How do Muslims respond to terrorist attacks?: New Age Islam’s Selection From Pakistan Press, 4 December 2015

December 04, 2015

•  How do Muslims respond to terrorist attacks?

By Syed Kamran Hashmi

•  War on terror: more of the same — II

By Dr Saulat Nagi

•  Syrian crisis takes a turn for the worse

By Abdur Rahman Chowdhury

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How do Muslims respond to terrorist attacks?

By Syed Kamran Hashmi

December 04, 2015

People in favour of the military operation were called the “scum of the earth” by the pro-negotiation group, which, in an attempt to find justification thought the insurgency could be explained away with drone attacks that killed children, women and the elderly

Aside from rekindling the debate regarding Islam as being inherently more violent than other religions, the Paris attacks have also sparked once again an argument within the Muslim community about how they should respond to such atrocities: whether they should sympathise with the victims all the way without any ifs and buts or just consider it a necessary evil to seize higher objectives, a violent reaction to the series of systematic oppression, opportunism and greed unleashed upon the followers of Islam by the west over the last few decades.

First, let me say that no sane person supports terrorism, at least not overtly, as it can backfire and may even cause legal trouble. However, many Muslims — educated, moderate and pragmatic — find ample reasons to condone it. And while they are doing so, one just wonders at the faint smile that spreads across their faces, an exuberant glow betraying their words of compassion as if they are indeed rejoicing instead of being concerned. On the other end of the spectrum, there exist people who find it inhuman — what to talk about religious or not — to justify the mass killings of vulnerable civilians in any shape or form, the ones who grieve the loss of American soldiers in Iraq as much as they would if one of their own family members had died.

Both of them accuse each other of being hypocritical and selfish, and both find the other to be responsible for the failure of the ummah (Muslim community) in paddling out of the quagmire of poverty, illiteracy and foreign subjugation. Blaming the self-appointed defenders of Islam for religious bigotry, the pro-west group criticises them for justifying violence in the name of God, a great sin, and reasserts itself by promoting universal human values. “Why do you have to dig in the past every time and look centuries behind in order to look forward?” they question. The defenders of faith strike back and call the latter traitors, people who have lost faith and have either given up on Islam as the way of life or sold their conscience for money, the blue passport, safe future of their children or, maybe, for all of them.

It does not take more than a few minutes to reckon that the two groups cannot reconcile their differences. It is like a debate over a glass of water, which some of them thinks is half empty while others believe it is half full. Do you know which side you belong to? Are you among those who blame the US for an attack on its soil in which thousands of people died? Or do you feel obliged to defend those who share your faith even when they do something as catastrophic as 11/13 in Paris? Or do you stand on the side of the US even when someone recites the same verses of the Quran you hold so dear to your hearts, and sacrifices his life to (allegedly) revive the glory of Islam? I do not think staying neutral is left as an option anymore.

Not too long ago, Pakistanis struggled with the same dilemma. Thousands of civilians died in suicide attacks from 2007 to 2014. Terror caste by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ruled the country as if the government did not exist. Soldiers were martyred, their lives taken in the name of Islam by the people who shared the same faith. However, the nation stood irresolute, divided into the same two groups, not sure whether they should negotiate with the TTP, accept their demands and provide them the political space that they were demanding or quash them with full force, eradicating every form of religious extremism.

People in favour of the military operation were called the “scum of the earth” by the pro-negotiation group, which, in an attempt to find justification — like we notice after the current incident — thought the insurgency could be explained away with drone attacks that killed children, women and the elderly, or the US invasion of Afghanistan, which fuelled anger and frustration. They said it would end once the US left Kabul and Pakistan stopped tailing US foreign policy. At the core of terrorism lies bad governance, poverty and oppression, according to one of their arguments. Not military action, rather good governance, is what we need to wipe out militancy. I must confess that most Pakistanis were lured in by those arguments. Their claims hit the right nerve. It helped Pakistanis exonerate themselves from taking any blame and held foreign powers responsible for everything bad happening in the region. At that time, Pakistanis also used to whisper that the real reason behind the US getting into Afghanistan did not have anything to do with 9/11 and everything to do with the country’s natural resources, which the ‘imperial power’ was so eager to tap.

But, how did it all end? Did negotiations succeed? The federal government, led by the PML-N, initiated the process twice even when the Pakistan army opposed it. Did it stop the TTP from attacking the church in Peshawar? Did the Peshawar massacre never happen?

After the Army Public School attack, everyone realised they could never negotiate with savages and that the only way to deal with extremism was to crush it with an overwhelming force, a force not only to get hold of ‘ground soldiers’ but also to track down the financiers, the abettors, the sympathisers and, above all, the source of their inspiration. This is what the west needs to do as well, which it has not done so far. It needs to go after the place it all starts from without which even when it stamps out the likes of Islamic State (IS), it will remerge in some other form like Daesh sprang out after al Qaeda.

Syed Kamran Hashmi is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com

dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/04-Dec-2015/how-do-muslims-respond-to-terrorist-attacks

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War on terror: more of the same — II

By Dr Saulat Nagi

December 04, 2015

Every war requires an enemy or a heap of them. The quantity and quality of war depends on the quantity and quality of an enemy

What happened in Paris was horrible and must be condemned. But what happened to Allenda, Lumumba, Guevara, Tania, Rosa, Eugene Levine and thousands of those who were brutally slaughtered by a not-so-hidden force, which in its condemnation stands at the forefront, was equally repulsive and reprehensible. From Bengal’s famine to the Algerian massacre, from My Lai to Aleppo, from Mosul to Benghazi, which hegemonic force(s) overturned stable states, drenched innocent citizens in their blood and then pushed them into the abyss of a primitive era? Who destined infants to die on the sea shores of the ‘civilised’ world? But are these queries qualified to be asked? Laing is more succinct in his reply. He states: “Pedants teach youth that such questions of value are unanswerable, or not really questions at all, or what we require are meta-questions. Meanwhile, Vietnam goes on.” Do we really need to change the Middle East with Vietnam? After all, that generation is still alive, which has seen the horrors of chemical weapons used in Vietnam albeit their ‘class’ varies. One belongs to the war veterans who are scarcely known, others akin to the two Johnnies, Kerry and McCain, live in pomp and show.

Capitalists are averse to the dialectic analysis of things. Facts can only be understood if the real existence (phenomenon) is distinguished from the inner core (the essence); either cannot coincide with the other. The bourgeoisie misses this point. That is why the imperialist world either begins to imagine its existence on an invincible cranny of this planet or tends to suffer from collective amnesia or national Alzheimer’s disease while simultaneously believing that its victims too have the same affliction. That certainly is a misconception. After the production of means of destruction how can the producer expect to live under the safe havens or after creating chaos without any blow back? A war imposed upon the meekest of people is never without consequences. “The smallest worm will turn being trodden on,” says Shakespeare. The US, beyond doubt, is the number one arms dealer in the world. Those who live by the sword die by the sword since all roads that lead from the house of an arms dealer end up in destruction. “Organisation for peace,” says Macuse, “is different from organisation for war; the institutions that served the struggle for existence cannot serve the pacification of existence. Life as an end is qualitatively different from life as a means.” The institution of war is only capable of unleashing horror, pure and simple. Hence, Kevin Philip’s warning about “the US becoming a garrison state” is a reference to the pathway this ‘land of opportunity’ (or opportunists) is heading towards, which culminates, if it has already not culminated, at fascism, a synonym of barbarism.

Violence cannot be supported; it is abhorrent and despicable but the violence of the weaker cannot be compared with the violence of the mightier. Both are hideous; the only difference lies in the mode of their presentation. Those who hold the media can highlight relative trivialities as cataclysms while their own My Lais, Hiroshimas and Abu Ghraibs are not considered even worth mentioning. “An order given by the executives of Fox network to Fox reporters, which appeared as an ad in The New York Times,” according to Howard Zinn, “required the latter not to play up Iraqi civilian casualties.” Why? Did the victims belong to some other species? Were they not human beings? If so, was Franz Fanon, while arguing that “human beings who are not considered as such shall not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in their attitude towards the coloniser,” really promoting violence? Howard Zinn continues to state: “The many thousands of people... hired by private corporations to be the security people are repeatedly called by the press as contractors. The more accurate term would be mercenaries... they are just not wearing the uniforms. This is the privatisation of an ugly war.” The leaders of this ‘free’ world are incapable of doing wrong. If they do, history brings forth their crimes only when the capital needs scapegoats to shield its crimes. By that time these mighty figures of today have already immersed into oblivion, replaced by some other players taking their roles on the stage of the world.

“The war,” says Orwell, “is not meant to be won; it is meant to be continuous.” “It is a sad commentary on the capitalist system,” Howard Zinn adds, “that the capitalist system could solve the problem of unemployment only through war. It is a sort of basic fact about this system that it is driven to give people jobs only when those jobs contribute to war and militarism. And there is such a thing called military Keynesianism. Military Keynesianism is even more effective than ordinary Keynesianism because there is the profit motive for the corporations operating to give people jobs in war industries. It is a commentary on the capitalist system that seems to be the only way it can maintain economic stability.”

Every war requires an enemy or a heap of them. The quantity and quality of war depends on the quantity and quality of an enemy/enemies. The Cold War provided the sustained necessity of keeping hostilities alive though the Soviet Union was never eager to fight. Only a warfare state can fulfill the needs of a welfare state since it continues to produce goods including waste and indoctrinated buyers who buy without needs. Its enemy is vague, eternal and omnipresent. It has to be there or else it needs to be created. It is always lurking both in peace as well as in war. Akin to the executive, judiciary and legislators, the enemy is very much an integral part of the system. It can have one or several names. It can be as concrete as the USSR or as abstract as al Qaeda, as distant and alienated as once the ‘axis of evil’ or as close and brutal as Islamic State (IS). It does not impede productivity nor inhibits the level of growth but helps to maintain the status quo. The motive is to contain any real possibility of liberation.

To be continued)

Saulat Nagi is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com

dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/04-Dec-2015/war-on-terror-more-of-the-same-ii

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Syrian crisis takes a turn for the worse

By Abdur Rahman Chowdhury

December 04, 2015

Following the 2002 Iraq invasion, the Sunnis, the second largest community, were marginalised. The Iraqi government pursued a highly sectarian policy purging the Sunnis from government services, including the armed forces

November 2015 has been a turning point for the Syrian crisis. A Russian aircraft with 224 passengers on board was blown up in midair over the Sinai Peninsula. A few days later, a bomb exploded at a public rally in Ankara killing over 100 people and injuring many more. Then, in mid November, bombs exploded in a stadium in Paris where thousands had converged to watch a soccer match. Almost at the same time, a theatre hall was attacked by a group of armed men. These incidents in Paris took the lives of over 123 innocent people and left over 200 seriously wounded. The following week, a luxury hotel in Cairo, where judges overseeing the elections were staying, was attacked by gunmen. Islamic State (IS), operating in Syria and Iraq, claimed responsibility for all these attacks. IS took revenge against military assaults on its forces. In all these attacks, the victims included men, women and children who had nothing to do with the war efforts of their governments. Nonetheless, they paid the supreme price.

Russia, during the past four years, has opposed foreign intervention in Syria and has advocated a political solution to the crisis. It, however, backed Syrian leader Basher al-Assad and maintained that he was the legitimate leader of the country. Moscow, at the same time, provided arms and ammunitions to the Syrian army in order to keep the insurgency under control. Iran was another valuable partner of Assad. Iran’s army and militia are reportedly fighting alongside the Syrian army against the insurgency. Military analysts are of the opinion that had Moscow and Tehran not extended support, Assad would have been removed a long time ago and that Syria would not have gone through this unprecedented bloodshed. This view is, however, not shared by others; they believe the removal of Assad would have dragged the country into more disintegration as witnessed in Libya.

It is fair to conclude that Assad’s abhorrence of pluralism and pursuit of dynastic rule triggered the crisis four years ago. The people of Syria have never had the opportunity to participate in the governance of their country. Assad’s father, Hafiz al-Assad, ruled the country for about 20 years suppressing dissidents. After his death, Basher al-Assad came to power but the pattern of governance remained unchanged. The rule of the Alawites, the minority community Assad belongs to, continued. Following the 2002 Iraq invasion, the Sunnis, the second largest community, were marginalised. The Iraqi government pursued a highly sectarian policy purging the Sunnis from government services, including the armed forces. The Sunnis in both Syria and Iraq were marginalised.

General Petraeus, the US top commander in Iraq at the height of insurgency, reached out to Sunni tribes and brought them to the side of peace and stability. They were assured of fair treatment and just share in government services. An era of peace and tranquility appeared looming on the horizon. A unified defence force was set into motion with the enrollment of youth from Shia, Sunni and other communities. The US army provided training and equipped them with arms and ammunitions. An army of 200,000 personnel emerged in a few years. The US spent six billion dollars to help the Iraqi army reach the best of its capability.

The US government began to drawdown its troops in 2011 and began consultation with Baghdad on the deployment of a residual force in Iraq. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opposed the residual US army. Instead, he suggested complete withdrawal of foreign troops and the last US marine left Iraq at the end of 2012. The de-Baathification, initiated by the provisional administration in Iraq in 2003, marked the beginning of the exclusion of Sunnis in government services. Thousands of trained personnel from the police and defence forces were laid off because of their association with the Saddam regime. They were left with no jobs and had very little savings to survive on. In this chaotic environment many of them lost homes and properties. Communal harmony came under strain. As the insurgency raised its head, former defence and police personnel were welcomed by radical outfits. Given their familiarity with road networks and important installations, these former military personnel became valuable inductions in the insurgency. The insurgency inflicted severe casualties to the occupation army. The US army lost over 4,400 marines and the casualties of the coalition partners were also significant.

The overtures made by General Patraeus were discarded by the Maliki administration after the US troops were withdrawn. Parochialism began to overshadow national reconciliation. Sunni tribal leaders were betrayed and ethnic cleansing resumed with renewed enthusiasm. While the disenchanted Sunni youths were looking for new opportunities, IS emerged championing the cause of the Sunnis in the region. Sunni youths, not only from the region but North America and Europe also, were lured in to join the radical outfit. About 30,000 fighters reportedly comprise IS’ combat forces.

Reports emanating from IS held territory reveal that most members have had no prior jobs, are frustrated at the lack of opportunities when it comes to entering trade and commerce, and are overwhelmed at the denial of freedom to open their minds. They come from a region marked by huge income inequality where 47 percent of the youth are either unemployed or under-employed, and 40 percent want to start their own business. IS offered jobs and business opportunities, and many got married. They were permitted to peruse a particular brand of governance and faith. This new opportunity has been welcomed by many disillusioned youngsters. But those who had expected freedom from tyranny, bigotry and injustice became jaded. They began to witness how bigotry and intolerance culminated in the beheading of men and enslavement of women, and became desperate to escape. Those who succeeded in moving out narrated horrific tales of brutality.

In the meantime, four million people in the region have been on the move in search of safe sanctuary. During September and October thousands of refugees reached Europe. Europeans were taken by surprise at the influx of these refugees and could not cope with the arrivals. Notwithstanding their unpreparedness, Germany, France, Poland and Scandinavian countries accepted a large number of refugees and promised to take in more. The US announced it would take 10,000 by the end of next year while the newly elected Canadian government has agreed to accept 25,000 in the next six months. The horrendous incidents in Paris, however, have sent a shockwave all over the northern hemisphere. The Conservatives are urging their governments to promote settlement of the displaced population back in their troubled homes.

Some US presidential hopefuls have made egregious proposals: granting asylum only to Christians refugees, issuing special identity cards to Muslims and shutting down the borders to all refugees. President Obama, however, reiterated that refugees will undergo a screening process and dismissed the fear of infiltration by terrorists.

The carnage in Paris has only harmed the refugees. The countries that have agreed to accept refugees will put in place stricter screening processes in order to filter the bad from the good. Others who have been inclined to accept refugees will be cautious about their next move. While the debate on accepting refugees goes on thousands of desperate migrants will helplessly wait at the borders of Europe in the midst of rains and severe cold.

Abdur Rahman Chowdhury is a former official of the United Nations

dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/04-Dec-2015/syrian-crisis-takes-a-turn-for-the-worse

URL: https://newageislam.com/war-terror/how-muslims-respond-terrorist-attacks/d/105503