What is common between the two, one a secular fundamentalist and the other a radical Islamist? They both confronted America. That they were both American agents whom America used for its own purposes and that whatever they did and perhaps Osama is still doing has resulted in the killing of millions of Muslims is, of course, of no account. We love confrontation.
Fed on the diet of Naseem Hijazi's romantic war novels, acclaimed as Islamic historical fiction, in their youth, many of our intelligentsia -- if they can be called that -- simply love confrontation and abhor sensible compromise. Anyone in the community, for instance, who suggests a negotiated settlement of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, involving compromise, is branded a BJP agent. Knowing that, not many dare suggest sensible solutions.
Muslim leadership and even journalism has now passed into the hands of bearded clerics. Some of these mullahs may appear clean-shaven, their beards concealed well within their stomachs, as the saying goes, but their responses are the same as those of ignorant mullahs.
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4:35 AM
Moderate Islamist here
