US envoy says West is not at war with Islam

Militarisation of religion is dangerous, says US special representative to Muslim communities Shaarik Zafar

ISLAMABAD:

President Barack Obama’s point-man for Muslim communities has called for re-doubling efforts to debunk the myth propagated by those who seek to justify violence through religion that the West is at war with Islam.

“Militarisation of religion is very dangerous as it takes away all the wonderful redeeming spiritual aspects which are the very basis of a religion,” said Shaarik Zafar, the US special representative to Muslim communities, at a roundtable with Pakistani journalists on Wednesday.



“It is a dangerous, dangerous game whenever people try to militarise religion. And right now, you have seen it in your part of the world that there are rising sectarian tensions,” he said. Zafar, who
is of Pakistani origin, was appointed in as a special representative at the US Department of State in July 2014. He is responsible for driving US Secretary of State John Kerry’s engagements with Muslim communities around the world.

Zafar, nonetheless, pointed out that religion and religious people could play an important role in society outside of theology. “When it comes to making strong statements on issues of health, such as vaccination programmes, resolving disputes, and other things, religious people have been playing an incredibly important role. And so we have to recognise that.”

He pointed out that the only way to counter those who were using religion to promote violence was to highlight voices which called for peace and tolerance.



Da’ish a different challenge to al Qaeda

Asked about the rise of the Middle Eastern extremist group Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym Da’ish, Zafar said the group presented a different challenge than al Qaeda.



“Challenge of Da’ish is that they claim to be building a false caliphate and they present a different type of challenge,” he said but warned that putting everything under ‘one banner’ denies the complexity of the challenge.

Zafar highlighted that the combined efforts of the US-led global coalition against al Qaeda, of which Pakistan was a key member, had started yielding results with the terror group’s ideology not resonating like it did before.

West not at war with Islam

The US envoy highlighted that despite their overt differences and varying narratives, most terror groups, including the likes of al Qaeda and Da’ish, promote the narrative that the West was at war with Islam.

“The single thing that they do, one commonality, is the false claim that there is a war against Islam and that is being waged by the West and their allies, including the government of Pakistan,” Zafar said.



“If there is a war against Islam that is being waged by al Qaeda and Da’ish, they are killing more Muslims than anybody else and we saw that in Peshawar [on December 16, 2014].”

Published in The Express Tribune, February 18^th, 2016.