The person who wrote it deleted the writer’s name.
A beautiful piece of observation.
*Indian Muslims*
The Country with the largest Muslim population in the world is Indonesia and the second largest Muslim populated country is not Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt or Pakistan. It is India. With more than 150 million Muslims, India has more Muslims than Pakistan.
Here is an interesting statistic from 9/11:
There are no Indian Muslims that we know of in al-Qaeda and there are no Indian Muslims in America’s Guantanamo Bay ie. post-9/11 prison camp and no Indian Muslims have been found fighting alongside the jihadists in Iraq. Why is that?
Why do we not read about Indian Muslims, who are a
minority in a vast Hindu-dominated land, blaming America for all their problems and wanting to fly airplanes into the Taj Mahal or the British embassy? Lord knows, Indian Muslims have their grievances about access to capital and political representation. Interreligious violence has occasionally flared up in India, with disastrous consequen- ces. I am certain that out of 150 million Muslims in India, a few will one day find their way into al-Qaeda, but if it can happen with some American Muslims, I am certain it can happen with Indian Muslims. But this is not the norm.
Why? One of the main reason is because India in particular is a secular country. It practices free-market,
total democracy, and is heavily influenced by a tradition, culture and religious tolerance.
M. J. Akbar, the Muslim editor of the Asian Age, a national Indian English-language daily, primarily funded by non-muslim Indians, put it to me this way: “I’ll give you a quiz question: Which is the only and the largest Muslim community in the world to enjoy sustained democracy for the last sixty years? His answer was, the Muslims of India.
I am not going to exaggerate the good fortune of the people of India. There are demonstrations, tension, economic discriminations, and provocations, like the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya by Hindu nationalists in 1992. But the fact is, the Indian Constitution is secular and it provides a real opportunity for economic advancement of all communities in India. Every Indian with individual talent, regardless of ones religious background can survive in India with total freedom, justice and fairness. India does not have an official religion and neither is religion controlled by the State. That’s why a growing Muslim middle class here is moving up and generally doesn’t manifest the strands of deep anger that you find in many Non-democratic states, Islamic Republic States or even in Democratic Muslim States.”
Where Islam is embedded in authoritarian societies, it tends to become the vehicle of angry protest such as in Egypt, Syria , Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc.
However, where Islam is embedded in pluralistic democratic free societies such as in Turkey or in India for instance, with a more progressive outlook and have the opportunity for a better and a fair hearing for interpretations and a democratic forum where they can fairly fight for justice and a fair hearing on an equal footing.
On November 15, 2003, the two main synagogues of Istanbul were hit by some suicide bombers. I happened to be in Istanbul a few months later, when the synagogues were reopened after repairs and renovations.
Several things struck me. To begin with, the chief rabbi
appeared at the ceremony, hand in hand with the top Muslim cleric of Istanbul and the local Mayor, while crowds in the streets were jubilant and threw red carnations on them. Secondly, the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who comes from an Islamic party, paid a visit to the chief rabbi in his office.
The father of one of the suicide bombers told the Turkish newspaper Zaman, “We cannot understand why this child had done the thing he had done. First let us meet with the chief rabbi of our Jewish brothers. Let me hug him. Let me kiss his hands and his flowing robe. Let me apologise in the name of my son and offer my condolences for the deaths. We will be damned if we do not reconcile with them.”
In different contexts there are different narratives and different interpretations and different imaginations. I am also keenly aware of the imperfections of the Indian democracy, starting with the oppressive caste system.
Nevertheless, to have sustained a functioning democracy with all its flaws for more than fifty years in a country of over one billion people, who speak scores of different languages, is something of a miracle and a great source of stability for the world.
India is the only country in the world where three major religions, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism were born. Three of India’s presidents have been Muslims. One of its Presidents, Abdul Kallam is both a Muslim and the father of the Indian nuclear missile program.
While a Muslim woman sits on India’s Supreme Court, no Muslim woman is allowed even to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Indian Muslims, including women, have been governors of many Indian States and the wealthiest man in India in the recent past as well as high on the Forbes list of global billionaires, was an Indian Muslim: Azim Premji, the chairman of Wipro, one of India’s most important technology companies.
I was in India shortly after the United States invaded Afghanistan in late 2001, when Indian television carried a debate between the country’s leading female movie star and parliamentarian Shabana Azmi, a Muslim woman. An Imam of New Delhi’s biggest mosque had called on Indian Muslims to go to Afghanistan and join the jihad against America, but Azmi orally ripped him, live on Indian TV. Basically she told the cleric to go and take a hike to Kandahar and join the Taliban and leave the rest of India’s Muslims alone. How did she get away with that? Easy. As a Muslim woman she lived in a context that empowered and protected her to speak her mind even to a leading cleric. Different context, different narrative, different imagination. This however, is not all that complicated as the next.
Give young people a context where they can translate a positive imagination into reality; give them a context in which someone with a grievance can have it adjudicated in a court of law without having to bribe the judge with a goat; give them a context in which they can pursue an entrepreneurial idea and become the richest or the most creative or most respected people in their own country, no matter what their background; give them a context in which any complaint or idea can be published in the newspaper; give them a context in which anyone can run for office; and guess what? They usually don’t want to blow up the world. They usually want to be part of it.
A South Asian Muslim friend once told me this story: His
Indian Muslim family split in 1948, with half going to
Pakistan and the other half staying in Mumbai, India. When
he got older, he asked his father one day, as to why the
Indian half of the family seemed to be doing better than
the Pakistani half. His father said to him, “Son, when a
Muslim grows up in India and he sees a man living in a big
mansion high on a hill, he says, ‘Father, one day I will be that
man.’ And when a Muslim grows up in Pakistan and sees a
man living in a big mansion high on a hill, he says, ‘Father,
one day I will kill that man.’ When you have a pathway to be
the Man or the Woman, you tend to focus on the path and on
achieving your dreams. When you have no pathway, you tend
to focus on your wrath and on nursing your memories.
India only twenty years ago, was known more as a country of
snake charmers, poor people, and of Mother Theresa of
Calcutta. Today its image has been recallibrated. Now it is also
seen as a country of brainy people and computer wizards.
Atul Vishistha, the CEO of the outsourcing consulting firm
Neo IT, who often appears in the American media to defend
outsourcing. He told me this story: “One day I had a problem
with my HP printer as the printing was very slow. I was
trying to figure out the problem. So I called HP technical
support. This guy answers and takes all my personal
information down. From his voice it was clear that he was
somewhere in India. So I start asking him where he is
from and how the weather was. We were infact having a nice
chat for about ten or fifteen minutes he said, ’Sir, do you
mind if I say something to you?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ and I figured
that he was going to tell me about something wrong I was
doing with my computer and was trying to be polite about it.
Instead he says, ‘Sir, I was very proud to hear you on the
Voice of America . You did a good job.’ I had just been on a
VOA show about the backlash against globalization and
outsourcing. I was one of three invited guests. There was an
union official, an economist and myself. I defended
outsourcing and this guy heard it.”
Remember: In the flat world you don’t only get your
humiliation dished out to you. You also get your pride dished
out to you fiber-optically. An Indian help-line operator
suddenly knows, in real time, all about how one of his
compatriots is representing India half a world away, and
it makes him feel better about himself.
The French Revolution, the American Revolution , the Indian
democracy, and even e-bay are all based on social contracts
whose dominant feature is that authority comes from the
bottom up, and people can and do feel self-empowered to
improve their lot. People living in such contexts tend to
spend their time focusing on what to do next, not on whom
to blame next.
Recently I read a book, “Malaysia and the Club of Doom”
written by, “Syed Akbar Ali” The author, precisely high lights
that almost all the Muslim Countries throughout the world
are failed States. Syed, being a Malaysian, he is directly
pointing out that the Malaysian Government is almost there
taking Malaysia into that failed state which he terms as, ”The
Club of Doom”. This book is recommended to be read by all
especially the Muslims.