The Loneliness of Saad Ansari: He Must Be Saluted For His Courage to Stand Up Against the Fanatics Who Mock Islam In The Name Of Blasphemy
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
22 June
2022
Do
Muslims Really Have A Double Face; A Moderate One For Popular Consumption And A
‘Real’ One When They Are In A Majority?
Main
Points:
1. Muslims
physically threatened Saad Ansari for his post on Prophet Muhammad.
2. Instead of
rational arguments, Muslim orthodoxy is increasingly using threats to have its
way.
3. The silence
of Hindu liberals and Muslim champions is being loudly heard.
4. Can there be
a meaningful fight against rising intolerance of the majority without at the
same time pointing out the levels of intolerance within the Muslim community?
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Saad Ansari arrested for sharing post, supporting suspended BJP
spokesperson Nupur Sharma. Twitter
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A frenzied
crowd calling itself Ashiq-e-Rasool (Lovers of the Prophet) menacingly
surrounds a house in Bhiwandi, a predominantly Muslim suburb in Mumbai. They
are angry about a post which was put up by a young boy indirectly supporting
BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, now suspended from the party for her
uncharitable remarks on Prophet Muhammad. This young boy, an engineering
student by the name of Saad Ansari is religiously agnostic and asked Muslims to
grow up rather than behave like overgrown kids over the issue of blasphemy. In
his post, he asked the following question to Muslims: “A 50 year old man
marrying a 6-9 year old kid is clear child abuse….. I don’t know how you people
support this. Will you give your 6-year-old daughter to a 50-year-old man? (Think
about it)”.
There can
be a number of ways in which Muslims could have responded to the anxiety of
this young Muslim boy. They could have told him about the historical context
when such marriages were common place or they could have argued (like many Barelvis
do) that some of the things that the Prophet did is beyond human comprehension
and hence it is futile to talk about them. But then, any rational and civic
behaviour is too much to ask from some Muslims these days. They surrounded his
house, abused and slapped him and forced him to recite the Shahada (the
belief in oneness of God). Not content, they formally lodged a complaint
against him on the basis of which he was arrested by the Mumbai police.
Saad Ansari
is a young boy of exemplary courage and he must be saluted for that. But
imagine the moral vacuousness of the crowd which forced him to chant the first Kalima.
These are the same Muslims who repeat ad nauseam that Islam cannot be forced on
anyone. They argue that Islam is about submission and that it spread through
its teaching of justice and fairness rather than through force. And yet, they
have no compunction to force it on one of their own who dares to question the
dominant understanding of Islam. Do Muslims really have a double face; a moderate
one for popular consumption and a ‘real’ one when they are in a majority? In
the context of Bhiwandi, the majoritarian Muslim impulse was that it will not
brook any sort of divergence from their understanding of the Prophet or Islam.
Moderate
Muslims have consistently called out the intolerance within the Muslim
community. Being Muslims, they know that without the space for dissent, the
community would remain mired in a mentality which is truly antediluvian. It
will never face up to modern challenges, like embracing modern ideas of dissent
and freedom of expression.
Anyone who
seeks to tinker with the dominant ideational pattern within Muslims is labelled
as a heretic who is conspiring to defame the community. This is not just the
story of Saad Ansari; it has been the story of many before him, including Hamid
Dalwai and Asghar Ali Engineer. They too had to face social ostracism and what
not from the community simply because they were arguing for social and
religious reform.
When
religious chauvinism overwhelms the mind, one does not simply demand laws on
blasphemy but also primarily curbs any moderate or dissenting voices within the
community. We can clearly see it is not just Nupur Sharma who is being
threatened but also young Muslims like Saad are forced to keep silent, to
remain in the little cocoon which has been made for them.
There was a
lot of noise about Nupur Sharma but then we have complete silence on the issue
of Saad Ansari. Where are the voices of Muslim journalists and social media
influencers who always write about Muslim victimization? Why don’t they write
about the threats and bullying of Saad Ansari? But then, it is too much to
expect this from them. Instead of educating Muslims to dissociate from the
politics of blasphemy, they were actively fanning it. The only Muslim there is
to write about is the Muslim victim; all other issues of concern within the
community have disappeared into thin air.
More
importantly, where are the Hindu liberals who were teaching the Muslim
moderates to understand the pain of the community during the Nupur Sharma
episode. Why are they not condemning what happened to Saad? Why are their pens
silent now? We know why. Their pens only move when the victim is a Muslim and
the aggressor is a Hindu. Incidents which happen with the likes of Saad do not
fit their narrative and hence such stories are conveniently dropped.
Intolerance is never a one- way street. If we have to call out the intolerance
of the majority community, nothing should stop us from calling out the intolerance
within also.
Decades earlier, Hamid Dalwai was bold enough
to realize and write about how both forms of intolerance feed upon each other
and must be fought together. Moderate Muslims have always made this connection.
Liberal Hindus would be better off without telling us what to do and what
political positions to take. They are no one to lecture us on how to understand
the pain of the Muslims in the given political context. As Muslims, we feel and
experience this pain each passing day. But that has not blinded us to overlook
what is happening in the community in the name of protecting Islam.
I pity
those who bullied Saad into reciting the Kalima. If the intention was to
re-instil faith into this Muslim youth, then they have already failed. For faith
is not something which can be imposed from the outside. The obverse might
actually happen. Saad will never to able to reconcile his faith in Islam as he
has seen the thuggery that the followers of this religion are capable of.
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A
regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher
on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-society/saad-ansari-fanatics-blasphemy/d/127295
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