Ogiek
30-11-2004, 02:35
Religious fundamentalism - whether Christian anti-abortion fanatics killing doctors and nurses, or Muslim terrorists blowing up buildings, or Hindu mobs rapping and burning women and children, or the Jewish Gush Emunim stealing land from West Bank Palestinians - may be the gravest threat to world peace and stability today.
Nowhere is that threat more eminent than in India. Although India has more Muslims than any nation in the world, they make up only 15% of the population. In the past few decades India has seen a rise of Hindu-Fascist philosophy that claims only Hindus are true Indians.
Killing Thy Neighbor
Hindus and Muslims go on the worst murder spree in a decade. Is secular India a fast-dying dream?
By ANTHONY SPAETH
When Afsana, an 18-year-old Muslim living on the outskirts of the Gujarati capital of Ahmadabad, heard last Wednesday that a Muslim mob had torched a train, the Sabarmati Express, at Godhra, she was appalled—and very, very frightened. She knew that revenge would be nigh. Her neighborhood, Naroda, is largely Hindu. On the day after the Godhra killings, local Hindu leaders gathered a crowd of 2,000 residents and gave them simple instructions: Muslims had to be destroyed. When part of the mob reached Afsana's house, she fled with her five-year-old brother to a Hindu neighbor's house. From the neighbor's roof, Afsana saw the mob pull her parents from their home, douse them in gasoline and set them alight. Her four sisters were stripped, raped and killed. Along the lanes, other Muslim houses were burning….
http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/india_ayodhya/cover.html
What is really frightening is that India and Pakistan, two countries at risk of slipping into the hands of fundamentalist religious fanatics, have nuclear weapons.
Nowhere is that threat more eminent than in India. Although India has more Muslims than any nation in the world, they make up only 15% of the population. In the past few decades India has seen a rise of Hindu-Fascist philosophy that claims only Hindus are true Indians.
Killing Thy Neighbor
Hindus and Muslims go on the worst murder spree in a decade. Is secular India a fast-dying dream?
By ANTHONY SPAETH
When Afsana, an 18-year-old Muslim living on the outskirts of the Gujarati capital of Ahmadabad, heard last Wednesday that a Muslim mob had torched a train, the Sabarmati Express, at Godhra, she was appalled—and very, very frightened. She knew that revenge would be nigh. Her neighborhood, Naroda, is largely Hindu. On the day after the Godhra killings, local Hindu leaders gathered a crowd of 2,000 residents and gave them simple instructions: Muslims had to be destroyed. When part of the mob reached Afsana's house, she fled with her five-year-old brother to a Hindu neighbor's house. From the neighbor's roof, Afsana saw the mob pull her parents from their home, douse them in gasoline and set them alight. Her four sisters were stripped, raped and killed. Along the lanes, other Muslim houses were burning….
http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/india_ayodhya/cover.html
What is really frightening is that India and Pakistan, two countries at risk of slipping into the hands of fundamentalist religious fanatics, have nuclear weapons.