Lessons from History

The Need for a Counter-Ideology The present-day Muslim militants have adopted a selfstyled concept of jihad, that is, to establish divine rule in the world, and have chosen to give their militancy religious justification by calling it jihad. This is why the present Muslim militancy has gained so much ground. In other words, its proponents look upon it and project it as ‘justified’ militancy, or militancy based on ideology. To discharge this ‘duty’ they have – by their way of it – given legitimacy to all forms of violence, even suicide bombing. Now the question is: how to tackle this militancy? The answer is that it requires a counter-ideology. The militants have purportedly legitimized their militancy by applying to it a wrong and misleading interpretation of the religious scriptures. We have to delegitimize it by replacing the wrong interpretation with the right interpretation. No other strategy will work. Man is a rational animal. He always accepts things when his mind is properly addressed, and Muslim militants should certainly be no exception to this rule. Here, I would like to narrate a very relevant story. Once on a visit to Palestine, I found some Arab boys singing a song in unison. One line of this was: Halumma nuqatil halumma nuqatil fa inna al-qitala sabil ar-rashadi (Let us make war, let us make war, for war is the way to success!) I told them that it would be better if they sang like this: