Preface
Unless you are completely blind or you’re Rahul Gandhi, you would have by now realized that India has over the last two years been the victim of a renewed and vigorous tide of Jihad. This tide has lashed in several ways, affected various spheres of our life, and it continues to go on unhindered in various parts of the nation.
But first, let’s look at some random recorded facts of the past and the present.
23 August 1929: An assault was launched on the Jewish quarter of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem (now in Israel) after Friday prayers. This attack fuelled even more violent attacks against the Jews in the subsequent days in the cities of Hebron, Safed and Haifa. A total of 135 Jews were massacred.
16 Aug 1946: The Star of India, an influential Muslim newspaper edited by Raghib Ahsan, a Muslim League MLA from Calcutta published a detailed programme for the day. The programme called for a complete hartal that targeted all spheres of society: civic, commercial and industrial except essential services. The notice proclaimed that processions would start from multiple parts of Calcutta, Howrah, Hooghly, Metiabruz and 24 Parganas, and would converge at the foot of the Ochterlony Monument (now known as Shaheed Minar) where a joint mass rally presided over by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy would be held. The Muslim League branches were advised to depute three workers in every mosque in every ward to explain the League’s action plan before Juma or Friday prayers. Special prayers were also arranged in every mosque on Friday after the Juma prayers. These prayers were aimed at seeking divine blessings to liberate Muslims from Hindu India. The notice drew divine inspiration from the Quran, emphasizing on the coincidence of this day with the holy month of Ramzaan, claiming that the planned protests were an allegory of Prophet Muhammad’s conflict with heathenism and his subsequent conquest of Mecca and establishment of the kingdom of Heaven in Arabia.
7 December 1990: On Friday morning, about 200 people gathered… at around 11 a.m. and began pelting stones at the houses of members belonging to the Hindu community, besides indulging in stabbing, looting and torching houses and shop. to quell this mob, police opened fire…resulting in the death of one person and injuries to three others. In view of the seriousness of the situation, police clamped curfew at around 12.30 p.m… By this time, nearly 15 persons had been stabbed. (The Hindu, 9 December 1990)
7 December 1990: Violence in Aligarh had started when a Friday mob coming from the mosque assaulted a policeman and snatched his rifle. ”The violence spread to other areas of town including AMU, which has always been a hotbed of communalism.” (Times of India, 12 December 1990)
2 May 2003: Eight Hindus were killed without provocation by a Muslim mob on 2 May 2003 at the Marad beach of the Kozhikode district, Kerala. A cache of swords and other sharp weapons, including blood-stained ones, as well as powerful country bombs is recovered from a mosque in the vicinity. (Rediff)
3 Dec 2011: Rioters attacked liquor stores, a massage parlor and hotels after being stirred up by fiery sermons in a predominantly Kurdish city in north Iraq, police officials said today. (The Independent)
14 Sep 2012: US braces for more violence in Muslim world after Friday prayers Sep 2012—The
Obama administration was caught by surprise by the ferocity of the Sept. 11 attack against the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed the ambassador and three other Americans. Now it is bracing for another potential eruption of violent demonstrations in parts of the Muslim world after Friday’s weekly prayers — traditionally a time of protest in the Middle East and North Africa. (Times of Israel)
16 November 2012: Fresh violence broke out at Charminar after Friday prayers when some people visited the Chilla. Police used tear gas and lathi charge to disperse the mob at charminar and Gulzar Houz area. The areas around Charminar resembled a war zone after Friday prayers following incidents of stone pelting followed by lath charge and tear gas firing by the police. At least 10 people, including a policeman, were injured in the violent incidents. (Newswala)
26 July 2013: Many Hindus were injured and 2 people were killed, including a Hindu woman who died when Muslim mobs rioted on late Friday. Friday is the day that Muslims hold congregational prayer called Jumu’ah, usually preceded by sermons. The violent clashes occurred in the Nagla Mal area of Meerut…It has been reported that the violence began when groups of local Muslims were upset that a Hindu temple was playing Hindu devotional songs (bhajans) and forced the loudspeaker to be shutoff while beating a few Hindu men in the temple. Police tried to control the violent mob and is looking for the rioters involved. (Chakra News)
9 August 2013: A 30-year-old man was killed, 15 people injured and many shops and vehicles gutted in Kishtwar town, 250 km from [Jammu], in clashes between two communities on Eid-ul-Fitr Friday. The trouble started when one of the many groups heading towards the town’s main ground to offer Eid prayers started shouting anti-India slogans.
(Hindustan Times)
What is the common strand that connects all these incidents of violence? No prizes for guessing the obvious—they all occurred on a Friday after the Juma (Friday) prayers. Now, prayer is supposed to give you peace of mind, it’s supposed elevate you from base passions such as anger, cruelty, and lust. The aforementioned incidents seem to demonstrate just the opposite. Which makes us wonder what is the exact nature of this prayer which turns people violent and murderous. Indeed, I’m not alone in asking this question.
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A commentator in the 1990s, one Mr. Brelvi questioned in the Patriot on 21 December 1990: “Why does communal trouble start on Fridays after jama prayers, as in Aligarh, Hyderabad and elsewhere? How can the police succeed in flushing out the illegal arms and check the attackers without being posted on the troubled spot? Why is it that illegal arms are mostly recovered from minority areas?”
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Rajeev Srinivasan too raises the same questions albeit in a different fashion: “almost all Muslim-initiated riots in India take place on Fridays, after the faithful have heard sermons in the local mosque. A cache of swords and other sharp weapons, including blood-stained ones, as well as powerful country bombs is recovered from a mosque in the vicinity.”
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Most recently, Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas GOP governor, Fox News and radio talk-show host to his great detriment spake thus: “…could someone explain to me why it is that we tiptoe around a religion that promotes the most murderous mayhem around the planet on their so-called holiest days?…if you’ve kept up with the Middle East, you know that the most likely time to have an uprising of rock throwing and rioting comes on the day of prayer, on Friday. So the Muslims will go to their mosque and they will have their day of prayer and they’ll come out of there like uncorked animals throwing rocks and burning cars….the most likely times for them to erupt in some type of terrorist activity, violence, storming of an embassy, is on their holy days…”
And guess what China does to prevent such occurrences?
Uighur (Muslims) in Xinjiang are subject to a number of restrictions on worship, including a ban on anyone under 18 attending a mosque. The government also controls the appointment of imams.
This of course is a small sample. For a more detailed account of how China has so far managed to contain Islamism and how it deals with the Friday Problem, read this.
Jihad in Kishtwar
Let’s begin with the latest first. What is happening in Kishtwar even as we speak. The first thing is to call it by its proper name. What’s happening in Kishtwar is not riots or clashes. It is just one more location where the renewed Jihad against India is being carried out. Of course, the media won’t tell you this because, well, since when has the media spoken the truth? Kishtwar is the extension of what happened in the Kashmir Valley in the late ’80s, which spilled over well into the 90s. In other words, this is the beginning of perhaps another bout of ethnic cleansing of Hindus. Let’s hear it in the words of the Hindu businessmen in Kishtwar:
Few members of the minority community joined by the traders in Kishtwar today threatened to migrate if the state government did not take steps to provide them with adequate security and fully compensate their losses during violence on August 9….
the president Kishtwar Traders Association Rakesh Gupta said, “We’ll have no option but to move out of this place if the state government does not take serious steps to provide security and pay compensation to us for the losses suffered by us in the communal clashes which broke out in the town on Eid…
If the government fails to fulfill our demands, we will migrate from Kishtwar. We have been facing such attacks repeatedly. Such clashes are not a new thing for us. We have faced similar situation in 1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008, but they were of a lesser magnitude…
What too many people don’t know is the fact that the term minority is used in Jammu and Kashmir for Hindus. Indeed, we have a couple of clues that the call to wage this bout of Jihad came well in advance, that the attack against Hindus was preplanned. Here is the ex-Home Minister Kitchloo confessing the truth after he was forced to resign from his post and in the wake of the severe battering he received all over the country:
Former Jammu & Kashmir minister of state for home Sajjad Ahmed Kitchloo on Tuesday said the communal riots in Kishtwar on Eid had been planned over the past two months… “It (the riots) was most certainly a pre-planned incident. Everything was being planned for the last almost two months by some elements who wanted to destroy the peace and harmony in the area.”
Kitchloo told The Indian Express in an interview.
The fact that there’s more sinister stuff than meets the eye is also revealed in the suave and sophisticated Omar Abdullah’s Stalinist behaviour in the wake of the riots. First, he did nothing to prevent the riots despite having sufficient advance information. And then he allowed the violence to reach sickening proportions and then stopped no less than the leader of the Rajya Sabha from visiting the place. As Arun Jaitley rightly remarked, J&K is not Omar’s personal fiefdom although he has proved that he is indeed, treating it like one. So who exactly is Omar Abdullah protecting and why? In fact, Omar’s anxiety was visible when he bizarrely brought up the Gujarat riots issue even as his own backyard had turned into a battle zone. Is this how a responsible Chief Minister reacts to a deadly situation where Hindus in his state are getting butchered? Even assuming Modi apologized for the 2002 riots, would that stop the rampaging Jihad-mongers in Kishtwar?
Omar might be playing vote bank politics but as far as the Jihad-instigators are concerned, it’s just another golden chance to extend Dar ul Islam by just another inch, and as we’ve seen over the last 65 years, the lambs that are slaughtered at the altar of this politics always happen to be Hindus. Indeed, a very well-read and widely travelled Kashmiri friend of mine remarked wistfully, recalling how he, like the lakhs of Kashmiri Pandits, was forced out of his own home:
Moslems forced us to leave for good was also Eid day after Ramazan. Yes, 27th April 1990. The day we ceased to have any home in Secular India.
And he said this is what the Hindus of Kishtwar are confronted with today. Indeed, when the whole Amarnath yatra controversy erupted, it should’ve been clear to people that the Jihadis had won yet another victory.
It is the same sickening story again and again and again and again and again. It can start innocuously like an altercation in the football or cricket field and turn into a riot against Hindus. Or it can start with some “grievance” against the Indian armed forces and escalate wildly out of control. Or like in this case, it can be meticulously planned, and on a Friday, after the battle-ready Jihad enthusiasts are sufficiently prepped up by all kinds of divine sermons and let loose. Recall the stone pelting in 2010. When it seemed that the riots had died down, September happened. The Koran was burnt in the US and then there was the commemoration of the September 11 attacks by the Faithful. The result? A Koran burnt in faraway US, and the Jihad in Kashmir intensified. A Christian missionary school, and several Government buildings were burnt down. In Poonch, a gas cylinder was exploded in the SDM’s office, the SDPO, the Forest, and the BDO buildings were destroyed. This is not to mention the innumerable vehicles that were destroyed. And two common themes underlying such exemplary acts: demand for separatism, and an open display of Pakistani flags. Oh, Pakistani flags were also proudly displayed in Kishtwar, a fact that our media takes pains to hide.
Jihadi-loving Indian Media
But of course, the media is only too happy to black out any such inconvenient news. On the contrary, it simply just can’t get enough of the charming and sexy Omar Abdullah who gets a stud-like treatment in the TV studios. Indeed, sources in the Delhi media circles tell me that among others, Omar is the darling, especially of some of the dumb bimbettes strutting around as anchors and journalists—see even I can do “sources” journalism! So, no tough questions. Normally, a prolonged state of anarchy like the 2010 stone pelting episode would invite some tough talk shows and furious op-eds. Lucky Omar. Gets away with it every single time. Hmpfh!
Now, change the location of the stone pelting, and place it in Gujarat. I suppose nothing further needs to be said.
We understand why the media hates Narendra Modi so viscerally. He is seen by them as anti-minority. By which yardstick, Omar Abdullah too must be anti-minority: recall that the term minority is applied to Hindus in J&K. And Hindus have been at the receiving end of minority…err…majority violence for 20 years in Kashmir. Over 700 Muslims were killed in riots in Gujarat and the entire secular establishment descended on one Chief Minister. However, a few lakh Hindus were killed and/or forced out of their own homes in Kashmir, an operation so terrible and so calculated, and not a whimper from these secularists.
Indeed, Nikhil Wagle presents a stellar example of the extent their minds are twisted. Even as Hindus were getting assaulted in Kishtwar, he claimed on Twitter that J&K is normal because Hindus still go to Vaishno Devi peacefully! The absolute cruelty of this statement apart, it actually is a testimony to the unflinching devotion of Hindus who visit Vaishno Devi despite the threat of Jihad in J&K.
Of course, you can pick hundreds of such twisted secular scum but the conclusion is inescapable: the English media loves Jihadis and by extension, enables their holy war.
Continued in Part 2