Whose version of Islam?

28.09.2009

Is Islam a violent religion or a religion of peace?
More than one war is being waged in Pakistan.

Since the beginning of 2009, letters to the editor of Dawn, the major daily English language newspaper in Pakistan, have been rejecting the ongoing brutality of the Taliban as being un-Islamic.

Muslim women during demonstrations in Lahore and Karachi have protested against the whipping of a teenage girl by Taliban zealots in Swat. Editorials in Dawn have declared the violence in Pakistan to be both inhuman and un-Islamic.

On May 24, 2009, Dawn carried an article The Men Who Saw Today. The men referred to were Sufis such as Bulleh Shah who lived in the Punjab in the 18th century and 20th century Pakistani poets and writers such as Allama Iqbal, Faiz Ahmad Faiz and Saadat Hasan Manta. In their writings and poetry, they rejected the use of violence in the name of religion which is now so common in 21st century Pakistan.

Taliban have recently slaughtered Muslim men like sacrificial animals, cutting their throats while onlookers call out "Allah is great" and publicising their violence by sending live video images of the brutality through mobile phones. Bombs have been carefully exploded in Pakistani cities such as to cause indiscriminate maiming of the innocent.

Mosques of the Shiite sect of Islam who are regarded as heretics by the Taliban fundamentalist Sunni extremists have been attacked by gunmen and suicide bombers just at the time when worshippers have gathered for prayer.

Many Pakistanis are now showing their revulsion and disgust at the barbarity of the Taliban. They are openly asking the question "Whose version of Islam?" The Taliban not only defend their violence as a religious duty but assert that it is the will of Allah for the destruction of the enemies of Islam. Many Pakistanis agree with them and support them. But many Pakistani Muslims now disagree, claiming that their religion is a religion of peace and reject the savage violence of the Taliban.

The Taliban brutality is forcing Pakistani Muslims to ask themselves whether violence is justified on the grounds of religious purposes. There are two camps, so to speak, those Muslims who claim that there is no relation between violence and Islam, and the Taliban and their supporters who say that their obedience to Allah demands that they carry out the violence of a holy war.

In his lecture at Regensberg University in Germany on September 12, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI asked that people of good will consider whether religion and the will of God can justify violent brutality. The Taliban in Pakistan have no doubt that their religion not only justifies but demands their violence. Other Muslims are loudly rejecting this interpretation of Islam which they regard as a religion of peace. The most popular Islamic religious cable channel in Pakistan is "Peace TV." It continually asserts that Islam is a religion of peace.

Its programming content mainly consists of a heavy polemic against Christianity and Hinduism. However, it has been unable to debate and discuss the violence being carried out by Muslim Taliban in Pakistan against other Muslims in the name of Islam.
A growing public opinion Pakistan is forcing an urgent discussion amongst Muslims about whose version of Islam is the correct version.

Fr Robert McCulloch has been a missionary in Pakistan since 1978.

For more information about Dawn:see http://www.dawn.com

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