By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
On April 25 every year thousands of men and women from Australia, New Zealand and other western countries would converge to Gallipoli to commemorate the failed expedition to Turkey during the World War-I. In the year 2000 the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard and his New Zealand counterpart Helen Clark landed with 15,000 strong pilgrims from English-speaking world. This day is still remembered every year as lakhs of soldiers from United Kingdom, France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and British India took part in the mission to capture Istanbul, the capital of Ottoman Empire. The invasion, which started in 1915 on this very day, was led by the then Admiral Winston Churchill.
Muslims in Muzaffarnagar district of Up demanding reservation on 6 March 2011 [TCn Photo]
Though eight months later the campaign to wipe out the last Muslim Empire, (which had Germany as an ally), ended in disaster and the Allied forces had to retreat yet the West still recalls the day. It caused, according to one estimate, 1.25 lakh casualties. Western tourists make it a point to visit the place. They search the graves of the soldiers killed in the attack, make films to show to their generation next as to what were the factors which led to their retreat. So they do not only celebrate their victories but also make a serious introspection of what led to their defeat,and that too even 95 years later. This notwithstanding the fact that the Allied forces ultimately won the World War-I in 1918.
Now take the case of Muslims, especially of the Indian sub-continent. They tend to learn nothing or very little from reverses. They just believe in glorifying their past and are seldom prepared to re-assess historic mistakes, committed advertently or inadvertently.
Some of them would boast on television channels or use magazines and internets to propagate that Islam is the fastest growing religion, while others would claim that they have made thousands of people Namazis. Yet another set of people have nothing to do except shower praise on the work done in the field of education over a century back.
These Muslims seem to have no time to examine that by their action, some of them inadvertently, drive many non-Muslims or even ‘non-practising Muslims’ further away from Islam.
If you question the authenticity of the claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion you are bound to be declared its enemy. The truth is that there is no such data available in the world. It is all a part of western propaganda to keep Muslims in dark, but we believe them as Gospel truth.
But one way we may claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion and that is on the basis of higher birth rate of Muslims than Christians. In that way the number of Muslims is rising slightly faster. It is also true that thousands of women and men are converting to Islam all over the world.But what about, perhaps equally larger number of Muslims who are deserting their faith? Who will calculate that? A few months back a weekly tabloid run by Muslims carried a story which said that as high as 3,000 Muslim girls married non-Muslims in just one state, Andhra Pradesh,in the last few years. They have in all practical purpose deserted their own religion and had married in temples. Similarly a large number of disillusioned Muslim youths, especially in the war zones of the Islamic world, are turning to atheism. A detailed report even appeared recently in the media. Several of them are Pakistanis. Ironically, all this is happening when the godless philosophy of Communism has few takers in the world.
Muslims are losing in another way yet they hardly pay notice to it. Wherever natural or man-made calamities strike a large number of Christian missionaries and other NGOs, especially from the West, would swoop down to take up relief and rehabilitation works. This happened even in tsunami-struck Indonesia and other South-East Asian countries. They would take thousands of orphans and keep them in orphanages run by them. Many parents would turn up to adopt them.Why will they bring up these children as Muslim? They have taken away orphans from war-torn Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq or many other countries.
Muslim community leaders would just adopt ostrich-like approach. But is not it the fact that US Presidential candidate for 2008 John McCain has an adopted daughter, who is originally from Bangladesh. She is 20 year old Bridget McCain. In fact McCain’s wife Cindy brought two ailing new born girls from a Bangladesh orphanage about two decades back and gave one to her friends.
After all the sparsely populated rich Arabian Sheikhdoms are not giving refuge to people in distress of the Muslim Ummah, not to speak of humanity in general. At most they would ‘help’ Islam by building palatial mosques, which is against the very spirit of Islam as the mosque built by Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) in Madinah then was a very simple structure even by the standard of seventh century. There are several traditions (Ahadith) of Prophet which prohibit Muslims from adoring and decorating mosques.
A healthy community learns from its mistakes; the sick one tends to hide them. The West may be on decline but the people there still have the urge to learn from the past. As a community Muslims are not doing so, though at some places signs of change are visible. However, the need of the hour is to rein in windbags, who are innocently and ignorantly playing into the hands of someone else.