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The direct lines to God

The mail was extremely enlightening. For the first time, I understood the depth of the fear felt by Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. See, I'd asked seven questions in that article, none of which was answered by even one of the gutter creatures. No argument was rebutted, no piece of information was challenged. The only refrain was: you have hatred for Muslims and are stoking discord between communities... I realised that such Muslims hate writers of my tribe because they're afraid of us. They are terrified because we bring to the attention of Indians the inequity disseminated in the name of secularism. They know that when we succeed, the subsidies and the indulgence will halt. Frankly, I'd thought that the Islamic faithful would be more receptive to my reasoning since they've absorbed the concept of haraam and thus would reject PM Hajpayee's buying of the Muslim vote with Hindu sweat that isn't his to trade.

The threats have stemmed from Muslims all over the world - the US, the UK, Canada, India, Pakistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Singapore - because I bluntly expressed an opinion substantiated by irrefutable facts about a contentious issue. I now ask: Although the Quran unilaterally propagates violence against kaffirs ("When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful" [9:5] From The Quran translated by NJ Dawood, Penguin Books, Fifth revised edition, 1990), does today's Muslim have a right to act by such Quranic dictates against a journalist simply because she's voicing views that are unpleasant for Muslims?

A more pertinent question is: are these creatures just the "fringe lunatics" - a term applied by Indian secularists to terrorists of the non-Hindu persuasions...? Take the Students Islamic Movement of India: Two of its activists, Mohammed Maroof and Abdul Mobin, confessed their involvement in triggering the blasts in Sabarmati Express on August 14 that killed a dozen people, two blasts in Kanpur on August 14 and 15, the blast in Lucknow on August 15, and the blast in Agra on the eve of President Clinton's visit to India. Half a kilogram of RDX was recovered from their possession. Mobin admitted that Hizbul Mujahideen militants had trained SIMI activists in the use of grenades and IEDs in Aligarh in July - the month when Hizb and our Nobel PM were communing over a cease-fire. They also admitted that seven students of the Aligarh Muslim University were involved in executing the blasts and that younger students were used by SIMI as couriers for explosives and information.

O! K! I buy that Maroof, Mobin and SIMI are merely "miscreants" and "fringe" lunatics. But then, how do you explain the AMU students' observing Black Day, their violence in the form of dharnas, ransacking and road-blockades to protest against the arrest of Mobin? What about their holding captive and beating up an Intelligence Bureau sleuth for "planting evidence" against Mobin? Why was the normal functioning of classes in the university disrupted for *four* days after Mobin was picked up by the Agra police? Why did the Junior Doctors Association of the Nehru Medical College "strongly condemn" the report mentioning the fact that training camps of the Hizb had been organised at AMU? The over-2,500 students who gathered when the IB guy was detained, were they all "fringe" lunatics?? Is every terrorising Islamist a "fringe" case...? Hey, maybe AMU is a fringe institution!

At this point, I reproduce excerpts from an article I wrote in The Sunday Observer of 20 October, 1996, since it holds even truer today: "On October 7, a small PTI news item reported a symposium held at the Haj House in Mumbai and organised by the SIMI to call for establishment of Khilafat, the Quranic concept of a world government based on moral principles laid down in the Sunnah. The symposium was but a prelude to a 10-day, nationwide campaign to be launched on November 28, and was attended by delegates from Burma, Palestine and that haven for moderates, Iran.

"The president of the symposium said that nationalism gave rise to fascism on the basis of caste, colour, race and nationality, and that it became a rallying point for the exploitation of weak nations. The concept of Khilafat, as anyone with a modicum of sense will realise, urges all Muslims to unite into a single nation devoid of geographical boundaries and regional loyalties. In other words, an Indian Muslim must identify more with a Pakistani Muslim than with his own Hindu neighbour. And if he must respect a temporal government, it should be one such as Saudi Arabia's: the Muslim ethos must always supersede an Indian ethos. Say what you may, the SIMI campaign scheduled for next month is going to add fuel to the already volatile affairs of India...

"I have little against the gentlemen of SIMI: they are doing exactly what's expected of them. They are precisely what secularists have been saying they aren't: anti-nationalist to the core and with allegiance elsewhere... But what does one make of the conspiracy of silence among the otherwise clamorous secularists and hawk-eyed editors who cry foul the minute any Hindutvawadi group even sneezes?

"I can anticipate the rejoinders condoning Khilafat: that only 'moral' principles are sought to be followed, that it's to eradicate Muslim castes, feuds, blah blah... Then they'll say that this is a fringe group; that all Muslims aren't like this; that Indian Muslims honour their motherland. And I say: Put your money where your mouth is. The Supreme Court has been flooded by letters from all sorts of Muslims against the implementation of the uniform civil code - so why this hush now? Unless, if at all they exist, the rational among Muslims are a negligible minority..."

Fact: SIMI was set up in 1977 by the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, under the leadership of Syed Ali Shah Gilani.

Fact: As far back as in 1991-92, the ISI had selected key functionaries of SIMI for providing a platform to Sikh extremists. Too, fugitives of Al Umma and Lashkar-e-Taiba were under instruction to take shelter with SIMI cadres.

Fact: In early 1993, the Majlis-e-Numaindgan (council of representatives) of the Jamaat asked its general secretaries to set up an underground org, whose " rukuns" (activists) would develop links with other Islamic bodies in every state.

Fact: Intelligence reports of 1994 record how Muslims youths were recruited for training in arms and explosives through SIMI, and how the org hosted militants.

Fact: In June 1997, while participating in the Khilafat symposium organised by SIMI, Syed Ali Shah Gilani exhorted Indian Muslims to join the jehad in Kashmir.

Fact: In December 1999, Pervez Musharraf wrote letters to Syed Ali Shah Gilani in a Jodhpur jail. The letters related to Pakistan's new "five-point" policy on Kashmir - drafted under Musharraf's guidance after inputs from Gilani and which calls for stepped-up support to militants.

Fact: An AMU identity card was recovered from a terrorist who was killed in an encounter with the army during the massacre of Amarnath pilgrims in J&K.

Fact: SIMI openly gave a call to jehad when illegal structures were demolished by the Bombay Municipal Corpn in October 1992. But, while denouncing an organised Hindu assault "spearheaded by the Shiv Sena" during the December riots, the Sricrescent Report stated that Muslim rioting was "a spontaneous reaction of leaderless and incensed Muslim mobs... There is no material on record suggesting that known Muslim individuals or organisations were responsible for the riots..." You see, according to the Gita, "Muslim organisations like SIMI and BMAC also carried on propaganda..." Just "propaganda." I said it even then: The rampaging Muslims had sophisticated arms and were never "leaderless" or unorganised. Today, the roots stand revealed.

What's the situation now? SIMI has floated a new outfit, Tahreek Ahyay-e-Ummat, to enable it to continue its activities if it's banned. While focusing its energy on UP, SIMI has created bases in Delhi, J&K, Bihar, Kerala, TN, WB and Assam. Its Aligarh-based think-tank is playing a crucial role in augmenting the number of madrassas close to the Indo-Nepal border, in the border areas of the western sector, and in the southern states. SIMI has already infiltrated into several educational institutions in J&K, including Srinagar's Kashmir University. Pakistan, via Hizbul, has been providing material and training to SIMI cadres. One Kashmiri PhD student of AMU established an ISI module in Aligarh and established an ISI-SIMI platform to shield different Sikh terrorists.

In August, the Jehad committee of Deendar Anjuman resolved to explode bombs at Lord Venkateshwara temple, Tirumalai, and a series of blasts on September 1 for Lord Ganesh. On September 2, a dozen people were injured when members of "a particular community" stoned a Ganesh procession at Rajsamand in Rajasthan, leading to tension in the area. Police arrested 50 "miscreants" for stoning the procession which passed through their locality. Again on September 2, tension prevailed when Father James, principal of the Bhopal School of Social Sciences, a college run by Christian missionaries, quietly shifted to the residence of an ex-student the Ganesh idol installed in the campus by the students. When students insisted the idol be restored, the principal rusticated 25 of them.

Why, why, WHY? The answer came via the Dominus Iesus, a 36-page declaration by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that will be sent to every Catholic bishop warning against the temptation to view other faiths as equals. The Vatican put out the dictum to combat the "so-called theology of religious pluralism" which suggests that Catholics are on a par with Hindus, Muslims, Jews, etc, all of whom are inherently inferior and in a "gravely deficient situation" in seeking salvation...

The other Semitic creed propagates that "Idolatry is worse than carnage" - 2:191; "Fight against them until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme" - 2:193; "As for the unbelievers, neither their riches nor their children will in the least save them from God's wrath. They shall become the fuel of the Fire" - 3:9 (From The Quran translated by NJ Dawood).

Such are the core beliefs of Islam and Christianity. Sarva-dharma-samabhava is a joke taken seriously only by dweebs, aka Hindus. And that joke is compounded by further jokes from Hajpayee: "We will take harsh decisions." Right; like freeing that bastard Masood and raising the Haj subsidy. "I will always remain a swayamsevak." Right; he certainly will serve himself all the way to the Nobel. Finally, the RSS, too, backs the Bandarus... Uff, these halwais make me vomit!

Varsha Bhosle