New Age Islam Edit Bureau
31 August 2015
Tackling the Is Tentacles in India
By Sazzad Hussain
Poison of Demographic Prejudice
Editorial, Economic and Political Weekly
The Indian Paradigm For Religious Tolerance
By Balbir Punj
Compiled by New Age Islam Edit Bureau
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Tackling the IS Tentacles In India
By Sazzad Hussain
29 August, 2015
The spread of occupation of Islamic State or ISIL, ISIS is phenomenal since its rise to prominence in the Middle-East in the wake of the popular Arab Spring that started in 2011. The west’s consistent duplicity over the issue of bringing democracy selectively in the Arab world contributed immensely towards the formation of IS. While George W. Bush invaded and destroyed Iraq beyond integration to bring democracy by toppling Saddam Hussain in 2003, the Obama administration took eleven days to condemn the crackdown on pro-democracy activists at Cairo’s Tahrir Square by Hoshni Mubarak’s forces. Similarly the west spelled ‘restraint’ when pro-democracy demonstrations were brutally handled in Bahrain with Saudi forces. But the Anglo-Franc duo of David Cameroon and Nicholas Sarkozy bombed Libya and aided Al-Qaeda cadres on the ground to topple and hunt down Gaddafi. Same fate is being awaited for Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the last bastion of secular Arab establishment, as the west has been pumping money and arms to various Jihadi outfits with the help of some regional allies Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Israel. The IS was made from foreign Jihadists that fought against Gaddafi’s army in Libya and from those who tried to take control Tunisia after the popular revolution that toppled the despotic rule of Zain al-Abedine Ben Ali. After its ‘spectacular’ success against the Syrian and Iraqi army, thanks to the large coverage by the western media, the IS now is trying to project itself as a global force. This objective and designs, very much multiplied in the social media are now echoed, though peripherally in India. It is high time now for all the stakeholders of the Indian state to root out the evil before it sprouts up in an immeasurable field.
Ever since the Islamist movements surfaced the Arab world, in the form of Muslim Brotherhood founded by Sayyed Qutb in Egypt in 1950s there were no takers for it in India, the home to world’s second largest Muslims. Though the political elites of the community did have a transnational agenda in the form of the Khilafat Movement a hundred years ago, it was mostly an anti-colonial mobilization rather than a religious affiliation. Maulana Mawdudi and those who dreamt of a political Islamic system where the idea of nation-state ceases, the Partition took them to Pakistan. Thus Indian Muslims were free from any political Islamic rhetoric after its independence. India’s secularism and New Delhi’s strong and unequivocal support for the Palestinian cause, the core issue for which the global launch of the Jihadi movement is excused, made Indian Muslims hard to find any logic to go against the state to join the global Islamist movements emanating from the Middle-East. India’s role in freeing Bangladesh from the tyranny of Pakistan also provided the Indian Muslims a thought that religious affinities do not mean political or territorial solidarity. Even the infamous armed seizure of the Ka’aba during the Haj of 1975 by Osman al-Uthaibi’s transnational Islamic followers could not attract the Indian Muslims for that cause as none of the Indian pilgrims joined that rebellion (there were many Pakistanis who did it). So when Muslim fighters from many Arab countries gathered near Peshawar from 1980 onwards to fight a Holy War against the Soviets in Afghanistan with US and Pak-Saudi help, there was no interest or enthusiasm about this among Indian Muslims and the ten Afghan president Dr. Najibullah was accorded a state honour during his official visit to New Delhi with much objection by Washington.
But seeds of dissent among the Muslim youths of the country were sown as the nation witnessed unprecedented unrest related to the Ayodhya dispute. The demolition of the disputed structure on 6th November, 1992 led to wide spread communal riots across the country. A slack administration, biased police force and the slow pace of the legal proceedings in providing justice to Muslims in those carnages antagonized a section of the youth from the community. Meanwhile the triumph of the Afghan Mujahedeen in Afghanistan with the withdrawal of Soviet troops by Gorbachev in 1989 encouraged Pakistan to try similar moves in Kashmir, Chechnya and the Balkans. The rise of the pro-Pak militancy in Kashmir and the communal riots after the Ayodhya demolition led some Indian Muslims to go against the state and it was the Pakistani agencies that took the chance of using them. Thus we have the Bombay Blasts of 1993 which continued for more than two decades with bombings in suburban trains, market places, the Gateway of India etc. However, though the Al-Qaeda emerged strongly during these period which culminated in 9/11 strike, there was no Indian Muslim as members or cadres of this terror group. No Indians figures in the list of twenty-two countries whose nationals numbering to more tan five hundred were arrested by US forces in Afghanistan and flown to the Guantanamo Bay for detention as Al-Qaeda operatives. But the politics of hate kept some Muslims in India to think the other way as we had the Gujarat pogrom. Outfits like the Indian Mujahedeen surfaced to engage in terror attacks with active support from Pakistan.
Whatever the armed or terror tactics used by some Indian Muslim outfits to play the act of revenge or to extend the Jihad, it has been characterized only being concentrated within the country or operations across the western border. No Indian Muslim outfits have been found calling for Jihad abroad or in the distant legions of the neo-Caliphate. The publicity of the IS through the social media is the reason behind the reported incidents of Indian Muslim youths joining that dreaded terror group operating in Syria and Iraq. The Indians are now following their European, Australian and American counterparts to join the outfit, mostly because of it glorification and romanticization in the social media. Thus it is important that the Indian state should initiate some measures to reverse this dangerous trend. Promoting the pluralistic character of the nation and Sufism in a great way could be one step in tackling this prevailing trend.
Sazzad Hussain teaches English at Lakhimpur Commerce College, North Lakhimpur, Assam
Source: countercurrents.org/hussain290815.htm
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Poison of Demographic Prejudice
Editorial, Economic and Political Weekly
Vol - L No. 35, August 29, 2015
India's demographic profi le remains stable; it is only the fi res of prejudice that are growing.
A fear that has been cultivated in India is of the majority being swamped by the minority “Other”: Hindus by Muslims. In Eastern India, the xenophobia has taken the form of a belief that a Bangladeshi influx is changing the demographic profile of the region. Across the rest of the country, a much older mythical fear is that the small Muslim minority will, in size, soon overtake the huge Hindu majority. It is claimed that Islam disapproves of any form of family planning and it is therefore just a question of a few decades (or even years) before Hindus become a minority in “their own country.” Until a few decades ago, such views were held only on the fringes; but since the late 1980s, aided and abetted by Hindutva groups, these have become mainstream views. The facts, if anything, increasingly show that the opposite is happening.
Take the case of the Census of 2011 population figures according to religion which were released earlier this week. Hindus now constitute 79.8% of the population, Muslims 14.2%, Christians 2.3%, Sikhs 1.7% and those of other religions and atheists making up the remaining 2%. The Muslim population of India grew by 2.46% a year between 2001 and 2011, which was indeed higher than the Hindu population growth rate of 1.68% a year. Yet, what is relevant for studying demographic changes is not this difference but how it has changed over time. The Muslim population growth rate of 2.46% between 2001 and 2011 was lower than the 2.95% recorded in the previous decade of 1991–2001. That of the Hindus too has declined, from 1.99% to 1.68%, respectively. But the decline in population growth is larger and faster among the Muslims. This is no surprise, rather it is common knowledge. Between 1992–93 and 2005–06, according to the National Family Health Survey, the fertility reduction among Muslims was as much as 30% while that among the Hindus was 20%. So much for Muslims not practising birth control or obeying religious diktats prohibiting the use of contraceptive techniques.
The attempt to project something like a countrywide Muslim fertility that is high and uncontrolled is also without any basis. The fertility rate of the Muslims of Kerala is far lower than that of the Hindus of Uttar Pradesh; and the fertility rate of the Muslims of Tamil Nadu is less than that of the Hindus of Bihar. The fertility rate of all religious groups in the poorer and more populous states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar is higher than elsewhere, and since the Muslim population in these states is disproportionately larger than elsewhere, the “average” fertility rate among Muslims has always been higher.
There have always been some fertility differences according to religious denomination. In the United States, fertility in the 19th century and the initial decades of the 20th century among the Protestants used to be lower than among the Catholics. But with the gradual spread of modern contraceptive practices across groups, these differences eventually disappeared. Likewise the differences in India will become insignificant, if not disappear altogether. With access to health services and education, with aspirations (and at times even in desperation), all social and religious groups are practising birth control and the differences in fertility behaviour are narrowing.
A reduction in fertility now will take some time to show itself in a lower population growth rate. So the Muslim population in India will continue to grow for a while—with or without immigration—slightly faster than that of the Hindus. Eventually—long before a radical change in population shares can take place—this difference too will disappear and the Hindu population will continue to outnumber the Muslim community by a factor of more than 5.
All of these are old facts, all of this is common knowledge to demographers and all of this will be apparent to anyone who is not swayed by the fires of prejudice. (In 2005, a special issue of EPW addressed this very question: “Religion and Fertility Behaviour,” 29 January 2005.) But when it is a question of prejudice, when did facts ever count? They could have if the media had taken its educative role seriously. Instead, the Indian media took the fear-mongering route earlier this week. “Muslim population rising faster,” “Muslim share up, Hindu share down,” and “Hindu population share falls below 80%” were some of the headlines meant not to inform but to create panic. The government and political groups could have, for their part, worked to delegitimise these myths. They too chose to abandon their responsibility. The Ministry of Home Affairs press release on the Census of 2011 population by religion is a scandal of its own kind. It listed the bare facts about the faster population growth of Muslims and the fall in share of the Hindus, both designed to feed the poison of prejudice. Quite predictably, Bharatiya Janata Party Members of Parliament like Swami Adityanath and Sakshi Maharaj have lost no time in raising an alarm about an impending demographic tsunami.
It is not a question of one government acting one way, and the other differently. The United Progressive Alliance government suppressed the data from the 2011 Census, as if running away from the challenge of explaining demographic patterns and dissolving mythical fears would bring it electoral dividend. In 2002, on the election trail Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was then Chief Minister of Gujarat, called Muslim refugee camps “child-producing factories” and used the phrase hum paanch humare pachees for the purpose of electoral mobilisation.
epw.in/editorials/poison-demographic-prejudice.html
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The Indian Paradigm For Religious Tolerance
By Balbir Punj
The faithfuls, for whom bloodshed ofkafirs is an article of faith, must know that ‘god is one'. For those who hold the world to ransom claiming divine injunction, there is ‘only one god' and the rest is kufur or heresy
Is there an escape for the beleaguered world from the violence unleashed by the faithfuls, following the recent resurrection of medieval ideologies for whom bloodshed ofkafirs (non-believers and apostates) is an article of faith? Is the panic-stricken world fast reaching a stage of conflict and doom which eminent US political scientist Samuel P Huntington had predicted in his book, The Clash of Civilisation and Remaking of World Order in 1996?
Recently, Khaled Asaad, a respected scholar who devoted over five decades of his life to preserving the majestic 2,000-year old ruins of Palmyra, an ancient city in the Syrian desert, was beheaded by the Islamic State. Last month, it released a video showing child soldiers summarily executing 25 Government troops in the city’s Roman amphitheater.
And nearer home, Pakistan has emerged as an epicentre of terror in the region and is a frequent witness to intra-religious feuds marked by shooting and bombing of the faithfuls by other faithfuls. All such assassins claim religious sanction! Thekafirs (Hindus and Sikhs) have already been accounted for in Pakistan.
Within the ‘secular’ Union of Indian, the population of pandits, the flag-bearers of the original pluralistic culture of the valley steeped in Vedic traditions, has dropped nearly to nil, following the cleansing by the kafirs, by those claiming to be the faithfuls, backed by guns.
All this destruction of symbols of kafirs/heathens and their killings are a part of a tradition lasting over hundreds of years. Wars were fought and civilisations exterminated. Genocides were committed and religious places belonging to kafirs or heathens laid waste. And they (crusaders/Ghazis) did all this in the name of their god and his messenger.
We, in this part of the world, have suffered this bigotry for long. When Christianity, and later Islam, came along with the traders within a few decades of their birth on the shores of Kerala, they were feted and welcomed.
India’s encounter with Christianity goes back to the fourth century when some Christians landed at Malabar to escape religious persecution in Iran at the hands of Christian orthodoxy who considered them to be heretics. Later, they were joined by refugees from Syria and Armenia flying from Christian heresy — hunters. The Hindu rajas and the general public received them and didn’t bother about the god they worshiped.
However, Hindu-Muslim relations changed with the invasion of Sind by Muhammad bin Qasim in the early eighth century, followed nearly three centuries later by Mahmud Ghazni’s pillaging raids deep into India. Two centuries later, Muhammad Ghori attacked India and after defeating Prithviraj Chauhan, established the Delhi Sultanate in 1208.
Since then, till the 18th century, it was a sordid tale of religious persecution, forced conversions and desecration and demolition of places of worship of the Indians by invaders and a section of locals who had converted to their faith, mostly under duress.
Apart from the motive of gathering plunder from fabulously rich India, the raiders were indeed energised by their religious fervor. Mahmud Ghazni, who repeatedly vandalised the famed Somnath Temple in Gujarat, had taken a vow to wagejihad (holy war), every year against the kafirs (idolaters) during the solemn ceremony of receiving the Caliphate honours on his accession to the throne of Ghazni. The precedents set by the likes of Ghazni are followed by the faithfuls till date.
In the case of Christianity, it was in 1542, that India saw its bigoted face when Saint Francis Xavier and his Jesuits from Portugal landed in Goa and later spread their operations in other parts of South India. The saint had come with a firm resolve of uprooting paganism from the Indian soil and planting Christianity in its place. The details of persecution of both Hindus and Muslims by the saint and the administration under his instructions, are well documented.
For Indians, Christianity was no longer one more way of reaching the divine. Hindus were facing medieval imperialism that was fired by an ideology of proselytisation, with all the implicit brutality and venality. In 1698, when the East India Company’s charter was renewed, a clause was included that laid down that chaplains were to learn native languages so as to instruct natives in the protestant faith.
Even today, in nearly half of the Western democracies, the state provides direct subsidies to religious charities. One-third clergy in the state-recognised religions is on the state’s payrolls. In 40 per cent of the countries, the state acts as a dues collector for churches!
Like the Islamic state in Pakistan has been exporting terrorists to India and providing them with training and arms, the church, funded by affluent West, has been trying to destabilise non-Christian societies (particularly India) by stealth, under the cover of serving the poor and sick.
Ghazni, Ghori, Saint Xavier….. East India Company, may be dead and gone. But the mission, they lived and died for continues. Techniques and strategies have changed with time. But the goal remains unchanged — establishing the god, and his messenger as a sole representative; and simultaneously seek the destruction of other traditions.
Behind the hands that pull the trigger, behead a hapless non-believer, detonate bombs, blow up bamiyan buddha, lay waste the ruins of Palmyra, or trade souls for a loaf of bread, is a mind-set shaped by religious texts (or its interpretations) and a theology, saturated with hate for non-believers, their traditions and identity. The war against terror thus has to be fought with by arms, and ideas as well. The insular mind-set will have to be countered by an alternate narrative.
This is where India becomes relevant. It’s home to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and numerous other indigenous traditions, with a common silken thread running. No doubt, each of these faiths has an identity of its own. But they not only co-exist peacefully but go beyond. Far from having inimical feelings, the followers of Indian born faiths have genuine respect for each other’s beliefs. Jews and Parsese, when faced with religious persecution back home, found safe refuge in India.
The Indian paradigm probably holds the key to end the dogma inspired strife that has enveloped the world for hundreds of years. It’s in this context that a ‘global Hindu-Buddhist initiative on conflict avoidance and environment consciousness’ is being organised by Vivekananda International Foundation, in collaboration with International Buddhists Confederation and the Tokyo Foundation, Japan in New Delhi on September 3 to September 4. One hopes this initiative will kick-start a process leading to a more peaceful world.
We believe that ‘god is one’ with countless manifestations. For those who hold the world to ransom claiming divine injunction, there is ‘only one god’ and the rest iskufur or heresy.
dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/the-indian-paradigm-for-religious-tolerance.html
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2:52 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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