World | India
Battle within to keep out extremism
On his way out of the town mosque, through a green archway, Ghulam Sarwar Shaikh was handed a copy of the community newspaper.
- By Rama Lakshmi, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 23:40 July 4, 2008
Umred, Maharashtra: On his way out of the town mosque, through a green archway, Ghulam Sarwar Shaikh was handed a copy of the community newspaper.
Quietly glancing over the front page, he sighed.
The article that had caught his attention was about a series of bombings in an Indian city last month that killed 80 people and injured more than 150.
A previously unknown group, calling itself the Indian Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the attack. It blamed the Hindu-led government for deliberately delaying justice for Muslim victims of religious riots. "These are dangerous times. We cannot trust anybody," Shaikh, a 28-year-old taxi driver, whispered as other worshipers around him nodded in agreement. "We are holding on to our teenage boys by a very fragile thread. We have to protect them from outsiders who come to change our moderate ways."
Shaikh's concerns reflect the growing anxiety among Indian Muslims, a minority in this country of more than 1 billion people, following a series of bomb blasts carried out by radical groups over the past three years.
Social strain
Many in his community are proud of their moderate tradition and wary of straining the social fabric of this multi-religion nation. The modest prayer hall of Shaikh's mosque, for instance, has posted a painted sign warning outsiders to stay away. The sign lists the names of some Islamic groups, whose members are not welcome in the mosque.
In the past two years, several mosques here in the Indian state of Maharashtra have taken similar measures. About two-thirds of India's 130 million Muslims are Barelvi Sunnis. In addition to attending mosques, they follow the Sufism and attend shrines of Sufi saints - seen by more conservative Muslims as blasphemous.
Shabeeb Rizvi, a professor at Rizvi College in Mumbai, who is researching Islamic ideologies in India, said the Barelvis have increasingly felt besieged by groups with stricter interpretations of Islam, particularly Wahhabism.
"Most of the Barelvi Sunni mosques are in a dilapidated condition, and the groups loosely connected to Wahhabi ideology donate money for repairs, appoint their own priest and slowly begin to take over," Rizvi said.
"About 30 per cent of their mosques have been taken over by front organisations of Wahhabi school in 10 years. This brings a new aggressiveness to the Indian Muslim landscape."
Two years ago, a violent clash broke out at a Barelvi mosque in the town of Chimur, also located in Maharashtra, over ideological differences among the worshipers. Those with more conservative views took over the mosque, and the others are now building a new one, replete with a signboard warning that not all are welcome.
The group now in charge of the mosque does not advocate violence of the sort that has inspired fears among moderate Muslims. Rather, the head cleric said his group simply did not approve of Muslims who visited Sufi shrines and wanted to enlighten them. "We do not belong to any group. We are just good Muslims," said Abid Husain. "But our doors are open. We do not put up signs."
No violence
Most Islamic groups that embrace Wahhabism or other strict versions of Islam do not support violence.
And not all religious-based violence in India is carried out by Muslims. Two Hindus were arrested recently in connection with a pair of explosions in suburban Mumbai.
Still, Indian officials fear that members of more radical Muslim groups are seen as prey by organisations that do support violence.
"Muslims in India have always followed a moderate tradition. There have been no calls to violence in the mosques. But we can no longer remain complacent. A few have begun giving shelter to terrorists, helping put together the explosives and pressing the timer device," said a senior intelligence officer who has investigated several of the bombings in Indian cities over the past three years. He said about 300 Indian Muslims have been arrested or detained in connection with about a dozen bombings that have ripped through India since 2005.
In various interrogation sessions, the officer said, the radicals confessed to being driven by two specific episodes in recent Indian history - the 1992 demolition of a mosque by a Hindu mob and sectarian killings in the western Indian state of Gujarat that left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead in 2002.
"Terrorism is born out of the womb of injustice," said Akhtarul Wasey, head of Islamic studies at Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. "In spite of all this, Indian Muslims still have faith in the secular and democratic Indian state."
The violence, along with the police scrutiny, has led Indian Muslims to react in different ways. Some, like those at Shaikh's mosque, have closed their doors to outsiders.
One of the most pronounced responses came from the Deoband school, an influential 19th-century Islamic seminary that issued a religious edict against terrorism. The seminary has held nearly a dozen anti-terrorism conferences.
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