Every aftermath of a terrorist attack has the media covering up for them. The said covering up is clothed in assorted linguistic finery. However, the phrase most in vogue happens to be Muslims under seige.

Message for Mumbai police: being tough on terror cannot mean targeting an entire community

It sounds like a sane statement. Yet, it doesn’t reveal the whole picture.

To provide some context

All that is disputed is the number. Estimates of the number of persons gathered in investigations after the July 7 Mumbai blasts vary between 150 and 1,500. But what is becoming resoundingly worrisome is that Muslims in the city feel under siege. A special series in this newspaper on post-7/11 faultlines has begun filtering perceptions of ordinary, and mostly educated, Muslims about the manner in which the Mumbai police are following up the case. The faultlines are showing up in diverse ways: a feeling reinforced that religious affiliation alone is rendering them suspect in the eyes of the police,…

That perception is only partially true. The last time I heard, politicians and the media bend backwards to please the “minorities.” In the same breath, they paint the “under seige” picture. Here’s the thing: Mumbai has been the favourite target of Islamic terror for over about 15 years, and the perpetrators have all been Muslims–homegrown or imported from Pakistan/Saudi Arabia. Yet, the average Muslim who supposedly feels besieged has a share in this: he has signed his approval–silently or otherwise–to statements made by mad Mullahs, or worse, by frauds like Javed Akhtar who can’t bring themselves to speak the truth. In the same way as the pusillanimous media which doesn’t dare utter “Islamic terrorism.” Here is a sample of language cloaked in cowardice:

It is a fact that the terrorist threat is upon India, and that it is growing.

Why not call it for what it is: “Islamic terrorist threat?” It is plain jihad, which the likes of Al Qaeda have announced against the US, Israel and India. The media in the West at least has some voices that echo reason but Jihad=Evil is taboo in India. Especially in the media. So, the media is forced to invent newer and newer wisdom when each act of mini-Jihad is perpetrated on India. The latest drop of wisdom that has been doing rounds especially after the Varanasi blasts is this: the “motive of the terrorists is to foster communal hatred.” Hey, but I thought only Hindus were communal. Anyway, here’s a variation of the same theme:

These voices must serve as first cautions that terrorists are gaining success even in the second of their obvious targets: to wreak death and disruption and to create suspicion between innocent civilians.

That motive again. But there is a problem of contradiction. This very paper’s editor, Shekhar Gupta, elsewhere attributed a different motive not very far in the past. He said the motivation for the train blasts was to kill upper-caste Gujarati Hindus and that that they deserved it Hindu fanatics had also done a similar act. It’s another issue that Newsweek recanted that latter statement. But this edit piece says that the motivation was to sow seeds of hostility and mistrust. What shall we believe?

What is more shameless in this piece is the blatant double-facedness that stands out in these lines:

However, India also does not have luxury of adopting the community-based policing rampant in the global “war on terror”. The efficacy of community-based profiling has yet to be established. But in India profiling by religion or ethnicity is in itself the terrorist plan that has to be defeated each time violence strikes.

First, the quotes surrounding “war on terror.” And then the highly englightened conclusion of: profiling by religion or ethnicity is in itself the terrorist plan that has to be defeated each time violence strikes. Every major act of terror has invariably its source in Islamic tenets. This piece wants us to believe that it is only “violence” without reason or ideology. One would feel the terrorists get a kick out of bombing out innocent lives just for nothing. As logically absurd as it is, how would it matter to terrorists what kind of profiling was done by the cops? How would anything matter at all to people who’re not afraid to die?

Even through the worst, Mumbai has held fast to its cosmopolitan spirit. It is troubling, then, that by many accounts people are disentangling into single-community neighbourhoods.

The spirit again! To die, to suffer in silence, to live daily cowering in helpless fear! The Spirit of Mumbai. As for single-community neighbourhoods, I’ll end my rant with an observation. The moment a locality becomes Muslim-dominated, others are forced to leave. This is a global phenomenon. Think what that means.

I think it is far better to have single-community neighbourhoods if that kind of homogenity ensures that society is peaceful.

Grow up, SpIndian Express, we know who you’re covering up for.