The recent Summit of Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) at Mecca, where leaders of 57 Muslim countries converged, resolved to fight against 'deviant ideas'. By 'deviant ideas' they did not mean Leftist, secular or Western ideas, as it might appear from the Islamic point of view, but rather terrorism.

Terrorism, OIC recognised, imperils not only the contemporary Islamic society but also its future and the future of humanity at large. One important recommendation of OIC towards eliminating terrorism was to call for new school curricula to purge extremist ideas.

But what are those 'extremist ideas' which need to be purged? Are these 'extremist ideas' borrowed from certain sources outside the standard Islamic courseware? Or do they come from within the pall of its basic texts such as the Quran and the Hadith? Those who indulge in acts of terrorism, including suicide bombing, are no religious scholars with decades of grounding in Fiqa (Islamic jurisprudence) or Hidaya (Islamic calligraphy).

Many of them, recent converts from non-Islamic religious, blow themselves up as suicide bombers even before they could learn Arabic. It is amply evident that the seeds of terrorism are to be found within the fundamentals of Islamic curriculum rather than its lengthy interpretations and commentaries.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal first raised the issue of 'deviant ideology' on the eve of the Mecca Summit. However, Saudi Arabia's own credentials expose its doublespeak. The ruling dynasty of the Kingdom, the House of Saud, is guided by Wahabi ulema.

In 1961, it founded the Islamic University of Medina as an alternative to Egypt's Al Azhar University, the apex body of Islamic academia. Coincidentally in the same year, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser extended Government control of curriculum in Al Azhar.

His crackdown on Islamic brotherhood drove many of its members to Saudi Arabia. They played vital role in activating of Islamic University of Medina. Pakistani radical Islamist Maulana Abu al-Ala Mawdudi was one of the trustees of the university.

The university was even kept outside the pale of the Saudi Ministry of Education. However, it was controlled by the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Mohammed ibn Ibrahim Al al-Sheikh. Students from entire Muslim world attended its classes and were exposed to the ideas of Wahabis Muslim brotherhood. Some years later, non-Saudis formed 85 per cent of the student body.

Those foreign students returned home to disseminate ideas professed in Medina's University. In 1967, King Abdul Aziz University was established; it too, catered to foreign students injecting in them the Wahabi ideology. The twin universities became hothouses for the growth of Islamist ideology.

So which 'deviant ideology' was the OIC summit referring to? The question whether it is 'deviant' or 'non-deviant' is certainly another debate but Saudis were fortifying the intellectual infrastructure of terrorism rather than curbing it. They were, by no stretch of the imagination, promoting moderation or toleration.

It was rather the Egyptian Government that controls and monitors the curriculum of Al Azhar. Thus, to vast sections of Islamic ummah, Al-Azhar has lost its dignity and has become merely an extension of 'pagan' and 'Westernised' Egyptian Government.

The Grand Mufti of Al Azhar, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, recently issued a 'clear-cut' statement that Quran encourages tourism as a means to bolstering national economy, providing job opportunities and, new markets. He further added that tourism helps promote global cooperation.

The 20th century was full of sound bytes rather than 7th century aphorisms; therefore, it was but obvious that this 'clear-cut' statement was dictated by Mr Hosni Mubarak rather than by Allah in Quran. The objective was to scripturally disarm the Muslim fundamentalists in Egypt who want a ban on tourism.

They consider tourism a brazen display of pagan heritage and an avenue for contamination of Muslim minds by westerners. I do not know if this is deviation or not, since 'national economy', 'job opportunities', 'new markets' and 'promoting global cooperation' were unlikely concepts in 7th century Arabia.

Moreover, Tantawi had not shown the process of his conclusions. Sheikh Tantawi had spent four years at Islamic University of Medina. But if he is indulging in this kind of 'deviation' (a fatwa as pronounced against him by ulema in Egypt in 1996 to this effect), it is aligning Egypt with the modern world rather than pushing it into a Taliban like state.

It has often been suggested that some verses in the Quran instigate violence against non-Muslims (mostly Hindus and Buddhists, whom Islam considers idolators). It is these verses that, which must be put under the scanner and reviewed. It must be remembered that one of the grounds Muslims claim the validity of Islam is its incorruptibility over ages.

It means not a comma or a full stop can be relocated, added or deleted in Islamic texts. Any deviation in this matter would be tantamount to condemnable heresy. Secularism as practiced in India had ensured that these inconvenient aspects of Islam are never discussed. Any attempt to critically analyse Islamic theology is immediately termed as 'communalism'.

Moreover, Muslims are bound by Prophet's Sunna, which means Muslims should try to replicate what the Prophet did or said. Thus Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani (1879-1957), who served as President of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind for 17 years and opposed Jinnah's two-nation theory, spoke of 'composite nationalism' amongst Hindu and Muslims against British rule on the lines of Prophet Mohammed and his followers from the Quraish and Ansar tribes forming an alliance with the Jews of Medina.

Madani, in that entire speech of 1938 (now published as booklet, Composite Nationalism and Islam by Manohar Publishers), proves his mind is fully in Arabia although he was born and died in Uttar Pradesh. However, he stopped short of saying whether with the fight with the British, the "enemy of Islam" was dead. His ambiguity leaves little to the imagination: That there would be no departure from the original Quranic texts that condemn idoltars as fit to be killed.

Today, OIC says terrorism is a deviant ideology, and cast an ominous shadow on Muslim society and humanity at large. But is it only because Muslim leadership understands that it is accountable to humanity? Or is it because the world, armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombs, and mastery of the seas and skies could teach the Islamist countries a lesson if need be?

This equation of Islamic inferiority vis-à-vis West began during the colonial era. And it was during the colonial era that ideas of secularism, co-existence, and tolerance began to be introduced in world discourse. Today, it is no longer possible for the Islamic world to avoid its accountability to the rest of humanity.

But when Muslim armies from Arabia conquered flourishing civilisations of Middle-East, Persia and India, they had no accountability except to Islam. Massacre by Mahmud Ghazni, Taimur Lang or Ahmed Shah Abdali were certainly no acts of terrorism going by Islamic standards. They were, rather, attempts to implement the Prophet's Sunna and Quran's teachings against non-Muslims.

Strangely, OIC never finds any 'deviant' ideology at work in Jammu & Kashmir. Like always, it passed a resolution calling for implementation of the plebiscite formula recommended by the UN in 1949. But it had nothing to say about the jihadis of Kashmir - whether they are being 'deviant' or not.

Whether by driving out Kashmiri Hindus, Muslims have indulged in 'deviant' ideology. Similarly, OIC has nothing to say about persecution of minorities in Bangladesh, a member country, since Muslims claims that minorities were well protected under the Caliphate.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, in his message to the world community after the London blasts on July 21, deplored that more students in Islamic world gravitate towards theological rather than scientific studies, and this explains that the Muslim world is in a shambles. As long as religious curricula dominate, purging few verses will not be engaged.

(The writer, a Rajya Sabha MP and Convener of BJP's think-tank, can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)