IT REQUIRES A LITERARY BOMB

Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

Milovan Djilas (1911–1995) who was born in Yugoslavia, was influenced in his early youth by communism and became an active member of the communist party. Later in life, he rose to become the Vice President of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. But when he saw the practical results of communism, he became a strong critic of the communist regime.

In 1957, Djilas published a book, The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System, in which he argued that communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was not egalitarian, and that it was establishing a new class of privileged party bureaucrats, who enjoyed material benefits from their positions. This book proved to be very successful and was translated into more than 40 languages.

Reviews on this book were written throughout the world. The Reader’s Digest reviewed the book under the title: The Book That Is Shaking the Communist World. (Eugene Lyons, Reader’s Digest, October 1957) America was strongly opposed to communist Russia, but rather than drop a nuclear bomb on it, it devised and supported a literary campaign against the communist regime. A sizeable number of books were published and disseminated in various languages which criticized the flaws in the philosophy of communism. All this had taken careful planning and amounted to throwing down a challenge to communism at the ideological level. This strategy was successful, and in 1991 the USSR collapsed after sixty-nine years of existence.

This is also the right way to tackle the modern-day so-called Islamic terrorist movements. The use of chemical or nuclear bombs is not the way to eradicate this kind of terrorism. It requires a literary bomb to encourage people to shun terrorism and follow the path of peace. In present times, tackling the menace of terrorism requires a powerful book on the subject, one which can again be reviewed under the heading: The Book That Is Shaking the Terrorist World.

There was a time when it was thought that Saddam Hussein was the biggest patron of modern Muslim terrorism. He was convicted on charges of killing and executed in 2006. After Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, considered the principal leader spearheading terrorism, was likewise killed in 2011 when his hideout was bombarded. Then, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was regarded as the most formidable terrorist to be dealt with. According to media reports he was killed or seriously injured in an airstrike in November 2014.

Yet, even after the killing of these leaders, terrorism, in the name of Islam, continues to flourish. This shows that we have to change our approach in this matter. We have to adopt a strategy other than the use of guns and bombs.

According to news reports, President Barack Obama all but admitted on June 10, 2015, the anniversary of the fall of Mosul, as he ordered an additional 450 military advisers to join the 3,500 already in Iraq, that his anti-IS strategy wasn’t working. (“Battling Islamic State,” The Hindu, June 12, 2015, p. 10)

Going by experience, we ought, as far as this issue is concerned, to take a U-turn. We have to change our previous mindset if we are to put an end to the menace of terrorism. It is important to take lessons from historical experience. We have, therefore, to replace chemical bombardment with literary bombardment. This is the only way to success in this field.

Modern terrorism in the name of Islam is based entirely on the misinterpretation of Islamic texts. One example of this misinterpretation derives from a verse of the Quran, which says: In al-hukmu illa lillah. That is,

‘All power belongs to God alone.’ (12:40)

In this verse, hukm is used in the sense of the supernatural power of God. However, the Muslim extremist thinkers have misinterpreted it to mean political power. Furthermore, it is said that Muslims, as representatives of God, should establish God’s rule on earth. This assumption is wrong because it is based on a Quranic verse which has been taken out of context.

Another verse in the Quran says: I’dilu. This means,

‘Follow the principle of justice [in your life].’ (5:8)

But a misinterpretation of this verse has taken it in the transitive sense instead of the original intransitive sense in which it was used in the Quran. That is, the verb used in the above verse does not have any direct object of action, but because it has been wrongly interpreted, it comes to have an object of action, which in this case is the outside world. Thus, the verse has been taken to mean that justice should be imposed on people by force. As a result of this misinterpretation, the concept of justice has been politicized, although this notion cannot truly be inferred from the text.

Any interpretation of the above kind is false. And this falsehood must be made manifest so that people may understand with certainty that the present militancy has no sanction in Islam and so that extremists will give it up, in the knowledge that their actions are un-Islamic.

The terrorist phenomenon is based on misinterpretation of the scriptures. It can be eradicated only by a right interpretation of the text being universally publicized.

In a speech on July 19, 2015, the British Prime Minister David Cameron expressing his anxiety about youngsters travelling to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), said,

‘We must de-glamourise the extremist cause, especially ISIL. This isn’t a pioneering movement – it is vicious, brutal, fundamentally abhorrent.’ (Tim Ross, “David Cameron tells teenage jihadists they are ‘cannon fodder’”, The Telegraph, July 19, 2015)

It is true that present Muslim extremism is the result of the glamourization of the self-styled concept of global Khilafat or caliphate. Its real solution lies in de-glamourizing this false ideology developed by extremists through a misinterpretation of Islamic sources. Moreover, de-glamourization of the Khilafat can be achieved by de-Islamizing this concept of the Khilafat based on false interpretation.

One of the aims of this book is to offer valid arguments to show that the concept of political Islam has no basis in Islam. It has to be conceded that the present concept of the false Khilafat is based on a political interpretation of Islam. This book demolishes the current false ideology of the Khilafat.

The UN has rightly adopted this dictum: