True Colour of Terror

Is there a way to arrest the alarming spread of terror? Undeniably, ‘terror’ has acquired a dangerous proportion worldwide and has posed a challenge before the civilized world.

We must come out of the state of denial first. We have wasted enough resources, intelligence, time and energy in proving somehow that there is nothing unusual about terrorism and it is merely a law and order problem. A construct however, coined by the ‘sane’ world that ‘terror has no religion’ has only helped us in fooling ourselves. Even cancer can be cured but for that at least those who are treating you must be unanimous about the nature of the disease, its extent and the area affected with the disease. Asking the family of the patient to believe that all diseases are bad for health will only make the patient complacent and that would only help aggravate the problem further. The first step to treat this menace would be to accept that this disease finds its strength in a particular religion ‘Islam’. Unless we dig out our head from the sand of our virtual and idealized surroundings, we would not be able to make effective strategies to tackle this problem that exists unfortunately in our real world.

It must be realized that the genesis of the problem rests in some construct of the Islamic theology. At the same time, fortunately for us, the solution also lies in several other constructs that are part of the same theology. After all, isn’t it a fact that ‘Sufism’ that is widely owned by the Indian Muslims and appreciated equally by other believers, also have originated from the same theological concepts? That a plural thought such as ‘Sufism’ can find its root in Islam is an evidence enough to prove that Islamic theology also has a scope of being as accommodative and as plural as any of our Bharatiya religions. Unfortunately, our country has been following a policy that is even more repulsive than those adopted in the west. Indian intelligentsia and strategists, over the years, have been working overtime to prove that terror has no religion. What is worst is that they have also been investing enough time, energy and thought to prove that terror also has other colors. This approach in the name of ‘Secularism’ has worked negatively for our country on two accounts. Those who could have otherwise worked to find a theological solution of the ‘real terror’ were made to feel complacent while on the other hand this approach also provided enough reasons to instigate counter-terrorism. It is as if a cancer patient is advised that one should worry about the cancerous wounds only as much as one pays attention to scratches as both are primarily wounds but only of different verities.

There are umpteen verses that exist in Ancient Vedas, Ramayana, several instances reported in Mahabharata and Manusmriti that are neither owned nor followed now because they have lost all relevance today even if they were being owned and followed religiously historically. Old traditions such as Sati-pratha, Child-marriage, Denial of education to the Girls, Caste-discrimination, Denial of Equal opportunity and Animal sacrifice find no support today only because the progressive and reformist thoughts are traditionally being appreciated and encouraged in the same society. On the contrary, Islam needs such reformers immediately, not to disown irrelevant verses of holy ‘Koran’ or ‘Hadith’ or ‘Sharia’ but to pick up the right verses that can find relevance and encouragement in the present context. We must understand that reforms are accepted easily only when the reformers belong to the same society. Reforms imposed from outside have often proven to be counterproductive.

We only need to identify potential reformers within the Islamic society and back them to carry out the desired transformation. Is it difficult to understand that – what USA could have achieved through Saddam Hussain, they have actually achieved just its opposite till now after eliminating him? But for that we must begin with acknowledging the true color of ‘terror’ that is nothing but ‘Islam’.