Muslim states like Pakistan must end malaise of jihadi cancer from spreading

As the spectre of radical Islam haunts the world, media mogul Rupert Murdoch called upon Muslims to “recognise and destroy their growing jihadist cancer” and warned “political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy”. His tweets followed horrific Islamist attacks in Paris, Peshawar, Toronto, Sydney, Yemen, Nigeria and there seems to be no end in sight as yet to the global jihadist rampage. The jihadi cancer is surely spreading and in quite a few cases the political institution called the Muslim state, instead of countering the cancer, actively supports its growth. There appears to be a deadly cocktail of hypocrisy, deception and outright lying by states like Pakistan that have contributed to the bloody, global mess.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu was the top Muslim leader to take offense to Murdoch’s statement. “This understanding of collective crime is the reason for the emergence of the Nazi movement,” the Washington Post cited Davutoğlu as saying. Murdoch tweeted back Wednesday, “Certainly did not mean all Muslims responsible for Paris attack. But Muslim community must debate and confront extremism,” followed another tweet that called upon “people of all faiths to address the threat.” Turkish rulers who are in self-denial, have surely put the clock of history back in their country by diluting the achievements of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. As they try to emphasise the primacy of Islam in their nation’s life, they ended the decades old pledge of schoolchildren each morning, "Happy is he who can say 'I am a Turk!'", according to Reuters. The present leaders of Turkey have actually been at the feet of Islamist radicals: a dated video on Youtube shows Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sitting at the feet of the blue-eyed boy of the Inter-Services Intelligence Afghan mujahideen leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, officially designated as a terrorist by the United States. Turkey, which reportedly helped the ISIS to massacre of Yezidi Kurds, is making the same kinds of mistakes that Pakistan made, scholars Michael M Tachum and Halil M Karaveli warned. In an article in The New York Times, they wrote,“Turkey’s intervention in the Syrian civil war parallels Pakistan’s support of the Taliban to affect the course of the Afghan civil war". Vice President Joe Biden, notorious for speaking out what he wants, exposed Turkey during a speech at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University last October, by saying it was aiding “al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world," according to the CNN, which also reported Biden immediately apologised after Erdoğan protested.

Moderate Muslims do play into the hands of Islamic radicals, the Pakistani example proves. Pakistan’s political leadership’s views on jihad in Kashmir shows moderate Muslims in the “fortress of Islam” follow the jihadi line to please the army GHQ. Pakistan is a peculiar state where the soldiers not only defend the geographical boundaries but also the ideological frontiers of the country. Under the shadow of bayonets, the sheepish politicians not only fail to combat “jihadist cancer” but become accessories to the spread of the menace. For instance, Premier Main Nawaz Sharif, who won elections in May 2013, vowed to stop terror attacks on Kashmir, but according to the Jamestown Foundation, his younger brother Mian Shahbaz Sharif government in Punjab “allocated $620,000 to facilities run by the proscribed charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the parent body of the notorious Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist group that carried out the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai". Pakistani soldiers and the political right have remained steadfastly incorrigible when it comes to bleeding India in any possible manner in Kashmir. Zenith of Pakistan’s openness was having a woman premier assassinated twice-premier Benazir Bhutto. Her “lipstick and powder burned the rears of the mullahs in Pakistan, so I support her” a journalist once said, as mullahs, who are root cause of Pakistan’s miseries along with the military, believe women should stay at home. Ms Bhutto was a darling in the eyes of Westernised “Pakistani burger families,” the Aman Ki Ashawalla types. But she too sounded like a pucca jihadi on Kashmir; her speech to Kashmiri Muslims extolling them to wage jihad against India as the “blood of mujahids and ghazis run in your veins” saw terror descend on the Kashmir Valley, forcing exodus of the 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits – this January 19 will mark the silver jubilee of their exodus. Not only Kashmir, the formation of the deadly Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan had the full blessings of the civilian Bhutto administration, during her second stint in power; one of her closest aides major general Naseerullah Babar played a key role in cobbling together the Taliban. While Bhutto is no more, “Lady Taliban” Robin L Raphel, who reportedly promoted the Taliban in Washington DC as Afghanistan’s last hope and who fully backed Pakistan’s flawed stance on Kashmir is in the dock reportedly on suspicions she was an agent of Pakistan. As if bad karma the very same Taliban proved to be Bhutto’s undoing as she was killed by the Islamists, with the blessings of the Pakistani soldiers, not very far from the place her father, premier ZA Bhutto, was hanged by the very same soldiers. However, all the blood in the Bhutto family does not stop Pakistan’s Rahul Gandhi – Bhutto’s son Bilawal Zardari - who was just one year old when his mother delivered those fiery speeches, from demanding “every inch of Kashmir”. The young Zardari’s demand seems quite comical as his life remains under constant threat of those who have been pulling the triggers of guns in Kashmir for more than 66 years now and who wiped out his entire maternal side of his family, baring an apolitical aunt Sanam Bhutto. Bhutto policy on jihad in Kashmir and helping Talibanisation of Afghanistan shows moderate Muslims in Pakistan have failed to “recognise and destroy their growing jihadist cancer.” This has provided a field day to the extremist narrative, who cite Prophet Muhammad’s Ghazwa-i-Hind hadith, or Holy Scripture, that whosoever among his followers joins the crusade against India “will be protected from the hellfire” and enjoy eternal bliss in heaven with 72 hours is and 27 pearl-like boys. Let alone, Benazir Bhutto and Bilawal Zardari, even speeches of the Bhutto patriarch ZA Bhutto before the UN Security General were full of lies; to endear the Punjab, ZA Bhutto accused India of starting the 1965 war and “promised to fight to wage a war for 1,000 years, a war of defence”.

A second aspect of the jihadi problem is failure of the West to call a spade a spade. Islamic radicals of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader publicly owned the Charlie Hebdo killings. Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was cited by the Al Jazeera news as saying, "The leadership of (AQAP) was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan... It was following orders by our general chief Ayman al-Zawahiri." However, one of the most powerful houses on the face of earth, the White House, whose primary residence for the last six years has been a black family headed by President Barack Hussein Obama refused to call the Charlie Hebdo killers “Islamic radicals.” On grounds of “accuracy,” explained White House spokesperson Josh Earnest, according to Fox News. Also, President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were conspicuous by their absence at the historic Paris rally Sunday which was attended by 40 world leaders and three million people, according to French media reports.

As the polemics over radical Islam continues in the wake of the Paris killings, many Westerners and some Middle Easterners who want to be politically correct blamed Charlie Hebdo magazine for inviting the killings. Teju Cole, a highly intellectual distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, accused Charlie Hebdo of going specifically for “racist and Islamophobic provocations” against Muslims in recent years. “This week’s events took place against the backdrop of France’s ugly colonial history, its sizable Muslim population, and the suppression, in the name of secularism, of some Islamic cultural expressions, such as the hijab,” the Brooklyn-based Nigerian American wrote in The New Yorker, forgetting that hijab contravenes feminist values The New Yorker proudly champions – hypocrisy that Murdoch mentioned. In London, Salah-Aldeen Khadr, executive producer of Al Jazeera English, a moderate Muslim intellectual from the Middle East, sent out editorial guidelines to his reporters on how to cover stories in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings, leading to a war of words among his staffers, according to the National Review Online. “Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile,” Khadr sounded much like Cole, arguing Charlie Hebdo killers were radicalised by images of Abu Ghraib, not by images of Muhammad.

A major reason why there is so much confusion over the term “Islamic radicals” appears to be utter disbelief any religion may provoke such heinous crimes, many forgetting killing in the name of God and country is not limited to Islam alone. Surprisingly, Pope Francis too said there were limits to free speech “If (a close friend) says a swear word against my mother, he’s going to get a punch in the nose,” he told journalists accompanying him on an Asian tour, according to TIME. The reason is simple history of Christianity is also tainted with human blood all through the period of different inquisitions. In India, novelist Richard Zemler told Rediff, the “Goa Inquisition” saw conversions and killings of Hindus all the way until 1812. “It was a machinery of death,” Zemler said. Meanwhile, a report Thursday in one English daily The Express Tribune said Pakistan was banning the JuD among ten other terrorist organisations. Radio Free Europe cited state department spokeswoman Marie Harf as saying the bans were "an important step towards eliminating terrorist activity in Pakistan". However, both but Indian and Pakistani analysts believe the news seems to be too good to be true as yet.