Renowned thinker and Head of Chair in Islamic Studies & Research, Yenepoya University, Mangalore, Dr. Javed Jamil has called upon the RSS “to give up the approach based on religious identity and adopt religious morality”. He was delivering a talk on “Need of all-religion unity against New World Order” in an international seminar on “Retrieving the Voices from the Margins: Thinkers of Modern India”, organised jointly by Banaras Hindu University and Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla at BHU Campus. He stressed, “Religious morality rather than religious identity should be the foundation of the unity of all religions if they have to face the challenge of New World Order and Westernism.”
Dr. Jamil said that “what governs the modern international scene is neither Sciences nor Ethics nor Religion but pure, unbridled “Economic Fundamentalism”, espoused by the forces of Economics and political power in the West.” “The challenge to religion in today’s world is not from one another but from the forces of economics,” he argued. He elaborated how after the Industrial Revolution, the forces of Economics organised themselves into a powerful lobby and changed everything. “They sacrificed Law in front of the eyes of Statue of Liberality, banished religion, remodelled society and took Sciences and Technology as their mistresses,” he said.
Dr. Jamil stressed that if the religions of the world do not come together, the false and dangerous ideologies of the so-called New World Order will engulf the whole humanity. He said this work may be initiated in India by Hindus and Muslims jointly and then taking all other religions along. He stressed that RSS will have to work for the application of religious morality rather than finding in the name of their ideology issues that evoke antagonising Muslims and helping certain people to come to power.
The seminar appeared to be dominated and organised by ideologues and intellectuals close to RSS. In an answer to a question, Dr. Jamil said that “ISIS has nothing to do about Islam and is a creation of West to destabilise the Middle East”. In a sharp retort, he said that “he condemns every single act of violence against innocents whatever the identity of the perpetrators or the victims whatever their ideology, religious or non-religious, whatever their motive and method”.
He added that “if on that yardstick we have to condemn Al-Qaeda and other such organisations six thousand times for killing six thousand people we will have to condemn America three million times for killing as many people in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Then he asked if others are ready to condemn America for the killings. He also gave statistics showing that more than 95 per cent of 35000 terrorism-related deaths in India in the last three decades have been caused by Non-Muslims.
The participants included Prof. Kapil Kapoor, Chancellor, Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwvidyalaya, Wardha and Former Rector and Professor of English & Sanskrit, JNU, New Delhi, Prof. Chandrakala Padia, Chairperson, IIAS, Shimla, Prof. Girish Chandra Tripathi, Vice-Chancellor, BHU, Prof. Manjeet Chaturvedi, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Prof. Anindita N. Balsev, Professor of Philosophy, University of Denmark, Copenhagen & Presently Nehru Fellow, New Delhi, Prof. M. Sateesh Kumar, Queen’s University, Belfast, Prof. Sudhir Kumar, University of Punjab, Chandigarh and Prof. Y.P. Dubey, Vice-Chancellor Sapoornanand Sanskrit University, Varanasi