Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: Tehelka
Date: September 17, 2005
Introduction: Why is it that moderate Muslims
can never become respected icons? Why do separatist hate- mongers get the
honour of being mass leaders of the community?
It's nice to hear from scholars about how
Islam stands for peace, brotherhood and coexistence, and all those terror
machines are created either by wayward Muslim youth in anger against the 'oppressors',
which is against the real teachings of Islam, or by western governments to
give Islam a bad name. Okay, agreed. We too would like to trust them and this
theory.
But what is the reality? There were reports
that our own Sarabjit Singh was forced to embrace Islam just to get a whiff
of fresh air so essential for his tuberculosis-ridden body. Did converting
a hapless jailed inmate to Islam bring any glory to the faith?
A few years back when our ambassador Talmeez
Abroad was in Riyadh, he disclosed that 25,000 Hindus, working in Saudi Arabia,
had embraced Islam. None cared or even gave any significance to the news except
The Statesman, which front-paged it. Was it communal to ask why it should
have happened?
And this week, a strange incident happened
in a country which is known as a moderate, secular Muslim majority society
governed by a progressive, modern and highly cultured government. It's Malaysia,
'truly Asia' A new sect emerged there called Sky Kingdom, led by Ayah Pin,
who proclaimed, among other things, that members of the sect could follow
any religion they like. He claimed that all prayers will be answered. According
to a widely read Malay newspaper Bernama Malasia, he used to say: "All
religions are basically the same. God teaches love. He is for anyone who wants
to know about the world. You can choose whichever religion you want."
Ayah Pin claims to have several thousand followers
in Malaysia, Singapore, Bali and beyond - but this was not tolerated by the
secular, modern, moderate and progressive Malaysian authorities for the simple
reason that it had irked the majority Muslims, specially the Islamic clergy.
The entire centre of this sect was destroyed by the police and its followers
arrested.
As long as Muslims are less than the majority,
they feel it's their right, a secular, fundamental one, to convert the members
of the majority into their fold; but the moment they are in a majority, even
a moderate Malaysia becomes a hardliner and the flowering of a different way
of worshipping god is crushed ruthlessly.
Recently, a high-profile leader of Jamaate-Islami-Hind
kindly presented an authentic version of the holy Quran with correct meanings
certified by the organisation. Among other things, he said that Prophet Mohammad
had said that each individual is given the right to profess the faith he or
she likes. He said that the brouhaha over terrorist incidents in the UK and
US is all a creation of western countries to malign Muslims and to find an
alibi to intimidate them. Look, he said, what they have done in Iraq. I agreed.
He said that the anger and anguish among the Muslim youth has to be understood
in its right perspective.
There was nothing I could say no to. Finally,
I asked a question. "Maulana sahib, even if we agree that the anger in
the red-eyed revenge-seeking Muslim youth against the horrific West needs
to be understood, why is it that the Kashmiri Muslim has turned against his
own motherland? You can't separate Kashmir, the land which derives its name
from Rishi Kashyap, from the rest of India where most of ethnic Kashmiri Muslims
were Bhatts or Kauls or Zutshis just two or three generations before. Why
did the change in faith change their loyalties? After all, since Partition,
only Kashmiri Muslims have ruled the Valley, the Centre has doled out huge
subsidies, it's a no-tax haven and even a Bill seeking protection to women
against domestic violence will not be applicable there thanks to Article 370.
Why then, are Hindus, their blood-brothers, ousted and their properties either
illegally occupied or left as a haunted house? Maulana sahib's answer was
left for our next meeting.
Compare the situation in Malaysia and Pakistan
with India. While a different sect in Malaysia is destroyed by the State and
non-Muslims are accorded second class status in Pakistan and they are told
in no uncertain terms that to be in Pakistan means to adhere compulsorily
to Islamic teachings (read the report by the Sustainable Development Policy
Institute, Pakistan), the Indian government, run by majority Hindus, finds
it politically correct to announce greater facilities and subsidies to Haj
pilgrims while ignoring the pilgrimages of the majority populace. Here a Christian
chief minister announces reservations for Muslims in a Hindu-dominated province
and proposes the same in the political arena also. Huge government billboards
in the capital's railway station invite applications from all non-Hindu religions
for education funds and free coaching. Hindus alone are unwanted. An age-old
Hindu math is destroyed for no apparent reason and temple endowments are trusted
to atheists with their funds spent on non-Hindu purposes. In fact, it pays
to be a non-Hindu in Hindustan.
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has beautifully explained
the difference between living in a Muslim majority country and a Hindu one.
He said a Muslim nuclear scientist of a neighbouring country is in jail while
another Muslim scientist is head of our State and is a darling of all the
faiths in the country.
It's easy to criticise and denounce VS Naipaul,
but the questions he raises have to be answered. If Islam means peace then
why is it that most of the terror all over is its progeny? Why does a lo-year-old
girl get her throat slit in the name of defending Islam in Jammu? And the
girl is a Muslim! And still, there are no fatwas from Deoband or Nadwa! A
diktat on Imrana comes too soon but silence envelopes the defenders of faith
when humanity is assaulted. If Pakistan takes pride in naming its missiles
after a Ghauri, Ghaznavi and Babar and Indian Muslims keep their eyes wide
shut - pawns in the hands of so-called seculars - peace shall be as distant
a dream as Osama's conversion into a UN peace ambassador.
Prof Salim Mansur is a reputed scholar in
Canada. Recently, commenting on Tony Blair's statement on Al-Qaeda, he wrote
in the National Post, "Al-Qaeda's ideology is deeply entrenched in the
Muslim tradition and reaches far back, into the earliest years of Islam...
Al-Qaeda's terrorists are a throwback to those Muslims in the first decades
of Islam who believed their faith was the purest, while doubting the belief
of others around them, and approved of violence as the right way to advance
their views of faith and power. They are known as khwarij (meaning those who
secede) or kharjites." This has to be analysed deeply and without prejudice
to understand the present terror and hate networks in the name of a faith.
We have also seen Muslims who had the unflinching
determination to defend their faith yet minced no words to condemn what was
condemnable. Maulana Hasrat Mohani, Abul Kalam Azad, Rafiq Zakaria and Maulana
Wahiduddin Khan command respect cutting across party and ideological lines.
But why is it that they could never become an icon of respect among common
Muslims? Why is it that only the separatist hate-monger gets the honour of
being a mass leader of the Muslim community. My? Is it not time that right-thinking,
genuine Muslims should join hands with those whom they trust and forge a commune
against all that is hateful and chauvinist, a terror breeder?
Let the spirit of the 1857 'rising' be raised
again to foster a unity we have never seen since and no country on earth can
be better than India for such a dream to materialise. All the hateful invaders
from Arabia and the deserts of Middle East might have won a war or two but
they could never overpower us the way they did it in Spain, Morocco and the
Far East. That's the power of India that makes it worth a hundred worlds.
We are what we have been for the last 5,000 years and we are still going strong;
let this be equally shared and nurtured by the legitimate heirs of the heritage
- including Muslims - to defeat the forces of hate and terror. Because if
it can happen, it can happen here alone.
The writer is Editor, Panchjanya, the RSS
mouthpiece
