Straight Talk: Why Is A Muslim In India Expected To Explain An Act By Algerian Muslims In France?

What happens when you are in a newsroom working on something that may offend people, when you hear that in another newsroom ten colleagues were killed and 11 others were grievously hurt for doing the same. I had just finished writing on religious fundamentalism and was discussing Islamism with a believing Muslim colleague, when the horror of Charlie Hebdo streamed in on TV.

Of course, what I do is nowhere close to what the satirists at Charlie Hebdo do. Indian laws do not allow that kind of freedom of expression.
Besides, I wish to continue working and continuing to live is essential to that goal. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right in my country but it is qualified with "reasonable restrictions" and secularism means respecting all religions, disrespecting any is virtually illegal. Also, the reasonable restrictions part is so vague that one can be jailed for drawing a brinjal, lest it resemble a god.

Freedom of expression as a fundamental right includes freedom to offend, why else would we need a constitutional guarantee if we only had nice things to say about everything. There are few takers for that position though. Even those who agree hasten to add that freedom to offend religion is certainly not included. Religion is what we call a touchy subject, what Charlie Hebdo lampooned as the untouchable. We do not have to go through censorship, but we have mastered the art of self-censorship, because we in the media do not want to invite trouble, that often visits us uninvited.

Though the press enjoys substantial freedom, it is also true that the press here doesn’t test the distance it can go. Even lurking around the limits can provoke the loonies, and we have quite a variety of them. Loonies also enjoy unity in diversity and they all unite, in case one is lampooned. The maulvi who lampoons polytheism stands with the Bajrangi who is outraged by PK. Such rare camaraderie is never seen during religious flare-ups. But that’s not the point I put forward today.

For those who follow no faith, empathy is all they can offer to believers. I empathise with the average Indian Muslim today. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam notwithstanding, I don’t have much experience living with the entire world. This is based on first-hand living and learning. It must be tough being a moderate Muslim because the expectations are huge, especially in a country like India where Muslims are the largest minority but a minority nevertheless.

So when my Muslim friends sound apologetic about a massacre in Paris, it confounds me. Why should he feel more indignant than a non-Muslim? If an Arab Muslim rapes a non-Muslim in Nantes, the Indian Muslim is not stirred, and rightly so. So why then when a couple of Algerian-origin French Muslims massacre 12 atheists in the Charlie Hebdo office?

I do not have answers. I asked around and have a few pointers.

Pan-Islamism is one. Islam has brotherhood built into it but, at the same time, it is as diverse as it can be. In the last two decades, however, things have changed. Afghanistan and Iraq threw up a sense of shared victimhood, unlike any other past event. Manipulated. They were propagated as attacks on Islam. Muslims from faraway countries arrived in Afghanistan to fight the invaders. The al Qaeda was born. 

The reach of communication tools and the internet brought people closer and the feeling of brotherhood grew stronger. Indian Muslims, like other Muslims, began considering Arabs as brothers. Arabs never really returned the favour, but what the hell, pan-Islamism began gaining ground in lands untouched by it!

Pan-Islamism cuts both ways. An injustice against a Muslim in Kenya started bothering a Muslim in Bangladesh. Persecution of Muslims in Syria began to agitate Muslims' hearts in Indonesia. In unprecedented numbers, Muslims from around the world have been fighting in Iraq and Syria as if it were their own battle. 

No Hindu from India went to fight for Hindus in Fiji. No Christian from US would volunteer to die in Somalia. But a Muslim in Pakistan would do so. Islam developed this unique strain. They began defending their faith as if their faith of "One God, One Prophet" was not diverse as it is, but one as they wish it to be. The Wahhabi code wormed its way into liberal lands.

Increasing numbers of Muslims instinctively began empathising with Muslims for being fellow Muslims, more than for being fellow humans. If an injustice on a Muslim in a faraway land evoked a sense of injustice in a Muslim here, an injustice by a Muslim instinctively evoked a sense of responsibility. 

A Muslim in India, who has absolutely nothing to do with an attack in Peshawar, needed to explain Peshawar to non-Muslims because he has in the past attempted to explain his outrage over a US drone attack in FATA. There have been terror attacks closer home too, executed by Muslim extremists. They would never justify it, but felt obliged to defend the faith. That’s risky business in the world of interpretations.

The demonisation of Muslims and what is called Islamophobia was growing, parallel. India is 80 per cent Hindu and just about 15 per cent Muslim. Hindus have no real presence anywhere else in the world to share or understand the feeling of new brotherhood among Muslims. However illogical it may sound, there is expectation that Muslims need to explain what their co-religionists are doing in the name of religion. Similarly, Muslims feel obliged to somehow explain an unconnected event only because it was executed by people who shouted Allahu Akbar while doing it.

It is time non-Muslims stopped expecting Muslims to explain everything that a Muslim does in the world in the name of Islam. It is unfair. Also, it is time Muslims stopped explaining and feeling distantly responsible for every terrorist act involving a Muslim. The brotherhood must stop at sharing the same religion and holy places. Period.

Since you have read this far, let us also examine the position of moderate Muslims. I find this phrase unacceptable but it has become the acceptable word for Muslims "who don’t react violently". There is an unreasonable amount of expressed and latent pressure on them to stand up after every Islamist terrorist attack. Stand up and do what? They are like every other human being. It is time non-Muslims began expecting the same from them what they expect from themselves. What’s a moderate Muslim’s reaction to Charlie Hebdo? Not much different from that of a non-Muslim. They are not a different species, for Darwin’s sake.

And, finally, a word to the moderate Muslims. Sorry for sounding patronising, but do pull up your socks. There is a reason the whole world demands answers from you. You have been ignoring your own feelings for far too long. Of course, you react with the same horror that non-Muslims do. But after the damage is done. I will limit my argument to the Charlie Hebdo attack. I see a lot of Muslim condemnation, loud and clear, against the sick ideology that condones such terrible acts. They declare, without condition, that this isn’t their Islam. "Not in my name". Well, we all need to do that a little early.

When Charlie Hebdo published those caricatures, the moderate Muslims condemned it. It was not in good taste. But their condemnation did not come qualified it with a call for non-violence and their commitment to freedom of expression under the law of the land. Even after, fatwas declared a price on their heads. Why do they need to be so unequivocal? Because it is they who face the fire afterwards.

It is time they stood up for non-Muslims who do/may not respect Islam. Non-Muslims are not required to respect a faith they do not follow. In an ideal world, everyone should respect the other’s faith. This is the real world with unreal expectations. It is obligatory only on Muslims to respect Islam’s prophet and the Holy Quran. If others respected them as much as Muslims, why would they be non-Muslims in the first place?

Disrespect for religion is at the heart of Islam. Where it did not spread under the sword, it spread because Islam convinced others that their god(s) and books were false. The Prophet himself desecrated places Meccans considered holy. Later, Sufi saints and Islamic scholars managed to prove to people of other faiths that their deities were useless pieces of stone. Islamists should stop demanding a full-stop to criticism of Islam. The Quran uses strong words for people of other faiths. The tenets of Quran apply to those who have surrendered to Allah. Those who have not are out of its purview.

In India, the overwhelming majority, the Hindus, have no God to speak of. They have deities. But in a reaction not to Muslims of India but the fear of political Islam, they too seek to become a monolithic identity, though they practice polytheism. They react as violently now to lampooning of their deities, who have become their god(s). 

They are in the process of zeroing on one book as well. I call it the rise of Wahhabi Hinduism, because it smacks of the written in stone code of al-Wahhab. The increasing furious reaction to films, paintings and even newspaper reports hint at a mutation in the Hindu DNA as well. This contagion across beliefs threatens a multicultural, inclusive country like no other, in more ways than one.

The lack of faith among the faithful in their faiths is staggering. They believe God is all powerful and protects us all yet feel the need to defend God. Education, overall progress in science and technology, was expected to reduce religiosity in general. It is not happening as quickly as one expected. The so-called fear of rising religiosity is a delusion. 

The religious happen to be louder and have loudspeakers to boot. Reason doesn’t scream, but is reclaiming space from religion. It will take its time. This intolerance will kill itself. There’s only so much that humanity can take before it wakes up. But it will get worse before it gets better. We will have to tread carefully till then.