Author: Sadanand Dhume
Publication: The Wall Street Journal
Date: November 27, 2007
URL: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119613137833704851-lMyQjAxMDE3OTI2ODEyMzgxWj.html
Friday's multiple bomb blasts in the northern
Indian state of Uttar Pradesh -- which killed 13 people and injured about
80 -- ought to give pause to those who see the world's largest democracy as
a linchpin in the war on terror. India's leaders and diplomats seek to portray
the country as a firebreak against radical Islam, or the drive to impose the
medieval Arab norms enshrined in Shariah law on 21st century life. In reality,
India is ill- equipped to fight this scourge.
Like neighboring Pakistan and Bangladesh,
(and unlike Turkey or Tunisia) India has failed to modernize much of its Muslim
population. Successive generations of politicians have pandered to the most
backward elements of India's 150-million strong Muslim population, the second
largest in the world after Indonesia's. India has allowed Muslims to follow
Shariah in civil matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. An increasingly
radicalized neighborhood, fragmented domestic politics and a curiously timid
mainstream discourse on Islam add up to hobble India's response to radical
Islamic intimidation.
Most Indian Muslims have nothing to do with
terrorism, and are more concerned with the struggles of daily life than the
effort to create a global caliphate. Muslim contributions to the fabric of
national life -- most visible in sports, movies and the arts -- should not
be dismissed. Furthermore, religious zealotry in India is not a Muslim monopoly.
Still, the notion that Indian Islam is uniquely tolerant, or somehow immune
to the rising tide of world-wide radical sentiment, is a myth.
Last year, Haji Muhammad Yaqoob Qureshi, a
minister in the Uttar Pradesh government, publicly offered a $11 million bounty
for beheading the Danish cartoonists who had drawn the prophet Mohammed. In
high-tech Hyderabad, parts of which are Muslim strongholds, three sitting
legislators of a local Islamic party recently roughed up Taslima Nasreen,
a Bangladeshi author critical of her country's treatment of its Hindu minority
and her faith's treatment of women. Last week, the government of West Bengal
state in eastern India had to call in the army to quell Muslim rioters in
Calcutta, whose demands included Ms. Nasreen's expulsion from the country.
India's historically weak-kneed response to
radical Islamic intimidation only encourages such behavior. In 1988, India
was the first country to ban Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses."
(Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous death sentence on the author only
after reading about disturbances in India.) In 1999, after terrorists hijacked
an Indian aircraft to then Taliban-controlled Kandahar, New Delhi responded
by releasing three prominent Islamic militants from prison in Kashmir. One
of them, the British-Pakistani London School of Economics dropout Omar Saeed
Sheikh, went on to mastermind the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl. True to form, the authorities have responded to the latest outbreak
of violence in Calcutta by bundling off Ms. Nasreen to distant Rajasthan,
and from there to Delhi.
As in other democracies -- Britain and Holland
to name just two -- a permissive approach toward radical Islam has only made
the country more vulnerable to terrorism. In August this year, 42 people died
in attacks on a Hyderabad restaurant and an open-air auditorium. Last year,
a series of explosions on commuter trains in Bombay killed over 200 people.
Two years ago, the Hindu festival of Diwali was rung in with bombs that claimed
62 lives in Delhi.
New Delhi has blamed the attacks on groups
such as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba and Bangladesh's Harkat-ul Jihad-al-Islami.
Though much of India's terrorism problem is imported, part of it is homegrown.
Instead of reflexively blaming Islamabad, Indians need to ask themselves why
foreign terrorists appear to have little trouble recruiting accomplices from
India. (The Uttar Pradesh attacks appear to be the work of a previously unknown
outfit called Indian Mujahideen.) The bromide about the lack of Indian Muslim
involvement in international terrorism, accepted unquestioningly by much of
India's liberal intelligentsia, must be called into question after the involvement
of Indian doctors in this year's failed attacks in London and Glasgow.
India's experience offers important lessons
to other democracies struggling to integrate large Muslim populations. It
highlights the folly of attempting to exempt Muslims from universal norms
regarding women's rights, freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. It reveals
that democracy alone -- when detached from bedrock democratic principles --
offers no antidote to radical Islamic fervor.
Mr. Dhume is a fellow at the Asia Society
in Washington, D.C. "My Friend the Fanatic," his book about the
rise of radical Islam in Indonesia, will be published by Melbourne next year.
