Mumbai violence: Reinventing the Muslim victimhood stance

[shivajithesavior]

Muslims in India and elsewhere have a right to feel concerned for their co-religionists anywhere in the world if they are targeted and discriminated against – whether in Myanmar or Assam is immaterial. But the violence in Mumbai last Saturday, where the media and the police were at the receiving end, shows that they are being taken up the garden path once again. Their leaders are creating in them a new sense of victimhood and anger that does not square with the facts.

It is easy to blame the police for being unprepared for the huge crowd that turned out, but it is the leadership of the protest organisers who must be blamed more, since they would have been even more aware of what was really going on in their mosques and bylanes in the run-up to the protest.

According to The Indian Express, a confidential report had been sent to the Mumbai Police Commissioner that he should expect “law and order problems,” especially because Muslims were being told in their mosques during Friday prayers to attend the Saturday protests. They were being pumped up on stories of atrocities on Muslims in Myanmar and Assam.

Of course, the police must be blamed for assuming that the permission given to an unregistered group to hold a prayer meeting at Azad Maidan would be a placid affair. But given the context in which the protest was being held, they were clearly underprepared. However, given also that 45 of the 50-and-odd injured in the violence were policemen, it is their extraordinary restraint that must be commended rather than just being apportioned the blame for not being adequately prepared.

Rather, it is time to throw the spotlight on the Muslim leadership for building up the anger and not doing anything to rein it in.


More than the police, no one in the Muslim community could have failed to note the misleading SMSes and MMSes doing the rounds in the run-up to the protest day.


One SMS was designed to make very Muslim in India feel like a hunted animal and angry and victimised. According to The Times of India, the SMS read thus: “Burma, Assam, Gujarat, Kashmir ke bad na jane kahan? Burma mein Musalmano ke qatl-e-aam or zulm ke khilaf Azad Maidan me Sunday ko rally hai. America me 5 Sikho ka katal hua to media or sarkar me hadkam hai, or lakhon Musalmanon ki zindagi ki koi keemat nahi. Sab ki ankhen band hai. Is SMS to Sunday se pehle Hindustan ki har Musalman or mantriyo or media tak pohchao..”.

The bashing of the media and destruction of television OB vans can be traced to this SMS message.

Look at the number of deliberate truth distortions here. The Indian media has been more than fair in reporting the Bodo-Muslim violence in Kokrajhar – in fact, it has been balanced, and did not overtly take the Bodo side even though the Bodos have as much reason to be angry as the Muslims, thanks to the influx from Bangladesh, some of them illegal immigrants. The fact that many people are infiltrators from Bangladesh is not even mentioned. Every word in the SMS is designed to feed a sense of victimhood without context.

It is easy to blame the police for being unprepared for the huge crowd that turned out, but it is the leadership of the protest organisers who must be blamed more. Reuters


As for the Myanmarese violence against the Rohingyas of the Arakan, the SMS assumes that it is somehow India’s job to take up the issue. This is why the murder in the US Gurdwara is mentioned – to show that if India can take up that issue, why not the riots in Myanmar? That many of the Rohingyas are taking shelter on the India side (some have even shifted to Hyderabad) is not seen as a reason to be grateful to this nation which has not so far discriminated against the flood of migrants from Bangladesh and even Myanmar. Would Indian Muslims be so angry if told that we are providing shelter to these victims of violence?

Then, there were the fake MMSes doing the rounds – many of them put up on social media – showing pictures that purport to show that Muslims were being slaughtered by the hundred. A Pakistani journalist-blogger – Faraz Ahmed – who is no friend of the Myanmarese, investigated these pictures and found that many of them were bogus, and possibly morphed by mischief-monger to enrage Muslims everywhere (Read Ahmed’s article, ‘Social media is lying about Burma’s Muslim cleansing,” here, and another related report here).

Ahmed’s conclusion: pictures taken during the 2010 earthquake in China, protests in Thailand and Tibetans setting themselves on fire against the Chinese atrocities in Tibet are captioned as cases of Muslims being victimised and killed. A Thai picture of teargassed protestors in 2004 is captioned “More than 1,000 people killed in Burma”

Writes Ahmed: “I do not deny the killings of Muslims in Burma – not even for a minute. I think it is horrific and I am sympathetic towards the immense loss being suffered by my Muslim brothers and sisters abroad. What I am against is being lied to. Imagine the amount of lies we are being fed through these pictures.”

The Muslim protestors who went on the rampage in Mumbai were also fed lies and half-truths by the circulation of these mischievous pictures and by their leaders.

The incendiary statement of Asaduddin Owaisi in parliament the other day, where he “warned the central government…” about a “third wave of radicalisation among Muslim youth” (read his full statement here), and another one right at the protest venue (where one speaker talked about biased media coverage) are clear examples of Muslim leaders trying to engender feelings of victimisation among Muslims.

When Owaisi said he was warning the central government about the radicalisation, he was forgetting one thing: was it not his duty to combat this radicalisation, to tell Muslims the whole truth rather than just the one he wants to convey?


It is no one’s case that Muslims are not discriminated against in India, or that they are not targeted occasionally in communal violence, but balance requires that Muslim leaders should speak the whole truth – that this is not a one-way street.


No Muslim in India is even told that Hindus in Pakistan are now being forced to consider seeking asylum in India. Owaisi, in fact, seemed to spread disinformation on the influx from Bangladesh. He told parliament: “I would say that the population of Bangladesh, when Bangladesh was created, Muslims were three crore; Hindus were three crore. As of now, Muslims in Bangladesh are 13 crore; and Hindus in Bangladesh are 1.5 crore. Sea cannot swallow so many Hindus of Bangladesh! Where have they gone? This is the question I leave it to the wisdom of Mr Advani.”

The facts: the population of Bangladesh in 1971 wasn’t divided 50:50 between Hindus and Muslims. The first census in East Pakistan after partition put the Hindu population at around 22 percent. It is now less than half the figure – below 10 percent (Read here).

So when Owaisi asks where did these Hindus go, he has a point. It is more than likely that they were among the early migrants to the north-east after 1971 along with many Muslims who entered illegally seeking better economic prospects.

But this nuance is lost, and Owaisi doesn’t even pause to reflect on the implications of what he said: why did so many more Hindus than Muslims leave Bangladesh, assuming that is the case?

He should also read Derek O Brien’s piece in India Today. He tells a tale where his extended Anglo-Indian family was split asunder after partition: one wing was in Pakistan, and another in Kolkata. In 1984, his brother visited the Pakistani branch of the family and found that most of them had converted to Islam.

His conclusion: “Most of my father’s generation and all of the next generation – my second cousins – had converted to Islam. The pressure had been too much. Being a minority in Pakistan was tough business.”

Then he reflects on being an Anglo-Indian in this country. “I thought of our life in India, the freedom to go to church, the freedom to practice my faith, the freedom that my country gave its minorities. I’ve never felt prouder of being an Indian.”


India’s Muslim leadership has a responsibility to highlight the grievances of their community, but it has an even greater responsibility to speak the truth about how much better it is to live in a secular state, despite the warts.


Mumbai violence: Reinventing the Muslim victimhood stance | Firstpost

 

[ishaqzaade]

“Burma, Assam, Gujarat, Kashmir ke bad na jane kahan? Burma mein Musalmano ke qatl-e-aam or zulm ke khilaf Azad Maidan me Sunday ko rally hai. America me 5 Sikho ka katal hua to media or sarkar me hadkam hai, or lakhon Musalmanon ki zindagi ki koi keemat nahi. Sab ki ankhen band hai."

bro same this type of comments i also read in "times of india" facebook comment section.


https://www.facebook.com/TimesofIndia

 

[Bombay Dude]

What happens when Muslims become Majority?

 

[Arav_Rana]

Most Muslims are easily brainwashed by their leader. Have you seen any muslim leader come forward against the mumbai riots ?
They just use them for their political gain with out knowing that they are making religious morons. These morons don't need good education, they don't care about what is right or wrong , they don't respect country value. They just wish to kill every one in name of Islam. For them usa, all west countries, India etc every country is evil. but funny thing is muslims are also most happy in these countries where they have right to **** in public and break any law.

and no matter in which part you go. every where you ll see same story. and that's all muslims people speak here.
Today these things are happening at small level, but what about tomorrow ?

Good muslims should come forward against these devil people or else 1 time ll come when they ll lost the right to say " every muslim is not terrorists "

 

[IZVINITE]

Its really sad how a rally which was supposed to be peaceful ended with damage to public property and left many cops badly injured. The Muslim Leaders you speak of are by and large just manipulators with a larger political agenda in mind. Its just disappointing that a religion which like every other emphasizes patience, tolerance and much more has such gullible followers who love playing victim at the drop of a hat.

 

[IZVINITE]

Double Post

 

[hussain0216]

B.S basically dont complain about any attrocity,

The article is rubbish, it says that muslims have the right to protest and then tells them not to

The assamese scum and buddists are killing our people and were supposed to throw flowers on them

Hindus are the biggest twits out if the lot they revel in muslim death and are happy muslims die in burma etc and yet they demand no response and blame leaders for highlighting the issues and deaths

 

[Manas]

Mumbai violence: Reinventing the Muslim victimhood stance

Fabulous article. Its good to read R Jagannathan and see unbiased journalists like him still left in the mainstream English media, though first post is relatively new and online only.

 

[phylumchordata]

THE REASON WHY WORLD IS AGAINST MUSLIMS...THEY ARE ASSERTIVE AND UNDIPLOMATIC...

 

[Manas]

B.S basically dont complain about any attrocity,

The article is rubbish, it says that muslims have the right to protest and then tells them not to

The assamese scum and buddists are killing our people and were supposed to throw flowers on them

Blah blah ...nobody denies the right to peaceful protest ,but that does allow for destruction of public and private properties.

The assamese scum and buddists are killing our people and were supposed to throw flowers on them

So what are you waiting for Bravo boy??Just board the London tube carrying explosives inside backpacks since nobody has killed more muslims than the Brits .
than the Brits.

THE REASON WHY WORLD IS AGAINST MUSLIMS...THEY ARE ASSERTIVE AND UNDIPLOMATIC...

Often simply lunatic in mobs.

 

[Alfa-Fighter]

B.S basically dont complain about any attrocity,

The article is rubbish, it says that muslims have the right to protest and then tells them not to

The assamese scum and buddists are killing our people and were supposed to throw flowers on them

Hindus are the biggest twits out if the lot they revel in muslim death and are happy muslims die in burma etc and yet they demand no response and blame leaders for highlighting the issues and deaths

Where were you muslims when muslims killing innocent African non muslims in dafur, where were you people when muslims terrorist kills in African Christians , do European stage protest for these and destroy muslims property in europe ? no , why you people crib into other country internal affairs , why don't you mind your own county business?

 

[phylumchordata]

Often simply lunatic in mobs.[/QUOTE]

 

[ajtr]

Perpetuate a myth of Islamic innocence
The Dangers of Legitimizing Muslim Grievances

There is no surer path to Muslim violence than through the legitimization of Muslim grievance. And once you accept the legitimacy of the grievance, then you are also bound to accept the legitimacy of the violence that follows.

Violence begins with grievance. Grievance is the pretext for violence and the narrative for the violence. Liberals make a fetish of separating the grievance from the violence, emphasizing constructive means of resolving the grievance. But what do you do when the grievance and the violence are inseparable?



Grievance is the stories that Muslims tell themselves to justify their violence. To explain why they kill children and why they murder the innocent. The list of grievances is an endless as the violence. Every act of violence carries its own narrative. The endless Muslim conflicts throughout the world all carry their burden of history. But it isn’t a history that can be resolved with a tolerance session.

Muslim grievances are the frustration of conquerors, the broken teeth of predators who weren’t allowed to feed on the world until their stomachs burst. All the lands they couldn’t conqueror, the peoples who rebelled against their rule, the inferior civilizations that pushed them back and drove them off. The swine who build skyscrapers and enjoy the fine things in life.

The civil rights model of social conflict resolution accepts grievances as legitimate and then tries to ‘heal’ through them through social justice. And when that model is applied to Muslims, it turns into empty appeasement because the conflicts at the heart of Muslim violence cannot be resolved through integration or representation. Applying the word “justice” in any form to a conflict involving Muslims is wasted ink.



The fundamental Muslim grievance is that they are not in power
The problem begins with a clash of definitions. To a citizen of a secular Western state, “injustice” means a lack of representation. To a Muslim, “injustice” means a lack of Islamic jurisprudence. A Non-Muslim state is always unjust simply because it is not ruled by Islamic law.

The fundamental Muslim grievance is that they are not in power, not just in Israel where the world has accepted their demand to be in power as a wholly moral and legitimate demand, or throughout the Muslim world where Western governments have helped bring the Islamists to power with bombs and political pressure. The fundamental grievance is that they are not in power… everywhere.

If you believe that Islam is the fundamental law of mankind, that all mankind at one time were Muslims and that there is no true justice except through Islamic law—then it follows naturally that Muslims have been cheated of their rightful power, that they are forced to live under “atheistic” regimes and that “justice” demands that the world “revert” to Islamic rule.

It’s why the rhetoric of democracy falls notoriously flat when it comes to Islam. Muslims are not out for representation except as a preliminary stage to absolute power. They may route the guardianship of that absolute power power in various ways, through a dictator or some form of popular democracy, but these are only vehicles for the imposition of Islamic law.

The absolute power of Islamic law is justified by its origin in Allah and the unjust nature of non-Muslim law is equally proven by its lack of divine origin. If you take Islamic assumptions at face value, then this makes perfect sense. Therefore a devout Muslim cannot view a non-Muslim society as just. Equating an infidel code with Sharia is blasphemy. And so the logic of Islam dictates that Western Muslims must view themselves as oppressed.

Muslim grievances justify endless war against the real, in the name of the ideal,
Like the struggle with the left, this is a clash between the ideal and the real. Totalitarian idealists are always outraged because compared to their ideal every system is rotten, corrupt and unjust. Whether it’s the ideal of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the Guardianship of the Jurists, it all comes down to the tyranny of the ideal against the immorality of the real. The representational compromises that make the modern Republic work are anathema to people who believe that they have the perfect system which will be absolutely just… because it is perfect.

Muslim grievances justify endless war against the real, in the name of the ideal, without ever having to deal with the shortcomings of the ideal. The collectivism of the ideal disdains the individual except as a foot soldier, a martyr in bringing about the ideal. The infidels are unworthy of life because they are immersed in the grossness of the real. And the suicide bomber rejects the real for the ideal by disdaining his own life, much as he disdains the despised earthly women, but the demon virgins of paradise who represent another ideal.

The common denominator of the cartoon controversies, Muslim wars around the world and just about every other grievance, from their claim to Spain to their demand for more mosques, is an insistence on power at the expense of others. Everyone has to keep paying a price for Muslim grievance—either in rights and freedoms, or in blood.

Muslim violence is already a self-perpetuating grievance engine. If Muslims win a war, then they’re heroes. If they lose a war, then they were betrayed, undermined from within and had what was theirs stolen from them. The grudges will fester for a thousand years and touch off endless wars until they get what they want or they lose the ability to fight those wars.

The purpose of war is conquest. Islam treats Muslim conquest as a form of justice. A failed conquest is an injustice
The purpose of war is conquest. Islam treats Muslim conquest as a form of justice. A failed conquest is an injustice. Try applying social justice to a mindset like that and what you’re left with is Europe today.

Since no Muslim should ever have to live under the unjust rule of infidels, there is always a cause for war and a fifth column waiting to rise up and demand their right to rule over everyone else. And the war is endless—its origins written in blood on the pages of Islamic scripture.

Innocence is the root of grievance, the “I was minding my own business until he came up and hit me and then I had to burn his village, rape his daughters and spend a thousand years enslaving his descendants” narrative of Islam. First comes the innocence and then comes the genocide.

Legitimizing Muslim grievance means accepting their narrative of innocence
Legitimizing Muslim grievance means accepting their narrative of innocence. Their “I was minding my own business until this cartoon offended me, until I was hauled off to Gitmo for absolutely no reason, until people give me dirty looks on the street for absolutely no reason and then I just had to kill as many of them as I could” narrative.

That narrative of innocence is a lie. People are not innocent, and the conquerors and oppressors of much of the world are certainly a long way from innocent. Historical Islam was a brutal conquering ideology that fed off blood and human misery. No amount of revisionist history will make that go away and the revisionist history is a disgusting insult to the millions killed and the cultures wiped out for the greater glory of Islam.

A religion that has never stopped practicing genocide, slavery and repression as religious mandates is the worst positioned to act out the charade of innocence, to pretend that everything was fine until the Ottoman Empire fell and the British and French colonialists replaced the Muslim colonialists and gave the local minorities civil rights instead of a spiked boot in the face.

Legitimizing Islamic grievance is dangerous not only because it feeds the self-righteous violence of Muslims, but because it convinces well-meaning Westerners that maybe they have a point. Once we accept the grievance, then it becomes hard to resist the violence, except by calling for more peaceful means of resolution. And if those peaceful means of resolution fail… then the violence is justified.

The Israeli peace process is a case study of how this process operates, how the legitimization of Muslim grievance comes to justify its violence, and how its own obstruction of negotiations disproves the peaceful means of resolution, which then doubly justifies the violence.

Rejecting the grievance also rejects the violence, it prevents the narrative from getting its foot in the door, the mosquito whine that pitifully pleads even as it’s sinking its stinger into your neck. Fighting that narrative requires pulling back to see the sweep of history, the conquering armies of the Caliphs bringing slavery, destroying cultures, burning books and oppressing millions. And it requires that we see history repeating itself again.

Grievance was at the root of Mohammed’s conquests. His “I was minding my own business, preaching a totalitarian ideology that said non-Muslims are inferior dogs when someone made fun of me, so of course I had them killed and fought a war and enslaved their descendants for all time” narrative. Poor innocent me.

Muslims must believe themselves to be moral, or accept that they are mass murderers fighting wars and destroying civilizations. And they need us to accept their narrative, to view them as moral actors resisting oppression and injustice—rather than monsters spreading pain, hate and fear in formerly peaceful places. While we may not be able to prevent them from believing their lies, accepting their lies deludes us and them… and directly feeds violence.

When Americans keep repeating that Islamophobia is a major problem, Muslims treat this as an admission of guilt and a justification for violence
When Americans keep repeating that Islamophobia is a major problem, Muslims treat this as an admission of guilt and a justification for violence. When Europeans accept that freedom of speech should take a back seat to Muslim sensitivities, then Muslims hold it up as proof that they don’t really believe in freedom of speech and that those who insist on it are not following principles, but are deliberately agitating against Muslims.

Everyone who shouts “Blood for Oil”, denounces Gitmo, rants about Israeli occupation and all the rest of it is legitimizing Muslim violence, whether or not they mean to do so. And when they perpetuate a myth of Islamic innocence, they are denying Muslims the opportunity to make a moral reckoning without which they cannot improve or change.

Wars begin as stories and end as stories. The Muslims have been telling their story for a long time. And these days we’re telling their story too.

 

[Hulk]

The biggest problem is when people start believing without verifying facts. I aways take any internet content with pinch is salt. Please verify facts before you start taking them at face value. The sense of being victim is so high that pretty much any false info has many takers.

 

[harpoon]

1.5 billion Muslims in the world with 50+ countries being majority Islamic, rich in all type of minerals and deposits especially oil, control many strategic choke points like Suez Canal..yet Islam is in danger..beats he how they arrived at this logic.