New
Age Islam Special Correspondent
23 May 2019
Classical
Islamic historiographers like Ibn Hisaham and Ibn Ishaq report that the
Ghazwa-tul-Badr was the first Islamic military expedition which took place on
the 17th Ramzan in 624. After eight years, Muslims achieved the victory in the
holist city of Mecca during Ramazan.
On Ghazwatul Badr, social media campaigns, mostly in
Urdu, are underfoot to promote a willful misinterpretation of the Islamic event
in the Facebook pages and WhatsApp groups.
But this
occasion is marked with a wilful misinterpretation of Islamic history which
seeks to launch jihadist attacks during Ramazan in many parts of the world,
particularly in Jammu & Kashmir. Today, on the 17th day of Ramazan the
first Islamic battle— Ghazwa-tul-Badr also known as Jang-e-Badr in the Indian
subcontinent—was orchestrated with the win of the Prophet (pbuh) and his
Companions against the pagans of Makkah. But surprisingly, it is treated by the
extremist and separatist groups in J&K as a call to arms and not mercy as
was ultimately intended in the event.
The All
Parties Hurriyat Conference Chairman, Syed Ali Gilani, while felicitating
Kashmiri Muslims on the holy occasion of Ramazan, said that the month is not
only an exercise for fasting and worship(Ibadat) but also for an overall social
wellbeing of society. He further said: “If fasting, Taraawih, charity, Qur’an
recitation and other extra [Nafil] Ibadat fails in Ramazan, to hammer our
conscious to the realization of Haq (truth) and Batil (falsehood), then this
holy month can give us nothing except fifteen hours long pause of hunger. It
will fail to enlighten our dark days”.
Worryingly
enough, the twisted sermons on the sacredness of Ramazan with a militarized
underpinning are conducive to confrontational attitudes, supplemented by the
religious ignorance of the separatist Kashmiri leaders of the older generation.
They have put such a poisonous seed in the minds of the youth that they
continue to live in an adversarial relationship with their own nation and the
people. Even the rich syncretic religious traditions of peaceful coexistence in
the Kashmir Valley are on the rampage, thanks to the concerted efforts of the
Salafist and Jamat-e-Islami networks.
Falsely
contrasting the situation of Muslims in India with the oppression meted out to
the holy Prophet and his companions in Makkah, Geelani says:
“Pathetic
and miserable condition of Muslim Ummah is not only painful but thought
provoking as well. Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is also in the ruins and presents
a devastated look, disturbing and panicking our new generation. We as a nation
are drifting away from our source of Hidayah, which has deprived us from the
sense of differentiating between Haq and Batil (right and wrong).
First, the
clarification must be made about the oppressive pagans or the Quraish tribe in
Makkah. They historically wronged and harshly tortured the Prophet (pbuh) along
with his followers, denying them the basic human rights of freedom of life and
faith and inflicted great injustice upon them. But the believers in the Prophet
(pbuh) persisted and won against all odds. This is where the significance of
the 17th day of Ramzan lies, as it also marks the historic and epoch-making
conquest of Makkah known as “Fath-e-Makkah” in the Islamic history. This is one
of the most sacred days and events of the entire Islamic calendar like the
Shab-e-Qadr (Night of Power).
But the
twisted interpretation of this historic event was not so popular among Indian
Muslims unless it was promulgated in a wave of Islamic messages spread across
social media. They began to preach an ‘emulation ‘of the historic victory that
the Prophet’s companions achieved in the battle of Badr and thus, they
popularized the term ‘Youm-e-Badr’ (the day of Badr) in Jammu & Kashmir.
The event
of Badr is actually misconstrued and twisted by the self-styled Islamic
ideologues like Geelani with an aim to provoke Muslims to act in vengeance against
their supposed enemies. The mainstream Muslims particularly those in Jammu and
Kashmir have to remind themselves of the true Islamic ideal of Marhama
(mercy) in place of Malhama (retaliation or war). They must recall that
having achieved a crowning victory over the oppressive Quraish, a few
Companions, overjoyed with the victory, loudly said: “Al-Yum YumulMalhama”
(Today is the day of retaliation). But this proclamation was strongly rejected
by the Prophet of mercy. He rather said: “La al-YaumYaumulMarhamah” (No,
today is the day of compassion).
But
tragically, some warmongers in Jammu & Kashmir choose to celebrate the Badr
day as an occasion of peddling terror. They particularly engage in south
Kashmir to celebrate the ‘anniversary of Ghazwa-e-Badr’ with ghastly terror
attacks, as Shakeel Shamsi, a veteran Urdu journalist noted in an editorial in
the daily Inquilab. But on the other hand, some semi-literate and gullible Urdu
editors like Roznama Sahafat regularly carry sycophantic articles on the ‘contemporary
relevance ‘of the Ghazwa-e-Badr. Shockingly, in many Pakistani Urdu newspapers
such as Nawa-e-Waqt of Lahore and websites like Daily Urdu Point and the
official website of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the theological justifications for striking
terror on the occasion of Ghazwa-e-Badr are routinely put up.
In Kashmir,
this peculiar form of jihadist atrocity is not an isolated phenomenon.
Historically, the valley witnessed vicious attacks around Ramzan in the 90s as
well as in the early 2000s. Former BBC correspondent, Yusuf Jameel, who covered
Kashmir’s armed militancy in the nineties, recounted how they stood out as the
“bloodiest” in terms of the militant attacks in Kashmir. “The scale of attacks
back in the ’90s was much greater. There were a number of incidents during the
nineties on a given day. The scale was much larger than this”, he said.
Scores of
innocent people bear the brunt of these terror attacks and many government
troops and cops are shot dead. This is how the Ghazwa-e-Badr anniversary is
marked every year with obnoxious actions and extremist designs not only in
Jammu & Kashmir but also in other parts of the world. In fact, the ISIS
also celebrated the event of Ghazwa-tul-Badr on every 17th day of Ramzan in its
previously occupied territories in Raqqa and Mosul. According to Kurdish news
source Rudaw, the ISIS celebrated the 17th Ramzan, while at the same time it
discredited other Islamic festivals including the two biggest Islamic
occasions—Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Adha. ISIS clerics asked the residents of
their occupied lands to shun the Eid celebration as it never existed during the
Prophetic era.
According
to the leading radical Islamist, Abu Mus’ab Zarqawi, the military expeditions
of the Islamist fighters on the day of Ghazwa-tul-Badr or 17th Ramzan is
attributed with divine intervention. An ISIS spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
urged his worldwide sympathisers and loyalists to systematically launch attacks
during the holy month of Ramzan. He reportedly said: "Ramadan, the month
of conquest and jihad. Be prepared to make it a month of calamity everywhere
for the non-believers ...”
Further to
the point, the ISIS jihadists chose this auspicious month to further their
nefarious designs in Orlando (Florida), Istanbul (Turkey) and Dhaka
(Bangladesh). From Florida, Istanbul, Dhaka, London, Baghdad, Java, Indonesia,
to Manchester and Tehran, most ISIS terror attacks were orchestrated very
particularly during the final days of Ramazan.
As we are
winding down to the end of Ramazan, a note of caution is seriously required,
particularly in the context of Jammu & Kashmir. As the jihadists try to
mark it as ‘a month of calamity’, the mainstream Muslims must not forget: When
the Sahaba said: “Al-YumuYumulMalhama” (today is the day of retaliation), the
Prophet (pbuh) strongly rebutted: “La, Al-YaumuYaumulMarhama” (No, today is the
day of mercy).
2:55 AM
Moderate Islamist here
0 comments:
Post a Comment