Patriot Day, Wahlberg’s new movie about the Boston Marathon bombings, was released this week. That terrorist attack was three years ago but emotions remain very raw in Boston. Read what the actor playing the terrorist Tamarlan Tsarnev said about the reaction of the crowd to him:
- “Then I walked on. Imagine 800 people just went quiet. From the laughing and the cheering and the talking, there was just quiet. … “They were all staring at me,” he continued. “I saw a cop looking at me. He had been at the actual event when it happened. He would stare at me and look away. I could feel the energy. Finally, he came closer and said to me, ‘Every time I look into your eyes I want to squash your head.’ I just said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ He said, ‘You’re welcome. Good luck.’ It was the most amazing, but at the same time, the most weird compliment I ever got.” The reaction from the crowd illustrated the raw emotions locals still have toward the terrorists nearly three years after they set off two bombs at the marathon finish line”
Would any journalist in Boston or America make fun of or jeer at the raw emotions of the people of Boston about the actions of Tamarlan, the terrorist killer of Boston? What if Boston’s media discovered a man, a father of Dagestani/Chechnian descent in Boston, who had recently named his new born son as Tamarlane? How would the media handle that news? Every father has the absolute right to name his son any way he chooses and after any historical figure he chooses. But we doubt that would be the chosen approach of Boston’s media.
They would question the motive of the father in naming his new born son after a notorious terrorist killer who himself was named after Tamarlane or Taimur-the-lame, the Sword of Islam, one of the worst mass killers in history.
1.What’s In a Name?
Some names are so steeped in people’s minds as the sheer embodiment of evil that they evoke raw anger even after decades or centuries. Hitler is one such name. Imagine the media outcry if they find a prominent White man who named his new born son after Hitler or any of Hitler’s henchmen? Every one would question the motives of the father in doing so. No journalist at Bloomberg or at any mainstream TV network would jump to the defense of that father. Because the name Hitler is steeped in raw infamy and it will remain so for centuries, at least in the minds of Europeans, especially Jews of European heritage.
We bring this up because this week, the same week that reawakened the raw emotions of Bostonians, a prominent & rich father named his new born son Taimur after the same mass murdering evil Taimur or Tamarlane after whom the Boston terrorist was named.
The father, a prominent actor in Bollywood, is an Afghani Muslim by descent. By his name, he seems to be a Pushtun – a member of the same Afghani clan that makes up most of the Afghani Taleban. He has married a Hindu Bollywood superstar actress who presumably had no voice in choosing the name of her son. This actor’s father had also married a Hindu superstar Bollywood actress who had to convert to Islam to be able to marry his father.
Taimur or Tamarlane is a name that goes deep into Hindu consciousness. Taimur was possibly the absolute worst of the several Muslim conquerors from Central Asia who invaded India and massacred Hindus. How much of a butcher was Taimur?
- ” … it was said that the city reeked of the decomposing bodies of its citizens with their heads being erected like structures and the bodies left as food for the birds. Timur’s invasion and destruction of Delhi continued the chaos that was still consuming India, and the city would not be able to recover from the great loss it suffered for almost a century“.
By some accounts, 100,000 people were killed by Taimur’s army in Delhi. And this is the evil after whom the Dagestani/Chechnian parents of the Boston marathon killer named their son and after whom this prominent Afghani Pushtun Bollywood actor named his new born son?
After Taimur massacred Indians & looted Delhi, he turned his eyes on the Middle East. He was just as brutal in Baghdad.
- “Timur invaded Baghdad in June 1401. After the capture of the city, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred. Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him. When they ran out of men to kill, many warriors killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign, and when they ran out of prisoners to kill, many resorted to beheading their own wives”
Not only was this genocide, it was religious cleansing as well. According to an article that asks Tamarlan, Tamarlane: What’s In a Name?
- “Timur’s campaigns sometimes caused large and permanent demographic changes. Northern Iraq remained predominantly Assyrian Christian until attacked, looted, plundered and destroyed by Timur, leaving its population decimated by systematic mass slaughter“.
By the way, didn’t this happen recently in Iraq & Syria under ISIS? Weren’t the Yazidis subject to similar treatment by ISIS?
Given this history of Taimur, the “Hitler” of his time, isn’t it reasonable for people in India to ask why this Pushtun Muslim Bollywood actor named his new born son Taimur? Many did on Twitter and in print.
2. Religious Apartheid at Bloomberg?
The above is by way of background of Taimur & why his name arouses intense emotions. But this article is not about Taimur or about the motivations of the Pushtun Muslim Bollywood actor who named his son Taimur. This article is about how Michael Bloomberg & the Bloomberg organization handle the behavior on Twitter of Andy Mukherjee, a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist.
Mr. Mukherjee took it upon himself, as a Bloomberg Columnist, to heap scorn on Hindus who protested the naming of the actor’s son after the evil Taimur. That is his right. After all, hate, contempt, supremacism are human feelings and as such human rights. Mr. Mukherjee may well feel utter & total contempt for Hindus who remember Taimur with intense emotional agony. He may even feel getting massacred by Muslim invaders is a natural fate for Hindus just as getting killed by wolves is a natural fate for sheep. He is entitled to whatever personal opinions he might have.
But he crossed a major corporate & institutional line when he used his Twitter handle to express his scorn, the Twitter handle that explicitly identifies him as a Bloomberg Gadfly columnist, the Twitter handle he uses in retweeting Bloomberg articles & commenting on issues in his role as a Bloomberg columnist. By doing so, he involved the Bloomberg organization in this issue and made the Bloomberg organization complicit in his scorn of emotions of Hindus.
Understand that the standards of what a media organization may or may not accept about the personal behavior of an employee were established by the Paula Dean case. Ms. Dean was removed from her role as a TV host not for what she did on the job but for personally making offensive statements in the past about an emotionally sensitive issue.
So how will the Bloomberg organization handle the behavior of their columnist Andy Mukherjee? Had Mr. Mukherjee heaped the same scorn on Jewish people who protest the use of “Hitler” name either for children or for business activities, he would, we believe, be summarily disciplined by the Bloomberg organization. Had Mr. Mukherjee heaped similar scorn on the raw emotions expressed by Bostonians this week about Tamarlan, he would, we believe, be summarily disciplined we well.
But Mr. Mukherjee heaped scorn on the raw emotions of Hindus about Taimur’s massacres. That, we believe, is very different for Bloomberg Editors and Bloomberg Management. The American media, in general, has a jaundiced view of Hindus and they just don’t think it is news to cover killings or forced conversions of Hindus by Muslims. We believe the Bloomberg organization shares this religious apartheid even though they are not as obvious or not as diligent in expressing this view as some more prominent publications.
That is why we didn’t approach Bloomberg editorial management with our concerns. We went directly to the man whose name is on the organization and who has complete power over the Bloomberg organization. We reached out to Mr. Michael Bloomberg via a few tweets with analogies. Neither Mr. Bloomberg nor any one else in the Bloomberg organization responded or reached out to us.
We hope that is because neither Mr. Bloomberg nor his organization understood the issues behind the Taimur name. So we decided to write a detailed piece about why this is a major issue, major to Hindus & also to those Christians in the Middle East who were forcibly converted or cleansed out of Iraq by Taimur as many continue to be in today’s Middle East.
We have respected Michael Bloomberg for a long time, both for what he did in business and for ethical standards he established as the Mayor of New York. We fervently hope that he doesn’t share the same scorn towards emotions of Hindu victims of Taimur that many of his media counterparts & colleagues do.
We may be naive to hope so but isn’t this week of Christmas & Hanukkah a week for optimistic hope?
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A friend told me that the rumour mill in the ghettoes of Karachi says that the name Taimur had been suggested by BHAI aka Dawood through his lackeys in Bollywood. Truth, however, will be known only to God – or to Dawood. There are reports that the naming of Saif Ali’s son as Taimur was celebrated by the jihadi outfits in Pak-Occupied Kashmir. Is it a mere coincidence that Pakistan has named its most deadly missile as Taimur. it is aimed at India. We Indians are indeed living in interesting times !