NEW FLASHPOINTS OF NEVER-ENDING FITNAH IN MUSLIM WORLD

Islam has always been marked by perpetual strife for political power. The strife has two facets: confrontation against other faiths and civilizations, called jihad, and clash within itself called fitnah.

- FAISAL C.K.

Jihad and fitnah are timebombs ticking beneath the very foundation of the civilizational edifice and only liberalization and secularization of Muslim societies across the world will save the from this Islamic apocalypse The recent military escalation between Iran and Pakistan is the latest episode of the never-ceasing fitnah within the Islamic world.

Sistan and Balochistan Province of Iran are the epicentre of the fresh armed conflict. The Sunni Muslim Baloch living in the province have been suffering religious persecution and discrimination in Shia Iran.

Iran claims that the main bases of the two main Sunni Baloch insurgent groups, Jundullah and Jaish-ul Adl, are in Pakistan's Balochistan province, which shares a long border with Iran. Iranian forces are increasingly carrying out cross-border attacks against these groups, straining relations between Iran and Pakistan and possibly fuelling the Sunni-Shia sectarian violence in both countries.

JIHAD AND FITNAH

"From its earliest beginnings, and certainly from the Prophet's years at Medina, the core of Islam has not been some innerdirected search it is in the teaching of the Buddha, for instance-but the founding, consolidation, expansion of a state. The religion has been an instrument for this-an ideology to define and weld a group, an ideology to rationalize the conquest and conversion and subjugation for others"-Arun Shourie rightly opined on the nature of Islam in his "The World of Fatwas". As Islam is an aggressive political movement, it has always been marked by perpetual strife for political power.