It hardly needs to be emphasised that the biggest threat to peace in today’s world comes from the Taliban and their fellow Islamic radicals operating in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Both Afghanistan and Pakistan are devastated by Islamist terrorists and are perpetrating the most horrifying massacres of innocent civilians, even during prayers inside mosques. They claim to be establishing what they call “pure Islam”, by eliminating mainstream interpretations of Islam and any minority sects they do not recognise as Muslim. These medieval obscurantists also use the excuse of Western domination of Muslim lands to further their nefarious ends. They never explain, however, what Western domination has to do with their medieval acts of terror like burning girls’ schools, oppressing women and killing members of religious minorities, terrorising and violating the human rights of people in the most blatant and barbaric manner.

But even more worrisome is the fact that the world’s determination to confront these roguish elements appears to be flagging. NATO countries seem to be losing interest in what looks like an endless war. Despite daily news reports of murder and mayhem in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, and the very real possibility of this happening in their part of the world as well, exemplified by several recent terrorist attempts, many people think it is not worth their while spending hard-earned money to beat the enemies of civilisation in such a remote part of the world.

Also, a group of Taliban sympathisers appears to have grown recently, not only in civil society but also in the strategic community, which seems to feel that not all Taliban are bad and that it is possible to make a deal with the good ones who are the majority of Taliban, thus providing a route to a safe exit, leaving the volatile region to its fate, as has been done several times before.

The frontline ally of the West in the war, Pakistan and its Army in particular, clearly feels the same way. The difference for them is that they see the Taliban devastating Pakistani cities as the bad ones who should be fought while the Taliban fighting the West or their allies, like Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, creating mayhem periodically in India, are the good ones who should be left alone. There are sensible elements in Pakistan too who see the inhuman and suicidal nature of this policy. But the policy has by and large remained unchanged. Indeed, the Pakistan Army has made several attempts to cut deals with the ‘bad’ Pakistani Taliban too, only to face fresh subversion and terrorism from them once they used the breathing space to regroup.

Meanwhile, the general populace in large parts of Pakistan itself, in the biggest and most influential province of Punjab, for instance, is being radicalised and acquiring sympathies for the Taliban and their terrorist allies, fed up as they are with massive corruption and misgovernment of the ruling elite. This trend poses a grave threat to world peace, not least because Pakistan is a nuclear state almost permanently on the brink of joining the ranks of failed states.

It is imperative that we make a fresh pledge not only to continue confronting these medieval marauders but also to look at the reasons why humanity’s efforts have not met with the kind of success they should have.

There are many factors involved including strategic and tactical errors on the part of the Western forces combating the Taliban. But the most glaring failure has been on the part of mainstream Muslims in not challenging the radical Islamists’ corrupted postulates and leaving no room for them to misuse Islam and our holy book, the Koran, for their nefarious ends. We keep saying that Islam is a religion of peace, but that clearly has not been enough when the Islamists are using their interpretation of Islam to justify war.

We probably took continued Western support for granted in putting down the inferno of hate and contempt for other religious groups caused by the ideology of Islamic supremacy. This ideology is far older than the Western quest for power and wealth of recent centuries that the Taliban give as the reason for the radicalisation of Muslims.

Not long after the death of the Prophet Mohammad, Arab imperialists - who were opposed to Islam’s ideology of human equality and respect for all religions - hijacked Islam and created a hereditary monarchy, the Khilafat, that immediately embarked on imperial expansion. Then, in order to justify the misuse of Islam to run an un-Islamic system of imperialist expansion based on Islamic supremacy, they undermined the only scripture the Prophet had left behind, the Koran, and created a parallel scripture called Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet). Compiled two to three centuries after the death of the Prophet, these sayings were attributed to the Prophet and were advertised as marvels of research in which meticulous care had been taken to find out the route through which the saying had travelled for two to three centuries before being written down. A mere glance at some of these sayings recorded in what are considered the most authentic compilations, the voluminous Bukhari and Muslim, shows that some of these sayings had been concocted to suit the imperialist tendencies and even the lecherous nature of the monarch-khalifs. Nevertheless, through massive and constant propaganda the Hadith came to occupy as exalted a space in the minds of average Muslims as the Koran. It is no accident that the most influential ideological group among the radical Jihadis calls itself Ahle-Hadees (People of Hadith), people who apparently believe the Hadith to be superior even to the Koran.

The Khalifs also created the clergy as a powerful institution to enslave and control the Muslims. Neither the mullahs nor any other kind of priesthood were part of Islam when the Prophet made his transition to the other world, saying he was satisfied that he had completed Islam. But the hijacked and subverted form of Islam that has come down to us through the centuries has taught Muslims not to consult the Koran for guidance on ideological issues. They have been told it is too difficult for them to understand. Instead they go to the mullahs who invariably misguide them, keeping in mind their own interests and those of the rulers they have traditionally served.

We mainstream Muslims have no option but to adopt a more pro-active role in this existential struggle against a radical, political Islam based on the ideology of Islamic supremacy. The West would probably continue to help us in the war against the Taliban and other Jihadi terrorists if they saw that we were serious about the fight. We need to own this war as our war. Primarily it is a war within Islam – as the far larger number of dead among the Muslim community due to terrorist attacks testifies.

The ideological dimension of this war has been completely lost. After all, suicide bombers do not perpetrate their heinous acts just because they have been offered a few thousand dollars. They have been brainwashed into believing that they need to kill all “infidels”. Moreover, they have been told that those Muslims who are not engaged in fighting the infidel are the first enemies of Islam and must be eliminated first, and that the person who does that will be rewarded instantly with a place in heaven.

This is not the place to engage in a theological discourse, but I can assure you, dear reader, that there is no room for this kind of thinking in the Islam that Prophet Mohammad handed down to us. But by leaving the war to be fought only with military means and by the Western victims of Jihadi terrorism alone, we mainstream Muslims have left the field open for prejudices to be formed against both us and our religion. I find it difficult to blame the average citizen of the non-Muslim world who is fast developing

Islamophobic tendencies. Whilst there are indeed forces in the non-Muslim countries who are exploiting the situation for their own vested interests, I feel that the total passivity of mainstream Muslims is largely to blame for this state of affairs.I hope the time has not passed for us to do something about it and join the struggle in earnest. The war against the Jihadis has to be fought and won by Muslims on the ideological front, hopefully with continued military backing from the West.

--Sultan Shahin

Sultan Shahin is editor of New Age Islam, http://www.newageislam.com/