03-05-2009, 03:29 AM
http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/593/59..._anand.htm
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Seize the moment</b>
JAVED ANAND
      GOOD can sometimes emerge from the ugly, evil moments; when all seems lost, a ray of light can emerge from the darkest corners. In her essay in response to the savage assault on Mumbai, âThe Monster in the Mirrorâ published by Outlook and The Guardian, UK, Arundhati Roy quite aptly places the stark options before us today and we all must choose. Only two choices, no third option: Justice or Civil War. Its difficult to disagree with what she says: how can there be peace where there is no justice?
Count Anwar Ebrahim, a former Islamist and former deputy prime minister of Malaysia, among Muslims who were shell-shocked on 9/11. Not long thereafter, he wrote that it will no longer do to try and distance Islam from the terrorism being practised in its name. Muslims must ask themselves why and how in Islamic theology and tradition there was space left for extremism and terrorism to grow roots. Many Muslim scholars and theologians have since introspected on this question and traced back the root of the problem to India. And the name of the problem is, Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami.
The website of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba/Jamaat-ud-dawa tells us: âIslam does not mean following a few rituals like performing prayers, keeping fasts, performing the pilgrimage to the Kaaba (Haj), giving alms (zakaat), or donating to charitable works, but in fact, it is a complete Code of Life.â Guess from where the JUD/LeT gather such wisdom? From a 1939 speech by Maududi, later published as a booklet Jihad fi Sabilillah (Jihad in Islam). Islam, for Maududi is a ârevolutionary creedâ and Muslims means a ârevolutionary partyâ. It is the duty of this vanguard to engage in jihad by âevery means possibleâ to overthrow all man-made systems ruled according to man-made laws (liberal democracy, fascism, communism) and install an Islamic state to enforce âAllahâs laws (shariah) on earth.â
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