We Indian Muslims Need No Sermons From The Al-Qaeda Chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri
By
Grace Mubashir, New Age Islam
7 April
2022
Ayman Al-Zawahiri
Message Is Like A Savage Murderer Crying Out Sermons On The Value Of Human Life
Main
Points:
1. We Indian
Muslims are never looking for external
support to defend our rights guaranteed under the Indian constitution.
2. India is the
largest temple of democracy and pluralism.
3. Al-Qaeda’s
supreme commander Ayman al-Zawahiri has released a standalone statement on the
Hijab controversy in India.
4. Islam, like
any religion, embraces changes in terms of laws and cultural evolutions.
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Let me at
the outset categorically junk the rubbish allegations raised by Al-Qaeda head
Ayman al-Zawahiri. We Indian Muslims are never
looking for external support to defend our rights guaranteed under the
Indian constitution. This is like a savage murderer crying out sermons on the
value of human life.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief of the
terror group Al Qaeda
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Unlike the
theocratic dictatorial regimes you want to establish where space of individual
liberties would be smothered to death invoking misconstrued religious dictates,
India is the largest temple of democracy and pluralism. My country has the
adequate fluidity to absorb and mitigate her inner contradictions.
Belying the
news of his natural death, the Al-Qaeda’s supreme commander Ayman al-Zawahiri
has released a standalone statement on the Hijab controversy in India. This
comes from the head of a dispensation who has supported clipping the freedom of
women by banishing them from schools, as in Afghanistan today or African states
where Al-Qaeda has influence. After initial progressive signs of moderation,
the Al-Qaeda-supported Taliban regime that emboldened after the bungled
withdrawal of American boots in Afghanistan has blatantly succumbed to
pressures from hardliners. It has demonstrated again that still it clings to
outdated tribal Islam with crass regard for civil liberties and multiple
religiosities.
Although
India has already found fleeting references in his speeches earlier, his
broadcasted messages solely on an Indian issue demand critical attention. This
shows the designs the Al-Qaeda has entertained in the region manipulating the
occasional discontent innate to a democracy. In their pipedream of establishing
an Islamic Caliphate, India with its large Muslim population has been a vital
cog. Community leaders and security experts should proactively engage to distil
the incipient trends of radicalism, especially based in the cyber world.
Al-Qaeda’s Version Of Islam
Understanding of blinkered understanding of
the Al-Qaeda’s religious views will help better read the messages in context.
Al-Qaeda believes in ethnic tribal Islamic traditions nurtured by hard-core
Salafism exported from the Middle East.
It is antithetical to divergent religious interpretations and follows
contrived rigidity of Islamic Sharia totally expunging the spirit of religion,
Sufism. Following tribal traditions of patriarchy and sustenance through war
spoils, they believe in the harsh interpretations of Islam.
Islam, like
any religion, embraces changes in terms of laws and cultural evolutions.
Al-Qaeda refutes timely accretions to the religion discrediting them as profane
innovations as they believe in a puritanical form of religious version. In
their scheme of polity Pashtun and other African ethnicities are endowed with
hegemony. They follow a highly illiberal patriarchal social system and thus
women are chastised from the public.
They resort
to violence to destroy and tarnish anything they deem as ‘Shirk’ (idol-worship
or polytheism) as per scriptural strictures in the Al-Qaeda’s interpretation of
Islam. They conveniently dump into oblivion the plural and multi-cultural
teachings of Islam. To establish a Pan-Islamic Khilafat to prop up their
radical ideologies is central to their political idea. According to the
Al-Qaeda, also identical to political Salafism, Islam cannot survive without
political establishment.
Indian Muslims Reject Al-Qaeda’s Dogma
Al-Qaeda
has no moral vindication to guide Indian Muslims. Al-Qaeda is at a loss without
the rudimentary understanding of Indian democracy. Indian democracy is
celebrated not for the absence of inner contradictions; but for the pragmatic
forte to accommodate and diffuse differences.
The sermon of Zawahiri, although focused on
Hijab issue, was a sinister ploy to discredit the democracy and send innuendoes
of subverting the system. It has in fact tried to preach misogynistic and
theocratic political messages. The allegations of Indian democracy supporting
pagan Hinduism is plainly misleading and a rigid theocracy like the Al-Qaeda
cannot digest the notion of mutual coexistence.
Whether
Hijab is essential to religion is contentious within the religion. But, for a
muscular patriarchal Al-Qaeda Hijab is indispensable to limit the visibility of
Muslim women. The Karnataka High Court’s
verdict banning Hijab from schools with compulsory uniforms itself shows the
diversity of the Indian system to accommodate diverse opinions in a rainbow
polity. Indian judicial system has ample space for grievance redressal through
peaceful means. The issue is already in Supreme Court.
The
militant ascendancy of Right Wing Hindutva poses existential threats to the
idea of the nation, but the country has enough checks and brakes to prevent
such aberrations from being the norm. While the recent shift to majoritarian
nationalism spawns doubt, the nation has the consciousness to implement the
constitution which guarantees equal justice irrespective of religious
affiliations. But the exhortations of Al-Qaeda’s supremo to disparage Indian
nationhood based on this fickle aberration are like blaming the eclipse on the
sun. This has actually hurt the cause of the Muslim community, evident from the
statement of the Karnataka home minister who attributed the Hijab protests to
‘outsider influences’.
Indian
Islam is one among the multiple interpretations of Islam. It is fundamentally
different from puritanical bare dogmas of the Al-Qaeda in its inclusiveness,
localism and syncretic moorings. Indian Islam is malleable and adaptive to
timely evolutions as a religion is supposed to be. It reposes faith in
multicultural society and plural cultural ethos. Indian Muslims are not hapless
lots to seek guidance from the rugged terrains of uncertainties.
Muskan and her father during an interview
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Al-Zawahiri’s
call to arms should not be taken in light vain as wails of a self-styled
evangelist. It is part of a larger plot to promote radical insurrections in
multi-religious societies. Indian Muslims have earlier repudiated the call to
join ISIS to fight the infidel state. The Muslim community has to maintain
extra vigilance from radical overtures from ‘outsider forces’. Along with this,
governments have the constitutional onus to assuage the grievances of the
minority communities to assure safety to all.
It is noteworthy that soon after a video
emerged in which Ayman Al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida chief, purportedly praises Bibi
Muskan Khan for defending her right to wear the hijab, the Mandya student’s
father gave him a fitting reply. In his video Zawahiri praises Muskan through a
poem that he allegedly penned. Mohammad Hussain Khan, Muskan’s father, told
reporters yesterday that they don’t want any appreciation from the leader of a
terror outfit. “We don’t know anything about it [video], we don’t know who he
(Al-Zawahiri) is,” Khan said. “I saw him today for the first time. He says
something in Arabic...In India, we all live peacefully like brothers with love
and trust. His (Zawahiri's) statement appears to be aimed at sowing discord and
creating division among us Indians,” Mohammad Hussain Khan said. Muskan's
father said the row has disturbed the peace in his family and he plans to enrol
Muskan in a college that allows students to wear the hijab.
Muskan's Allah o Akbar moment
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It may be
recalled that at the peak of the hijab row in February, Muskan, a second-year
BCom student enrolled in a college in Mandya, was heckled by a group of saffron
shawl-clad students while she was entering the college wearing Hijab. Muskan
had responded to shouts of “Jai Shri Ram” with a cry of “Allah-hu-Akbar.”
This has made her a mascot of Islamist fundamentalist elements across the
world, particularly in Pakistan. Last
month ISIS magazine Voice of Hind had also referred to the Hijab row in India
in its cover story. So had AQIS in its magazine Nawa e Ghazwa e Hind.
All these terrorist groups see an opening in India with the current events.
They want to instigate peaceful Muslims to join them. It's like an attempt to
fish in troubled waters. But Muskan’s father's categorical response has shown
that Indian Muslims will brook no foreign interference in their country's
internal affairs. India has vigorous judicial institutions that can redress any
grievances Muslims may have.
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Mubashir
is a journalism student at Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic
Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism