The government of India should, at the United Nations, raise the issue of what Islam teaches, and insist that this be a subject of discussion. It will get nowhere at the U.N., because the Arab bloc, which controls, in turn, the bloc of Islamic nations, and which has infiltrated so many of the U.N. Secretariat’s offices (not only with Muslims — see my January article, “A tribute to Edward Mortimer,” here), and which of course has caused the U.N. and its constituent organizations to spend possibly one-third of their time on Israel as a threat to world peace.
But merely raising the issue — and this should be by a country deemed to be outside the West, a victim rather than practitioner of colonialism — will be valuable. It will force Muslims to defend themselves, to be aware that their behavior, and their teachings, and their history, are now under scrutiny. And this, in turn, will force many of them to modify their behavior. Look at Tariq Ramadan’s latest line about “using the vote” and so on to gain power in Europe. We want to change Muslim behavior at once. Then we want to educate as many Infidels as possible, so that they will not mistake the perceived quiet, the perceived absence of terrorist acts, as anything but the temporary tactical move it will be, as will be the lapse in demands, in Western Europe especially, made on Infidels — in order to let Da’wa and demographic conquest proceed unopposed. And that must not be allowed to happen.
But for now, it would be good if the Indian Ambassador were to stand up (and John Bolton will put his famed unpleasantness to wonderful use — let him) and make this an issue. Howls will come from Muslim countries. Let those howls come. And then it will be time, in rebuttal, to remind the world of the 60-70 million Hindus who were killed by Muslim invaders, and about the forced conversions, and all the rest.
Start talking outside of India, about what has been happening to Hindus in Pakistan, that most treacherous and phony of American “allies” (well, next to Saudi Arabia), to Hindus in Bangladesh, to Hindus and Sikhs and Jains and Buddhists and Christians in India — all at some time victims of Islam-prompted atrocities.
And try to raise the unembarrassed consciousness of these historic realities among Hindus and other non-Muslim Indians living in the Western world, who should know all this if they paid attention more, instead of spending their time trying to prove their sophistication by belittling those who make much of the Muslim behavior and threat as “communalism” that is beneath them (see, for example, Amartya Sen when he offers his transparent misplaced defenses of Islam).
Those of us who are not Indian should find out a good deal more about what happened on the subcontinent, and cease to so readily accept the “advanced” view which holds that anything smacking of “communalism” (a word used to indicate, of course, those who wish to show their sympathetic interest in, and identification with, Hindu India, and who refuse to play the game of sanitizing the history of Muslim rule) is ipso facto evil.
This kind of thing will only stop if believing Muslims feel that their position in the world, their ability to remain in the Lands of the Infidels, is now being questioned. Only if they begin to feel uneasy, insecure (as in Australia), will they modify at least their outward behavior.
It is a pity that so many in India among those who are called, quite loosely and often quite comically, “intellectuals” — all shy away from anything that might conceivably be taken as a defense of Hindu (or Sikh) civilization, or culture. Above all, no thoroughly modern Indian will dare suggest that Islam has done great damage to India, to Indian civilization. No, there are exceptions — such as that cosmopolitan of Indian descent, V. S. Naipaul, who is not afraid of anyone. There are Indian-Americans (Hindu, Sikh, and even disaffected ex-Muslims) and their counterparts in Great Britain, who also know how silly it is not to make the case, to ignore history, or to shy away from the slightest hint of Hindutva, which is often mocked. And why is that, exactly? Is K. S. Lal to be mocked for “The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India”? Is Sir Jahundath Sarkar? Are all the other Hindu historians of India who have been unafraid to discuss what Muslim rule did to India?
One hopes that Indian-Americans interested in all this will begin to contact their Congressmen, and will begin to use their influence to make sure that the history of Muslim conquest, and Muslim destruction of artifacts and temples, and Muslim subjugation of Hindus and then, of Sikhs, will be brought home to them. For what better way to make clear to the Western world that it is nothing they, those benighted Westerners, have done, to Islam or to Muslims? Every non-Muslim group, West and East, North and South, offending or innocent, rich or poor — it does not matter — has been treated with hostility, even murderous hostility, by Muslims whose canonical texts teach such hostility.
One hopes that those in the Western world who are articulate and aware, and of Indian (Hindu or Sikh descent, primarily) will help to educate others — but that can only be done once one has educated oneself. Lal and Sarkar should be household words; the two volumes in which Sita Ram Goel simply lists tens of thousands of Hindu sites destroyed, should be better known.
Let us begin.