Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 10, 2005
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=74160
With Ayodhya on my mind I sat down
to write a piece on how Islamic terrorism will not be defeated until we
deal with the mullahs and madrasas who breed the suicide bombers and Islamic
fundamentalists. I was still writing it when London exploded. This was
not some distant horror but deeply personal since I have a son who lives
in that city. He could have been on the bus, on the underground or just
walking down a street. When I tried desperately to call him I found it
impossible to get through and thought of all the others who might be trying
as desperately to call a loved one and those who may have lost sons, brothers,
sisters, parents, friends just because Islamic fundamentalists believe
terrorism is their sacred duty.
Tony Blair called the acts of terrorism
in London ''barbaric'' and said that the terrorists would not succeed because
the civilised world was more determined to defend ''our values and our
way of life'' than the terrorists are to cause death and destruction. But,
they will succeed because no Western leaders and certainly not our own
''secular'' lot have shown any determination when it comes to dealing with
the mullahs and the venomous ideology they preach through Islamic seminaries.
On the flight to Gleneagles for
the G8 Summit, the day before the bombings in London, our Prime Minister
was asked about the terrorist attack in Ayodhya and he reportedly admitted
that ''the infrastructure for terrorism (in Pakistan) is by and large intact''.
By this he meant that terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the
Jaish-e-Mohammad continue to have the General's support? They probably
do but this is not nearly as important as the fact that neither the Indian
government nor Pakistan's military dictator have dared interfere in the
religious schools. The madrasas.
The young men and women who are
blowing themselves up are trained not by terrorist groups but by mullahs
and Islamic seminaries and until we acknowledge this we cannot win the
war against terrorism. That the madrasas in Pakistan have the support of
the Pakistani government is understandable since Pakistan is an Islamic
republic. Much less understandable is our own government's inability to
admit that religious schools have no business to exist in secular Bharat
that is India. And, please, let us not have any trash about how these madrasas
are the only chance for indigent Muslim boys to get an education.
Islamic seminaries in India have
so much money these days that they have finer buildings and grander facilities
than most Indian universities. I speak not just of important seminaries
like the one in Deoband but of unknown ones in the deepest, darkest corners
of rural India.
In Maharashtra's Nandurbar district
in the town of Akalkuwa, where I went last year to do a story on children
dying of starvation, the finest building in town is the Islamic seminary.
In small villages in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh you will see mosque schools
that have better facilities than the local municipal school.
Whenever these schools have been
charged with breeding fanatics and suicide bombers they protest that all
they do is teach the Koran. What can possibly be wrong with that? A great
deal if we are politically incorrect enough to admit that teaching children
only about Islam creates in them a sense of exclusivity. When a child is
taught that there is nothing better or more important than Islam then by
the time he becomes a teenager it is easy to persuade him to kill himself
because Islam is in danger from infidel Westerners, hateful Jews and idol-worshipping
Hindus.
When Dr Manmohan Singh said Pakistan's
''infrastructure'' of terrorism was intact I wonder if he knew about the
convocation in Islamabad on May 15 of the Wafaqul Medaris Al Arabia, a
coalition of more than 9,000 Deobandi seminaries. I would not have known
about it myself were it not for the South Asia Intelligence Review that
is brought out by the excellent South Asia Terrorism Portal. The review
reports that the convocation, held at a government convention centre, brought
together thousands of Deobandi clerics and sundry other fanatics like the
infamous former ISI chief, Hamid Gul, and a man of more recent notoriety,
Pakistan's Information Minister and Yaseen Malik's best friend, Sheikh
Rashid Ahmed.
At this convocation jehad was glorified,
America attacked and Kashmir's ''freedom movement'' supported. Among the
most interesting comments came from Maulana Fazl-ur-Rahman, one of the
Taliban's spiritual leaders. He said, ''Politics is the governance of a
society the rules of which were set by Koran and propounded by the Holy
Prophet. Therefore the Prophet was the greatest politician and statesman.
Muslims are bound to follow him in all respects of life. Since the mullahs
are the true disciples of the Prophet, politics is their religious right.
And by doing politics, the mullahs are carrying forward the Prophet's mission.''
The Prophet's mission, as interpreted
by the mullahs, also involves converting us infidels to the faith because
otherwise we are a constant threat to Islam. This is where the problem
begins.
If the mullahs used the religious
seminaries to teach love and peace and respect for other people and religions,
Muslims would find it easier to live with the rest of the world. But, they
teach jehad and bigotry and it is from these teachings that Islamic terrorism
is born. In India, if we want to tackle the problem we could begin by demanding
a White Paper from the government on how many madrasas exist on our secular
soil, when they were built and where they get their funds from. I am willing
to bet that most have come up in the past 15 years and that the money comes
from the same Middle Eastern countries that funded last week's bombings
in London and 9/11. As long as we pretend that this is not true we remain
in danger of losing the war against terrorism.