What is wrong with Muslims; this is the name of the book written by a well known Western author. In this book, the author has listed the various causes of the decline and downfall of the Muslims in the present time. Extremism and terrorism are of course the main focus of the book.
It is one of the several books written by Western authors on Islam and Muslims since the 9/11 attack in the United States. Most of these books contain negative perceptions and interpretations of Islams message and teaching. This is not unexpected because the Christian worlds hostility for Islam and then contempt for it, resulting from its colonisation and occupation by the West during the 18th and 19th centuries is well known to educated Muslims through out the Muslim countries. It was a reflection of this deep seated attitude which led President Bush to say that 9/11 signified the start of new crusades.
In response to such publications, Muslim scholars and authors have also published several books and articles to defend Islam and its teachings and to improve its image in the West which generally believes and openly accuses it of being a violent religion. Most Muslims, conservative as well as liberal and western-educated, react to it angrily and condemn it as biased, bigoted and untrue.
However, these have failed to change the perception in the West and will have no effect so long as the extremists and fundamentalist organisations like Al-Qaeda, TTP, LT etc. do not give up their acts of senseless violence. In the beginning, this included the slaughtering of Muslim and non-Muslim human beings as animals. Members of these groups would normally carry out such heinous acts in the background of Quranic ayat, the kalma and Allah-o-Akbar written on it; at the same time, most of the perpetrators also wore a black head band with the kalma written on it.
Such pictures naturally created a perception of people who were heartless, brutal and criminals who committed such acts because they claimed that these were sanctified by the Quran itself. They would often use the Quranic ayat of Amr bil maroof wa nahee anil munkir in their defence and another ayat which said that The Christians and the Jews cannot be your friends. Naturally, the misuse of these ayaats created a general dislike and fear in the West against the Muslims, particularly young Pakistanis who are regarded as dangerous and are no longer easily given either student or tourist visas by the Western countries.
Unfortunately, the Muslim extremists of one denomination also consider members of other sects including Sufi sects as non-Muslims and wajib-ul-qatal (liable to be killed). But they do not define who is or is not a Muslim. Nevertheless, it inculcates a free-for-all behaviour among those who agree with such an interpretation and begin to take the law in their own hands. The weakening of the writ of state, as at present in Pakistan, only leads to further encouragement of such unlawful behavior and very soon leads to wide spread criminalisation of the whole society.
It is natural that this descent of Pakistani society into an abysmal depth of violence and crime only leads to depression within and to a perception of failing state abroad. On top of this, Pakistan has acquired the distinction of being one of the most corrupt and ill-governed countries.
Therefore, it should be obvious to all of us that extremist, fanatics and terrorists are our enemies and cannot be made into puppets to be used by state agencies to achieve some ulterior motives. Such extremist groups like TTP become Frankensteins monsters and turn against their own creators and masters. This is exactly what is happening in Pakistan at present. The suicide bombings, 7 in the last two weeks, carried out by TTP and other organisations, which have led to the death of about 200 persons and injuries to twice as many, have to be unequivocally condemned by our religious leaders and strictly and even handedly dealt with by the government. Unless this is done, the sectarian violence that has become commonplace in Karachi will keep sapping the energy of police authorities and distract them from their job of preventing common crime.
Unfortunately, the common Pakistanis have also been indoctrinated that all the violence in Pakistan is the result of drone attacks and outside interference in our internal affairs.
The writer is a former Ambassador of Pakistan.