Muslim Love for Ramadan Violence
Celebrating Ramadan Jihadi Style
Muqtedar Khan
Washington Post
Ramadan is the ninth month
in the Islamic calendar and serves as a spiritual boot camp for Muslims. In this
month, Muslims fast from dawn to dusk everyday; abstaining from food, water, sex
and anything unpleasant and immoral. One is not allowed to get angry, speak
rudely or even think of bad things. The purpose of the month is to take a break
from deep entanglements in mundane affairs and make a systematic and concerted
effort to reconnect with the divine and work on improving one's personal moral
character.
For me, Ramadan is about returning to the fountain of truth and drinking from it
as deeply as possible. It is not the parched throat but rather the parched soul
that is my concern, so I study the Qur'an and contemplate on it. Other Muslims
adhere more closely to rituals. I believe that while rituals discipline,
knowledge is more transformative. But to each his own. The goal in Ramadan is
really is to find a way, ritual, spiritual or intellectual, to get closer to
God.
Unfortunately, for some Muslims, murder and mayhem rather than prayer and
fasting have become the way to celebrate Ramadan.
On September 6, in the first
week of Ramadan, two suicide bombers killed over 50 people in Peshawar,
Pakistan. On September 13, five bombs killed over 30 in New Delhi, India. On
September 15, a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a Ramadan fast breaking
ceremony killing 22 people in Diyala, Iraq. On September 17, a truck bomb and
some militants attacked the US embassy in San'a, Yemen killing 16 people. And on
September 20, a massive truck bomb killed over 60 people in Islamabad, Pakistan.
All of these attacks have been conducted by people who call themselves "Jihadis",
this they claim is their struggle in the path of God. One cannot imagine to what
extent the minds and the hearts of these people have become poisoned that in the
month of Ramadan, when even frowning is undesirable, they chose to murder and
maim indiscriminately. The most incomprehensible aspect of these atrocities is
that a vast majority of their victims are the very people on whose behalf these
wars are waged!
If they want to fight and die for God, they are welcome. There are over 200,000
American soldiers, in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are there specifically to oblige
them, why not go and fight them.
These cowards, who call themselves Jihadis, run and hide from soldiers seeking
to fight them and instead target helpless and unarmed civilians. They repeatedly
confirm that they have no regard for social order, for law, for human life and
even for the sacred injunctions from the God whose pleasure they seek through
violence.
If they really wish to wage a Jihad (struggle) in this holy month of Ramadan,
then their first target should be their own cowardice and the profound
Jahiliyyah (ignorance) that disables them from seeing what is right and what is
wrong.
There are three kinds of Muslim responses to these never ending atrocities. Some
Muslims condemn, oppose and actively reject the Jihadis and their agenda of
global anarchy. I wish they would be better organized and more effective.
Another minority, unfortunately, appreciates and supports the Jihadis. I pray
that this Ramadan may open their eyes to the true reality of the Jihadi
phenomenon. It preys on the weak and the helpless, has achieved absolutely
nothing of value for Muslims, and has pushed a large number of people in the
world to despise Islam and hate Muslims.
And then there is a significant Muslim population that lives in denial. They
also are intellectually dishonest. They first deny that there is such a thing as
jihadi terrorism, resorting to conspiracy theories blaming every act of Jihadi
violence either on Israel, the U.S. or India. Then they argue that unjust wars
by these three nations (in Palestine, Iraq and Kashmir) is the primary cause for
Jihadi violence; a phenomenon whose very existence they have already denied.
Unless Muslims wakeup to the culture of terrorism in their world and act to
eradicate it, they may find themselves isolated and shunned from the rest of the
world, while also being the biggest victims of the very phenomenon they do not
fight.
Muqtedar Khan is Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware
and a Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
Posted by Muqtedar Khan on September 22, 2008