I‘m pretty lukewarm on Thomas Friedman overall but he’s built quite a franchise on turning a good phrase or 2 and he does occasionally deliver some solid bits. Lately, in a media environment where every other article about Islam involves beheading, suicide bombs or sharia, he’s been doing a great job of recognizing the important & emerging pockets of liberalism in Muslim society writ large. In Iraq, for example, he recently noted an important reversal of the usual storyline for what happens to an intellectual who violates Arab society’s norms –
Here’s a story you don’t see very often. Iraq’s highest court told the Iraqi Parliament last Monday that it had no right to strip one of its members of immunity so he could be prosecuted for an alleged crime: visiting Israel for a seminar on counterterrorism. The Iraqi justices said the Sunni lawmaker, Mithal al-Alusi, had committed no crime and told the Parliament to back off.
Combatting Islamophobia His Own Way…
That’s not all. The Iraqi newspaper Al-Umma al-Iraqiyya carried an open letter signed by 400 Iraqi intellectuals, both Kurdish and Arab, defending Alusi. That takes a lot of courage and a lot of press freedom. I can’t imagine any other Arab country today where independent judges would tell the government it could not prosecute a parliamentarian for visiting Israel — and intellectuals would openly defend him in the press.
More stories like this & I believe Islamophobia worldwide would be taken down a notch or two. Towards the same end, Friedman has a great column this week about the Indian Muslim community’s response to the Mumbai attackers & how it contrasts with too many Arab Muslims –
All nine [of the Mumbai attackers] are still in the morgue because the leadership of India’s Muslim community has called them by their real name — “murderers” not “martyrs” — and is refusing to allow them to be buried in the main Muslim cemetery of Mumbai, the 7.5-acre Bada Kabrastan graveyard, run by the Muslim Jama Masjid Trust.
“People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim,” Hanif Nalkhande, a spokesman for the trust, told The Times of London. Eventually, one assumes, they will have to be buried, but the Mumbai Muslims remain defiant.
To be sure, Mumbai’s Muslims are a vulnerable minority in a predominantly Hindu country. Nevertheless, their in-your-face defiance of the Islamist terrorists stands out. It stands out against a dismal landscape of predominantly Sunni Muslim suicide murderers who have attacked civilians in mosques and markets — from Iraq to Pakistan to Afghanistan — but who have been treated by mainstream Arab media, like Al Jazeera, or by extremist Islamist spiritual leaders and Web sites, as “martyrs” whose actions deserve praise.
The symbolic gesture is interesting on many levels. In our politically correct world, a lot of social commentary first focuses on identifying majorities vis à vis minorities (or rich vs poor, white vs non-white, west vs. the rest, bank vs subprime borrower, etc.). The all too common implication being that the powerless aren’t entirely responsible for their “bad” behavior because circumstances created by the powerful made them do it.
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There is no truth, only competing agendas…. |
The problem is that at the extreme, this makes all standards of behavior & intent relative. To leverage Lenin’s classic formulation, determining right vs. wrong becomes first a question of “who? whom?” rather than “what.” Many of the “yes.. but’s” when talking about the cartoon rioters, for ex., rather explicitly hedged between Who/Whom (Westerners did something to Islam) and What (fighting Free Speech). Some rap lyrics can go platinum coming from the right mouth or be a hate crime coming from the wrong one.
Heck, depending on how deeply one buys into Who/Whom, the idea that Friedman – clearly non-desi and non-Muslim – should praise (i.e. judge) Desi Muslims might even be insulting.
However, what the Mumbai terror attacks remind us is that even in our multi-cultural, tolerant ideal world, we still ultimately require some universals (e.g. “don’t shoot up hotel guests”) that society must “intolerantly” judge & enforce regardless of Who/Whom. Friedman’s piece comes from this vein when it recognizes universals, that minorities still exercise volition, and are often a more proximate variable than anything the majority can do.
And so despite umpteen transgressions against them, the Muslim minority of India isn’t quietly rationalizing that somehow the Hindu majority “made” these terrorists do their deeds. They’re instead expressly disavowing the Mumbai 9. The result is an important step for the minority to productively and peacefully continue to engage the majority in common society –
When a culture and a faith community delegitimizes this kind of behavior, openly, loudly and consistently, it is more important than metal detectors or extra police. Religion and culture are the most important sources of restraint in a society.
It is why so few, if any, Indian Muslims are known to have joined Al Qaeda. And it is why, as outrageously expensive and as uncertain the outcome, trying to build decent, pluralistic societies in places like Iraq is not as crazy as it seems. It takes a village, and without Arab-Muslim societies where the villagers feel ownership over their lives and empowered to take on their own extremists — militarily and ideologically — this trend will not go away.
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As Friedman notes, the message it sends other Muslims is as important as the message it sends other Indians. As I argued with Yeh Hum Naheen, disaffected young men are a fact of life in every society on the planet. What determines where they land on the long continuum from schoolyard punk to international terrorist is the social narrative they draw their “juice” from. Given Islam’s traditional insistence on a clean, expedient burial, 9 bodies rotting in a morgue for nearly 3 months is a pretty graphic signal to aspiring copycats. Far from being hailed as martyrs, future terrorists are being told that Desi Muslims consider them chumps.
he..he.. I’m impressed by your modesty. Do you think temples are places for mythical figures whereas masjids are places for real and present Allah ?. I think you just fell into the RSS trap of identifying yourself as a “Hindu” ?. 🙂
“but if you did a little research on the history”
I like how you talk about sensible history research, but then cite kooks and reactionaries:
“Shrikanth Talageri, Subhash Kak, and Rajeev Malhotra (not to mention David Frawley and Koenraad Elst”
“Sufi benevolence in India may be overstated.” VHP benevolence in India may be overstated.
“Two Oscars for two Muslims, from ‘oppressive’ India. “
your brilliance leaves me speechless. if you go by numbers, pray explain why muslims are the largest under-educated minority in india. is that their own fault? maybe, but in that case, does it make sense to attribute oscar wins to the liberal political climate of india?
“Any basic reading of the baburnama, kitab ul hind, or any other primary work recounting the escapades of numerous islamic invaders would be indicative of the iconoclasm of that period and the degree of violence inflicted on the indigenous traditions of the subcontinent. If you still disagree, I refer you to our good buddy Aurangzeb: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurangzeb“
some of our indigenous hindu rulers also mistreated their population. so what? do we castigate indian muslims for atrocities committed by aurangzeb? ok, count me in for when we’re getting the kohinoor back from the queen.
149 · SecularPlease said
I don’t have time for this now. I’ll talk to you later on or on another thread.
whoa!
just wonderful reasoning. it’s easy to make blanket assertions without proof. yes, shrikanth talageri was so much of a kook that he was invited to Harvard’s department of south asian studies for research…gasp and subhash kak is a respected scientist in his own right. I suppose your idea of brilliant historian is sarmila bose who’s made a career out of denying the genocide in bangladesh and praising pakistani commanders who butchered and raped her bengalis sisters.
re: post 3
umm, who has advocated the castigating of indian muslims here? do you actual read entire posts or just cherry pick? the whole point of putting together an accurate history is to have all sides reconcile and move on from history. In contrast, people like you specifically attempt to use history, whether babri or gujarat, to shape a ridiculous narrative of hindu oppression rather than encouraging reconciliation and compromise form all groups in India. And you dole out that tripe every time there is an attack on Indian soil to rationalise the imperial project of the pakistani jihadi complex, to which the vast majority of indian muslims have no connection. But as with dialectics and Dr.A, you prefer squaring the circle to fit people into your half baked frameworks so you can debate strawmen instead of actually discussing meaningful points. I’m sorry, I’m not one of your hindutva bogeymen.
Dialectics
Re: AIT
Umm, I don’t recall saying that no commingling ever occurred…again strawmen. Of course there has been interchange, especially in the last 2500 years. I’m sure Razib could fill up the pages on that, but any cursory reading of history would should that there were obvious cultural and genetic contributions from persians, greeks, scythians, huns (more genetic than cultural…heh), and most recently the british. The point was whether the foundation of indian civilization was laid in the subcontinent or brought from elsewhere by “god-like blonde haired, blue-eyed white skinned invaders” which is utter bunk.
“shrikanth talageri was so much of a kook that he was invited to Harvard’s department of south asian studies for research.”
wait a minute; why don’t you describe the whole situation. he was invited to learn how to do research by witzel:
“After the publication of his book on the Rig Veda (2000), Talageri was offered on 17 June 2000 the possibility to do advanced study or a Ph.D. with Witzel in Harvard, “provided he [Talageri] is open-minded and flexible in his views, and does not show himself to be intransigent or predisposed to certain ideas”. Talageri declined this offer “for purely personal reasons as much as in view of the blatantly fishy proviso”. [wikipedia entry on talageri]
and here is the exchange that preceded the invitation. let’s examine witzel’s remarks on talageri’s work prior to the invitation:
“This is what I called “garbage in garbage out” By using Late Vedic texts, what can one expect but the Late Vedic/Epic and Puranic point of view that differs from the truly Rgvedic one by the changes made over centuries?”
you are either ignorant about the circumstances of the invitation to harvard or a liar. take your pick.
regardless of the neverending hindu/muslim debates on SM, I’d have thought that Hindu + Muslim alike would be united in praising
1) Muslim liberalism 2) increasing western press recognition of (1)
It won’t turn Pakistan into Switzerland overnight but it is the first step on a long path.
162 · vinod said
They’re not Hindu-Muslim debates. They’re Hindutva / not Hindutva debates. That’s why it’s not making sense- it has little to do with the real world and is a struggle over discourses that try to understand the real world. That is also why it is pointless.
Let’s see: I say “indigeneous theory is BS”, and you counter with AIT. When I pointed out that this was a bogus dichotomy because commingling occured, you counter now by saying commingling occurred but the foundation of the civilization was in the subcontinent. sounds like a historically solid claim to me 🙂
i see that i have become a debater than a discusser since i didn’t directly concede your sangh given talking points about thapar. i am glad you brought up somnath. i am always impressed how hindu rulers persecutiing rival religions like jainism and buddhism, both in today’s india, as well as in erstwhile ceylon, or in cambodia are conceded as a natural consequence of conquest, but the same acts by muslim rulers from 500 years ago are extremely prejudicial and need to be “corrected” (“nonviolently” as you put it 🙂
The point, is, these are not the “same acts” in terms of scale, scope or, indeed contemporaneous written or current archeological evidence. The attempt to say that a protracted campaign of violence and destruction is equivalent to incidents of infighting is the Big Lie.
164 · rob said
yes, the others were isolated schoolyard brawls 🙂
162 · vinod said
The expectation is that the actions are a meaningless gesture. NPR had featured a story on NYPD’s counter-terrorism unit. One of the anecdotes was how a plot to bomb the subway by terrorists was foiled because, the room-mate of the terrorists, who was also a Muslim, informed on them. The story went on to state that in a healthy society, the minority community polices itself and does not allow the potential troublemakers any opportunity to strike. And that when they do they are made an example of.
In India, this is not true. For many in the Muslim community, terrorism / gangsterism is a path to prominence. And they serve as role models. Afzal Guru should have been hanged by now, the Coimbatore bombers openly boast of their arrest and release, The mosque itself was staging point in Maraad, very few serial bombers are caught, and when they are, they are often released after a while because no one from their community steps up. Call me cynical, but in the light of the tacit approval of the community for terrorism who really cares about a few meaningless gestures?
yep, indian muslims are unreconstructed embodiments of evil. no bigotry there at all.
of course, i am secular, so won’t mention how “many” in the hindu community express overt support for actions such as gujarat and babri, or how their leaders launch political witch hunts and smear top cops who go after terrorists among their coreligionists.
Whoa!
Whoa, just great job on weasel words…yes, there was a long standing debate between witzel and talageri but that still does not negate the offer to earn a PHD. Good job, dude. Moreover, Witzel’s theories themselves which consist of odd interpretations of the Vedas are under a cloud of suspicion as well. Either way, way to contradict yourself.
Second, you ignored all the other scholars who are respected in their own right and whose research has at least enhanced the study of indian history if not completely invalidated AIT for all time. If anyone is blatantly lying and ignorant, it is you. So go ahead, continue touting failed colonial theories so you can advance the agendas of genocide deniers like bose. All you are doing is proving the point that the rest of us here have been making all along–double standards. Do you even have any understanding of indology and its origins? If you don’t then your comments, which consist of a haphazard google search and convenient cherry picking only show how in over your head you are.
Third, what arguments do you have against the theory of the Authochthonous nature of Indian civilization? I’m not saying it should be gospel–it shouldn’t. The point is between Mueller’s own confessions and western scholarship itself questioning the validity of AIT, you are only proving how tragically ideological you are. So enjoy your JNU cocktail parties and continue turning out the colonial bunk that somehow seems to put a smile on your face. No one here is advocating a saffronisation of history. Indian, and yes Hindu, civilization has had both triumphs and failures. It has both learnt from and taught the world. Only when all aspects are properly studied, instead of ignored (people don’t even learn about aryabhata in many schools), then indians can have both a healthy pride and skepticism about their history. People like you only seek to prevent that.
Dialectics
Dude, what the heck are you talking about? Invalidating AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory if you still don’t know) does not mean denying invasions and migrations that have impacted the ethnic and cultural character of India over time. Why do you pseudo-secs only deal in absolutes? These are reconcilable.
Second, my critique of Thapar is based upon my own study of her work be it A History of India Vol. 1, where that ridiculous theory (for which she offered no evidence) about the bhakti movement was made or her article on Somnath. In contrast, I have great respect for the man who schooled her, A.L. Basham. It is a pity she does not carry on in his footsteps. So I know you love painting people who disagree with you as saffronites, but again, I believe in a secular india, have indian muslim friends who are like brothers and sisters to me, and have a guru who is fakir…but that doesn’t stop me from calling out your BS and those who think having an italian babysitter ruling the country is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Third, dude how bout some specifics on so called hindu persecution of other faiths within the indic tradition? If you are going to talk about Pushyamitra–that is laughable considering the Sangha continued to prosper under him. It was yet another colonial theory put together by a british imperial apologist named W.W. Tarn who made a career out of misinterpreting indian texts and touting Alexander as a humanist who simply wanted to unify mankind.
Please, educate me on the so-called hindu imperial project in cambodia? What indian ruler sent people to persecute buddhists there? The problem with people like you is that you first form an opinion then search for facts to defend it, rather than the converse. Of course, if you want to create a narrative about muslim victimhood then you first have to negate hindu tolerance and pluralism by spinning and lying about history.
How are jains and buddhists persecuted in modern india? Describe…give me facts. Don’t just pull lies out of your rear. India has given sanctuary to the most venerable buddhist leader in the world and jains are the most powerful businessmen in India (accounting for 48% of tax revenues). Where is the history of forced conversions, of female abductions and rape against practitioners of those traditions? Specifics dude, not obfuscation and lies.
Look, ultimately, you and you buddies want to create manichean world where in it’s either your twisted sense of secularism or the hindutva bogeyman. But news flash, there are people that fit in neither category, don’t care about ideology, and want all sides (hindu and muslim) to get over the cycle of victimhood. So why don’t you drop your ideological agenda for a change and embrace the very reason you tout…right now, it’s lacking…
“Whoa, just great job on weasel words…yes, there was a long standing debate between witzel and talageri but that still does not negate the offer to earn a PHD”
you’re the one using weasel words. the invitation to harvard was nothing but disguised contempt. even talageri recognized it as an insult and refused to go. but if you want to be recalcitrant about it and call me a weasel when i clarified the situation, you’re weakening your own (infinitesimal) credibility. like i said, take your pick. are you foolish or are you malicious?
“those who think having an italian babysitter ruling the country is the greatest thing since sliced bread.” yes, it is clear that dialectics is no less a sonia gandhi acolyte than ambika soni. if you want your constitution enforced, then be prepared for all manner of inapplicable slurs: congresswallah, JNU commie, pseduosec, hindu-hater, and thapar disciple.
“no one here is advocating a saffronisation of history.” okay. we believe you, but what of the historians whom you love to quote?
Or Consider the decision by the Muslim group in Bombay to refuse burial to the terrorists as A PRAGMATIC ACT.