Islamo-Fascism and Islam-Supremacism feeding Islamophobia worldwide: Sultan Shahin tells UNHRC
United Nations Human Rights Council, 16th session, Geneva - 28 February 25 March 2011: Agenda Item 8: General Debate on Follow-up and implementation of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of ActionOral Statement by Sultan Shahin, Editor, New Age Islam On behalf of International Club for Peace ResearchMadame President,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 Islam-supremacism in Muslim societies worldwide. Even
exemplary moderate countries like Indonesia, 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 maybe 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 the radical Islamists
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 Mohammad or the Holy Book,
the Quran. The issue of blasphemy has been raised to such a high pitch,
particularly in Pakistan, but also in other countries that the masses
of Muslims are just not allowed to see reason. As in the case of Aasia
Begum 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 Quran asks them not only to kill the 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, the entire humanity, not just the Muslims, completely
oblivious of the dire contradiction involved. The
result is a sort of free for all in the 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 court room
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 the Prophet
Muhammad. These laws have since been widely used to victimize the now
some five million strong Ahmadi sect as well as Hindu and Christian
religious minorities. 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, recognizing 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 any one 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. Madame President, 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
Salman Taseer had got 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 the civil society. Different
Islamic sects including those like the Barelwis who were once
considered moderate have now come together on an extremist platform. The
killer of Governor Salman Taseer belonged to the majority Barelwi sect;
500 clerics of his Jamaat Ahle Sunnat Pakistan (JASP) sect 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 of 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 Quran, the e
authoritative sayings of the Prophet or even Islamic jurisprudence
prescribing death penalty for the 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 human rights bodies organised after the
murder of Salman 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. Madame President, 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.
Islam-supremacism is now the rule not only in the 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 Quran and Islamic traditions, we Muslims must believe in
all the 124, 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 Mohammad 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 [madrasas 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 multi-cultural world. Even
if we Muslims constitute a simple majority in a country, we want to
impose man-made Sharia 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 the Sharia 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. Madame President, When
the term Islamofascism was used for the first time, many of us in the
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
Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in which he said: "All
of mankind is from Adam and Eve (Hawwa), an Arab has no superiority
over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has 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 Islam-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.
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