Islam is as peaceful as Hindus are intelligent

The Asian Age has a good opinion piece on page ten in its Sunday edition on the ban on minarets in his native Switzerland by Peter Stamm. Nice because Stamm writes simple lines and probably does not think of himself as in intellectual. Some of the opinion pieces- save the ones by Swapan Dasgupta and MJ Akbar in the Times of India and Admiral Arun Singh in Asian Age- can be very bombastic and tough to follow after a couple of paragraphs because the writer is busy trying to sell himself as a ‘know all’.
However I have a serious problem with Stamm’s idea of a friendly, peaceful, accommodating Islam.
The religion as I know it in India isn’t any of the above three. It is just a religion whose proponents have realised that come hell or high water, they would be pampered for their ability to rise above local issues and unite behind imaginary persecutions and ‘Islam is in danger’ cries during the elections. Plus every Muslim who votes knows that his ability to carry around a persecution complex in garb of inequality is rewarded in election after election by ‘secular’ parties. And he uses the unique gift.
Secondly the Muslims of India know that the vast majority of Hindus in this country are hypocrites, frightened, unlearned and vain. All of which is true since I myself am a Hindu and possess all these characteristics in abundance.
Just lo look at us. When a group of like-minded Hindus get together, they form a party like the Bharatiya Janata Party. When those who dislike the Hindu ethos or culture of this country- the negationists like Nehru- come up with a party, they make the Congress. The Congress is probably the brainiest party in any part of the world and its ability to divide and pamper different groups of people in the right amount and at the right time is so legendary that even when they are up for the count after ten years of stupendous inactivity and mismanagement, they still win elections. Look at Maharashtra. The problem with a lot of foreign writers like Stamm is that they live in worlds far removed from the bile of lesser developed nations and have this amazing urge to show themselves as secular as is defined by the West. Probably how I might react if I am told that some bloody black Nigerians have blown up some oil pipelines in the Niger Delta. My first reaction would be savages, heathens and the like. But my view might not be the truth because I would not be knowing the angst of a group like the Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) because I read newspapers run by big corporates whose brotherhood with big corporates, who sustain the former with their ads, is too strong to give in to the urge of reporting what is true.