HAJI ABDUL SATTAR ANSARI opined that those who say Islam is 'dehsatgardh' have a 'tangnazariyaya' (those who say Islam favors terrorism are shortsighted). Islam is the religion of 'salamati'. It is the most moralistic and humanistic of all doctrines. Those who have no idea of it are the ones who are propagating it all over the world and mostly lies are being propagated.

Islam presented the ideal of humanism in the world at a time when no one had ventured.

TAHSEEM MOHAMMAD of Pakistan said he had been inspired by what Rakesh Bhatt said. Projecting that what had happened in Pakistan was well known here in India was the creation of religiosity overtaking politics and it was condemnable. Excessive misuse of Islam in Pakistan should be an eye-opener. He said that merely starting that how good Islam was as was said by the other speakers would not do. An analytical perspective is indeed required.

Ultimately religiosity is something which is controlled by money and not merely politics. In the NWFP province of Pakistan the U.S. dropped a bomb. Yet it created no condemnation from the state. State has lost its sovereignty. We should take the debate forward. Global superpowers are responsible for foisting terrorism not religiosity.

He noted that there is a great differentation seen in people and living styles in Pakistan. If one goes from Lahore till Peshawar, one comes across various varieties of Muslim – some are Sunnis, some Shia, some Kaafri, Some Rajri, some Mohajirs. So much is the segmentation that if tomorrow a census is taken it would reveal that the Christians are in a majority in Pakistan! We are leading very segmented lives.

Let us first how are Muslim countries treating their own people. In Pakistan, something very neafarious has taken place – and this pertains to the absolutism of the State in the name of religion. We need to raise the question, whether the entire nation state is viable? He said personally he feels it is the type of ideals that are inbuilt into your psyche which determines at a personal level how humane a person is. That a person can be more humane without being religious is also possible. He recounted his own example. He said that a child he grew up in a Muslim household and he was sent to the mosque periodically. But he did not learn the Qoran. More than from the scriptures, he learnt his values from what he saw in his home. The Christian school where he was sent taught him his basic virtues, the treatment meted out to his Christian governess at home defined his attitudes and beliefs.

All over the world, exploitation is class based. He said his parents and predecessors hailed from Himachal in India. His mamu was a Hindu from Dharamsala. Hence despite so much of turmoil around him in his country, he could not forget the basic essentials of an idealistic humanism that he believed in. By implication he meant that a person's identity is constructed by many influence of which religion may be one. He made another hard-hitting point that the fundamentalists all over the world are similar and speak the same language and idiom. Bal Thackeray of India could be an ISI agent, if he went by the similarities of his agenda. He said that the Hindutva agenda of the Indian fundamentalists compares very well with what the Muslim clerics preached in Pakistan and were still at it.

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