#TalkToAMuslim: The Only Good Muslim is the One Who is ‘Invisible’

Muslims are only accepted if they are ‘liberal’, ‘secular’ and modern, and conform to norms of majoritarian society.

(Photo: Arnica Kala / The Quint)

The only good Muslim is an invisible Muslim. This seems to be the overarching message, the world over. Over the past 17 years, Muslims, who collectively account for 1.8 billion people in the world, have been held to account for the actions perpetrated by less than a fraction of 1 percent of their community.

Even in a country like India, which has one of the largest and most diverse populations of Muslims in the world, they are treated as a homogeneous group.

Adjectives commonly used to describes Muslims:

• Violent
• anti-national
• conservative
• misogynist
• backward
• fifth columnists
• Pakistanis

And there are many more.

Recently, the Defence Minister of India had a fit because Rahul Gandhi had allegedly said that the Congress was ‘also’ a party for Muslims. Of course, the humble ‘also’ was completely overlooked.

Today, to speak and highlight the plight of Muslims, is to be damned as either an appeaser, or someone who encourages victimhood. To remain silent is to damn oneself. If secular parties proclaim that they are also pro-Muslim, they are accused of appeasement politics.

However, if advocates of ethnic and religious nationalism speak of saving Muslim women from Muslim men, they are lauded for their vision.

To draw attention to the almost daily story of lynchings is to be an alarmist. To point out that lynch mobs have political patronage is to play communal politics. To be an Indian Muslim today, is to constantly be on the back foot. To be an Indian Muslim today, is to be a spokesperson for all Muslims, regardless of whether they are still alive, or died 500 years ago. Muslims are after all the ‘sons of Babur.’

#TalkToAMuslim Divides Tweeple

Recently, in response to this growing alienation, a young woman’s Twitter hashtag #TalkToAMuslim has gone viral, garnering thousands of retweets within a few hours. The hashtag has been received with both derision and support. Some people think it is quite obviously patronising, while others have taken it as an opportunity to articulate what they have felt for a long time: alienation.

What is interesting about many of the Muslims tweeting and re-tweeting the hashtag is that they seem to be from a largely middle or upper-middle class background.

They too are feeling a sense of alienation despite perhaps not looking like the stereotypical Muslim man or woman. Among the Muslims, much like among virtually all other religious communities, there are people who identify as ‘modern,’ ‘liberal’ or ‘secular’, and largely the first part of this hyphenated identity has spoken more of their religious practice than their political views.

Often the hyphenation is a choice, but sometimes it is also because of the social pressure of being accepted. Even today most people would automatically assume that a devout Muslim could never be politically secular and liberal.

Of Alienation & Polarisation

I have lost count of the number of times I have been asked whether I am religious or not, as if the answer to this question will be a key to identifying my politics. When I respond by asking if they would pose a similar question to a Jew, a Hindu, a Sikh or a Christian then generally I am met with an uncomfortable silence. The point is that, anyone with a Muslim name has reason to worry today, because they may be a target just because of their name. \

It will not matter whether they believe or don’t believe, whether they live in a gated upper-middle class community or not, and indeed whether they wear overtly ‘Muslim’ apparel or not. Their name will be enough to damn them, and if things come to a head, then at least Muslim men are easily identifiable by pulling down their trousers, as Manto wrote in his short-story, ‘izārbund.’ Of course, this sense of alienation among Muslims is not new.

Practically right from the moment of Partition, Muslims were expected to ‘prove’ their loyalty, as Sardar Patel famously declared.

This sense of being viewed as fundamentally different, continued afterwards. Abdul Hamid Qureishi recalls in his memoir Agnipariksha, that he was surprised in the 1969 Ahmadabad riots, when even his house (in a largely Hindu neighborhood), was targeted.

After the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the sense of alienation grew yet again, particularly among those who were visibly Muslim.

My aunts and many others I know, were routinely jeered at on roads, told by shopkeepers to go to Pakistan, and were confronted by the dreaded yellow and khaki PAC (provincial armed constabulary) trucks that had painted on to their sides ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan, Musalman jao Pakistan ya Qabristan.’

Historical Oppression & Persecution

To this day the very mention of the deployment of the PAC can invoke deep-seated fear among Muslims, particularly those from poorer socio-economic backgrounds. Incidentally, the PAC is infamous among Muslims for having virtually no Muslims in it, which is something that Asaduddin Owaisi recently spoke of with regard to Muslim representation in the Army.

In 2002, in Gujarat, former MP Ehsan Jafri’s house became a refuge for those fleeing from the riot-hit areas, because it was assumed it would not be attacked. Of course, it was.

Until recently, because of the absence of social media, there was no measure of how acute and widespread anxieties were, and most information was often anecdotal, and thus, any mention of such incidents, was dismissed as fear-mongering.

Of course, this level of paranoia and fear is not without historical precedent, but then again, history itself seems to have no place in our post-truth world. In the nineteenth century in Prussia (Germany and Austria), many Jews tried everything to integrate themselves and make themselves more acceptable to what they perceived to be the mainstream.

Many Jews became atheists, others converted to Christianity, and still others turned on their co-religionists, as if that would make them more acceptable.

However, their liberalism and reformed Judaism, forged in antagonism to tradition, was not durable enough to protect them from the impending genocide. Jews were regarded as a foreign presence that needed to be purged from the body politic.

In Europe as well as in the US, anti-Semitism manifested itself in every sphere of life.

The Jewish spectre haunted these countries as they sought to locate and define their sense of nationhood, much like what is happening in India today. #TalkToAMuslim can easily be dismissed as a trite social media fad, but perhaps it can also be taken seriously as an example, albeit a small one, of the growing insecurity and anxiety felt by even those Muslims who are insulated by layers of privilege.

(Ali Khan Mahmudabad is an Indian historian, political scientist, poet, writer, and assistant professor in the dual fields of history and political science at Ashoka University. He tweets @Mahmudabad. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)