IN defining the threat posed by Islamic-inspired terrorism, security experts are fond of using the word “transnational”
As the term suggests, it implies a threat that recognises no borders, reaching beyond or transcending national boundaries. In the last few weeks the city of Brussels and its citizens found to their cost just what transnational terrorism means.
These days, however, it is not only terrorism that poses a transnational threat. Religious intolerance too, it seems, has increasingly become no respecter of global boundaries. Over Easter, Pakistan saw a series of violent incidents that once again revealed the various shades of religious extremism and intolerance in that country. In Islamabad, protesters there turned out to demonstrate against the execution of a former policeman Mumtaz Qadri, guilty of murdering Salman Taseer, the former governor of Punjab province, because of his critical stance toward Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. The Islamabad protesters were Barelvis, a moderate section of Sunni Islam deemed to follow a relatively peaceful line and with deep connections to various Sufi orders. And yet Qardi himself was a Barelvi. Over and above demanding that the executed Qadri be declared an official martyr, the protesters also wanted the imposition of an Islamic system within Pakistan.
This insistence by some that others must view religion through one singular prism and that there is no room for alternative views, beliefs or reasonable criticisms is not unique to Pakistan and can be found across the globe.
Here in Scotland of late, however, it has become disquieting to note that religious intolerance from that part of south Asia has increasingly begun to make its presence felt. In Glasgow at the city’s Central Mosque the bitter and sectarian nature of Pakistan’s home-grown religious politics has been behind recent threats and verbal attacks against human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar after he condemned Glasgow Imam, Habib ur Rehman for praising extremist killer Mumtaz Qadri as a “true Muslim”.
This too comes alongside the death of Glasgow city shopkeeper Asad Shah, who was a member of the persecuted Ahmadi sect. The man charged with his murder issued a statement in which he claimed to have carried out the attack because Asad Shah claimed to be a Prophet.
Then there is the controversy over two leading figures at Scottish mosques. Sabir Ali, head of religious events at Glasgow Central Mosque, and Abdul Hamid, leader of Polwarth Mosque in Edinburgh, are facing allegations of links with the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) sectarian group.
All these issues make clear that the bitter religious intolerance that thrives in places like Pakistan has itself transcended that country’s own borders and manifest itself here in Scotland.
While it would be wrong to conflate terrorism and religious intolerance as equal threats too often they do exist in tandem. Many within Scotland’s Muslim community have themselves warned of the dangers such religious intolerance and sectarianism poses, rallying against it and condemning it. Their response is to be commended and worthy of support.
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