Recipe for Confusion
I was supposed to go to my University today but I didn’t and this is why: two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the International Islamic University in Islamabad. Six people fell victim to this heinous crime while dozens were injured. One of the attackers actually disguised himself and managed to get to the girls cafeteria where he detonated his bomb. Following the incident, schools, colleges and Universities will remain off till Sunday, across Pakistan.
The first thought that comes to mind is how low could the attackers and their planners get that they could attack students with such impunity? What were they thinking? How did they justify it and put their consciences to sleep – that t00 for so-called “religious” causes?
There’s another belief that all such attacks on Muslims in Pakistan could never have been carried out by fellow Muslims. Such ideas are backed up pieces of evidence indicating direct as well as indirect involvement of “foreign agencies” in a highly complex scenario of vested interests driving a myriad of events.
Unfortunately, with all the bloodshed, we now have a highly confusing situation on our hands that is certainly dividing the nation. I receive messages and emails from fellow Pakistanis urging people to recognize the “real” enemy and not be “deluded” into thinking the Taliban are behind the killings. Such people exhort the Taliban and whoever supports them, believing them to be the ultimate savior for Muslims in Pakistan (and even across the world!).
Surprisingly, some even believe the Taliban is in fact an extension of foreign agencies’ evil schemes and thus, such people would lump up the Taliban as one big conspiracy too. Thus, “Muslims could never kill Muslims like this” is their mantra every time a vicious incident takes place.
However, if you talk to refugee families from the conflict-ridden areas, they will tell you how people they initially thought were their helpers and leaders (Taliban, etc.) turned upon them later on. Extortion, kidnapping for ransom and routine harassment then exposed the true nature of these people to the innocent villagers. The common people admitted their mistake of initially lending their support to these Muslim brothers “in the name of Jihad” but later had to suffer themselves.
So what is going on? Why is all of this happening? What are the motives?
I’ll admit I do not have a single clue as to the real situation. I do know we have Muslims with totally distorted ideas of killing other Muslims “for the greater cause”, whatever that is… so I will not attempt to turn a blind eye and glorify them. I also know there are vested interests out to secure their interests, just as was done in Iraq. I also know there are common criminals who jump into the frey whenever confusion abounds to see what they can possibly get out of it in terms of wealth and power.
However, the biggest problem in all of this is that we do not know the truth and because of that, I cannot possibly stay united with my Muslim sister, for example, in her claim that we must “fight the enemy” when I am not even convinced the enemy is one single, definable entity.
Some people have twisted notions of battles in the name of Islam and their brains have become totally addled by all the war hype. Such are the people who totally sadden me: lacking direction, driven by vague ideas, making no sense when they speak and seeing things as either “black” or “white” and thus oversimplifying the entire complex scenario. In fact, this was what led me to write this right now – the madness that is driving the educated people in this nation today.
A confused mix of “religiosity”, nationalism, pessimism and a tendency to see a conspiracy in every tiny thing – that’s what’s going on. The Qur’an and the Sunnah, the wisdom that is required and the need to refrain from knee-jerk responses have all been forgotten. Why don’t people open their eyes already and realize the common Pakistani Muslim is not what they are glorifying him to be? Why don’t they realize we have so much work to do, to being people to the practice of Islam as taught by the Prophet(pbuh) and not drag them off into half-baked ideas of “martyrdom” all stemming from nationalism? Most of all, why don’t people realize all this confusion only helps the original enemies of Islam who have opposed it from the time of the Prophet(pbuh)?
To set things back on the right track, the Pakistani Muslim first needs to free himself of such baseless notions of “Pakistan is the bastion of Islam”, ignoring all the un-Islamic acts that he commits in his daily life. How many Pakistanis actually offer the five daily prayers in the masjid? Killings, “honor crimes”, lying, cheating, corruption, ignoring traffic rules, domestic abuse all happen in Pakistan. If you don’t admit it, you’re never going to change and there are no “short cuts” available.
Whatever is going on today, only one thing is for sure: Allah(swt) is the Only One Who is aware of the real situation and we ask Him to guide us to what is right for us. Yes, we Muslims have failed miserably in our duties but, in seeking to improve upon our knowledge of the Quran and Sunnah and implementing it in ourselves, spreading it in our areas of influence, we can find the right way again.
The important thing is Hikmah… wisdom. If we lose this, as many people are demonstrating to, may Allah protect us!
Filed under: Pakistan, Peace, Reflections, Reminders, Society, War | 4 Comments
Tags: Islam, Pakistan, Peace, Terrorism, War
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It is sad and scary to hear about the bombings in Pakistan. It sounds bad, but culturally speaking, I am a lot closer to Pakistan, than say, Iraq. I have Pakistani friends online and offline. Therefore when such tragedy strikes, it really shocks me. May Allah grant peace and stability to all the troubled Muslim lands, ameen.
You’ve answered your questions in the post; it’s about the distorted ideas that have been placed into their minds to produce a ‘fake version’ where they are killing in the name of “Islam” which defninately do not call for this; rather their mentality and ideology calls for!
It is very sad how innocent people (and Muslims) are being killed by that way which is not from Islam but rather done by Muslims!
Completely agree. One really can’t trust the news sources these days – be it mainstream or alternative media. Conspiracy theorists go with the mantra that there’s something fishy unless proven otherwise, while the opposite is true of anti-conspiracy theorists. There’s no telling what the ultimate truth is and in the end it’s just a battle between two or more ‘holier than thou’ parties drooling over the idea of world domination. To compound the problem, there’s a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaigning by all parties involved.
It is only a minority of individuals out there who view these issues as multi-faceted and complex.
When muslims the world over vie for Islam in politics (Shariah law, the Khilaafat, etc.) , it doesn’t at all occur to the majority of them how delicate the issue is from a practical standpoint, especially now that the world is more global. The idea and intentions may be noble, but we fail to ask the question if are ready yet to present a solution that nations in the world can look up to and draw inspiration from. With examples of Shiah fighting Sunni and vice versa and political assasinations, honor killings, etc. all being done in the name of upholding Shariah law, etc. it is truly baffling how propagandists shout this war cry.
I think the chaos and utter confusion this leads to, adds fuel to the fire and plays into the FUD campaigns of propagandists on either side of the divide giving rise to an unnecessary and most definitely premature clash of civilizations.
We most definitely need to start small in order to achieve the big things in life and try to build bridges between peoples at a grassroots level and pray that Allah rewards us for this. I doubt if we can ever trust our governments to carry out this momentous task. Governments who have always divided people into arbitrary nationalities (eg. Arab states, India-Pakistan-Bangladesh, etc.) and waged war for their own vested interests.
a well-balanced article. And quite right.
When ideology is corrupted, no material weapon can help to finish the vice, though pressed or limited for sometime it can be – it can only be defeated and eliminated from it roots ideologically.