[Reader-list] An Indian Muslim Appeals to America

[info at mysprat.org]

21-Oct-04

Dear Friend,

I am a Muslim from India. I always looked up to America to lead humanity to 
a more civilized world. Lately I feel disillusioned and disturbed. This 
piece expresses my apprehensions and, in the context of ensuing 
Presidential elections, appeals to the American people for justice. Perhaps 
you may find this worth circulating or having published as an open letter 
or otherwise.

May I also take this opportunity to thank you for your generous support and 
solidarity with the cause of Satya Satyagrah?

M Hasan Jowher
President
SPRAT 
[Society for the Promotion of Rational Thinking]
SF-8, Rajnagar Complex, 
Narayan Nagar Road, Paldi,
AHMEDABAD 380 007 India
 
Tel : 91-79-266346 55 / 66 / 77
Fax: 91-79-2661 20 49
Email: mhj at mysprat.org 
Web: www.mysprat.org 

====================================
AN OPEN LETTER TO AMERICAN FRIENDS

Dear Fellow Americans

Exporting Injustice - A Muslim Viewpoint
------------------------------------------------
Thank you America for your numerous gifts to earth. Your medicines saved 
numerous precious lives, your inventions made our life comfortable. 
American explorations from the sub-atomic to supra-galactic broadened our 
understanding of life, its origin and perhaps direction. And above all we 
thank you for proclaiming the dignity of human race and liberty and 
equality of all humans on earth. Without you this world would have been 
badly impoverished.

On this third anniversary of Nine-Eleven I join you in mourning the loss of 
innocent American lives and offer profound condolences to the bereaved. I 
want you to know that I had profusely cried with you and was angry no less. 
I too want its perpetrators punished. Along with other like criminals. 

As a curious middle class Muslim in the far off India I grew up admiring 
your heroism, sportsmanship and adventures, science and technology, 
struggles and compassion. I marveled at your fine democratic spirit and 
institutions. Although culturally very different, I instinctively aligned 
myself with your travails and lapped up your icons. For most of mankind you 
became the ultimate dreamland. 

That sadly is past. Alas! the famed American spirit, too, seems to have 
fallen prey to the vagaries of history. Your successive governments' 
foreign policies have developed utter contempt for the weak and vulnerable. 
Virtually righting the might you have adopted disturbing double standards 
conveniently overlooking stark truths. May I present another side of the 
reality?

You virtually coined the phrase Islamic Terrorism popularizing the notion 
that Muslims are by default terrorists. Undoubtedly Nine-Eleven was an act 
of terrorism. But reckon who killed more humans in history. Muslims? 
Consider the massacre of Jews in Germany, the carnage of innocents on both 
sides in the two world wars including in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Picture 
these victims: mothers feeding babies, patients inside hospitals, revelers 
in wedding processions, peasants at work in agricultural farms and workers 
in medicine factories.. killed in Sudan, Vietnam, Afghanistan and now in 
Iraq. These were about as innocent as those in WTC. The victims, not the 
killers happened to be Muslims.

You and I have squarely condemned the Palestinian suicide bombers, the 
barbaric Beslan school killers. But have you imagined how a Palestinian, 
driven out of his homeland feels when Israeli occupiers bulldoze his 
villages and destroy whole streets in "preemptive strikes" - an expression 
converting murder to statecraft? Or how the Chechens deprived of their 
right of self-determination for 300 years perceive our world?

A bomb is a bomb, whether crude or nuclear; missiles, chemical weaponry, 
armoured vehicles, gunships, communication jammers and peeping satellites.. 
are not within the reach of the Palestinians and Iraqis. Suicide bombing, 
kidnapping and throat slaughters are. If these appear barbaric please 
remember they are but minuscule, though more visible version of state 
sponsored terrorism. The American state has made this ancient human 
aggression more sophisticated and remote-managed - and hence seemingly less 
barbaric. But when American fighter aircrafts rained wholesale bombs on 
unsuspecting innocent Muslims, the rest of the world saw it as just that: 
barbaric. Mass murder using state apparatus. 

When your foreign policy pampers Muslim despots, Emirs, Sheikhs and kings - 
for your oil needs - and helps them suppress the people's struggles for 
freedom, liberty and democracy, why does your sense of democracy not 
militate? 

Would you like a Muslim ruler to impose his values upon you and your 
country and, if you disobey, be punished and called aggressors, militants, 
terrorists? Isn't your President doing just that in Iraq? In simple 
language America is aggressor and the Iraqis are fighting for their freedom 
from occupation. 

Your government has fed you on familiar diet: homeland security, chasing 
the enemy, preempting terrorism et al. But, sorry, most people believe that 
today America has more enemies than before, that despite your mighty 
arsenal you live in greater danger than ever before. Anyone who pushes 
people to suicides lives dangerously.

Haven't you somehow developed a jaundiced, self-centered world-view? 
Liberty, democracy, freedom and rule of law for yourselves at home, 
injustice, aggression for others outside? Your soldiers are liberators and 
heroes; theirs jihadis, militants, aggressors, fanatics! To know how the 
world regards your foreign policy, you don't need global referendum; the UN 
General Assembly proceedings, despite the stifling pressure exerted by your 
government through puppet regimes and leaders, suffice. How come the heirs 
to the heroes of liberty came to condone such plain indignity? 

Most of humanity sympathized with you for Nine-eleven. Even after blatant 
aggression in Iraq most people - including Muslims - distinguish the state 
from the ordinary American. By re-electing Mr Bush, however, you will be 
endorsing his policy of murder and aggression. Would you then not be liable 
to retaliation from his victims? Some don't believe America has the sole 
monopoly of murder.

We respect you because of what you gave, not for your power of killing. We 
count upon you to free earthlings of disease, deflect asteroids heading 
toward earth, not to police the earth and dictate your values on our lives. 
We want to love you, not fear. We adore those of you that show concern, 
understanding and reconciliation, not those calling for confrontation, 
destruction. If this madness continues, humanity loses, peace perishes, 
innocents fall, undoing all the good your forefathers did.

John Kerry who? I don't know. Bush I do. One is an unknown face, another 
tested evil. What right do I have to muddle in your politics? The same way 
as you have in Iraq, Korea, Iran, Libya, Indonesia.. minus the gun. 

I absolutely dislike Osama and his ilk because they are against science, 
reason, modernity, secularism. But in all fairness - like many Americans - 
I see merit in his grievances. Remember he had started on your approved 
model: clean-shaven, trousers and jackets, a degree in economics, dances in 
Beirut.. But your system let him down, denied him justice. And the Jihadis 
won. Your political extremism fanned his religious extremism. Your 
injustice made the monster you now find him.  You partnered him in 
repelling invading Soviets in Afghanistan.  He partners with the Baathis in 
fighting your invasion of Iraq!

As truth seekers can you not see the man's commitment to his cause, 
sacrifices and character? What if you catch and kill him? You will have 
unwittingly made him a martyr. Then you lose, he wins more. Instead, 
through justice and fairness deflect his argument, his case. Reach out, as 
you once did, with truth, compassion, equality and thereby spread the famed 
American spirit.

Yes, the Jihadi's method is violent and I believe will betray their cause. 
But can you cure the ailments by treating merely the symptoms? Gandhi, 
Mandela and Dalai Lama have a message for you: truth, understanding and 
reconciliation. You have an opportunity this November of asserting 
Americanism. Peace on earth also happens to hinge on your decision.

==================
The author runs a voluntary organization, SPRAT, to further human rights 
and may be reached at mhj at mysprat.org