“Islamophobia” this very title has intentionally been branded by the westerns. Under the camouflage of the so-called “freedom of expression,” they keep ridiculing our Holy Prophet (SAW) and Islam. The history is a wise guide that whenever Muslim religious beliefs are mocked, and their Prophet ( PBUH) is ridiculed, it creates a wave of reactions that can’t be fathomed with the secular lense these “Lords of secularism” wear. As a reaction, when some resistance is shown by the Muslims, they link it to Islamic fanaticism.
There was a time when Islam would be the only significant religion, spread over the vast lands of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Arab Peninsula already being the stronghold of Islamic civilization. Islam taught humans the ways that lead to a successful life. It’s Islam that paved the way to democracy, justice, human rights, especially women’s rights, which the age of darkness had deprived them of until Prophet Muhammad (SAW) came with the light of Islam and abolished all the superstitious beliefs that had incarcerated them for long.
Islam brought a prodigious alteration in the lives of the ordinary people. As a nation, Muslims kept progressing in every field of life as long as they strictly adhered to the teachings of Islam. Since they let loose the grip from Allah and His Prophet’s chosen path, they didn’t only witness their downfall in almost every field of life, but in this highly materialistic world, they even went astray.
Those nations, who were once under the aegis of Islamic rule suddenly appeared on the surface, took hold of the rein, controlled the saddle from Muslims, and made them indigent for everything.
The perception of Islam in the West is exceedingly confused and misleading. A high degree of skepticism is exhibited regarding the universality and immutability of the abiding message of Islam. The distorted picture corresponds neither to the facts of history nor to the realities of present times. In the corridors of media and politics, faulty impressions are built up which have nothing to do with genuine flavor and fervor of the code of life which Islam portrays.
Western intellectuals and literary circles have been influenced primarily by episodes produced through media and written texts to propagate hostility towards Islam. The results of such literary works appeared not only in the faulty representation of Islam but actual brutal attacks against Muslims in Afghanistan, Palestine, Spain, and Turkey. The same trend, unfortunately, continues to persist even today. Islam is still viewed as the world’s most troubling phenomenon –the religion of fanaticism.
There is a pre-planned game of the western mentality to propagate concocted negative stories through media to tarnish the image of Islam.
However, the bitter fact is that suspicion and misinterpretations continue to hamper the pace of understanding and the nature of relations between the two sides. There are people in the West, like professor Huntington of Harvard University, who believe that with the long fight between communism and capitalism is now over, the inevitable clash to take place will be the West and Islam. Some of the glimpses of this notion we witnessed when the USA and its allies raged the so-called war on terror after the 9/11 events, then most of the western intellectuals termed it not, war on terror but a war against Islam or the long-awaited clash of civilization.
One of the most intriguing obsessions afflicting modern western civilization is the phenomenon of the so-called “Islamic Fundamentalism.” Western regard it as dangerous a trend as the communism of the past. It is considered one of the potential threats to destabilize the Western world.
Since western civilization is heavily materialistic and secularized, and Islam is oriented to moral and spiritual guidelines, the two cultures are not only different but equally challenging to each other’s perception. This is why the Islamic conception is not acceptable to the West. It is regarded as a threat to its dominance and proposed strategies to perpetuate its vested interests in the world in general and the Muslim world in particular.
The west apprehension that Islam is reemerging in present times as a potential threat to western civilization is not based on the fact of history and is contrary to the perception of contemporary developments.
Islamic revivalist movements that sometimes have to take recourse to strict measures to see Islam applied in their daily lives cannot be rejected as a facet of terrorism or extremism. There may be a sporadic outburst of abrupt socio-cultural and religious phenomenon. But they cannot be condemned as ugly manifestations of Islam.
The Iranian revolution in 1979 was also based on their religious beliefs, against the socio-cultural imperialism of the West, which united them against the western atrocities and paved the way for the Islamic revolution.
Prior to the Iranian revolution, a school teacher Hassan-al-Banna in Egypt led a movement that was essentially based on Islamic fundamentalism. These movements were carried out not for some materialistic gains but out of fear of the impending moral, social, and cultural disasters that may have taken place, hadn’t those been halted by the Muslim’s prompt actions.
Recent incidents of school teacher Samuel Petty in France in the name of freedom of expression created a hue and cry situation in the Muslim world. Instead of soothing Muslim’s emotions, France govt added insult to injury by declaring him a hero and started portraying the controversial caricatures officially from time to time. French govt’s deliberate step goes without saying that the westerns are purposely enticing Muslims’ emotions by hitting them religiously.
Ostensibly, in the name of war against Islamic extremism and terrorism, they are undoubtedly leaving no stone unturned to have it linked to their believed theory of the “clash of civilization”. God forbid if this happens, there would be grave consequences for both cultures.
Cutting the story short, The current wave of hatred unleashed by the West could equally prove that dangerous or more if sanity did prevail. The onus rests on the West and East alike to devise ways for creating a balanced narrative to prevent another “World Disorder”. The world has no choice except to move from a “Clash of Civilization” to a “harmony of civilization,” and the West should take the lead in this rather than fueling the fire.
