Hadi Matar Is the Face of Shia Extremism
The US People
See Every Muslim Youth with Suspicion Because Of Act of the Youth like Hadi
Matar
Main
Points:
1. He was
sympathetic to Shia extremism.
2. He
sympathised with Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
3. He was
recently radicalised during his visit to Lebanon.
-----
By New
Age Islam Staff Writer
17 August
2022
Hadi Matar, 24, right, leaves an arraignment in the Chautauqua County
Courthouse in Mayville, NY. on Saturday. AP
-----
The attack
on Salman Rushdie is another example of the radicalisation of the Muslm youth
by extremist forces in the Europe and Americas. Hadi Matar's motive is unknown
till date but the attack may be attributed to the ideology of hate that has
been spread among the Muslim youth. Hadi Matar had been sympathetic to Shia
extremism and to te Iranian Revolutionary Guards and perhaps wanted to avenge
Qassem Sulaymani's assassination allegedly by the US. Another motive which is
being doubted is Salman Rushdie's allegedly blasphemous novel Satanic Verses
for which Iranian supreme leader had announced a reward for Rushdie's killing.
Hadi Matar was born ten years after the publication of the novel and so may not
have read it or heard about its content.
He was
probably brainwashed recently by Shia extremists against Rushdie whom he may
have taken as a symbol of American interests as he was a citizen of the US. For
Islamic extremists, targeting American interests in any form or anywhere fulfils
their objectives. Therefore, Hadi Matar was incited to attack by making him
believe that he would be doing a great service to Islam and would win a place
in heaven by killing Rushdie who had committed blasphemy. Such acts do not
serve any cause of the extremists, rather malign the image of Islam and Muslims
and present them as extremists and violent.
Equally
unfortunate was the reaction of the Muslims to the attack. Hadi was hailed for
attacking a blasphemer and made a hero. Urdu newspapers made headlines full of
religious fervour at the attack though the newspaper headlines should be
neutral and devoid of any emotional or religious tinge.
The attack
was characteristic of terrorist organisations which exhort Muslims to carry out
loan wolf attack on the enemies of Islam, particularly on the interests of the
US. Such frustrated youth embark on a path of mindless violence in the belief
that by carrying out such attacks they are causing harm to the US.
But in
reality, they harm their own community by providing the US and other European
countries the excuse to impose greater restrictions on the Muslims. Donald
Trump had called for immigration of Muslims and France had cracked down on
hundreds of mosques after the killing of the French teacher Samuel Patty by a
Muslim youth. The US people see every Muslim youth with suspicion because of
act of the youth like Hadi Matar.
Tabish
Khair's article raises very relevant questions about the behaviour of the
general Muslims and the reaction of the so-called Muslim intellectuals to the
extremist acts of Muslim youth. Rationalising a violent attack on a writer
speaks of the sick mentality of a section of the Muslims. The Muslim media also
justifies such acts and glorifies such extremists. The Muslims had glorified
Mumtaz Qadri after he had assassinated the governor of Punjab Salman Taseer and
made him into a saint.
----
Salman
Rushdie: Those Hailing the Attack Must Know a Knife Is No Way to Think
By Tabish
Khair
16 Aug 2022
Even sadder
than the attack on Salman Rushdie – may he recover soon – is
the fact that many Muslims are defending, even acclaiming it. I say so not to
defend whatever Rushdie might or might not have written. I say so because as
long as substantial numbers of Muslims feel that a stupid knife is an answer to
words and ideas, they, as communities, are doomed.
Salman Rushdie
-----
I can
understand that religious feel offended
by Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. There is nothing wrong with feeling offended,
or even with protesting legally, though optimally, both should involve a degree
of intellectual effort, not just loud shouting on the streets. Offended Muslims
should, if they have any capability as well, write books or essays to counter
what they consider wrong in that novel, or in other novels. They should write
books of their own, and write them well enough to gain even more readers.
The
'Generation of Rage'
There is
nothing to stop them from doing so. If they did so, they will develop their own
ideas, explore their own possibilities, and engage in the kind of intellectual
activity that their prophet recommended when he said that a Muslim should go as
far as China (the farthest corner of the world) for knowledge. But sneaking up
and attacking a 75-year-old author with a knife is not going to give anything to the
community except a taste for fascist power.
As usual,
most of these Muslims who are acclaiming the attacker have not read The Satanic
Verses. Is the novel really blasphemous? Is the novel even about the prophet of
Islam? Or is the novel about something else altogether? These are questions
they are not willing to ask themselves, and, more than that, these are people
who cannot read literature as literature. They relate to the world as if it was
a unidimensional thing, like a knife, and fail to really understand words or
ideas, let alone consider their subtleties and nuances. In this, for Muslims
from my tradition, they fail in the first injunction that started their holy book:
‘Read!’
Interestingly,
many of the people tweeting ‘blessings’ on the attacker are indulging in what
David Devadas, in a perceptive book on Kashmir some years ago, called the
“generation of rage”. By that, he also meant that an entire class of highly privileged
people in Kashmir talked in ways that generated rage among the unemployed and
the less privileged and educated. This rage then spilt out on the roads or
enabled radical militants to influence youth into sacrificing for some cause or
the other. The point is not that there were no reasons for protest or even
anger: there were such reasons in Kashmir, and there are such reasons in the
world.
But the
rage generated was a total failure – it was a negative response, enabled by
classes that did not put their careers or affluence on the line, but instead
prepared poorer, less educated people to offer themselves up as a sacrifice,
often for causes they vaguely understood.
Many of the
tweets supporting the attack on Rushdie come from people like that, and this,
too, is detrimental to Muslims as a community. It is an abdication of community
responsibility by the elites.
What
Fascism Really Means
Whatever
might be the position of Muslims in places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, where the
structures of power, though different from one another politically and
theologically, are essentially authoritarian, this matter assumes further
shades in places like India, and in Western nations. These are constitutional
democracies, and in India in particular, many Muslims claim that the rise of
Hindutva – with its corollary of lynch mobs – contains a fascist element. The
essential definition of fascism is the use of physical force against social,
intellectual and political opponents.
It is the
brown shirts marching, the stomp of Nazi boots. It is Jews and Gypsies being
hunted down in the streets by Nazí mobs. It is the knife in the ribs.
How can any
Muslim in India even consider supporting a person who attacks and knives an
author? Essentially, this is a quintessentially fascist enactment of power. If
religious Muslims cannot see this, then they leave their societies wide open to
the incursions of fascism. And interestingly, they enable their opponents to
justify the use of fascist force against them.
Reaching
an Intellectual Dead-End?
There is so
much wrong with the attack on Rushdie. But there is so much more wrong with any
rationalisation – let alone celebration – of the attack. Unless Muslims can
come to see this, they will be hollowing out their own intellectual and other
traditions.
To use a
knife against an idea is to use a knife against your own brain. To use a knife
against words is to slice off your own fingers. One does not have to agree with
Rushdie to say so. One simply has to care enough for Muslims to realise that
they have reached an imaginational and intellectual dead-end if they celebrate
a knife over ideas.
What kinds
of generations of scholars will that spawn? What kind of writers to celebrate
and narrate the best in Muslim traditions? What kind of scientists to help
Muslim communities – and states and the world – to solve their problems? What
students, what teachers? What caring fathers, what informed mothers? What
thoughtful children?
A knife is
no way to think.
-----
Tabish
Khair, is PhD, DPhil, Associate Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark.
This is
an opinion article and the views expressed are the author’s own.
Source: Salman
Rushdie: Those Hailing the Attack Must Know a Knife Is No Way to Think
URL: https://newageislam.com/radical-islamism-jihad/hadi-matar-shia-extremism/d/127730
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