Chapter Six

The ‘Islamisation’ of Violence beings has assumed a new form. This is what can be called ‘ideological murder’. That is to say, killing people on the basis of a particular ideology, or shedding human blood on the basis of some ideological justification. This notion of ideologicallyjustified violence has made it possible for people to blindly and indiscriminately kill others, ignoring the distinction between culprits and innocents. And this does not prick their conscience at all, because, based on their misconceptions, they think that they are killing people for the sake of the Truth. Ideological justification of violence was invented in the first half of the 20th century by the Communists. They believed in the theory of ‘Dialectical Materialism’. According to this belief, the only way that ‘Revolution’ could come about was by one class violently wiping out another. This belief led these people to massacre some 50 million people in different parts of the world. A second, even more frightening, example of ‘ideological violence’ was that which emerged in the Muslim world. This extremist ideology got a major boost in the first half of the 20th century. Two present-day Muslim parties in particular were responsible for developing and spreading this ideology—the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimoon or ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ in the Arab world, and the Jamaat-e-Islami in the non-Arab world. Based on its ideology, the Ikhwan adopted the following slogan: al-Quran dasturuna wal jihad manhajuna, or ‘The Quran is our Constitution, and Jihad is Our Method.’ ‘Through jihad [in the sense of violent method]’, they insisted, ‘We have to enforce the Quran throughout the whole world.’ This slogan became so popular in the Arab world that people began singing on the streets: Halumma nuqatil! Halumma nuqatil! Fa innal qitala sabilar rashadi! Come, let us wage war! Come, let us wage war! Because war is the path to success!