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A “marginal minority” of 15 million – CORRECTED

11 January 2007 6 views 5 Comments

My favourite quote re. radical elements within Muslim populations is: “most Muslims are liberal, peace-loving souls and Islamic radicals (undoubtedly misguided youths) are only a “marginal minority”…

Which sounds great until you realise that even if just 1% (which is pretty marginal in my maths book) fall in the misguided youth category, we have about 15million radicals raring to go to “jihad” (of which at least 20% – or 3million – are in India’s neighbourhood).

5 Comments »

1. Hindu Suta said:

You’d do well to not spread hatred in the name of love for a religion.

12 January 2007

2. B Shantanu said:

Dear HinduSutra,

The piece was written tongue-in-cheek and should be read in that spirit

Perhaps the reference to Iraq and Afghanistan was gratuituous�the genesis of the problems there has probably nothing to do with Islam or Muslims in general�so I have removed it from my revised post (which is why the heading has changed to “Corrected” – I will be the first toa dmit my mistake)

So let me clarify my position:
I have nothing against Muslims (or any other creed, caste, people, followers of other religions or belief systems)�neither do I have anything against Islam, Christianity or any other sects, religions, or beliefs�

And of course I would never dream of spreading hatred against any religion in whatever way.

What I do challenge is a particularly violent and intolerant interpretation of the Islam that drives some of its followers to commit pre-meditated, violent crimes against innocents and those who may not agree with their interpretation�and if the mainstream clergy and the opinion-makers within the community do not condemn these acts, we have an even bigger problem.

Is there an easy fix-it to this issue? Perhaps not…should we therefore give up hope? Definitely not�but at the same time, there is no use pretending there is no problem. It is only by acknowledging the reality of the situation that one can begin to address it.
.
P.S. Have a look at some of these links (all from different sources and meant just by way of a sample) and you will realise where my tongue in cheek comment came from:

“So where are all the peace-loving Muslims?” http://videsupra.blogspot.com/2006/08/so-where-are-all-peace-loving-muslims.html

“Andrew McCarthy reviews The Truth About Muhammad at National Review” http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/014794.php#more

and

“Arab journalist attacks radical Islam” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3632462.stm
(from which I have drawn a relevant excerpt below)

“Mr Rashid’s comments employ what has become a standard defence of the Muslim faith, namely, that the problem is not Islam itself, but a small number of Muslims.
That may very well be true as far as the number of Islamic militants go. But this analysis does not address the fact that radical clerics, like Mr Qaradawi, remain widely popular.
The problem of Islamist violence appears to go well beyond the views of a small, albeit influential, minority.”

* Mr Rashid is Abdelrahman al-Rashid, MD of the news channel al-Arabiya

12 January 2007

3. Indian said:

I agree with Shantanu. See somewhere we have to draw attention. We cannot keep our eyes, mouth and ears shut when we know something is at danger, no matter it is an issue of religion or whatever.

I wonder why always tolerent people is demanded to keep shut and not those who really are spreading hatered? Rediculous to ask innocents to keep shut. We have lost our many people still we are calm and had not produce single jihaids like Muslim produces everyday. The plight of Kashmiris is not enough to show that how much love and tolerence we are showing towards Muslims.

Can we imagine this from Muslims? No way, they cannot keep their eyes, mouth and ears shut even for a cartoon? Can we expect peace from them? It is laugable even to think also like that, as we can see whole world is in danger due to their act arises out of interpretation of Quran.

12 January 2007

4. holger danske said:

dear friends,

i added you to my blogroll…
all the best

holger danske
http://europenews.blogg.de
europenews@web.de

14 January 2007

5. B Shantanu said:

Courtesy BengalVoice, this excerpt from Maloy Krishna Dhar’s article - India’s Fault Lines:

The other cancerous reality check pertains to unbiased appreciation of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism, contamination of Indian Muslim minds with the poison of jihad and revival of the isolationist separatist tendencies. Let us be clear at the outset that all Muslims are not separatists and jihadists. Most of them are not even fundamentalists. In case a comparative study is made between the 80+ crore Hindus and 15+ crore Muslims it would appear that about 5% Hindus strongly believe in Hindutwa and Hindu fundamentalism. Only a fraction, may be 0.01% think of taking up weapons against the Muslims.

Compared to this about 60% of Muslims can be rated fundamentalists, 35% believe in Islamic resurgence, 30% believe in isolationist separatism and nearly 15% believe that armed jihad, as practiced by Pakistani and Bangladeshi tanzeems can alone retrieve the lost glory of Islam in India. This figure is worrisome.

31 August 2009