Bombay Muslims donate blood to bomb victims

Indian Muslims are donating blood to their Hindu neighbors who were injured in the Bombay train bombings, denounced by the Council of Indian Muslims as “barbaric acts”, Reuters news agency reported.

“We don’t care whether it’s a Hindu or a Muslim who gets our blood as long as we can save them,” said Abdul Khan, one of dozens of Muslim men waiting in line at the blood bank at Siddarth Hospital.

A series of explosions hit commuter trains in three suburbs of India’s financial capital, Bombay, during the evening rush hour on Tuesday, killing at least 180 people and wounding more than 700 others.

In the suburb of Jogeshwari, whose station was hit by the coordinated blasts, Muslims opened the doors of the Islamic Arabia Mosque to offer shelter, food, water to the wounded.

”People are trying to break our harmony but they have failed,” Pasha Mian Sheikh said of the attackers.

“Hundreds of Muslims yesterday showed a lot of courage and harmony when they helped out their Hindu brothers. Hindus and Muslims are together in Mumbai.”

Leaders of India’s hardline Hindu Shiv Sena party said they were overwhelmed by the Muslim response.

“Hindus and Muslims walked hand in hand yesterday,” said Manohar Kargaonkar, a Shiv Sena official, adding that Muslims “have shown what brotherhood is”.

Analysts say rising prosperity from India’s booming economy have helped ease tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

“We are getting increasing reports of Hindu-Muslim harmony from Mumbai this year unlike the earlier times, Maulana Jalaluddin Umri, a top Muslim cleric, told Reuters.

Meanwhile, the Council of Indian Muslims issued a statement to denounce the Bombay bombings.

“Words fail to condemn such barbaric acts and express ones feelings of disgust on the mercilessness and cowardliness of human looking beasts involved in such crimes,” CIM’s Chairman Munaf Zeena said in the statement.

“We find equally abhorring the mischief and irresponsible behaviour of some web-based news agencies pointing fingers at Indian Muslims. Any journalist or politician making irresponsible statements is playing in the hands of the terrorists because terrorists want to destroy communal fabric of the Indian society,” he added.

Zeena also called on the Indian government to conduct a public investigation and bring the perpetrators to justice.

“By repeatedly failing in conducting inquiry and gaining the confidence of the public in security system of the country, Indian Government is providing strength to terrorists and providing a ground to vested interests to create misunderstandings about Indian Muslims,”

“While we deplore these acts in the strongest possible language, we also condemn any attempt to malign and suspect Indian Muslims for these blasts. Enough is enough, now is the time when Indians from all faiths and denominations to put pressure on the Government to launch an inquiry and punish the culprits regardless of their communal religious backgrounds.”

AlJazeera