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Muslims
Must Save Islam from Islamists
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Jihadists
see Western-style education of the youth as a problem worth mass
murdering for.
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It seems there is no respite for the ordinary Muslim. Barely a day
goes by when news of fresh atrocities by our coreligionists isn't in the
headlines.
Most of the world's billion-plus Muslims wouldn't dream of killing in
the name of Islam, but enough do to form a critical mass that has put us
on a collision course with the rest of humanity.
The Sydney siege by an ISIS-inspired jihadist had barely ended when
the horrific news of a Taliban massacre killing 140 children at a
Pakistani school shocked the world.
It took place at an "Army Public School", inside a Pakistan
cantonment on the edges of Peshawar. Many of the students who attended
this elite school were the sons and daughters of Pakistan army officers.
Most of the world's billion-plus
Muslims wouldn't dream of killing in the name of Islam, but enough do
to form a critical mass that has put us on a collision course with the
rest of humanity.
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Ironically, the Taliban barbarians who killed these children were a
creation of the Pakistan military, aimed at controlling neighbouring
Afghanistan as a satellite state.
Why did the Taliban strike at a military school? Could it be
retaliation for the recent Pakistan army campaign to expel the Taliban
out of Pakistan and into Afghanistan?
That may be one reason. But knowing the workings of the worldwide
jihadist terror movement and the Islamists who sow its seeds in Islamic
countries and the West, there is another: the Islamist's rejection of
Western-style education systems.
The school attacked had boys and girls attending classes in what is
referred to as a co-educational "English-medium" school.
The boys, smartly dressed in green blazers, white shorts and green
neckties, reflect everything the Islamists despise.
And to be in the company of teenaged girls being educated at the same
school would be seen as the worst of sins by those who promote Islamism,
not just in Islamic countries but in Canada.
I suggest this is the "Boko Haramization" of the Pakistani
jihadist movement that proclaims "western education is 'Haraam'
(sinful)".
Not that the Taliban have any tolerance for educating girls —Nobel
Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai being one their early victims — but
this attack appears to have been aimed largely at teenaged boys.
Last month, Zahid Askani, an American-educated Baloch who ran a
co-educational school, where boys and girls studied English and wore
western-style jackets and neckties, was assassinated by suspected
jihadist death squads with the reported backing of the military.
Muslims who claim the actions of
the Taliban or ISIS are not Islamic ... must renounce armed jihad as
unfit for our age.
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Massacres are not new to Pakistan, or its military. In the last few
years Pakistan's army intelligence wing has reportedly abducted and
killed hundreds of students in the Baloch Students Organization (BSO) in
Balochistan who support an indigenous independence movement.
Just a day after an ISIS-sympathizer took hostages in Sydney,
Australia, leading to his own death and that of two innocent civilians,
the tragedy of Peshawar provides another opportunity for Muslims to
recognize we have a serious problem that only we can correct.
Muslims who claim the actions of the Taliban or ISIS are not Islamic
must match this rhetoric by coming together and calling for a strict
separation between Islam and politics. They must renounce armed jihad as
unfit for our age.
If they don't, we will all be tarred by the actions of those who kill
in the name of Islam and Allah.
The hashtag on Twitter by an Australian woman expressing solidarity
with Muslims, #Illridewithyou, may please us, but it will not save us
from the proverbial Dante's Inferno.
Only we can do that, no one else.
Tarek
Fatah is a founder of the Muslim
Canadian Congress, a columnist at the Toronto Sun, host of a
Sunday afternoon talk show on Toronto's NewsTalk1010 AM Radio, and a
Robert J. and Abby B. Levine Fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the
author of two award-winning books: Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic
State and The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel
Muslim Anti-Semitism.
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