Fundamental Principles of Islam

provided them with weapons to set themselves up against the Soviet Union and assisted in the dissemination of their literature all over the world. But this enemy-of-my-enemy-is-afriend formula ultimately proved counter-productive, in that it virtually amounted to replacing one enemy with another. The waging of this proxy war turned out to be only very temporary in its benefits. Those who at a later stage felt the impact of extremist fundamentalism, took this to be a case of violence against them. So they opted for a policy of gun versus gun. But subsequent events proved this policy to be a total failure, the reason being that the issue was not that of conducting a purely physical struggle, but of exposing and scotching the fallacies of a flawed ideology. You can win a fight with arms, but to defeat an ideology, a counter-ideology is a sine qua non. Without that nothing can be achieved. There is no doubt about it that Muslim fundamentalism is a threat to peace, for, due to their fanaticism, its proponents do not stop sort of resorting to destructive activity, even if it should prove suicidal. Now the task we must undertake is to make use of the media on all fronts in order to make people aware of the fact that this political interpretation of Islam is totally without basis either in the Quran or in the examples set by Prophet in thought, word and deed. As opposed to this erroneous interpretation, the true values of Islam, based on peace, brotherhood and well-wishing should be presented to the public. If this correct interpretation of Islam could be brought to people’s attention, I should have high hopes that the majority of the people who have been misguided would abandon the path of hatred and violence and come back to Islam—“to the home of peace” to which God calls us in the Quran.