TAHIR KHAN
THE globe is encircled with religious intolerance. Many new events of religious intolerance, especially against Muslims, come to the surface now and them. The basis to this religious intolerance is American Political Scientist, Samuel Huntington’s book, “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”. He wrote that book in Post Cold War period, in 1996. His man argument was that future wars would be fought not among countries but among civilizations. Basically, he wanted to create an enemy for the West against which they must unite and better their economy. Hence, the enemy he created was, Islamic Civilization. Following that, a wave of religious wars and associating wars with religions began. It ultimately, resulted into a great rage and propaganda against Muslims throughout the globe. Recently, on 05 August 2019, India, under fascist regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, scrapped Articles 370 and 35A from Indian constitution. This was basically a religiously motivated move against Muslims of Kashmir to robe them off of their religious and political protection and autonomy. Further, the same government, following extremist ideology of Hindutva of M S Golwalker, have formulated new acts called Citizens Amendment Act (CAA) and National Register of Citizens, targeting Muslims of India only. Additionally, the acts performed in Norway sent a wave of hatred and deep anger throughout the Muslim world. From Norway and its neighbour country Denmark new incidents against Islam such as burning of Holy Quran, writing of ‘Satanic Verses’ book by Salam Rushudi, unleashing a fierce police dog at a Muslim person in mosque in Norway and recent issue in which a person wanted to burn Quran which was foiled by a Muslim young man who attacked the offender, are witnessed regularly. Moreover, an incident of mass shooting by a Christian terrorist in a mosque in New Zealand is another event in this regard. Here, a lone shooter came live on Facebook and killed brutally multiple people who had gathered in a mosque to offer Friday prayers. This was seen as a great event of sorrow and grief by every person having a human heart. Similarly, Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar have also faced persecutions, killings and hardships on the religious grounds. Buddhist forces have ruined Rohingya’s cities, towns, destroyed their properties, annihilated their agriculture and converted their villages into ashes. That is the reason Time Magazine has issued its latest edition with the cover photo of Buddhist Monk with a title “The Face of Budhist Terror”. This shows that Muslims throughout the globe are targeted and are in great danger. These are well-organized and pre-planned threats to Muslims. However, still there is a time to counter this threat of increasing religious intolerance against Muslims throughout the globe. The first step in this regard is to launch religious awareness campaigns to overcome this insanity and intolerance at individual as well as at collective level against Muslims. The Muslim governments should teach the real tenets of all major religions. They should develop books and strategies that impart basic understanding of all major religions. This would create religious harmony among all the communities of the globe and would mitigate misunderstanding of Islam and Muslims throughout the globe. Moreover, media is the opinion maker in today’s modern world. Therefore, Muslim States have to create new channels. Those channels would play a vital role in creating peace and religious harmony. Indeed this is the century of technology and media is the greatest invention of this technology. War on Terror, after incident of 9/11 was made possible and Turkish coup was failed only because of media. Therefore, those programmes should be devised which create religious harmony and which may mitigate biases and anti-Muslim thoughts. Al Jazeera is playing a very vital role in this regard. Other such channels should also be introduced which may propagate Muslim point of view throughout the globe.And, hat creating programs should not be allowed to go on air. Social media accounts should be disallowed to propagate hate and disharmony. Social sites and application owners should be contacted through OIC to disallow hate speeches and events against Muslims. Finally, the politics should be conducted beyond religions. All Muslim countries should keep aside all their ethnic, sectarian and political differences at one side and work for the betterment of Muslim community. You are not seen at international fora as a Sunni, Salafi or Shia but you are seen as Muslims, hence, are in equal danger. Therefore, you must not intermingle religion with politics. To conclude, Muslims have faced many dangers and are still facing the worst situation globally, but if this intolerance against Muslims keeps on increasing and aggrandizing, it woud cause a great danger for all Muslims throughout the globe. Therefore, it is upon Muslims that how do they tackle the issue and work for the betterment of Muslim community and for the betterment of globe. —The writer is a researcher in social and political affairs.
