Impious Violence in the Name of Jihad: An Unprecedented Experience of Muslims

When Father Kuruvilla said, “Indifference to God  need not be juxtaposed to violence in His name” or something to that effect, as the conversation occurred six months back in July,18 in the Papal Seminary in Pune, it appeared it appeared he was referring to West's secularism and the allegedly  violent religiosity of the Muslim Ummah. At that moment , I knew I had a valuable truth to communicate. As a Muslim  and insider, I can vouch that the quintessential Muslim,  who up to now is the most numerous too, ascribes his/her  woes to ‘Actions’. “Our actions have become bad” (Hamare ámaal kharab ho gae hain) is the refrain when two Muslims ruminate over their problems. They unreservedly hold their own lack of piety to be the real reason for their problems.  The ‘Other’, the ‘Enemies of Islam’ come a distant second.  The greater the link with orthodoxy and tradition (in juxtaposition to the contemporary/the modern/the western) the greater is this distance, and vice versa too.