(Please bear with me if you have come to this post for its length.) “Lest We Forget” This morning I went to the cenotaph located at the southeast quadrant of Victoria Park in London where I reside for the November 11 service. It was a beautifully radiant and gorgeous morning with crystal blue sky above, and as the bells tolled at 11.00 it was remarkable how large was the gathering of people come together to pay respect to the memory of those Canadians, men and women, who served in and some never returned from all the wars in which Canada as part of the British Commonwealth and member of NATO participated. And for me such occasions are reminders of how many men and women, over 2 million in numbers, from British India or the Raj volunteered to serve for the Empire and fought for our freedom in all sectors of WWII in land, sea and air. During WWI some 1 million Indians went forth to fight for God, King and Country in the blood-soaked killings fields of France. From my family there were uncles and aunts who served in the army, navy and air force of British India, including my father who joined the Bengal Civil Service just out from university to serve in the war effort that made India a reservoir of manpower and resources needed to defeat Germany and Japan. This past summer I was in Paris in one of my frequent visits to the City of Lights with my wife and daughter where we have lots of friends and family. It is a city full of memory, and a feast of a city for a history buff to visit. And while in Paris I make it a point to attend the Friday prayer service at the grand mosque inaugurated in 1926. On this visit once again I took my family and friends for a Friday prayer at the great mosque built soon after WWI at a prime location gifted by the French government in appreciation of the service of Muslims of North Africa in the Allied war effort, and dedicated to the memory of over 100,000 North African Muslims killed fighting for France against Germany. Inside the mosque are two huge plaques with names of Muslims officers and soldiers who died on the battlefields of France. And then I sat with my family and friends after the Friday prayers in a nearby cafe and talked with them about the significance of the grand mosque in Paris, which is also an architectural landmark in the city, and to the memory of those to whom the mosque is dedicated and what all this mean for us at a time when all things Muslim and Islam have become suspect. Lest We Forget – yet we tend to forget, and sometimes willfully! It was this grand mosque in Paris that directed Muslims of North Africa to remain true compatriots of the French and the Allies through the darkest period of the war against Nazi Germany. And when France succumbed to the German Wehrmacht and came to be ruled by what is known as the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain, the grand mosque in Paris became a shelter for Algerian and European Jews. The Imam of the mosque despite grave risks provided documents and safe passage to these Jews to escape from the collaborationist Vichy regime into North Africa. This episode in history, and the role of the King of Morocco to protect Sephardic Jews from Nazis, have become obscured and sadly, perhaps deliberately, forgotten in our time. At this dark moment in our history, especially as our brave soldiers and airmen are engaged in action against ISIS in Iraq, we non-Muslims and Muslims together need to recall how intimate has been our partnership in past wars, how great has been the service and sacrifice of Muslims in the two world wars of the last century to save Europe from fascism and totalitarianism. We need to recall how loyally Muslim soldiers served the Empire and what it represented far away from their homes and their families, and that many never returned. We may recall the significance of the Victoria Cross awarded by the King-Emperor George V to Khudadad Khan, a Muslim soldier in the British India army from a district in Punjab (now located in Pakistan) for his bravery in the field of battle in Belgium in October 1914. Those Muslim Islamists who have perverted Islam for their own misdirected objectives do not represent the vast majority of Muslims, nor Islam. “Lest We Forget” – as we often do and sometime willfully! For the entire duration of the Cold War – in other words WWIII waged in the swamps and paddy fields of Asia, in the jungles of Africa, in the deserts of the Middle East, in the mountains of southwest Asia – Muslims and Islam provided the strategic depth for freedom and democracy in the struggle against Communism. Future historians, if they are true to their profession they will not be jaundiced by the conflict of our time in assessing the Cold War and its end, will record the contributions of Muslims and Islam for the eventual victory of freedom and democracy over Bolshevism. We need to win this war we are engaged in against Islamists of ISIS and all the other al Qaeda-type organizations. And one of the urgent requirements in winning this war is to recall our common history of struggle and partnership of non-Muslims and Muslims against fascism and communism. This relationship was forged under fire, and our enemies should not be allowed to divide us. Those who do, whether they be Muslims or non-Muslims, they are then complicit ignorantly or willfully in weakening Muslim and non-Muslim relationship, in destroying those bonds welded in the heat of the war against enemies of freedom that tie us together now as they did in the past and if memory does not fail us should continue to remain strong in the future. “Lest We Forget!” It is the shallow minds in our midst that cannot differentiate between Islam and Islamism, between Muslims who are anti-Islamists and Muslims who are Islamists. The shallow minds are the bigoted minds of Nazis and Communists, of Taliban and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, of the KKK and ISIS, and it does not matter whether these minds come dressed in the garments of Muslims, Christians, Jews, atheists or agnostics. They are uniformly the same, they are bigots, and they are creatures of hell. So let us not forget, today and everyday, as our brave men and women in uniform remain in the field of battle against our enemies abroad and the shallow minds at home. God bless.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 23:21:28 +0000
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