On Eid, bands against terror
A sombre Eid, an editorial in The Indian Express
Muslims in
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Time magazine’s take on Mumbai Terror: Behind the Mumbai Massacre -
Mumbai attacks and the Muslim question by Hasan Suroor
Despite Batla, Muslims stick with Congress
It’s about terror, not Sachar by Seema Chishti
Muslims to wear black ribbons on Bakr-Eid: Imams
Compiled By New Age Islam News Bureau
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On Eid, bands against terror
10 Dec 2008, 0242 hrs IST, TNN
"At every dargah, prayers were said for the grieving families in Mumbai. In Ajmer Sharief, Kaliyar Sharief (Uttarakhand) and Barabanki's Deva Sharief, the community came together burying their differences to focus on one thing: communal harmony. By showing our unity, we have spoilt the terrorists' Bakr-Eid," said Qari Mohd Miya Mazhari, editor, Secular Qayadat.
The festival of sacrifice also became a platform of protest both for celebrities as well as ordinary citizens.
In Mumbai, cerebral star Aamir Khan wore a black band on his arm. So did 'Jab We Met' director Imtiaz Ali, lyricist Javed Akhtar and his actor-director son, Farhan Akhtar. A news agency reported that other Bollywood biggies such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan too preferred to stay away from the festivities.
Some Muslims even avoided festival purchases such as new clothes. The trustee of Mumbai's Khar Jama Masjid, Zafar Iqbal, sent 500 emails and 250 SMSes reaffirming Islam's peaceful tenets.
In
"They tried to divide our hearts and minds. This is to tell the terrorists they have failed. Muslims must be the first line of defence. Because if the society gets polarized, the ordinary Muslim will face the brunt," said theatre personality from Delhi Aamir Raza Husain.
In Chennai, chief Shia Qazi Ghulam Mohammed Mehdi Khan said, "I request each and every Indian regardless of their caste, community, state, religion or race to stand united against such inhuman groups because our sustenance and survival lies in our unity as Indians. No religion promotes terrorism and terrorism has no religion." Trader Navaz Currimbhoy described it as a landmark day. "This is the first time I have heard a Qazi categorically condemn an act of terror."
Taxi driver Ashfaq Hussain said, "Forget about celebrations, it just doesn't feel like Eid. There is no excitement in the neighbourhood and I just don't feel like feasting." Actor Shabana Azmi, though, pointed out the faint silver lining. Speaking to TOI, she said, "I have been flooded with messages this Bakr-Eid, many of them from people who never greeted me before. I think the terrorists failed to divide us. Indians have seen through their game."
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/On_Eid_bands_against_terror/articleshow/3815902.cms
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Muslims in
By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: December 7, 2008
MUMBAI, India — Throngs of Indian Muslims, ranging from Bollywood actors to skullcap-wearing seminary students, marched through the heart of Mumbai and several other cities on Sunday, holding up banners proclaiming their condemnation of terrorism and loyalty to the Indian state.
Muslims took part in a candlelight march last week toward the Oberoi hotel in Mumbai.
The protests, though relatively small, were the latest in a series of striking public gestures by Muslims — who have often come under suspicion after past attacks — to defensively dissociate their own grievances as a minority here from any sort of sympathy for terrorism or radical politics in the wake of the deadly assault here that ended Nov. 29.
Muslim leaders have refused to allow the bodies of the nine militants killed in the attacks to be buried in Islamic cemeteries, saying the men were not true Muslims. They also suspended the annual Dec. 6 commemoration of a 1992 riot in which Hindus destroyed a mosque, in an effort to avert communal tension. Muslim religious scholars and public figures have issued strongly worded condemnations of the attacks.
So far, their approach appears to have worked: the response has been remarkably unified, with little of the suspicion and fear that followed some previous attacks.
Hindu right-wing groups have been noticeably absent from the streets. Although leaders of the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have criticized the government’s handling of the crisis, they have not stirred anti-Muslim sentiment. The fact that some 40 Muslims were among the victims of the attackers may well have helped dispel any strife.
Still, many Muslims seem anxious, fearing that some of the anger unleashed by the attacks may be directed into the Hindu-Muslim violence that has often marred
“It’s a pity we have to prove ourselves as Indians,” said Mohammed Siddique, a young accountant who was marching in the protest here on Sunday afternoon with his wife and mother. “But the fact is, we need to speak louder than others, to make clear that those people do not speak for our religion — and that we are not Pakistanis.”
The cluster of banners all around him, held aloft by marchers, seemed to bear out his point. Some read “Our Country’s Enemies are Our Enemies,” others, “Killers of Innocents are Enemies of Islam.” A few declared, in uncertain grammar, “Pakistan Be Declared Terrorist State.”
There were also slogans defending against the charge often made by right-wing Hindus that Muslims constitute a fifth column, easily exploited by terrorists. “Communalist and Terrorist are Cousins,” one sign read. Some of the marchers held up a sign with lines drawn through the names of various terrorist or extremist groups, including, notably, the acronym S.I.M.I.
That stands for the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, a radical group, now banned, that has come under suspicion after recent attacks. One of the men arrested earlier this year in what appears to have been a similar plot against Mumbai landmarks used to belong to the group. Unlike the most recent attackers, who are all believed to be Pakistani, four of six members of the earlier plot were Indian.
There is little doubt that jihadists — including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group believed to be responsible for the Nov. 26-29 attacks — are seeking Indian recruits. Although such groups are rooted in the ideology of global jihad, many people fear that the Indians who join them may be motivated in part by essentially Indian grievances, like the 2002 mass killings of Muslims in the state of
One of the gunmen in last month’s attacks referred to the
He seems to have failed. The brutality of the attacks and the fact that many Muslims died have strengthened a sense of outrage among ordinary Muslims here, and even some sense of communal harmony, however precarious.
“After this attack, everything has changed; people now see the realities,” said Saeed Ahmed, 45, as he stood outside his stationery shop on
Certainly, the violence has prompted many Muslims, including religious scholars, Bollywood figures and politicians, to speak out more urgently than they had in the past.
“Indian Muslims have often suffered twice: first from the terror, and then from the accusations afterward,” said Javed Akhtar, a Muslim poet and lyricist. “Perhaps because of that, they have been much more articulate and more unconditionally clear about condemning this attack.”
But many remain anxious that foreign jihadists could take advantage of the divisions in Indian society to wreak more havoc here.
“There is a very deep divide,” said Mahesh Bhatt, a well-known film producer and director who is half Muslim, half Hindu, as he sat on a plastic chair on the set of his latest film on Sunday morning, with actors strolling nearby. “And if the foreign element is using the indigenous clay, how can justice be done?”
Mr. Bhatt, who has the baroque manner of an old-fashioned Hollywood eminence, added that he saw in the crisis a chance for India to heal the religious and social fractures that make it vulnerable.
“In every danger there is an opportunity, a chance to look at the evil within,” he said. “If you’re going to do this fight against terror, you’d better start by fortifying your own house.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/asia/08muslims.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ei=5070&emc=eta1
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A sombre Eid
The Indian Express
Posted: Dec 06, 2008 at 0046 hrs IST
Signalling their sorrow and solidarity with the victims of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, Muslim clergy have announced a “Black Eid” on December 9. It is not merely a mark of mourning, but an active protest against the use of Islamic terms for acts of Terror and the “attempt to polarise communities”, according to the All India Organisation of Imams of Mosques.
The fact that they even have to make such a visible statement testifies to their bind. Certainly, the boast that Indian Muslims are untouched by the global call to arms has been busted. But the easy conflation of Islam and terrorism has been most damaging to a community already victimised by stereotype, and to the Indian state struggling to assert its secularism amidst fringe extremism of different sorts. Thirty-three out of the 172 dead in Mumbai were Muslims. And yet, in the fallout of the attacks, Indian Muslims have most to worry about the repercussions of ramped-up counter-terror action. Stronger interrogation and detention laws could end up targeting Muslims as they historically have.
International coverage of the Mumbai tragedy decried the widespread alienation and oppression of Muslims, trotting out the
In this fraught atmosphere, the Muslim clergy presents a countervailing force, one that carries some amount of moral weight in the community and can articulate the particular burdens of being an Indian Muslim. In a time when progressive politics had ceded the language of faith and morality, it is important to have a platform that operates within a religious discourse and manages to reformat it. The importance of this goes beyond the immediate aftermath of 26/11.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/a-sombre-eid/394827/
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Time magazine’s take on Mumbai Terror
Behind the Mumbai Massacre:
By Aryn Baker
Thursday, Nov. 27, 2008
The disembodied voice was chilling in its rage. A gunman, holed up in Mumbai's Oberoi Trident hotel where some <40 people had been taken hostage, told an Indian news channel that the attacks were revenge for the persecution of Muslims in
The roots of <Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice over what many Indian Muslims believe is institutionalized discrimination against the country's largest minority group. The disparities between Muslims, which make up 13.4% of the population, and
The huge gap between Muslims and Hindus will continue to haunt
The Beginning of the Problem
On the afternoon of March 29, 1857, Mangal Pandey, a handsome, moustachioed soldier in the East India Company's native regiment, attacked his British lieutenant. His hanging a week later sparked a sub continental revolt known to Indians as the first war of independence and to the British as the Sepoy Mutiny. Retribution was swift, and though Pandey was a Hindu, it was the subcontinent's Muslims, whose Mughal King nominally held power in
Muslim society in
From this period of introspection two rival movements emerged to foster an Islamic ascendancy. Revivalist groups blamed the collapse of their empire on a society that had strayed too far from the teachings of the Koran. They promoted a return to a more pure form of Islam, modelled on the life of the Prophet Muhammad. Others embraced the modern ways of their new rulers, seeking Muslim advancement through the pursuit of Western sciences, culture and law. From these movements two great Islamic institutions were born: Darul Uloom Deoband in northern India, rivalled only by al-Azhar University in Cairo for its teaching of Islam, and Aligarh Muslim University, a secular institution that promoted Muslim culture, philosophy and languages, but left religion to the mosque. These two schools embody the fundamental split that continues to divide Islam in the subcontinent today. "You could say that Deoband and
The campus at Deoband is only a three-hour drive from
Founded in 1866, the
Today, more than 9,000 Deobandi madrasahs are scattered throughout
Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of the
This fracture in religious doctrine — whether Islam should embrace the modern or revert to its fundamental origins — between two schools less than a day's donkey ride apart when they were founded, was barely remarked upon at the time. But over the course of the next 100 years, that tiny crack would split Islam into two warring ideologies with repercussions that reverberate around the world to this day. Before the split manifested into crisis, however, the founders of both the Deoband and
Two Faiths, Two Nations
But nationalistic trends were pulling at the fragile alliance, and
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the Savile Row-suited lawyer who midwifed
But rarely in
Following the 1971 civil war, when East Pakistan, now
Almost overnight, thousands of refugees poured over the border into
But jihad, as it is described in the Koran, does not end merely with political gain. It ends in a perfect Islamic state. The West's, and Pakistan's, cynical resurrection of something so profoundly powerful and complex unleashed a force whose roots can be found in al-Qaeda's rage, the Taliban's dream of an Islamic utopia in Afghanistan, and in the dozens of radical Islamic groups rapidly replicating themselves in India and around the world today. "The promise of jihad was never fulfilled," says Gul. "Is it any wonder the fighting continues to this day?" Religion may have been used to unite
In India, Islam is, in contrast, the other — purged by the British, denigrated by the Hindu right, mistrusted by the majority, marginalized by society.
Kashmir, a Muslim-dominated state whose fate had been left undecided in the chaos that led up to partition, remains a suppurating wound in India's Muslim psyche. As the cause of three wars between India and Pakistan — one of which nearly went nuclear in 1999 — Kashmir has become a symbol of profound injustice to Indian Muslims who believe that their government cares little for Kashmir's claim of independence, which is based upon a 1948 U.N. resolution promising a plebiscite to determine the Kashmiri people's future. That frustration has spilled into the rest of
A mounting sense of persecution, fueled by the government's seeming reluctance to address the brutal anti-Muslim riots that killed more than 2,000 in the state of
Still, many South Asian Muslims insist Islam is the one and only force that can bring the subcontinent together and return it to pre-eminence as a single whole. "We [Muslims] were the legal rulers of
That sense of injustice is at the root of Muslim identity today. It has permeated every aspect of society, and forms the basis of rising Islamic radicalism on the subcontinent. "People are hungry for justice," says Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of the new book Descent Into Chaos. "It is perceived to be the fundamental promise of the Koran." These twin phenomena — the longing many Muslims have to see their religion restored as the subcontinent's core, and the marks of both piety and extremism Islam bears — reflect the lack of strong political and civic institutions in the region for people to have faith in. If the subcontinent's governments can't provide those institutions, then terrorists such as the Trident's mysterious caller, will continue asking questions. And providing their own answers.
With reporting by Jyoti Thottam / Mumbai and Ershad Mahmud /
Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862650,00.html?cnn=yes
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Muslims to wear black ribbons on Bakr-Eid: Imams
Thu, Dec 4 11:15 AM
Under the banner of All India Organisation of Imams of Mosques, they called for subdued Bakr-Eid festivities across the country, which is scheduled to be held on December 9.
Describing Mumbai carnage as an 'attack on the nation', they asked all the mosques, muftis and madrasas to repeat that Islam forbids the killing of innocent people and is against any form of terrorism.
On Wednesday, cleric from Shia and Sunni sects asked for critical action against
Firangimahali, the naib Imam of Idgah, Maulana Mohammad Mushtaq, president of All India Sunni Board and Maulana Naimurrehman, president of the Ulema Council of India. (ANI)
http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20081204/808/tnl-muslims-to-wear-black-ribbons-on-bak.html
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Muslim body calls for subdued Bakr-Eid
Express news service
Posted: Dec 05, 2008 at 0036 hrs IST
The Coordination Committee of Indian Muslims also gave a call for scaling down Eid festivities and asked Muslims to wear black ribbons on Bakr-Eid to express solidarity with those killed in the attacks. The call by the Coordination Committee comes a day after the All India Organisation of Imams of Mosques came out strongly against the 26/11 attacks and urged for subdued Eid celebrations.
The Coordination Committee of Indian Muslims, formed after the recent
“The motive of the terrorists is to destabilise
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Muslim-body-calls-for-subdued-Bakr-Eid/394377
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Despite Batla, Muslims stick with Congress
9 Dec 2008, 0122 hrs IST, Dipak Kumar Dash, TNN
NEW DELHI: Putting paid to apprehensions of Muslims moving away from the 'grand old' party in the wake of the Batla House encounter — an issue
which had caused a lot of unrest — the Congress seems to have retained its base in the community, bagging eight of the 12 seats which have over 20% Muslim vote in the capital.
The final proof of Muslims still keeping their faith with the Congress came when party strongman Parvez Hashmi scored a narrow 541-vote victory in Okhla, the constituency under which the Batla House area falls. According to Congress poll managers, there was almost no visible change in the Muslim support for the party. Apart from Okhla, Congress candidates won in Chandni Chowk, Ballimaran, Vikaspuri, Seemapuri, Seelampur, Mustafabad and Sadar Bazar, all constituencies with sizeable Muslim voters.
Party insiders admitted being unsure of which way the Muslims would vote particularly after Samajwadi Party tried to use the Batla House issue in a bid to open its account in Delhi assembly. "People's unhappiness was obviously a cause of concern. But the community was convinced of the need to stay behind the Congress," said a senior party leader.
At Okhla, Hashmi bagged 29,303 votes and his nearest rival, Asif Mohammed of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), a SP rebel, finished second with 28,762 votes. "Had Asif got the ticket from SP, Hashmi would have been out of the race," said a Congress insider. However, in the other seven Muslim-dominated seats, party won with a comfortable margin.
In fact, a random survey carried out by
However, there are also some good indicators for BJP as the party's greenhorn nominee, Anil Jha, managed to pull off a win in Kirari which has approximately 30% Muslim votes. Similarly, the party's debut candidate, S C L Gupta, defeated his nearest rival, ex-IPS officer Amod Kanth, from Sangam Vihar, which has about 20% Muslim votes.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Delhi/Despite_Batla_Muslims_stick_with_Congress/articleshow/3810812.cms
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‘Forget differences and unite to fight terrorism’
Express News Service
Posted: Dec 09, 2008 at 0147 hrs IST
The whole world is passing through a fearful phase of possible large-scale wars. In such a time, we should forget all our differences and conflicts. We should maintain love, unity and harmony. We must not allow cruel conspiracies that seek to divide the nation and the society. Many innocents have perished due to such acts of terrorism. Now, when the question of coming together to combat this arises, all nations must unite to assist tackling terrorists’ acts. The war against terrorism could go on for long because these people carry their fight remaining in hiding and not face to face. It’s obvious that it is going to take time and some innocents may also have to suffer. But society has to prepare itself for such sacrifices to put an end to bloodshed of innocents that the extremists carry out everyday. The main objective of saints is to provide guidance to the society and make people useful to the family, nation and the society. Unfortunately, those very saints have lost their way and are entangled in the sparkle of physical world.
Dr Keiki Mehta, honorary ophthalmologist to the police
I’m very proud how our police stood up to the terrorists despite being severely hampered by lack of good firepower, protective devices and communication. They are a great force, only need better equipment to do a better job. The terrorists were a lift-off from the popular movie Universal Soldier. They were emotionless “killing machines”, who killed women and babies. Obviously like in the movie, their brain had been heavily conditioned and had to be on drugs to maintain this conditioning. We need to investigate this angle too.
Vikram Mane, director of Radhakrishna Carriers and Exports Private Limited
I’m not angry with a single politician but I am just upset with the system. For example, on the November 27 when I went to
Dr. S. Natarajan, Executive Chairman and Managing Director,
When I saw the events unfolding on TV , I was aghast . As a doctor my mind focuses on healing my patients and that gives me the greatest satisfaction. My heart goes out to the relatives of the deceased. I salute the heroes of our country, police, commandos and all the people who have done their bit to rescue the hostages. Let us unite in war against terrorism.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/forget-differences-and-unite-to-fight-terrorism/396032/
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It’s about terror, not Sachar
Seema Chishti
Posted: Dec 08, 2008 at 0123 hrs IST
The report of the prime minister’s high-level committee on the social, educational and economic status of Indian Muslims is a painstakingly documented product, with mint-fresh statistics. It is brutally frank on prejudice, the thwarted hopes of some, replete with analysis of why in some states Muslim women’s literacy rates are higher than Hindu male literacy rates. It is a supreme display of self-confidence from a third-world democracy which has one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. And, though not hardcover, when hurled at people still reeling under the impact of a 60-hour Terror encounter, the Sachar Report can hurt.
Just hours after the shock and horror of the Mumbai terror strikes, the world stood by, and
However, soon after, a strange sub-text was slipped into the discourse — the Western and Pakistani media suddenly started discussing the state of the Indian Muslim and how it treats its minorities. What added ammunition to these arguments, were facts lifted from the Sachar Report on inadequate civic facilities, drop-out rates, etc. All facts, all true, all documented, but for the want of a better parliamentary word, all pathetically irrelevant.
As the “gunmen” (to use the BBC’s term) were in the process of tearing Mumbai’s hotels down, the innuendo was that India was somehow being “got back at” by members of a “disgruntled” minority — a minority getting back for Babri Masjid, Godhra, high drop-out rates amongst young Muslim boys in UP and Bihar, and perhaps even their graduation rate being lower than “others” in the arts stream.
Lo and behold, there was also an email, written in bizarre Hindi — that all Hindi and Urdu speakers would know in a second could have only originated outside of India, in a place where the Hindu-Muslim binary discourse has frozen since 1947, discussing the accession of states, characterising the Hindu as a bania — all sentences from a lost time, arguments simply never accepted by millions of robust Indian Muslims. But no, the whisper of Sachar was in the air, and discussions, particularly in the Western media, continued to allude to this revolutionary framework which hinted at the “gunmen” as virtually the mother of all revolts. Of 150 crore agriculturists, weavers, school teachers, film stars, cricketers, unemployed, beedi-rollers, carpet makers, scientists and lyricists having decided that Enough is Enough — to quote the very provocative and odd slogan picked by NDTV 24x7, but that’s another story — and striking out at India.
The Indian Mujahideen was also alluded to, and how (in the words of a former ISI chief)
The first problem was the allusion that somehow Indian Muslims had participated in this heinous act of butchery — an extremely callous statement, untrue, given the evidence at hand so far, and, more importantly, diversionary.
When 9/11 or 7/7 happened, the world was expected to stand back and see it as “pure evil”. The history professors were locked up in their libraries: the world (read mainstream international press) never said it was the descendants of
Of course, we have our million and one mutinies, our sorrows, our tales of discrimination, injustice, tears, and assassinations. Clearly, all is far from Kodak-perfect in the Indian family. Like all old civilisations or families, we have our secrets and our dark dungeons where old battles are being waged and the knives are out. But
The final statements on our imminent Balkanisation have been pencilled several times, but a poor, third world country somehow still manages to get there. An emerging economy, one that retains its political freedoms unlike most of its neighbours, has produced Nobel laureates, missions to the moon, Booker winners, song and dance sequences in the middle of staid tales — seriously unparalleled in the world. For the sheer number of software and science graduates, spelling-bee winners and grit, we have been the source of so much surprise. But surprise at a multi-cultural democracy dissolves into envy and, soon, disdain for dirty railway platforms, hungry children, the Naxal insurgency, incidents of Dalit suppression, all sub-plots that of course exist alongside.
India, on the other hand, has not even argued that what it is suffering now is another manifestation (if one was needed) of a unilateral and irresponsible War on Terror gone so hopelessly wrong that it has left virulent hate laboratories in its neighbourhood.
And for all those who think the idea of
seema.chishti@expressindia.com
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/its-about-terror-not-sachar/395404/0
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Mumbai attacks and the Muslim question
Hasan Suroor
Muslims in Ahmedabad holding a demonstration against terrorist attacks in Mumbai. There is now a growing, educated, and politically aware Muslim middle class.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Mumbai terror attacks is the perception that Indian Muslims who had, so far, appeared to have escaped the virus of global jihadi fanaticism have finally succumbed to it. Over the past week, British commentators have repeatedly recalled Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s proud ``boast” to visiting foreign leaders that it was a tribute to the country’s secular ethos that ``although we have 150 million Muslims in
This, it is believed, may no longer be true; and — as The Times put it — if “fanaticism” has indeed taken root among Indian Muslims then “the future for a country built on tolerance , secularism and multi-ethnic balance looks grim.” This has been the dominant theme of much of the analysis of the Mumbai outrage in the British media with fears being expressed that a possible Hindu “backlash” could further undermine the already fragile Hindu-Muslim relations.
But before the Hindu Right gets into the self-congratulatory we-told-you-so mode, here’s the sting in the tail. The same analysis that suggests that home-grown jihadi-ism has arrived in India also holds that Muslim extremism is a reaction to the way the community feels it has been treated over the years — exploited as a vote bank, suspected as fifth columnists, discriminated against, and intimidated by Hindu militants. The communalisation of Indian Muslims, it is stated, is a result of the failure of the Indian state to confront the “fault-lines in the system” (an euphemism for anti-Muslim bias, and Hindu communalism) that Al Qaeda-inspired groups are now exploiting.
There is almost a sense that Muslim extremism and other violent campaigns going on in
Mohsin Hamid, an expatriate Pakistani writer, thinks that the West is often soft on
“Had recent protests in Indian Kashmir occurred in a former
Meanwhile, portents for the future don’t look good. There is concern that after the Mumbai attacks, the BJP could be tempted to revert to its “default” Hindutva programme in the run-up to next year’s general elections. Among Britain’s India-watchers, it has not gone unnoticed that the next putative BJP Prime Minister is the same man who led the inflammatory campaign on Ayodhya resulting in the demolition of Babri Masjid and the mayhem that followed. Nor do they find it comforting that the party’s next big star is Narendra Modi, who was the Chief Minister of
The “biggest challenge” before the Indian government is to maintain communal peace, says Edna Fernandes, a British-Indian writer and author of Holy Warriors: A Journey into the Heart of Indian Fundamentalism. Journalist-broadcaster Ian Jack, an old
Maria Misra, an Oxford historian, has no doubt that Al Qaeda-style extremism has penetrated India’s Muslim community and asserts that “there is evidence of an entirely domestic element at play” behind the Mumbai atrocity. But, she suggests, that it is hardly surprising given the sense of Muslim grievance. Pakistani involvement notwithstanding “the chief recruiting officer” of Muslim terrorists is “often the
“This is especially true at regional and state levels where the police and judiciary are often ‘captured’ by Hindu political interests that have used anti-terrorist laws to pursue political vendettas,” she wrote in The Times.
This was also the burden of an Economist editorial which described
Nor was the Left-leaning Observer surprised that Indian Muslims had fallen prey to the “terrorists’ conspiratorial narrative.” The reason was simple: the “vast majority” of Muslims had been excluded from the economic boom and though this was a fate they shared with “millions of poor Hindus” there were additional factors that militated against Muslims such as the fact that “they have also been subject to terror at the hands of ultra-nationalist Hindus and have had little or no state protection.”
It is nobody’s case (and all commentators have been at pains to stress this) that the Muslims’ sense of grievance, genuine though it may be, is a justification for terrorism. But if wounds are left to fester for too long there’s a real risk of the infection spreading.
One point that the British commentators have not made but which an “insider” can see is that Muslim fundamentalism has also been helped by India’s “secular” political establishment which, barring the Left, has not only made no effort to develop a progressive Muslim leadership but actively prevented it from taking root. Instead, it has relied on a class of Muslim “leaders” whose own political interest lies in keeping the community backward-looking.
By mobilising Muslims around issues that have nothing to do with their daily lives they have landed the community in a situation where it finds itself a target of Hindu fundamentalists, on the one hand, and susceptible to faith-based militant Islamist elements on the other.
While the Congress is the chief culprit in this respect, it is not alone in propping up self-serving Muslim leaders. The fact is that it is hard to name any progressive Muslim leader in any of the secular parties. Over the years, the only change that has been noticed is that instead of “mullahs” with long beards we now have suave English-speaking Muslim leaders to match the “modern” face of Hindutva. Their language and worldview, however, remain unashamedly sectarian.
But what about the ordinary Muslims themselves? The idea of an amorphous — uneducated, poor Muslim mass as hapless victims of either their own leaders, or Hindu communal groups or jihadis has become part of the secular/liberal mythology. It is a view that is not only patronising but also misleading. There is now a growing educated and politically aware Muslim middle class which does not fit this description.
Only if they could divest themselves of their “victimhood” mindset they could be a huge force for good for the community.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/02/stories/2008120255120900.htm
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Praveen Swami
Were the terrorists who stormed Mumbai non-state actors?
“Whoever they are,”
President Zardari’s claims have disintegrated with media reports from
Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian national who had taught Islamic studies in
Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, born in a conservative, Punjabi family which lost 36 of its members during its Partition journey from Shimla to
From the outset, the Lashkar made clear that it was not confined to
Late in 1992, as communal tension began to rise across
Hindu chauvinists handed Cheema a gift in December 1992, in the form of the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Lashkar operatives now reached out to Indian Islamist organisations. Indian nationals Abdul Kareem ‘Tunda,’ Mohammad Azam Ghauri and Jalees Ansari executed the first Lashkar-led operation in
On December 13, 2001, terrorists stormed
Even as
After the Mumbai bombings of 2006, Gen. Musharraf once again promised to end terrorism directed at
Muzammil — if that is indeed the name of the six-foot tall, long-haired and full-bearded Punjabi-speaking terror commander who operates out of Muzaffarabad,
Even as the Lashkar focussed on its anti-India campaign, though,
Saeed’s public speeches began to draw on the same ideas. Just this May, for example, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief asserted “the Crusaders, the Jews, and the Hindus — all have united against the Muslims, and launched the ‘war on terror’ which is in fact a pretext to impose a horrible war to further the nefarious goals of the enemies of Islam.” Less than a month later, on June 12, he called on
By targeting western nationals in Mumbai, the Lashkar has initiated the third phase of its campaign, which first focussed on Kashmir and then all of
Did the ISI or elements in the military also play a role? No hard evidence exists to support this claim but
It is likely that some in the ISI see the Lashkar as an ally in their campaign against
Now, President Zardari has the option of speaking the truth and acting against the Lashkar — or giving weight to charges that the banned terror group is an instrument of the state he governs.
Source: http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/09/stories/2008120955670800.htm