Seminar: Only state can wage jihad, say scholars

‘Future of jihadi outfits depends on removal of people’s grievances’.

The future of jihadi organisations is closely related to the removal of causes for which aggrieved people are taking up arms. This was the consensus at a seminar organised by the Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) here on Thursday, said a press release issued by the institute. 

Lt-Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul, one of the speakers, mentioned Kashmir as the source of jihadist militancy in this part of the world which would continue to fuel violence until India accepted the demands of the people of Kashmir.

Gen. Gul said that a historic event had taken place two days ago at Chicago where NATO and the United States had conceded their defeat at the hands of the Afghan people who were fighting against their country’s occupation. He said that the world has undergone a great change as in the unequal war between the downtrodden people and the “mightiest imperial power”: the weaker side was winning because its cause was just. He lamented that at a historic time like this, India has chosen to toe the American line and place itself on the wrong side of history.

Prominent Indian journalist Ajit Sahi of “Tahelka” fame agreed with the general and said that Pakistan’s example was before everybody. The country has gained nothing after over half a century of toeing the American line. Speaking on equivalence of jihadi organisations in non-Muslim societies, he said he had found that most cases of terrorism against Muslims in his country were fabricated. He said that states and their institutions needed villains to keep people’s attention diverted from real issues, such as poverty.

He made a strong plea for people-to-people contacts and opening of borders to promote a climate of friendship in the subcontinent so that the political issues could be solved in a conducive atmosphere without the misunderstandings that state agencies create to keep people divided.

Seven papers and presentations were made at the seminar. In his paper on the concept of jihad, Professor Mushtaq Ahmad of International Islamic University Islamabad quoted from the Quran and other Islamic literature to assert that only the state could wage jihad and no private individual or organisation could take on that sacred responsibility.

He said that Islam forbade the killing of innocent people and there could be no justification for indulging in violence in the name of jihad. He said it was the government’s duty to eliminate non state actors engaged in violent activities. He dispelled the notion of jihad being perpetual war against nonbelievers, saying there has to be a cause to wage jihad.

Dr Rashid Ahmad, University of Peshawar, said that war under the concept of jihad had to have a necessity, like defence or eradication of persecution or punishment for treachery or against oppression.

Concluding the first session, Dr S M Zaman former chairperson Islamic Ideology Council said the term jihadi was a contemptuous term that the west had devised to give jihad a bad name.

In his paper on modern warfare and jihadi struggle, Air Commodore Khalid Iqbal (retd) explained the evolution of warfare from third to fourth and fifth generation of warfare in which the distinction of who was fighting whom and victory and defeat had been diluted. It is now a perpetual war and the state has scant means for a definite closure.

Winding up the seminar Khalid Rahman, Director General IPS said that if terrorism is a global problem, it is the responsibility of the United Nations to deal with that. But the UN’s approach is conceptually weak as it has not been able to define what exactly constitutes terrorism.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2012.