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In the Name of Defending Islam –II: How Radical Muslims Play Victim

In the Name of Defending Islam –II: How Radical Muslims Play Victim

Having understood how the radical Muslim psyche works, we now proceed towards a much more tragic and serious problem. Not only is the radical Muslim the aggressor in all the riots that take place in India and the world, he also manages to portray himself as the victim, and miraculously the international media also portrays him as a victim.

In a classic inversion of meanings, the victim becomes the oppressor, the oppressor becomes the victim. Offense is called defense and the defender is shown as the aggressor.

OPPRESSORS BECOME VICTIMS

A concerted effort in the global media is always made to absolve Islam or even Islamism of all guilt. But whenever a major terrorist attack takes place, it becomes a little harder to hide the inspiration of the act. It is then that the myth of the moderate Muslim comes in handy. It is immediately claimed that the ‘ghastly act of terror’ is a work of a few radicalized individuals ‘who have nothing to do with Islam’.

It is claimed that ‘terror has no religion’ and that there are a thousand reasons from poverty to social unrest behind the act of the terrorists, but ideological indoctrination based on fundamentalist Islam is not one of them! It is not only vehemently denied but outrightly rejected that radical Islam has anything to do with terrorism. That there are ample proofs that the Quran contains some problematic verses (The Quran: See Note 1) and that many verses of the Hadis directly incite acts of terror against non-Muslims is a fact which is completely lost on these terror apologists.

If the assertion of the Muslims that Islamism is not guilty of inspiring the acts of terror is true, and if some non-Muslims do insist on attaching the guilt to Islamism, then it follows that the non-Muslims are prejudiced against Islam and Muslims. From here it is a short leap to claim that it is actually the Muslims who are the victims. Conversely, the non-Muslim society, which is the victim of terrorism, becomes the oppressor.

India is far from the only place in which this classic inversion of blame has been played. Britain is an all too familiar sufferer in this inversion of blame. As Melanie Phillips says about the London Terror attacks, 2005:

“From such nonsense, it was but a short step to saying that those who did point out that the roots of such terrorism lay in Islamist ideology, and therefore expected the Muslim community to do something about it, were guilty of prejudice. Accordingly Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, was quick to say that ‘the real victim of these bombings is the Muslim community of the UK’. And if the Muslim community was the real victim, then it followed that the British, far from being the targets of terrorism, were actually to blame for causing it by supporting the war in Iraq. This moral inversion was then turned into a threat that unless the British changed their foreign policy they could expect more of the same.” (Phillips 135)

Thus, in a shocking spectacle seen all over the world, after every Islamic terrorist attack, the political leaders, the media and most public intellectuals rush to warn the world against Islamophobia, and hereby also declaring that they are not Islamophobic. In a horrible inversion of sympathies, the society which has lost its members is instantly instructed ‘not to hate Islam and Muslims’. Even the slightest voice of protest against the ideology which clearly inspired the terrorist act invites swear words such as neo-Nazis, fascists, racists, etc.

In the recent Delhi riots too, we saw how the community that had been raising Islamist and openly racist and anti-Hindu slogans for months was cast as an abject victim. And, the community which had been extremely peacefully tolerating the rioting,destruction of billions worth of property and disruption of public life all over the country was immediately cast as the genocidal oppressor as soon as it started to retaliate for the Delhi attacks. The inversion of roles and sympathies was working very well here.

DEFENSE IS OFFENSE

The liberals who make appeals after every Islamic terrorist attack to pay attention to the moderate Muslims are mistaken too. In the Islamic law, it is permissible for any Muslim to wage Jihad of every kind against anyone who seems to be working against the interests of Islam. Since Muslims regard all land as legal tender of Muslims, every non-Muslim, just by the sheer act of living, is in direct transgression of the Islamic law.

Furthering Islam is a pious act for Muslims, and any non-Muslims who come in the way are fair game for Jihad. The moderate Muslim does not at all differ from the extremist Muslim. He may not pick up arms himself in usual conditions but he supports all the ideological principles of the extremist Muslim. Calling them moderate Muslims would be contradiction in terms (Saxena). Time and again some Muslim organization or public intellectual issues a token ‘opposition to killing others’. However, any guilt associated with Islamic ideology is vehemently frowned upon.

In one such case in 2005, the British Muslim Forum issued a fatwa against terrorism. It proclaimed that Islam forbids acts of terror against innocents. However, the definition of ‘innocents’ can be easily distorted. After condemning the terrorist act, the writers of the tract immediately say that:

“That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land shall be regarded as having killed all mankind…. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.” (Phillips 138)

‘Villainy’ is a loose word and anything can be defined as villainy from a different perspective. Once someone is defined as villain he loses the status of being ‘innocent’. And anyone who is not innocent is a valid victim of Jihad. In this way, anyone can be declared of as a villain and working against the interests of Islam and Muslims, and thus Jihad, which is basically and fundamentally an offense against the victim society can be termed as ‘defending Islam’. This happens all over the world, but with a frightening regularity in India.

India has been tolerating illegal immigration of Bangladeshi Muslims in the past few decades. These illegal immigrants have destabilized the entire country and regions, altering the demographic and socio-political balance of many states like Assam and Bengal. Radical Muslims thought of this as a legitimate way to further Islam. The CAA threatens to thwart these designs of the Islamization of India and hence the great ire of radical Muslims.

The angered Muslim community destroyed national property all over India. The riots started from Assam and Bengal where thousands of crores worth of public property was destroyed. The fire then spread to various other parts of India and finally reached Delhi. In the anti-CAA protests, slogans such as ‘Hinduon se Azaadi’, ‘Kaafiron se Azaadi’, ‘Chicken neck kaat do’, ‘Fainsla sadakon par hoga’ were considered as peaceful civilian protests (Yaajnaseni). And the call by Hindus to end blockade and violence was termed as oppressing dissent.

During the Partition of India, Muslims demanded a separate state. They got it. But then the Muslims who fell into the Indian part, who were most vociferous in demanding Pakistan, were the ones who stayed in India. Meanwhile, in Pakistan and Bangladesh, a systematic ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Hindus kept taking place. In the last hundred years, Pakistan reduced its Hindu population from 15.93% to 1.84%. While Bangladesh reduced its Hindu population from 33.93% to 8%. In Bangladesh, which is considered a peaceful country, one of the greatest genocides to have ever taken place in peace times, the genocide of Bangladeshi Hindus, took place. Bangladesh and Pakistan in particular and radical Islam in general in this case were guilty of genocide (Bajaj).

While the cleansing of the Hindus in these two countries kept taking place, another sinister game of demographic invasion was taking place. Bangladesh was siphoning off its Muslim population all over India and particularly in the neighboring states of Assam and Bengal. As a result, the demography of India was also getting tilted towards Islam in a major way with many parliamentary constituencies forever becoming Islamic in nature. This dual game of genocide of Hindus in Bangladesh and illegal Muslim infiltration in India is aimed at the complete Islamization of India and absolute destruction of India.

The left-leaning anti-Hindu Congress governments of India kept silent over this and kept encouraging the agenda of radical Islam. The Narendra Modi led BJP government in 2019, for the first time attempted with CAA and proposed NRC to rectify this monumental mistake of India’s leaders. They wanted to recognize the ongoing genocide of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh and on the other hand stem the tide of illegal Bangladeshi Muslims in India. In these acts, India was essentially defending itself against the onslaught of radical Islam.

Instead of blaming radical Islam or Bangladesh for the genocide of Hindus, the liberal community of the world instead blames India, the BJP, and the entire Hindu community. Islam is clearly the aggressor in this; and the Hindu society and Hinduism the victim. And yet in the rabid, anti-Hindu, racist and colonial narrative that was spun globally about the Delhi riots, the Hindus were depicted as nothing but monsters and Muslims as nothing but hapless victims. Once again, a diabolical inversion of meanings and words was practiced.

BONDAGE IS FREEDOM

In the anti-Hindu protests against the CAA, the alliance of the Left and radical Islam was all too clearly visible. Openly Islamist anti-Hindu agendas were being aired in the name of ‘azaadi’, ‘freedom’, ‘peace’. For example, burqa was shown as a symbol of freedom of choice for the Muslim woman. It is extremely simple to see that the burqa is an obvious sign of oppression and subjugation of women in an ultra-religious patriarchy which does not just consider women inferior to men, but actively institutionalizes misogyny by believing that a woman without burqa is an active incitement for lust in men.

Even then, the burqa was and is produced as an argument in favor of ‘freedom’ and ‘freedom of choice’. The fact that it actually hides a woman and thus cannot fundamentally be in favor of freedom is lost upon those who argue in its favor. The fact that it being compulsory in Islam makes it fundamentally against freedom of choice is also lost upon them. In another classical case of inversion of meanings, bondage becomes freedom!

On the other hand, the Hindu society has come out of the purdah completely, which itself was an Islamic influence on it. In spite of the fact that the Hindu society has actively worked against the purdah and has now largely removed it from public is not enough to characterize it as a free society. And thus, in this dystopian present, it is the Hindu side which is characterized by liberals as the side which oppresses women and subjugates them.

But things weren’t confined to this in the anti-Hindu protests against the CAA.

The CAA Act gives speedy citizenship to the victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the neighboring Islamic states of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It does not at all affect Indian citizens: Muslims or otherwise. This fact was very clear from the beginning and yet the Muslims were incited to riot by the extremists in their midst and by left-liberals in general. Riots started in Bengal and Assam and continued for months until the anti-Hindu massacre around the end of February 2020. In the meanwhile, billions of worth of property was destroyed. Many were killed. And, openly racist and anti-Hindu slogans were raised against the Hindus. None of this was ever deemed ‘provocative’ or ‘hate speech’.

On 23rd February, Kapil Mishra, in strong words, warned the Shaheen Bagh squatters to vacate the premises and let normal life resume. No mention of religion or religious community was made. But this was considered ‘hate speech’. And, international as well as national media considered the Kapil Mishra speech as the starting point of the riots, ignoring every other piece of evidence. As Melanie Phillips says: “…every act of defence against this Islamic aggression is therefore reconceptualised as an attack on Islam.”

STEPS TO ATTACK AND THEN PLAY VICTIM: INVERSION OF MEANING

It is a classic case of inversion and playing victim. This is the chronology of how it goes:

  • First, start agitation on something absolutely without any provocation. The motive is purely aggressive. The goal is to claim new lands and new grounds for Islam.
  • Second, keep upping the aggression and engage in massive unprovoked violence, until someone from the victim side retaliates.
  • Third, as soon as the retaliation happens, no matter how insignificant it is, make a huge uproar about it and immediately start playing victim.
  • Fourth, increase the aggression and violence manifold and make sure that in the process, radical Islam gets some irreversible gains. The non-Muslim side is tired of all the violence and aggression, considering what is lost is lot, and is ready to accept the new status quo.
  • Fifth, lay low for some time and then start the cycle again, and thus, bit by bit turning Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam.

Thus, it comes full circle, the vicious cycle of Islamization. Attack is projected as defense and vice-versa and thus bit by bit, more and more regions are Islamized forever. Pakistan and Bangladesh were lost in the Partition. The genocide in Pakistan of the Hindu community is virtually complete and is about to be completed in Bangladesh. Then even inside India, many regions have been Islamized. Kashmir is another region within India that was Islamized. The ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kashmiri Hindus, which was as great a crime as the Holocaust, not only goes unnoticed in the West and in international intellectual circles, the guilt is actually laid upon India, which is trying to defend itself from Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and the rest of India.

Many other states like West Bengal and Kerala are on the verge of becoming another Kashmir. A slow ethnic cleansing of Hindus is underway in both of these states as well as many other states like Assam. Despite all these facts, all the media attention is focused on the ‘transgressions’ of Indian military in Kashmir. All the evidence in the world that Pakistan is virtually a terrorist state, that it not only encourages but sustains Islamic terrorism in Kashmir and India, that it openly engages in anti-Hindu racism, and that it has ethnically cleansed Pakistan of Hindus, is not enough to implicate radical Islam as the culprit here. But the sole act of self-defense in Kashmir on India’s part is taken as the final evidence of India’s status as the perpetrator of brutality and that of Muslims as perpetual victims. India is not alone in receiving this treatment. Melanie Phillips writes about Britain:

“This message preached by such religious leaders, that Britain and America are engaged in a war on Islam rather than a defense of their society against attack, is a potent incitement to terror by whipping up a hysteria that Muslims are under attack from the West. So any attempt by the West to defend itself against terror becomes a recruiting sergeant for that terror. The more atrocities committed against the West, the more the West tries to defend itself; and the more it does so, the more hysteria rises among Muslims that they are under attack, and the more they are thus incited to hatred and to terrorism. The circle is completed by British fellow travelers who promulgate the same morally inverted thinking, and thus help further incite both Muslim extremism and Western defeatism.” (Phillips 149)

In India too, this process of Islamization finds ready business partners in the left-liberal media and academia which become all-too-willing fellow travelers of radical Islamists. Shrouding their ‘extremism’ as ‘moderation’, Islamic fundamentalism as secularism, terrorism as freedom fighting and anti-Hindu racism as liberalism, they keep the majority of the world and the Hindus too in darkness and in doubt. The liberal-left of India is the smokescreen, hidden under which radical Islam furthers its agenda of complete Islamization of India.

For this, it has created a new vocabulary of inverted meanings, and in this Orwellian inversion of meanings, it is India and its freedom which stand to lose all, and it is radical Islam which stands to gain the most. In order to defeat this design aimed at the destruction of freedom, humanity and Hinduism, this unholy alliance of the left and radical Islam has to be broken, this inversion of meanings has to be exposed and the true meanings of words have to be accepted and propagated. Only then the most nefarious designs can be defeated.

This series of articles aims to expose the Orwellian speech of the Islamic apologists and terrorist huggers, who, in classic inversion of meanings, portray radical Islam as the victim and the non-Muslim societies, countries and religions as the perpetrators. It is a game of the absolute conversion of the entire earth into Islam. By keeping the cases isolated from each other, they help the delusion that Islam is a victim in every single case. By keeping it local, they keep playing the victim and keep defeating countries and nations one by one. This series will examine many such attempts all over the world, one by one.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

  1. Quran (Chapter 9:Verse 5), (9-28), (4-101), (9-123), (4-56), (9-23), (9-37), (5-57), (33-61), (21-98), (32-22), (48-20), (8-69), (66-9), (41-27), (41-28), (9-111), (9-68), (8-65), (5-51), (9-29), (5-14), (4-89), (9-14)
  2. Saxena, Pankaj. “Letter to a Moderate Muslim” Indiafacts. 05 February 2020.
  3. Yaajnaseni. “Delhi Riots: Here’s A List Of Hate Speeches That Were Barely Reported In The Run Up To The Violence.” Swarajya. Feb 28, 2020.
  4. Bajaj, J K., Srinivas, M D & Joshi, A P. Religious Demography of India. Centre for Policy Studies, 2011.
  5. Phillips, Melanie. Londonistan. Encounter Books, 2007.

Featured Image: DNA India

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in this article.

Pankaj Saxena

Pankaj Saxena is a scholar of History, Hindu Architecture and Literature. He has visited more than 400 sites of ancient Hindu temples and photographed the evidence. He has been writing articles, research papers and reviews in various print and online newspapers and magazines. He currently works as the Asst. Professor, Centre for Indic Studies, Indus University, Ahmedabad. He has authored three books so far. He maintains a blog at http://literaryfalcon.wordpress.com/