WHY INDIAS MUSLIMS HAVENT RADICALIZED Though Muslims make up only 14.4 percent of India’s total population, the country maintains “the world’s second-largest Muslim population in raw numbers (roughly 176 million),” according to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center. That’s a little more than 11 percent of the world’s total Muslim population, according to another report from Pew’s Religion and Public Life Project. Despite the enormity of India’s Muslim community, one finds little mention of them in Western media reports on modern Islam. Perhaps because, in the wake of Sept. 11 and in the midst of the war on terror, the West’s chief concern with the global Muslim community has been its capacity for fostering extremism — and India’s Muslims remain largely un-radicalized. “A combination of factors explains it,” reads an editorial in The Economist. Religious intermingling has roots that run deep in India: “Islam in South Asia has a long history, over 1,000 years, but was long dominated by Sufis who integrated closely with non-Muslim Hindus, sharing many cultural practices.” The Taj Mahal, arguably the most globally recognizable structure in India, was built by the Muslim Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, in memory of Mumtaz Mahal, his beloved wife who died in childbirth. Shah Jahan was himself the son of a Muslim father and a Hindu mother, the Emperor Jahangir and his wife, the Rajput princess Taj Bibi Bilqis Makani. Back in 2009, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reported on a growing trend among Indian Muslims wherein community members refused to bury the bodies of suicide bombers. “That’s why India’s Muslims, who are the second-largest Muslim community in the world after Indonesia’s, and the one with the deepest democratic tradition, do a great service to Islam by delegitimizing suicide-murderers by refusing to bury their bodies. It won’t stop this trend overnight, but it can help over time,” he wrote. “The fact that Indian Muslims have stood up in this way is surely due, in part, to the fact that they live in, are the product of and feel empowered by a democratic and pluralistic society,” Mr. Friedman explained. “They are not intimidated by extremist religious leaders and are not afraid to speak out against religious extremism in their midst. It is why so few, if any, Indian Muslims are known to have joined Al Qaeda.” The country’s Muslim community is not a resource to be squandered — for reasons that have impact beyond India’s borders. Though, in terms of coverage, a fractional, violent minority garners most American and European headlines, India’s large and growing community of moderate Muslims should stand as evidence of Islam’s moderate, un-radicalized majority. And in a time where South Asians of all creeds are often stereotyped and discriminated against, and even killed, because of the actions of that radical few, India’s Muslims are a 180 million-strong rebuttal. - Jake Flanagin , New York Times
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 15:55:17 +0000
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