Move over, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, you are now passé. The new IBMs* are Imbeciles Baiting Muslims.
All along we were told there was never any clash of civilisations, never a war against Islam or Muslims. The Deccan Chronicle, referring in editorial to a two-decades-old clash of civilisations has in a revelation, acknowledged otherwise. The Islamic Civilization is the target. We must be grateful they refer to it as civilization!
“The (alleged) intelligentsia world over,” DC says, “now sat up and took note.” Actually, saner elements everywhere do take note at the proliferating new IBMs*: Imbeciles Baiting Muslims. A teenager beheaded a teacher. Horrifying, criminal, unacceptable. DC cites provocative (DC’s own admission) Charlie Hebdo cartoons shown to students, mentioning “best example of freedom of expression”: Oho: provocation is now freedom! We all see how standards of public discourse have fallen, but it is unusual for newspapers to show approval of that which is, mildly put, base. DC holds agents provocateur in high esteem: trigger-happy US cops shooting blacks, is acceptable. DC has no compunctions. Incredibly shameless declarations of hate closer home, against minorities… DC has no problem. Rapes no, sorry, gang rapes and murder of rape victims in UP. No problem. No politico suggesting they can be identified by their clothes… Cremation of a body, destruction of material evidence… NOT a problem: actors were not Muslims. NEET declares a Muslim its topper, and all hell breaks loose! The co-equal mark scoring girl is, rules and precedent be damned, added, glorified, awarded. Good for her, but declarative of non-secular official response.
DC cites “celebrated culture of discourse wherein any opinion whatsoever is open to scrutiny and vigorous, non-violent debate”: “any opinion whatsoever” eh? Well, then, how about an opinion the Holocaust never took place? How about 9/11 being a US-Israeli conspiracy? How about the Constitutional fraud on Muslims slowly causing exclusion, ghettoization, deprivation (recall the post: “except dogs and Muslims”?), violating every known canon of treaty obligations, of the very “human rights” DC blithely mentions? Open to discussion in our Indian intellectual climate today? No problems with that climate, apparently.
DC approves a head of state “openly calling upon immigrants rather than the existing population to integrate” with French multiculturalism. Which idiot would call on existing native population to “integrate” and with whom?! Farsighted as it is, DC thinks all the way right up to the very tip of its nose ! For DC, defamatory rubbish is “multiculturalism”. Which “culture” approves of derogatory caricatures or revered figures, prophets or not? Can DC stand for depraved culture?
DC “unequivocally stands behind Macron to uphold democratic values of freedom of expression, an activity at the heart of knowledge, freedom of conscience, human dignity and equality between men and women”. Brilliant, isn’t it? Caricaturing a prophet revered by billions is, claims DC, “freedom of expression at the heart of knowledge”. Wow! What shocks the conscience of all right thinking people of all faiths and belief-systems, is extolled as freedom of conscience! DC, wearing religious blinkers, (oof! I’m sorry, Islamophobic blinkers) “applauds Macron’s plan to draft law to fight “Islamist separatism”: not any other separatism. Separatism simpliciter is okay, if we understand DC. Only, it must not be Islamist. Islam is thus what is wrong about separatism, in fact, about anything and everything. Fair game. Open season. Are you getting the picture?
Macron’s law will (claims DC) “counter the favouring of personal laws over France’s republican values that adversely affect women’s rights”. Bloody hell: isn’t that fragment a categorical admission?! “France’s republican values that adversely affect women’s rights.” Let’s drop it, because first, as personal laws apply to only persons who subscribe to those laws, neither DC nor Macron nor Machiavelli can have anything against it…correction, they do: what they have against it is blind intolerance. Second, the “adversely affect women’s rights” part: DC, Macron and Machiavelli together shall determine what all women shall reveal (sorry, wear, as including nothing-at-all-strings) and wear (as in veils, a chhi-chhi no-no: you cannot have hayaa, sharam, modesty, damn it: it is against French republican “values”).
Fact check: let’s say you are making a movie with two lady characters. You want to project one as a positive, constructive member of society, and another as… ahem ! a lady-of-the-night. How will you clothe them? Aha! Got you, right? DC reveals (is there a pun there?)… no, determines what mothers should do, regardless of what the mothers themselves want. DC determines what mothers want is not what mothers want but that it is what others who suppress mothers want those mothers to want. You see what I mean? Why do you lock your car, your doors? To protect what you value, right? Right. DC and company would have you keep them open; else you would be violating the human rights of potential thieves.
Contrary to what DC projects, “human rights are compromised” not by liberals in the name of multiculturalism, but by alleged exponents of freedom of speech to abuse it to denigrate, defame, demonise and then destroy Islam. And DC claims to come out in support… sorry, unequivocal support: human rights, claims DC, are a universal declaration and even dates it: Paris, 1948. All of 72 years ago! Antique, what?! DC’s editorial geniuses are obviously oblivious to something that dates back not 72 but 1400 years: Prophet Mohammed’s last public address : “There is no superiority of an Arab over a non-Arab, or of a non-Arab over an Arab, and no superiority of a white person over a black person or of a black person over a white person, except on the basis of personal piety and righteousness.” But no: not acceptable: Islamic, you see ! Is the picture getting clearer now? Good.
Islam’s Holy Book declares there is no people to whom a prophet has not been sent, and demands acknowledgement of and reverence for all. Islam’s all embracing, inclusive cosmopolitanism is lost on DC: how can there be anything good about Islam?!
DC refers to “insecurities caused by globalisation” but walks around another set of insecurities: the one major insecurity, apprehension, terrifying prospect that troubles the world: the realisation that if the value-system of Islam is understood, its advantages and benefits for society as a whole taken note of, its disapproval of interest-based economy analysed with intellectual honesty, its protective cloak around women appreciated… there just might be a mass exodus towards it. What then of French (or any other) multiculturism, or any other ism? No we can’t have that: Islamic, damn you. So, make everything Islamic appear demonic, diabolical, wean away everyone from learning about Islam, paint it in abhorrent colours, draw insulating lines (a la “Crime Scene: Do Not Cross”) all around it, call it foul names, get as depraved as you can… Rule 1: anything not Islamic, is okay. Rule 2: repeat Rule 1.
For DC, caricaturing a prophet is an “essentially humanitarian cause.” DC, in India, thinks it is an “ever-growing global malaise” that Turkish Erdogan seeks to challenge “Saudi Arabia’s leadership of the Sunni world”: where on earth did you get that from, DC? DC is perturbed that alleged “leadership of the Sunni world” is sought by Turkey, and KSA should remain! Ask DC what the state of human rights is in KSA… shhh…under the carpet, quick! Few (says DC) spare a thought for women in regressive societies who risk torture and opprobrium for routine freedoms but lack a political voice. Quite right. Regressive societies. Not Islamic societies. Anti-minority rhetoric closer home is apparently irrelevant in DC’s editorial office. Too close for comfort, eh?! No human right references there.
Only a demented, sick mind would consider Hebdo cartoons and caricatures as anything but a vulgar depraved exercise of freedom of expression. DC has taken a Devil’s Counsel stance in the editorial it published. It has shamed itself, and betrayed what, beneath the superficial veneer of pursuing freedoms, it actually stands for.
IBMs at DC would do well to read what an enlightened person, Finland’s Foreign Minister, had to say about what an IBM Macron said: “I don’t understand anything anymore: when we make fun of black people, we call it racism; when we mock Jews we call it anti-Semitism; when we mock women we call it sexism… and when we mock Muslims we call it freedom of speech.”
Would DC care to show similar unequivocal support if some misguided people say things that derogate from the respect and reverence Hindus have for their revered figures? No. Why not? Because DC dares not. Why not ? Because there will be, uh…consequences. But abusing Islam is okay. The rapes and murders of rape victims that took place in northern India recently: do they reflect on Hinduism? No. Why not? Because it is not Islam, and while we can attack Islam with impunity, we dare not do that with others. Though just as hate-mongers cannot be Hindus, and actually reflect the anti-thesis of Hinduism’s principles and values, and perpetrators of atrocities cannot be Muslims, but actually reflect the antithetical perversion of Islamic principles and values, it does not strike DC’s myopic editorial staff that denigrators of revered prophets cannot be valuers of any rights or freedoms, but seek only to wrong, to gloat in smug abuse, titillate, provoke and get a response to which they can then react… enter kriyaprati-kriya, to then blame Islam !
We the victims of Machiavellian and Macronian isms understand. And we sympathise with them all, including any Devil’s Counsel. Satyameva Jayathe: India’s stand. “It is in the nature of truth to prevail, and it is in the nature of falsehood to perish”: The Qurán. So, we do not care, but do wish Islam-detractors, supportive demonstrators and Muslim-destroyers a speedy recovery.
Where vice is virtue, its folly to be fair. The kriyaandprati-kriya ruse that is time-tested in our country, must be revisited, inquired into. The hunter plays the hunted, the predator dons the masks of the prey, and reality is lost sight of that much faster when everyone wears masks of compulsion, Covid-19ian, or masks of expediency, Political. Aggression breeds reaction. Get well soon, DC. Give world peace a chance.
Jai Hind.
Shafeeq R. Mahajir is a well-known lawyer based in Hyderabad