New Delhi, June 10: President of Association of Indian Muslim Social Scientists Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam has written to the US President George W. Bush asking him to roll back his war against the Muslim world and leave a legacy of peace rather than conflict.

The following is the text of the letter Dr. Alam wrote on June 7

Hope this finds you well. I am writing to you in the hope that you would somehow try to undo the immense harm that you have done to your own soul as well as to large masses of humanity. Although your presidency is on its last leg now, and a "lame duck presidency" (an American phrase, you know), is no longer capable of doing anything substantial.

However, there is some scope for rolling back some of your initiatives and contain the damage. In writing to you I am being guided by the message that one of the several names of Allah carries. That is Aziz-al-Hakim, the Most Powerful, the Most Wise. God's Rule is informed by Immense Wisdom, Justice and Fair Play.

We, the children of Adam and Eve are expected to apply wisdom in the use of whatever little power we have, following God's Way. Being the most powerful "ruler" on God's earth you could have used some of the wisdom that your position demanded.

With your speech in the Israeli Kensset and putting Iran in the crosshairs, you have started another wild goose chase that reminds us of the Iraqi "WMDS", and the subsequent war and unjust killing of more than half a million people.

You have set the Mid-East peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state back by several decades. In fact, you have taken the trouble to flush every promise made during seven years of your presidency down the drain.

To Israel you gave everything, to the Arabs nothing, except sermons on terrorism. I (and the Muslim world as such) subscribe to the version of President Hosni Mubarak expressed at Sharam al-Sheikh an hour before your arrival at the venue. And that was a refutation of your logic. You already know that the Israeli occupation and atrocities are at the root of what you prefer to all "terrorism". You gave a green signal to Israel to go ahead with its atrocities and continue the occupation of Palestinian land. That certainly is not a recipe for peace.

You know that what you have been talking in the Mid-East sounds hollow. You invaded Iraq because you imagined there were dangerous weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). That was only your fantasy. In the Middle East you chose to ignore the so-called "Annapolis Process" that you had started for the establishment of a Palestinian state only a few months ago. Instead, you harped on Iran's intention to build nuclear weapons and the need to stop it from doing so. That was a case for yet another war against a Muslim country after Iraq on the same false ground. The IAEA has time and again refuted your claims on Iran's "weapons" as did the UN's chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, repudiate your claims of Iraqi WMDs.

This is a clear sign of your attempts to sidestep real issues like Israel's nuclear weapons, atrocities against Palestinians, continuing occupation and expropriation of more and more Palestinian land. As if the devastation of Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine is not enough now you are training your guns at Iran and Syria. Tomorrow it will be the turn of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

At this late hour in your presidency, I would like to remind you of your obligations to use your might even-handedly, with immense wisdom and restraint rather than with Pharaoh-like arrogance. You are a religious person and you know that it is the meek who would inherit the earth, not Pharaoh and their contemporary versions.

After a million plus deaths in Iraq (half a million from US-led sanction, the other half under your able stewardship of the world), devastation of Afghanistan and Palestine, your lust for blood should have been satisfied.

With this we hope from God that He would take kindly to you and lead you on a more sensible, humane path. There is only a small window of opportunity now left for you to leave a legacy of peace and prosperity rather than of an endless campaign of injustice and violence against the poor and the weak.

With regards,
Dr. Mohammad Manzoor Alam
President
Indian Association of Muslim Social Scientist

Issued by: Office Secretary