BY SULTAN SHAHIN
Even though the Vienna Declaration and Programme of
Action called for elimination of all kinds of human rights violations
almost two decades ago, we find that in some areas the situation is only
worsening. Article 15 asks us to work against xenophobia and Article 19
calls upon governments to protect all human rights of minorities. But
xenophobia, particularly in the form of Islamophobia, is growing in
several European countries and partly feeds upon the flagrant violation
of the human rights of religious minorities in several Muslim-majority
countries.
Petrodollar Islam has injected the poison of Islamic
supremacism in Muslim societies worldwide. Even exemplary moderate
countries like Indonesia and Malaysia are now infected with this virus.
But the worst-case scenario is evolving in the only Muslim nuclear
power, Pakistan. Jihadi vigilantes, including members of security
forces, are hunting down and killing all those who oppose their version
of Islam. The country is drowning in a sea of violence but civil
society, media or elected parliamentarians dare not condemn the wanton
killings in the name of Islam. The educated middle class regards these
murderers as heroes. Many in the security apparatus support the Talibani
goal of a takeover of Pakistan to be followed by that of other countries
in the region and beyond. Their goals may be insane but their insanity
is not unlike that of the Nazis and Fascists in early 20th century
Europe.
Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere have to understand
that radical Islamists the world over make use of emotive issues that
would capture the imagination of Muslim masses and make them react
irrationally, unthinkingly. In order to capture the minds of the Muslim
masses, fanatical mullahs are raising sensitive issues like those of
members of other religious communities insulting Prophet Muhammad or the
holy book, the Koran. The issue of blasphemy has been raised to such a
high pitch, particularly in Pakistan but also in other countries, that
the Muslim masses are just not allowed to see reason. As in the case of
Aasia Bibi, which has raised the present storm in Pakistan, there is not
a shred of evidence except the allegation of a woman with whom she had a
personal fight earlier. But not many in Pakistan are demanding any
evidence. Not many even want to know what, if anything, Aasia Bibi is
supposed to have said or done. Mullahs are telling them in televised
addresses that the Koran asks them not only to kill blasphemers but also
to kill them with relish. They present the picture of an extremely
sadistic god and his prophet who relish torturing and killing and ask
their followers to do so too. They do that while also referring to Allah
as kind and compassionate and the prophet as a mercy to mankind, mind
you, mankind, entire humanity, not just the Muslims, completely
oblivious of the dire contradiction involved.
The result is a sort of free-for-all in society. Any
thinking Muslim can be a target. The latest case in point in the case of
Pakistan is the Taliban latching on to the issue of blasphemy and making
it appear as if the moderate elements among Muslims are either
blasphemers themselves or support blasphemy. The result is the complete
impunity with which they have been able to assassinate the only
Christian minister of the Pakistani government and earlier, the powerful
governor of the state of Punjab in Pakistan.
These murders have taken place, as these people were
campaigning against the notorious blasphemy laws of Pakistan under which
religious minorities like Hindus and Christians can be sentenced to
death without even being told exactly what crime they have committed.
This is what had happened recently in the case of Aasia Bibi. These two
government leaders were killed because they were sympathetic to the
hapless lady and were trying to get her death sentence reduced to life
imprisonment, as there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on her part. A
mere allegation of blasphemy is enough to condemn members of religious
minorities to death in Pakistan. No judge can dare impart real justice
even if he wants to, as he himself can get killed in the courtroom
itself.
To get a little perspective, one needs to recall the
circumstances in which these laws were instituted. In 1984 the then
military ruler, General Zia ul-Haq, made it a criminal offence for
members of the Ahmadi sect to claim that they were Muslims. Two years
later, he instituted in the existing laws the death penalty for
blasphemy against Prophet Muhammad. These laws have since been widely
used to victimise the now some five million strong Ahmadi sect as well
as Hindu and Christian religious minorities. (The blasphemy laws have as
often also been used by Muslims against fellow Muslims to settle
personal scores – Ed.)
Some statistics may help us understand the enormity of
the problem. Almost half of the thousand people charged under this law
since 1986 belonged to Ahmadi and Christian communities though together
they do not account for more than five per cent of Pakistan’s
population. Higher courts are known to have generally dismissed
blasphemy charges, recognising that they were false, arising mostly from
disputes over land or family feuds. But the emotive value of the laws is
such that 32 people who were freed by the courts were subsequently
killed by Islamist radicals, and so were two of the judges who freed
them, without anyone launching much of a protest. Thus once a blasphemy
charge is made, this could inevitably prove to be a death sentence. Not
only can no government dare to repeal these laws, they cannot even
condemn wholeheartedly the murders of even their own leaders committed
in its name.
Even the Pakistani Parliament, consisting of freely
elected members, has not been able to condemn either of these
assassinations. The valiant civil society that has been campaigning
against the blasphemy laws and demanding human rights for religious
minorities for decades is now on the back foot. Its prominent members
are saying publicly that they are just waiting to be assassinated. They
are afraid because there is not a single institution in the country that
is either not compromised or scared. Incitement against them is allowed
to continue with complete impunity. All political parties are following
a policy of appeasement of jihadis. Assassinated Punjab governor Salmaan
Taseer had had removed banners calling for death to members of civil
society campaigning against extremism. But after his assassination,
banners justifying his own murder and hailing his murderer have sprouted
all across the state and there is no one left now to stop that. Large
sections of the popular print and electronic media are part of this
incitement against civil society.
Different Islamic sects, including those like the
Barelvis who were once considered moderate, have now come together on an
extremist platform. The killer of Governor Salmaan Taseer belonged to
the majority Barelvi sect; 500 clerics of the sect’s
Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat Pakistan (JASP) group supported him in a joint
statement. This statement is probably the height of blasphemy in itself,
as it paints Islam as a traditional religion of killers and god as a
sadistic entity who would encourage killing of innocents merely on the
accusation of blasphemy. While issuing a death threat to anyone who
attended the funeral prayers for the slain governor, the clerics’
statement said: “The punishment for blasphemy against the prophet can
only be death as per the holy book, the Sunnah, the consensus of Muslim
opinion and explanations by the ulema… this brave person [Qadri, the
bodyguard-assassin] has maintained 1,400 years of Muslim tradition and
has let the heads of 1.5 billion Muslims of the world be held high in
pride.”
This is extremely offensive to mainstream moderate
Muslims, as there is no statement in the holy Koran, the authoritative
sayings of the prophet or even Islamic jurisprudence prescribing death
penalty for a blasphemer. But after the clerics’ intervention in his
support, this dastardly killer of the very person he was being paid to
safeguard has now become a popular hero and is being lionised even by
the educated middle class. The interior minister of Pakistan, who is
supposed to maintain the rule of law in his country, said that he would
have personally killed the blasphemer, of course, without waiting for a
trial. He continues to hold his post even after making such an offensive
statement.
The few liberal voices that continued to be heard even
after the assassination of the governor are now falling silent,
particularly after the killing of cabinet minister for minority affairs
Shahbaz Bhatti, another crusader for moderation. As human rights
defender Tahira Abdullah pointed out, the vigils that human rights
bodies organised after the murder of Salmaan Taseer didn’t attract more
than 100 or 200 people in the capital of Pakistan, Islamabad, which has
a population of one million highly educated people, and they got only
about 500 people to come to those organised in Karachi, the largest
Pakistani city with a population of 18 million.
Barring a few pockets, moderates are losing the war
within Islam everywhere. The massive injection of petrodollar funding to
radicals throughout the world since 1974 has virtually changed the
nature of the religion. Islamic supremacism is now the rule not only in
Muslim-majority countries but also in countries where Muslims live as a
minority. Millions of Muslims now look down upon people of other faiths
and consider them permanently hell-bound.
According to the holy Koran and Islamic traditions, we
Muslims must believe in all the 1,24,000 prophets who have spread the
divine message to humanity in different parts of the world and must
treat them all as equal to Prophet Muhammad in status. We have to treat
the followers of all these prophets as People of the Book (ahl-e-kitab),
with whom close social, including marital, relations are allowed in
Islam. But the concept of ahl-e-kitab has now been rendered
completely meaningless. Instead, Muslim children in religious seminaries
(madrassas everywhere) as well as in government-run schools (in the case
of Pakistan and some other Muslim countries) are now being taught to
look down upon other religious communities. Many of us already have
developed contempt for followers of other religions. The so-called
religious scholars tell us that people of other religions may be
ahl-e-kitab but they are nevertheless kafir (non-believers,
infidels). They never explain how they hold and reconcile these two
contradictory positions in one breath. Any community holding others in
contempt is apparently not likely to be able to live peacefully in an
increasingly globalised multicultural world.
Even if we Muslims constitute a simple majority in a
country, we want to impose man-made Shariah laws, calling them of divine
origin which they are not. Now, even in countries where Muslims are a
minority, they want to be governed by Shariah laws. Apart from India, no
other country allows this and no society is prepared to do so. This is
leading to avoidable tensions and increasing Islamophobia in some
societies.
When the term Islamofascism was used for the first time,
many of us in civil society considered it a vast exaggeration. But that
no longer looks like the case. Islamofascism is even more dangerous
because it is sustaining and encouraging a wave of Islamophobia,
creating dangers for the religious minorities in several countries of
Europe.
This makes it imperative for the world community to
urgently work out a strategy to fight this growing menace. It also makes
it incumbent on the moderate elements in the Muslim community to take
the ideological war within Islam more seriously. Let us remind ourselves
of the last sermon of Prophet Muhammad in which he said:
“All of mankind is from Adam and Eve (Hawwa); an Arab
has no superiority over a non-Arab nor does a non-Arab have any
superiority over an Arab; a white has no superiority over a black nor
does a black have any superiority over a white except by piety and
good deeds. Do not therefore do injustice to yourselves. Remember
one day you will meet Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware: do not
stray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.”
As one can see, the prophet did not say a Muslim has any
superiority over a non-Muslim. For him superiority was entirely a matter
of “piety and good deeds”. That is all. Let us remember that and fight
the growing power of the pernicious ideology of Islamic supremacism
which renders us unfit to live as a worthy component of the present-day
globalised multicultural world as a peaceful community that we
mainstream Muslims have always been.
(Sultan Shahin is the Delhi-based editor of the website
NewAgeIslam.com. The above article is the text of an oral statement made
by Shahin on behalf of the International Club for Peace Research at the
16th session of the UNHRC, Geneva, held between February 28 and March
25, 2011.)
