Save Muslims from defenders like Mani Shankar Aiyar, please

Is there something about the Delhi winter that makes Mani Shankar Aiyar shoot off his mouth? On January 17 last year, Aiyar decided to call BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi a "chaiwala", sending the latter's popularity ratings soaring. Aiyar's comment gave Modi, who is otherwise known to have pursued pro-rich policies as the Gujarat chief minister, a chance to become a hero of the underclass against the "elitist" Congress. We all know what happened to the Congress a few months later, when the election results were out. It seems now Aiyar, with the best of intentions, is doing to the Muslim community what he managed to do for the Congress last year.

Reacting to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, Aiyar said: "We have to admit that ever since there has been a war on terror after 9/11, many innocent Muslims have lost their lives. This is what America did in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is, therefore, only to be expected that there will be a backlash. Countries like America can't do what they want just because they are powerful. Why should just powerful countries act this way? Why should those who are less powerful not respond? Powerless people will find powerless means of responding, when there are drone attacks".

Though Aiyar claims that he is not justifying the Charlie Hebdo attack, that is exactly what he did.

Yes, the number of Muslims who have lost their lives in the so-called war on terror is too large even to begin counting.

Yes, countries like America do exactly what they want to. People might not find a US drone strike as brutal as an ISIS beheading. To some, it might even seem as banal as a video game. But you know what, people do die in drone strikes, that too in much greater numbers. Yet there are no candlelight protests against such strikes.

But does that give Aiyar the right to preach a narrative of victimhood to the Muslim community? Absolutely not.

What is most irksome about Aiyar's comments is the patronising worldview they stem from. This is true of many "apologists" who try to "defend" Muslims after any terror attack carried out in the name of Islam. "Powerless people find powerless ways of responding," Aiyar says. He later adds, "I am a Gandhian, I am not a terrorist". It is almost as if Aiyar is trying to say that Muslims, being less enlightened beings than himself, are unaware of the principles of non-violence and therefore it is understandable if they respond in violent ways.

Muslims are as aggrieved as anyone else over such acts of violence, perhaps more so, as they are carried out in the name of the faith they hold so dear. They don't need Aiyar to offer explanations on their behalf.

In an excellent article that captures the collective pain of the Muslim community, Kashif-ul-Huda the editor of TwoCircles.net writes: "While religious leaders avoided talking about worldly issues and muslibs (liberal Muslims) shied away from talking about religion; extremists moved into the vacuum that existed at the intersection of modern technology and religious identity".

Calling for a debate within the community, he further writes: "It is high time we Muslims acknowledged the growing presence of these extremist tendencies amongst us. Muslims need to have open discussions in mosques, schools, and homes too, about extremism and extremist interpretations of Islam".

But this debate isn't restricted to Muslim opinion-makers like Kashif-ul-Huda. Consider what the Imam at the Nithari Jama Masjid said during his Friday khutba a few days after the Peshawar attack. "Those who carried out such a inhuman attack will be punished in this world and the next. We pray for the families of the children who were killed. While we do that, we must also reflect on why such acts are being carried out in the name of Islam. We must weed out such people who justify violence in the name of Islam," the Imam said in his sermon.

Nithari is far away from Peshawar, even farther away from Paris. Yet, people have begun discussing and criticising the extremist interpretations of Islam that provide the basis for such terror attacks. The well meaning but unnecessary explanations like the one Aiyar is offering will only impair this process of debate.