Muslims fight for Political,not Religious reasons

Written by Salim Lone

Salim Lone is a former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq.

Friday, 26 January 2007

I HAVE LOTS OF CRITICS. One is a close Kenyan friend whose judgment I respect greatly. He was one of those who felt I was too critical of US policy in the Middle East.

When the US midterm election resulted in an anti-Bush landslide, he called to say he had been wrong. "You have been vindicated by the Americans themselves," he said. I wish events would prove me right more often!

My articles criticising US attacks on Somalia to topple the Islamic Courts Union and on the advanced US plans to attack Iran also received a lot of criticism, although as usual, many more agreed than disagreed with me.

On my Iran article, one criticism was that Iran's President Ahmadinejad was a dangerous leader who must be stopped from developing nuclear weapons.

It is true Mr Ahmadinejad has made some extremely provocative statements about Israel and Jews. Talk of "wiping Israel off the map" is particularly unacceptable. Besides threatening peace, such provocative assertions needlessly give Iran's enemies ammunition with which to undermine it.

But those who believe that President Bush is threatening Iran because it is led by Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are well off the mark. Whoever was Iran's leader, the US would oppose Iran's developing civilian nuclear technology, even though doing so is its sovereign right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Indeed, the NPT requires that nuclear-armed nations assist others in developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, as a way to encourage compliance with broader non-proliferation goals.

Interestingly, while a global BBC poll this week showed people worldwide strongly disapproved of America's aggressive policy on Iran by a 62 to 23 per cent margin, Kenyans recorded a higher level of support for the US stance than any other country's nationals - more even than Americans themselves, who opposed the Bush approach by a 50 to 40 per cent margin!

Kenya, in fact, turned out to be among the only three countries which recorded a positive view of the US, along with the Philippines and Nigeria. I imagine one reason is that we Kenyans have suffered from two terrorist attacks, and also that all three countries have sizeable Muslim minorities which make the majority population worry about Islamic radicalism. Our leaders, clerical and otherwise, should be developing ways to tackle this divisive religious split.

This brings me to the critics of my Somalia article. It seems a very large number of people are convinced that "Islamists" and "Jihad" are dirty words, connoting a desire to forcibly convert the world to Islam.

When the Islamic Courts Union declared a jihad last month against invading Ethiopian soldiers, that sealed their fate for many Kenyans and the international media.

A grossly illegal action, invasion, became much less important than a word. Jihad, of course, has been portrayed in the media as a "holy war" and reinforces the propagandistic notion that Islam was spread by the sword.

Jihad has many interpretations even for Muslims, but a holy war to convert the enemy is not one of them. Forcible conversion is forbidden by the Qu'ran.

Jihad means struggle, and its many incarnations include a struggle within oneself to rise to a higher spirituality, a struggle of the "pen" to convince others of your religion's authenticity, and, of course, its most commonly used formulation, which is the struggle against tyranny and injustice.

Those Muslims who fight against occupations invoke their religion in order to mobilise the people. That is no different from others invoking freedom, democracy or human rights as rallying cries for war. What should determine our view of all wars are not the rallying cries but whether they are "just."

The vast majority of Muslims who fight such wars do so for political reasons; those who do so for religious reasons are a tiny, tiny minority. That is why the intense conflicts we see are primarily in occupied Muslim countries.

In any event, if unlawful violence is perpetrated by those who are Muslim, or for that matter Christian, Jew or Hindu, that does not mean that we can malign all those who belong to that religion.