PSEUDO-SECULARISTS ARE NOW ON THE BACKFOOT
Monday, 12 May 2014 | Balbir Punj
By acknowledging that terror organisations recruit from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, BJP leader Amit Shah has called a spade a spade. But jihadi apologists have not been able to stomach this
The well established fact that terror organisations like the Indian Mujahideen find many recruits from Azamgarh does indeed justify the reference to this Uttar Pradesh town as the ‘face of terrorism’ — much like in the public perception, Agra is city of the Taj or Varanasi, the abode of Lord Vishwanath.
The Congress, the Samajwadi Party and others political outfits that have attacked BJP leader Amit Shah for labeling Azamgarh a ‘terror hub’, should clarify if they are with those who condemn terrorism or if they are one of those who ignore national interests and capitulate before the terror-tainted for the sake of a handful of votes.
One Congress spokesperson lamented that the fact that Azamgarh is the largest foreign exchange earner in Uttar Pradesh is never mentioned in the media. In response, one can only wish good luck to all those young boys from Azamgarh who have to face the challenges of working in the Gulf countries so as to send some money home.
However, we must also ask why the hard-working Azamgarh boys in the Gulf have had to leave their hometown in the first place.
Also, we need to ask some hard questions about why the Azamgarh’s Muslim community, from which the Indian Mujahideen picks its foot soldiers, does not take any steps to stop this trend. Why does it not expose those who come to head-hunt for terrorists?
It is not the election discourse alone that has exposed the problems in Azamgarh. For several years now, investigating agencies have traced terror activities across the country back to this town in Uttar Pradesh. The Batla House encounter is just one example.
This brings us to the next questions: When many in Azamgarh find jobs in the Gulf and the people of the town know that this road to riches is open, why is it that some Muslim youths prefer to take to the gun and bomb culture? What kind of role do community leaders have in this phenomenon? Are some youths brainwashed to romance terror in the name of religion or are they themselves sympathetic to the cause of terrorists?
In fact, these are questions that should also be fielded at Mr Shah’s critics. What has the Congress’s Digvijaya Singh and the Samajwadi Party’s Mulayam Singh Yadav done to turn the tide of Indian Muhajideen recruiters in Azamgarh?
Every time there is a counter-terror police raid or law enforcement agencies act on confidential information about a terror plot, these ‘honourable’ men rush to Azamgarh and shed copious tears — the many efforts of the investigative agencies be damned.
This same set of self-styled secularists also issue regret statements when a terror attack happens and a large number of innocent men, women and children are killed. They even accuse the police of not being able to shut down terror modules in advance. How is this double talk be allowed when it clearly hurts national counter-terror efforts?
The Samajwadi Party supremo has chosen to pitch his electoral tent in Azamgarh so as to gain sympathy votes. His plan of action includes accusing security agencies of hunting down the innocents. Ironical, he is the tallest leader of his party which rules Uttar Pradesh, and his Government is committed to ensuring a terror-free environment across the State.
In other words, Mr Yadav has the authority to stop innocents from being hauled up by the police and his party-led Government has enough clout to see that militant operatives are flushed out of their safe houses. Yet, he uses neither to good effect. Instead, Mr Yadav leaves the people exposed to a debilitating bomb culture even as Indian Muhajideen recruiters run amok across his State.
Mr Yadav, in fact, competes with Mr Singh and other Congress leaders to commiserate with the Muslim community and issue public statements endorsing the claim that those arrested in the aftermath of a terror attack, are all innocents. In contrast, the BJP’s Mr Shah has chosen to set the facts straight about the Indian Mujahideen recruiting from among the Muslims of Azamgarh for the past several years. Who then is the real culprit in this case?
Ostensibly to get minority votes in bulk (although this conventional wisdom has been challenged in recent years), the Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Trinamool Congress have been aggressively targeting the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
In the process they are ignoring the rising tide of Islamist ideology and the danger that it poses to the nation.
For those who are want the Election Commission to take action against Mr Shah because he has had the audacity to call a spade a spade, must also inform the public what they have done or intending to do to fight Islamist jihadi ideology, the seeds of which are being freely sown in Azamgarh and elsewhere around the country.
Those who perpetually deny the dangers of Islamist ideology are clinging to the illusion that appeasement of jihadists will somehow make jihadi terror go away. Unfortunately, the civilisational threat produced by these misconceptions is not illusory at all.
Indeed, the reality of this was sharply etched into world history by the set of determined jihadis who destroyed the twin towers and killing over 3,000 people in America. They played their card again in Mumbai a few years later, indiscriminately gunning down hundreds of innocent people.
The link between these terror groups, their handlers and financiers may not be evident to the likes of Mr Singh and Mr Yadav — who may have chosen to close their eyes to it — but hopefully these leaders will be able to read what Muhammad Atta, the leader of the gang that destroyed the Twin Towers in 2001, wanted to be written on his grave: “I don’t want any woman to go to my grave during my funeral or on any other occasion thereafter.”
May be the Congress and Samajwadi Party leaders will hail Mohammed Atta for his bravery too, just as they still maintain that the Azamgarh plotters who were eliminated by Delhi Police in the Batla House encounters are all martyrs.http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/pseudo-secularists-are-now-on-the-backfoot.html