Everywhere Muslims are under attack it seems. As I write the Muslim world erupts into conflict over gratuitous, intentional insults over the Prophet Mohammed. Even though Salman Rushdie says this same week, the anniversary of the fatwa against him that ‘you have no right in any declaration of human rights, not to be insulted’.
Islam needs freedom fighters. Freedom from the Muslims that will kill them in Iraq, that will kill them in Syria and that will kill them in Afghanistan.
This week as Muslims are slaughtered in Syria, survivors ask on BBC why the world watches and does not help? Is it because one day the West is asked for help, the next attacked for giving it? Yet the West remains willing and able – as always to send her sons into harm’s way to save Muslim lives.
For all the energy that goes into killing an American Ambassador and daring and co-ordination for attacking US consulates, and Embassies around the world, you’d think you would be able to save each other in Syria, as much as kill Westerners elsewhere? You would think you would have influence over your own community, more than non-Muslim Westerners do? You would think if you can send over fighters from Bradford to Pakistan, to Afghanistan, you could divert them to Syria?
So if ever I hear another idiot unable to tell the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist, it is this – a freedom fighter would die for his beliefs, but would rather live for them, and would rather others lived too. A freedom fighter spends more energy on saving lives, than killing lives.
Why are there more Muslim protests worldwide over words in a movie, than over dead Muslim babies in Syria? I have common cause with Islam. I want there not only to be more Muslim freedom fighters, but proof that the Muslim brotherhood exists too, to save Islam in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
So to the Muslim brotherhood I pray my God give you courage to act against Syria. I pray that your blood boils with anger and the wrath of the Lord flow through your veins and you strike down with a mighty vengeance those Muslim brothers who harm Muslim children.
When Pope Benedict visited the Blue Mosque in Istanbul he said, ‘May all believers identify themselves with the one God and bear witness to true brotherhood.’
Muslims of the world, unite, you are your brother’s keeper. A Catholic has told you – a Pope no less, a Hindu commoner has told you –when will the Muslim brotherhood tell you?
And to the Muslims in Pakistan, I remind you the words of the founding father of your nation, Mahatma Gandhi, ‘death for me would be a glorious deliverance rather than that I should be a helpless witness of the destruction of …Islam…that destruction is certain if Pakistan ensures no equality of status and security of life and property for all professing the various faiths of the world, and if India copies her. Only then Islam dies in the two India’s.
Islam flourishes only if it stops Muslims killing Muslims. Only if it protects those of other faiths. That is what my faith teaches me.
Alpesh Patel
Political Animal 