Jihad, Terrorism and History

Adnan Rashid

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Channel: Adnan Rashid

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ITV South Africa (Feb 2019).

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Assalamu alaikum and good evening, my name is used to be small and the program you're watching is I beg to differ. This is a program which focuses on contemporaneous debate on socio economic, political, cultural and religious issues affecting us as South Africans and looking at some of the global trends in the international community and its impact on us. Last week, we discussed the pernicious phenomenon of Islamophobia. Today, we look at another concept which is acquired popular sentiment and usage in the mainstream media. And that is a concept of jihad. What is Jihad? Is it really holy war is a core teaching of Islamic theology, which calls upon Muslims to go March and

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massacre non Muslims, while debating this particular concept. I'm joining the studios once again for part two of this ongoing discussion with Adnan Rashid, a historian from the United Kingdom, who studied in school for oriental African Studies with a specialization in Islamic civilizational history. Welcome again. Thank you Have you again.

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Let's go back to this idea of jihad. People don't understand it. It's generally conventionally equated with the term holy war yet you probably know that in Arabic, the word holy is

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his wall, holy wall. Haruka distill. How What does Jihad mean? How did this concept acquire the misnomer of being simply limited to holy war? Holy War is a Christian term, which was used for the crusades, and when the second, right, yes, exactly. And when Christians studied Islam with the Christian lens, they saw the Christian terminology and everything, Islamic. So for that reason, the term holy war is not a good term to describe the concept of jihad and Islam jihad, actually, linguistically means struggle to struggle. And this struggle comes in a number of forms, for example, there is struggle by pen, they struggle by speaking up like using your tongue, they

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struggled by hands, they struggle by fighting sometimes to defend the poor, the weak, the oppressed. If you struggle with your hands, led by the leader of the country, the state, then that is also regarded as jihad. And it is a very noble concept in Islam. Very often, it is equated with terrorism, which is what we can talk about in due course. jihad is not terrorism. And terrorism is not jihad. Jihad has set rules in Islam in virtually exclusive terms, and yet they viewed and presented as one in the same thing. Yes. And the point you're basically making is that from the Quranic perspective, at the very least, it's universal in its usage, would would, would I be correct

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in suggesting that it is extremely generic? Yes, in the sense that, for example, a classic thing that comes to mind, it's sort of like mine, when it speaks about the polytheistic parents, compelling you to engage in Acts of shirk, you'd not obey them in Acts of polytheism, would you bear them good company in Islam, but the word used in compelling or engaging in a form of duress to and to force you to engage in polytheism is windjana dakka dakka, they compel you so the root word from which you can get the word jihad is you? So the Quranic terminology way jihad is, occurs in its various forms and manifestations very universally, based? Why has Why has that not being picked up

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not caught on in the public mind, in the academic mind when they're just simply to the issue of holy fighting? It is partly because the Muslims used the term Jihad to describe military,

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military interventions or military actions. So Muslims have historically classically used the term Jihad for military action.

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It is, you know, it is in a sense, the sexual struggle Jihad physical fighting, that's right, but to to to kind of make it mutually exclusive limit the term itself to just simply fighting divorces it from other meanings, other meanings, which is there is another term used by the prophet in a hadith that, once one's the greatest struggle is to struggle against oneself. Right. So that's also a struggle to suppress your lesser Jihad to the greater GA. Exactly, exactly. That report is there, although some people doubt it is not a thing yet. But the meaning is the one one one's greatest struggle is against his desires is against his passions, especially if those passions are

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are not legally kept. Yeah, yeah, exactly what we call Jihad enough, you're not controlling you're not controlling yourself, your desires, your passions. So jihad is a generic term as

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You rightly pointed out, but technically in Sharia, when the term jihad is used on its own, it usually means armed struggle, armed struggle for justice, armed struggle for justice, it cannot Jihad can never. Jihad can never be for oppression, for terrorism, for the killing of innocent people never. Because it is not jihad. It is not jihad. So, jihad against innocent people is an oxymoron. It's an oxymoron. It's an oxymoron. Yeah, it's like a square triangle is black, white. Okay, so crucial point. Yes, making Yes, in general. If you look a quick summary, then Jihad could basically be understood. Broadly speaking as a struggle for righteousness exam, the struggle for

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righteousness obviously can take its manifestations in various forms, speaking truth to an oppressive leader, actual struggling in one's own absolutely very good point of standing up, for example, in the defense of against oppression that Alicia just mentioned, it's very, very interesting, where the progression of total jihad, Kalamata Hakan, endosulfan, enjoy the best of struggles. And the term here is jihad is and it's not. The Bobby's not talking about armed struggle. He's talking about the struggle of raising your voice in front of oppression, oppression. So he's probably the Prophet said the best of struggle is to speak the truth in front of a tyrannical ruler.

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Amazing. So the term here is jihad. So this, this in itself, this prophetic tradition highlights the fact that jihad is a generic term used for struggle in Islamic literature, but it also means armed struggle, which is the common meaning taken by Muslims and non Muslims in most cases. Could we basically say that?

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And maybe this may be a controversial aspect, but I'm going to ask it that when Muslim jurisprudence when fick acquired, as someone argued, systematic, juristic form during the a busted period, it incorporated de facto the logic of Muslim imperialism of that particular time. So for example,

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since the Muslim rule was very much in its expansionist phase, yes, terminology within the Islamic worldview concepts were then kind of relegated to, for example, certain aspects, certain facets and so, when, for example, the state acted in a very militaristic style, then obviously, certain concepts of appropriate and the same thing happened with the with the whole concept of jihad, whereby it then basically quiet it's kind of limited understanding of scope within the ficky literature. Your point is partly valid, but there are there is there are, there are nuances, I think,

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the nuances when problems arose, questions were asked answers were required. So the jurists at the time, they started to look for answers and to seek answers. They went to the Quran and the prophetic tradition and they found answers. For example, if a ruler wanted a fatwa, a ruling on a particular campaign, he would go to the scholars and he would ask them to deliver a ruling. So the scholars would sincerely go back to Quran in the prophetic tradition and find answers. For example, the issue of taxation was raised during that basket period, called the use of one of the greatest students of Mr. Barney Frank Malala wrote Qatar Farage in response. So scholars didn't have this knee jerk

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attitude towards Islamic jurisprudence Rather, they answered questions. There's an inherent flexibility based on the circumstance. Yes, conditions. Yes, yes. Yes.

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And then this takes us to another issue. Was it abused? Did abuse happen in Islamic history? Yes, of course, there are many cases of abuse. And this abuse was not due to Islamic rulings. This abuse was due to personal

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vendettas personal greed. Some rulers were better than others and others were worse than their predecessors. So many rulers committed atrocities, but not all the Muslim rulers generally. If you look at the Islamic civilization, it was a great thing. It was a great achievement. Western scholars Western historians who have studied Islamic civilization, they have praised Islamic Islamic civilization risk tolerance is coexistence is convivencia. To use the, the classical term used by Spanish aerobus to describe the coexistence between three Abrahamic faiths ages for Christians and Muslims in Islamic Spain, Spain was governed for nearly three centuries sorry, seven centuries,

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parts of Spain were governed for nearly seven centuries by Muslims. And what happened during that age. It was called the Golden Age by the Jews, because the Jews flourished. I mean, you had Jewish physicians, physicians, philosophers.

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Theologians, Musab Mahmud, my mother. These are memories.

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Born Jewish. Yes. He was called the second Moses by the Jews. He was the most important man after Moses himself. They say that the peak of Jewish civilization was insane. It was dumb. Yes, absolutely. And likewise, Christian scholars flourished within the Muslim domain, and they coexisted happily. So Islam, the Islamic civilization at large was a positive thing. Did atrocities happen? Did that take place? Yes, we have timber lanes. You know, we had bombers. We had other individual civilizations? Absolutely. Absolutely. And basically, that's how civilizations empires, you obviously going to have abuse, there is no utopia. And the problem is that this is then presented as

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a norm. So this idea of the marauding Saracens coming and taking over Europe, and that's always whenever it comes to Muslim civilization history. Yeah, that's effectively presented as well. This is what this is what prejudice does, what you do is because you're looking for,

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you're looking for evidence to support your prejudice, you will, naturally you will naturally ignore everything that goes against prejudice. So this is what Islamophobic scholars, or Islamophobic, orientalist or Islamophobic, for that matter had been doing recently, what they do is they selectively choose passages from Islamic Chronicles, and ignore all the other facts that go in just negative aspects. Yeah, amaizing these particular aspects in Islamic history, presenting this as normative and then of course, rejecting all the rest. One thing, which is also quite disturbing in recent times, is that traditionally in history, the crusades, the pronouncement at Claremont popup

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on the second the subsequent crusades and massacres that happened in Jerusalem. Historically, this has generally been viewed as a blight on Christianity, even by Christians who have acknowledged that, but I think this is a new trend, which is coming out extremely commonly, I don't know whether you call it revisionist material where now the Crusades or some of the other justified, I don't know if you come across this argument as a sort of a response to the previous six centuries of Muslim incursion, conquest, massacres, genocide that took place so very much that this was a kind of a, an aggressive form of defense, where Christians will now basically been persecuted. They're not taking

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the initiative to go ahead and do it with the persecution. This is a new kind of theory this and islamophobes basically represent is I see the late Nabeel Qureshi. Strangely enough, you know, dealing, obviously, with his association, in one of his recent books puts the same idea across citing, historically revisionist crusade scholars to justify the visit you see, this position is

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usually

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used by missionaries and islamophobes, who have an agenda. They're not interested in academia, they're not interested in objectivity. There, they are interested in selective anecdotes from history to support the theories, right. So what they do is they go to 19th century, outdated works, and they pick up these theories and then they try to normalize them, but they are completely ignored by mainstream academics and historians don't take them seriously. Because a lot of these theories were absolutely false. Have you ever come across any academics that have come across that are now presenting this idea that the Crusades was very much a defensive war, there was an academic or there

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he's still alive, Jonathan Riley Smith, who is considered an authority on crusades who happens to be Catholic. He tried to justify the Crusades by saying that this was a way of Crusaders expressing their love for Christ over the love for the Muslims. But how do you love someone by killing the king by killing them? So this was a problem. There are a stroma He's an exception. He's an exception. There are historians like Christopher Timon, there is.

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You know, there are other historians like Carol, Carol Hillenbrand, who have highly I mean, even Steven Runciman, although he has been outdated, he has been criticized for his approach his traditional approach. There are many historians who challenged challenged that narrative and they declared crusades to be barbarian invasions of the civilized east. And a lot of historians do see it like that the Crusaders are effectively barbarians. We don't like to use these terms in academic writings. But that's reality, but that's the reality. They were highly used loosely as well in the writings. Yeah, you're in one work. One medieval work in particular highlights this fact, quite.

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humorously, and that work is the the writing of Osama bin Mancha, who was a contemporary author who looked at the Crusaders and described them. Of course, he had his Islamic prejudice he had his Islamic lens through which he was looking at the Crusaders and their social norms, and he's described the Crusaders in fascinating ways. He looked at the Crusades.

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When he saw them to be very shameless, when it comes to moral ethics, they were very shameless. And he described them as racist as well as very race centric. They don't like to mix with others. Then he described them to be unhygienic, very

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on intellectual things like that they medicine was primitive. So his cow valetta bar is very, very entertaining. And at the same time, translated, it has been translated by Paul Cobb, and published by Penguin,

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penguin press. And it is a very, very interesting book to read. For historians as well as the masses, if they want to look into a Muslim perspective, specter from the Middle Ages on the Crusades. fascinating, fascinating stuff. Well, we'll continue this discussion, we just have to go for a quick ad break and we'll be back soon.

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Welcome back to I beg to differ. I'm your host your service model and wouldn't be in the studios for part two of an ongoing and fascinating discussion on Jihad and whether it's equivalent to holy war. I'm joined by Adnan Rashid, welcome back. And now, it's great to have you. We focus on the crusades, I want to take us forward into the phenomenon of, of so called Islamic terrorism or terrorism, as it's a quite it's common definition, Islamic terrorists in the mainstream media are looking from the perspective of popular culture that, you know, when you look at some of the kind of Hollywood mainstream productions that existed in the, in the 70s, in the 60s, a lot of the kind of the common

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enemy, the fictional enemy, were either the Indians, you had the issue of the cold front, you look at some of the James Bond movies from the 60s. And you look at some of the movies by Sylvester Stallone, for example, in the early 80s, I believe one of them Rambo, where he sighed to the Mujahideen, I'm not so sure if you're familiar with it. I'm not too familiar with too much of these. But it seems that there's that from a popular culture type of perspective.

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In the public mind, certain sentiments were created as a sort of Boogeyman. And then post 1990 1992 93, you then have in popular culture, for example, things like the siege executive decision, and so on, so forth, where now this new threat is so called Islamic terror. The specter of Islam coming to take over society and so on this shift, and we're talking purely just just purely from the perspective of fiction, fictional entertainment, but as happy the sense that of kind of enticing people into a particular direction, a particular a particular form, in terms of developing their own opinions. What kind of led to the shift?

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Of course, political events led to the shift. I think Hollywood is 79 Revolution, the 79 revolution in Iran, would that have been in a sense, critical to

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suddenly out of nowhere, you had the Shah of Iran, the revolution takes place. Now we've got this new phenomena like Islam is back. We have to confront something new. I don't think it was that particular revolution. I think this whole issue of Islamophobia, or what I call political Islamophobia, escalated after the first Gulf War.

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The Western foreign policy was supported 91 Gulf War. Yeah. 91. Yeah, Western when I say Western foreign policy, the coalition of Western countries, it was supported directly by Hollywood movies. So the the justification, and the humanization of the cause came from international media, in particular, the Hollywood, even the Bollywood is using these tactics to demonize Yeah, they're using absolutely 100% you see how the Muslims are depicted in some of the recent movies, most of the depicted or the Muslim rulers of the past are depicted very

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negatively, they are shown as the enemy of India, they are shown as generally disturbed people mentally disturbed people, for example, there was a recent movie made by you made within bollywood, called Bajirao. bajo was a Marotta you know, General, who is shown as a hero fighting Muslims in this movie, The mogul is an example the period, the Mughal period, the later Mughal period and the 18th century. Then there was something recently made

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about but not what he who who is a mythical figure who didn't exist historically, but a story has been made out of her mythical mythical tale.

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That one of the Muslim kings allowed in khilji, who was a historical figure who did govern India for some time. He was crazy about her and he invaded her territory. And he wanted to basically to get to her because he heard about her, her beauty. So to get to her, he invaded a Hindu territory and destroyed. So these negative depictions of Muslims are happening even in Bollywood. Hollywood has been at it for a very long time, you know, movies like under siege to lies, where,

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yeah, where terrorists are shown using the word Jihad for their movement for Jihad and terrorism has been shown as you know, interchangeable terms changeable terms. Yes. to that problem, as you build discussions on Muslims on portraits are very much as presented as primitive. Yeah, very strange. Very strange. Yeah. This this mysterious Eastern man. Yeah. Yes, that's right. History of the shake. Was it? Was it Valentino? Was it Rudolph Valentino? Yeah, the 1900s. This whole notion? Yeah. So it's, it's quite fascinating. from that aspect, that it was Gulf War 119 91. Then, of course, you had Gulf War, two 2003, you had the 911

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attacks that happened, and then it just suddenly went haywire. And a lot of these policies, these wars were directly supported by the media, the mainstream media, BBC, Sky News. A lot of the intellect intellectual impetus was, was provided by these media platforms. And Hollywood did an amazing job in justifying some of these wars by making movies on these wars. And some of the soldiers were humanized. You know, why they, why they're doing what they're doing and what they're going through after these wars. So on the other hand, the enemy was dehumanized, all sympathy was taken away, as they say that when you want to kill a dog, give it a bad name, right. So Muslims have

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been given a bad name for a very, very long time. Muslims are always seen as an alien entity, an entity. And, and, again, as I said, it started in the Middle Ages, it continued during the Renaissance period, then it went into the so called enlightenment period, then it came into the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution period. And then it reached its peak in the 20th century. And then, of course, it was highly, it was definitely challenged by Western historians, scholars and philosophers. They did challenge this approach towards Islam and Muslims, a lot of the historians who were objective in their approach, they came out and challenged it. But the media the power,

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the power holders of the power, powerful elite, that govern the West, for some reason has some kind of vendetta against the so called Eastern civilization.

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Have we have we ever since internalized some of these images, Muslims in the sense of

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the kind of phenomenon of extremism that you see where certain individuals primarily youth, a lot of them from questionable backgrounds, God, I mean, I look at some of the examples that I've got.

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Mohammed emwazi, the individual known as jihadi john, he was raised in educating the UK to British medics who met him at a Syrian hospital described him as an adrenaline junkie and drinking expeditions. And you had Mohammed Ahmed Yusuf Sarawak. I'm not sure again, 2014 they traveled to Syria. And when I think mrfr went on the, into the rooms and they found a book called Islam for dummies for dummies, showing the limited scope in terms of the material that they have.

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Did you Francoise was a French journalist, he was interviewed by Christian Amman pool I think he was kept in ISIS captivity for about 12 or 14 months. And when he was questioned what motivated them he said they didn't even have a Quran says on YouTube. Now, it seems to me that a lot of these individuals that are joining these extremist factions are themselves from a religious perspective, totally bankrupt.

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They have a questionable kind of allegiance towards the Islamic world. They don't come they don't they don't betray the kind of so called religiosity that you would see from a traditional orthodox Muslim, a lot of them have questionable criminal backgrounds. I mean, the same thing with the Charlie Hebdo killers, the quasi brothers. They were on the radar of French intelligence prior to the killings. And so a lot of these individuals are questionable. Yet they are presented as normative by those bigots and islamophobes as engaging in Islamic explained this contradiction. Well, there is this contradiction and it's well planned. It is well orchestrated, it is well

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presented by the Western media when I use the term Western media. I don't mean all media outlets, I mean, most major Western media outlets, I mean, obviously, of course, I'm talking about BBC, Sky News, NBC, Fox News, CNN, all these channels, pump out

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BBC.

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Yeah, BBC is the most, I think BBC is the most influential and the most subtle ones are two of them. Yes, it is soft, what we call? Yeah, we've got what we call soft Islamophobia. BBC practices, soft, subtle Islamophobia, not necessarily direct, like Fox News, for example, okay. But it is definitely in that category, which pumps up this narrative that this possibly is very Islamic. What's happening, as you rightly mentioned, that most of these individuals were possibly drug addicts, or they came from a violent backgrounds, and they loved violence for some reason, and they wanted to just kill. And that's why they ended up in that place. So amazingly, so little are the examples of

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such people from the Banaras. From religious institutions, hardly any of these people came from religious institutions, in fact, in fact, if anything, so most of them came from Western institutions, they went to Western academic institutions.

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London bombings, yes, yes. Yes, that's right. We're not saying we're not saying Western education, educational institutions, promote terrorism. Likewise, the notion that this is religiously mandated teaching absolutely, people absolutely, absolutely, there is no link, there is no link, if there is a leg, there is a link between these individuals who are doing these atrocities and institutions they went to if you want to make a link, but I don't think that link is fair. would would you see that as a misappropriation of religion? Because Mark sedgman, who was a psychiatrist, I think, worked with the Afghan with JD, he wrote a book, I think, where he focuses and this is a code given

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to him by him. He says, religion has a role, but it's a role of justification. It's not why they do this, or why young people go there. And when referring to ISIS, he, for example, says ISIS members are using religion, to advance a political vision rather than using politics to advance a religious vision to give themselves legitimacy. They use Islam as the justification. It's not about religion, this is what he says it's about identity, you identify with the victims of the guys being killed by our enemies. So would it be correct in saying that, rather than using religion, although they catch it in religious terms, it's actually a misappropriation of legitimate political grievances. I agree

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there are legitimate political grievances being allowed. And for example, if you look at all his work, at least those that have been presented to us, more often than not, he talks about foreign policy. So it's a question of the legitimate political grievances, and you've got these factions that are misappropriating them for their own particular use and propaganda purposes. Yes, there is no doubt that there are legitimate grievances against Western foreign policy, appropriation and political agreements. That's right. And and not Muslims are not the only people who are

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who are not so happy with the Western foreign policies. It will it is some of the Western thinkers and philosophers and academics and

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executives in 2003. Yes, yes. It was one of the biggest movements, one of the biggest marches in the history of Britain, 2 million people took to the streets. Yes, I was there. I was there personally, as Absolutely. So I consider myself part of the mainstream. I don't divorce myself from the British society. I'm much integrated, absolutely very much integrated. And I love Britain, and Britain is a is a beautiful country, with beautiful people in it. But these people were talking about the fringe. They are actually a reactionary movement. They are reacting to the geopolitical events of their time. As you said, they are misappropriating religion. Okay. They have grievances, in some cases

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legitimate, but they don't know how to how to manage those grievances. You know, they are mismanaging these grievances, and they're using religion to support the atrocious agenda, propaganda scam. Absolutely. Absolutely. We have to go for a break. And we'll continue this discussion, this fascinating discussion. When we come back. See you soon.

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Welcome back to I beg to differ. And we are debating and discussing a contentious issue or something that has acquired a pejorative meaning in the mainstream media and that is the concept of jihad. What is it? What does it entail? And what's the root meaning of this word? Welcome back.

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We looked at some of these extremist factions from a theological point of view.

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The critique that is somehow the other leveled against Islamic source, which is primarily the Quran, the prophetic paradigm, the Sunnah,

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The traditions of the Prophet the Hadith is that the texts justify violence. I think one of the key writers Philip Jenkins pointed out that if Christians or Jews needed

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biblical text to justify instances of mass violence, they would have a problem and embarrassment of riches. So it's very much a question of inconsistency is a sign of a failed argument or a double standard, then, generally, a lot of the critique against Islamic violence being brutal, being cruel, comes from Christian evangelical missionary work, which is, in fact an inconsistent position because their own particular source material is filled with aspects of violence far worse than any of the commands that are contained in the Quran. Absolutely, no doubt. The Bible is full of verses where God commanded to commit genocide against one semi 15 free against the Amalekites as a Christ exactly

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in numbers 3117, the killing of the Canaanites enslaved. And not only that a lot of the atrocities that were taking place in Europe during the early modern period, and then into the Enlightenment period. For example, witch burnings, hundreds of 1000s of women were burnt at stake throughout Europe for almost three centuries, from 1450 to 1750, hundreds of 1000s of women were burnt at stake but alive. Now, where was the inspiration coming from justify Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, you know? Yes, directly from burning the idea of burning wood? Where did that idea come from? That idea come from the book of Leviticus. If

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a girl prefers a father, who is a priest than she is to be burned, we see a practical demonstration in the book of Judges with you have a lady coming, the man makes an oath to Jehovah and he subsequently burns his daughter enters the front gate. Yeah, so we we had all these things. You know, this historically, all these events taking place in a place in Europe, the inspiration came from the Bible, right? And for that reason, we turn to the Quran and we show show the world or show the people who are criticizing the Quran for similar things. That link doesn't exist because when you look at the Islamic civilization, there are no witch burnings. There are no heretic burnings.

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There are there is no mass murder, there is no persecution. Of course, exceptional cases do exist. But throughout the history of Islamic civilization for over 1000 years, you're not going to see pilgrims.

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That wasn't the norm, where pilgrims pilgrims didn't take place. That was the exception. And even in those cases, those pilgrims are condemned by the Muslim scholars, because Muslim scholars made it very clear that the killing of the innocent people or the civilians or even burning of crops and trees and cutting down even killing animals in conflict is not allowed. And they were taking this inspiration from

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the prophetic tradition directly. We have reports on the province prohibiting you absolutely absolutely. The Prophet Prophet Muhammad directly inauthentic reports for bait forbade killing of women and children even in conflict. Right. Targeting ation of dead bodies mutilation of dead bodies cutting edge, absolutely agriculture, there was a inherent concern in respect to this. And that takes me to further thing recently, which I almost forgot to raise with you. There has been a book that has not attained popular

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popularity by Amazon, written by Spencer, well known islamophobe, which focuses on the history of jihad. He spends a significant amount of the book in which he presented irrefutable evidence focusing on India. I think before we entered the discussion, we heard a few of the clips, yes, where he mentioned, I think Feroz Pasha and he mentioned some of the Mughal emperors, that there was a systematic act of mass murder and genocide towards a Hindu population by these mogul emperors, destruction of temples destruction of religious place of worship, in the name of Islam. Can we have your counter response to that, to that kind of this? Where does it come from this attitude or this

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view of history? A very

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distorted view of history comes from the colonial period when the British administrators who are governing India, they needed

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the masses. They needed the masses to appreciate the government and they wanted to present present themselves as beacons of tolerance, right beacons of progression. And how did they do that? They showed the Muslim period as a very intolerant, disturbing form of mass murder.

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What they did was they they selectively chose passages from

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medical mentors and chronic med medieval Muslim chroniclers, who deliberately inflated the deeds of the rulers of the time to pay attributes to them and how would Muslim chroniclers pay attributes to the rollers bye

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exaggerating, exaggerating the Jihad and the achievements in battle such and such ruler killed 100,000 enemies of Islam or he destroyed X amount of temples and he broke X amount of idols. So this is how they appear attributes and and all these attributes are actually highly exaggerated who says so modern historians, they have studied this phenomenon very carefully people like Richard Eaton take temple desecrations as an example, Richard Eaton studied this topic and where does where does this rhetoric actually come from? There is a commonality between this rhetoric coming from people like Spencer, who is in the US highly funded, highly tolerated by the government and, and has

00:35:42--> 00:35:57

impunity for some reason to spread hatred against Islam and Muslims globally. And that is, again, distorting the history of Islam deliberately. This rhetoric comes from the right wing, Hindu nationalist element in India,

00:35:58--> 00:36:13

BJP Vishwa, Hindu parishad berjuang Tao, the Rashtriya sway and absolutely This is their rhetoric. So So here's the thing. Let me get your position colonialists, British colonialists in order to justify the brutal rule. Yes, killing in mass murder

00:36:14--> 00:37:01

in India during the colonial period, justified the position that they were far more tolerant, far more helpful towards the natives of India. Yes. And they did this by appealing to classical Muslim biographers writing in India, you may or may not have exaggerated some of the debts and the conquests by Mughal emperors in order as a literary that would be correct that that was a literary style of writing where people just simply to assert power, you exaggerate the conquest, the deeds, the deeds of the ruler, and shadow power. That's right. And and this tactic or this, this strategy, or this method of propaganda was used by many rulers in the past, to to inflate the image to,

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to present to present themselves as the heroes in classic history because if you look at I think Julius Caesar's Gallic wars yesterday, there's talk that in his commentaries on the Gallic war, particularly the conquest of gold, there's a lot of exaggeration that he's 100% tame there, absolutely, and so on and so forth. So taking that into account what the Hindu nationalists gave, so we can get this clear. Did the Hindu nationalists then appropriate this British writing? Yes, that basically portrayed the Muslims as barbaric invaders? Exactly. There was one particular collection in the 19th century compiled by Elliot and Dowson. It is known as the Elliot and Dawson collection,

00:37:39--> 00:38:29

which has selections of Muslim Chronicle Chronicles where the Muslim Chronicle is talking about these wars and invasions of territories within India, in some cases, Hindu states, in other cases, Muslim states, right. So there were wars happening all over the place in India during the Middle Ages, right, so edited down and collected all these unpleasant passages for Muslim Chronicles. So what happened in the 20th century, most modern historians of India have rejected that collection as a hodgepodge of inauthentic information, which was used to inflate the image of medieval rulers popularized was popular, this was this this post 48 right, I would say, not even 48 I would say this

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was popularized by a man called chaos lol, who was a historian and he studied The Chronicles of

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The Chronicles of Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal period. And he again, just like Eliot and Dawson chose these passages, passages selectively, and now the bedroom doll and the BJP and the shift center are using that narrative to to, again, supporting the cause, or the xenophobia, Islamophobia against India government. Yes, sustained the same? Absolutely. This is why JP, the president BJP administration holds on to the same position in Genesee Yes. So they want to introduce this which was rejected by the vast majority of historians into the mainstream. Yeah, I'll give you one example the the figure of orange zevalin gear, the man who governed from 1658 to 77, one of the most

00:39:21--> 00:39:35

powerful Mughal emperors throughout history, and in fact, orange zabe period was the richest period in Indian history. When India had 24% of world's GDP.

00:39:36--> 00:39:42

You know, the height of mostly Yes, this this was the height of Muslim ruler, orams, a was a religious figure. He was a very good Muslim.

00:39:43--> 00:39:59

And he was again a king who fought wars, and he subdued rebellions, and he did desecrate temples. Why were the temples disagree? Why would temples disagree? Right. They were desecrated in all cases when it when it comes to moguls.

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for political reasons, not for religious reasons, I'll give you why I'll give you the reason why. There were hundreds of 1000s of temples within the domain, governed by orange a bottom get hundreds of 1000s of temples. If he had an India wide policy of Temple desecrations he would have destroyed, possibly 1000s of temples. The evidence we find is only a few dozen temples destroyed by orange zevalin geese orders because those particular

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groups were rebelling against the king. Now rajputs, who were also Hindus were allied with orange zevalin gear, they were allies, and they were Hindus, they were temple, a temple no destruction of temples and to kind of summation a quick summation is that it was done by Hindu kings Yes, as well as mogul kings. Yes, as a as a kind of a political as a weapon of war as a weapon as a weapon of war. religiously, just know that the temples were desecrated for political reasons to to decrease the morale or to break the morale of the forces that were fighting the Hindu kings were doing this to other Hindu states, when they would invade another Hindu state, they would go straight to the

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temple, break the Deity, the idol and destroy the temple that would simply finish the war because the forces the enemy forces would lose their morale. Okay, this point is highlighted in the works of Richard Eaton. Richard Eaton is an authority on temporal desecrations and his work is easily available online if you google his name, Richard Richard etern, temple desecrations, you will get his article value incident time if you absolutely explore that further, but we're just gonna go for an ad break and we'll be back now.

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Welcome back to I beg to differ. And we're engaging that totally fascinating discussion this evening on Jihad on Holy terror, so called Islamic terror on the history of Muslim civilization in parts of India, and we'll be back again Adnan Rashid, fascinating stuff you mentioned just before we went Richard Eaton, and I think I want to drive this point down because Spencer in his book well known islamophobe cites case law, right, the historian who utilizes a lot of this information that is drawn directly from British colonial writing the British colonial period. And then of course, going back to some of the Muslim biographers. We are saying that fascinating love yesterday was temple

00:42:34--> 00:43:15

desecration, yes. But that these temple designations were a policy of power, political power, where the particular ruler, I'll beat Hindu or Muslim consolidates his power. Yeah, I think one thing we need to also point out is that, would I be correct in this what we're discussing possibly in the break, is that a lot of these Muslim rulers, a lot of their soldiers were Hindus? Yes. And a lot of Hindu leaders had Muslim. Muslim. Yes. So there's not actually a religious policy of destruction of destroying religious places of worship, or for religious it was purely political, it was, how do you come to the conclusion is that that has been the general trend or how do you come to the conclusion,

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temple desecrations was an Indian phenomenon, try it to the moguls 100%. Prior to the moguls prior to the Muslim appearance in India, the Buddhists were doing it to Hindu temples, the Hindus were doing it to Buddhist temples before the Muslims arrived on the scene. And this phenomenon continued because it is within the Hindu scriptures, that the power of the ruler is the deity. If the deity is removed, then the power of the ruler is removed. So destruction of idols What did that amount that amount, that amount that amounted to the destruction of the state. So it was a bad omen, it was a it was a bad omen was was the idle symbolic of power? Exactly. Just like when you watch this movie,

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Troy, when Achilles lands on near Troy, right, he gets go straight to the temple and first the first thing he does is he decapitates that the statue Apollo to to destroy the morale of the army of Troy. So this is very, very clear in India. In India, this is exactly what's happening. This is exactly desecration of temples going on for for over 1000 years for over 1000 years. Yes, throughout history, throughout known history of India period. Yes, absolutely. There are traces of ancient temples destroyed, who is destroying them before Muslims. So it is not a Muslim phenomenon. It was a strategy of war. It was a military strategy to basically finish the conflict as soon as possible

00:44:46--> 00:44:59

without much casualties. So in war, back in the day, during the Middle Ages, when armies would fight, both armies would be aiming at the king, they would be aiming to kill

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As the leader the General of the Army or the king himself, once the king falls from the horse or from his elephant the war is over is over. Likewise, they would aim for the temple, if the deity has been broken and the temple has been desecrated, the war is over. Hence for that reason, Emperor's like orangevale um give us this very tactic which is an Indian tactic to subdue the enemy as soon as possible. So, there were certain Masjid, the Babri Masjid was that give us a bit of the history of the Babri Masjid, it is claimed by the hindutva movement in India that there was a temple

00:45:38--> 00:46:09

but there was no temple there is no temperately no, there are a lot archeologists have done a dug underneath and there is no temple there. So this was a claim made by the Hindu, right, yeah, to cause problems to cause problems on Muslims. So this Islamophobia, this hatred of Muslims and these accusations on the part of the islamophobes in the US, like Spencer, or in India, like case law, relying primarily on Hindu nationalists in the far right, Spencer is an opportunist who is

00:46:10--> 00:46:54

an opportunistic prostitute who, who would go yes exactly sparkling crime. Pamela Geller Yes. And wouldn't all these other Yeah, they are they are basically living on this, this this movement of hatred, they are simply making money and intellectually Yes, the entire thesis is totally bankrupt. Absolutely modern. Why am I saying this? Is it because of me? Is it because of me? Is it but I think no, it this is what modern historians say. There is a recent book on orange zip. Interestingly, the author is Audrey trash. She is an American historian. She has written this book on orange zip. And in this book, she provides the incidents where whereby orang zabe gave money to temples for their

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repair, and give money to priests issued orders to his subjects not to harass the Brahmins who worship in the temples, leave them alone, do not harass them ever. And he threatened his subjects and his governance in his generals with consequences if they disturbed the Brahmins or the temples. So there is this contradiction in oranges life on when you study the history carefully such as audit book, you will come to realize that when he did desecrate temples, these temples were desecrated because of the village they were in or because of the city they were in because these villages or cities had rebelled against the king. So the king invaded this territory, and the easiest way to

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subdue the enemy was to destroy the idol and desecrated on the other hand, Hindu generals working for orange a bottom gear

00:47:49--> 00:47:56

under his command, his months of DARS or his generals or position holders.

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How can I explain this in the English language people who held government posts during Oregon saves rain 50 years rain 31% of them were Hindus 31% more than all the mogul kings put together before him. October gelato the mama duck Burr, who apostatize from Islam is a great the great They call him and oder trust makes this point that if anyone calls him up, but the great

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that person simply doesn't know Mughal history, you don't know what you're talking about. So academics are very interesting if we read them, modern historians, and they're not Muslim apologists, by the way. They're not Muslim apologists. They simply want to put the record straight, and they are highlighting the absurdity of the hindutva movement. When it comes to history story about heroes pasteurize it. In juggernaut, which we spend some mixing we'll we will listen to that clip. Can you just for OSHA, Gov yeah for OSHA governed in the 14th century in India, he was the son of Muhammad bin tullock and Zeldin Burmese, who wrote about his campaigns clearly exaggerated no one

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takes out in Bernie's.

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Bernie's the historian, store historian who was writing about the deeds of Russia, because he wanted to be close to the king. And he paid lavish tributes to him in his own way by highlighting his atrocities against Hindus and others. And Bernie, for that reason is not taken very seriously by modern historians. They highlight that Bernie was again trying to get close to the king and he paid these lavish tributes and these lavish tributes, which were heavily exaggerated or used by Hindu right wing elements in India, and they're trying to highlight that Muslim period was extremely barbaric, intolerant, and temples were being desecrated. In those were being mass murder. If that's

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the case, where did the rajputs come from? Where did the mirages come from? These are huge powers mirages and rajputs they couldn't be pushed around. They couldn't be bullied in fact,

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There were there were times when they cause serious problems to the mobile state because they held very important positions. And when they rebelled, of course, there were wars between them. And there were periods of peace and treaties between them. So history is far more nuanced than what islamophobes and Islam haters and

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myths of the genocide of 20 million Hindus, totally the numbers are impossible number of Muslims were being killed. Hindus were being killed. Christians were being killed. If it was a genocide, the population would not be at the level it is today. No Muslims know. Some of these claims are laughable, absolutely love, they are absolutely out there in the mainstream media and wanting to be pulled. There's a reason for that, because maybe the mainstream media, as I mentioned earlier, they want to highlight this rhetoric, they want to make this

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rotten, distorted view of history. The norm, this is what they want to present Islam Islamic history as, but this is why we the Muslims need to study our history, understand it in the light of modern academic works, and present it to the world. And then of course, rebut these faults, absolutely. And negative stereotypes in respect of what we see of the atomization of Scripture. We don't have too much of time to that. But that is a kind of a common polemic used against Islam. Surah nine verse five, surah nine verse 29, Surah 47 verse 48, verse 60, the key passages I remember some years back doing a debate with Jay Smith on the biblical and Quranic approach to peace and violence. We had a

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discussion on just simply Quran the Bible in the rebuttal session he never focused on after seeing the explanations in Surah nine verse five and 929. But some years later, he has some of the debate Shabbir Ali brings the same point that even after explaining the context, historical mulu the what we call the barbel muscle behind many of these passages, it seems to me that atomization of Scripture seems to be kind of the norm when it comes to focusing on the Quran and presenting it as inherently violent and calling people to violence. Quran is a book of law, as we know it has rules and engagement. Koran has written a book of guide he absolutely a guidance on marriage guidance on

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fasting guidance on prayer on charity theory absolutely 100% and it has a rules of engagement it has rules of conflict. When you are in conflict you are to do X, Y and Zed. And when these verses are quoted, they are definitely in most cases quoted out of context by islamophobes and missionaries. We are a people who don't like to water down our religion. We cannot lie about Quran and the Sunnah. We have no reason to do that people are not stupid. The sources are online, all the sources online, we invite people to go and study a book written by a Muslim scholar on the concept of jihad. And on these verses nine, chapter nine, verse five, chapter, chapter nine, verse 29. All of these verses

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have context. First of all, chapter nine, verse five was revealed about the Qureshi is when they had broken the treaty, and they were attacking Muslims and the Prophet was commanded to retaliate, to fight back so much story specific elements. Were those pagans? Yes, sir. aligned was for Yeah, had not broken the treaty, you want to deal with them? Absolutely. At the end of the term, so the line was fast, specifically applicable to those who have broken the treaty. And so the line was 13 points or the aggravating circumstances will not fight against those who no one broke the treaty violated the odds and took the initiative by attacking the profit first. So even without the history, from

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the Quranic perspective itself, the kind of the text, and the surrounding context, debunks his whole notion. Yes. It seems to me that the underlying motif behind these kind of false assertions and you've come across him I think weekly in Africa scorn in Hyde Park is clearly mischief clearly out there to false and outdated paint Muslim Absolutely. In the worst possible light. Absolutely. The the general position of Islam on the non Muslims is in chapter 16, verse eight, God revealed in the Quran, Allah subhanaw taala states that with those non Muslims do not attack you, they do not attack you. You are to be kind and generous to them. 22 verse 39, same things yessing sort of fulvous 75

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absolutely took us one night. Yes, absolutely. Last 30 seconds. Is this something that you want to advise the Muslim community out there who are facing this onslaught of negative propaganda and certainly extremists who may be engaging in acts of violence? What would your advice be? My advice is never believe this propaganda. There is no truth in it. Go and study your sources. Pick up any academic book on your history, written by an objective historian recognized by a major institution such as Oxford, Cambridge, and you'll see the reality of your civilization. Thank you very much. It's been great pleasure having you for part two of this ongoing discussion. We hope inshallah, in

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the future once you come down back to South Africa from the UK, we'll have you again, and that's all we have for this evening. We've had an engaging session on what Jihad ease and we've explored other

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issues on the history of Islam in India aspects of violence. And join us next week for more hard hitting interactive debate and discussion where we look at other issues affecting us as a community till next week. This is use of a smile phone and we have ITV Assalamualaikum and have a good evening.