Ignoring signposts on the road: da'wa: jihad with a velvet glove.(Religion)

AUSTRALIAN MEDIA preoccupation with the Muhammad Dawood aka David Hicks case-along with the September 11 atrocities, the Bali, London and Madrid bombings and the Iraqi war--has assured Islamist terrorists like the Taliban, Usama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida and militant Pakistani, Indonesian, Somali, Sudanese, Iraqi, Bangladeshi, Mindanaon and Thai jihadists, a regular spot on prime-time television. This plethora of information or misinformation has encouraged some people to rush to judgment on topics like Islam and the nature of the threat posed by fundamentalist Islamists to their less radicalised fellow Muslims and to Western democratic institutions.

Mention Deobandism, however, and you get blank stares. Yet it was the radical Deoband Dar-ul-Ulum brand of Islam that inspired the Taliban movement. It has had widespread appeal for Sunni Muslim fundamentalists in India and Pakistan and beyond, particularly for its anti-Shia bias.

Most of the Taliban leadership "attended Deobandi-influenced madrasas in Pakistan. As Vali Nasr (The Shia Revival) says, "The ulama [Qur'anic scholars] in these madrasahs had ties with Saudi ulama and the network of religious charities and educational institutions spawned by Saudi Arabia since the 1960s."

The movement takes its name from Deoband in northern India, 100 kilometres from Delhi, where a madrasa was founded in 1867. It was a hot-bed of hostility to British rule, and promoted a fundamentalist literalism regarding the Qur'an and Islamic law.

Deobandis believe they have an obligation to wage jihad against any country where they consider Islam to be under threat. They regard Shiites as non-Muslims. President Musharraf is reportedly a Deobandi.

ISLAM AND VIOLENCE: EXCEPTION OR NORM?

ONE OF THE MOST often-stated myths about "orthodox" Islam is its peaceable nature, and tolerance. Non-Muslims are the equal of Muslims under Shari'a--or so Westerners are led to believe by the spin-doctors, more often than not female, who are the politically correct face of radical Islam in parish halls and in the media. When non-Muslims suffer in Islamic countries, the Islamist PR machine grinds away with by-now familiar pitches about aberrant Islamists disobeying the teachings of the Qur'an and acting contrary to its teachings.