Leaders must speak sense

In light of the current terrorist threat that is haunting the country, this is a time when the entire nation should stand together to defeat the common enemy. The threat is being aimed at every citizen irrespective of his caste, creed, religion, race and political party, in spite of the enemy belonging to a particular community. The enemy is one who thinks everybody other than him should be wiped out from the surface of the earth. Therefore, there cannot be vacillation on the part of any right-thinking citizens of this country in dealing with him or her.  

There cannot be any justification of terrorism or any semblance of it. Even an unintended justification of the faintest semblance might cause irritation and suspicion among people. It is in that backdrop one has to look into the comment made by Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs Minister A.H.A. Haleem during a media briefing on swords recovered from several mosques by the law enforcement authorities after the Easter Sunday suicide attacks against Christians. 

When a journalist questioned the purpose of keeping swords in certain mosques, the minister had ludicrously replied that they might have been meant for the clearing of shrubs around those mosques. At a time when Muslims around the country had been ashamed by the horrific suicide bomb attacks on unarmed innocent men, women and children by a bloodthirsty group of Muslims, in the name of Islam, the Minister’s irresponsible statement brought further ridicule for them.

One cannot fault the journalist to pose a question to the Minister on the matter, as he is the political authority responsible for mosques. Had the question been put to him just because he was a Muslim one can treat it even as a racist question, as the entire Muslim community stands with the others against the terrorists with Muslim tag. Had it been so, it would have even been tantamount to holding a member of a community responsible for a crime committed by another member of the same community.

But, here Mr Haleem is the Minister-in-charge of Mosques in the country. He is morally responsible for anything that happens within the premises of mosques. It is on that ground that the question might have been posed to him. Yet, one cannot expect him to be cognizant of everything that takes place in and around each mosque in the country. 

Even a harshest anti-Muslim racist would not suspect the Minister to be a member or a supporter or a sympathizer of the terrorist group that cold-bloodedly killed more than 300 people on Easter Sunday. 

Nor does anybody suspect that he was aware of the reasons for the swords being kept in several mosques. Hence, he does not need to provide reasons for what he was not aware of.  In fact, it is only the Police that can answer this question, not the Minister.

Having a sword in one’s house is not illegal unless he harms another person with it. But having a sword in a religious place, even for self-defence would give rise to fear and suspicion among the people of other faiths. The sense of fear and suspicion that might be felt by other communities can be imagined when dozens of weapons were found in a religious place. 
The fear would be intensely high when a cache of weapons is found in a mosque at a time when Muslims have been demonized with a plethora of distortions of Islam and especially after a series of suicide bombs having them exploded by a group of Muslims. 

The faintest justification of such an act by a Muslim leader might give rise to anger apart from it being ridiculed. The apparent attempt by the Minister to justify the swords being kept in mosques points to the fact that he had not grasped the seriousness of the situation. Leaders must speak only sense at a critical juncture like this.