The War of Ideas

Violence against ideas

The US President Barak Obama had his recent European tour. In Brussels, he delivered a lecture in Palais Des Beaux-Arts.  He told his elitist audience, “We must meet the challenges to our ideas and our international order with strength and conviction.”–(The Guardian, 31.03.14). In the context of recent exacerbation of cold-war polarisation, it is not a simple statement, it is a war cry. The human history is indeed the history of wars of ideas. But the wars of ideas do not remain confined within the ideological premise, rather mostly turn very bloody. Because, those who believe in “might is right” do not fight such ideological wars with ideas, instead, they deploy their all lethal military might. Such use of violence against ideas not only exposes their political arrogance, but also reveals their moral and ideological bankruptcy. In the history of mankind, the most monstrous crimes against great ideas, faith and beliefs are the works of these thoughtless political bullies. In ancient Egypt, Pharaoh mobilised his huge army to kill the prophet Moses (AS) and his followers only to annihilate their monotheistic Divine ideas. The old Pharaohs died, but new generations of Pharaohs took over the charge –not only in Egypt but globally, to continue with the same doctrine. Hence the use of violence against ideas has never ended. The old Pharaoh could not kill unarmed Moses (AS), but the new Pharaohs are killing the unarmed people everywhere. The recent statement of President Obama indeed reveals his full determination to continue the same war against ideas with full lethal might. And Mr Obama is not alone; the all NATO countries and many others are pursuing the same war.

After the demise of Soviet Union, Obama and his NATO friends do not perceive any foreseeable threat to their geopolitical frontiers. But they recognize threat to the ideological frontiers. Hence Obama emphasizes that NATO countries must meet the challenge with strength and conviction. Probably this is the most important message that he passed on to his friends during his recent visit to Europe.  Obama’s narratives on ideas and international order are not ambiguous. His idea –like any other western leaders, entails beliefs, values and life styles that are loaded with capitalist, imperialist and hedonist version of the worldview.  His values and beliefs justify military occupation of any country of the world, and dropping tons of bombs and drone attacks on the civilian population. He and his predecessors practised such belief and values in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and many other countries. The NATO countries do not possess any distinctive moral or ethical boundary; they share the same values, beliefs and ethical norms. Indeed, they are united in faith and ideas. Hence all heads of the NATO states find the same incitement to applaud the USA bombardment on any country as cheerleaders. Their faith and values do not find any moral problem with Israeli bombardment on unarmed Palestinians either.

Obama’s international order has a special meaning, too. It entails not only the west’s military, economic and political  dominance over the world, but also the protection of the artificial state of Israel and other artificial client Arab states that are created to protect the western interests. It aims at ensuring Israel a safe existence and provides an infrastructure of western exploitation. The current world order is in fact the legacy of the western colonialism, and gives the state of Israel the unrestrained right to grab the Arab land as much as she likes, and to expel its Muslim population from their own homelands. It also means giving Israel full right to build its huge arsenal of atom bombs, and deprive Iran and other Muslim countries of such rights. It also gives protection to the artificial Arab states and its autocratic rulers –as long as they show allegiance to the USA.

War against Islam

The main objective of this US led war against Islam is not to annihilate Islam, but to dismantle Islam’s influence on Muslims’ cultural, political, economic and social life. They allow Muslims to live with the name of Islam, but not with the teaching of Islam. They wish Muslims’ full cultural and political conversion to the west and to comply with its imperialistic global agenda. Obama’s current war is not against Russia, China, India or any other world power. Rather he begs their partnership and co-operation to pursue his own agenda against Islam. Prof Huntington –the writer of “The Clash of Civilization” advised the same. In response to such call, the US invasion in Afghanistan and Iraq received full support from Russia, China and India. The USA army didn’t fire a single bullet against these countries, but in last 50 years, they fought many wars against Islam and the Muslims, and the war is still on-going. Apart from their own bloody invasions, the USA and its NATO partners support some of the worst bully like Israel, and also Russia, China and India to do the same destruction against the Muslims. Hence like Israel’s Gaza invasion, Russia’s Chechnya devastation, China’s massacre against Uyghur Muslims, and India’s brutal Kashmir occupation did not get any condemnation from the USA and its NATO partners.

After the collapse of communism, Islam emerged as the only ideological force that presents a viable alternative for moral, spiritual, cultural, economic and political ills of the mankind. It is the only surviving Divine Truth –in fact the continuation of the same monotheistic faith that was promoted by all the prophets of the Divine chain –starting from Adam (AS) to Muhammad (pbuh).  A Muslim has a religious obligation only to practise this Divine Truth: any compromise on this premise or deviation from the trusted responsibility can only bring the demise of his own belief in Allah. Such a compromise or deviation only amounts to treason against Allah. Therefore, the religious obligation of a Muslim makes him a life-long warrior of the Divine faith. He considers his politics, intellectualism and war as an important instrument of fulfilling such Divine obligation. Hence, wherever Islam exists in its prophetic form, there also exist millions of its defenders. Hence the enemies of Islam cannot go unchallenged in any Muslim land.

Islam enters into a Muslim’s heart not only with its rituals of prayers, rather as a comprehensive way of life that reconstructs all spheres of his or her living.  Politics, education, culture, warfare or any other issue does not stay outside that domain. Hence, jihad comes in their midst as the natural outcome. Since the enemies of Islam want an easy and overwhelming access to the Muslim lands, they do not like this combative mood of the believing men and women. They call it political Islam. Since they want overwhelming dominance on the Muslim land, they want their full surrender -not only in the political, economic and military fields, but also in their cultural and ideological arenas. Practice of jihad and Islamic law (shariah) –the two inseparable parts of the Muslim life has no place in that surrendered land.

The west’s fundamentalism

Obama and his NATO colleagues are not ready to reconcile with the Divine obligations of the Muslims. This is the west’s worst fundamentalism. They want to make their own ideas and values dominant even in Muslim lands. Such an aggressive attitude of the NATO countries makes war against Islam inevitable. They ask the Muslims to restrict their practice of Islam only within the premise of prayer mats or mosques. This way they want to keep the political, cultural, judicial, economic and other arenas of the state free from the Islamists, and reserved for their own occupation. For implementation of sharia law, the USA and the NATO partners are not ready to give Muslims any space -even in a predominantly Muslim country. They label it as religious extremism. The western scholars –like a mufti, have even started lecturing on fundamentals of Islam. They claim that practice of Islam must be restricted only within the premise private life, and emphasises that Islam has nothing to do with people’s political, cultural or economic life. They label such limited practice of Islam within the confines of the mosque and in private life as the original Islam. They conveniently forget that Muhammad (pbuh) –the prophet of Islam was not only a religious head, but also the head of the Islamic state. Along with building mosques, he also organised numerous jihad against the enemies. He did not confine the practice of his faith in his private life, rather made it the state policy. And the law he implemented in the Islamic state, was nothing else but the Qur’anic law -called sharia. The Muslims in all ages possess no other superior mission but to follow the same prophetic tradition. Only this way, a Muslim man or woman can claim to be the true follower of this Divine prophet and the part of the Ummah.

The west ignores the fact that Islam cannot be practised without following the prophetic tradition of its full implementation –like the practice of sharia and jihad. An iota of deviation from such tradition is indeed a deviation from Islam. With such derailment from the prophetic road map, a Muslim turn enemy against his own faith and register his place in hell fire. This is the core teaching of Islam. But the west doesn’t want that Muslims should practise such fundamental beliefs of Islam in even a Muslim land. They like to see the deviants taking the full control. They wish that the Muslims should comply with the Western ideas and the world order, not with the prophetic Islam. To them, adherence to prophetic tradition is extremism and backwardness. While denying the Muslims the right of practising Islam in their own country, the western arrogance goes to the extent that they are desperate to take their cultural and ideological frontiers inside the heart of the Muslim lands. They demand that the Muslim countries should have the open borders for the unfettered practice of Western law, their economics, their culture, their values and even homosexuality and same sex marriage. Can Muslims swallow such non-Muslims’ interference in their own affairs? Does Islam allow that? Can Islam survive amidst such cultural and ideological invasion? Against such invasion, Islam prescribes its own weapon -the obligatory jihad for all believing man. Thus, the incompatibilities of the western extremists against Islam make a perfect recipe for a prolonged war in almost all Muslim lands.  Indeed, such a war against Islam has already been started for many years.

The Islamic obligation

Allah SWT reveals, “He it is Who has sent His Apostle with the guidance and the true religion, that He may make it overwhelming over all other faiths –although the polytheist may not like it.” –(Sura Saf, verse 9). Such revelation came three times in the Holy Qur’an. Here it gets fully expressed Allah SWT’s own vision. Such revelation gives a clear message to every believing Muslim man and woman that Qur’anic teachings are not for mere recitation, but for full implementation. A Muslim gets his vision and mission in everyday life from such Qur’anic guidance. Muslims’ preaching, politics, war and all sacrifices become the vehicle to carry on such mission. With such a Divine vision, Islam emerged as the most powerful civilizational force from day one. It played the most significant role in the whole history of the mankind to change its course. It could go beyond the ethnic, linguistic, geographic boundary, and within a short period of time, could take millions of people of Asia, Africa and Europe out of darkness (jaheliyah) towards Divine light. In a Muslims’ life, the source of inspiration to make huge sacrifice in bringing such a civilizational change is indeed in Allah SWT’s Own revelation. The Muslims are faith-bound to comply with such a vision of their own Lord and play such a prescribed role all the time.

But the west does not show any sign of reconciliation with such a Muslim vision. Denial of Muslim’s right of full practice of Islam with its sharia gives birth to the clash of civilisations between the west and the Muslims. As long as the west is stubborn in its attitude of non-reconciliation with such a core belief of Islam, there is no chance of cessation of this ongoing civilizational war. The Muslims has no option of surrender; such surrender amounts to betrayal against Allah’s expressed wish and leads to hellfire. Hence, as long as the Muslims remain faithful to Allah SWT and His Qur’anic revelation, the war may only change its frontiers but it will continue unabated. The west’s problem lies in their ignorance. They have fully failed to understand the Islam’s core beliefs and the Muslims’ binding obligation. Due to such ignorance, their dealing with the Muslims is very wrong and provocative. They appreciate even the homosexuals for their aberrant sexual orientation, but not ready to permit Muslims to practise shariah –the Divine law that were practised in Muslim countries for more than thousand years. They even label such core belief of Islam as backwardness and terrorism, and target them for total destruction. What can be more insulting to Muslims than such toxic vilification of their faith? The USA’s arrogance is not only in its insistence of dominance over a unipolar world, but also for a singular world order -which never happened in whole human history.

The NATO strategy

For its ongoing war against Islam, the USA and the NATO members have their own strategy. Apart from its 28 formal member states, this anti-Islamic axis has thousands of informal members and partners. These informal members and partners are playing a crucial role in their fight against Islam. The war of ideas doesn’t have any clear-cut battle ground. It runs through every land, and takes place in intellectual premise of every man and woman. It is truly global. Any man or woman who does not comply with the western morality, values and world order is considered a potential threat against the west. The Islamists are well known for such non-compliance, and hence become the real target.  In the USA and in many NATO countries, a close monitoring on these Islamists and their detention in cages is a routine phenomenon.  Hence infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay finds enough reasons to survive and proliferate. HencAnd Obama’s bombs, drones and missiles are being dropped not only on war fields, but also on caves, mountains, houses and madrasas in Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. In fact, wherever they find a religious scholar or activist preaching Islamic ideas with a view of implementation of sharia become a preferred target of annihilation.

The so-called international world-order is indeed the work of the western colonial power for their own interest. It has been designed to assign Muslim countries a vassal state like status. To make such status a permanent feature of the Muslim world, the western imperialists needed to divide the Muslim heart land into more than 20 Arab states. The defensive power of a country diminishes with the decrease of its size; hence, dividing a Muslim country has been a definite strategy of crashing the Muslims’ backbone. To stop the emergence of any Muslim state as a global power, such fragmentation process is still ongoing. Pakistan, Indonesia, Sudan –these larger Muslim states have been fragmented as a part of the same project. If the countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon and UAE achieve a per capita income 1000 times more than that of the USA, that will not change their status of a vassal state. When Obama and his NATO colleagues tell about defending the international order, he means to defend such divisions of the Muslim world. They are not ready to give a Muslim country the right to merge with another, not to increase its territory by a single inch. Saddam Hussain was a beloved man of the west. He was supplied with the weapons of mass destruction –even chemical bombs, to kill his own people. The west was very happy as long as he was engaged in killing the fellow Muslims. But when he tried to increase the territory of Iraq by annexing Kuwait, he became the enemy of the west. Because, he crossed the redline set by the west, NATO crashed the whole Iraq.

The Muslim countries have already been the occupied land of West. The colonial occupation has ended, but the cultural, educational, economic and ideological occupation still exists. Due to such foreign occupation, the Muslims cannot practice their own faith in their own land. Neither can they unite with their own fellow Muslim brothers. Dividing walls in the name of artificial states have turned their undivided land into a collection of virtual prison cells. Like the prisoners of cells, they cannot help each other either. Hence, when people of Gaza were bombed by the Israelis, the dwellers of the prison state of Egypt could not open their gates to receive the injured Muslims brothers. For the same reason, the Rohynga Muslims of Myanmar could not get access to Bangladesh.

Sharia –the Qur’anic laws are outlawed in almost all of these Muslim countries. Hence, more than one and half billion Muslims cannot practise Allah’s obligatory commandments in their own lands. What can be a bigger betrayal of Allah than such non-compliance? In the early days, when the Muslims were not even more than few thousands in the village of Medina, the situation was not so helpless. It is a colonial and post-colonial phenomenon. Before the colonial era, the Muslims had autocrats, but could practise at least sharia. Such non-compliance with Allah’s Law is indeed restricting them becoming a full Muslim, and forbids them getting His full mercy. To keep the Muslims away from the practice of sharia, the USA and its NATO ally want to maintain such occupation at any cost. But to minimise the cost of occupation, they have developed partnership with the dictatorial regimes of the Muslim states. These autocratic regimes, too, need the Western support for their own survival. Hence removal of the elected President Dr. Muhammad Morsi and the military took over in the Egypt receives warm welcome in the western capital. When Obama talks about defending the ideas and the world order, indeed he means defending this occupation.  06/04/14