03 January 2004

Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism
Sita Ram Goel passed away recently and the world lost a strong defender of Hindu civilization.
Mr. Goel believed that Hindu Dharma has much to offer to contemporary human civilization, just as it has enriched the world in the past in many different ways. He pleaded that in order to understand human suffering, we must do a first hand study and evaluation of totalitarian ideologies masquerading as religions, instead of indulging in clichéd explanations.
Reading his article about the situation in Kashmir, I had several "aha" moments as in "this is happening to western society right now".
This article is a brief examination of the history of "what is called the Kashmir problem but what, in fact, is the problem presented by terrorist and totalitarian ideologies operating under religious cloaks. And it must be admitted that none of these questions can be answered except with the help of history."
Although the author begins by identifying "terrorist and totalitarian ideologies" as the problem, his subsequent article makes it quite clear that it is the imperialist nature of Islam that is the problem.
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The author calls Kashmir an integral part of the historical region of Bharatvarsha which comprises the present day states of Afganistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. This region, an ancient cradle of Hindu spirituality, resisted Muslim invasion for a number of centuries:
"Again, it goes to the credit of Kashmir that its kings supported the Turki and Hindu Shahiyas of Kabul and Zabul in repelling one invasion after another till the north-western gateway stood closed to Islamic inroads effectively and the Islamic imperialists at Damascus and Kufa were forced to seek another avenue of advance through Makran and Baluchistan.
Finally Kashmir not only threw back the Islamic army which advanced towards its borders from Sindh and Multan under Mohammed Bin Qasim (712-715 CE) but also forged an alliance with China which was facing the same menace in Central Asia. At the same time it fought tooth and nail with the Tibetans who were at that time in alliance with Islamic imperialism."

While fighting direct invasion, Hindu rulers allowed some Sufi missionary activity and continued to hire Turk mercenaries even after the Turks became Islamicized. When a coup staged by an Islamicized army occurred, the populace was not resistant:
"Perhaps the odds were too overwhelming, or perhaps a psyche of surrender had been crystallizing over a period of time. The latter seems to be the case if we consult the record of Kashmiri Hindus subsequent to that period.
What is the record? Starting with Jonaraja (15th century CE), the author of the second Rajatarangni, and coming down to Jawahar Lal Nehru (20th century CE) it is an endless saga of sycophancy and kowtowing on the part of Kashmiri Hindus before the aggressors."

Contained in this summary are already two "aha moments":
Hmmm, Muslims in the army
Hmmm a populace made docile by Muslim abuse (i.e. aggression combined with control/coercion over what you can think and say).
One more:
"Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence."
Substitute Dearborn for Delhi and it still rings true. Hmmm.
This is what dhimmitude looks like when it plays itself out in history:
"The record shows a progressive degeneration of the Hindu psyche vis-a-vis Muslim sultans. Jonaraja had the decency at least to detail the brutalities committed by the Islamic sultans. For Jawahar Lal Nehru that dark chapter in the history of Kashmir does not exist at all."

And this is the kind of political lack of confidence that a history of dhimmitude creates:
"Having watched the scene all these years, I feel that the secularist forces in India have never felt sure that Kashmir is an integral part of India like the rest of our states. It is only when someone else says that Kashmir does not belong to India that they make some half-hearted noises for fooling the people of India. This is the meaning of Article 370 and of propping up one Muslim leader after another in the valley in the fond hope that world events will some day solve the problem one way or the other."

Afterword:
The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying from within.
~ W. Durant, "Story of Civilization"
In Kashmir, the Muslim conquest is not complete. Hindus are fighting it tooth and nail. America and France can easily be in the same position in the future. So can anyone; it is just a matter of who is next in Islam's unrelenting drive to take over the world for Allah.
Negationism In India - Chapter Two - Negationism In India: "In 1984 a citizen of India, H.K. Chakraborty, filed a petition with the West Bengal state government to ban the Quran. He added a list of 37 Quran verses which "preach cruelty, incite violence and disturb public peace" (to use the terminology of the Penal Code), 17 verses which "promote, on grounds of religion, feelings of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different communities in India", and 31 verses which "insult other religions as also the religious beliefs of other communities". Indeed, even after subtracting some verses which could be regarded as legitimate polemics (esp. against the Christian belief in Incarnation), there are about 60 passages in the Quran that formulate a doctrine of demonization of non-Muslims, and of hatred and war against them. If the Indian laws prohibit communal hate propatganda, Mr. Chakraborty was right in considering the Quran as an excellent candidate for banning. But even after reminder-letters, the West Bengal authorities gave no response.

At this stage, Mr. Chakraborty met Chandmal Chopra, an adherent of the extremely non-violent Jain sect, who had taken up the study of the Quran in order to understand the plight of the Hindus in Bangladesh, who are gradually being chased from their ancestral homeland by the Muslims. In 1985 Chandmal Chopra filed a petition with the Calcutta high Court, asking for a ban on the Quran. He added a list with reprehensible verses from the Quran: 29 passages from the Quran (1 to 8 verses in length) that incite violence against unbelievers, 15 which promote enmity, 26 which insult other religions.

Some typical examples are: "Mohammed in Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are merciless for the unbelievers but kind to each other." (Q.48:29) "Make war on them until idolatry does not exist any longer and Allah's religion reigns universally." (Q.8:39, also 2:193) "We break with you; hatred and enmity will reign bnetween us until ye believe in Allahh alone." (Q. 60.4) "The Jews and Christians and the Pagans will burn forever in the fire of hell. They are the vilest of all creatures." (Q.98:51) There are dozens of Quran verses like this which in their unanimity cannot be dismissed as "isolated, mistranslated" little accidents "quoted out of context".

Chandmal Chopra stated in his writ petition: "The cited passages in the Quran... arouse in Muslims the worst sectarian passions and religious fanaticism, which has manifested itself in murders, massacres, plunder, arson, rape and destruction or desecration of sacred places both in historical and in the contemporary period, not only in India but in large parts of the world."

The petition created a lot of furore in Calcutta and abroad. Muslims created street riots. The government intervened and put heavy pressure on the judicial process. The secret service was put to work to find possible objectionable biographical data of the petitioner. The court used some dirty tricks to disturb the peritioner's case, like changing dates and changing the object of a session to which the petitioner had been summoned, during the same session itself, with apparent foreknowldege of the government's counsel.

Both the authorities and the court violated the secular basis of the Indian Constitution by using as justification for their policy c.q. judgement a statement of religious belief. The Marxist West Bengal government stated in its affidavit: "The Quran contains the words of God Almighty revealed to His last Prophet Mohammed... As the Holy Quran is a Divine Book, no earthly power can sit in judgement on it, and no court of law has jurisdiction to adjudicate it."

The judge dismissed the petition on this ground: "Banning or forfeiture of the Quran... would amount to abolition of the Muslim religion itself." Indeed, the very text which preaches war against the unbelievers is the core text of Islam, so abolition of Islamic hate propaganda amounts to abolition of Islam itself. Islam without hatred is not Islam. The judge further observed: "This book is not prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between religions. Because of the Quran no public tranquillity has been disturbed upto now..." - a resounding statement of negationism.

This verdict was only what the petitioner expected: because of political pressure, an anti-Quran verdict was simply unthinkable, and moreover, the Penal Code keeps scriptures and classics outside its own purview. The petitioner has made it clear that he considers book-banning counterproductive, and that the controversial petition was meant to direct public attentiton towards the Quran's contents: people should read it, because Indian citizens have a right to know why their country is plagued with never-ending religious riots.

When Chandmal Chopra had the documents of the legal dispute published, the administration decided to prosecute him and his publisher on the basis of the very same Penal Code articles which he had invoked to request a ban on the Quran. The case is still pending.

Beside H.K. Chakraborty's and Chandmal Chopra's petitions, a third text which pointed at the Quran as a source of religious violence, was a poster published in Delhi (1986) by I.S. Sharma and Rajkumar Arya, prominent members of the Hindu Mahasabha, a small political party more extreme than the BJP. The poster carried the title: "Why do riots break out in this country?" It showed 24 Quran verses, such as: "Fight the unbelievers in your surroundings, and let them find harshness in you" (Q.9:123), and : "Kill the unbelievers wherever ye find them,, capture and besiege them and prepare them every kind of ambush" (Q.9.5).

Both publishers were arrested on the basis of arts. 153A and 295A. However, they were acquitted. The judged ruled that they had made a "fair criticism", for: "With all due respect to the holy Quran, an attentive perusal of the verses shows that these are indeed harmful and preach violence and have the potential to cause conflicts between the Muslims and the others." An appeal against the court ruling is still pending.

This criticism of the Quran pulls the carpet from under the negationists' feet. The enmity between Muslims and Pagans is clearly not a back-projection from contemporary artificially created religio-political tensions. Neither is it a conflict which developed historically long after Mohammed and which can be reduced to socio-economical factors. This enmity is, on the contrary, present in the very core of Islamic doctrine.

With this information about Quranic doctrine, we find that the negationist thesis is not only contradicted by a massive body of authentic evidence; it is also highly implausible in itself. For, the thesis that Islam in India was not systematically (proportionately to its possibilities in given situations) in conflict with other religions, claims in fact that Islam in India deviated from its own principles, and behaved completely uncharacteristically for centuries on end. It is methodologically more usual to provisionally assume a consistent and probable bahaviour (viz. that adherents of a God-given call to war against the unbelievers effectively make war on the unbelievers, and that a religion which persecuted other religions everywhere else, did the same in India), and only give this up if positive evidence for a less plausible and more inconsistent course has been found. But what positive evidence there is, points in the opposite direction: a long list of Muslim invaders and rulers faithfully put the Quranic injuctions into practice."
The Tribune, Chandigarh, India - Punjab A farmer with his bullock cart moves along the Indo-Pak border fence near Amritsar on Monday. He has agricultural land beyond the fence.
Scroll about halfway down the page to see the picture.