By now the goal of radical Islam has become clear, especially to those who have bothered to study and understand it. In an October 6, 2005 speech to National Endowment for Demo-cracy American President Bush talks about the goal of radical Islam: ?(establishing) a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia?. Implications for India are clear: it is a nation that must be destroyed and recaptured permanently for Islam to complete this vision.
If this is the vision of radical Islam, where is the evidence? Indeed, every Muslim majority of South Asia – including, Pakistan and Bangladesh, have seen massive drop in non-Muslim percentages with most driven away to India. But most Muslims were allowed to stay in India. This pattern of Islamic conquest has now extended into a region within India, namely Kashmir valley. This shows dominance of radical Islam in Muslim majority regions and proves the intent of radical Islam-to strategically capture portions of India exclusively for Islam and marginalise non-Muslims.
From ?Where Indian Muslims have gone wrong? by Aakar Patel, Mid-day, September 5, 2004: ?A recent poll revealed that just under 90 per cent of Mumbai'sMuslims, presumably the most progressive in the country, rejected a secular civil code preferring instead Shariah law, favoring polygamy, triple talaq and Islam'sunequal inheritance laws which allow women half as much property as they allow men. The views of most younger and educated Muslims and of women were also the same, in almost the same proportion.? Association with shariah and secular uniform code should reflect extremism and moderate outlook respectively. This poll, taken together with other information-including extremists invariably representing Muslims-show beyond any doubt that most Indian Muslims identify with radical Islam-and are not moderates at all.
How can radical Islam succeed in its vision of destroying a Hindu majority India? This is through various forms of long-term multi-front jehad. The core Islamist strategy lie in characterising Hindus as ?oppressors? of Indian Muslims through virulent and falsified clerical sermons, and create a sense of ?grievance? and hatred of Hindus – to set the stage for increased confrontation, separation and eventually, dissolution of India with a fast growing Muslim population.
Islamists see increased Muslim reservation in jobs and education as part of an integral strategy of waging jehad. Reasons: unfair reservations for Muslims take wealth and opportunities away from deserving majority and put them into undeserving hands of Muslims – resulting in a destabilised India with an increasingly poor and illiterate majority and a wealthier and well-placed radical Muslims. Such an India is primed for destruction.
Islamic partitioning of 1947 has made Hindus and other non-Muslims disadvantaged communities vis-?-vis Muslims. Hence, Indian Muslims, however backward, under no circumstances, deserve reservations, having a permanent – 25 per cent reservation – in the form of Pakistan and Bangladesh! Since Muslim backwardness is deliberately created by clerics – to wage a jehad by using them as foot-soldiers, the real solution lies in liberating Indian Muslims from radical clerics to their indigenous ancestral religions. Unfortunately, government and media lack support of weakly institutionalised, disunited and ill-informed majority to take on well-funded and community-supported Islamists.
Grievances are a proven basis of mobilising communities to fight an enemy. Even Srilankan Hindus were mobilised successfully on this basis against Singhalese, who had discriminated against them in jobs, land and educational opportunities. Crores of Hindus have remained impoverished due to jehad and various Muslim subsidises. Jobs and educational opportunities taken away unfairly through Muslim reservations, land and wealth taken away by Muslims, insecurity, expensive insurgencies and instabilities created by radical Islam, high Muslim population growth in a crowded India form core grievance and directly relate to day-to-day existence of all Indians. Once momentum is built on this basis, critical issues such as Article 370, Muslim infiltration from Bangladesh or Muslim conquest of Hindu holy sites can be publicised to canvas even more support and mandate.
While this propaganda of majority grievance against radical Islam will likely increase tensions in the short-term, it should mobilise majority and create dissension in Muslim ranks in the long-run. This approach has the best chance of breaking Muslim vote-bank, and discredits Islamists who falsely claim Hindu ?oppression? of Muslims. Nationalist organisations and citizens should launch a long-term grievance-based campaign against radical Islam, instead of making meaningless protests at every instance of privileges extracted through Muslim intimidation.
Only a ground-swell of majority support and dissension among Muslim masses can set the stage for defeating jehad imposed on India. The nature of jehad, involving Muslim civilians as foot soldiers – requires new ways responding to radicals.
(The writer is an US-based nuclear physicist with over thirty published papers on radical Islam during the past seven years. He can be contacted at [email protected])
