Medieval barbarism
On Sunday, when 53-year-old T J Joseph, a Malayalam lecturer in the private Newman College at Thodupuzha, Kerala, was driving home with his mother and sister after Mass, a van stopped his car. Six men pulled Joseph from his car and chopped off his right palm with an axe, in full view of his family members.
At the Specialists Hospital at Kochi, he underwent two lengthy micro-vascular surgeries – lasting 16 hours – to ‘reconstruct and re-graft’ the severed palm, which police found about 200 metres from the scene of the crime, where it had been thrown by the assailants. Joseph is out of danger, but doctors are not yet sure whether his hand will get properly reattached.
The reason Joseph was attacked was that over a year ago, a question paper he set for his undergraduate students contained a passage about an imaginary dialogue between God and Muhammad, on which students were asked to comment. Some Muslim organisations assumed that the ‘Muhammad’ in the passage was intended to be the Prophet Muhammad, and took offence at what they said was ‘blasphemy’. They staged protest rallies. Stones were thrown at the college, which is run by the Church.
The college management apologised unconditionally. Then, on the government’s instruction, it placed Joseph under suspension for a year. The police registered a case against him. He was arrested under Section 295 of the Indian Penal Code (causing communal hatred), and later released on bail. The case is still on.
The attack on Joseph is nothing but medieval barbarism. What the assailants did was to cut off the hand that ‘offended’. But that is a punishment from the middle ages, not fit for a civilised society. The incident has been condemned by a large number of Muslim organisations, among others.
Two activists of one of the organisations that earlier organised the protests against Joseph for his question paper – the Popular Front of India (PFI) – have been arrested in connection with the attack. The PFI – which, incidentally, also has a Goa branch – earlier came into focus when the Mysore Police accused it of played a ‘crucial’ role in riots in that city in April 2009, along with Pramod Muthalik’s notorious Sri Ram Sene. However, the organisation has also been the target of ridiculous accusations about ‘Love Jihad’, in which Muslim boys apparently ‘systematically seduce’ girls of other religions, to convert them to Islam.
While the PFI has also condemned the attack, it has qualified its denunciation in a very peculiar way. It says that the “attack on the teacher is deplorable”, but adds: “Such unfortunate incidents are caused due to inaction of the government and related parties to check situation (sic) leading to such incidents.” That is not all. It goes on to lash out at the “hues and cries of those who hesitate to take appropriate action when provocative and uncivilised remarks and campaigns were repeated every now and then on Prophet Mohammed…” Last, it accuses “Christian Churches and mainstream organisations” of keeping a “sinful silence” when there are attacks on Islam. Does it sound at all sincere?
In contrast, the All India Milli Council has pointed out that those who attacked Joseph forgot that the Prophet of Islam in his own life had pardoned a Jewess who used to throw garbage on him. When she did not do so one day, the Prophet enquired about her and, being told that she was ill, went to wish her an early recovery. The Prophet also forgave the people of Mecca after its conquest, though they had expelled him from his hometown and waged war against him for years. It says Islam explicitly forbids taking law and order into one’s hands when there are competent authorities to do so. “The criminals who attacked the professor,” it concludes, “have clearly sinned and defamed Islam by committing this crime.”
