I have a very deep respect for all religions and have great friends from different religions. In fact, one among my best friends is Arshaan Khan. Captain of our Begumpet Blasters cricket team and one of my dearest friend. We regularly talk with each other on various subjects and have understood each other always. The reason am giving this example is that, just like there can be fanatics in my religion, there are fanatics in Islam as well.
There are two kinds of Islam according to me. One that my best friend follows, which believes in respecting other cultures and following your true path towards enlightenment and God. I believe most of the Indian educated Muslims belong to this category. And then there is another Islam. The one, where they believe only in Allah and all the others, who don’t follow the path of Allah are considered infidels or Kaafirs, who need to be eliminated. Unfortunately we have many Muslims in India, who belong to the second category as well. The behaviour of some members of the Tablighi Jamaat is a case in point.
The problem is never with people of the followers of first type of Islam. As they also believe in the concept of Universal brotherhood and are truly patriotic. But the second category, is dangerous as they only believe in one thing and they blindly follow their religious heads dictates to the T. While they go about unleashing hell on the rest of humanity, we have defenders of these nincompoops, who then legitimise everything they do under the big old umbrella of Islamophobia. Now here is my problem with that, what they are inadvertently doing is creating this sense of distrust between two different sects and that will have major repurcussions.
The problem, with the second type of Muslims, is that they don’t believe in the concept of national allegiance. Their allegiance is to their faith. While it is commendable that they have such unwavering belief in their faith, the situation reaches critical point because they believe in eliminating all the non-believers. There can be no other explanation than that, when they spit on our front line warriors, choosing to spread the infection than be cured or the way they have been hiding instead of trying to come forward to get tested, which can have tragic consequences in the near future.
And very recently the brutal lynching of three men in Palghar district, Maharashtra, where the police led a 70 year old Saffron clad Monk and his associate along with their driver to their deaths, by handing them over to frenzied mob armed with sticks, bricks and what not, all used to brutally assault a 70 year old man, whose face was bloodied while he was running to seek the protection of the Police will haunt me for the rest of my life. Whether the mob was Muslim or Christian, I do not know. But what I do know is that they were killed for the colour of their clothes.
The liberal media, as it is wont to do, downplayed the incident while the usual assorted bunch of celebrities and award wapsi gang was silent. It was heart wrenching to say the least, to see a person being led to his death by the very people, who are supposed to protect him. The State, which has contibuted to the highest number of Covid cases so far, but was adept in celebrity endorsements had nothing to say on that appalling incident and warned against communilising the issue. This is where my Islamophobia comes in. A party, which was established on communal lines has suddenly become secular! Irony!
To the liberal gang, which routinely downplays such incidents but are ready to dish out sermons over unlawful activities as freedom of expression and start targetting individuals speaking against such incidents and branding them as Islamophobes to shut them up, I would like to say, I am an Islamophobe. I have a fear of the second type of Muslims, who don’t mind killing and getting killed in the name of religion. So if you want to brand me as communal, intolerant or any other term that you can think of, please be my guest. If speaking out against such horrific brutality that happened in Palghar, will get me branded so be it. But one cannot be sitting in the comforts of their drawing room peacefully with the knowledge, that such heinous crime playing in front of their eyes happened only because they were saffron clad monks.
And before I finish, I would like to discuss on another point I raised at the beginning of this article. I have stated that there are fanatics in Hinduism as well. So why don’t I fear a Hindu fanatic as well. The most I have seen a Hindu fanatic do till date is reply to a brutality heaped upon them by others. I have never seen an aggressive Hindu fanatic, who kills because he believes that all the others are infidels. It made me angry and fanatical to see such horrific brutality heaped upon an old Sadhu, who renounced everything only to run for his life, while he was being repeatedly beaten from all sides by a ruthless and worthless mob. It made me angry and fanatical, to hear the State’s response on such brutality. It made me angry and fanatical, to see the policeman handover the old Sadhu, like a lamb to slaughter, into the hands of the rampaging mob. Will I become an Islamophobe, if I express my anger in words rather than action? Or should it be the other way around?
Whatever tag you might want to brand me with, I am comfortable in knowing that my conscience is clear. I know my best friend will still be my best friend and he knows those tags don’t apply to people like me. Someday, I hope that a majority of my country see things the same way and has the courage to call a spade, a spade and do away with these shackles that the liberal elite have so cleverly blinded us with and call out any heinous crime in the name of religion, whether its the Shaheenbagh protests or the Delhi Anti-Hindu riots or the callous and perverse attitude of some members of Tablighi Jamaat or the recent Palghar incident without fear of being branded. Until that day comes I will be a proud Islamophobic. Jai Hind.
