Muslim leaders at the rally at Mumbai’s Azad Maidan on Friday. (PTI)

Jan. 23: For the first time in many years, almost all prominent Muslim religious organisations have come together to tacitly praise the Congress for removing the “terror blot” slapped on the country’s largest minority community.

The immediate ballast has been provided by the confession of Swami Aseemanand, the RSS pracharak and terror suspect. But the backdrop was set by the statements of Congress leaders such as Rahul Gandhi and Digvijay Singh who have been trying to the put radical Hindutva forces on the defensive over the terror attacks in Malegaon, Ajmer, Mecca Masjid and on the Samjhauta Express.

Following the revelations about Aseemanand, pro-Congress Muslim organisations like Jamiat-e-Ulema, which runs the Deoband seminary, feel vindicated. In March 2008, hundreds of Deobandi clerics had issues a fatwa against terrorism and suicide bombing, terming them “anti-Islamic”.

Other organisations like the radical Jamaat-e-Islami and the Islamic Centre had organsied nationwide seminars and awareness programmes to deny any link between religion and extremist violence.

Last Friday, over 50 religious groups and NGOs held a rally in Mumbai’s Azad Maidan targeting the “cult of Sanghi terror” while asking the UPA regime to release, compensate and rehabilitate “innocent Muslim youths” implicated in the blast cases.

In addition, a large number of Muslim delegations have been calling on Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel in Delhi.

Some members of these delegations told The Telegraph that while they had “thanked” the Congress leadership, they had also demanded an effective mechanism to check extremist elements and their sympathisers who seek shelter behind religious and cultural identities.

According to some politically inclined Muslim leaders, the Congress strategy to corner the RSS on Malegaon-Ajmer-Samjhauta blast accused, is aimed at regaining some political space in Uttar Pradesh where Assembly polls are due next year. These leaders feel the party is also putting this strategy to test in the coming Assembly polls in Assam, Bengal and Kerala which have a substantial Muslim electorate.

The calculations are that if Muslims back the UPA in the three election-bound states, it will queer the pitch for pro-minority parties such as the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is yet to wrap up its probe into various terror-related blasts that took place in 2007-08. But major Urdu dailies published from Lucknow, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bhopal and other cities have not only been publishing Aseemanand’s confession prominently but also lamenting that the “national” English media has been ignoring some “significant” developments.

At the Mumbai rally, Maulana Burhanuddin Qasmi said: “When Abdul Kaleem of Hyderabad and the imam of Haj House in Mumbai were arrested, it was national news and when they were released no one bothered in the media to make it news. This attitude of the media must change.”

The Urdu media has also been constantly reproducing AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh’s remark made at the Burari plenary when he had quoted some BJP leaders as saying that all Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims.

Digvijay’s punch-line: “Can we apply the same logic and say that all Hindus are not terrorists but all Hindu terrorists arrested in various blast cases are RSS activists?” has become a significant statement in most editorials and news articles.