The alleged involvement of two highly skilled Muslim youth from Bangalore in an abortive bid at blowing the Glasgow Air Terminal building in the United Kingdom should send alarm signals. The lengthening shadow of the operators of terror should worry us, for it typifies the mindset of a section of the modern Muslim youth. The West’s highhandedness in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon is a well established fact. But it should not be a licence for sundry groups to attack the unsuspecting, innocent citizens in airports, universities and parks and stadiums. The West has to be engaged at academic, diplomatic and intellectual levels. And indeed if some states are sure of the symmetry of power, even in the battlefield. Bombing public transport, airports and places of worship strengthens the West’s - so far contrived - cause for war against the Muslim world and lends credibility to the West’s monopolized media to further demonise the Muslims. The terrorists and jihadists therefore become the willing tools in the hands of the Western jingoists who are seeking a convenient camouflage for their sinister agenda against the third world.

It will be a travesty of truth, if the Muslim community merely blames ‘a few misguided youth’ for the violence and fails to search for deeper motivations that drive them to extremism. Blaming the West and its aggressive policies towards the Muslim world may serve as platitudes that suit fickle minds, but cannot satisfy thinking sections of the academia and media. For well over half a century, the youth have been fed a steady diet of idealism untempered with the current socio-economic realities. The indoctrination has idealized martyrdom, militancy and struggle and ridiculed all concepts like human rights, social equity, gender rights, democracy, nation-state, pluralism et al. Propagandists have theorized strategies of Islam prevailing over other faiths rather than working out a road map for coexistence. No wonder then why such supremacist ideas find easy translation into attack against symbols of modernism like airports.

‘Islam for peace’ theorists would fail in their effort to convince the world if the core of the ideology rests on the fulcrum of ‘Islam is supreme’ theology with covert espousal of ‘Nothing but Islam’ doctrine. ‘Islamic state’ instead of a nation-state, a largely notional ummah in place of universal humanism, and ‘Caliphate’ in contrast to plural democracy, therefore provide the lynchpin for the ideology. An individual is well within his right to conceive his success in the hereafter in his belief, but its manifestation in social practice and governance is problematic. Most Islamists miss this thin line of demarcation and end up muddying the course of an intellectual discourse with the West and rest of people of the world.

Utopian ideals and absolutist ideas could be as dangerous for the world and damaging for the Muslims as the fascist goals of industry-military-media nexus that has gained ascendancy in the West currently. The West has a thriving intellectual community to offer analysis and course correction. The Muslim world has none, thanks to brutal suppression of the right to speak, theories and publicise one’s views that tend to differ from the official.

Contextualizing Islam essentially calls for shunning the tendency to romanticise the past. A community engrossed in idealizing the past is all likely to develop a disdain for the present. Since it is natural to use the modern technology in service of the utopian ideals, such people mess up issues and blend their tribal and patriarchal concepts with nation-state, democracy, elections et al. Fundamentalism is bred thus.

Purveyors of victimhood fuel the fundamentalist fire. End result: inability to precisely diagnose the malady and administer cure. This does not happen in the case of the West which while waging the war in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine, encourages the Muslim students to enroll in its universities, work in its laboratories, engage in intellectual discourse, seek immigration and even marry its women, proliferate and participate in the democratic process there.

It then all boils down to the fact that some level headed thinking is imperative on the part of the ummah. Muslim history is replete with accounts of how the community has prayed, struggled and fought, but not much how it devised operational principles of living, coexisting and tackling the challenges of the time and society. Here lies the challenge of rebuilding the world order. Demolition squad is the last thing the Muslims require. They need theorists who could think anew. For the present, the community should engage itself in introspection and wean away youth from the path of violence.

Editorial