A lot lies in between violence and silence

Jamait-Ulema- I-Hind (JUH) of Deoband condemns terrorism in all forms and does well. Whose terror? Whosesoever. That does not matter when the very act is violent. Whatever the motivation and the aim behind executing that desperation on the ground, it’s hateful in all its possible manifestation. Permitting a single option as a time-bound excuse will always let other options open thereby making the very nature of ‘terror’ a subject of an endless debate. By the time we will have half the humanity drowned in the blood of innocents. So before actually putting the statement to further deliberations, one issue is to be concluded without any circumlocution and ambiguity. Human life, the first last and the last. Then we can have an unbiased approach towards tracing out the genesis of terror.
 It was immediately followed by a mature response from United Jehad Council. They call it ‘correct but incomplete’. Correct, because there can’t be any bigger violence done to Islam than attributing violence to it. And incomplete, as it is silent about the original perpetrators of terror who breed it and then once it spirals out of control they take lead to denounce it. Those who watered the serpents could not save themselves from the bite and then what could have they done except making some compulsive condemnations against anything and everything that means violence. They begin with an extreme of glorifying violence as the creed of believers and a sure way to salvation and they end by taking a vow that they won’t rest till they clean the whole planet of all kinds of orthodoxy. First they mean religion, live religion, breathe religion, and then they banish religion never to see it again. It has happened with groups and individuals both. At one stage we are committed to ‘revolutionize’ the universe and then comes the time when nothing bothers us except those few cubic centimeters spacious enough to ensure us a harmless and worry free livelihood. All such movements have got crushed under these two extreme points of view and both are dangerous. While venerating violence we go murderously hysterical and while condemning it we become abjectly apologetic. Even all genuine non-violent forms of resistance are not only disowned but disdained. So if Islam gets a bad name, Muslims are maligned, Deoband scholars are worried about the harm caused to their secular image. Rightly so. But draw a line between an extreme rebellion which means nothing but ferocity and extreme loyalty that even deprives one of the basic right of self-assertion. Throwing the baby out in a bid to get rid of bathwater will only dispossess us of our self-respect.
 Oppression breeds terror no doubt, but it does not justify it. In the name of self defense, one is never free to carry on the chain of violence. Pushed to wall, one can’t help but hit back, but there is a huge room before the adrenalin outpours. If victims become oppressors themselves, tyranny is fought with tyranny, peace is ensured through war only, eye for an eye principle is given a free and absolute run, we are welcome into the world of mayhem. Then we have no choice but to prefer oppression to chaos. At least oppressive regimes are less anarchic than people unleashed against each other. There you still know the top-down relationship between the king and the subject. Here who knows who is the king, who the subject.
 Our history and even our scriptures have also suffered the same violence at our hands. We refer to a divinely revealed verse when we need to incite our innocents and let them run riot. And when it all rebounds with an even more force too hard to fight back, we swiftly refer to the same and locate the text that suits the moment now. Demand of the time is prudence which never lets one swim with the tide unless he foresees the benefits and dangers. Ofcourse good and bad happen to a human decision, but a fair amount of acumen will always keep us from these blind extremes which can logically end at nothing but madness. After all we need sense, not sensation.