Opinion - Letters to the Editor   

Debate or denial?

The article “Debate or denial: the Muslim dilemma” (July 17) calls a spade a spade. But will the fundamentalists accept that violence was deemed legitimate when Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers, and that it is no longer relevant? The problem arises when people insist that words in religious texts should not even be interpreted, let alone changed.

G. Sam George,

Madurai

The article is a masterpiece. It should serve as an eye-opener to the believers and non-believers of Islam. The sermons and diktats found in religious texts are irrelevant to the times we live in. We must understand this and move on . Our political leadership should read the article and help Muslims to bring about reforms.

K. Aravamudhan,

New Delhi

Apart from Muslims, the media and politicians too should accept the reality instead of keeping quiet in the name of secularism.

Let us accept the fact that many Muslim youths are in potential danger of becoming terrorists using religion as a shield.

M.P. Sivasubramanian,

Chennai

Intolerance of other faiths results in exclusiveness and deprives Muslims of the benefits of economic development. The community should introspect and inculcate the spirit of peaceful co-existence with other religions.

V.N. Mukundarajan,

Thiruvananthapuram

The article is frank and thought-provoking in discussing the challenge before the Muslim community. Muslims must choose debate over denial. They should encourage free expression of thought and reasonable scrutiny of religious tenets. They should not fight shy of reforms wherever necessary to ensure that Islam encourages its followers to seek enlightenment rather than making them susceptible to the idea of jihad.

Avuthu Srihari,

Secunderabad

Most of the 56 Muslim countries in the world are ruled by feudal monarchies, military oligarchies or self-appointed dictators who ignore the Islamic laws of governance. Many of them are American puppets. Unlike Indian Muslims, who live in a true and thriving democracy, a majority of the 1.3 billion Muslims do not enjoy democracy. It is the absence of democracy that is the root cause of Islam’s present plight. The U.S. foreign policy, which ruthlessly punishes foes for their crimes and handsomely rewards friends for their crimes, is also making more and more Muslims anti-American every day. Personally, I blame the supine and subservient Muslim rulers, and not the Muslims, for the worst crisis engulfing the Muslim world.

M. Riaz Hasan,

Hyderabad

Hasan Suroor has appealed to readers to come out of the comfort of arguing that the youngsters who perpetrate acts of terror are “misguided.” It is time we encouraged such debates as there seems to be no end to terrorist activities.

Nikhil Pavan Kalyan,

Machilipatnam

The author has driven home the need to look beyond ‘social deprivation’ and ‘western foreign policy.’

His argument — on the basis of the views of a Muslim scholar and a couple of reformed extremists —that the driving force for the Muslim youth resorting to terror acts is the concept of establishing Dar-ul-Islam is untenable. While a few misguided individuals may be inspired by factors such as the establishment of a “puritanical caliphate,” I wonder whether Iraqi or Palestinian suicide bombers would blow themselves up for reasons other than the frustration wrought by the occupation of their lands.

Syed Sultan Mohiddin,

Kadapa

Post-Cold War Muslim extremism can hardly be placed in a continuous historical trajectory from the time when Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers, itself a thesis that has been contested, complicated and refined in the historiography of early Islam (see Andre Wink’s Al-Hind: the Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Volume 1).

Prashant Keshavmurthy,

Bangalore

Disproportionate media coverage and the non-Muslim world’s denial of the West’s slaughter of human values have created the unrest in the Muslim world. The so-called moderates or liberal Muslims contribute to the illusions about Islam. They are verily the in-betweens who can neither join the Islamic mainstream nor the so-called modern western societies. A huge communication gap exists between the true Islamic society and the non-Muslim society, which the West effectively exploits to further its selfish ends.

K.A. Mohamed Anis,

Chennai

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