There are millions of people who think that our enemy is not only ISIS or the Taliban but Islam itself. It isn’t. Edward Said wrote in an article published immediately after September 11 that there is more than one Islam (and more than one America).

In Urdu poetry, there is an Islam that runs clean counter to the Islam of the Taliban and other terror groups. Urdu literature is, for the most part, the work of Muslims and portrays the life of the Muslims of the Subcontinent, but it is rarely concerned with propaganda for Islam, and where it is, it is for an Islam as different from the Islam of the fundamentalists as chalk is from cheese. The 18th-century Urdu poet Mir said:
“Go to the mosque; stand knocking at the door
Live all your days with drunkards in their den
Do anything you want to do, my friend
But do not seek to harm your fellow men.”

The most popular part of Urdu poetry is the ghazal, which, thanks largely to Bollywood films, is loved by millions of non-Muslims and millions of non-Urdu speakers. It deserves to be. Its message is one of vigorous humanism and of loathing and contempt for fundamentalism.

Non-Muslims, particularly those who are familiar with this humanist Islam, must do all we can to make our compatriots familiar with humanist Islam and deeply appreciative of it. People who value the Hindu tradition of bhakti and love the forceful poetry of Kabir should have no difficulty in this since that tradition is exactly the same.