Amarnath outrage shocks the nation

By Pramod Kumar

Hindus once again came to the streets on July 3 to register their protest against cancellation of land allotment to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board at Baltal in Kashmir by the Jammu & Kashmir government. Responding to the Bharat Bandh call given by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), people observed complete bandh across the country. Barring some violent incidents in Indore and Satna in Madhya Pradesh where some anti-social elements tried to sabotage the peaceful bandh, the bandh passed peacefully across the country.

According to VHP general secretary Dr Pravin Togadia, from Jammu to Jharkhand, from Pune to Patna and from Gujarat to Goa, Hindus observed spontaneous bandh. This shows that Bharat will not tolerate any injustice to Hindus and will protest any such move democratically. The VHP had appealed to its activists to demonstrate peacefully and democratically. It had also advised all to exempt medical, school and essential commodities vehicles and services from the bandh and ensure no inconvenience to the old, disabled, sick, children etc.

Commenting on the incidents of Indore and Satna Dr Togadia said during the Rameshwaram Ram Sethu agitation and today’s ‘Save Amarnath Land from Jehadis’ agitation, the VHP has noticed that some anti-social elements in some states like MP, Gujarat, Punjab etc misguided media by using VHP, Bajrang Dal names for doing their own violence and for settling their personal enmity. VHP denies any reasonability of any criminal activities during the spontaneous Bharat Bandh that may have been done by the people not from VHP. Any such misreporting pertaining to the bandh amounts to criminal defamation, he added.

Dr Togadia made it clear that their agitation does not stop with the success of Bharat Bandh and it would continue till the land is returned to the Board. He announced to launch a Protest Week beginning from July 5 and made it clear that if the government fails to return the land to the Board the whole country would be made Ayodhya. “Now this agitation has reached every village of the country and every Hindu is now involved in it. The VHP unit in Jammu has decided to continue bandh for another 72 hours. The Jammu-Srinagar national highway is completely blocked and would not be opened till the government accepts the demand of Hindus. During our week-long agitation the stains and VHP activists would organise dharna, demonstration, etc. across the country. Memorandums would be presented to President, Prime Minister and Governors through the authorities concerned. The saints and VHP leaders would meet on July 8 and if the land was not returned to Baba Amarnath the agitation would be intensified,” he told Organiser in New Delhi.

The impact of the bandh in Delhi was seen everywhere. Even the tea and beetle shops remained closed voluntarily by the people to show their acrimony against the government. The VHP, Bajrang Dal, BJP and other organisation workers came to the streets at 9 am. They made the bandh successful in a peaceful manner. Police in Sultanpuri arrested 566 workers. In most parts the people shut down their establishments voluntarily. The local residents were also raised slogans against the government along with the demonstrating workers.

Meanwhile, former BJP president M. Venkaiah Naidu said if BJP comes to power at the Centre it would make all arrangements for Amarnath pilgrimage in Kashmir. Addressing the protesters in Delhi, he said it is a national shame that the UPA government has not been able to provide 100 acres of land for making arrangements for the pilgrims of Lord Amarnath, the symbol of the belief of crores of Hindus of the country. “Today the Hindus are feeling offended and insulted in their own country. This is the reason why there has been worldwide reaction to the decision of the Congress to cancel the allotment of land to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board. BJP is not going to sit silently. It will not tolerate any injustice against the Hindus,” he added.

Delhi BJP chief Dr Harsh Vardhan said the question is not only of 100 acres of land. The issue is connected with the belief, honour and prestige of the Hindus. The Congress government is insulting the Hindus again and again deliberately. By the arrest of Shankaracharya, demolition of Ram Sethu, questioning the existence of Lord Rama and now the cancellation of land allotted to Amarnath Shrine Board the Congress has proved that it would play the game of appeasement although the majority community may feel insulted. He warned the Congress would have to face the consequences of dividing the society.

Reports received from Jammu point out that curfew continued for the second day on July 3. However, angry residents came out on the roads at some places in Jammu city, defying curfew restrictions and staged protests against the land order cancellations. Banks, educational institutions and government offices remained closed for the third day in view of the strike and curfew. The Jammu-Srinagar highway, which is the supply lifeline to the valley, was also blocked by protestors at several places. Police had placed BJP state president Ashok Khajuria under house arrest in Jammu to prevent his participation in the protests.

Thousands of VHP workers blocked important arterial roads at Vakola, Malad and Borivili in northwest Mumbai and in the northeastern suburb of Ghatkopar. The shops and business establishments in several parts of Karnataka were also remained closed. There are reports of bandh from Kerala, Karantaka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Harayana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.

Abject surrender to Islamic separatists

By Shyam Khosla

If one were to talk of demographic change in the valley, it was brought about two decades ago when hundreds of thousands of Hindus were forced to flee from their homes by the terrorists and secessionists. There is almost complete ethnic cleansing of the valley. Since then Kashmiri Pandits are forced to live as refugees in their own country.

Congress Government has shamelessly surrendered to the Islamist and secessionist elements by rescinding the order that granted permission to Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) to put up temporary shelters on forest land for the pilgrims to the holy cave. Anti-national elements and secessionists indulged in street violence and even stoned buses carrying pilgrims. They have vitiated the atmosphere and sharpened communal polarisation by spreading canards and hurting Hindu sentiments. The chilling message to Hindus is that their presence— even for the short duration of the yatra—is unacceptable to people in the valley.

Instead of curbing the mindless violence perpetrated by highly inflamed mobs, the State Government bet a hasty retreat and announced that the autonomous Shrine Board that was set up in the year 2000 to manage the pilgrimage would no longer be involved in the exercise. The task was taken over by the “secular” government. No effort was made to disabuse the public mind of falsehood spread by interested parties and jehadis. Baseless and provocative allegations went unchallenged by the Government. Nothing could be more absurd and stupid than the assertion that ‘transfer” of forest land to the Shrine Board was part of the hidden agenda to settle Hindus in the valley to bring about a demographic change in Muslim majority Kashmir. An innocuous plan to provide some resting places to Hindu pilgrims has been mischievously portrayed as a conspiracy. The fact is that State Government order had merely granted permission to SASB to raise “pre-fabricated structures only for camping purposes of pilgrims without going in for construction of permanent structures” on forest land and went on to clearly state that “proprietary status of forest land shall remain unchanged”.

If one were to talk of demographic change in the valley, it was brought about two decades ago when hundreds of thousands of Hindus were forced to flee from their homes by the terrorists and secessionists. There is almost complete ethnic cleansing of the valley. Since then Kashmiri Pandits are forced to live as refugees in their own country. The Government miserably failed to ensure security and create a reasonably congenial atmosphere so that Kashmiri Hindus could return to their ancestral land. More than 20,000 Hindu refugees from Pakistan who settled in the state in 1947 have been denied state citizenship rights. Under the circumstances, how can any non-state Hindu even think of settling in the valley? Blatant lies were spread by fanatics to incite anti-Hindu and anti-national feelings among the people in the valley. Instead of calling a spade a spade, Lt. General (retd.) S.K. Sinha, who was till recently Governor of J&K, and Hindu outfits are being blamed for the trouble in the valley by the Congress and the “secular” crowd.

So-called mainline political parties in J&K are no less guilty. PDP has all along drawn strength from separatist elements. In the last elections, the party emerged as the third largest party in the assembly with the clandestine support from secessionists. The party led by former Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed and his daughter Mahbooba Mufti is unfolding its vicious “self-rule” plan that aims at weakening state’s links with the rest of the country and ultimately realising the dream of an “independent Kashmir ”. The PDP by withdrawing support from the Government sent a strong signal to separatists and secessionists that it is playing their game in the political arena.

Transfer of management of the Amarnath Yatra to an autonomous board in 2000 has never been smooth. Besides separatists, several other elements were irked by the decision. The Board regulated the money charged by porters and pony-owners to ensure that pilgrims were not exploited. Sections of civil servants who indulged in corruption and pocketed money allocated for providing facilities to pilgrims also resented the Shrine Board. At the political level too there was resistance. In the year 2004, SASB demanded that the period of yatra may be extended to two months and that the Board be allowed to use forest land to set up seven rest sites so that pilgrims could have access to sanitation, shelter and security. The then Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed opposed the demands tooth and nail. The J&K High Court gave a landmark judgment in 2005. It held that the duration of the yatra would be decided by the Board and not by the Govenrment and ordered that the State should immediately permit the use of forest land to provide shelter to pilgrims. So, the permission to use forest land for providing facilities for pilgrims has judicial sanction. How can they call the permission “illegal”? On the contrary, rescinding the permission is against the orders of the High Court and, therefore, illegal. Those who wish to pamper Muslims are not impressed. For them, Muslim sentiments based on falsehood are sacred while Hindu sentiments and safety is secondary.

While Muslim fundamentalists are celebrating their victory, Jammu is burning. Curfew was imposed and police resorted to firing on Hindus protesting against the Government capitulation to jehadi elements. Nationalist forces are observing bandh and strikes not only in Jammu but also all over the country. Demands for pulling down Haj complexes and Haj terminals are being raised by enraged citizens. They want Haj subsidies to be withdrawn. Providing countless amenities to Muslim pilgrims and denying minimum facilities to Hindu pilgrims is gross injustice and is totally unacceptable. The Congress party will have to pay a heavy political price for its anti-Hindu policies. Governor N.N. Vohra, who is ex-officio chairman of the SASB, has deeply hurt Hindu sentiments by handing over the management of the yatra to the State Government. His action, obviously taken at the instance of his political masters, has undermined his credibility he had so assiduously built over decades as an able and honest civil servant.

Hindu leaders arrested after attack by 6,000 strong Muslim mob in West Bengal

Hindu Samhati
Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 9:07 PM

FRIENDS OF HINDU SAMHATI
Registered in: New York, USA.
Contact: hindusamhati@gmail.com
June 13, 2008

The Friends of Hindu Samhati, USA unequivocally condemns today's gruesome attack on the Hindu Samhati training camp at Ganga Sagar (West Bengal) by a murderous mob of local Muslims, at least 6000-7000 strong, starting Thursday (June 12, 2008).

Ganga Sagar is a very reknowned Hindu Tirtha Kshetra (Place of Pilgrimage) where the sacred Ganga River has a confluence with the Bay of Bengal. Ganga Sagar is located on the western edge of the Sunderban Delta on Sagar Island. At the edge of Sagar town - adjacent to the beach - is the ancient temple dedicated to Kapil Muni, the sage responsible for initiating the chain of events that ultimately resulted in Mother Ganga descending to the earth from heaven and giving mankind an opportunity to wash away its sins in her pure water. The earliest mention of this sacred place is found in the Mahabharata where a learned sage explains to Bhishma the significance of taking a dip at the confluence of Ganga Sagar. Millions of Hindu pilgrims visit this holy place all year round to take a dip in the ho,y Ganges, particularly during the Kumbha Mela and Makara Sankranti festivities.

Since this morning (Thursday, 12 June, 2008), Hindu Samhati had started conducting a training camp and workshop on the current socio-political scenario to 180 men, women and children in the peaceful and serene surroundings of Ganga Sagar.

Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh, the National Convenor of Hindu Samhati is conducting the main sessions of this camp. Other eminent people and local notables are also present. Everything went on smoothly until this evening, when suddenly the camp building was surrounded by a murderous mob of about 6000-7000 local Muslims bent on mayhem. The Muslim attackers were well-prepared and have been throwing gas cylinders and petrol bombs (molotov cocktails) and kept on attacking incessantly for a few hours, to incinerate the whole camp. The entire camp building has been reduced to ashes. All 180 of our camp attendees (a large number of them women and children) and 15 policemen are trapped inside this burning camp along with our dear leader Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh.

Already 14-15 attendees of the camp have been injured in the carnage, and at least 7 of them are in very critical condition and are not expected to survive. The names of the critically wounded include: Subodh Kundu, Bivas Mondal, Gopinath Biswas, Prasenjit Sardar and Gautam Halder, apart from 2 others that could not be identified because of serious facial burn injuries.

Nine camp attendees are still missing and may have been kidnapped by the Muslim mob. Their names are: Gautam Mondal, Kartick Biswas, Ram Shil, Palash Roy, Gopal Dolui, Piyush Senapati, Ashok Das, Shankar Nandi and Subhash Roy. We are very apprehensive about their well being.

The local police-station (Thana) has unfortunately sent in a small posse of 15 policemen who are totally inadequate for resisting such a huge Jehadi mob armed to the teeth. The police could not control the mob of Muslims even after firing several rounds.

As of Friday morning (June 13, 2008), as per the recent information received by us, the assault by the Muslim mob at Hindu Samhati campsite in Gangasagar is still on, although the intensity has abated a little bit. Some more police force has reached the trouble spot, though the large force required to subdue a mob of this size and temperament is nowhere in sight. A recent update by phone from the camp is that along with the 14-15 attendees who were injured, 2 policemen have also been seriously injured due to the assault by the Muslim mob. Scores of other attendees to the camp has sustained minor injuries in this most cowardly assault including the National Convener of Hindu Samhati, Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh. Thankfully his injuries are not serious.

Apart from throwing petrol bombs to incinerate the camp building, the Muslim mob also tried to breach the wall by exploding cooking gas cylinders against it. Failing to break into the camp, the rampaging Muslim mob has attacked and seriously damaged some nearby houses of the local Hindus. They have also seriously damaged and set fire to an adjoining Kali temple and a 'Yatri Nivas' (Travellers' Lodge) run by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The fireball attacks have slightly abated but the vicious threats and stone pelting continues – all attuned to the collective chants of both 'naara-e-takbir, allahu akbar' (allah is the Greatest) and 'inquilab zindabad' (Long Live the Revolution).

Sagar island at the Ganga Sagar – the confluence of the Ganga and the Bay of Bengal – is one of the holiest pilgrimages of India, where millions of Hindus from all over India and the world gather during the 'Makar Sankranti' (Winter Solstice) for the 'Punya Snan' (Holy Bath) every year. If a peaceful Hindu gathering can be assaulted with such viciousness and impunity in one of the most sacred Hindu sites of pilgrimage, one shudders to think what lies in store for the Hindus of West Bengal a few years hence.

In a travesty of justice, instead of arresting the attackers, the Police in West Bengal have slapped a non-bailable arrest warrant against Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh and 15 Hindu Samhati activists. The concocted charges against them are listed as being: "Incitement and Instigation for Rioting" and "Disruption of Communal Harmony".

As per the latest news received from the ground, Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh and 15 Hindu Samhati activists have been framed and arrested for inciting communal disharmony by Kakdwip Thana (Police Station) in West Bengal.

1) The Friends of Hindu Samhati, USA strongly protests this outrageous attack on a peaceful, indoor religious function that was held behind closed doors. There was no provocation for this vicious assault nor was any outdoor procession held at the location. It is pitiable that the police could not provide security to its peace loving citizens and is instead insisting on closing the camp down.

2) We strongly urge the police and the local administration to arrest all the perpetrators of this heinous crime immediately and provide security to continue the camp at a nearby, alternate location.

3) We deeply deplore the travesty of justice in West Bengal and appeal to the police and the local administration to remove the framed charges and release Sri Tapan Kumar Ghosh and 15 Hindu Samhati activists immediately.

4) We request all friends and readers in India and abroad to call up the Indian administration to inquire about this incident. At least, they will know that people still care about justice and peace in India. The Numbers to Call are:

a) District Magistrate, South 24 Parganas
Phone: 033-24793713
Email: dm-ali@wb.nic.in

b) Mr. Praveen Kumar
District Superintendent of Police, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal
Mobile Phone: 91-98300-23142

c) Ganga Sagar Police-Station/Thana
Officer in Charge
Phone: 91-3210-240-205

d) Mr. Tomal Das
Officer in Charge
Kakdwip Thana (Police Station)
Mobile Phone: 98305-99612

e) Sub-Divisional Police Officer--Senior to Officer in Charge
Phone: 94349-66000

5) Finally, please show your solidarity with the beleaguered Hindus of West Bengal, and spread the news of this heinous outrage among your friends, co-workers and family.

Hindu boy's killing leads to protest in Pak

Islamabad, April 12: Asking Pakistan government to protect all citizens irrespective of their faith, scores of people demonstrated against the recent killing of a Hindu worker in a Karachi factory by his colleagues, who had accused him of passing blasphemous remarks about Prophet Mohammed.

Jagdish Kumar, a 22-year-old worker at a leather factory in Karachi, was killed on Tuesday by his colleagues after he allegedly passed blasphemous remarks during a debate on religion.

Asghar Ali Narejo, Chairman of the NGO Council for All Under-privileged Segments Eminence, and Zeeshan Leghari, a local leader of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, led the protest on Friday outside the press club in Mirpurkhas, Kumar's hometown.

Organisations that participated in the protest include Jeay Sindh Tarraqi Passand Party and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. The protesters carried banners and placards and called on the government to take strict measures to end religious extremism and to order an impartial inquiry into the killing of Kumar. They also urged the government to take appropriate measures to protect all citizens, irrespective of their faith.

India's Intellectual Zombies

India's leftist intellectuals who are promoting Islamic terrorism, anti-Hindu ideology and mindless and bogus secularism are in chord with our enemies to destroy Hindus and our perennial philosophy. The following article is based on some critical observation of India's Intellectual Zombies.

Dr. Babu Suseelan

* * *

For centuries Hindu society has been active in producing intellectuals, philosophers, psychologists, scientists, political theorists, artists, poets, spiritual leaders and life scientists. Islamic invasion, Christian colonialism, destruction of Sanskrit education and Marxist influence had a disastrous influence on Hindu society. The social and psychological conditioning suffered by Hindus lead frequently to the erosion of cultural identity and the depersonalization of individuals. It is therefore, not surprising that the production of intellectuals dwindled. The repercussions of long period of Islamic oppression and colonization, in the wake of social and cultural disintegration and the trauma suffered by Hindus as a whole, persist even today. Everybody seem to agree that Hindu civilization is now facing a crisis. Entrenched forces from within and without have joined together to de-structure or destroy our thoughts, beliefs, practices and values.

Hinduism has never been a unified, monolithic movement and there has been a great deal of disagreement among Hindus as to how to protect themselves and their interests. There are several Hindu spiritual organizations, and cultural movements in different parts of India. Unfortunately politically, spiritual movements has not resulted in an overreaching Hindu strategy in politics, in the media, in academics, and other areas of social-political life.

It is time for Hindus to join together, to discover its causes and to assume the responsibility of formulating a solution. It is time to rally our values, our self-esteem and fight for our moral ideals with full, righteous confidence. The intellectual group is one that manifests a collective capacity for dealing with the wide-ranging needs and problems in national life. Intellectuals of a nation are expected to maintain connections with the country's past culture, present social, economic, and political groups and concerns itself with renewing and maintaining internal strengths. But this is not what we see today in India. In India, the anti-Hindu mafia has become the "gate keepers" of Indian minds. The anti-Hindu intellectual zombies have entrapped the members in a servitude and set in motion a malignant process by creating powerlessness in the majority communities. They join together with our enemies from within and without to demean and discredit the culture, and its perennial philosophy that sustains the social bonds for centuries. Our intellectual zombies are competing with our enemies to make Hindus more powerless and prevent them from acquiring skills and self-esteem to regain lost strength and acclaim. Indeed, the greatest threat to India and Hindus today is the political opportunism of the phony secular intellectuals who are inclined to promote Islamo fascism and dismissing or understating internal and external threats. If we ask our moral relativists, agnostics, secularists, liberals and media pundits--they will come up with sticky puddle of stale syrup of tolerance, love, global programs, universalism, and coexistence with Jihadi terrorists, Marxist murderers and crusaders. India's intellectual zombies had become apologists for the Islamo fascists, Marxists and underground Maoists. They want to replace Hindu tradition, and its eclectic philosophy with the reductionist dogmas of Islam, Marxism and deconstruction. They have sold our nation for a price and joined with our adversaries and engage in "the socialization of the anti-social, or acculturation of the anti-cultural, or the legitimization of the subversive" under the influence of modernism. Intellectual discourse is corrupted by moral relativism, leftist cultural criticism and subversive modernism. By blurring the lines between good and evil, right and wrong, spirituality and fanaticism, these intellectual zombies have rendered our society more vulnerable to evil influences. The general public are increasingly ill equipped to recognize, much less respond to, the evil forces that threatens India from within and without.

One of the tragic errors of India is that too many of its best minds believe as they did in the past-that the solution is to rely on more tolerance, inaction and passivity. They are neither humanist or nationalists. Their goal is to demolish Hindu values and to put barriers on Hindu spirituality and place as many obstacles as possible in the way of Hindutva. Their response against Islamic terrorism goes against the commonest of commonsense and only serve to protect anti nationalists. They are significantly out of touch with reality. Like most psychotic people they avoid complex social problems, afraid of decision making and promote policies that recommends tolerance of intolerant dogmas and their bizarre behavior. The exact opposite is true. What we need most urgently is to recognize that our tolerant culture cannot exist without a philosophy of confrontation of intolerant ideas.

Our present state of cultural disintegration and political oppression is maintained and prolonged by intellectual zombies, posturing as intellectual leaders. India's intellectual zombies are living in a fantasy world embracing "all religions are the same", and tolerance of intolerance is a positive virtue . They generally consist of frustrated, alienated and misguided intellectual zombies who serve as catalysts, inciting, and actualizing the prevalent sentiment of Hindu hatred. They also endorse extra privileges for Muslims and provide a sort of moral justification for Hindu oppression. These modern intellectual zombies have succeeded in misdirecting the public and have extinguished the flame of protest, and they have no answer to halt the triumphant advance of brute Jihadis and Marxist murderers. They have no answer to those voices demanding freedom from oppression, liberty from bogus secularism and reason from political idiosyncrasy.

FUMBLED STRATEGY

One of the greatest challenges facing our intellectuals today is objectively examining the roots of the present social-political-pathology and malady afflicting Hindu society and developing a strategy that will lead to a lasting solution of our predicament. The inability to grasp the roots of Islamic terrorism, coercive religious conversion and social disturbances is the result of moral relativism, agnosticism and non-judgmental attitude prominent in India's liberal thought.

A political ideology directed by bogus secular political leaders whose purpose is to help and empower our enemies is deceptive. In India, these intellectual mafia's commitment for Hindu bashing has reached a new pinnacle with the national ascendance of Italian born Sonia as the leader of the Congress party. The Congress party's snobbery and insensitivity to Hindus has created a pseudo-secular culture whose leaders appear unwilling or unable to communicate with the majority Hindus. They are unable to communicate in the cultural language of the majority.

How should Hindus revitalize its strategy? Hindus must better educate and explain the Islamic threat to the general audience. Education at all levels should indicate Hindus in the history, philosophy, mechanics, virtues, responsibilities, and achievements of Hindus. Tolerance and diversity need not mean acceptance of oppression and tyranny. India's intellectual zombies offer misbegotten solutions, ignore inconvenient facts and hide behind Islamic mafia and promote meaningless universalism. The universal pretensions cannot be used without addressing the proper scale of coercive religious conversion, psychological warfare by foreign agencies, subversive activities of anti-national groups and Jihadi terrorism. Instead of putting the blame where it belongs, India's intellectual zombies, when confronted with social-political problems, invent fantasies to keep the public in darkness. Real problems confronting India and Hindus are too scary for intellectual zombies to comprehend

Identifying with your adversary without proper reflection is an exaggerated tendency toward grandiosity. It is an expression of narcissism, one of the deepest wellsprings of India's liberal tendencies towards unreality. The self-defeating belief system, lead to unreality-to the feelings that somehow Muslims will become fair-minded and do justice. India's intellectual zombies are in self-delusion that virtually gets in the way of reality, clouding their judgments on important matters leading to bad decisions. Unreality, self-delusion, and denial are the hallmarks of their disease and treatment. It is a treatment in that it promotes adjustment to harsh reality of Islamic violence and terrorism. This treatment of escapism, denial, and self-blame are worse than the disease. It is this collective disease of India's intellectual zombies, the unhealthy side of reality that is badly in need of treatment.

This liberal unreality, denial, escapism, appeasement and irrational tolerance is narcotic. While each dose "cures" the pain of harsh reality or previous abuse, it further strengthen the disease. Escape from reality, and hiding behind a thick wall of denial, may provide India's intellectual zombies a brief respite from cruel reality of Islamic atrocities and promote a false adjustment to the cruel world of Islamists. But it is not a true or effective cure for Islamic brutality, hostility and demand for extra privileges.

The most human quality we have is our ability to conceptualize, rationalize and act. As a nation, our greatest hope for improving ourselves and becoming better is to use our mind and capacity to think. It takes intellectual capacity to think and makes change for the better. Why, even after physical independence, Indians shape their reality, interpret or appraise events to please their long term oppressors and tormentors? Why intellectuals shape their thought to justify evil deeds of Muslims, Marxists and phony secularists? Why they downplay external threats or turn off unpleasant internal disturbances created by anti-national elements? It is strange that alienated intellectuals, leftist academicians and phony secularists develop an unconscious cravings and urges to feel good, to feel wonderful or to feel exalted delight in front of adversaries and tormentors. They restructure their thoughts and develop self-defeating behaviors to please their oppressors. They have limited intellectual competencies to handle conflicts and social problems created by Islamic fascists, subversive agents, and psychological warfare operatives. It is difficult for them to assertively handle social conflicts or to say "no" to social pressure to participate in self-destructive behaviors. They often lack the skills to question unhealthy and disastrous policies and activities of our enemies.

For any dangerous social or political challenge or problem situation, India's intellectual zombies come up with automatic anti Hindu thoughts including blame game. These automatic Hindu blame game that pop up quickly are not rational or evaluative in nature. This self-destructive behavior of intellectual zombies is reinforced by few bread crumbs thrown at them, and few applauses by Jihadis, subversive agents and the bogus secular crowd.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

The intellectual zombies that champions the adversary culture now dominate the cultural establishments-the publishing houses, media, museums, book publications, government public relations, television, theater, the cinema, the academia, and the national educational institutions. They promote cultural-moral relativism and mindless universalism. This "relativism of truth and values" has corrupted the moral character of India. India's phony intellectuals and bogus secular politicians are not attuned to the values of freedom, equality, individual rights, spiritual culture, peace, progress and justice. These alienated, self-serving intellectuals are no longer committed to liberty, fairness, equal opportunity, openness and prosperity. They are busy promoting freedom for Islamic tyrants, strengthening conversion gangs and assisting subversive groups. Silencing of Hindus and the suppression of all inclusive, tolerant, and uplifting Hindu ideas is their pastime.

Hindu organizations should identify Hindu intellectuals and channel resources toward formulating and promoting Hindu vision of public policy. Hindu intellectuals should penetrate community intellectual institutions such as journals, theater companies, study groups, book publishers, electronic media and music clubs. Vital intellectual institutions should be established to create a culture that thinks critically and discuss ideas and philosophies that shape government policies, education and social policy.

Pseudo secular forces have joined with our enemies to restrict the terms of public debate. Hindu intellectuals should address specific issues and concerns that cut across Hindu communities around the globe. In the public sphere, the culture and values of the pluralistic, all inclusive Hindu values should help fashion public policies and political goals.

Only Hindu philosophy points to theoretical systems that yield needed understanding of human beings and their psycho-social-cultural environments. In order to survive in this world of communication, political realities, information warfare, media manipulation and psychological warfare operations, Hindus need to design an action agenda for turning Hindutva into proactive realities in the public field.

-- Dr. Babu Suseelan

Secularism encouraging terrorism

Something is terribly wrong not only with our national law and order system, but the distribution of prosperity throughout the length and breadth of the country. The distribution is very uneven, but that is only one aspect of the situation. The other aspect is the growth of jehadism in the country and it has now been discovered that Karnataka has become a centre of recruitment. What comes as a shock is that the recruits are not illiterate or poor Muslims eking out a bare living, but well-educated youths among whom were noticed a civil engineer, a software engineer, a mechanical engineer with a Ph.D in computational fluid dynamics and a doctor. Apparently there is growing radicalisation of educated Muslim youth who have pursued their education in Britain and the United States.

What has India done to these youths that they should turn into jehadis and antinationals? India has gone out of its way to do what it can—including subsidising Haj visits—to the so-called minorities in the name of secularism. Even where they are in a majority, as in Jammu and
Kashmir, Muslims get preference. The damage done by Islamic terrorists in other parts of India, speaks for itself. From March 2006 to December 2007, in a space of 18 months, jehadi acts of terrorism are just unimaginable. Consider this list: In March 2006 there was twin bombing
in Varanasi, one at the railway station and the other at the Kashi Vishwanath Temple killing 20 people. In July 2006, seven serial bombings of a Mumbai railway station killed more than 200 and injured 700 others. In September 2006 at least 30 persons were killed and 100 injured in twin blasts at Malegaon in Maharashtra. Not even Hyderabad, which has a large Muslim population, was spared. On August 25, 2007, bombs ripped through crowded public areas killing at least 42 persons. It is as if these deaths do not matter. The brutal incidents are quickly forgotten.

Speaking in Bangalore on August 4, 2007, former Punjab Director General of Police, K.P.S.Gill made the point that India was being ruled by pseudo-secularists who did not have the will to fight terrorism. At a meeting organised by the Forum on Integrated National Security (FINS), Gill said that “intellectuals and some political establishments are wedded to weaken the country consciously and as a programme, in the name of secularism.” As Gill saw it, Islamic fundamentalism backed by Pakistan is growing with its sleeper cells increasing across the country, while extremist political leaders are posing a larger danger of dividing the society in the pretext of advocating welfare of Muslims and OBCs. Now—believe it or not—the UPA government has decided to provide a relief package to dependents of terrorists—those very men who fought in the past against the integrity of India and were killed by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

Is anybody aware of the damage done by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir? A souvenir of the Jammu and Kashmir police released in 2003 and quoted by another senior officer, Joginder Singh (Pioneer, February 11) provides the facts. According to the souvenir, between 1990 and
December 2002 there were 56,041 incidents of violence including 10,093 explosions, 29, 931 firing incidents, 5,561 cases of arson, 763 rocket attacks, 4,597 abductions, 229 cases of hanging to death, 275 arms snatching cases and 4, 592 other acts of violence. During those 14 years, more than 30,000 civilians were killed and security forces seized 24,785 AK—type rifles, 9,387 pistols and revolvers, 58 carbines, 91 light machine guns, 6,865 kgs or RDX , 742 rocket launchers and the list grows.

Worst, due to terrorism, 3.70 lakh Hindus and Sikhs were forced to leave the Valley and there has been total ethnic cleaning. Can we call it genocide? So what do we do? In the period between
2000-2003, the state got Rs 13, 188 crore as grant which is three times what Bihar, one of the poorest states in India, received—about Rs 4,047 crore. On November 17, 2004, our kind Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh announced an “Economic Revival Plan” of Rs 24,000 crore for Jammu and Kashmir. Incidentally, according to Joginder Singh “no one really knows what was spent where and who got what”, since the state’s accounts have not been audited for our a decade.

Par for the course, one might add. Never question a Muslim majority state how it spends money. That would not be secular. And all this, when, according to Army sources, over 2000 militants of
Lashkar-e-Toiba were trying to sneak into the Valley in August 2007. Major-General Ramesh Halgali, G-O.C of the 19th Infantry Division told PTI that many militants had been brought to the border by Pakistan to wreak terror.

Pakistan gets away with murder and its patron in Washington turns a blind eye to what is going on. Pakistan is fighting terrorism, isn’t it? So what is India complaining about, is the US response. But does the large Muslim community say a word of what’s going on? Hardly. In any event, where are the Muslim community leaders who can speak with authority? If there are any, their argument would be that one does not have to apologies every time a jehadi indulges in violence. They become self-defensive, quoting figures to show how poor the Muslims are, and how important it is for them to attend a madrasa and the secularists lap it up, not wishing to recognise that there are poor among Hindus who do not complain, and yet they attempt to give their children as much education as is within their capacity.

A Muslim writer, Ed Hussain, in his book The Islamist, notes that Islamic extremism did not descend from another planet or was imposed on the community by outside forces. “It breeds within the community and is the product of a certain kind of interpretation of Islam”, wrote Hussain, quoting Zia-ud-din Sardar, one of Europe’s most prominent Muslim scholars.

According to Zia-ud-din, Islamists were “ nourished by an Islamic tradition that is intrinsically inhuman and violent in its rhetoric, thought and practice”. Commenting on this Husan Suroor,
writing in The Hindu (July 17, 2007) said that “more Muslims need to realise that Islamic terrorists are not simply ‘misguided’ individuals acting on a whim but that they are people who know what they are doing and they are doing it deliberately in the name of Islam.” And that has
has been most noticeable in Karnataka in recent times when police caught terrorists and one of them spilled the beans, saying eight fidayeens are presently on the loose in India and could strike any time.

All that our secularists would say is, that is not a Big Deal.

Islamic Radicalisation of Maldives

R. Upadhyay

Tourist brochure describes Maldives as a paradise. Perhaps due to the natural beauty, this country of 1192 small coral islands in Indian Ocean was known as Maldveep (Garland of island) in ancient Sanskrit literature. With 100 % Sunni Muslim population of over three lakhs, area of 800 square kilo metres distributed across atolls and islands, having more sea than land in its occupation and historical roots in South Indian, Sri Lankan Sinhalese and Arab communities, it remained isolated from the influence of modern world for centuries. Situated at a distance of about 450 miles southwest of Sri Lanka and nearly 300 miles away from the southern coastline of India, both the countries are its nearest marine neighbours. Because of its Location on the major marine routes in Indian Ocean, its geo-strategic importance can be understood.

Before the advent of Islam in the island its natives were practising Buddhism. Islam was initially introduced largely in its southern area in 1127 AD but the then tolerant Buddhist ruler did not give any patronage to conversion. However, in 1153 the Buddhist king Dhobenei Kalaminj Siri Bavanaadheettha got converted to this faith and imposed it on his subjects. Although, with the introduction of new religion Maldives also faced the challenge of Arabisation, the influence of pre-Islamic past remained the bedrock of its socio-political philosophy till it came in contact with the wider part of modern world.

Maldives has all along been an independent State except for a brief period of about 15 years under Portuguese occupation in 16th century and under British protectorate from 1887 till 26th July 1965, when it got independence. It reverted from Sultanate to a republic on 11th November 1968.

After reversion of Maldives from Sultanate to a republic, its first president Ibrahim Nasir opened up the country for tourists and foreign investments. The growth of tourist industry in this Muslim country was somehow not palatable for the Islamist establishments from all over the world. However, when Abdul Gayoom, who is educated in Islamic jurisprudence from Al Azhar University in Cairo became president in 1978, he changed the role of religion significantly and irreversibly transformed the traditionally tolerant society into an increasingly radicalized Islamic society. Since the tourist industry was the backbone of national economy, it was not possible for him to close it but due to his Islamic educational background, religion occupied a front seat in his politics. He sent a significant number of youths to Islamic institutions in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and India for Islamic studies.

With huge funding from Saudi Arabia for Wahhabisation of Maldives Islamist zealots on their return from Islamic institutions became loyal collaborators of the regime and began an intense indoctrination for Arbisation of the island in the 1980s. Describing the indigenous cultural symbols like native names, language, greetings and attire as ‘Jahiliya’ (Age of darkness) they “began insisting that it was sinful to call God anything other than Allah” (maldivesroyalfamily.com). This made the Maldivians culturally restless as Arbisation of language was an assault on their vocal chord that was accustomed to pronounce ‘Maaiyraskalaange” for the term God. Although, they tried to ignore the dictates of Mullahs, they succumbed to the threat of Islamist preachers who said that non-pronouncement of Allah by Muslims would send them to hell. Gradually, this cultural conquest forced the traditional Maldivian culture disappear from the island. Traditionally, some parents used to send their children for Islamic education in countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia solely for their solid moral foundation but after Gayoom came to power promotion of anti-Semitic and hate-Israel teachings in Madrasas increased religious sentiments. “Now we are in evil times and teachers train children in fanaticism and bigotry in Islamic schools” (Ibid.).

Since its independence, Maldives adopted a policy not to allow military base of any world power although the Wartime British air base on its Gan Island in Addu Atoll continued till it was unilaterally given up in 1976. It had even rejected the proposal of Soviet Union for access to its military base in the island following the withdrawal of the British. India too never felt the need to actively harness the Maldives’ strategic potential in Indian Nation. However, when Gayoom became the president, he adopted the policy of multilateral and bilateral approach, which was quite visible during the coup against him in November 1988 which he could overcome with help from India. He sent an international appeal for political and moral support but sought military appeal only from India, as he wanted to keep the island away base from extra regional powers.

It is said that President Gayoom used Islam as a tool to marginalise his political opponents. In his presidential address to the nation on the occasion of country’s national day, he often blamed opposition for their alleged motive to bring other religions to the country. The 1997 Maldives constitution designated Islam as the official religion and law prohibits the Maldivian citizens to practise any religion other than Islam.

In 2003, posters praising Osama bin Laden appeared on the walls of a school in the Edyafushi island. A shop displaying photo of Sant Claus was attacked in 2005.

Gayoom often projected himself as supreme propagator of Islam which progressed at a remarkable state under his last thirty years continuous rule. He had repeatedly stated that “Maldivians are born Muslims”. During his tour to India in 2005 while addressing the Maldivian students he asked them not to deviate from the strict Islamic policies set by his government and advised them to “strive hard to avoid the influence of new ideas including liberalism, tolerance and outspokenness” (Minivian News). Speaking in Male on April 10, 2005, he said “Islam and freedom of this country are interconnected” (Ibid.).

“Among the roughly 180 countries of the world, Maldives is placed in the sixth position, concerning intolerance and harassment against minorities” (Ibid. dated June 12, 2005). Government of Maldives stresses that “belonging to anything else but the Muslim ideology would be against Maldivian tradition” (Ibid.).

The first Islamist terror strike was in Sultan Park of Male, the capital of Maldives on September 29, 2007 targeting the foreign tourists in which about a dozen of them were injured. Maldives police believed that the blast was a plot of Islamic militants against the tourist industry of the country. Even President Gayoom admitted that Islamist terrorism has begun to affect the peaceful image of the island. He ordered a ban on entry of Mullhas and Islamic clerics from outside Maldives without any invitation from the authorities. His government also cracked down on religious dissent banning foreign preachers and unlicensed prayer groups (AtollTime.com).

Although, a Safari clad clean shaven Gayoom has been trying to prove his moderate image, he cannot escape the responsibility of the growth of Wahhabism in Maldives which is the root of terrorism. His commitment to the promotion of hard-line Islam, constitutional ban on the practice of any other religion except Islam, the growing popularity of beards and veils, and dictates of Mullahs to shun music, to stop listening to music and watching T.V. are indications that Maldives is creeping towards its Talibanisation. Reports about growing number of youths from Maldives supporting the militant philosophy of Jihad also suggest the rise of militant Islam in this country. Sultan Park incident has not only confirmed it but has also sent a signal that Islamist terrorism which starts from Pakistan has discovered a new route of terrorism via Maldives to support the Islamist groups in southern Indian states, where a number of terror attacks took place last year. In the absence of adequate security forces and advanced arms and equipments Maldives may not be capable to destroy the sleeping cells of terrorists.

India occupies the core position among South Asian countries and therefore, its natural concern is to protect its national interest from the inevitable consequence of the changing geo-strategic influence in the region. It is already facing the challenge of Mullah-Military alliance in Pakistan, Bangladesh and from the growth of Islamic radicalism in Sri Lanka. But Maldives, an integral part of South Asia and a member of South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) has failed to construct a secular structure during last thirty years rule of President Gayoom, which allowed the extreme Islamist groups of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India to transform the Islamic society of his country to a more conservative nation and active form.

India is thus facing the unabated challenge of Islamist terrorism that get embedded in neighbouring countries. This should be cause for concern.

(The author can be reached at e-mail ramashray60@rediffmail.com)

Ire, indifference after closure of 'objectionable exhibition'

Chennai, March 7 : Anger and indifference are the two main reactions expressed here Friday following Thursday's closure of an "objectionable exhibition" organised by French journalist and political commentator Francois Gautier at the Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA).

The exhibition claimed to "expose the misdeeds against Hinduism during the Mughal period".

Following Muslim protests, the exhibition of paintings and reproductions of Arabic and Persian documents alluding to destruction of Hindu shrines at the LKA here since Monday was closed down to "prevent a law and order situation".

"We had no other option but to close it down. Some Muslims objected to it citing wrong inferences drawn from Arabic texts which could not be independently deciphered by anyone here," Rm Palaniappan, the secretary of the Chennai LKA told IANS.

"We requested the removal of some objectionable materials - including a few illustrations of temples being pulled down during the era of Mughal emperor Aurangazeb - thrice as their display is against our rules.

"Our facility is purely meant for showcasing contemporary art. When the representatives of Francois Gautier refused to heed our requests, we had no other option but to close it down after a police complaint.

"Since we wanted to prevent a law and order situation here developing out of an objectionable exhibition, we had to pull the shutters down," Palaniappan said.

A furious Hindu Front leader Rama Gopalan has a different version.

"The incident makes it clear that we are being prevented from publicly exhibiting historically documented facts. The exhibition of Gautier - which had been shown successfully elsewhere in India earlier - was vandalised by Islamic goons and closed down by the LKA officials with police protection to pander to the crude tastes of the minority community.

"If persons like M.F. Hussain can be allowed to openly denigrate Hindu deities in the name or art in similar institutions in India, can't an impartial foreign commentator be permitted to depict facts per se? In a nutshell, this is simple and straight fascism," Gopalan told IANS.

"The press has twisted facts to fit into a pattern that suits saffron apologists," said Commissioner of Police Nanchil Kumaran.

Director General of Police P. Rajendiran said: "Notwithstanding what my colleague (Kumaran) said, the simple fact is that a law and order situation has been averted. No news, in our opinion, is good news."

Artists view the matter differently.

"It is a very sad thing to happen. Art is something where there is total freedom of expression. Why are they making religion such a big issue? It is totally unfair.

"There is nothing obscene in exhibiting Mughal paintings. Look at the west, which has given artists complete freedom. If such things happen in a democratic country like ours, what can you say," said leading contemporary artist Kanchan Chander.

"There have been protests. We protested against politicians who targeted M.F. Husain branding his works anti-national, but nothing really came of them. I am a Hindu, but I respect every religion," Chander added.

Gautier was unavailable for comment.

Why not relocate Siddhivinayak to tackle terror threat, asks HC

20 Sep 2007, 0118 hrs IST,TNN

MUMBAI: "Why can't you think of relocating the Siddhivinayak temple?" This was the question Justice J N Patel of the Bombay High Court asked the temple trust on Wednesday as he and Justice Amjad Syyed were confronted with concerns from local residents about the inconvenience caused by the wall surrounding the famous temple.

The judge made this suggestion as he observed that the wall was not adequate protection for the temple in the wake of perceived security threat.

"Is a wall the solution?" the judge asked and remarked that there were so many high-rise towers around the temple that a rocket could easily be fired over the wall.

The judge even suggested that the temple could be relocated to Goregaon's Aarey milk colony. The reference to Aarey perhaps stemmed from the fact that the previous matter before the bench discussed the availability of open space at the milk colony.

Senior counsel C J Sawant, who represented the Siddhivinayak temple trust, said the wall was suggested as a security measure by the police after intelligence experts, including RAW and international agencies, reported a perceived threat to the deity and suggested that safety steps be taken.

The wall is not at the instance of the police nor the trustees, he said, adding, "I am fully aware that a wall is not enough protection."

Government pleader K R Belosay pointed out that the attack on Akshardham was carried out using a jeep laden with explosives and the wall is the only safety measure. Justice Patel did not seem convinced. He observed, "If intelligence agencies work properly then it (such attacks) will not happen."

The exchange between the judge and Sawant went on for a while with the lawyer for the trust saying that, "even a past prime minister was not protected against a terrorist attack. We must not deny the existence of even mythological figures. There is no question of rejecting the devotion of the people in the Siddhivinayak temple where celebrities come walking from Bandra and Juhu as do common people."

Meanwhile, the court allowed petitioner Vinod Desai and other residents who reside in the temple's vicinity to challenge a recent BMC resolution which officially gave its approval to the construction of the multi-crore wall around the temple that took away about half the existing road. The resolution was passed despite about 900 objections received from local residents who pointed out the inconveniences caused by the wall.

However, towards the end of the hearing, the judges asked the state and temple trust to see if there was any other way out to ensure the safety of the temple and, given the technological advances in surveillance methods, to see if the wall could be removed.

South India covered by Islamic terror blanket

September 17, 2007

By Haran B.R.

The Chennai edition of The New Indian Express dated 17th February 2007 reported as follows:

The 'Q' branch of the state police is now concerned about the formation of a new Islamic outfit, "Popular Front of India" (PFI), a coordinated effort between three organizations – Karnataka For Dignity (KFD), Karnataka, Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP), Tamil Nadu, and National Development Front (NDF), Kerala. The new organization was launched on Friday (16th February) in Bangalore, 'to coordinate & strengthen grass root level developmental activities through out the country' followed by an 'Empower India' conference in the garden city. Though the organization's agenda has been well spelt out – democracy & social justice, the state police fear that the organization had been set up to propagate hardliner ideology. A 'Q' branch official had said, "What is worrying us is the fact that a majority of the leaders of this new front belonged to the now banned SIMI". The decision to launch Popular Front of India (PFI) has been taken at a conference of KFD, MNP & NDF held on 22nd November 2006 at Calicut. The leaders of PFI include, K.M.Shareef, President of KFD, Gulam Muhammed, leader of MNP and Abdur Rahman Baqari of NDF and they have decided to confine their activities to South India.

This shocking report, deserved to be a 'Top Story', was published only in New Indian Express, that too only on the third page.

It is an open secret that the NDF has been unleashing terror in Kerala right from day one. This organization is alleged to have been involved in the murdering of many cadres belonging to RSS, BJP & other Hindu Organisations, with the support of CPM goondas and their student wings DYFI & SFI. Both the then Congress government & the present Communist government have miserably failed to check the violence & terror unleashed by NDF. This organization is alleged to receive huge funds from Gulf countries to conduct its operations. It is reported in Kerala media that, Pan Indian & South Asian terror groups are operating across the state. It is believed that, after the banning of SIMI & ISS (Islamic Seva Sangh), the terrorists belonging to those outfits changed their name & operate as National Developmen Front.

Similarly, the Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP) has been very active in Coimbatore & Theni districts of Tamil Nadu. Some six months back, a few MNP activists were arrested in Coimbatore for plotting to murder a Hindu activist and to plant bombs in crowded areas. MNP involves in conversion and is conducting classes in the name of 'Arivagam' in Theni, to brain wash new converts, train them and recruit them in to Jihad squads, as reported by Ms. Jaya Menon in the 'Indian Express' dated 26th July 2006. The disturbing factor is that both Theni & Coimbatore are close to Kerala borders and hence MNP can easily coordinate with NDF. When SIMI was banned, its TN Unit changed its name as Tamilaga Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) and when Jayalalitha government banned 'Al Umma' after the Coimbatore serial blasts, the outfit is alleged to have changed its name as Manitha Neethi Pasarai (MNP) and continued its shady activities. Very recently the Jihadis belonging to these groups have murdered Kumar Pandian, Hindu Munnani activist in Thenkasi. A few days back, these militants also attacked Pandian's brother and he sustained grievous injuries. Even now, MNP's wall writings & messages can be found in the streets of Muslim dominated Triplicane, under the nose of Chennai police.

Likewise, the KFD (Karnataka for Dignity) has also spread its tentacles through out Karnataka as evidenced by the violence unleashed in Bangalore recently in the name of protests against Saddam's hanging. It is reported that this organization is aiding & abetting the terrorists from organizations like LeT in executing their missions like the attack on the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. These militants are also responsible for the recent murder of Sukhanand Shetty , BJP Taluk President in Mangalore. The vehicle used by these militants in that operation was bearing a TN registration number, which points to the fact that KFD is connected with MNP. Also, the entire coastal belt from Calicut in Kerala to Karwar in Karnataka seems to be under the control of Islamic militants, which points to the coordination between KFD & NDF.

With regards to Andhra Pradesh, the strength of the Muslim organizations is an open secret and the twin cities of Hyderabad & Secunderabad have born the brunt of terror & violence many times. The Pakistani ISI has made inroads deep inside Andhra Pradesh and developed close contacts with the naxalite outfits and has formed many 'sleeper cells', as per media reports.

Apart from targeting innocent Hindus, Hindu organizations and their leaders, these terror outfits have also threatened to attack Vidan Sabhas, IT Majors, MNCs and even Nuclear installations.

In this kind of a terror struck scenario, the concerned state governments are supposed to be on alert and are expected to deal with the situations with hands of iron & nerves of steel. Are they doing so? Unfortunately not. Immediately after coming back to power both the Communist government of Kerala and the DMK government of Tamil Nadu have come together in attempting to obtain the release of the inhuman & dreaded terrorist Abdul Nazar Madhani on the so-called humanitarian grounds, and having failed in their attempt, the TN government has changed the prison cell of Madhani in to an Ayurvedic center, where he can enjoy a cushy life. The DMK government also issued a GO for the release of some nine Al Umma activists from the Palayamkottai prison, Thirunelveli. Despite catching some cadres of MNP in Coimbatore on the charges of plotting to kill Hindu leaders and conspiring to plant bombs, the TN police has said that it would simply monitor the activities of MNP, due to the influence of TMMK leadership with the state government. Just before the elections, the Kerala assembly, which is flooded with pseudo secularists, unanimously passed a resolution for the release of Madhani from Coimbatore prisons, which is an unprecedented action in the history of India. The NDF is striking at will, as & when it wishes, in Kerala and the Communist government seems to turn a blind eye towards it. In Karnataka, while the BJP as an ally is putting a lot of pressure on Chief Minister Kumaraswamy to take action on Islamic militants, the Chief Minister may act like Mayawathi after his turn of Chief Ministership is over, forcing the state for yet another election. Even otherwise, the steps & measures taken by him to curtail Islamic militancy are not convincing, as his party is also known for its pseudo-secularist credentials. With regards to Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister Samuel Reddy is a known Muslim appeaser and he always follows the footsteps of his Italian Boss in dividing the Muslims & Hindus, so that, his Christian objectives can be achieved silently & easily.

There seems to be coordination between Naxalites – Maoists of AP & Islamic militants through ISI in the formation of sleeper modules. There seems to be a connection between LTTE & the AP naxalites as evidenced by the huge cache of 'rockets' in Chennai & Andhra. There seems to be an alarming increase in the LTTE activities in Tamil Nadu, as proved by the recent captures of LTTE cadres along with boats full of arms, ammunition & explosives including suicide jackets. Now, the three individual organizations KFD, MNP & NDF have formed a combined outfit PFI with an aim of focusing only on South India. A clear network & coordination of all these anti-national organizations in future cannot be ruled out. It is sad & unfortunate that we have governments in the center as well as the southern states formed by Minority appeasing pseudo secularists, who do not seem to have realized the gravity of the situation. The following statement of the 'Q' branch official to the New Indian Express marks this callous attitude: "It is unfortunate that the Hindutva hardliners have been working as a catalyst and in turn forcing the religious minorities to think on hard lines". This statement of travesty is a real tragedy.

Infertility can be cured, but not impotency. Our central and southern state governments are impotent when it comes to security.

Jai Hind! Vandemataram!

Agitation by Muslims against installing Ganesh idol

Chennai, Sep 15 : Tension prevailed at Thammampatti village in Salem district of Tamil Nadu when about 200 Muslims resorted to a road blockade, objecting to the installation of an idol of Lord Ganesh in the vicinity of a mosque.
Reports received at the police headquarters here said a group of Hindu people had installed a giant idol of the elephant-headed God on the occasion of Vinayaka Chathurthi, about 80 metres away from the mosque.

A group of Muslims took exception to it, stating that it was installed opposite the mosque's entrance and demanded that it be shifted. They resorted to the road blockade to press their demand, leading to tension in the area.

Police and Revenue officials were holding talks to resolve the issue amicably.

--- UNI

Renaming ‘Muslim Indian’

Tuesday August 7 2007 13:32 IST
S GURUMURTHY

An interesting story and instructive too. Kafeel Ahmed, an Islamist Jihadi - who, along with his brother, Dr Sabeel Ahmed, planned to blow up the Glasgow airport - has succumbed to the burns he inflicted on himself to do what he intended to but fortunately failed to.

Indians, particularly Muslims among them, are rightly indignant that the two Bangaloreans have trashed the reputation of Indians as peace-loving people and also added the Muslims in India to the list of global terror suspects and Al-Qaeda sympathisers. Yes, for their acts which have done irreversible damage to Muslims in India and outside as much as to Indians and India, they are rightly demonised. But without sounding perverse, can it be said that what they have done has also the potential to do good to India, to its Muslims? How? Read on.

First, to partition India and its people, Mohammed Ali Jinnah divided the people who were just Indians into ‘Indians’ and ‘Muslims’ and got Pakistan exclusively for Muslims who refused to be Indians, leaving the mainland India as the motherland for the rest of Indians including Muslims. So, at the dawn of freedom, it was Pakistan for Muslims and India for Indians. Next, post-freedom, national political leaders divided Indians into vote banks, classified them according to their faith and identified an Indian national who was a Muslim as ‘Indian Muslim’. Third, thanks to communal and votebank politics that began eroding the nationalist sentiments built during freedom struggle, the religious identity of a Muslim in India was, in post-Partition India, becoming more and more emphatic than his identity as an Indian. Fourth, with this designed trend deepening, Islamist leaders who were driving this trend, would not tolerate the religious identity of a Muslim appearing next in order after his national identity as an Indian.

They insisted that a Muslim in India was a Muslim first and then an Indian! That is to say he was not just an ‘Indian’ or ‘Indian Muslim’, but a ‘Muslim Indian’. So from ‘Indian’ to ‘Indian Muslim’ to ‘Muslim Indian’ - the design was clearly to distance the Muslim from India to integrate him in global Islam.

The Islamist leader who expounded why the Muslim in India was not an ‘Indian Muslim’ but ‘Muslim Indian’ was not an Islam-centric Imam or Mulla like the ones who lead the Talibans for instance. He was Syed Shahabuddin, a well-educated, ex-diplamat with global experience. Atal Behari Vajpayee as the foreign minister in the Janata Government in 1977 had become so fond of Shahabuddin, that the diplomat was inspired to quit service, enter politics. But, soon he began articulating Islamic politics, turned an Islamic leader in early 1980s, nevertheless being in a secular party! He detested the fact that the identity ‘Indian Muslim’ places the religious identity of ‘Muslim’ behind and lower than the national identity ‘Indian’ and therefore gives secondary importance to it. He insisted that the two identities be re-ordered the other way round, that is, ‘Muslim’ first and ‘Indian’ next, as ‘Muslim Indian’.

The intent was obvious. The Islamic religious identity was a greater, even global, identity than national identity as Indian and so it has to be ahead of the national identity. Shahabuddin even ran a journal ‘Muslim Indian’ to reinforce his Islamic view that a Muslim’s religious identity supersedes his national identity. The idea was to take the Muslim in India closer to the global Islamic identity and away from his national identity. No one from the Islamic community, yes no one, objected to this thoroughly antinational identity politics that was, more dangerously, camaflouged as secular. Far from it, this made Shahabuddin the intellectual icon of the Islamic community.

The seculars, as usual, were petrified at the loss of Muslim votes if they objected to Islamic identity being placed ahead of India and if they insisted on reversing it. Shahabuddin also hijacked the Islamic leadership in the Ayodhya controversy and of course led the community to disastrous consequences, by his militant stand that pre-empted any possibility of a solution to the temple issue. Before Shahabuddin was consigned to political oblivion, the damage he intended to do had been fully done; his identity theory confused the Muslims in India as to what comes first: their religion or country. In this identity politics even cross-border Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and terror attacks on Indian people were underplayed by pseudo-secular politics as that might alienate Muslim votebanks of secular parties.

Thanks to Muslim-secular votebank politics and spurred by Muslimappeasement manifest in political acts like the mindless overturning of the Shanbano ruling by the Supreme Court, Indian political theatre was getting polarised between pseudo-secularism and, as a reaction, the Hindutva movement, through the Ayodhya issue, through the 1980s and, particularly, 1990s.

Simultaneously globally, the global Islamic forces had no one to target, in the post-cold war era, after the Soviets ceased to be; so they began to target their benefactor, the US itself. The cold war between Islamists and the US through the 1990s finally peaked in the most violent terror attack on the US on September 11, 2001. It did not take too long for the West to openly admit the terror that targets the US and the West was Islamic in its drive. Thus the secular world began openly to identify terror with Islam. For a while the US President George Bush chose to be politically correct, like the seculars in India, by not prefixing Islamic identity to terror; in contrast in his address on September 20, 2001, to the US Senate and Congress, he even certified that Islam was a peaceful religion, for which he even earned the derisive title ‘Imam Bush’.

It did not however need a seer to confirm that the terrorists had had a religious motive and were inspired by Islam as they viewed it, to die to masskill. Despite all efforts to be politically correct, the prefix of Islam has now stuck to terror in global debate. Those who were against political correctness in defining terror argue that unless terror is Islamic it does not explain why all terrorists drawn from different countries, now including India, have only one thing common among them - and that is Islam. As the core of global debate on terror is about its Islamic drive, the aborted terror of Kafeel and Sabeel is seen by the world as evidence of Muslims of India making debut in global Islamic terror.

This is what has damaged both India and Muslims in India. This damage in the global theatre is beyond the capacity of seculars and Muslim leaders in India to contain. So, their effort now to abandon the emphasis on Islamic identity and fall back on the identity of Muslims in India as Indians. The effort today is to do the reverse of what Shahabuddin once insisted. That is a move away from the global Muslim identity - that started in the early 20th century tryst with Wahabism in India and perpetuated by pre-partition and secular politics - and a move back to the Indian national identity. The global Muslim identity which tormented the Muslims in India is now not a pride but a burden. Hence the chorus ‘Kafeel and Sabeel are Indians’; the plea to “not identity them by their religion as Muslims”!

Will Shahabuddin repeat the philosohy of ‘Muslim Indian’ today? Never. Yes, ironically, thanks to Kafeel and Sabeel adding Indian Muslim as participants in Islamic terror, outside India, particularly the West, a saner Muslim from India does not want to be known as ‘Muslim Indian’ as Shahabuddin asserted earlier. He would prefer to be an Indian and just that, in and outside India, particularly in the West.

Has not what Kafeel and Sabeel have done the potential to undo the damage done to India and Muslims in India by Jinnahs and Shahabuddins? Has it not the potential to rename the ‘Muslim Indian’ into ‘Indian’? Yes it has. A caveat: But, will the seculars and Muslim leaders tolerate a Muslim in India being just an Indian, not ‘Indian Muslim’ and ‘Muslim Indian’? The future will answer and it alone can.

Send responses to comment@epmltd.com

Terrorism feeds on UPA policies

Terrorism feeds on UPA policies
by Balbar K Punj

The Congress is playing a numbers game to justify sops to a particular community. The flawed Sachar Committee report has been subverted by another conundrum: The count of people who have died in all jihadi terror attacks in the country published by different newspapers. In the last decade, India has suffered the largest number of deaths due to terrorist attacks anywhere in the world save Iraq. The number is as high as 53,000 -- a toll higher than all the deaths in the wars that India has fought.

The UPA Government last May projected its 'achievements' in the three years of its rule. What was deliberately left out was the death toll on account of extremism. The Mumbai train blasts of July 11, 2006 killed 187 people. Despite this large casualty and the several hundred families that have been left without their sole bread-earners, the Prime Minister did not remember the event on its anniversary this year. This is the same person who went sleepless when an Indian doctor was held in Australia on suspicion of his involvement in terrorist activities. That the accused was subsequently released after being cleared is a different story altogether.

In New York, on every anniversary of the killing of over 3,000 people by jihadis on September 11, 2001, the US commemorates the event and keeps the nation on the alert against any subsequent onslaught. In India, the Congress and its allies do not even mention any terrorist by name, nor do they hold any commemorative ceremony to remember the innocents the jihadis have killed.

The ruling class talks of peace as if terror is just a passing phase. This sends wrong signals to the citizens whose cooperation is needed to suppress terror. The ruling coalition has turned a Nelson's eye on the scourge of terror, making it look as a mere act of some 'misguided youth'. Thus, it has deliberately avoided declaring an all-out war against terror as its main policy focus. How can the people be inspired to unite against all jihadi elements hiding in society?

The result is a depressingly familiar but ineffective drill once any terrorist attack takes place. The place where the event occurs is not even cordoned off and the VIPs and lesser fries romp around to be seen on television. In the process, they destroy vital evidence. Soon it is back to business -- they sympathise with 'misguided youth' and refuse to see them as people who preach terror, are determined to destroy the Indian state in the name of upholding a particular religion globally.

The Government remains in perpetual denial and, along with the 'secularists', plays down the acts of terror as isolated events, not as evidence of a vital link in the global war that extremists have unleashed on all others. The denial also serves the purpose of masking the international dimensions of the threat. Thus, the ruling establishment and its Marxist allies together are the best allies that the jihadis could have prayed for.

This approach of the ruling establishment to the pervasive threat of terror differs radically from the international approach -- be it of the US, Canada, the UK, Spain, France, Australia or any other country. Even Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia recognise the worldwide dimensions of this threat, but not India. The very title of the US Patriot Act differentiates terror mongers from other citizens of the country. This American law's provisions, too, are tough on terrorists, their abetters and financiers.

National Security Adviser MK Narayanan has publicly declared that funds for terrorists are coming into the country though a widely distributed money laundering network in the form of remittances. But what has the Government done so far to stop this funding? Should not the banks be asked to find out the remitter's whereabouts and his/ her capability of sending so much money and what relationship the remitter has with the beneficiary? Almost all countries have taken such steps to stop terror-funding -- but our Government has been lethargic. The horrifying face of jihadis supported by Marxists is lurking behind the UPA Government and the Congress.

How the Congress has allowed itself to be led by a minor party, MIM, on such a sensitive matter as terrorism is seen in the case of the Mecca Masjid bombings. Intelligence agencies had prior information from a person arrested at the Bangladesh border about large-scale landing and distribution of RDX from Pakistan and Bangladesh. According to newspaper reports, they wanted to search and locate the foot soldiers of this operative. But surprise of surprises, the Andhra Pradesh Government refused permission to the authorities concerned on the fear that it would inflame Muslim sentiments. For such ill-founded apprehension, these arrested people had to be released. The latest Hyderabad bombings showed just the predictable result.

If further proof is needed for the velvet glove the UPA Government and its Left supporters are extending to terrorists, look at the dilly-dallying over the execution of Mohammed Afzal, the mastermind behind the attack on Parliament House, ordered by the Supreme Court. A Congress Chief Minister openly says that he wants the Government not to carry out the sentence. Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil refuses to reveal what exactly the situation of the convicted man is.

The Left parties and many self-styled socialists are raising the 'larger issue' of how the sensitivity of one community might be affected if the sentence is carried out. This means that there are two laws in this country -- one for non-Muslims and another for Muslims. And the latter are exempt from punishment that the law prescribes for all criminals. Is that the message that the UPA Government wants to send? If so, is it not encouraging terrorists to strike anywhere without fearing any retaliation by the state?

The general reluctance to crack down on the merchants of terror for alleged fear of its impact on the Muslim community is a clear admission by the Government of India that for the vote-bank of this community, it can sell the country down the drain. It also, by implication, justifies the 'angst' of the community and finds a rationale for its demonstrated sympathy for those who take to terrorism as a 'justifiable' outlet of 'grievance'. More than anything else, look at the reaction of the Marxists to the Hyderabad carnage as has been detailed in the People's Democracy. Nowhere does the CPI(M)'s mouthpiece condemn the killings.

How US foiled a 9/11 repeat

Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, Hindustan Times
New York City, September 07, 2007

It is a 9/11 anniversary ritual. With the date approaching, Bush administration officials are everywhere pointing out it’s now been six years and the US has yet to experience a sequel to Al Qaeda’s first spectacular terrorist attack.

Vice-President Dick Cheney attributes it to administration policy: "There has not been another attack on the US. And that is not an accident.” But experts say the source of US immunity is more complex.

What is termed “Al Qaeda” has two distinct overseas elements. One is a core group centred around Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. The other is Al Qaeda affiliates operating in regions like Iraq and North Africa.

There is broad agreement that Bin Laden was rendered impotent for nearly five years by the US overthrow of the Taliban. “He didn’t expect the success of the initial US response in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda and the Taliban were in disarray. They lost their base of operations, they were fleeing,” says Cato Institute analyst Stanley Kober.

Another inhibitor: Al Qaeda’s own psychology. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a vice-president of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies, says, “Al Qaeda set a very high bar for itself: Zawahiri cancelled a chemical attack on the New York subway because it wasn’t on the level of 9/11.”

There is a sense Al Qaeda's capabilities were exaggerated just after 9/11. When the Terrorism Index recently asked 100 US foreign policy experts what they thought was "the principal reason" the US had not experienced a second terror strike, a plurality of 35% said it was because Al Qaeda's "reach and capabilities" were "not as great as portrayed".

Regional Al Qaeda groups, on the other hand, seem uninterested in attacking the US homeland. Their focus is strictly local. The Iraqi and Afghan affiliates have no shortage of US soldiers to kill. Al Qaeda North Africa sees Spain and France as its main enemies. P.J. Crowley, homeland security expert at the Center for American Progress, says, "In Iraq we provided Al Qaeda an opportunity to inflict considerable damage on the US without having to enter the US." US soldiers in Iraq probably absorb a few thousand jihadis who want to strike a blow against the Great Satan.

However, few US analysts are complacent about the future. Gartenstein-Ross says, "Our weakest link is that we are losing ground overseas. Al Qaeda has regained a safe haven in Pakistan's tribal areas."

With a haven, comes the luxury of plotting. Says intelligence expert Amy Zegart of the University of California-Los Angeles, "Al Qaeda's planning cycle is notoriously long. The 1998 African embassy bombings were at least five years in the making, as was 9/11." Eighteen per cent of the Terrorism Index respondents believe Bin Laden is "patiently planning" for a second attack.

America Effective

In the past 13 months, the US has broken up at least three separate homegrown Islamic terrorist plots at the planning stage. A plot to bomb a Manhattan train tunnel was picked up by FBI monitoring of jihadi websites and encompassed police in six countries. A store clerk asked to copy a jihadi video on to a DVD tipped off police about an attack on a New Jersey military base. And two months ago, US security officials arrested a group wanting to blow up a fuel pipeline at JFK Airport thanks to a police informant.

Experts ascribe the US ability to avoid the sort of low-level terror attacks that trouble the UK, Indonesia and India to a number of reasons.

n The US has dramatically ramped up the counter-terrorism abilities of the FBI and its police since 9/11. "Intelligence is the spearhead of counter-terrorism," says Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside Al Qaeda. "By investing in intelligence, the US, Canada, Europe and Australia have prevented over 100 terrorist attacks since 9/11." The US, with 16 separate intelligence agencies with a spook budget of at least $50 billion, maintains an easy global lead in electronic and signal espionage.

This has been combined with "Al Capone prosecutions". Explains Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the anti-terrorism Foundation for the Defence of Democracies: "As plots tend to be disrupted at the early stages it is hard to win terrorism convictions. The defendants claim their threats were just talk. So former attorney-general John Ashcroft devised a strategy of charging them for the lesser crimes often committed in preparing an attack." This includes credit card fraud, illegal weapons possession and immigration violations.

US authorities also incorporate common people into their counter terrorism network. Truck drivers, garbage men, sales clerks and building security men are urged to report anything unusual to law enforcement officers. Many receive basic training on what to watch out for. Many breakthroughs in US homegrown terrorism cases have come from persons on the street. New York City pays for television ads thanking the over 14,000 people who reported suspicious activity to the police last year.

Most experts feel the "war on terror" has done little damage to civil rights, at least within US borders. The best attribute of US counter-terrorism, says terror analyst James Carafano of the conservative Heritage Foundation, is it does "a very good job of protecting and respecting the civil liberties of individuals…It does a poor job of defending itself against spurious allegations of abuse or incompetence."

The judiciary's assertiveness is a key reason. The Bush administration's early belief "the civilian judiciary could not handle terrorists" has been repeatedly undercut by the US courts, points out intelligence expert P.J. Crowley. "Extra-legal actions like Guantanamo Bay have been counterproductive." The US public are also more individualistic. Amy Zegart says that in the UK, university students asked authorities for more surveillance cameras. "I cannot imagine that coming from US students."

Muslim Mindset

The other strength of the US: its Muslim community has been resistant to radicalization. Gartenstein-Ross says, "There is a cognizable difference between Muslims in the US and those in Europe. In Europe we see a refusal to assimilate, open manifestations of radicalisation." When Britain's MI5 chief last year said the UK was simultaneously monitoring 30 terror plots, 200 networks and 1,600 individuals, a FBI official publicly said the US domestic threat was on a much smaller and less organised scale.

The overall fact, says Crowley, is "democracies tend to be vulnerable to terrorism, but tend not to produce terrorists." And some democracies are better than others in not driving people to violence.

Not perfect

When a think tank asked 100 Washington foreign policy experts earlier this month what was the likelihood of a Madrid bomb blast-type terrorist attack in the US, 83 said they expected one in the next five years. Despite nearly six years of homeland security success under its belt, the US establishment is not confident of the future.

One obvious reason is bin Laden's successful regrouping in Pakistan. Says Gartenstein-Ross, "Last August's airplane plot in the UK was the first to emerge from the new safe haven. We can expect to see more of this variety." The other are the training grounds for Islamic fighters that exist not only in Iraq but also Somalia.

However, US terrorism experts are concerned at the virulent "down with Uncle Sam" attitude across the world. Says PJ Crowley: "The extent to which we are admired and favoured doesn't make us immune to terror, but it has served us well historically. Less violence has been directed against the US than most other countries." Rohan Gunaratna agrees: "The US is very good at operational counter terrorism: killing, capturing and disrupting operations. The US is very weak in winning hearts and minds of Muslims."

n The US needs to restore multilateralism to the heart of its counter-terrorism strategy. The present strategy, says Crowley, is overly dependent on military action - actions that have strained US relations with the world. "The solution is not a charm offensive, the US should pursue its national interest. But we have lost the sense of shared purpose we enjoyed with much of the world."

It is a view crossing ideological lines. "We can't do it alone. The problem of terrorism is international and consequently it will require an international solution," says Stanley Kober. "There is much we can all learn from each other in combating international terror," agrees James Carafano.

India is a country most believe should be at the forefront of such US anti-terrorism efforts. Crowley points out democracies work best with each other in fighting terror, particularly if they share Anglo-Saxon laws. Says Gartenstein-Ross, "India really understands this problem first hand. Russia and China have some experience. But terrorism is much more a pressing problem in India and, more than most, it is steeped in democratic values. Indo-US cooperation is more likely, especially as concerns grow over Pakistan."

Roots of Islamic fundamentalism

By Shyam Khosla

Perceptive commentators, including liberal Muslims, have at long last started questioning the conventional wisdom that certain “misguided” youth are indulging in Islamic terror and that Western foreign policy and economic and educational backwardness are propelling Muslims on the path of fundamentalism and terror. Noted scholar and commentator, Hasan Suroor has put the issue in perspective by asking the community to realize that Islamist terrorists are not simply “misguided” individuals acting on a whim but that they are people “who know what they are doing and they are doing it deliberately in the name of Islam”. However perverted their interpretation, he argues, it remains an interpretation of Islam and it is not enough to condemn their actions or accuse them of hijacking Islam without doing anything about it. Other liberal writers too have cautioned the Muslim community to wake up to the dangers that these extremist elements pose to the community and the society at large. A prominent European Muslim scholar, Zaiduddin Sardar, argues that it is for the Muslims to have some honest introspection and trace the roots of Islamic terrorism. He argues that Islamists are nourished by an Islamic tradition that is “intrinsically inhuman and violent in its rhetoric, thought and practice”. This places a unique burden on Muslims as they try to make sense of what their co-religionists are doing in the name of Islam. He significantly points out that because he is a Muslim, he believes it is his responsibility to “critically examine” the tradition that sustains terrorists who act in the name of Islam.

It goes to the credit of Suroor that he made an earnest effort to kick-start a public debate into the factors that breed Islamist extremism and terror. He laments that the community is in perpetual denial and it tends to paint itself as the victim and blames “others” instead of looking inwards. The Muslim community, he says, has betrayed an unwillingness to acknowledge either the scale of the problem or its nature and traces this mindset to “the fear of making the community or Islam look bad”. This attitude, he argues, has created a strange silence around issues that “lie at the heart of the Islamist debate”. The Muslims argument about “external factors” - plight of Muslims in Palestine and Iraq and educational and economic backwardness of the community because of racial or religious discrimination - are not based on ground realities. Suroor is pained that instead of doing some honest introspection, the community has talked itself into a “default position” in regard to the growing Islamic fundamentalism. The perception that Muslims refuse to admit the extent of their own responsibility in dealing with it, he says, is no longer confined to “right-wing Muslim bashers” and that even liberal position is shifting.

It is not for nothing that people all over the world are deeply concerned about the happenings within the Muslim community and look at them with suspicion. Several reformed extremists have shocked the world with their inside stories. Their vivid descriptions of goings on within the community under the garb of religious education and the manner in which certain terror outfits are brainwashing educated and well off Muslims turning them into terrorists are revealing. One of them, Ed Hussain, in his recent book ‘The Islamist” has told his harrowing journey to “hell and back”. He joined Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT) - a radical Muslim outfit banned in several countries - via a religious organisation, Jammat-e-Islami in London. Hussain says HuT leaders’ self-assurance, their fine oratory and extraordinary organisational skills made the outfit an instant hit with the British Muslim youth looking for a purpose in life. Soon, British campuses were teeming with Hizb supporters and contrary to the view that it is it only socially or culturally alienated Muslims who tend to gravitate towards extremism, they included the cream of British born Muslims - educated and successful professionals - who had no apparent reasons to be alienated.

British Muslims, whose parents had sent them to universities for education, returned as dogmatic zealots linked to a network of speakers spreading venom across Britain, the former extremists aver. He confesses that the Hizb conned him into believing that it had a clear-cut vision and blueprint to achieve its aim, namely establishment of a caliphate. Ed rose to be a member of the HuT’s secret cell structure but soon realised that behind the mask, it was essentially a gang of “swaggering thugs” who knew nothing of Islam but were using it to achieve political power. Their strong arm tactics against “kafirs”, their total rejection of democracy which they think is anti-Islam because of its Greek roots and their belief in violence as a legitimate means to seek their bizarre goal of establishing caliphate began to worry him. The tipping point came when a Hut vigilante knifed a black Christian youth to death simply because he was bullying his Muslim college mates. Another reformed British extremist, Hasan Bhatt, says he used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that sole cause of Islamic terror was Western foreign policy. Intellectuals fail to recognise the role of Islamic ideology that preaches a separatist message of “Islamic supremacy” and seeks to establish a “puritanical caliphate”. Butt too was an activist of the HuT that is notorious for recruiting jehadis in mosques and university campuses. While admitting that he was enraged by the plight of fellow Muslims across the globe, Bhatt insists that what drove him and many of his peers to plot acts of terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that they were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.

Nearer home, most Indian Muslims are still in denial. They argue that the community shouldn’t be blamed for the violent acts of certain “misguided youth”. Terrorists, they say, has no religion and in any case, all terrorists are not Muslims. They refer to ULFA, Naxals and LTTE that are no less vicious and dangerous and angrily ask why they are not described as Hindu terrorists. The simple answer is that neither of these banned terrorist outfits claim that they are in the business of terror to establish Hindu supremacy or that they are inspired by Hindu religion to indulge in violence. ULFA and LTTE are essentially separatist movements and all the three are politically inspired with no religious overtones. Evading the real issue will not do. To begin with, let the community have an intense and open debate to identify the pernicious roots of the jehadi ideology and its philosophy of establishing a Dar-ul-Islam by violent means. Anger or despair can’t be the motivation for terror for a Muslim from an upper middle class family in a democratic society against a country that is host to his ambitions. A serious and sincere effort will have to be made to demystify Islam and take it out of the hate-mongers.

Non-Muslims are systematically persecuted in Muslim countries

Tuesday, July 17th 2007
Dear Editor,

I kept Sultan Khan's letter, "Christendom is an obsolete notion, which is anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim" (July 03, 2007) and carefully studied it. I agree with Khan's analysis regarding the concept of "Christendom." However, this is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. I wish to address the plight of Hindus and other non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

In all Islamic countries that had large Hindu populations prior to these countries becoming Islamic states, such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the Hindu population has rapidly declined due to widespread atrocities incited by a radical exposition of Islamic theology that declares non-Muslims as kafirs. In addition, these states themselves sponsor discrimination against Hindus and non-Muslim minorities. For example, in 1965, "The Enemy Property Act" was passed in Pakistan that openly incited and legitimized the confiscation of Hindu-owned lands and buildings. During 1970-71, massacres were perpetrated by the Pakistani army against Hindus. Human rights groups estimated that approximately three million Hindus were killed. Millions of Hindu women were raped and kidnapped in this period. In 1977, the military dictator, General Zia ul-Haq introduced Islamic sharia that further marginalized Hindus. Between 1989 and1992 approximately 300 Hindu temples were destroyed in Pakistan alone.

In Bangladesh, Hindus are officially and legally identified as enemies of the state. The "Enemy Property Act" of Bangladesh was put in place to confiscate lands and other properties from Hindus. This anti-Hindu law is still in place as we speak.

In all of these countries Hindu temples are still being systematically destroyed, and Hindus are denied basic human dignity. There was international outrage from non-Muslims over the demolition of several Hindu temples in Malaysia between April and May 2006, many of them more that a hundred years old. On April 21, 2006, the 107-year-old Malaimel Sri Selva Kaliamman Temple in Kuala Lumpur was reduced to rubble after the city hall sent in bulldozers. These state atrocities are committed against the most underprivileged and powerless sector, the Hindu society in Malaysia. The video of this particular temple destruction, as well as other Hindu temple demolitions in other Muslim countries are available for all to see on the internet.

Only recently, a Hindu family living in Saudi Arabia was deported for performing pooja in their home. The Saudi religious police, on a tip by Muslims, destroyed the pooja room of the devoted Hindu family and later deported them.

Despite the fate of Hindus in Islamic countries, and places where large Muslim populations exist, in Hindu India the Muslim population has been steadily rising. In India, there are several ordinances in place, and politicians are busy making more of these ordinances, to make this Hindu country a better place for Muslims. When will Muslim countries offer non-Muslims similar kind gestures? When will the Hindu population and other non-Muslim populations be allowed to grow in Muslim countries, as the Muslims have been allowed to flourish in Hindu India?

The brutality against Hindus by Islamic forces, in history, and even today, knows no parallel in human history. The Chicago Tribune (July 13, 2007) carried a news article which highlighted some of these atrocities against Hindus by Muslims in Muslim countries. These include kidnap, rape, and forcible conversion of Hindu girls.

While Muslims demand equal rights in non-Muslim countries, and they should have equal rights, non-Muslims are systematically persecuted, terrorized and ethnically cleansed from Muslim countries and many places where Muslims are a majority. Europe (non-Muslim countries) has been very kind to Muslims in comparison to the treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim countries.

Yours faithfully,
Somadatta Mahabir
Nandalall