Is religious extremism harming India?
These are bad times, says the chief priest of a small mosque in the heart of the Muslim quarter of Asia’s largest slum in India’s biggest city. “There is fear and suspicion everywhere,” said Mohammed Saeed Khan Qadri of Salaullah Mosque in Mumbai’s Dharavi slum, set in the middle of a sea of tin-roof shanties and slush-filled lanes that buzz with life and rattle from the noise of passing trains. When seven bombs ripped through Mumbai’s commuter trains earlier this month, they not only shattered the lives of hundreds of people, they may also have shattered a myth, police say. US President George Bush once famously congratulated India’s leader Manmohan Singh that not a single Indian Muslim had joined the ranks of al Qaeda — a testament, he implied, to communal harmony in the world’s largest democracy. The statement may be factually correct — but it is clear that Islamist extremism is an emerging threat in India. Police say the Mumbai attacks may have been organised by Pakistan-based Is
