ASSESSING
MUSLIM MINORITiES ALONG AFRICAN AND INDIAN OCEAN COASTS AND ISLANDS May 2013
By
John Paul Maynard, Harvard University
There are times when Muslims need rally against outside foe,
but this is not now, even when under attack. Better to lay low and not say much. Minority Muslim communities are
widespread along the Africa coast, along the Indian coast, and throughout
Southeast Asia, including China. There are also some 50-odd islands in the
India Ocean each having a Muslim community. These include Madagascar, the
Seychelles, Mauritius, Zanzibar, the Lakshadweep Islands, the Maldives and ,
usually, the Muslims are in the minority.
The Arakan coast, and inland, minority Muslim communities have
been attacked. Bombs and assassinations continue is Southern Thailand. There
are false dawns, in Thailand and in the Philippines. Along the east coast of Africa, Muslim
communities are also under pressure. The Wahhabi sect has used oil money to
place narrow clerics in Mombasa, Nairobi, Dar as Salam, Beira, Maputo, even
Durban. Out in the Indian ocean, on islands, there is also tension. But it
would be incorrect to say all these and tensions and tragedies are the same in
all cases.
For one thing, these mixed trading societies have been
co-existing synergistically for over a thousand years. Madagascar, for example, has seen some
turmoil – a duopoly – but the Muslim minority in Toliara and Mahajanga has seen
no deterioration of its status, as far we can tell. We know they are there
but we never hear of them, so assume they can survive without desperation.
India is also doing well. Seven years ago, some 3,500
Muslims and Hindus were killed in Ahmedabad, in Gujjarat. The Muslims, laying low, are pushing no irredentist claims to any part
of India, including Kashmir. They can use Al Shar’ in the courts. They mix
during the day, and as India becomes more prosperous, it will likely become
more tolerant, more inclusive. But the rising tide of war in the Middle East
and Central Asia, threatens to alter this peaceful synergy.
The Buddhist, like the Muslims, were, are, a trading civilization,
quite unlike Byzantium and the West. They have experienced short periods of
tensions before. Using Google Earth, the
reader might explore the sections of coast running from Chittagong to Sitwe –
the Arakan coast. In the villages and towns of Myanmar, one can see the mosques,
as well as Buddhist pagodas, temples and stupas. If one follows the coast up
into Bangladesh, one sees the Buddhist institutions sprinkled amongst the
mosques. Buddhists can't drive out Muslims in Myanmar, because the Bangladesh's can easily drive out the Buddhists and Hindus in its eastern coastal region south of Chittagong.
One is shocked that the new Burmese authorities, led by Aung San Su Chih are not
prosecuting the several Buddhist bigots who instigated a slaughter of Rakhingas
– that is, former citizens of the very old Rakhine Sulktanate. Hinduism
had earlier penetrated Southeast Asia, no doubt on the back of trade. Hindu kingdoms of Chola and Vijranakar were
counterweights to the Turkic period of North India: even before Mahmud of
Ghazni, there were Turks and Persians coming down through the Frontier passes, debauching into Indus then the Gangetic Plains Then there
were the Ghorids (from Central Afghanistan) and the Lodi, then in the early 16th
C., Babur, the founder of the Mogul Dynasty, entered India, defeated its Turkic kings, and set up an enlightened national society. Akbar, Shah Jehan - at first the Moguls were very
tolerant of other faiths, and cultures, but successive emperors became more and
more aggressive, fostering an aggressive Islam bent on dominance. Such intolerance had Areabia (Wahhabi) roots back then as well as today.
But as for the
people, they co-existed in a synergistic way, just as Muslims, Hindus,
Christians, Jains, Buddhists do today. All the contact regions are different: there is no threat to Islam, as the mullahs keep preaching. And no Jihad in the Qur'an, that is to say, no theory of war in that book.
The Muslim minorities on the Indian and African coast, along
rivers, on the islands of the India ocean, and in Southeast Asia, are too many
to list. Often they are just single neighborhoods in larger towns. But
business-wise, they are tied tightly, one group to the other. They are smart to
lay low. Even if the communities experience prejudice, they then close in on themselves, to deal with each other for basic commodities. But that free trade, necessary for survival, can be clinched, by the government(s), and by extremist groups, like we saw in Mechtila and in the Arakan coast. And some of
these Muslim merchants do maintain long-distant trading relations.
Those trading links were once very long-distance: from Zanzibar to
Ghuangzhou. Muslims settled in all parts of China (the Hui or Hua), and over in the Philippines, where some
ten thousand have perished in inter-ethnic , inter-sectarian strife.
It may be totally incorrect to call the tragedies in
Gujjarat, Thailand and the Philippines examples of Muslim-Hindu –Christian –Buddhist
tensions. But each case is different,
and it hard to call murderers and robbers Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims or
Christians.
Do not use my name to commit evil. If you do, I will
punish you with especial severity..
Exodus 20:7.
