From The Gathering Storm
“India is moving ahead but majority of Muslims continue to live in poverty, superstition, insecurities in the collective shells of their ghettoes, not only in India but also throughout the world. This reality will not change by mouthing slogans and blaming others for Muslim underdevelopment.”
This quote comes from a review of a committee report by a Retd. Justice Sachar in India. The report is enlightening placing the fault of Muslims living in India to progress in one of the fasted growing economies in the world. So, who’s responsible for the backward state of Muslims in India? This litany of reasons apply to all Muslims in all non-Muslim countries who refuse to assimilate.
- EDUCATION: If even the most illiterate and poor Indian believes that the govt schools are open for everyone and modern education can bring about change and prosperity to their lives, why Muslims still prefer to shy away from education or send their children to Madarsas, where all they learn is ‘majhabi’ education? In these Madarsas, no vocational training is given and those coming out of them are fit for becoming Islamic teachers only.
- MISPLACED PRIORITIES: Do Muslims ever object to Haj subsidy and insist the govt to open schools and hospitals for them from this money? Has the Muslim society ever questioned the failure of the Muslim leadership to use the huge funds it receives from abroad to build modern schools and colleges for them, instead of mosques?
- EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE FOR MUSLIMS: When job opportunities –in govt, private sectors, Armed Forces and judiciary-- are equally available on the basis of merit only, how can anyone claim that there’s discrimination against Muslims? How come so many Muslim actors of the Mumbai film industry have been able to conquer the Indian audience if there is discrimination against them? The industry doesn’t care about how well the candidate knows the Koran, the hadiths and other Islamic things. If the Muslims bothered to study things other than religion, then they stand a much better chance of getting jobs. And, if they’re educated, they stand a better chance of getting a loan from the banks for their business.
- FEMALE EQUALITY: When female literacy and education is becoming increasingly important throughout the world, why 50% of Muslims are not getting their rights of equality by the Muslim society? Muslims don’t want to give equal rights to their womenfolk, who’re constantly under attack from their patriarchal family heads. Muslim women are not allowed to educate themselves, are forced to drop out of schools, are married off early, are not allowed to use family planning methods to limit their families and are under constant threat of divorce.
- FAMILY PLANNING: When every strata of Indian society are adopting family planning, why Muslims find it against their religious laws and continue to live in poverty due to the large size of their families and supporting the thesis that Muslims want to outnumber others by fast-breeding?
- HEALTHCARE: When every Indian is adopting modern healthcare to enhance the quality of life, why Muslim society adopts superstitious stance on health programs like ‘Pulse Polio’?
- NOT MERGING WITH MAINSTREAM: Muslims don’t merge with the mainstream of majority society anywhere they live and are conspicuous by their dressing habits, special food habits, beards, skullcaps, 5-times Namaz and their insistence on veils for their womenfolk even in this 21st Century. Muslims don’t want to bring about social changes in their society and any efforts by any well-meaning ones, including those within, is rejected as an encroachment and insult to their religion. No wonder that even in liberal countries in Europe and USA, Muslims are considered anachronistic and out of touch with modernity.
- OTHER MINORITIES HAVE NO PROBLEMS: Why other minorities like Parsis, Jains, Sikhs, Christians and Buddhists never complain about discrimination? Why is it that other minorities do not find any problem in getting access to education and jobs either in public or in private sector? There is no reservation for these classes of people in Government or public sector jobs and yet they are rubbing shoulders with the majority.
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