Hindu leaders should realise that Muslim leaders and rulers fear ideas, not arms. They know where they are weak and confused. That is why they are most intolerant of writers, thinkers, poets and critics. ... A critical examination of Islamic dogmas is the Achilles heel of Islam. – Virendra Parekh
Political Islam has emerged as the biggest threat to human civilisation in the recent times. Hindus have been facing it for centuries, while Europe is a late learner. If there is a single common factor debilitating their response to this mortal danger, it is their ignorance about the true nature of Islam. They must shed blinkers like secularism, multi-culturalism, political correctness, Islamophobia et al and look at the reality with clear eyes. Fortunately, countervailing forces are emerging everywhere, but ensuring their success will necessitate arduous work—intellectual, social and political.
The Hindu society has paid, and continues to pay, a very heavy price for its failure in knowing Islam as it is. Educated Hindus, even scholars, feel obliged to view it as just another dharam, a religion of peace and brotherhood and a different way of worship, even as the reality stares at them in the eye. This is amazing. Ordinary Hindus have suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of Islam and its followers. Hindu generals and soldiers have been battling Muslim invaders for centuries. Will Durant, a great historian, described the Mohammedan conquest of India as “probably the bloodiest story in history”. The behaviour pattern patented by Islam has remained unchanged over the centuries and across the country. Yet, Hindu statesmen never felt it necessary to know and understand the character of their inveterate enemies. Hindu scholars never saw the need to study from primary sources the ideology that drove their aggression, shaped their mentality and guided their actions.
This gross ignorance about the motivations of Muslim leaders (political and religious) has confused our intellect, paralysed our will and led our leaders to commit follies whose consequences still haunt us. For Prithviraj Chauhan, Shahabuddin Ghori was just another warrior, whom he forgave and set free with light-hearted magnanimity after defeating him in the First Battle of Tarain in 1191 CE. We know what followed. More recently, in 1920s, Gandhiji yoked Congress to the dangerous cause of revival of Khilafat, throwing a lifeline to political Islam in India at a time when there was a real chance of finishing it off. Again, it was Gandhiji who condemned the shuddhi abhiyan (purification movement) carried out by Arya Samaj to bring back Muslim and Christian converts to their ancestral faith, and forced its discontinuance. India’s partition was a historic opportunity for the Hindus to assert the primacy of their civilisation in the truncated India. Instead, their leaders chose to accord a special treatment to Muslims under the guise of a sham secularism.
Dr. Shankar Sharan, a scholar extraordinary, recounts all this and draws our attention to another historic crossroads that is emerging in our own times. Both India and the West are facing an aggressive, violent jihadi Islam which is raring to overrun their lands and remake them in the image of seventh-century Arabia. Any appeasement, however attractive politically and ‘morally’, will be fatal. On the contrary, here is a real chance to expose the true character of Islam to the world and finish it off politically if only we open our eyes and stay the course. This will be a singular service not only to the free world, but also to millions of Muslims trapped in an irrational belief system which punishes apostasy with death.
Dr. Shankar Sharan writes on Islam with a clarity and courage that is rare among Hindu intellectuals. In his short but incisive book in Hindi Muhammad se Asahamati: Kya Aur Kyon (“Disagreement with Muhammad: What and Why”), he relies upon the Quran, Hadis and Sira to show that Islam is an intolerant, aggressive and violent ideology of power masquerading as religion. It uses the language of theology, but its objectives are political. It seeks to dominate the world by decimating other cultures and religions and converting the whole mankind to its fold.
Dr. Sharan’s prescription is simple. Know Islam as it is. Speak about it clearly and fearlessly. Let the world know how and why Islam is incompatible with civilisation. Islam pauses a mortal danger to freedom of religion for the whole mankind, not just non-Muslims. An Islamic rule will snuff out modern values such as individual freedom, equality, gender justice and democracy. If ever there was a right time to speak up, it is now.
First of all, says Dr. Sharan, we must know what sets Islam apart from other religions and traditions. Holding someone as a prophet—even the best and the last one, believing a book to be word of God or worshipping in a particular way is by itself nothing objectionable. What distinguishes Islam and makes it dangerous is its extreme self-righteousness, intolerance and exclusiveness backed by violence.
Islam for momins and kaffirs
Islam says that there is no god other than Allah. All other gods are false. Worshipping them is not only stupidity but also an insult to Allah. Equating or associating Allah with any other god is blasphemy. The injunctions of Allah were revealed to the mankind through Mohammad who was his best and last prophet. These injunctions are compiled in the Quran which is the word of the only true god. All other scriptures are false and misleading.
The Quran insists that Islam is the only true religion for the whole mankind for all time to come. All others are kufr (untruth). Islam is perfect, immutable and eternal. It needs no reform, only strict adherence. No objective proof for these tall claims is necessary. Quranic assertion is enough. Quran enjoins the faithful to bring the whole world under its aegis by whatever means. Persuasion pressure coercion duplicity deceit lies falsehoods violence destruction—anything is permissible for propagating the faith. This is jihad, bringing new people and new lands under the flag. The Quran regards jihad as the most meritorious deed, prescribes it as an absolute duty for everyone depending upon his circumstances and looks down upon those who lack the drive to undertake it.
Islam believes in one God, but two humanities: us and them, momins and kaffirs, believers and non-believers. Therefore, it has a dual ethics. All the teachings of brotherhood, truthfulness, charity, fidelity etc. are meant for dealings among Muslims. For others, jihad is the rule. Islam does not believe in reciprocating hospitality of the hosts with good behaviour. It utilises the tolerance, freedom and kindness afforded by other cultures to destroy them and propagate its own ideology. It is a one-way street. Europe is learning this the hard way.
Dr. Sharan pays special attention to exposing the duplicity and deceit employed by Muslim leaders to confuse and hoodwink others. He points out that Muslim leaders are adept in playing victim even when they are the aggressors, that they can claim being discriminated against even while availing of all the generosity of the host society. Muslim leaders insist that non-Muslims must respect Islamic beliefs and practices even in public life, but Muslims would not show any tolerance towards others: what you give to us is your duty, what we do to you is our right.
He also comes down heavily on Hindu leaders of all hues for their timidity in calling out political Islam. Leaders of BJP, Congress, Communist parties or regional parties fiercely fight with one another on issues involving Islam and Muslims, but never talk about the elephant in the room: political Islam deploying Muslim street power, tactical voting and permanent victim card. They are too terrorised even to name the chief tormentor of the Hindu society, how can you expect them to stand up and fight it? Even RSS and VHP leaders are reluctant to condemn the communal politics of Muslim organisations in a clear and forthright manner as was done by Dr. Ambedkar. Muslim leaders follow a long-term strategy spanning decades and rarely place personal goals above their communal agenda. Hindu leaders, in contrast, live from election to election.
The tide turns
Fortunately, the situation seems to have taken a turn for the better in recent years. There is a new awakening among the common people in the West about the real nature of Islam and what it has in store for the free societies. In the last few decades, European countries including Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands and Belgium saw a massive influx of Muslim immigrants. Political leaders in those countries invited Muslim refugees from the Middle East and north Africa to come and settle in their countries in the name of multi-culturalism. Now their people are paying the price for this self-invited trouble. The immigrants who came in, posing as poor helpless refugees lost no time in showing their Islamic colours. They made no secret of their utter contempt for Judeo-Christian civilisation and values of modern western democracies, and their desire to bring the “light of Islam to these blighted lands.”
This ungrateful, uncouth and unapologetic behaviour prompted many European writers, journalists, students and scholars to study Islam from its primary sources. They wanted to understand what it is about Islam that produces the same kind of terrorists, same kind of violence and the same kind of demands everywhere. This led them to a gradual understanding of the real source, nature and objectives of jihad. The information technology and internet vastly facilitated their task. Everywhere, some people came to realise that Islamic theology is the source of all jihadi slogans and demands followed by violence and destruction. The jihadi Muslims are not a bunch of misguided souls, but a highly motivated and well-organised group fighting for its religious objectives. The common people in Europe had understood all this much earlier from first-hand experience. As a result, anti-immigration parties are gaining ground in one European country after another.
A similar churning is afoot in Muslim countries also. The Arab countries have realised that they can no longer bring the world to its knees with oil. Also, oil is a double-edged sword. If the world needs to import it to drive its economy, the producers need to export it to run theirs. Barring Iran and Turkey, most Muslim rulers have realised the limitations of Islamic politics and the impossibility of achieving its objectives in a multipolar world, moving away from fossil fuels. Gradually, they are introducing reforms or allowing western, say human values to permeate their societies, actively or passively.
Then there is a third force in the play, silent, almost submerged but most lethal for Islam: the ex-Muslims. Dr. Sharan does not discuss it, but quest for truth and freedom is fast catching up with Islam as it did with Christianity and Communism in the past. Islam is not safe even in its strongholds. The challenge is more serious because it has arisen from within.
Islamic belief system is no longer sheltered from a searing scrutiny of reason, science and facts. Millions of Muslims, men and women, young and old, in Muslim countries and elsewhere, are examining the Quran, Hadis and Sirah with the help of the internet, Google and social media. The results have been devastating for gatekeepers of Islam. These seekers are no longer convinced about the truth of Islam. They find that the tall claims of Islam have no basis either in logic or in facts. They study the Quran and find that there is enough evidence both inside the Quran and outside it that it cannot be the word of God. Muslims are asked to regard Mohammad the prophet as their role model, and base their thoughts and actions on his life. But the seekers find much, rather too much in the life of Mohammad which is highly objectionable, goes against normal human ethical values and deserves to be condemned rather than followed. They take their doubts and queries to their religious leaders and scholars, but are not satisfied with the answer or the response that they receive.
Such Muslims are leaving Islam in droves, and their numbers are growing fast everywhere. A few of them, safely ensconced in western countries, have come out in the open. Names of Salman Rushdie, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Harris Sultan, Ayan Hirsi Ali are well known. But there are millions upon millions who have renounced Islam from their heart but are unwilling to disclose it for fear of consequences. Islam punishes apostasy with death.
Hindu organisations should make a common cause with ex-Muslims, instead of seeking certificates of good character from Mullahs and Maulavis. There is no dearth of the former in India.
As Dr. Sharan says, Hindu leaders should realise that Muslim leaders and rulers fear ideas, not arms. They know where they are weak and confused. That is why they are most intolerant of writers, thinkers, poets and critics. This tradition goes back to Mohammad himself. From Abu Afak to Salman Rushdie. From Asma bint Marwan to Taslima Nasreen. A critical examination of its dogmas is the Achilles heel of Islam. It is easy to hit. That will be a great service to humanity, Muslims included.
Muhammad se Asahamati: Kya Aur Kyon by Shankar Sharan. Akshaya Prakashan, New Delhi. 2026. Pages: xxvii+118. Buy at Amazon Books for Rs 270.
Filed under: india, world | Tagged: critics of islam, islam, islamic doctrine, jihad, shankar sharan |
