I’ve not posted for quite some time now, and I am sorry about that. I was traveling, and then I fell ill, and then I was traveling again.
On my way, I noticed a few things, which I thought I might share.
Travel
South India is very sensitive about it’s languages and culture. They feel that the North Indian (Hindi) culture is trying to eat up their culture and language. Sometimes these justifiable concerns are used wonderfully by southern chauvinists. Because of them, we’ve had a riot when a famous Kannada actor (Rajkumar) died (of age). Mob went out and pelted stone at windows, shops and glasses. Because of these same chavinists, all buses in Karnataka have their destination written only in Kannada. A real pain in the neck for who don’t read Kannada, some of them are Kannada themselves (they study in English).
It was, therefore, very surprising when I noticed that there was not a single announcement made in Kannada at the Bangalore airport. All announcements were made in Hindi and in English. That’s the other extreme. It felt as if the urban rich India was challenging the common Kannada people- `we don’t give a damn’. I didn’t like the absence of Kannda, just as don’t like the absence of English on Karnataka buses.
I feel happy that I am from a state which does not practice cast system much. West Bengal has little record of female foeticide- the sex ratio is fairly normal here. Communalism is less than most parts of India, but on the rise at the moment.
I have also felt disgusted that India, in general, practices all of these, and is not taking it seriously to undo them.
I have always heard about untouchability. Little did I expect that I will see it being practiced in Kolkata, a poor place of high morals, a place I thought has risen far above these.
At the flat where I was putting up, there lives a lady, opposite to my place. She’s not a bengali, to be fair to the the Bengalis. She was standing at the gate, buying some fruits from a street vendor. She threw a plastic bag towards the man (She stood a metre away from him). The Nepali darwan held the bag as the poor man poured fruits into the bag for the woman who wouldn’t touch her.
I could stand there anymore. I left. Arguing with her would have been futile, for a number of reasons. The best thing I could have done, I realized later, was to find a pretext to shake hands with the man in front of her. I hope I will remember the lesson next time I encounter a similar situation.
We are approaching a thousand years of Science. Modern science is based on the idea of empiricism. Every idea, to be accepted, must be verifiable by experiement. This soul of the new Science was first seen in the works of ibn al-Haitham or Alhazen in the first half of the eleventh century.
I read about the history of Muslim spain long time ago, but I was not very sure about how the fall came about. I think now I have a better idea.
But before I get into the history, let me recount an experience.
I was talking to an ultra-orthodox friend of mine. He told me this about Spain (Al-Andalus)- “the Muslims there were so impious that when the Christians told them to wait the Muslims did not have the ability to run or fight. The Christians came back with swords to slaughter them.
I was deeply disturbed by this account. There was no sympathy for a race that was being persecuted! There was, instead, a contempt for the sufferer (a signature of right wing mind).
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History
It is a sad story and a shameful one for the Musilms. And a demostration of how easily unity of Ummah can fall apart.
Problem started when the Umayyad dynasty at Baghdad was overthrown by the Abbasids. A young surviving Umayyad prince named Abd-ar-Rahman came to Spain and started to rule there. The Abbasids, sure enough,did not like the development. They sent a band of soldiers to kill Abd-ar-Rahman. These soldiers were duly defeated by Abd-ar-Rahman, and he then declared Andalus independent of Baghdad.
Can you imagine what happened next? The Abbasids formed an alliance with the French kings and warlords who were fighting Muslim Andalus from the north. The Andalusians, in turn, allied with the Byzantine empire who were defending their falling empire againt invading Muslims.
Even inside Andalus things were not black and white. There were many Christians fighting for the Muslims. For the invading French, however, things were black and white. They considered Muslims as pagans and heretics who had to be destroyed.
Meanwhile Abd-ar-Rahman’s successor Abd-ar-Rahman III declared himself the Caliph of all Muslims.
This proved fatal. Succession struggle became so bitter that the empire fell into pieces of city states. Muslim Andalus never recovered from this infighting which was almost a civil war. Add to the problem- the invading French from the north.
The city states held out for about three more centuries among infighting and constant attack from the north.
In 1492, with the fall of Granada, fall of Muslim spain was complete. Then came in Spanish Inquisition, the brutality of which I better not mention, except that no less than a million books on theology, physics, chemistry, astornomy, philosophy and medicine burned.
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So what do I make of the narrative of my ultra-orthodox friend? I think that the Abbasids, who were never quite friendly with the Umayyad Al-Andalus spread these rumours about Andalusian Muslims, as propaganda. I would argue that these propaganda has survived through ages.
Instead of helping the tolerant and coherent Muslim Andalus, where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side, they (both the Andalusian and the Baghdadi Caliphate) paved the path for inquisition and maybe even the crusades.
“South Asia is struggling to deal with the worst monsoon flooding in living memory but as mountain glaciers up north slowly vanish, drought in the future promises an even greater misery.
Al Jazeera’s Tony Cheng travelled to the Tibetan plateau to witness first-hand the impact of climate change on an area known as the “roof of the world”.
Nomadic herders sense the drastic change
that is taking place
The northern Himalayas, with crystal clear skies, is one of the cleanest and least polluted places on earth.
And for the nomadic herders who roam the mountains and valleys, little has changed, their lives packed up on the backs of their nimble footed yaks.
But they have noticed one big change in all the years they’ve been walking these paths.
This was just a stream, said a young herder, but has now become a fast-running river, swelling with glacier run-offs.”
“The approach was emblematic of al-Jazeera English’s general attempt to change the climate of television journalism” -Mark Lawson
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Ever since it’s launch, Al Jazeera English has seen abundant applauses and controversies. There is little doubt that it differs in it’s attitude and point of view from the other major TV News media outlets- BBC and CNN. It has created the impression of a professional, different and bold news agency. Even among the liberals in the United States. They are afraid that Al Jazeera might change. Very few people doubt now that AJE has carved a niche for itself in importance just beside BBC and CNN.
The imperial powers did not like this rise. Al Jazeera was talking about subjects they did not want anybody to talk about. At first, there was a well conceived propaganda to discard Al Jazeera as a terrorist mouthpiece, followed by persecution-
“But the station has had to pay a high price for its independence and professionalism. Its offices in Kabul and Baghdad were bombed by the US; its Baghdad correspondent Tariq Ayyub was killed; its Kabul correspondent Taysir Alluni was arrested in Spain and charged with terrorism; and its cameraman Sami Alhajj was kidnapped in Kabul and continues to be held in Guantánamo Bay. Most notoriously of all, George Bush even suggested to Tony Blair that they bomb al-Jazeera’s Doha headquarters”. -George Galloway, in The Guardian Unlimited.
However, Al Jazeera has stood the test, most of the world has acknowledged Al Jazeera as a legitimate and independent news channel.
The ban happy Indian government (which has a long legacy of banning the Satanic Verses, The Final Solution, Shivaji… ) has effectively stopped the channel from broadcasting in India. This is curious; because even the United States did not ban it. India has refused Al Jazeera permission to downlink into India. Which basically menas cable operators can not carry this channel. How is that different from a ban?
So what does the government say to justify it? The cite “securiy reasons”. This is ludicrous. “It can make a skull smile.”
`What purpose does it serve?’ is the question I do not know an answer to.
It may be that the government does not want a dinosaur in it’s backyard. The Indian media, by and large, are a tamed flock. They sometimes bark, but rarely bite. They race happily behind the government when tensions rise with neighboring countries, creating an atmosphere just perfect for waging a war. They talk sweet when we are in good terms with the same neighbour, a month later. They, most of them, do not talk ill of other countries we have a ’strategic interest’ in. Suddenly a news channel that is not afraid of taking on the global giant Exxon, may evantually become too much trouble to handle.
Whatever may the actual reason be, the Government does not want to admit it. It is upto us to demand that we be allowed to watch this channel that draws so much applause and awe. Al Jazeera can be a welcome break from the emperial attitudes of the western media.
Judging from much of the Muslim reaction to the latest Islamist outrage — last month’s attempted bombings in London and Glasgow — the community seems to have talked itself into a default position in relation to violent Muslim extremism.
Raises several questions. How was the Glasgow attempt deemed Islamist? The perpetrators of the crime never mentioned Islam or jihad, to the best of my knowldge. If the mere fact that they were Muslims make it Islamist, then the LTTE suicide bombings are Hindu, or the bombs that drop daily on Afghan civilians are Christian, by the grace of same logic.
Broadly, the Muslim argument is that it is all down to a host of external factors. Top of the list is the western foreign policy, especially with regard to the Palestinian issue, compounded by the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq.
There were obligatory references to social deprivation etc., etc. And as for the three Indian doctors suspected to have been behind the London-Glasgow plot, they were simply “misguided” individuals acting alone.
So they were not misguided individuals. What is the author trying to suggest? That these people were championed by every Muslim in the UK? Championed or abetted by Muslims across the globe?
According to Suroor, I can’t deny responsibility for Glasgow bombing attempt. And what is my guilt? Trying to profess my Islam and trying to convince everybody that suicide terrorism is not the answer? Is that my guilt that my preaching the tents of peace and justice may reach the ears of a would be bomber and refrain him?
With me, the Muslim mama who was waiting for her kid outside school when the bombing took place is also to blame.
All the Islamic theologians I have met in recent times have unequivocally denounced the killing of innocents. They preach peace, timidity and patience. Collective responsibility means they, too, are responsible for what happened at Glasgow.
That’s what collective responsibility means.
There was much hand-wringing when the anchor underlined the fact that Muslims had been behind all recent acts of terrorism.
Should the author atleast not have checked the newspapers before making such a tall claim. I am not asking him to read research articles on terrorism. He should have perused the newspapers- yes, the biased, misinformed and disproportionate newspapers.
Or is it that I have missed when LTTE, ASSU, ULFA, IRA etc. converted to Islam? Well? Huh?
The author is opposed to euphemism. However, he is not, apparently, opposed to passing wrong informations; or could they be lies?
Of course, the community condemned any violence committed in the name of Islam, a peaceful religion. And, indeed, there was need for introspection and discussion.
So what should we do? “I am sorry sir, for the terror I have caused”? Should I apologize for the terror I have caused by condemning terrorism and trying to create an environment of understanding?
At first there were calls from the like of Suroor “where are the silent majority?”. Then the `silent’ majority shouted out so loud that nobody asks that question anymore. However, the blame has to be on the Musims, so the position is slightly shifted to “they can not deny collective responsibility”. In other words- even though they do not like it, even though they are afraid of terrorism themselves, even though the theologians themselves have condemned it and do not support it and is trying to conciliate with the non-Muslim population and to counter the environment of fear and mistrust- they are responsible.
And the truth is that many of their assumptions about the underlying causes of extremism are flawed. Every fresh terrorist attack chips away at the idea that foreign policy and socio-economic factors are the sole drivers of Islamist extremism, making the Muslim default position more untenable.
I am stunned! Every attack rather confirms to the contrary. An overwhelming majority has condemned terrorism and expressed their willingness for friendship with others. In words, and in works.
Daniel Pape has collected data and analyzed the motive and mentality of suicide bombers. He concludes, in his book (Dying to Win- the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism), that the most important motivation behind an act of terror is to force a democracy to withdraw from a land that the terrorists covet as their own. In short, it is nationalism, and not Islam, that drives these terrorists. Sometimes, some Muslim terrorists try to justify their claim in the name of Islam. These interpretations are not accepted in the mainstream.
This in itself may not explain the possible involvement of an Indian in the plot. Here is the explanation- another variant of nationalism is at work here- tribalism. The Muslim identifies with the Muslims in Iraq, and therefore views it as an attack against his nationhood.
Such behaviour is not unique to Muslims. When the Hindu gods were printed on American sandals, Indian Hindus protested.
They did not perpetrate suicide bombing? Okay, start genocide of Hindus in US and watch. You need not go that far. Look at LTTE. Or look at IRA.
Hassan Butt, a reformed British extremist, recalls how “we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.” […] According to Mr. Butt, though many extremists were enraged by the deaths of fellow Muslims across the world “what drove me and many of my peers to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain, our homeland and abroad, was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary state that would eventually bring Islamic justice to the world.”
Another incosistency. He starts the passage with the claim that Butt and his allies laughed at the suggestion of foreign policy being the reason, and then at the end of it, says that it was one of the major factors.
In fact, that is the most important factor. There are other factors. But they are not the main cause.
Arguably, defectors are not the most reliable of people and there is, inevitably, an element of exaggeration in what they say about the organisation they have left and of their own role in it.
If you read ‘The Islamist’, carefully, everybody else in the terror organization that the author joined are to be blamed, except he himself. He `fell’ for them. So much for honesty. How can we trust such a guy that he is telling us the truth?
Mr. Butt, Mr. Maher and Mr. Husain are darlings of the Western governments and the Islamophobes now. Because they say just what the Islamophobes and the western government want to hear- that terrorism is inherent in a certain version in Islam, and foreign policy has nothing to do with it.
Instead listen to what the active terrorists say. In Kashmir- “Our people are being held captive by the Indian government. We are fighting for them in the name of Islam.” Reason they are fighting is that they think Kashmir is being held by India. This attitude makes it quite clear that they are fighting not because of Islam, but in pretext of Islam. To think that they are justified in their methods, they name Islam. Just as Bush called his War for Oil (oops! War on Terror) a ‘Crusade’- to make him seemingly the force for good in the eyes and ears of Catholic in the US.
Ed Husain, another ex-Islamist, has written a whole book (The Islamist) warning against complacency.
Another incosistency. At first he says the Muslim community “is irritated that every time a Muslim does something silly it is expected to stand up and apologise.” Then he mentions complacency!
First and foremost, Muslims must acknowledge what Ziauddin Sardar, one of Europe’s most prominent Muslim scholars, calls the “Islamic nature of the problem.” Islamist extremism has not descended from another planet or been imposed on the community from outside. It breeds within the community and is the product of a certain kind of interpretation of Islam. And, in the words, of Mr. Sardar, terrorists are a “product of a specific mindset that has deep roots in Islamic history.”
I agree here. There has always been an element of violence and injstice deep rooted inside Islam’s history. Pray tell- which history is free from it? Which one?
Hasn’t Islam’s history given us one of the best examples of coherent coexistence, not just tolerance, in Al-Andaluz? The condulensia? In Palestine? Why do we forget the history that might benefit us and present examples to follow, and emphasize the history that only evokes anger and misunderstanding?
Claiming that violence is inherent in Islam is the best possible deal for the governments that claim to be ‘victims of terrorism’. If the acts of terror can be made into action itself, and not reaction to their government policy, or other socio-economic-political reasons, then they can not be held responsible for their indirect hand in the terrorist acts. We don’t, then, need to explain the reasons behind violence in Kashmir or Manipur- because the people living there are `inherently violent’. (Three cheers for Arundhati Roy).
Nay, it is not the government- it is we, the common people, regardless of religion, that are the victims of terrorism.
In a seminal essay, “The Struggle for Islam’s Soul” (New Statesman, July 18, 2005), Mr. Sardar argued that Islamists were “nourished by an Islamic tradition that is intrinsically inhuman and violent in its rh etoric, thought and practice” and this placed a unique burden on Muslims as they tried to make sense of what their co-religionists were doing in the name of Islam. “To deny that they are a product of Islamic history and tradition is more than complacency. It is a denial of responsibility, a denial of what is happening in our communities. It is a refusal to live in the real world,” he wrote.
Let’s face it; there are verses in the Koran that justify violence. The “hard truth that Islam does permit the use of violence,” as Mr. Butt points out, must be recognised by Muslims. When Islam was in its infancy and battling against non-believers violence was deemed legitimate to put them down.
It is not hard truth. It a good truth that Islam allows violence in self defense. No verses in the Qur’an, however, asks believers to kill innocents. Qur’an deems it a crime against humanity to kill innocents- “if someone kills an innocent, it is as if he killed the whole of humanity”, says the Qur’an.
[…] jihadi groups, pursuing their madcap scheme of establishing Dar-ul-Islam (the Land of Islam), are using these passages to incite impressionable Muslim youths.
How utterly stupid claim! They want to create Land of Islam through suicide bombing! Let us for a moment forget the fact that Islam does not allow suicide- under any circumstance- and attack on civilians (forget civilians, chopping down a tree without a reason is not allowed in Islam). Given that, how is one going to bring down a government with one suicide bombing every three years?
It is not hard to see the desperation in these attacks. It not hard to see that it is not a revolution that these fanatics seek. If you are willing to look, that is.
The pattern of suicide bombing by an isloated individual without an organisation just does not fit a revolutionary mentality. If there is no organisation, who is going to rule the new ‘Islamic republic’ after our martyrs are dead?
Is it so hard to see that they seek revenge?
Yet there is no sign of a debate in the community beyond easy platitudes, and it remains in denial.
And yes, I am in ‘denial‘ just as I defend the common UK citizen’s right to deny his innocence of the war crimes being committed in Iraq or Afghanistan. I think he and I are both justified in our ‘denial’.
And by the way, instead of discussing a failed terrorist attempt in such excruciating detail, why aren’t we discussing Mali, Iraq, north Ireland, Assam, Kashmir and India’s North-East? Does it have something to do with different price tags attached to Occidental and Oriental lives?
I have seen few such reasonable sounding yet ill informed and ill thought articles as this one. Such articles will create misunderstanding of the causes behind terrorism, thereby making terrorism more difficult to handle. It will also make the work of the reformist Muslims, who seek to reach out and create understanding by dialogue with non-Muslims, difficult.
Honestly I did not expect such an ill-informed article that makes claims like “all terrorism are due to Musilms” show up on the edit page of The Hindu. This was a big let-down, Mr. Editor.
Post a comment.
I am quite impressed with Zainab Salbi. It is very difficult and perhaps inappropriate to pass a judgement about someone in just one encounter, but I really liked her efforts to rebuild woman’s lives.
Another thing that made me very happy is that a lot of women, who lost their husbands in the September the 11th attack, gave in charities to rebuild the lives of women devasted in the Afghan war. “It is our way of bringing peace and mutual understanding”, said they.
There are some people who still think that the sun is going around the earth. I have met one of them personally. He argued that what he was saying was scientifically correct.
Can his argument be called scientific?
If not, then there can never be Islamic Terror. There can never be Peace Terror.
What do we call those Muslims who try to kill innocent civilians?
Plain, call them just what they are- Muslim terrorists.
As-Salaamu Alaikum wa Rahmutullah wa Barakatuhu
