With hundreds of families picking up the pieces after yesterday’s wretched carnage in Kabul, one Islamic scholar has called on Muslims to confront the “crisis of extremism” facing the ummah. There were bloody scenes on the streets of the Afghan capital on Wednesday after a suicide car bomb explosion, killed 90 people and injured 400.

The powerful blast went off during the morning rush hour near Zanbaq Square, the heavily fortified area of Afghanistan’s capital that contains many diplomatic offices. The explosion is one of the deadliest to hit the capital in recent years, and comes barely a week into the sacred month of Ramadan.

Speaking to VOC’s In the Fast Lane on Thursday, Dr Imam Rashied Omar from the Claremont Main Road Mosque condemned the latest attack as “cowardly”.

“Our hearts and prayers go out to the victims, their families and loved ones. It is so tragic that such wanton killing and maiming of innocent souls has taken place during this most holy and sacred month of Ramadan,” said Dr Omar, a research scholar of Islamic Studies and Peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

“At this time we do not know who is responsible for this attack. No matter who is responsible for this latest act of terror, the fact remains that it occurred within a country with an overwhelmingly Muslim majority population and it happens far too frequently within Muslim majority contexts.”

The Afghan explosion follows a week of deadly violence in the Middle East. On Tuesday, a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside a popular ice cream shop in Baghdad — killing at least 17 people and injuring 24 others — in an attack targeting families eating ice-cream after breaking their fast has killed.

The blast was followed by another attack, outside an office where people collect their government pensions, which killed 14 and wounded at least 37. The Islamic State group (ISIS) quickly claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The persistent violence waged by extremist groupings, ostensibly on innocent Muslims, raises serious questions on how the South African Muslim community should mitigate against the “crisis of extremism”. This call, echoed by Dr Omar, comes on the back of a critical symposium on ISIS held in Cape Town two weeks ago, in which influential Muslim thinkers urged the South African Muslim community to tackle extremism in all forms.

Dr Omar penned five key reflections for Muslims:
1. In the face of the almost weekly wanton killing and maiming of innocents, Muslims should never tire or become weary of saying over and over again loudly clearly and unequivocally that the wanton killing of innocents is contrary to the teachings of Islam. No matter what the cause of the attackers were there is no justification for the killing of innocents. In Islamic ethics the ends does not justify the means?

2. Muslims should make dua and pray for the victims their families and appeal to Allah, the Lord of Compassion to provide the Ummah with healing from its current state of crisis.

3. Muslims should support victims through charities such as Islamic Relief which has an active branch in Afghanistan

4. Muslims should support the calls for a serious reassessment of the so-called Global War on Terror. 15 years after the revengeful US invasion of Afghanistan, the country is no safer and the Trump Administration has stepped up its killings in Afghanistan during the past 2017, dropping the so-called ‘mother of all bombs’ in a remote part of Afghanistan on 13 April 2017. In the wake of this latest atrocity, Omar expressed alarm at reports that Trumps Military Generals are considering increasing the number of US troops in Afghanistan by another 5 000 troops. He said credible research from scholars such as Robert Pape of the University of Chicago that the presence of foreign troops inflame the conflict and is clearly not the answer.

5. During this sacred month of Ramadan, Muslims need to do some serious introspection with regard to how we understand Islam and propagating our faith. The overwhelming number of victims in this barbaric bomb attack is not US or foreign nationals but ordinary innocent Afghans who were trying to get to their places of work during the morning rush hour traffic and almost all of whom were Muslims and fasting. We need to examine the mind-set of a small but influential group of Muslims who equivocate about such atrocities.

Dr Omar made reference to the thesis of Prince Ghazi ibn Muhammad of Jordan in a newly published book titled “A Thinking Person’s Guide to Islam: The Essence of Islam in 12 Verses from the Quran” (Turath Press, 2017). In the book, he argues that a tiny minority of Muslims seems to be bent on hijacking the religion of Islam and bringing it into perpetual conflict with the rest of the world as well as the vast majority of Muslims who do not share their views.

The alim also expressed concern at the rise of religious intolerance and bigotry within the South African Muslim context, particularly on theological differences.

“People are so easy to make takfir and excommunicate others from the fold of Islam,” he said, adding that it is this kind of mind-set that feeds into extremism.

“These are serious questions and need honest answers. They are the litmus for our understanding of Islam and the condition of our hearts,” Dr Omar concluded. VOC