By TCN News,
New Delhi: All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat President Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan today wrote a letter to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram describing the latter’s views on Jihad as a gross misrepresentation of the Islamic term, and urged him “to look beyond the popular clichés and the vague claims of your officials, and try to curb the real terror within the boundaries of our country.”
Addressing the Intelligence Bureau centenary endowment lecture on December 23, Chidambaram had said that after the end of the Cold War, there emerged another kind of war, namely, Jihad. He had also said that Jihad is a war or struggle against unbelievers and, currently, it is waged by a number of groups owing allegiance to Islam. Unlike the original Crusades, Jiihad is not fought like a conventional war. Jihad employs terror as an instrument to achieve its objectives. Such terror is directed against all and sundry, its victims are usually innocent people, and its goal is to overawe and overthrow the established authority. The tactics of the jihadis have been copied by militants belonging to other groups too, not excluding militants professing the Hindu faith.
Dr Z I Khan, in the letter, said he was surprised to read these comments and termed them as gross misrepresentation of Jihad.
“It is a gross misrepresentation of “Jihad” and also betrays sheer ignorance on the part of your speech writer, Dr Khan said.
“Jihad in Islam means struggle and according to a saying of the Holy Prophet, it is divided into “Greater Jihad” and “Lesser Jihad”; the greater one is against one’s own shortcomings and waywardness while the lesser one is against foreign enemies who invade us and occupy our lands. Such struggle is the duty of every faithful lover of his/her country. Hence “Jihad” is a defensive war against invaders and occupiers like the one our forefathers fought against the British occupiers of India.”
“What goes as “Jihad” these days is a product of American designs to takeover foreign lands and resources. It all started with their training, arming and financing fighters in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation and it was hailed as “Jihad” by the US-controlled media. Later their own creation turned against them for a plethora of reasons which cannot be explained in such a letter. Suffice to say that this “Jihad” has nothing to do with Indian Muslims who have refrained from taking to violence despite gravest of provocations in recent years. No Indian Muslim has taken part in such activities whether in the Indian part of Kashmir or in Afghanistan or Iraq or elsewhere. At the same time there is ample evidence of Hindutva terror even since before Independence. During recent years its votaries like Sanatan Sanstha, Bajrang Dal and Abhinav Bharat have committed umpteen terrorist acts while carefully trying to pass them on as acts of “Islamic terrorism” but overwhelming evidence is now available in the public domain to nail them beyond any shred of doubt,” the letter reads.
Dr Khan expressed anguish that despite ample evidence against the involvement of Hindu groups in terrorism, no sincere efforts are being taken to curb them.
“Your ministry and your subordinate departments like IB seem to be in no hurry to curb them and ban such poisonous and dreadful organisations. Various departments of your ministry are still beating about the bush, making tall claims about “Islamic terrorism” while there is none as far as Indian Muslims are concerned,” Dr Khan said.
“It is my sincere advice to you as a learned, sincere and secular leader, to look beyond the popular clichés and the vague claims of your officials, and try to curb the real terror within the boundaries of our country. Kindly leave the so-called “Jihad” for America to tackle as it is its the creator and beneficiary of this monster to this day in its quest to control energy resources of the Middle East,” he urged.