What on earth is wrong with the Muslims?

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What on earth is wrong with the Muslims?

 

By M.V.Kamath

 

What on earth is the matter Muslims in the Indian sub-continent? And

when one speaks of the subcontinent one includes under that rubric

all three countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

 

One had hoped that once Pakistan was conceded Muslims who decided to

stay on India would learn to live in peace with the non-Muslim

majority. Any Muslim who felt that he was being oppressed had total

freedom to leave India and migrate to Pakistan.

 

Or, for that matter, to Bangladesh. But that is not happening. On

the contrary, Pakistani and Bangladeshi jehadists are sneaking into

India and are apparently being given shelter by Indian Muslims.

Admitted their number is minuscule. Admittedly the majority and a

substantial majority of Muslims are totally opposed to any form of

terrorism being practised against Indian targets.

 

The tragedy is that because of an insignificantly small number of

Muslims who are giving shelter to Pakistani and Bangladeshi

terrorists, not only Muslims as a community, but Islam as a religion

are getting a bad name.

 

According to knowledgeable sources, since 2001, Uttar Pradesh

alonehas seen the interdiction of at least 22 cells linked to

Pakistanbased Jehadi groups in operation. What happened at the

Sankat Vimochan Temple in Varanasi is not a rare and isolated

instance. It was merely a repetition of what happened at the

Akshardham Temple in Ahmedabad in September 2002, when 37 Hindu

devotees were killed and 80 injured.

 

Indeed, less than six weeks before the Varanasi bombings, a Kolkata

police official, Prasum Mukherjee had told journalists that his

force had arrested a Lashkar operative who had planned to execute

strikes across urban centres in north and cast India.

 

Following the Varanasi bombings reports indicate that jehadis were

also planning to create havoc in many Hindu religious centres.

 

According to a media report, in 2003 intelligence-led operations

uncovered four terrorist cells of Jaish-e-Mohammad and arrests were

made in Lucknow, Allahabad, Muzaffarnagar, Sikandarabad and Noida.

 

People may have forgotten it, but on December 6, 1993, Muslim

terrorists helped set off a series of 43 explosions in Hyderabad and

Mumbai and seven separate explosions on trains. By the mid-1990s

jehadi cells had started developing a formidable all-India reach.

What has India done to deserve all this? Muslims in India are free

to practise their religion without hindrance. No VHP activists have

dropped bombs on Muslim devotees kneeling at prayers.

 

The Government gives liberal subsidies to Muslims who want to go on

a Haj pilgrimage, which is being questioned by no less a Muslim

personage as the Prince of Arcot, Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali.

 

Reacting to newspaper reports that the Union Government has decided

to allow the Haj pilgrims to carry $ 10,000 as basic travel quota,

in Addition to 2,000 Saudi Riyals, Nawab Abdul Ali is reported to

have said that this move means an annual outflow of foreign exchange

to the tune of $ 1,000 million for one lakh pilgrims visiting the

holy mosques at Mecca and Medina.

 

Is attacking Hindu temples the Islamic way of repaying this

extraordinary generosity? There is total freedom for Muslims to

practice their religion in India, unlike as in Pakistan where Hundus

such as there now are have to practice their religion under cover.

 

Sania Mirza is a national heroine and everybody is proud of her

performance. Mohammad Kaif, Wasim Jaffer, Irfan Pathan have made

their mark in ODI and Test cricket and they have been applauded. No

one ever thought of them as Muslims; they were great players; if

they failed no one condemned them. When they did well all Indians

felt proud.

 

Time was when a Muslim film star had to assume a `Hindu name, as

Dilip Kumar did. But who bothers to question the religious affinity

of a Shah Rukh Khan or an Amir Khan? Or Shabana Azmi? We have heard

of books on Kathakali, Bharatanatyam and Indian culture being

confiscated and destroyed in airports of Saudi Arabia but the most

orthodox Hindu would be shocked and pained should anyone dare to

tear the Quran.

 

India is not a barbarian country. It respects all religions. It is

therefore shocking to learn that a British airline has banned its

staff from taking Bibles or wearing crucifixes on flights to Saudi

Arabia "to avoid offending the country's Muslims'. And it is just as

painful to learn that a Muslim girl in Kerala and her family are

facing social ostracism because she is learning Bharatanatyam!

 

Kerala Muslims obviously do not know that Ramayana is played in

dance form in Indonesia by Muslim artistes. In Pakistan there is a

ban on 35 Indian entertainment channels. There is no Islamic country

in the world where religious minorities enjoy equal economic,

religious and political rights.

 

In India women can wear burqa and nobody cares. The burqa is banned

in Turkey. But for all the freedom that Muslims in India enjoy, it

has in recent years been made the target of Islamic hatred.

 

One of the most active Hate-India organisations is the Lashkar-e-

Toiba which has been masterminding a lot of terrorist activity

against India. Only a few weeks ago in January, Indian security

forces in Kashmir finally were able to kill Abu Huzaifa who had

masterminded the October 29, 2005 serial bomb blasts in Delhi that

left more than 60 dead.

 

Hatred is openly propagated as did an Uttar Pradesh Muslim Minister

who promised crores of rupees to anyone who would behead the Danish

cartoonist who had drawn a series of cartoons derogatory of the

Prophet.

 

And he continues to be a Minister. It is this kind of atrocious

behaviour, one believes that provoked K.P.S. Gill to condemn Islamic

intolerance in a powerful article in a national daily. "What

dishonours Islam more: a few irreverent cartoons?

 

Or the acts of remorseless murder, of relentless violence against

people of other faiths, of the intimidation and abuse of all other

faiths and communities which the Islamists routinely engage in"?

Gill asked. But who is going to answer him?

 

Do Jehadis think they can break up India by their acts of terrorism?

Or that they can `free' Jammu & Kashmir by attacking the Indian

Parliament? All that the jehadis are doing is to give both decent

Muslims and Islam a bad name. The least that Muslim citizens of

India can do is to give up violence. Violence gets them nowhere. It

only antagonises everyone against them.

 

Is that bow they want to live for generations to come? As one poet

put it: "jeena yahan, marna yahan, iske siva jana kahan?" Can't

Muslims live in India in peace for India's sake if not for their

owm?

 

Why can't they handle the traitors in their midst instead of

constantly berating the majority community? It is peace that gives

the richest social and economic dividends, not terrorism.

 

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