Islamophobes, Islamofascists
And Islamic Pluralists?

The Muslim Ummah, almost one fourth of the total world population is the most oppressed section of the humanity. Yet the western political establishment and the media has succeeded in painting the darkest red on the face of everyone with a Muslim sounding name as a bloodthirsty, mindless terrorist that deserves to die.

President Bush never misses a chance to call them Islamofascists who have attacked his homeland and are preparing to destroy the epitome of the human civilization – the democratic, free, secular humanist West (Eurocentric unipolar world).

Who are the Islamofascists? Do they include the millions of eastern European and central Asian Muslims that Stalin killed? What about all those from the Philippines to Tangier who perished either because the US directly used its muscle to kill them and destroy their lands or keep its laky regimes in power to destroy any trace of Islamic identity other than passive religiosity – the Islamic pluralists.

Islamofascism, in hackneyed usage, means any modern Islamic movement or group that asks for the revival of Islam. Islamofascists include not only Al-Qaeda – a generic term coined to target every active Muslim, the current Iranian government, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hizbullah as well as Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah, Somali Shari’ah Court, Wahhabis, Tablighis, and every tiny association that is helping Muslims anywhere regain their basic human rights from Patani to Spain. The western governments and the media care the least that associating the religion of Islam with fascism is not only unjustified but also extremely offensive and inaccurate. It provides a simple target to shoot at anyone who raises his voice against the inhuman treatment of the Muslims internally within a nation state or outwardly in the name of clash of civilizations.

Islamofascism covers every movement that seeks a return to Shari’ah and the restructuring the human life around God-head. The western media pundits always berate the Muslims for secretly working to restore the Khilafah – a unified political entity to re-establish the old Muslim empire and relegate all non-Muslims to the "Dhimmi" status, negating all the advances made in the last two centuries in equality and basic human rights.

The origins of the term are unclear, but appear to date back to an article, "Construing Islam as a language", by Malise Ruthren, which was published in The Independent on September 8, 1990.

Earlier writers like Malise Ruthren and Khalid Duran claimed that Muslim societies find it particularly hard to institutionalise divergences politically, and blamed the pulpit for imposing "religious orthodoxy on the state and the citizenry." Anti-Islam writers and journalists like Stephen Schwartz expanded it to refer to every Muslim who resisted western moves for world dominance in the name of globalisation. Al-Qaeda’s extremely limited approach to get rid of the US troops from Hijaz, and Saddam’s attempt to annex Kuwait provided the American strategists a ruse to secure their lifeline-oil supplies. Despite enormous resources at their disposal, servile Muslim states did nothing to secure the basic rights of the Muslim communities, severely suppressed internally or under attack from their foes.

The anger pushed some individuals and groups to do whatever they could. Some planned armed struggle to replace their own oppressive ruling elite, and others planned what are nothing more than pin pricks like the 7/11 destruction of Twin Towers, train bombing in Spain and UK to force the West, including the US and Israel to change their course. With massive propaganda means at their disposal, the foes of Muslim resurgence marked their antagonists first as the "Islamic extremists" and now the banal "Islamic terrorists".

The world has closed its eyes and refuses to hear the cries and the sighs of millions of Muslims dying everywhere by bombs, torture, and hunger. Even the Muslim charities that tried to put a few drops of water in the mouth of a dying Muslim are legally banned for "helping the terrorists".

Now the Pope has added his religious blessings to the political chess masters, Bush and Blair. The clash of civilizations of the academics like Huntington has finally reached its intended destination: The Muslims don’t deserve to live among the human communities as their belief in their God creates a hateful Jihadist mindset. The Pope finds that the fundamental difference between Christianity and Islam is their view of God. The Christian God is intrinsically linked to reason (the Greek Logos – reason being the controlling principle in the universe) whereas, Islam’s God is "absolutely transcendent" –not bound up with any of human categories, even that of rationality. This concept of divine justifies the irrationality of violence.

Did the Pope forget how rational his belief in a human god is, and how the followers of his Christian rational god decimated the Christian Europe twice within half a century? In the last two centuries Pope’s crusaders, believers in a rational godhead, have killed millions of human beings for their imperial ambitions and destroyed global natural resources?

Islamic Pluralists are very active in this war against the Muslims. They blame everything on the deviant Muslims who have misunderstood the peaceful ideology of Islam. Decades ago I heard a talk. The speaker was a prominent Islamic Studies professor. According to him, we Muslims are living in the early stages of Makkan life of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and we have to restrict ourselves to the Cave of Hira, reciting Lakum Deenukum wa lia Deen (Keep your way of living to yourself and I will keep my way of living to myself).

The Islamic Pluralists don’t stop at the innocent looking stop line and the compromising attitude does not end here. They wish to expunge every mention of the struggle against oppression from the holy texts, and every Divine command to establish a just society and eradicate denunciation of human bondage from the Islamic teachings. The Muslim apologists never use interfaith dialogue opportunities to clearly state the Islamic view of human life on earth. Islam visualises human beings as God’s creation. God, as the Creator and Sustainer of the universe has provided equal opportunities for everyone, and anyone violating the equality and justice principle will be accountable to Him on the Day of Judgment. This fusion of the divine and the mundane is the only way for a fulfilling human life without subjugation and misuse of God-given resources.