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Politicising religion in India |
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Written by Asghar Ali Engineer
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Saturday, 20 May 2006 |
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Page 1 of 2
Thursday, 23 March 2006, March 23, 2006,
India’s politicians hardly ever measure up to standards of democracy. They want to exploit every event for their purposes. It is indeed politicising of every such event that creates conflict between Hindus and Muslims, says noted columnist Asghar Ali Engineer.
The bomb explosion in the Sankatmochan temple and Varanasi railway station on March 8 once again has shaken the country. These criminals against humanity often invoke Islam for their dirty criminal deeds and assume Arabic sounding names and call themselves ‘mujahids’ to pass their misdeeds as an act of jihad. It can deceive no one and least of all Muslims.
In fact, these terrorists have their own political agenda and to promote this agenda they do not mind disgracing fair name of Islam. If we doubt anything it is their Islam. Either consciously or unconsciously they are promoting the agenda of enemies of Islam. The repeated acts of terrorism on their part have indeed done great damage to image of Islam.
No religion promotes violence and any religion, which does, cannot qualify for being a religion. All religions lay great stress on non-violence and peace be it Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Janinism or Sikkhism. And for Islam peace is most central. Allah, whom Muslims worship as the only God, His one of the names is Peace and thus worshipping Allah means worshipping peace. Any Muslim who causes hurt or injury to any other human being without justification should be punished in equal measure.
The Qur’an clearly says in verse 5:32 “…whosoever kills a person unless it be for manslaughter or for mischief in the land, it is as though he had killed entire humanity. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire humanity.” Such is the sanctity of life in the eyes of Allah. Thus these so called ‘mujahidin’ are openly defying the injunctions of the Qur’an and slaughtering innocent people in places of worship. Even under the rules of jihad (although the Qur’an does not use the word jihad for war even once) the holy Prophet required Muslims not to kill any non-combatant or women or children or destroy any property or standing crops in the field.
These so called jihadis defy every rule of the shari’ah. How can then they be described as ‘holy warriors’? They are nothing more than murderers. If they are killing for revenge then that is also not considered a praiseworthy act in Islam. Allah is repeatedly described by the Qur’an as Ghafoor al-Rahim i.e. the Pardoner and Compassionate. Then how can those who worship a pardoning and compassionate God will kill innocent people as they often do in the name of jihad?
All this clearly shows that what these various terrorist organisations do in the name of jihad is far from any religious act. No one can accept indiscriminate acts of violence as integral part of religion. All such acts should be strongly condemned.
It is a matter of pride that generally Indian Muslims are not involved in such acts of terrorism nor are they part of Al-Qaeda. However, there may be some exceptions. All such terror organisations breed under authoritarian regime. Indian Islam is no purist nor is obsessed with restoration of early days. It is product of a multi-religious ethos which were nurtured by Sufis whose universal doctrine has been sulh-i-kul i.e. total peace and peace with all. Indian Islam has richly contributed to the composite culture. Apart from Sufis even the traditional ‘ulama in India accepted secular democracy and composite culture and did not support separatism. Jami’at al’Ulama played glorious role in Indian independence and supported the Congress nationalism without any reservation. Thus Indian Islam never supported extremism of any kind in the name of Islam.
It is unfortunate that many people in India do not understand this and after every such incident demand proof of Muslim loyalty and want ‘moderate’ Muslims to condemn it as Muslims. This is not in keeping with secular ethos. Why Indian Muslims should be required to condemn such acts of terror as Muslims and not as Indians. Such an attitude keeps us divided. The underlying assumption is that Muslims are not part of national mainstream. It really irritates when such demand comes even from otherwise secular people.
Also the word ‘moderate’ Muslim also conveys certain mindset. The underlying assumption is that all other Muslims are ‘extremists’ and support such acts of terrorism whereas fact is that overwhelming majority of Muslims are peace loving as demonstrated both in Delhi in October and in Benaras when bombs exploded in the Sankatmochan temple. The large number of Muslims and Hindus showed great solidarity and frustrated the designs of communalists to use the opportunity to provoke communal violence.
The Mufti of Benaras issued a statement strongly condemning bomb explosion in the Sankatmochan temple and on request from me issued a fatwa against the bomb explosion. Also Muslim women took out a morcha against the explosion and demanded strong punishment against the culprits. Muslims also queued up for donating blood for the injured so much so that the blood bank officials had to plead with Muslims that we cannot take more blood as their capacity was no more. What better example of human solidarity?
The Hindu masses also frustrated the political designs of communalists and did not express any support for the yatra announced by the BJP leader Shri Lalkrishna Advani. BJP also demanded in this hour of grave crisis dismissal of Mulayamsingh Yadav Ministry. This also did not go well with the masses and they reacted against such politicising of a grave human problem. Instead of sincerely helping the people affected by the tragedy they were busy playing their politics.
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Friday, 22 August 2008
