Prejudices & counter-prejudices...

`Return of the Muslim Other', an article by Soumaya Ghannoushi, director of research at IslamExpo, published in The Guardian online edition on October 24 draws heavily on writers like Edward Said whose critique of the discourse of `orientalism' made him an intellectual cult figure among the Leftish sections as wells as Islamists. Deep prejudices that marked the West's discourse of the Orient cannot be treated as rubbish. True to the tradition of post-colonial intellectuals, the author also hinges the central argument of the article on the West's obsession with the `Muslim Other' and its sense of superiority over other cultures. I agree with the author's observation that the idea of Europe being Islamised is the far-right's `figment of imagination'. However, if Europe has deep prejudices against Islam, Islam is also not free from its own set of prejudices against the West. The author accuses Europe of `unwillingness to extned the norm of tolerance to newcomers from the Muslim world'. A person from the West can make the same accusation against Islamic countries more forcefully and convincingly.

Voices of certitudes

We often meet or listen to people who speak with absolute certitude on any issues under the sky. They invariably invoke their party or religious ideology to impose upon others what they think is the correct way to understand the world. A radical commie was heard the other day on a TV channel during a debate on Chinese Communist Party's changed attitude to religion that religion was spiritual version of capitalism. I still fail to understand what that really means. But that chap was speaking in a voice that did not betray even an iota of doubt about what he was speaking about. There is no better example of unquestionable faith in what one thinks as absolutely right than the anti-Americanism of the Indian Left. The Left has developed it into a kind of religion. It is admirable that the Left sticks to what it believes is right even at the risk of facing serious political setbacks. But the voice of certitude in what it says leaves a sense of intellectual emptiness.

Phobia about `Islamophobia'?

Is there some thing called moderate Islam? The answer to this question depends on which way you look at the question and there are presumably different ways of looking at it. Some Muslims are moderate to the extent that they do not pursue an extreme and radical view of Islam. But both moderate and non-moderate Muslims share a concept of Islam that is absolutist as a belief and as a way of life. Any absolutist concept is intrinsically dangerous and Islam is no exception in that sense.
Some secular writers living in the West are saying that Islamophobia is on the rise in the West after 9/11, London serial blast and Madrid bombing. The spectre of Islamophobia, they say, is posing danger to multi-cultural societies such as England. Personally, I wish I can agree with them. And it is politically correct to do so. But I encounter problem when I find that even highly educated Muslim youths are willing to be propelled to be human bombs and kill innocent people in the name of their religion. And the so-called moderate Muslims are not as visible as they should be in condemning this menace that seeks to harm modernity (in the sense in which most of us understand the term).
Perhaps the problem lies in what I understand as central to Islam's view of the world. It divides the world into two entities: dar-ul-Islam (land of peace) and dar-ul-harb (land of war). The division might have been relevant during the early days of Islam when it was waging a battle for survival. This division of the world cannot be more absurd in this age of democracy, freedoms, gender equality, liberal values etc. Unless the so-called moderate Muslims come out to debate these issues honestly and critically, those raising serious concerns about rising intolerance among Muslims as a community cannot be debunked as completely wrong.

Shameful surrender

Credibility of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has undergone erosion with the u-turn that he as well as Congress president Sonia Gandhi has made on the the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. The PM and the entire Congress leadership had been saying till yesterday that the deal was favourable to India and even had suggested that those who were opposed to it (read the Left) were enemies of the country's development. An independent-minded person tended to believe what Dr. Singh said about the deal. A decent, honourable and erudite man that he was, Dr. Singh's views on the issue were seen as honest and true. The authority of the PM's post also lent it public credence. I fail to understand what made the PM and Ms. Gandhi to change their stance on the issue and say that the Left's concerns were not fully unjustified. At last, the Congress has capitulated before the ideological posturings of the Left. For politicians, it may be compulsions of coalition politics that have led to the surrender. For an ordinary citizen, this somersault has dealt a terrible blow on the authority of the institution called Prime Minister of India.

`I am going to be a writer'

Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul is a wonderful memoir that unravels his evolution as a writer with the melancholic legacy of the once glorious Istanbul casting its shadow on his life and writing. Pamuk identifies his melancholy (`huzun' in Arabic) and his transformation as a writer with the ancient city full of marks of past glory and present defeat and irrelevance. He at last finds another `Orhan' who, he thought when he was young, was living somewhere in Istanbul. He has found that Orhan when he says `I am going to be a writer'. One cannot but feel rejuvenated after reading Istanbul that is replete with insights on failed relationships, use of power and violence and conflict between tradition and modernity.

My metamorphosis into a non-appeaser...

Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion is among the books that I will cherish as breathtakingly direct. I am a terribly honest man after I finished reading it. The book has equipped me to announce, whenever I get an opportunity, that I am a non-believer. A world without religions is a good option to be pursued. Employing the arsenal of Darwinian natural selection, Dawkins devastates the idea that the universe is inttelligently designed. I had been an appeaser all these years. Not any more. You can't after you read Dawkins. I thought sky will fall when I said what I wanted to say about religions. Not any more.

Blow on political parties that cannot care less

Legal luminaries may debate on complex legal issues involved in the Supreme Court of India's outrage against the Tamil Nadu Government over the government-sponsored bandh/hartal/general strike called by ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam. Some are accusing the court of encroaching on what is not its territory. Forgotten in this excercise in hairsplitting is the fundamental right of citizens as opposed to the right of political parties. Who will remedy the physical and mental torture suffered by those who are stranded due to bandhs etc. and huge financial loss caused by strikes that paralyse normal life? The fundamental rights of citizens should not be allowed to be bulldozed by the rights of political parties to call for strikes that disrupt public order. The court's intervention is just an expression of the pubilic ire against such strikes. I firmly believe that the court upholds the constitutional rights of citizens to free movement. I hail the court order.