Date: 6/7/2006
http://india.indymedia.org/en/2003/03/3544.shtml////// ENCIRCLEMENT FROM WITHIN////// By Rajaram //////// ENCIRCLEMENT FROM WITHIN Threat of encirclement from within is greater than being encircled from outside. To defeat this, the impact of dhimmitude must be understood. /////// Sonai Gandhi's recent statement in the Parliament criticizing the PM must be read against the background of the state of paranoia in part of the Christian community in India. I feel she shares some of their apocalyptic beliefs. Here is an article I wrote for the BHARATIYA PRAGNA. /////// Threat of encirclement from within is greater than being encircled from outside. To defeat this, the impact of dhimmitude must be understood. //////// Trivializing terrorism ////// Terrorism, more particularly Islamic terrorism poses the greatest threat to peace and security in the world today. And no country in the world has been victimized more by terrorism than India. Yet, a recent debate in the Indian Parliament saw the opposition leader Mrs. Sonia Gandhi taking the Government to task for supposedly keeping alive the issue of Pak-sponsored terrorism in order to polarize the country along communal lines, meaning of course Hindu-Muslim lines. Her concern no doubt is political— that terrorism as an issue can lead to the rout of her party in the important states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharastra and Rajasthan, putting an end to her dreams of becoming Prime Minister. But there is a deeper issue here: are the political ambitions of a few politicians to take precedence over national security, at a time when India is engaged in a life or death struggle against a terrorist state across the border? /////// It is important to note that neither Mrs. Gandhi nor her party have clearly stated any policy for fighting terrorism or even national security other than appeasement of anti-national forces. They seem to see the growth of the national spirit manifest in the Hindutva movement as a greater threat than cross border terrorism. What is more disturbing is that her recent parliamentary statement is not an isolated instance but a pattern that goes back to the time she tried to take over the country in a coup attempt just before the Kargil War. Here is the record. /////// That the Congress leaders were willing to place personal ambition above national security became clear during the Kargil conflict in the summer of 1999. When Indian soldiers were engaged in a life-and-death struggle in the world’s most forbidding battlefield, the Congress ‘leader’ went around the country denigrating the Government and its war effort. In fact Pakistani Televison (PTV) often began its news broadcast with one of Sonia Gandhi’s campaign speeches. It is also worth recalling that earlier, the Congress and its leader had joined hands with Jayalalitha and Subramanian Swamy and virtually immobilized the Government for more than two months before bringing it down. This created a window of opportunity for Pakistan to carry out its successful infiltration across the LOC in Kargil. One shudders to think what might have been the fate of Kashmir (and India) had the coup succeeded, just when Indian troops were battling the Pakistanis on the Kargil heights. Is such a person fit to hold the country’s most responsible office? /////// A person so irresponsible as to trifle with national security for the sake of appeasing vote banks to come to power cannot be expected to be responsible in one’s choice of friends and allies. Here is more on the pattern. ////// Appeasing anti-national forces ////// It should be recognized that the issue goes beyond seeking minority votes, which is perfectly legitimate and proper. The real point is the extent to which the Congress-Communist nexus has been willing to go to appease and accommodate anti-national forces over the years. To understand what drives this behavior, it is important to recognize that they represent special interests that look with fear at the national spirit. To them Hindutva is a symbol of the national spirit, which they see as posing a threat to their interests. They reflexively oppose anything that has a hint of nationalism in it while taking the side of any movement or ideology that can damage the nation. The other side of this coin is that its ‘leaders’ reflexively appease anything that is hostile to the nation, in the name of ‘secularism’. Let us look at the record in the recent past. ///// When Indian soldiers were waging a heroic life and death struggle at Kargil to save Kashmir from Islamic terror, a Muslim cleric, hailed by the secularist establishment as a ‘moderate’ declared that he could not pray for the victory of Indian forces fighting in Kargil. This ‘eminent’ and ‘moderate’ cleric was Syed Abdul Hasan Ali Nadvi, popularly known as Ali Mian. As a true Muslim, he said he could not pray for the Kafirs fighting against a Jihad by fellow Muslims, even when they are from Pakistan. According to the report (The Hindu, June 30, 1999): “Muslim clerics were prepared to pray for the well-being of the country but they had reservations about praying for the well-being of Indian soldiers [Kafirs] who were fighting militants in an action of Jihad. To pray for soldiers would mean to pray for the defeat of the Jihadis, was the reason given.” It is worth noting that until his recent death Ali Mian was a great favorite of Congress leaders, especially of Sonia Gandhi and her family. Sonia and Priyanka found time to attend his funeral, paying respectful homage to their ‘secular’ hero. /////// The media (and Sonia Gandhi) may hold him up as ‘secular’, but Ali Mian and his ilk never made any secret of their unswerving loyalty to Pakistan— both its ideology and its virulent anti-Indian policy. Following Pakistan’s humiliating defeat in the 1971 Bangladesh War, the same Ali Mian went to Karachi and shed copious tears telling how Muslims like himself, who looked up to Pakistan as what an Islamic state should be felt deep personal pain. This is Pan-Islamism pure and simple. Incidentally, Ali Mian was also the Chairman of the Muslim Personal Law Board, the organization that led the campaign against Shah Bano and forced Rajiv Gandhi to capitulate. /////// None of this is new. An examination of recent history shows that the Congress, instead of fighting anti-national forces, has always appeased them. Ali Mian was only repeating in 1972 and again in 1999 what Maulana Mohammad Ali said in 1923: “Extra-territorial sympathies are part of the quintessence of Islam.” And he said this in his address as Congress President! Eighty years later, even after several wars and the loss of thousands of innocent lives, Congress leaders and the ‘establishment’ intellectuals have never stopped appeasing Pakistan, even during the Kragil conflict. As previously noted, almost every evening, the Pakistan TV news used to begin with one of Sonia Gandhi’s campaign speeches proclaiming that India was doing badly. /////// The Congress and its leader Sonia Gandhi were opposed to nuclearization also. Former Rajiv Gandhi associate Ahluwalia stated in an interview in which he gave some revealing information relating to the Pokharan tests. At that time he was still in the Congress, and close to Sonia. Following the successful Pokharan tests, Ahluwalia asked her to congratulate those responsible for the achievement. She rejected his suggestion claiming that some foreign powers would object. ////// This raises a fundamental question: what is that makes people willingly sacrifice national interest and appease forces that make no secret of their enmity to the nation and its values? This goes beyond prejudice. It is a state of mind called dhimmitude, which is the historical and emotional baggage carried by peoples and nations that have experienced the threat and force of Islamic Jihad. To understand dhimmitude, it is first necessary to have a clear idea of Jihad and the terror it unleashed on the world. /////// Jihad and Terrorism in history/////// Jihad is the central doctrine of the Islamic state, ordained by its scripture. Thanks partly to the September 11 terrorist attack on the New York World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the world now knows something of Jihad and its ties to Islamic terror. Nonetheless, Jihad continues to be presented as a noble internal struggle over one’s baser instincts— something like meditation and Yoga. Here is the truth.//////// Dictionary of Islam defines Jihad as: “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad [the Prophet]. It is an incumbent religious duty, established in the Quran and in the Traditions [i.e., the Hadits or the ‘Acts of Muhammad’] as a divine institution, and enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam… Sufi writers say that there are two Jihads: al-Jihadu ‘l Akbar, or the ‘greater warfare,’ which is against one’s own lusts; and al-Jihadu ‘l Asghar, or the ‘lesser Jihad’ against infidels.” This is a later Sufi innovation that has no scriptural sanction; in fact it is a heresy that is rejected by the orthodox. To continue with the Dictionary of Islam: “The duty of religious war (which all commentators agree is a duty extending to all time) is laid down in the Quran in the following verses, and it is remarkable that all the verses occur in the al-Madinah Surahs, being those given after Muhammad had established himself as a paramount ruler, and was in a position to dictate terms to his enemies.” //////// This means any hint of compromise that one finds in the earlier al-Meccah Surahs can be explained by the fact that they were given at times when Prophet Muhammad felt besieged and was forced to compromise with his adversaries in order to gain time. These were erased by the later Surahs revealed when the Prophet had become the paramount ruler. Yet, these defunct verses are the ones invariably held up by Islam apologists! /////// Like Jihad, terrorism is an integral part of Islamic history and doctrine that cannot be separated from its scripture. Terrorism, by which we mean the threat and use of violence against innocents, has a long tradition in Islam going back to Prophet Muhammad himself. The Hadits (compilation of the acts of the Prophet) record that the Prophet had the poetess Asma bint Marawan assassinated while sleeping with her child. Her crime was satirizing the Prophet and his claims in some of her verses. There are other such examples in the Prophet’s career. More importantly, terrorism was not limited to the founding period, like what happened following the French Revolution. (Robespierre’s “Reign of Terror.”) Its use as an instrument of policy is not an aberration but an inseparable and continuing part of Islamic history down to the present. //////// The most famous of the early Islamic terrorist organizations was the Nizari Ismailiyun, a Shiite politico-religious sect, founded in 1094 by Hasan-e Sabah. He and his followers captured the hill fortress of Almaut in northern Iran and turned it into their base of operations. Hasan styled himself Grand Master and went on to set up a network of terrorist strongholds in Iran and Iraq. Hasan-e Sabah and his successor Grand Masters commanded an army of assassins who spread terror among the people throughout Iran and Iraq. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Grand Master had “a corps of devoted terrorists, and an unknown number of agents in enemy camps and cities, who claimed many victims among the generals and statesmen of the Abbasid caliphate as well as several caliphs.” /////// The Nizari Ismaliyun or the Order of the Assassins expanded into Syria after its founder’s death. In the 12th century, Rashid ad-Din as-Sinan, famous as the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ set himself up as an independent Grand Master of the Assassin Order in the impregnable castle of Masyaf in Syria. For more than a century and half, from 1094 to 1256, these Grandmasters and their assassins spread terror throughout the Middle East. Their end came at the hands of the Mongol warriors of Haleku Khan— the grandson of Chengis Khan. He captured and destroyed the assassin strongholds in Iran one by one, and finally Almaut itself fell in 1256. He mercilessly killed every one of the assassin agents and their leaders. Two years later, in February 1258, Haleku’s soldiers sacked Baghdad itself and ended the Caliphate by executing the Abbasid Caliph al-Mustasim and his sons. The Syrian castles and strongholds were gradually reduced by the Baybars I, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. The Ismaili order gradually faded into insignificance, becoming a minor heresy. In Pakistan they are considered non-Muslims and often persecuted. /////// The Caliphate officially ended with the death of al-Mustasim at the hands of the Mongols in 1258. The 19th century claim of the Ottoman Turkish Sultans to be the inheritors of the Caliphate was not recognized by Muslims outside India. It was a political ploy by the Ottoman Sultans to keep together their crumbling empire. But Mahatma Gandhi made the restoration of the Turkish Sultan as Caliph the centerpiece of the disastrous Khilafat Movement in the support of which he launched the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921. It resulted in a reign of terror in Malabar (Kerala) known as the Moplah Rebellion. It was the Khilafat that sowed the seeds of Partition. It also showed that terror could be used for political ends. /////// Inspired by the terror that followed the Khilafat, Mohammed Ali Jinnah—a ‘liberal’ Muslim—resorted to terror to gain his political goal of partitioning India. In 1946, his call for ‘Direct Action’ in support of his demand for Pakistan led to street riots all across North India. The Congress capitulated and agreed to the Partition of India. ///////// In all this, there is an almost religious belief that terrorism is both legitimate and effective in gaining political ends. In the Pakistani official manual, The Quranic Concept of War by Brigadier Malik, it is explicitly stated: "Terror struck into the hearts of the enemy is not only a means, it is the end in itself. Once a condition of terror into the opponent's heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved... Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him.” The idea is to make the enemy live in a state of perpetual terror. The authority for this is the Koran (Anfal 59-60): “Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into the enemies of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” This is the seed of indiscriminate terror employed by Grand Masters of the Order of the Assassins centuries ago, and by Osama Bin Laden and a host of others today. This belief in the power of domination through terror, and its legitimacy, is what needs to be defeated. The basic truth is— terrorism runs like a tread throughout Islamic history, supported by its scripture. It is futile to try to separate Islamic terror from Islam. Dhimmitude in India Dhimmitude is a relatively recent concept among Islamic scholars though it has played a major role in the history of Islam. It was brought into focus by the pioneering work of the Egypt-born scholar Bat Ye’or. (Her penname, which means ‘Daughter of the Nile.’) Dhimmitude may be seen as the state of mind induced in the victims of Islamic terror, more particularly in the minds of the non-Muslim subjects in countries under Islamic rule. Like the famous ‘Stockholm Syndrome,’ which afflicts hostages by turning them into defenders of their kidnappers, dhimmitude also has the effect of turning the victims of harsh Islamic rule into its defenders; there is an unconscious fear that criticizing them might make their condition far worse. It arose from the need of Islamic rulers to deal with non-Muslim subjects in their realm. It may be described as follows. In an Islamic state, the Word of God (The Quran) and the Acts of Muhammad (The Hadits) lay down the rules—sacred as well as secular—for all people and for all time. These are binding on believers as well as non-believers. This may appear strange until one recognizes that the ultimate goal of Islam is to bring the whole world under its sway. The instrument for achieving world domination is Jihad, and the legal code for ruling the Islamic lands (Dar ul-Islam) is the Sharia— loosely translated as the Islamic legal canon. The Sharia treats some non-Muslims living in Dar ul-Islam as dhimmis (‘protected flock’), whereby they are granted limited protection as second-class citizens under debilitating conditions. The Egypt-born Bat Ye’or has made a detailed study of the state of the Jews and Christians as Dhimmis, and the peculiar ‘Dhimmi Civilization’ that it gave rise to. (This may be compared to the ‘Slave Civilization’ in the United States before the Civil War.) The behavior pattern of a good part of the non-Muslim world today is explained by dhimmitude. This is particularly the case in India, where the wounds inflicted by centuries of Islamic rule on a large segment of the Indian intelligentsia and the political class have been so debilitating that they continue to live in a state of constant fear. It is the principle point of the present essay that this dhimmi state of mind continues to influence the thoughts and actions of influential leaders and poses a threat to the nation’s security. That is to say, political freedom in India has not brought about spiritual freedom: politicians and the intelligentsia still act like oppressed colonial subjects when asked to face the truth about their country’s Islamic past. This is typical dhimmitude. To comprehend this, we need to go back to the early period of Islamic conquests, which resulted in countries under non-Muslim rule (Dar ul-Harb) coming under Islamic rule (Dar ul-Islam). Recognizing that a newly conquered land is bound to have a substantial non-Muslim population, the Sharia provides for laws to govern them. They essentially become dhimmis. At first, it was meant only for ‘People of the Book’— or Jews and Christians, soon including Zoroastrians because Iran was rapidly conquered by the Arabs. Somewhat later, when Islamic rule came to parts of India, Hindus were given grudging recognition as dhimmis though, as idolaters, they were not entitled to it. But the expediencies of politics and governance forced Islamic rulers of India to bend the rules of the Sharia against the blandishments of the clergy. This brings up an interesting issue: the idolatrous Hindus whose choice under Sharia was limited to ‘Islam or death,’ were much more successful in resisting the onslaught of Islam than the ‘protected’ Jews and Christians. Even the Zoroastrians of Persia, then a great empire ruled by the Sassanids, had to migrate to Hindu India to keep their faith alive. Hindus and Hinduism proved much more resilient than these ‘Religions of the Book’ and their adherents. Hindus never stopped fighting the imposition of Islam and finally defeated it though at great cost in terms of both land and people. It is a battle that still rages. It accounts also for the extraordinary hatred of Hindu India borne by Muslim ‘leaders’ in India and Pakistan— for it is a living reminder of Islam’s failure. Hindutva is a manifestation of the same phenomenon, driven by the same spirit that drove Vijayanagara, Shivaji and Guru Govind Singh. All this has left an indelible mark on the psyche of the Indian intelligentsia, especially the media. This dhimmitude, which is rooted in fear of Muslim violence, is what is really behind much of the secularist attitudes and posturing. It is this dhimmi state of mind that makes secularist ‘leaders’ engage in purely communal activities, and granting concessions in the name of secularism. Some examples help bring this out. Last year alone 125 crore rupees were given to Haj pilgrims. This is a consequence of the Haj Bill introduced in 1959 by the ‘secular’ Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. What is no less scandalous is the diversion of funds from Hindu temples to mosques, brought to light by Sri Sri Ravishankar of The Art of Living Center. In the state of Karnataka Hindu temples generate Rs 40 crores. The government gives them back only 50 lakhs. The mosques on the other hand generate only about 50 lakhs, but get Rs 8 crores from the government! This means the government is in effect taking money from temples and diverting it to mosques and madrasas. This is in spite of the fact that Karnataka has no major pilgrimage centers. The diversion of funds from temples to mosques, madrasas and waqf boards is much greater in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, which have major temples like those at Tirupati and Guruvayoor. This is voluntary dhimmitude, for the Muslims never demanded any such largesse. Here is another example. When some Hindu groups objected to M.F. Husain for painting Hindu goddesses in the nude, the secular intellectuals including the media defended his ‘artistic freedom’ do as he wished. But in 2002, a newspaper office in Bangalore was vandalized by a Muslim mob for publishing a perfectly innocent cartoon of Prophet Muhammad in its children’s section. And the newspaper apologized to the attackers. Imagine the victim apologizing to the assailants! Other papers in Bangalore—and at other places—have also apologized on similar occasions. So ‘artistic freedom’ means freedom to offend Hindu sensibilities only! This also is nothing but a manifestation of dhimmitude. This brand of ‘dhimmi secularism’ not only distorts the truth, but also rationalizes cowardly behavior as the following example shows. Some years back the ‘secularists’ turned the killing of the Christian missionary Graham Staines and his sons into a national and international affair by blaming Hindu organizations. In 2002, a Christian youth Paul Raj and his Muslim wife Sameena were brutally murdered by the girl’s family because he did not convert to Islam. There was no public denunciation of this act of savagery either by the secularist politicians, the media or even Church officials. The Church officials would not even go near their orphaned child. It was finally adopted by a Hindu NRI family, which arranged for its care and upbringing. The same Church officials held public meetings and loudly denounced Hindu organizations, without any evidence, when a few windows in a church in Mysore were smashed by hooligans. Dhimmitude in the Christian world Dhimmitude can lead to absurdities as when a leading Indian politician attributed the advaita propounded by Sri Shankaracharya to Koranic inspiration! Even this pales into insignificance when compared to the behavior of religious leaders in the West. Pope John Paul II, during his visit to Egypt and Jerusalem, respectfully attended Muslim service without saying a word about the horrors inflicted on Coptic Christians. Likewise in India, he took the Indian Government to task for mainly imaginary atrocities against Christian minorities, while maintaining a stony silence over the daily massacre of Christians in Islamic countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. This was taken a sordid step further by Church ‘leaders’ in India when they colluded with Muslim fundamentalist organizations like the Pakistan-based Deen-dar-Anjuman in engineering Church bombings with the sole purpose of discrediting the Indian Government. They seem driven by their hatred of the ‘heathen’ Hinduism as much as their Western counterparts by historic anti-Judaism. This has made them go on a propaganda spree in the West, denouncing Hinduism and the Indian Government, and inviting the US and the European Union to pressure India to put an end to Hindu nationalist movements. This is compounded by the growth of an extraordinary state of mind in a section of the Christian community in India. This group, made up mainly of followers of some American evangelical denominations (like Jehova’s Witnesses) but not limited to them believes that after defeating Iraq the United States will attack India and impose Christian rule. This fantastic belief appears to be part of the teachings of these religious groups founded on apocalyptic visions. This neurosis seems to be heightened by the rise of Hindutva, which it sees as the handiwork of anti-Christs who have risen just before the Second Coming of Christ. This too lies at the center of their insane belief system. This indicates that Christian organizations, beleaguered by declining fortunes in the ‘Christian’ West, are prepared to go to any length just to survive. The Church lives in constant fear of losing Rome to Islam as it lost Jerusalem to the Arabs in the first millennium and Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in the second. This existential fear is not helped by the presence of Islamic armies in Kosovo, a hundred miles from Trieste on the Italian border, aided and abetted by NATO and the US with their lopsided priorities. In the long run, this dhimmi state of mind poses a greater threat to the world than the Islamic warriors. And as a state of mind rather than anything physical (like Jihad), it is also harder to combat. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, who has gained wealth and position beyond her wildest dreams is close to Christian organizations, especially the Vatican with their apocalyptic fears. It is natural that she should see the growth of Hindutva in the same light as they, as a threat to her comfortable position. She has an awkward choice: either turn herself and her party towards true nationalism and risk the wrath of the Jihadis—real or imagined—or keep appeasing them in the hope she and her family can continue enjoying her wealth and position. One may conclude that dhimmitude has brought about such a state of mind that survival must take precedence over national security. (It is not surprising that such a person should feel hostility towards a nationalist like Veer Savarkar.) This dilemma is the one facing the ‘secularist’ elite also. They too fear the rising Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) as a threat to this cozy world. These are not people who can defend the nation against enemies. Conclusion: “Encirclement from within” All told, Bat Ye’or’s concept of dhimmitude is an inspired insight that sheds light on how whole communities and even nations may be manipulated by fear and greed. Or as Brigadier Malik of Pakistan put in his seminal The Quranic Concept of War (sponsored by General Zia ul Haq, the Founding Father of Talibanism): “Once a condition of terror into the opponent’s heart is obtained, hardly anything is left to be achieved… Terror is not a means of imposing decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him.” Dhimmitude is nothing but negationist accommodation rooted in fear. This is what is behind appeasement and fear of Hindutva. India is still under the spell cast by two ghosts from her imperialist past. One is Macalayism imposed by European imperialism and the other dhimmitude forced by Islamic rule. The latter is proving to be far more lasting and debilitating to the national psyche. The growth of Hindutva has brought together the remnants of these two defunct imperialisms. As long as these ghosts keep their hold on the people and the institutions of India, the country, though politically free cannot be spiritually free. And as long as dhimmitude is seen to work, the Muslims, their leadership in particular, will continue to harbor imperial visions. They will see every move towards equality and every national movement as a threat to their privileged positions. This is exactly the fear that haunts the ‘secularist’ establishment— the intelligentsia and the politicians. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that they should pose a threat to the national interests, especially national security. Their main agenda is the suppression of the national aspirations of the people of India, which they see as threatening their privileged existence. To save themselves they are prepared to be hospitable to anti-national elements— by taking up their cause in the media and the political arena. Being an entrenched state of mind rather than a foreign army, this “encirclement from within” poses a greater threat to national security than any encirclement of India from outside the borders. Defeating this is the greatest challenge before the nation. Arise, Awake, and be Vigilant @ http://vivekajyoti.blogspot.com/2006/01/contributing-our-bit-to-awaken-unite.html 000000000
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