Munir's Story: 28 years after the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila

by Franklin Lamb on September 6, 2010

The untreated psychic wounds are still open. Accountability, justice and basic civil rights for the survivors are still denied.

Scores of horror testimonies have been shared over the past nearly three decades by survivors of the September 1982 Sabra- Shatila massacre. More come to light only through circumstantial evidence because would be affiants perished during the slaughter. Other eyewitness are just beginning to emerge from deep trauma or self imposed silence.

Some testimonies will be shared this month by massacre survivors at Shatila camp. They will sit with the every growing numbers of international visitors who annually come to commemorate one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century.

There are no average massacre testimonies.

Zeina, a handsome bronzed-faced middle-aged woman, an acquaintance of Munir Mohammad's family, asked a foreigner the other day: "How can it be 28 years? I think it was just last fall that my husband Hussam and our two daughters, Maya, 8 years old, and Sirham, 9 years old, left our two room home to search for food because the Israeli army had sealed Shatila camp nearly two days before and few inside Shatila Camp had any. I still pray and wait for them to return."

In Shatila Palestinian refugee camp and outside Abu Yassir's shelter, the bullet marks still cover the lower half of the 11 "walls of death" where some of the dried blood is mixed and feathered in with the thin mortar. An elderly gentleman named Abu Samer still has some souvenirs of the event: three American automatic pistols fitted with silencers, a couple of knives and axes that were strapped to some of the killers belts as they quickly and silently shot, carved and chopped whoever they came upon starting at around 6 pm on Thursday September 16, 1982. Plus a couple of whisky bottles. These weapons were gifted to Israel by the US Congress and subsequently issued along with drugs and alcohol and other "policing equipment" to the killers in his "most moral army" by Ariel Sharon.

Earlier this year, one of the murderers from the Numour al-Ahrar (Tigers of the Liberals) militia, the armed wing of Lebanon's right-wing National Liberal Party founded by former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun, nonchalantly confessed, "we sometimes used these implements in order to advance silently through the alleys of Shatila so as not to cause unnecessary panic during our work." The Tigers militia, one of five Christian killer units, was assisted inside Shatila by more than two dozen Israeli Mossad agents, and led in this blitz by none other than Dani Chamoun, son of the former President.

No plaque or sign notes what happened here.

The world learned of the slaughter at Sabra-Shatila on the morning of Sunday September 19, 1982. Photos, many now available on the Internet, taken by witnesses such as Ralph Shoneman, Mya Shone, Ryuichi Hirokawa, Ali Hasan Salman, Ramzi Hardar, Gunther Altenburg, and Gaza and Akka Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) Hospital staff, preserve the gruesome images deeply etched in the survivors memory. The Israeli Kahan Commission, five months later in its February 7, 1983 Report, substantially whitewashed Israeli responsibility referring more than once to the massacre as "a war."

Zeina ushered me down a narrow alley from her house arriving at the 3 by 8 meter wall outside her sister's home, spraying here and there with an aerosol can as we walked. She apologized for the spray but insisted that she and her neighbors could even now smell the slaughter that happened there three decades earlier.

For readers unfamiliar with the location of Shatila Palestinian Refugee Camp in Beirut, this particular "wall of death" is located across from the PRCS Akka Hospital, such as it is, after years without adequate financial or NGO support. Locating the 11 "walls of death" requires help from the few older Palestinians who still live in this quarter. They are among those still living at the scene and who still vividly recall the details of the massacre. Some provide personal history of some of the butchered, seemingly urging the dead to return by making them seem so alive, often describing a personality trait and the name of their family village in Palestine.

"A sweet boy who adored his older brothers Mutid and Bilal."

Zeina recalls that Munir Mohammad was 12 years old on September 16, 1982, a pupil at the Shatila camp school, named Jalil (Galilee). Virtually all of the 75 remaining UNRWA schools in Lebanon, like other Palestinian institutions, are named after villages, towns or cities in occupied Palestine. Often they are named after villages that no longer actually exist, being among the 531 villages the Zionists colonizers obliterated during and after the 1947-48 Nakba (Catastrophe).

Zeina recalls that it was late on a Thursday afternoon, September 16, that the Israeli shelling had grown intense. Designed to drive the camp residents into the shelters, almost all of which Israeli intelligence, arriving the previous day in three white vehicles and posing as "concerned NGO staff" had identified and noted the coordinates on their maps. Some residents, thinking aid workers had come to help the refugees, actually revealed their secret sanctuaries. Other refugees, based on their experience in the crowded shelters during the preceding 75 days of indiscriminate, "Peace for Galilee" Israeli bombing of Shatila, suggested to the "aid workers" that the shelters needed better ventilation and perhaps the visitors would help provide it.

According to Zeina the Israeli agents quickly sketched the shelter locations, marked them with a red circle and returned to their HQ which was located less than 70 meters on the raised terrain at the SE corner of Shatila camp still known as Turf Club Yards. Today, this sandy area still contains three death pits which according to the late American journalist Janet Stevens is where some of the hundreds of still missing bodies of the more than 3,000 slaughtered are likely buried. Janet had theorized that there was a second Sabra-Shatila Massacre that occurred on Sunday morning, September 19th, which piggybacked the first and was conducted on the west side of Shatila inside the second Israeli-Phalange HQ, known as the Cite Sportiff athletic complex. As the Israeli soldiers took custody from the Phalange militia of the surviving refugees, trucks entered Cite Sportiff loaded with hundreds of camp residents on the back to be taken to "holding centers". Family members forced to wait outside heard volleys of gunfire and screams from inside the complex. Hours later the same flat beds drove away to unknown locations, tarps covering the unseen mounded cargo.

Camp resident, Mrs. Sana Mahmoud Sersawi, one of the 23 complainants in the Belgium case filed against Ariel Sharon on June 16, 2001, (currently but not fatally sidetracked) explained:

"The Israelis who were posted in front of the Kuwaiti embassy and at the Rihab benzene station at the entrance to Shatila demanded through loudspeakers that we come to them. That's how we found ourselves in their hands. They took us to the Cite Sportiff, and the men were marched behind us. But they took the men's shirts off and started blindfolding them. The Israelis interrogated the young people and the Phalange delivered about 200 more people to the Israelis. And that's how neither my husband nor my sister's husband ever came back."

Journalist Robert Fisk and others who studied these events, concur that more slaughter was done during the 24 hour period after 8 a.m. Saturday, the hour the Israeli Kahan Commission, which declined to interview any Palestinians, ruled that the Israelis had stopped all the killing.

Eyewitness testimony also established that the "aid workers" described by Zeina passed the shelter descriptions and locations to Lebanese Forces operatives Elie Hobeika and Fadi Frem, and their ally, Major Saad Haddad of the Israeli-allied South Lebanese Army. Thursday evening, Hobeika, de facto commander since the assassination the week previously of Phalange leader and President-elect Bachir Gemayel, led one of the death squads inside the killing field of the Horst Tabet area near Abu Yassir's shelter.

It was in 8 of the 11 Israeli-located and marked shelters that the first of the massacre victims were quickly and methodically slaughtered. There being few perfect crimes, even in massacres, the killers failed to find 3 of the shelters. One of the overlooked shelters was just 25 meters from Abu Yassir's shelter. Apart from these three undiscovered hiding places there were practically no Shatila shelter survivors.

American journalist David Lamb wrote about this first night of butchery and the "walls of death":

"Entire families were slain. Groups consisting of 10-20 people were lined up against walls and sprayed with bullets. Mothers died while clutching their babies. All men appeared to be shot in the back. Five youths of fighting age were tied to a pickup truck and dragged through the streets before being shot."

At around about 8 p.m. on September 18 Munir Mohammad entered the crowded Abu Yassir shelter with his mother Aida and his sisters and brothers Iman, Fadya, Mufid and Mu'in. Keeping the relatively few camp shelters for the woman and children while the men took their chances outside was a common practice as the massacre unfolded. But a few men did enter to help calm their young children.

"If any of you are injured, we'll take you to the hospital."

Munir later recalled events that night: "The killers arrived at the door of the shelter and yelled for everyone to come out. Men who they found were lined up against the wall outside. They were immediately machine gunned." As Munir watched, the killers left to kill other groups and then suddenly returned and opened fire on everyone, and all fell to the ground. Munir lay quietly not knowing if his mother and sisters were dead. Then he heard the killers yelling: "If any of you are injured, we'll take you to the hospital. Don't worry. Get up and you'll see." A few did try to get up or moaned and they were instantly shot in the head.

Munir remembered: "Even though it was light out due to the Israeli flares over Shatila, the killers used bright flash lights to search the darkened corners. The killers were looking in the shadows". Suddenly Munir's mother's body seemed to shift in the mound of corpses next to him. Munir thought she might be going to get up since the killers promised to take anyone still alive to the hospital. Munir whispered to her: "Don't get up mother, they're lying". And Munir stayed motionless all night barely daring to breath, pretending to be dead.

Munir could not block out the killers words. Years later he would repeat to this interviewer as we passed the Shatila Burial ground known as Martyrs Square:

"After they shot us, we were all down on the ground, and they were going back and forth, and they were saying: 'If any of you are still alive, we'll have mercy and pity and take them to the hospital. Come on, you can tell us.' If anyone moaned, or believed them and said they needed an ambulance, they would be rescued with shots and finished off there and then…What really disturbed me wasn't just the death all around me. I…didn't know whether my mother and sisters and brother had died. I knew most of the people around me had died. And it's true I was afraid of dying myself. But what disturbed me so very much was that they were laughing, getting drunk and enjoying themselves all night long. They threw blankets on us and left us there till morning. All night long [Thursday the 16th) I could hear the voices of the girls crying and screaming, 'For god's sake, leave us alone.' I mean…I can't remember how many girls they raped. The girl' voice, with their fear and pain, I can't ever forget them."

The same kind of dégagé is displayed by the half dozen confessed militia murderers featured in German director Monika Borgmann's 2005 film Massaker, one of whom opined: "With hanging or shooting you just die, but this is double," explaining how he took an old Palestinian man and held him back against a wall, slicing him open in the shape of a cross. "You die twice since you also die from the fear," he said nonchalantly describing white flesh and bone as if in a charcuterie waiting to be served.

The killers also explained how they began a frantic rush to dispose of as many bodies as possible before the media entered Shatila. One testified how the Israeli army gave them large plastic trash bags to dispose of bodies. Another confessed that they forced people into army trucks to ferry them to Cite Sportiff where they were killed. And that they used chemicals to destroy many of the corpses. Several mentioned that Israeli army officers conferred with the militia's leaders in Beirut on the eve of the massacres.

The venomous hatred persists to this day.

To this day, the Hurras al-Arz (Guardians of the Cedars) boasts of its role in the carnage. Less than two weeks before the massacre the party issued a call for the confiscation of all Palestinian property in Lebanon, the outlawing of home ownership and the destruction of all refugee camps.

The party statement of September 1, 1982 declared: "Action must be taken to reduce the numbers of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, until the day comes when no single Palestinian remains on our soil."

In 1982 certain political parties referred to Palestinians as "a bacillus which must be exterminated" and graffiti on walls read: "The duty of every Lebanese is to kill a Palestinian"–the same hatred commonly expressed today in occupied Palestine among colonists, extremist Rabbis and politicians.

The 'Guardians' call for outlawing Palestinian refugee property ownership was indeed achieved in 2001 by a law drafted by current Minister of Labor, who pledged on September 1, 2010 that "Parliament will never allow Palestinian refugees the right to own property."

The mentality that allowed the Massacre at Sabra-Shatila 1982 is largely unchanged in 2010, as Lebanon still resists the call of the international community to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila massacre basic civil rights. Some who have studied the Arabic websites and observed gatherings of the political parties represented at the 1982 massacre, claim the hate language is actually worse today and is being used to stir up Parliamentary opposition Palestinian civil rights.

During the month following the 1982 Massacre, British Dr. Paul Morris treated Munir at Gaza Hospital approximately one kilometer north of Abu Yassir's shelter, and kept the youngster under observation. Dr. Morris reported to researcher Bayan Nuwayhed al Hout (Sabra and Shatila: September 1982, Pluto Press, London, 2004) that Munir "Will smile once in a while, but he doesn't react spontaneously like others of this age, except just occasionally." Then the doctor banged on the table, and said: 'The lad has to be saved. He has to leave the camp, if only for a while, to recover himself."

When Munir was asked by al Hout if one day when he grew up and would be able to carry a weapon would he consider revenge. The pre-teen replied, replied: "No, No. I'd never think of revenge by killing children. The way they killed us. What did the children do wrong?"

Munir's 15 year old brother Mufid was among the first to enter Abu Yassir's shelter, but he left and later appeared at Akka Hoppital with a gunshot wound. After being bandaged he left the hospital to seek safety and his family. No one has seen him since and for a long time Munir could not even mention him.

According to camp residents, Munir's older brother, Nabil, then 19 years old, being of fighting age would have been shot on sight by the killers. Aware of this, Nabil's cousin and his cousin's wife fled with him as the Israeli shelling increased and camp residents reported indiscriminate killing. The trio dodged sniper bullets to seek refuge in a nursing home where his aunt worked. Like Munir, Nabil soon learned that his mother and siblings were all dead.

Postscript

Now in America, both Munir and Nabil are leading relatively 'normal lives' considering the horror and lost family they experienced while escaping death at Sabra-Shatila. Munir and Nabil have become a credit to Shatila camp, to Palestine and to their adopted country. Residing in the Washington DC area, Munir is married and busy with his career. Nabil is devoting his life to advocacy for peace and justice in the Middle East, working with an NGO. Both brothers return to Shatila camp regularly.

Also apparently living 'normal lives' are the six "Christian" militia killers featured in Borgmann's film Massaker. "They are all living ordinary lives. One of them is a taxi driver," Borgmann explains.

As is well known, the massacres at Sabra-Shatila were undeniable war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Each killing was a violation of international laws enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention, International Customary Law and jus cogens. Similar massive crimes have seen charges brought against Rwandan officials, Chile's ex-president, General Augusto Pinochet, Chad's former president, Hissein Habre, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Liberia's Taylor and Sudan's Bachir.

No one has been punished or even investigated for the Sabra-Shatila massacre. On March 28, 1991 Lebanon's Parliament retroactively exempted the killers from criminal responsibility. However, this law has no standing in international law and the international community remains legally obligated to punish those responsible. The victims and their families of the Sabra-Shatila massacre as well as virtually all human rights organizations including but not limited to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Humanitarian Law Project, strenuously oppose blanket amnesty for the killers. They argue that the 1991 violates Lebanon's constitution, as well as international law and promotes impunity for heinous crimes.

It was precisely to achieve justice for the victims of crimes such as Sabra-Shatila that the International Criminal Court was established. The ICC must begin its work without further delay and all people of goodwill must encourage Lebanon to grant the survivors of the Sabra-Shatila Massacre basic civil rights.

* Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel's Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book. He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

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Asadullah Syed

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Asadullah Syed

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Asadullah Syed

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Asadullah Syed

THE Prophet Muhammad

Post by Amina Wadud 

The Prophet Muhammad. When we say this name, we respectfully follow by asking Allah's prayers for him, abbreviated as saw. I think it's hard to get the gist of his continual importance in Islam and as I've said, I'm all about the living tradition. So, I'm not here to give a history lesson or to make a biography. There are biographies and documentaries aplenty (I think I mentioned I have the soundtrack from one I advised on a few years ago. It has the lovely four minute prayer for waking). Anyway, I want to make a shift in how we might look at this important historical figure, and specifically about teachers, leaders, and guides.

I told you yesterday that part of the inspiration for making this entry about the Prophet Muhammad (saw) was through the reminders my own spiritual teacher has been making during our retreat. Well, there's one more thing. I started this blog at Ramadan and I get comments from people who are following or who have a read a few about this being a Ramadan blog. My friend Mona posted a link on Twitter and said I was one of her heroes, and that I was writing a blog about Ramadan.

Since we're almost through Ramadan, I guess I should catch a few people up. I never had any intention of simply writing a Ramadan blog, but I am grateful if that has been the inspiration for some people to read. Plus, it's been a challenge to fast, travel and keep it up, but keeping it up has a goal a bit broader than Ramadan. I'm making preparations for pilgrimage to Makkah: hajj. Almost all of my feminist Muslim friends who have gone, tell me I will not be satisfied with some of the arbitrary restrictions on women. Then they recount specific challenges they faced on the hajj and things they did to get around it.

I'm writing a blog, both as a way to get around some of crappy stuff, so I don't have to fight and yet, I don't have to be silent. It's a part of the subversive strategies of what I deal with extensively in my book Inside the Gender Jihad. To survive with dignity as a woman, and to survive with love as a Muslim. Yeah, sometimes that is the paradox. Anyway, I asked my shaykh for his advise regarding the hajj some time ago, and he suggested specifically that I spend more time at the Prophet's mosque in Madinah.

That was like the last thing I wanted to hear. Everybody says that is where they experience the worst restrictions. When I mentioned this, he said not everything is about the politics of gender. Well, on another occasion perhaps I might take the time to write about that, but the short of it is, only men can say this. No disrespect intended. It's sorta like when people say, I don't pay attention to race. In America, only white people say this. Nevertheless, and this is what motivates this entry, I intend to follow his advice.

I have a friend from graduate school who is happily living in Madinah and she adores her life there. She has told me, convincingly, just how beneficial the time limitations put on women's visits to the Prophet's mosque are. I mean women can't go all the time or any old time, but these same pesky old (or young) men who forcibly keep women out at other time, are apparently equally vigilant about coordinating for women's exclusive access when it is their designated time. I have a plan, and Allah knows best. I will do what ever the rest of the day might dictate to get as much access in the limited times as I can.

I like my shaykh's advice to seek as much of the nur or light of Muhammad (saw) as I can. My shaykh, and many Sufi teachers talk about Nur-Muhammad. Some go as far as to say the whole universe was created only after Nur-Muhammad. Or that the whole of the universe was created for Muhammad. I cannot go that far, but it's important to say something about the love of a Muslim for the Prophet. I think people get the wrong impression because of controversies like the Salman Rushdie affair, or the Danish cartoons. I don't know how the importance of the prophet gets lost in the zealousness of certain defenders, but trust me, this is not about freedom of speech.

I have absolute confidence that you can understand that freedom of speech not only means you can say what ever you want, but also, that certain things you say could have consequences. So, for example, if you call me a "black bitch," (a strong example of racist, sexist speech) there might be some consequences. Muslims love the Prophet Muhammad. Not only now, when the most we have are historical stories and our ideology about following the sunnah, or normative practices, of the Prophet, but they also loved him who lived simultaneous with his life, his companions.

I came into Islam in 20th century America and inherited the legacy of this love, but I can't say I understood it right away, let alone actually felt it. I tried, but he remained too distant from me, for quite some time. I was content with the Qur'an as an intimate read which quenched my existential thirst and soothed my soul in its quest for at-one-ment with the Sacred. The Prophet remained a distant idea, not yet resonant in my heart. I guess he seemed too big, too remote—a legacy, yes, but larger than life. Larger than my life anyway. Not just 14 centuries between us, but a whole world, a whole way of being in the world.

That changed in the 1980s actually, with one small book by an Arabic historian named Nabia Abbott. She has one book entitled The Beloved of the Prophet and it is about A'ishah, one of the wives of the Prophet. Maybe at another time, I can say more about her or the other wives, but the thing about this book, for me, at that time, was that some historical image was lifted off the page and came to life. Well, I don't mean literally of course. I just mean, his living, breathing, nuanced personality unfolded. I could imagine him laughing, eating, bathing, and being challenged by the mission of revelation. He got to be ordinary and this made his special mission all of a sudden that much more believable.

Still, I would not say he was this light, this personal friend— not yet. I had to wait until I met my teacher to really come to understand how the Prophet can be so important to people today, including the zealots. This will not be the history of my relationship with my teacher — after all I gave this post a title and if I were you, I'd expect me to get to that topic at some point. If you are like me, one of those people who balk at authority, especially the arbitrary kind and the oppressors, the idea of a spiritual teacher is hard to swallow.

But the true spiritual teacher is not some sort of task maker: simply bossing you around expecting you to follow to prove you are on your way to enlightenment or some such. Nope. It's more like that story about one of Buddha's students. He held up a flower, and the student attained enlightenment. Every thing, every place, every circumstance contains ayat, or signs. A flower can be as much of a teacher as a person with a fancy set of qualifications, degrees, or lines of authority. It's the state of the student's heart that matters.

When my teacher accepts me as a student, he makes a commitment, he said, that extends beyond my willingness to respond. It even extends beyond this life time. That's a lot of responsibility. But, over the years that I have known my teacher, including living in the same state, living in a different state, and living in different country, I live with the sense of his loving guidance.

That's what the Prophet gave: loving guidance. Sure, he had this special relationship with Allah, such that he was the recipient of wahy or divine revelation. In Islam, we do not say that he was the only one. We accept that divine revelation came to Adam, Abraham, Moses, Noah, Joseph and Jesus, and many more, may peace be unto them all. We also accept that the revelation was the same, in essence: worship none but the One True God and follow my example, my sunnah.

We hold that Prophets were selected for the mission of receiving the revelation from before their birth. That they were groomed to accept to carry the message in their lifetime, like Joseph on the well, Moses in the basket, Abraham in the temple. We hold that they were all as beautiful as Joseph and that they spoke eloquently. After all, it would not do for such an important thing as the divine message to get sidelined by something arbitrary like a personal disfigurement.

Most important, like with my teacher, we do not hold that Prophets ask for anything from us — and the Qur'an repeats that claim often. We ask nothing of you, our reward is with Allah. But there is this intimate sense of responsibility. This teacher who loves for us to get it right: not only are we loved by the teacher, we are loved by Allah. What response could we have but to love in return and to do our best to make them proud?

The Qur'an says wa maa arsalnaahu illa rahmatan lil-aalamin, "We" have not sent him (Muhammad) except as a mercy to all the worlds. First there is the negation. To erase any possible reason beyond the one given, a rahmah, a mercy. Usually this is translated as "we only sent him as a mercy," but I wanted to offer the strength given in its original Arabic. Those who use the legacy of the Prophet to do harm, to do injustice, including injustices to women, in the name of the Prophet, or at the Prophet's mosque, don't get this. This is our mercy, this is our love: this one who carried the guidance on his heart, uttered it with his tongue and followed it with his actions.

Anyway, that is the one I follow, and that is the one I plan to visit in Madinah, to step where he has stepped, to pray where he has prayed and to give my greeting at his grave site Anyone who keeps me from that, better answer to Allah. Anyone who seeks to ridicule him has to make the same answer. But because I know this to be true, I am neither bothered by those who seek abuse, nor am I curious about them. To this day, I have never seen those cartoons that caused so much controversy. I don't need to, the Prophet has a place in my heart as a loving teacher, the rest is up to me: can I find enlightenment with the whiff of this flower?

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Asadullah Syed

"Racism Is Not Only Found on the Right"

Thilo Sarrazin and His Comments on Muslims' Intelligence

"Racism Is Not Only Found on the Right"

Thilo Sarrazin's theories have highlighted the fact that racism in Germany is not exclusive to the extreme right but can also be found in mainstream society. Human rights expert Hendrik Cremer is convinced that politicians must address the problem

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"Politicians or other representatives of the state must address racism in the public sphere and stand up against it. Anything else would counteract the integration policy, which is now considered right and necessary in Germany," writes Hendrik Cremer | Deutschland schafft sich ab. Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen, which roughly translates as "Germany is digging its own grave: How we are gambling our country", is the title of Thilo Sarrazin's book, which was published this week. As a member of the board at Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, Sarrazin holds a very prominent public position. Initial published extracts from his book show that Thilo Sarrazin is picking up where he left off in the past.

For some time now, he has set himself the task of using his public statements to divide German society along "them-and-us" lines. He subdivides the "them" group into other groups such as "Turks", "Arabs" and, on occasion, "Muslim migrants". To the members of these groups he then ascribes negative characteristics in a generalising, derogatory manner.

Nevertheless, Sarrazin rejects the charge that he is caught in racist thought patterns. Yet the style he employs is not untypical of the methods used to disseminate such attitudes. He laments the walls of political correctness while at the same time launching racist verbal attacks.

The issue of racism is rarely addressed

In Germany, the term "racism" is often associated with the crimes against humanity committed by the National Socialists. Moreover, it is often only employed in conjunction with the politically organised extreme right.

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"The scale of discrimination and racism in a society ultimately depends on the convictions and attitudes of the people who live in it," writes Cremer | The use of a term such as "xenophobia" in court, for example, leads public prosecutors or judges to speak of "xenophobic" motives for a violent act when making assessments during criminal proceedings. In this way, language exposes the victim of physical violence to yet more marginalization. This example shows that in Germany, a country of immigration, not enough thought is given to racism and its current manifestations.

Discrimination in everyday life

In Germany, the prevailing narrow understanding of the term "racism", which is not sufficiently discussed and debated, has other practical consequences. Not enough attention is being paid to incidents of racism in everyday life that do not cross the threshold into violence and structural discrimination in the field of education or on the labour market.

Of course, the stereotypes, marginalization and discrimination that exist in democratic societies cannot be equated with the systematic and monstrous crimes committed during the National Socialist era. However, restricting the definition of racism to right-wing extremism completely ignores the state of academic research and the debate about racism at European and international level, where the definition of racism has been wider for quite some time now.

UN calls for a broader approach

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In its action plan against racism dated October 2008, the German government acknowledged that the fight against racism cannot be restricted to the fight against right-wing extremism, but must be widened to society as a whole | The fact that the definition of racism in Germany is too narrow has been criticised in recent years by several international bodies that are fighting racism. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which monitors the implementation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, recommended in 2008 that Germany should broaden its definition of racism and its approach to fighting racism.

In 2009, the Council of Europe's Commission against Racism said much the same thing. More recently, the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism arrived at a similar conclusion in his report on Germany, which he presented to the UN Human Rights Council in June of this year.

At least initial steps have been taken in this regard. For example, in its action plan against racism dated October 2008, the German government acknowledged that racist attitudes and stereotypes also exist outside the extreme right wing and that the fight against racism cannot be restricted to the fight against right-wing extremism, but must be widened to society as a whole.

Marginalization of anyone who is "different"

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Hendrik Cremer works at the German Institute for Human Rights in Berlin | To be racist, one does not necessarily have to subscribe to a specific body of thought based on theories relating to origin or heredity. Although race theories are propagated on the basis of such biological criteria, patterns of racist argument – not only in Germany, but elsewhere too – are increasingly being applied on the basis of different "cultures", "nations", "ethnicities" or "religions". One characteristic feature of racism is the identification of supposedly homogenous groups and the attribution of certain properties to every member of that group.

This does not necessarily go hand in hand with an explicit application of a hierarchical system or degradation. The creation of groups according to the "them-and-us" principle with the sole aim of marginalizing "them" ("they are different, we don't want them here") can also lead to serious marginalization.

The importance of a broad debate

As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, Germany has entered into obligations that comprehensively restrict state violence. The convention also contains obligations to fight racism in the political sphere and in public life.

The reasoning behind this is that it is not enough to commit once to upholding human rights; human rights must be lived, practiced and defended. The scale of discrimination and racism in a society ultimately depends on the convictions and attitudes of the people who live in it. In this regard, politics, the state and its institutions have an important role to play in terms of setting standards.

It also means that politicians or other representatives of the state must address racism in the public sphere and stand up against it. Anything else would counteract the integration policy, which is now considered right and necessary in Germany. For this reason, we should welcome the fact that the chancellor has rejected Sarrazin's remarks as simple and stupid blanket judgements that are incredibly hurtful and insulting.

What's more, any reaction must not be restricted to a straightforward rejection of Sarrazin's theory. It should be taken as the starting point for a broad debate about the definition of racism in Germany.

Hendrik Cremer

© Deutsche Welle/Qantara.de 2010

Hendrik Cremer works at the German Institute for Human Rights in Berlin.

Translated from the German by Aingeal Flanagan

Editor: Lewis Gropp/Qantara.de


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Asadullah Syed

Gandhi and Islam

Interfaith Dialogue

28 Aug 2010, NewAgeIslam.Com

Gandhi and Islam

By Syed Ashraf Ali        Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the spiritual and political leader of India, worked tirelessly to make India independent of British rule. His teaching was based on the power of love. He organised campaigns to defy the government by peaceful means because he did not believe in the use of force. He once said: "An eye for an eye ends up making the whole world blind." His belief in non-violence was based on his faith that truth is God. India became independent in 1947 largely as a result of his leadership. Gandhi lived a simple life, did not hold a position of power in the government, and had no worldly possessions. He felt in himself the woeful poverty of his people and literally put on the beggar's robe to demonstrate his unity with them. For clothes, he wore a loin-cloth and a robe of coarse homespun. He lived on goat's milk, vegetables cooked without spices or salt, and a little bread and fruit. He used to spin for a while every day in order to identify himself with the poorest people. He also used to clean streets and collect refuse in order to punish himself for the injustice of the caste system as practised by most people in India. Only untouchables did this kind of work. Whether as an exceptional human being, a unique politician, or charismatic leader of non-violent movement, Gandhi's many-sidedness is proverbial. The Indian people loved him. They called him Bapu (father) out of affection and still hail him as the Father of the Nation. Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian maestro, called Gandhi Mahatma, which literally means "great soul." His ideals and teachings have influenced and inspired billions at home and abroad, including the likes of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. Although a very devout Hindu with unshakable conviction in Hinduism, Gandhi was a religious genius as well -- with genuine tolerance and respect for all mankind's faiths. In his Introduction to the Sayings of Muhammad by Abdullah Suhrawardy, Gandhi declares emphatically: "There will be no lasting peace on earth unless we learn not merely to tolerate but even to respect the other faiths as our own." M.J. Akbar elucidates it further: "Gandhi's commitment to religion did not mean commitment to a single religion. In his Ram Rajya, every faith had full freedom and complete equality. His prayer meetings were not just about his beloved Gita; there was space for the Holy Qur'an, the Bible and the Guru Grantha Saheb as well. He could never understand why anyone should misunderstand this, and it pained him when opponents misrepresented him, sneered at his gentle idealism, and challenged his pacifism with the undisguised threat of violence." The impression of Islam and the Muslims on Gandhi started at a very early age. "He was born," says Sheila Mcdonough, a renowned authority on comparative religion, "into that part of India (the coast of Malabar) where the geography situates Hindus to reach out and experience contact with others. To be a child beside the sea is already to know that a mysterious beyond beckons. The Muslims had been in Gujarat for centuries as traders. In his childhood, Gandhi knew them as representatives of those who came and went to other places beyond the seas. Muslims seem from the beginning to have represented challenge and adventure to him ... Muslims were received as guests in the Gandhi home: the political traditions of diplomatic courtesy seem to have been imbibed by the child as a self-evident way for civilised life to be conducted ... In his father's world, the Muslims had long been part of the community. The British were the perceived danger to the well-being of the social and political order." Gandhi not only spent his childhood among Muslim neighbours who were frequent visitors to his house, six generations of Gandhis had also served as ministers of the ruler of one of the principalities of Kathiwara where Gandhi was born. The family had therefore great experience in dealing with Muslims as part of local political and social life. Even at school he learnt to cultivate friendship with students who professed other religions and developed a healthy respect for their beliefs. Gandhi was well aware that his fundamental values with respect to Hindu-Muslim mutual respect and cooperation were rooted in his childhood experiences. While addressing a meeting of the Congress Working Committee in 1942, he reiterated the importance of these fundamental values as a basis for designing a free, renascent, independent India: "Hindu-Muslim unity is not a new thing. Millions of Hindus and Mussalmans have sought after it. I consciously strove for its achievements from my boyhood. I believed even at that tender age that the Hindus in India, if they wished to live in peace and amity with other communities, should assiduously cultivate the virtue of neighbourliness." In the world of the men of his family, friendships with Muslims, Jains, and Parsis were indeed part of the natural order of life. Once when Gandhi's paternal grandfather had been involved in a conflict with a local ruler, Muslim soldiers had guarded his house during an attack, and one of them was killed. A memorial to that Muslim soldier still exists in the Vaishnava temple adjoining the family house. When Gandhi returned to his native land after qualifying as a barrister in England, he went to South Africa as a lawyer for a Muslim firm that had family connections with some of his neighbours at home. Through this significant phase Gandhi's sense of common brotherhood with Muslims was reaffirmed and strengthened. Many of the Muslim businessmen he worked with in South Africa had roots in his hometown of Probandor, as well as in Bombay (now Mumbai). He sometimes lived in their homes there. The feeling of participation with Muslims in common life with shared goals became much stronger. In his own words: "When I was in South Africa, I came in close touch with Muslim brethren there ... I was able to learn their habits, thoughts and aspirations ... I had lived in the midst of Muslim friends for 20 years. They had treated me as a member of their family and told their wives and sisters that they need not observe purdah with me." In his political activity in South Africa, both Hindus and Muslims living there were his followers. The South African experience invigorated his belief that there should be mutual understanding and cooperation among Indians irrespective of religion. "The South African experiences," writes Sheila Mcdonough, "seems to have strengthened and developed Gandhi's basic religious consciousness by eliciting from him a profound 'no' to the absolute category of eternal inferior which the South African were attempting to impose upon the Indians. Since the category was imposed on Hindus and Muslims equally, the 'no' came with power from both. The protesters formed a brotherhood of resistance to degradation. "Gandhi knew that Prophet Muhammad had said 'no' to many elements of his own situation. He understood from his Muslim friends that sometimes courage requires casting the whole self into struggle ... Gandhi responded with the movement of his own soul when he heard an old Muslim say that, with God as his witness, he would never submit to that law. "This attitude is characteristic of a certain Muslim understanding of jihad, struggle, namely that sometimes witnessing to God requires that the whole self must make conscious choices and decide to act. Gandhi believed that the essential struggle of Muhammad's lifetime, the struggle to create a new form of civilisation, could be equated with the mythical struggle of Rama against Ravana as portrayed in the epic, the Ramayana. The Qur'an and the Ramayana, as he understood them, conveyed images and symbols that could illuminate the spiritual meaning of everyday life." The years spent by Gandhi in Great Britain to qualify for the Bar also played a significant role in educating him on Islam. During the early twentieth century when he was in England, the climate against eastern religions, especially Islam, was slowly changing. On May 8, 1840, Thomas Carlyle delivered a public lecture in Edinburgh on Muhammad (peace be upon him) and Islam. It was the second of a series "On Heroes, Hero-worship and the Heroic in History," and had the particular title: "The Hero as Prophet." Carlyle had no special qualifications as Arabist or Islamist for lecturing on this subject, and yet the lecture has an important place in the development of Islamic studies in Europe, since here for the first time in a prominent way was it asserted that Muhammad (pbuh) was sincere and the religion of Islam basically true. This speech on the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was a massive attack on the stereotyped Christian and Jewish attitude to Islam. Carlyle carefully listed the virtues he had found that Muslims attributed to Muhammad (pbuh). The holy Prophet was regarded as: "A man of truth and fidelity, solid, brotherly, genuine ... able to laugh ... spontaneous, passionate, just ... a great, silent soul ... one who could not but be in earnest ... one who communed with his own heart ... open to the 'small, still voice'." In his historic and brave endeavour, Carlyle was only following the footsteps of the great German philosopher-poet Goethe's positive evaluation of the religious simplicity of basic Islamic teaching, namely that human beings should surrender to God, and only to God. "If this be Islam," said Goethe, "do we not all live in Islam? Yes, all of us that have any moral life, we all live so." It was through Carlyle's sensational essay that Gandhi got the perception that Islam affirmed self-denial. Carlyle said: "Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self ... This is yet the highest Wisdom that heaven has revealed to our Earth." The fact that Gandhi read Carlyle's essay at a formative period in his own development makes it very probable that Carlyle's perspective strengthened the young Hindu's conviction that Muhammad (pbuh) represented an example of a significant religious leader whose battle against the forces of darkness in his own time could and should be a model of honest people everywhere. Gandhi himself informs us: "A friend recommended Carlyle's Hero and Hero Worship. I read the chapter on the Hero as a prophet, learnt of the Prophet's greatness and bravery and austere living ... These books raised Muhammad in my estimation." Later, Gandhi read Shibli Numani's biographies of Muslim heroes, books of Hadith, and Syed Amir Ali's books on Islamic history which strengthened his respect for the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) all the more. We find references to the works of Carlyle, Shibli and Amir Ali scattered throughout Gandhi's writings in every period of his life. All this whetted Gandhi's interest in Islam and he made a deeper study of the tenets laid out in the Holy Qur'an to understand better. In his later years, he learnt to carry on "sympathetic debates" with eminent Islamic scholars like Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar and later Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Zakir Hussain, M. Mujeeb and S. Abid Hussain. Gandhi firmly believed that understanding the religion of another is ultimately appreciation of the other as a person, with direction and hope. He tried to reveal himself in this sense to his Muslim friends, so that they could perceive the inner meaning of his tradition. He was committed to inter-faith dialogue; he believed one should try to comprehend the personal dimension of faith. "Heart-unity" meant for him that friends should be open to the deepest values of each other's traditions. In 1920, Zakir Hussain, M. Mujeeb, S. Abid Hussain, and a few other Muslims of Gandhi's way of thinking felt that they had to disassociate themselves from the Aligarh Muslim University which was considered too pro- British. In this instance they decided to set up an altogether different type of institution of learning for Muslims, the Jamia Millia Islamia. Very few Muslims know that Gandhi offered the directorship of the new institution to the renowned poet and philosopher Allama Mohammed Iqbal. Most of Gandhi's close Muslim friends loved Iqbal's poetry; the poet's work was an important source of increased Muslim pride and self-esteem. Gandhi himself was well aware from his conversations with his friends like Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar that Muslims generally considered Iqbal's poetry a magnificent source of inspiration. In his brief but eloquent letter written to Iqbal in 1920 Gandhi wrote: "The Muslim National University calls you. If you could but take charge of it, I am sure that it will prosper under your cultured leadership. Hakimji Ajmal Khan and Dr. Ansari and of course Ali Brothers desire it." Iqbal, however, very politely declined the offer for personal and other reasons. He replied: "I regret very much my inability to respond to the call of those for whom I have the highest respect, for reasons which need not and perhaps cannot be mentioned at present. While I am a strong supporter of National Education, I do not think I possess all the necessary qualifications for the guidance of a University that requires a man who would steer the infant institution through all the struggles and rivalries to arise in the earlier stages of its life. And I am, by nature, a peace-time worker." "Iqbal believed," writes Sheila Mcdonough, "that the Muslims of his generation needed special help in education to get them up to the level of the other communities of the country in terms of economic development. They were, in his opinion, a sort of backward minority, because, following the disaster of the 1857 Mutiny (the First War of Independence), they had been excluded from the possibility of development by British policy. Gandhi and other Hindu leaders still thought of Muslims as bullying rulers, needing to be tamed into reasonable citizens, but many Muslim leaders, like Iqbal, thought that the repression of Muslims after the Mutiny had made them a relatively under-developed class. "On the issue of religious education, there was also an emerging difference ... Gandhi thought that hymn-singing and devotional practice were the crucial elements of religious practice, and that helping children learn to sing hymns and to internalize the inner significance of religious poetry was all that was necessary ... Iqbal, the poet, had less confidence than Gandhi did in the spiritual power of poetry to shape future generations. "Iqbal laid special emphasis on Sharia. Iqbal's phrase about the need for the Sharia was that it might give 'a suitable line of action under our present limitation' ... The Sharia stressed human equality, and would serve to keep Muslim minds aware of social justice at a time when they were in danger of being swamped by discriminatory caste system ... So the poet thought the Muslims needed the Sharia, as well as poetry." Gandhi did not seem to have grasped the significance of Iqbal's thought on this issue. Later, while he was in jail in 1932, Gandhi decided that Iqbal had become anti-nationalist. After going through an account of Iqbal's speech to the Muslim League published in the newspaper, he commented: "Other Muslims too share Iqbal's anti-nationalism; only they do not give expression to their sentiments. The poet now disowns his song Hindustan Hamara (India is Ours)." Mahdeva Desai asked: "Is not his pan-Islamism the same as Shaukat Ali and Muhammed Ali's?" Bapu said: "Yes, but this anti- nationalism has nothing to do with pan-Islamism." Zakir Hussain, M. Mujeeb and S. Abid Hussain, the three young Muslims who returned from their graduate studies in Europe to take over the Jamia Millia Islamia, remained with the institution until the independence of the country. They devoted themselves specifically to education. Gandhi called upon educators to design a new system of basic education for Indian Schools. He put Zakir Hussain in charge of this project. Dr. Hussain stayed with the project for ten years. Subsequently, he became the governor of Bihar, vice president of India, and finally president of India. Gandhi's broad outlook and respect for other religions urged him not only to ask that Jamia Millia Islamia retain the word Islamia in its name, but he also sent one of his sons to be educated there. Gandhi's keen interest in Islam took a political turn when he launched India's freedom struggle after his permanent return to the country. He was able to enlist the full support of Muslims, intellectuals and masses alike, when he himself lent full support to the Khilafat movement and tacked on the 1921 Civil Disobedience movement to it. The message of the Khilafat movement, ably led by Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali, and supported whole-heartedly by Mahatma Gandhi and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, reached every nook and corner of India. For the first time in the political history of India, thirty thousand men and women went to jail in thirty days. For the first time in the political history of India twenty lakhs of human beings left their country at the bidding of their leaders. So pervasive was the passion for liberty that even Moplas were roused out of their poverty and ignorance to set up a Khilafat kingdom along the far-flung Malabar coast. It seemed that India at last realised her new dreams, her new pride and dignity, her unity and strength. The folk song of the day truly echoed the feelings of the nation by the words: "Desh ka Bandhu Chittaranjan, Desh ka Shova Gandhiji, Khoda ka piyara Muhammad Ali (Chittaranjan is the friend of the country, Gandhiji is its ornament and Muhammad Ali is the darling of God). The Muslim sentiment had been antagonised by the dethronement of the caliph at Istanbul by the victorious Western powers as Turkey had fought with the Germans in World War I. The entire Muslim Ummah had looked upon the caliph as the spiritual head of Islam. The caliph was needed to protect the freedom of Makkah. Pilgrimage to Makkah is one of the basic religious duties of all Muslims, and Makkah has been free from foreign domination since the days of the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). The independence of Makkah was therefore a potent symbol for all Muslims. Gandhi argued that one must help a brother whenever he says he has a religious need. Hence the Hindu should help his Muslim brother defend the sacred shrines of the Islamic faith. According to him, Hindus needed "heart-unity" with their Muslim brothers; they could win this unity if they helped the Muslims protect the independence of the Turkish caliph. Indian Muslims joined the civil disobedience in large number as Gandhi had linked it to the demand to restore Caliph to his pristine spiritual glory. Not only Maulanas Muhammad Ali and Shaukat Ali, but many other renowned Muslim leaders and exegetists like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad also became actual participants in the joint Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements, the first nation-wide Hindu-Muslim movement since the First War of Independence in 1857. But the entire bottom fell out of the historic movement when the resurgent Turks under the leadership of Kemal Ataturk decided to abolish the caliphate and declared themselves a republic. Gandhi called off non-cooperation after violence broke out in Chauri-Chaura. Many Muslims felt, as did some Hindus, that Gandhi had betrayed their revolution by calling it off just when they had some hope of success. Since the Turkish revolution abolished the Caliphate, the Indian Muslims of the Khilafat movement fell into disarray and confusion because they had lost their cause and the symbol that united them. Most of the Muslim students, who had earlier shunned the Aligarh Muslim University, returned to the same institution. But to the end of his life, Gandhi always had Muslim friends close to him. Besides the group of teachers and students of the Jamia Millia Islamia, another group of Muslims who remained loyal to Gandhi were the Khudai Khidmatgar (servants of God). These were a group of Pathans on the North-West frontier under the leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Popularly known as the "Frontier Gandhi," Abdul Ghaffar Khan remained loyal to Gandhi for the rest of his life, and accompanied the Hindu leader later on many of his long walks in riot-torn areas. Mention must be made in this connection of another Muslim stalwart who influenced Gandhi's life and thought (not always in a positive way), especially in the period from 1937 to 1947. He was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, creator of Pakistan. Hailed as the Father of the Nation in Pakistan, he is revered by all Pakistanis as Quaid-e-Azam , the "Great Leader," a name first given to him in 1940. Gandhi and Jinnah took diametrically opposite positions on most occasions and arrived at very different solutions for the Muslims in undivided India. But the situation was totally different and quite friendly at the initial stage. The two leaders were not at daggers drawn and saw eye to eye on many an issue: "In 1915, the young Jinnah, having established a successful legal practice in Bombay, became a leading advocate of co-operation between Hindus and Muslims in the task of working together to promote self-government for India after the war. He managed to arrange for the Muslim League and the Congress party to hold a joint meeting." No wonder, Gopal Krishna Gokhale unhesitatingly declared: "Jinnah is an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity." Jinnah was also hailed by many as the "Muslim Gokhale." "But Jinnah did not like the response of many Congress members in 1919 to Gandhi's call for the use of his satyagraha techniques for combating the British. Jinnah disliked the idea of attempting to agitate the masses, and he prepared to deal with the British through constitutional negotiation. He also did not like Maulana Azad's idea when he wanted to develop a new form of leadership by enlightened members of the Ulema class. Jinnah was interested primarily in the development of modern constitutional means of government ... He never felt any sympathy with Gandhi's approach, or with the tactics of the Muslim leaders of the Khilafat movement. Although he certainly shared the goal of self-government for India, he disliked the populism and mass agitation of the Non-Cooperation movement of 1919-22. The difference between him and Gandhi was a matter of disagreement over means; it was not in the first instance a difference based on Hindu-Muslim issues. Once Jinnah, after 1937, accepted the leadership of the Muslim League, he faithfully implemented the policies of the League. Iqbal and other Muslim thinkers helped to brief him and then he implemented their ideas." (Mcdonough) The difference between Gandhi and Jinnah unfortunately went on widening over the years and soon their views were poles apart almost on all occasions, especially when Jinnah became the chief spokesman of the Two Nation Theory. No wonder, Gandhi never felt inclined to discuss Islam with Jinnah, as he often did with Muslim thinkers like Maulana Mohammed Ali Jauhar, Allama Iqbal, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Zakir Hussain, et al. During the period of the Khilafat and the first Civil Disobedience movements, Gandhi moved very closely with Muslim leaders and intellectuals like Maulana Muhammad Ali, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Allama Mohammed Iqbal, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and later Congress stalwarts like Zakir Hussain. Through intimate acquaintance and long discussions with these learned exponents of Islam, his profound respect for the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) became deeper and stronger. Gandhi was so eager to know about Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) that he became sad when he did not have more to read about him. In his own words: "I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind ... I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his selflessness, his absolute trust in God and his own mission -- these and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet's biography) I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life." Gandhi's eulogy further testified: "Muhammad was a great Prophet. He was brave and feared no man but God alone. He was never found to say one thing and do another. He acted as he felt. The Prophet was a Faqir, he could have commanded wealth if he had so desired. I shed tears when I read of the privations, he, his family and companions suffered voluntarily. How can a truth-seeker like me help respect one whose mind was constantly fixed on God, who ever walked in God's fear and who had boundless compassion for mankind." The sayings of the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) impressed Gandhi to such a great extent that he hailed those as "the treasures of mankind." In his introduction to The Sayings of Muhammad (SM) by Allama Sir Abdullah Al-Mamun Al-Suhrawardy, he unhesitatingly declared: "I have read Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy's collection of the sayings of the Prophet with much interest and profit. They are among the treasures of mankind, not merely Muslims." Mention may be made in this connection that the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy came to appraise the real personality of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) through Sir Abdullah Al-Mamun Al-Suhrawardy's The Sayings of Muhammad (SM) and "a copy of this book was found in the large over-coat in which he wrapped himself before setting out on that last walk of his to die in the fields he used to till." In addition to his interest in the example of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as a man who changed the world by putting his faith into action, Gandhi also studied the Holy Qur'an regularly. He spent a considerable time studying the Holy Qur'an during his intermittent sojourns in Indian jails as the guest of His Imperial Majesty. "He wanted, as he often said," claims Sheila Mcdonough, "to know from the inside the hearts of his Muslim fellow-workers, and he believed that understanding their scripture was the way to understanding them. There were a number of areas in which he believed that he recognised similarities of themes between the insights he had gained from his understanding of Hindu scriptures, and the Qur'an. The word 'surrender' is one instance. This is the common English translation of the word Islam and is acknowledged to be the basic affirmation of all Muslim faith, namely surrendering to God, and to God alone. Gandhi felt that this was similar to the understanding of surrender he gained from an Upanishadic passage. Gandhi thought there was no significant difference between the Qur'an and the Upanishads on the issue of the necessity for total self-abandonment to God." Another similarity he discerned was the teaching that one should respond to evil with good. This seems to have one of the earliest affirmations that he took very seriously to heart when he learned it from a Vaishnava hymn. There is a very similar moral teaching in the Qur'an. In the words of Mcdonagh: "Only men possessed of mind remember; who fulfill God's covenant ... patient men, desirous of the Face of their Lord, perform the prayer, and expend of that We have provided them, secretly and in public, and who avert evil with good." In Gandhi's opinion, dharma meant firmness in upholding truth. This would be similar to his understanding of Qur'anic imperative in Surah Fatiha to remain on the straight path, and not be led astray. No wonder, he continuously used Surah Fatiha from the Holy Qur'an as part of his daily prayer service: "Gandhi also advised the Hindus as well as the Sikhs to read the Koran as they read the Gita and the Granth Saheb. And to the Musulmans he would say that they too should read the Gita and the Granth Saheb with the same reverence with which they read the Koran." (Abdul Waheed Khan, India Wins Freedom: The Other Side) While discussing Suddhi and Sangathan movements Gandhi even went to the extent of asking: "Why cannot Hindus believe in the divinity of the Qur'an and say with us that there is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet? Ours is not an exclusive religion, but it is essentially inclusive." Gandhi also believed the teachings about the attributes of God to be very similar in the scriptures of Hinduism and Islam. He did not hesitate to speak of Caliph Ali bin Abu Talib (RA) as a model of restraint, and thus a model for those who would take up the method of satyagraha. (Satyagraha means utter insistence upon truth. When a man insists on truth, it gives him power). In his own words: "You must know how to restrain your anger, if you desire to maintain non-violence in action for any length of time. Hazrat Ali, the hero of Islam, was once spat upon by an adversary; and it is my conviction that if he had not restrained his anger at the time, Islam would not have maintained its unbroken career of progress up to the present time." Gandhi also paid eloquent tribute to the incomparable sacrifice made by Imams Hassan and Hussain (RA). The glorious example of Imam Hussain (RA), the grandson of the holy Prophet of Islam (pbuh), who suffered martyrdom at the hands of a cruel and hostile state, is equated by Gandhi with tapascharya, the Hindu belief in the power of suffering to transform consciousness: "All religions in the world are thus strict in regard to pledges ... Even if only a few among you take the pledge, we shall have reward through them. Muslim students have before them the example of Imams Hassan and Hussain. Islam has not been kept alive by the sword, but by the many fakirs with a high sense of honour whom it has produced ... I have nothing to give you in the way of excitement ... I want to give you quiet courage. I want you to have hearts pure enough for self-sacrifice, for tapascharya." Gandhi believed that what he called "the Sufi aspect of Islam" taught patience and self-discipline, which Indian Muslims should learn to practice and the bhakti forms of Hinduism preached egalitarianism, which Hindus should learn to understand in its true spirit. He firmly believed that the Holy Qur'an stresses mercy and patience as essential human virtues. He refused to believe that irrational violence was a particular characteristic of the Muslims or the Hindus. He always interpreted irrational Muslim violence as corrupt understanding of Islam, as Hindu violence was equally a corrupt understanding of Hinduism. No wonder Gandhi was cut to the quick when a terrible communal riot broke out in Calcutta on August 16, 1946. In the next few years, mutual killing and destruction continued among Hindus and Muslims in many parts of the country. There were attacks on Hindu villages by Muslims in Noakhali and similar outbursts of violence against Muslim villages by Hindus in Bihar. The grief-stricken Bapu lamented: "We represented in India (the undivided India) all the principal religions of the earth, and it is a matter of deep humiliation to confess that we are a house divided against itself; that we Hindus and Muslims are flying at one another." Nothing became him so well as the end of his life. His cherished dream had come true -- freedom had come. But with freedom came communal passions, and Hindus and Muslims massacred one another. The frail old man, on the verge of his eightieth year, went from place to place, seeking to establish peace and goodwill while there were enmity and strife. He went to Noakhali to soothe the Hindus who had suffered from Muslim atrocities. He went to Patna to heal the sufferings of the Muslims at the hands of Hindus. He went to Delhi, and each day he preached love and communal amity. In the words of Mcdonough: "Gandhi indeed lived his final years, in the midst of a sort of hell on earth. There can scarcely be a worse kind of hell than outbursts of malicious violence among the very persons one has given one's life to serving." An insensate fanatic named Nathuram Godse, unable to bear Gandhi's message of goodwill and inter-faith harmony, shot him dead even when he was on his way to his prayers. That day, January 30, 1948, will remain a day of mourning forever, not only in India but in all places where people shun hostility and love peace and harmony between all faiths. Source: www.ikhwanweb.com URL: http://www.newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamDialogue_1.aspx?ArticleID=3354

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Asadullah Syed