Puppets Of Faith Theory Of Communal Strife (A critical appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity ‘n more)

by BS Murthy

  So to the chagrin of the Israelis, Yasser Arafat resurrected the ghost of 'Abd Allah ibn Unays in the form of Al Fatah to infuse his jihadi in the disgruntled minds of the Palestinians. Well, the Israelis did find ways and means to counter the Islamic terror tactics in due course, for after all, hasn't history proved that while the M usalmans turn desperate in defeat, the Jews steel themselves in adversity? Thus pushed to the wall, Arafat, by fusing the Quranic diktats and the Muslim hurt with hadith as the catalyst, developed the deadly fidayeen in the Islamic laboratory of the Palestine. Confronted

  with the martyr missiles being thrown at them by the Islamic desperados, the Jews responded by decimating their dwellings and deporting their families.

  M aybe, the Israeli hope was that the potential martyr might give up, realizing that his loved ones in this world would have it tough even as he's having a heck of a time in 'the hereafter'. But right 'here', the Israelis had to face the barrage of protests from human rights activists, morons all, who fail to grasp the rights of legitimate offensive and the wrongs of a misguided aggression. What is worse, in support of the extremist causes, they second fiddle from a safe distance, either owing to their naivety or vested interests, and/or both, and thus end up being insensitive to the sufferings of the victims of the so-called armed struggles they espouse.

  Whatever the Israeli calculation, the hadithian response on the ground was a mixed one. While it might have brought sanity into many a Palestinian home, there were enough shelters in the refugee camps for the Hamas to rope in the fidayen in numbers. After all, isn't martyrdom too tempting a proposition for the shahid what with the promised company of all those black-eyed virgins? Lest there should be any doubt in the minds of the prospective martyrs about the capacity of man to enjoy so many women, lo, the Quran had clarified that their own virility increaseth a hundred fold to be able to have them all! Oh, M uhammad! The uniqueness of the M uhammadan cult is that belief enables the believer to endure the hassles of the Islamic dogma 'here' for the rewards of the 'Hereafter' guaranteed for the martyrs.

  Given the Israeli ascent, maybe vexed with Palestinian excesses, 'the God' had tilted the Divine Scales towards the Jews, His originally Chosen People, all again, at the cost of the M usalmans as He warned them thus in the Quran:

  "0 Ye who believe! Whoso of you becometh a renegade from his religion, (know that in his stead) Allah will bring a people whom He loveth and who love Him, humble toward believers, stern toward disbelievers, striving in the way of Allah, and fearing not the blame of any blamer. Such is the grace of Allah which he giveth unto whom He will. Allah is All-Embracing, All-Knowing."

  Chapter 28

  Delusions of Grandeur

  Peace being the 'supposed' message of Islam, the religion that the Palestinians and the Pakistanis together profess, strife seems alike to be their political fate. While it is apparent that the Arab hostility towards Israel is steeped in the legality of tenancy, it can be seen that the Kashmir quagmire is rooted in Pakistan's delusions of Islamicgrandeur. Whatever, it is the paradox of the Muhammadan creed in that that it provides a common ground for the Palestinian need, and the Pakistani greed, for 'land' that leads them on their self-destructive course.

  Even before the ink was dry on the British deed of Hindustan's partition, Pakistan surreptitiously pressed its tribal Muslim hordes into the Kashmiri flux to annex the Paradise on Earth to its Land of the Pure. What with Raja Hari Singh, the 'vacillating' Hindu King, having had no army to name, the mujahideen, armed to the teeth by Pakistan, could overrun a large chunk of his land, but owing to their jihadi habit to plunder, and the acquired vice of rape, these marauders had senselessly antagonized even the Kashmiri M usalmans, who came under their sway. Nevertheless, before the mujahideen could turn the fabled valley into a Pakistani trophy, Hari Singh's Hindu sentiment and Sheikh Abdullah's patriotic fervor saved the day for Kashmir as the former, acquiesced by the latter, inalienably aligned the State with the Union of India. Though the Indian forces entered the scene and stalled Pakistan's progress through its proxy rogues into the heart of the valley, yet, stymied by the cease-fire call of the comity

  of nations, the wooly Nehru's own making, the Indian State couldn't reclaim all of Kashmir to itself. If anything, the geo-political game of the Western nations in those cold war days enabled Pakistan, which teamed up with them against the Soviet Union, to usurp the thirteen-thousand-odd km square area, which it ironically calls 'Azad Kashmir'.

  Thus lying divided in the laps of the adversaries, Kashmir became an arena of strife with many sub-continental twists and turns. Whatever may be the Pakistani brief over all of Kashmir; it cannot harp on the legality of its accession to India for after all, Raja Hari Singh derived the power to accede his kingdom, the way he willed it, from the same document that created Pakistan! So be it, but to which group the Pakistani blood that its 'jugular vein' carries belongs to? Is it Rh+ for Kashmiri M uslims or the Rh- for Kashmir Valley?

  Well for the right answer, the question is better addressed to mohajirs, the Muslim migrants from the Gangetic plains into the Pakistani Sind. Why didn't Pakistan fail them by not letting them feel at home in the homeland of the M usalmans of Hindustan that it was supposed to be? So also, the Bihari M usalmans, though they were cohorts with the Punjabi Muslims in the massacre of the Bengali believers in the then East Pakistan, yet fail to get the entry visas into what was left as Pakistan.

  Won't it then serve the secession-mongers of the Kashmir valley to ponder over why the Pakistanis, unwilling to suffer the presence of those faithful in their midst, are so fond of the Kashmiri M usalmans living beyond their borders? Unless they had turned morons by the Islamic death wish to sink with the failed state of Pakistan, it should be apparent to them that unlike the Bihari believers, they have a fabled valley to add to the map of Pakistan. And that is about the Pakistani land greed camouflaged with the religious solidarity to seduce the Kashmiri M uslims into its inimical fold.

  Be that as it may, way back in the 16 th Century, had not the Portuguese wrested Goa from Islam and ousted its believers, Pakistan would have an irrefutable claim on it in the partitioned Hindustan, but that again is history! Whatever, the urge of the M usalmans has always been to expand the Islamic territory on the global terrain, and thus Pakistan's Decommissioned-Adult-Muhammadans fail to take India's Kashmiri perspective into account, much less analyze it to see if any course correction is needed in their India outlook.

  The two-nation theory by which the ancient land of Arya Varta was partitioned was an illusion of the Indian M usalmans that was not subscribed by the Hindus of India, and had they wanted a country for them only, wouldn't they have ceded some more land to Pakistanis, if that were needed, as a quid pro quo for ridding the Islamist presence from their Indian midst. But, rightly or wrongly, that was not the way Hindustan was partitioned, and if so, what's the rationale for those millions of M usalmans to stay back in Hindustan even after Pakistan came into being?

  So, any Pakistani argument for wanting Kashmir, citing its M uslim majority would be untenable to any reasonable mind, and likewise, the urge of those Kashmiri M usalmans to merge the valley with the Islamic Pakistan wouldn't sync with the spirit of partition. If not, won't it make a case for the Indian M usalmans to seek the merger of those areas with Pakistan, wherever they happen to form the majority, and let their brethren, wherever they are in minority, to continue living in India that is until they cross the halfway mark! Thus, when push comes to shove, the moral right of the Indian M usalmans to live in India would become questionable, and if Pakistanis, in the spirit of their panIslamic credo, wish the Indian umma well, then they should become wiser to their 'hate India' campaign, which only exacerbates the Hindu-M uslim apathy in India.

  The same applies to the Bangladeshi believers, likewise afflicted with the Decommissioned Adult syndrome of their erstwhile Pakistani masters. Why at the dawn

  of the 'original partition', even before the Bengali M uslim celebrations for having s
een the back of the hated Hindu were over, the ugly reality of the Punjabi M usalmans stared them in their Islamic face! It's as if the M uhammadan creed of equality before Allah was of no avail to the Bengali M uslims in the Pakistani version of the Islamic democracy, and so, in the hour of the Bengali glory, Bhutto's political greed and the Punjabi fauzis' prejudice to their dark skin, upstaged their right to have their man, M ujibur Rahaman, to head the Islamic Pakistan. Well their agitation for their democratic right to see Rahaman as the Prime Minister of Pakistan made the Bengali Musalmans appear like idolaters to the Islamic Generals of Pakistan, and they treated them likewise massacring the men and raping their women. This about speaks for the hypocrisy of the Muslim Brotherhood, not to speak the way the Musalman expatriates from Pakistani and India are treated in the land of their M essenger.

  Where did the hapless Bengali Muslims flee to escape from the repression of their fellow M usalmans than to Hindustan! It is another matter though that all this was 'the godsend' to India to grind its own Pakistani axe by helping the freedom struggle of rebellious Bengali faithful. It's thus, in what was a unique instance in the Islamic saga, so as to oust their Punjabi brethren; the Bengali M usalmans welcomed the Hindu kafirs into their dar al-lslam! Well, India did oblige them, and Bangladesh came into being, and this one gesture could have been sufficient for the Bangladeshi M usalmans to shed their old Hindu hatred and hold the hand of eternal friendship to the Indians. Why not? In the ever changing world, that is what the 'nations at odds once' are doing now, and that's what the Bangladeshis would have done in the normal course. But then, for them there is the Islam to contend with.

  Before long, the initial euphoria of the Hindu-M uslim bhai-bhai, occasioned by their Bengali sense of gratitude, gave way to India-animosity brought to the fore by their Islamic upbringing on the staple diet of kafir hatred, which goaded them to murder their own savior, M ujibur, perceived to be India friendly, and to wipe out his kith and kin in cold blood to boot. That's not all for they began persecuting the Hindu minority in every possible way to force their exit from their Islamic midst. That Sheik Hasina his daughter providentially survived that heinous massacre and in later years brought some sanity into the bigoted Bengali Muslim polity is the saving grace of Bangladesh's bloody history.

  Why, it can be reasonably assumed that but for their inculcated Islamic bigotry, Bengali M usalmans, as a people per se, would have appropriately responded to the Indian goodwill gesture, as any other people of the world would have. It's thus, in what could be termed as the great human tragedy, Muhammad succeeded in cementing the bigoted Islamic cult in the Arabian soil, which his zealot followers religiously planted in other lands to their hurt of their people, but for which the Bangladeshis would not have been what they have come to be. So, it's one of the ironies of Islam in that it gives with one hand and takes away with the other, and thus it is the destiny of the M usalmans to suffer on that score, even as they make 'the others' to suffer as well.

  As for the truncated Pakistan, obsessed as it was with its idea of a strategic depth against India, when the time came, it thought it was jolly well holy to foster terrorists on its Islamic soil to play the American cold war game in the Soviet occupied Afghanistan. What with the eventual Russian withdrawal under the Islamic duress, and the Taliban coronation that followed, Pakistan had reassigned the mujahideen to serve its Kashmiri cause. And by then, Osama bin Laden too had set up the international terror network of Al Qaeda for Muhammad Atta and others to exhibit the Islamic derangement on 9/11/2001 forthe world audience.

  When came the American pressure on Pakistan in its wake, its Generals have chosen to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares in their terrorist badlands but wouldn't

  Washington know that the jihadis of Pakistan meant for Srinagar might go astray and attack New York all again? After Iraq, wouldn't it be Pakistan's turn to face the American music after its Al-Qaeda ghost is exorcized? Even otherwise, till recently, one would have thought that the fate of the Islamic militancy would be decided in the Promised Land but meanwhile, it is as if the Sunnis are at the Shia-throats in Iraq and Pakistan to snatch the terrorist standard of Islam from the Hamas.

  Meanwhile, the un-lslamic world is unable to counter these loose cannon of a fidayen but would it forever like to remain a hostage to the Islamic terrorism? How long would 'the others' bear with the unpleasant task of clearing the human debris that the Islamic terrorists would be leaving behind in their midst? Won't the world lose its patience with the M usalmansat some point of time?

  Why, going by its ruthless campaign against all things Islamic, the formidable China has already lost, so to say, its bearing even. Would the umma be able to take on the rest of the world, if and when it chooses to crack the whip, without their Angels of War, which, anyway, never returned to aid the M usalmans after their brief appearance in the Battle of Bardr to rescue Muhammad? Why, in this 'neutron bomb era', Islam seems to be really in danger for once, and the fidayen of the Baghdadi's ISIS-School might be bringing the M ohammedan D-Day closer to our times.

  Chapter 29 Ways of the Bigots

  The obscurantist self-destruct of the M uhammadans is a weird phenomenon as Islam has the compelling character of infusing in its believers a frenzied madness of religious insanity. Hadn't the Wahabis once dug up M uhammad's grave to make Islam purer! But, now, what of the growing trend of the Islamic car-bombings even in the holy land, not to speak of the conquered ones, aimed at fellow M usalmans, not to speak of kafirs? It's as if the Quranic terrorism, willy-nilly nursed by the umma, like the Frankenstein M onster, has begun to devour the Islamic Hypocrites of dar al-lslam.

  Well, as one cannot farm in the desert sands, obscurantism wouldn't have become the second nature of the M usalmans without the masjid-madrasa cultivation of it, and so it helps the umma to realize that the Satan, who misguides the believers, comes in the guise of Muhammadan child psychology. Well, won't the umma willy-nilly ensure that the inimical tenets of Islam are injected into their toddlers in adult dosage to habituate them to adhere to the supposedly straight path that the Quran laid for them, which M uhammad had cemented for the umma to tread on into the eternity?

  However, as the Upanishads aver, the Satan but resides in one's mind and the way to control him is through self-awareness, but, unfortunately, the M usalmans sow wild psychic seeds in the minds of their kids, which in time grow into fundamentalist trees of obscurantist species as has been observed in this exercise. Thus, the noble but naive desire of the umma to inculcate the Islamic faith in its kids with the Quranic drill in the precincts of the masjid-madrasa-mohalla combine comes to grief, as if by Satanic Design! Why, as Islam that prohibits drink to the believers 'here', inebriates them with a heady mix of religious indoctrination, how the Muhammadan Decommissioned Adult would know that while the alcoholic inebriation brings the drunken back to senses, sooner than later, the Islamic elixir would keep the believers inebriated forever!

  But dawns not reason on the bigoted minds; Inshah Allah, if the child were to pick up the Islamic threads and religiously grows up into a believing Musalman, still he would have developed a prejudiced psyche that stymies his awareness in our age of openness. But God forbid, if the child turns out to be a Hypocrite, as his tedious religious drill would have implanted the Quranic guilt feeling in his troubled consciousness, where the

  pious M uslim parents would have left, the disgruntled Islamic fanatics would take over. While the prejudiced psyche of the Musalmans could be cultivated into Islamic zeal against the kafirs by the misguided mullahs, the guilt feeling of the Hypocrites could be re-engineered as martyr missiles in the J ihadi workshops of Al Qaeda and Hamas, not to speak of the terrorist camps at the Af-Pak border, and, of late, in the rogue lands of ISIS.

  It is a psychological possibility to work on the subconscious guilt of those youth, who have strayed from the Straight Path, to induce a conscious desire for martyrdom to atone for their past sins as the ideologues of Al-Qaeda had first demonstrated;
didn't Osama's plane loads that struck the 'Satanic Towers' on 9/11, as the world watched in awe, came from this deceptive source? If anything the way the Islamic converts from the white-lands that have flocked to the Deadly Caliphate of ISIS to kill and get killed has demonstrated the irrationality of it all.

  It's thus, Islam proves the point; a religion that brainwashes its faithful into believing that life for them begins only in 'the hereafter' is bound to be at odds with the possibilities of life 'here'. Well, this is the theological method of the mullahs in converting the Western jailbirds into Islam, which can be galvanized into the jihadi zeal pictured in The New York Times, which M .J. Akbar cited in his book The Shade of Swords.

  [Little in the manner of Ijaz Khan Hussein betrays the miseries he saw as a volunteer in the war in Afghanistan.

  M r. Khan, a college-trained pharmacist, joined the jihad, or holy war, like thousands of other Pakistanis who crossed into Afghanistan. He worked as a medical orderly near Kabul, shuttling to the front lines and picking up bodies and parts of bodies. Of 43 men who boarded a truck to travel with him to Afghanistan in October, he said, 41 were killed. Now with the Taliban and Al Qaida routed, have Mr. Khan and other militants finished with jihad?

  M r. Khan, at least, said he had not.

  'We went to the jihad filled with joy, and I would go again tomorrow,' he said. 'If Allah had chosen me to die, I would have been in Paradise, eating honey and watermelons and grapes, and resting with beautiful virgins, just as it is promised in the Quran. Instead, my fate was to remain amid the unhappiness here on earth.']

  Khan Hussein's fanatic account should have gladdened Muhammad's heart no end, peace be upon him, but it would have grieved the parents of those 41, unless they too were psychic characters, believing that black-eyed virgins, besides rivers of flowing wine, lay in wait for their offspring in the 'Hereafter'. It would be an idea to know how the parents of all those children whom Ayatollah Khomeini, in his fight against Saddam Hussein, consigned to martyrdom by promising Paradise; and as a cynical example of the clerics' exploitation of the Islamic belief system, he equipped the hapless kids with plastic keys, made by infidels of Japan, to open its gates! Can irony get any better, cynically speaking that is?