Category Archives: Politics

Mardin Fatwa & New Mardin Declaration

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(Written by S Iftikhar Murshed and shared by Wequar Azeem)

A very interesting article.Does this mean that both Western Media and Muslim Media are wrongly blaming Wahabbism as the root cause of terrorism? Who is the real culprit? Taliban, JUI and majority of NWF is Deobandi. Although Deobandi and Wahabbi are considered cousins, but they hate each other and has differences in ideology. Are Deobandi happy that Wahabbis are getting all the blame and they are getting a free pass?  ( F. Sheikh).

Article

Friday,28th March 2014 marked the fourth anniversary of the adoption of the New Mardin Declaration by globally renowned Muslim theologians and academics from across the world including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Senegal, Kuwait, Yemen, Bosnia, Mauritania, Iran, Morocco and Indonesia. They convened at the picturesque south-eastern Turkish city of Mardin on March 27-28, 2010 and accomplished more in a few hours than what that grotesquely inept outfit known as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference has been able to achieve in the four decades of its futile existence.


The meeting, which was jointly organised by the Artuklu University and the Global Centre for Renewal and Guidance, was chaired by the famed scholar and former vice president of Mauritania, Sheikh Abdullah bin Mahfudh ibn Bayyih. In the two days that the conference lasted, it critically examined and then exposed the deliberate textual distortions of the Mardin fatwa of Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328). It is from the corrupted version of this decree that Al-Qaeda and its affiliated networks have derived their ideology which justifies mass murder and destruction in the name of Islam.

Though the fatwa was issued more than 700 years ago, its relevance to the terrorism-plagued contemporary world is undiminished. This was recognised by the Mardin scholars who accordingly decided “to take the fatwa from the specific geographical focus for which it was intended to a broader global focus and from the contingencies of Ibn Taymiyyah’s time to a timeless understanding.”

Ibn Taymiyyah was born in Haran, an obscure little town in the Mardin region, and was only seven at the time of the Mongol invasion of the area. His family, which consisted of some of the most well-known theologians of the times, was forced to flee to Damascus which was then ruled by the Mamluks of Egypt. But the damage insofar as Ibn Taymiyyah was concerned had already been done. At that tender age he had witnessed the atrocities perpetrated by the Mongols and was traumatised. Hideous memories of Mardin haunted him for the rest of his life. 

In Damascus he was taught Islamic jurisprudence by his father and steeped himself in the teachings of the Hanbali school of thought. Although Ibn Taymiyyah was soon acknowledged as the foremost religious authority of his times, he also became controversial. As early as 1293, he came into conflict with the local authorities for protesting the sentencing of a Christian on charges of blasphemy. Five years later he was accused of anthropomorphism (ascribing human characteristics to God) as well as for contemptuously criticising the legitimacy of dogmatic theology. 

Around that time Ibn Taymiyyah accompanied a delegation of the ulema to Mahmud Ghazan, the ruler of Mongol Empire’s Ilkhanate branch in Iran in order to persuade him to stop attacking Muslims. But suddenly ghastly scenes and images from his early childhood in Mardin came back to Ibn Taymiyyah, and, unable to restrain himself, he told the ruler bluntly: “You claim that you are a Muslim and you have with you muftis, imams and sheikhs but you have invaded us and reached our country for what? While your father and your grandfather, Hulagu, were non-believers, they did not attack and kept their promise. But you promised and broke your promise.”

This impassioned outburst brought Ibn Taymiyyah to the adverse notice of the authorities. He was subsequently jailed on several occasions for contradicting the opinions of the jurists and theologians of his day. On the orders of the Mamluk rulers of Cairo he was imprisoned in Damascus from August 1319 to February 1321 for propounding a doctrine that curtailed the ease with which a Muslim male could divorce his wife. He was incarcerated again in 1326 until his death two years later for issuing edicts that conflicted with the thinking of those in authority. 

But his fame had spread far and wide and his bier was followed by 20,000 mourners, many of them women who considered him a saint. It is ironic that Ibn Taymiyyah’s grave became a place of pilgrimage even though he was an exponent of the fundamentalist strand of Islam and is considered one of the principal forerunners of the Wahhabis.

It is against this background that the scholars at the Mardin conference moved on to a textual examination of Ibn Taymiyyah’s actual decree. He was pointedly asked whether his beloved land, Mardin, was an abode of war (dar al-kufr) or the home of peace (dar al-Islam). His answer was that an unprecedented composite situation had emerged. Mardin was neither an abode of peace where the Shariah prevailed nor was it a land of war because the inhabitants of the region were believers. Therefore, he decreed that “the Muslims living therein should be treated in accordance to their rights as Muslims, while the non-Muslims living there outside the authority of Islamic law should be treated according to their rights.”

This superbly nuanced ruling, which came to be known as the Mardin fatwa, was unmistakably peaceful in intent and was in accord with the teachings of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) who prohibited rebellion even against unjust authority in order to stave off anarchy and indiscriminate bloodshed. But the text was subsequently changed to read: “…while the non-Muslims living there outside the authority of Islamic law should be fought as is their due.”

This was done through the substitution of two letters in a single word. In the second version the word ‘yuamal’ (should be treated) had been rendered as ‘yuqatal’ (should be fought) as a result of which the purport of the decree was drastically altered. According to Sheikh Abd al-Wahab al-Turayri, an internationally acknowledged authority on Islamic jurisprudence and a former of professor at Riyadh’s al-Imam University, the only known copy of the original fatwa was the Zahiriyyah Library manuscript which had been archived at the Asad Library in Damascus. But unfortunately this was either not widely known or had been deliberately ignored. 

The corrupted version made its first appearance more than a hundred years ago in the 1909 edition of Ibn Taymiyyah’s ‘Fatawa’ that was printed and published by Faraj Allah al-Kirdi. This did incalculable damage because the error was never rectified and was not only republished time and again but also rendered into English, French and several other languages. 

It was used by the Egyptian ideologue Muhammad abd al-Salam Faraj (1954-1982) for his book ‘Al-Faridah ahl-Gaibah’ which posits that jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam and, in the words of Sheikh Abd al-Wahab al-Turayri, “has become a manifesto for militant groups” including Al-Qaeda and its affiliates. Faraj established the Jamaat al-Jihad in 1981 which assassinated President Anwar Sadat on October 6 of that year. He was executed six months later.

For the first time ever the distortions in the text of Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwa were exposed and corrected by the Mardin conference. This was a remarkable achievement and was acclaimed worldwide as a crippling blow to the ideology of terrorism. The New Mardin Declaration which was adopted on the conclusion of the conference affirms unambiguously: “Anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation…It is not for a Muslim individual or a Muslim group to announce and declare war or engage in combative jihad…on their own.”

This is a sobering thought for the Pakistan government which has committed the supreme folly of initiating direct talks with the TTP, the first round of which was held on Wednesday. The outcome of the Mardin conference was summed up by its spokesman who said that the meeting had brought together “scholars and theologians from different persuasions within Islam. But united they stood: Islam condemns terrorism and indiscriminate murder.” This is the message that the government’s panel of negotiators should convey to the TTP shura as the futile talks with the outlawed group gathers momentum.

  

How Vladimir Putin became evil

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Interesting article by Tariq Ali in The Guardian. After winding down of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, is Industrial Military Complex trying to prop up a new frontier in Ukraine and wooing Russia into military race? Excerpts:

“Once again, it seems that Russia and the United States are finding it difficult to agree on how to deal with their respective ambitions. This clash of interests is highlighted by the Ukrainian crisis. The provocation in this particular instance, as the leaked recording of a US diplomat, Victoria Nuland, saying “Fuck the EU” suggests, came from Washington.

Several decades ago, at the height of the cold war, George Kennan, a leading American foreign policy strategist invited to give the Reith Lectures, informed his audience: “There is, let me assure you, nothing in nature more egocentric than embattled democracy. It soon becomes the victim of its own propaganda. It then tends to attach to its own cause an absolute value which distorts its own vision … Its enemy becomes the embodiment of all evil. Its own side is the centre of all virtue.”

And so it continues. Washington knows that Ukraine has always been a delicate issue for Moscow. The ultra-nationalists who fought with the Third Reich during the second world war killed 30,000 Russian soldiers and communists. They were still conducting a covert war with CIA backing as late as 1951. Pavel Sudoplatov, a Soviet intelligence chief, wrote in 1994: “The origins of the cold war are closely interwoven with western support for nationalist unrest in the Baltic areas and western Ukraine.”

When Gorbachev agreed the deal on German reunification, the cornerstone of which was that united Germany could remain in Nato, US secretary of state Baker assured him that “there would be no extension of Nato’s jurisdiction one inch to the east”. Gorbachev repeated: “Any extension of the zone of Nato is unacceptable.” Baker’s response: “I agree.” One reason Gorbachev has publicly supported Putin on theCrimea is that his trust in the west was so cruelly betrayed.

As long as Washington believed that Russian leaders would blindly do its bidding (which Yeltsin did blind drunk) it supported Moscow. Yeltsin’s attack on the Russian parliament in 1993 was justified in the western media. The wholesale assaults on Chechnya by Yeltsin and then by Putin were treated as a little local problem with support from George Bush and Tony Blair. “Chechnya isn’t Kosovo,” said Blair after his meeting with Putin in 2000. Tony Wood’s book, Chechnya: The Case for Independence, provides chapter and verse of what the horrors that were inflicted on that country. Chechnya had enjoyed de facto independence from 1991-94. Its people had observed the speed with which the Baltic republics had been allowed independence and wanted the same for themselves.

Instead they were bombarded. Grozny, the capital, was virtually reduced to dust as 85 percent of its housing was destroyed. In February 1995 two courageous Russian economists, Andrey Illarionov and Boris Lvin published a text in Moscow News arguing in favour of Chechen independence and the paper (unlike its Western counterparts) also published some excellent critical reports that revealed atrocities on a huge scale, eclipsing the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre in Srebrenica. Rape, torture, homeless refugees and tens of thousands dead was the fate of the Chechens. No problem here for Washington and its EU allies.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/28/why-putin-crimea-strategy-west-villain

posted by F. Sheikh

‘ Clash of Old Egos & New World Order in Ukraine’ By Fayyaz Sheikh

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Mr. Vladimir Putin, and to a large extent Russian citizens are longing for old glory and respect worthy of world power, which faded away with the fall of Soviet Union.  Russia was gradually cornered by the West by absorbing the newly independent republics into EU and NATO.  Ukraine , which has large ethnic Russian population, turned out to be the last straw. Ukraine debacle raises some interesting questions;

Was the West overzealous in encircling the Russia by taking in some former Soviet republics in EU and NATO and making Russia impatient and nervous about its security?

Would any other country, with the same military power and veto power in UN’ have behaved differently than Russia under similar circumstances?

How it will impact future world affairs and alliances?

Did the West lost a golden chance of bringing Russia into Western style democracy and a free market economy?

I think the West overplayed their hand by having some former Soviet republics, even some financially bankrupt, join the EU and NATO. It not only made Russia nervous but some of these republics have become a financial burden on EU and hardly has any capacity to contribute much militarily to NATO. What is the purpose of having these former Soviet republics join the EU/NATO except warding off Russia? If the objective was to have a democratic independent governments in these countries, it could have been achieved by helping them by economic trade and building democratic institutions without having them join the EU/NATO. It would have lured even Russia more towards the Western Democratic values and free market economy rather than scaring it away. 

Ukraine is the most corrupt, both morally and financially, country which the EU was trying to bring in its fold. This time the Russia did not buy the assurances by the West that Ukraine will not be asked to join the NATO.  Although Russia’s annexation of Crimea is a condemnable act, but it is not entirely baseless as the West has us believe. Crimea was part of Russia and given to Ukraine in 1954 by a Ukrainian, Soviet President Khuruchiev. Before that, it was allied to Ottoman Empire and was cleansed of Tartars in Stalin era. Russia’s use of aggression and force in Ukraine is no different than what we have seen , especially in the last few decades, USA , EU  and allies used in violating the sovereignty of other free and independent countries. Our credibility in this regard is on thin ice.  

Our strategy to lure these former Soviet republics, including morally corrupt and financially bankrupt republics, join EU/NATO has been self-defeating. Russia was already a fading military power and our extension of NATO was un-necessary. We are also forgetting that the present Ukraine Government has some ultra-extreme far right nationalists in its ranks. These are like the Freedom Fighters of Afghanistan who later became terrorists. Mr. Kenan Malik writes about these elements in one of his article;

“While the overthrow of Yanukovich was clearly no fascist putsch, the new government is, nevertheless, disproportionately influenced by the far right.  Representatives of two neo-fascist parties, Svoboda and Pravy Sektor, now occupy seven ministerial posts, including that of deputy prime minister and national security.

Svoboda (‘freedom’) is a party that traces its roots to a Second World War partisan army allied to the Nazis and, till it rebranded itself in 2004, was known as the Social National Party. It is part of the far-right Alliance of European National Movements, whose members include the  British National Party, Jobbik, the Hungarian neo-fascist, anti-Semitic organisation and the French Front National.  Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok has denounced in parliament the ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia’; in 2005 he published an open letter calling for the government to halt the ‘criminal activities’ of ‘organised Jewry’, which was working to commit ‘genocide’ against the Ukrainian people.”

 

 We are at crossroads where the West needs the Russia and China’s co-operation to resolve difficult issues like Iran and Syria. It is possible that it will be start of new world order where Russia will turn toward East and Asia, courting China and India and other Asian countries. But West’s economic as well as military power will be hard to ignore. Economic power will count more than Military power. China is hesitant to openly support Russia because of its economic ties to West. This hesitancy will stop other countries, like India, also to openly ally with Russia against the West.

Ukraine will become the West’s problem, unstable with financial and ethnic problems as Eastern Ukraine still has large Russian population. If Ukraine joins the EU, it will further alienate Russia and it will hunker down with old ways. Financial sanctions will bite Russia, but it will bite Europe also which depends on Russian gas reserves. Russia with significant Military power and Veto power in UN, can still make West’s life hard and difficult in world affairs by acting as a spoiler, and some other aggrieved countries may join Russia to settle their own scores.

If the aim of the West was to spread democracy and free market economy in the former Soviet Republics and Russia, it may have hit a brick wall due to short sighted and testosterone driven policy of having these former soviet Republics join NATO. Soft power of ideas would have achieved better results in the long run than current power dependent policies of the West. 

Myanmar’s Deadly Medicine

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Worth reading editorial article in NYT about the plight of Muslim minority in Burma. Even the West’s human right darling and champion Aung San Suu, Noble Peace prize winner, has refused to condemn the violence by Buddhist extremists; Some excerpts;

A cynical decision by Myanmar to ban Doctors Without Borders from the state of Rakhine has left some 750,000 people without medical care since Feb. 28. About 150 people, including women with difficult pregnancies, are estimated to have died since the ban was imposed.

Myanmar acted after the group, which has provided medical care in Rakhine State since 1994, reported treating 22 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority for gunshot wounds and other injuries after an attack by a Buddhist mob in January. A United Nations investigation concluded that up to 40 men, women and children were killed in the rampage, which Myanmar denies took place.

If the goal in kicking Doctors Without Borders out of Rakhine State, and depriving hundreds of thousands of people of their only source of medical care, is to prevent foreign witnesses to the human rights violations in the region, it is a badly calculated strategy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/opinion/myanmars-deadly-medicine.html?hp&rref=opinion

Posted by F. Sheikh