Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: Afternoon Despatch & Courier
Date: May 31, 2007
URL: http://www.cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=editorials&xfile=May2007_onthespot_standard213&child=onthespot
Gone is the easygoing, Indianised Islam of
before which gave us some of our great poets, musicians, writers, thinkers
and movie stars.
Writing a book requires solitude and as I
am in the last stages of one I have spent the last ten days holed up alone
in a house by the sea, away from the seductions of city life. I spend the
mornings writing and revising and the afternoons reading. The solitude has
given me time to read two books that I recommend to our policy makers and
to those who believe that Indian Muslims have been unaffected by the worldwide
jehad. The first is 'Infidel' by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the second is 'The Islamist'
by Ed Husain. Both books describe in frightening detail the changes that occurred
in the interpretation of Islam in the nineties and how a literal understanding
of the Koran by Islamists has created an aggressive, new religion whose stated
objective is world domination through the resurrection of a caliphate, or
an international Islamic republic.
Global domination Ed Husain, a British Muslim
of Bangladeshi origin, was an Islamist himself for a while and writes this
about the objective of radicalising Muslims in Europe. "All this, we
were convinced, was based on the sira, or the life of the Prophet Mohammed.
He had bequeathed a political system for us to implement, a total ideology
for global domination: Islam. This ideology would be carried to other parts
of the world by means of a jihad, which was the raison d' etre of the army
of the future Islamic state."
What makes the books important is that they
have been written by Muslims who have observed what is happening in Europe
from the inside. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somalian woman who became a Dutch citizen
and Member of Parliament and who lives under permanent guard now because she
angered Islamists by pointing out that the position of women in Islam was
that of slaves. She worked with the Dutch film maker, Theo Van Gogh, on a
film about Muslim women called 'Submission' and it resulted in the brutal
murder of Van Gogh two years ago by an Islamist fanatic.
Overt influence
What does all this have to do with India?
Well, we have the second largest population of Muslims in the world and since
the early nineties they have been gradually radicalised. Most Indian analysts
are too politically correct to acknowledge this and those of us who do blame
it on the demolition of the Babri Masjid. After the mosque was demolished
in December 1992 there were riots across the country and especially bad ones
in Mumbai in which more than a thousand Muslims lost their lives. We even
sort of justify the bomb blasts that happened in March 1993 by saying they
were a reaction to the riots.
We refuse to accept that there is a movement
to de-Indianise Indian Muslims by imposing an Arabic idea of Islam. Travel
to any Indian city with a large Muslim population and you will see more veiled
women than ever before, more children in Islamic schools and more overt influence
of the religion than before. Gone is the easygoing, Indianised Islam of before
which gave us some of our greatest poets, musicians, writers, thinkers and
movie stars. Gone are the movies of yore, the Muslim family dramas, that gave
us "Chaudhvin ka Chand" and "Mere Mehboob". Have we stopped
to ask why they are not made any more?
What is more worrying is the manner in which
our 'secular' politicians are making the same mistake Europe made by inadvertently
encouraging the worst kind of Islamism through their policies. Ever since
the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government came to power in Delhi three
years ago it has revived the old Congress policy of encouraging Muslims to
believe they have valid reasons for a sense of grievance. The Sachar Committee
was set up with the specific purpose of establishing that Muslims do not get
their share of the Indian pie without anyone
bothering to point out that the problem lies mostly with the community refusing
to understand the importance of women's education. Uneducated women usually
produce educationally handicapped children because half a child's learning
comes from its mother.
The UPA government has gone beyond Sachar
in its efforts to create a sense of insecurity among Muslims. Banks have recently
been ordered to give priority loans to Muslims and there are at least two
Congress states that have started reserving jobs for Muslims. It was similar
mistakes in England and Europe that allowed the Islamists to feed on insecurities
and lure Muslims into their fold with ideas of pan-Islamism. If we take our
blinkers off and look around we will notice that the same thing is beginning
to happen in India. The recent municipal election in Malegaon was won by an
Islamic party called the Indian Muslim Congress. It is a religious party that
was born out of insecurities in the community that resulted from the bomb
blasts in September last year. Muslims felt they were being targeted by the
police and discriminated against by the Maharashtra government.
How long will it be before we see Muslim religious
parties winning elections in other parts of India? How long will it be before
these religious parties become involved in the international jehad because
let us not forget that Hindus are as much the enemy as other kafirs like Jews
and Christians?