Syed Zubair Ahmad for BeyondHeadlines
When we reached at India gate at 7 pm yesterday to attend a candle march in a show of our solidarity with the family of journalist Muhammad Ahmad Kazmi who had been implicated in connection to Feb 13 terrorist attack on the wife of an Israeli diplomat at that time there were approximately 200 people. Meanwhile, a police officer with his troop came and instructed the participants to conclude the march within fifteen minutes and move away quickly. But within few minutes when the scattered people started gathering to a point and took shape of thousands I didn’t see the police men around the massive gathering again. They didn’t come to give any kind of instruction and the crowd remained shouting and yelling till 9 pm.
The policemen were watching the hullabaloo from the distance and their officers might be reporting about the massive gathering to the home minister himself. This is what makes a difference. We would have been driven away by the police had we been fewer in numbers. But we were more than one thousand so the police officer thought it better to move away from around us. This is the need of the hour. Now the time has come to show our unity and strength unanimously. We have shown our unity and strength in U.P elections and driven the Communal forces from there, now we need come out from the label of ‘vote bank’ and establish ourselves as a strong pressure group to ensure justice not for only our community but for all oppressed people whether they are Dalits, Aadivasis and victims belonging to any caste and community, for that matter even poor people from the upper castes. Only fighting for others and fighting it together can make all of us safe. It’s a matter of grave shame that we have become the target of all kinds of atrocities and are crying for justice, while our role was that of savior of humanity. History is witness that Muslim rulers even in their twilight years were saviours of humanity.
The Muslim entry in Spain led by Tariq bin Ziyad was to save the Spanish populace from the yoke of king Roderick. This assault was only finalised when due to Roderick’s forced adultery the daughter of count Julian became pregnant and he appealed to Musa bin Nusair (Africa’s governor) for help, who with sanction from the caliph in Damascus sent Tariq bin Ziyad to attack on Spain.
When a Sri Lankan caravan for Hajj was detained by king Dahir and a detainee girl managed to write a letter expressing their plight and asking for help it is said that Hajjaj bin Yusuf jumped out of his bed on receiving the letter and could not sleep for whole night. Earliest in the morning what he did was to despatch an army in command of Muhammad bin Qasim to attack Sindh and teach king Dahir a befitting lesson. This was our instinct to fight against injustice on others, now we are crying for justice for ourselves.
Muslim youths have become soft targets of police and intelligence agencies after war on terror launched by imperialist America and its allies. Muslims are being implicated falsely in terror cases and after spending 5-10 years in jail they are being released only to face a dark future. This has become a daily routine of police and intelligence agencies to demoralize them and create a psychology of fear among the Muslim masses. The arrest of senior and honest journalist Muhammad Ahmad Kazmi is a turning point of this atrocity. Few days before our slight unity have made communal forces run away from U.P. If we will unite properly such forces are bound to run away from Delhi too.
(Syed Zubair Ahmad is a Writer & Journalist. He can be reached at smzubairahmad@gmail.com)
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect BH’s editorial policy.
