It has been an oft-repeated practice to distort Pakistan’s war against India. The whitewashing comes from various quarters. While the Pakistanis themselves are honest about the Jihad they are waging against India, peaceniks within India and elements who have long cosied up to Pakistan deny what Pakistan itself admits. Similarly, Majeed Memon from NCP issued a statement recently about Pakistan’s tirade against India and asserted that Pakistan is fighting for land and is not waging Jihad against India.

#Exclusive | This can’t be called ‘jihad’. Jihad is a religious war and there is no fight for religion here, it’s a fight for land:@advmajeedmemon, NCP leader tells TIMES NOW. | #IndiaStingsPak pic.twitter.com/2KTSyVbUsZ — TIMES NOW (@TimesNow) September 14, 2019

Majeed Memon said that what Pakistan is doing in Kashmir cannot be called ‘Jihad’ as ‘Jihad’ is a religious war. What Pakistan is doing is fighting for land. Memon urged media not to ‘misrepresent or miscommunicate’ the ‘concept of Jihad’, which is a religious war.

Majeed Memon has himself spoken of religious wars being waged and tried to instigate Muslims in the name of Islam. Earlier, NCP leader and Rajya Sabha MP Majeed Memon made a statement on Times Now insinuating that more religious land is needed for Muslims, as their population is on the rise. Memon is heard saying that Muslims were finding it very difficult to offer their prayers in extended Mosque areas or footpaths owing to their growing population.

He claimed that the number of places where the Muslims are expected to offer prayers have in contrast remained unchanged, as he alleged that more mosques were not being allowed to be built, and even the existing ones were being prevented from being scaled up. He also tried to drive home his point by claiming that it was the constitutional right of Muslims to get proper places of worship.

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While Majeed Memon himself furthers Jihad, his statement shielding Pakistan is downright incorrect.

To understand the blood-soaked tirade against India, one must go back to the partition of India itself. India was broken into two, India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. Muslims wanted a separate country for themselves and decided that they cannot co-exist with Hindus.

Time and again, Pakistan has eluded to its Islamic identity. Recently, when Imran Taliban Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan held a ‘jalsa’ in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir to ‘stand in solidarity’ with Kashmiris, the sound that reverberated in POK was that of Islamic identity and Ummah, not that Pakistan wanted to occupy a piece of land.

Shahid Afridi, Pakistan cricketer who spoke at this ‘Jalsa’ in POK also alluded to the Muslim identity of Kashmiris. He asked why only ‘Muslims are subjected to atrocities’.

Of course, in Afridi’s speech, there was no mention of Islamic terrorism of the Jihad that Muslims have waged against non-Muslims for decades.

Imran Khan himself tried to instigate the Muslims of Kashmir. Not the citizens of India in his eyes, but the Muslims who belong to a universal Ummah.

He took potshots at PM Modi by ranting about how the BJP-led government was furthering the RSS agenda of pushing India towards a Hindu state. In the midst of this, he mentioned the Pulwama attack, blaming the Indian suppression leading to this suicide attack.

He instigated Kashmiris to take up arms against India and said, ”The people of Kashmir will oppose India, take up arms against the BJP-RSS controlled regime there. PM Modi is testing the patience of innocent Kashmiris. We want peace. Tired of violent suppression by the Indian forces, a 20-year-old Kashmir youth had armed himself with bombs and attacked them in Pulwama…India blamed us for Pulwama attack and launched airstrikes in Balakot but we shot down their jet. We did not return their pilot (Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman) because we didn’t want a war. PM Modi told his countrymen that Pakistan succumbed to international pressure but he did not know that a true Pakistani is never afraid of death.”

While Imran Khan absolves Pakistan of the Pulwama attack and says that Kashmiri youth got tired of oppression of the Indian State and picked up a bomb, which is much like that narrative Majeed Memon wants to further, the Pulwama terrorist Adil Ahmed Dar, stated in a video that he wanted to kill ‘cow piss drinkers’ and ‘kaafirs’.

If as Imran Khan and Majeed Memon claim, the fight is for the land and rights of Kashmiris, why would Dar, the Pulwama terrorist, want to kill ‘Infidels’ and ‘cow-piss drinkers’.

Interestingly, while elements like Imran Khan and Memon talk about Kashmir, it is exclusively about the Muslims who inhabit that piece of land. Imran Khan has repeatedly alluded to the Kashmiri ‘Muslims’ as has his ministers.

However, the ones who claim to care about ‘Kashmir’ have never mentioned the plight of Kashmiri Hindus who were brutally raped, murdered and driven out of their homes in Kashmir in the 1990s.

The Kashmiri Hindus were subjected to a brutal genocide by Pakistan sponsored terrorists where slogans like ‘if you want to stay in Kashmir, you will have to say Bismillah’ etc were raised. The aim was rather simple – either the Kashmiri Hindus convert to Islam, or leave the land of Kashmir.

Since decades, Pakistan has waged a religious war against India. It started with Jinnah and the genocide of non-Muslims during the partition and it is that Jihad which is being waged till date. Majeed Memon might want to shield Islam itself by his comments, but facts point to a very different reality from what he wishes to peddle.