SPIRIT OF ISLAM FEBRUARY 2018

44 Spirit of Islam Issue 62 February 2018 ASK MAULANA Your Questions Answered There is a perception that intolerance is on the rise in India. What do you say? Intolerance is there in every society. It existed in the past, the only difference being that now, with modern means of communication, news about it spreads far and wide. Tolerance, intolerance—these are part of every society. Human beings have freewill, and so there will sometimes be intolerance, there will sometimes be dissent, there will be differences. These things will always be there. Now, the key is how to handle them. The wise approach is that if someone says something that might hurt you, you should simply not react. Just ignore it. Why should you enter into a debate? If you do not react, if you simply keep quiet, the matter will die out on its own. But there’s so much violence happening in the world, in the country. Millions of things are happening in the world, in the country, but the media is highlighting only that one incident of violence. It ignores everything else. And so, following the media, people also do not look at the million good, constructive things that are happening and get taken up by the one thing that the media highlights. But don’t you think that intolerance has increased in India, if you compare the situation today with that of a few decades ago? Especially Muslims, since they are a minority in India, are affected more by intolerance, violence and by communal riots. How do you think communal violence can be stopped? The solution is not through protests, issuing fiery statements or through taking out demonstrations. If you want to solve the problem of riots, you should understand why they happen in the first place. Generally, riots are a result of some very small issue. If you just ignore this issue and do not blow it out of proportion, it will not escalate into a riot. I’ll give you an example. Once, a Muslim boy drank water from a hand- pump, with his mouth or hand touching the pump’s spout. Some Hindus told him not to do that. The Muslims protested against this, and it soon turned into a riot! Now, the same thing has happened with another Muslim, too. He was told not to drink like that, and he responded very differently. He simply said, “Okay, I’ll use a glass to drink”, and then of course no one got angry and the matter ended there. So, the lesson