FROM MAULANA'S DESK

According to Islam, these attacks are clearly haram or forbidden. Suicide-bombing has no justification in Islam. With regard to the bombing of the church in Peshawar, the attackers said that they were taking revenge for US drone strikes. But, taking revenge itself is an un-Islamic act. The argument that these attacks are a legitimate answer to the oppression of others is completely baseless. Islam does not allow taking of such revenge by attacking innocent people. The concept of revenge is in itself an un-Islamic one; but, for the sake of argument, supposing that Islam does allow taking of revenge, then that revenge must be directed against those who are responsible for the killings for which revenge is sought. In these attacks, those who were present in the church in Peshawar and in the mall in Nairobi were innocent. They were not involved in any kind of attack nor did they carry out any killing, and so they cannot be subjected to revenge. Attacks of this kind do not in any way solve the problems they claim to be a response to. Rather, they only exacerbate them. The claims of people involved in such attacks of representing and championing Islam are completely false. Islam does not give permission for such attacks at all. However, the real blame goes less to the attackers themselves than to their intellectual mentors. The real culprits are those leaders who have given a political interpretation to Islam. I think political Islam is the greatest evil in the present age. Such an interpretation has made the violence that Peshawar and Nairobi have just witnessed seem justified to those who carried it out. Some Muslims quote, among others, the following Quranic verse to justify their hatred of non-Muslims: O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people. (5: 51) On the basis of their erroneous interpretation of this verse, they seek to stir hatred against people of other faiths. Once that happens, then it becomes easy for them to seek legitimacy for violence against them. However, the fact of the matter is that their argument is completely wrong. The Quranic verse quoted above is neither about all the Jews or