Preaching hatred

In the days before e-mail, I used to try and answer every letter written to this column. In general terms I am the laziest letter writer in ...

In the days before e-mail, I used to try and answer every letter written to this column. In general terms I am the laziest letter writer in the world but Khushwant Singh impressed upon me once in the days of my impressionable youth that it was rude not to answer letters that related to something I had written. It is a valid point but impossible in these post-e-mail times so instead of answering every letter I make it a point to read all the letters in my mailbox to see how you, dear readers, have responded to the views expressed in this space.

Last week8217;s column provoked a flood of letters and reading them was a disturbing experience because my mailbox turned into an epistolary Hindu-Muslim clash. Hindu letter writers were delighted with what they called my courage in 8216;8216;calling a spade a spade8217;8217; and Muslims charged me with 8216;8216;targeting Islam8217;8217;. Clearly, we need to talk some more about this.

For those of you who may have made the mistake of not buying last week8217;s Sunday Express, let me precis what I wrote. In the context of the terrorist attacks in London and Ayodhya, I submitted in what I thought were humble, dispassionate, lawyerly tones that perhaps the root of the problem 8212; the nursery of suicide bombers 8212; were the madrasas and the narrow-minded, semi-literate mullahs who run these Islamic schools. I was not targeting Islam or attempting to write something with the specific objective of pleasing Hindu readers but I was certainly targeting mullahs. And, I target them again because I believe they are largely responsible for the birth of the Islamist suicide bomber. I believe they create a false sense of grievance in young, impressionable Muslims and then persuade them to kill themselves, and a lot of innocent people, because of their bizarre and bloodthirsty interpretation of what Allah wants.

Let me say here that it is not just mullahs I consider semi-literate and unattractive but priests in general. Other faiths, luckily, do not need them quite as much as Islam does because other faiths do not have a Prophet who came down to Earth with a book written by God.

Hindus of more fanatical bent constantly assert that all it needs for better relations with the Muslims is for a few offensive references to the treatment of infidels to be deleted from the Quran. Unaccustomed as they are to books written by God they do not understand that if you question a single word written in the Quran you automatically cease to be a Muslim. You cannot question Allah and continue to be a Muslim.

What Muslims can and should question is the interpretation of the Quran that modern-day mullahs give. Does Allah really like the idea of teenage boys and girls blowing themselves up on his behalf? Does he really approve of innocent people being murdered in his name? Instead of vestal virgins in Paradise is it possible that Allah may be sending suicide bombers straight to hell? It is these questions to which answers are required and, unfortunately, the only people who consider themselves interpreters of Allah8217;s will are the mullahs. Increasingly in recent times they have given the impression that their God would like Westerners, Hindus and Jews exterminated. There is not enough space in this column to list the number of times mega mullahs have asked the faithful to go out and do terrible things to us infidels and this does not go down well with us. Jews come in for more abuse than anyone else and of late Western countries have come a close second.

If the animosity against the Jews can be blamed on Palestine can someone explain what exactly the West has done to harm Islam or Muslims? There is the war on Iraq which personally I think was a serious mistake but let us remember that 9/11 happened before the Americans went for regime change. After 9/11 did anyone seriously expect the United States to sit back and do nothing?

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In the letters this column received last week from Muslims, nearly each and every one contained a diatribe against the West and America in particular. They also contained justification of terrorism.

Here is a sample, 8216;8216;50 people killed and hundreds injured in London and started sic writing articles in newspaper against muslims, madrasas etc. Have you ever dared to write about the Bush administration and Iraq war?8217;8217;

The answer, my friend, is yes I have. Often. But, in my humble view the difference between war and terrorism is that in the former it is usually a fight between two sets of armed combatants and in the latter it is always a fight against defenseless civilians. When I saw pictures of the children killed last week by a suicide bomber in Baghdad it turned my stomach. Images from Beslan still haunt me. Whenever I write this I get letters charging me with not caring enough about the children who die in Palestine at the hands of Israeli soldiers. I do care. I believe that killing a child is the worst crime on Earth and that there cannot possibly be a God who approves of this particularly when it happens not by accident in a war but because of the deliberate act of a suicide bomber.

In the end, I would like to clarify once more that I am not against Muslims or their faith. But, I have serious problems with mullahs who do not publicly from their pulpits condemn terrorism and even more serious problems with those who teach small boys that if they strap themselves with explosives and kill a lot of innocent people they will achieve martyrdom and heaven.

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