"Character assassination of Islamic religious figures".
Dear me. Telling the truth about them, or what?

Posted by: Paolo at July 12, 2005 12:31 PM

This is fantastic. Let's give them another billion. (sorry, my sarcasm is real turned up today.

Posted by: reset at July 12, 2005 1:35 PM

Actually, after 1947, the Pakistani government committed a mass genocide of the Hindu population and even did so in 1971 with the Nixon/Kissenger administration's full knowledge and support. The only thing no one realised is that after the Hindus were reduced to a mere decimal point value in both Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Christians were next. It is a sad world we live in.

Posted by: Gorkhali at July 12, 2005 6:27 PM

Not only did the Pakistani government and the people of Pakistan (the Muslims) engage in constant persecution and murder of Hindus, and did so ever since the founding of this state whose entire reason for being is Islam and nothing but Islam, but the Pakistani government's main interest in life is claiming Indian-held Kashmir (don't forget that the Pakistanis already hold part of Kashmir -- but they want all of it under Muslim rule) for Islam.

To that end, they have sponsored, and trained, and financed, or when necessary turned a blind eye to the sponsoring, training, and financing, of Muslim terorrists deep within India itself. Bombs all over Mumbai, attributed to a gangster, but a Muslim gangster. Attacks, murders, the news of which never reach the Western press, which simply cannot be bothered to cover India too closely (save for those breathless Tom Friedman reports which makes it sound as if India has over night become one big Bangalore firm that specializes in accommodating the needs of American corporations looking to outsource services). Even the attack on the Indian Parliament.

There were the forced expulsions of 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits. (Google "Kashmiri Pandits" and see what you find). In Bangladesh, the Islamic razakars, who took the side of General Yahya's murderous army from West Pakistan because it was necessary, so it was said, to hold East and West Pakistan together, despite the persecution and murders of those in East Pakistan by the army of West Pakistan, necessary "for Islam." And what else mattered to those quislings within East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, if not Islam, which took precedence over national or ethnic identity, as it always does, as Muslims are taught it must.

Certain youngish so-called Indian intellectuals, especially those who find it easiest to ape the Western intellectual attitudes, as picked up from the pages of "The Guardian" or "The Independent" or the "London Review of Books," are quick to deplore and distance themselves from the benighted practitioners of wht is called "communalism" (i.e. standing up for Hindu and Sikh rights, and demanding that the history of Islamic conquest be told correctly). Indian writers of the old school, such as the brilliant Nirad C. Chaudhury, were quicker to appreciate the British, and British education, and not nearly so hellbent on retouching the photographs of Muslim rule in India -- a bloody and terrible thing, in no way justified by the odd monument (the Taj Mahal, that "tear in marble") or by the intrigues and romances at the Mughal Court, the kind of thing that the Barbara Cartland (Upper Division) of these matters, William Dalrymple, finds so exotic and exciting and fit for his admiration.

The most famous Indian, or man of Indian birth today, is V. S. Naipaul. About Islam, about what it did to India, that "wounded civlization," Naipaul has never flinched. He pierces all veils, and all pieties. Read "Among the Believers" and "Beyond Belief" and you will appreciate his ability to see into the heart of things, and to adduce the telling anecdote.

Another famous Indian is Amartya Sen, whose vaporings on "democracy" and Islam not being mutually inimical offer a perfect example of the Indiah Who Makes Good in the West and above all, shudders about the putative horrors of Hindu nationalism and of "communalism." And instead, is deeply solicitous ofMuslim demands that threaten to damage not only India, but the very Western world that those Indians who, like Amartya Sen, would wish to live in, and in which they are happy to attract admiration, could also disappear if Islam has its inexorable way wit it. And it could happen.

One would like to appeal to Indians and those of Indian descent in the West to help enlighten not only fellow Indians in that West who may not remember, or may not have personally experienced, the somewhat less aggressive behavior (less aggressive because the Muslims are still very much a minority) of Muslim Indians, not to forget what Muslim rule did to India (whose pre-Islamic past was recovered, and restored, by such English scholars as Sir William Jones), nor what Islam teaches. We need them to help bear witness, and to convince Europeans that it is not "Islam Against the West" (which, in that same West, leads so many to conclude that it must be something that West, that is to say we, did to Muslims, rather than viewing that hostiiity as directed against all Infidels).

Indians, Indian-Americans, Indians who live in Britain and have British citizenship -- all those that is who are Hindu or Sikh -- could bear witness.

And should.

Posted by: Hugh at July 12, 2005 8:00 PM