Prioritizing the scripturally-mandated quest for religious supremacy over national interest and pursuing such quest through terrorism, violence, riots and civil disobedience, is a common phenomenon among radicalized Indian Islamists.
Saudi Arabia, an Islamic Kingdom in the Middle East that continues to be the most dreadful place for women and non-Muslims, has been making snail’s-paced reforms to catch up to evolved democracies like India or USA, thanks to King Salman, who is touted as ‘progressive’ and ‘liberal’ compared to his predecessors.
As part of the reforms to reduce Saudi’s dependency on oil revenues and venture into other sectors such as, tourism, health and recreation, King Salman decided to open movie theatres in Medina, a city in Saudi where, according to Islamic mythology, Mohammad, a prominent Islamic preacher was buried. Watching movies is considered as an insult to Muslim god Allah and a sin as per orthodoxic Islamic Sharia law. So, expectedly, this move drew the ire of fundamentalist Islamists.
However, it is both hypocritical and laughable that Indian Islamists (as opposed to progressive and pluralistic Indian Muslims), with their usually misplaced priorities, also joined this protest wagon. This is because, in pluralistic India, though majority population is Hindu, many prominent movie stars of Bollywood — Indian movie industry — are from Muslim community. And Indian Muslims, including Islamists, regularly visit cinema halls for entertainment.
Indian Islamists — who proudly trace their roots to the Arabic Islam — have a history of prioritizing religious supremacy over national interests. They frequently indulge in violent protests, rioting, destroying local property and causing civil disobedience for Islamist causes from around the world that are completely unrelated to India. Keeping up with this tradition, the Islamists led by a well-known radical group Raza Academy, organized a protest in Mumbai, against Saudi Kingdom’s internal decision. The fringe group, dominated by the Muslim-caste of Sunnis, issued a ‘warning’ to Saudi Kingdom, clearly overstepping the national interest of foreign diplomatic relations.
The group’s violent past is well known to Indians and intelligence officials. In 2011, radical Islamists of Raza Academy desecrated Amar Jawan Jyothi, the Indian Army Soldiers’ memorial in Mumbai, while rioting in favor of Muslims in Myanmar (see cover photo). The riot caused considerable destruction of public property and injured many local police personnel. The group, in collaboration with other Islamist organizations, also threatened artistic and academic freedom on numerous occasions, which included calling for a ban on movie titled ‘Mohammad: Messenger of God’.
Along the lines of prioritizing religious interest, many such fringe radical groups including Raza Academy, also opposed Indian government’s move to provide humanitarian refugee status to Hindu, Sikh and Christian communities from neighboring Islamist nations of Pakistan and Bangladesh, where minority persecution and genocide is rampant.
Indian intelligence officials continue to warn the governments and public of the dubious nature of such anti-nationalists who, while operating as cultural and Muslim-advocacy groups, allegedly enjoy funding and support of other radical Islamist groups from around the world, especially Pakistan, to destabilize, cause civil unrest and to establish Islamic Caliphate in India.
It is appalling to note that such Islamist groups also enjoy the support of a ‘syndicate’ that includes ultra-leftist Indian journalists, bigoted Western/Indian academicians and media houses that want to ‘dismantle’ Hinduism and India. Whenever constitutionally appointed law-enforcing agencies act upon intelligence inputs to bring such Islamists to justice, the ‘syndicate’ immediately swings into action to protect them by creating the narrative of ‘minorities under attack’.
What is even more concerning is the patronage these Islamist fringe groups like Raza Academy, AIMPLB, and Popular Front of India enjoy, from some national and regional political parties in India, who indulge in relentless Islamist appeasement for short-term electoral gains . These opportunistic political groups, in cahoots with the ‘syndicate’, use the well-fabricated and propagated ‘Islamophobia’ bogey to thwart any attempts to expose the anti-nationalist and Hindu-hating agenda of such organizations. Such appeasement has no limits in India, as the ‘syndicate’ will even create ‘minority victimhood narrative’ for dreaded Islamist terrorists such as Afjal Guru, Burhan Wani or Ajmal Kasab, to name a few.
Rise of radical Islamism has been an ongoing concern in civilized, democratic countries around the world, especially in India. Though the current Indian Government ruled by BJP is making numerous efforts to delink the enthusiastic and innocent Muslim youth from radical, anti-national Islamist organizations, such efforts often get trumped by the scripturally-mandated quest for Islamist supremacy.
However, it is optimistic to note that many progressive and secular Muslims, who resonate with the cultural and pluralistic ethos of India, are joining the Central Government’s and fellow Indians’ efforts in changing the course.