February 22, 2015

The Muslim Takeover of West Bengal

By Janet Levy

Riots, restrictions on speech and religion, and the takeover of politics and law enforcement are just a few of the unwelcome changes that can be expected in non-Muslim societies as Muslim immigrants increase in number, according to Dr. Peter Hammond.  A Christian missionary based in South Africa and author of 40 books, Hammond delineates how Muslims change societies in his book, Slavery, Terrorism and Islam.  Citing examples of countries worldwide, Hammond outlines typical activities that occur as the Muslim percentage of the total population increases.  It is a warning bell about the gradual, step-by-step changes that can be expected in other countries still undergoing significant Muslim immigration.

These societal changes occur because devout Muslims are bound by a 1,400-year-old doctrine of immigration originating in Islamic scriptures and based on Mohammed's migration from Mecca to Medina. Under the religious edict or Hijra, Islamic expansionism and submission of all non-Muslims to shariah or Islamic doctrine must occur.  Islamic expansionism and its counterpart, jihad, are first expressed as Muslim demands for special status and privileges within the host country.  A higher percentage of Muslims in the host country can soon translate into Muslim control of political processes, law enforcement, media, and the economy, as well as restrictions on freedom of movement, speech and religious practices. The appropriation of goods and property, as well as violence with impunity, can also occur.    

The situation in at West Bengal in Hindu-majority India, bordering Muslim-majority Bangladesh, illustrates the inherent problems to non-Muslim societies of a growing Muslim population.

West Bengal

Bengal, an ethno-cultural region, was politically divided in 1947 during the partitioning of British India into independent India and Pakistan.  Under this arrangement, the Bengal province was carved in two: the predominately-Hindu West Bengal, a state of India, and the predominately-Muslim East Bengal, which became a province of Pakistan and, in 1971, the Muslim-majority country of Bangladesh. 

At partitioning, the Muslim population of West Bengal stood at 12% and the Hindu population of East Bengal 30%.  Today, with massive Muslim immigration, Hindu persecution and forced conversions, West Bengal’s Muslim population has increased to 27% (up to 63% in some districts), as per the 2011 census and Bangladesh’s Hindu population has decreased to 8%.  While the situation for Hindus in Bangladesh is certainly dire, life has become increasingly difficult for Hindus in West Bengal, home to a Muslim-appeasing government and a breeding ground and safe haven for terrorists. For several years, West Bengal has suffered under apparent Muslim-planned riots designed to implement shariah, extract government concessions and grab more territory. 

Kolkata Riots

In 2007, a violent protest broke out in Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) against Bangladeshi feminist author, physician and human rights activist, Taslima Nasreen. The demonstrations against Nasreen were a thinly veiled attempt to institute Islamic blasphemy laws and curtail freedom of speech. 

Nasreen, who was born a Bangladeshi Muslim but chose atheism, had witnessed the horrific treatment of Islamic women in her medical practice, and advocated for freedom of expression, women’s rights, non-Muslim rights and abolition of shariah law.  In 1993, she published a novel, Lajja (Shame) about a Hindu family persecuted by Muslims.  The novel ignited a furor in the Muslim community, which called for a ban on the book and offered a bounty for her death.  The novel was subsequently banned by Indian authorities.  Nasreen was physically attacked, went into hiding and escaped from Bangladesh to Europe.  After 10 years’ exile, she returned to the east and settled in Kolkata.  Her Bangladeshi passport had been revoked and she waited several years for a visa to be able to visit India.  While in Kolkata, she continued to write articles critical of Islam despite renewed threats and calls for her beheading.

In November 2007, a protest organized by militant Muslims against Nasreen led to riots as Muslims blocked traffic, pelted police and journalists, torched cars and damaged buses.  Similar to the justification for the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris, West Bengali Muslims protested the violation of shariah blasphemy law, which mandates death for anyone who dares to criticize Islam.  The army was forced to intervene, Nasreen was placed under house arrest and later forced to leave the area.  The banned Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) were believed to have fostered the mayhem.

Canning District Riots

In 2013, Muslims in West Bengal were actively lobbying for a second partition of India to create an Islamic super state – Mughalistan – that would incorporate Pakistan, Bangladesh and parts of India.  Meanwhile, ethnic divisions were also stirred up by an upcoming local election.  Into this charged situation, the murder of a Muslim cleric by unidentified assailants sparked outrage among Muslims, as thousands mobilized for rioting in the Canning District.  An article in a popular weekly publication, Organiser, called the attack “a well organized and meticulously planned attack on Hindus.”  Over 200 Hindu homes were looted and firebombed, hundreds of temples and idols destroyed, and vehicles set on fire amid shouts of “Allah-hu Akbar!”  Repeated calls for help by Hindus went unanswered by the police.  Local residents claimed authorities were complicit with the Muslim mobs.   

Violence in Usti

This January 29th, in a market in the Kolkata suburb of Usti, more than 50 Hindu shops were ransacked, looted and gutted by rampaging jihadists.  Police mostly watched as bombs were hurled at Hindus indiscriminately.  They fired a few random shots into the air and detained victimized Hindu shop owners while their attackers roamed free. A legislative assembly member and the state minister for minority affairs reportedly demanded that local police release the few rioters held in custody. There was limited reporting by the mainstream media that didn’t specify the Muslim identity of the perpetrators and West Bengal’s Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, issued no statement about the violence.  Independent sites, Indiafacts and Hindu Samhati, reported the incident with numerous photographs.

Political Implications

With a 27% Muslim population, enough pressure exists to tip the scales for elected officials precariously toward advancement of an Islamist agenda and make Muslims the most privileged class in West Bengal.  In some areas, such as the border district of Murshidabad, which is over 63% Muslim, de facto shariah is imposed on all residents.  The vast majority of political candidates, elected officials and law enforcement leadership are Muslim and the economic prospects for Hindus dim as Muslims refuse to patronize non-Muslim businesses.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who has received official visits from Hillary Clinton and several U.S. ambassadors, offers a prime example of a political leader who expediently favors Muslim constituents, capitulates to their many demands and entices them with special benefits and privileges.  The reality of Muslim vote bank politics, whereby an entire Muslim community votes along lines dictated by the local imam or religious leader, adds to the problem and furthers Muslim control of the state.  Banerjee has gone so far in her Muslim sympathies as to publicly recite the Kalima Shahadat, the Islamic conversion prayer, in front of an audience of imams.  

Because West Bengal’s Muslims were largely responsible for her election as chief minister, Banerjee has made substantial payback.  She approved and validated the academic degrees of 10,000 previously unrecognized Saudi-funded and controlled madrasas (Islamic colleges) four minarets (Muslim towers), honorariums for imams and an exclusively Islamic township. Banerjee called for the establishment of Muslim medical, technical and nursing schools with special subsidies for Muslim students, as well as Muslim-only hospitals.  She has favored Muslims to the extent of distributing free bicycles and rail passes to female Muslim students and laptops to Muslim boys.  Banerjee’s political party, the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), will most likely send more Islamists to serve in parliament in the future.  Reportedly, jihadist sleeper cells inhabit the area under her protection.  Meanwhile, the needs of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh are ignored, even as they continue being victimized in West Bengal. 

In June of 2014, Mamata Banerjee made a highly questionable appointment, Rajya Sabha, to the upper house of the Indian Parliament.  Despite multiple warnings from the District Intelligence Bureau that had red-flagged him for instigating violence against Hindus, including alleged participation in the Kolkata and Canning riots and sheltering known terrorists, she selected Pakistani Hassan Imran to serve as MP. Imran is a founder and self-admitted member of the radical student group, the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a recognized terrorist organization banned by the Indian government.  He founded and edited a radical weekly magazine, Kalam, which he later turned into a daily newspaper, Dainik Kalam, and sold to the Saradha Group, a financial conglomerate with ties to West Bengal government officials. The publication has advocated for the establishment of Muslim-controlled areas in the state under shariah.  Hassan has close ties to local Islamist leaders and has worked with Jamat-e-Islami (JI), a pro-Saudi jihadist group supported by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).  He also has ties to a chief official of the Islamic Development Bank, a Saudi entity that has financed Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding trial in the United States.  JI and the ISI have been linked to efforts to take over the Indian state of Assam and separate it from India. 

The Saudi-funded terrorist group Jamaat-ul-Mujahadeen, also linked to MP Hassan Imran, has a major base in West Bengal, including bomb-manufacturing units, and has used Wahhabi money to build mosques throughout the state.  The Muslim call to prayer is blasted by loudspeaker from early in the morning to late at night and some thoroughfares in the Muslim districts of Kolkata are closed to all traffic for Friday prayers.

Recently, Hassan and other associates of Mamata Banerjee were implicated in a financial scandal – a Ponzi scheme with the Saradha Group – and things are starting to unravel for the chief minister.  A major investigation of a consortium of 200 private companies that collected between $4 – 6 billion from over 1.7 million depositors before it collapsed, may bring down her reign in West Bengal.  Her MP appointee, Hassan, is believed to have acted as a liaison between Jamaat-e-Islami and the money launderers.

Bangladesh

Hindus of West Bengal need only look across the border to Bangladesh to see their future if Muslim immigration continues and the Muslim population exceeds the current 27%. In Bangladesh, with an 89% Muslim population, ethnic cleansing persists unabated, Hindu land is forcibly captured and Hindu homes and businesses looted.  People are commonly beaten with no police intervention.  Hindus have been tortured and forced to pay the jizya, a tax that non-Muslims are required to pay for protection against Muslim terrorism.  Hindu girls, even married women, have been raped, mutilated, kidnapped, enslaved and forced to marry Muslim men.  Law enforcement authorities are often complicit in the activities and provide no protection or recourse.  Victims are typically threatened if they report incidents to the police. Often, in the case of abduction, police refuse to register complaints and make claims that consensual intercourse has taken place even if the girl is 9 or 10 years old, a non-minor under Islamic standards.  

Kidnapped Hindu girls who manage to escape report that they were taken to Muslim families in which relatives and friends were invited to rape them over several days while Muslim women facilitated the encounters. 

This dire future could possibly be avoided in West Bengal, where some speculate that the Saradha financial scandal could go far in exposing Mamata Banerjee’s dangerous ties to Islamists who seek to wrest control of West Bengal from Hindus.  If her government falls as a result, it could be the wake-up call needed to turn the current situation around.  It could also serve as an example to other countries facing increasing Muslim immigration and increasing imposition of Muslim values on non-Muslims.

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