Adding insult to injury

Adding insult to injury

573

1993 10 October 21-23 Adding insult to injury (706)

On January 12,1987, a mob of students from deeni madarsas (religious schools) in Peshawar, Pakistan, attacked the offices of the Frontier Post, a local newspaper causing extensive damage to them. Their action was in protest against the reproduction of a painting of Adam and Eve by the German artist, Lucas Cranach in the newspaper’s Friday magazine of January 9, 1987. The raid was carried out at the instigation of their leaders, who had taken it upon themselves to make fiery speeches on the subject. After congregational prayers the following Friday, they also held a rally in which they described the attack on the newspaper’s offices as “correct and timely”, and “congratulated those who performed their religious duty by attacking the newspaper’s offices.”

Justification of such action and congratulation of its perpetrators only adds insult to injury, for neither the action itself nor the teachers’ approbation of it is inspired by true Islamic principles. In such matters, there is one hard and fast rule, which the Qur’an sets forth thus: “Let evil be rewarded with like evil” (42:40). In another chapter, it is written: “If you punish, let your punishment be commensurate with the wrong that has been done you” (16: 126).

With such guidelines as are laid down in the Shariah, the maximum these Muslim youngsters were entitled to do was write letters to or articles for the newspaper in order to express their disapproval. Using proofs from the Qur’an and Hadith to back up their arguments, they should have simply pointed out why the picture was objectionable in terms of the Shariah. After all, burning offices and holding protest rallies are hardly in consonance with true Islamic practice.

Let us go back to the time of the Prophet and see how he and his Companions reacted to the anti-Islamic slogans raised by his opponents. Never on once did they adopt the tactics of arson and vandalism. Rather, they countered attacks on Islam with reasoned arguments. On this point, an eminent Companion, Hassan bin Thabit, is especially noteworthy. He was a poet, and in ancient Arabia, poetry occupied much the same position as the newspapers of today. Poetry was, so to speak, the ancient equivalent of journalism. What Hassan bin Thabit did was to write poems to rebut the opponents of Islam. People then learnt these poems from one another and, in this way, their message spread far and wide. Many such poems, written during the life of the Prophet have been recorded by Ibn Hisham.

If the Muslim students had sincerely wished to perform their religious duty, they should have written articles expressing their disapproval of the publication of such a picture, just as Hassan bin Thabit composed poems in the time of the Prophet to counter the adversaries of Islam. In burning office equipment and premises, the students were not so much doing their religious duty as demonstrating their inability to do so. Incapable of writing a scathing article in the newspapers, they resorted instead to arson and vandalism. Where the situation called for a constructive attitude, theirs was destructive. This is little better than heaping the blame on others for one’s own incompetence. Such a reaction is essentially unislamic in that it is vicious in the extreme.

When one looks at such incidents solely from the point of view of the Shari’ah, one has first to determine whether an offence has actually been committed. Even supposing that one has been committed, the public is not entitled to take the law into its own hands. It is the courts and law-enforcing agencies which must mete out punishment as a matter of duty; it is not the responsibility of the public at large. Even if the judicial authorities decided that punishment were in order, it would not be the building and equipment which would be singled out for punishment, but the individual who was the actual culprit.

Whether we look at the matter from the everyeday, commonsense standpoint, or whether we see it in terms of the Shari’ah, we have to condemn the students’ action as unislamic. If, to their way of thinking, they were performing their “religious” duty, their so-called religion must be something very far removed from what we now understand by Islam.