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Islam and terrorism

Islam and terrorism

Author: M. V. Kamath
Publication: News Today
Date: August 27, 2007
URL: http://newstodaynet.com/guest/2708gu1.htm

First, an explanation: when one speaks of Muslims, it does not mean all Muslims in India, just as when one speaks of Hindus, it does not mean all Hindus think alike from Kanya Kumari to the snowy mountains of the Himalayas. And yet, one can't help generalising at times as when one says that as a result of a long history of tyrannical Muslim rule, Hindus have come to attach an abhorrence of Muslims in general and Islam in particular. Muslims did not rule all of India all the time.

Neither were all Muslim rulers tyrannical all the time. But one speaks here of 'impressions', just as did Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh when, addressing the National Press Club in Washington a year ago, he said: 'We have 150 million citizens who practice the faith of Islam. And I say it with some pride, that not one of them has joined the ranks of these gangs like the al Qaida or other terrorist outfits .......' Famous last words. If he eats them he would have indigestion.

As Aroon Purie of India Today recently pointed out, there is a strong possibility that al Qaida cells are active in India. As he put it: 'Our Parliament, commuter trains and crowded market places have already been attacked'. But go back to recent times. Even if we don't take into consideration the torching of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra and the incineration of over 53 woman and children at one go and the bombing of the Akshakdham Temple in Ahmedabad, remember these acts of terrorism: On 8 August, 1993 there was a bomb blast at the RSS office in Chennai killing eleven and injuring seven. On 14 February, 1998 there was a serial car bombings in Coimbatore killing 46 and injuring over 200. In May-June 2000 there was a series of 13 bomb blasts in churches in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, killing nearly 50.

On 28 December, 2005, an Let-backed group attacked the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and on 18 May, 2007 again the Lashkar-e-Toiba arranged a blast at the Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, killing 16 persons. We need also to take into consideration the attack twice, on the Raghunath Temple, the Delhi blasts in 2006 and Sankat Vimochan, Varanasi also in 2006. According to the Anti-Terrorist Squad, ISI-sponsored groups like the Let and al Badr have both active and sleeping modules in India. Outlook has pointed out that 'there is a sizeable educated Muslim population who are now seen as likely candidates for jihadi indoctrination'.

What does it say of the Muslims? One generalisation is that Muslims have not come to terms with history and can't stand the thought that they have now to live in a country with a predominantly Hindu-oriented government, no matter how loudly it claims to be 'secular', after having for centuries been the rulers. To Muslims, Hindus are still kafirs and they blanch at the thought of having to be governed by a common Civil Law. They have still to accept the fact that times have changed, that they have to live with Hindus as fellow citizens and not as masters.

That would explain the Two-Nation Theory and Jinnah's insistence on a separate Muslim state. That may also possibly - just possibly - explain the irritation in many Muslim minds of being a minority that can't lay down the law as in ancient times when though they were numerically few, politically and militarily they ruled as a majority. It is also possible that because of that very fact, they think that Hindus are deliberately keeping them down out of vengeance and therefore must react violently to it.

These are guesses and anyone is free to question them. But what, one may ask, will the Muslim community gain through violence? Where will extremism and religious fundamentalism take them? Can one blame Hindus if they smear all Muslims as potential terrorists? Hasan Saroot, writing in The Hindu (17 July) made the point that 'Islamic extremism has not descended from another planet or been imposed on the community from outside' and that 'it breeds within the community and is the product of a certain kind of interpretation of Islam'

The general argument made by our secularists and enraged Muslims is that Islam is a religion of peace. But Hasan Surior writes: 'Let's face it; there are verses in the koran that justify violence..... When Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers, violence was deemed legitimate to put them down. Today, when it is the world's second largest religion with more than one billion followers around the world and still growing, that context has lost its relevance. Yet, jihadi groups, pursuing that madcap scheme of establishing Dar-ul-Islam (The Land of Islam) are using these passages to incite impressionable Muslim youths'.

Are Hindus to blame? What have Hindus done to invite Muslim angst? The demolition of the insignificant Babri Mosque? One should put that against the background of the number of temples - counted in hundreds - demolished by Muslim rulers, especially Aurangzeb and some of his predecessor and contemporaries, in the past. Are Hindus supposed to forget them and let byegones be byegones? Then comes the argument that the claims that Sri Ram was born at the exact spot where the Babri Masjid was built is an untenable one. But that is a matter of faith.

Can Hindus question the belief that it was Allah who dictated the Koran to the Prophet or that - to move a little further - that Christ was born to Virgin Mary? Has anyone questioned Malaysia which in the past few months has razed to the ground several Hindu temples to the utter distress of Hindu devotees? And this is not history but done in the living present. Has any Muslim or secular organisation raised its voice? How many illegal mosques have not the Musharraf regime pulled down in Pakistan in recent years? Then there are many who try to explain Islamic violence to what the United States an Britain have done to Iraq and what the US has done to Iran. But what has that got to do with India? India has neither officially or unofficially condoned the US invasion of Iraq; indeed India has shown clearly its unwillingness to accept the US thesis that Iraq was accumulating weapons of mass destruction and therefore needs to be brought to order.

Another excuse for Islamic violence is that it is poverty and lack of education that is the driving force. But as Perves Hoodbhoy, who teachers at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabed notes, 'deprivation and suffering do not, by themselves, lead to radicalism, that lack of educational opportunities too is an insufficient cause, considering that the 9/11 hijackers and the Glasgow airport doctors were 'highly educated men supported by thousands of similarly educated Muslims in Pakistan'.

Muslims in India must look inwards and think of what a reformed British extremist, Rassan Butt, said about 'the role of Islamic ideology in terrorism' that preaches 'a separatist message of Islamic supremacy' and seeks to establish a 'puritanical caliphate'. What Muslims in India and, for that matter, in Pakistan must come to accept is that times have changed and that they must change for the better.

Hoodbhoy says that Pakistan must take strict action against mullahs who spread hatred. Will Musharraf dare to take such action? He was forced to get Lal Masjid in Islamabad vacated of would-be terrorists. But there is a greater job ahead of him to be discharged, and that is to modernise Islam as once his political icon, Kamal Pasha of Turkey, did. But will Musharraf last? Word is going round that Washington wouldn't hesitate to wage war in Waziristan and elsewhere to root out all Qaida. One can only wait and see.


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