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.

The Delhi High Court issued a strong judgement on Thursday in support of one of India’s leading painters MF Husain, who has been forced into exile after a painting of Mother India as a naked woman was accused of hurting religious sentiments.

Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul made no bones about how he felt about the issue.

“It is most unfortunate that India’s new ‘puritanism’ is being carried out in the name of cultural purity and ignorant people vandalise art,” the Times of India quoted him as saying.

The high court found nothing wrong in Husain’s work and said art, both ancient and modern, had always used nudity.

“We have been called the land of Karma Sutra then why is it that in this land we shy away from its very name,” he said.

“Ancient art has never been devoid of eroticism where sex worship and representation of the union between man and woman has been a recurring feature.”

It remains to be seen if the 90-year-old Husain will ever return home, but Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen decided enough was enough earlier this year and decided to leave India.

Last year the Economic Times said the Indian government had not done enough to defend Nasreen because it was “afraid of offending the Islamist street”.

When we reported this issue last year, a leading sociologist told us lopsided economic growth had created a disposed population which could not relate to Western cultural values and norms.

And the Bharatiya Janata Party said the West was fighting psychological warfare to influence youth, and said it was saving the country from cultural anarchy.

So did Justice Kaul get it right? Is freedom of speech and expression under threat in India from the religious right, whether Hindu or Muslim?

Or is a rich, liberal elite out of touch with the valid religious sentiments of hundreds of millions of Indians?