For those Western critics that say Islam does not enough to to condemn terrorism, perhaps they should look at India, home to one of the world’s biggest Muslim populations — around 13 percent of mainly Hindu India’s 1.1 billion people.

 On Wednesday, it was the turn of Khalid Rasheed, head of the oldest madrasa in the northern city of Lucknow — a traditional centre for Muslims and religious scholarship. He rejected terrorism as anti-Islamic after he and his colleagues had been accused of apostasy over their pacifist stance by at group that calls itself the Indian Mujahideen.

Indian Mujahideen made threats against the madrasa in which they also claimed responsibility for last week’s bomb blasts in Jaipur, western India, which killed 63 people.

“The reaction of terrorists to our stand against terror has shown that we were moving in the right direction,” Rasheed said.

   Apparently a “Movement Against Terrorism” has been created by clerics to exhort imams to use Friday prayers at mosques across India to speak out against terrorism.

This was no flash in the pan. Earlier this year, tens of thousands of clerics and students from around India attended a meeting near Delhi at the 150-year-old Darool-Uloom Deoband — whose strict interpretation of Islamic law is said to have inspired the Taliban in Afghanistan — and denounced terrorism as against Islam.

It is not surprising that Rasheed said they had received support from Darool-Uloom Deoband, Indian clerics appear to be increasingly outspoken, perhaps not surprising in a country where there is a centuries-old tradition of preaching religious tolerance.

How much is this outspoken criticism happening in other Muslim countries? And how much is being reported in the Western press? I would be eager to know more.

 Despite a history of religious clashes, India’s tolerance often seems to win through. It was the Mughal Emperor Akbar, who was famed in the 16th century by many for his religious tolerance and who initiated scholarly debates with Muslim, Sikhs, Christians and Hindus.

Many of India’s bombings are blamed on Islamic militants, although few groups every claim responsibility and few people are ever arrested. The attacks have mostly failed to incite Muslim-Hindu tensions.

Here in New Delhi, I always enjoy taking foreign visitors to India to the Sufi shrine in Nizamuddin. My latest guest was a U.S. diplomat based in Pakistan. Hardly allowed out in Islamabad - let alone able to visit a mosque — the diplomat wallowed in the warmth of the visit and the relaxed atmosphere of the Qawwali singers.

For years India has always looked west to Pakistan when bombs exploded in its cities, powerless to influence its old foe.

Now, it is talking peace with Pakistan, and casting aspersions eastwards to Bangladesh, a country it helped establish and should have much more leverage over.

Isn’t it time for some serious diplomacy, to improve relations with Bangladesh and work together to combat violent Islamist extremism?

While homegrown Indian Islamists may have carried out the attack in Jaipur, and a previously unknown group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility, initial investigations have also thrown up a possible link to Bangladesh .

Police have released a sketch of a man in his mid-20s who was seen near the site of one of the bombings, who was apparently speaking Bengali. Dozens of Bangladeshi migrant workers have also been rounded up for questioning.

Police say they also see similarities between these blasts and others in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad last year, which were blamed on Indian Muslims backed by the Bangladeshi group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami.

HuJi, whose name means the Movement of Islamic Holy War, was first established in Pakistan to fight in the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then moved into Kashmir.

Its Bangladeshi wing was reportedly set up in 1992 with direct assistance from Osama bin Laden. And its leader signed a 1998 fatwa sponsored by bin Laden that declared American citizens “legitimate targets for attack”.

Bangladesh has its own problems with HuJI. It blames the group for a grenade attack on a rally held by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2004 in which 23 people were killed.

Dhaka’s government banned Harkat in 2005 and has arrested its leader Mufti Hannan.

Yet last September, when India drew links between HuJI and the Hyderabad bomb attacks, Bangladesh reacted angrily. The Indian media, it said, were “trying to portray Bangladesh as a hotbed of terrorism”.

“It has become a habit of Indian officials to blame Bangladesh for every terrorist action in India,” a foreign ministry official told Reuters.

In its latest report on terrorism, the U.S. State Department said India’s counterterrorism efforts “were hampered by its outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems”.

Bangladesh was also trying to address the root causes of violent extremism within its borders, but the U.S. added that “mistrust between Bangladesh and India stymied potential counterterrorism cooperation between the two countries”.

Whether or not there was a Bangladeshi link to Jaipur, there is cause for concern in India about extremists in its eastern neighbour. Isn’t it time for a concerted effort to break down that “mistrust” and work with Dhaka to fight this menace?