Mohamed and the Mountain

Masjid Nimra at Arafat near Makkah

Mohamed and the Mountain


In the extreme media coverage on our own 26/11 event of a year ago and the damp squib of the tabled Liberhan Committee Report after 17 long years, most people may have missed the exhortation from Mufti-e-Azam Saudi Arabia Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah Al Sheikh in his Hajj sermon of 26th November.

The Mufti of Makkah’s sermon was both unexpected and surprising, but only in so far as so few of the senior Islamic clergy around the world, and moderate laity for that matter, have thus far condemned Islamic terrorism in unequivocal terms.

Sheikh Abdul Aziz urged the Muslim Ummah not to compromise against terrorism and be united against suicide attacks. The sermon was delivered by the Mufti-e-Azam in Masjid Nimra at Arafat near Makkah to tens of thousands of pilgrims. This is indeed most welcome, coming as it does, from the most prominent cleric in Saudi Arabia, and on the eve of a new decade, after one scarred by much needless strife and bloodshed.

If, like the Mufti’s, enough moderate Muslim voices amongst other clerics and laity, decide to criticise, censure, curb, and eventually expel the warped logic being pushed in the name of Islam, much can indeed be accomplished. Especially,if the change in sentiment is followed by action to cut off extremist lifelines. Even those which fuel the ancient animosity between the Islamic sects of Shias and Sunnis.

After all, every war is probably only one part classical warfare and two parts a battle for hearts and minds. What Islam can do to reorient itself against terrorism from within, no outside retribution from injured people of other faiths can do.

It is certain that the jihadis must know their chances of winning this war against all others, including those Islamic regimes they see as reprobate, is doomed; but as the self- brainwashed Sword Arm of Allah, they see themselves in miraculous, if unrealistic terms.

But sermons such as the Mufti of Makkah’s, holds out hope to give the lie to Samuel Huntington’s dark prognosis of a “clash of civilisations”. Echoing, as it does, the logic of the Crusades of antiquity, it should not gain further ground. If Muslims themselves curb their extreme fringes and refuse them the liberty of giving the vast majority a bad name, this nightmarish progression can be arrested much faster.

Also, jihad, always intended to be an improving and internal battle of the spirit, in which good overcomes evil, stands a chance of returning to its true Islamic meaning, one in which the spilling of innocent blood has no place.

The Mufti of Makkah’s bold and statesmanlike call for a peaceful departure from the terrorist’s “deviant ideology”, taken at face value, can perhaps be viewed as a very important step towards the eventual elimination of terrorism. After all, it is a call from Islam’s highest pulpit, at the start of its most important pilgrimage, one incumbent, at least once, on all true believers.

This sermon, if amplified suitably by others who take up the Mufti’s call, should have great resonance amongst the moral majority. After all, common or garden Islamic terrorism, with its subversive guerrilla tactics, is claiming altogether too many victims both in the world at large and from the ranks of Muslim youth alike. And this, with little or nothing of value to show for itself. It seeks, improbably, to simultaneously overthrow the West, and the Jewish nation, and also the Hindu one, but could nevertheless end up annihilating mankind via a nuclear misstep.

That is why apocalyptic retaliation cannot be seen as anything but pyrrhic, while prevention, even if successful, as a product of a siege-like, freedom destroying and suspicious defensiveness.

Only internal reform and reorientation amongst the Muslim brotherhood can heal this wound in the most effective way. It is ironic though, that in today’s world, the ways of peace sound like a pipe dream. Perhaps it is a bridge too far, as always, but wasn’t mankind meant to learn from the futility of past ideology/religion based warfare?

It is therefore very pleasant to dream of an Islamic terrorism without moral, financial and popular support from other Muslims. This terrorism without roots would not only be doomed in terms of its eventual outcome, but couldn’t even persist and prosper for long.

In the same sermon, the Mufti also blamed the ongoing economic crisis around the globe on the non-observance of Islamic principles in the conduct of business and economic affairs. This of course, tends to put the maximum leveraging ways of Dubai, an Islamic Emirate, in the same boat as several banks and institutions in the Western world.

And while terrorism may not be migrating across ideological frontiers with as much facility as greed, both owe their “deviant behaviour” to exaggeration and excess. The world’s capitalist excesses have the same world searching for moderation, probity and recalibration. This promises, after a season of tribulation, a more secure future with more realistic assumptions.

If there is a parallel between the amoral terrorism of Islamic fringe elements supported darkly by certain Governments and the economic turmoil caused by guardians of capital making much too free and easy with it, it can only be in terms of the extremes that both have gone to.

Since terrorism has the greater potential for ultimate destruction, it is good to read in the Mufti’s message, his juxtaposition of global economic mayhem and the deviant ideology that has produced Islamic terrorism; a subtext of redemption.

The world is being compelled to curb its economic extremism, Dubai being the latest citadel brought to its knees, due to eventual non-viability. By the same token, we can expect terrorism to also see its own depraved face in the mirror some day and realise shattering the mirror won’t do away with its innate ugliness.

It will however, sooner or later implode upon itself, not so much as a consequence of losing its jihad, but more because it will inexorably lose its raison d’ etre.

The Mufti of Makkah’s message is a message of peace and a call for course correction. With the Christians about to celebrate Christmas espousing similar sentiments a scarce few weeks away, and the dawning of a new decade days after that, it may be time to re-frame the world-view defined by the attacks of 9/11 in 2001.

(1,053 words)

November 29th, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Edit Page Leader in The Pioneer under the title "Sermon with a difference" on December2nd,2009 and simultaneously online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived there under Columnists.