Readers' Mail

Apologia Vs Reality

A religion is judged by what its followers believe and do, and not by what its apologists say. The apologists of Islam may cry themselves hoarse that Islam is a religion of peace, but all their efforts prove to be an exercise in futility, when we look around us and see the misdeeds of jihadis and Islamists throughout the world.

A pseudo-journalist, who is sustained by petrodollars, wrote in The Indian Express dated September 29, 2012: “It is a universally Muslim belief that the Prophet never retaliated to reported insults to him, through either word or deed.” To this contention, Prof. C.M.Naim replied in The Indian Express dated October 2, 2012: “….it is also true that a few enemies of the Prophet were ordered by him to be mortally punished, including one or two who virtually abused him. A devout Muslim, therefore, may claim right to follow whichever tradition suits his own inclination.” What Prof. has written can be verified from Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Prophet Mohammad. Abu ‘Afak and ‘Asma bint Marwan were two poets who mocked Mohammad and his claims to prophethood in their verses. Abu ‘Afak was reputed to be over hundred years old. He had criticised Mohammad’s killing of another of his opponents. Mohammad asked his men, “Who will deal with this rascal for me ?” He found a ready volunteer in a young Muslim named Salim bin ‘Umayr who despatched the old poet as he lay asleep. ‘Asma bint Marwan, a poetess, was incensed when she heard of the murder of Abu ‘Afak.She wrote verses in which she criticised men of Medina for obeying a stranger and asked them,”Is there no man of pride who would attack him by surprise and cut off the hopes of those who expect aught from him ?” When Muhammad heard of this, he looked for a volunteer to kill her: “Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?” A Muslim named ‘Umayr bin ‘Adiy al-Khatmi took the job and  killed heralong with her unborn child that very night. But after he had done the deed,’Umayr began to worry that perhaps he had committed a grave sin. The Prophet reassured him:”You have helped God and His apostle, O ‘Umayr!”But would he incur punishment ? “Two goats,”replied the Prophet,”won’t butt their heads about her.” ( Biography of the Prophet by Ibn Ishaq, pages 675-76, OUP Karachi, 2004) It is often argued that a small minority of Muslims, roughly 7% of the Muslim population, are jihadis. We have no problem in accepting this figure, but the more important question
is: where do the sympathies of the 93 % Muslims lie ? When the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were hit by the hijacked aeroplanes in September,2001, there were wide spread jubilations throughout the Muslim world. And when Osama bin Laden was killed by the US marines in Pakistan, there was all round dismay and anger among the Muslims of all hues and countries.

How can you convince non-Muslims of the peaceful nature of Islam, when an amateurish and crude video film enrages Muslims so much that they take to streets killing innocent people and damaging properties worth billions of rupees; when madrassas are producing suicide bombers and when Muslim clerics are openly preaching hatred against non-Muslims ? In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the Blasphemy Law has made the lives of non-Muslims a constant nightmare. Even the Shi’ites saying their prayersin the mosques are targetted by the sunnis.In Saudhi Arabia, followers of any religion other than Islam, are not allowed to build a church, a temple, a gurudwara etc. In most of the Islamic countries of the Middle East, followers of other religions are not allowed even to practise their religion in public places. Still the apologists and the so-called Islamic scholars living in non-Muslim majority countries have the temerity to say that Islam is a religion of peace.    One thing more. Why do the followers of Islam have to declare again and again that Islam is a religion of peace ? Why do the followers of other religions not feel the need of crying from house tops that their religion is a religion of peace ? The answer is obvious: their followers do not indulge in arson, loot and rape in the name of religion to appease their god. Of course, there are violent verses in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament and perhaps, as some scholars point out, Prophet Mohammad took his cue from those verses. But the modern day Jews and Christians have moved forward, ignoring those verses. The teachings as contained in those verses have no bearing on the day to day conduct of the followers of those religions. But the case with Islam is different. To be a true Muslim, you must follow the teachings of the Quran in totality. If you do not accept the Quran as the final word of Allah, you are considered an apostate and the penalty for apostasy in Islam is death. There is no middle path for Muslims. Even the enlightened Muslims who regard the Quran as a historical document reflecting the tribal culture of seventh century Arabia, do not have the courage to say so publicly for fear of death and the Islamic frenzy goes on.

However, a Pakistani journalist, Kunwar Khuldune Shahid has shown the nerve to call a spade a spade and his article has been published in Pakistan Today dated October 2, 2012: “…It is so painfully amusing to note how the “moderates” and armchair revolutionaries, would sit there with a glass of vine in their hands, uninhibitedly hanging out with the opposite sex, not having offered a prayer or fasted for ages, claiming how the Taliban–who lead their lives strictly according to the Shariah–are infesting their religion of harmony. The poor chaps are doing what their scriptures–the ones that the pseudo-intellectuals extol, or don’t have the cojones to criticize–tell them to do. When you are being taught, through the scriptures that are universally recognized by the followers as “authentic”, that all the non-believers or threats to the grandeur of your ideology should be killed, you will kill them, where is the misinterpretation here ?” The passage needs no further elaboration.

H.L.Kandhari

Innocence of Muslims

The video film “innocence of Muslims” is highly provocative, no doubt, but the producer of the film intended it to be so. The producer must have known that Muslims do not allow even a painting of their prophet, much less his role being played by a man in a movie intended to mock and revile him. The violent protests and demonstrations held by enraged Muslims throughout the Muslim countries and elsewhere are indicative of the aim achieved by the movie for which purpose it was made. Regrettably, this aim was achieved at the cost of some precious human lives and damage to properties worth billions of rupees, besides further souring the relations between communities.

Admittedly, the Muslims have the right to protest the depiction of their prophet in poor light, but how violent their protests should be, it is for them to decide. Muslims take to streets, burn property and kill people at the drop of a hat, which has earned them the unenviable title of being the most intoerant people in the world. It is not that only Muhammad has been ridiculed and made fun of. Far more damaging paintings like the Piss Christ have been made in the West, but Christians never behave the way Muslims have behaved.  They take them in their stride and simply ignore such movies or cartoons or books.

There is an other classic case of the hypocritical late MF Hussain who painted only Hindu goddesses and mother India naked only to provoke Hindus. Some Hindu organisations protested and condemned him, but they never took to streets, like the Muslims. They filed suits against him in different courts of law and the matter ended there. A prominent aspect of this controversy was that a number of Hindus came out in support of MF Hussain and defended his right to freedom of expression. The maturer way for Muslims would have been to treat the movie with disdainful indifference, instead of resorting to violence and bringing bad name to Islam. The movie was released in July 2012, but no one took note of it. But when a few excerpts of the movie were telecast by an Egyptian TV channel, the trouble started sending the Muslim world into religious frenzy.

However, it is to be noted that the incidents of Prophet Muhammad’s life, as shown in the movie, have been selected from the sira (biography of Muhammad) and hadith written in Arabic. These books are easily available and can be consulted to verify these incidents of Prophet Muhammad’s life. Of course, the producer of the movie has given a twist to those incidents to present them in a mocking way in order to poke fun at Prophet Muhammad and provoke Muslims. For example, Muhammad’s marriagw with Zaynab bint Jahsh, the wife of his adopted son Zayd bin Haritha, finds a mention in a revelation as recorded in the Quran which according to Muslim belief is the word of Allah. In chapter 33 verse 37, Allah tells Muhammad ” And when thou saidst unto him on whom Allah hath conferred favour and thou hast conferred favour: keep thy wife to thyself, and fear Allah. And thou didst hide in thy mind that which Allah was to bring to light and thou didst fear mankind whereas Allah hath a better right that thou shouldst fear Him. So when Zayd had performed that necessary formality (of divorce) from her, We gave her unto thee in marriage, so that(henceforth) there may be no sin for believers in respect of wives of their adopted sons, when the latter have performed the necessary formality (of release)from them. The commandment of Allah must be fulfilled.”( Pickthal’s translation) This sura makes two things clear— the Prophet wanted to marry the divorced wife of his adopted son, but was afraid of society because it was not allowed even in that tribal society. Then Allah comes to his rescue and absolves him of the sin that he might commit by marrying his adopted son’s wife and in doing so Allah allows all believers to marry the wives of their adopted sons. Now what will you make of this episode ?

Only one more example will make our point clearer. When Muhammad invaded Khaybar inhabited by Jews, a fierce battle ensued with heavy casualities on both sides, but eventually Muhammad won. The Muslims immediately entered Khaybar to locate the treasure of the inhabitants. The Muslims caught Kinana, a leader of the Jews, and brought him before Muhammad, because Kinana was supposed to know the secret of the treasure of Banu Nadir. When Kinana denied having any knowledge of the treasure, he was severely tortured; a fire was lit on his chest and as he was about to die , he was beheaded by a Muslim. The wives and children of the Jews were enslaved. Among the war booty, there was Safiya, the beautiful 17-year old wife of Kinana, whom the Prophet took for himself. He immediately manumitted and married her.In the words of Ibn Ishaq ( the writer of Muhammad’s oldest and the most reliable biography), “When the apostle married Safiya in Khabar or on the way, she having been beautified and combed, and got in a fit state for the apostle by Umm Sulaym d. Milhan mother of Anas b. Malik, the apostle passed the night with her in a tent of his. Abu Ayyub, Khalid b. Zayd brother of B. al-Najjar passed the night girt with his sword, guarding the apostle and going round the tent until in the morning the apostle saw him there and asked him what he meant by his action. He replied, “I was afraid for you with this woman for you have killed her father, her husband, and her people, and till recently she was in belief, so I was afraid for you on her account.” They allege that the apostle said,” O God, preserve Abu Ayyub as he spent the night preserving me.”(Page 516-17, The Life of Muhammad, OUP 2004 Karachi.)

Examples can be multiplied, but these two examples suffice to show that the producer of ” Innocence of Muslims ” has not concocted any of the incidents of Muhammad’s life. But the problem with Muslims is that most of them are uneducated and know very little of their Prophet’s life and those few who know, do not want others to know the details of their Prophet’s life.Hence this rage. But they must know that in the modern age of internet, the facts cannot be concealed for long. It is better for Muslims, as civilized human beings, to make some introspection and heart-searching, instead of fixing the price for the head of the producer of the film.

H.L.Kandhari

Islam and Sex Slavery

Bikya Masr reported last week that “a new report from George Washington University professor Michele Clark and Coptic rights activist Nada Ghaly has argued that thousands of young Coptic Christian girls in Egypt are the victim of kidnapping and forced servitude by Muslims in the North African country.” Meanwhile, every day seems to bring fresh reports of Muslim gangs in Britain forcing young non-Muslim girls into prostitution and sex slavery. Muslims from the Twin Cities area ran an interstate sex trafficking ring until they were caught and indicted in late 2010. The dirty secret behind such reports is that this behavior is sanctioned in Islam.

The Qur’an forbids Muslim men to have sexual relations with “wedded women, save what your right hands own.” (4:4) “Prosperous are the believers who in their prayers are humble and from idle talk turn away and at almsgiving are active and guard their private parts save from their wives and what their right hands own then being not blameworthy.” (23:1-6)

Those whom their “right hands own” are slaves, and inextricable from the concept of Islamic slavery as a whole is the concept of sex slavery, which is rooted in Islam’s devaluation of the lives of non-Muslims. The Qur’an stipulates that a man many take four wives as well as hold slave girls as sex slaves. These women are captured in wartime and are considered the spoils of war. Islam avoids the appearance of impropriety, declaring that the taking of these sex slaves does not constitute adultery if the women are already married, for their marriages are ended at the moment of their capture. A manual of Islamic law directs: “When a child or a woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately annulled” (Reliance of the Traveller, o9.13).

This is by no means an eccentric or unorthodox view in Islam. The Egyptian Sheikh Abu-Ishaq al-Huwayni declared in May 2011that “we are in the era of jihad,” and that as they waged jihad warfare against infidels, Muslims would take slaves. He clarified what he meant in a subsequent interview:…Jihad is only between Muslims and infidels….Spoils, slaves, and prisoners are only to be taken in war between Muslims and infidels. Muslims in the past conquered, invaded, and took over countries. This is agreed to by all scholars–there is no disagreement on this from any of them, from the smallest to the largest, on the issue of taking spoils and prisoners. The prisoners and spoils are distributed among the fighters, which includes men, women, children, wealth, and so on.
When a slave market is erected, which is a market in which are sold slaves and sex-slaves, which are called in the Qur’an by the name milk al-yamin, “that which your right hands possess” [Qur’an 4:24]. This is a verse from the Qur’an which is still in force, and has not been abrogated. The milk al-yamin are the sex-slaves. You go to the market, look at the sex-slave, and buy her. She becomes like your wife, (but) she doesn’t need a (marriage) contract or a divorce like a free woman, nor does she need a wali. All scholars agree on this point–there is no disagreement from any of them. [...] When I want a sex slave, I just go to the market and choose the woman I like and purchase her.

Right around the same time, on May 25, 2011, a female Kuwaiti activist and politician, Salwa al-Mutairi, also spoke outin favor of the Islamic practice of sexual slavery of non-Muslim women, emphasizing that the practice accorded with Islamic law and the parameters of Islamic morality.…A merchant told me that he would like to have a sex slave. He said he would not be negligent with her, and that Islam permitted this sort of thing. He was speaking the truth….I brought up (this man’s) situation to the muftis in Mecca. I told them that I had a question, since they were men who specialized in what was halal, and what was good, and who loved women. I said, “What is the law of sex slaves?”

The mufti said, “With the law of sex slaves, there must be a Muslim nation at war with a Christian nation, or a nation which is not of the religion, not of the religion of Islam. And there must be prisoners of war.”
“Is this forbidden by Islam?,” I asked.
“Absolutely not. Sex slaves are not forbidden by Islam. On the contrary, sex slaves are under a different law than the free woman. The free woman must be completely covered except for her face and hands. But the sex slave can be naked from the waist up. She differs a lot from the free woman. While the free woman requires a marriage contract, the sex slave does not–she only needs to be purchased by her husband, and that’s it. Therefore the sex slave is different than the free woman.”

While the savage exploitation of girls and young women is an unfortunately cross-cultural phenomenon, only in Islamic law does it carry anything approaching divine sanction. Here is yet another human rights scandal occasioned by Islamic law that the international human rights community cravenly ignores.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch
and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)
and The Truth About Muhammad.

His latest book, Did Muhammad Exist?, is By Robert Spencernow available.

The Quran: Allah’s contradictions and lies

In Islam, Allah “God “ demands believers to surrender to him completely and to obey to his every command given in the Holy Book, the Quran, in its totality. Allah states that everything recorded in the Quran is his own words. Allah’s unconditional demand to his followers to follow the Quran is absolute. Muslim scholars of Islamic sects agree, confirm and believe this is absolutely true that it is mandatory to obey Allah commands in the Quran with no reservation of any kind by every believing Muslim.

The Quran, in reality, is a book of an imperfect scripture, allegedly sayings of God, filled with errors, contradictions, stupidities, historical inaccuracies. The contents of the Quran are also not arranged according to importance, continuity, sacredness, biography, chronology, significance or sequence of any sorts, but simply by length: the longest chapter, followed by the next longest. The Verses are disorderly arranged and jumbled up in unrelated subject’s or topics. The Quran has no prophecy, no chronology, no geography, no biography of anybody (except bits & pieces of Muhammad’s), no ministry, no history, no proverbs, no parables, no miracles, no psalms, no sequence of any sort. It s generally a manual of dos and don ts, like an instruction manual of a vacuum cleaner, with punitive punishments, reprisals and rewards specified in it. The Quran is, undoubtedly, not a book created by an intelligent being, and is unfit for the intelligent and rational thinking persons. This book filled with stupidity and logic and reason (discussed below), which makes it a complete lie.

In demanding absolute and unconditional obedience from his believers, Allah categorically states (Surah 33.36): “And it becometh not a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and his messenger have decided an affair (for them), that they should (after that) claim any say in their affair(s); and who so is rebellious to Allah and his messenger, he verily go astray in error manifest.”

So as believers, Muslims have no right to think independently about their own affairs, because al-Allah and his messenger have already done the thinking for them. All that Muslims are required to do is just to obey (like sheep) to Allah’s words as in the Quran, and becoming totally obedient morons. If these Muslims do not obey and follow all the commands, they will be considered by Allah as “rebellious” and face consequences. In the same verse, Allah also demands Muslims to obey his human messenger, Muhammad (giving equal status with Allah???). No other religion on earth demands from its followers such absolute and unconditional obedience to a human messenger and his puppet god. This defies all logic. Why shouldn’t Muslims use their God-given brains for independent, rational thinking into their own affairs?

Islam is like a magician: once he put an illusory spell over his audience, he has complete control of everything he wants people to believe and do! By taking control of Muslims mind, and making them force Islam on those not in controls, Islam deprives Muslims from questioning and leaving Islam, even if one wishes so? Either you believe and behave, or you will be forced by true believers to conform; thus Islam keeps an absolute grip on the community. Almost everything in Islamic community is forced upon against the will and rational thinking of the individual: there s no choice of one s own.

And, exceptional rewards are promised to believers: Allah attempts to sell them a fake death insurance policy to reward them with eternal paradise filled with wine, honey, and angelic virgins… Allah also attempts to shame, threaten, and bribe Muslims into leaving their worldly life and sign up for jihad, with the promise of gaining entry into paradise.

Islam is sure a trap with no way out. If a Muslim tries to get out, he/she will be killed as an apostate (Surah 4:89). This is why Muslims dare not criticize Muslims, who commit violence, murder, bombings, etc? With no rational thinking allowed, Islam has proved itself to be a bloody murderous trap! Is this from God? Will God(s) ever be so merciless and have narcissist thinking? Or this may be just a plain fake religion?

Facing the Kaba for praying
The Arabs were facing the Kaba in Mecca for their prayers in pre-Islamic times. As per the Pagan Arab practices of respect in Mecca and Medina, they always showed respect by facing to their respected and venerated God(s). Muhammad and his followers in his early days of preaching did the same. Then his narcissist Allah changed his mind, after Muslims migration to Medina, demanding that ALL Muslims face only Jerusalem instead, for all their prayers (Surah 2:142-145). Years later, Allah changed his mind again, demanding that Muslims face the Kaba while praying. This is how the Quran was invented: Allah cannot make up his mind and keep changing things around like a childish game.

When Muslims were facing Jerusalem for praying, they were showing their backsides to the Kaba, a mark of disrespect in Arab tradition. Why did the Muslims disrespect the Kaba in this way on Allah’s orders? Was Allah’s first command wrong? Was this Allah so fickle minded? Why should Muslims worldwide face the Kaba to pray in the first place? If God is everywhere, why face only in one direction to pray? Is Allah squatting only in the Kaba? How did this thinking ever come about? In pre-Islamic Arab Paganism, it was disrespectful to face something deemed holy, or someone respectful—a person of high regard, like a king, parents, grandparents, etc., when in communication with them.

The Flat Earth
In Surah 15:19, “Allah says that the Earth is flat (and not a sphere) “the earth spread out like a carpet” and to drum this “scientific Islamic theory of a flat earth” into the believing Muslims, earth is also referred in Surah 20:53 as a bed, in 43:10 as a resting place, in 78:6 as an expanse, in 84:3 as spread out, and in 88:20 as spread. As if that is not enough stupidity, Allah goes further and confirms in Surah 18:87 that “the sun sets every day in a muddy spring water on the earth”, and people living there.

The claim that a huge sun would land on an spring on the surface of our tiny planet earth sends all logics out the window??? The heat from burning fires of the Sun which are in thousands of degrees centigrade will set the whole earth into a ball of flames and disintegrate it in just milliseconds, even before it gets within a million Kilometres of earth’s atmosphere. Where on this spherical earth has “its setting-place”? The fact that the sun is a ball of fire that cannot even come a bit closer to the earth seems didn t dawn on this Allah yet. Allah also thought that the earth is flat, and that the sun sets everyday on it?

This Allah also thought that he was cleverer than the Pagans and decided to be one up on them and made it compulsory for Muslims to face the Kaba to pray. And why not: he thought, when he thought the world is flat as a carpet or a bed. But when the world is a sphere in actuality, Muslims end up facing the outer space, not the Kaba, thanks to al-Allah’s poor understanding of the universe! This has become a comic of errors with Muslims straining themselves five times every day trying to face the Kaba, but failing to do so. Is Allah, the alleged creator of the universe, so stupid, or was it just Muhammad, who actually invented the Quran, full of errors.

And what about al-Allah’s other “scientific Islamic theory” in Surah 39:5, which says the Sun revolving around the earth. With so many illogical and erroneous verses in the Quran, none can imagine that Islam is from a true almighty God. Islam is just a fake creation of Muhammad, plain and simple!

In conclusion, the holy Quran was poorly presented which resulted to produce poor thinking amongst Arabs and the majority of Muslims.

Cleansing Hindus From Pakistan

In his 1993 BBC television series Akbar S Ahmed, former ambassador from Pakistan to Britain and presently Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University in Washington DC, stated that Jinnah had created Pakistan so that India’s Muslims could be “safe from Hindu reaction”. But he has remained largely silent on the Hindus of Pakistan who have been the victims of Islamic ‘reaction’, aside from a few meaningless platitudes towards communal harmony. In this he is far from alone.

When British India was partitioned in 1947 Hindus and Sikhs constituted about twenty percent of the population in what is now Pakistan. Now it is barely one percent. This is a demographic catastrophe which has hardly warranted attention in the media, or from human rights groups and other NGOs. While India is constantly berated for having severe problems with an amorphous communalism, Pakistan is rarely brought to task over this same standard. In one way however Pakistan can be said to have resolved the communal issue; by simply having negligible numbers of minorities to strive for equal rights.

The constitution and legal system created for Pakistan openly discriminated against Hindus with a high level of crime and harassment against them. This was exacerbated by periods of tension between India and Pakistan which were always the worst times for Hindus in Pakistan, with large numbers killed and expelled by pogroms by the majority community who were supported by their government. In 1965 The Enemy Property Act was passed, which openly legitimized the confiscation of the property of Hindus whether it was their homes or temples that were destroyed and helped to further reduce the Hindu population in Pakistan.

This was dwarfed by the war of secession which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. A huge undocumented number of Hindus were massacred by the Pakistani army in which the estimated death toll was probably three million.

At independence India chose a secular constitution. Admittedly, along with its parliamentary democracy, has met with varying degrees of success. But it has endured. India has had heads of state which come from minority communities and minorities are active in many spheres notably government service, cinema, music, academia, the media and sport. Pakistan however chose a stridently theocratic form of government right from its inception, in which anyone not adhering to the majority faith and the being part of the majority community was always going to be suspect. By stating that the head of state had to be Muslim that built uncompromising discrimination into the constitution itself.

The pandering to extreme religious intolerance by the secular whisky-drinking Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was taken to new levels by his nemesis General Zia ul-Haq who introduced Islamicisation programmes which utterly changed the nature of the country. The injection of despotic legal changes such as the Hudood Ordinance, Blasphemy Law, Sharia law and a host of other procedures mitigated against democracy and reduced women, Christians, Hindus, and Ahmadis to lesser citizenship. This was the time when Saudi influence made itself felt ideologically through Wahhabism as madrasas proliferated and the centuries-long native Sufi tradition of Madhu Lal Hussein, Bulley Shah and Waris Shah was smothered. Under the 1973 constitution Bhutto made Islam the state religion of Pakistan and established a separate electorate for Muslims and non-Muslims so that Hindus could only vote for Hindu candidates. The majority community could therefore ignore the minority Hindus with impunity. Musharraf abolished the separate electoral system in 2002. It is ironic how a democratic ‘socialist’ leader promoted discriminatory legislation which was only later rescinded by a military dictatator who had seized power from an elected government. Even so, in Pakistan’s political system, the minorities, such as Hindus, Christians and Sikhs remain outcasts.

Pakistan is home to some 2.5 million Hindus, 95% of them living in the southern Sindh province. Most are poor peasants living as serfs on the estates of landlords, similar to the caste from which the Bhuttos hailed. However there are also some successful some businessmen. In Sindh, they are a hot commodity for bandits. They have become increasingly subject to kidnapping for ransom which the largely impoverished members of the community can ill afford. Rape, forcible and pressurised conversion to Islam have also become a matter of course for Hindus living in that oppressive state. As with kidnapping the conversion of Hindus is a profitable business in this country.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan stated in 2010 stating that at least twenty-five Hindu girls are abducted in Pakistan every month. In July of that year around sixty members of the minority Hindus in Karachi were attacked and ethnically cleansed when a Hindu youth drank from a water tap near an Islamic mosque. But even more sinister plans have been afoot. Hindu minorities under Taliban rule in Swat were forced to wear red headgear such as turbans as a symbol of their inferior status. Promulgation that Hindus are inferior is however the norm as it is officially sanctioned in textbooks used in governments schools. In November 2011 the US Commission on International Religious Freedom warned that text books in Pakistani schools foster prejudice and intolerance of Hindus and other religious minorities, while most teachers view non-Muslims as “enemies of Islam”. In the words of its chairman Leonard Leo:
“Teaching discrimination increases the likelihood that violent religious extremism in Pakistan will continue to grow, weakening religious freedom, national and regional stability, and global security”

In 2006 the last Hindu temple in Lahore was demolished to make way for commercial development. In Dera Ismail Khan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a group has illegally acquired the 700-year-old Kali Bari Mandir and is now using it as a hotel. The issue of Kali Bari is not an isolated example. In Islamabad, Hindus have no access to a temple situated at Saidpur model village. Meanwhile the Raam Kunday Mandir in Islamabad, once considered a sacred site by Hindus, is being converted into a picnic spot. Eminabad in Gujranwala region has several temples dating back to the 15th century, which are in shambles today. Most of them are being used as stables to provide shelter to donkeys, horses and other animals. In Punjab’s Bakkar city, Sheeran Wali Mandir has been used by Islamic clerics as a madrasa. Nearly 360 sacred Hindu sites are located in Pakistan, including Hanglaj Maata Mandir in Balochistan, Sadho Beela Mandir in Sindh, Hanuman Mandir in Kotri, Kali Ma and Shiva Mandir in Punjab’s Imanabad, Ganga Khogi in Saidan Shah Punjab, Kali Bari Mandir and Kala Sathi Kewal Raam in Dera Ismail Khan, Raam Takht in Swat and a Shiva Mandir in Mansehra. But neither is the government ready to ensure the upkeep of these sites, nor is it willing to hand them back to the Hindu community. At a wider level cultural prejudice has become part and parcel of language itself. Hindus are referred to as “na pak.” Na means “un” and pak means “pure.” Given that the word “pak” is part of the word “Pakistan” — which means Land of the Pure — somebody’s impurity suggests that they are not really Pakistani. So the ‘impure’ Hindus are not seen as belonging to the country.
Under these circumstances it is no surprise that those Hindus which were not forcibly expelled from Pakistan on its creation in 1947 have decided to leave, mainly for neighbouring India. In the wake of the world’s silence on their systematic persecution they decide as with previous generations to vote with their feet, denied as they are an equal voice in Pakistan’s shaky quasi-democratic process. In doing so they make immense contributions to their new host countries where they can at least breath the air of freedom.

One thinks of the prosperous Sindhi community which was uprooted en masse from their native homeland in 1947. But we must also remember filmstars Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, and Sunil Dutt who trace their birthplaces and ancestral homes to Pakistan. Independent India’s first Test cricket captain, Lala Amarnath hailed from Lahore, prime ministers I K Gujral and Manmohan Singh are also from the part of what is now the province of Punjab in Pakistan. Former deputy prime minister Lal Krishna Advani was born in Karachi. Nearly all of these individuals left their homes due to the violence and turmoil of independence setting what seems like a precedent for future generations of Hindus in Pakistan who will complete the exodus from lands that were once an integral part of Hindu culture and ancient Indian civilisation.

While western democracies are keen to ignore what they brush off as a ‘Hindu’ problem the events in neighbouring India should give us cause for concern. Those who are keen to promote the cause of Kashmiri ‘freedom’ such as the Conservative Party Chair Baroness Sayeeda Warsi conveniently ignore the rather inconvenient fact that this would bring death and destruction to Hindus, just as she and other powerful voices avert their gaze from how almost the entire indigenous Pandit community was ethnically cleansed from the Vale of Kashmir by mujahadeen at gunpoint in 1989. To this day they eke out a miserable existence in refugee camps in Jammu.

The Pakistan backed Kashmiri terrorists have since extended their massacres and atrocities to Hindus, Sikhs and Christians in the whole region. With Pakistan a hotbed for terrorism, awash as it is with weapons and drugs to compliment the intolerance and sense of general hopelessness, with neighbouring Afghanistan due to fall once again to the Taliban once NATO forces withdraw, Iran developing a nuclear weapons programme, and Pakistan’s imperial masters in Riyadh presently expanding their colonial interests using their Salafi minions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, western democracies should be very worried.

Otherwise they will face a ‘Hindu’ future. As Pastor Martin Neimoller warned regarding his incarceration by the Nazis:

They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object — For I wasn’t a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object — For I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labour leaders, and I didn’t object — For I wasn’t a labour leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object — For I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me – And there was no one left to object.
So who will there be to object when ‘they’ come after the western democracies and there are no Hindus left?

By Ranbir Singh