The most interesting part of the Anti-Terrorism Declaration issued by the Conference hosted by Darul Uloom, Deoband  is the enunciation of the virtues of Islam contained in the opening paragraph of the Declaration. Those having some knowledge of Islam’s scriptures and history could easily be left wondering whether this part of the declaration was a satirical interpolation by some mischievous elements. However a visit to the Darul Uloom website is enough to establish the genuineness of the opening paragraph like the rest of the Declaration.

SOME DIFFICULT QUESTIONS

Darul Uloom Deoband is unquestionably the most prestigious institution of Islamic learning in India, something like Cairo’s AL AZHAR. However the sweeping claims that the Declaration makes in favour of Islam happen to be so blatantly contrary to well known facts that they can not be passed over as just the clerics’ rhetorical flourishes. What are these known facts forming such a serious challenge to the credibility of this part of the Declaration? These include (just to mention a few)—the actual treatment of non-Muslims and minority Islamic sects by the State as well as the non state practitioners of Islam, the historical experience of non- Muslims who were subjected to invasions by Muslim conquerors, views expressed by authoritative theoreticians of Islam, the injunctions in the holy Quran, and Sunnah etc. This is a vast field but for reasons of space, the discussion here will be confined only to the most significant points.

CLAIMS MADE IN THE DECLARATION

The Declaration claims that:
(i) Islam is the religion of “mercy for all humanity”, the “fountainhead of peace, tranquility, security
(ii) Islam makes no differentiation between human beings on the grounds of caste and creed,
(iii) “ Islam has taught its followers to treat all mankind with equality, mercy tolerance, justice”.
(iv) Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism”.(Emphasis added)

ISLAM AS PRACTICED BY MUSLIMS

The first difficulty in accepting the Deoband Declaration arises when one sees Islam in actual operation. The leaders (Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad etc.) and the constituents groups (Al Qaida, Markaz Dawa Al Irshad , Lashkar-e- Toiba, Jaish- e -Mohammad, Harkat ul Mujahideen etc) of the International Islamic Front for Jihad, and also smaller groups and individual followers across the Islamic world, all claiming to be the true representatives of Islam, have long been using terrorism and violence as the instruments of Jihad against the perceived enemies of Islam including Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists etc. The laws and regulations enacted and enforced by the Governments of Muslim majority countries led by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan etc. do not even remotely suggest “treatment of all mankind with equality, mercy, tolerance, justice”. The notorious blasphemy laws of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan are a thorough rejection of the commonly perceived notions of equality, justice or mercy.

TESTIMONY OF DEMOGRAPHY

One incontrovertible piece of evidence against the Deoband Maulanas’ proclamation of the compassionate, egalitarian, and just nature of Islam is provided by the steady decline in the population of non- conformists in Muslim majority countries. As is well known the population of Hindus and Sikhs in what is now known as the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which was about 20% of the total in 1947 has come down to about 1%. The continuing slaughter of Hindus was again confirmed by the murder of Jagdish Kumar, a factory worker in Karachi, by a, crowd of Muslims in the presence of policemen on 8 April 2008. The Christians who had enthusiastically supported the demand for creation of Pakistan have also been victims of persecution by Islamic zealots. The Ahmadis (Remember Zafrullah Khan the first Foreign Minister of Pakistan?) have not only been declared to be non –Muslims but are liable to be imprisoned just for claiming to be Muslims. Even the minority Islamic sect of Shias (who are in power in adjacent Iran and whose leader Khomeini heralded the Islamic revolution in Iran) have been fighting a bloody but losing war against the majority Sunnis, some of whom want the Shias too to be declared non –Muslims. Nor is the decimation of religious minorities confined only to Pakistan. In what was earlier known as East Pakistan and now known as the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh the population of Hindus has come down from about 30% to about 9%. Even in the Muslim ruled state of Jammu and Kashmir within the secular Republic of India a systematic programme of religious cleansing has resulted in the Kashmir valley having been purged substantially of the Hindu Pundits. The same pattern can be seen almost all over the Islamic world.

INDIA’S EXPERIENCE OF ISLAMIC CONQUERORS

Islam first came to India in the shape of Arab invasions of Sind around the time of Caliph Umar (634-644 AD). The first 500 years saw invasions by Muhammad Bin Qasim, Mahmood Ghazanavi, etc. culminating in the conquest of Delhi by Shahabuddin Ghori in 1192. India remained under Muslim rule till the deposition of Bahadur Shah Zafar by the British in 1857. Beginning with the defeat of Dahir’s forces at Debal in 712 AD Muslim victories were usually followed by slaughter of defeated troops and Hindu civilians, rape of Hindu women, enslavement and forcible conversion of Hindu men, women and children, destruction of temples, and imposition of religion based penal taxes like the jaziya. A Muslim slayer of Hindus was exalted as a Ghazi. Many Muslim victors delighted in erecting towers made of skulls of the vanquished Hindus. The “History of India as told by Its Own Historians” by Eliot and Dawson gives umpteen quotations from the writings of the court historians of various Islamic rulers to provide graphic details of the atrocities perpetrated following each victory. According to Will Durant "The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history”. The fact that none of the famous Hindu temples has survived Muslim rule in north India, the ruins of the Martand Temple in Kashmir, the still standing carved columns (taken from destroyed Hindu and Jain temples) of the Quwwat-ul-Islam mosque in the Qutub Minar complex , Mehrauli, the ruins of the burnt down Nalanda university in Bihar etc. etc. are not shining examples of the peacefulness, mercifulness and universal egalitarianism of Islam. The slaughters, the towers of skulls, the caravans of slaves, the harems full of captured women, have all receded, away from public memory, into the dark pages of history but the grand mosques standing majestically over the sites where the holiest Hindu shrines once stood at Mathura and Varanasi, continue to proclaim loudly the utter untruth of the Maulanas’ protestations.

The experience of the old Persian and Egyptian civilizations and of European countries invaded by Muslims was not much different either. In its attempt to bring as much of the world as possible under the domain of Islam, the sword of Islam dealt with infidels in east and west with equal ferocity. The poet philosopher Allama Iqbal, who still continues to have many admirers in India, extolled the role of Islam’s sword in several of his poems;

VIEWS OF AUTHORITATIVE ISLAMIC SCHOLARS

The claims of the Deoband Maulanas are also in contradiction of the writings of some of the most highly regarded scholars of Islam. For example the classical Muslim jurist al-Mawardi explains the Islamic rules for infidels taken prisoner during jihad campaigns:

“As for the captives, the amir [ruler] has the choice of taking the most beneficial action of four possibilities:the first to put them to death by cutting their necks;the second, to enslave them and apply the laws of slavery regarding their sale and manumission; the third, to ransom them in exchange for goods or prisoners; and fourth, to show favor to them and pardon them. Allah, may he be exalted, says, 'When you encounter those [infidels] who deny [the Truth=Islam] then strike [their] necks' (Qur'an sura 47, verse 4)”....Abu’l-Hasan al-Mawardi, al-Ahkam as-Sultaniyyah." [The Laws of Islamic Governance, trans. by Dr. Asadullah Yate, (London), Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 1996, p. 192.

EVIDENCE OF THE HOLY QUR’AN AND SUNNAH

According to the Holy Qur’an, those who do not believe in Allah, His Prophet and the Last Day will go to Hell to be roasted there in Fire forever. Allah has also commanded the believers to fight the unbelievers till Allah’s religion prevails everywhere. There are hundreds of Ayats in Quran containing such injunctions. A few samples are reproduced below;

2:161” Those who reject Faith, And die rejecting On them is Allah’s curse, And the curse of angels, And of all mankind;”

8:39.” And fight them on Until there is no more Persecution or oppression, And religion becomes Allah’s in its entirety ”

8:67. “It is not fitting For a Prophet That he should have Prisoners of war until He has thoroughly subdued The land. ”

9:5. “ But when the forbidden months Are past, then fight and slay The Pagans wherever you find them, And seize them, beleaguer them, And lie in wait for them In every stratagem (of war), ”

9;29 “ Fight those who believe not In Allah nor the Last Day, Nor hold that forbidden By Allah and His Messenger, Of Truth, (even if they are) Of the People of the Book, Until they pay the jizyah With willing submission, And feel themselves subdued”

98;6 “ Those who reject(Truth), Among the People of the Book And among the Polytheists, Will be in hell-fire, To dwell therein (forever), They are the worst Of creatures”

[The Holy Qur’an Translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Published by GOODWORD BOOKS,1,Nizamuddin West Market, New Delhi 110013]

The record of the sayings and the doings of the Prophet, the Hadis (or Sunnah) is believed to have authority equal to that of the Quran.” The Prophet was the interpreter of the Qura’an and its living example.” A study of the Hadis reveals that the Prophet dealt with his opponents not with compassion but with ruthlessness. The killing, instigated by the Prophet, of poetess Asma while suckling her child in her bed, and of Abu Afak a poet more than one hundred years of age, both for having written seditious poetry, are not examples of Islam’s mercy. The Prophet’s dealing with Jewish tribes of Madina area was not kind either. The beheading of the entire male population of some 600-700 of Banu Qurayza tribe after their unconditional surrender is a prime example of Islam’s brutality.

WHY THE FALSE CLAIMS?

It is not that the venerable Maulanas who had assembled at Deoband and issued the Declaration were unaware of the falsehood of the claims they were making. Being among the front rank leaders of the Faith, and aware of the bad name that Islam was getting due to the actions of the Jihadi terrorists, they sought to serve the cause of Islam by using the Qur’an sanctioned practice of Taqiyya (dissimulation) used by many Islamic scholars and clerics as a tactic of outwitting opponents, avoiding straightforward debate or deflecting criticism by using obfuscation. The Maulanas’ effort has apparently had some success also.

THE ISLAMIST NEWSPEAK

Some readers may recall that among the many devices that the totalitarian state visualized in George Orwell’s novel “1984”, used to control the thinking of the subject population was the evolution and use of a new language called newspeak in which old words like peace, freedom or equality took on totally different new meanings. The use of the words mercy, peace, justice, security, equality, tolerance, oppression, violence etc. in the opening paragraph of the Deoband Declaration appears to be the Islamist version of newspeak.

The views and facts stated above are entirely the responsibility of the author and do not reflect the views of this Association in any manner.