Sultan Shahin responds to Ghulam Muhammed’s nightmare vision

A Story by New Age Islam

Shahin Saheb has every right to pursue his one-sided effort to denigrate and demonise Muslims and exhort them to accept what is on the table.

I had a very disturbed sleep last night. Yours was the last letter I read before going to bed. Your implied threat of a thousand-year-war to retrieve the Babri Masjid site and build a mosque right there kept coming back to me in a variety of nightmare scenarios. I may not represent the consensus of the overwhelming numbers of the Muslim community, but I am not sure that you do either; at least I am hoping that you don’t. I believe it is in our interest as a community and as a nation that we do not allow this cancer to fester and that we try to solve it.

Merely condemning the miscreants who demolished the ex-mosque and abusing them and vowing “Masjid wahin banayenge” will not serve any purpose. It doesn’t seem to me to be a good idea to get pathologically fixated on the demolition of an ex-mosque, which was actually a functioning temple at the time of demolition, and forgetting that we have tens of thousands of functioning mosques and madrasas all over the country and are building new ones all the time.

The miscreants who demolished the ex-mosque claimed to be votaries of Hindutva but were not only anti-social, and anti-national but actually anti-Hindu: they gave Hinduism a bad name, sullied its image of peaceful demeanour and non-violence and tolerance built over several millennia and indeed made homeless Hazrat Ramchandra who, I understand, is now living in a tent, bereft of a roof over his head.

In any case, to many Muslims the image of idol-worship in a mosque-like building and indeed a 400- year old former mosque was more outrageous than its demolition. We must, however, try and move ahead. We cannot remain stuck in the Babri quagmire. One Karbala, and one Muharram is more than enough.

There is a bright side to the picture of Muslim life in India too. Indeed a very bright side. Where else in the Muslim world, for instance, we can live our life in accordance with the Muslim Personal law? Do any of the so-called democracies allow that? Former President Abdul Kalam and Shah Rukh Khan are perhaps the two most universally acclaimed and respected individuals in the whole country. Well, there are a million examples like that, but you need a positive vision to notice that. There are problems and injustices too, of course, and we must certainly fight that and we are indeed doing that along with many of our Hindu brethren, but please don’t overlook the larger perspective.

You have overturned my request for keeping the larger perspective in view to mean something entirely different. You want me to join the grievance-mongering brigade. To a certain extent, and within limits, highlighting the legitimate grievances of a community is a necessary act. It is the virtue of a democracy that it allows that. But that is not all we should be doing. You all are doing that so well in any case. Do highlighting grievances and protesting alone, however, solve any problems? Should our focus not be on solving problems, resolving conflicts, rather than merely highlighting them and expressing anger and frustration at their non-resolution? Don’t we need to move ahead? Can we solve our problems, merely condemning miscreants, complaining against the authorities, clamouring for justice?

I must thank you, however, for at least one thing I have gained from your kind letter. I was merely blaming radical Islamists for brainwashing our kids. I now have a better appreciation of why some of our youth may be going astray and taking recourse to terrorism. If the elders in the community, who are supposed to have more experience and understanding of life can be so angry, so negative, so obsessed with the downside of life as a Muslim in India, so utterly oblivious of the bright side, how can one really blame the youth, who are traditionally more animated and adventurous. Youthful bravado, I am told is one of the motivations behind acts of terrorism.

But how does one explain and reconcile with the adults and senior citizens of a community going nuts, blind to anything but the darkness they see and the gloom they experience all around. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, I understand, psychologists call it. But I find it difficult to believe, despite your claims that my entire community must be suffering from this sort of chronic anxiety disorder. I think it is the leaders of the community, our intellectuals who need to get cured from their OCDs and at least refrain from spreading it. Don’t throw our youth in the dark abyss of depression and frustration in which they become liable to develop a destructive or suicidal outlook.

Ghulam Muhammed Saheb, you present a terrifying vision of what is going to happen to us and to the country. More terrifying than Maulana Maudoodi’s vision for the Muslims of India! May God invest you and the likes of you with some sense or at least prove you wrong. Please don’t misguide our youth with your distorted vision and twisted ideas. They are the hope of the community and the country. Do help and defend those accused of terrorism; they are merely accused so far and deserve the best defence in a court of law. But don’t behave as if every Muslim youth has become an accused or is already detained or is going to be killed in a false encounter or detained wrongfully. Try to calm their fears, if any, and give them positive examples. Please don’t scuttle the possibility of our country producing more Abdul Kalams and Shah Rukh Khans.