Muslims Also Victims of India's Killer Quake

Muslims call quake Allah's punishment for neglecting his will as tensions with Hindus remain even in tragedy for both.

BY: Beth Duff-Brown

ANJAR, India, Feb. 2 (AP) - Two hundred Muslim men, their white topi caps covered in dust, some sprinkled with blood, gathered near an ancient tomb to show their submission to Allah's will in Friday prayers a week after India's killer earthquake.

``We didn't obey the Quran, so this is Allah, the Almighty, punishing us for our sins,'' said Dawood Rayma, a 38-year-old trader in Anjar.

With eight of the town's 16 mosques destroyed, Muslims gathered wherever they could. Prayer leader Moulana Azim knelt on the ground under the huge branches of a poplar tree next to the 300-year-old whitewashed tomb of Saint Hazi Bir.

``We must now live a holy life, a simple life, a prophet's life,'' added Rayma, whose family survived the 7.7-magnitude quake on Jan. 26 that was centered near Anjar.

All across the western state of Gujarat, where at least 15,000 people died, tens of thousands of Muslims faced Mecca, knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground. Prayers were said outside ruined mosques, next to Islamic cemeteries and other holy sites.

``God has given us his punishment,'' lamented an old man at the Dawoudi Bojhar Islamic cemetery on the outskirts of Anjar, where 100 bodies were placed in a mass grave on Friday.

Though Muslims make up only 14 percent of India's 1 billion population, at 140 million they are still one of the world's largest Muslim communities. Tension between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority sometimes flares into violence.

Many Anjar Muslims live in the old city, where the alleys are narrow and rescue workers had a difficult time. Children played around rotting carcasses of cows and goats on Friday, seemingly oblivious to the smell of decomposing bodies as they ran in and out of long ration lines for rice, wheat and kerosene.

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