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Friday, September 25, 2009

[ALOCHONA] Muslim women are oppressed in India



Muslim women are oppressed in India

By Alka Pande

It is in India and neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, alone, where Muslim women are oppressed, rest of the Muslim dominated nations give equal status and rights to women. This is how the Muslim minorities feel in this Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. These Muslim minorities also feel that the government schemes do not reach them. "There are welfare schemes relating to education, health, employment and so on but even the Muslim Concentrated Districts (MCDs) remain ignorant about them where it the implementation of these schemes is mandatory, what to say of districts which have sporadic population of minorities," said Aftab Alam, a social activist who is working in one such MCD –Bahraich – in Uttar Pradesh.

The issue cropped up during a consultation meet on Mid Term Appraisal of XI Five year Plan, which was held in the state capital Lucknow, last week. The meeting focused on "listening to the voices from the field" and was organised by the Planning Commission, Government of India with support of UNIFEM, UNICEF, UNFPA, Voluntary Health Association of India and National Alliance of Women. The issues which were covered in the day-long brain storming sessions included minorities, health, women and children.

The presentations emphasised on lack of quality education as far as Muslim population of India is concerned. "The government policy has the provision for 25 percent enrolment of Muslim girls but hardly 5 percent girls are enrolled in government schools," the representatives of minority group pointed out. The group included social activists working for the uplift of Muslims, from different parts of the state. The state of madarsas is more or less the same. "The condition of the madarsas, which get the government aids, has improved a bit as now they teach subjects like computer and English. But such madarsas are very few in numbers. Majority of madarsas are still in pathetic shape and imparting not so relevant education in terms of employment," said Aftab Alam.

Talking of employment, the minority representatives pointed out that a large section of Muslim community comprises craftsmen but the government does not provide them any opportunity to excel and promote their crafts. "On the contrary, capitalists and industrialists are taking over various traditional crafts and arts and the artisans and craftsmen are becoming labourers who are working for these industrialists," said Shaista Amber, a woman social activist and the president of All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board.

The group representing the minorities sounded united when they claimed that a major portion of Muslim population was unaware of the government welfare schemes. Besides, the schemes, which the minorities knew of, were hardly reaching the beneficiaries.

"The overall objective of the whole exercise was to obtain communities' perspective towards various programmes and schemes and their effectiveness," said Manju Agarwal, the founder director of Path – the Lucknow based organisation, who was facilitating this consultation. Such consultations are being conducted at state and regional level (clusters of five to six states) to assess the communities' participation in the central government programmes. "The exercise would also assess the level of knowledge of the community on various components of the national level schemes designed for them," said Manju Agarwal.

The group of minorities gave a few recommendations as well:

- Include minority representatives in the policy making.

- Propagate the government schemes through madarsas.

- Scholarships should go directly to the account of the students so that there is no mediator to exploit the students.

- Sachchar Committee report should be given the status of a legal document so that it has a binding on governments for the implement of its recommendations.

- Special protection/shelter homes for single women who become homeless after their talaq (divorce), or who after their husbands' death or due to jahez (dowry) are thrown out of their in-laws houses.

Alka Pande, CNS
(The author is a senior journalist and a Fellow of CitizenNews Service (CNS) Writers' Bureau. Website:
www.citizen-news.org )



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[ALOCHONA] Weapons Of Mass Desperation



Weapons Of Mass Desperation
 
Operation Green Hunt, the offensive against Naxals, might blow up in our faces. SHOMA CHAUDHURY examines the tricky and dangerous terrain
 
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Enemy worthy? Naxals in Abujmarh. Women suckle babies. The poverty shows
Photo: AP
ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2009, India woke up to the news that the Delhi Police had captured a top Naxal ideologue, 58-year-old Kobad Ghandy – a South Bombay Parsi who had grown up in a giant sea-facing house in Worli, had gone to Doon School, and had studied for a CA in London before returning to India to work with the most destitute of Indian citizens in Maharashtra, before going underground in the 1970s. His wife Anuradha, a sociologist, went underground with him and died of cerebral malaria last year. (Malaria, particularly the lethal falciparium malaria, is a common affliction in the neglected heartland of central India.) Home Minister P Chidambaram called Ghandy the State's "most important Naxal catch."
On the night of September 22, Times Now had a prime time debate on the significance of Ghandy's arrest. The aggressive rhetoric of anchor Arnab Goswami epitomised typical high urban attitudes to Naxal issues. If you happened to watch him anchor the show, several terrifying things would have become evident. Over this past year, the Home Ministry has been planning a major armed offensive against the Naxals, particularly in Chhattisgarh. According to reports, the plan involves stationing around 75,000 troops in the heartland of India — including special CRPF commandos, the ITBP and the BSF. Scattered newspaper accounts have spoken of forces being withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast; there is also talk of bringing in the feared Rashtriya Rifles — a battalion created specially for counter-insurgency work — and the purchase of bomb trucks, bomb blankets, bomb baskets, and sophisticated new weaponry. Minister Chidambaram has also said that if necessity dictates, he will bring in the special forces of the army.
The decision to launch such a massive armed operation on home ground — due to start this November — should have triggered animated political, civil society and media debate. But Operation Green Hunt — as the offensive is being termed — has been gathering force in almost complete silence. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Chidambaram have variously called Naxals — or "Maoists" — "the gravest threat to India's internal security." Perhaps a military offensive against them is the answer, but is it the only answer? Is it the best answer? Will it provide a solution? Who will be impacted by this offensive? What will be its repercussions? Who are we really declaring war on? What are we declaring war on? Are we going into this with eyes wide open? Is there anything we should have learned from the seemingly irreparable psychological mess in Kashmir and the Northeast? These are the questions a democratic society should be asking. One can perhaps understand the well-heeled turning their back on such bleak issues. But with such a significant operation looming on the horizon, what can excuse the complete absence of debate from national political parties?
But silence, perhaps, is only the lesser worry. A few days ago, the government announced an ad blitzkrieg as part of its psychological offensive. "Naxals are nothing but coldblooded murderers" the ad screamed across all major news dailies. The visual showed a series of men, women and children brutally killed by Naxals.
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On the night of September 22, discussing Kobad Ghandy, Arnab Goswami mouthed the same line. "Terrorist or ideologue?" he intoned, with the moral certitude of a man who has never got off his urban chair to trudge the interiors of the country. "Six thousand innocent Indians have been killed on Mr Ghandy's 'watch,'" he said (as if Kobad Ghandy was some Idi Amin figure presiding over a banana republic), "and yet human rights organisations and NGOs are asking for his release." (Mr Goswami always reserves special scorn for human rights activists, as if they are a uniform sub-species of anti-national humankind, rather than men and women with differing and individual views.) "What about the 12-year-old girl the Naxals killed in Jharkhand?" he thundered. "What about the 15 CPM cadres they killed in Bengal last night?" Every time one of his panelists tried to introduce the larger political context behind Naxalism or a more complex argument, Mr Goswami swatted them down: "The question we are asking is very simple," he said, "is he a terrorist or an ideologue? Is he responsible for violence or not? Can he be blamed for 6,000 dead or not?"
Watching the show was like straying into a child's playroom, watching the grave judgments of infants playing at Good and Evil. As an individual point of view it would have counted for nothing, but as the voice of Times Now, currently deemed the most popular English channel, Mr Goswami's unthinking edit line seems symptomatic of a wider, urban, English-speaking constituency. Coupled with the government ads, it presents the disturbing prospect of a public discourse that is marked by reductive official propaganda on the one side and infantile ignorance and simple-mindedness on the other. We can afford neither.
AT THE heart of the Naxal riddle, there are three primary questions: Who is a Naxal? What is one's position on violence as a tool of struggle? And why is Naxalism on the rise across the country? To understand the first, try a useful metaphor. Imagine fish in water. Naxal leaders are the fish, finite, identifiable (even punishable); the water is the vast, infinite constituency they speak for. And swim in.
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As Kobad Ghandy proves, a Naxal ideologue, commander or politburo leader can come from any milieu. The disempowered dalits of Andhra Pradesh, the destitute tribals of Chhattisgarh, the middle-class intellectuals of Bengal or the privileged rich of Bombay. These "informed revolutionaries" function at two levels. At a political level, they do not believe in parliamentary democracy (where they see power still concentrated in the hands of the feudal upper class) and their long-term objective is to seize State power for the people through armed struggle. In this, they threaten the sovereignity of the Indian State and many humanist thinkers, including men like K Balagopal of the Human Rights Forum, who was part of brokering peace talks between the government and Naxals in Andhra Pradesh in 2004, believe the State is within its rights to confront them. "The Maoists themselves would not tolerate such a challenge if they came to power," says he. Balagopal is also critical of Naxal leaders creating "liberated zones" where the Indian State cannot function. "If they claim to be the voice of the people, can they pursue a political agenda that injures people — either by their actions or the repercussions they invite? Does the current tribal generation of Chhattisgarh want to sacrifice itself for a utopian future that may never come?"
It is true that in this prolonged ideological war, many Naxal attacks like the horrific one on the Ranibodli police station two years ago and the more recent one in Rajnandgaon embrace brutal tactics and almost fetishise violence. Even if these attacks are against an oppressive and corrupt police, it is a nobrainer to condemn them and say one is opposed to this violence. Or that their perpetrators should be punished.
But like dozens of other intellectuals, Balagopal points out that it is suicidal to focus only on this ideological war or resort to extrajudicial means alone to quell it. Can Naxalism really be wiped out by brute counter force? If that were so, Siddhartha Shankar Ray's crackdown in Bengal in the 70s should have nailed it for all time. But the fact is, while stories of their own coercions are true, Naxal leaders enjoy wide support because they also espouse social-economic causes and empower people that the Indian State has ignored — criminally — for 60 years. Most Naxal cadres, therefore, are not "informed revolutionaries" fighting a conceptual war: they are beleagured tribals and dalits fighting local battles for basic survival and rights. Bela Bhatia, an activist, says she met a mazdoor in Bihar who was part of the cadre. "You can call me a Naxal or whatever you want," he said. "I have picked up the gun to get my three kilos of annaj."
The point is, should the Indian State be declaring armed war on its most despairing people? Is there no other way to empower them and wean them away from the gun and the seduction of the 'informed revolutionary'? When Arnab Goswami evoked the 15 dead CPM members in Bengal last week, he forgot to mention that, according to newspaper reports (since no TV channel bothered to send teams there to find out) a 10,000-strong crowd of tribals had descended on the CPM office which was stockpiling arms in Inayatpur, near Lalgarh. When his panelists tried to draw his attention to this, he scathingly dubbed all 10,000 tribals as Maoists. Should "Operation Green Hunt" then stamp all 10,000 out? And if 10,000 Maoists had attacked an office, is it possible that only 15 people would have died? What is the real truth about the attack on the CPM office last week? And why was the superintendent of police, visiting a day later, unable to find any bodies? And why were the central paramilitary forces stationed there unable to prevent any of it?
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Lalgarh, in fact, is a textbook case for the Naxal riddle. Over the last six months, mainstream Indian media has been agog about the "Naxal menace" in Lalgarh. But almost no one thought to ask, was the flare up in Lalgarh in May sui generis? Does an entire society become Maoist overnight? Very few bothered to report that the trouble in Lalgarh began after the Maoists attempted an assassination of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya earlier this year. In retaliation, the Bengal police rounded up and brutalised scores of innocent tribal boys in neighbouring Lalgarh, who had nothing to do with the attack. After several months of this sort of general, untargeted police oppression, angry and desperate, the tribal community spontaneously organised themselves as a resistance force, fighting the might of the Indian State with nothing more than traditional tools – pick-axes, bows and arrows. A few weeks later, it appears, Kishenji, a Maoist leader from Andhra Pradesh arrived to raise the ante, teaching tactics of struggle, meshing solidarity with guns and advice. The State responded with increased force and brought in paramilitary forces — a dry run for Operation Green Hunt. After several days of heavy fire, ironically using Maoist jargon, the State declared Lalgarh had been "liberated". But, the truth is, it has been on burn ever since. The attack on the CPM office is only the most recent expression of simmering anger in the area.
As Himanshu Kumar, a Gandhian and the only human rights activist on ground zero in faraway Dantewada where Operation Green Hunt is to be launched, says, "We can all be agreed on the premise that Naxalism is a problem, but why are these poor people attracted to a politics that will end in death? Have we created such a heinous system that death is more attractive than the deprivations and humiliations this system doles out? If that is so, why should I defend this system? All that these people want is food, health care, school, clothes and their legitimate right over their land. Yet, instead of weaning them away by strengthening the democratic process, if we are going to run our democracy only on the strength of weapons, I fear we are entering a dangerous and irrepairable state. We are headed for civil war." Men like Himanshu should know. For 17 years, he has functioned like an ICU on the edges of a wounded society, providing education and health care, painstakingly drawing tribals into the electoral and constitutional process. The government, loath to undertake the trouble, has been happy to outsource its functions to him. Yet now, it is deaf to his wisdoms. Worse, it hasn't even consulted him.
WHICH BRINGS us to the element of water in the Naxal metaphor. People who say human rights activists and the questions they raise are antinational, would be surprised to know what men like Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee themselves have had to say earlier about the Naxal riddle. Not to mention a galaxy of judges and constitutionalists.
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In 2006, the Planning Commission asked an expert committee for a report on development challenges in "extremist affected areas." The committee comprised senior officers like former UP police chief Prakash Singh; former intelligence head, Ajit Doval; senior bureaucrats like B. Bandopadhyay, EAS Sarma, SR Sankaran and BD Sharma; and activists like Bela Bhatia and K Balagopal. The report submitted in October 2008 had some visionary analysis and recommendations.
"The main support for the Naxalite movement," it said, "comes from dalits and adivasi tribals": the element of water: the infinite constituency in which Naxal leaders swim. Dalits and adivasis comprise a staggering one fourth of India's population, yet are disproportionately destitute and low on the Human Development Index scale. Worse, they suffer the most humiliation and indignity: the proverbial insult on injury. The report is an exhaustive anthology of the causes for rural discontent and violence — recording meticulous data and case studies — but at the heart of its argument, it places the "structural violence implicit in our social and economic system" as the key explanation for Naxalite violence. Slamming the neoliberal directional shift in government policies, it urges a "development centric" rather than "security centric" approach to the Naxal problem.
Curiously, three years earlier in 2005, human rights lawyer Kannabiran had written a letter to Dr Manmohan Singh reminding him of his own report as a Planning Commission Member in 1982 and one written by Pranab Mukherjee in 2002 that had come to the same conclusion. As Bela Bhatia says, "With all this insight and understanding already with them, it is completely mystifying why they should go against their own intuition and recommendation and take a security-centric route. Actually," she adds, "it is not mystifying. It only makes the character of the Indian State more clear."
WHO IS A NAXAL? IMAGINE FISH IN WATER. NAXAL LEADERS ARE THE FISH, FINITE, IDENTIFIABLE. WATER IS THEIR INFINITE CONSTITUENCY
This 'character' gets even more depressing when you know that barely a week ago, on 15 September, Arjun Sengupta, former economic adviser to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi also wrote that "Naxalism is a cry that must be heard". Responding to Dr Manmohan Singh's admission that despite the State's best efforts to contain the "Naxal menace", violence was still on the rise, Sengupta wrote powerfully, "It is important to understand why this is so and in what sense Naxalite violence is different from other violent outbursts. Although it has always expressed itself as a breach of law and order with violence, murder, extortion and acts of heinous crimes, it may not be prudent to think of every protest movement of the disaffected people as a simple issue of law and order violation, and calling for its brutal suppression. This form of extremism, indeed, goes beyond law and order, fanning some deep-seated grievance. We must try to resolve those problems first, as otherwise the violence will remain insurmountable."
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(Way back in 1996, Justice MN Rao of the Andhra Pradesh High Court had also remarked in a judgment, "While left wing extremism is viewed as a problem by the administration, it is increasingly being perceived as a solution to their problems by the alienated masses." Why is this so? That's a question every self-styled jingoistic nationalist must ask themselves.)
As Sengupta reminds the prime minister, he is right to fear that Naxal violence will raise its head again and again, because at its heart is the deeper structural violence that our democratic Republic refuses to address: a violence that forces 77 percent of Indians to live on less than Rs 20 a day while 5 percent enjoy lives that border on obscene excess.
Structural violence: that's an imaginative vacuum. For most urban Indians, the lives of tribals and dalits has no meaning, no face, no flesh. Our books no longer write of it, our films no longer evoke it, our journalists no longer cover it. It's not just the poverty; it's bumping into a face of the Indian State you have never seen before: brutal, illegal, rapine, pimped out to serve the interests of a few. Unless one travels into the silent smoky hole in the heart of this country — the remote jungles of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh; the desolate corners of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Rajasthan, one cannot feel the dread of this question: How will Operation Green Hunt solve this? You might stealth-march a mythic army of COBRA commandoes into this imaginative vacuum, but how will that dissolve the "two categories of human beings" our nation has created? Operation Green Hunt may kill several hundred 'informed revolutionaries' and several thousand of the despairing poor who have taken up arms, but how will it address the birth of new anger — anger born out of bombing an old wound?
THE DISCOURSE ON NAXALS IS MARKED BY PROPAGANDA ON ONE SIDE AND INFANTILE IGNORANCE AND SIMPLEMINDEDNESS ON THE OTHER
As anthropologist and historian Ram Guha says, "It's like a house with three rooms. One room was already on fire. Instead of dousing that, you willfully set fire to another room, then bulldoze the whole structure down."
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ONE OF the key architects of Operation Green Hunt, Home secretary Gopal Pillai sits in a giant office in powerful North Block. At first meeting, he doesn't seem the average cynic you expect Indian bureaucrats to be. An amiable, thoughtful man, he says he's seen long years of service in the Northeast and knows what a security-centric approach can do to a people, how it can trigger a world of smoke and mirrors where nothing is what it seems and everyone is chasing someone's shadow. He seems open and ready to listen. More, he is full of surprisingly honest admissions: Manipur is a society in collective depression, he says. Yes, raising the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh (which human rights activists have been crying hoarse about) was wrong; yes, the Naxals have often taken up causes and done work that the government should have. But, he adds, their violent disruptions are a real deterrence for governance. You have no argument with that.
According to him, then, Operation Green Hunt is being planned as a kind of "area domination". "We want to take back control of the land; but we will only fire if we are fired against," says he. "Lalgarh is the model; we want no collateral damage. Our real success will be in restoring civil administration in this area. PDS, mobile medical vans, stronger police chowkis, schools – that's our goal." You feel eager to believe him.
MANMOHAN SINGH AND PRANAB MUKHERJEE HAVE BOTH HEADED REPORTS URGING DEVELOPMENT CENTRIC APPROACHES TO NAXALISM
Part of the problem of administering the tribal villages in the jungles of Chhattisgarh is that they are lonely and farflung; also few in the district or political administration know the tribal languages. Operation Green Hunt has been long in the planning. Battalions of CRPF men and para-military forces across the country are being given crash courses for the impending operation. The Centre has sanctioned 20 new schools in jungle warfare; invited crores worth of bids for military equipment. Is there a similar hot-foot programme for training, sensitising and incentivising the civil administration? you ask. Has he invited civil society activists in the region for their inputs? Mr Pillai has a sudden shocked moment of self-recognition. No, he admits, and scribbles "training" and "dialogue" on a yellow notepad.
There is a month to go before Operation Green Hunt is launched. A familiar despair sprouts: the gap between stated intention and action. And miles of paper and good advice gathering dust in the Planning Commission.
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TODAY, THE biggest riddle for anybody concerned about a just and equal world is the dilemma of violence as a tool of political struggle. When the government shows such poor intention, when it is completely deaf to peaceful people's movements like the Bhopal gas victims', or the tribal resistance to bauxite mining in Niyamgirhi, or the Narmada Andolan, is one justified in asking the poor to defang themselves, unless one is willing to step out of one's comfort zone and share their lives of helpless status quo?
Should one distinguish between Naxal violence and spontaneous rural violence? Yet, in a democratic society, how can violence of any kind be condoned? Where does that leave democratic practice?
Despite these internal tussles, contrary to what Arnab Goswami asserts, almost the entire human rights community is agreed that not only is Naxal violence to be condemned, but subdued. Increased and international access to weaponry has led to escalating violence. As Prakash Singh, a widely respected retired police chief, says, "The Naxals used to move in dalams [cells] of 20. That's gone up to a 100. They have sophisticated weapons and their attacks have become more brutal. We have to show that such armed insurrection will not be tolerated."
NAXALS ARE OFTEN GUILTY OF BRUTAL VIOLENCE. THEIR STRUGGLE TO SEIZE STATE POWER THREATENS INDIA'S SOVEREIGNTY
The disagreements arise over strategy and efficacy. A top security expert who wishes not to be named but is generally considered a hawk, for instance, has serious doubts over Operation Green Hunt. Ironically, he voices the anxiety of a wide range of human rights activists. "To attempt this kind of an action by police forces against your own land and people is a dangerous trap," says he. "We usually reserve such operations for hostile territory. The police is supposed to go after particular individuals – say, Ram Lal, a criminal. But in an operation of this kind, you don't even know who Ram Lal is, it is very difficult to know who he is or get accurate intelligence on his movements. You might end up killing Ram Lal's relatives or his whole village. And if you don't hold inquests, you'll never know who you killed."
Kashmir and the Northeast are bleeding, painful reminders: once paramilitary forces or the army moves in, you can never really withdraw. No bureaucrat or military strategist or powerful minister can control the vicious logic of paranoia, fake killings, genuine mistakes and revenge that sets in. When friend and family can be an informer, everyone is an enemy.
Already, this helpless cycle has started to turn in Chhattisgarh. Last week, in the first of its assaults, a company of 100 COBRA commandos set off to destroy an alleged Naxal arms factory in Chintagufa area. They were caught in Naxal fire. Seven COBRAs were killed. In turn, they claimed to have killed nine Naxals (whose bodies they say they have) and many more they claim the Naxals dragged away. The government has tried to pass this off as a big triumph. But the deadly smoke and mirrors game has already begun. Villagers claim the COBRAs made no kills and had dragged innocents out of villages to tot some up, among them an old man and woman. Chhattisgarh DGP Vishwaranjan does not help matters by refusing to answer questions: "I don't have any details," he says. An odd answer for a DGP. Plus, there's the wound of six COBRAs dead in the first sortee.
As Operation Green Hunt kicks into top gear, all these problems will magnify. The hallucinations of the impregnable forest. Extremists who disappear, leaving villagers to bear the brunt of the commandos' ire. Paranoia within and without, revenge and, as in the Salwa Judum, innocent tribals caught between the fury of the Naxals and the fury of the State.
TODAY, THE BIGGEST RIDDLE FOR ANYONE CONCERNED ABOUT A JUST WORLD IS THE DILEMMA OF VIOLENCE AS A TOOL OF POLITICAL STRUGGLE
Pressure will create equal and opposite counter pressure. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh can't seem to grasp this simple physical equation. The impact of the Salwa Judum was to drive more tribals into the arms of Naxals. Operation Green Hunt promises to set the place on fire. When Binayak Sen spoke against the Salwa Judum, he was jailed. Now, when Himanshu Kumar is warning about impending civil war, no one is listening.
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"Not commandos. Send in health workers and schoolteachers protected by the CRPF," pleads he. "Show the tribals hope and they will choose life over death." But the weight of his voice does not sway even a mote of dust in the corridors of the Home Ministry.
THERE IS one final silent piece in the escalating Naxal violence that has gripped the country: neo-liberal land grab and tribal rights. It is no coincidence that a majority of the Naxal leadership today is from Andhra Pradesh. According to journalist N Venugopal, the roots of this go back to the Telengana Movement of 1946-51, which was abruptly withdrawn by the Communist Party. In the Andhra Second Five-Year Plan (1956), 60 lakh acres of surplus land was identified. Yet by the time the Land Ceiling Act was passed in 1973, and enough concessions had been made to rich landowners, the State said only 17 lakh acres of surplus land was available, and it distributed only four. Land, livelihood and liberation was the clarion call then. Still driven by that unfulfilled aspiration, most leaders today are from the families of the '46 – '51 movement.
'THIS OPERATION IS A DANGEROUS TRAP,' SAYS A SECURITY HAWK. 'YOU ARE LOOKING FOR RAM LAL, YOU'LL END UP KILLING HIS RELATIVES'
EAS Sarma, former Commissioner of Tribal Welfare and former secretary, Expenditure and Economic Affairs, unlocks the real heart of the matter. "I am totally against violence of any kind and a firm believer in democratic process," says he. "But Left extremism is a secondary issue. How many tribals even know there is a government? Their only experience of the State is the police, contractors, and real estate goons. Besides, the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution grants tribals complete rights over their traditional land and forests and prohibits private companies from mining on their land. This constitutional schedule was upheld by the Samatha judgement of the Supreme Court (1997). If successive governments lived by the spirit of the Constitution and this judgment, tribal discontent would automatically recede."
Mr Sarma is probably right. Human rights activists have long argued that the real intention of the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh was to capture tribal land — brimming-rich with minerals — and hand it over to private companies. The fact that 600 tribal villages have been evacuated in the last few years gives credence to this theory. If tribals no longer live on that land, the inconvenient Fifth Schedule of the Constitution will not apply.
Given that the Supreme Court directed that the Salwa Judum was to be dismantled, perhaps, Operation Green Hunt is the second lap. In any case, whether for ill-intention, poor execution, or unplanned collateral damage, there is much to fear in the impending operation.
In the meantime, we would all do well to read the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution.

WRITER'S EMAIL
shoma@tehelka.com

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 39, Dated October 03, 2009



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[mukto-mona] FW: [Dahuk]: What is New about Al-Qaradawi's Jihad?



 

 

What is New about Al-Qaradawi's Jihad?

by- Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi

 

In the name of Allah, Most Merciful, Most Beneficent

 

The importance of this conference is due to its focus on the most critical concept in contemporary Islamic thought- that of Jihad, which occupies an important position in the edifice of Islam. Jihad is “the summit of Islam and its pinnacle” according to the hadith, and is the subject of widely divergent views and stances from within and outside Islam, views which have serious consequences for international relations, in view of Islam’s growing role internationally.

 Those views, moreover, have an effect on relations between Muslims themselves, with their governments, and with non-Muslims, in view of the awakening witnessed across the Muslim world, both at the level of faith and the level of practice. This has led to a greater connection between Islam as a religion (creed, rituals, morals) and an ideology of great influence on the thought and behaviour of Muslims, socially and politically, or what is known as “political Islam”, in which jihad occupies a central position in one way or another.

This paper owes its importance to the position of the figure whose views on this crucial concept it attempts to present - that is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who occupies an important position in contemporary Islam, as testified by his role at various levels: at the intellectual level, his writings have exceeded 150 works, covering all aspects of Islamic thought. In addition to his membership of the major intellectual and juristic councils, he was elected President of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, as well as being the chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research and a number of charity organisations, and a member of various Islamic Studies academic committees, including the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. As for “political Islam”, he grew up inside one of its groups, the “Muslim Brotherhood”, occupying leading positions within it. He is also a rising star in the world of modern media, through his patronage of the most important Muslim website Islam-online, and through his famous weekly programme on Aljazeera channel “Sharia and Life” which is followed weekly by over 60 million viewers.

Al-Qaradawi has developed a principal theory in contemporary Islam, from which all his views and stances emanate, and to which he tirelessly calls, widening its appeal and marginalising its opponents - that is the principle of Islamic Wasatiyya or moderation. This was inspired by the verse in the second chapter of the Quran, “And thus we made you into a middle (wasat) nation”. Thus, he presents Islam as the middle position between opposing and conflicting rigid positions; as the middle ground that brings all together, - a middle position between materialism and spiritualism, between individualism and collectivism, between idealism and realism, etc. Starting from this wasati viewpoint, he presents all his ijtihads in all aspects of Islamic thought, including his ijtihad on the question of jihad, as revealed in his latest book “The Fiqh of Jihad: a comparative study of its rulings and philosophy in light of the Quran and Sunnah”. This study was described by its author as one which “took several years of continuous work, and occupied his thought for decades”. The fruits of this work are presented in a momentous book of two volumes, in which he puts forward, from the wasati perspective, his views on this critical issue, elaborating his theory on jihad, which he hopes will contribute towards forming consensus on this grave matter.  The book springs from the conviction that “it is dangerous and wrong to misunderstand jihad, to shed inviolate blood in its name, to violate property and lives and to taint Muslims and Islam with violence and terrorism, while Islam is completely innocent of such an accusation. However, our problem in such grave matters is that the truth gets lost between the two extremes of exaggeration and laxity.”

Our exposition of this momentous work will focus on clarifying the general view of jihad in Islam according to Sheikh Qaradawi based on the Quran and the Sunnah and their interaction with the tafsir and fiqh heritage as seen in the historical contexts in which it emerged, and through the current state of the Muslim ummah as it is engaged in major conflicts with the forces of despotism or with external forces, under the current power balances, a modern culture that glorifies the value of freedom, and an international law that recognises state sovereignty and limits legitimate war to self-defence. Within these contexts, Al-Qaradawi’s view of jihad was formed. What we wish to explore is not its details, but the general picture - what is novel in it, particularly in relation to major questions, such as jihad’s relation to freedom, and to relations between Muslims and others, whether it is inside or outside Muslim societies. So, what are the foundations of this methodology? What is jihad? What are its forms? What are its goals? Defensive or offensive? Between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Kufr? What are the rulings regarding captives in Islam? Is there jihad within the ummah? Where is jihad in the ummah’s current causes?

1. Issues of methodology:

In the introduction, the author defined the foundations for his study thus: 
a. Relying on the Quran as the absolutely authentic text which serves as the criterion for other sources including the Prophetic Sunnah. It is to be understood using the logic of its original language, Arabic, without forcing meaning onto the text, and on the basis that all its verses were revealed to be applied, “thus we questioned at length the claim of those who say that there is a verse in the Quran, which they called Ayat al-Sayf (the verse of the sword), which has allegedly abrogated one hundred and forty verses or more, although they differed over which verse that is”. The author almost entirely invalidates the principle of abrogation in the Quran, depriving the extremists of a sharp weapon with which they have disabled hundreds of verses promoting kindness, forgiveness, dealing with non-Muslims with wisdom and beautiful preaching and distinguishing between a hostile unjust minority amongst non-Muslims with which defensive jihad can be used, and a peaceful majority towards which justice and kindness are due.
b. Relying on authentic Sunnah which does not contradict stronger evidence, such as the Quran. Thus the author judges as weak sayings such as “I was sent with the sword” and others, using the tools of the science of Hadith. He also interprets an authentic hadith which commands fighting against people until they say “there is no God but Allah”, by taking the generic word “people” as being used to mean a specific group, that is the hostile Arab polytheists.
c. Benefiting from the rich heritage of fiqh, without bias towards a particular school, and without restricting oneself to the well-known schools, basing himself on the methods of comparative law, analysis, critique and selecting the most suitable opinion. He distinguishes between Fiqh and Shariah: the latter being of divine origin, and the former the product of intellectual effort to deduce the rulings of Shariah. True fiqh is not what is copied from books, but rather the jurist’s own ijtihad (intellectual exertion) to produce something suitable for his specific time and place, particularly as in our time, major changes have taken place.
d. Using the method of comparison between Islam and other religions and legal systems.
e. Relating fiqh to the current reality: The Muslim faqih (jurist) when speaking about jihad must realise the fixed principles in this matter, such as the law of tadaafu` (mutual checking), the obligation to prepare all possible sources of power to ward off the enemies, and to fight against those who initiate fighting against the Muslims, the prohibition of transgression, etc. There are, however, other matters that have emerged (considered mutaghayyirat, or changing factors), such as condemnation of war, seeking peace, and the emergence of international law, human rights conventions, the United Nations, and the sovereignty of states. In this respect, the author affirms that “we can live, under Islam, in a world that promotes peace and security rather than fear, tolerance rather than fundamentalism, love rather than hatred. We can live with the United Nations, international law, human rights conventions and environmentalist groups. In truth, our main problem with our rigid brothers who have closed all doors and insisted on a single viewpoint is that they live in the past and not the present, in books rather than reality”.
f. Adopting the methodology of wasatiyya (moderation) in da’wah (preaching), teaching, ifta’ (issuing legal edicts), research, reform and revival. Among the principles of this methodology in fiqh is to revive religion from within, through new ijtihads for our time, just as our previous scholars did for their time, through understanding secondary texts in the light of primary objectives, being firm when it comes to usool (fundamentals) and flexible in furu` (secondary matters), seeking wisdom whatever its source, and balancing between contemporary changes and Shariah fundamentals.
g. While studying “Fiqh al-Jihad”, one can easily perceive its author’s care not to present himself as the sole proponent of the above views amongst jurists. Instead he is very keen to refer to supporting views amongst old and contemporary scholars, even if such views were neglected or ignored, removing the dust that had collected and shedding light on them, presenting them in a more attractive appearance, and thus giving them new life. He is also careful to support his views with relevant values and expertise from modern culture, benefiting from his profound knowledge of the sources of Islamic culture and his familiarity with modern culture. Thus he constructs a new, coherent, well-rooted yet contemporary view of Islamic jihad, one which shares a wide common space with contemporary culture in relation to war and peace. What is new in this view is not the details, for its parts are scattered and buried deep inside books, but rather the whole picture, making this work a meeting point and a point of consensus, wherein all - or most - parties can find something familiar that facilitates their acceptance of what is unfamiliar. This ability to build consensus is a traditional characteristic of the great scholars. Thus the author does not exaggerate when describing the dire need among jurists, lawyers, Islamists, historians, Orientalists, diplomats, politicians, military men, and the educated masses for such a study.

2. The essence of jihad and its forms:

No Islamic concept has been the target of a continuous flow of attacks, and has brought a constant flow of attacks to Islam and Muslims, as much as that of jihad. It has fallen into the two extremes of exaggeration and laxity. The latter is promoted by a group that wants to abolish jihad from the life of the ummah, spreading the spirit of submission and surrender, under the guise of various calls such as tolerance and peace, described by the author as “agents of colonialism whose hostility to jihad is such that it has gone as far as creating groups which fabricated an Islam without jihad, and devoted themselves to promoting it, such as Bahais and Qadianis… At the other extreme, there is another group that makes of the concept of jihad a raging war it wages against the whole world, taking the natural state of things in relation to non-Muslims to be that of war, and regarding all people as enemies of Muslims, as long as they are not Muslim”. This latter group may agree with those Orientalists who define jihad, as in the encyclopaedia of Islam as “spreading Islam by the sword, an individual duty upon all Muslims, such that it is almost a sixth pillar of Islam” (Encyclopaedia of Islam, Arabic Translation, p. 2778).

The author tackles this extremism on both sides, through the linguistic analysis of the word jihad, which essentially means exerting oneself, making an effort, and through its occurrence in the Quran and Sunnah and its use by Muslim jurists. He concludes that there is a clear distinction between jihad and qital (fighting), as the command to engage in jihad was revealed in Mecca where there was no fighting, but rather jihad of da’wah (preaching) through the Quran, “And strive against them with the utmost endeavour with it (the Quran)” (p. 50-52). The word is also used in the Quran and Sunnah with various meanings, including exerting oneself in resisting the enemy, resisting the devil, resisting one’s desires, etc. Thus the word jihad is much wider than just fighting, for jihad, as the author quotes from Ibn Taymiyya, “can be with the heart, by calling to Islam, by countering invalid arguments, by advising or facilitating what is beneficial to Muslims, or by one’s body, that is fighting”.

The author further seeks support from a fourteenth century scholar, the eminent Ibn al-Qayyim, student of Ibn Taymiyya, in order to clarify the vast scope of jihad, which makes every Muslim a mujahid - but not a muqatil (fighter) by necessity. Ibn al-Qayyim concluded from his study of the process of Islamic da’wah that there are 13 levels of jihad: first, jihad al-nafs (jihad of the self) which comprises 4 levels, exerting oneself to learn the guidance, to act upon it, to call to it, and to persevere on those actions; second, jihad against shaytan, which includes 2 levels, struggling against the doubts in one’s faith which Satan instigates, and resisting the desires and corruption to which he calls; third, jihad against the non-believers and hypocrites, including 4 levels: with one’s heart, tongue, wealth, and self; and fourth, jihad against the oppressors and the corrupt, comprising 3 levels: with one’s hand if possible, if not then with one’s tongue, if not then with one’s heart. The author differs in regarding jihad against oppression and corruption as preceding jihad against disbelief and external transgression, while stressing that peaceful confrontation is to be adopted against oppressors “profiting from the reasonable forms which others have developed in confronting unjust rulers, such as elected parliaments, parties, and the separation of powers” (p. 198).

The author also stresses the importance of intellectual and cultural jihad “through the establishment of specialist Islamic academic centres, catering for exceptional youth - academically and morally - in order to prepare them academically and intellectually in a methodology that unites our heritage and modern culture… We do not call for isolation from the rest of the world, but rather to cultural and civilisational interaction. We choose what to take or leave based on our own philosophy and criteria, just as they had borrowed from us in the past concepts and inventions which they then developed and used to build their civilisation. What we take will be imbued with our own spirit, character and moral heritage such that it becomes a part of our intellectual and moral system, losing its original character” (p. 190-192).

The author concludes in his study of the fiqh of jihad in Islam that there are two types of jihad: civil and military - meaning fighting against enemies who attack Muslims, which necessitates preparing for it when there is a need; this type is a matter for states. Spiritual civil jihad “encompasses the academic, scientific, cultural, social, economic, educational, health, medical, environmental and civilisational fields. The objective of this civil jihad is to exert oneself for Allah’s sake in order to educate the ignorant, employ the unemployed, train workers, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, treat the ill, achieve self-sufficiency for the needy, build schools for pupils, universities for students, mosques for worshippers, clubs for sports lovers to practice their hobbies” (p. 215).

3. Objectives of jihad

Islam is a call to peace; it abhors war, but cannot prevent it, hence it prepares for it, but does not wage it unless it is forced upon it, which is due to Islam’s realistic nature and its recognition of sunnat al-tadafu`, the law of mutual checking. However it has sought to limit its consequences by surrounding it with rules and ethics. Islam has not been the exception in recognising war of necessity amongst other religions, including Christianity, whose followers have been among the most frequent participants in conflicts and wars, both against other Christians and against others. Luke’s Gospel reads “I have come to bring fire on the earth… Do you think I came to bring peace on earth?”. The Old Testament contains numerous calls to genocide, against 7 nations that inhabited Palestine that had to be completely eradicated- such that the modern calls to “transfer” and massacres committed by modern Zionist gangs are but miniature versions.

Jihad in Islam has specific objectives which Al-Qaradawi summarises as repelling transgression; preventing fitna- that is guaranteeing freedom of faith for Muslims and others; saving the oppressed; punishing those who break treaties, and enforcing internal peace within the ummah. Thus, expansion and appropriation are not amongst the objectives of jihad, nor is the eradication of disbelief from this world, for that is against God’s law of difference and mutual checking. Nor do the objectives of jihad include imposing Islam on those who do not believe in it, for that contravenes God’s law of diversity and pluralism (pp. 423). 

4. Military Jihad: Between Daf’ and Talab (Defensive and Offensive Jihad)

Following the tradition of classical and contemporary jurists, Al-Qaradawi questions the nature of jihad and its status in Islam: Is it of a religious nature, meaning it is obligatory upon Muslims to fight non-believers until they embrace Islam or submit to its authority, which they call jihad al-talab, that is voluntary offensive jihad? Or is it of a political nature, necessitated by the need to defend the lands of Islam against transgressors and to defend Muslims against those who prevent them from freedom of faith, and the oppressed generally- which they have termed jihad al-daf`, that is necessary defensive jihad, which, if Muslims must engage it, should be engaged in with pure intentions, for God’s sake, and following strict ethical guidelines which cannot be neglected.

Classically, and in the modern era, jurists have been divided between two groups, which al-Qaradwi calls the hujumiyyin (proponents of offensive jihad) and difa`iyyin (proponents of defensive jihad), proclaiming his proud adherence to the second group. The hujumiyyin consider it an obligation for the Muslim nation to attack the land of the non-believers at least once a year in order to call to Islam and expand its territories. They hold disbelief per se as a sufficient reason to initiate war and legitimate killing, even if non-believers do not attack or harm Muslims, to the extent that Muslims would be sinful if they do not do so. The proponents of this view, a large number of jurists, most prominent of which among classical scholars is Imam al-Shafi`i, and among contemporary thinkers are Sayyid Qutb and al-Mawdudi, support their view with evidence from the Quran and the Sunnah, and from historical practice. The Quranic texts used call for fighting against all polytheists, such as verse 36 of surat al-Tawba “and fight the polytheists all together as they fight you all together”, verse 5 “Kill the idolaters wherever you find them”, and verse 29 “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day… until they pay the Jizya with willing submission”. They differed as to which of those verses is the one they called Ayat al-Sayf, or verse of the sword, which, according to them, abrogated all contradicting verses, over 200 such verses calling for mercy, forgiveness and freedom of belief, prohibiting compulsion in faith and severity, and considering the judgment of people’s faith a matter to be left to God alone. They also sought support from prophetic sayings such as “I have been commanded to fight people until they say ‘there is no God but Allah’” (narrated by Bukhari). They also consider the early Islamic conquests as evidence for their view that war, rather than peace, is the natural state in Muslims’ dealings with others.

Al-Qaradawi’s disagreement with the above group does not prevent him from looking for excuses for them, particularly classical scholars, due to the relations between states at their time, which were based on power and war, and due to the existential threat to which Islam had been subjected since its birth in the Arab peninsula.

Al-Qaradawi stresses, alongside classical and contemporary scholars, the consensus that jihad becomes obligatory upon every Muslim if a Muslim land is attacked, or Muslims suffer fitna (are prevented from freedom of faith), and that every Muslim must practice some form of jihad, be it striving against one’s desires, against evil and corruption, and striving to promote good and support religion, as much as one is able to. However, Al-Qaradawi, through his study and analysis of the various texts related to jihad and the views of classical and contemporary scholars, concluded the following:

1. That Quranic verses, particularly those of surat al-Tawba commanding fighting against all polytheists, are to be understood as a reaction and an equal retribution, just as the verse says “as they fight you all together”, and not a general command or a basis for dealing with all non-Muslims, but was rather concerning a specific group of the Arab polytheists which declared war on Islam since its emergence, chased it out and followed it to its new home, broke treaties and mobilized everyone to eradicate it “Will you not fight people who violated their oaths, plotted to expel the Messenger, and took the aggressive by being the first to assault you?” (The Quran, 9:13). Within the same chapter, as well as in other chapters, there are limits and conditions restricting the above –seemingly general- command: “And if they incline to peace, then incline to it” (8:61). There is no need to set one verse of the Quran against another; rather one should look at all relevant verses and ahadith, all of which confirm the rule that Islam seeks peace with those who are peaceful towards it, and fights those who fight it.
2. Military jihad is not an individual obligation upon every Muslim, of the same level as the obligations of the testimony of faith, prayer, fasting, alms giving and pilgrimage, for despite its importance within Islam, it was not included in the inherent characteristics of the God-conscious in surat al-Baqara, nor in the characteristics of the believers as described in surat al-Anfal or surat al-Mu’minun, nor in the characteristics of those with true understanding as described in surat al-Ra`d, nor in the characteristics of the servants of the Most Merciful as described in surat al-Furqan, nor in the characteristics of the pious in surat al-Dhariat, nor of the righteous ones described in surat al-Insan. Thus, the practice of military jihad only becomes an obligation upon Muslims when its conditions arise such as an attack on Muslims, their land or their religion. Preparing for such an incidence, on the other hand, is an obligation upon them, according to their ability, in order to deter enemies and maintain peace.
3. There is no obligation upon Muslims to invade the lands of non-Muslims, if they are safe from them. It is sufficient for them to have a powerful army in possession of the latest weapons and trained soldiers guarding their borders and deterring enemies such that the latter do not thing of attacking Muslims, for the collective duty to be fulfilled (p. 91). It is worth noting that Al-Qaradawi prefers using the term non-Muslims instead of kuffar or disbelievers, for that is the way of the Quran which uses the terms “O people of the Book”, “O people”, “O Man”, “O Children of Israel”, “My people”, “O Children of Adam”. It never addressed non-Muslims as disbelievers, except in a few exceptional cases where there were negotiations regarding creed.
4. Islam recognised freedom of belief and each individual’s responsibility for his belief before God. On that basis, its societies, on the whole, did not experience religious wars. Under it, various monotheistic and pagan religions coexisted and continue to coexist, under the system of Dhimma which granted citizenship to non-Muslims regardless of religion. All they needed to do in order to enjoy the rights of protection by the Muslim state alongside Muslims was for those able to pay the jizya tax to do so, which is equivalent to the military service tax in some modern systems. According to Al-Qaradawi, unifying the tax rate and generalising military service make such a system which has been misunderstood and misused unnecessary.
5. It was historical conditions, rather than the texts of Islam, that made many jurists believe offensive jihad to invade non-Muslim lands to be obligatory. The ummah was constantly threatened by its powerful neighbours, the Persians and Romans (p. 82), and there were no international laws based on mutual recognition of state sovereignty and prohibition of hostility as is the case today- despite their contravention by the powerful.
6. The natural state of affairs in relations between Muslim and others is peace and cooperation in goodness. Islam abhors war and only engages in it unwillingly and as a necessity “Fighting is prescribed for you, though it is hateful to you” (Quran, 2:216). Peace is the essential character of Islam; it is the greeting of Muslims, the greeting of the people of Paradise, it is one of the names of Allah. The most hated name in Allah’s sight is Harb- which means war, one of the ancient Arab names, as Arabs were warriors. However, when the Prophet, peace be upon him, was told by his son-in-law that his daughter Fatima had given birth to a boy and that he called him Harb, he commanded him to name him Hasan (meaning good).
7. Islam welcomes international conventions that prohibit transgression and promote peace between nations, and welcomes international bodies that protect such laws, such as the United Nations, UNESCO, etc. However, the West still maintains its belief in the principle of power in its relation with other states and other nations. An example of that is the exclusive enjoyment of its major states of the right to veto, in a flagrant disregard for the principle of equality, thus guaranteeing the protection of their interest and the avoidance of any condemnation of its violations, as the US and UK did in their invasion of Iraq, without any legitimacy, with full impunity from any condemnation, and similarly with their continuous protection of the Zionists’ various forms of hostility against Palestine and its people.
8. Under international recognition of human rights, including freedom of belief and preaching, as well as freedom to establish institutions and protect minorities, one of the principal justifications of jihad al-talab becomes redundant, that is invasion in order to enable the call to Islam by dismantling oppressive regimes which used to prevent their people from thinking freely or choosing beliefs that are different to those of their rulers, such as the Pharaoh who reprimanded the Children of Israel for believing without his permission: “He said: You believe in him before I give you leave?” (Quran, 20:71). In contrast, today, unprecedentedly, in any previous era of Islam history, mosques and Muslim minorities are found everywhere, making our need greater for “huge armies of competent preachers, teachers, media experts, all suitably trained and able to address the world in its different languages, and using methods of this modern age, which, unfortunately, we possess less than a thousandth of what is required”, (p.16). Al-Qaradawi laments that you may find many who are ready to die for Allah’s sake, but very few who are willing to live for His sake.
9. The sources of Islam reveal that, according to Islam, the world is three abodes: dar al-Islam, the abode of Islam, where its law reigns, where its rituals are publicly practiced, and where its adherents and preachers are secure; Dar al-`ahd- the abode of accord, that is states between which and the Muslim state there is mutual recognition and prohibition of hostility; and finally dar harb, or the abode of war. Al-Qaradawi regards Muslims, in view of their being part of the system of the United Nations, as being in a state of accord/pact with other states, except with the Zionist state, because of its usurpation of the land of Palestine and its dispossession of its people, which unfortunately took place with the support of major states. Thus Al-Qaradawi considers the greatest problem in our relation with the West to be its constant and unlimited support of Israel and its continuous aggression against Palestine and its people.
10. Al-Qaradawi distinguishes between jihad and irhab- terrorism, or between legitimate irhab -being feared by the enemy to deter it from any aggression, and illegitimate irhab, that is terrorizing innocent people as done by groups using the name of Islam, which declare world on the whole world in an illegitimate use of jihad in an inappropriate setting, terrorizing innocent people- Muslims and non-Muslims- in order to achieve alleged political ends inside or outside Muslim lands, flagrantly contravening the principles and ethics of jihad in Islam. Hence Al-Qaradawi condemned violent acts committed by extremist groups in Muslim and non-Muslim countries against innocent people, whether tourists or others. He further stripped the indiscriminate killing and shedding of innocent lives committed by these groups of any legitimacy.
11. Al-Qaradawi is extremely careful to distinguish between extremist groups that declare war on the whole world, killing indiscriminately, tainting the image of Islam and providing its enemies with fatal weapons to use against it, on the one hand, and on the other groups resisting occupation. And as much as he condemns the former and delegitimizes its foundations, he defends the latter, and calls on the ummah to support them, particularly in Palestine, as long as their operations are against military targets. He does not hesitate to justify martyrdom operations, considering them to be the weapon of one with no other options, who is deprived of equivalent weapons to those of the enemy, in order to defend his home and his land. God’s justice does not allow the weak to be completely deprived of any weapon, hence the latter’s use of his own body as a deterrent weapon. In any case, the ethics of jihad must always be respected, and only combatants can be targeted.
12. As he stresses that the first jihad to be obligatory upon the ummah in this age is liberation from colonialism, particularly in Palestine, Al-Qaradawi warns and stresses the fallacy of those who wrongly believe that the conflict between us and Zionists is due to the fact that they are Semites- for we are also Semites, both of us coming from the progeny of Abraham- or that it is a religious conflict- for Muslims regard Jews as People of the Book, whose food is lawful, with whom marriage is lawful, and who have lived amongst Muslims in safety and have sought refuge in our lands when Spain and other European countries expelled them, finding refuge nowhere but among Muslims. In reality, the conflict between us and Zionists started for one single reason: their appropriation of the land of Palestine, dispossessed its people, and imposed their presence with violence. The conflict will continue as long as its causes remain. No one can give up any Muslim land, but it is possible to have a truce with Israel for an agreed period of time. As for the principle of “Land for Peace”, it is indeed a bizarre principle imposed by the logic of the enemy’s brute force, for the land is our land, not the enemy’s, so that it can bargain it in return for peace (p. 1090).
13. Just as he, and his mentor Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, had a leading role in confronting those extremist groups and preventing them from hijacking Islam and diverting it from its mainstream towards the margins, through stripping their actions of any legitimacy based on jihad, both inside and outside Muslim lands, Al-Qaradawi praised the important revisions made by the most important of those groups, which found great support in his writings- after having attacked and rejected his views- in order to engage in their revisions, which he described as brave and enlightened (p. 1168).

5. Ethics of Jihad:

“War in Islam is ethical, just like politics, economics, science and work, none which is divorced from ethics, in contrast to war in western civilisation, which is not necessarily bound by ethics.” For Muslims, war is governed by a moral code, because morals are not an option, but rather an essential part of religion. That includes: a) Islam’s prohibition of the use of unethical methods to infiltrate the enemy and obtain their secrets- including sex, intoxicants, etc. b) prohibition of transgression, as the Quran commands “Fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you, but do not transgress. Lo! Allah loveth not aggressors.” (2:190). The author inteprets transgression to mean killing non-combatants, by killing women, children, the elderly, the ill, farmers, and others not engaged in fighting (p. 728). The ethics of jihad also include the prohibition of mutilation of the enemy. c) the fulfillment of agreements and prohibition of treachery and betrayal. d) Prohibition of cutting down trees and demolishing buildings. e) The non-legitimacy, islamically, of what is called weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical, biological or nuclear weapons which kills thousands or millions at once, without discriminating between the guilty and innocent, destroying life and all living beings. Islam prohibits the use of such weapons, because Islam prohibits the killing of non-combatants, as the Prophet, peace be upon him, strongly condemned the killing of one woman in one battle. However, that does not prevent the ummah from seeking to acquire such deterrent weaons, since others are in possession of them and can threaten Muslims nations with those weapons, particularly as the Zionist enemy which has usurped its land is in possession of such weapons, and their scripture legitimises the obliteration of all their neighbours. What is astonishing is that America and other great nations prohibit other nations from possessing these weapons, while they themselves possess them. They prevent Arab and Muslim states from acquiring them, while Israel possesses over two hundred nuclear heads. The mutual deterrence between the western and eastern blocks had contributed to the maintenance of world peace, and similarly between India and Pakistan. Such weapons cannot be used, except in the most exceptional circumstances, when a nation is subject to an existential threat (p. 592). F) Islam enjoins its mujahidin to treat captives kindly. After a detailed discussion of all texts and all juristic opinions concerning war captives, particularly on the question of whether they can be killed, the author concluded that the final ruling is that revealed in surat Muhammad “either set them free as a favor or let them ransom (themselves)” (47:4), possibly with the exception of war criminals. On the whole, the author approves the articles of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of captives.

In conclusion: Al-Qaradawi’s study on the fiqh of jihad can be regarded as an authentic Islamic ijtihad, upholding the principle of jihad as an eternal Islamic mechanism of defence in its wider meaning, one which has suffered a great number of misrepresentations leading to tainting the image of Islam. Al-Qaradawi recuperates the effectiveness and moderation of this mechanism, taking it out of the hands of extremists. His courage in standing up to the campaigns waged against the concept of Islam has been just as great as his courage in rejecting the arguments of extremist groups who declare war against the entire world. He did not shy away from criticising the great number of jurists who uphold the principle of offensive war (jihad al-talab), nor was he ashamed of his proud adherence to the group believing in jihad as defensive only. He continues to counter the arguments of the former group, without fear or hesitation, without injustice, undermining or misrepresenting the views of those he disagrees with, but rather he seeks excuses for them. He has continued to do so, until he almost destroyed what is known as jihad al-talab, establishing instead defensive jihad in its wider meaning, jihad with no trace of relation to the charge of terrorism -which he clearly distinguishes from legitimate resistance of occupation-, a jihad with ethics that agree with international conventions and their principles, values and laws prohibiting aggression, occupation, the use of weapons of mass destruction and the torture of captives; a jihad that welcomes an open world in which ideas and persons move freely, dealing through proofs and arguments rather than violence and power, until the most valid triumphs. Through such a presentation of jihad, Al-Qaradawi has opened a vast space for dialogue, tolerance, agreement and coexistence between Islam and other religions, human values, and international accords, enabling a response to the eternal Quranic call “O mankind! Lo! We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that ye may know one another. Lo! the noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct.” (49:13)

 

- lecture at Edinburgh University - 9 September 2009

 

Source: http://www.ghannoushi.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=298:qaradawi

 

 


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[ALOCHONA] FW: The Burka is not Religion: My op-ed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten




         I have been speaking up, writing columns, and presenting papers at International Conferences against the politics of hijabization of Muslim  women for many years now.  I am glad to see that many more Muslim men and women are speaking up against this falsehood of equating Islam with the debilitating hijabization of women.
 
           Farida Majid


Date: Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:45:41 -0400
Subject: The Burka is not Religion: My op-ed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten



The Burka is not Religion: I support its ban in Denmark

 
Friends,

My friend Naser Khedar who is a Danish MP has introduced a bill in Parliament asking for a ban on the burka in public.

One of Denmark's leading newspapers, Jyllands-Posten asked me to comment on whether the burka is a religious requirement in Islam or not. Here is my op-ed that appeared on September 16, 2009.

Tarek
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The Niqab wars in Europe and North America



Tarek Fatah
Jyllands-Posten, Copenhagen

When a Muslim member of President Sarkozy's cabinet, Fadela Amara asked for the banning of the burka in France, the reaction from the worldwide Islamist movement was npredictable. She was denounced as a traitor to Islam. 


Now, Danish MP Naser Khedar has joined the ever-increasing chorus of Muslims around the world demanding a total ban on the imprisonment of Muslim women in niqabs and burkas.

Khedar and Amara's demand to end this insult to the female gender has found resonance across the Atlantic, where in Canada, the Muslim Canadian Congress has taken up the challenge to confront the Islamists and their leftwing allies.

This unholy alliance claims women should have the right to wear face masks in public and invoke religious freedom and Islam as the basis of their claim.

Nothing could be further than the truth. The latest incarnation of the niqab controversy surfaced last month in Toronto, when a judge ordered a Muslim woman to take off her niqab when she testified in a case of sexual assault. The woman invoked Islam as the reason why she wanted to give testimony while wearing a facemask. She told the judge: "It's a respect issue, one of modesty," before adding that it was a matter of Islamic "honour."

These explanations were rejected by the judge, who determined that the woman's "religious belief" was not particularly strong, and that, in his opinion, the woman was asking to wear the niqab as "a matter of comfort."

However, such arguments are beside the point — for they are premised on acceptance of the myth that a facemask for women is a necessary part of religiously prescribed Islamic attire, which is nonsense.

There is no requirement in Islam for Muslim women to cover their face. Rather, the practice reflects a mode of male control over women. Its association with Islam originates in Saudi Arabia, which seeks to export the practice of veiling — along with other elements of its austere Wahhabist brand of Islam — to Muslim communities around the world.

If readers have any doubt about this issue, they should take a look at the holiest place for Muslims — the grand mosque in Mecca. For over 1,400 years, Muslim men and women have prayed in what we believe is the House of God, and for all these centuries, female visitors have been explicitly prohibited from covering their faces.

For the better part of the 20th century, Muslim reformists, from Egypt to India, campaigned against this terrible tribal custom imposed by Wahhabi Islam. My mother's generation threw off their burqas when Muslim countries gained their independence after the Second World War. Millions of women, encouraged by their husbands, fathers and sons, shed this oppressive attire as the first step in embracing gender equality.

However, while the rest of the world moves toward the goal of gender equality, right here in Europe and North America, under our very noses, Islamists are pushing back the clock, convincing educated Muslim women they are mere corrupting sexual objects and a source of sin.

Minister Amara and MP Khedar are not alone. In 2006, India's prominent Muslim film star and activist Shabana Azmi told a gathering in London while receiving the International Gandhi Peace Prize:

"The Quran speaks about women wearing clothes to cover her modesty. A woman is supposed to cover herself to be modest. She does not need to cover her face. A time has come for a debate on the issue,"

Her comment led to India's leading Islamic cleric, Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari, referring to Azmi a for prostitute.

Despite the fact Islamists cannot produce a shred of evidence that the burka or niqab is a religious requirement, they rely on bullying tactics and threats of violence to spread their oppressive misogyny.

Not only is the Niqab not a requirement in Islam, head covering known as the hijab too is a cultural practice, not a religious one.

Author Farzana Hassan, communications director of the Muslim Canadian Congress says, "Originally a source of modesty, the hijab, or Muslim head scarf, has become a political tool."

She wrote, "All women have, at some time in their lives, chosen to wear a head cover. In blinding snowstorms or freezing rain, the covering of the head, irrespective of what religion one practices, is crucial to one's survival. Halfway across the world, in the deserts of Arabia, whether one was a Muslim or a pagan, the covering of one's head and face was an absolute necessity -- not just when facing a blistering sandstorm, but any time one-stepped out of the home in the searing sun. What was essentially attire for a particular climate and weather has been turned into a modern symbol of defiance and, at best, a show of piety by Islamists and orthodox Muslims."

The only verse of the Quran that comes vaguely close to such a dress code (Sura 24, "The Light," verse 31) directs believing women to cover their breasts, not their heads of their faces.

Islamists have turned the hijab and niqab into the central pillar of Islam. They consider Muslim women who do not cover their heads and faces-- the vast majority -- as sinners or lesser Muslims.

It is time for all Muslims to come out and challenge the Mullahs. They should be told, they do not speak for us; Muslims like Danish MP Naser Khedar and French Minister Fadela Amara, do.


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