On the heels of my last column, ‘Sharia court rules in Jammu and Kashmir, and secularists keep mum’ (November 27), comes even more disturbing news from Kashmir, and Kabul as well. The Talibanisation of Kashmir goes on unabated. Apart from Sharia courts dispensing justice, we have now cinema houses and liquor shops forced to pull down their shutters in the valley under pressure from Islamic outfits. The person leading the charge on behalf of radical Islam is none other than Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the cynosure of Delhi’s “secular” pack! No wonder, none of the ‘secularists’ in Delhi has protested against this Talibanisation.
The report from Kabul on the Moharram day says 63 people had been killed and over 100 injured in an attack on a procession, and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, one of the many terrorist groups with close links to the ISI, has claimed responsibility. It’s not believers versus kafirs in Kabul. It’s a conflict between the two sects of Islam—each says the other is false. In Srinagar, the state government banned Moharrum processions to prevent a repeat of Shia-Sunni violent confrontation but violence broke out even against this ban. For long, Lucknow, which has a majority Shia community, has seen the inter-sectoral conflict bursting out into violence and only recently, the Moharrum procession was allowed under restrictions.
The origin of this conflict goes back into history. Moharram marks the day when the son-in-law of the Prophet, Ali, was murdered by the rival group for claiming the Islamic leadership inheritance. Both groups justify their acts of violence with reference to the teachings of Islam that confuses non-Muslims about the true nature of what is often described as Islam, the religion of peace and brotherhood.
Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are most conservative nations but their mutual enmity seems to overtake their common distrust of other religions. In both countries, you cannot practise, at least in public, any religion other than Islam. And each country also denies to its Islamic minority of the other sect any right whatsoever.
Why such violence frequently demonstrated in suicide killings and bombings unfortunately extends to all those states and regions where the Muslims are in majority? In Kashmir Valley, almost all the pundits have been driven out by calculated murders. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, the percentage of Hindus to the total population has fallen drastically since partition. Why?
With so much intolerance of not only other religions but also minority sects within the same religion of Muslim-majority countries coming out so prominently, it is no wonder that Europe, where Islam is said to be the fastest growing religion, has become wary of the threats to its liberal culture with the growth of a fanatic religion amid it.
The top political leaders of Europe, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicholas Serkozy, discussed this threat and found the fanatical streak in this growth needed to be considered at governmental level as well. This intolerance has suddenly made the Western governments sit up to the dangerous turn the Arab Spring is taking, after Tunisia and then Egypt returned Islamist parties to power.
The question is rising in the west European countries that supported the Arab Spring, and even sent arms and planes to back up the people’s movement against the dictators, whether they have done a terrible mistake in the process by advancing the progress of such committed Islamists like Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, whose founder wrote the gospel of extremist Islam, and against all symbols of modernity and secular education. Is intolerance of other religions or even other sects in the same Islamic fold among the regressive demands of what is proudly claimed as resurgent Islam by its followers?
And why are the “secularists” in India silent about the murder of “secularism” in the Valley? Why no word so far about the demolition and bombing of mosques and gatherings of Muslims for religious functions in Pakistan, Kabul or Iraq?
The opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own