the onus is on moderate muslims

by arul s

My Dear Muslim friends,

With another thwarted terrorist attack more and more people have started equating Islam with terrorism and one often heard reply from you is “Don’t blame the whole Muslim community or Islam because of some rouge elements”. To add strength to that argument the question that is asked is why Hinduism or for that matter tamilians not blamed for the terrorist activities of LTTE.

The logic seemd perfect and when i posed the same question (FYI, I’m a tamilian and Hindu) to myself i found something that is obvious and that everyone else knows. When your life is in perpetual danger from terrorism its normal for people to get paranoid. There is saying in Tamil which goes like this: “Even one’s own shadow is a ghost if he is scared”. When people constantly hear Muslims names and organizations, it is normal for them to assume every Muslim to be a suspect. So why then Tamilians, Hindus or Christians (IRA) are not blamed as a whole?

Like I said earlier, as people hear more and more about something, they start to suspect everything that is even remotely related to it. LTTE  and IRA  differ from the Muslim terrorist outfits by the fact that their activities are confined to a specific geographical boundary and they never crossed it. Also, they fought for freedom or against repression. The whole world associated their struggle with their cause. But when it comes to Muslim terrorists, the terrorists claim that their cause is Islam and when their cause is religion it is natural that Islam is accused too.

Some of you might think that LTTE crossed their border and killed Rajiv Gandhi, then why not blame Tamilians. One must remember when LTTE killed RG the whole of Tamilnadu disowned LTTE and defeated the DMK because it sympathized with the LTTE. Every tamilian put his nationality before his tamil feeling and thereby sending a message to the whole of India and no other indian suspected a tamilian. Similarly the Sikhs disowned the Khalistan terrorists and now no one blames Sikhs that they are anti-national. Everyone is aware that the harshest critics of the Sangh Parivar are mostly hindus. Even when PLO was fighting against Israel or Taliban were fighting USSR, Islam was never blamed. Only when the same Taliban said that they are fighting for Islam, the religion is blamed.

There is no chance that the terrorists are going to stop this carnage anytime sooner and the only option for the Muslim community is disown them all and send a message to the world that Islam is not at fault. But so far the moderate muslim voices are feeble. Why can’t a Amir Khan raise his voice against the terrorists when he can do the same against Narmada dam. Think of the impact he had on the Narmada issue and the amount of awareness raised. The muslims have more famous personalities in India than has any other minority community. Why can’t   all the famous personalities raise their voices against the terrorist who fight in the name of Islam? The more they are silent, the more the terrorist’s voice is heard and Islam is blamed. If the muslim community wants others to beleive that Isalm is not at fault then the onus is purely on the community and not on others. Also you must understand that this in not a call to prove your patriotism. I have full faith in that, in fact, some of my Muslim friends like Sadath are more patriotic than I could ever be. All I'm asking you is please send a message to the terrorists by disowning them publicly.