'' he added. 
Bhisham Mansukhani, a journalist, was attending a wedding reception at the Taj's Crystal Room. `I was inside the bar when glass shards almost hit my eye,'' he said. `More than 200 people were escorted inside Chambers, a business centre inside the hotel,'' he added. 
High alert in Uttar Pradesh 
Statewide high alert was sounded in Uttar Pradesh, particularly in Lucknow, late on Wednesday evening following the terror attack on Mumbai. Additional director general of police (ADG), law & order, crime and special task force (STF), Brij Lal said that alert was sounded across the state. TNN 
TERROR BY NIGHT 
Over 100 killed , at least 250 injured in terror attack on heart of south Mumbai 
Firing around several landmark buildings in Colaba-Nariman Point area, including Taj Gateway hotel and Oberoi hotel 
Top floor of Oberoi was said to be on fire amid reports of blasts in the area; blood-smeared bodies were brought out of Taj lobby 
Firing and blasts also reported from Mazgaon, the Metro Junction, Crawford Market and Colaba 
Reports of a blast in a taxi near Vile Parle 
Firing and bombing apparently began close to Gateway of India just before 10pm. The gunbattle then moved towards CST and raged on for over 45 minutes 
Assailants fired into crowd at CST and people on trains then ran out of the station into nearby buildings 
Just before going to press, fresh blasts were reported at the Taj and Oberoi Trident. 

Mumbai Attacks : NOVEMBER 26

November 27, 2008   | THE NEWYORK TIMES
At Least 100 Dead in India Terror Attacks 
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

MUMBAI, India — Coordinated terrorist attacks struck the heart of Mumbai, India’s commercial capital, on Wednesday night, killing dozens in machine-gun and grenade assaults on at least two five-star hotels, the city’s largest train station, a movie theater and a hospital. 

Even by the standards of terrorism in India, which has suffered a rising number of attacks this year, the assaults were particularly brazen in scale and execution. The attackers used boats to reach the urban peninsula where they hit, and their targets were sites popular with tourists. 

The Mumbai police said Thursday that the attacks killed at least 101 people and wounded at least 250. Guests who had escaped the hotels told television stations that the attackers were taking hostages, singling out Americans and Britons. 

A previously unknown group claimed responsibility, though that claim could not be confirmed. It remained unclear whether there was any link to outside terrorist groups. 

Gunfire and explosions rang out into the morning. 

Hours after the assaults began, the landmark Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, next to the famed waterfront monument the Gateway of India, was in flames. 

Guests banged on the windows of the upper floors as firefighters worked to rescue them. 

Fire also raged inside the luxurious Oberoi Hotel, according to the police. A militant hidden in the Oberoi told India TV on Thursday morning that seven attackers were holding hostages there. 

“We want all mujahedeen held in India released, and only after that we will release the people,” he said.Some guests, including two members of the European Parliament who were visiting as part of a trade delegation, remained in hiding in the hotels, making desperate cellphone calls, some of them to television stations, describing their ordeal.

Alex Chamberlain, a British citizen who was dining at the Oberoi, told Sky News television that a gunman had ushered 30 or 40 people from the restaurant into a stairway and, speaking in Hindi or Urdu, ordered them to put up their hands.

“They were talking about British and Americans specifically,” he said. “There was an Italian guy, who, you know, they said, ‘Where are you from?’ and he said he’s from Italy, and they said, ‘Fine,’ and they left him alone.” 

Sajjad Karim, 38, a British member of the European Parliament, told Sky News: “A gunman just stood there spraying bullets around, right next to me.” 

Before his phone went dead, Mr. Karim added: “I managed to turn away and I ran into the hotel kitchen and then we were shunted into a restaurant in the basement. We are now in the dark in this room, and we have barricaded all the doors. It’s really bad.”

Attackers had also entered Cama and Albless Hospital, according to Indian television reports, and struck at or near Nariman House, which is home to the city’s Chabad-Lubavitch center. 

The police told Reuters that an Israeli family was being held hostage. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it was trying to locate an unspecified number of Israelis missing in Mumbai, according to Haaretz.com, the Web site of an Israeli newspaper.

Several high-ranking law enforcement officials, including the chief of the antiterrorism squad and a commissioner of police, were reported killed. 

The military was quickly called in to assist the police. 

Hospitals in Mumbai, a city of more than 12 million that was formerly called Bombay, have appealed for blood donations. As a sense of crisis gripped much of the city, schools, colleges and the stock exchange were closed Thursday. 

Vilasrao Deshmukh, the chief minister for Maharashtra State, where Mumbai is, told the CNN-IBN station that the attacks hit five to seven targets, concentrated in the southern tip of the city, known as Colaba and Nariman Point. But even hours after the attacks began, the full scope of the assaults was unclear. 

Unlike previous attacks in India this year, which consisted of anonymously planted bombs, the assailants on Wednesday night were spectacularly well-armed and very confrontational. In some cases, said the state’s highest-ranking police official, A. N. Roy, the attackers opened fire and disappeared. 

Indian officials said the police had killed six of the suspected attackers and captured nine. 

A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahedeen said it had carried out the attacks. It was not known who the group is or whether the claim was real. 

Around midnight, more than two hours after the series of attacks began, television images from near the historic Metro Cinema showed journalists and bystanders ducking for cover as gunshots rang out. The charred shell of a car lay in front of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, formerly Victoria Terminus, the mammoth railway station. A nearby gas station was blown up. 

The landmark Leopold , a favorite tourist spot, was also hit. 

Reached by phone, some guests who had been trapped in the Taj said about 1 a.m. that they had heard an explosion and gunfire in the old wing of the hotel. 

A 31-year-old man who was in the Taj attending a friend’s wedding reception said he was getting a drink around 9:45 p.m. when he heard something like firecrackers — “loud bursts” interspersed with what sounded like machine-gun fire. 

A window of the banquet hall shattered, and guests scattered under tables and were quickly escorted to another room, he said. No one was allowed to leave. 

Just before 1 a.m., another loud explosion rang out, and then another about a half-hour later, the man said. 

At 6 a.m., he said that when the guests tried to leave the room early Thursday, gunmen opened fire. One person was shot.

The man’s friend, the groom, was two floors above him, in the old wing of the hotel, trapped in a room with his bride. One of the explosions, he said, took the door off its hinges. He blocked it with a table. 

Then came another blast, and gunfire rang out throughout the night. He did not want to be identified, for fear of being tracked down.

Rakesh Patel, a British businessman who escaped the Taj, told a television station that two young men armed with a rifle and a machine gun took 15 hostages, forcing them to the roof. 

The gunmen, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, “were saying they wanted anyone with British or American passports,” Mr. Patel said. 

He and four others managed to slip away in the confusion and smoke of the upper floors, he said. He said he did not know the fate of the remaining hostages. 

Clarence Rich Diffenderffer, of Wilmington, Del., said after dinner at the hotel he headed to the business center on the fifth floor. 

“A man in a hood with an AK-47 came running down the hall,” shooting and throwing four grenades, Mr. Diffenderffer said. “I, needless to say, beat it back to my room and locked it, and double-locked it, and put the bureau up against the door.”

Mr. Diffenderffer said he was rescued hours later, at 6:30 a.m., by a cherrypicker. “That was pretty hairy,” he said. “I don’t like heights.” 

Among those apparently trapped at the Oberoi were executives and board members of Hindustan Unilever, part of the multinational corporate giant, The Times of India reported. 

Indian military forces arrived outside the Oberoi at 2 a.m., and some 100 officers from the central government’s Rapid Action Force, an elite police unit, entered later. 

CNN-IBN reported the sounds of gunfire from the hotel just after the police contingent went in. 

In Washington, the Bush administration condemned the attacks, as did President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. The State Department said there were no known American casualties, but the White House said it was still “assessing the hostage situation.”

Reporting was contributed by Michael Rubenstein and Prashanth Vishwanathan from Mumbai; Jeremy Kahn and Hari Kumar from New Delhi; Souad Mekhennet from Frankfurt, Germany; Sharon Otterman and Michael Moss from New York; and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company 

Does religion make terrorists ?

By Abhishek Pandey

Do terrorists have any religion? This is a question which was raised by our Muslim brethren since terror was attached with Islam. Some radical groups like sangh parivar and VHP related Islam with terror by saying that “All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims”. And BJP had also used this as a political plank in recent past by some way or the other.

These days we are listening a new term ‘Hindu terrorism’ or Hindu terrorist’ which is opposed by sangh parivar and BJP in a different way saying that one person can not malign the whole community. The case of Malegaon blast accused has brought some BJP and sangh parivar activists under the scanner of the ATS (Anti Terrorist Squad) for their alleged anti-national activities. The day after Sadhvi was arrested for her alleged link in Malegaon blast case, BJP president Rajnath Singh, who was found with Sadhvi Pragya in a picture, said that he was embarrassed to be found with her in the same frame. Party’s prime ministerial candidate LK Advani also distanced party from the accused and said taking a political correct stand, Sadhvi should be punished if found guilty.

All this changed suddenly as Hindutva center authority, RSS, decided to support her. And BJP also found that it is loosing an emotive issue for the next LS elections, Advani asked the government not to politicise the issue and don’t mix religion with terrorism. He also said that a spiritual leader should not be treated in a barbaric manner. These statements can not be justified which are coming form a party which have been claiming to be the saviour of country from terrorism and asked for the strictest law for the terrorists. BJP is the same party, which has opposed the legal assistance by Jamia Milia University to it students, who have allegedly behind the bomb blasts in Delhi. BJP is also trying to malign the image of the Maharashtra ATS by saying that its actions are politically motivated and unprofessional in its investigation. BJP has forgotten the national interest for fulfilling its political agendas and this trend is alarming for the nation. In the recent past BJP president Rajnath Singh called Rahul Gandhi a bachha in politics but some one should tell him that mature leaders think before they speak, as BJP leaders didn’t do in Sadhvi’s matter.

BJP leaders and other outfits those are supporting Sadhvi and other accused of Malegaon blast should give the answers to the people of India, why did they attach religion with terrorism and see every member of the community -Islam- as a suspect. These question are still lying unanswered. 

Hindu terror targets RSS

HT | Nov 20/11/2008

Members of Hindu right-wing organisation Abhinav Bharat, accused of carrying out the Malegaon blast, plotted to kill senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders who they thought weren’t doing enough for Hindutva, show investigation reports accessed exclusively by Hindustan Times.

At a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party has declared its support for the accused, who are being investigated by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), the probe report reveals a plan to kill RSS general secretary Mohan Bhagwat and senior leader Indraeesh, who manages the Rashtriya Muslim Manch, which attracts Muslims with a “nationalistic outlook”. The report is with the state Home Department, which has shared it with the Union Home Ministry and central intelligence agencies.

Data found on the laptop of Dayanand Pandey, alias Shankaracharya Sudhakar Dwivedi, who was arrested in Lucknow on November 12, verifies the report. Experts at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Kalina are examining the laptop.

The planned killings, the report said, were masterminded by S. Apte, a 70-year-old Pune-based RSS worker who was unhappy with the organisation’s functioning, along with Pandey, Major (retd) Ramesh Upadhyay and a leading Delhi-based doctor identified only as ‘Dr Singh’. 



The ATS found that Apte and Pandey, the son of a retired sub-inspector of the Uttar Pradesh police, approached Lieutenant-Colonel Prasad Purohit for help in executing the plan. Apte also paid him Rs 10 lakh, said the report.

Purohit introduced a close aide, whose identity HT has withheld so as not to hinder investigations, to Apte to assist him.

In August, when the group learnt that Bhagwat and Indraeesh would be visiting Pune, “Apte showed [Purohit’s aide] around the various spots [suitable for the killings] in Pune” and they zeroed in on a couple.

Investigations also showed that “[Pandey] had arranged for a weapon”, a 9 mm foreign-made pistol, which was delivered to one of his followers “in Faridabad” when he and Apte first hatched the plot. 

The ATS is investigating Apte, who is currently in Pune.

Rethinking Islam And Hinduism

                                                                                       BY S Irfan Habib

There has been a lot of noise about rethinking in Islam, particularly post September 11,2001. I feel it is long overdue and September 11 has just given us a rude shock to get into action. Within India, Godhra and the ensuing Gujarat carnage has added urgency to the question of rethinking, making us conscious of the fact that there is something seriously wrong somewhere. If September 11 and Godhra are the ugly faces of Islam than the burning of Graham Staines and his children and the ongoing Gujarat carnage is the depraved and distorted face of Hinduism. Both are threats to the secular and pluralist fabric of India.

Unfortunately Muslims and Hindus have allowed their respective faiths to be hijacked by the lunatic fringe, which appears to be calling most of the shots on their behalf. Pakistan is an apt example of this perversion in Islam while the Sangh Parivar is the mirror image of this aberration in India. The Islamic variety appears to be more threatening to world peace due to Islam’s multinational character and the diverse political problems involving these so called Islamic nations. However this does not mean that the sangh parivar’s machinations and hate filled campaign against its fellow citizens is a lesser danger to civil society. Striking terror and causing mayhem and misery among fellow human beings is nothing but terrorism. It is time to wake up and wrest control from those who have no qualms about vulgarization of their religion as long as it serves their sectarian agenda.

It is a known fact that Islam did not undergo any meaningful reform to cope with the challenges of modernity. Any serious attempt at ijtihad- a reasoned struggle and rethinking to reform Islam, has been countered by specious arguments saying Islam is beyond time and context thus any talk of rethinking is un-Islamic. This was seen during the 19th century when Syed Ahmed Khan, Jamaluddin Afghani, Mohammad Abduh and others gave a call for ijtihad. The so-called defenders of faith take refuge in Islamic tradition to counter any suggestion for change, which conforms to changing times. They fail to realize that Islam came in with a dynamic and revolutionary social, political, and moral message. It can never be a creed to resist change in accordance with the changing contexts. Alam Khundmiri, the late activist and thinker of Hyderabad who died in 1983, was right when he said that most Muslim social reform movements commit a common error of identifying a particular medieval religious tradition with Islam itself, which as a religion was itself a revolt against the superstitions of the age in which it was born. It is a pity that in an attempt to preserve the Islamic tradition, this revolutionary tradition of early Islam is being completely ignored.

The Book has many passages that should inspire man to use his reason and elevate the status of man as an agent of change. Islam left it to the creative intelligence of the believer to translate the essential vision of the Book into an idiom, which suits the requirements of the modern age. This early vision of Islam and its reverence for human reason and respect for human experience was revealed in a limited manner in the magnificent achievements of Muslims in the fields of science, mathematics and philosophy. All this was possible in an era of Mutazilite ascendancy when ijtihad reigned supreme and the shackles of tradition had not yet trapped the vibrant faith. The believers were still conscious of the fact that the only thing eternal about Islam is Quran and the relationship with the Quranic text has to be interpretative, more so if it is perceived to be eternal. Once interpretation or ijtihad was outlawed, any scope of adjustment with the changing times and contexts became impossible. Alam believes and rightly so that the medievalists committed an error by putting the seal of finality on Islam’s historical achievements. Let us stop finding medieval solutions to our modern day concerns and reinstate ijtihad to open up Islam, bring back its dynamism so that it stops being an obstacle to progress.

Another much talked about feature of Islam is Shariah. It is being interpreted in its most revile form by the believers themselves and in the process inviting ridicule and scorn of the civilized world. The Shariah is perceived as a divine code of conduct applicable forever without any spatial or temporal constraints. This has led to serious complications with respect to women’s rights. It is unfortunate that in Islam religiosity and morality have become synonymous with legality, while in fact legality should be subordinate to a moral and ethical vision.

There is an urgent need to make necessary changes in Shariah under the Quranic gaze so that it conforms to the moral fervour of the Prophet and the ethical vision of Islam. Ziauddin Sardar is right when he says that Shariah is nothing more than a set of principles: framework of values that provide Muslim societies with guidance. But these sets of principles and values are not static , they are dynamically derived within changing contexts. Taliban misadventure in Afghanistan has shown to us how narrow adherence to the text and tradition takes us away from the real world. What we have today is the caricature of Islam being projected as the true face of Islam.

But what about Hinduism and its vulgarization at the hands of sangh parivar? A group of rabble-rousers have legitimated themselves as representatives of Hinduism and its believers. They leave no opportunity to malign their bete-noire Islam but tend to do exactly the same while articulating their brand of Hinduism. They have brazenly adopted the most un-Hindu version of Hinduism called Hindutva, propounded by Vir Savarkar in the early last century. Being a proclaimed atheist, Savarkar had no qualms in defacing Hinduism to suit his politics of social engineering. It was treated with contempt it deserved all these years till L K Advani revived it in 1989/90, providing it legitimacy and respect.

Simultaneously Advani promoted the idea of cultural nationalism, which was again inspired by the mischievous ideology of Savarkar who unabashedly made Hindutva and nationalism interchangeable. This exclusivism automatically drove out Maulana Azad, Ashfaqullah Khan, Frontier Gandhi, Ajmal Khan and scores of others from the nationalist gallery of the sangh parivar. Contrast this cultural nationalism with that of Jamaluddin Afghani, who was in India during the 1880s, just when the nationalist discourse had begun. While addressing a group of young Muslims in Calcutta, he emphasized on the composite strength of Indian nationalism where all communities had to be equal participants in their struggle against the British colonialism. He emphasized on the common secular heritage including its science, technology and literature reminding the Muslim youth present that they were the inheritors of a civilization that produced arithmetic and geometry for the world. He further went on to say that `Human values spread out from India to the whole world…. The Indians reached the highest level of philosophic thought. The soil of India is the same soil; the air of India is the same air; and these youths who are present here are fruits of the same earth and climate.’

Here we find a clear enunciation of shared heritage that is not conflict-ridden and is not grounded in religious exclusivism. Hindutva is unfortunately rooted in the revival of a sectarian past and not the common past of all Indians. It seeks to construct an unadulterated Indian past after a careful sifting of icons and ideas, leaving out a large section from our heritage as something not only alien but also defiling. The most unfortunate aspect of it all is that Hindutva’s concerted hammering of lies had trapped a substantial Hindu population in its web.

Hinduism and Islam have had their bumpy patches but they never hated each other as much as they do now in their new avatars of Hindutva and jehadi Islam. Both these versions have purged their respected faiths of all humanity, morality and spiritualism. They merely represent crass jingoism, fanaticism and hatred for each other. Both are haunted by the images of their golden pasts which are lost in the march of history and which both of them want to rediscover. This reinventing of sectarian pasts has messed up our present and will certainly blight the region’s future.

The author is a well known researcher and author TO MAKE THE DEAF HEAR — Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades: Irfan Habib - Three Essays Collective.

This article was first published at Jahan-e-Rumi. 

Islam, Muslims And Terrorism

                      BY Asgar Ali Engineer

Islam is being invariably associated with terrorism both in media as well as in political circles, especially in Western countries. When they hear it being condemned by Muslim theologians, it is celebrated as something unusual. It is strange irony of both misunderstanding and motivated propaganda that if a small band of Osama’s followers give call for jihad, it is taken as authentic Islamic call and if it is condemned by mainstream Islamic theologians, it is accepted with mixed feelings of celebration and skepticism. The mainstream condemnation of terrorism is somehow not accepted with conviction.

When the Darul Ulum Deoband, a leading Islamic seminary in Asia, held an anti-terrorism conference the media spotlighted it and number of articles and editorials were written in mainstream media. There was underlying skepticism that how thousands of ‘Ulamas and imams could gather together in such large numbers, to denounce terrorism. In fact when media unceasingly targeted Islam for terrorism, these ‘Ulamas thought it necessary to do so to convince their non-Muslim friends that Islam does not stand for terrorism.

In fact it was hardly necessary to do so as all Muslim theologians know fully well that there is no link, whatsoever, between Islam and terrorism but due to such continuing attacks, Muslim theologians had to issue a declaration condemning terrorism. Let it be noted that not only Osama bin Laden but not a single leading member of Al-Qaida is a qualified theologian. They are all modern educated youth or politicians. Among Taliban too, there is no theologian of any credible standing. Some of them may be product of madrasas in North West Frontier province of Pakistan but they never went for higher Islamic studies. They never got beyond preliminary Islamic education. It was their political bosses who decided course of action and formulated policies invoking ‘jihad’ to justify their acts of terrorism.

Never any major theologian ever justified acts of terrorism. One of major Islamic thinker and theologian from West Asia issued any fatwa approving of terrorism as jihad. Yusuf Qardawi, a well-known theologian and highly respected by orthodox Muslims, condemned terrorism and suicide bombing killing of innocent people. A conference of leading Muslim scholars also condemned suicide bombing as un-Islamic. Qur’an is so clear on the issue along with hadith literature that save on political grounds, no one can approve of acts of terrorism.

There are in all 41 verses in Qur’an on jihad and not a single verse uses it for war or violence. In early twentieth century when terrorism, like today, was not the issue, a noted scholar of Islam Maulavi Chiragh Ali wrote a scholarly book on Jihad and showed that not even once word jihad has been used for war or violence in Qur’an. It is really a landmark work for those who want to understand meaning of jihad in Qur’an.

The prophet of Islam (PBUH) himself never fought any war of aggression; he fought battles only in defense. Most of the battles Prophet fought was in and around Madina where he had migrated to, to escape severe prosecution from his and Islam’s enemies in Mecca. It is opponents of Islam who attacked Madina and Prophet fought back. He followed the injunction of the Qur’an, “And fight in the way of Allah those who fight against you but be not aggressive. Surely Allah does not love aggressors. (2:190)

This Qur’anic verse is self-explanatory and does not need any elaboration. How prophet could have violated this injunction from high on in his own lifetime? The real problem is that one fails to distinguish what is theological and what is political. Many Muslims had their own political interests and they conveniently invoked doctrine of jihad for their political project as Osama bin Laden has been doing in our own times.

The invocation of jihad for political purposes is post-Qur’anic development. The Prophet would have never approved it. Those who kept away from political struggle for power like Sufis, gave jihad a very different meaning. According to Sufis love and peace is the basis of Islam and jihad is spiritual struggle to control ones desires. In other words real jihad is war against ones own desires, as it is selfish desires which require human beings to resort to violence.

In fact Sufis always kept themselves away from political power struggle and believed in leading peaceful life and emphasized doctrine of sulh-i-kul (total peace and peace with all). Since they never involved themselves in political power struggle they led simple life and busied themselves in suppressing their desires and tried to achieve what Qur’an calls nafs mutma’innah (i.e. peaceful and satisfied soul). This could be possible only if one controlled ones desires.

It was Sufi Islam, which was most popular among the masses, as Muslim masses also had nothing to do with wars for political domination. Sufis believed in controlling themselves rather than control others. One needs violence only when one wants to control others, rather than oneself. Since Sufis controlled themselves they avoided violence and politicians desire to control others and hence justify use of violence.

All empire builders use violence and then justify it in the name of religion or patriotism or security. America today uses violence on largest scale imaginable and causes havoc because it wants to control whole word for its material resources. It attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam before, only to control oil and other resources. And as Vietnamis were forced to fight in their own way now Osama and their followers are fighting against America.

Of course there is big difference between Vietnam’s fight against American aggression and Osama bin Laden’s use of violence. Vietnam was a country and it was defending itself and Osama is a fugitive from Saudi, represents no country and leads a group founded by him al-Qaida and uses hit and run tactics and involves innocent citizens in his attacks. Osama has not been authorized by any country, much less by any religious authority, to attack All leading theologians always condemned him for his terrorism.

The problem with media is it never goes in depth. It has no time for it. Its news is related to events and particularly negative events. What we call investigative journalism is rare and again in depth analysis appeals to intellectuals, not to average readers. Then add to this hostile attitude, political agenda of certain vested interests, Zionist lobby in USA and USA’s own justification of war of aggression against Muslim countries and one can understand why western media projects Islam as religion of jihad and terrorism.

There is great need to understand various parallel trends in the Islamic world today. Media reporting and statements of certain political leaders has developed a stereotype that Muslims are essentially jihadis and united in their fight against non-Muslims. When we are hostile to a community or a nation, we homogenize it and look for negative traits ignoring diversity and complexities.

It is no different when it comes to Islam and Muslims. Since theologians tend to speak of Islam and not Islams, a message goes that there is one single understanding of Islam and all Muslims fall in line with this theological Islam. Sociological and cultural differences in understanding of Islam is totally ignored. Apart from Sufis there are several Muslim sects who do not approve of use of violence as integral part of Islam.

It would be of great interest to know that among all other Islamic sects Isma’ilis consider jihad as one of the seven pillars of Islam (generally Muslims believe in five pillars) as at one time in history Ismailis were involved in long struggle for power with Abbasids and yet today Ismaili communities throughout the world are most peaceful communities. This clearly shows that violence is political, not religious necessity.

Christians too, despite Biblical doctrine of love and presenting other cheek if slapped on one cheek, came out with the theory of ‘Holy War’ during crusades and the Geeta pronounced concept of dharmayuddha. We find so much violence in Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka and Thailand. Thus it would be seen that all religions talk of love and peace and all religions permit use of violence in defense. But the followers often misuse the concept of defensive violence for aggressive purposes.

Media may have its own compulsions, politicians may have their own needs, but scholars should not buy their formulations. They must fight their own prejudices and go for in depth understanding of issues. Intellectuals and scholars should be committed to quest for truth as peace and non-violence is not possible without truth. Gandhiji insisted on truth and even said truth is God in order to promote peace and no-violence.

War needs propaganda for its justification and propaganda is based on half-truths and outright lies and peace needs truth and nothing but truth. It is quest for truth which brings peace of soul – nafs-i-mutma’innah or shanty. Desire for controlling others and political power creates unrest and violence. Today Middle East is a war torn zone as it sits over unlimited source of oil. It is control over oil which tempts America to attack Arab countries and people like Osama indulge in reactive violence. Terrorism is reactive violence whereas state violence is active violence. Thus terrorism is not all about jihad but reaction to American violence for its lust for oil.

JIHAD is not Terrorism

Jihad? But What About Other Verses In Qur’an?       By Asgar Ali Engineer

The terror attacks in India as well as abroad has created an impression as if jihad is central to Qur’anic teaching. First of all, as we have asserted repeatedly, jihad does not mean war in Qur’an as there are other words for it like qital and harb for war. Jihad has been used in Qur’an in its root meaning i.e. to strive and to strive for betterment of society, to spread goodness (ma’ruf) and contain evil (munkar).

But supposing jihad means war, as many Muslims, especially those who want to use it for their own political agenda, even then jihad is not that central to Qur’anic teachings. The word jihad occurs in the Qur’an 41 times (though not a single verse uses it in the sense of war) there are other key words in Qur’an representing values. As we have pointed out in one of the previous articles there are four most fundamental values in Qur’an i.e. justice (’adl), benevolence (ihsan) compassion (rahmah) and wisdom (hikmah).

These are Allah’s names also in Qur’an i.e. Allah is Just, Benevolent, Compassionate and Wise. Thus the Qur’an is embodiment of these values and a Muslim is duty bound to practice these values above all. One who fails to practice these values can hardly claim to be true Muslim. Jihad is not even obligatory in Islamic jurisprudence whereas these values are indicative of a Muslim’s character and hence quite important.

In Qur’an compassion is quite central and Allah’s names Rahman and Rahim (Compassionate and Merciful) are among the most important names. A Muslim begins his/her work by invoking Allah’s names Rahman and Rahim (i.e. I begin in the name of Allah Who is ‘compassionate and Merciful). Thus it would be seen that Compassion is most central to Qur’anic teachings and the words compassion and mercy in their various forms occur in Qur’an 335 times as against jihad only 41 times.

The word ihsan (i.e. to do good to others) occurs in the Qur’an 194 times which also greatly outnumbers jihad. Similarly the word wisdom and its derivatives occur 101 times. Qur’an lays great emphasis on wisdom as wisdom is superior to reason in a way. Reason is also quite important but at times it can be misused by human beings whereas wisdom includes reason and values put together. Qur’an advises Muslims again and again to use wisdom. It asks Muslims to call to Allah also with wisdom, not with threats or force. One cannot invite anyone to ways of Allah by use of force, coercion or threat but with wisdom and kind words.

Also, there is great emphasis in Qur’an on justice in all social and political matters and Qur’an uses three words for justice i.e. ‘adl, qist and hakama and all these three words put together there are 244 words for justice in Qur’an. Thus it clearly shows that justice with all is highly necessary which clearly implies no innocent person would be punished in any case.

Also, Allah is thirty three times described in Qur’an as Ghafur al-Rahim i.e. Forgiver and Merciful and not one who seeks revenge. To seek revenge is human weakness, not strength of character. Thus a devout Muslim tends to forgive like Allah who forgives his servants if they sincerely repent. Those who are waging ‘jihad’ in the form of terror attacks are bent upon seeking revenge whereas a good Muslim would tend to forgive alike Allah forgives. It is true Allah punishes oppressors (zalimun) but no individual or a group of individuals not representative of community or state can dispense punishment. Only Allah or state or its representatives of states can dispense with punishment.

That is why in Islamic jurisprudence (Shari’ah law) jihad can be declared only by state or those empowered by the state, no one else. Terror attacks, on the other hand, are planned and executed by few individuals unrepresentative of any state or state institution. So their attacks cannot be legitimate by any Islamic or Shari’ah law. That is nothing but committing murder of innocent people. Also according to Islamic laws in jihad too no non-combatant can be attacked much less women, children and old persons and no civilian property can be destroyed unless it is being used for military purposes or for purposes of combat.

It will be seen that rules laid down for war by Islamic laws are no different from modern laws of warfare or Geneva Conventions. But terror attacks are gross violation of all these Islamic rules and there is no way these attacks can be characterized as ‘jihad’. These terrorists are described by media as jihadis. It is also gross misuse of the word as there is no word like jihadi in the first place in Arabic language. It is in fact mujahid and word mujahid is used in laudatory sense – one who devotes oneself for a good cause like fighting against social evils etc. At times it is also used for a warrior but in that sense it used for a brave person who is not only fearless but also wages war only for a good cause and fights only on the front, not hit and run kind.

I would also like to throw some light on the word jihad as understood and explained in Islamic literature. If these Qur’anic values are important and they are undoubtedly then real jihad would be to cultivate and promote these values with utmost efforts and sufi saints considered real jihad only in this sense. After all Islam came in this world through the Prophet to combat all social evils then prevalent in Arab society in general, and in Mecca, in particular.

Since primary importance in Qur’anic teachings is for these values, a true Muslim would devote himself/herself to fight all evils in the society which negate these values. The Prophet (PBUH) devoted his entire life in practicing and promoting these values. He was, therefore, rightly described in the Qur’an as Rahmatun lil ‘Alamin (i.e. mercy of the worlds) because mercy can prevail in the world only if one eliminates all these evils.

The Islamic history during Prophet’s life is to be seen in two important phases i.e. the Meccan phase for first thirteen years after Muhammad (PBUH) became Prophet and then 10 years in Madina after his migration. In Meccan phase the Prophet and his followers were most oppressed minority and yet Prophet did not ask his followers to use violence in any form. On the contrary, Qur’an repeatedly advised Prophet and his followers to bear all hardships patiently and not to despair.

The Prophet bore with utmost patience all the hardships, even insults and humiliations and carried on his mission. His followers were subjected to great hardships but he always advised them to be patient and penitent. Thus the Prophet (PBUH) guided Muslims how to behave in such adverse conditions and how to ensure peace despite such hardships. But when conditions became unbearable he advised some of his followers to migrate to Ethiopia and later he himself migrated to Madina with some of his followers.

Thus Meccan model of Islam can be very useful for those Muslims who are facing similar situation in parts of the world. As Qur’an lays great stress on hikmah (wisdom) one has to imply wisdom and carve out a proper strategy of survival rather than take plunge in violence throw themselves into peril. The Qur’an advises Muslims “…and cast not yourselves to destruction with your own hands and do good (to others). Surely Allah loves the doers of good.” (2:195)

This advice of the Qur’an not to throw yourself to destruction with your own hands is important and relevant even today in similar situations. See what the 9/11 attack on New York towers resulted in? Did Al-Qaida not invite great disaster to the entire Islamic world, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq? Did they not throw themselves in perdition with their own hands? What good that attack do to anyone. Was there any wisdom in that rash and ruthless attack?

Qur’an repeatedly advises Muslims to use wisdom. Was there any wisdom in that attack on New York trade towers? How can one be Muslim without following Qur’an in every sphere of life? To launch such attacks recklessly will bring nothing but disaster for Muslims and Islam. On the contrary the Qur’an advises Muslims to do good to others instead of throwing themselves into perdition (tahlukat).

Qur’an is clearly advising Muslims to win over hearts of others by doing good to others and thus ward off evil from them. Also, both peace of Hudaibiyah (name of the place where the Prophet signed a peace treaty) and behavior of the Prophet (PBUH) after conquest of Mecca are shining example of exemplary conduct of a great and generous leader. It is in this sense that Qur’an describes the Prophet as uswah husnah i.e. good role model for all.

Both at Hudaybiyah and in Mecca after the conquest the Prophet (PBUH) rather than dictating terms or seeking revenge showed great generosity towards his enemies and won over their hearts. At Hudaybiyah the Prophet had enough strength to dictate terms to the unbelievers of Mecca but instead he accepted certain humiliating terms dictated by them. Ultimately the treaty benefited Muslims. But it required wisdom of the prophet to enter into such treaty which was apparently humiliating but proved to be otherwise.

Similarly after conquest of Mecca the Prophet forgave worst of his enemies who had insulted and humiliated him and oppressed in most inhuman ways his followers. That won over his worst enemies and all of them embraced Islam. Had he chosen to seek revenge which was customary to Arabs, another bloodbath would have resulted and Islam would not have won so many adherents. Thus moral victory is far more superior to seeking revenge. Revenge only satisfies our ego and injures the ego of the enemy and thus war of attrition continues.

What terrorists are doing is seeking revenge and that too from a weaker position and thus every attack brings nothing but disaster for themselves and others. Allah certainly does not like those who only seek revenge to satisfy their egos. Conducting ummah’s affairs with wisdom would be far more beneficial to Muslims as a whole. However, it does not mean surrendering to unjust powers but how to fight for justice must be decided through collective wisdom to minimize danger to the cause of Islam and Muslims.

Also the question is of methodology for interpreting Qur’an. The Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet (PBUH) over a period of 23 years and most of the verses were revealed in response to certain situation and the relevant verse has to be understood in the context in which it was revealed. Every text has a context and only context can explain how to understand the text. And while understanding the text it is also necessary to judge whether context has changed and similar conditions prevail.

Various verses quoted to justify ‘jihad’ are generally taken in literal sense and also ignoring the value system of Qur’an. It is not only context but also value system of the Qur’an which must be kept in mind while applying the injunction contained in the verse. When Qur’an was being revealed the revelation was from Allah and was being revealed to the Prophet (PBUH) and both were fully aware of the value system and hence they knew when war becomes absolutely necessary.

But when human beings other than the Prophet apply Qur’anic injunctions it is very different thing. Ordinary Muslims are neither infallible nor thoroughly immersed in Islamic values because unlike the Prophet they are not a real role model (uswa-e-husnah). And when someone applies these Qur’anic injunctions without any consensus of ummah behind it, it is all the more unacceptable. This is what these terrorists are doing.

It is well known fact that be it Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization, they do not represent any government or larger Muslim organization. They succeed in mobilizing some angry youth who have no maturity or wisdom and are carried away by ‘Islamic’ rhetoric and commit terrorist attacks taking lives of several innocent bystanders. These attacks violate all Qur’anic values.

Apart from this the conditions as obtained in 7th century Arabia cannot be compared to the conditions in the contemporary world. In those days violence could be met only with violence. The Arabs had their age old tribal traditions of qisas (retaliation) and Qur’an, looking to the context permitted qisas with strict condition that it be strictly in equal measure in the interest of justice but also advised if you forgive it is better.

In those days there were no other institutions available and Qur’an permitted only defensive war and banned aggression even against enemy. And as the example of peace of Hudaybiyah shows, war should be avoided wherever peace is possible even on enemy’s terms and the Meccan example shows instead of qisas one should better forgive and win over the hearts of the enemy. Both these models are part of the Prophet’s sunna and Muslims should follow Prophet’s sunna.

And today’s world is radically different from 7th century Arabia and today we should go more by Qur’anic ethics than injunctions about war. Today several institutions are available for arbitration, reconciliation and solving disputes. One cannot rush to resort to violence. All Muslim countries are members of United Nations Organization and without referring any international dispute to it no other action could be contemplated.

Well, the extremist organizations can point out that UNO is dominated by the USA and other western nations and one cannot get justice from it. It is entirely true but then this also has to be continuously exposed and world should know how UNO works in the interests of USA, rather than in the interest of justice. It is also known that USA committed aggression against Iraq despite UNO refusing permission to wage war against Iraq. It exposed USA and world at large knows today how helpless UNO is before powers like USA.

Also, if one wants to really solve the problem peacefully violence will only damage the cause and make world opinion also adverse. The greatest strength of the cause in contemporary world is the favorable public opinion. One must try and win public opinion. Non-violent action is much likely to win public opinion rather than violent actions. Killing innocent people through terror acts can never be effective against a very powerful enemy. And it also makes public opinion very adverse.

Today media is very powerful in creating public opinion and non-violent actions will certainly impact the media people. Unfortunately the youth being impatient with democratic processes and under illusion of following Qur’anic traditions rushes to resort to so called jihad and antagonizes the world opinion. And what they do not understand, other Muslims, including Muslim countries, have to face adverse consequences.

Such thoughtless violence as committed by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Pakistan has created an image of Islam as violent religion, religion of jihad though the value system of Islam gives precedence to compassion and respect for human life and dignity. While Buddhism is being equated with compassion and Christianity with love and peace Islam is being equated with jihad and violence. Should these Muslim youth not deeply reflect what adverse image of Islam they have helped create?

These youth are so brainwashed by certain vested interests that they think jihad is obligatory on Muslims and that jihad is the only way out. These youth are totally ignorant of Islamic value system and importance of moral superiority over superiority of weapons. The examples of Hudaybiyah and peaceful Meccan conquest clearly show moral superiority ultimately matters. The most powerful can be disarmed before the might of moral stand.

In our own time Gandhiji showed the effectiveness of truth and non-violence. The mighty British Empire had to bow down before the might of truth and non-violent action. Unfortunately many think non-violence is cowardice and is born out of weakness. It is very erroneous view. It is only most courageous and truthful person who practices non-violence. Violence is borne out of anger and revenge, not out of truthful stand.

The Prophet of Islam once defined jihad as ‘telling truth in the face of a tyrant ruler’ Telling truth in the face of a tyrant ruler requires tremendous courage and a coward will only kneel on his knees before a tyrant. One who is convinced of truth (Haq in Qur’anic terminology) will stand by it most courageously and endure all hardships patiently. The Muslims in Meccan period of Islam endured unimaginable hardships with greatest degree of patience and most steadfastly. They were never provoked into violent action.

Meccan Muslims are best example of how to endure hardships in the face of most challenging situations. Today we have so many Muslim majority countries and the Muslim youth have to put pressure on the rulers of their countries to unite and fight against injustices being perpetrated by the USA and other powers. If the rulers are pro-US and do not take action they must launch public agitation peacefully. It will expose those rulers who serve their personal interests rather than the Muslim ummah.

One can argue such agitations do not produce immediate results and no one knows what effect it will have on the ruling class. This argument is partly true. But then one would like to ask how effective is terrorist attacks? Do they succeed in achieving the desired goal? One has no such example. And again, violence against whom? So far there is not a single example that such violent attacks have forced US or any other power bringing them on their knees. It invites greater counter-violence and it becomes vicious circle. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan (and now also in India) hundreds of innocent people have died and yet violence has been going on.

It becomes more of ego fight than fight for any cause. Wisdom (which is one of the important values in the Holy Qur’an) requires that one should thoroughly and objectively assess the situation before adopting any strategy. Those resorting to terrorist violence are no match to superior might of these western nations they are fighting against or any government for that matter. And in armed struggle they cannot involve masses. The violent actions, on the other hand, alienate the masses from violent groups for their arbitrary attacks.

Thus wiser course will be to fight democratically mobilizing public opinion in their favor. The Meccan model of Islam is far more useful than any other model. The verses relating to war in the Qur’an were revealed in Madina because Muslims were being attacked by Meccan kuffar (unbelievers) again and again and in those days only course of action available was to defend themselves. The Islamic history is witness to the fact that all the battles fought by the Prophet were defensive in nature.

And if the USA attacked Iraq and Afghanistan it was for the armies of these countries to defend themselves or devise other strategies, in case of defeat. It does not give license to any group to launch violent attacks. And these groups cannot attack the innocent civilians of their own countries.

In case of India one cannot avenge communal violence by such terrorist attacks on innocent Hindus and Muslims in market places. It is same sin which communal forces committed against innocent Muslims. Wisdom requires that one should patiently mobilize public opinion through democratic means and win over hearts of common Hindus and expose communal fascist forces in the eyes of public.

One hopes the misguided Muslim youth resorting to such violent actions would realize the futility of terror attacks and renounce such sinful and criminal acts and instead concentrate on excelling in learning and acquiring superior moral character thus truly following transcendent Qur’anic moral precepts. Did not the Prophet say ‘ink of a scholar is superior to the blood of the martyr?’