India: Wahhabi Taliban onslaught on Sunni Muslims - Clean-shaven Muslim’s daughter killed, 4 injured

A Story by New Age Islam

In the ensuing violence that involved the entire village his 7-year-old daughter lost her life while four people got injured.

In a Saharanpur village clean-shaven Mohammad Iqbal got severely beaten up for his ‘crime’ of saying Takbeer as a clean-shaven person in a mosque before Iftar. In the ensuing violence that involved the entire village his 7-year-old daughter lost her life while four people got injured.

An eye-opening report by Saleh Ahqar of Delhi’s premier Urdu Daily Hindustan Express’ News Bureau from Saharanpur, a stronghold of Deobandi Talibani Wahhabism in Uttar Pradesh.

Sultan Shahin, Editor, NewAgeIslam.com adds: The Wahhabi onslaught on Sunni Indian Muslims is now acquiring overtones of Talibani extremism and violence. What was considered harmless Tabligh (sermonizing) engaged in by the Tablighi Jamaat and similar Wahhabi organisations of the Deoband school of thought is asserting itself now through growing violence in its bid to acquire control of more and more Sunni Muslim mosques. This has already happened in Pakistan where most Sunni Muslim mosques and madrasas are now controlled by a small minority of Wahhabis.

From preaching absolutely outlandish and crazy theories like - for a Muslim shaving his beard clean once amounts to razing 10, 000 mosques - it has now come to stopping clean shaven people from even saying Takbeer during prayers. Takbeer is a loud assertion and reaffirmation of one's faith and a call for others to do the same and is supposed to bring a lot of sawab (blessing) to the person who makes it. But if you are a clean-shaven Muslim you cannot do it, so say the new converts to Wahhabism and are prepared to kill for it. [Wahhabis too were once considered Sunni, as they are not Shia -- and in fact consider Shias, indeed all non-Wahhabis Kafir -- but are now referred to just as Wahhabis.]

The day is probably not far when à la Taliban’s Afghanistan clean-shaven Muslims will not be allowed to even enter mosques and will face social boycott.

It’s time the larger Muslim community woke up and took notice of the growing Talibani culture in India.

We should take a leaf out of recent Pakistani history.

Only a few years ago I had found people in Pakistan, even in Peshawar, complacent about the growth of Talibanism in their society. Asked if Talibanism was growing in the Pakistani society even civil society people would be in denial and ask me to look around and see for myself. Do you see any Taliban around, they would ask me. I am sure they are ruing their complacency now.

Let us try and steer clear of this malady. The virus has already spread far, even to our villages. The Indian Muslim society is no longer immune to Talibanism as we once proudly claimed it was due to our proximity to other cultures and ideologies. The why and wherefore of this phenomenon is a subject for another write-up, but meanwhile let us introspect on where we are going in allowing such diseases to remain untreated, indeed not even talked about.