Blasphemy of the Highest Order

World citizens of all persuasions and backgrounds have decried the barbarism witnessed in the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in France. The cold blooded murder of twelve journalists and cartoonists has been declared an affront to democracy and freedom of expression. While France and the world go through another bout of disgust and rage at the unfathomable motivation to massacre for the pleasure of God, many are raising a call to reason to keep the event from flaring into ethnic confrontation across the continent. Muslims in Europe and the world over have distanced themselves and Islam from the event through unequivocal condemnations. Others are churning their preferred positions on the causes of terrorism motivated by extremism. The perspectives on offer range from Europe’s failure to integrate its Muslim migrant community into secular societies to the intrinsic theological connection of Islam with a philosophy of violence. Some prefer the term ‘failed multiculturalism’. Others are quick to narrate the history of European imperial intervention at various junctures of history to explain the causes of political dissatisfaction, frustration and vengeance that is ever ready to simmer at the slightest instigation, across the Muslim world. Yet others still attempt to prove foregone theories such as the ‘clash of civilisations’ with recent examples. What is glaringly absent in the discourse though, in the aftermath of both Peshawar and Paris, is the recognition of the fact that for one reason or another, the ideology of barbaric terror based on a fanatic interpretation of Islam has now pervaded all our societies. We have all actively or complicity allowed it to flourish right under our watch. It is now high time that we confront this ideology with the full intellectual, spiritual and cultural vigour of our civilizations in the east and the west.

The attack itself could not have come at a more trying time for the Muslims of Europe. Germany has witnessed thousands marching in its cities in the name of resisting the Islamisation of Europe over the past few weeks. A significant percentage of Germans pledge support for the marches if they were to come to their cities. Progressive forces rejecting such trends as racist fringe elements have now lost control of the discourse to middle-class majorities across Europe. Electorates are being led by right-wing parties to challenge not only the religion but also the culture and economic contributions through immigration of Muslims as incompatible with their western way of life. How have we allowed a post-colonial stream in our religion and post-cold war mercenaries to take charge of defining the way of life of 1.6 billion Muslims living across six continents? When did Allama Iqbal’s Muslims, who called the world their home, allow the warm hearts of our neighbours around the world turn cold to our very presence? Why did we abdicate the faith of the greatest voice of the oppressed, Imam Hussein (RA), to the control of beasts who wreak tyranny of the worst order on the hapless and innocent around the world?      

All political and historic causation of our suffering aside, we must once again stand for justice. We must put an end to this ideology of terror, its propagation and dissemination through cutting its accessibility and reach. We must do this by reaching out to those most vulnerable to it, either because of their socio-political exclusion from our societies or their economic disenfranchisement at the hands of our own home-grown masters. But most importantly, we must lay bare the hollow and disgusting reality that this ideology is and suffocate it by creating the dominant intellectual narrative to reclaim our humanity and religion. No matter how many terrorists we may bomb or hang, it is the venomous ideology of mutilated Islamism that we must extinguish. Without it, its proponents are as good as dead and while it lasts, they would continue to haunt us from beyond the grave by poisoning the stream of our future, the world over. Europe may have liberty, fraternity and secularism to fight this disease in their societies but the task to wrest free our faith from their poisonous fangs falls upon us.

Let us reach out to our youth, children, women, oppressed, excluded and hurt with a hand that extends socio-economic justice, political enfranchisement, constitutional governance, social welfare, dignity of life and preservation of property, access to universal education and healthcare and then bring them into participative democracies the world over. As the first act of reclamation of our religion, let us say to the perpetrators of the horrors at Charlie Hebdo that it is your actions that are the blasphemy of the highest order against the great universal message of Allah’s Messenger of submission in peace. Let us declare to them and their ideology the words of God: “And the servants of (Allah) Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, ‘Peace’!” (25:63). We do not know what prophet you claim to have avenged for, for we only know of our prophet Muhammad (PBUH) who prayed for the guidance of the people of Taif when his shoes were drenched with blood by their pelting stones; who nursed the sick, old woman when she failed to throw her garbage in his path one day; who forgave all enemies of crimes committed against him when he reigned victorious over them and who was not sent but as mercy for all creatures (Quran 21:107).