Chennai: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram
on Saturday said he had no intention to hurt the sentiments of
Muslims by his recent remarks equating 'jihad' to terrorism
and said he was "happy to stand corrected."
"I may assure you that there was no intention to hurt the
sentiments of anyone in the Muslim community," Chidambaram
said in a letter to M H Jawahirullah, president of Tamil Nadu
Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK), who had objected to his
remarks on jihad.
He said as a "devout Muslim," Jawahirullah was more
informed about the teachings of Islam and the true meaning of
the word 'jihad.'
Pointing out that the words 'jihad' and 'jihadi' are in
common parlance used to describe militant activities and
militants in different parts of the world, including India,
Chidambaram said he had used the word as it is used in common
parlance.
"Like others,I used the word as it is used in common
parlance, and I am happy to stand corrected," he said in his
letter.
He said leaders of terror outfits like Al-Qaeda and
Lashkar-E-Taiba used the word "jihad" on more than one
occasion.
"In a conversation between one of the terrorists who had
attacked Mumbai in 2008 and his handler in Pakistan, the word
jihad was used," Chidambaram said adding the father of
Abdulmutallab, who had planned to blow up an American
plane, had reportedly said his son had come under the
influence of jihadist version of Islam that he did not
recognise.
In his address at the 22nd Intelligence Bureau Centenary
Endowment Lecture in December, Chidambaram had said that even
as the Cold War came to an end, another kind of war, 'jihad' ,
had emerged.
Jihad employed terror as an instrument to achieve its
objectives and directed against all and sundry, with its
victims being innocent people, he had said.
In a letter to Chidambaram recently, the TMMK president
had said jihad was striving against injustice and falsehood
and did not teach advocte that this should be done through
violence.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, January 10, 2010, 00:06