In its issue dated October 19-26, Radiance, official organ of the Jamaat-e-Islami, has carried an editorial on the Iraq-Iran war which deserves wider attention. As was only to be expected, it expresses unhappiness over the fact that two Muslim countries are engaged in armed hostilities against each other. It is also understandable that it characterizes Iraq as the aggressor. But these are not its principal concerns. It is alarmed that Jordan should have “taken the lead in declaring its (sic) support for Iraq against Iran on the main ground that Iraqis are Arabs” and that other Arab countries should have kept silent instead of putting pressure on Baghdad to end the hostilities, vacate its aggression and agree to thrash out “the dispute (with Iran) in an Islamic spirit” across the table. Their behaviour, it adds, “gives rise to the suspicion that other Arab countries are also thinking on the same lines as Jordan.”
The editorial contains factual inaccuracies. Other Arab countries have not been either silent spectators or united on the issue. While Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have, for example, made no secret of their support for Iraq, Syria and Libya have come out openly in favour of Iran. As such it is difficult to view the war as a contest between Islam and Arab nationalism, even if we assume that by virtue of the revolution in the name of Islam, Iran represents the faith. The absence of support for Iran by governments of other Muslim countries outside the Arab world makes the confusion worse confounded. But all this does not detract from the importance of the central message of the editorial, which lies in its affirmation of the Jamaat’s opposition to “the European concept of nationalism” on the ground that it is “wholly incompatible with Islam.”
The same issue of Radiance carries cables by “some premier Muslim associations of North America” to President Bani-Sadr and President Saddam Hussein. The latter says: “This is not a war between Arabs and Persians or between Sunni and Shia Muslims as imperialists and their agents try to portray. This is a war between alien ideologies which perpetrate foreign domination and between Islamic ideology which emancipates Muslim masses from foreign domination and occupation. It is well advised if forces and resources of Muslim countries are directed against Zionist occupation of Palestine and Russian occupation of Afghanistan rather than against other Muslim people and lands. We demand immediate withdrawal of forces to their original positions and freedom of Muslim masses of Iraq.” We do not know Muslims from which part of the world constitute these “premier” organisations in Northern America. Possibly they are from the Indian sub-continent. Even if this is not so, there is some other evidence to suggest that there is considerable support for Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran among Muslims in the subcontinent. This support seems to cut through the Sunni-Shia and geographical divides.