07-23-2006, 09:22 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->ANALYSIS - Discontent sows seeds of Jihad among Indian Muslims
link
By Reuters
Sunday July 23, 05:31 PM
By Krittivas Mukherjee
MUMBAI (Reuters) - These are bad times, says the chief priest of a small mosque in the heart of the Muslim quarter of Asia's largest slum in India's biggest city.
"There is fear and suspicion everywhere," said Mohammed Saeed Khan Qadri of Salaullah Mosque in Mumbai's Dharavi slum, set in the middle of a sea of tin-roof shanties and slush-filled lanes that buzz with life and rattle from the noise of passing trains.
When seven bombs ripped through Mumbai's commuter trains earlier this month, they not only shattered the lives of hundreds of people, they may also have shattered a myth, police say.
U.S. President George Bush once famously congratulated India's leader Manmohan Singh that not a single Indian Muslim had joined the ranks of al Qaeda -- a testament, he implied, to communal harmony in the world's largest democracy.
The statement may be factually correct -- but it is clear that Islamist extremism is an emerging threat in India.
Police say the Mumbai attacks may have been organised by Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, but they believe young Indian Muslim men carried out the bombings.
Although the radicals may share the violent and anti-Western ideology of Islamist extremists around the world, analysts say their motivation is rooted in a sense of injustice at home.
Their most powerful recruiting tool -- the 2002 riots in Gujarat where human rights group say around 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked and burnt to death.
<b>"Gujarat was the turning point in India's communal history. Now many Muslims who have suffered see the state as an active participant in the pogrom,"</b> said Mohammed Wajihuddin, a minority affairs expert.
"Then it becomes easy for groups like al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba to draft these people in."
India's Muslims form 13.4 percent of the mainly Hindu country's 1.03 billion population -- the world's largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan. Sectarian clashes have erupted periodically, but the Gujarat riots marked a watershed.
India's Supreme Court said the Hindu nationalist government in Gujarat was complicit in the killings. Despite a national outcry, little has been done to catch the culprits, rights groups say.
In other Hindu-Muslim clashes around the country, Muslims have formed the bulk of casualties and complained about bias on the part of the mainly Hindu law enforcers.
DISCRIMINATION
"We have accepted we will not get good jobs. There is subtle bias and discrimination but at least we should have security," said Zafar-ul-Islam Khan, editor of The Milli Gazette, an English newspaper based in New Delhi aimed at Indian Muslims.
By contrast, Indian rule in mainly Muslim Kashmir, and alleged human rights abuses there, have not stirred passions in the same way, perhaps because Muslims in the rest of India do not feel as threatened by events in Kashmir.
Washington's "war on terror" have fuelled Muslims' sense of alienation, analysts say. But the complaints of the radical fringe are also rooted in a wider sense of disillusionment among Indian Muslims after a history of social and economic neglect.
"The ground in India is rife for the growth of jihadis," said a top police officer investigating the bombings. "Poverty, illiteracy, discrimination, injustice: everything is there to disillusion Muslims."
Official figures reveal Muslims log lower educational levels and higher unemployment rates than the Hindu majority and other minorities like Christians and Sikhs.
They account for less than seven percent of public service employees, only five percent of railways workers, around four percent of banking employees and there are only 29,000 Muslims in India's 1.3 million-strong military.
This is a copy of the Sachar comittiee.
India is officially a secular nation and its top woman tennis star, its president, and its richest man are all Muslims as are several top Bollywood stars and federal ministers.
But such high-profile success stories may mask the real status of Indian Muslims, who are often held responsible for the partition of the country into Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan in 1947 at the time of independence from Britain.
"After the subcontinent was partitioned, most upper and middle class Muslims moved to Pakistan. Those left behind were leaderless and mostly poor," Wajihuddin said.
Recent bomb attacks in India have not sparked the kind of Hindu-Muslim rioting their perpetrators may have wanted, but with police rounding up hundreds of Muslim men in Dharavi, there is a strong sense of mutual mistrust.
Some young Muslims say that the community has to fight back.
"Those who lost their fathers, mother, brother, sisters will seek revenge," said Ashraf Sheikh, a 28-year-old unemployed man, furiously gesticulating and smoking a cigarette as he talked of Muslim deaths in Gujarat.
"That is what is happening," he said, referring to the Mumbai blasts. "These things will only increase you will see."
(Additional Reporting by Kamil Zaheer in NEW DELHI) <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why the forget who started? Why Muslim can't recall what they did in train in Godhara?
link
By Reuters
Sunday July 23, 05:31 PM
By Krittivas Mukherjee
MUMBAI (Reuters) - These are bad times, says the chief priest of a small mosque in the heart of the Muslim quarter of Asia's largest slum in India's biggest city.
"There is fear and suspicion everywhere," said Mohammed Saeed Khan Qadri of Salaullah Mosque in Mumbai's Dharavi slum, set in the middle of a sea of tin-roof shanties and slush-filled lanes that buzz with life and rattle from the noise of passing trains.
When seven bombs ripped through Mumbai's commuter trains earlier this month, they not only shattered the lives of hundreds of people, they may also have shattered a myth, police say.
U.S. President George Bush once famously congratulated India's leader Manmohan Singh that not a single Indian Muslim had joined the ranks of al Qaeda -- a testament, he implied, to communal harmony in the world's largest democracy.
The statement may be factually correct -- but it is clear that Islamist extremism is an emerging threat in India.
Police say the Mumbai attacks may have been organised by Pakistan-based Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, but they believe young Indian Muslim men carried out the bombings.
Although the radicals may share the violent and anti-Western ideology of Islamist extremists around the world, analysts say their motivation is rooted in a sense of injustice at home.
Their most powerful recruiting tool -- the 2002 riots in Gujarat where human rights group say around 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked and burnt to death.
<b>"Gujarat was the turning point in India's communal history. Now many Muslims who have suffered see the state as an active participant in the pogrom,"</b> said Mohammed Wajihuddin, a minority affairs expert.
"Then it becomes easy for groups like al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba to draft these people in."
India's Muslims form 13.4 percent of the mainly Hindu country's 1.03 billion population -- the world's largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan. Sectarian clashes have erupted periodically, but the Gujarat riots marked a watershed.
India's Supreme Court said the Hindu nationalist government in Gujarat was complicit in the killings. Despite a national outcry, little has been done to catch the culprits, rights groups say.
In other Hindu-Muslim clashes around the country, Muslims have formed the bulk of casualties and complained about bias on the part of the mainly Hindu law enforcers.
DISCRIMINATION
"We have accepted we will not get good jobs. There is subtle bias and discrimination but at least we should have security," said Zafar-ul-Islam Khan, editor of The Milli Gazette, an English newspaper based in New Delhi aimed at Indian Muslims.
By contrast, Indian rule in mainly Muslim Kashmir, and alleged human rights abuses there, have not stirred passions in the same way, perhaps because Muslims in the rest of India do not feel as threatened by events in Kashmir.
Washington's "war on terror" have fuelled Muslims' sense of alienation, analysts say. But the complaints of the radical fringe are also rooted in a wider sense of disillusionment among Indian Muslims after a history of social and economic neglect.
"The ground in India is rife for the growth of jihadis," said a top police officer investigating the bombings. "Poverty, illiteracy, discrimination, injustice: everything is there to disillusion Muslims."
Official figures reveal Muslims log lower educational levels and higher unemployment rates than the Hindu majority and other minorities like Christians and Sikhs.
They account for less than seven percent of public service employees, only five percent of railways workers, around four percent of banking employees and there are only 29,000 Muslims in India's 1.3 million-strong military.
This is a copy of the Sachar comittiee.
India is officially a secular nation and its top woman tennis star, its president, and its richest man are all Muslims as are several top Bollywood stars and federal ministers.
But such high-profile success stories may mask the real status of Indian Muslims, who are often held responsible for the partition of the country into Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan in 1947 at the time of independence from Britain.
"After the subcontinent was partitioned, most upper and middle class Muslims moved to Pakistan. Those left behind were leaderless and mostly poor," Wajihuddin said.
Recent bomb attacks in India have not sparked the kind of Hindu-Muslim rioting their perpetrators may have wanted, but with police rounding up hundreds of Muslim men in Dharavi, there is a strong sense of mutual mistrust.
Some young Muslims say that the community has to fight back.
"Those who lost their fathers, mother, brother, sisters will seek revenge," said Ashraf Sheikh, a 28-year-old unemployed man, furiously gesticulating and smoking a cigarette as he talked of Muslim deaths in Gujarat.
"That is what is happening," he said, referring to the Mumbai blasts. "These things will only increase you will see."
(Additional Reporting by Kamil Zaheer in NEW DELHI) <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why the forget who started? Why Muslim can't recall what they did in train in Godhara?