francois gautier's column that was rejected

nov 2nd, 2006

you decide whether francois is telling it like it is.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: fgautier

Dear friends,

This column written for Rediff.com for which I am a regular contributor, was
refused thrice by its editors
Best
Francois Gautier

WILL ISLAM CONVERT ITSELF ?

The recent bombings of the Western Railway system in Mumbai have once again
thrown up the same question: Is it possible to dialogue with today¹s Islam ?
Does it listen to reason ? Does plain logic work ? Will it ever stop killing
innocent people in the name of God ?

Take these bombings for instance:  do they really make sense ? Here you have
a Central Government which is heavily pro-Muslim, making sure that a number
of Muslims are appointed in top posts, endeavouring to carve a sizable chunk
of reservations for Muslims, as seen in Andra Pradesh and constantly
pandering to India¹s Muslim minority. The bombings also happen in
Maharashtra, a state governed by the Congress, where many Muslims live and
work, the financial capital of India, whose prosperity benefits all,
including MuslimsŠ

The same illogical strain seems to have got hold of the Government of India,
whether it is BJP or Congress ruled. We keep hearing that those blasts, in
Delhi, Vanarasi or Mumbai, are the work of the ISI of Pakistan or
Bangladeshi extremists. But what they don¹t say is that it would be
impossible for these people to function unless they have a lot of ground
sympathy amongst local Indian Muslims. And the question has to be asked
again: why should Indian Muslims go against their own Government, which has
done so much for them since Independence ? Why should Indian Muslims target
India, a country where they have more freedom than in say Pakistan, or Saudi
Arabia ?

Every time also, the Government comes out with the same litany: ³these acts
are meant to create communal violence, be peaceful, don¹t react². Which
basically means, ³ You Hindus (who are targeted), keep quiet and get killed.
Who cares anyway². And a few months later, another blast takes the lives of
a few more innocent Hindus. But how long will the Hindus keep quiet? This is
the question that the Indian Government has to ask itself. Gujarat has paved
the way: However reprehensible these acts of mass vengeance were, they have
shown that Hindus keep quiet for a long time: they get riled at, they are
made fun of, they are despised, their women raped, men killed, children
burnt in trains and one day they blow up - and blow up badly. Riots don¹t
erupt in a few days: they are the fruit of decades, of generations even, of
suppressed anger, of frustration, of a silent majority which sees itself
more and more marginalized and taken for granted.

Yes, we do occasionally come across wonderful Muslims, open, friendly, who
have somehow preserved the knowledge that all religions are the same, that
Islam in India owes a lot to the tolerance of Indians, that Hinduism, yoga,
meditation and pranayama, are India¹s gifts to the world and can be
practiced by Muslims, Christians and Hindus alike. I have personally met
quite a few of them, within the Art Of Living Family, for example. But they
are such rarities. And even those educated Muslims, whom you can talk to,
will not go as far as criticizing the Koran. Look at Javed Akhtar¹s  poetic
tearjerker on the Bombay blasts (³As a human being, I shudder to think how
can my fellow humans do something so heinous? Are these terrorists made of
flesh and blood? Do they laugh and cry like us²?). Not once Akhtar, who has
made a favourite pastime of deriding Hindu Gurus, said that all these crimes
are committed in the name of Islam and the Koran, ³his² religion and ³his²
ScripturesŠ

So will Islam ultimately convert itself? Because the problem is not with
Muslims, but with the Koran. Will it, instead of feeling totally paranoiac,
thinking that it is under attack everywhere, whether it is Palestine,
Chechnya, Kashmir, or France, realize that it is actually Islam which is the
aggressor all over the world, that Muslims who have settled in France or
India, or the UK, and which these countries have sincerely accepted, giving
them citizenship and the same rights as any French, Indian or German
citizens, are actually biting the hand that fed them ? Will the mullahs of
Islam accept to sit down and reform the Koran, which is a perfectly
acceptable scripture for the Middle ages, when mentalities were very
different, but which today still propagates an aggressive, exclusive, and
dangerous zeal in its children?

This is what we are all hoping for. This is what most Western leaders
secretly crave for, when they go out of their way to praise and favour the
moderate Muslims of their country. This is what spiritual leaders like His
Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar are attempting, with a certain amount of
success, by speaking to Muslim leaders, fostering ties in Muslim countries
such as Iraq or Afghanistan, or reforming Kashmiri terrorists through
meditation.

Unfortunately, time is running out. Muslims in India and elsewhere in the
world do not understand is that we are slowly losing our innocence. At the
moment, Islam still benefits from the sympathy of the media, which
constantly negates Islamic fundamentalism, making a hero for instance of
the Chechen warlord Shamil Bassayev, recently killed, who organized the
gruesome massacre of hundreds of children in Beslan and a villain of
Vladimir Putin (or a hero of Sadddam Hussain and a monster of Bush) but it
is slowly losing that sympathy. Sooner or later nearly the entire world will
wage a war against Islam, from Europe to China, from the Ural to Pakistan.

There will also come a time, which is not very far, where everybody will
become wary of anything Islamic. Anyone looking slightly Muslim, in a plane,
in a train, in a shopping mall, will be looked upon suspiciously. Anybody
with a Muslim name will have problems entering any country. Those who have
Muslim friends will quietly stop seeing them or find some excuses not to
meet them. It is already happening. Muslims will cry themselves hoarse and
speak of persecution. But they will have only themselves to blame: they did
not speak up as a community when innocents all over the world were killed in
the name of their religion .

And this may be the way Islam will slowly disappear. Muslims with a little
common sense, or just maybe with a sense of survival, will start changing
their names quietly, they will stop going to the Mosque, they will send
their children to Christian or Hindu schools. Governments will clamp down so
hard on their own Muslims, there will be so many restrictions on them, that
entire families, will move out of the Muslim enclaves you find all over the
world, to resettle elsewhere. Jehadis facing certain death even if they are
not suicide bombers, will melt back in civilian life. Muslims will slowly
lose faith in the righteousness and the power of their own religion, become
atheists, or even embrace back Hinduism, as 90% of Muslims in India are
Hindu converts. It may take a few decades, a hundred years even, But Islam
will surely disappear in the alleys of history and what look now like
menacing, dangerous, foreboding force will be looked upon as just another
religion that came and passed away..

Unless Islam converts itselfŠ

François Gautier