Tolerance of the RoP

This is an excellent piece by Ramesh N. Rao on the tolerance for Hindus shown by Islam.

Hinduism in Islamic republics
Commentary: Of Karma and Dharma

FARMVILLE, June 16 (UPI) — Islam, we are told, is a religion of peace but that a few people have hijacked it and given it a bad name. Others say that Islam is the problem, and that fascism and authoritarianism are codified in Islam. I will leave it to the experts to debate the validity of the contending claims. While that debate rages on, I would like to present some disturbing information about the attacks against other religions, religious symbols, and religionists in Islamic Republics, and especially attacks on Hindus and Hinduism.

India was partitioned in 1947 by the British into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and India, a secular, democratic republic. Pakistan chose Islam as its state religion, and living in the two parts of Pakistan - West and East - was a large minority of Hindus. In West Pakistan (now Pakistan), the Hindu population was estimated to be anywhere between 15 and 24 percent of the population, and in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Hindus constituted 30 percent of the population.

Sixty years later, the Hindu population in Pakistan has been reduced to about 1.6 percent, and in Bangladesh (a.k.a. East Pakistan, formerly East Bengal) to about 9 percent. "They just migrated to India because they felt more secure in India," or "they migrated because of economic opportunities" are the assertions of those who wish to side-step the hegemonic nature of the monopolistic claims of Islam, or the authoritarian bent of Islamic regimes.

Read the whole thing for good information on the benevolence shown to the Hindus by pratitioners of the Religion of Peace™. Also discussed is the approach taken by "progressives" in multicultural matters and how helpful that has been.

They say, "Also needed are multicultural policies that recognize differences, champion diversity and promote cultural freedoms, so that all people can choose to speak their language, practice their religion, and participate in shaping their culture — so that all people can choose to be who they are."

Interesting as it may sound, does it mean that a Muslim living in the U.S. is allowed to divorce through "talaq" or marry four wives, or that Muslims can demand that Arabic be the language of instruction in public schools where there are large groups of Muslim students, or that Hispanics can demand Spanish, and Indian-Americans can demand Hindu and the seventeen other official languages of India for Indian students?

In India, the demand to have a common civil code governing practices like marriage, etc., has been labeled as an attack against Muslims made by "Hindu nationalists," ignoring the fact that such a demand is completely logical, fair, and rational. This attitude of the liberal/progressive groups is what enables the extremists from the other end of the political spectrum then to demand an America for "whites only," or the Christian fundamentalists to make the world "Christian."

Amartya Sen and the U.N. committee are mum, however, in their report about diversity and democracy in Islamic republics. It is this strange blindness and inexplicable tied tongues that make progressives the object of racist and extremist derision if not hatred. When we recognize the strange blinders that progressives wear evaluating the "functioning" of Islamic regimes or the influence of Islam on peoples of the world we recognize ideology overwhelming sanity and logic.

Read the whole thing, there is much, much more.