I AM AN INDIAN BORN IN PAKISTAN; a Punjabi born in Islam; an
immigrant in Canada with a Muslim consciousness, grounded in a Marxist
youth. I am one of Salman Rushdie’s many Midnight’s Children: we were
snatched from the cradle of a great civilization and made permanent refugees,
sent in search of an oasis that turned out to be a mirage.
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I am in pain, a
living witness to how dreams of hope and enlightenment can be turned into
a nightmare of despair and failure. Promises made to the children of my
generation that were never meant to be kept. Today, the result is a Muslim
society lost in the sands of Sinai with no Moses to lead us out, held hostage
by hateful pretenders of piety. Our problems are further compounded by a
collective denial of the fact that the pain we suffer is caused mostly by selfinfl icted wounds, and is not entirely the result of some Zionist conspiracy
hatched with the West.
I write as a Muslim whose ancestors were Hindu. My religion, Islam, is
rooted in Judaism, while my Punjabi culture is tied to that of the Sikhs. Yet
I am told by Islamists that without shedding this multifaceted heritage, if
not outrightly rejecting it, I cannot be considered a true Muslim.