An Open letter to Mr. Shahrukh Khan

Your name is a household phenomenon in Indian and even beyond her borders. Your fame has put you in the Newsweek "most powerful people list" recently. However, as you may recall from your recent experience in New Jersey Airport, real life is a little different - it does not always follow the path predicted by a scriptwriter or director.

Of late, we have been reading about your opinions and statements on matters beyond the celluloid world. Nothing is wrong in it. You live in a free, democratic country and are entirely entitled to your opinion. But as a common man, also from the same soil, I think I have the right too to raise a few points that may not conform to your views of the real world.

I hope you will read it out.

When recently, the Pakistani players were not selected for the IPL, it was almost predictable that NDTV, the award-winning, mouthpiece of our Indian liberal media select you for your views and you certified that "It (Pakistan) is a great neighbour to have. We (India and Pakistan) are great neighbours. They are good neighbours."

I have a few words to say about those statements.

One may recall your effort to clarify the Pakistani team captain, Shoaib Malik"s apology to the Muslims, living all over the world, for failing to win the final T20 match against India, likely much to the embarrassment of a lot of Indian Muslims, as expressed by Shamin Bano, mother of the man of the match, Irfan Pathan. What was more embarrassing was your effort to try to defend Shoaib in a subsequent interview, "I don"t think he meant to segregate Muslims and Christians and Hindus and say this was a match between Islam and Hinduism. I don"t think that..."

I doubt whether Shoaib talked to you personally about his thought process at that time. You did not really have to respond for somebody else but perhaps you could not resist the temptation to show your brotherhood and solidarity.

This reminds us again of Dr Ambedkar"s observation that, "The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only.

Partition of India was what Pakistan wanted and got. It was painful to millions but many more millions in present India have been spared. Since then Pakistan has offered us only hatred. It has imposed on us three major wars, the Kargil insurgency, the Kashmir conflict, the series of serial blasts, the routine violation of border ceasefires, attacks on the Parliament House and the recent Mumbai 26/11attack.

Did you have these in mind when you talked about them being good neighbours?

In another interview you had tried to explain the concept of Islamic Jihad. "I think one needs to understand the meaning of jihad .. I"ve understood the essence that jihad is not about killing other people; jihad is about killing the badness in you."

May be you understand jihad better and deeper than the superficial meaning of what we, the rest of the mortal mankind, overburdened and terrorized by the inter-religious, intra-religious and sectarian violence that is plaguing the world in the name of Islam today, do. For we, the less educated, cannot really make a difference between Jihad and Qatl, between Jihad by heart / soul, Jihad by pen and Jihad by sword or between lesser and greater jihad.

We wonder, whatever its meaning may be, does it minimize the significance of the mindless killings that we see today in the name of Islam, across borders, all over the world? Does it change the nature of the killers whether you call them holy warriors, mujahidins, fedayeens or plane suicide bombers?

We agree with you that terrorism has no religion. But hopefully you will also agree with the people who perceive that most terrorist in the world today happen to believe in the scriptures of Islam. They actually believe that they themselves are the true Islamists.

The so called "moderate" Islamist, perhaps does not want to contradict them or may be does not dare to speak out against them. You have probably not forgotten the FIR against you for listing Prophet Mohammed as one of the most unimpressive personalities in history, the threats from which you had to skillfully wriggle out. Others who are not so fortunate, famous or flexible are suffering lifetime, as Tasleema Nasreen or Salman Rushdie would testify. For blasphemy in Islam is punishable with death, even for a believer.

Do I have to spell out the fate if it is a non-believer?

It is due to the inherent intolerance and exclusivity of Islam itself despite your effort to convince us that there is an Islam from Allah and very unfortunately, there is an Islam from the Mullahs

Here is an historical insight from writer Irfan Hussain, "The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes.. all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed. Indeed, the presence of Muslim historians on their various campaign