Muslim majority must stand up against Islamic extremists

KABUL, Afghanistan — As the flames of war burn terrible scars into Gaza, Israel, Iraq, Syria and beyond, a viable path to peace presents itself. It has little to do with the US military or President Obama.

The solution lies in the Arab world itself.

Arab intellectuals and moderate Muslims of the ulama (leaders and scholars of Islamic law) need to speak up, speak out and start a social media campaign to stop these wars. The international community of civilized nations and the United Nations should add the names of states like Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia to the list of countries that support and sponsor jihadists.

Responsible Muslims and world leaders everywhere must “tell it like it is” and place blame where it belongs. They need to stop pretending that atrocities are committed only by Israel and the US.

Muslims will never gain real credibility until they address and condemn the atrocities committed in the name of Islam.

The Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza is a human tragedy. Muslims are pained and saddened to see on their TV screens the killing of Palestinian civilians, among them women, children and the elderly, by artillery which Israel justifies as self-defense in response to Hamas’ indiscriminate firing of rockets at them.

The Muslim sentiment is reflected by Arab news network Al Jazeera and its website, as well as in Arab social media. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called Israel’s action “genocide.” Representatives from dozens of political and religious parties in Pakistan issued a joint declaration denouncing Israel’s “heinous Zionist crimes.” King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called it “collective massacre.”

The killing of non-combatants is not justified on either side. They are human tragedies and perhaps even Medieval acts of revenge, incongruous with democracy and a clear violation of human rights.

Most puzzling is the dichotomy of the Muslim religious establishment ulama and Muslim political leaders who turn blind eyes and deaf ears to the cries of women that lost sons or children that lost fathers because of terrorist acts of other Muslims.

Where is the outcry over the dead Muslim street vendor or daily laborer, or the dead woman that left home to get a loaf of bread for her family, only to be blown apart by a suicide bomber? Or the new Muslim bride and groom, massacred at daylight by Islamist extremists?

Against the record of Muslims killing Muslims, cries of states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia over Israel’s killing of Muslims is pure hypocrisy.

Since the Gaza war started, the Palestinians say their death toll has eclipsed 1,800. But the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Syria have already left more than 100 times as many dead, most of them Muslims. You don’t hear much outcry about that because the victims didn’t die from Israeli artillery fire.

They died at the hands of other Muslims.

In my native Afghanistan, the UN reports that in the first six months of 2014, nearly 5,000 have been killed, already making it the bloodiest year since the UN began keeping records in 2009. About 1,000 of those killed were children.

In Iraq, the Islamic States is engaged in a grotesque campaign of beheading, mass shootings and purging of non-Sunni Muslims and Christians.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran security forces and their religious establishments are accused of financing and giving safe haven to Islamic militants. Those that blow up civilians in Afghanistan are coming in from “Muslim” Pakistan. Those that fight against the Shiite government in Iraq and wage war in Syria are reportedly financed and sent from “Muslim” Saudi Arabia.

The word jihad can mean an internal struggle by a believer to fulfill his religious duties, but it also connotes a struggle against those who do not believe in the Allah, the God of Abraham. Sadly, jihad has become a euphemism for genocide, and Allahu Akbar (God is greater) became a battle cry as a Muslim sword falls on a Muslim neck.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is chronic and flares up periodically, but the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria have been raging for years, and we never hear Saudi, Pakistani or Muslim scholars call this slaughter of Muslims by Muslims what it is: a genocide.

The Islamic State has shocked the word by posting videos of beheadings and mass shootings of Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish Yazidi and Christians, yet the Islamic scholars remain silent.

It has been reported that the Saudis paid Pakistan $1.5 billion — which Pakistan called a “gift” — to train Salafi soldiers to fight alongside the Islamic State. The Iran clergy finances Hezbollah, another terrorist organization, to fight for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who gassed his own people.

Jihadists that want to establish a new caliphate (Islamic state) pose a great danger to world stability. President Obama’s decision to surgically bomb the Islamic State is the wrong recipe for dealing with these extremists. It’s like kicking a hornet’s nest.

Instead, the vast majority of moderate Muslims, their leaders and the ulama that still carry sway in the Islamic world, must to stop blaming the West and the Israelis, and tell it as it really is. Religion isn’t the problem. Terrorism, extremism and intolerance are the problems.

Wahab Raofi is a graduate of Kabul Law School and worked at the Ministry of Justice in his native Afghanistan. He immigrated to the United States, but currently works with the NATO/International Security Assistance Force as an interpreter and culture adviser in Afghanistan.

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