Basit Jamal, is a peace activist and storyteller from New Delhi, India. Through a powerful storytelling platform, Jamal has created a space within conservative Muslim circles to promote a non-violent and inclusive interpretation of the Quran. He has reached more than 10,000 youth so far and has enabled each one of them to become ambassadors of change, peace, and love, within their communities. The following is his story, as told to Sourya Banerjee.
For those who work
with religion as a means to advocate for peace, for them reality is not that
religion creates problems in the road to peace, but that the active and willing
misinterpretation of religiondoes.
Those of us who
work with religion as a basis for peace understand that religion is in itself a
very potent tool. If I try to fight what individuals or a community stand for with
something else and try to break down the very essence of what they are, the
community in which I try to bring about a positive change will become more
negative, more ghettoized, and more radicalized.
They would say, “Dekho! Dekho! Humara religion change karne aya
hai!” (Look! Look! They’ve come to change our religion!). The extremists
already live with a conspiracy theory running on their minds to the effect that
everyone is out to get them - and that’s true for all extremists of all
religions’.
I am not denying
that there are hardcore extremists in each religion, but we should not
generalize lest we end up pushing the non-radical ones right into the hands of
the radical ones. Even if one percent of our population, which would be close
to one million –and that’s a huge number- becomes radicalized, it does not mean
that every individual within that group is out to kill another. There are
always more religious people than religious fanatics.
Thus, the problem
is not inherent with religion but rather in those that view religion through
the lens of supremacy and politics, and use religion as a tool for their own
gains.
With supremacists
and extremists, the problem always starts with an arrogant attitude about “me” - I am better; my colony is
better; my city is better; my sect is better; my religion is better; my
country is better… If we ever found another planet with life on it, they might
just sayarrogantlyEarth is better. So
the problem is in the individual’s arrogance, which they subsequently pass on
not only to their religion but to everything else, too. Whereas religion is
meant to bring about a sense of commonness among people and to keep them
together.
A lot of people
may say, “Religious ban rahe ho, per pehle
insaan toh bano” (Before becoming religious, become a human). But this
statement is a bit contradictory for me, and for people like me, who advocate
peace and love through religion. We believe that it is through religion, by accepting
love and advocating mercy, and by acceptance and togetherness, that we truly
become humans. I know this is debatable, but this is what I truly believe in.
Logic can get you to peace, but not to love. Only faith can provide love. Thus,
I try to share my own discovery of religion as a tool to spread love among
people who misuse religion for hatred.
Truth be told, I
started researching religion only when I was nineteen or twenty years old. Till
then, religion was a part of my life as a ritual and not as an ideology. When I
was doing my BA, in the first and second years, my concept of religion was that
it talked about justice.Someone once convinced me that religion talked aboutgetting
justice for wrongs done against people, even through fighting and killing. At
that age, one is not mature enough to realize that our logic is broken. That
‘justice’ achieved through killing and fighting is not justice but senseless
revenge and vendetta. When 9/11 happened, I was in school, and didn’t care much
about it back then. When I reached college, I reached such a point that I
looked back at 9/11 and thought that it was good and just. I believed that they
had killed people and had been killed in return. That, to me, back then, was
justiceirrespective of who died, as long as blood was shed on either side. This
is what all terrorist organizations beat their trumpets about: they equate
justice with revenge.
But I eventually began
to do more research.That was when I realized that religion does not stop at
justice, itintroduces the concept of justice and then advocates the choice to
love, forgive, be patient and be merciful.
There is a verse in the Quran, which talks about taking an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth, advocating revenge-based justice. But the very
next paragraph says that if someone chooses to forgive instead of seeking
justice, God himself will pay for his sins and debts on the Judgment Day. In
Islam, we believe that on Judgment Day, everyone will have to account for their
sins, and everyone has committed some or the other sin. What that paragraph tells
us is that yes, you can choose to act violently against those who acted
violently against you, or you can choose to forgive, and God willchoose to
forgive all your sins on Judgment Day.
This is what the
people of radical ideology do not want their followers to see or know: that religion
is not asking you to go after ‘justice’, it gives you the option of doing wrong
and doing right. It is for people to read the whole thing and understand what
is right and good for them. This is what religious fundamentalists are most
scared of - people actually reading the Quran themselves.
The problem is
that most people don’t read the Quran.Only if they read the translations, they can
question the claims of extremists. What the extremists do is to keep insisting
that only their Religious Scholars should read the Quran and that only their Religious
Scholar is fit to interpret these texts. They make people follow them blindly
like a flock of sheep devoid of the knowledge to take power. I was also a sheep
once, but critical thinking set me free.
A common misconception is that children
are radicalized at home. One should understand that it is rare for parents to
radicalize.Parents do not want you to die or live a violent life. It’s only
after when you go outside your safe circle, in college or other places do
individuals get radicalized by the stories you are told. For example, there are
religious scholars who may say that if you are a Muslim, who is living in India
and you don’t try to topple the Government, everything you do in your life is
haram (sin). But in the Quran, there is a beautiful story of Prophet Yousuf
(Joseph), one of our greatest prophets, who used to work with and helped grow
and strengthen the empire of a non-Muslim King. So the question that automatically
comes up here is, was the life of one of our greatest Prophets also haram? When
you hear conflicting opinions from a scholar and what a story in the Quran
tells you, the choice is clear for you – the Quran is always superior to the
opinion of any scholar of today.
The radical mind
is radical because it chooses to avoid these stories in the Quran for personal
or political gains, or does not even know about the existence of such stories.
So my workshop format does not engage in debate or discussions. I don’t bring
up statistics - a radical fanatic believes that everyone is an enemy. I work at
the base of the same thing that has radicalized them - our faith. I do not
challenge their faith.
A mistake that a
lot of others, including de-radicalization programs in Europe etc, make while dealing
with religious extremism is that they try to hit at the faith, belief, or
religion. You cannot change the foundation of an individual.If you try to do so,
you will only push him away further. What I do instead, is to build on their
foundation and on their faith. I read out stories from the Quran, I tell them
about the stories which talk about violence, and also the stories which say
that the merciful receive the grace of God. I share stories that tell us that
we have enemies, and also the stories that implore us to try to reach out and
talk to our enemies and be friends through peace and love.
When they hear
these stories, it's like a dam breaks inside them. I do not tell them that they
are wrong or that anything is right or wrong. I just show and read to them what
the Quran says and use their very faith which may have radicalized them, to
pull them towards love. The more radicalized a person is towards violence, the
more passionate he eventually becomes for peace once he realizes what the Quran
wants him to do. The interesting thing about this is that I use the same tool that
radical extremist use - they say the Quran cannot be challenged - I just use
the Quran to highlight how they were only seeing half the truth till date. No
believer is able to challenge me, because it is in the Quran! They are caught
in a moral dilemma to either live in a life of violence knowing that it is against
the Quran or to change towards peace and love.
The entire game is
centered on their belief and true faith. I merely use the stories that are already
present in the Quran to build on their belief. People do not seek out violence in
general. Some believe that the Quran wants them to be violent, so I merely
readjust their understanding that Quran wants them to love. The rest, they do
on their own. That is how I describe myself and my work – I simply tell stories
of love. For me Quran is a book of Love.
