Islam

By Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi

I feel insecure when your look becomes a gaze,

And you stare at my beard

I feel shy when your potent voice call me “circumcised”

I reason why? Your equation starts with:

“Every Muslim is not a terrorist but why all terrorists are Muslims.”

I only cry when “a call for prayer” from a distant mosque becomes

“JIHAD for you”

I stop thinking when you think

“Islam is a terror.”

In my prayer, I silently say:

‘Allah-o-Akbar’

“I am a human first, and love all human too.”

 

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi is university faculty and assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, India; and author of two books on lesser known Indian languages: A Grammar of Hadoti and A Grammar of Bhadarwahi. As a poet, he has published around fifty poems in different anthologies, journals, and magazines worldwide.