[Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'

Wed Dec 3 11:41:46 IST 2008

Following comments on this article I found very interesting 
a must read

vedavati

Asra is a lier/Cheap publicty seeker. Lot of poor muslims grown up to elites like sharuk, abdul kalam etc. No Hindus discriminate them. My muslim classmate's rich family r doctors but he always supports Pakistan and he never respects India. Many in jail means ...many are doing sin rather good work and living in mainstream. Don't propagate in negative way. There are many Hindus ready to die for Abdul Kalam....no one thinking about his religion. I wonder how you are still thinking in your blackmail way even after you raised in US. when will you liberate your mind.

Submitted by: Vels
11:47 AM PST, December 1, 2008

2. "My extended family prospered as part of an educated, middle class." How did they make it in India?? - By being educated. Lack of education in the Muslim community is the problem not the Indian secular democracy.

Submitted by: Anonymous
11:46 AM PST, December 1, 2008

3. LA times..please show a little sensitivity. I am an Indian who almost had her friend killed at the Taj. We are baffled, shocked and angry beyond belief. Give us some time to heal and get rid of the anger before hurriedly inviting Naussbaum and others to write about why--after the dust has settled--Muslims are still victims and need our "understanding". Have patience with us...we will return to our apathetic lives and forget about all this..in the meantime, just dont add salt to our wounds. maybe you can just keep quite...like many of the Muslims in this country.

Submitted by: sapec
11:39 AM PST, December 1, 2008

4. By the way, what about the roles of Muslims in remaining backward? Their neighborhoods are the dirtiest, crime rates are the highest, illiteracy rates are high and the Muslim girl-child is abused by the Muslim male. This is sadly true all over India. What about lack of responsible behavior by Muslims themselves all over India? The LA Times should be ashamed of publishing a bogus and immature article. Couldn't you find someone more mature and honest in giving a balanced, point-of-view? What world is this guy/woman living in?

Submitted by: This column is intelectually bogus
11:36 AM PST, December 1, 2008

5. This deeply demented notion that Muslims are untouchables in India is not only wrong but disingenuous and the author is engaging in intellectual flatulence, with all due respect. Muslims in India have unfortunately abused their women-folk and thei religious leaders, in order to be relevant, have strived hard to cut average Muslims from the mainstream. People of all religions, castes and regions are struggling in India. This is not particularly pervasive only in Muslims. Please do not engage in such erroenoeus claims.

Submitted by: This column is intelectually bogus
11:36 AM PST, December 1, 2008

6. Please tell me what country in the world gives special privileges to its minorities like India has? Hell, we even split our motherland to India and Pakistan (and later, Bangladesh) to appease Muslims. What else do Muslims want, I ask you in exasperation???

Submitted by: This column is intelectually bogus
11:36 AM PST, December 1, 2008

7. 2. Muslims have their own civil law. Indian civil law is not applicable to them. This means, under the guise of this law, Muslims continue to abuse their womens's rights, for decades. 3. Muslims have "reservations" per Govt regulations and laws in all kinds of educational institutions, all over the country. 4. We have had Muslim presidents, powerful politicans, cricket players, movie stars, business people and educated middle class all over the nation.

Submitted by: This column is intelectually bogus
11:36 AM PST, December 1, 2008

8. With all due respect to the writer, let me let your American readers a little known fact or two: 1. The annual Haj pilgrimage for all Indian Muslims is footed by the Indian taxpayer (including people of all religions). No Hindus or Christians or Jains or Buddhists are giving this pecial treatment..

Submitted by: This column is intelectually bogus
11:35 AM PST, December 1, 2008

9. I would like to know why people move, in large numbers, to countries with different cultures than theirs? Do they want to be assimilated into the country, or are they hoping for a bloodless coup once their numbers are sufficient? I mean, really, check out the country you want to emigrate to, and if the conditions are not to your liking, STAY HOME! In America, the natives,(anyone born here), share a culture and language, and a secular government. if you need to speak Spanish, or live under a theocracy, STAY HOME! Immigrants show up late for the buffet, and then whine that all the shrimp are gone.

Submitted by: Dean
11:29 AM PST, December 1, 2008

10. why is it always the fault of the host country, not matter where they are, who have not assimilated the muslim population? In Great Britain the Indian Hindu, Sikh, and Chrisitan populations have integrated into society just fine, and in some cases are considered a great example of a minority population who have integrated into the UK. Yet it is the Pakistani Muslims who lage behind in education, salary etc...and you surely saw how they coordinated the very same terrorist groups in Pakistan as they blew themselves up on the London Tubes and Buses.

Submitted by: Vijay
11:24 AM PST, December 1, 2008

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--- On Wed, 3/12/08, Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
To: "Naeem Mohaiemen" <naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>
Cc: "reader-list at sarai.net" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Wednesday, 3 December, 2008, 12:50 PM

Naeem ,

Be assured...non of commies and liberals would try to correct you........And
if they would they wouldn't be intellectual liberals....

Pawan

On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 7:55 AM, Naeem Mohaiemen
<naeem.mohaiemen at gmail.com>wrote:

> Muslims -- India's new 'untouchables'
> The condition of the country's Muslims has deteriorated, and the world
> has overlooked the nation's problems.
>
> By Asra Q. Nomani
> December 1, 2008
>
> The news of the attacks in Mumbai eerily took me back to a quiet
> morning two years ago when I sat in Room 721 of the Taj Mahal Palace &
> Tower hotel, reading the morning newspaper, fearing just the kind of
> violence that has now exploded in the city of my birth. The headlines
> recounted how the socioeconomic condition of the people of my
> ancestry, Muslims in India, had fallen below that of the Hindu caste
> traditionally called "untouchables," according to a government
report.
>
> "Muslims are India's new untouchables," I said sadly to my
mother, in
> the room with me. "India is going to explode if it doesn't take
care
> of them." Now, indeed, alas it has. And shattered in the process is
> the myth of India's thriving secular democracy.
>
> Mumbai police said over the weekend that the only gunman they'd
> captured during the attacks -- which left nearly 200 dead and more
> than 300 wounded -- claimed to belong to a Pakistani militant group.
> But even if the trouble was imported, the violence will most certainly
> turn a spotlight of suspicion on Muslims in India. Already, my
> relatives are hunkered down for a sectarian backlash they expect from
> anti-terrorism agencies, police and angry Hindu fundamentalists.
>
> India, long championed as a model of pluralism, used to be an example
> of how Muslims can coexist and thrive even as a minority population.
> My extended family prospered as part of an educated, middle class. My
> parents, who settled in the United States in the 1960s when my father
> pursued a doctorate at Rutgers University, were part of India's
> successful diaspora. I love India, and on that trip, I wanted to show
> it off to my son, Shibli, then age 4.
>
> But on that visit, across India from Mumbai to the southern state of
> Tamil Nadu and north to Lucknow, the hub of Muslim culture, I was
> deeply saddened. Talking to vegetable vendors, artisans and
> businessmen, I heard about how the condition of Muslims had
> deteriorated. They had become largely disenfranchised, poor, jobless
> and uneducated. Their tales echoed those I'd heard on previous trips,
> when my extended family recounted their humiliating experiences with
> bureaucratic, housing, job and educational discrimination.
>
> Indeed, the government report I read about in the newspapers two years
> ago acknowledged that Muslims in India had become "backward."
"Fearing
> for their security," the report said, "Muslims are increasingly
> resorting to living in ghettos around the country." Branding of
> Muslims as anti-national, terrorists and agents of Pakistan "has a
> depressing effect on their p syche," the report said, noting Muslims
> live in "a sense of despair and suspicion."
>
> According to the report, produced by a committee led by a former
> Indian chief justice, Rajender Sachar, Muslims were now worse off than
> the Dalit caste, or those called untouchables.
>
> Some 52% of Muslim men were unemployed, compared with 47% of Dalit men.
>
> Among Muslim women, 91% were unemployed, compared with 77% of Dalit women..
>
> Almost half of Muslims over the age of 46 couldn't read or write.
>
> While making up 11% of the population, Muslims accounted for 40% of
> India's prison population.
>
> Meanwhile, they held less than 5% of government jobs.
>
> The Sachar committee report recommended creating a commission to
> remedy the systemic discrimination and promote affirmative-action
> programs. So far, very few of the recommendations have been put in
> place.
>
> Since reading the report, I have feared that Islamic militancy would
> be born out of such despair. Even if last week's terrorist plot was
> hatched outside India, a cycle of sectarian violence could break out
> in the country and push some disenfranchised Muslim youth to join
> militant groups using hot-button issues like Israel and Kashmir as
> inspiration.
>
> What has irked me these last years is how the world has glossed over
> India's problems. In 2006, for instance, former U.S. Defense Secretary
> William Cohen, whose Cohen Group invests heavily in India, said the
> U.S. and India were "perfect partners" because of their
"multiethnic
> and secular democracies." When I asked to interview Cohen about the
> socioeconomic condition of Muslims, his public relations staffer said
> that conversation was too "in the weeds." But, to me, the
condition of
> Muslims needs frank and open discussion if there is to be any hope of
> stemming Islamic radicalism and realizing true secular democracy in
> the country.
>
> India's 150 million Muslims represent the second-largest Muslim
> population in the world, smaller only than Indonesia's 190 million
> Muslims. That is just bigger than Pakistan's 140 million Muslims or
> the entire population of Arab Muslims, which numbers about 140
> million. U.S. intelligence reports continually warn that economic,
> social and political discontent are catalysts for radicalism, so we
> would be naive to continue to ignore this potential threat to the
> national security of not just India but the United States.
>
> Throughout my 2006 journey, I found the idea of India's potential for
> danger unavoidable. On one leg, my son tucked safely in bed with my
> mother in our Taj hotel room, I went out to watch the filming of "A
> Mighty Heart," the movie about the murder of Wall Street Journal
> reporter Daniel Pearl by Muslim militants in Pakistan. When the
> location scouts needed to replicate the treacherous streets of
> Karachi's militant Islamist culture, they didn't have to go far.
They
> found the perfect spot in a poor Muslim neighborhood of Mumbai.
>
> Asra Q. Nomani is the author of "Standing Alone: An American
Woman's
> Struggle for the Soul of Islam."
>
>
> Please click the following link and read the comments on above article:
>
>
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oew-nom1-2008dec01,0,2169717.graffitiboard
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