The horrific visuals of burning churches in Faisalabad, Pakistan, that went viral last month reconfirmed the rapid descent of the country into the abyss of religious extremism. At last count, 21 churches, dozens of Christian homes, and hundreds of Bibles had been sacrilegiously torched.
This horrendous barbarity was allegedly perpetrated by the extremist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) on the basis of the rumour that torn pages of the Koran with blasphemous words scribbled on them were found near a Christian colony. Shockingly, this disinformation was diffused through mosque speakers.
The situation was redeemed to some extent after several Pakistani clerics mustered the moral courage to condemn the violence. The chairman of the Pakistan Ulema Council Tahir Mahmood Ashrafi, in a televised press conference, apologised with folded hands to the Christian community.
He said, “We are ashamed; we seek forgiveness (hum sharminda hain; hum ma’afi ke talabgaar hain).” Another cleric, Mufti Taqi Usmani, called the burning of churches as “highly condemnable (intihaa’i qaabil-e-muzammat).”
Editorial | In the name of god: On how dangerously sectarian Pakistan is
The incoming Chief Justice of Pakistan, Justice Qazi Faez Isa, for his part, sent out a strong message to the biased judiciary of his country by personally distributing food packets to the Christians of the violence-hit Jaranwala tehsil in Faisalabad district. He put the onus on common Muslims to protect non-Muslims and their places of worship from the extremists.
The view from India
In stark contrast, only a handful of Indian clerics came forward to condemn the church burning — Muhammad Rahmani of the Abul Kalam Azad Islamic Awakening Centre, Waris Mazhari, Abdul Khaliq Nadwi, and Mufti Athar Shamsi of the Kairana-based Al-Quran Academy.
Hardly any Muslim political party, “public intellectual”, or religious organisation barring the Jamat-e-Islami Hind denounced the anti-Christian violence. Their cold aloofness is unreasonable and callous because in 2017, the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (JUH) had reportedly displayed its humanitarianism by seeking permission from the Home Minister of India and the Bangladesh government to carry relief material to the camps of Rohingya migrants in Cox’s Bazar and even “build a colony for the Rohingya Muslims”.
Therefore, it would be unfair and unIslamic if prominent Muslim organisations such as the JUH and All India Muslim Personal Law Board remain silent now on the anti-Christian violence in Pakistan. Their passivity has the potential to aggravate the distrust between Muslims and non-Muslims and would snatch away their moral right to champion the cause of Muslims in India.
On justice
In one of the most powerful statements in human history on justice, the Koran (in 4:135) categorically commands Muslims to be honest testifiers of truth and unswerving establishers of justice (koonu qawwameena bil qist) even if it goes against themselves, their parents, close relatives, or anybody irrespective of their social, relational or financial status (wa lau ala anfusikum awil waalidayni wal aqrabeena in yakun ghaneeyan au faqeeran).
And in the context of religious violence, the Koran warns (in 22:40) that if peace-loving people do not repel (daf’u) rampaging mobs, it would result in the destruction of monasteries, churches, synagogues and mosques in which god is commemorated in abundant measure (lahuddimat sawaamiyu wa biya’un wa salawaatun wa masaajidu yuzkaru feeha usmullahi kaseeran).
To paraphrase Scott Fitzgerald, if most Muslim societies find themselves wrecked on the shoals of intolerance it is because, over the centuries, supremacist theologians allowed the life-affirming teachings of the Koran to be overridden by sectarian edicts, thus inculcating a sense of negativity towards non-Muslims.
For instance, a fatwa issued by Saudi cleric Muhammad bin Salih al- Uthaimeen warns that “it is not permissible for anyone to believe that a religion other than Islam is permissible, that it is allowed for a person to worship by it... if he believes this, then the scholars have declared that he is a disbeliever, who is outside the pale of Islam” (Fatawa Arkan-ul-Islam, p.292).
The obdurate mindset behind such fatwas refuses to realise that freedom of religion is one of the fundamental doctrines of the Koran which (in 2:256) states that “there shall be no compulsion in religion” (laa ikraaha fid deen).
Caliph Umar put this injunction into practice when he assured the people of Jerusalem that their “churches will not be inhabited [by Muslims] and will not be destroyed. Neither they, nor the land on which they stand, nor their cross, nor their property will be damaged. They will not be forcibly converted” (The History of al-Tabari, Volume 12, translated by Yohanan Friedman, pp191-192).
Rethinking Muslim theology
Therefore, the few courageous Muslim clerics who condemned the attacks on Christians in Pakistan must realise that the Muslim world has reached a stage where mere condemnation of extremism is not enough. What is needed is a complete re-evaluation of Muslim theology to bring it in consonance with the humanitarianism of Islam’s locus classicus — the Koran.
To begin with, hadiths and fatwas that violate the letter or spirit of the Koran should be questioned and disregarded on the basis of the axiom that humanly-authored books cannot countermand the book of God. There can be no better way of telling the world that extremism of the kind displayed by Pakistani mobs is not rooted in the Koran or the authentic teachings of the Prophet.
A. Faizur Rahman is Secretary-General of the Islamic Forum for the Promotion of Moderate Thought. E-mail: themoderates2020@gmail.com
