FROM MAULANA'S DESK

earth. This assumption is wrong because it is based on a Quranic verse taken out of context. Another verse in the Quran says: (5: 8) ‘Follow the principle of justice [in your life]’. Misinterpretation of this verse has given it the transitive sense, instead of the original intransitive sense used in the Quran. The verb used above does not have any direct object of action, but the wrong interpretation has taken the object of action as the outside world. Thus, the verse is being taken to mean that justice should be imposed on people by force. This misinterpretation has politicised the concept of justice, although such a notion cannot be inferred from the text. Any interpretation of the above kind is false. And this falsehood must be made manifest so that people understand with certainty that the present militancy has no sanction in Islam, and so that the extremists abandon their violence on realising that their actions are completely un-Islamic. The terrorist phenomenon is based on misinterpretation of the scriptures. It can be eradicated only by universally publicising the right interpretation of the Islamic texts. In a speech on July 19, 2015, the British Prime Minister David Cameron, expressing his anxiety about youngsters travelling to Iraq and Syria to join the so-called ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (ISIL), said, ‘We must de-glamorise the extremist cause, especially ISIL. This isn’t a pioneering movement—it is vicious, brutal and fundamentally abhorrent.’ It is true that present Muslim extremism is the result of the glamorisation of the self-styled concept of global Khilafat or Caliphate. The solution lies in de-glamorising this false ideology developed by extremists through a misinterpretation of Islamic sources. De-glamorisation of the Khilafat can be achieved only by de-Islamising this concept of the Khilafat based on a political interpretation of Islam. And political Islam has no basis in Islamic scriptures. The UN has rightly adopted this dictum: ‘Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.’ To eradicate terrorism, we shall have to reengineer the minds of terrorists along peaceful lines. No other method will be of any avail. o Maulana Wahiddudin Khan editor@thespiritofislam.org