Letter to Times of India:
Dear Editor
In her interview with Lalita Panicker,
Shabana Azmi (The Times of India October Interview October 24, 2001) said
'But to equate the whole Islamic world with terrorism is both untrue and
unfair. It is strange that the Hiroshima bombings were never called Christian
terrorism, the LTTE's action is never called Hindu terrorism.' It is very
true that the entire Muslim world cannot be equated with terrorism but
at the same time to equate LTTE with Hinduism or the nuclear attacks on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki with Christianity is not parallel with associating
the current terrorism emanating from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Arab countries
with Islam.
The Tamils struggle in Srilanka
is not related to religion. This struggle is solely ethnic in character
and those who are taking part in it, irrespective of their religious affiliation
are Tamils. They don't quote Hindu religious scriptures to justify what
they do. Christian Tamils are as much part of it as the Hindu Tamils. And
so they call themselves by a Tamil name. No Hindu of any other ethnicity
is an active participant in it.
As far as the nuclear attacks on
Japan are concerned, the fight between the Japanese and the US was not
a religious war. Neither side raised the religious bogey ever during the
entire war. The Americans did not go to fight quoting the Christian scriptures.
It was a political war.
She forgot to mention the Germans'
holocaust of 6 million Jews. Yes, this was terrorism against the Jews and
it is so called in every history book Holocaust of the Jews. It was not
inspired or sustained by Christian ideology. Its motivation came from Nazism
and it has also been labeled so. Christian nations fought Germany another
Christian nation -- to save the Jews from the Holocaust.
Contrary to the above, the terrorism
emanating from Pakistan, Afghanistan and some Arab states is being waged
exclusively in the name of Islam and justified by frequent quotations from
the Koran and Hadis. It is the religious schools of Islam that feed the
ever growing need of the human fodder that terrorism demands. The call
for jihad by the Imam of the largest mosque of the most populous democratic
and secular country cannot be lightly brushed away as unIslamic, however
one might wish to do so.
And contrary to only Tamils being
part of LTTE, in the terrorism Shabana Azmi is objecting to being called
Islamic terrorism, Muslims from all across the globe from Algeria and Morocco
on the western end â€" not to mention the US and Europe -- to
the Philippines on the eastern end are actively involved in it. What brings
all these Muslims of diverse nationalities together, if it is not the common
bond of Islam?
I will say, no Shabana, there is
valid reason to call it Islamic terrorism.
Vinod Kumar
(Note: This letter was sent,
but it may not have been published.)
