By Mohammad Ajmal
Author is Assistant Professor at Centre of Arabic and African Studies, JNU, New Delhi.
Anti-Islamic tendencies showed by non-Muslims in general and the West in particular once happened to be a disease, which has now been turned into a circus. The West sometimes attacks the prophet Mohammad (saws), sometimes they paved the way to desecrate the glorious Qur’an, it was only a few days ago, that Qur’an was attacked in Denmark and now the glorious Book has been set on fire in Sweden.
One should be very clear, that anti-Islamic sentiment has a long history in the West and is not a new phenomenon, in fact, Christians and Jews started opposing Islam with the advent of the Prophet itself. HazratSafiya (ra), one of the wives of the Prophet, was Jewish before she reverted to Islam, she claims that when the prophet Mohammad (saws) announced his prophet-hood, her father and uncle inquired as to whether the news of the Prophet’s mission was true or false; when it was determined that this is the Prophet whose arrival is foretold in the Torah, both of them testified and witnessed this to be the case. According to Hazrat Safiya, her father also told her uncle, what his future plan might be as far as the case of Mohammad is concerned; her uncle said that he will continue to oppose Him as long as he is alive.
Prior to the arrival of the Holy Prophet, Jews and Christians used to state that if we get the period of the last Prophet, they would not only accept Him as a prophet but also wage war against His opponents. However, when the Prophet began spreading His mission, majority of the Jews and Christians refused to believe in His call.
In their hostility, the West have misrepresented Islam and Muslims, they also made an effort to alter and distinguish Islam’s name and identity; for example, the West referred to Islam as “Mohammedanism” and Muslims as Mohammedans, for us, it is quintessential to make it very clear, thatthere is no such idiom as Mohammedanism or Mohammedan; it is only Muslim and Islam alone.
People in the West often referred to Muslims as “Hajerine” or “Hajrai” in allusion to Hajer, the wife of the Prophet Ibrahim (as), they detested this moniker since Hajer (as) was the a maid of Ibrahim’s first wife, Sara. Prophet Ismail (as), on the other hand, was born from the womb of Hajer (as), and the family chain of thep Muhammad (saws) conjoins with Prophet Ismail (as), in this context, the term “Hajerine” was used by West to refer to Muslims, implying that they are the offspring of a girl maid who served as a servant and that they had no historical entity.
It will not be out of place if we mention the ‘Crusades’ here, as often Muslims forget toreferit in their conversations and writings, nevertheless, the vast majority of Muslims do not know the background of the Crusades. In fact, the Crusades were not an “invention” of the Muslims, rather, were fabricated by the West, and in its backdrop was the hatred that Christendom harbored in their hearts for Islam and Muslims.
It was the year of 1095AD, Urban II, the then Pope stood up in a church and delivered a sermon and declared, “Islam is a satanic religion, and it has been revealed upon me that it is the duty of Christians to exterminate this satanic religion and its followers.”
Pope Urban II called Islam a ‘satanic religion’, without any historical or scientific basis for it, Pope Urban didn’t make this statement in the context of the Torah, the Gospel, or any statements made by Prophets Moses or Jesus (as), neither his interpretation of the Qur’an or the Hadith nor his consideration of the life of the Prophet led him to make this assertion.Instead, it was just a perceptual deception on his part, as he claimed that I had been “revealed” or “inculcated” with the belief that Islam is a ‘satanic religion’.
One must note that, believers of all beliefs know that there is a “divine revelation” and a “demonic revelation” and it takes a spiritual, moral and cognitive ability to distinguish between them, what was inspired on Pope Urban’s heart was hundred percent satanic revelation, but he considered it to be a divine revelation.
Nevertheless, the fundamental argument here is that the Pope’s voice has not shown to be authentic and trustworthy, following the Pope’s 1095AD proclamation that Islam was a satanic religion and should be destroyed along with its followers, and finally in 1099AD, the entire Europe virtually gathered under one umbrella of ‘crusade’ and began the wars of crusades and continued it for more than two hundred years.
At the beginning of these wars, the crusaders devastated Jerusalem brick by brick. According to Western sources, they massacred Muslims in Jerusalem on such a massive scale that the city’s streets were covered in so much blood that it was difficult to even walk and ride horses and did not even spare the Jew inhabitants.
Then there was a time in Jerusalem, when Salahuddin Ayyubi’s forces besieged Bait-ul-Maqdis, at that time, about one hundred thousand Christians were living in Jerusalem, it was the best opportunity for the Islamic army to justify the pogrom of Muslims in the Bait-ul-Maqdis, as it was well-known, that Salahuddin Ayyubi was a pioneer of Islam and a great fighter, however instead of doing so, he offered them a significant sum of money, and gave them a passage of leaving from Bait-ul-Maqdis, many Christians were so destitute that they were unable to pay Salahuddin Ayyubi even a tiny amount of money, as a result, Salahuddin Ayyubi and his followers compensated for their contributions.
Even today, the vast majority of Muslims do not know that the official position of the Christian Church regarding the Prophet is that the Church considers prophet Mohammad (saws) to be the great figure in history.
The Prophet is being considered among the Geniuses of history, but the Church does not consider the Prophet as a prophet, the West claims (by Allah’s refuge) that Messenger (saws) borrowed verses from the Torah, and from the Bible and clubbed them together to create the Quran, ironically, this accusation is made by the Christendom, which has no original scripture of the Gospels itself.
The concept of Western world regarding the prophet Mohammad is actually derived from the concept of their God Jesus, Prophet Jesus never did Jihad, the Prophet (saws) did it instead, likewise, Jesus did not establish any state, on the contrary the Holy Prophet (saws) established the state of Medina, Prophet Jesus did not get married and lived a celibate life. In contrast, the Holy Prophet had eleven wives, when the Western world looks at the Holy Prophet in this perspective; they see the Prophet as very different from Jesus. Therefore, the Christian world refuses to accept Mohammad (saws) as a Prophet. Rather, it becomes willing to humiliate the Prophet; it calls the Messenger of Allah (saws) a world loving and selfish person. Dante, the prominent poet of the West, had so much hatred for the Prophet (saws) that he depicted the Prophet (saws) in Hell in his poem “Divine Comedy”.
The study of history shows that after the defeat of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the anti-Islamism of the West suddenly increased in a very large scale.
9/11 proved to be the fuel in fire, and played a central role in this regard, after the demolition of the twin towers of America, US President George Bush announced to start “Crusade” in response to 9/11 while addressing the American people, whereas the term crusade was used for the wars of crusade, so it meant that the West has launched a new crusade against Islam and Muslims.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy after George Bush, while addressing the press, said that Christian civilization is superior to Islamic civilization and the way it defeated communism, it will defeat Islamic civilization as well. Here, they forget to remember that with whose help they defeated communism!!
After the statement of the Prime Minister of Italy, the Attorney General of the United States at that time, Ashcroft, crossed all limits, while addressing a conference in Washington DC, he said that the God of Christianity is superior to the God of Islam because the God of Christianity sacrificed his son Jesus for the salvation of humanity. On the other hand, the God of Islam asks Muslims to sacrifice their lives in the form of martyrdom to show their superiority. When the leaders of the West were making these statements, their official position was that they were going to fight against terrorism, but the reality was that they were going to fight against Islam, the Prophet and Muslims.Therefore, in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI openly committed blasphemy, he repeated the words of the fourteenth-century Christian king Manuel II about what Mohammad had brought new, and that ‘Islam spread by the force of the sword’.
It was such a big incident of blasphemy by the greatest personality of Christianity that it would have been a minor thing if the third world war had started on it, but unfortunately, wails to condition of Muslims, as they are not Muslims in letter and spirit rather they are pile of ashes, of nouse.
The situation of Muslims, especially the kings, Emirs, and Shaikhs of Muslim world, political leaders and generals, is that they have failed miserably in defending the freedom and sovereignty of Muslims, even the sanctity of the Holy Prophet and the Qur’an. You see how the military and political establishment has despondently failed to discharge their duties to protect Denmark and Sweden’s blasphemous act of insulting and desecration of the glorious Quran and the Prophet.
However, one positive aspect in this realm took place on July 12, 2023, is the resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council, an auxiliary of the United Nations in Geneva, the resolution has condemned the burning and the desecration of glorious Qur’an in Sweden. Interestingly, the Human Rights Council has accepted this resolution despite the opposition of the United States and the European Union.The resolution was presented by Pakistan with the support of the OIC, and as expected, calling it contrary to the concepts of human rights and freedom of expression, the United States and Europe opposed the resolution, whereas the Human Rights Council accepted the incident as an abuse of freedom of expression.
The United Nations Human Rights Council consists of forty seven members, of which twenty eight members voted in favor and twelve against the resolution, in which the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union were in the lead, while seven members were absent.The absence of seven members is also important from the point of view that by not voting against the resolution, as they did not recognize the desecration of the Qur’an as the right to freedom of expression.
With the acceptance of this resolution, the feeling can be solidified at the global level that dirty actions based on religious hatred can destroy world peace. In the approval of this resolution, it is also worth mentioning that the non-Muslim countries who have voted in favor of resolution include China and India.
The open opposition of the United States and the United Kingdom to this resolution shows that the concepts of human rights and freedom of speech are a tool for their imperialist ambitions and suppression of nations. The three hundred year imperialist history that America made is full of inhumanity, but they are continuing their movement against a true religion by being Satan’s tool.This step taken bythe OIC and Pakistan should be welcomed by the so-calledpeace-lovingworld; the issue needs to be raised more forcefully in the international community.
At the last touch of this write up, it is imperative to inform the West of the mistake they are making of trying to treat Islam like any other absurd Western ideology. The West accuses Islam of being backwards but are themselves now devoid of any form of morality and conviction to a proper society. Their conscience revolves around minor thoughts and ideas, which have no impact that is not the case with Muslims. Unlike the Christendom, the Muslims are not spineless and would not let the Godless West intervene within their religion.
