THERE is a misconception floated by the sceptics and the unbelievers that even if there is a real Creator, the universe keeps functioning according to the fixed and unchangeable order of Nature, the Creator being not necessarily active or even present.

This is another version of the old Aristotelian notion of universal causation — an unending chain of cause and effect — the final cause being the creation of the universe and the first cause the creator Himself. This means, in plain words, that God and Nature are two different powers.

God, as the Creator and Law-giver, has laid the foundation of a fixed and unalterable order of nature and, therefore, the chain action of natural events is automatic, without needing God’s constant control and supervision. As a corollary to this notion, even human beings like objects of nature, are free from God’s control and constant supervision to shape their individual destinies.

The Quran contradicts this fallacious notion. Firstly, Allah is active all the time. The exact words are: “All things in the heavens and earth cry out to Him and, therefore, He exercises (universal) power every day” (55:29) Secondly, Allah possesses unique and humanly incomprehensible power and an all-embracing authority. This idea of the Divine Being has been conveyed to us by Allah Himself in His own chosen vocabulary in Ayatul Kursi (Quran 2:255). That is why this particular Ayat is committed to memory by the vast majority of believers. This Ayat, in short, affirms that Allah is alive and eternal neither slumber nor sleep overtakes Him and the preservation of everything in the heavens and the earth makes him neither weary nor tired.

In Quranic language, the laws of nature are called Sunnatullah, literally, ‘tradition set by God.’ Ayat 30:30 says that “the Divine laws of creation are unalterable.” Accordingly, fire will always burn and high water always drown (if protection against fire and high water is not taken). But the Scripture also narrates that this tradition set by Allah had been ‘ruptured’ (Arabic kharq) or contravened by the Almighty Himself on a number of occasions:

The heap of fire specially lit by the idol worshippers for Prophet Abraham’s bloodless punishment did not burn him, although he was thrown in it quite unprotected, and he came out safe and sound. The Quran relates the event: “They (the idolators) cried out ‘burn him and stand by your gods.’ We (the Almighty) said, ‘O fire! become cool and peaceful for Abraham” (21:63-69).

Similarly, the waves of the Red Sea did not drown Prophet Moses and the Israelite tribes during their ‘exodus’ from Egypt. Instead, the waves cleared a path for them through the sea. The Quran tells the story: “When We (the Almighty) parted the sea for you (the Israelites) and rescued you, and drowned Pharaoh’s folk before your eyes” (2:50).

Thus, in both cases, the elements of nature — fire and water — ceased to function according to the accustomed order when God willed it so. In fact, God commanded the particular fire to shed its natural incendiary character for a while to save a prophet from harm. In the other case, God himself ‘parted’ the waters of a particular sea at a particular point for a few moments to rescue a Prophet and his followers. These incidents of the ‘rupture of accustomed order’ (Kharq-e-Aadat in Arabic) are only a few of the various miracles mentioned in the Quran where God acted to cause temporary suspension of the law of nature.

Even during our holy Prophet’s career, the Quran informs us, God attributed to Himself some kind of role in the victory of the believers in the Battle of Badr, when the ill-armed and heavily outnumbered Muslims beat back the Makkan polytheists. Addressing the holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and his small band of followers, the Quran says: “you (the believers) slew them (the infidels) not but Allah slew them and thou: (the Prophet) threw not (the handful of gravel) but Allah threw” (8:17).

These extraordinary events, which are contrary to the general conception of the unbelievers that nature only works according to natural laws, display very clearly the power and providence of an ever-watchful Sustainer and all-knowing God. These miracles convinced the contemporary diehard unbelievers that God is not only a one-time Creator but also an all-time Maintainer of the universe and all that exists in the heavens and on the earth.

Now, turning to the main theme of this article — God’s role in human destiny — one cannot but think that like all objects of nature, living or lifeless human beings too are subject to an accustomed order, or natural law, but with the difference that human beings are endowed with the consciousness of what is good and what is bad in the earthly environment they are placed in entirely by God’s will.

The Quran says, “had Allah willed they wouldn’t have been idolators” (6:107) or, “they wouldn’t believe unless Allah willed” (6:111), or, “had thy Lord willed He would certainly have made all mankind one nation” (11:118). Allah’s will is beyond question, because no one can choose before one’s birth as to where, in what country and in what family one should be born. Naturally, the placement of an individual, rather billions of individuals, has to be decided by the Creator according to His sweet will. So, there is no getting away from God’s will, whether one believes in His existence or, like a senseless soul, denies it.

So having been placed in a particular environment without one’s choice, every individual has to shape his own destiny guided by the congenital consciousness of good and bad, virtue and vice and God’s direct counselling, from time to time, through inspired Messengers. Every one will be accountable to God after having completed the full circle of life on earth, the duration of the cycle also having been pre-destined and kept secret. But an important point needs to be clarified here that irrespective of what course an individual adopts in his own life, whether one chooses to shape oneself in the image of a saint or a sinner, God’s bounty (Fazl) will accrue to both without discrimination.

The Quran says, “Allah supplies — both these and those — from His bounty as His bounty can never be walled up (17:20). God’s authority is, in fact, based on His knowledge about the antecedents of each individual — knowledge of all major and minor events that occur in one’s life time. Allah explains this apparently inexplicable matter in these words of the Quran (3:12): “It is We who bring the dead to life. We record that which they send before them as also the footprints they leave behind. All things We have recorded in a clear register” (Pickthall’s translation).

THE Indian foreign minister Mr Yashwant Sinha has been quite explicit, in a recent interview, in ruling out the possibility of a meeting between the Indian prime minister and the Pakistan president on the occasion of the forthcoming Saarc summit. His statement does not even confirm if Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee will be coming to Islamabad for the meeting.

He has said: “I am bringing expectations down, because everyone thinks that if Mr Vajpayee travels to Islamabad for the Saarc, immediately the summit level dialogue will take place between India and Pakistan.” Considering the overall implication of Mr Sinha’s statement it is obviously a very big ‘if.’

Mr Sinha perhaps believes that there should be adequate preparation before a summit could be scheduled, and there is not enough time for that between now and the Saarc moot. And therefore, he rules out the chance of a meeting between Mr Vajpayee and President Musharraf on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly scheduled to be held in New York later this month. Of course, there is always the possibility, howsoever slight, that President Bush way prevail upon the two leaders to hold a meeting while they are in New York.

Mr Sinha’s statement is not the only reason to believe why the resumption of the process of normalization between India and Pakistan, has all but stalled.

Meanwhile, there has also been quite an unusual exchange of visitors belonging to various categories between India and Pakistan in the last few weeks. Among those who have travelled across the border to deliver messages of goodwill, there have been parliamentarians, lawyers, journalists, trade union workers, even politicians. However, the Indian foreign minister has made it clear that mere expression of goodwill at the people-to-people level is not sufficient reason for India and Pakistan to start a dialogue designed to normalize relations between the two countries.

Is he trying to make a distinction between the people and the leaders? Does India now believe that Pakistan where the top leadership is not an elected one and the popular will is not always quite relevant to policy making deserves to be treated with due circumspection? Should Pakistan be trusted only when it compromises on its principled position on some vital matter, such as Kashmir?

It is significant that after the initial call for a resumption of the peace process, India appears to be dragging its feet on many matters of mutual concern. It has not agreed to resume the air and rail links between the two countries. It does not appear to be willing to make Kashmir an item of the agenda for a future bilateral dialogue in any meaningful way.

It continues to stress the primacy of bilateral trade and economic exchanges, leaving Pakistan with the suspicion that once trade and economic matters have been taken care of it may relegate other issues such as the Kashmir dispute to a secondary position. India has also kept up a steady barrage of propaganda against Pakistan, continuing to accuse it of cross-border infiltration of terrorists to fuel the insurgency in the occupied Kashmir.

With no concern for diplomatic niceties, the Indian foreign office has snubbed Pakistan’s foreign minister, Mr Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri, on his intention to visit New Delhi to deliver an invitation for the Saarc summit to the Indian prime minister.

Mr Kasuri perhaps showed undue haste by announcing his plan to travel to New Delhi apparently without some informal soundings (which is the normal diplomatic custom) whether such a visit would be welcome by India or not. However, New Delhi’s spokes- person also observed no diplomatic finesse, suggesting that the invitation need not be conveyed in person by the Pakistan foreign minister.

The Pakistan foreign minister has been visiting the other Saarc countries to deliver invitations. As the editor of Dubai’s Khaleej Times in a signed front-page editorial pointed out, India could have been expected to show flexibility where matters concerning Saarc are involved.

Contrary to the spirit of his gesture five months ago, Prime Minister Vajpayee will apparently make what seems like a deliberate effort to avoid President Musharraf during his journey to New York for the UN General Assembly session. India had to realize that a positive response on India’s part to Pakistan’s demand for a return to the negotiating table is equally important for both New Delhi and Islamabad. The easing of tensions and normalization of relations is (or should be) a matter of equal concern to both countries.

Mr Vajpayee and his aides might be thinking that with elections in four states due later this year and the general elections scheduled for 2004, India should not be seen to be making any concessions to Pakistan. However, there are indications that as the popularity of Mr Vajpayee’s coalition government could well be on the decline, his effort to create a climate of peace and stability in the region could give it a boost.

It is not without significance that in a recent opinion poll conducted in India on a national scale 60 per cent of the people expressed their support for the recent peace overtures to Pakistan. What should be a matter of even greater concern to Mr Vajpayee, there were also strong indications of the Congress‘s possible emergence as a more popular party.

Political analysts in India are of the view that the Congress is gaining in popularity all over the country even though it may not yet be in a position to gain a decisive majority in the Lok Sabha.

It seems unlikely that Mr Vajpayee’s vacillation on talks with Pakistan which has led to increased tensions in the region could be endearing him to his people. The increasing militarization of India has been under criticism from a significantly large section of the Indian intelligentsia. Heightened communal tensions in the state of Gujarat also appear to be a potential source of concern to the people.

According to the poll in question, an overwhelming 80 per cent responded positively to the question whether they would be willing to have a member of another community as their neighbour. A breakdown of the polls revealed that 77 per cent of the Muslims said yes to the question and so did a significant 66 per cent of the Hindus. As a veteran Indian political analyst Ajit Kumar Jha, has observed this could be “either because the minorities are more liberal socially or are more accommodative because of a popular survival syndrome.”

“Killing (Yasser Arafat) is definitely one of the options,” said Israel’s deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert last Sunday. “We are trying to eliminate all the heads of terror, and Arafat is one of the heads of terror.”

It is the first time in fifteen years that a senior Israeli leader has openly called for Arafat’s death, and it is not immediately obvious why he should do so now. The recent round of violence that destroyed the June ceasefire, with Israeli targeted assassinations of Palestinian militia leaders alternating with Palestinian suicide bombings, had no direct connection to Arafat.

As part of the concerted Israeli-American effort to sideline Arafat and create a more malleable Palestinian leadership over the past two years, there have been endless assertions by both Jerusalem and Washington of Arafat’s continuing involvement in terrorism, and no doubt his intelligence services are aware of some of the militias’ plans. But there is no evidence that Arafat has collaborated with the extremists in their plans, nor that he could stop them even if he wanted to.

Olmert’s argument skipped past all that and took Arafat’s leading role in sponsoring terrorist attacks against Israel as a given. “From a moral point of view, (the assassination of Arafat) is no different from others who were involved in acts of terror. It is only a practical question. What is the benefit? What will be the reaction?” Avi Dichter, head of the Shin Bet security service, even contended that killing Arafat would actually be safer than sending him into exile, because the furore would die down more quickly if the Palestinian leader were dead.

Washington definitely opposes the idea: US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s instant response was that “The United States does not support either the elimination...or the exile of Mr. Arafat. I think you can anticipate that there would be rage throughout the Arab world, the Muslim world and in many other parts of the world.” Not too cheery a prospect when the US is already sinking into a political and military quagmire in occupied Iraq, but Israel rarely lets American concerns restrict its freedom of action.

There is certainly a case for saying that Yasser Arafat should have died fifteen years ago. His career as a freedom fighter was remarkably successful, bringing global recognition to the Palestinians as a distinct people with rights to at least some of the land of former Palestine. But as a diplomat, and later as the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, he combined corrupt and nepotistic rule at home with hopelessly naive negotiating tactics with Israel.

Wishing Arafat dead is not the same as killing him, however, nor does any sane observer believe that murdering him would lead to a decline in terrorist attacks on Israel. On the contrary, as senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat warned last Sunday, “Militias (like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Brigades) would take over with machine-guns. The first thing they would do...is kill me, like the rest of the moderates.” The people around Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are intelligent enough to understand that, so why are they toying with the idea of killing Arafat?

There is an interpretation of events, quite widespread among both Israelis and Palestinians, which argues that the extremists on the two sides act in tacit collaboration to prevent more moderate groups from successfully negotiating a compromise peace. The hard right in Israel makes the necessary noises about peace to placate Washington, but it does not really want to trade the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories for a peace it does not trust in any case.

Palestinian extremists, both Islamist and secular, are equally determined to thwart a two-state solution that leaves a demilitarised Palestinian state in a permanently inferior relationship with an Israel that still controls almost 80 per cent of former Palestine.

Opinion surveys consistently show that over two-thirds of Israelis and the same proportion of Palestinians reject the extremists and support the idea of two states living side by side, separated by Israel’s pre-1967 borders. But under Ariel Sharon the hard right is already in power in Israel, and thanks to the blood-letting of the past three years the extremist militias now enjoy the support of at least a third of the Palestinian population.

Killing Arafat would destroy the civilian government of the Palestinian Authority and bring the militias to power, ending all pressure on the Israeli government for concessions leading to a peace agreement. There would be a storm of condemnation of Sharon’s government at first, but the current US administration would not abandon him under any circumstances.—Copyright

SINCE the second anniversary of September 11, we have had sober reminders that military force alone cannot eliminate the threat of religiously inspired terrorism. There has been the dramatic, if disputed, reappearance of Osama bin Laden; new reports that Islamist extremism is again gaining ground in Afghanistan; and in the wake of horrific attacks by Hamas, the Israeli right has called for the expulsion of Yasser Arafat — a move that would almost certainly provoke a new spate of suicide bombings.

How do we account for the rise of this religious violence in the post-Enlightenment world? Ever since 9/11, President Bush has repeatedly condemned Islamist terror as an atavistic rejection of American freedom, while Tony Blair recently called it a virus, as though, like Aids, its origins are inexplicable. They are wrong, on both counts.

The terrorists’ methods are appalling, but they regard themselves as freedom fighters, and there is nothing mysterious about the source of these extremist groups: to a significant degree, they are the result of our own policies.

History can tell us a great deal about the profile of these movements. Over the centuries people have often resisted colonial domination or oppressive governments by evolving millennial visions that amounted to a systematic repudiation of the mainstream culture. These millennial groups usually developed after a crisis or disaster had in some sense destroyed the world they had known. Inspired by a corrosive sense of political helplessness, they fought for a new world order, in which the first should be last and the last first.

The “fundamentalist” movements that emerged in every major faith tradition during the 20th century conform to this pattern. Wherever a western-style, secularist society has been established, a religious counterculture has developed alongside it. The persistence of this militant piety shows a disturbing and worldwide alienation from western modernity. Every group that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has experienced secularism as destructive, and is engaged in a battle designed to push religion back to centre stage. All are convinced that the secularist liberal establishment is determined, in one way or another, to wipe them out.

Only a small minority of fundamentalists take part in acts of terror, but when people feel that their backs are to the wall, they can lash out violently. In the past, any attempt to suppress a fundamentalist group has usually made it more extreme, because it has simply confirmed this deep-rooted fear of annihilation. Far from quelling Islamist terror, Israel’s assassination of its leaders has only inspired Hamas to further atrocities, and the invasion of Iraq, which had no links with Al Qaeda, has predictably opened a new terror front, convincing some Muslims that the West is truly engaged in a new crusade against the Islamic world.

Yet even though they have given us terrifying demonstrations of their power, those brought up in the secular tradition find it difficult to assess these movements. “Whoever cared about religion?” cried an exasperated official in the US state department after the Iranian revolution.

People seem to assume that Muslim extremists are mechanistically driven by a fanatical strain inherent in Islam itself, which is patently not the case, since the terrorism that currently concerns us is chiefly confined to the Arab world, which makes up only 20 per cent of the Islamic population. It is widely believed that the terrorists are simply inspired by a fanatical yearning for paradise and martyrdom that has fuelled both Hamas and the Iranian revolution in exactly the same way.

These reductionist theories are dangerous. Iranians who exposed themselves to the Shah’s bullets were engaged in a distinctively Shia battle against a cruel dictatorship, while Hamas has been influenced by Zionism. There has been little veneration of land in Islam, but in their struggle with the Israelis, Palestinians have introduced the characteristically Jewish themes of exile, nostalgia for the sacred homeland and restoration into their Islamist resistance.

Ironically, West tends to become like its enemies. In describing his war against terror as a battle between good and evil, President Bush has unwittingly reproduced the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden, who subscribes to a form of Sunni fundamentalism that divides the world into two diametrically opposed camps in just the same way. The last thing the Israelis intended was to create “Palestinian Zionism”, and yet in the early days Israel aided and abetted Hamas, which virulently opposed the secularist ideology of the PLO, in order to undermine Arafat.

They should have learned from the tragic fate of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, who, at the beginning of his presidency, sought to create an independent power base by courting the Islamists who eventually killed him.

The west has also cultivated its future enemies, by arming Osama bin Laden and other Arab mujahideen in Afghanistan during the cold war and by giving initial support to the Taliban. These exploitative policies reflect a thinly veiled contempt; the religious ideas of these groups were dismissed as beneath serious consideration. Yet to those who had studied these movements it was clear long before 9/11 that fundamentalists all over the world were expressing fears and anxieties that no government could safely ignore.

We have also nurtured extremism by allowing conflicts to fester beyond the point where a secular, pragmatic solution was possible. In the past, millennial movements often became more religious when conventional politics failed. So too in the Middle East. After the six-day war of 1967, when nationalism and socialism seemed to have brought only humiliation and defeat, there was a revival of religious politics in the Arab world. Palestinians long held out against this trend, but despairing of the ordinary political process, the Islamist parties finally emerged in 1987. Once God is brought into the conflict, positions become absolute, sacred and far more difficult to negotiate.

The west has contributed to the growth of radical Islam in the region by repeatedly supporting undemocratic regimes, which allow little effective opposition. As a result, the only place where the people have been able to express their anger and discontent has been the mosque. Iran is the classic case. After the Mossadeq government deposed the Shah in 1953, British intelligence and the CIA organised a coup that put him back on the throne. The US continued to support the Shah, even though he denied Iranians human rights that most Americans take for granted. The result was the Islamist revolution of 1978-79.

Had its intelligence taken the trouble to learn more about the dynamics of Shiasm, the US could have avoided bad mistakes in Iran. We can no longer dismiss religious movements with secularist disdain, but must study them as seriously as other ideologies. In particular, we must educate ourselves to see the distress, helplessness, fear and, latterly, rage that underly the various fundamentalisms, if only because these groups now have powers of destruction that were formerly only the prerogative of nation states.

Terrorism is wicked and abhorrent, but it has not come out of the blue. If we simply write off these movements as irrational and inexplicable, we will feel no need to examine our own policies and behaviour. The shocking nihilism of the suicide killers shows they feel they have nothing to lose. Millennial or fundamentalist extremism has risen in nearly every cultural tradition where there are pronounced inequalities of wealth, power and status.

The only way to create a safer world is to ensure that it is more just.—Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is author of “The Battle for God: a History of Fundamentalism.”