The Taliban: The Totalitarianism of Islam [Archives:2001/11/Focus]

COMMON SENSE
By: Hassan Al-Haifi
That Islam came to counter ignorance, hypocrisy and tyranny, no one can deny but the most ignorant. However, since Islam was brought into this world as a lasting religious phenomenon, the most pure and clear-cut Islamic elements arose that declared themselves to be the puritanical personification of the creed. All throughout Islamic history one will find such closed minded groups wreaking havoc, and displaying an appalling taste for violence, bloodshed and pilferage, of which Islam is completely innocent. Over the ages these overzealous members of the creed have been generally contained, thanks to the very child-like stubbornness to pursue what may be regarded as the anathema of Islam, that kept the faithful generally in line with the more tolerant and comprehensible tenets that have made the religion the fastest spreading religion to date. But, thanks to substantial funding, the prodding by elements of non-Moslem clandestine cults (including the international Zionist establishment, in its discreet form) and the ignorance of those who have provided them with substantial financial support, this persistent virus among the faithful has become increasingly apparent and has worked its way to an international level. This reflects a sadistic cult that surely has adulterated the humanistic and cultural characteristic of Islam and projected Islam in a manner that surely does no service to the religion or to the goal of unifying the Moslem nation in spite of all the obstacles that it encounters today, many of which come from within.
It is from this that the Taliban of Afghanistan regrettably comes. It is indeed a serious threat to Islam that such “puritanism” is allowed to prevail within the Nation of Islam – the nation of peace, brotherhood and tolerance.
The nature of this kind of Islamic puritanism has not changed over the centuries, and often the rise of such groups has been smeared with the blood of the faithful in such gory ways, that one is bound to believe that there is no way God All Mighty can condone such terror. These groups have over the centuries carried out ugly massacres, not against the enemies of Islam, but among adherents of the faith and more often than not were easily overwhelmed as sensible Moslems overcame these groups and sent them underground.
Ironically, these groups have helped to do the work of outside enemies of Islam from within, succeeding in doing what the West has been trying to do to Islam for centuries, since the Moslem armies reached the proximity of Paris some 1300 years ago. In fact, many chroniclers contend that the latest surge of Moslem “puritanism” has its roots in British intelligence work during the “Golden” Age of Imperialism, when British intelligence officers in the Middle East found a ready ear amongst the faithful who claimed to be working towards bringing Islam back to its pure and uncorrupted form as “practiced by the Prophet Mohammed (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and the early disciples”. Nothing is further from the truth. The form of Islam preached by the followers of this sadistic puritanism has done great harm, killing thousands of innocent people as they plundered here and there throughout the Moslem World, on the premise that even Moslems who do not follow their misconceptions of Islam are “heathens” and thus their blood and property are sanctified. Even in the midst of the heart of the Moslem world, pilgrims on their way to Mecca have been raided by these bloodthirsty vagrants (thousands of Yemenis on their way to Mecca in the late Twenties of the last Century fell victim to such groups) and no mercy was spared against the old, the timid and the women, who fell victims to these highway robbers who have done such harm to themselves and the world of Islam that God could never forgive them. Not only are they destroyers of human life, even among their own brethren, but they go on a rampage destroying centuries of culture. For example, these fanatics despise domes or graves of important Moslem personalities over the ages who are highly regarded by other Moslems for their contributions to Islam or for their piety and deep faith in Allah. These so called fundamentalists, however, regard such graves as a form of idol worship, which must be uprooted. In fact, they are ready to call anyone who visits the grave of a long lost relative as anti-Islamic and will insist that the visitor should be killed. It is this kind of ignorance that has driven heretics like the Taliban, who have wreaked destruction and senseless bloodshed in Afghanistan, to introduce a totalitarian form of Islam that closes the doors to all forms of freedom and human rights, which Islam had in fact introduced to the world, when the world was still dominated by tyrants in the East and the West. Thus the destruction of centuries of cultural monuments by the Taliban should not be regarded as anything new, but as a clear indication of the destructive nature of the likes of the Talibans who are found everywhere in the Moslem world today, thanks to the lucrative funding they have access to (It is no secret where this funding is coming from to most Moslems) and thanks to obvious Western clandestine support, because of the destructive nature that characterizes these groups, which serves Western interests by bringing division among the oil and other mineral rich Moslem countries, and to keep Islam under control. It is for certain that if the funding line for these groups is cut – and it is not a mystery to most Moslems and probably most Western intelligence agencies where this funding is coming from, then these groups will vanish into the underground again.
What is important is to stress that this kind of sadistic puritanism is not worth the respect of true faithful Moslems, who understand the humanistic and tolerant spirit that Islam insists should be the motto that drives any Islamic missionary work. Anything to the contrary deserves to be shunned and damned by all Moslems, as well as non-Moslems. The sad fact is that these groups are farther from the Prophet Mohammed’s (P) teachings than any non-Moslem enemy of Islam can be attributed to be, because they rely on a tyrannical form of rule, to which even their own constituents are not free to question or argue against and their operations lack any form of transparency. Moreover, their insistence on creating sensationalism to attract the ill-informed to their fold or to embezzle whatever they can get are as far from Islam as anything can be.
It is worth noting however, that in situations where Moslem shrines (such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and some important shrines in India – with people in them sometimes) were burned by fanatics of other faiths, the international outrage was far less apparent!
Surely, the early Moslems who entered Afghanistan had seen those cultural monuments and once the people had adopted Islam peacefully, Moslems throughout the ages saw no logic or justification for destroying monuments that had withstood the ravages of time and showed the world that there was once a great people who trod the land of Afghanistan, who had a higher level of culture than the Taliban and their likes could ever claim to have.

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