THE report from Amman that a committee of 100 Muslim scholars has been formed to address “through dialogue” the critical issues affecting Muslims around the world is another welcome attempt to meet the most serious challenge the world of Islam has faced in a long time. This, of course, is not the first of such efforts. Committees have been formed, dialogue forums held, seminars conducted and workshops organized in many parts of the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds to send forth the message that the mission of Islam is to influence human hearts, not to conquer human bodies. As the cradle of Islam, the Kingdom has taken a leading role in all such initiatives.
However, events across the Muslim world tell us that the messages have yet to register where they matter. “Dialogues” addressing critical issues affecting Muslims continue to be conducted, as they have been for some years now, with bombs, AK-47s or knives. Reason, logic and argument have yet to make the scene. That is what we hear from Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Pakistan and other theaters of Muslim “dialogue.” Sadly for Muslims, and more so for Islam, this butchery by Muslims — of Muslims and non-Muslims — goes accompanied by the claim that all this is done for Islam. That claim is blasphemy — an insult to a religion that holds human lives sacred.
This is a message that can be conveyed only by enlightened Muslim scholars who know that theirs is a religion of peace, not of slaughter. It is their responsibility because the present crisis is a result of their failure to give their community the guidance it needed when it needed wise guidance and counsel. While Muslim lands were being colonized, their economies being destroyed, their people being pushed to educational and intellectual backwardness, the scholars were not where they should have been — in the command post, directing the ship. They were debating trivialities or making their own private nests more comfortable. Taking advantage of the situation, the religion was hijacked by demagogues. Some of them were misguided zealots without understanding, while others were buccaneers using the religion to mask their real intentions and to attract unthinking followers.
The first job of Islamic scholars and Muslim intellectuals, when they finally begin their historic mission, is to make absolutely clear, using every means available, that every conflict involving Muslims is not a holy war. Jihad has its rules. It is not anarchy where every man with personal or sectarian grievances can declare war on others. Equally important is the job of persuading the Muslim and world leadership to engage truly in solving the problems that feed justifiable Muslim anger. The tragedies of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and others have to be brought to an end. The Muslim people have to be made to feel that the world is not stacked against them and that their problems will be solved by their own, and the world’s, leaders.
When this happens, the message will be heard.
