Don't Misuse the Name of Islam

In the last few years, people using the name of Islam have come to this country, but what have they given us, what have they done? When they have got into power, in the name of Islam they have destroyed our country.

Islam is a sacred religion. It's a complete religion. It was brought to this world for peace and for the people to follow it. Truly, a people that follow Islam can live a happy and prosperous life. But in our society it is the opposite.

After the arrival of the Soviets, there was a self-made resistance - it was not being directed by the people who claim to be jihadis today. We gave over two million martyrs, millions of orphans, millions of widows - but the jihad of the Afghan people successfully came to an end. We broke communism.

But what did the Islamists do? During the entire jihad period, they fought against each other. In the name of Islam they fought each other.

When these parties and our Islamists took power, what did they do? In the name of Islam, the government of Rabbani proclaimed jihad against the other Islamic parties. Jamiat-e-Islami declared war against Hizb-e-Islami, and they used Islam as an excuse. Hizb-e-Islami - [its leader] Mr. Hekmatyar - declared war against Jamiat and against their government, and once again used Islam as an excuse. The Shias, under [Hezb-e-Wahdat's late leader Abdul Ali] Mazari and [Harakat-e-Islami leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Asef] Muhsini, also both proclaimed holy war against the government.

Look at the other [Taleban] government. The blind mullah [Omar] came to power and brought a government to us; he changed the name to Emirate. In the name of shariat, he destroyed all the country.

Even in our current government we have the suffix Islam, but we can see how this sacred word is used. In the current government we see there is corruption, and theft. There are Islamists and politicians who only want to use Islam's name for the restoration of their personal dominance.

Let's come together and bring our country to prosperity, to greatness and growth. We should take our country to the level of those countries that have everything; we should take that great responsibility from these un-great people. We should never give them an opportunity to use the name of Islam again.

If we say the government of Afghanistan, obviously it means an Islamic country, because all the people are Muslims.

Every Afghan hears the call to prayer from birth until the day they are laid in their graves, and after they are buried, people will still say prayers over their graves.

To our people, everything is Islam - there is no doubt about that.

But 80 per cent of the American public are Christian, yet we don't call it "The United States of Christian America". They don't say the government of Buddhist Japan. There are only a few religious governments in this world, and those countries are backward, they are in a state of feudalism. With the use of religion, dictatorship has come to power.

If we think in the future that we should have an Islamic government, we will put those people who have preyed on our people and misused our government back in power again.

If we include in the constitution that we have a religious government, it will be like putting power in the hands of those people that have played on and abused Islam.

Our unfriendly neighbours are lying in wait, to use the sacred religion of Islam for pillaging and destroying our society.

For example, Iran and Pakistan - they produce different groups of Islamists and bring them to our country. The purpose is that they want us to be very weak. They want religious government in our country, someone that they can control.

We should not have a religious government. This does not mean we should have a secular government. We are all Muslims here, and the constitution should pay attention to this matter.

Words, however, cannot bring a society together. Let us look at Iranian society. It's an Islamic country and it is a developed country, with more than 20 years of Islamic government. But the growth and success of the Iranian government was not in the last 20 years. Everything that is left from the past - streets, factories, homes - are left over from the Reza Shah's government, the non-Islamic government. The last 23 years equals hundreds of years of backward movement.

Let's look at our country. It's been 10 years that we've been facing this issue. There was no issue about "Islamic" before that - it's only in the last 10 years that they have used this word against us.

So it is better for us to have a government chosen by the people, and the majority should bring them to power.

Which people? Muslim people, educated people who want peace, proud people who destroyed the evil government of Russia. It should come through them.

Words cannot bring us to success. The success and growth of a nation depends on the strength of the people. When - with the people in power - we remove the name of Islam, this country will succeed.

Without the power and the strength of the people, if you were to say the name of Islam 10,000 times, the country would not prosper. So the fact of the matter is the people - we should look at ways to strengthen the power of the people.

Fazal Rahman Oreyi is the chief editor of the Mashal-e-Democracy newspaper in Kabul and a representative of Afghanistan's Democratic Party. This piece is a condensation of his remarks at a recent seminar on the draft constitution, sponsored by IWPR in Kabul.