Commentary/Fuzail Jafferey

US created the Frankenstein's monster of Islamic terrorism

An extensive report recently published in Egypt's largest circulated Arabic daily Al-Ahram, a newspaper which is widely quoted and commented upon in the western media, reveals that the bomb attack at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad on 19 November 1995, which claimed 19 persons and injured many, was engineered by the Al-Jihad group in Egypt, in collaboration with the Pakistani Islamic zealots.

The Egyptian intelligence agencies, which took over a year to complete their investigations, have now come out with certain specific details in this regard. According to the investigators, the operation was financed by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi dissident religious leader who has been living in exile since 1994 after he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship on the charge of actively opposing the present Saudi regime.

The Al-Ahram report further claims that the three jihad (meaning "struggle" or to "strive for") leaders, Ayman al-Zawahry, Tharwat Shehata, and Adel Abdel Mejid Abdel Bary, who had planned the car-bomb attack at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, had been working in close cooperation with Pakistani Islamic radicals for quite some time. Moreover, American and Egyptian investigators attribute the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York and the blast in the building in Saudi Arabia which housed American civil and military personnel to the same network of Islamic militants.

Various media reports suggest that Pakistan has virtually become the official, though undeclared, headquarters of the Islamic militants spread almost all over the world. The rightwing Pakistani militant organisations, however, refute the claim that they are promoting terrorism in order to replace the secular and quasi-secular governments in Muslim-dominated countries with their own version of Islamic rule.

While vehemently denying any direct or indirect involvement in the attack at the Egyptian embassy and the American World Trade Centre, Qazi Husain Ahmad, chief of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, had issued a press statement saying that: "I do not consider him a Muslim who is directly or indirectly involved in killing innocent people through terrorist activities."

Describing Islam as the "universal religion of peace," Qazi Husain Ahmad has claimed that the blasts in the US, France, Saudi Arabia, and Islamabad in recent times have little to do with Islamic fundamentalism. He further asserted: "Muslims at large are the victims of a vigorous propaganda by the media ... the western powers, particularly the US is implicating Muslims in every terrorist activity committed in any corner of the world."

Commenting upon the incident involving the Egyptian embassy, Ghulam Raza Naqvi, the Supreme Commander of Sipah-e-Mohammad Pakistan stated: "We do believe in Muslim brotherhood, but we do not support violence against innocent people." The supreme commander, however, adds a new dimension to the controversy when he says, "We believe in jihad against unIslamic governments which are guilty of terrorism against true Muslims."

Since, Ghulam Raza has not named any such unIslamic country, we will not like to dig into the matter any further, leaving it to the guess of the readers. From the Iranian point of view even the present Saudi government is an unIslamic government as monarchy and dynastic rule are strictly prohibited in Islam.

As far as jihad against evil forces is concerned, it is doubtlessly an Islamic concept. It is also related with the idea of pan-Islam as propagated by Jamaluddin Afghani and by Allama Iqbal in the 20th century. At the same time, one should not forget that Muslims, by and large, have not been attracted by or resorted to jihad in recent centuries.

The concept of waging war against the non-believers had been shelved for all practical purposes after the Middle Ages. Various Muslim leaders such as Saad Zaghlul, Habib Bourgviba, and Gamal Abdel Nasser, who fought to liberate their countries from monarchy and colonialism, were diehard nationalists who never used religion as a weapon to achieve their objectives. Even the Khilafat movement in India, aimed at defending the Ottoman Empire against the intemperate westernised secularism of Kamal Ataturk, had nothing to do with jihad. The fact that the Khilafat movement was supported by Mahatma Gandhi while opposed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, shows that it had no pan-Islamic context. Of late, the successful revolt led by Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini against the shah of Iran was termed as Inquilab-e-Islami (Islamic Revolution) rather than jihad.

The present notion of Jihad International Inc, that is an armed struggle of Muslims, often resulting in massive destruction of life and property, is a modern phenomenon whose sponsors include the governments of the US, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. It was America and its allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia which, for their own political reasons, revitalised Muslim fundamentalism in Afghanistan by converting the war against the then Soviet Union into a religious war. The US not only sent arms and aid worth about 15 billion dollars to Afghanistan, it also encouraged Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria, etc, to send their nationals to fight against the 'godless communism' and establish an Islamic government in Afghanistan.

It is on record that when a delegation of the mujahideen (religious fighters) went to the White House, President Ronald Reagan described them as the Muslim world's "moral equivalents" of the founding fathers of America. But for the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the US would have certainly continued its support to Islamic militants not only in Afghanistan but in every part of the Third World where Soviet presence could pose a threat to American supremacy.

Even today, while the Taliban are violating all norms of civilised human rights, the United States is discreetly supporting them against the liberal, ousted Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, simply because he is backed by Iran.

The US government which is now describing jihad as a menace to mankind, must realise that the growth of pan-Islamic terrorists with a worldwide military network and collaborations in the last quarter of the century is its own creation. Islamic universities, madrasas, and training centres which were established in Pakistan and other places with the funds made available by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi agencies during the Afghan war have now become the breeding grounds of Islamic militancy.

Moreover, as Rana Jawad, a noted Pakistani political analyst has commented: "It is the hangover of 'defeating a superpower' that makes the zealots believe that anything under the sun can be achieved through the tactics employed in Afghanistan."

No wonder if the mainstream Pakistani religious parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Pakistan, which have deeply penetrated into the army and the paramilitary since the days of the late General Zia-ul Haq, continue to send those returning from the Afghan war (who are now jobless) as well as new recruits to Jammu and Kashmir. Jihad combined with lucrative monetary gains has become quite an attractive profession for many Pakistanis, Afghans, and all those Arab nationals who have stayed back even after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Afghanistan.

Muslim masses who consider jihad as a holy concept have never aligned themselves with the forces of disruption and destruction. Americans, Egyptians, and Saudis will have to redraft their political agenda if they want a terror-free world. America and Egypt can also help each other in containing Muslim militancy by stopping Israel from bombing south Lebanon and treating the Palestinians in a savage manner. It is also rather strange that while the US government is taking every possible step to get rid of Saddam Hussain, it continues to support the military rulers of Algeria.

Global terrorism is no doubt a serious menace. But in order to overcome it, the world requires a comprehensive rather than the piecemeal formulae that the US prescribes from time to time.