- (november 2008)
We are all Indians.
There are good news even among the worst news: the Mumbai attacks are the first
Islamic terrorist attacks that many Muslims have openly protested against.
The "moderate" Muslims have been playing a dangerous game, often justifying,
tolerating and sometimes denying Islamic terrorism.
This is the first time that sizeable groups of Muslims take to the streets to
demonstrate against a terrorist attack perpetrated in the name of Islam.
(See Islam's moderates).
However, that relatively small group of Muslims (out of one billion) does not
change the fundamentals. There is still a worldwide crusade by these jihadists
to fight the USA, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, India, the Philippines and
any other place that is not Islamic. And there is still widespread indifference
among the Muslims of the world, who tend to blame non-Muslims for everything
that happens in the world.
(See The Islamic world is perfect).
Count the ones that stayed home instead of demonstrating against terrorism,
and you will know who the real enemy is.
As long as one billion Muslims will condone or ignore Islamic terrorism, the terrorists will only get bolder.
Aren't Muslims a bit ashamed and humiliated that the only thing that works in the Islamic world is terrorism?
We would expect a much stronger reaction by the Muslims of the world when
something like this happens. Muslims should torch Mecca or burn millions of
copies of the Quran or convert to other religions in order
to truly shock and discourage the terrorists.
Until that day, the rest of the world will be forced to enter a fight that
nobody wanted to fight (we would all be very happy to forget that Islam exists
and never hear about it again, if we only could).
Instead of bickering all the time about irrelevant issues such as the borders of Georgia or Taiwan's independence, the world powers (European Union, Russia, India, China, Japan, ASEAN, USA, Brazil, African Union) should get together and solve a problem that affects the whole planet and will only get worse with time.
The planet needs an alliance of civilized people against the barbarians
inspired by the religious intolerance of Saudi Arabia (the most racist country
in the world).
Before we worry about dying of global warming in one thousand years, let's worry about dying in one year of Islamic terrorism.
Just like the USA, India is everything that the Islamic jihadists hate:
a secular multi-cultural multi-religious state. It's hell for Mohammed, as
defined in the Quran. It is precisely what Mohammed fought in Mecca (Mecca
used to be a rare example of religious tolerance and coexistence before
Mohammed established his monotheistic tyranny).
India's main religion is Hinduism, which is worse than un-Islamic: it is politheistic.
India also happens to be a close ally of the Western powers, and has
helped the Afghan government fight the Taliban.
It is the perfect target for the jihadists, but it is also the perfect symbol
for the rest of the world: we are all Indians.
That said, let us also remember that
this Islamic terrorism did not arise from the vacuum. Pakistan was a frontline
during the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union: it helped immensely
the USA strategy of undermining the Soviet empire, and eventually helped caused
the demise of the Soviet Union. But to achieve that goal the USA supported and
funded a force of determined fighters who were motivated by Islam. Basically,
the USA used Islam to fight communism via Pakistan.
It was a brilliant idea and it worked.
Alas, it created an infrastructure of Islamic terrorism right inside the
Pakistani army and intelligence service that is now not so easy to disactivate.
The Mumbai attacks were also (and possibly more seriously) an attack against
the young democracy of Pakistan. The new president of Pakistan was already
under siege: on one side the USA that pressed for a quick campaign against
the Islamic militiae in the mountains, and on the other side the Pakistani
masses that demanded an end to USA intervention. Now the problem is bigger
because India demands Pakistan to take action against these Pakistani-grown
terrorists. Whatever the Pakistani government does, it certainly won't look
good in the eyes of the Pakistani masses. The Indian government will pay a
price because of its inability to provide security to its citizens, but the
Pakistani government may pay a higher price because of its inability to
articulate what exactly is that the Islamic republic of Pakistan stands for.
It wasn't clear when Pakistan was born (in a colossal bloodbath). It wasn't
clear when Pakistan fought war after war for Kashmir (one bloodbath after the
other). It wasn't clear when it fought a civil war against Bangladesh (one
hell of a bloodbath). It was clear only during the Cold War, when India sided
with Russia and the USA used Pakistan as a wedge between the two and then as
a proxy to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
Pakistan basically worked as a recruiting center for Islamic fighters willing
to die fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
When that mission ended, Pakistan became again an anomaly: a country created
by uniting several unrelated ethnic groups, four distinct geographic regions,
and with no previous history of independence.
Ironically, today it's India that gives Pakistan meaning: Pakistan makes sense only
as an enemy and a nemesis of India. Otherwise it doesn't make sense: it would
only be a poor man's facsimile of India. The terrorists may be mad dogs, but
they use a simple logic. It's the leaders of Pakistan, instead, who never
quite came up with an alternative logic that would justify the existence of
Pakistan.
Pakistan is another case of the consequences of decolonialization
(See Decolonization and the Islamic civil war).
The central government doesn't have the power to fix the problem, as Pakistan is
on the brink of splitting into separate political entities.
The army and intelligence service have no motivation to fight the very
guerrillas that they created.
The masses don't want to fix the problem, because they have been brainwashed
for decades to think that fighting India is a national duty.
(It is likely that no Pakistani feels responsible at all for the Mumbai attacks).
It is hard to see what India can hope from Pakistan.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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- (october 2008)
Had this happened in a Muslim country, the Christian world would be
already sending the troops. For months a growing number of
Hindu extremists had carried out a brutal campaign against Christians in
Eastern India
(30 people killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed in Kandhamal alone).
The government has not been able to protect a minority that
is being slowly annihilated, either forced to convert to Hinduism or flee.
The numbers are colossal by any standard. Only the Taliban in Afghanistan
caused more devastation against a religion (in that case Buddhism).
Indian nationalists of the
Bharatiya Janata Party
are using the exact same tactic used by Islamic extremists:
they blame the minority being oppressed for insulting the majority's religion.
If you don't believe in their gods, then you are insulting them. Just like
an Islamic fundamentalist thinks that anyone who does not believe in Mohammed
is automatically insulting Islam and therefore deserves to die.
The argument of Hindu fundamentalist is similar.
Christian organizations have been publishing booklets that claim Hindu gods are
not gods at all (incidentally, a belief shared by billions of people around
the world).
Others blame Christians for the killing of Hindu preacher Swami Laxmanananda
Saraswati, a notorious xenophone, racist and Hindu fundamentalist. The police
investigation blamed a Maoist group for the murder but, in another gesture
that is reminiscent of Islamic fundamentalists, the Hindu extremists have
blamed Christians for the killing, and all of them.
There is no questions that Christian missionaries have "invaded" this region
over the last 60 years to proselytize. Just like in Islamic countries the
non-Muslims have tended to care more for education and therefore do better
than the Muslims, the Christians of this region have cared more for education
of their children and are now considerably more prosperous than the Hindus.
Christians are only 3% of the population, but, being more educated and better
organized, they tend to account for 5 or 6% of voters. Christian leaders such
as the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi can benefit from this small group in a
country that is as divided as most democracies between two major political
parties. Hindu nationalists, on the other hand, benefit from the grievances
of the Hindus who see themselves left behind in the areas "colonized" by
the missionaries.
Eventually it all boils down to an election season that will end in march 2009.
Until then the main parties have a vested interest in letting the religious
tensions grow.
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
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