Religious terrorism is fight against humanism – Modi
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said, the fight against religious terrorism around the globe was not a confrontation against any religion but rather a struggle between the values of humanism and the forces of inhumanity.
Addressing the World Sufi Forum, he said: “We must reject any link between terrorism and religion,” adding: “Those who spread terror in the name of religion are anti-religious.”
“Every year, we spend over $100 billion on securing the world from terrorism, money that should have been spend on building the lives of the poor,” Prime Minister Modi said, pointing out that, “the impact cannot be fully captured in statistics alone. It is changing the way we live”.
“Since the beginning of this century, tens of thousands of families have lost their loved ones in terrorist incidents globally.”
He said, last year alone more than 90 countries experienced terrorists attacks. “Parents in 100 countries live with the daily pain of their children lost to the battlefields of Syria.
The Sufi Sect or Sufism which is called, “Tasawwuf” in Arabic is generally understood by scholars and Sufis to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam.
However, many Muslims and non-Muslims believe that Sufism is outside the sphere of Islam. But one of the foremost Islamic Scholars, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, has described Sufism as the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam.
Prime Minister Modi said “there are forces and groups that are instruments of state policy and design. There are others recruited to the cause in misguided belief”.
“There are some who are trained in organised camps. There are those who find their inspiration in the borderless world of cyber space.”
He said, though terrorism uses diverse motivation and causes, none of these can be justified. Terrorist distort a religion whose cause they profess to support and they kill as well as destroy more in their own land and among their own people than they do elsewhere.
Prime Minister Modi said, each day brings us terrible news and horrifying images “of schools turned into graveyards of innocence, of prayer gatherings turned into funeral processions, of call to prayer or Azaan drowned by the sound of explosion, of blood on the beach, massacres and smouldering cars on streets and thriving cities ruined and priceless heritage destroyed”.
At a time when the dark shadows of violence is becoming longer, he described Sufis, who continue to preach the oneness of mankind as “the Noor or light of hope,” adding that, “when young laughter is silenced by guns on the streets, you are the voice that heals”.
“Sufism is a celebration of diversity and pluralism, expressed in the words of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, that every people has its own path of truth, beliefs and focus of reverence,” Prime Minister Modi said.
Source: GNA