Some of Jawahar’s perceptions of conditions in the West are rather skewed and highly debatable; for example, it is his opinion that Israel is overreacting against Hezbollah, that unbelievers in Christian countries are “the biblical equivalent of [Quranic] kafir,” and that Europe “has shed its multicultural melting pot idealisms to clam up with a strict no-nonsense attitude towards the mullah menace” following the bombings in London and the Danish cartoons of Muhammad.
However, his editorial contains several astute observations on the challenges facing India– not just from the jihadists, but from within– in the aftermath of last week’s bombings in Mumbai.
From NewsTodayNet, with thanks to Hugh Fitzgerald:
As I write this, the Israeli military is relentlessly bombarding the airport of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. The reason for the rain of hell fire is the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese terror outfit, Hezbollah. So, is Israel overreacting? Apparently yes. But given the history of Islamic violence that Israel had to contend with particularly in the context of its vulnerable geography too, surrounded as it is by Islamic nations with their legendary hatred for anything Jewish, its actions reveals a stern wisdom borne out of experience: the only language Islamic
terror understands is counter terror, preferably pre-emptive! Nip it in the bud, before they turn you into a corpse, which is not a possibility but an eventuality. Little surprise, therefore, that the jehadis deem Israel a tough nut to crack, a small nation of a David holding out against violent Islamist Goliaths all around.
This prelude is presented out of both frustration and inspiration; frustration because of the way Indians have been rendered sitting ducks by a combination of factors, mostly self-inflicted, to the bombs of Islamic terrorists: inspiration, because if India has the will, Israel has already shown the way. If the holding of just two soldiers warrants a war, what should be India’s payback to the Islamists for the gallons of ‘kafir’ Indian blood that they have spilled over the years in the name of their religion? But alas, Bharat somehow still seems to love its blissful confinement to the negotiating table, even as the battlefield beckons. The ‘will’ to take on the terrorists is nowhere in sight and hence it is frustration that finally overwhelms inspiration, unless you are an incurable dreamer or a fan of Vijayakanth, who has killed more terrorists on screen than have our forces.
Every country in the world, even with just one incident of Islamic terror, has pulled up its socks, geared up, made its intentions clear without mincing words and followed up with concrete action, both defensive and affirmative. The US has ensured that 9/11 is not just the first, but the last strike on its soil. Britain pressed the panic button after the London bombings last July and has remorselessly secured itself to the point of criminal paranoia. The rest of Europe, after the cartoon crisis, has shed its multicultural melting pot idealisms to clam up with a strict no-nonsense attitude
towards the mullah menace. But India, with the longest history of being at the receiving end of Islamist violence — of over ten centuries from the sultans of the Middle East, to the mughals to Ghazznis, Ghoris to the current Dawoods and Jaishes and Lashkars, is
in deep slumber …secular slumber, to be precise. The medieval Muslim marauders varied from the modern versions only in the methods — the swords and machetes have given way to guns and RDX, horseback has been replaced by faster transports and the famous Khyber pass now has numerous modern peers on a border more porous than a coffee filter for infiltrators to pour in from all sides as and when they wish. But the underlying religious zeal of all these maniacal murderers, queuing up to kill kafirs and thus secure a seat in paradise, has been preserved in its pure and pristine form ever since
the onset of Islam. Non believers simply have no right to exist. Period!
The predominantly Christian West, having suddenly realised the grim portents of such a violent group driven by religious rage …an understanding facilitated by the fact that their own faith too treats the non adherents as heathens, the biblical equivalent of koranic kafir, though not as violently but quite insidiously, for sure … have not just hit back militarily but civilisationally too. Thus George Bush felt justified historically, when he dubbed the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq as crusades, though he beat a partial retreat for making a politically incorrect statement. Churches and clergymen all over the west are as much a part of the debate on how to handle militant Islam as are politicians, statesmen, thinkers and the media. In short, the ‘free and secular’ western world, wears its religion and culture like a talisman, to ward off the Jihadi threat even while flexing its muscles and delivering punches, when necessary and even when not so. But India, predominantly Hindu and targetted by the terrorists precisely for that… though we may imagine otherwise, rather unwisely… remains suspended in secular seclusion! Any association of terror with the religion of a minority is taboo even when it is glaringly apparent and any invocation of our own culture or religion is dubbed communal even when it could actually strengthen us, as a
rallying point. It does not seem to occur to us that for us to be secular, we have to be alive first!
Read it all.