When Islamic terror goes infesting mosques in the national interiors with impunity — in the guise of extending’liberal charity’ — no one is safe from its gaze, not even the Muslims of the country. As and when these oft- trumpeted modules of ‘largesse’ strike, causing mass, indiscriminate killings, feelings of disgust and revulsion overtake every community of the country. It is often claimed that even large sections of Muslims ‘feel distressed’ when Hindus or other non-Muslims are eliminated in bloody terror assaults in the name of Islam. It is ironic, however, that a mosque or any other pious religious place, which supposedly delivers lessons in social bonhomie, altruism and benevolence, should simultaneously nurse young ones to grow into cruel adult killers. Training them to perform criminal acts, equipping them with bombs and lethal weapons, at these sanctums of God — Allah or whatever be the name of the divine — to settle scores with ‘enemies of Islam’, is all too appalling, criminal and reprehensible. This should be a cause for major concern unexceptionally for every Indian citizen, including Muslims.

A mosque built to promote terrorism

A mosque in the Palwal district of Haryana is allegedly built with funds from Pakistan’s Hafiz Saeed-led terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba. The Khulafa-e-Rashideen Masjid at Uttawar village in Palwal was recently searched by the National Investigating Agency officers, following the arrest of three men in New Delhi, including the mosque’s Imam, Mohammed Salman, in an alleged terror-funding case. The construction of this mosque through LeT funds is clearly meant to promote terrorism to cause chaos and mayhem in this country by attacking the non-Muslim communities in crowded places. Meanwhile, Haryana chief minister ML Khattar said in Palwal that the government would “take stern action after a thorough investigation”. Congress leader Randeep Surjewala expressed his concern, too: “If it is true, then it is worrisome… action as per law should be taken.”

Terror links & hawala trail

The United States government has designated the LeT as a global terrorist organisation and the mastermind of 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, Hafiz Saeed, as a global terrorist. A news agency quoted the NIA as saying, “The Imam got Rs 70 lakh through hawala from a Dubai-based Pakistani citizen, named Kamran, who works for the LeT and also provides funds for terrorist activities in India.” Some residents of the Palwal village, however, said the mosque was not funded by any terror group. But here the question is how the villagers know where all the money actually came from. Are the villagers, the pradhan in particular, prompted to make such a statement wholly antithetical to the NIA findings for the sake of the Muslim vote-bank? Possibly yes, because the NIA has seized some incriminating documents that point to terror links and the hawala trail.

India’s concerns on terror are serious. If one dubious mosque has come up in Palwal today, many more may be seen thriving secretly elsewhere tomorrow. In fact, the entire south Asian region remains badly impacted by the vicious acts of terrorist outfits like al Qaeda, Taliban, LeT, Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizb ul Mujahideen, Harkat ul Jihad al Islami, Jamaat ul Mujahideen Bangladesh, ULFA, the now diminished LTTE, Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors and others. Having turned dreadful in recent years, terrorism is now posing a serious challenge to the entire international community. Terrorists can strike at places and times of their choosing with the intent to cause mass deaths and destruction. The growing nexus between terrorist groups, cross-border operatives, terror financing networks, constant propagation of hatred and the funding of weapons has left no country immune to the impact of terrorism. Pakistan openly sponsors several terrorist entities and provides safe havens to fulfil their political and hegemonistic agendas, with its gaze fixed on Kashmir.

No let-up in hostility to Hindus

The fundamentalists who hatched this conspiracy of Masjid terror funding are forgetting that, in 1936-37,when the British conducted elections to 11 provincial legislatures, the Muslim League, a party of landlords and educated middle class of the community, which claimed to represent Muslim aspirations, polled less than 5% of their votes, implying a rejection of its anti-Hindu, non-secular stand. That mandate not only went to the secular forces but was surprisingly also buttressed by the votes of broad-minded Muslim. The same mix of fear and anxiety is sought to be perpetuated today by the League-type Muslim groups that continue to be hostile to the Hindu community — even 70 years after Independence. That explains why leaders of the Muslim community, mostly religious heads, ulema, mullahs, including some hardcore educated communalists, invariably urge their community folk to not mingle with the Hindus who still continue to enjoy a demographic majority in this country.

Demographic push to acquire more power

It sounds strange that these leaders also ask fellow Muslims secretly to increase the size of their families to quickly reach somewhere close to the Hindu population “if they want to rule the country again”. Doesn’t this sound atrocious? They always complain of atrocities perpetrated on Muslims by ‘Hindu terror’ groups — a whataboutery to cover the rising Muslim aggression that becomes all too visible in the attacks that are mounted on innocent citizens at various places.In their disturbed vision, they see the Hindu cultural organization, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, as a ‘killer entity’. They view the abolition of triple talaq as “Hindu aggression” on Muslim families, even though the intent here is to establish a fair gender equality. In this divisive campaign to install an exclusive Muslim terrain, they are ignoring the fact that they regularly participate in every government at the Centre and in the states through a democratic process. And they enjoy privileges that far exceed those that are available to their Hindu and other counterparts. Above that, they take advantage of minority appeasement that every party offers them to win power with their vote-bank.

Will Muslims themselves combat this menace?

If some mosques are built to generate terror modules, then ideally, broad-minded Muslims ought to be the first to raise strong voices against such dreadful impositions. For, these nasties and the acts of senseless violence that such modules perpetrate, at the instance of a hostile Pakistan, definitely bring slur to Islam, put the Muslim community in a bad light and cause it endemic anxiety, fearing a chain reaction of retributive violence from the community of victims. When terror attacks are mounted and bombs are exploded to kill certain targeted people at a crowded public place or institution, people of all communities, including Islamists, suffer and die indiscriminately. But who cares?

Worst victims of terrorism globally

Muslims, more than anybody else, must know terrorism has globally affected them the most. While attacks by Muslims on non-Muslims in Europe have dominated headlines recently, researchers from the University of Maryland have concluded that Muslims are, in fact, the worst victims of terrorism worldwide. The researchers studied the causes and human consequences of terrorism, compiling details of many attacks. In the Middle East, Africa and some other regions, Muslims are perhaps the worst victims of both terrorism and counter-terrorism operations.

Several thousands of people have been killed in Hindu-Muslim communal clashes and riots since the 1947 violent Partition of India. The roots of this violence lie in India’s history that caused unending anger directed at the Islamic conquest of India and the horrible massacre of Hindus, with victims of invasion numbering millions, during the Middle Ages. Who does not know Hindus suffered extreme religious persecution in the form of forceful conversions, massacres, demolition and desecrations of temples and the destruction of educational institutions? In the modern times as well, Hindus in the Muslim-majority regions of Kashmir of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and other countries suffer persecution. Muslim conquest of the Indian subcontinent began during the early 8th century AD, bringing in a wave of massacres of Hindus, Buddhists and others. Muslims put barbarous checks also on the Mahayana Buddhism that was flourishing and spreading to Bhutan and Sikkim between the 8th and the 12th century before the Palas collapsed. Can that bloodbath be forgotten easily? The policies of the British rulers and the Partition of India into an Islamic state of Pakistan and a secular India with a Muslim minority further precipitated this cycle of violence.

Can’t Muslims live in peace with Hindus?

It is, therefore, arguably fundamental that this minority comprising Muslims must live in peace with the majority Hindu community which, by nature and comparison, is more accommodating and incredibly kind — provided it is not viciously interfered with. Many studies have indicated that most Muslims in India hate the cult of terrorism and violence. They believe in a life of peace and prosperity. It’s only the fundamentalists among them that incite the rest of the community to violence, invoking non-existent ‘dangers to Islam’ from Hindu people. Modern India wants Muslims to reject terrorism and live in peace with other communities.

Will not India’s Muslims themselves put locks on this Sayeed-promoted Palwal mosque, which is designed to produce only terror monsters and not Sufis, mystics or Saints. It is no sanctum of God.