Will the half-baked Mullahs Ever Feel Ashamed of their Hypocrisy?

By Sheeba Aslam Fehmi

If you ask any common criminal—be he a murderer or just an ordinary liar—how he shou
ld be dealt with, one can expect him to express some remorse, but in the case of
a half-baked mullah you can surely expect him to say, ‘We are blessings sent by A
llah for the sake of humankind, and so we ought to be treated in the same way as
divine avatars are treated.’ In other words, you can expect the mullahs to say, ‘We
will openly and without any restraint mock others’ beliefs and faith. Using all s
orts of arguments, we will claim our own beliefs to be “scientific” and that of othe
rs false. We will prove our religious book to be divine and that of others wrong
. We will announce that our prophet is the last and most beloved of God, and tha
t the religious figures of others are inferior to him. We will term our violence
as “jihad” but will term the violence of others as terrorism or brutality. We will
camouflage our hypocrisy as ‘taqiyya’ or pious dissimulation. All these things we wi
ll do, and, in this way, we will assert ourselves over others, but we will never
allow others to do the same thing with us. If they dare try to do so, we will l
oudly declaiming against it, and will opportunistically invoke human rights, dem
ocratic values, Constitutional rights, justice, equality, freedom, and, above al
l, secularism—values that we do not believe in when we are in the majority—in our de
fence.’
The mullahs will rail and rant in the media against France for its ban on burqas
, branding this as an attack on ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom of choice’. But they have absol
utely no shame, for in the same breath as they insist that forcibly banning the
burqa is wrong and a violation of freedom of choice, they resolutely praise coun
tries like Saudi Arabia and Iran for forcing women to veil. They do not regard t
his as a violation of freedom of choice. Rather, they idealize it. Strange is th
eir logic, and wholly inconsistent, too.
The mullahs will insist that their prophet is the last of the prophets. But when
Jews and Christians declare their own prophets to be the last prophet, the mull
ahs will declare them guilty of blasphemy, and will even announce hefty financia
l rewards for their murderers. They will treat non-Muslim minorities in the way
that the hapless Pakistani Christian woman Asiya Bibi, hounded for alleged blasp
hemy, is being treated, and yet, in the same breath, will claim that they stand
for justice and equality. They will call upon their followers to destroy the pla
ces of worship of other communities, declaring this to be an act of ‘great bravery’
in their books. But if others destroy their places of worship, they will declare
this to be ‘the murder of democracy’ and ‘violation of minority rights’. They do not un
derstand that the conquest of other peoples and the destruction of their places
of worship that they glorify in their madrasas as ‘great victories’ is a much older
story than that of others’ destroying their places of worship, and certainly far p
redates the destruction of the Babri Masjid. If they refuse to consider their de
struction of others’ places of worship as wrong, how can they claim the destructio
n of the Babri Masjid was wrong?
The mullahs will lead delegations of their followers to engage in what they call
*tabligh* to far-flung countries, to America, Europe and so on, where they will
tell the Christians they meet, ‘Jesus is not the last prophet.
Muhammad is the last prophet.’ But if any Christian in their own countries believe
s that Jesus is the highest and publicly announces it, he easily runs the risk o
f being charged under the offense of blasphemy and being killed.
These folks simply do not seem to understand that a Christian will naturally reg
ard Jesus as supreme and will not praise the Prophet Muhammad. He will naturally
consider his own religion and religious personages to be better.
The way the half-baked mullahs treat the non-Muslim minorities living in their m
idst, persecuting and even killing them for their religious views, only shows th
at they believe that in countries where Muslims rule, non-Muslims do not deserve
freedom of religion.
The intolerance of the mullahs is not limited to their relations with people of
other faiths. They will never cease to fight even among themselves as to the ‘real’
Islam. Each of them considers his own sectarian interpretation of Islam to be th
e sole true one, and so Sunnis, Shias, Aga Khanis, Bohras, Ahl-e Hadith, Deoban
dis, Wahhabis, Barelvis, Salafis etc will never give up fighting among themselve
s and breaking each others’ heads, each claiming to be right. And if one of these
sects manages to establish control over a country, it will seek to forcibly impo
se its interpretation of laws on the whole of the country, including on those wh
o are associated with rival sects. This, in turn, is a perfect recipe for never-
ending conflict, and sometimes even civil war. And in such a dispensation, group
s like Qadianis, Bahais, Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and so on will have t
o live completely ghettoised lives and cannot publicly express their religion, f
or if they do so they can easily be targeted under blasphemy laws and slain.
This is precisely what is happening in Pakistan now, the only country in the wor
ld that was created in the name of Islam in recent times. In many other Muslim
countries like Pakistan, non-Muslims have no freedom of religion worth the name.
And while the mullahs and their followers will lament the state of Muslim minor
ities in non-Muslim countries, they will never utter a word to commiserate with
the plight of non-Muslim minorities in Muslim lands.
The notorious blasphemy law in Pakistan, which claims to protect the honour of t
he name of the Prophet Muhammad, is so flawed that any non-Muslim can, simply on
account of his religious beliefs, be prosecuted under it—and then killed. The law
does not even properly explain what ‘blasphemy’ is. Even if a person is acquitted
of blasphemy charges, the bigoted mullahs and their hordes of followers will not
let such a person survive—they will kill him inside the courtroom itself or when
he is on the way out, as has happened in several cases. Such is the immense hold
and tyranny of this bigotry. Once a person is accused under this law, even if h
e is proven innocent his life is completely destroyed, and sooner or later he wi
ll be killed by angry mobs.
If a person accused of blasphemy is a ‘non-Muslim’, then hordes of ‘Muslims’ will descen
d on his locality and loot it and set it on fire. This, for instance, is precise
ly what happened in Gojra, in Pakistan, in 2010, where, according to the Pakista
n Human Rights Commission, announcements were made from the mosque calling on ‘Mus
lims’ to ‘make mincemeat’ of the local Christians. Scores of innocent Christians were
slain by the Muslim mob, who also set fire to their homes, fondly imagining that
in doing so they were serving God. Why did this happen? All because of a comple
tely false allegation that a Christian had insulted the Quran. So the modus oper
andi is: falsely charge a member of a religious minority with blasphemy falsely,
and then do not give the accused any opportunity to prove his innocence. I fail
to understand why, in countries like Pakistan, where the followers of a certain
religion form the overwhelming majority of the population and religious minorit
ies are miniscule in numbers, the majority needs a law to protect its religion.
Is this not an argument to actually defend the oppressor and to punish the oppre
ssed? And is it not strange that ever since this blasphemy law was imposed, in 1
986 by the mullah military dictator of Pakistan, Zia ul-Haq, there has been a ma
ssive upsurge in reported or alleged cases of blasphemy in that country? One nee
ds ask these bigots if such a law helps check the crime or does it, in fact, wor
k to increase it. In the Pakistani case, it seems to be the latter.
Why this is so is easily explainable. Most of these cases of alleged blasphemy a
ctually are a cover-up for other issues, for property disputes, for settling per
sonal scores, for eying other peoples’s lands and so on.
Concocting blasphemy charges against one’s personal rivals has thus become the mos
t convenient trick to get them into trouble—and to even have them‘legally’ killed!
Salman Taseer, the late governor of the Pakistani Punjab who was slain for his d
efence of a hapless Pakistani Christian woman unfairly accused of blaspheming Is
lam, wrote shortly before (December 24th, 2010) his death: “My observation on mino
rities: A man/nation is judged by how he/it supports those who are weaker rather
than how he/it leans on the stronger.” The despicable way in which the hapless mi
norities of Pakistan are being treated by the mullahs and their supporters, incl
uding being hounded in the name of countering blasphemy, clearly shows that the
mullahs and their men have absolutely no qualms at all in engaging in the most b
rutal forms of inhumanity, all in the name of their religion. And the Pakistani
state has fallen completely prostrate before such despicable characters. And tha
t is why Pakistan is now in the grips of a vast number of mullah-style ‘Islamic’ out
fits that are driving the country into the throes of darkness.
Non-Muslims generally place no hurdles in the path of Muslim minorities in their
midst leading their lives the way they want and following their religion, provi
ded they stick to the rules of decency. I fail to understand why Muslims living
in Muslim majority countries cannot do the same with regard to their minorities.
The brutality of what is being done in Pakistan in the name of Islam has terrib
le consequences for Muslims all over theworld, especially those who live in coun
tries where, like in India, they are in a minority but are left free to follow
their religion and live as they please. In this regard, it becomes incumbent on
the Indian Muslims, especially their religious scholars, to openly condemn as an
ti-Islamic the heinous actions of the half-baked mullahs in Pakistan which they
are undertaking in the name of Islam. They must also condemn the misuse of the b
lasphemy law in that benighted country, for it is itself giving Islam a bad nam
e the world over, ironically while claiming to ‘protect’ its image.
It is no longer possible to remain quiet on such issues. We can no longer opport
unistically choose to remain mum on these matters. To condemn what is happening
to minorities in countries like Pakistan is a duty incumbent on all Muslims who
live in non-Muslim majority countries, where they enjoy the same rights and free
doms as others. If Indian Muslims and their religious ‘leaders’ and their organisati
ons remain silent on this naked oppression, then they must also remain silent an
d stop speaking about the Babri Masjid, about the Sachar Report, about the Ranga
nath Mishra report, and about violations of freedom, democracy, secularism, the
rule of law and minority rights in India. The Indian Muslim clerics must try to
promote tolerant understandings of Islam in Pakistan in any which way they can.
They themselves never tire of insisting that Islam stands for peace, love and t
olerance—this is what they tell the Hindus, the media, the government and so on. S
o, then, let them try and prevail upon their Pakistani counterparts to practice
Islam in what they say is its true spirit. Let them openly denounce the terror b
eing engaged in the name of Islam in Pakistan as anti-Islamic. If they do not do
this, they would be guilty of sheer hypocrisy, for secularism does not mean tha
t you preach love and tolerance in countries where you are in a minority but act
in precisely the opposite way with other communities where you are in a majorit
y. I would regard this as the opportune moment for the Indian Muslims and their
religious leaders to prove their claims of their religion indeed being tolerant
and just by speaking out against the terror being inflicted on the minorities in
Pakistan in the name of Islam.
Sheeba Aslam
Research Scholar (PhD),
Centre for Political Studies,
School of Social Sciences
Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi-110067. 0-9871683654
URL: http://newageislam.com/NewAgeIslamWarWithinIslam_1.aspx?ArticleID=4432

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COMMENTS
4/27/2011 3:28:44 PM Ghulam Mohiyuddin
Sahani asks, "where are the educated class in islam. do they believe in science.
"
There are educated and uneducated people among Muslims and among Hindus, but clo
sed minds can t see that.
(Just as an aside, let me insert this, which I read this morning: "Indian-Americ
an space scientist Dr Nazeer Ahmed, hailing from Tumkur, holds 14 American paten
ts in advanced composites, a material that goes into making space ships and shut
tles. He emerged as one among the top space scientists in the US while working o
n solid propellant rockets at the Caltech University labs and later on Hubble Te
lescope. He is a household name in Tumkur for laurels he won in academics during
1950s and 60s and his philanthropy in recent years. Known as ‘Rank Nazeer’, He had
even contested and won an election to the Karnataka Assembly in 1978 from Tumkur
, only to resign a year later and return to space research in the US. Possessing
two doctorates, in space sciences and theoretical and applied mechanics from Ca
ltech in California, and advanced mechanics from Cornell University in New York,
Dr Nazeer was instrumental in devising the most sensitive mirror ever devised f
or Hubble Telescope. A socially conscious person, Nazeer Ahmed frequents Tumkur
very often and devotes a considerable amount of the proceeds from his patents, o
n promoting scholarship among students in the district.)

4/27/2011 3:21:31 PM Ghulam Mohiyuddin

Satwa says, "I donot expect better than that from a Muslim."
The language of the hate pracharak! I can say that I do not expect anything bett
er from you, but I will never say, "I do not expect anything better from a Hindu
."

4/27/2011 9:34:32 AM sahani s MacBook

Every second world is changing . Change is the way of life. Change is all we loo
k for ,day and night, child, to youth to old age. This is the fact then why bill
ions converts to islam are stuck with7th century preachings. Peaching causing
millions death in islamic and other world.
where are the educated class in islam. do they believe in science.

4/15/2011 11:22:05 PM satwagunam

@ghulam
I donot expect better than that from a Muslim. But it is nice that the admin is
allowing the posting.
4/15/2011 1:39:49 PM Ghulam Mohiyuddin
Satwa Gunam says, "Typical rigidity of uneducated Muslim of India."
Such a self-righteous and insightless comment from a hate-spewing sanghi of Indi
a!

More Comments... Total Comments: 32