One Muslim Community (Finally) Takes a Stand!

Who says all news is depressing? In what BBC reports as "their first openly defiant act against 'Islamic terrorism'" Indian Muslims refused to bury the bodies of the nine men who terrorized Mumbai in Muslim cemeteries.

Finally, a precedence-setting act of courage! Alhamdulillah.

Earlier, I was told that US government officials were starting to avoid referring to terror perpetrators as "mujahideen." I hope the media follows suit.

Kinship with people of one's faith is natural, among Muslims this kinship is deeper and stronger than many other faiths. We celebrate each others' successes as siblings do. We mourn with each other our losses. Our hearts weep for the oppression other Muslims endure. Yet, for all the tragic and heart-rending oppression of Muslims, we can never retaliate by crossing the lines our Lord has drawn. Our love for other Muslims will not blind us to their crimes. We are not a tribe, we are a faith community. Our faith sets high ethical and moral standards. We are not so naive that anarchists and terrorists could pass off as freedom fighters and martyrs.

You can fool anybody once, but you can't fool all the people all the time. I view the response of India's Muslims as the beginning of the end of the age when terrorists defined Islam and Muslims.

Terror is our response to tyranny against us? Forgive the cliche, but two wrongs do not make a right. We don't fight sin with bigger sin. Just as speaking the truth before a tyrant is a great form of jihad, resisting hopelessness, despair and suicide in face of great oppression must have great rewards with God. Who came and tricked us into suicide missions? And look at what that has brought us?

We need to unequivocally denounce the terror strategy. It has no place in our faith. And it's been tried for way too long and failed. It has brought shame to the name of our faith and untold suffering to our people. To borrow from the editorial headline of India's leading Urdu newspaper Inquilab: "ab bahut ho chuka" - enough already!