Allah has made Jihad mandatory for the ‘Mumin’ and has warned them that, “if you do not willingly engage in Jihad, the most heinous of punishments await you” (9:39). Allah has instructed his beloved Prophet, “Oh prophet, campaign against non-believers and be stern against them - for only the deepest recesses of hell awaits them” (9:73).
Dear readers, those are just some of the words that constitute The Quran (forget delving into other religious publications for while). Those inundated by their sense of blind faith have dubbed the Quran as ‘the book of guidance’, and have declared Islam as the ‘religion of peace’. It is to those that I pose this question, have you ever wondered if anybody took the above mentioned verses ‘as guidance’ and acted upon them, what sort of “peace” he/she will bring to this world? Thanks to the principles of Jihad ‘Islamic terrorism’ is a well-established term today. Every day the newspapers bear some report or the other describing men or women inspired by the edicts of Jihad, resort to bombing people, open streets, houses, factories, transport, cinema halls, cultural establishments or on the seas or oceans. About a thousand Jihadi groups such as – Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Harkat-Ul-Jihad, Harkat-Ul-Mujahidin, Jammat-E-Islamia, Hijab-E-Islamia, Ansaralluah Bangla Team have managed to envelope the world in a never-ending fog of fear.
The Bangladesh government has banned a few groups such as the Hizbut-Tahri over allegations of terrorism. Before that happened the BNP-Jamat coalition government managed to ban the Jamaitul Mujahidin (JMB), Harkat-Ul-Jihad-Al-Islami Bangladesh (HUZI) during their reign; Shahadat-E-Al-Hikma and the Jagroto Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB) were also banned during their reign due to similar allegations. Harkat-Ul-Jihad first came under the radar of Bangladesh during the year 1996. On the 29th of February that, a joint operation between the police and army, led to the capture of 41 Harkat-Ul-Jihad terrorists along with a raft of guns, bombs and ammunition. They were arrested from the Lundakhali Jungle which is attached to the Painkhali village of Uthia, Cox’s Bazar.
The group consisted of one foreigner whilst the other forty were comprise of Madrasa students and teachers from all parts of the country. After that on 18th January 1999, during an attack on poet Shamsur Rahman, a total of ten 10 terrorists were arrested, some right from the scene of crime (Shamsur Rahman’s house) and some later from the other areas. They all claimed to be a part of Harkat-Ul-Jihad. And again during the Udichir ceremony in Jessore, on the 23rd July 2000 where bombs were planted in a general assembly held in Gopalgonj Kotalipara set to be attended by none other than the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, and of course who can forget 14th April 2001 in Dhaka Ramna, or the grenade attack of 21st August or the 17th August 2005 serial grenade attack all over the country. With these horrifying deeds the Harkat-Ul-Jihad forced themselves into the centre of all diplomatic conversations.
However the 17th August bombings in 2005, surpass their entire list of obscenities by quite a margin. Readers perhaps many of you remember the horrors of that day. A series of synchronized bombs went off across 63 zillas in Bangladesh. The day was unanimously declared as the blackest spot in the country relatively brief history and was dubbed as Bangladesh’s ‘9/11’. It was evident just how sinister the link between terrorism and “pure” Islam was after a visit was paid to the places whre the bombs set off. The streets there where littered from top to bottom with leaflets and pamphlets , bearing verses from the Quran and Hadith, specifying instructions to go into Jihad or wage war against Kafirs and non-believers. And despite the feeble attempts of people like Farhad Majhar and Badruddin Umra to deny the relationship between pure Islam and terrorism, it was all in vain. Even though the government then oversaw the expulsion of 5 terrorist groups, another 70 strong ones had joined them in secret. Together they are intimating every possibility to cause as much disruption in the country’s affairs as possible. Their main objective of course is to hinder and destabilise the war criminal trials in Bangladesh as much as possible.
It is time for the peace-loving, pious and socially conscious people to undergo a bit of self-realization, and ask from a sceptic’s point of view – Why are all terrorist groups extreme Islamists? Why are they ‘terrorists’ at all’? Who’re the ones responsible for the gradual rise of the Molla Omars, the Bin Ladens, Moulana Mannan, Golam Azam, Sheikh Abdur Rahman, Mufti Hannan and the Bangla Bhais? It’s time to come out of all this obscurity and state with razor sharp clarity that these religious books are at the very root of terrorism. Of course we can add in the imperialistic mind frame of the US in conjunction with that of the Western world and of course, the malevolent foreign policies maintained against the Middle East should not be forgotten as well.
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