The Touchy Topic Of Terror

India is still the safest country in the world, at least if we choose to view her through a Western lens, that, for its own convenience & simplicity often uses the hyphenated term "Islamic-terrorism" as a single entity.

Contrast that with the Indian narrative that terror haz no religion. So, our media rarely uses that term. 

The pseudo-secular pseudo-liberal West goes about its way with imposition of universal ban on burqa, restricting the height of Mosque structures, etc. 

The Indian Muslim, is patriotic & for the most part, not Arabized. It is for thiz reason that Pakistan must indulge in cross-border terrorism from its own soil, as it can't effectively recruit motivated fidayeen type fighters from India. 

However, considering the vast strength in number of Muslims in India, even if a tiny chunk of them were truly to be influenced by the terror marketers from outside of India, at best we would have a disaster on hand & at worst a mayhem.

So even when a giant nation like India is largely peaceful, the question before us should really be - can we then discount the ISIS type absolute-ist Muslims, as mere fringe & simply call it an aberration among just a handful of misguided youth and then ignore the issue?

No. We should not ignore the phenomenon, no matter how small it impacts us today.

All & especially the Muslim elders themselves must first accept that there is a problem within their community. 

The terror attraction is a manifestation of their inability to reform with time & that can happen to persons of any faith, irrespective - if they remain frozen in the past.

For most Muslims, religion even today is not about a personal spiritual experience in solitude, but the faithful are expected to visibly practice the rituals in a manner that makes their religiosity a central life theme. 

That gets further rekindled at the almost mandatory weekly Friday mosque's mass congregations where sermons could get politically charged. As a result, when Muslims encounter many modern-day requirements that cannot be compatible with their daily mandated religious routines, they assume that the problem is outside. 

Being accommodative would attract scorn from the community peers or make them feel incomplete Muslims. Thus, most cannot convince the world at large that they are beyond & larger than their self imposing religion bearing identity. 

In a fast globalizing world where cultural assimilation is an expectation, interdependence a maturity, and gloss & glam a norm, their inflexibility to adapt to the order of the day renders them somewhat unemployable & their school of thought as obsolete.

Not willing to bow out as misfits in the fast-paced modern society, some staunch fellows have lately been instigating a retaliation rather than reform. 

These so called instigators don't seem to resonate with the likes of say Abdul Kalam the former president of India or the information technology billionaire Azim Premji or the Khan trio Bollywood superstars or A R Rehman the master music composer or Bismillah Khan the instrumental music ustad or Sania Mirza the tennis ace or Azharuddin the cricket captain or I H Latif the ex-air force chief or Ahmedi the ex-justice at Supreme Court - to just name a few of the Muslims, that have negotiated with their personal space to reach great heights & become entire India's favorite. 

It is not even in their reckoning that thiz makes India perhaps the most unique country in the world where a minority community has achieved so much & in so many spheres. 

For them, the heroes to emulate are perhaps foreigners like Osama Bin Laden or even Burhan Wani or Ishrat Jahan - all Pakistan declared "martyrs."

Some parents too get influenced by the cause if not the actions and so cover the issue with soft velvet blanket and fail to guide their children,  that there is solace in societal achievements and not in being a claimant of perpetual victim-hood by it.

At such a delicate time, the ISIS ideology had begun to seep into India and demanding that the faithful to Islam must not wait to be affected in order to retaliate. 

It wants the Muslim community to become aware & focus on the minutest ideological differences that exist between the Muslims and non-Muslims and eliminate all and any nonconformity, be they neutral or benign. Their call is against the liberal Muslims as well, who are deemed traitor-like. 

They are in fact the echo-in-action, to the hollow war-on-terror cry made by Bush at the UN, who had reportedly thundered "Either you are with us or against us. 

To some, the ISIS brand of terror appears mesmerizingly attractive and an opportunity to subjugate the world to the puritanical Muslim way.

Now when a population with a particular belief - say, any explosive idea (affinity to the ISIS kind of terrorism being the case here) goes 'unopposed' from a very tiny fraction to about 3% of people, the tipping point may not be far. 

Studies show that the time taken for a radically different idea to take grip of even just that 3% of the population is very difficult in the beginning i.e. if it takes 90 % of the time to reach that threshold number; from there on however, to move to a higher critical mass % of population, it will take only 10 % of the time, after which that idea can no longer be ignored as it would become trend setting. 

So if it is going to take 9 years to radicalize 3% of the Muslims into motivated terror elements, it will take just 1 year to reach a higher damaging number, after which the entire society would have to deal with them on almost a daily basis. 

It would hurt all, non-Muslims and Muslims alike. 

Thiz should explain where the ISIS itself came about from, so suddenly & out of nowhere. 

In reality, it is not as sudden as it feels. For years, it was simmering in the back burner unnoticed, but after the forced departure of Saddam Hussein, there was a local leadership vacuum & that problem got compounded further by the American bombing. 

It then came out in full force to actually influence many, the ideology traveling through the world without a passport.  

It therefore becomes prudent for not only the government but also the wise Muslims to rein in the extreme elements.

Be alert. Peace can only be maintained at the edge of an ever sharpened sword and mind.