As salaamu alaikum warahamatullahi wabarakatahu
There was a news recently on newspapers about Mohammad Amir Khan, named a terrorist and accused of involvement in 19 cases of bombings in Delhi, Rohtak, Sonepat and Ghaziabad between December 1996 and October 1997. By the time i finished reading his story i had tears in my eyes and I decided to do some reaserch on how Muslim youths are being tortured by police and media for no reason and Alhumdulillah today i came up with this post.
Indian Muslims are often accused of terrorist links, but in many cases it is Muslims themselves who are terrorised. S.M. Mushrif, former I.G.police writes in his book ” Who Killed Karkare?” that – whereas hundreds of Muslim boys were being arrested after every bomb blast in the country, the number of Blasts had not just reduced but after the arrest of the real terrorists in Malegaon Blasts case of 2008, they have almost completely stopped.
India’s Guantanamo Bays:
The media invariably base their stories on the sources of the state. An apt example is Praveen Swami, a terrorism expert cited by everyone writing about the IM. Swami is to print media what Arnab Goswami (of Times Now) is to Indian TV: Their views are rabidly nationalist, some might even say Islamophobic. Swami reproduces the police version (e.g. see his writings in CTC Sentinel, May 2010; The Hindu, Edit-Page, March 22, 2010; and Frontline, June 2-15, 2007) without giving the other side of the story, namely: the viewpoints of the alleged terrorists, their family members, or the Muslim community. It is well-known that the Indian police are biased against Muslims and have been complicit in killing them, as was evident in the state-mediated 2002 Gujarat violence, in which more than 5,000 Muslims were killed.
What is rarely visible in the Indian media, however, are the brutal, illegal methods used against suspected terrorists: torture cells, illegal detention, unlawful killings in “police encounters”; elimination of evidence against the illegal actions of the law-enforcing agencies; and rampant harassment of Muslims. In July 2009, The Week reported on the existence of at least 15 secret torture chambers meant to extract information from the detainees. The methods to extract information include attaching electrodes to a detainee’s genitals as well as the use of pethidine injections. To quote The Week, these chambers are “our own little Guantanamo Bays or Gitmos”, which a top policeman called “precious assets”.
In May 2008, a Muslim boy aged 14 was abducted by the Gujarat police. He was dragged to the police car at gunpoint and taken to a detention centre where he was tortured. He returned home ten days later when the court ordered his release following his mother’s petition. The police subsequently threatened the boy’s family with dire consequences if they pursued the case in court. The police harassment becomes even more acute in light of the fact that most lawyers often hesitate to take up the cases of “terrorists”. As a disempowered community – as the government-appointed Sachar Committee report (of 2006) minutely demonstrates – Muslims themselves don’t have adequate and qualified lawyers to pursue such cases. Muslims’ marginalisation thus renders their voice invisible in the media too.
Muslims are always labelled as Terrorists:
In the fight against terrorism, evidence and the rule of law are subservient to prejudice. As of this writing, the Indian government has not yet tracked the perpetrators of the July 13 attack. However, only two days after the attack, Subramanian Swamy, a prominent politician and former minister (with a doctorate from Harvard University) wrote an article called “How to Wipe Out Islamic Terror”. Without any evidence, he blamed Muslims for the attack, in the same way that The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Sun suspected Muslim involvement in the Norway shooting nine days later.
What Swamy did is standard practice in Indian media. In September 2006, a blast killed 35 people at a Muslim graveyard in Malegaon. The media blamed Muslims. Likewise, in 2007, after a blast killed 10 Muslims praying in Hyderabad’s Mecca mosque, Praveen Swami freely wrote about the Muslim terrorists he believed caused it and about what he perceived to be the “Islamist threat to Indian cities”. However, investigations later showed that Hindu nationalists carried out the Malegaon and Mecca mosque terror attacks.
Returning to Subramanian Swamy, Swamy wrote: “We need a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the Islamic terrorist. The Muslims of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindus. That they do I will not believe unless they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims, their ancestors were Hindus”. Those refusing to acknowledge this, Swamy advocated, “should not have voting rights”. He proposed declaring India “a Hindu Rashtra [state]”.
From April 13 till April 22 2009, India witnessed repeated attacks on trains, killings of security forces in large numbers spread over six states and that involved at least five different terrorist groups, but nobody termed it terrorism.
None of these attacks including the daredevil strike on NALCO plant in which 11 security personnel were killed, was shown on TV. Footage was rare and not repeated. There was no talk about modules, identity of those involved and that how they get the weapons.
Believe me, had any of these attacks involved a Muslim, it would have been termed a Terrorist attack and for days, we would have been shown images of ‘trained Muslim youths’, their links, cell phone records, the masterminds, the names of obscure organisations with Arabic names and what not.
I would request you to just have a look at the frequency of attacks mentioned below:
1. 11 CISF personnel gunned down in Naxal attack on NALCO bauxite mine in Orissa (April 13)
2. Landmine blast kills 7 including five para-military force personnel and two passengers in Jharkhand, 12 others killed by Maoists in Bihar, Orissa and Maharashtra (April 16)
3. 1 killed, 18 injured as Barak Valley Express targeted by Jewel Garlosa militant group in Assam (April 9)
4. Two killed, dozen injured in attack on goods train in Assam (April 10) [Link]
5. ULFA targets Kamrup Express, two blasts on railway track (April 13)
6. CRPF DG’s chopper fired by suspected Maoists
7. Dima Halam Daoga group kills 7 including 6 policemen
8. Naxalites hijack train, hold 300 passengers hostage (April 22)
9. Convoy of 25 vehicles of Bodo leaders attacked by NDFB militants in Kokarajhar, three killed
Read the newspapers reports and you will find that the word terrorism was never used. Even the word militants was not used. Just like LTTE remains Tigers or Tamil rebels, the Naxals were called Maoists or left-wing extremists and the Assam groups termed as ULFA separatists or outlawed factions.
How many of us have heard the name of Black Widow group that killed seven persons North Cachar district? Headlines read, ‘Cops killed in fresh violence in Assam’. The news items are put in inside pages and the word terrorism is nowhere to be found.
If we talk about United Liberation Front of Asom or Assam (ULFA), In the last 30 years, nearly 8,000-10,000 persons have died in the region due to clashes between militants [or terrorists] who prefer themselves to be called as revolutionaries. The figure of deaths is perhaps second to only LTTE that is now nearing its end in Sri Lanka.
ULFA rebels believe that historically Assam was never part of India. Over the years, the organisation has carried out assassinations, killed security forces’ personnel and policemen apart from accusations of killing Hindi speaking labourers of UP and Bihar.
Though ULFA completed 30 years of its existence, no news channel focused on doing a comprehensive story or report about ‘Thirty years of Terrorism’. Over a quarter century has passed but it’s either mentioned as separatist outfit or rarely as militant group in mainstream media. Is it because Assam is way off Delhi or because there is no Muslim cadre in ULFA?
Kindly comment after reading the post properly. My issue is that on one hand an objectionable term ‘Islamic terrorism’ is used everywhere, other terrorists are not even called terrorists. ULFA, BODO, Naga, LTTE, Naxalites and Abhinav Bharat are not even called Terrorist.
I don’t want them to be termed as Hindu or Christian terrorist, but at least call them terrorist.
But they remain OUTLAWS, MAOISTS, REBELS or at the most EXTREMISIS and MILITANTS. That’s the basic issue. Is it that only a group that has Muslim cadre qualifies for the definition of Terrorist? Crores of Muslims aren’t fools, as they notice this prejudice every day.
Why terror suspects are always Muslims?
1. Talha, the son of Maulana Amir Rashdi Madani, was arrested in Nagpur. Midway on the train journey he was detained and taken away. After several days, it was revealed that he was in police custody and when he was released, he was reporteldy warned not to make any statement or go to the media.
He was working with a private company in Bangalore and the police had earlier claimed that he was the fourth ‘terrorist’ who escaped during the Jamia Nagar’s encounter. Later the court let him go due to lack of any evidence.
2. In the month of July 2011, just a few days before the recent Mumbai blast, a Muslim photo-journalist of Mid Group, Sayed Sameer Abedi, was detained for taking innocuous photographs of a traffic junction and an airplane. He was threatened, roughed up and even called a terrorist because of his Muslim name. According to a report in Mid Day, at the police station, when Sub-Inspector Ashok Parthi, the investigating officer in his case, asked him about the incident and he explained everything, emphasizing that he had done no wrong, he was told by the inspector, “Don’t talk too much, just shut up and listen to what we are saying. Your name is Sayed, you could be a terrorist and a Pakistani”.
3. Ataur Rahman, in his mid-sixties, lived in Mumbai with his family which included an engineer son who was an accused in the July 2006 Mumbai blasts.
At the tribunal, he had told, “My house was raided in the night and I was taken to an unknown destination. After keeping me in illegal custody for several days, I was formally shown to be arrested on July 27, 2006, and an FIR was lodged against me. Me, my wife, my daughter and daughter-in-law were paraded before my arrested sons while being abused by the police officers continuously. My sons and I were beaten up in front of each other. The women of the family were called up by the ATS daily and were asked to drop their burqah (veil) before my arrested sons. Adding to their humiliation, my sons were abused in front of the women folk. An officer beat me up and threatened me that the women of my family were outside and they would be stripped naked if I did not remove my clothes before my children and other police officers. They brought in other arrested accused and I was stripped naked in their presence…”
4. Amir khan, who had already been acquitted by the trial in 17 out of 20 cases, walked out free on January 9, 2012. Of the three remaining cases the Delhi High Court has overturned his conviction for life in one case. The remaining two are scheduled to come up for appeal.
TwoCircles.net was the first one (and probably the only one) to report story of Amir and Shakeel around one and half years back. As 18-year-old Mohammad Amir Khan walked to see a hakeem in Bahadurgarh on the night of February 20, 1998, his biggest worry was the kidney stones he had developed. Little did the teenager know that unforeseen problems were about to overtake his life in the next hour.
Named a terrorist and accused of involvement in 19 cases of bombings in Delhi, Rohtak, Sonepat and Ghaziabad between December 1996 and October 1997, Amir spent 14 years in different state jails. His family faced social shame and financial ruin, his father died of a liver ailment that could not be treated in time and his mother suffered a brain haemorrhage that left her paralyzed and speech impaired. one might ask, that how can it be that the police framed charges against a 19 year old boy, in not, 1, 2, 5 or 10, but 18 cases when they didn’t have even a single witness against the accused to prove the case against him.
Then there are serious questions like if Amir hadn’t done those 18 blasts, then who did? If the actual perpetrators of the blasts are being let scott free, as this and many other cases show, who will be responsible for the cycle of violence which resurfaces in another cycle of bomb blasts? What about the accountability of those officers who deliberately fabricate charges against people, specially in terror cases?
My Question?
In the post-blast scenario police and investigative agencies face a tough time dealing with the pressure of clamoring voices which call for bringing the culprits to book. Interestingly, even when just to deal with the pressure police picks up a few misidentified suspects, their arrest is not seen as wrong and illegal, but as some thing which fulfills the “collective conscience” of the society, which in turn justifies it as a balancing act and a compensation for the injustice done to the terror victims.
Saffron Terrorism or Hindutva Terrorism:
In 1992, the death of a Sangh Parivar worker during blast in the VHP office in Neemuch where bombs were being assembled, is hardly mentioned in media. But many would recall the blast during bomb-making in Kanpur when two Bajrang Dal workers had died a couple of years back.
Or for that matter the blast in Tamil Nadu’s Tenkasi. With the arrest of three RSS workers, the TN police had cracked the case and said that the aim was to spark communal rioting.The modus operandi was similar in parts of Malwa and Maharashtra.
Likewise in Nanded, the police had recovered fake beards and skullcaps from the house of RSS worker. This case was closed but reopened later by ATS under Hemant Karkare. Later during Malegaon and Modasa blasts also the motorcycle with Islamic stickers was placed deliberately to give a false impression that Muslim youths were behind the blast.
Besides, organisations ranging from Sanatan Sanstha to Abhinav Bharat who were alleged involved in blasts in Goa, Modasa, Thane, Nanded, Parbhani, Ajmer, Mecca Masjid at Hyderabad, Samjhauta Express and a host of other places, are ideologically close to Sangh Parivar with RSS activists’ role found in these cases.
In case of RSS, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena there is never any raid or sustained interrogation. Ram Sene leader Pramod Muthalik was caught on camera claiming that he could set off a communal riot for a fee but there was no action against his group.
Babu Bajrangi became a face of militant Hindutva in Gujarat and confessed that he murdered women and raped them. But he wasn’t touched.
While Muthalik and Bajrangi were active in states ruled by BJP, the Shiv Sena and MNS have done the same in Congress-ruled Maharashtra where outsiders including Biharis and UP-ites have been targeted and yet the parties escaped the terror tag.
The offices of these groups aren’t raided, their connections are never investigated and their leaders who openly pour out venom are not booked. It is no surprise that the radicals are getting bolder and bolder by the day, so much that they are even targeting Vice-President and planning to overthrow the state.
If SIMI operatives were involved in terrorism and it was banned, why not RSS and Bajrang Dal after all they also have their activists involved in terror plots? PFI’s freedom march was banned but despite open display of arms, firing gunshots and holding training camps for years, Bajrang Dal or even Sanatan Sanstha is not reined in.
Conclusion:
Terrorism to Islam is like Fire to Water so we need to stop blaming Muslims for Terror attacks as there is nothing called as Islamic Terrorism. And My Muslim brothers the below Ayah of Quran is sufficient for us…
Do men think that they will be left alone on saying “We believe” and that they will not be tested? We did test those before them and Allah will certainly know those who are true from those who are false. (29:2-3)
Each believer, therefore, must expect to be tested. The stronger his faith, the harder will be the test, and the greater his reward will be if he remains patient having unshakable faith and trust in Allah (swt). The Prophet (p) said: The magnitude of the reward goes along with the magnitude of the affliction. (Tirmidhi)
May Allah guide us all to the straight path, Aameen.
knowthestraightpath 