Joining me with more about the implications of all of this is Timothy Shah, adjunct senior fellow for religion and foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. Tim, welcome. Tell us how religion was tied up in this.
TIM SHAH (Adjunct Senior Fellow, Religion and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations): In a number of ways, and in really two big ways in particular. First is that the group that was most likely involved in these terrible attacks in Mumbai was not just a militant group, as we often see in the press, but it was a group motivated by religious ideology. The group is known as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which means “Army of the Pure,” and it continues to operate openly in Pakistan today. It has reconstituted itself as a faith-based NGO, but it is still a radical Islamic organization motivated by religious ideology. The second way in which religion is involved is that these attacks help to intensify a very volatile mix of religion and politics in India, which especially involves the Hindu nationalist movement and its political wing, the BJP.
[KIM] LAWTON: Now where does this leave India’s Muslim population?
Mr. SHAH: It raises some questions and suspicions in the minds of many Indians and also people outside of India as to whether India’s very large Muslim community was in some way involved in this, if not as the prime instigators perhaps as accomplices. India has a very large Muslim community. It’s the third largest Muslim population in the world, making India the third largest Muslim country in the world of about 130 million people, and so there are questions ””so far no concrete evidence I should emphasize ”” but there are questions and suspicions about the role of India’s Muslims.
Mr. Shah is a member of Truro Church, Fairfax, VA.
The WSJ Weekend Journal has an article [url=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122852093316784075.html?mod=todays_us_weekend_journal]India’s Dangerous Divide[/url] with some more history. Tim Shah’s interview is too short.