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(The author is a Professor in International Economics in Nagasaki University, Japan)

In the comments made by Pope Benedict XVI quoting the question raised by the Byzantine Emperor Paleologos to a Persian scholar, Pope did not wanted to insult Islam but wanted to initiate a debate about the contribution of Islam to the world civilization. Muslims should response positively by disassociating themselves from the Muslim Empires in the past, whether Arab or Turkish or Mongol (Mughal in the Indian subcontinent).

Justifications for these empires are not justification of Islam. If the Muslims are against imperialism of the Arabs, Turks, Mongols, the rest of the world will certainly appreciate them. If they instead support imperialism of Arab, Turks and Mongols, the rest of the world will condemn them. It is essential for the Muslims to separate Islam as a religion from the Muslim empires and Muslim atrocities against the non-Muslims committed or inspired by the politicians and military generals, as it is the case in most of the countries with mixed population. In this case Islam can be justified as the religion, which promotes uniqueness of The God and there cannot be any quarrel between Islam and any other religions of the world. Even Hinduism believes in just one God Brahman.

It is not true that the Muslims protect Christians and the Jews as the “men of the books” and Pope Benedict XVI has unnecessarily started a vendetta against the Muslim reflecting his ‘crusade’ mind. If that was the case Crusade could not have taken place at all. In recent years Christians were massacred in Azerbaijan in 1989, Chechnya in 1992, Georgia in 1993, Indonesia in 1999, Bosnia in 1992, and in Kosovo in 2001. About 350 Russian children killed by Chechen Muslims in Beslan in 2004 were all Christians. War between the Jews and the Muslim is an unending saga.

Most important religion of the Middle East in 7th century was Zoroastrian, not Jewish or Christianity. Zoroastrians are now wiped out from the Middle East. Central Asia was Buddhist; there was no sign of it now. Afghanistan and Pakistan were Hindu-Buddhists, who do not exist there any more. Albania, Bosnia, and Chechnya, Tatarstan, Boskiristan, Azerbaijan in the former Soviet Union became Muslim because of the occupations by the Turkish Empire. Arab Empire did the same in North Africa. Jewish exodus from Palestine had started after the Arabs occupied it. St. Sophia, the most important church for the orthodox Christians in Constantinople (now Istanbul) was converted into a Mosque by the Turkish Empire in the same way Mosques were erected in the three most holy places of the Hindu religion, Ayuddhaya, Mathura and Varanasi by the Mongol (or Mughal) Empire replacing the temples.

Europeans did much worse in the Americas continents, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. Within ten years from 1757 when Robert Clive occupied Bengal, one third of the population of the Mughal province of Bengal (implying Indian states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkand, West Bengal, South Assam and Bangladesh) was wiped out. In North America, Australia, New Zealand the native populations were nearly exterminated. However, Christians disassociate themselves from these evil empires of Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain and these empires are not called Christian empires. Followers of Jesus do not consider Pizero, Cortez, Clive, Dalhousie, Napier, Cecil Rhodes or Kitcheners as Christian hero.

Christianity and the European Empires are distinct. It was a Christian priest Bartolome De Las Casa who wrote a long letter to both the Pope and Prince Philip of Spain in 1542 describing in detail the mass murder committed by the representatives of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, including Columbus, in Latin America and later published the book ‘A short Account of the Destruction of the Indies’ to publicize his cause to save the Indians in the Americas. It was a Christian priest Bishop Wilberforce who had started his very successful campaign against the slave trade in the British Empire. During the death and destructions in Vietnam and Cambodia and massacres organized the CIA in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nicaragua, the World Council of Churches had condemnation these mass murders very forcefully. The Christian Catholic priests of Latin America were in the forefront in the fight against oppression in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. Hindus had not supported or glorified the destruction of Buddha Gaya by Sasanka, the King of Gaur (Bengal) in the 6th century or the mass killings of the Buddhists by Pushyamitra, the King of Magadh in the 2nd century. Buddhists do not feel proud of the empires of China and Japan.

However, Muslims identify themselves with the empires of Arab, Turk and Mongols and are very proud about their exploits. Imperialists like Saladin, Ben Kasem, Ghoury, and Sultan Mahmood are considered as hero for the Muslims. We have not seen any Mullah or Imam to declare fatwahs against Jinnah, Surrawardy, Ayub Khan, Tikka Khan or Begum Zia for the atrocities they have organized against the non-Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Mohammed Iqbal, the national poet of Pakistan, even wrote poems to glorify Sultan Mahmud’s massacres of the Hindus in 9th century.

These acts are against Islam, as The Koran said,” God does not forbid you to be kind and equitable to those who have neither made war on your religion nor driven you from your homes. God loves the equitable” (in Al Utahanah, 60:5). Hindus in Kashmir and Bangladesh, Buddhists in Chittagong Hill District in Bangladesh, Christians in Indonesia, Russians in Krasnodar or Ossetia, Serbs in Bosnia, Georgians in Abkhazia and Armenians in Azerbaizan and Turkey have not declared war against the Muslims, but they were driven out of their home and killed mercilessly by the Muslims. Why is it not possible for some Imam to declare fatwah that these acts are un-Islamic?

The idea of Pakistan does not come from the true Islam. Leading Muslim politicians in British India Maulana Abul Kalam Azad or Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan have lived their lives according to Islam, but both were opposed to the idea of Pakistan. Those who provoked Muslims of India to kill the Hindus to get Pakistan, Surrawardy and Jinnah, the Muslim leaders advocating the creation of a separate homeland Pakistan for the Muslims in British India, were both very un-Islamic in their life style and beliefs. When Jinnah declared in Lahore 1940 that Hindus and Muslims are two opposite nations and enemies of the Hindus are the heroes of the Muslims, he was following Khalifa Yazid, the enemy of Prophet Mohammed. Those who were praised by Jinnah and Iqbal, the national poet of Pakistan, as hero of Islam are nothing but Arab, Turk, Mongol imperialists bringing death and destructions to Eurasia and North Africa, as said by the Byzantine emperor Paleologos, mentioned by Pope Benedict XVI.

The reason the world opinion is now against the Muslims is due to the fact that they support Muslim imperialism and committed violence against the people who have caused no harm against the Muslims. This is anti-Islamic, as The Koran said, “ Fight for the sake of God those that fight against you, but do not attack them first; God does not love aggressors” (Al-Baqarah, 2:191). Terrible atrocities were committed by these empires of Arab, Turk and Mongols on the countries they have occupied. There was no reason for the Muslims to support these empires as these were against the true Islam. Otherwise they bring disrepute to their own religion. The real message of the lecture given by Pope Benedict XVI in his alma mater University of Regensburg is that the origin of Christian theology is derived from the Greek-Roman secular philosophy of reason. The word Theology itself is derived from the Greek word of Theo-logos or the reasoning about god. Reason not blind faith must be the foundation of religion.

Hinduism has no dispute with this concept, as Rig Veda has provoked the Hindus about the nature of the God when it says, “ Only that God knows whence comes this universe, and whether it was made or uncreated; he only knows, or perhaps he knows not” (Rig Veda, X 129). The purpose is not to deny the God but to initiate a debate to enlighten our mind as the Gayatri prayer in the Vedas says, “ Let our meditation be on the glorious light of Savitri; may this light illuminate our minds.” The Koran also said, “ God is the light of the heavens and earth….God guides to his light whom he will,” (Al-Nur, 24:35). That light is the reason, as explained in Bhagwat Gita, “ Brahman is the vision, the end of vision, to be reached by vision..” (Chapter 13, verse 17)

Thus, rather than organizing violent demonstrations against the Pope Benedict, the Muslims should take up the challenge and propagate the true message of Prophet Mohammed. During the 7th century, in the known part of the world, in the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Persian Empire and in the Empires of India, religions were reduced to mindless rituals, witchcrafts and exploitation of the ordinary people by the priests appointed by the feudal lords. As Sri Krishna said, “ when righteousness is weak and faints and unrighteousness exults in pride, my spirit arises on earth” (Bhagwat Gita, Ch. 4, verse 7). Prophet Mohammed as that spirit of the God has tried to re-establish true religion by declaring the uniqueness of the God. He was against superstitions and rituals and asking everyone to the essential duties of every person to take care of the poor members of the society. Sri Krishna similarly said clearly that by building temples, performing rituals of the Vedas and worshiping other gods, one couldn’t reach Brahman. Jesus was crucified because he went against the Jewish priests who forgetting their true religion had turned the temple in Jerusalem as a business center. Prophet Mohammed also was attacked and forced to leave Mokkah.

That true message of Islam was demolished by Yazid, son of the king of Syria, a mortal enemy of Prophet Mohammed. He had killed Hassan and Hussein, the sons of Ali, the only Khalifa appointed by Prophet Mohammed himself. Thereafter Yazid burned down the Kabbah in Mokkah, killed every relatives of Prophet Mohammed, appointed his own people to rewrite the Haddiths - the biography of Prophet Mohammed, to suit his own evil purpose to expand the Arab empire to terrorize vast areas of Asia, Europe and North Africa by killing millions and destroying all achievements of earlier civilizations. His followers had destroyed Alexandria and the great centers of learning in Taxila, Balkh, Baghdad, Nalanda and Samarkhand in the name of Islam.

The mantle of that Arab empire was taken up by extremely ferocious and uncivilized Turkish tribes from central Asia, who had at one time occupied India, the Middle East including Egypt, East European countries including Greece and parts of Russia. Turkish emperors proclaimed themselves as Khalifa so that the subject people would be forced to worship them as divine, which is fundamentally against the teaching of Prophet Mohammed and is nothing but crude imperialism. In South Asia and Afghanistan, Mongols took over from the Turks later and started building mountains of severed heads of their innocent victims as Timur Lane did in Afghanistan and the Mongol Emperor Akhbar did in Chittore, India. When Muslims today consider American imperialists as “great Satans', they should understand that Arab, Turkish, Mongol empires, and the most recent Pakistani empires were not any virtuous than the British, Spanish, Portuguese, French or American empires.

Pakistan was created according to Jinnah as the homeland for the entire Muslim population of the British India. However Pakistan refuses to accept the Muslims of India. Pakistan has invaded and killed Muslims in Kashmir in October 1947 and Balochistan in April 1948. In 1947-48 in the North West Frontier Province, Pakistan has massacred thousands of Muslim ‘Khuda-I-Khitmatgars’ or the servants of Allah – a political movement of the people there, followers of Khan Abdul Gaffer Khan. In 1971, about 3 million people were murdered in East Pakistan. In the same way, Pakistan had organized Mujahideens and Talibans who have killed thousands of Shia, Tajik and Hajara Muslims in Afghanistan between 1992 and 2001. In Majer-E-Sharif in 1995, Talibans, who are mostly Pakistanis, killed at least 5000 Hajara Muslims. However, there was no fatwah against Jinnah, Yahia Khan, Zia Ul Haque, Benazir Bhutto or Mussaraf.

The Koran said in Jonah, 10:47, “ An apostle is sent to each community. When their apostle comes, justice is done among them; they are not wronged.” Also in Al-Nahl, 16:36, The Koran said, “ We raised an apostle in each community, saying: Serve God and keep away from false gods”. Thus, the Muslims should not refuse to accept Rama, Krishna, Zorathustra, and Gautam Buddha as the spirit of God. When the Muslims can understand that the god of all communities is one, as the Hindu saint Ramakrishna Paramhansa understood when he has converted himself to both Islam and Christianity, they will not cause violence against the people of other religions or ideas. Pope Benedict is provoking the Muslims in a way to turn to the true message of Prophet Mohammed and the Muslims should respond positively.

Religion according to Karl Marx is “ the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” (in ‘Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February, 1844). Religion is the shelter for the people who are dispossessed whether materially or psychologically. Sri Krishna said, “ For this is my word of promise, that he who loves me shall not perish. For those who come to me for shelter, however weak or humble or sinful they may be …they all reach the path supreme” (Bhagwat Gita, Ch9, Verse 31-32). The Koran also said, “ God is the patron of the faithful; he leads them from darkness to the light” (Al-Baqarah, 2:257).

The contributions of Prophet Mohammed are the messages in The Koran, “ Righteousness does not consist in whether you face towards the East or the West. The righteous man is he …who gives away his wealth to kinsfolk, to orphans, to the destitute, to the traveler in need and to beggars and for the redemption of captives…. who is true to his promises. Such are the true believers” (Al-Baqarah, 2:177). Islam means surrender to the will of God, and thus, Muslims should listen to these positive message of Prophet Mohammed and denounce violent doctrine of Khalifa Yazid. In this case they can influence the world towards Islam. If instead they take up the sword of Yazid and his violent Jihad towards the innocents they would face a new crusade from the rest of the world. That was the real message of Pope Benedict XVI.

Dr.Dipak Basu

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