It was not at all surprising to read the preposterous and
at the same time ludicrous arguments made by Chetan in his blog article in Times of India dated August 6, 2016, entitled “How to tackle radical Islam: The more we have dictatorships in the name of
religion the more global terrorists will persist.” Just like any arm-chair
thinker, Chetan took pot-shots at Islam (the easiest way to hog limelight and
portray oneself as an intellectual), while talking
about the US Presidential Elections and the communal statement of Donald Trump related to banning the
Muslims from entering the US in order to provide safety to the US citizens, as
in his bigoted view, the presence of Muslims puts a question mark on the safety of the citizens.
Chetan writes, “Half of America seems to support Trump,” who believes that terrorism stems
from “Radical Islam” and argues that in order to fix this problem we have to
“call a spade a spade, and point out that the broader religion of Islam itself is somehow breeding, sanctioning or at least
spinning off as a byproduct radical Islam.” Had he been even a little sincere
in his research or at least even slightly aware of the historical facts and
hypocrisy resulting from the power politics (which
even a X standard student knows), he would not have made those shallow
arguments, which sound nothing more than a broken record played by every
untalented ambitious rookie, desperately trying to sound like an intellectual.
The myth of Muslim terrorists
stands no ground if we take a mere casual look at the statistics provided by
the (Federal Bureau of Investigation) FBI documenting all the terrorist attacks
during 1970 – 2012, including a decade after 9/11. It states that out of 2400
terrorist attacks, 60 of them were carried out by
Muslims, which corresponds to a meagre 2.5% of all the attacks. This means that
an American terrorist suspect is over nine times more likely to be a non-Muslim
than a Muslim. The report further claims, there were more Jewish acts of terrorism in the United States than Islamic, yet
when was the last time we heard about the threat of Jewish terrorism in the
media? Why are not Chetan and the like crying hoarse about the non-Muslim
terrorists? Why is there a complete blackout of the
incident where the perpetrator is non-Muslim, for example, the Norwegian Anders
Breivik who killed 80 people, however no one questioned his religious
orientations or inclinations. The answer is known to all those who have eyes to
see, ears to hear and heart/mind to understand, yet
for those who want to hide behind the veil of political naivety, then in short
and simple words – anti-Islam rhetoric sells and can garner you votes and at
the same time divert the attention of people from real issues of the
world. In the year 2016 alone, the United States of America has witnessed a
massive 263 cases of mass shooting, where a total of 9,908 people have died,
but the parochial vision of Trump and his die-hard fans fail to see it as a
question of safety of citizens.
As for the question of “Radical Islam,” then the whole
world knows what the CIA did during the Cold War as they crossed all the
barriers of humanity in order to further their agenda to “bleed the Russians.”
In order to stem the expansion of the communist
ideology, the CIA supplied the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan with money
and weapons and exploited their religious beliefs for its own benefit. The CIA
gave birth and then nurtured the armed groups during its ideological war with
the USSR. The armed militias were held in high esteem
and Ronald Reagan invited the leaders of the armed militia to White House and
boosted their morale and thanked them. About the Nicaraguan rebels who were
fighting the communists, Reagan likened them with the “Founding Fathers” of the US. It was the CIA which gave rise to the
growth of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in order to finance its war effort
and hence are directly responsible for the drug menace in the region. And as
for the recent crisis of ISIS, then it is well
documented and crystallised fact that the US created the preconditions for the
rise of this radical Sunni group after invading Iraq in 2003 despite the red signal
from the United Nations.
He further goes on to justify the suspicious treatment of
Muslims which often lead to xenophobic crimes against
them. One should ask him what will happen to the society if such type of inductive reasoning is applied
to outcast the whole of the community?
He
further writes, “The reason
for so much terrorism in the name of Islam is not
just religion. It is the presence of several undemocratic, rich and resourceful
dictatorships that operate in the name of Islam.” Such statements make it clear
that either he is too naïve to understand the reality of the world or he simply
does not want to see it through an unbiased lens. It
is well documented and beyond any iota of doubt that the Muslim countries in
the Middle East and particularly the one which he mentioned by name – Saudi
Arabia – are nothing but strong allies of either America
or Britain, who wait to serve the western interests at the drop of a hat. The
truth of the matter is that these countries are only habited mainly by Muslims
but are ruled by Capitalist and traditional laws rather than being based on
Islamic Law. Hence their foreign policy is made to
favor the western states. Saudi Arabia is merely a pawn in the Global Politics
and are made to bend and fold as their puppet masters see fit. It is a brutal
dictatorship run by a fabulously wealthy family that has created, owns and controls the country to the whims and fancy of
America. It is clear to see that Saudi has no sentiment for Muslims when it
created one of the largest militant movements in Afghanistan, and that had no
relation to Islam and rather was a part of the
American foreign policy strategy to use the Muslims hatred towards atheistic
communism to fight the Russian occupation in Afghanistan. We take any despotic
ruler, be in Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah, Bashar al-Assad or any ruler for
that matter and one will not be surprised to find
them in bed with their masters.
He
makes another bizarre argument that “You cannot go to Ramlila Maidan to
demonstrate or tweet your point of view. There is no news debate on what the
ruler did wrong. You want change, pick up a gun.” The
Middle East became a
theatre of war even before the destruction of the Ottoman Empire. It was the
western forces which were hell-bent to destroy the Ottoman Caliphate for their own ulterior
motives. It was Britain and France who decided to divide the Ottoman lands under the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 and way before that they were working for
it. Since the fall of the Ottomans, there were constant attempts to suppress the people and capitalist
system was enforced upon
them. During the Cold War, it became the theatre for proxy
wars between US and USSR and afterwards the American domination continued
to make the situation chaotic. It is because of such
external influences that the Middle East suffers. Muslims are the ones who have
been continuously and systematically being killed in
millions. Right from Afghanistan, to Syria to Iraq to Beirut to Burma. In fact, 4 million Muslims have been
killed in wars since 1990. The count is appalling, yet who cares.
In
the end he gives an advice to the Muslims in India
that they should “carve out a new identity and lobby to free other Muslims in
oppressive regimes.” One may ask him what new identity he is talking about and
how does democratic set-up of India help the Muslims where they are being
killed merely on the
suspicion of storing beef, where they are being
killed in riots after riots, where they are languishing behind the bars in
false terror cases, where they are being forced to eat cow dung and beaten like
animals in public, yet no law and order comes to protect
them and where they face discriminations at all levels.
Chetan
has done nothing but a great disservice by writing such a biased viewpoint. It
seems he put aside all the ethics of the profession on the one side and tried
to jump on to the hate-Muslim bandwagon. Now, the only decent
thing he can do is to scratch the surface, study Islam and Muslim society and
the realpolitik around the globe sincerely and attempt to understand it in a
better way before writing, until then he should do what he is best at, writing
fiction.
Alifia Umm Yusuf
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