By Bashir Goth

“Those who believe (in the Qur’ān) and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians, any who believe in God and the last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their lord: on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.” Qur’ān, (2:62).

When the Taliban zealots destroyed the 5 th century statues of Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in March 2001 the world watched with derision and disgust at the barbarism of such primitive hordes but did nothing to stop them. It took a human and civilizational tragedy of Sept11 to make the world realize how unstopped evil could spillover even to distant lands in today’s global world.

When Nazis in Germany ordered the burning of books in May 1933, it was only a handful of intellectuals and few newspapers that could see through the fog of history the oncoming disaster predicted a long way back by the German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine in his prophetic statement “ where one burns books, one will soon burn people.” It was the bibliocaust as described then by the Time magazine that was a prelude to the Jewish holocaust that followed for which the memory of Auschwitz stands as the ugliest crime committed in the name of an ideology.

Presently the world was outraged at the scene of Somali Militant Islamists unearthing the remains of bodies in an Italian cemetery in Mogdishu, dumping the skeletons in the most disrespectful way at a garbage dump and building a mosque in the middle of the cemetery and on top of whatever remains of the dead bodies. One has to wait and see what tragic consequence this also has to bring before the world acts to move against such barbarism.

It is not coincidental that all three acts of barbarism had to be committed in the name of puritanical ideologies with the Nazis burning the books to cleanse the German nation of unGerman ideas, while the Afghani Taliban and their counterparts in Mogadishu spearheaded by the Wahhabist Islamic courts, committed their crimes in the name of cleansing infidel traces of history from the House of Islam.

It is also tragic that both the Afghan and Somali Talibans had to hijack Islam and drag it in the mud in the face of the unforgivable silence and indifference of the majority of the mainstream Muslims. It may help here to refresh the minds of the non-Muslim world and confused Muslims as well that such desecration of the cemeteries and destruction of historical relics amount also to desecration and an act of aggression against Islam as well.

Taking the lead from the actions of the Prophet of Islam, one may recall it was Muhammad (PBH) who allowed a delegation of Christians from Najran who called on him to stay in the Holy Mosque of Medina. And when at evening, the Christians desired to offer religious service; the Prophet permitted them.

It was also Prophet Muhammad who, when he saw a funeral procession of a dead Jew passing by, stood up to show respect for the dead. When he was told that the deceased was not a Muslim but a Jew, he said, “The funeral may be of a Muslim or a non-Muslim we must get up to show respect”.

It was again the Prophet of Islam who prayed for the soul of the Abyssinian Negus when he heard about his death. History revealed to us that when the word of the death of Negus of Abyssinia reached him, Muhammad turned to the congregation after the next prayer and said to them: “This day a righteous man hath died. Therefore, arise and pray for your brother Ashamah.” He then led the prayers. The Islamist groups claim that the Negus had secretly converted to Islam as they cannot accept the idea of Muhammad praying on the soul of a non-Muslim, but experts in the history of Islam say that Muhammad prayed for the Negus for being a good Christian who also protected his followers from prosecution in the hands of their non-Muslim tribesman at the beginning of Islam.

It may also be worth mentioning here that it was the same Christian King of Abyssinia for whom the Prophet of Islam had asked him to stand on his behalf and to ratify his marriage to Umm Habiba, Abu Sufyan’s daughter, whose husband died while Muslims were in the protection of the Negus. The Negus solemnized the marriage and threw a feast in his palace with all Muslim exiles invited.

Another shinning example of the Islamic tolerance and respect toward other religions was evidenced by the well-documented Covenant of Omar. When the Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab, entered the city of Jerusalem in 638 AD, he granted to the people of Jerusalem and to the Patriarch Safronius a covenant of peace and protection which came to be known the Covenant of Omar, or the Code of Omar. In addition, to ensure the care and protection of Christian and Jewish Holy places, Omar entrusted each of the major holy places to the care and protection of a different Muslim family.

The text of the Covenant read as follows: “This is an assurance of peace and protection given by the servant of Allah Omar, Commander of the Believers to the people of Ilia' ( Jerusalem). He gave them an assurance of protection for their lives, property, church and crosses as well as the sick and healthy and all its religious community.

Their churches shall not be occupied, demolished nor taken away wholly or in part. None of their crosses nor property shall be seized. They shall not be coerced in their religion nor shall any of them be injured.”

History says that Omar also prohibited the destruction of any Christian images or places of worship. It is related that Omar had refused to pray in the Church when the prayers time came and there was no mosque yet built for the victorious Muslim forces. Invited by the Patriarch Safronius to offer prayers in the Church, Omar declined the invitation saying that if he did, Muslims would lay claim to the Church years later as the place where Omar had prayed.

This is the true Islam that the new Talibans in Mogadishu like the Afghan Talibans before them are trying to replace with their Wahhabism brand which is known for its demolition of the domes and cemeteries of the Prophet’s wives and his prominent supporters when they captured the holy cities in the early 19 thC. They leveled the domes of the houses of Khadijat al Kubra, prophet’s first wife, Imam Ali and Abu Bakr-al-Siddiq, first and fourth Caliphs of Islam. In Medina they laid waste to the gravestones of the Janat al-Baqi cemetery next to the Prophet’s Mosque, where the remains of some of the greatest names of Islam in its nascent years lie. The Wahhabists also plundered treasuries of the Prophet’s mosque. It was due to Muslim world outrage and the forces of the Ottoman Empire that saved the dome of the Prophet’s Mosque from destruction.

It must be clear to all Muslims and non-Muslims alike that the zealots of Islamic courts in Mogadishu have committed a crime against humanity and against the respect for the dead resting in peace in their last abode regardless of their previous creed, color or race.

It is an irony that when Somali refugees are sheltered by Italian Churches, when generations of Somali children get home and education and dream of a good future in Europe and other countries of the West, when churches rush to the rescue of the Tsunami victims of Somalia and home thousands of Somali refugees from man-made disasters, when even the clerics of Mogadishu themselves owe their subsistence to the monthly assistance send to them by their sons and daughters living on the handouts of churches and the welfare of the Western tax payers, when the Christian world is trying to help the living Muslims to have a decent life; that Christians who died decades ago cannot find peace in their lasting abode in a small plot of land in the House of Islam.

It is time that mainstream Muslims should stand up and call this by what it is “an act of barbarism and a crime against Islam, against all recognized human norms and against human decency”. They should break their eerie silence and declare this as a plague that has to be condemned and confronted before it is too late. They should know that to describe this as only a land-grab and real estate companies fighting for spoils of public land is an ugly euphemism tantamount to a derelict of duty and an incongruous attempt to insult to human intelligence and absolve the perpetrators of their barbaric act of vandalism. It is time to rescue noble Islam from the claws of the hijackers.

I may not find a better way to conclude this piece than to remind the fanatics that we do not need them to preach to us as who is right and who is wrong in the ways of God as Almighty Allah has told us 14 th centuries ago and in the mouth of the Great Prophet of Islam that it was only Almighty God and no else that held the truth of the matter. That it was He alone who could judge who is right and who is wrong as it is evident in the following Ayah of the holy Qur’ān: “To each among you have we prescribed a Law and an open way. If God had so willed, He would have made you a single people, but (His plan is) to test you in what He hath given you: so strive as in a race in all virtues. The goal of you all is to God; it is He that will show you the truth of the matters in which ye dispute.” ( 5:48). I may not claim absolute claim on whose side the truth lies but as is obvious to every living human being and particularly to the victims of Tsunami and every other calamity that bests human beings, I have no doubt as who has won the race in virtues, in rubbing the tears of the deprived and alleviating the misery of the poor, the homeless and the refugee.

Bashir Goth
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