Generalised anti-Muslim bigotry boosts, not checks, Muslim extremism!

 

The road towards peaceful reconciliation between any two communities passes through dialogue, discussions and mutual respect. While Muslim extremism is a legit threat to the values of peace harmony across the globe, the answer does not lie in dehumanizing Muslims as people. In fact, the web series 'The Family Man' rightly highlights how generalised anti-Muslim bigotry boosts, not checks, Muslim extremism. The anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 following the burning of the S-6 railway coaches in Godhra were followed by the Akshardham attack and the birth of the Indian Mujahidin. Violence against law-abiding civilians only invites violent backlashes; it doesn't "put in place" an entire community, just as the horrendous anti-Sikh riots in 1984 only boosted Khalistani terrorism.

Sure, terrorism in the name of Islam is a complex affair; not all radicalised Muslims have a personal history of victimhood, nor does shooting at a Malala or an Amjad Sabri or making sex-slaves out of a harmless minority like the Yazidis of Iraq have anything to do with avenging any victimhood, like killing a Dalit for touching a hand-pump or entering a temple doesn't either. That said, it is undeniable that violence against unarmed Muslim civilians serves as a catalyst for radicalisation. Some people have argued - what about the Kashmiri Pandits? What about the Japanese who have faced the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings? What about the Jews who faced the holocaust? These are, indeed, fair questions.

Let's start with the Kashmiri Pandits.  Some Kashmiri Pandit boys also tried to blast a bomb in a school in Jammu to kill some Kashmiri Muslim students who had come to write a board exam, though the bomb ended up exploding elsewhere, though thankfully with no casualties, except one of the perpetrators! And though most Kashmiri Pandits focused on rebuilding their lives and education for their children, it's not like sizable folks among them do not have genocidal hatred of Muslims.

Next, let's take the Jews who suffered the Holocaust. Those who escaped the Holocaust ran for their lives with no time to plot revenge, and later, Germany did what it could to restore their dignity. That said, there were those who sought revenge against Germans.

Finally, coming to the Japanese who faced the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, one can read this article about a victim plotting revenge. After Japan’s surrender in World War II, some Japanese migrants in Brazil refused to believe that Japan had surrendered and resorted to terrorism against fellow Japanese in Brazil who had believed it.

It is also true that none of these match up to the scale of international jihadist terrorism. That said, it's only since the 1980s, when the American government funded and armed The Taliban and Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan that the Jihadist terror network has emerged as the largest global terror network, prior to which some jihadist groups in Palestine or Egypt were as localised as ultra-leftist terror groups like the Naxalites in India or 'shining path' in Peru or separatist groups like the LTTE, ULFA or IRA, which also have a history of killing unarmed civilians, and there was no major global Jihadist network (conspiracy theories about 9/11 have been rejected even by Noam Chomsky). And those offering conspiracy theories about Jihadist terrorism may see this article too.

While the Quran, like the Old Testament of the Bible, has both tolerant and intolerant verses vis-a-vis those of other faiths, apostates of Islam ("ex-Muslims") like Salman Rushdie and Tasleema Nasreen and even other critics of the Islamic scriptures have also contended that their critique of the Islamic scriptures (there are similar critiques of scriptures of other faiths, including by their apostates), holding controversial interpretations as accurate, does not validate stereotyping in a negative fashion the people we know as Muslims or even practising Muslims. Terrorism is not a Muslim monopoly, as discussed in this other and I have also discussed the ideological roadmap to fight Muslim extremism here. If one says reform is impossible in Muslim societies, they must note that Muslim women in our own subcontinent have moved from being largely veiled in the 19th century to now Katrina Kaifs, Sheikh Hasinas and Hina Rabbani Khars. On how reform is possible, there's a must-watch movie 'Road To Sangam', based on a true story, and there's also the case of Kasim Hafeez, who initially wanted to become a terrorist seeking to blow up Jewish civilians but changed his standpoint about Israel for the better after visiting that country, while still remaining a practising Muslim and now facing death-threats from Muslim extremists.

Morocco banned the veil, Tunisia and the UAE have come to recognise marriages between Muslim women and non-Muslim men, Sudan banned FGM, unilateral and arbitrary Triple Talaq was abolished in most Muslim-majority countries (including Pakistan) before India – so it shows that Muslim societies can reform. There are already full-fledged Muslim-majority secular democracies like Albania and Senegal, which can be held up as role models.

And yes, groups like Al Qaeda and the ISIS, not elected by Muslims, are, no doubt, barbaric and have killed more liberal and moderate Muslims (not only Shias and Sufism-adherents but even puritan Sunnis rejecting grave-worship but still disagreeing with their worldview; most Muslims don't see music or cinema as sinful, do not believe in completely stifling women's rights and seek to peacefully coexist with those of other sects and faiths) than non-Muslims.