This Fire Needs to Be Put Out

My 25-year old daughter traveled in India for half a year. She is Israeli. She said that it was the Muslim Indians who were the kindest, fairest and treated she and her boyfriend the best.

Indian is known for its' spirituality and joy, but she found most of the goodness residing in the Muslim population, who very well could have been bad to her because she is Israeli.

It just goes to show, killers and hatemongers will hijack any religion to justify their crimes.

Just because a forum like this allows you anonymity, do not abuse your privilege. And stop spinning lies and baseless allegations, you Islam haters. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindus do not suffer discrimination by their own co-religionists because they are deemed 'untouchables' by the powers that be like they do in India. Unlike India, no one judges you for your caste there. We all know the plight of the scheduled castes in the great country that is India. The lives many lead is worse than that of chattels. A few reserved seats are not going to change things. The mental blockade of higher caste Hindus must cease.

Other than that, India as we all know has a wonderful record when it comes to treating minorities. Lets leave the Muslims alone, who can of course be targeted at the slightest excuse, just google Christian minority in India and you get page after page of descriptions of the harrowing atrocities inflicted upon Christians, most of whom live a life of extreme poverty even by Indian appaling standards, by Hindu thexenophobes who form a majority in India. And who are not just confined to illiterate and ignorant group, as apparent from some of the despicable comments here.

What makes Mr. Zakaria so sure that the perpetrators of this condemnable act "got support and training from Pakistan"? Should I give him a food for thought! What about American involvement, overt and/or covert. Is it too far fetched? Not when you are not seeing things through American prespective only.

In India, Muslims butcher Hinus.In the Middle East, Muslims butcher Jews and Christians.In South East Asia, Muslims butcher Buddhists.In Iran, Muslims butcher B'hai and in Iraq, when there is no one else there, Muslims cheerfully butcher each other.That's the news without the liberal slant of the Western media.Lets all get together now and search for the "root cause". Could it be Islam???? Nah.Its George Bush

Yeah thats right, I am sure George Bush was there when this all started, he obviously has tapped into a form of immortality that has allowed him to walk through the corridors of time and sow hatred amongst all men.

After reading all of these comments i have decided that you all are nuts

Terrorists cannot be deterred by death because a jihadist believes in their cause so strongly that death to them is not a deterrence. Would death to their families, however, who have knowledge or suspicion of their plans be a deterrence? Hold the families of these terrorists just as accountable if they have knowledge and don't come forward to prevent the loss of innocent life.

There you go again! You know what the f***ing problem is with all the Muslims including you? You mother-f***ers always try to justify killing people in the name of religion and cry wolf over a perceived disenfranchisement. Your loyalty to religion triumphs over national allegiance. I wish all of your relatives were killed in the massacre and see how you could then preach this BS. Muslims all over the world are lagging behind not because the cilivilized world shunned them, but because of their own reluctance to embrace modernization, their desire to suppress women and the uncanny ability to produce scores of children beyond their means to support them.

Blaming 'external links' and Pakistan has always been India's knee-jerk reaction. But it is no panacea to its myriad woes. After all, if the terrorists were so compliant of Pakistan's wishes then surely the country would not have been the victim of devastating terrorist attacks like the gruesome bombing of Islamabad Marriot just two months ago. And even if some officials in ISI did harbor sympathy for some terrorist groups vis-à-vis the Afghan conflict with U.S.S.R in the early1990s or so, that is no longer the case. After all the group with 'ties' to Islamabad and its intelligence agency ISI now being blamed for the carnage in Mumbai is the same one that twice attempted to assassinate Pakistan's former President Musharaff, who was a military journal and commander of ISI. Obviously, if the group had been in Pakistan's pocket then it would not have tried to kill its leader.

India needs to take a leaf out of America's book. When we were targeted with equally reprehensible attacks, we did not launch a PR drive to convince the world about so-and-so's role. We went after the terrorists as hard as we could. And we took measures to monitor threat level as well as to reduce the magnitude lest we were attacked again. India, despite facing repeated attacks, has failed to do so. It is about time it changed.

Comment: Being a hindu in India, I never knew what it felt like being a minority, until I came to the US for my graduate education. Only now, after many years in the US being a minority, and having changed my mental model do I realize the shabby treatment of all minorities in India.

We, in India, have a fundamental problem of not acknowledging our treatment of minority rights. We have consistently refused to listen to and understand the minority position. This has led to an apalling degree of underrepresentation and disenfranchisement of all minorities.

There is a great need for a dialogue in India - which needs to start now. Both, the political establishment and regular people need to grasp this opportunity to start the long and difficult process of reconciliation, conversation and re-integration of disenfranchised minorities into the India of tomorrow.

Thanks,

Nilesh

India has a serious and persistent problem with its treatment of religious minorities. What else could explain the treatment of Christian minority in India. In the last few months alone tens of thousands of Christians have been forcibly displaced by Hindu mobs and many killed in the Indian state of Orissa.

And I don't think I even need to recall the gory details of what happened to Muslims in Gujarat, India not long ago in in 2002 when more than a thousand Muslims were merciessly massacred , and when, in a much reported incident, some even ripped open the body of a pregnant Muslim woman and slaughtered her foetus. Interstingly, the chief ministeer of the state, who gave his blessings to the coldblooded massacre, has since become a more powerful leader.

I can go on and on about the widely documented cases of abuse and mistreatment of minorities in India . The point is there is a dichotomy between how India tries to present itself and the reality.

Aspiring for prosperity is great but it is greater when all, irrespective of religion or caste, can partake in it.

Unfortuntely, Fareed Zakaria, like many other too soft Muslims, allows himself to be pushed back on the defensive because a few crazy Muslims have done an atrocious crime of terrorism. He writes: "None of this is to excuse in any sense the cruel choice anyone might make to join a jihad. But moral clarity does not always yield intellectual clarity."

Moral clarity? A ???jihad??? is still a struggle against what is terribly wrong, most importantly ???a crime against one own soul??? but also against the type of imperialist aggression or limitless greed that we have recently witnessed that causes immense misery to millions of people; but also.against barbaric killers such as those who perpetrated the massacre in Mumbai.
Columists who are in a better position to be clearheaded without having to fear being accused of being apologists for terrorism (e.g. Somni Sengupta http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/world/asia/29india.html?pagewanted=print) have documented how Indian politicians manipulate caste, religious and other differences and grievances, encouraging the cruelty of neighbour against neighbour, in order to mobilize vote blocs in their favour.
Regarding the issue of Muslim disaffection proper, the Sachar Committee Report of 2006 has laid out a number of measures that the Government of India should implement to roll back the disaffection gaining ground among India???s minority populations as a result of exclusion from India???s boom. Not much has been done so far. Also, contrary hate language one often hears, the Report points out that ?????? the use of contraception is widely prevalent among Muslims but to a marginally lesser degree than the average for the overall population???. Muslim families are also very keen on giving their children, including girls, a good education, but access is limited.???
Other columnists, such as Nicholas Kristof and William Dalrymple point out that India???s ???harsh violations of human rights in Kashmir, and the brutal anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, have empowered groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (in much the same way that America???s policies in Guantanamo have empowered Al Qaeda). And India was slow to react to olive branches from General Musharraf, missing the chance to ease tensions in Kashmir???.
Nobel-prize-winning Economist Amartya Sen has argued that those same democratic states, including India, that can prevent famine merely by generating a lively public debate, were far less effective at preventing sectarian strife, because stopping demagogues from fanning hostility is different.
In sum, by all means crack down decisively on the terrorists and the pockets of nascent terrorism. But, more importantly, address the root causes of the problems ??? exclusion, manipulation by cynical politicians, the nefarious demagoguery of hate groups that demean minorities, and, instead nurture communal vigilance instead of communalist vigilante, encourage the unifying rather th