The recent attacks on the 13th century Sufi Shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and Noorani Shrine in Pakistan were an attack on humanity and brought disgrace to the Muslim community. The attacks caused massive damage and claimed over hundred innocent lives.
Who exactly are the perpetrators of the attack is not clear. The attacks could have been carried out by some external elements in the disguise of Muslims or by Muslims themselves.
If the attacks were executed by Muslims, the question arises that who they are and why are they doing it. Who is influencing these people and how are these cowardly acts justified? Are these attacks carried out to avenge some injustice? Or are these shrines attacked in the name of Jihad? If these attacks are carried out as Jihad, the Holy Quran is being misquoted.
Whatever the reason may be, one thing is clear. Islam neither allows these sort of attacks nor justifies them. People who attribute them to Jihad are a bunch of stupid people who are totally ignorant of Islamic principles.
Jihad, as Allama Ibn Ul Qayyim Al Zawzi (who died in 751 AH) points out, begins with oneself and courses through to the devil and to his immediate neighbours and then culminates to the non-Muslims. After one gets through these three stages and conveys the message of Islam to non-Muslims with a proper method and due diligence, then only comes the stage of waging wars against those who are impeding in the way of Tauheed and Islam.
Moreover, the final stage of waging war is conditioned on several requirements dominated by the availability of all the required resources at one’s disposal. Unfortunately, in Indian sub-continent, Muslims have not had to cross even the first stage.
In the first stage, we need to understand Tauheed, which is the basic foundation of Islam and without which Islam is not complete. We need to pray, pay Zakat or taxes to the poor and most importantly make a distinction between halal and haram and not usurp the rights of fellow human beings.
We need to focus on weeding out internal evils before pointing fingers at anyone else. When we don’t follow the religion in its true spirit, how can we attack or justify attacks in the name of Jihad?
To conclude, Islam has a universal rule against the self-proclaimed Jihadists or suicide bombers: Whosoever kills any human being, has killed the entire humanity. So Islam attributes the loss of one life as the loss of humanity. This is enough to warn those who resort to violence against the innocent people.
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