Sunday, February 28, 2016

A Case For Extirpating Wahabism

Colombo Telegraph
By Izeth Hussain –February 27, 2016
Izeth Hussain
Izeth Hussain
Verily God will not change the condition of men, till they change what is in themselves. – Koran – Sura 13 verse 14.
The main purpose of this article is to point out that there might be a case for action by Muslims, as well as non-Muslims constituting the international community as a whole, towards extirpating Wahabism and all its clones from off the face of the earth. I choose the word “extirpating” advisedly to mean a process of rooting out so that Wahabism will never ever again manifest itself on this earth. I have been provoked into arguing this case by the anti-Shia hate campaign for which our mosques have been misused over several weeks. I cannot see the slightest justification for this hate campaign. We have a small community of Shias in the form of the Borahs who have always had excellent relations with our Sunni Muslims consisting of the Moors, the Malays, and the Memons, and also with non-Muslim Sri Lankans. In addition there are a few hundred non-Borah Shias here, who took to Shi-ism mainly because they were enthused by Iran’s 1979 Revolution. They could be the target of the Wahabi hate campaign. But, as far as my enquiries reveal, they have not been aggressively pushing a Shia agenda nor have they been using unethical methods to increase their ranks.
What, then, is the explanation for the entirely gratuitous and utterly irrational anti-Shia hate campaign that has been sustained for several weeks, desecrating our mosques in the process? The question is an important one, because the answers to it could constitute some of the reasons why Wahabism should be extirpated. Part of the explanation is the intolerant and totalitarian mind-set of the Wahabis. They hold that not only non-Muslims but professing Muslims such as the Sunnis and the Shias – in short all those who don’t abide by Wahabi tenets – are in reality non-Muslims and should therefore be put to the sword. But according to the well-entrenched belief system of all non-Wahabi Muslims the shahada – the confession of faith that there is only one God and Mohammed is his Prophet – suffices to make a person a Muslim, and that is not something that should be questioned. The fierce fanatical intolerance of the Wahabis means that they cannot live in peaceful accommodation with other Muslims. They have been busy dismantling Sunni Islam in Sri Lanka, now they want to eliminate Shi’ism, and next they will want to destroy the Sufi orders that have traditionally structured orthodox Islam in Sri Lanka. Only the Kharijites of early Islam showed a like intolerance. They were quickly banned by other Muslims. It is time to ban the Wahabis.                      Read More