Pakistani media has reported that the leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JEI), a Pakistani Islamist political party close to the global Muslim Brotherhood, has accused the West of being the “real terrorists” and complained that Western societies will not allow Muslims to practice Islam in their daily lives, labeling practices such as jihad as terrorism According to one report:
Jamaat-e-Islami Secretary General Syed Munawar Hassan has criticised the West for what he called ‘deliberate tarnishing of the peaceful image of Islam.’ The real terrorists are Washington, Tel Aviv and Delhi who usurped Muslims’ land and now they are out to maim them with their lethal chemical and biological weaponry besides calling them terrorists, he said while addressing a training workshop of party cadre of Vehari district at Mansoorah on Saturday. Referring to the history of Muslim warriors, he said Muslims refrained from unnecessary bloodshed because Islam strictly prohibits harming non combatant citizens, women and children.Such positive attitude caused massive conversions to Islam, he said. While on the other hand millions of people were killed in the World Wars I and II, Munawar said adding that the US killed millions of people in Japan by testing nuclear bombs on innocent civilians, besides massacring millions of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11. This brutality mocked the US claims of searching the WMDs as they themselves used much more deadly weapons to kill Muslim civilians and destroy basic infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. He said there was western plan to divide Muslims on the basis of caste, colour and language. He said Western societies were willing to give places in their respective countries to build mosques and Islamic centres but they were not willing to allow the Muslims to practise Islam in everyday lives. He said those Muslims who wanted to practice Islamic teachings, economy, politics and foreign policy (jihad) were immediately branded as terrorists. The West is presenting the Holy Quran as book of war, therefore, they were acting upon a plan to exclude it from the educational system of Pakistan.
The JEI was founded in 1941 and is Pakistan’s oldest religious party. The party had its origins in the thought of Maulana Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi (1903-79), the most important Islamist intellectual in the history of Southeast Asia. Maududi was also a major influence on the global Muslim Brotherhood with whom the JEI has long enjoyed close relations. In the United States, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) is generally considered to represent the JEI. ICNA has a particularly close relationship with the Muslim American Society (MAS), a part of the U.S. Brotherhood, and the two organizations have been holding joint conferences in recent years. In addition, many past and present leaders of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), also part of the U.S. Brotherhood, have backgrounds that are strongly associated with JEI. One notable example is India-born Muzammil Siddiqi, a past ISNA president and leader of the Fiqh Council of North America. A previous post has discussed a recent speaking invitation by ISNA to another JEI leader.
(Note; For the JEI report on Hassan’s remarks, go here.)