From: Ravi
OPINION ASIA
JANUARY 28, 2010, 2:05 A.M. ET
India's Groupthink on Islam
Ayaan Hirsi Ali's talk at the Jaipur Literature Festival shows how globalization is changing the debate.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the Jaipur Literature Festival.
By SADANAND DHUME
Jaipur
If you're looking for a defining image from the fifth Jaipur Literature Festival, which ended Monday, there are plenty to choose from: laughter rippling across the front lawns of the Diggi Palace hotel as Alexander McCall Smith recalled the travails of his fictional female detective from Botswana, an electric evening performance by the Tamil singer Susheela Raman, a moving speech on the power of literature by the Scottish novelist Andrew O'Hagan. But none was as arresting as the unannounced (for security reasons) appearance of the controversial Dutch-Somali writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Speaking to a packed hall, with her burly bodyguard unobtrusively off-stage, Ms. Hirsi Ali spoke about Islam—and its problems with individualism, women's rights and sexuality—with a frankness unfamiliar to most Indians. She described the faith she was born into as "a dangerous, totalitarian ideology masquerading as a religion." She argued against the moral relativism that has prevented Western intellectuals from scrutinizing Islam as they do Christianity and Judaism. She asked why it seemed impossible to have a sober discussion about the Koran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad without riling Muslim sentiment, and made the case for bringing the Enlightenment to the blighted lands of the Middle East and Muslim South Asia. Ms. Hirsi Ali touched upon India only briefly, to contrast the country's success with the dismal state of neighboring Muslim-majority Pakistan.
But her very presence in Jaipur speaks of the ways in which India, home to 150 million Muslims, is slowly starting to grapple with the faith. As India grows wealthier and more integrated with the rest of the world, the call-center worker with the American accent and the farmer with the cell phone have become the most common symbols of how much the nation has changed since it began opening its economy nearly 20 years ago. But the Jaipur festival suggests other, less obvious, ways in which globalization has begun to impact a country long dominated by the kind of groupthink fostered by decades of socialism.
The Indian debate about Islam has remained frozen in a time warp. The mainstream intellectuals who dominate the country's editorial pages and television channels tend to trace the Muslim world's problems almost exclusively to the alleged misdeeds of Israel and the United States. The Hindu right doesn't make this mistake, but its tendency to group all Muslims together, its inability to distinguish between Islam as a religion and Islamism as an ideology, and its championing of causes important to the most orthodox Hindu believers shades into bigotry and religious chauvinism.
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4 comments:
Check this, Palaniappan's image building comes under attack:
Experts question Palaniappan's methods
In a scathing attack on Chidambaram's policy of using the media against the Maoists, another senior officer with outstanding knowledge of India's internal security, said, "When you are fighting insurgents within your country, this is never done. The use of the media to build your image as the doer is a different ball game."
Don't much care for Dhume of his articles, but our websites should have had their own direct reports on this festival.The remarks of Javed Akhtar and sundry pals is predictable and significant.
Loga Abdullah,
Honestly, we are sick of Taquiyya masters like you. I read Koran and seen Islam in practise so, try not to fool us.
Tell us about the treaty of Hudabiya, the fate of Banu Quraiza. Also how did Safiyya and Juwaria became his wives. Did'nt your prophet kill all their male members and enslaved the rest?
i am not sure why my fellow-moderator posted this abdullah's stuff, because it is pure propaganda with all this triumphalist piety.
i'm keeping it on as a reminder of how incredibly self-righteous mohammedans are. reminds me of nawabzada interview on the web -- they don't realize how incredibly inhuman they are too:
see the excerpts from an interview with Nawabzada Nabiullah Khan of the Jamaat-I-Islami of Pakistan, published in the February 1999 issue of the Jamhooria Islamia, a Baluchi magazine. Khan is quoting the views of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of the JI, which has captured a large number of seats in the Pakistani 'elections' held recently. The entire interview, as a window into the mindset of an Islamist, is most instructive. And shows a remarkable world view.
What kind of government that JI envisages for Pakistan?
It will be the Sharia government. Sharia will be made our constitution so that the eminent Muslim scholars who had completed the schooling in madrassas will be appointed as the judges in every court. Qazi wanted to make the presidium on the same model as the Khalifa. Presently our ideas is that the entire top leadership of JI as well as all three military generals will be part of the presidium for which the Qazi will be the Kalifa.
We are keenly watching the progress of Taliban and learning from it. We are impressed with the Taliban on the women issue, minorities issue and law and order issue. Mullah Omar is a great friend of Qazi. Omar had visited his house many times. In the tentative talks, we had decided to form union of Pakistan and Afghanistan once the right conditions are set in Pakistan (ie the JI government in Pakistan). Our motto is Constant Jihad.
The idea is to keep Pakistan in a constant state of Jihad all the time. Qazi's vision is that Pakistan will be centre of the new Islamic empire that stretches from Burma to Afghanistan and from Sri Lanka to Tajikistan including Kashmir. Towards that end, Jamaat will use all tactics from terrorism in the kafir- controlled areas to negotiations in the Muslim-controlled areas. Already the Jamaat leaders of Bangladesh and Jamaat leaders of India had accepted the primacy of Pakistani leadership in this regard.
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