Ground Zero Mosque Iman Rauf Justifies Islamic Terrorism

Via

Who is Feisal Abdul Rauf — the man behind the ‘Ground Zero mosque’?

To support these charges, his detractors cite Rauf’s refusal to call Hamas a terrorist group and his equating of certain U.S. actions with Islamic terrorism. The Cordoba Initiative and its Park51 project aren’t about dialogue, critics say, but rather about proselytizing and spreading Islam.

What are some of his controversial quotes?
“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims.” (Speech in Australia, 2005)

“I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened [on 9/11], but United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened… We have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” (CBS 60 Minutes, Sept. 30, 2001)

“The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.” (Quoted in Sydney Morning Herald, 2004)

YouTube: Imam Rauf “America Has Muslim Blood on Hands

Imam Rauf’s Newly Discovered Explosive Audio Tapes

Anti-Islam film’s director Geert Wilders goes to Washington

Fitna – The Movie Geert Wilders’ film about the Violent Quran (English)
February 26, 2009

Anti-Islam film’s director goes to Washington

(CNN) — A right-wing Dutch politician arrived in the U.S. Thursday to show his controversial film attacking Islam.

Geert Wilders says he fears the Islamization of Europe but his short film on the subject has provoked death threats, Muslim protests and led the UK to refuse him entry.

In the U.S., Wilders is touring with the film “Fitna” and meeting with lawmakers in Washington.

The 16-minute documentary juxtaposes passages of the Quran with the mass murder of 9/11 and other acts by extremist Muslims.

He says if liberal lawmakers in Europe can ban Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” then they should also bar Islam’s holy book.

But his critics argue he is twisting selected passages from the Quran to suit his argument in the same way that extremists do to promote terrorism.

Wilders told CNN: “It would be ridiculous to say all Muslims are terrorists. This is nonsense. But most of the terrorists in the world today are Muslims…

“Islam is not just another religion. I believe Islam is more a totalitarian ideology. I have nothing against Muslims. The majority of Muslims in our societies are law-abiding people.”

In another CNN nterview he said: “I believe that we should be proud and stand up and say, well we don’t want our children and grandchildren living in a world, in a country dominated by Islamic culture that is only at the end of the day costing us all our freedoms. “…I have nothing against Muslims, but I am very much afraid of the Islamization of our continent.”

Radwan Masmoudi, from the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy: said “I know he doesn’t have a beard and he looks nice with his blond hair, but his views and his opinions are extremely mirror image, exactly mirror images of what al Qaeda has been trying to teach. He is the al Qaeda of the Netherlands.”

Wilders was invited to the U.S. by Republican Senator John Kyl to show “Fitna” to lawmakers in a Senate building near the Capitol.

Kyl said “all too often, people who have the courage to point out the dangers of militant Islamists find themselves vilified and endangered.”

When he answered a similar invitation from a British politician, the UK government called Wilders a threat to community harmony and therefore to public security, and refused him entry to the country.

10 Eternal truths about Islam — Must read

To read the article click here

Professor K.S. Lal has studied and taught the history of Islam in India for the last more than fifty years. His characterization of Islam as an ideology is being presented below:

1 Islam is understood more correctly when it is called Muhammadanism. Muhammad is the central figure in Islam. He controls the hearts and minds of all Muslims everywhere…

2. Fundamentalism is not accidental but essential to Islam It sees unchangeability as strength. That is why the word reform is so abhorrent to Muslim thinkers and religious leaders …

3. In Islam truth is established by the sword… dissent is hated as heresy and stamped out as infidelity … early medieval Indian Muslim chronicles mention the sword as the greatest harvester of converts. Islam was made to spread, as the old saying goes, with Quran in one hand and sword in the other. Sword was freely used in forcing people to become Musalmans

4. There is a uniqueness about Islam. Non-Muslims are to be converted to Islam freely. But once a Kafir becomes a Musalman, he has to remain one for ever thereafter. He is not permitted to renounce Islam or revert to his original faith. Punishment for such apostasy is death…”73

5. Islam lacks any doctrine of coexistence... Muslim madrasas cannot shed their Kafir complex… The present adjustment of coexistence is a temporary expediency in India…74 It is the teaching of Islam to shun contact with non-Muslims except with a view to converting them… Muslim separatism expresses itself in many ways…”75

6. In Islam all human beings are not treated as equals. It makes a distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims. A non-Muslim is a Kafir, an inferior being. Non-Muslims do not enjoy any human right in this world; they cannot enter Paradise after death.  Islam has two sets of principles of morality, ethics and justice: one is for Muslims and the other for non-Muslims. Sincerity, well-wishing and brotherhood are for the believers and faithful Islamic scriptures recommend setting Muslims against non-Muslims, believers against infidels to defend Islam and destroy unbelief. Individual and group killings of Kafirs is encouraged…”78

7. Islam recommends Jihad or permanent war on adherents of other religions This makes Islam a totalitarian and terrorist cult which it has remained ever since its birth.79… There have been wars but wars fought by Muslims are in the service of Allah. This gives Islamic belligerency divine sanction and terrorism becomes a divine command…”80

8. Like proselytization, desecrating and demolishing the temples of non-Muslims is also central to Islam. Iconoclasm derives its justification from the Quranic revelations and the Prophet’s Sunnah or practice …81 non-Muslims cannot reclaim their desecrated temples. This is the law of Islam…”82

9.Islam has all the ingredients of imperialism found anywhere in the world in any age… 83 By destroying the national spirit of non-Arab Muslims, Islam has demolished the Asian centres of civilization such as Egypt, Iran and India…”84

10. The Islamic principles of denigrating the non-Muslims, of aggression and violence against them – principles that perpetually incite to riot and rapine – have boomeranged. However brave face the fundamentalists may try to put up, the victims of Islam today are by and large Muslims themselves. The Prophet must have known that violence begets violence and repeatedly exhorted Muslims not to kill one another after his death. He also had a premonition that violence of Islam against non-Muslims will be met with a backlash. There is a hadis in Sahih Muslim which says that once the Rasul opined that Islam which began in poverty in Medina would one day return to Medina in poverty. Just as a snake crawls back and coils itself into a small hole, so will Islam be hunted out from everywhere and return to be confined to Mecca and Medina. The increasing power of the non-Muslim West and the disenchantment of Muslim dissidents point towards that possibility, howsoever remote.

Prof Lal has presented many other facets of Islam such as that Islam has no word for democracy; that secularism and Islam are mutually exclusive; that Islam can set up only a theocratic state; that Islam has institutionalised slavery and degraded women; and that Islam has laid waste many countries.

Entire Quran is a Manual on Jihad

What has been India’s experience with Islam?

Click:     India’s Experience with Islam and Islam’s other Victim India

In Pakistan, Muslims are killing Muslims in the name of Islam

There are two aspects to Muslims killing each other in Pakistan

One is the Shia Sunni clashes. Violence between Sunni and Shia factions began from early 1980s. More than 150 people have been killed in the past year alone. Around 4,000 people have killed in total. More here.

January 10, 2009
Seventeen people have been killed and 30 wounded in clashes between Sunni and Shia groups in villages in the Hangu District in northwest Pakistan, police said Saturday.

7 killed in Pak Shia-Sunni clashes
19 Jun 2008 source

The second is extremist Jihadis killing Muslims in Pakistan they dont’ agree with. All In all a big killing party by members of the peace religion.

Muslims are killing Muslims in the name of Islam

For full article read here

To be sure, terrorist violence in Pakistan predates the arrival of NATO forces in Afghanistan. In the first 9 months of 2001, even before September 11, Pakistan went through 45 bomb blasts including 12 in Quetta, 10 in Karachi, 3 in Rawalpindi and 2 each in Lahore and Peshawar (there were bomb blasts in Okara, Gujranwalla, Sialkot and Gujrat). To be certain, attacks on cable television operators, beauty parlors and on women who either refuse to wear a veil or wear western attire had become common in settled Pakistani areas several years prior to September 11. At least 2 years prior to September 11, the state of Pakistan had lost its writ over some 10,000 square kilometers of physical terrain between Tochi and Gomal rivers (all figures are based on data bases maintained by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), the Institute of Conflict Management and news reports).

Raison d’être behind terrorism in Pakistan: In effect, Muslims who reject the current world order want to impose their own world view on the rest of Pakistan–and that too through violence. In essence, it is a struggle for political power, a struggle between two world views. The struggle is for the soul of Pakistan and the origin of this struggle is older than September 11. Pakistan now has more casualties from terrorist violence than does Iraq or Afghanistan. In NWFP, the entire political leadership is on the run and extremists are winning. In Punjab, there is no political consensus on fighting terrorism. Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the largest political party in Punjab, does not even view the current terrorist threat as a clash between two world views. Shahbaz Sharif says, “The government should shun someone else’s war.” Nawaz Sharif says, “There’s no reason not to engage in a dialogue with those involved in terrorist activities.”

Indian Muslims: Where Have They Gone Wrong?

A Review of  Indian Muslims: Where Have They Gone Wrong? by Rafiq Zakaria

Kashmir Herald, Volume 4, No. 7 – May 2005
BOOK REVIEW: The road to amity
By Sreeram Chaulia

Few have steadfastly walked the thankless road to Hindu-Muslim harmony like Dr Rafiq Zakaria, one of India’s most ardent liberal thinkers. The theme of Zakaria’s 17th book is the nefarious role played by Muslim political leaders in impeding communal harmony before and after Indian independence.

M J Akbar, another rare specimen from the community of the enlightened, writes in the foreword that the flaw in Indian Muslim politics after 1857 was the minority complex based on the specious number game, the belief that Muslims, being only a quarter of the population, would always be subservient to Hindus. “Where have Indian Muslims gone wrong? Whenever they have forgotten their Indian roots.”

Zakaria takes the bull by the horns by dilating on how the present generation of Indian Muslims is suffering the consequences of erroneous steps taken by its leadership of yore and now. In the 1940s, Muslim elites “gave Muhammad Ali Jinnah all the support he needed” for partition of the South Asian subcontinent. After 1947, “they resorted to the same manner of confrontation with the dominant Hindus, widened the divide and intensified the hatred” (p xxviii). Ordinary Muslims were indoctrinated with a “ghetto mentality” and divorced from the national mainstream owing to “obstinate adherence to outmoded traditions” and fear of the ulama (clerical class).

Despite differences in the character of Islam and Hinduism, there was no move for partition in medieval times. Muslim rulers who persecuted Hindu subjects made no effort to divide territories on communal lines. Common Muslims and Hindus had largely cordial relations, celebrating each other’s festivals. Despite conflicts between ruling classes of the two communities, Indo-Saracenic art, music, literature and architecture flourished. Muslim poets, writers and philosophers “went into ecstasy over the secrets of human emancipation in the Bhagavad Gita” (p 38). Muslim musicians composed raagas in praise of the Hindu deities Krishna and Shiva. Urdu literature, from Amir Khusrau to Hasrat Mohani, bristled with respect for Hindu saints and spiritual precursors.

The real threat to India’s unity came from Jinnah’s “aggressive separatist stand”. His pernicious “two-nation theory” poisoned communal ties as never before. His campaign to frighten Muslims that Hindus would subjugate them to “abject slavery” or “complete annihilation” inflamed misunderstanding and passions. Thousands of Indian Muslims combated the communal virus. Badruddin Tyabjee, Rehmatulla Sayani, Shibli Nomani, M A Ansari, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Maulana Azad, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Hussain Ahmad Madni, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Syed Abdullah Barelvi, Humayun Kabir et al risked the ire of their co-religionists to uphold oneness of all faiths. However, the British “kept Jinnah in the forefront in any negotiation and did not allow him to be isolated” (p 100). Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of British India, convinced Congress leaders that “the only way to get rid of Jinnah was a divided India. Any form of a united India would start a civil war” (p 115).

In the aftermath of partition, prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru rushed to the rescue of innocent Muslim victims. His “anti-communalism was not one-sided. He fought Muslim communalism no less valiantly” (p 125). He opposed separate electorates and reservation of seats for minorities. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, was ever concerned about the psychosis through which Indian Muslims were passing. In her opinion, “Unless Muslims are made to feel that they are as much an integral part of India as Hindus, their attachment to secularism would remain hypocritical” (p 199).

The creation of Pakistan fueled Hindu-Muslim bitterness instead of easing it. Indian Muslims were more besieged than before 1947. Pakistan is “a constant threat to their safety and security in India”. Persecuted Bengali Muslims “had to be eventually rescued by Indian armed forces, consisting mostly of Hindus”. Average Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh still “groan under the iron heels of feudal cliques backed by the army” (p 162).

Zakaria strongly asserts that any solution of the Kashmir dispute on the lines desired by Pakistan will reopen the floodgates of vehement communalism. “The best way of silencing the Pakistanis and preserving Kashmir’s integration with India is to strengthen the link between Kashmiri Muslims and Indian Muslims” (p 405). Terrorism perpetrated in the name of jihad in Indian Kashmir is a major cause of Hindu-Muslim hostility. Zakaria cites Imam Ghazali, popular as the “Rejuvenator of Islam”: “If Muslims did not destroy terrorism, terrorism would destroy them” (p 203). To gloat over acts of terrorism and hold jashn (celebrations) depicts “utter crassness and lunacy”.

The economic condition of Indian Muslims is worse than that of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. Muslims have as much to blame as the government for their own backwardness in education. They fail to capitalize on common facilities for educational uplift. Purdah (veiling women) and fear of coeducation deter female children’s progress in the secular world. Zakaria urges Indian Muslims to cooperate with Hindus through intensive contact on a daily basis. The former have “their place only in India and they have to get emotionally involved in her affairs, trends, ethos, conventions and traditions” (p 450).

Hatred can be overcome only by love. Since a generalized scare exists among Hindus that Muslims will demographically overtake them, Zakaria calls upon Muslims to eschew polygamy and adopt family planning vigorously. Triple talaaq (arbitrary divorce) and the hajj subsidy have to be abolished. The ostrich-like behavior of such leaders as Syed Shahabuddin and Imam Bukhari harms Muslims by keeping communal rancor alive. Hindus in turn have to live with 150 million Muslims, who cannot be wished away. Threats from the champions of Hindutva to eliminate Muslims have to cease.

Highlighting the more liberal facets of the lives of historical figures can clean mental cobwebs. Shivaji, the Maratha warrior king, had one-third Muslim soldiers in his army. The supreme commander of his navy was a Muslim. The first thing Shivaji did after a conquest was to promulgate protection of mosques and Muslim tombs. “He was more liberal and tolerant than the best of European potentates” (p 315). Swami Vivekananda, the apostle of humanism, saw the real unity of India in Hindu-Muslim goodwill in the villages and averred, “A junction of the two great systems – Vedanta brain and Islam body – is the only hope” (p 327).

The politics of hate is eating into the vitals of India, last demonstrated in the communal horrors of Gujarat. Zakaria takes the electronic media to task for its deep-rooted neglect of progressive Muslim viewpoints. It gives undue publicity to mullahs and fanatics. “If a Muslim demonstrates backwardness, it is news. If he exhibits progressiveness, it is not news” (p 356). The most evident barriers against improvement of Hindu-Muslim relations are riots. Governments and political parties treat them as law-and-order problems, without tying them to economic problems of livelihood among all religious communities.

Indian Muslims live in depressed conditions as hewers of wood and drawers of water, lacking a cogent middle class. Zakaria asks them to harness inner strengths and be self-reliant. “Give up asking for doles … never seek patronage” (p 427). The mindset of the community has to be transformed by “disarming terrorists and disowning bigotry” (p 464). Indian Muslim perception warrants sea changes. Religious prejudices and narrowness of spirit have to be won over by compassion of the likes of the greatest Sufi, Jalaluddin Rumi:

Then listen! I am lover of love
My love transcends all creeds

Suffused with Urdu, Persian and Hindi poetry, Zakaria’s erudite publication will rate as yet another milestone in the peregrinations of the Indian Muslim caravan.

[Indian Muslims: Where Have They Gone Wrong? by Rafiq Zakaria. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai, October 2004. ISBN: 81-7276-352-2. Price: US$11; 565 pages.]

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The Islamic siege of India

August 24, 2008, SPECIAL INSIGHT ON I-DAY
The Islamic siege of India
By Dr Gautam Sen, http://www.organiser.org

India now exhibits all the political and psychological symptoms of a defeated society. The unprecedented protests in Jammu have been greeted with surprise across the board precisely because they are exceptional. But the overall situation in India is dismaying.

The economic success of India in recent years and the resulting additional resources at the disposal of the Indian State are not relevant to the grievous outcome threatening it. These huge resources are actually being used for electoral bribery or stolen and to purchase arms that have little relevance for the prosecution of the deadly internal war.

India is undergoing outright warfare, with its cities bombed at will and massive infiltration across its borders. The Pakistani rationale for cutting India down to size has rarely faltered since 1947 and echoes a much older Islamic tradition. It stretches back a millennium and reasserted itself the moment British usurpers of Islamic rule were expelled by Hindus. Of course the Anglo-American imperialists and cold warriors actively incited this diabolical outcome because they assumed Islam would be an ally against Soviet communism and Nehru’s India would not.

The Arabs in general and the Saudis in particular eventually become co-conspirators in the project to restore Islamic primacy in the Indian subcontinent even if Hindus were to continue ruling it nominally as vassals. They correctly perceive that the ability to control and deploy India’s economic and demographic assets will allow them to challenge the Christian West. The Saudis are the main source of the catalytic funding for the jihad that is threatening to break India’s political will and evidently succeeding. The Chinese also became active after the mid-1950s in arming Pakistan and, more recently, encouraging its bombing campaign of Indian cities to curb the economic advance of India, which it regards as an irritating, lowly rival.

Within India, some mosques and madrasas are the fifth column that provides critical support for the aggression that it is encountering. Their role is to cultivate passive and active support for the Islamic onslaught. It entails ensuring that most Muslims refuse to co-operate in efforts to interdict Islamic terrorists by remaining silent spectators while the murderous bombings continue, provide safe havens in impenetrable Muslim areas for terrorists and a vital element of local manpower to the Pakistani and Saudi agencies engaged in terrorist activities. The deployment of Muslim votes strategically is also an important aspect of their overall goals in order to make it impossible for important Hindu families (rather than the nominal political organisations that they preside over) to survive politically without their consent. The economic sabotage of counterfeit currency produced by Pakistani government agencies is another aspect of the Islamic onslaught that has the virtue of making Indians themselves defray the cost of jihad.

Indian themselves are profoundly complicit in the project that seems destined to destroy their country and their civilisation. Two underlying factors that have facilitated the rapid expansion of the Islamic onslaught against India are its political culture and constitutional arrangements.

The first is the product of the bumbling imbecility of the Gandhian project that de-legitimised the whole notion of self-defence, on which all societies are founded and to which the most important Hindu text is almost exclusively addressed. And it was Pandit Nehru whose arrogance and intellectual mediocrity accentuated and institutionalised this Gandhian self-destructiveness in India’s political culture and national psyche. India’s constitutional arrangements, again the product of the wilful ignorance of its leaders, created a parliamentary democracy after independence that guaranteed to highlight and deepen every division among its citizens. In a presidential system, by contrast, Indians would have been compelled to begin overcoming their multiple identities and the potential divisions they incubated because the constituency for president would have been a national one.

India now exhibits all the political and psychological symptoms of a defeated society. The unprecedented protests in Jammu have been greeted with surprise across the board precisely because they are exceptional. But the overall situation in India is dismaying, with virtually its entire political class overawed by the intimidatory truculence of Islam, anxious not to provoke even if it entails conceding the most fundamental norms of Indian society.

The ascendant media, harbouring crude Western aspirations and their concomitant political interests, and elite higher education institutions dominated by Christians are gleefully nurturing a deracinated Indian establishment. Their purpose is to exercise influence over India by completely dominating its intellectual life and of course continue saving souls in the way it has done successfully by Christianising South Korea. The Islamic onslaught against India provides them with a window of opportunity, by keeping India off balance and preventing the emergence of a self-confident indigenous elite that might resist its imperialist designs. This is why Islam and Christianity co-operate cynically over what is becoming the spoils of a broken-backed India, postponing their own competition with each other until they have destroyed all traces of the civilisation of the Hindus first.

The economic success of India in recent years and the resulting additional resources at the disposal of the Indian State are not relevant to the grievous outcome threatening it. These huge resources are actually being used for electoral bribery or stolen and to purchase arms that have little relevance for the prosecution of the deadly internal war against Islamic and other forms of terror. Some of the terrorists have clearly formed a seamless political alliance among themselves, with the Naxalites publicly declaring support for Pakistani terrorists and no doubt benefiting from Pakistani largesse. It may also be hazarded that many individuals, media outlets and alleged human rights organisations are mere fronts for terrorists and the evidence is in the public realm in some important instances.

The armaments being purchased with uncharacteristic purposiveness by the entire political class has some bearing on potential external threats to Indian security, but one suspects that the alacrity with which they are undertaken has much to do with spin-offs that result from bribes. But most relevant of all is the failure of India’s politicians to engage with conviction against internal terror by deploying appropriate resources and motivating trained personnel instead of hobbling them in the performance of their duties because of apprehensions about losing Muslim votes.

The end is not necessarily going to take the shape of an invasion by the rapist Pakistan army across the Punjab towards Delhi. In fact, India’s demise and the retreat of Hindus will express itself as an accentuation of trends and processes already underway, with occasional dramatic departures that underline the calamity unfolding. The expulsion of the Pandits, which failed to truly exercise even India’s official nationalists, is a harbinger of the shape of things to come. Hindus are likely to face expulsion from areas dominated by Islam though some of it will occur and is occurring in a huge swathe of eastern India because Hindus are voluntarily abandoning Muslim areas for fear of consequences if riots occur.

These areas then come under implicit Pakistani rule under the guise of the autonomy of Sharia practices and constitute bases for militant activity against adjacent areas outside the immediate control of Islam. As the political balance changes in favour of Islam, the Indian political class will behave even more supinely, in a pattern that has already become well established, further sealing the fate of India. And with each success Islam will demand more, as it has increasingly begun to do dramatically in less than four years.

The first major Indian city likely to come under the total sway of Islam is Kolkata since its demographics are changing rapidly, with whole areas being abandoned by Hindus and becoming ‘no-go’ Muslim areas. Bangladesh, which is contemptuous of Hindu India as a pushover denies the very notion of infiltration because its Muslims never accepted the legitimacy of the partition settlement. They believe that the Assam, West Bengal that Jinnah originally demanded, should and will belong to the Islamic Republic of Bangladesh. On this India’s communists apparently concur with them! And if Bangladesh is able to frighten Hindu India there is little hope for it in the face of enhanced joint Saudi-Pak subversion that evidence of each Indian retreat is already encouraging. Each terrorist bombing illustrates the helplessness of India and the ease with which Hindus can be overawed by a handful of determined mass murderers.

(The writer taught at the London School of Economics & Political Science for over two decades. He is the co-author of Analyzing the Global Political Economy, Princeton University Press, 2008.)

Human Rights Forum Highlights Hindu Minority Plight

Human Rights Forum Highlights Hindu Minority Plight 
By ASHFAQUE SWAPAN
Special to India-West

MILPITAS, Calif. — Three activists drew horrific pictures of the predicament of Hindu minorities, sometimes backed by poignant video presentations, in far-flung parts of the world at the Hindu Human Rights Forum hosted at the Vaishnav Mandir here July 20. Hosted by the Hindu American Foundation, speakers talked about the plight of Hindus in Kashmir, Malaysia and Fiji. HAF also presented its recently released fourth annual human rights report, “Hindus in South Asia and the Diaspora.”

The plight of evicted Kashmiri Pandits, and Hindus in Fiji and Malaysia was highlighted by impassioned presentations by Jeevan Zutshi, a Bay Area community activist and Kashmiri Pandit himself; southern California-based engineer and Malaysian Tamil human rights activist Bhuvan Govindasamy; and San Francisco Bay Area-based attorney of Fiji Indian descent Sadhana D. Narayan.

The statistics are staggering: An estimated 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits have been hounded out of their homeland in the Kashmir valley; and Malaysia’s egregious discriminatory policies have resulted in a drop of Indian-descent student enrollment in Malaysian universities from 20 percent in 1957 to just five percent in 2003. In Fiji, harassment and discrimination has led to an exodus of Fiji Indians: From around half the population in the 1970s, the Fiji Indian population has dropped to 38 percent in 2004.

To be sure, only in Kashmir can it be argued that Pandits have been targeted because of their religion. In Malaysia and Fiji, Hindus have been part of a broader, xenophobic attack against immigrants. Malaysia’s decades-long troubled race relations led to Singapore leaving the Malay federation and a Chinese guerilla insurgency, while in Fiji, the plight of Hindus has been driven by the schism between indigenous Fijians and Indians who immigrated in the 19th century, a point made by Narayan.

“The civil rights issues in Fiji do not boil down to a Hindu-Muslim type of conflict,” she said. “The Hindus and the Muslims in Fiji live in peace, and live in harmony.

“The conflicts that we have as Hindus in Fiji relates more to the fact that ethnic Indians, primarily Hindu, have been discriminated against in the last 10-20 years or so as a result of the ethnic Fijians and their actions. . . If anything, the Muslim community has suffered with us.”

Zutshi’s presentation was augmented by the screening of a documentary film on the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits by Ashok Pandit, which presented poignant images of destitute Pandits in refugee camps and distraught women talking about the murder of their husbands by Islamists.

Zutshi refused to recognize the anti-Indian movement in Kashmir as the freedom movement that its supporters claim it is. He said it was an Islamist insurgency fueled by Pakistan. “The Islamic colonization of Kashmir has been supported by Islamic terrorists and fundamentalists who committed crimes of genocide against the community of Kashmiri Hindus in Kashmir. . . (including) targeted attacks on Sikh community,” he said.

He was scathing in his condemnation of the Indian government’s role. “Unfortunately, Indian leaders have been romancing with the Islamists, anti-Hindus and anti Indians,” he said. “So much so that the self-confessed killers and anti-nationalists, they have been wandering scot-free in the streets of Kashmir. . . The government of India has established two standards of justice. One for Indians, one for Kashmiri Muslims.”

The U.S. role had been equally egregious, Zutshi said. “The (George W.) Bush administration has been cozying up to the Taliban regime in the same way . . . (as) the earlier administration of President (Bill) Clinton.,” he said. “Thousands of Kashmiris Hindus have been murdered . . . Hindus are suffering, and the government is silent.”

He said the recent violent protests in the Kashmir valley against leasing of forest land to the Amarnath temple was a “sad and painful portrayal of the exclusivist and illogical mindset that rules the roost in Kashmir.”

“The government’s approach towards this issue is reflective of its subjugation to the Islamic diktats which . . . cannot be accepted,” he said.

Govindasamy painted a grim picture of the plight of Hindus in Malaysia. “From 1957 what was a trickle of removal of rights became, under the rule of Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, a torrent, a waterfall,” he said.

“What was a trickle of temple demolitions about 25 years ago, has now grown, and till now, 15,000 Hindu temples have been demolished.

“They have taken away our economic rights, they have deprived us in education,” he said. “They cannot even leave our religion to us.”

Five Indian leaders have been unlawfully incarcerated, he added.

In 50 years, the Malaysian government has turned the Malaysian Indian society into the underclass, Govindasamy charged.

“Hindus are an endangered species in Malaysia,” he said. “If this goes on for the next five to 10 years, there will be no more Hindus. All will either have left, or will have forcibly converted to Islam.”

Although Fiji Indians had gone through a difficult time, there was a glimmer of hope, Narayan said. Ironically, following a coup in 2006, things are looking up. Narayan made it clear that although she applauded the positive developments, she in no way endorsed the military coup.

“Currently, we are in the process of trying to have another constitution put in place which essentially would go back to the original constitution . . . which would allow race neutral policies,” she said.

A rise in indigenous nationalist fervor and four coups in 20 years, including the toppling of democratically elected Fiji Indian Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, had exacerbated the plight of Fiji Indians, Narayan told the audience. “We were put in a position where all of a sudden we were interlopers and we did not belong,” she said.

“Fiji Indians were . . . essentially told to leave,” Narayan said. Temples have been attacked repeatedly, she said.

“The second thing they did was to make people homeless. . . Individuals who had lived on the same land for three generations were forced to leave their lands and tear down their homes and go away. Now where would they go?,” she asked.

“So we have squatter camps that have developed around Fiji.”

There are now huge squatter camps in the Fiji cities of Suva and Ba, and Amnesty International estimates that 12 percent of Fiji Indians live in squatter camps.

The worst part was a lack of security, Narayan said. “In Fiji if you are Fiji Indian and a Fijian came and robbed your home, nobody would come,” she complained. “Nobody would come to assist you. . . If you have no personal safety or security in your own home, you start feeling very frightened.”

Consequently, Fiji Indians left the country in droves, and now Fiji faces an economic crisis.

Former Fiji Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry, who is now Fiji’s finance minister, has told Narayan that the nation is bankrupt.

“The exclusionary policy of the last 20 years of keeping out Indians, making them feel not wanted, has eventually helped to destroy the economy of Fiji,” she said. “And he was asking Indians to come home.”

The government is promising lease restoration of land and possible government payment. “Understandably, a lot of Fiji Indians are not interested in coming back,” Narayan said. The government is promising 30-year leases on land with automatic 20-year renewals. “It’s a situation where the government may end up having to rebuild the homes of the Fiji Indians and that’s something that we are hopeful will end up happening,” Narayan said.
:by indiawest

BJP’s Ashok Khajuria asks Kashmiri Muslims to leave Jammu immediately

Well said, Ashok Khajuria. Islam is a cruel, oppressive and violent religion. There should be no place in India for those who follow such a savage belief system. In India our ethos based on peace, harmony, pluralism, democracy and respect for all all beliefs.

Tension over land row heightens, Kashmiris asked to leave Jammu
India’s News.Net
Thursday 24th July, 2008 (IANS)

Tension gripped the curfew-bound Jammu city after some Hindu leaders asked Kashmiri Muslims to ‘pack up’ from here and angry crowds defying curfew staged protest marches Thursday, a day after a man allegedly committed suicide here against the cancellation of land allotted to the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB).

Undeterred by the curfew and agitated over the government’s alleged failure to restore land to the shrine board, people in several parts of this winter capital city and its suburbs held protest demonstrations and blocked the Jammu-Pathankote and Jammu-Srinagar national highways.

The protesters were raising slogans against Governor N.N. Vohra and National Conference president Omar Abdullah, whose effigies were burnt at various places.

Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) state unit president Ashok Khajuria in a news conference asked Kashmiri Muslims to leave Jammu immediately.

‘Omar Abdullah should not visit Jammu, and all Kashmiris should leave the region at the earliest. They have no right to be here,’ Khajuria said.

Many areas in Jammu region observed a complete shutdown in response to the general shutdown call given by Amarnath Yatra Samgarash Samiti (AYSS).

‘The protests will continue,’ Leela Karan, convenor of the AYSS, told reporters here.

Karan said the situation could take any turn, and it would be better for the Kashmiris who have settled in Jammu to ‘pack up from here’. ‘They (Kashmiris) have no business to be here when their leaders are rigid in conceding land for the (Amarnath) pilgrimage and pilgrims’ facilities.’

Life in many towns of the Hindu-dominated Jammu region came to a halt with all shops, business establishments and educational institutions closed. The roads were deserted.

Divisional Commissioner (Jammu) Sudhanshu Pandey told IANS: ‘The indefinite curfew was imposed at dawn as a precautionary measure.’

The lull that had descended in Jammu after a 10-day-long spell of shutdowns and curfews was broken Wednesday when Kuldip Kumar Dogra allegedly committed suicide to protest the government’s ‘inaction’ on the land row.

Dogra, in his late 20s, appeared at Parade Ground, where activists of the AYSS were on a hunger strike Wednesday. He made an emotional speech to the gathering, saying the revocation of the land transfer order to the shrine board had driven him to desperation. He said he was ‘sacrificing my ife for the cause’, eyewitnesses told reporters.

Dogra, who had allegedly consumed poison before making the speech, fell unconscious. He was taken to a hospital where the doctors declared him dead, the police said. His body was cremated at his native village of Bishnah region Thursday.

The police said a suicide note was found in Dogra’s pocket. It said he was upset about Omar Abdullah’s remarks in parliament Tuesday that Kashmiris would die but never give up their forest land.

Karan said the government should register a case against the National Conference president for his ‘communal and provocative utterances’.

The curfew continued in Jammu city but it was repeatedly defied by protesters, who raised anti-government slogans and demanded Governor Vohra’s recall from the state.

The AYSS is demanding the allocation of nearly 40 hectares of forest land to the Amarnath shrine board. The land was first diverted to the shrine board May 26 for setting up temporary prefabricated structures for pilgrims travelling to the cave shrine of Hindu god Shiva in south Kashmir.

The issue triggered massive protests in the Kashmir Valley. Protesters in the Muslim-majority region alleged that the plot would be used to settle outsiders and change the demographic character of Kashmir.

The government rescinded the order July 1. That silenced the street protests in the Kashmir Valley but ignited a counter agitation in Jammu, where people are still demanding allotment of the plot to the shrine board.

In Taliban Kerala, Prominent Muslim Leader’s Film Scene Gets Deleted Due to Hue and Cry From Muslim MLAs

Ex-minister cut out from film
20 Jul 2008, 0446 hrs IST, Ananthakrishnan G,TNN

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A film-maker decided to delete a scene featuring a prominent Muslim leader because he thought Muslims acting in films was un-Islamic. This did not happen in Taliban country, but in India’s most literate state – Kerala.

At the centre of the furore is the yet to be released Malayalam movie ‘Chembada’ (red army) directed by noted filmmaker Robin Tirumala and his friend and senior Muslim League leader M K Muneer. The former Public Works minister, also a good singer, features in a dance and song sequence in the film.

On Friday, Robin announced he was pained by the controversy which was affecting Muneer and decided to drop the part from the movie. His was referring to the demands made by three Muslim MLA’s raising questions about Muneer’s role. Only a few days back, the legislators – K T Jaleel, P M A Salam and PTA Rahim – all of whom are Left-backed independents, had raised questions over the propriety of Muneer’s film role vis-a-vis Islam and asked him to clarify his religious stand.

Robin’s announcement came two days later leading to speculation that the Muslim League had prevailed on Muneer and the director to make the cut. But Robin denies this. “I consulted my producer and we decided to drop the scene on our own as we did not want a leader like Muneer to get caught in controversies like this. There was absolutely no pressure,” he told The Times of India. Muneer said he was pained by the allegations. “There was nothing obscene in it,” he said.

A doctor by qualification, Muneer is the son of former Kerala Chief Minister C H Mohammed Koya. Party sources said the League leadership was under pressure given the sensibilities in its constituencies in north Kerala. Muslim groups supporting the League were of the view that Muneer’s act was un-Islamic. However, senior ML leader and former education minister E T Mohd Basheer said the matter had not come up for consideration of the party at all.

The demand by the MLA’s came at a time when the state was witnessing heightened protests by the Congress led opposition of which MLA against school text books getting a communist tinge. A panchayat ruled by the League had even decided not to teach the book inviting sharp reactions from the Left government.

Jaleel admits that the strategy was to corner the Muslim League. Jaleel, Salam and Rahim had defeated heavyweights in the last assembly elections in the Muslim-dominated districts considered strongholds of the Muslim League. Many, however, feel the controversy could have been avoided. “Malayalam superstar Mammotty is a Muslim. His brother Ibrahim Kutty is also a film actor and leader of the Muslim League, but no questions are raised about that. This is only a political stunt,” exclaimed a movie buff.