A Silent Muslim

On the morning of November 27, I woke up with a sense of dull apathy. I lazily switched on the TV where reports were coming in of firing that happened at Mumbai's CST terminus on the night of November 26.

As the series of news events began gathering momentum, it dawned on me that Mumbai was under the grip of a terrorist attack. "Not again" - my mind screamed.

As fervent newscasters went about their business trying to find out who were behind the attacks, I knew at the back of my mind the inevitable name that would come forth - "Islamic Terrorist". As I braced myself to be plunged in grief to hear this, it suddenly flashed across the screen that they were from Pakistan. Call it morbid, but somehow I was relieved that it was some other country and not someone from India who had perpetrated the attack.

This is exactly the way every Muslim of this great country feels on hearing of a bomb blast or a terrorist attack. There is an unannounced air of relief whenever perpetrators of violent attacks turn out to be from non-Islamic backgrounds like the Virginia Tech university massacre in April 2007 in which a South Korean killed 32 students.

I rack my brain trying to find a reason as to why these people do the brazen things they do. The mind numbing emotions that all Muslims share are hard to pen down. A deep sense of shame and gloom prevails amongst us.

Why, why do they have to attack in the name of religion? Do they feel people will be terrified and will accept Islam? Is this the way to let people know about Islam at the point of massacring innocent humans? Who will understand the high ideals this religion propounds, the solution for all of human problems that it offers, if the followers resort to such inhuman methods?

Do these people know that we hang our heads in shame with regularity when we are with non-Muslims? Do they even have an idea of the way we try to hide and skirt these topics when it is being discussed?

By Farooq Ali Rizwan in an E-Mail to NDTV