Author:
Publication: Jihad Watch
Date: January 5, 2008
URL: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/019459.php
India, as the object of Islamic conquest,
endured, over the centuries of Muslim rule and misrule, tens of millions of
Hindu victims. India is a country that, at its Independence, was forced to
give up large chunks of its territory on both sides to form West Pakistan
(now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), in order to accommodate
Muslim demands. In Pakistan, at Partition, 15% of the population was Hindu;
it is now 1.5%. In Bangladesh, at Partition, 34% of the population was non-Muslim
(Hindu and Buddhist); it is now 7%. Meanwhile, in India, the Muslim percentage
of the population steadily rises.
In the Pakistan-held parts of Jammu and Kashmir,
400,000 Hindu Pandits have, by Muslim pressure, been driven out. In Indian-held
Kashmir, terrorist attacks by Muslims, supported by Pakistani groups unchecked
by, and at times supported by, the Pakistani army, have attempted to murder
and terrorize the Hindus and drive them out. In India proper (a dangerous
phrase, I admit, and I regret it, for it inadvertently concedes that Indian-held
Kashmir somehow is different from "India proper" -- the same problem
one has in referring to what is called the "West Bank" -- but cannot
at the moment think of anything better than "India extra Kashmirem"
on the old-map model of "India extra Gangem") there have been attacks,
never or seldom reported in the West, for decades, of Muslims on Hindus. But
every counter-attack by Hindus pushed to the limits of their endurance is
given front-page coverage. We all know about the Hindu attacks on the mosque
deliberately erected on the Hindu temple at Ayodha. We all know about the
Hindu attacks on Muslims in Gujarat -- why, the State Department banned Narendra
Modi, who ran the Gujarat government, from entering the United States.
But the provocations that prompted those attacks,
the burning to death of Hindu pilgrims, is quickly glossed over in a sentence
And all the other Muslim attacks, steadily, all over India -- those repeated
bombs in Mumbai, killing bankers and tea-wallahs alike, set off by the Muslims
who run the Bombay underworld (the head gangster sought, and found safe haven,
in Pakistan), and even the attack by Muslims on the Parliament building in
New Delhi --somehow none of them ever quite make any impression on the non-Indian
world. That world remains so deeply uninterested in what is endured by Indians,
and unsympathetic (but why?) to Hindus -- not quite to the same remarkable
extent as the world has shown itself willing to accept the unendurable position
that the Lesser Jihad has forced Israel into, but close.
And now here is Taslima Nasreen, born into
Islam in Bangladesh, but whose intellect and moral sense and ability to question
and think for herself led, inexorably, to an analysis of Islam, and a subsequent
jettisoning of Islam, not unlike that of Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, and Ali Sina. The Community of Apostates turns out to be, for those who
study their works, the community of the very best people, self-selected, of
all those born into Islam. She dares to return to Bangladesh. She is harried.
She is hunted. The death threats never stop. So she moves to India, powerful
large India, with a population that is 87% non-Muslim. And even there what
happens? She is confined to quarters. She meets no one. No one meets her.
She is, in effect, a prisoner. She has been condemned to prison, instead of
being given the protection of the state that will allow her to move around,
to meet, to address gatherings, to publish her views in every sense.
She should be made much of. Instead, a fearful
Indian government has condemned her to solitary confinement. How long can
she endure such a life in India? How long will it be before she has to flee
to the United States, the way Ayaan Hirsi Ali did, driven out by death threats
from the country where she had been a member of that country's Parliament?
There is something wrong here. There is something
that could be fixed. It requires a different attitude by the Indian government,
and by all the Infidel governments. They can run, but they can't hide.
