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INTRODUCTION

Here is a small book on a subject who has been disturbing us for so long that instead of facing it,
we try to dodge it. Islam is a religion, which has closed its doors to rationalism, logic, sensible
thinking and judicious line of arguments. Whether it is Salman Rashdie or Taslima Nasreen, Hamid
Dalwai or Anwar Shaikh, the threat is always held against all those who write differently. If there
is any progressive or rational Muslim, please stand up.

In this small book, I have discussed the Muslim mind, which nurses and nourishes its sickness
and disease instead of curing it to have a healthy body. The Hindu love for 'sarva-dharma-sama-
bhav'a' is in direct opposition to the Islamic theology if you are not with us, you are against us '.
Hinduism, the most peaceful and law-abiding religion has never imposed its creed on others.
Cannot Islam learn to treat the non-Muslims in the same humane and decent way as the non-
Muslims are treating the Muslims in all democratic countries of the world?

In a chain reaction, as more and more Muslims become diehard and fanatics, more and Hindus will
start becoming assertive and even aggressive. That is not good, in the long run. The ball is in
your court, my Muslim bhaijan! This world is different from what it was 1400 years ago. We have
to move with the times and march ahead, instead of stagnating and killing.

I am thankful to Mr. R.K. Bhatia for providing me with some material information on Islam to write
this small tract.

April 1996

SOME VOICES

On per capita basis, Muslims in India nurse more criminality; indeed in big cities, the underworld
has a high Muslim proportion, specialty in smuggling, boot- legging and murder-on-hire". (Syed
Shahabuddin, M.P., 'Muslim India', November 1987)

"What is it in the Muslims' psyche that it does not permit them to imbibe democratic ideas, norms
and values (M.B.Naqvi, Pakistan; Commentator).

"Hindus and Sikhs open out their arms to their Muslim brethren, visit Sufi shrines to pay homage
to Muslim 'pirs', but rarely do we get Muslims participate in non-Muslim festivals, visit temples or
Sikh gurudwaras. This is a great pity. (Khushwant Singh, 'The Tribune', 13 October 1990)

"The evasion of the Vedic doctrine has affected even more adversely those Indians who call
themselves 'Muslims'. They have fallen in love with the Principle of Inaction and seek paradise
through Intercession. The result is dreadful; these people see nothing in the drops of the Ganges
and look for everything virtuous in the

sands of Arabia". (Anwar Shaikh, 'Liberty', U.K. January-March 1996).

"The tragedy of Indian Muslims does not lie so much in the backwardness of a vast majority of
them in relation to the Hindus, -which is only a symptom, - as in the unwillingness of educated
Muslims to under- take a critical reappraisal of their heritage". (Prof. A.B.Shoh, in his Foreword to
Homid Oolwai's book 'Muslim Politics in Secular India').

"Muslim nationalistic movements, wherever there is a Muslim-majority, do not allow non-Muslims
to exist freely and equally". {Hamid Dalwai, 'Muslim Politics in Secular India', p.81)

In Bombay's THE DAILY (November 17, 1981), the celebrated journalist Kuldip Nayar filed the
following report :

"For the first time, a Home Ministry report has squarely put the blame on ' the Muslim countries
and the pan-lslamic organizations' for the 'Zeal' with which certain Indian Muslim groups are
working for the conversion of Harijans, The report has singled out ' the Jamaat-e-lslami-Hind and
other revivalist groups' which, according to the Ministry, has acquired 'resources' from abroad.

"The affluent Muslims of this region, who have close commercial links with the Gulf countries as
well as the Muslim countries in the south-east, have supplemented the efforts of the Muslim
organizations', says the report. The report says that London-based Islamic Cultural Centre has
worked out plans to Convert '80 million of the 120 million Harijans in India to Islam with financial
largesse from the oil-rich Islamic Gulf countries and other Arab nations'.

"The move is stated to be aimed at raising the Muslim population 'from 80 million to 200 million in
the next decade'. The report mentions the name of the Karachi-based Motamar AI-Alam-al-lslami
(World Muslim Congress) for the recent conversions in and around Meenakshipuram.

The recent mass conversions to Islam", says the ministry, "have created in the minds of the
people of the majority community 'a sense of danger and insecurity', as they feel that a calculated
and deliberate attempt is being made by some interested elements to reduce Hindus to a minority
in due course. 'If such a feeling persists, it portends serious repercussions in the communal "front
with increasing possibility of communal violence' ".

" The 1981 Meenakshipuram conversions brought about revulsions. The then Union Energy
Minister, A.B.A Ghani Khan Chaudhary, said, "Conversion is a bad practice and it will only
weaken our national philosophy of secularism. ...Those who have been propagating conversion
have been doing positive harm to the use of Indian secularism and to the future prospects of
Muslims. Muslims in India should realise that their future lies in total integration. There is no
halfway. On this, there must be total oneness".

Gandhiji was against forcible conversion from one religion to the other. As early as 11 May 1921,
be had said, "The days of forcible conversion are over". (Young India) Probably, he had in his
mind the forcible conversion of Hindu men and women, boys and girls unleashed by the Muslim
vandals in India during the Lodhi, Afghan, Pathan and Mogul rule in India. The British rulers,
though favoring the Muslims against the Hindus, did not approve forcible conversions for fear of
riots. Hence, Gandhiji's surmise that the days of forcible conversions were over.

However, the terrible tornado of Muslim terror against the Hindu minority in Noakhali (East
Bengal) in the 1940 shook him completely. Whatever his other views, of heart he was still a Hindu.
When he was asked whether those Hindu girls in Noakhali who were abducted or forcibly
converted to Islam or married under duress with Muslims against their will should be taken back
to Hinduism, he said in his prayer meeting address on Sunday 20th October 1946 that forcible
conversion was no conversion at all, nor abduction a bar to the return to her home. He also said
that no purification was necessary in such cases and the Hindu society should not impose any
penances on such persons. *** Read the Massacre of Noakhali****

Again, in an interview to a friend from Shrirampur, on 12 December 1946, when Gandhiji was told
that 'unless those who have been converted are brought back to the Hindu fold quickly, the
cleavage between the Hindus and the Muslims may become permanent', he said in emphatic and
clear words, "Yes, I admit the force of the argument. Many had returned. ...But all must" (Harijan,
12-1-1947).

Gandhiji's statement, made one year before his assassination, leads weight to the argument that
those Hindus, converted to Islam, should return back to the Hindu faith and fold without any
penances, and we should accept them with full honours and dignity.

After the disgrace of Mohammed-bin-Kassim, who had to be sent to the Caliph in Baghdad, in
spite of his victory in Sind in 712 A.D., most of the Hindus, converted to Islam came back to
Hinduism. Important men like Nawasa Shah and Rai Sal, who had become Muslims during the hell
days of Mahmud of Ghazni, returned to the Hindu fold. Large scale reconversion started from
Hindus converted to Islam back to the Hindu fold. 'Deval Smriti' laid down simplified norms for
taking back converted Hindus to the Hindu faith.

Islam, with fire and sword, has always broken the skulls and bones of all those who have refused
to accept Islam, the revealed religion of Allah. Conversion of the Hindus to the Islamic faith was
mixed with a religious piety so that the sword and the sickle was mercilessly used against all those
who refused to embrace Islam and remained 'kaffirs'.

In the twentieth century, this conversion by force has been done away with, but the brainwashing
through endless and ceaseless propagation of the faith continues to be waged by petro-dollars
from the opulently rich Gulf countries.

Prof. Deniel Pipes lucidly said, "The effect of this Oil boom as confirmation of Islam is extensive
but unmeasurable. Many Muslims, who would have shied away from their religion, associating it
with poverty and backwardness, now embrace a new image: that of the Arabian Sheikh with his
uncounted wealth and his steady devotion to Islam. By confirming Islam in the eyes of many, it
prepared the way for the Islamic Movements in 1970s. Two countries, Saudi Arabia and Libya,
one aligned to the West and the other to the Soviet Union, have been playing the most important
role in furthering these movements all over the world, particularly in India. Though antagonists in
so many ways, Saudi Arabian and Libyan activities for promotion of such movements
complement one another. The two regimes use different methods to achieve common goals. Libya
under Gaddafi funds extremist Islamic movements, trains saboteurs and sponsors terrorism. Saudi
Arabia provides financial aid and Libya runs guns. Arabia props up friends of Islam, and Libya
brings down its enemies. One provides incentives, the other punishes".

Politically, Libya and Saudi Arabia are at logger- heads "with each other, the first one being ruled
by an autocratic Military ruler and the second one by an autocratic orthodox Wahabi ruler, but
ideologically both share the same view: Islamisation of the non-Muslims. Rational thinking
disappears; the law of the jungle prevails; arguments are at a premium; tribalism rules the roost.
Along with Iran, these two countries have no love for Hindu India and are hell-bent on its break-
up into fragments by induction of terrorists, Mullahs and fanatics through the back door. Islam
allows no deviation, and hence this sneaking hatred against the Hindus of Hindustan.

In the International Affairs magazine, Ali A. Muzurai published a revealing article under the title
"Changing Guards from Hindus to Muslims". Some extracts:

"Three trends gained momentum in 1970s which were profoundly to affect the crescent. One was
the Politicization of Islam, the second was Petrolisation of Islam, and the more speculative trend
was Plutoniumisation of Islam. The first concerned the rise of great Political consciousness in the
Muslim world, the second concerned the emergence of petrol-power as an important ingredient in
the fortunes of Islam and the third concerned the potentialities of Muslim nuclear power in the
combat arena of World Politics.

"The politicization of Islam had, as its dramatic focus, Iran; the Petrolisation of Islam, had, as its
dramatic focus, Arab world; and the Plutoniumisation had, as its dramatic focus, Pakistan. This
new confidence of the Muslim world has petroleum as its material foundation and Islamic
fundamentalism as its spiritual sustenance. The combination of these two has enabled Islam to
launch a 'Petro-Jihad' to safeguard Muslim interests and make new conquests for Islam in the non-
Muslim world. It has succeeded to a good extent. The leadership of the Third World
internationally has passed into the Muslim hands".

However, there is an interesting point: should the Arab countries, because of the unlimited money
they possess on account of Allah's gift of petrol to them, concentrate their activities on funding
the mosques and Islamic institutes in India than on providing education to the illiterate Arab
girls? Dotard Arabs, with their last legs in 'kabirstan' come to Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) in
India, pay a few thousand rupees to the brokers or the parents of the poor teenage girls and marry
them for a temporary period and then leave them in the lurch like sucked-out oranges. Is this
Islam?

Rational thinking has never been the hallmark Islam; 'believe or perish' is their watchword; 'believe
or be damned' is their 'fatwa'. Deviation is 'kufffur' . -Hinduism, on the other hand, tries to explain,
examine, investigate, experience and come to a decision. We did not lynch Charvaka; we did not
kill Gautama Buddha; we did not hang Swami Dayanand Saraswati.

"Islam", said Ram Swarup, the celebrated Hindu scholar from Delhi, "refuses to argue.
Discussions, in its view, is merely a waste of breath; it has found that the logic of force is more
convincing". The result? Conversion from Islam to any non-Muslim faith is banned in Muslim
countries; transgressors are hanged! Conversion, for them, .is a one-way traffic.

Sir Jadunath Sarkar, who was India's most eminent historian, said in A Short History of
Aurangzeb as follows: -

"By the theory of its origin, the Muslim State is a theocracy. Its true king is God, and earthly
rulers are merely His agents bound to enforce His law on all. The civil authorities exist solely to
spread and enforce the true faith. In such a State, infidelity is logically equivalent to treason,
because the infidel repudiates the authority of the true king and pays homage to his rivals, the
false gods and goddesses. Therefore, the toleration of any sect outside the fold of orthodox Islam
is no better than compounding with sin. And the worst form of sin is polytheism, the belief that
the one true God has partners in the form of other deities. Islamic theology, therefore, tells the true
believer that his highest duty is to make 'exertion jihad) in the path of God' by waging war against
infidel lands (dar-ul- harb) till they become a part of the realm of Islam (Dur-ul-lslam) and their
populations are converted into true believers. After conquest, the entire infidel population
becomes theoretically reduced to the status of slaves of the conquering army.

"The conversion of the entire population to Islam and the extinction of every form of dissent, is
the ideal of the Muslim State. If any infidel is suffered to exist in the community, it is as a
necessary evil, and for a transitional period only. Political and social disabilities must be imposed
on him, and bribes offered to him from the public funds, to hasten the day of his spiritual
enlightenment and the addition of his name to the roll of true believers.

" A non-Muslim, therefore, cannot be a citizen of the State; he is a member of a depressed class;
his status is a modified form of slavery. He lives under a contract (zimmi) with the State: for the life
and property that are grudgingly spared to him by the Commander of the Faithful he must
undergo political and social disabilities, and pay a commutation-money (jiziya).

"He must pay a tax for his land (kharaj), from which the early Muslims were exempt; he must pay
other exactions for the maintenance of the army, in which he cannot enlist even if he offers to
render personal service instead of paying the poll-tax; and he must show by humility of dress and
behavior that he belongs to a subject class. No non-Muslim (zimmi) can wear fine dresses, ride on
horseback or carry arms; he must behave respectfully and submissively to every member of the
dominant sect.

As the learned Qazi Mughis-un-din declared to Ala-un-din Khalji, in accordance with the
teaching of the books on Canon Law: 'By these acts of degradation are shown the extreme
obedience of the zimmi, the glorification of the true faith of Islam, and the abasement of false faith.
The Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive No other
religious authority except the great Imam (Hanifa) whose faith we follow, has sanctioned the
imposition of the jaziya on Hindus. According to all other theologians, the rule for Hindus is
"Either Islam or death",

The zimmi is under certain legal disabilities with regard to testimony in the law courts, protection
under the criminal law, and marriage. The State, as the other party of the contract (zimma),
guarantees to him security of life and property and a modified protection in the exercise of his
religion; he cannot erect new temples, and has to avoid any offensive publicity in the exercise of
his faith.

" The early Arab conquerors, notably in Sind, followed the wise and profitable policy of leaving
the shrines and religious practices of the non-Muslim population practically undisturbed. There
was at first no wanton or systematic iconoclasm. With the growth of the Muslim population,
however, the long enjoyment of unchallenged power bred in them a spirit of intolerance and a
love of persecution. Every device short of massacre in cold blood was resorted to in order to
convert heathen subjects. In addition to the poll-tax and public degradation on dress and
demeanor imposed on them, the non-Muslims were subjected to various hopes and fears.
Rewards in the form of money and public employment were offered to apostates from Hinduism.
The leaders of Hindu religion and society were systematically repressed, to deprive the sect of
spiritual instruction, and their religious gatherings and processions were forbidden in order to
prevent the growth of solidarity and a sense of communal strength among them. No new temple
was allowed to be built nor any old one to be repaired, so that the total disappearance of all places
of Hindu

worship was to be merely a question of time,. But many of the more fiery spirits of Islam tried to
anticipate the destructive hand of Time and forcibly pulled down temples.

"In this later age, particularly among the Turks, the old Arab toleration of false faiths appeared
sinful. Outside their own realms, the destruction of temples and the slaughter of Hindus sanctified
every war of aggression. Thus frame of mind was produced in the Muslim community which
habitually regarded plunder and homicide as the purest of human acts, 'as 'exertion (jihad) in the
path of God.' The murder of infidels (kafir-kushi) is counted a merit in a Muslim. It is not necessary
that he should tame his own passions or mortify his flesh; it is not necessary for him to grow a
rich growth of spirituality. He has only to slay a certain class of his fellow-beings or plunder their
lands and wealth, and this act in itself would raise his soul to heaven.

"A creed whose followers are taught to regard robbery and murder as a religious duty, is
incompatible with the progress of mankind or with the peace of the world. Nor has it been
conducive to the true interests of its followers.

"For permission to live in an Islamic State the unbeliever has to pay a tax called Jiziya, which
means substitute money, i.e. the price of indulgence. Muhammad, who bade his followers 'fight
those who do not profess the true faith, till they pay Jiziya, with the hand in humility', first
imposed it. (Quran, ix 29). The last two words of this command have been taken by the Muslim
commentators to mean that the tax should be levied in a manner humiliating to the taxpayers: the
taxed person must come on foot and make the payment standing, while the receiver should be
seated", (pp. 124-131).

By no stretch of imagination can Jadunath Sircar be called as a biased fanatical historian; he was
objective in his views and analytical in his arguments on historical facts.

In the same book (pp 130-131), Jadunath Sircar gives some examples of Aurangzeb's bigotry in his
wild mad spree of Hindu temple destruction. When he was Viceroy of Gujarat in 1644, he had
destroyed the newly built Hindu temple of Chintaman in Ahmedabad after killing a cow in it. He
had issued an order in his reign in which he asked the officers in every town and village of Orissa
from Cuttack to Midnapore "to pull down all temples, including even clay huts, built during the
lost 10 or 12 years, and to allow no old temple to be repaired".

On 9th April 1669, he had ordered the demolition of all Hindu schools. His evil eyes fell upon the
second temple of Somnath, the Vishwanath temple of Varanasi and the Keshav Rai temple of
Mathura. Since Varanasi stood between Agra and Delhi, Aurangzeb;s 'pure' eyes would have
developed a religious cataract if these Hindu temples stood in the way. He destroyed the Keshav
Rai temple at Mathura in January 1670; he changed the name of the city of Mathura to Islamabad.
Victory to Islam after destroying the prestigious Hindu temple! -

Since there is no tolerance (forget about acceptance) in Islam, Hindu temples cannot be allowed to
survive in a country where Hindus were in absolute majority though the Muslims were the rulers!

The Muslim minority in India is so much pampered and appeased that during every election,
every political party seeks its vote-bank. No party is willing to render full justice to the Hindu
majority, lest it injure the tender sentiments of the Muslim minority. Muslim ghazal-singers of
Pakistan like Mehdi Hassan, Ghulam Ali, Suleman Ali Khan, Mohammed Ali and the Sabri
brothers,- who come to India to sing their lullabies of love, earn, fat money and take it to Pakistan
to deposit there in their Banks, were-the ones who had demanded from the late Pakistani President
General Zia a blanket ban on the entry of Indian films and music into Pakistan. The result has been
that while India invited Noorjehan, the singer of yesteryears, to come to India to regale the
audience with her once-melodious voice, our own Lata Mangeshkar was refused to sing in
Pakistan!

Not a single Muslim leader in India has raised his voice of protest against this discrimination in
music and song by the Pakistani fanatics. All the time we the Hindus are asked to be secular, fair,
chivalrous and benevolent, whereas the Muslims prefer to eat the butter on both sides of the
bread !

The canker of Islamic fanaticism, fundamentalism and medievalism is, slowly and gradually,
enveloping many modern Muslim countries. John Laffin, author of ARAB MIND, said, "Even
Egypt, with the most cosmopolitan capital in the Muslim world, has recently re- introduced the
Shariat laws, including the death penalty for any Muslim-Egyptian guilty of apostasy renouncing
his religion. When I was in Egypt in 1973, upper class Cairones were talking of the recent mur-
ders of a Christian priest and two Muslims he had converted. No action was taken to find the
killers".

In the so-called progressive Muslim Indonesia, a Muslim was hauled up in the Court for
describing Prophet Mohammed as a dictator. Shrill cries went up that he should be killed. In
Sudan, Shariat is the law of the land. In Somalia, Christians are suffering serfdom. In Nigeria, there
are frequent Christian-Muslim riots.

It may be of enlightening interest to know that all the old armies of the Muslim world (like
Mohammed bin-Kassim, Mahmud Ghaznavi and Mohammed Ghori) who came to India to loot, had
Moulvis in their army whose job was, not only to show the correct light to the Muslim soldiers to
kill as many Hindu 'Kaffirs' as possible to gain a permanent place in paradise after death, but also
to convert more and more 'kaffirs' to the Islamic faith. The Gun was followed by the Book. Even
the so- called 'secular' Muslim 'sufis' were not free from the taint of the conversion mania.

In his. The Philosophy of the Revolution, the Egyptian revolutionary Gamal Abdel Nasser (later,
its President) spoke proudly and feelingly of the Muslim bond uniting one Muslim with the other
Muslim from Indonesia and China to Burma and Pakistan. He said, "When my mind travels to the
eighty million Muslims of Indonesia, the fifty million in China and the several other millions in
Malaya, Siam and Burma, and the hundred millions in Pakistan, the hundred or more in the Middle
East and the forty millions in Russia, as well as the other 'Millions in the distant parts of the world,
when I visualize these millions united in one faith, I have a great consciousness of the
tremendous potentialities that co-operation among them can achieve".

London's Economist (8th August 1981 ), basing its report on the news item published in the Arab
Time of Kuwait, had said, "The Islamic Cultural Centre in London has planned to convert 80
million of India's 120 million untouchables with the help of the Gulf money". Not willing to help
the poor Muslim rickshaw driver to have his teenage daughter married instead of being passed on
to a toothless old haggard Arab in temporary matrimony, the Arabs want to convert millions of
Hindu untouchables into Islam to create a buffer stock of Muslim untouchables! Dr. B.R.
Ambedkar

had warned these Hindu Harijans, "Conversion to Islam or Christianity will donationalise the
depressed classes. It is a misnomer to think that the Muslim countries (Saudi Arabia, Libya,
Pakistan, Iran, etc.) are not interested in converting the Hindus of Hindustan into the Islamic faith.
They are Islam must expand. It must spread its tentacles far and wide. It cannot contract; it must
not restrict itself to one country. It is an International Religion and it must get more and more
vota- ries. Proof? Here it is :

Times of India, New Delhi, in its issue of 21st March 1981, published a report under the title
INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY FOR MASS CONVERSION OF HARIJANS which, inter alia,
said, "Plans to convert poor Harijans to Islam and setting up of a host of organisations of
journalists, youths, trade unions and kisan sabhas with the help of 'friendly' Arab countries and
Islamic organizations in London and Europe have come to light. These poor Harijans could be
lured to Islam with financial largesses from oil-rich Islamic Gulf States and other Arab Nations.
...The London based-Islamic Cultural Centre's Director, Mohamed Abdul Kheir Badawi, in his
report told the Muslim nations that the time was ripe for converting poor Harijans, Such a move
would raise the Muslim population in India from 80 million to 200 million in the next decade. He
suggested sending to India Urdu-speaking Arab proselytizers. These preachers will carry out
work discreetly so as not to arouse suspicion of Hindus. ...The Home Minister and the Prime
Minister have referred to a foreign hand behind these (recent communal) riots. The Saudis were
giving money to Haj pilgrims from India, some of whom abetted communal riots".

All this unaccounted Arab money flowing to India does not need any audit. They consider their
funds well spent even if very few Hindus are converted to the religion of Allah. Forget that the
Muslims treat their awn Ahmediya Muslims as hewers of wood and drawers of water in Pakistan
and Saudi Arabia, since these Ahmediyyas have been condemned by Zulfikhar Bhutto as "non-
Muslims", a despicable word meriting hell in Muslim countries.

Muslim countries like Pakistan and many Gulf States have been pumping money through their
Muslim couriers to destablise Hindu India with a vengeance. It was only the other day that our
Government sent notices to 21 associations and 42 leaders of the Kashmir valley for having
received Rs. 80 crores in five years for carrying out clandestine activities in India. Why did the
Muslim countries donate so much money to them? To balkanise India to the glory of Allah!

The Arab attitude to unity in the Islamic faith is not genuine. but pure and fictitious. When
Pakistan declared the Ahmediyyas as 'non-Muslims' and the Sunni mobs razed the Ahmediyya
mosques to the ground, the Arabs did not lift their little petro-finger to protest against this
wanton and deliberate slur on Islam. The Ahmediyyas in Pakistan, though hundred per cent
Muslims, cannot recite the Kalma; they cannot touch the Koran; they cannot take the name of the
Prophet; they cannot display on their letterheads the Islamic Kalma: Laila ilai Allah, Mohammed
Rasool al Allah, they cannot go to Haj. The Hindu Harijans in India enjoy more freedom and more
rights than the Ahmediyya Muslims in the Muslim Republic of Pakistan.

When Dr. B.R. Ambedkar wanted to renounce Hinduism along with millions of his followers (with
a great monetary inducement from the Nizam of Hyderabad), he chose Buddhism, an offshoot of
Hinduism, in Nagpur on 14th October 1956. Veer Savarkar gave a very pithy opinion on this
conversion: "Instead of taking a long jump, Dr. Ambedkar has taken only a high jump".

Ambedkar knew that Islam would never give fair treatment to the non-Muslims even if they were
Harijans. That is why in 1948 he had advised the scheduled castes "who happen today to be
impounded inside Pakistan to come over to India" as "it would be fatal for the scheduled castes
...to put their faith in Muslims or the Muslim League. It has become a habit with the scheduled
castes to look upon the Muslims as friendly simply because they dislike Hindus. This is a
mistaken view... As regards conversion to Islam, I ask all the scheduled castes not to succumb to
it as an easy way of escape. I cannot say that they should die rather than be converted. What I
say is that they must look upon it as a last resort forced upon them by violence. ... Fortunately for
us we are not hampered by the rules of the Hindu Shastras according to which once a convert
always a convert. To all those who are forcibly converted I pledge my word that if they wish to
come back, I shall see that they are received back into the fold and treated as brethren in the same
manner in which they were treated before conversion".

When Gandhiji's profilgate eldest son, Harilal, accepted Islam at the age of 50 on Friday 29th May
1936 in the Jumma Masjid at Bombay, the Muslim world jumped in joy and glee at this great
conquest. A Muslim organisation sent a telegram to Gandhiii: "Expect, like your son, you -a truth
seeker, -to embrace Islam, truest religion of the world". Harilal "has been for years addicted to the
drink evil and has been in the habit of visiting houses of ill-fame (Gandhiji, Harijan, 6th June
1936). Harilal did not convert to Islam out of conviction; a boozer and brothel-frequenter has no

morals. He did it just to spite the faith of his mother and father.

In this connection, it is pertinent to quote the great secular Muslim writer, Hamid Dalwai, about
the ignoble role of many Muslims in India regarding their dream of the Islamisation of India. He
said (Muslim Politics in Secular India), "In an undivided India, a specially privileged Muslim
community would have vigorously continued a movement for Is/amisation of India" (p. 61 ). After
blackmailing the Hindus and achieving Pakistan, some Muslims were happy in getting their Land
of the Pure. However, there were some "bigoted and medieval Muslims whose pet dream of
converting the whole of India into Islamistan was shattered. Hamid Dalwai quotes them:
"Maulana Hussian Ahmed Madni was considered a great 'Nationalist Muslim' leader. He was
president of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Hind. When the Ulema convened a conference in Delhi in the
year 1945, he said in his presidential address, 'It is the non- Muslims who are the field of action for
this 'tabligh' of Islam and form the raw material for this splendid activity. ...We are opposed to the
idea of limiting the right of missionary activities of Islam within any particular area. The Muslims
have got a right in all the nooks and corners of India by virtue of the great struggle and grand
sacrifices of their ancestors in this country. Now, it is our duty to maintain that claim and try to
widen its scope, instead of giving it up". The Deoband School and the Demand for Pakistan by
Z.H. Faruqi, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1963 p. 117".

Hamid Dalwai spoke the honest blunt truth when he said, "What was the difference between
Jinnah and the nationalist Muslims? While Jinnah wanted a separate State, the nationalist
Muslims wanted the whole of India". (P 62)

So, it boils down to one thing only: beware of both: the communalist Muslim and the so-called
nationalist Muslim.

The Muslims are not worried if the Hindu minority in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Oman, Kuwait and the Gulf countries are discriminated against in every walk of life. In these
Muslim countries, a Muslim is more equal than a non-Muslim. When hardly two lakh Rohingya
Muslims entered Bangladesh from Myanmar in 1991, Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia
raised howls of protest against the Myanmar Government's step-motherly treatment of its Muslim
minority. The biggest surprise was that the Muslim world, and even the United Nations,
denounced Myanmar for its so-called anti- Muslim attitude. Why did the Bangladesh Prime
Minister, and the Muslim world, keep a sinister silence when blood-chilling atrocities were
committed by the Bangladeshi authorities against its Chokma Buddhist minority compelling
millions of them to leave their hearths and homes in Islamic Bangladesh and take refuge in Hindu
India? Why did not their conscience prick? Why did not they Jose sleep? Why? What is there in
Islam that makes it close its eyes and ears when the Hindu minorities in their countries are treated
as hewers of wood and drawers of water? The bitter truth is that the Hindu is always taken for
granted.

In his fully researched book Muslim Fundamentalism in the Indian Sub-Continent, Baljit Rai pours
out his anguish and anger in the following words:

"There are 120 million Muslims today in India enjoying all civic and political rights under the
Constitution of India. Count how many Hindus are there in Pakistan? Less than 0.5% in a total
population of 120 millions in Pakistan. Why so few Hindus in Pakistan and why so many Muslims
in India? I demand an answer from the Muslim community and its leaders. Do the Muslims have a
divine right to exclusive territory in Pakistan and Bangladesh and also share territory in India?"
(pp ix-x)

"Islam successfully wedged out Hinduism and Sikkhism from the soil of West Pakistan", he says.
"Hinduism receded by hundreds of miles in its own homeland. From the Hindukush ranges and
coastline of Sind, it receded by more than five hundred miles and disappeared from an area of 8,03,
936 sq. Km. that constitutes West Pakistan. This was worse than the fate of Islam in Spain. ...Islam
and Arabs (who were outsiders) in Spain were rolled back by the Christians, but in Pakistan
Hindus and Sikhs were not foreigners but had been living there for thousands of years and both
these religions were destroyed root and branch by Muslims whose forefathers in 98% cases were
Hindus.

"Today Islam is flourishing in India by leaps and bounds while Hinduism has been destroyed
totally and irretrievably in Pakistan. Yet, no muslim writer journalist or historian has the intellectual
honestly to acknowledge this fact. The Muslims are voracious eaters. They are having the cake
and eating it too. They are happy at the thought that Islam is flourishing in Pakistan with 12 crore
Muslims, in Bangladesh with 12 crore Muslims and in India with 12 crore Muslims. What about
Hindus and Hinduism in Pakistan and Bangladesh? To hell with them".

India's Captain in Wills Cup Cricket was Mohammed Azharuddin, while Pakistan's was Wasim
Akram: both Muslims. Nobody cared to pose a question to Pakistan's Akram: why are there no
Hindu cricket players in the Pakistan team? No reply would be forthcoming, for Akram would
never dare say, 'Where are the Hindus in Pakistan?'

How right was Hamid Dalwai when he said, "Wherever Muslims are in a majority, they have
denied equal citizenship to non-Muslims (Muslim Politics in Secular India, p.130). If you look
dispassionately and objectively, at the Muslim countries, you will find that Muslims, when in
majority, deny equal treatment to the non-Muslims, and when in minority create many problems
for the non-Muslims! This is a historical fact, which no amount of secular wishy-washy can hide.

Tolerance and acceptance has never been a part of Islam, whereas in the case of Hinduism both
are articles of faith in their spiritual armory. Islamic literature frowns upon, and even witch-hunts,
the Muslim writers of contrary and contradictory viewpoints, which go against the orthodox
beliefs, and norms of established canons. Is Islam so brittle and fragile that it crumbles under a
few hundred pages of printed words? In every civilized society, man struggles with his beliefs,
tests them on the anvil of truth and then arrives at a judicious decision. Aristotle, Plato, Gautama
Budda, Charvaka, Swami Dayanda Saraswati, Martin Luther, argued rationally. In Islam, departure
from the established norms is considered as blasphemy, 'kuffur'. When Faraq Fauda was shot in
Egypt for his non- conformist views, he wept for a "great truth that has been distorted, for a great
tradition that has been lost, and a great history that has been forgotten".

The result is that those Muslims who want to live have to write with a shaking pen, lest they are
shot dead in broad day-light. The thought-power has evaporated from Islam, making it a
compartmentalized regimented religion with no deviation. The Muslim who thinks otherwise is a
sacrificial goat, to be slaughtered at the altar of the medieval barbaric dictum 'Believe or Perish'.
This sacrificial ritual is a despicable act, which does not glorify Islam; the lust for conquest seeks
ghosts where there are none. It sees a 'kaffir' behind every table, hiding to gobble up Islam. This
witch hunting of the non-conformist is a political act supported by the proverbial mad mullah's
fantasy for Allah's kingdom where only the Quran can be quoted, where only Allah can be
worshipped, where idols of the 'kaffirs' are broken and battered. Fantasy, and not facts, is hugged.

Mishkat Sharif, Hadith No.3486 quotes Prophet Mohammed assaying. "I am ordered by Allah to
destroy idols, cross, singing and musical instruments", for"every song harnesses infidelity in the
heart exactly similar to as water harnesses a farm " ( -ibid -Hadith No.4597). Hence, music and
singing have no place in Islam. In Saudi Arabia, music is banned from the courtyard of the
mosques. But the Sufis and the Qawaili singers, who are Muslims, have immortalized song and
music even in their prayers.

As far back as 1910, Bourtus Pasha was murdered by an Egyptian Muslim just because he had
presided over the court that sentenced the Denshwai villagers; though the guilt of the murderer
was conclusively proved by irrefutable evidence, the Chief Qazi of Egypt had issued a 'fatwa' then
that according to Islam it was no crime for a Muslim to kill a non-believer! It is a significant fact
that while the Parsis, the Jews, and the Christians in India has no fear from the Hindu majority, it is
always, and only, the Muslims who seem to suffer from a 'persecution complex' and insist on
special rights and privileges as ordained in their Holy Book. But a country's laws are not governed
by divine rules; they are governed by the Constitution of the country, which can be interpreted
by the Supreme Court. We have always been surrendering to pressure tactics of the Muslims in
India due to political reasons, forgetting that surrendering to the bully makes him stronger in his
attitude, shrill and vocal in his behaviour, demanding more and more all the time.

"The fiddling in Shah Bano's case led to Hindutva awareness, which led to the destruction of the
Babri Masjid, which fuelled the Bombay blasts which killed innocents", said Varsha Bhosle in
Sunday Observer June, 25, 1995).

" A secular state is based on the principles of equality and freedom of religion, which means a
citizen is free to practice the religion of his choice -in his home and in places of worship. It does
not mean he is free to live by special religious rules running contrary to demo- .cratic principles.
And it certainly does not mean he can elicit favours denied to other religions: India will be paying
salaries to imams, while priests and pundits are denied them".

On the ground of Shariat, there cannot be a State within a State, a Muslim Parliament separate
from the country's Parliament, separate laws for one religion which are disallowed in the other
religions (a Muslim can have four wives, but a Hindu can have only one) . That is not equality; it
is discrimination.

In the name of Islam the late Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq had introduced a series of
discriminatory laws which deprived the Muslim women in Pakistan of a modicum of freedom and
fairplay. His Hudood ordinance of 1979 made Zina', (or sex outside marriage) a crime punishable
by death or stoning or imprisonment up to 10 years or whipping with or without a fine, but it does
not distinguish between adultery and rape. When a woman cannot prove that the she was raped,
she is convicted of adultery. Disgruntled husbands, and even fathers, found this dangerous
weapon very convenient in their hands to wreak their vengeance on non-co-operative Muslim
women of their families. Legally, the woman has to provide four male witnesses to prove her
innocence and if she fails, she would be punished for adultery. This has resulted in thousands of
Muslim women still languishing in jails in Pakistan, many on trumped up charges.

Besides, the law of 'qisas' and 'diyat' put the value of a Muslim woman's life at half of that of man
and this made it possible for an offender to get away with paying compensation and not physical
punishment, if the victim is a woman.

For its much tom-tommed talk of 'brotherhood' (without its link of 'sisterhood'), the fate of a
Muslim woman in Islam is sealed, specially those Muslim women in Muslim-majority countries
where laws are made by men to have an upper hand over women who are treated simply as
ornamental chattels. Tribune of January 12, 1994, reported the following disgusting gory incident
from Dhaka (Bangladesh).

On January 10, 1993, the sleepy village of Chhatakchara in northeastern Bangladesh district of
Maulvibazar was the stage of a chilling incident of obscurantism in the name of Islam that shook
the entire country. Noorjehan, a 22 years-old woman was made to stand in a waist-high ditch, and
stoned 101 times as a punishment handed out by the Imam (cleric) of a local mesque. Her 'crime'?
According to the Maulvi's 'fatwa', she had gone in for a seond marriage without obtaining
'talaknaama' (divorce deed) from her first husband. Several villagers silently watched the gory
incident and an outraged and humiliated Noorjehan ran back home and committed suicide by
consuming pesticide.

This one-year-old incident was resurrected to bring home the point that religions 'fatwas' and
verdicts handed out illegally by the village courts, presided over either by local Maulvis or petty
politicians, affected a number of women and men alike. There was another Noorjehan is Sripur
village of southern Faridpur district who was tied to a bamboo pole and set on fire as a local
Maulvi found her guilty of extra-marital affair.

In Sathira district in southern Bangladesh, 16-year- old Feroza Khatun of Kali Kapur village was
tied to a bamboo pole and hit by a broom 101 times, for a Maulvi accused her of having an affair
with a Hindu youth, Uday Mandal. Humiliated, Feroza took poison and committed suicide.

The poisonous propaganda against Family Plan- ning in Islam took such an exrtreme step that in
Sirajganj district in western Bangladesh, the Maulvis ruled that it was against Shariat and those
who underwent legation were denied the holy sacrificial meat.

As if this was not enough, the chief Maulvi of Bangladesh's largest mosque in Dhaka issued a
'fatwa' that lighting of the torch for the S.A.F. Games held in Dhaka in December 1993 was anti-
Islamic and so was the 'eternal fire' commemorating the sacrifice of those who fought the
Bangladesh's liberation in 1971.

For all these ills affecting the Islamic society, it is useless to lay the blame on the Hindus. The
Hindus are nowhere in the picture. The fault lies with the strange hold of the orthodox and
medieval-mentality politicians and Maulvis, as also with the fence-sitting so-called 'liberal'
Muslims, who have made Islam a world, which every non-Muslim looks at with suspicion.

Islam in India has not produced robust, rational and daring leaders who would refuse to play to
the gallery by indulging in war cries of 'Islam in Danger'. Islam is not in danger in India; if it is, it is
from the Muslims themselves. The Christians never shriek, 'Christianity in Danger"; nor does the
Parsis shouts, "Zoroastrianism in Danger". The suspicious separatist tendency makes them see
imaginary ghosts everywhere.

Let me quote Hamid Dalwai:

"These traditions of Islam and the strong separatist trends they have engendered among Indian
Muslims are the main cause of the persistent communal tension. To claim that Muslim separatism
continues to exist because the country has not adequately imbibed the spirit of secularism is to
betray ignorance of the working of the Muslim mind. The real cause of the present conflict is that
the separatist urges of Muslim nationalism have always existed parallel to those of secular
nationalism. Muslims have never agreed that partition put an end to this problem. As I have
mentioned in a recent article, Mr. Hasan Surhawardy, Chief Minister of undividual Bengal, had
pointed out in 1946 that 'Pakistan is not our last demand'. In his letter written after the partition to
Choudhary Khaliquzzaman, Mr.Surhawardy had propounded the idea of a Muslim Majority area in
India." (Muslim politics in Secular India p.72).

Long before the partition of the country, the Muslims were never reconciled to Hindu "majority
India; their dream was a Muslim India, with or without the help of outside Muslim forces in
Muslim countries. They were prepared to jettison the interests of India if outsiders helped them to
de-estabilise the Hindu majority in India to stabilize the Muslim minority in India. In his book
India, Its Administration and Progress p. 500), John Strochey quotes Sir Syed Ahmed Khan,
founder of the Aligarh Muslim University , as having said:

"... Suppose that 011 the English were to leave India, who would be rulers of India? Is it possible
that under these circumstances, Mohammedans and Hindus could sit on the same throne and
remain equal in power? Most certainly not, it is necessary that one of them should conquer the
other and thrust it down. You must remember that although the number of Mohammedans is less
than that of the Hindus, ...yet they must not be thought insignificant or weak. Probably, they
would be by themselves enough to maintain their position. But suppose they were not. Then our
Mohammedan brothers, the Pathan, would come out as a swarm of locusts from their mountain
valleys, -like a swarm of locusts would they come, and make rivers of blood to flow from their
frontier on the north to the extreme end of Bengal "

This was the language used by an 'enlightened' Muslim educationist who threatened the Hindus
that the Indian Muslims would be helped by the Pathans if the Hindus dared oppose the Muslims.
If a man is known by the language he uses, then the threatening language used by this
educationist displays the cursedness and crudeness of the speaker.

Guzarilal Nanda (Gandhi, Pan Islamism, Imperialism and Nationalism) quoted Mawlana Abdul
Kalam Azad (P. 117) as having said:

"A country like India which has once beep under Mohammedan rule, must never be given up,
and it was incumbent on them to strive to regain their lost control".

These worthies forget that the dotard, degenerated and degraded last scions of the Mogul Roi in
India were pensioners of the Marathas!

Milton said, " Some deserve fame, and have it; others neither have nor deserve It; some have it,
not deserving; others, though deserving, yet totally miss it or have it not equal to their deserts".
The Muslim leadership in India gained fame, not by sincere hard un- selfish work; the wily British
rulers who wanted the 'brave' Muslims to have an upper hand over the 'meek and mild' Hindu
thrust it upon. The webs of fame were woven on their bearded face and big heads to make them
look intelligent and enlightened statesmen!

The minority Muslim rule in India made the Muslims a privileged class, enjoying all the perks,
pleasures and profits accruing from the state. The majority Hindu subjects were compelled to lead
a meek and mild lamb's life, ever apprehensive of the bloody knife of the butcher. The common
Hindu, bred on the tolerance and universal acceptance of Hinduism, were shocked at the brazen
bigotry, unlimited licentiousness and devilish debauchery of the Muslim rulers.

Islam never recognized itself to be equal to Hinduism in India for, according to the Muslim theolo-
gians, Islam was the pinnacle of all religions, and all religions had to submit to Islam. Since Islam
allows no opposition, it demands total acceptance of its creed by all the non-Muslims. H.
Keyserling, a great philosopher himself, said "Islam is a religion of absolute surrender and
submissiveness to God, but to a God of a certain character, a War-lord The ritual of this belief
embodies the idea of discipline This military basis of Islam explains all the essential virtues of the
Musalman. It also explains his fundamental defects: his unprogressive ness, his incapacity to
adapt himself, his lack of initiative and invention. The soldier has simply to obey orders. All the
rest is the affair of Allah". (Quoted by Jadunath Sircar in his Short History of Aurangzeb, p. 129).

Islam in Muslim countries is so rigid and non- tolerant that no Muslim, or even non-Muslim, can
dare utter a word against the Book or the Prophet. On September 3, 1995, Sadek Abdul-Karim
Malallan, a Saudi Muslim, was beheaded in public after he was convicted of slandering God, the
Koran and the Prophet. A single stroke of the sword took away his life in a yard adjacent to a
mosque near Qatif, a desert town in the eastern province. Sacrilege is punished by instant death.

In democratic non-Muslim countries, this act is not punished with death, but simply ignored as
the fulminations of a mad man or the philosophical argument of a non-conformist. It may not be
accepted but it is tolerated. In Muslim countries, it is neither accepted nor tolerated; it is greeted
with instantaneous death. After the death of Prophet Mohammed, and after Islam stabilized itself
into a war-like steam-roller to march ahead in full speed to break down all opposition, the covetous
eyes were looking at the very rich and fertile field in 'Kaffir' Hindustan, and it was decided to
annex this country to the Crescent of Islam. "As this could not, in the opinion of kings and
warriors, be achieved without the subjugation of non-Muslims and occupation of their territory,
the propagation of Islam became identical with war and conquest" (M. Mujeeb, the Indian
Muslims, pp 67-68).

Capturing and converting or dispersing and destroying the Hindu men, carrying into slavery their
women and children and selling them off in the auction-markets of 1urkiston became the common
way of life of every affording Turkish Muslim. Allauddin had 50,000 slaves; Firoz Tughlaq had
collected 180,000 slaves.

There were so many young women slaves that it was difficult to maintain them and it became the
fashion with rich Muslims to pass on some beautiful women slaves to the guests as farewell gifts.

These women slaves were convenient sex machines for the users. After they were sucked dry,
they were passed on to the favorites of the king or noble. Women slaves were never married to
the Muslims; it was an anti-lslamic act. As per the Shariat law, a Muslim may marry a Jewess, or a
Christian, or a Sabean, but "a marriage between a Mussalman and a Hindu is invalid". Similarly, "a
female Muslim cannot under any circumstances marry a non-Muslim". (Hughes, Dictionary of
Islam, p. 318).

No wonder, Shahjahan had issued an order that Hindus could keep their Muslim wives only if
they accepted Islam. Consequently, during his reign, 4000 to 5000 Hindus converted to Islam in
Bhadnor alone. Shahjahan went to such an extent that he had appointed a Superintendent of
converts to Islam, 'thus setting up a department for the special purpose of making converts" (Prof.
Sri Ram Sharma, Conversion and Re-conversion to Hinduism, pp 90-91).

While Islam captured and conquered most of the non-Muslim countries within hundred years of
the Prophet's death (Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, North Africa and even parts of Europe
coming under the shadow of the Crescent), Islam received a rude shock from Hindustan, a land
said to be composed of caste ridden Hindu 'Kaffirs' with no central religious authority of their
own. Let me quote K. S Lal (Indian Muslims; who are they?):

"Persistent efforts were made to Islamise India but to no avail. At various points of time, it was
fervently hoped by Muslims that all the Hindus would be converted to Islam. The Arab invasion
of Sind saw lot of preselytization, but such conversions proved to be temporary. As Wellesley
Haig said, 'The tide of Islam, having overflowed Sind and the rower Punjab, ebbed, leaving (only)
some jetsam on the sand'. (Cambridge History of India, III, p. 10 and 130).

Killings and conversions of Hindus went on, but the Hindus were too many to be entirely killed
and converted. The Hindus could not be eliminated or reduced to a minority. India refused to be
Islamised. The Hindus hated the then Muslims so much that they were labelled as 'mleccha', i.e.
impure, and inter-marriage or inter- dining with them was frowned upon. "In brief, the Hindus
believed in peaceful discussions about religious matters", said K.S. Lal. "They believed in
freedom of religious thought and higher spirituality. They hated those who killed in the name of
religion and they shunned those who believed in conversions. That is how culturally the Hindu
was against strong and aggressive adversaries" (Indian Muslims, p. 136).

Thus the sword of Islam, which mercilessly cut through all the non-Muslim countries and
converted them to Islam, got blunted when it struck Hindustan. The Islamic Jihad could not
completely capture the 'Kaffirs' who were more in love with their own religion than with the
religion of somebody else. Even the Muslim destruction of Hindu temples in India would not
induce or threaten the Hindus to abandon their age-old faith. Egypt is supposed to be a modern
progressive Muslim country where the Mullahs don't harangue to kill the kaffirs. And yet in
December 1991 "a special State Security Court sentenced a little known writer, his publisher and
his printer to eight years in prison for blasphemy" (Economist, January 25, 1992). Maulvis from
AI-Azhar University, the 1000-year-old Egyptian theologian institute, raided the Cairo
International Book fair in January 1992 and confiscated eight books on religious topics.

Alaa Hamed, the Egyptian writer, who wrote his novel A Distance in a Man's Mind was hounded
from his job and threatened with death. He was not supposed to think independently; he was
supposed to toe the line! Awaiting his trial in a Court, the wily Hamed put his thoughts in a
satirical poem: " They ordered my thoughts to be captured, stuffed them in a sack, and throw it on
the back of a donkey. They opened it in court, and it was empty. They asked why? Because the
donkey got hungry and ate them"

The thought-current is switched off in Islam. With the thinking-power gone, most of the followers
become blurred carbon copies. There is no deviation, no critical commentary, no rational thinking,
and no contrary views. It is all 'Believe or Perish', 'Believe or be damned'. How can a society grow
like that?

A report from London dated August 2, 1994, carried by the German news agency Deutsche Presse
Agentur gives blood-curdling news about the fate of Iranian writers or poets who think or write
otherwise. Sultanpur, one of the 48 poets, writers and journalists executed by Iran's 'revolutionary
mullahs' since they seized power in 1979, was getting married when all of a sudden some bearded
men, armed with machine guns, burst into the room, seized the bridegroom and drove him away in
an armoured vehicle. Next day his bullet- ridden corpse was handed ever to his bride. His crime?
Waging war on Allah!

Rahman Hatefi, the novelist and journalist, had his veins opened up by interrogators at the Evin
Prison and left to bleed to death.

Mehdi Shokri, who wrote a poem mocking claims that the image of Ayatollah Khomeini had
appeared in a full moon, was shot in both eyes.

When a writer thinks otherwise, which is not in conformity with the strict Shia regulations of Iran,
a fictitious drug smuggling charge is leveled against him and then he is shot. Saeedi Sirjani, 78-
year-old best-selling author, was tortured on the same charge.

Writing in a Muslim country is a dangerous profession. It is like living with a death sentence
constantly staring at you. Some of the Muslim writers and poets were killee in the first flush of the
Islamic Revolution of Khomeini were:

Eelshed Mariwani, a famous Kurdish poet; Abdul Nabi Majid, a popular Arab poet; Khaled al-
Amin, the translator of Goethe and Schiller.

Between 1989 and 1993, eleven writers and poets were murdered in Egypt by Muslim extremists,
one of whom was the famous Farag Foda. In Algeria, eighteen were murdered in 1992 and 1993.

Most of the Muslim countries have their own black list of banned authors. Some time this goes to
a ridiculous extent, as for example when the Iranian Ministry of Islamic. Guidance blacklisted
works as diverse as Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor.

Egypt's most famous novelist and Nobel Prize- winner, Naguib Mahfouz, received 20 death
threats. The greatest living Arab poet, Mohammad Mahdi Jawaheri, has a prize on his head
announced by the Iraqi government. All these are symbols of Islamic fundamentalism, fanaticism
and bigotry. "Islamic fundamentalism, an ideology inherently hostile to liberal values, and one
that feeds on poverty and oppression" , said London's Time, "is competing to fill the vacuum left
by the collapse of communism in Central Asia. The tentacles are spreading through the Middle
East and beyond". (May 25, 1993).

There is surely something wrong with the lacklustre leadership Islam has produced in India, or
with the illiterate and medieval-mentality masses it has nourished in this country. Who will right
the wrong?

When an Austrian bombed the famed AI-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the Indian Muslims attacked
Hindu temples in Hyderabad, and when the Israelis bombed the mosque, our own Muslims
attacked our Jagannath temple at Jamnagar in Guiarat. When the Indian Cricket Team cricket team
in the test match in Pakistan many years ago, the Aligarh Muslim University declared a holiday at
Pakistan's victory and India's defeat.

When the Muslims took out their usual 'tazia' procession on Moharram day (28th October1982),
the Muslims attacked the Ashram of saint Prabhudatt Brahmachari at Jhusi (Allahabad).

In Srinagar (do you remember?), the Indian cricketers were stoned and booed as 'Indian dogs' and
the West Indies players glorified by the Srinagar Muslims. Why did the Muslims in Ahmedabad
take umbrage when everybody celebrated the Prudential cup victory?

When two sects of Muslims fought among them in Kaaba, the Hyderabadi Muslims attacked the
Hindus. When the Pakistan President Zia-al-Haq sentenced Bhutto to death, the Christians were
attacked in Kashmir, because Bhutto's hangman was a Christian.

Why should the Indian Muslims attack the Hindus in India when their mosque is attacked in
Jerusalem, when two sects of Muslims fight with each other far away from India, or when Zia
hangs Bhutto? Why the Muslim leadership in India maintains a criminal conspiracy of silence,
thus encouraging more and more sparks of fundamentalism and fanaticism?

All this hogwash of Islamic brotherhood is nothing but a pipedream. Where was Islamic
brotherhood when the Saudi Muslims attacked and killed the Iranian Muslims during the holy Haj
in Kaaba? Why do the Sunnis and Shias fight in Lucknow regularly? Why do the Punjabi
Muslims and the Sindhi Muslims kill each other in Pakistan? Why did the Pakistan Muslim
soldiers rape every East Bengali Muslim girl in Dhaka? Why did Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan shed
the blood of thousands of Ahmediya Muslims in a terrible genocide in 1953 when the Ahmediya
mosques were razed to the ground in Qadian? Why did Iran and Iraq fight with each other in a no-
holds-barred war? Why is Shia Iran dead-set against Sunni Wahabi Saudi Arabia?

The secular brigade in India has been appeasing and patronising the Muslim minority right from
the First World War of 1914-1918 when Gandhiji in league with the two Ali Brothes (Maulana
Mohammed Ali and Maulana Shaukati Ali) launched his Khilafat movement to support the
dethroned khalif of Turkey. Why should the Congress Party interfere in the internal affairs of
Turkey and how was India concerned with Turkey then? It was from there only that we have been
witnessing a regular Muslim appeasement policy, which culminated in the balkanisation of India
when Pakistan was created out of the womb of India. " An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile
hoping it will eat him last", said Winston Churchill. That vote-bank policy still goes on, with
dangerous consequences for the Hindus and Hindustan. (Ed's note- same as in Mauritius or other
countries of Hindus majorities)

The late Prof. A.. B. Shah (of the Indian Secular Society) was an honest 'secular' intellectual and
nobody could accuse him of being anti-Muslim or anti- Islam. He openly admitted that the
Muslims never share power with the non-Muslims in governance of the country. Listen to him:

"Neither history nor doctrine had prepared them (the Muslims) for freedom and the obligations
that go with it in a multi-religious society. For, unlike the Bible, the Quarn makes no distinction
between the secular and the spiritual sphere of life. Indeed, in its fusion of the two, Islam goes
beyond Hinduism. The latter, or rather the dominant tradition of it, is world negating in spirit and
every school of Hinduism places emphasis on individual salvation through one's own efforts. It
underplays the importance of the temporal order and thus, as illustrated by Vivekananda, makes
modernisation comparatively easy from one point of view. Islam, on the other hand, looks upon
the religious community ('umma') as the sole medium through which God's purpose, as revealed in
the Quran, can be realized. The individual has no existence except as a limb of the community.

"Islam thus rules out the rise of a movement that, may question, in any radical sense, the
ideological basis of Muslim society. ...The fact that, unlike Hinduism, Islam is a revealed religion,
which also asserts that Muhammad was the last prophet, puts on the Quran a seal of finality in so
far as man's social and spiritual evolution is concerned.

"This is palpably absurd, however offensive the word may sound to believers. .... No scripture of
any religion, 'revealed' by God or 'heard' by the Rishis, can claim finality in any field. The
knowledge that man has gained since the beginning of the modern age leaves no escape from
certain conclusions regarding religion "The challenge of modernity that Islam faces in India is,
therefore, also an opportunity for its adherents to undertake a creative 'reinterpretation' of their
faith. ...The fact of the Indian situation is that while Hindu society has undergone the
modernization process for nearly 150 years, nothing similar has happened to Muslim society in
India or even outside from where Muslim Indians might take inspiration.

It is clear from this that while Hindus and Hinduism have changed, in keeping with modern needs
and aspirations, the Muslims and Islam have refused to change, adapt, modify and assimilate.
Why blame the Hindus then when the fault lies with the Muslims themselves?

Jihad (or the Muslim Holy War) has been used, misused and abused by many Maulvis who, on
the slightest pretext, good the Muslim masses to join the Holy War to keep the purity of the
'umma' alive. Jihad is fought by military, economic and political means against any person or
country that the faithful might consider to be against Islam; in other words, who are 'enemies' of
Allah'. This can happen between the Muslims themselves, e.g. Muslim (Sunni) Iran fighting
against Muslim (Shia) Iran, or North Yemen fighting against South Yemen. Iraq called for Jihad
against Saudi Arabia to usurp Kuwait.

In December 1979,about 500 heavily armed Muslims, their weapons hidden inside their tobes,
stormed the Holy Kaaba during the Haj in a frenzied spirit of Jihad. The Saudi Muslim Guards
gunned down 300 insurgents (all Muslims), which were trained by Yemeni instructors and backed
by Iranian "ayatollahs'.

When the fanatics could not accept the peace pact signed by Egyption President Sadat with
Israel, he was gunned down. No Jihad was declared when Yasser Arafat of the Palestine
Liberation Organization made peace with Israel of the Palestinian problem!

The murder threat against Salman Rushdie, as also the vilifications campaign against Taslima
Nasreen, is also a part of Jihad. Jihad is a war to the finish against the unbelievers who can be
Hindus, Christians or Jews, or against the non-conformist Muslims themselves. The man who
attacked the Pope in May 1981 was a Turkish Muslim.

John Laffin wrote a beautiful 240 -page book Holy War Islam Fights to explain, what he said,
"what jihad or holy war is, where it came from, how it wages its campaigns, the inducements it
offers its warriors, why its planners consider themselves at war, how it chooses its enemies and
where It is going".

" Jihad the holy war of Islam ", he said, "is the greatest political-religious force of the late 20th
century and the commanders-in-chief are determined that by the 2000 at the Christian era, Islam
will have regained the 'rightful place' as the dominant world system".

John Laffin, author of about 50 books, had traveled widely in most of the 44 Muslim countries. His
logical views are backed by solid supporting evidence. Given in this small book are large extracts
from his pincer-Iike book, which will be useful to us in this country, to realise the tact that
terrorism, fundamentalism and fanaticism must be traced firmly and tearlessly. There is no
alternative. For the sake of our own survival, we have to meet it squarely.