Communal Egos and Inter-Community Conflict

They replied, “In our town, there is a mosque. Just next to it is a place of worship of our non-Muslim brethren. When we placed a loudspeaker in the mosque to announce the call to prayer, the non-Muslims began ringing bells at the time of their prayers. The sound of the bells could be heard inside the mosque. And so, we told these people, ‘Please don’t ring your bells while we are praying.’ But they did not listen to us. When we repeatedly asked them to stop ringing their bells, they got angry. And that is how the riot started.” I said to the men, “What Shariah-related issue is this that you insist that during the Muslim prayer-time a non-Muslim should not ring a bell in his place of worship? Such a thing is mentioned neither in the Quran nor in the Hadith. Neither have any of our scholars of Muslim jurisprudence made any such claim. In fact, not a single Muslim ruler ever issued a command that when it is time for the Muslims to pray, non-Muslims cannot play their trumpets or ring their bells in their places of worship. This being the case, why did you get so agitated about this matter? If someone rings a bell, let him do so. It doesn’t cause any disruption for Muslims in their prayers. Nor has the Shariah made it incumbent on us to ensure that bells aren’t rung during our prayer-time.” The men did not accept my point, however. Although they had no answer to the evidence that I had cited, they kept harping on their argument very zealously. In India, most communal riots are triggered off by such small incidents. What is the reason for this? When the Islamic Shariah has not ordered us to stop non-Muslim processions passing by our mosques with their music and singing, and when it has not commanded us to prohibit non-Muslims from ringing bells in front of our places of worship, why do Muslims want to do so? The reason for this is entirely communal, not religious. As a result of the politics of a hundred or more years, Muslims have turned such things into a