Submitted By Mirza Ashraf
ABSTRACT: History does not account top-down oppression as terrorism while retaliation to such oppression from bottom-up is described as violence and terrorism. Though religion-inspired terrorism has appeared on the fringes of all major and minor religions, today it is more frequent than other religions among Islamic groups from West Africa to Central Asia and Philippines. Is this mere accident or could a pattern be detected? In this article I have attempted to break the stranglehold from within illustrating that in Islam, though there is no such term as terrorism but the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were perpetrated by some non-state Muslim actors. … Terrorism seems to be in the interest of the Western powers helping them to turn the Islamic ideology against itself. It derives its impetus from the flaws of previous century’s nation-state system in the Middle East. The fate of its course depends upon the response of Western Powers. The West is viewed by the Arabs responsible for dividing the Arab world into small nation states, and appointing or supporting corrupt rulers as its agents. Therefore, for some zealous Muslims, targeting and charging mortal threats to the Western world and their agent rulers, is a freedom seeking tactic of the followers of Islam. Whereas they believe Islam is a faith of peace, a bottom-up struggle, even by raising arms for freedom and justice, is a rational crux in pursuit of their just objectives. . . . For the revolutionists, terrorism prompts justice for those who are oppressed and is an emanation of virtue. Since the concept of prompt and ready justice is at the core of Islamic Shari’ah, such justifications further embolden the religiously zealous jihadists. They are further inspired by the argument of Sergius Stepniak, a Russian-born fighter for democracy that “the terrorist … is noble, terrible, irresistibly fascinating, for he combines in himself the two sublimities of human grandeur: the martyr and the hero.” Within this context as the revolutionary Europeans justified or authenticated the use of terrorism as a struggle for the restoration of human liberties, it also provided a justification to the Muslims parallel to just war theory. Muslims under colonial rules adopted it as a form of new technique of revolutionary struggle wherever a dysfunctional relation showed up between the state and society. Just as the political sensibility of the French Revolution justified violence and terrorism as an important avenue leading towards a political progression, Muslims maintain that violence today, whether conducted with a religious commitment or an ideological determination, is “a politics by other means.” . . . Terrorist tactics, thus, have been learned by the Muslims from the Europeans, not from the Qur’an, which does not contain any injunction promoting terrorism. In Islam the term “terrorist” or an act defined as “terrorism,” has never been adopted by an individual or a group. It has always been applied to them by others, either by the governments of the states they target or by the societies practicing oppression. . . . The problem can be overcome, only if the Muslims think rationally and instead of presenting terrorism as a misinterpretation of Islam they need to view it as a mortal danger to Islamic civilization. It is time that Muslims need to accept the truth that we all live in a common and increasingly mixed global community where we share a common global history. Today, modern technology has connected us with each other irrespective of our faiths and beliefs. Because of scientific-enlightenment, day by day nonviolent forms of social and political changes are overtaking violent forms and actions.
For complete article please click at: https://independent.academia.edu/MirzaAshraf