By Dr. Mohammad Ghitreef, New Age Islam
16 July 2016
On Friday, a black Friday to me and to many like me, July 15,2016 there was another heinous, horrible attack on innocent French civilians who were celebrating their national glory. The killer driver was recognized in initial investigation as a 31 years old Tunisian Muslim youth. He brutally and heartlessly took on the poor merry making people and rode over them, killing at least 84 and leaving hundreds injured as his truck was loaded with deadly explosive weapons. The Tunisian young killer shouted Allah-o-Akbar (God is Great!) as he started firing on the innocent citizens before he speeded his bus and ploughed over them.
Now it is a time for worldwide condemnations and messages of condolence to French government from world leaders including Muslim countries, as we always witness on such occasions. Yet in our community there will be no introspection about it as we always explain away these incidents as dire consequences of perceived injustices done by West. It will not be any exaggeration if I dare say that even in some corner of our community there would be elements, people call them fringe, which maybe the case, who would be overjoyed and happy that one of their jihadist fellows accomplished a great job killing so many Kafirs in one attack.
Yet in our community there will be no feeling of shame, or regret at losing so many human lives, and no thinking to stop all that which is tarnishing our image before the world community and maligning Islam (which itself means peace). And life will on very normally as it is always seen in the wake of any such brutal attack as we have become accustomed to it. As it is OK, with no problems for us!!
We all will be back to our daily schedule, to our normal work, to our gossips and chit chat. And there will very soon be celebrated columnists in Urdu dailies specially in Pakistan and in India too, trying their best to passing the buck to the West itself. There will be Islamists everywhere, though condemning the gory incident, some in strong words and some in low profile, but at the same time giving it a conspiracy colour!
There will be Jamaat-e-Islami's official biweekly organ Dawat (Urdu) castigating the terror attack and yet inventing another excuse for the inhuman crime, and will surely and shamelessly say, Lo and behold! ''the French secret service in connivance with dubious and murderous Israeli Mossad staged this killing drama to serve further war mongering Islamophobes of the West, say, for example Donald Trump etc, etc.
Why are we not ashamed and embarrassed? Why are these suicide attacks in the name of Islam not stopping? Why don’t we understand that if this continues, in the long run, we Muslims and Islam will be on the receiving end. Indeed, we already are, to a certain extent, and with terrorism in the name of Islam continuing, Islamophobia will only grow.
Dr. Mohammd Ghitreef is the director of Foundation for Islamic Studies, New Delhi.
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