[Assam] Indian Muslims viewed with suspicion - Wasington Post

[Ram Sarangapani]

This is indeed unfortunate. Most people in India feel that the ISI/LeT of
Pakistan are behind the Mumbai blasts. There may have some Indian Muslims
involved, but by and large most Indian Muslims would not perpetuate
something like this - specially when it also affects them (like Hindus in
Mumbai).

The secular fabric in India has held strong, and the antics of LeT or ISI
have not been able to derail it. The aftermath of the blasts in Mumbai is a
perfect example of Indians (Hindus & Muslims) being able to come together at
a time of need and not let the blasts affect their overall sense of
judgement.

--Ram

__________
**
*Muslims in India 'Targeted With Suspicion'
*Residents of Thriving Bombay District Describe Rising Tension in Wake of
Train Bombings


By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 14, 2006; A07

BOMBAY -- At first glance, the Nayanagar district of Bombay could be a
showcase for the rising prospects of India's long-struggling Muslim
minority. It features wide, clean streets, brightly painted high-rise
apartments and a populace that includes doctors, engineers and real estate
agents.

But in the wake of the devastating July 11 train bombings in Bombay, in
which more than 200 people were killed, residents here say they feel fingers
of suspicion and hate pointing at all Muslims, not just jobless slum youths
and bearded students from Islamic radical groups.

"We are law-abiding citizens, but the whole community is being targeted with
suspicion now," said Azimuddin, 40, a physician who with dozens of neighbors
rushed to help victims of one bombed train that had just pulled out of
Nayanagar station. "Every one of us is a question mark."

Tensions have intensified in the past week, with warnings of further
terrorist attacks in Bombay and New Delhi during India's Independence Day
celebrations Tuesday. The U.S. Embassy has warned all American citizens in
India to remain off the streets during the next week.

On top of that, the alleged bomb plot thwarted in Britain has added to the
jittery sense of vulnerability across India, with all airports and military
facilities on high alert. With most of the suspects in that case of
Pakistani descent, the Times of India newspaper Saturday portrayed India as
"truly in the arc of terror."

The cumulative impact on Muslim communities such as Nayanagar's is palpable.
In a dozen conversations, residents barely contained their anger and
bitterness as they traced a history of growing discrimination, ostracism and
violence, punctuated by Bombay's Hindu-Muslim riots of 1993 and a worse
rampage of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat state in 2002.

"Of course I'm angry. I'm 52 years old, and I grew up in a Bombay of
friendship and compassion. That's gone now," said Abdul Majid, who owns a
small construction company. "We are all against terrorism, but how are
terrorists born? If you torture people and deny them jobs and education long
enough, you create terrorists."

Government officials have noted with relief that Bombay's heterogeneous
population pulled together quickly to restore normality to the huge,
fast-paced seaside city that is home to both India's financial center and
its powerhouse Bollywood entertainment industry.

But police investigations have led to the arrests of 13 Muslim men,
including a Bombay physician and a software technician, all with alleged
links to a banned Islamic students group and some with suspected ties to the
Pakistan-based radical organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. There have been
late-night raids in a dozen Muslim communities in Bombay and unusual
security checks of Muslims traveling abroad, including several irate members
of the pampered Bollywood set.

"This Islamophobia is being imported from the West and filtering like a
poison into India's bloodstream," said Mahesh Bhatt, a Bollywood producer
who complained that when his film crew flew to Dubai for a shoot last week,
the sole Muslim, a choreographer, was singled out by police for questioning
about his passport and travel.

Police officials here declined several requests for interviews, but in
public statements and letters to newspapers last week, they insisted that
Muslims in general are not being targeted because of the bombings. They also
denied Indian press reports that the government had ordered special scrutiny
of Muslims who travel abroad, including white-collar employees of
multinational companies.

Some human rights activists in Bombay said the behavior of the police had
been largely professional and not abusive after the bombings, despite the
fact that they are under enormous pressure to solve the crimes and that most
evidence so far has pointed to militant Muslims. Officials have met with
Muslim community groups, called mohalla committees, seeking cooperation and
promising restraint.

A senior government official in New Delhi, who spoke on condition he not be
named, said it would be a grave error to tar India's 140 million Muslims
with the terrorist brush. He said that despite occasional flare-ups of
religious violence, radical groups seeking to exploit religious tensions
have failed because India's secular democracy has been able to address
Muslims' grievances and absorb them into Hindu-dominated society.

"To say that Indian Muslims are becoming terrorists, nothing could be a more
dangerous assumption," the official said. He noted that to date, no Indian
Muslims had been found to be involved in al-Qaeda. "There is a fundamental
ethos shared by the majority of Muslims and Hindus," he said. "At the end of
the day, the vast majority of both groups see through the game."

For years, however, activists have pointed out that Muslims, who make up
about 15 percent of the populace, comprise only a tiny percentage of police,
army officers, public servants and public university students. They have
long blamed systematic exclusion by the Hindu-dominated government and
society, and some have pressed for job and education quotas similar to those
reserved for other Indian minorities.

Until recently, Indian officials tended to play down the problem, while some
militant Hindu groups such as Bombay's Shiv Sena have denounced Muslims as
self-defeating, religiously insular and untrustworthy because of their roots
in Pakistan, the Muslim-ruled neighbor and rival nuclear power that broke
off from India in 1947.

Now, there are signs that the establishment is belatedly recognizing the
problem of Muslims being left behind. Outlook, a major newsweekly, ran a
cover story last week on a 15 percent literacy gap between Muslims and
non-Muslims. It described the high number of Muslim youths who quit school
and become jobless as a newly "frightening" and "ominous" phenomenon.

There is also a growing realization that globalization, which has thrust
India into a proud new era of information technology and international
business development, has beamed a different message into its long-scattered
and isolated Muslim communities. Instant access to information has raised
their awareness of conflicts from Iraq to Lebanon and increased their
identification with aggrieved Muslims elsewhere.

"It feels like the whole world is against Muslims," said one young man,
checking his BlackBerry as he headed for Friday prayers at a mosque in
Mahin, a lower-class Muslim district in Bombay where several hundred youths
were rounded up and questioned after the train bombings.

Most people interviewed said they believed the bombings were the work of
sophisticated international terrorists, not the result of homegrown, pent-up
Muslim frustrations. But as Indian media reports this week described webs of
connections between banned Indian Muslim groups, Pakistani radicals and
pan-Arab militant groups, the line suddenly seemed to blur.

A variety of Hindus said they had good personal relations with neighbors or
colleagues who are Muslim, and some said they felt confident India's secular
fabric would survive the current specter of Islamic terrorism. But others
confessed it was hard not to succumb to negative stereotypes and ill wishes
toward the Muslim minority in the wake of so much mayhem and bloodshed.

"There is fear now in the Bombay psyche," said Ashok Seth, 45, a pharmacist
who works near Nayanagar. "I am a Hindu and I sit and eat together with the
Muslims in the next shop. They are not terrorists, they are my friends. But
I'll be honest, there is a growing feeling that there is a fight in the
world between the West and Muslims. And even here, some people say it's good
if Muslims are being killed; the fewer left the better."

In the alleys of Mahin on Friday, clean-cut young men in jeans mingled with
bearded religious students in skullcaps as hundreds of Muslims headed for
the mosque. In 1993, Mahin was at the epicenter of religious rioting that
convulsed Bombay and led to a series of bombings after Hindu radicals
demolished a historic mosque.

But on July 11, as in wealthier Nayanagar, residents of this shabby district
rushed to help victims of a bombed train that exploded near Mahin station.
Everyone interviewed in the community said they condemned the train
bombings, and several said they feared such acts made it even more difficult
for Indian Muslims to achieve acceptance and success.

"Some brand this as a terror spot, but they should have seen how people came
out with bedsheets to carry the wounded and the dead," said Deepak Talwar,
46, a lawyer in Mahin. "Of course Muslims' sentiments are hurt when they see
gory images of Lebanon, but no one here wants to be a party to all that.
Islam preaches harmony, and that is the only way for us all to survive."
(c) 2006 The Washington Post Company
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