For those in sync with global politics, and western world politics in particular, the British born personality called Anjem Choudary is a remarkable topic of interest. His notorious track record of inciting communal division and religious hatred included among several others: mentoring the man who beheaded a British soldier in broad daylight in London, hailing Osama bin Laden as ‘the chief of the Muslim Ummah’, heckling a parade for homecoming war veterans, and calling for a full fledged Sharia for the UK and the world at large. After going agog with his hatred and enjoying full media attention for several years, he was finally convicted recently and sent to jail.
For the uninformed: this is basically Anjem Choudary's rhetoric
After Chowdary was sent to jail, the modernist Muslim radio presenter Maajid Nawaz said on a show, “We have cultivated a culture of tolerating the most intolerable form of extremism in the name of multiculturalism. I fear that the cat has already been let out of the bag,” implying that the conviction should have happened much sooner. Now, although questioning the wisdom of the British police and judiciary is far beyond my pay-grade, I do certainly agree with Mr Nawaz’s underlying message. The loose cannon Anjem Choudary, who was nothing more than a media creation, did incalculable damage to the image of Muslims all over the world. He was such a pawn, that even right wing Christian channels did interviews with him just to do a character assassination of Muslims. This damage certainly should have been foreseen and prevented. It is worth noting that the United Kingdom is a country which has given the entire world some of its most progressive, intellectual and inspirational Muslim voices. It is a crying shame that owing to the criminal excesses of the British media and the opportunistic alt-right, many today see Anjem Choudary and his ilk as the singular representatives of the entire Muslim community.
Maajid Nawaz reacts to Choudary's arrest
I see a similar trend and analogy in India. We too, have our own share of zealous religious clerics who are causing great hurt to the perception of Muslims here. Earlier this month, a Muslim clergyman chided a female TV presenter by telling her to ‘turn up to work wearing underwear’. This, I still consider quite a minor self wound, compared to the one caused a few years earlier when the one of the two most influential Muslim seminaries, the Darul Uloom Deoband prohibited Muslims from singing the national song Vande Mataram. Around the same time, the other popular seminary, the Barelvi school, had called for a fatwa and social boycott of the humanist Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen. Both these schools and many other surrogates have been baying for the blood of acclaimed novelist Salman Rushdie. Just last month, I saw a cleric from Aurangabad insulting social reformer Hamid Dalwai on prime time television. I strongly believe that the vast majority of Muslims in India would take an exception to such narrow minded views. But the media still doesn’t seem to understand this dichotomy.
Just as the British right has painted all Muslims as having the same ideology as Anjem Choudary, the Indian right too has demonized the entire Indian Muslim community as sympathizers and followers of the hate-fuelling clerics mentioned above. Even today, when the TRP hungry media looks for ‘Muslim voices’, they do not approach elected politicians like Husain Dalwai, Salman Khurshid, Ahmed Patel, or writers like MJ Akbar or even captains of industry like Azim Premji. The media are committing a grave logical fallacy here, the same that the Brits did with Anjem Choudary. The media establishment thinks that ‘representatives of Muslims’ are the same as ‘representatives of Islam’. And hence quite predictably, they have gone with the most ignorant of the lot. This causes great damage not just to the image of Muslims (with the fatwas and underwear remarks), but in a country like India also to their physical well being.
Let me give an example (it’s quite a good example):
I distinctly remember, in the discourse leading up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, it wasn’t the Muslim intelligentsia at Aligarh and Jamia who steered the conversation, but the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid, Moulana Madani of Darul Uloom Deoband, and Kalbe Jawaad of the Shia Imambargah. As far as behavior of political parties is concerned, it was always known to intellectuals that a BJP government would mean a difficult time for Muslims; if not riots, then a beef ban, cow vigilantism, and the other usual xenophobic things that happen in BJP ruled states, but now on a national level. Now it was more than obvious, that to avoid a BJP landslide, the Muslims and other groups on the RSS radar would have had to engage in tactical voting, thereby grouping behind the biggest secular entity, the Congress in this case. Instead, barring the Shahi Imam, the remaining two and several other Muslim clerics openly encouraged their community to shun the Congress. Of course, there was no question of Muslims ever voting for the BJP, but the fracturing of the secular vote saw the BJP winning by the biggest landslide in the past 30 years. Clerics, you had one job. You screwed it up.
Moulana Madani dissuades Muslims from voting for Congress
Hence, I have a sincere appeal to make. For the best interest of the Muslim community and by transitivity the entire nation, their clerics have to be kept at least ten miles away from the nearest television camera or radio station (even mobile phone?).
