This is in context of a movie “Innocence of Muslims” by an American.
The movie, a satire on the Prophet, has angered Muslims in around 20 countries.
It has driven many to violence, destruction and deaths in protest. Most have
trashed the movie as stupid, badly made and tasteless satire. But does that
really matter? Would the consequences have been any different if it were
historically accurate or more tasteful? Your guess is as good as mine.
If you had the good fortune of going to a school but the misfortune of
being taught sanitised history here’s a small KBC quiz for you, and you have to answer
this off-hand: Name 7 prominent Hindu Kings.
That’s easy, isn’t it? You can choose to scribble the list in your writing pads
or in the comments section on this blog. If, for some reason, you didn’t manage
that list then try this: Name 7
prominent Mughal rulers.
If you couldn’t easily name 7 prominent Hindu kings it’s not really
your fault. It’s how our communist text books were designed. Imagine, in a line
of marauding invaders, a somewhat compassionate Akbar is considered the
greatest secularist by Nobel Prize winner and Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen. If the communist text books left any job unfinished we
have most Commie Fiberals in our MSM continue their propaganda and distortion
of Indian history. If I were to ask the Social
Genius to name 7 Hindu kings off-hand, I estimate she would have to use the
“call a friend” option. And Oh, in
case you forgot, SG is a “devout Hindu”. Why? Because her ‘uncle’ joined the
Ramakrishna Mission.
In a recent post I had attempted a fun review of interviews with Salman
Rushdie (SR) by two media celebs, Barkha Dutt and Sagarika Ghose (SG). Here are a couple of questions from one
of the interviews. First SG asks: “But in your mind religion is wrong? Is it
untrue? Are gods unnecessary and irrelevant?
SR: Yeah I think so…”. She follows it up with this:
SG: But why were you sad
when Babri.. was demolished if you're not a believing Muslim?
SR: Because it was beautiful
and an important part of Indian history. I am trained as a historian… I would
feel the same way if someone knocked down the Taj.. And by the way, everything
is built on top of something else… Probably even under a Hindu temple, there
are Buddhist temples.
The stupidity of the question reflects the poverty of the brain and the
bigotry of SG, her channel and their agenda. By her logic why would we be sad
or annoyed if Bamiyan Buddhas were
destroyed in Afghanistan if we aren’t Buddhists? We have nothing to do with
Afghanistan either. Why would we be upset if the Twin Towers were destroyed on
9/11? We aren’t Americans, are we? Those who didn’t lose any friends or family
have even lesser reason to be upset, isn’t it? That’s the kind of Moronery she
brings to the table. Motive: To
somehow get a few sound-bites that would tar Hindus as extremists. She did twist
a quote to create the headline “Hindu intolerance
as bad as Muslims’” for the interview. If that wasn’t crooked
enough, try this: “Hindu temples were
built over Buddhist temples”. That could have been her back-up headline.
There are many who believe that the TajMahal was built over a Shiva temple. Some have provided
pictures as evidence too. But nobody is asking to take down the Taj. It doesn’t
occur to the social genius that Babri is a dispute raging over hundreds of
years and cannot be equated with other incidents. Without condoning the
incident, the particular significance to Hindus of Ram Janmabhoomi is not the same as Taj. I’m sure everyone’s heard of
‘RamRajya’ but there isn’t a concept called ‘ShivaRajya’. Is there? This is
true for a couple of more historic Hindu sites and temples.
Now, let’s take up SR’s answer: “Probably
even under a Hindu temple, there are Buddhist temples”. Should we challenge
him? Should we ask him to prove it? No, not really. He just made an off the
cuff, generalised remark and he clearly qualifies it with “Probably”, indicating he doesn’t know and can’t be sure. But others
do make such remarks seriously but have never produced any evidence that Hindus
conducted a religious-campaign to replace Buddhist temples. I haven’t seen any
authentic evidence yet. And Hinduism is a lot older than Buddhism. But why is
there such a clamour to tarnish Hindus when Muslim violence is so all
pervading? Let’s not pick on SG, she is just the visible and voluble symptom of
the disease that afflicts much of our MSM, communist historians and most political
parties. SR claims to be “trained as a historian”. Ironically, even SG is a
History graduate. Isn’t that surprising?
So if you look up our school textbooks you won’t find what historian Will Durant said about the Islamic
invasion of India. He called it the bloodiest in human history. You will only
find those books glorifying all the Mughal rulers. It’s only since the Internet
that some of the real history is being disseminated more accurately. The
historians, as with MSM now, have chosen to turn a blind eye to real history.
Why is that so? If our media talked honestly about Muslim violence most of them
would have burnt offices and dead bodies.
After his interview with that anti-Hindu celeb, SR has spoken to a few
more. This time around he’s a lot more honest. To Fareed Zakaria he stated India is close to “no longer an
open society” and in an interview to Le Monde (TOI report) he mentions “Something’s gone wrong at the heart
of Islam”. To balance the stupidity of Muslim violence Rushdie points out
certain incidents. He points out Rohinton Mistry’s book being removed from the
University course. That had nothing to do with religion but more with a darker
view of Mumbai which the Sena permanently gets worked up over. The 300
Ramayanas being removed from University courses had no violence involved. It
was a decision by the managing authorities and removed by legal protests. The
book itself is not banned. And yes any sensible man would condemn violence
surrounding a book on Shivaji. There was no need to ban the related book either.
The SC has overturned that ban. But our cowards in politics play the
appeasement game instead of protecting the writer and publisher. But there is
no way Rushdie or anyone should ever equate these incidents with chronic
Islamic violence. If India ever was and
still largely remains an open society it is simply because of Hindus and Hindu
culture. Period.
Here’s a question for Rushdie and the Social Genius: Reverse the
population of India. Let’s say 70%
Muslims and 30% Hindus+others, what do you think will happen? It doesn’t
need an Einstein to answer that. For all the whining that Rushdie does he still
gets to come to India and go back when political and election temperatures
aren’t hot. Now I wonder if he would dare a trip to Pakistan, BanglaDesh or any
other Islamic county. So some of his utterances about India are filled with as
much nonsense as SG’s about Hindus. Rushdie didn’t blame the last Jaipur
LitFest crap on Hindus fortunately. He doesn’t blame them directly in anyway.
He rightly blamed a criminal govt that abdicated its responsibility to protect
him. What Rushdie now admits openly (something gone wrong with Islam) he could
have done during the many interviews he did earlier.
SR has proclaimed himself to be
an atheist or a rationalist. He did briefly claim to be a Muslim after the
Fatwa. So why not see another rationalist talking about religion, particularly
to Muslims? Rushdie has appeared on many shows with comedian and satirist Bill Maher. I can quite appreciate the
humorous way rationalists look at religion and even ridicule it. Here are
edited excerpts from Bill Maher’s Religulous.
I am willing to wager Rushdie has seen the movie: (8:52 mins)
Some observations from the video:
(00.50): Talk about the
name. Ahem! He calls himself ‘Propa Gandhi’ and he’s a Rapper. He is of Pakistani origin and is British. His
lyrics for the infidels: “… easy to use
a mobile trigger.. Blow them all to hell for a million dollar figure”. Of
course, he says it’s a satire and doesn’t reflect his intentions. Okay, accepted!
Question: what satire is acceptable to
the believers? And then he says Rushdie insulted and provoked
intentionally. (02.35): Maher then
ridicules Propa Gandhi: “You have the truth, I have the fiction”! (03.14): Dutch Imam: “Islam is peace,
peace, peace”. (03.22): When asked
about Islamic violence, everyone uniformly says: “No,No,No” “ It’s politics, it’s
politics, it’s politics”. (04.05):
Dutch Muslim politician Fatima Elatik
states those passages in the Quran were in the context of the time they were
written in. Maher points out, that’s not how people read holy books; that
God’s word is forever. (04.30):
Maher talks about how Islam conquered many parts of the world. The Imam says “not
conquered, but spreading Islam”. And Maher laughs and says maybe but they
weren’t spreading it by singing Kumbaya
(a spiritual song).
Now this is interesting: (05.17):
The site of Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, the holiest site for Jews. The Muslims
built a dome on top of the Jewish temple and Jews are not allowed into that
place anymore. That has been so for a very long time. That’s like “under new management”. Couldn’t that be
true for Babri or Taj Mahal? Couldn’t that be true for a lot of other temples
too? I leave that to the historians and SG and Rushdie. The next one gets even better at (05.31): The holy Mount of Olives. Orthodox Jews want to be buried there because they believe
when the Messiah comes he will raise the dead and march them through Golden Gates
to the Temple Mount. But guess what the Muslims did? They walled up the gates
to keep out the Jewish Messiah. Maher asks the hilarious question: “If He (The Messiah) has the power to raise
the dead, He’d have the power to jump a fence”? Oh yes, wouldn’t he? Haha!
But that’s Faith for you.
Now here’s something about the movie Religulous that most people would
have missed: It’s 1Hr 41 minutes in duration. Bill Maher talks about
Christianity, Judaism and Islam and even Scientology. He travels across the US,
Europe and UK. He shows a glimpse of Hare Krishna followers dancing in the
opening titles. That’s it! But there’s
not one word, I repeat, not one word ridiculing Hinduism or Buddhism in the
entire movie. You and I can wonder why but maybe the Social Genius has that
answer. It’s not as if there aren’t enough Hindus and Buddhists in the US or
UK. There are more Hollywood Buddhists than Scientologists.
In the 2nd Part we will attempt to examine why so much
Muslim violence is being tolerated and covered up by media for all the wrong
reasons. In the meantime, if you managed, off-hand, to name 7 Hindu kings and 7
Mughal rulers, you’re a winner!
