06 September 2004	Monday	20 Rajab 1425

KARACHI, Sept 5: Analysts and other speakers at the three-day international conference on Muslim Ummah in modern world - challenges and opportunities deplored the West's attempt to link terrorism with religion and stressed that the phenomenon was the offshoot of the frustration caused by injustice and denial of rights.

They were expressing their views at the concluding session of the conference. Some of the speakers also described the West's move to ban the use of scarf by Muslim girls and women as 'a form of terrorism'.

Stressing the need for changing this mindset, they maintained that use of force to resolve the issue was counter-productive. They stressed the need for an amicable solution to the problem through dialogue.

Prof Saiyid Hamid, Chancellor of the Hamdard University, Delhi, was of the view that Muslims were being maliciously identified with terrorism to which some of their misguided groups had been drawn in despair.

He, however, maintained that one should not seek extenuating the sin of terrorists wherever they might be. Enlisting the causes of the Ummah's weakness, Prof Hamid said Muslims were in a tight corner because they had neglected pursuit of knowledge.

In order to surmount the present difficult phase, Muslims should banish, ethnic, sectarian and regional intrigues to pave the way for social reforms. He regretted that some of ulema had created impediments for Muslims in acquiring scientific knowledge.

He called for a radical change in the attitude towards womenfolk in Muslim societies and maintained that the pardah observed in some Islamic countries was so suffocating that it prevented half of their population from playing its role in the development of society.

Prof Hamid said that Islam bestowed dignity on women and gave them equal rights, including entitlement to inheritance. He called for changing that mindset to benefit from the precious resources.

He suggested that Friday sermons at mosques could be delivered in the native language so that more and more people should understand what was being conveyed to them. He stressed that Ummah was in a dire need of reforms.

A former ambassador, Karamatullah Khan Ghori, was critical of associating extremism and terrorism with Muslims and holding them responsible for such a trend or act. He argued that extremism had a context and history.

"It is a product of inequality, and injustice that creates frustration," he observed, and said: "When frustration turns into extremism, it takes the form of terrorism." In this regard, he referred to the situation in Palestine, Chechenya and Kashmir.

Mr Ghori regretted that the post-9/11 terrorism had been linked with religion, and quipped: "What about secular terrorism? What about the ban on the scarf being used by Muslim women in France?"

He remarked that war is 'terrorism by the powerful' whereas terrorism is 'war of the weak'. He suggested that dialogue of civilizations was the only civilized way of solving the problem.

He said that implementation of the neo-conservative agenda by the Bush administration was in fact the realization of Henry Kissinger's advocacy for physical capture of oil fields after the 1973 oil embargo.

Karamatullah Khan Ghori, who has served in Kuwait and Iraq, recalled the devastating effects of the 12-year period of sanctions on Iraq, and pointed out that it killed 1.5 million Iraqis and the people were reduced to the level of rats owing to the resultant hardship and lack of facilities.

Another former ambassador, Afzal Mahmood, also dealt with the issue of terrorism. He was of the view that describing poverty, illiteracy, deprivation and social injustices as causes of terrorism was over simplicity because none of the hijackers involved in the 9/11 incident lived in such conditions.

He, however, maintained that extraneous factors could not be ignored as they did play an important role in nourishing extremism and terrorism. "Osama bin Laden may have been wealthy himself, but the resentment and rage on which Al Qaeda feeds do often spring up from the miserable condition of the dispossessed," he said.

Mr Javed Jabbar, in his presentation, rejected the perception that Islamic states could not be secular. In this context, he referred to Madina Pact (Meesaq-i-Madina) which had given equal rights to non-Muslims also.

Dr Abdullah Abu Eshy said that the concept of Jihad was being wrongly exploited by vested interests, much against the teachings of the holy prophet (PBUH). Later, a message of the UN Secretary General Kufi Annan was read out in which he expressed support to the subject of the conference.