Kashmir Affairs - Security & Conflict Analysis of Kashmir

What did you argue in that article?
Basically, what I was trying to say was that we Muslims should work actively for peace and devote all our efforts to dawah or missionary work, telling others about Islam, which is a fundamental duty for all Muslims. Only in a climate of peace and good relations with other communities we are able to do dawah work and others will seriously listen to what we have to say about our religion. So, to clarify this point I argued that we can learn from the example of Jesus, whom all Muslim deeply revere as a prophet of God. Jesus used peaceful methods to propagate his message and Muslims, too, should do that.

Islam itself says that violence can be resorted to only in self-defence and that the general norm is peace, violence being allowed only under exceptional conditions. But those Muslims who base their relations with people of other communities on confrontation and conflict ignore this. Rather than seeing non-Muslims as fellow beings, they see them as inherent enemies who should be dominated over, rather than to be approached through love and kindness with the true message of Islam.

My point in arguing that Muslims should adopt the model of Jesus was simply to say that we should adopt peaceful methods of dawah. I did not mean, in any way, to denigrate the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). I have written numerous books in praise of the Prophet, holding him to be a model for all humanity, and so I cannot be accused of this. Today we enjoy freedom of religion, and so the situation that demanded violence in defence of one's faith does not exist. In the Prophet's time this freedom was denied to the Muslims and this, and the fierce oppression that he and his followers had to face, forced them to take to arms in self-defence in some situations. Hence, we need to take full advantage offered to us by this freedom to peacefully propagate Islam, in the same manner as Jesus did or the Prophet did.

Do you also advocate non-violence because you feel that violence would be counterproductive from the Muslim point of view?
In most cases, this would be the case. We are much weaker than the West, so why continue this disastrous strategy, especially when it can only result in damage and massive loss of life, especially for Muslims? We need to use the peaceful method used by Jesus because today's situation demands this. The Prophet Muhammad used precisely this method in most cases, except in very trying conditions. So, when I talked about adopting Jesus' method, I was talking only about his minhaj (methods), and I was certainly not advocating that Muslims should adopt the Christian religion or abandon their din, which I, as a Muslim, also believe in and know to be eternal and unchangeable. I think some of my detractors in Kashmir have not understood this distinction I was trying to make between the eternal din on the one hand, and the minhaj, on the other, which depends on the situation. At the same time, they have acted on the same principal which they accuse me of advocating. The Prophet Muhammad and his followers fought battles using swords and sitting on camels, but militants in Kashmir have adopted a different method-using guns and bombs.

But let me come to come back to my point about violent confrontation being largely counter-productive from the Muslim point of view. We are living in an age of weapons of mass destruction. Islam imposes certain restrictions on the conduct of war. For instance, it says that non-combatants, including women, children and priests, cannot be killed. But in a war that involves weapons of mass destruction how can one differentiate between combatants and noncombatants? You just cannot. This means that such a war will inevitably involve massive loss of innocent lives, which Islam does not allow. This demands that Muslims, for their part, have to reconsider the whole situation.

From the point of view of Islamic missionary work, which is a fundamental Islamic duty, too, peaceful activism is far more effective, while armed conflict can only result in making non-Muslims even more distant from Islam, reinforcing false negative stereotypes about Muslims as inherently violent and opposed to people of other religions.

In Kashmir, many people see you as advocating the Indian position on the conflict there. What exactly are your views?
I have written about the Kashmir issue several times; including a piece that is part of my Urdu book Aman-e Alam (Universal Peace). I have studied the historical records relating to Kashmir. At the root of the problem was the fate of princely states following Partition. It was generally understood that the political future of the princely states would be decided by what the majority of their inhabitants wanted. Only two states presented a dilemma: Muslim-ruled but Hindu-majority Hyderabad and Hindu-ruled but Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Pakistan wanted to take Kashmir and it also wanted to annex Hyderabad, and the Razakars, under Qasim Rizvi, launched a movement for that. Sardar Patel, who was primarily responsible for the integration of the princely states into the Indian Dominion, sent a message to the then Pakistani Prime Minister, Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan, making the very sensible suggestion that Pakistan could keep Kashmir and India would take Hyderabad. Had Liaqat agreed, there would have been no problem. But he refused. He wanted to have both Kashmir and Hyderabad but in the end got neither. And today we all-Indians, Pakistanis and the people of Jammu and Kashmir-are paying for this folly. As the Japanese saying goes, 'If you run after two rabbits, you will lose both'.

This is new to me. Where did you get this information from?
It is mentioned in several books. I haven't cooked it up on my own. It is mentioned, for instance, in a very well-researched book written by Sirdar Shaukat Hayat Khan, a leading Pakistani politician, who was in-charge of Kashmir affairs soon after Pakistan came into being. He was the son of the Unionist Party leader and Premier of Punjab, Sir Sikander Hayat Khan. In his book, 'The Nation That Lost Its Soul', which was published a little more than a decade ago in Lahore, Sirdar Shaukat writes that when Mountbatten arrived in Lahore he passed on to Liaqat a message from Patel, wherein Patel had mentioned that Pakistan should abide by the rule agreed upon previously by Congress and the Muslim League that states whose subjects were mainly Hindu and which adjoined the Indian Union should join India, and that states with Muslim majorities and adjoining Pakistan should join that country. Accordingly, Patel offered that Pakistan could take Kashmir and India could take Hyderabad.

Sirdar Shaukat Hayat Khan then writes that in his capacity of being in-charge of Pakistan's Kashmir operations he told Liaqat that since the Indian Army had entered Kashmir, Pakistan was not in a position to annex Kashmir using the tribesmen from the Frontier or its regular troops, which were inadequate. Hence, he advised, Pakistan should accept Patel's offer. In response, Liaqat told Sirdar Shaukat, and here I quote verbatim from Sirdar Shaukat's book, "Sirdar Saheb, have I gone mad to give Hyderabad State, which is much larger than the Punjab, for the sake of the rocks of Kashmir?"

Sirdar Shaukat writes that he was 'stunned' by Liaqat's response and what he calls his "ignorance of our geography and his lack of wisdom". He adds, "I thought he was living in a fool's paradise and did not understand the importance of Kashmir to Pakistan while hoping to get Hyderabad, which at best was only quixotic wishful thinking", because Hyderabad was not connected with a border with Pakistan. In protest, Sirdar Shaukat at once resigned from the position he was holding in Pakistan's Kashmir operations. Now, you see what the historical cause of this conflict is and how we are paying for this great blunder.

What do you feel is the solution to the conflict in Kashmir?
I personally think that the only realistic solution is for both countries to accept the status quo and convert the Line of Control into an international border. There is no realistic alternative. Some people may not like this, but then there is no option save further destruction and loss of life, especially of innocent Kashmiris. India is too strong militarily. The Prophet Muhammad did not want to leave Mecca, but he was forced to do so by the oppression that he and his followers were facing there. Sometimes you must do what you don't want to do- and this applies both in an individual's personal life as well as in the life of a people.

I visited Kashmir in 1989, a month or so before militancy broke out there. At that time there was already talk about azadi, about nizam-e mustafa being established there and of Kashmir becoming part of Pakistan. I went with some Kashmiri friends to a village near Srinagar. We were sitting near a stream and, pointing to the stream, I said to my friends, "See, God is saying something to you through this. The stream comes down from the mountains. It faces massive boulders on its way to the river. But instead of fighting with these boulders and breaking its head on them, it gently flows over them or goes around them and succeeds in the end." That principle, I said, can be used in searching for a suitable solution to the Kashmir conflict.

During this trip to Kashmir I also gave a lecture at Tagore Hall in Srinagar. There I mentioned an interesting incident in the life of the Prophet. Once a man came into the mosque and urinated there. Instead of scolding him, the Prophet arranged for the spot to be washed clean. The man was overwhelmed by this noble example of the Prophet. When he returned to his people he told them about the gentle way that the Prophet had treated him. They, being greatly impressed, came to the Prophet and accepted Islam. I mentioned in my speech that what the Prophet achieved by splashing water in the mosque some groups were trying to achieve through shedding blood and that this would end only in death, destruction and chaos.

How have your views been received in Pakistan?
Many of my books have been printed in Pakistan. My Urdu magazine, Al-Risala, is widely read there. Our website www.alrisala.org <http://www.alrisala.org> is probably accessed by many people in Pakistan. On the question of Kashmir I had addressed a letter to President Pervez Musharraf way back in mid-2001. I told him that politics is the art of the possible, that the violence in Kashmir had achieved nothing but the loss of thousands of lives and had also further strengthened the wrong impression that many non-Muslims have of Islam allegedly being a violent religion. This, I said, had contributed to stop the ideological march of Islam through dawah and that it was time we should adopt the peaceful dawah approach, including in solving the Kashmir dispute.

Peace, I wrote to Musharraf, allows others to study or learn about Islam. I referred to the Treaty of Hudaibiya, which the Prophet signed with the Qureish of Mecca. The terms of the treaty appeared to have been loaded against the Muslims, but it actually provided them a period of peace, during which the Prophet and his companions engaged in peaceful dawah work. As a result of this, many Arabs who had opposed the Prophet became Muslims. I also told Musharraf that he should learn a lesson from the late Charles de Gaulle, who decided, against the will of most Frenchmen, to withdraw from Algeria. As a result, he failed to get elected for a second term but today he is still remembered for what he did. What I am trying to say is that sometimes we have to take what appear to be harsh decisions for the larger good, which we can only understand years later.

August 2007