Terrorism & Evangalism

There has been a potrayal of Islam in the western press as a religion of violence and terrorists are inspired by Islam and wage jihad against everyone else. They are also show Islam as a regressive religion and it has no respect for human rights. To my mind it is mostly western propoganda. They just want to show themselves in a better light and in order to achieve it they have to disparage other religions. The common perception of hindusim is that hindus worship monkey gods and do snake charming or ride on an elephant. As Glenn Beck says the river Ganges(westerners cannot even pronounce Ganga) sounds like a disease. Hindus are casteist and they are "pagans" and hence need to be converted. Even the so called Indian americans like Bobby Jindal (Lousiana Governer) and Nikki Haley(Republican candidate for a senate seat) have to de-emphasize their Indian background, proclaim loudly that America gives them opportunity and go the extra mile to show that they are christian. If such a thing happens elsewhere they will shout religious discrimination. The fact is that religious discrimination is quite strong in southern united states. Probably the only difference between the southern united states & pakistan is that South USA is well off and technologically sophisticated. Otherwise it is mostly the same,the gun culture, religious fundamentalism, gender discrimination, racism and xenophobia are all there.

Unfortunately the evangelists from USA are promoting a number of terrorist missions in asia. Although I have no concrete proof to substantiate my claims, there has been evangelical funding of LTTE, Maoists, Nagas and Manipur based terrorists by the evangelical churches. Some of the top maoists and LTTE members are converted christians. There have been evangelical inspired terrorist movements in Myanmar. This was also shown in the Rambo IV movie where the burmese military attack missionaries and Rambo saves them. The only villian in all of this is really the evangelists. There are heavy conversion activities in Nepal and the rise of Maoist movement corresponds to it. Bhutan is also opening up to such interests by hiring McKinsey for consulting and opening of tourism will lead to huge influx of missionaries. There are also reports of heavy evangelism activities in China. Apparently 100 million people have been converted and they are all practicing their religion secretly. I think it is just a matter of time before some major event happens there also.

The point of this article is to suggest that how clever media manipulation can turn two similiar movements, one into a civilizing mission/freedom struggle/struggle for rights and the other into a terror movement. The sad fact is that whatever media dishes out has been accepted by the majority and anyone who opposes will be called a "rabid hindutva fundamentalist" and a "internet hindu"