I am a Hindu by spiritual orientation. My faith teaches me to respect, and take the best from, Islam and every other faith on this planet. I revere many noble aspects of Islam, which I believe have enriched our national life. I believe, too, that our Muslim brethren have certain just concerns, which our polity must address. I write these prefatory words because it’s not my intention to criticise Islam when I say that I am horrified at what’s happening in the name of Islamist jehad in our small and increasingly scary world. (I won’t call it ‘‘a big bad world’’, because big it no longer is and bad it never was.)Ever since Delhi’s 29/10, when terrorists killed over 60 innocent people in Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar, the news from near and far only goes to validate what Theodore Dalrymple, a British writer, says in his insightful essay ‘‘The Suicide Bombers Among Us’’, written after the July blasts in London: ‘‘The sweet dream of universal cultural compatibility (between diverse socio-religious groups) has been replaced by the nightmare of permanent conflict.’’ Just read the recent news-scroll: ‘‘Suicide bombers kill 57 in Jordan’’; ‘‘Australia foils deadly chemical attack by arresting 17 Al Qaeda operatives’’; ‘‘Jemaah Islamia ringleader of Bali blasts blows himself up in gun battle with Indonesian police’’; ‘‘Terror attacks feared in China ahead of Bush’s Beijing visit’’; ‘‘Iranian President’s call to wipe Israel off the map of the earth’’.I won’t add to this list the riots in Paris and 300 other French towns, by Arab and North African immigrants, because they belong to a different category. Nevertheless, how the Islamist ideology of separatism has contributed as much to the problem of non-integration in France as socio-economic injustice is clear from the following observation by Amir Taheri, a prominent Paris-based writer of Iranian descent. ‘‘In some areas, it is possible for an immigrant or his descendants to spend a whole life without ever encountering the need to speak French, let alone familiarise himself with any aspect of the famous French culture. The result is often alienation. That gives radical Islamists an opportunity to propagate their message of religious and cultural apartheid. Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganised on the ‘millat’ system of the Ottoman Empire, where they would enjoy the right to organise their social, cultural and educational life in accordance with Shariah. In parts of France, a de facto millat system is already in place.’’ As the French premier admitted, even the police could not enter these ‘‘seceded’’ parts.But why have I strayed from Paharganj to Paris? It’s because I’ve been trying to find answers to the tormenting question: Why did Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar happen at all? I found a large part of the answer in two sources, a Hindu truth-seeker and The Hindu newspaper, neither of which can be accused of anti-Muslim bias. Here’s a chilling account of Lashkar-e-Taiba’s fascist mindset by Praveen Swami of The Hindu, whose investigative reports on jehadi terrorism are always an eye-opener: ‘‘Last week’s bombings in Delhi necessitate a clear understanding of what the terrorist group wants — and what it will do to achieve its ends. Understanding Lashkar requires an engagement with its core position: that the jehad in J&K is not a battle over territory, but a part of an irreducible conflict between Islam and unbelief.’’ To the uninitiated, ‘‘unbelievers’’ or ‘‘kafirs’’ are Hindus. But let’s continue with what Swami writes.‘‘Committed to the eventual creation of a caliphate that would rule over all the world’s Muslims, the Lashkar asserts that a jehad-without-end must continue ‘until Islam, as a way of life, dominates the whole world and until Allah’s law is enforced everywhere.’ In fact, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed who heads Markaz Dawa, a seminary which runs a massive network of charitable ad educational institutions in Pakistan, had declared some years ago, ‘the Hindu is a mean enemy and the proper way to deal with him is the one adopted by our forefathers, who crushed them by force.’ As the Lashkar spokesperson Nazir Ahmad bluntly stated: ‘Through the jehad that the mujahideen have launched in Kashmir, Islam will become dominant all over the world’.’’After The Hindu, read what the aforementioned Hindu truth-seeker wrote, nearly eighty years ago, about the ideological source of the current terror trail from New York to New Delhi: ‘‘The sword is no emblem of Islam. But Islam was born in an environment where the sword was, and still remains, the supreme law. The sword is yet too much in evidence among the Mussalmans. It must be sheathed if Islam is to be what it means — peace. (Mahatma Gandhi in Young India, December 30, 1926.)We can only pray: May the essence of Islam triumph over the violence of Islamism.Write to sudheenkulkarni@expressindia.com
