But what is of greater concern to us, as Muslims in India, is that our own politico-religious leadership appears to condone, if not endorse, terrorism by maintaining an intriguing silence on the role of jihad in Islam.A case in point is the recent threat of jihad against India by Saudi dissident Os-ama bin Laden. This has outraged Muslim opinion and again underlines the wide gap that separates the community and its leadership.

While the Muslims seem to understand the disruptive and divisive potential of this ridiculous threat, their leadership has remained silent. Jihad has religious connotations. Our leaders and the Ulema must know that terrorism simply cannot be jihad. They should have been the first to condemn this vilethreat.

Amidst reports of thousands of `sleeping' ISI agents waiting for their orders and the nation apprehensive about their plans, the Muslims realise how potentially explosive the situation becomes with bin Laden's call for jihad. There has been a spate of letters to the editors of Urdu newspapers asking who the hell is Osama bin Laden to declare jihad against a country where 150 million Muslims, more than the entire Arab world, more than even Pakistan or Bangladesh, live in peace and harmony.

But what has outraged them more is the seemingly silent approval given by not only political wheeler dealers like Shahi Imam but even eminent theologians like Mau-lana Ali Mian Nadwi whom the country respects, in the words of one commentator, as the symbol of India's composite culture. Apart from Maulana Waheeduddin Khan, who usually denounces such violence ag-ainst Islam, most of the Ulema habitually keep quiet when Islam is being denigrated by self-styled Islamists. The one leader to comment, the de factoJamaat-e-Islami chief Maulana Shafi Moonis has merely characterised bin Laden as `an irksome character'.

The Ulema must know fully well that according to Islamic tenets, no Muslim can declare jihad against a country which is the abode of peace for Muslims, which allows full freedom for Islam to be practised and propagated. It was the redoubtable Mau-lana Abul Ala Maudoodi, the founder-ideologue of the Jamaat-e-Islami, who had declared in 1948 the so-called jihad in Kashmir as un-Islamic. Islam does not allow proxy war, he had said, a war that is based on deception and lies.

As terrorism is being carried out in the name of Islam, it is imperative for the Muslim community to contribute to the fight against the jihadis. The only way for us to do that is to hit at their ideological roots, to tell the Muslim poor who beco-mes the jihadi cannon-fodder, that Islam has come to the world as rahmat (blessing) and those who are conspiring to transform it into an instrument of terror are really its enemies.

But inorder to do that we will have to snatch Islam from the clutches of the obscurantist mullah. Let us not forget that the Taliban are the products of the mad-rasas run by the Jamiat-ul-Ulema. The original centre of the Jamiat is right here in Deoband. As the Pakistani Jamiat has powerful supporters in the ruling elite, the Indian Jamiat, too, has powerful supporters here; it has a long-standing, 80-year-old, alliance with the Congress party.

It is not going to be easy to fight with such well-entrenched enemies of Islam. But any Muslim who cares a whit for the fair name of Islam and wants to save his country from the jihadi onslaught must join the battle. Once he decides to do so, he will have powerful weapons in the form of the Holy Koran and the Prophet's Sunnah. Things have reached this pass because we stopped studying our holy books. We abdicated our religious responsibility in favour of the mullah. He exploited the opportunity to misguide us. He has a vested interest now in keeping us in darkness. We mustreverse the situation, we must study and propagate true Islam.

Even if we simply read the last sermon of the Prophet, considered the final ess-ence of Islam, we will know that not even once does he call upon the Muslims to engage in any kind of war, holy or unholy, under any circumstances. Instead, he exhorts us, ``Hurt no one so that no one may hurt you.'' The Holy Koran itself is emphatic in its message of supreme co-existence: ``To you be your religion and to me mine''. Indeed, the word Islam itself me-ans peace.

The writer specialises in Muslim politics and culture