The Malaysian Insider

DEC 7 - Politico-religious murders and destruction of property have in the last half century taken a new dimension.

Killing in the name of God is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on for centuries and history is replete with instances of such senseless killings.

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel in 1995, was motivated by misplaced extreme religious ideology.

This young murderer justified the killing by invoking God's name. That God would condone the taking of a human life to stop peace initiatives which would have brought to an end a long continuing conflict and saved countless lives and improve the livelihood of millions, defies logic.

I am sure that the loving Creator would not lend His name to such criminals.

The murder of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 by Naturam Godse was also premised on politico-religious consideration.  Godse believed that Gandhi had sacrificed Hindu interests to appease other minority groups and blamed Gandhi for the partition of India.

Unfortunately, the mayhem of partition was revisited with the assassination of Gandhi when a backlash against members of Godse's caste resulted in the large scale destruction of property and loss of innocent lives. Against the wishes of Gandhi's family and Nehru, an unrepentant Godse was executed for the murder.

Godse requested that his ashes be not strewn in a body of water according to Hindu dictates but to be kept by his brother to be buried in the Sindh Province when Pakistan reunited with India.  Godse's brother kept the urn of ashes for many years and commemorated Gandhi's assassination with a salute to his brother the "hero martyr."

Such is the conviction of the misguided when their action is anchored on the premise that they are doing God's work on earth.

Last week, the world once again witnessed the work of such misguided fools. This time it was the mindless massacre of hundreds of innocent people in Mumbai by a band of criminals claiming to be Muslim Mujahideen.

Women, children, the elderly and the helpless were mowed down in a hail of gunfire and explosives.  These misguided criminals were ostensibly doing it in the name of God.

My elders have often warned me to be wary of those who take the name of God in vain.

There is nothing more absurd than the logic of these killers. God would never condone such senseless killing of the innocent. 
There is no doubt that Islam forbids and abhors such acts of crime. Any right -thinking Muslim would condemn the acts of such cold-blooded criminals. I condemn it in the strongest of terms.

In fact in November 2008 about 6,000 Muslim clerics gathered in the city of Hyderabad in India and issued an edict declaring terrorism as un-Islamic.

The decree drawn up at Darul Uloom Deoband, India's foremost Islamic seminary, declared unequivocally that "Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence, breach of peace, bloodshed, murder and plunder, and does not allow it any form."

This message was made clear by the Mumbai Muslim Jama Masjid Trust when it refused to allow the burial of nine of the Mumbai murderers in the Muslim graveyard in downtown Mumbai.

According to the Trust, these men were not true followers of Islam. "People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslims.  Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime," said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee of the Masjid.

They are not God's warriors.  They are not Mujahideens.  They are mere cowardly criminals whose crime is condemned by the very religion they claim to champion.

My heart goes out to the families of all the victims who perished in the mayhem. May God give you all the strength to overcome your bereavement and to those who were injured, I pray for your speedy recovery.

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