MUMBAI, India Ahlul Bayt News Agency - Few dispute that bombs alone cannot win the war against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or simply Islamic State. It is an ideological war and in this battle of minds, people like Allama Syyed Mohammed Musawi, have a crucial role to play.
A senior Shia scholar and head of London-based World Ahlul Bayt Islamic League, Musawi is a vital voice in the fight against terror as he has launched a 'jihad' against the extremists. Though based in London, Musawi actually lives out of his suitcase, hopping from city to city; Montreal to Mumbasa, Najaf to Nairobi. He was in Mumbai this past week.
"Since jihad means to strive, to struggle against evils, you can say I have started a jihad against the forces which are misusing the name of Islam. The self-proclaimed jihadists of ISIS are criminals and should not be called people engaged in a holy war as they kill and maim innocents," says Musawi, 61, dressed in a black robe that declares his revered position in the Shia clerical hierarchy. "They are deviants and criminals and the media does a great injustice to Islam when it calls them jihadists."
Born in Najaf (Iraq), Musawi fled his country to escape ruthless dictator Saddam Hussain's oppression and stayed in Mumbai for 12 years (1979-1991) before he was forced to leave India too. "We had organized a huge rally against Saddam Hussain at the Boat Club in New Delhi in early 1991 where over a million people participated. Saddam Hussain put pressure on the then PM Chandra Shekhar and I had to leave. I went to England and have lived there since, visiting Iraq after Saddam was deposed," explains the scholar, seated at Najafia House, a modest building off a busy lane in Dongri.
"I liked Mumbai's cosmopolitan character, its magnanimity to accommodate people from so many socio-cultural backgrounds. The idea of diversity and co-existence in Mumbai and India which I saw and still see will always remain with me." He is saddened that four youths from Kalyan have allegedly been lured into the ISIS in recent times.
"Recently I met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Tajikistan and told him that United Nations should declare any logistic, moral or monetary support to outfits like IS a crime. We must expose those countries and organizations which supply ISIS funds and arms without which the organization would have not survived for so long. Cut the supply chain of arms and money and terrorism will die," declared the senior cleric.
Islam originally means peace, he says, but is misunderstood today as some of its adherents practice violence even as they justify it as a reaction to injustice. "Violence can never be justified as an answer to real or imagined injustice," he adds.
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