Gandhari’s descendants and jihad

Our intellectuals can go to any extent to delink terror from Islamism. These days, their entire endeavor is to somehow show that the murderous attacks by Muslims anywhere in the world are the consequence of anything other than their faith. So, their response to the Brussels attacks, which left over 30 dead, is standard.

Typically, an edit in The Times Of India (March 23) said, “In EU, Belgium has the highest share of its population active as foreign fighters in Syria. This reflects a major failure of its socialization policies but also law enforcement: it took months to track down Abdeslam even though ‘everyone in the neighborhood’ knew he was hidden in this area.”

Thus, the problem is not with Islam or its followers but the Belgians, their “socialization policies,” et al. So mesmerized our editorialists are with their own outlandish theories that they don’t even realize the contradictions in the statements they make. On the one hand, they lecture us that ‘only a handful of Muslims’ indulge in terror activities; on the other, they themselves say that the entire community protects jihadists.

Our liberals can’t have enough of the (essentially Leftist) root-cause doctrine—that economic misery is at the root all problems human existence faces. The TOI edit continues: “The question of integrating the Muslim minority grows even more imperative for EU with the influx of refugees—because poverty and lawlessness provide an ideal breeding ground for jihadi terrorism.”

So, when it’s not the incompetence of the Western authorities, it is poverty and lawlessness, never the teachings of Islam.

While editorialists are not worried about the real causes of jihad, they are concerned about its consequences. Therefore, The Indian Express edit (March 23) says that the bombings in Brussels could give legitimacy to the xenophobic forces that have been working to exploit these strains for political gain.” And these evil forces, in the liberal parlance, comprise the champions of freedom like Geert Wilders and the intellectuals who are critical of Islam (Criticism of Christianity, Hinduism, etc., is scholarship, while that of Islam is Islamophobia).

In a similar vein, Sreeram Chaulia, “an international affairs expert,” wrote in The Times Of India (March 24), “Belgian Muslims comprise over 11 per cent of the population and seethe under a barely disguised racist culture where white Europeans detest people of color and rate Arabs, in particular, as second class citizens.”

Apart from the factual error—Belgian Muslims are slightly more than 8 per cent of the total population—the reprehensible tendency to blame the victim is evident in the article. Muslims in Belgium, indeed in all Western nations, not only afford much higher standards of living than in the countries of their origin but also enjoy infinitely better laws (there is no law against apostasy and adultery in Europe) and intangibles like freedom of expression and the right to drive a car (which is denied to women in Saudi Arabia).

But the “expert,” like other tendentious liberals, remains focused on the lower “skill levels, income, and employment statistics of Belgian Muslims.” In the very next sentence, he bemoans “cultural homogenization laws—like the one banning Islamic headscarves and face veils—and Rightwing neo-fascist political parties.” While blaming the Right for all the possible sins is the staple of liberals’ fulminations, Chaulia’s defence for Islamic headscarves and face veils is downright disgraceful. Only a perverted mind can defend the harness devised to domesticate women.

There are quite a few questions that liberal and Leftist intellectuals don’t ask, let alone answer. Why is it that Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists don’t have problems in Europe, the US, and elsewhere? And why is it that Westerners don’t have problems with these oriental, non-Islamic religionists? Wherever there are frictions—some alcoholic drink being named after some Hindu divinity, for instance—these are resolved peacefully. No Hindu, Sikh, or Buddhist has killed Belgians, French, Germans, Spanish, British, or Americans to avenge some (real or imaginary) wrong. Why is it that any issues pertaining to the integration or assimilation of Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists have never spiraled into bombings and shootings? Why is it that the US presidential hopeful Donald Trump talks about barring Muslims from entering into his country?

Further, why is it that Muslims want to enter into Europe and the US? After all, they themselves claim that there is considerable Islamophobia in Western countries. Journalists in these countries write less-than-salutary articles about Islam and cartoonists draw the Prophet Muhammad. So, why do Muslims want to go to Western countries and suffer the horrendous slurs and blasphemies of the infidels?

But intellectuals, the descendants of Gandhari, have blindfolded themselves to the horrors of Islamic terrorism. Unsurprisingly, they often end up as the B-team or overground brigade for jihadists.