Whenever any Islamic extremist or mob goes on a rampage, the Pavlovian response of the global left, which has decided to be a loyal servant of the Islamists for some decades now, is to deny it or dilute it if outright denial is not possible.
The same is being observed as Islamic mobs hunt for Hindus in Bangladesh after the nation went into another phase of anarchy with Sheikh Hasina, the then Prime Minister of Bangladesh, being forced to resign from her post and flee the country. That happened on Monday, and today is Friday when things could get even worse after mobs assemble for communal prayers.
Tools of leftist propaganda
The standard propaganda employed by the left for whitewashing crimes of Islamists comprises various techniques and tools – The first one is outward denial, which includes suppressing and censoring any information that goes against their well-crafted narrative (where Muslims must be the only victims). However, this has not been working ever since the internet, especially social media, gave the power of publishing and distribution to everyone. Facts started coming out.
Since denial has been tough, the tools of dilution have become important. The most important among these tools has been the tool of, ironically, “fact-check”. Facts started coming out, so “fact-checkers” were created. For this, the propagandists have to find, or even plot, a few claims of pieces of information that can be declared fake or false. This puts seeds of doubt in people’s mind and thus entire case itself can be assumed fake; that is what drives the “fact-checkers” of a certain kind.
This trick isn’t new, however. Many lawyers have been using similar tricks to discredit rape victims, for example. “Were you wearing the red dress or green gown that morning?” the lawyer will ask, a traumatized victim can come up with a wrong answer due to fuzzy memory, and bingo, “Milord, hear is the CCTV footage showing her wearing blue. She is clearly lying and no rape ever took place!”
People are slowly realising this nature of “fact-checkers” and thus, other tools of dilutions have become equally important. This is where they are going back to tried and tested tools of narrative building – slanted media reports would be published, fact-finding missions of ‘eminent citizens’ would be constituted, lawyer’s arguments or tricks would be selectively reported as facts (if and when the case goes to courts), research papers by ‘scholars’ would be published (would you believe that there is actually a guy who has written a ‘research paper’ on OpIndia so that it can be cited to vandalise its Wikipedia page? It’s true), propaganda art would be created, and these would be amplified by celebrities and influencers (and if required, even by pornstars).
Fighting against all of these at the same time becomes overwhelming, for they build upon existing old set narratives (literally over a century old), which are yet to be destroyed. Imagine that even now inane profundities like ‘religion is a personal matter’ or even ‘terrorism has no religion’, are repeated ad nauseum by almost all public speakers.
Politics vs Religion argument
In case of the ongoing slaughter of Hindus in Bangladesh, the old set narrative of “it is political, not religious” has been employed after denial of atrocities and dilutions via fact-checks and “human chains” did not appear to be working.
Scroll, a leftist propaganda website was first to further this theory saying Hindus have been being attacked for political reasons and not religious reasons, because they had traditionally voted for Sheikh Hasina’s party Awami League. This was soon picked up for repetition and amplification by Al Jazeera, the Qatar based media outlet, which has proven itself to be the best ally of Islamists in modern times (just in case you did not know, one of their ‘journalists’ in Gaza was working as a part-time terrorist and keeping Jews hostage).
Now I don’t want to discredit the “It was political, not religious” narrative just by discrediting the platforms that published it, even though they deserve nothing but contempt. It is important to understand why this argument is flawed as well as sinister, because it is most often employed to whitewash Islamic aggression (including bigotry, injustice, atrocities, and even terrorism).
This argument has been used to paint Mughal tyrant Aurangzeb as a just ruler, where ‘scholars’ like Audrey Truschke have written thesis to show how his army destroying temples after temples was actually a political statement rather than naked display of religious bigotry. The same argument has been employed in Kashmir to whitewash Islamic terrorists – who themselves have used religious slurs like cow piss drinkers and idol worshippers – by claiming that the ‘struggle’ in Kashmir is political and not religious.
The same argument is used when a Prashanth Poojary is killed in Karnataka or a Chandan Gupta is killed in Uttar Pradesh by Muslim mobs – that they were killed due to political reasons, and not religious. This has given a very smart alibi to Islamic terrorists where they just have to use the keyword of “Sanghis” to express all their violent thoughts regarding Hindus in general. Their religious bigotry gets the shield of being “political” statement and not religious.
The argument sells and ends up convincing many Hindus, because they genuine believe that politics and religion are different spheres. And for them, they are. But that’s not how it works in the Muslim societies. And this politically incorrect statement has to be made, else more and more Hindus will be killed with the crime being covered up as being ‘political violence’ than what it really is – an ethnic genocide.
Politics is not just electoral politics
The first thing to realise is that politics is not merely elections and political parties. Whatever he says appears funny because of his image of a joker, but Rahul Gandhi was, kind of, right when he said “politics is everywhere. It is in your shirts, in your pants”.
Actually no one demonstrates better than Islamists how politics can be in someone’s pants. In Bangladesh, they are actually pulling down pants of dead people and cheering loudly when they realise it was a Hindu they killed.
Nonetheless, for an average Hindu, the understanding of politics is limited to existence of political parties. But politics goes beyond parties and elections. The English word ‘politics’ itself has roots in the Greek word Politiká, which is title of a work by Aristotle, a Greek philosopher from 4th century BC. It deals with ideas on how people in cities should manage their affairs.
Elections are just one part of it. What should be the written and unwritten contracts between citizens of a state is defined by politics only. What should your child be learning at school, how should your parents be living in their old age, what are your and your neighbour’s rights over a common parking space in the housing society you are living in – everything is part of politics.
At this point of time, an average Hindu would still be like – yes, so what? Where is religion in all this?
Not for you maybe, but for a Muslim it is. Or let us say – in Islam, it has to be. This is not ‘anti-Muslim rhetoric’. It is a statement of fact.
From a very ‘secular’ perspective, actually every religion will have elements that go on to impact how people should manage their affairs i.e. politics. In Hinduism too, there are dharma shastras that cover many of such aspects. But by and large, Hindus have lived individual lives, definitely in modern times, where influence, let alone control, of dharma shastras haven’t been made inescapable.
Not just that, the traditions and philosophies that have grown under the wider umbrella of Hinduism, have ended up creating a system where the various aspects of dharma – the political, the mystical, the philosophical, the theological, the rituals, etc. – have become so diverse and rich in themselves that they could appear independent of each other.
Islam is not like that.
Politics is a subset of religion when it comes to Islam
It has come to this point because Islam has been the closest to how it was when it was founded. It has ways to protect that nature. Anyone trying to “reform” Islam ends up being declared a non-Muslim or brought dead on arrival. Someone like Ambedkar in an Islamic society would be dead the second day or a fugitive in a far-off country where he finally loses an eye after a few decades.
Various preachers of Islam have taken pride in the fact that it is a “complete religion” – much like what Marxists believe about their ideology, which must impact every aspect of their lives. The reason you have a “Halal economy” is precisely because of this – because economics, like politics, is also just a derivative of the parent faith – but again, we still have millions of Hindus who think Halal is some food choice or way of cooking/slaughtering, and not a virtual parallel economic system driven by religious considerations.
This is why the questions that could appear mundane and routine to Hindus end up being subject of various fatwas (Islamic opinion). Is playing games on mobile phone allowed in Isam? Should I date that girl who wears jeans? Should my sister take up the job of air hostess? And there are so many more. Forget Bangladesh, just search on Deoband’s website back home. A Hindu might find such things funny, but they are closer home than what you think.
Not just Islamic preachers, even an average Muslim takes pride in Islam being a complete and perfect religion. Hindus on the other hand take pride in Hinduism being a religion where nothing is mandatory, that it is a just a way of life, where you can pick and choose as per your convenience – this claim is seen with both despise and derision from an Islamic eye.
In short, politics or the thoughts and beliefs around how people should manage their affairs as collective, is very much part of Islam. Why else do you think every mass of land becomes an Islamic nation i.e. the constitution and laws become derivative of Quran and Hadiths, as soon as Muslims in that area become a majority? Forget Islamic nations, back in India itself you have examples of how Fridays have been declared a holiday (a ‘political’ decision by the way, where local administration decides) in institutions falling in areas with substantial Muslim population.
These things happen because politics and religion are not separate things in Islam. Politics is supposed to be subservient to the faith. This is not a bug, but a feature of Islam. It’s not criticism, but actually a praise of Islam (form the Islamic point of view itself).
Thus, the entire argument, that it was motivated by politics and not religion, when it comes to Islam, goes for a toss especially when you are dealing with their treatment of non-Muslims. You can make this argument only if you want to obfuscate the facts of the matter. You can make this argument only if you are dishonest or sinister, or both.
Any reportage, historical account, or analytical piece that makes this as the central argument – whether in context of Aurangzeb, Kashmir, Bangladesh, or anywhere – should be confined to the dustbin, forever.
