Meet Maryam, India�s Malala

 

Recently, a 12-year-old Indian Muslim girl named Maryam won a contest by answering all the questions asked in the Bhagwad Gita. This is the first time in India�s history that a Muslim girl has broken such a record.

The news of the young Muslim girl went viral on social networking portals and sparked numerous debates on news channel. While some highlighted the politics behind it, others praised the young girl�s efforts. Maryam has set a fine example for people who divide masses using religious bigotry.

India boasts of diversity, given the existence of various religions, but within its internal system, people are bifurcated on the basis of religion. Maryam has managed to prove a point to individuals who divide people on the basis of caste, creed and colour � that racism can never be as strong as collectivism.

She has set a great example by showing how tolerance can be practised, even at such a young age. Her actions are a response to Indian political parties who are running campaigns on the lines of �Muslim-free India�. Furthermore, Maryam proved that Muslims can grasp knowledge about any religion without adapting to it and that a child has the basic knowledge to differentiate between right and wrong.

Since Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has come to power, I have not come across an �acha din� (good day) as yet � something which the honourable PM Modi spoke about and promised his people during his election campaign. My hopes were further trampled upon when the union minister, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, and BJP minister, Giriraj Singh, passed offensive and abusive comments towards Muslims. Such immature remarks by these ministers highlight Maryam�s maturity.

In India, we have witnessed how religious bigotry is being used by politicians to divide vote banks in their favour. They use religious slogans to differentiate Hindus from followers of other religions. The Gujrat genocide and the Kashmir genocide are examples of how the politicians have massacred common people for the sake of their vote banks.

If we dig into the history of it, we will find thousands of people slaughtered by these political parties for their own gains and their ministerial chairs.

In the past, attacks on Muslims were carried out by Vishva Hindu Parisah (VHP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). From campaigns such as �Love jihad� and �Ghar wapsi muhim� to forced conversions, each attack is meant to malign the image of Muslims in India and is done in order to create a split between Muslims and Hindus.

In India, Muslims have tirelessly contributed towards every sector of its formation. For instance, the early contributions made towards society, by Dr Allama Iqbal and Dr Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Kalam, have helped India develop a lot. From science to technology to Bollywood, each segment has Indian Muslims contributing to it. The contributions of Muslims have proven that India belongs to Muslims as much as it belongs to Hindus.

For some, Maryam is India�s Malala Yousafzai. Malala fought against the Taliban while this young Indian girl fought against religious bigotry. She spread the message of brotherhood and gave reason to thousands of Indians to unite under the banner of religious harmony and shed religious differences aside, which have been plaguing us since time immemorial.

Maryam has given India a new reason to build itself. We should not wait on the government to take steps or make hollow promises. Rather, we should come forward like Maryam and build a new nation which will allow Muslims to live without fear in a country they call their own.

Now is the time to eliminate discrimination based on religion, caste, creed and colour.

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Our Future as Muslims in the West - Br. Nouman Ali Khan

Why India�s Muslims are so moderate

ON SEPTEMBER 3RD Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's chief, released a video message in which he promised to "raise the flag of jihad" across South Asia. Many analysts responded with little more than a shrug. The extremist group looks increasingly desperate. Since Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, al-Qaeda�s impact has been limited. It is overshadowed by the brutal Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, which draws volunteer fighters from a wide range of countries and has said that Afghanistan and Pakistan will be brought under its yoke too. Yet the biggest reason for scepticism about al-Qaeda�s threat is that neither it, nor the IS, are likely to get support from more than a tiny handful of Muslims in India.

India�s Muslims are numerous, but moderate. Though barely 15% of the total, at some 180m they roughly number the same as Pakistan�s entire population. Many are disaffected. In the only Muslim-majority state, Kashmir, residents are embittered by years of heavy-handed rule by Indian security forces, and protests frequently erupt. Occasional terrorist attacks take place in Indian cities, blamed on a home-grown group, the Indian Mujahideen. In February 2013 a bomb attack in Hyderabad killed 16. But these attacks have been growing less frequent and less deadly, possibly because support from Pakistan has waned. Bursts of deadly religious violence, when Muslims and Hindus clash, also take place, most notably last year near a northern town, Muzaffarnagar, when at least 40 people were killed. India�s Muslims generally have reasons for some gloom: they endure lower levels of education, income, political representation or government jobs than the majority Hindus. And yet India�s Muslims, almost across the board, have remained moderate, tolerant, quick to condemn religious violence and ready to engage members of other religions. The contrast with the sectarian bloodletting, growing radicalism and deepening conservatism in Pakistan next door, for example, is striking.

A combination of factors explains it. 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. In Pakistan, decades of large-scale migration to the Gulf along with close political ties to Saudi Arabia saw harder forms of Sunni Islam adopted, notably the spread of Wahhabi and Deobandi mosques, madrassas and beliefs. By contrast many Indian Muslim migrants to the Gulf, for example from Kerala, have proved less effective at reimporting harder-line forms of Islam on a large scale. Indian madrassas appear to be under more watchful eyes of the state. It is crucial, too, that India�unlike Pakistan and many other countries with large Muslim populations�has long remained as a robust and lively democracy. A secular constitution and the electoral clout of a sizeable minority helps give Muslims in India a stake in the political system. Many are also intensely proud to be Indian, even if a few support Pakistan�s cricket team. Targeted government welfare schemes to assist "backward" Muslim groups may help too. The election this year of Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi, as prime minister has not cheered Indian Muslims. But his promise to treat the secular constitution as his "bible" helps to put a limit on anxiety. Perhaps as important, as Indian Muslims are widely dispersed around the country, they are in a small but not insignificant minority almost everywhere: that fact encourages both majority Hindus and Muslims mostly to rub along together, since extremism would prove disruptive for just about everyone.

Such moderation is obviously a boon, and prevents more communal violence. Even troubled Kashmir has for the past three years seen relative calm. A handful of Indian recruits have reportedly joined up with IS in the Middle East but because they are from a population of 180m that hardly looks significant (more worrying are reports of several young men joining the IS from increasingly hardline, Sunni-Islam Maldives). Yet moderation today is not a guarantee that extremism will not arise tomorrow in India. One additional reason at times given for India�s Muslims remaining moderate is that literacy rates and incomes have been low, leaving them relatively isolated from those global forces�such as jihadist websites and news of atrocities against Muslims in the Middle East�that help to spread rage elsewhere. Rising literacy, an ever-more urban population and growing wealth and information may yet encourage more extremist factions to emerge. Large migration flows to the Gulf might yet help to bring back more conservative Islamic beliefs and funds for Wahhabi mosques and madrassas. Similarly, if Hindu nationalists in power were to grow heavy-handed, a backlash and a rise in extremism are easy to imagine. The stability in India is a remarkable achievement. With luck, zealots and murderers such as al-Zawahiri will therefore fail in their desperate ambitions. But preserving stability will be a task for everyone.

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