All 17 districts of Madhya Pradesh face danger from extremist Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)

Sep 25, 2008
Break SIMI’s network
In all 17 districts of Madhya Pradesh face danger from the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The organisation, over the years, being unchecked from any corner, has been strengthening its network. On Monday a meeting of senior police officials was held at the police headquarters in this connection. The districts where SIMI has spread its network include Sheopur, Guna, Ujjain, Indore, Bhopal, Dhar, Khandwa, Jabalpur, Shajapur, Neemuch, Dewas, Burhanpur, Narsinghpur, Seoni, Vidisha and Sehore. The meeting asked the police inspectors to coordinate and for free exchange of information on this issue.

Besides, the meeting also laid stress on intensive checking at all levels, proof of residence of tenants, regular checking of hotels, lodges and dharmashalas. It may be noted that soon after the constitution of the Anti-terror squad and the arrest of financier of SIMI, many grave information have come to the fore. At the same time the people’s co-operation is also a must to trace the activities of anti-national elements. The people should be aware what is happening in their colonies. If they find any person of suspicious nature, the police should be informed immediately so that any untoward incident is avoided. Now, the police intelligence should leave no stone unturned in busting SIMI’s hideouts and arresting their supporters.

Islam gains ground in Europe, tensions rising

Also look into Eurabia – Europe’s Future?

Islam gains ground in Europe
With their Muslim populations growing, Europeans are reassessing how well they integrate religious minorities.
By Shelley Emling

An estimated 15 million to 20 million Muslims live in Europe
Sunday, October 12, 2008

LEICESTER, England — It’s just before lunchtime and women in body-covering garments are perusing a medley of markets filled with foods that comply with Islamic law. The surrounding streets are decorated with special lights — funded by the Leicester City Council — to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid.

There are more than 30 mosques nearby, as well as a public library with shelves of books in Punjabi, Arabic, Hindi and Urdu, along with newspapers from across Asia and the Middle East. The neighborhood Islamic schools receive state funding, just like Christian and Jewish ones.

This is Leicester, a former manufacturing city of 285,000 people in England’s heartland. It is home to large pockets of Sikhs, Hindus, Africans and Muslims; indeed, the latter group makes up more than 15 percent of Leicester’s population. At least in one large Muslim neighborhood, called Highfields, there’s not a white English face to be found.

It’s not surprising. When the 2011 census is taken, Leicester is expected to become the first European city with a nonwhite majority.

“Cities from all over Europe are finding that they are becoming a lot more like Leicester,” said Mustafa Malik, chief executive of the Pakistan Center in the Highfields neighborhood.

No one knows for sure how many Muslims live in Europe today, partly because several European nations don’t count religion in their national censuses. Most experts estimate there are 15 million to 20 million Muslims living among Western Europe’s predominantly Christian population of 400 million. Without taking into account the possible admission of Turkey into the European Union, the number of Muslims is expected to grow to more than 40 million by 2050, representing about 15 percent of Europe’s population.

In the face of this growing Muslim population — fueled mostly by immigration but also by higher birth rates — tensions have risen amid an anti-Muslim attitude that sprang up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States and gained steam after the transit bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

Various events have sparked worries that at least some Muslims aren’t assimilating into European societies or accepting Western values. One example: the widespread protests by Muslims after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2006.

“There’s no question that people stick to themselves too much,” said Asaf Hussain, an interfaith leader and scholar at the University of Leicester. “A Hindu won’t go to a mosque, and a Muslim won’t go to a temple.”

Hussain said he can’t stand the way people often cite their religion first when asked whether they are British or Muslim. “I believe I am a British Pakistani and not a British Muslim,” he said. “In America, people say they are American Indian and not American Christian.

“Being British should be the key element binding everybody together,” he said.

As a result of the rapid changes brought on by the influx of Muslims, local and national politicians in Britain and across Europe have struggled to adapt and react.

In France, whose 5 million-strong Muslim minority is Western Europe’s largest, a ban on religious symbols and apparel in public schools took effect in 2004. The ban included all overtly religious dress and signs, including Muslim headscarves, Sikh turbans, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses. It was a controversial move but one that seems to have been quietly accepted by members of all faith groups.

On another note, many French were angered in June when a court in Lille annulled the marriage of two Muslims after the husband claimed his wife was not a virgin. Critics said the move set women’s rights back by many generations.

Also in June, France’s highest court upheld a decision to deny French citizenship to a Muslim woman who covers herself in a head-to-toe veil because she hasn’t assimilated enough into French society. Critics said the decision took France’s secularism too far.

Even so, many Muslims say they feel welcome in France, where the population seems to have grown so accustomed to having large mosques in their midst that many mayors even provide land at cheap rates for them.

“There is a big fuss about Islamization, but French society is very accepting,” said Deborah Remmane, secretary of the Muslim Students of France association in Paris. “People raise a Muslim red flag when they want to distract from other issues.”

Remmane said that if segments of the population don’t get along, it generally has more to do with financial status than it does with religion. “If you are Muslim and the daughter of a doctor, you won’t have any problem fitting in,” she said.

In Switzerland, there’s been a far greater concern about the spread of radical Islam and of mosques, with a nationwide referendum scheduled this month to ban the tall spires known as minarets on mosques. Supporters say the ban is needed because the minarets could lead to a disruption of social cohesion, while critics say the ban would violate human rights and fuel extremism.

The rise of mosques has become a catalyst for tension in other parts of Europe as well. In Cologne, Germany, rallies have been organized to protest what critics call the “Islamification” of the ethnically diverse city amid plans to build a large, domed mosque complete with two 177-foot-tall minarets.

In London, too, plans to build a “mega mosque” for 12,000 worshipers next to the site of the 2012 Olympics has drawn more than 250,000 signatures from those opposed to its construction.

There are about 1,600 mosques in Britain, a country that has tried to encourage a shared sense of national identity. In general, the British government has sought to engage more with Muslim communities since the 2005 suicide bomb attacks in London, in which four British nationals blew themselves up on the city’s transport network, killing 52 others.

Critics say some have gone too far to appease Britain’s Muslim minority. Earlier this year, the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said an element of shariah, or Islamic religious law, would inevitably have to be incorporated into British law, prompting waves of protest.

Denis MacEoin, an Islamic studies expert at Newcastle University, said polls show that a majority of Muslims express loyalty to Britain. But MacEoin said there is less devotion to British values than many people would like.

“There is still a lot of Islamic literature around which calls on Muslims to have nothing to do with non-Muslims and non-Muslim society,” he said.

MacEoin said that by seeking more ways to be self-sufficient, Muslims are creating a society within the broader society. “The use of the veil by women, for example, is designed to keep people at a distance,” he said. “Muslim schools make sure Muslims growing up never quite fit in to the society around them.”

But Peter Willetts, a professor of global politics at City University in London, said people often make sweeping generalizations about Muslims that simply aren’t true. He said there is so much diversity among Islamic communities in Europe that one can’t paint all Muslims with the same brush.

“In Europe, we have simultaneously Muslims who are well-integrated, Muslims who are struggling to achieve integration, Muslims who are separate but content and secure, and Muslims who are separate and alienated,” he said.

In Leicester, Hussain says that both the government and religious groups must do more to foster meaningful integration. Rather than simply coexisting, he says people from different faiths must forge real relationships with one another.

Toward that end, Hussain has started taking white English people on “intercultural safaris,” visiting temples, mosques, Sikh gurudwaras and ethnic restaurants in Leicester so that people can build an understanding of other cultures.

“Even at the university we have Muslims sitting together in one area at lunch and Hindus sitting together in another,” he said. “There’s a lack of integration. This is the real problem.”

semling@coxnews.com

Is Islamic goodwill for Hindus possible? — must read

Is Islamic goodwill for Hindus possible?
David Frawley
The Organiser
Date : October 14, 1996

Hindus today are often asked to express goodwill for Islam and help minority Muslims in India, who often fell oppressed under the Hindu majority rule. However Hindus are also minorities in various Islamic countries. There-fore the complementary question must arise, is there any Islamic goodwill for Hindus, particularly in Islamic countries? To look at Hindu-Muslim relations only within the borders of India where Hindus are a majority can be misleading. The entire context of these relations throughout the world and historically must be examined.

Hindus traditionally are tolerant people and have provid-ed a refuge for many religious refugees, like the Parsis, the Syrian Christians and the Jews. India is the only country that never oppressed the Jews. Even today there are a number of Islamicsects like the Ahmadiyas, the Bohras and the Sufis, and other religious movements originating from Islamic countries like the Bahais, which may not be tolerated in Islamic countries including Pakistan, and exist and flourish in India. In fact there is a greater diversity of Islamic sects in India than in any Islamic country today because of the religious tolerance traditional to Hindu-majority India. When Muslims lived under Hindu rule in pre-Independence India they were not obstructed from practicing their religion, sub-ject to forced conversion, religious taxes, or prevented from building mosques. The same is true of Muslims in India today. They are allowed to practice their religion without interference from Hindus.

Muslims, on the other hand, do not have such a history of tolerance starting with the first chaliphs of Islam who set out organised armies to conquer the world and marched to the very borders of India. During the period of Islamic rule in India most Hindu temples in the country were destroyed, including many that were rebuilt during that period. Hindus had to witness the ongoing destruction of their most holy places because of Muslim intolerance of other religions. The number of temples destroyed runs in thousands and it is difficult to find even a handful of temples in India that were not either destroyed ro defaced by the Muslims. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Hindus were killed in wars and genocide or turned into slaves. this included many religious leaders like various Sikh and Hindu Gurus whom the Muslims executed. Hindus exdured forced conversion and a heavy religious tax to convert them.

Yet this oppression for Hindus has not ended. Even after the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims, the Hindus left over in Pakistan and Bangladesh have suffered terribly. They have no real political or economical influence and the law seldom protects them. This problem of Islamic intolerance of Hindus goes for beyond the borders of the Indian subcontinent. Strictly Islamic countries, like Saudi Arabia, do not allow any other religions to exist within their border. No Hindu temple can be built in such Islamic countries by the Hindus who work there. You will not find any Hindu temples in Mecca or other Islamic holy cities. Hindus who have gone to work in the Gulf countries are not allowed to practice their religion in public, or bring any of their Hindu holy books with them. Even in India today Muslims do not tolerate and often attack the Hindu religious processions that may go through or near their neighbourhood. This is a holdover right from the Islamic period in India when Hindus were prevented from publicly expressing their religion in Muslim predominant communities.

Saudi Arabia insists that India sends only a Muslim ambassador and the Government of India meekly complies, not even raising protest! How would Islamic countries, in which Hindus are a minority, respond if the Government of India insisted that they sent only Hindu ambassadors? Certainly it would not be tolerated. Most instance of Muslim goodwill to Hindus occur in countries like Indonesia which were only recently and partially Islamized. It is not owing to Islam, which is intolerant in its heartland, but owing to the prior Hindu culture of the people. The more Islamic these countries become this tolerance is likely to decrease.

Today with growing global communication and the awakening of oppressed groups throughout the world, Hindu criticism of Islam is increasing. Hindu intellectuals are question-ing Islam not only historically but also spiritually, particularly its actions in India relative to Indian religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Hindu influenced political parties routinely complain against appeasement of the Muslim minority in India.

That Hindus may criticize other religions may be surprising to those who know the history of tolerance in Hinduism. It may cause them to think that Hindus are becoming intolerant. However, the other side of the issue must also be examined. That Hindus are becoming critical of Islam may not be so surprising to those who know of the ongoing oppression of Hindus by Muslims.

Hindus today are awakening to an understanding of the thousand years of oppression they underwent during nearly a thousand years of foreign rule by the Muslims and the Europeans. Their religion and culture was constantly under siege throughout the period. When Hindus today criticize the British rule of India and its efforts to Christinize India, it is generally regarded as understandable. However when Hindus criticize the Islamic period which was similarly a foreign rule and far more brutal than the British period, with a more determined attempt at conversion, it may be labelled as Hindu intolerance of Islam (suggesting that there is Islamic tolerance of Hinduism, which has yet to be demonstrated). But if British rule and Chritian intolerance of Hindus can be questioned, so can, similar action done by Muslims.

Just as blacks and women are, making an issue of their historical oppression, seeking an acknowledg-ment of it, and trying to correct it, so are Hindus. This is perfectly reasonable and modern, not fundamentalist and backward for them to do so. There is probably no other religious or political group in the world that has been slower to protest its historical mistreatment than have the Hindus. Hindus are the least organised socially and politically of all religious groups. The fact is that Musli8ms have routinely treated Hindus badly and this trend has continued. Not merely as Hindus but as human beings, Hindus have a right to draw the line.

Long oppressed groups, like the Blacks in America, may react with anger or even violence when they awaken to the fact of their oppression and seek some rectification of historical wrongs. Hindus today similarly are becoming more aggressive. Should this become exvessive it would be regrettable, but it is not without justification and does not mean their basic reaction is wrong. Hindus now are no longer willing to meekly accept domination and abuse by
Muslims in the name of communal harmoney. This is just another human community no longer of its human rights. It is about time that Hindus have taken this stance and it can only help other oppressed groups gain their legitimate rights as well.

The question is how will Muslims react to this trend? Will they recognize the legitimate anger of the Hindus against them, take some resposibility for the problem,
and seek to correct it? Or will they rect with hostility and refuse to acknowledge the history of violence that Muslims have without doubt peroetrated against Hindus? Will they take the opportunity to create oeace or will they inflame Hindus further by ignoring the mistakes done in the name of their religion? Muslis throughout the world are quick to condemn any oppression of Muslims which occurs in any part of the world. Should they be surprised or feel that it is wrong if Hindus begin to adopt such attitudes and start challenging the oppression of Hindus by Muslims?

In Hindu-Muslim dialogue since the time of Gandhi has generally been a matter of Hindus trying to please or accommodate Muslims. This led to the Partition of India in favour of the Muslims and the allowance of Muslim personal law for Muslims in India (but not, we might add, Hindu personal law for Hindus in Pakistan). The question is seldom asked what are Muslims willing to concede to Hindus in order to create peace with them? Perhaps because Muslims are a minority in India it is not considered what they should give but only what they should receive. However there must be reciprocity for there to be trust. And the Hindu-Muslim issue is not limited to India but to all lands where these two faiths meet. If Muslims throughout the world are intolerance of Hinduism, how can Indian Muslims expect Hindus in India not to be suspricious of them?

Muslims sometimes complain that they are discriminated against in India, and that they are not represented in the government. They must also consider the plight of Hindus in Muslim countries. How many Hindu political leaders have there been in Pakistan and Bangladesh? I
believe the answer is zero, even though, at least in Bangladesh the percentage of minority Hindus is on par with that of Muslims in India. There have, however, been Muslim President, Members of Parliament, chief ministers of State and cabinet minister of India has increased since Partition while the Hindu population of Pakistan and Bangladesh has dramatically decreased.

Clearly Muslims in India are treated much better than Hindus in Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Gulf countries. There are no Hindu prayers or songs allowed on Pakistani prayers and songs which can be found on Indian television. Pakistan history books still vaunt Islamic leaders like Mahmud of Ghazni and Aurangzeb, who destroyed temples and killed Hindus on a grand scale, as great and pious Muslims and great Pakistanis.

The treatment of Muslims in India cannot be devorced from the treatment of Hindus in Islamic countries. if Muslims in India want to be treated better, they must make efforts to get Hindus treated better in Islamic countries, who are much more likely to listen to their protests than those of Hindus. Muslims cannot rightfully expect better treatment from Hindus if they do not consider the plight of Hindus as will. There must be a concern for discrimination against all human beings, regardless of their religion, not looking out for Muslims and ignoring the plight of non-Muslims.

The further question arises, if Muslims want the goodwill of Hindus what are they willing to offer in order to receive it? Do Muslims think that they should have the goodwill of Hindus without offering anythink to the Hindus in return? Can they really think that their his-tory merits the trust and affection of Hindus? While Muslims may feel offended by Hindus, they should remember that in their history they have done little to consider the feelings of Hindus or help them out. It is they who have historically been aggressively attacking Hindus, not Hindus who have sent armies into their countries in order to convert them.

Hindus do have an historical right to critize Islam, which continues to target them and malign their religion.

Muslims routinely condemn Hindus as idol-worshippers, which is hardly an accurate, much less a sensitive rendering of Hinduism, which is a vast religion containig all avenues of human spirituality from devotional worship of images to yogic meditation.

Muslims in India recently had a great opportunity to redress the wrongs of history by giving the disputed Beburi structure back to the Hindus. It would have created much goodwill between the communities and proved to Hindus that Muslims in India, unlike most Muslims throughout the world, were not anti-Hindu. After all, Muslims had not worshipped in the Baburi monument for over fifty years and it never was one of their main holy sites. What did they have to lose by giving it back? It was built on the main hill in the Hindu sacred city of Ayodhya to humiliate the Hindus, not to peacefully worship God. However out of their pride and intolerance the Muslims have not taken advantage of this opportunity. They are unwilling to recognize the validity of Hindu complaints against them, which makes their own complaints against the Hindus lack any credibility.

Many Muslims and other have argued that Hindu temples were not destroyed out of religious reasons but from political motivation. Therefore the blame for this destruction is not with the Islamic religion, which is one of peace, but with political leaders who are prone to violence in order to hold power whatever their religious background. If this is the case Muslims should be happy to return such Hindu sacred sites as Kashi and Mathura. Mosques on these two sites of well known Hindu temples were built only three centuries ago by the tyrant Aurang-zeb, who killed his own brother, imprisoned his own father, and murdered Sufis as well as Hindu and Sikh leaders. If Islam as a religion is not responsible for the destruction of these Hindu temples but the arrogance of such as Aurangzeb, Muslims should not cling to such monuments as sacred. Otherwise Muslims are in fact saying that the destruction of temples and their replacement with mosques has a religions sanction, which is to equate their religion with such tyrants.

Yet this condition is hardly hopless. there is much that Muslims can do to gain the trust of Hindus, who are a peaceful and tolerant people. But this issue is mainly in the hands of the Muslims. Hindus cannot make peace with Muslims who are unwilling to give up their oppression of Hindus or their targeting for conversion. Muslims should be willing to consider doing the following if they are sincere about peace with the Hindus.

(1) Muslim leaders should make an official apology for the massive destruction of temples and killing of Hindus that was common under their rule in India and by their invading armies. One can use the example of the Christians apologizing to the American Indians or the Blacks for similar discrimination and oppression.

(2) Muslims should give back to the Hindus Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura mosques that were built by Babur and Aurangazeb on Ramjanmabhoomi, the Kashi Vishwanath Shiva temple and Krishnajanmabhoomi, just as they did not try to hold on the Somnath after Partition of India. This could be a peace offering for all the Hindu temples destroyed by Muslims through history.

(3) Muslims should invite Hindu swamis and religious leaders to speak at their mosques to explain to the Muslims masses what Hinduism really teaches. In the same way Hindus should invite Islamic leaders to speak at their temples. Muslim countries should allow Hindus to preach and build temples, particularly for Hindu workers in those countries. They should also invite Hindus to talk and preach their religion in orther to dispel Isla-mic misunderstandings about Hinduism.

(4) Muslims should be willing to accept Hindu names for God like ishvara as good as Allah. Hindus should also accpet Allah as a name of God as many of them already do.

(5) Muslims should be willing to accept the great teachers of India-based religions as divinely inspired, including those of recent centuries like Sikh Gurus or Ramakrishna, just as Hindus honour many Sufis and Islamic saints.

(6) Indian Muslims should complain to Muslim countries that discriminate against Hindus. They should criticize Pakistan and Bangladesh for the destruction of Hindu temples that has gone on there in recent times.

Of course it is doubtful whether this will occur any-time soon, even on one of these points. If this is the case, Muslims should ask themselves, if they are unwilling to make such gestures of goodwill to the Hindus why should they expect Hindus to respect and honour them in return?

You cannot repeatedly trample on a person and his culture and then expect him to help you when you are in need.

Muslims, who claim to follow the will of God, think clearly on the history of Islam, and how members of your religion have mistreated Hindus and denigrated their religion. Think of how your religious leaders portray the Hindu religion even today. Would you be quick to embrace a group who treated you in the same way?

What Indian Muslims Should Do — Dr Rafiq Zakaria

Full article by Arvind Lakhare go here
What should Muslims do?

In his book “Communal Rage In Secular India” (Popular Prakashan, September 2002) Dr Zakaria devoted the entire last chapter to “What Muslims Should Do?”, and accepting that there is a great deal of among Indian Muslims who believed there is little they can do to save themselves, he recommended the following.

1. Confrontation has done no good to the Muslims. The only alternative is for them is to change their outlook. Muslims must try and become an integral part of the mainstream. They must wholeheartedly collaborate in enriching composite nationalism. For this, they must get out of their ghetto mentality, break the barriers of alienation and generate a harmonious environment.

2. They must discard their worn-out prejudices and outmoded habits and adjust themselves to the requirements of the changing times. They must stop asking for doles which will only cripple them, and instead learn to stand on their own feet because the fact is that they have no true friends; many who show them sympathy are not sincere and do so only for electoral gain. Even Muslims from other countries have never come to their rescue. This has been proved time and again, and the wise must now take the hint and correct themselves.

3. Muslims continue to live in a make-believe world of their own. Their leaders waste their energies in whipping up emotions and bringing more trouble to the ordinary Muslims. There are also the other “warriors” — priests, academicians, journalists — who add fuel to the fire by taking up cudgels on behalf of the community. Indian Muslims have to come out of this quagmire; they must show such self-appointed champions of their cause in their place; they must do their best to change the hostile attitude of the Hindus against them and take their proper share in the nation’s development.

4. Indian Muslims must join hands with liberal Hindus to work zealously for harmony between the two communities. To succeed in this task, they must change their own behaviour, indeed their entire perception.

5. Indian Muslims must boldly come forward to undergo all-round transformation in their style of functioning. The younger generation in particular will have to arm themselves both educationally and socially. They will succeed if parents shed their old habits, give up their outdated notions, and help encourage and help their sons and daughters to get the best education. Merit alone will give them reward; they must never seek patronage.

6. Indian Muslims must disarm the jihadis and disown the bigotism which has made Muslims pariahs everywhere. They must give assurance to the non-Muslims that their religion stands for “live and let live”. This reformation will rejuvenate Islam itself.

7. Without compromising the Quranic injunctions, Indian Muslims must agree to the introduction of certain much-needed, essential changes in the Personal, particularly the enactment of monogamy. There is, in fact, enough scope under the Shariah to amend the laws relating to marriage, divorce, dower and even maintenance.

8. The controversy on the singing of Vande Mataram is meaningless. It was sung by all Muslim leaders of the Congress during the freedom struggle. Those Muslims who do not want to sing it, may not, but they must stand up when it is sung as a mark of respect to an anthem which has a hoary past and is declared as a national song. Why add hurt to an already worsening communal relationship?

9. There is the question of family planning on which much of our country’s progress depends. It cannot be denied that Muslims have not taken to it as seriously as Hindus. This has to be corrected. There must be a vigorous campaign for its implementation among Muslims and their leaders in every sector must engage themselves to persuade them to adopt it so that they do not lag behind Hindus in fulfilling this most urgent task, without which India cannot succeed in eradicating poverty.

10. Muslims must make a sustained effort to convince Hindus that they should have no fear of them and assure them that they harbour no enmity towards them, nor are in a secret conspiracy with Muslims elsewhere to harm them. They must give assurance that Muslims are as much the sons of the soil as Hindus and as committed to the country’s glory and prosperity as Hindus are.

11. Finally, the punch line. “What Indian Muslims have to understand is that eventually it is not their leaders but they themselves who will have to make their destiny.”