Ground Zero

I went to New York City for the first time yesterday. While walking around Manhattan, I made a very important stop: Ground Zero.

The former site of the World Trade Center is a place that can be summed up in the following sentence:
It wasn’t the presence of something…it is a loss made conspicuous by absence.

I never saw the twin towers in person. I did, however, watch them fall to the ground live on TV on September 11th , 2001, a heap of rubble and nearly 3,000 lives lost.

9/11 was probably the first and only tragedy in living memory that was shared live by millions of people in the US and abroad. Its memory is something that we all share in common. Our reactions to the event, however, diverged greatly.

I began college in 2003. I studied political science, and did so because of the effect that the 9/11 tragedy had on my life.  I wanted to know why, and how something like the attacks could have happened. Most of all, I wanted to know how I, an American Muslim, became an enemy in my own country overnight. I thirsted for answers, and quickly realized that unless I spoke on behalf of the Muslim community, no one else around me would.

I never believed that something like September 11 was about “good” and “evil”. No doubt the act was horrific and murderous  beyond belief. But it was an inherently political act. As I would learn, it was the confluence of factors, decades of geopolitics, the consequences of the action of men within our own government and those abroad.

History runs along a continuum. Unremarkable events and decisions, economic cycles, periodic natural disasters, the predictable rise and fall of power. But every now and then, history turns upon a moment—a day—a single event. And, as if another fork was taken in a diverging road, everything afterwards is forever changed. September 11th was one of those days. The World Trade Center attack was that event.

The emptiness at Ground Zero was unnerving. I stood at the historic 18th century cemetery across from the site, where a sycamore tree had miraculously fallen and shielded the church and attached graveyard, and wondered how life might’ve been had the towers not fallen.

But, as always, life goes on. Past is prologue, and the future lies ahead unwritten. Only time will tell.

This Genocide Will Not be Televised

“Muslims…they don’t deserve to live.”
-Senior Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) Official

FROM: “The Truth: Gujarat 2002: Tehelka Magazine Expose”: http://www.tehelka.com/home/20071117/

The legal definition of Genocide, according to the United Nations Charter, is as follows:

“[Genocide is] any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Seven years ago, on February 28, 2002, Gujarat State in Northeast India became the proving ground for what would be one of the audacious, brutal, and wide-ranging state-sponsored genocides in recent memory. Meticulously planned and executed by right-wing Hindu extremists in collaboration with  government officials, over the space of three days 2,500 Muslim men, women, and children were systematically murdered–hacked to death by machetes, burned alive in their own homes, and beaten to death. Muslim-owned businesses, mosques, and homes were burned to the ground. Thousands of women were raped and mutilated. Those who survived were rendered homeless, destitute, and without food or water. To this day- the community has not quite recovered.

An analogy for those not as well-versed in communal Indian politics:

Indian Muslims make up 15-17% of India’s population.  In numbers and social status, we are akin to African Americans in the United States: According to the government-commissioned Sachar Report, India’s Muslims are disproportionately poor, uneducated, oppressed and underrepresented in all academic, social, and governmental institutions. We live shorter lives, adverse health outcomes, and are subject to persecution by right-wing extremist groups– such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad/ Bharatiya Janata Party. The former is analogous to the Ku Klux Klan, the second to the American Republican Party.

I’ve written every year about Gujarat, hoping that by my writing about what happened will prevent people from forgetting the unimaginable atrocities committed in the name of religion–so that it may never happen again.

This year, however, is a bit different.

This due in large part  to the Oscar-winning film SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, which brought the plight of the Indian Muslim community to Western worlds’ film screens. Jamal Malik, a young Indian Muslim boy, is the central protagonist in the story, and very early on in the movie his mother is murdered in an mass-murder rampage by right-wing Hindu extremists. For the first time, my friends were asking me just what was going on.

My jaded response: “This happens all the time”.  A more accurate answer would be that the massacre depicted actually happened in 1994, in the aftermath of the attack and demolition of the Babri Masjid, one of India’s oldest mosques. And this happened again, only seven years ago as noted above. Has any one of those responsible been prosecuted for war crimes? No. Have Muslims received reparations for the loss of their homes, family members, and property? No.

In short: Justice is a bygone dream for India’s Muslims.

Help from the international community? None whatsoever. Does anyone from the global Muslim community give a damn? Not particularly. Will any country (US?) pressure India to stop its homegrown terrorism being perpetrated against its own citizens. Hell no.

Being an Indian-American Muslim is a uniquely frustrating experience in a lot of ways. The greater Indian community is deaf–purposefully ignorant–of the shit-shameful way minorities are treated.  If anything, because Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims barely interact in the United States, ignorance grows stronger. The Muslim community is preoccupied with the Occupation of Palestine (which, don’t get me wrong, is ridiculously racist and inhumane) and does not give a moments’ thought to other occurrences of injustices–especially with regards to the the largest Muslim minority in the world–rather, the second largest Muslim community of any country, period.  In India, you’re hated. In America, you’re feared. There’s just no break.

But I digress.

I implore all of you to look at this from a larger perspective. Regardless of where you are from, what national, religious, or cultural allegiance you hold, the crime of genocide–wherever it is committed, requires our interest and moral outrage. We must demand justice–and remain vigilant, for that is price of peace. I only hope that one day, justice will prevail for the victims of Gujarat.

Edmund Burke said it best:

“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”