Between Islamophobia and Islamophilia
On the morning of 6th of September, 1929, a man stood waiting outside the shop of Mahashay Rajpal, who hadn't arrived yet. As soon as Rajpal arrived, the man, Ilumuddin took out a dagger and stabbed Mahashay Rajpal.
The reason: Rajpal was the publisher of a book known as Rangeela Rasool (The Colourful Prophet), which, as you can understand from the title offended a lot of Muslims. When Rajpal was tried in the court, a wine drinking, ham eating lawyer (and hence presumed 'secular'), otherwise known as Mohammad Ali Jinnah, appealed on behalf of the man and urged that "as extenuating circumstances, that the appellant is only 19 or 20 years of age and that his act was prompted by feelings of veneration for the founder of his religion and anger at one who had scurrilously attacked him."
Less apologetically, Allama Iqbal, the Shair-e Mashriq (Poet of the East), praised Ilmuddin as a "great warrior". In modern day Pakistan, his name carries the title Ghazi/Shaheed and there is a Pakistani movie (http://www.newsplus24.com/2012/04/15/ghazi-on-screen/) that was made glorifying his vigilantism.
Around seventy one years later, another follower of Ilmuddin was garlanded by lawyers for murdering a governor in Punjab.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Pakistani Taliban recently attacked a religious congregation, in Rawalpindi on January 9, for taking part in festivities of eid-e milad (the prophet's birthday). It seems that not only is satirising the Prophet dangerous, but revering him can also land you in trouble.
To those from the subcontinent, the old maxim of 'Bakhuda deewana bashud, ba mohammad hoshyar' (Take liberties with God, but not a word against Mohammad) rings painfully true. Charlie Hebdo wasn't the first case of religious intolerance, or the apologia that consequently followed. And I do not think it will be the last.
As I write these lines, I am painfully aware that my cultural background puts me in a tough spot, and I could all too easily be mistaken for a chauvinist Hindu who takes a certain glee in putting down Islam/Muslims, and thus invite allegations of being Islamophobic.
It did occur to me that I should probably make my introductory paragraph more balanced, and include a few examples of Hindu extremism so as to convey my impartiality and avoid censure of some readers. Another closely related rhetorical trope often used by people like me to convey neutrality is to mention that all religions are equally 'evil', but that would mean being intellectually dishonest. Neither is my position the opposite: that some religions are more evil than others. Rather, as a skeptic, I hold the view that each religion is 'differently' flawed (I find the phrase evil too problematic), and each has its own peculiarities. For instance, Hinduism's dehumanisation of half of its followers by way of a sophisticated philosophy of segregation is problematic in a very different manner compared to Christianity's history of inquisitions or its anxiety about sex. It is inane to debate which is a greater 'evil'. Since it was the horrific massacre of Paris that led me to write this, my focus is disproportionately on Islam compared to other faiths.
The massacre in Paris gave rise to a predictable reaction. Understandably, a lot of people expressed solidarity with the slain cartoonists, many well meaning, but also quite a few who felt a certain vindication of their Islamophobia. Sometimes the two overlapped. Then came the liberal response, which can be summed up as follows: Yes we are sad, and it shouldn't have happened. But Charlie Hebdo wasn't dyed in the wool either. But Islamophobia. But imperialism.
I am not here to refute or deny the West's (continuing) history of imperialism and Islamophobia. It is also an unfortunate reality that Muslim immigrants in Europe continue to be marginalized. However, even though most of liberal response took a conscious effort to add caveats against direct causality, one couldn't help but notice an implicit argument that had the West not been Islamophobic/imperialistic, such massacres would not have happened. I beg to disagree.
First, as the examples from British India and Pakistan demonstrate, religious fundamentalists are often waiting to be provoked. Religious fanatics may use any pretext to justify their actions (imperialism is particularly fashionable in the context), but the bottom line is that those who want to be provoked, will be provoked (As the RSS/Hindu right in India does with impunity). Further, had imperialism been the target, it would have made far more 'sense' to attack government offices rather than cartoonists. Attributing their actions to imperialism is not only erroneous, but also obscures the agency of those who commit such massacres.
Secondly, it provides cannon fodder to fundamentalists within a faith to justify their actions on real or perceived injustices. For instance, it is well known that American involvement was instrumental in formation of the Taliban, but the Taliban itself couldn't have been conceived in a vacuum without the agency of the Pakistani government and religious organizations, who continued to support such groups, long after the withdrawal of American support. Further, such arguments also disempower those working from the inside to reform religions/communities.
Next, coming to the issue of Western hypocrisy towards free speech. There are ample examples of hypocrisy as far as free speech is concerned, the right wing trash Jylland Posten is what comes to mind immediately due to their refusal to caricature Jesus Christ, despite publishing cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (As an aside, it is not satirising Prophet Mohammad that I have a problem with. Only that the Jylland Posten’s cartoon was neither intelligent, nor satirical). But Jylland Posten is not the representative of European media. Just as the assassins of the cartoonists aren't representative of the 1.7 billion Muslims of the planet, the same discourtesy should also be extended to the Danish magazine.
Another issue raised by an article I read on the Huffington Post was the Western double standards in maintaining a law against Holocaust denial while continuing to print cartoons ridiculing the Prophet. I agree that while the law forbidding Holocaust denial is perhaps not the wisest (Even if neo-Nazis are allowed to publish their hogwash, I doubt many people will believe it), but equating satire against a religion with denial of a historical incident is perhaps not on the same footing.
Lastly, by failing to adequately criticize, or in many cases, even mention, the role of Islamic fundamentalism, progressive opinion has virtually given right-wing conservative opinion the monopoly on criticizing organized religion, specifically Islam.
Progressive voices, for fear of being censured, and being labelled 'Islamophobic' have allowed the right -wing to engage in a crude demonisation of a religion and its followers. The aftermath of Paris would have been a good time for the Left to promote a reasoned critique of organized religion and fundamentalism.
Between the extremes of Islamophobia and the uncritical acceptance of Islam as being peaceful, there is a middle ground of critique (Let's call it Islamo-criticism, or generally, religio-criticism) that progressives could have engaged in without feeling the need to be apologetic.
Islamic extremism is a problem, and imperialism is at best, a catalyst. These attacks were the handiwork of lunatics but lunatics too do not exist in a vacuum. Paris apart, there are Muslim societies where there is tacit support for violence against heresy (real or alleged). There is a reason why no Pakistani government has dared repeal the blasphemy laws. Because it knows that any such move will be too unpopular. To give another example from the subcontinent, the spread of Hindutva as an ideology isn't solely the work of right-wing lunatics. It requires the tacit approval (or fearful silence) of a substantial segment of the population to sustain it. Babri Masjid was demolished in the minds of millions some time before it was actually razed to the ground in 1992.
This takes me back to 2011. After Salman Taseer's assassination, many well intentioned Pakistani friends said that killing for blasphemy is un-Islamic, and accused the extremists of selective interpretation. The point is, as vast (and often contradictory) the corpus of Islamic law is, the liberals can also be accused of picking those interpretations that suit them. Neither has the monopoly on the truth. My question to them was: Assuming for a second that the extremist interpretation is indeed correct and killing for blasphemy is sanctioned in the religion, would that make the assassin's actions any more justifiable?
Less apologetically, Allama Iqbal, the Shair-e Mashriq (Poet of the East), praised Ilmuddin as a "great warrior". In modern day Pakistan, his name carries the title Ghazi/Shaheed and there is a Pakistani movie (http://www.newsplus24.com/2012/04/15/ghazi-on-screen/) that was made glorifying his vigilantism.
Around seventy one years later, another follower of Ilmuddin was garlanded by lawyers for murdering a governor in Punjab.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Pakistani Taliban recently attacked a religious congregation, in Rawalpindi on January 9, for taking part in festivities of eid-e milad (the prophet's birthday). It seems that not only is satirising the Prophet dangerous, but revering him can also land you in trouble.
To those from the subcontinent, the old maxim of 'Bakhuda deewana bashud, ba mohammad hoshyar' (Take liberties with God, but not a word against Mohammad) rings painfully true. Charlie Hebdo wasn't the first case of religious intolerance, or the apologia that consequently followed. And I do not think it will be the last.
As I write these lines, I am painfully aware that my cultural background puts me in a tough spot, and I could all too easily be mistaken for a chauvinist Hindu who takes a certain glee in putting down Islam/Muslims, and thus invite allegations of being Islamophobic.
It did occur to me that I should probably make my introductory paragraph more balanced, and include a few examples of Hindu extremism so as to convey my impartiality and avoid censure of some readers. Another closely related rhetorical trope often used by people like me to convey neutrality is to mention that all religions are equally 'evil', but that would mean being intellectually dishonest. Neither is my position the opposite: that some religions are more evil than others. Rather, as a skeptic, I hold the view that each religion is 'differently' flawed (I find the phrase evil too problematic), and each has its own peculiarities. For instance, Hinduism's dehumanisation of half of its followers by way of a sophisticated philosophy of segregation is problematic in a very different manner compared to Christianity's history of inquisitions or its anxiety about sex. It is inane to debate which is a greater 'evil'. Since it was the horrific massacre of Paris that led me to write this, my focus is disproportionately on Islam compared to other faiths.
The massacre in Paris gave rise to a predictable reaction. Understandably, a lot of people expressed solidarity with the slain cartoonists, many well meaning, but also quite a few who felt a certain vindication of their Islamophobia. Sometimes the two overlapped. Then came the liberal response, which can be summed up as follows: Yes we are sad, and it shouldn't have happened. But Charlie Hebdo wasn't dyed in the wool either. But Islamophobia. But imperialism.
I am not here to refute or deny the West's (continuing) history of imperialism and Islamophobia. It is also an unfortunate reality that Muslim immigrants in Europe continue to be marginalized. However, even though most of liberal response took a conscious effort to add caveats against direct causality, one couldn't help but notice an implicit argument that had the West not been Islamophobic/imperialistic, such massacres would not have happened. I beg to disagree.
First, as the examples from British India and Pakistan demonstrate, religious fundamentalists are often waiting to be provoked. Religious fanatics may use any pretext to justify their actions (imperialism is particularly fashionable in the context), but the bottom line is that those who want to be provoked, will be provoked (As the RSS/Hindu right in India does with impunity). Further, had imperialism been the target, it would have made far more 'sense' to attack government offices rather than cartoonists. Attributing their actions to imperialism is not only erroneous, but also obscures the agency of those who commit such massacres.
Secondly, it provides cannon fodder to fundamentalists within a faith to justify their actions on real or perceived injustices. For instance, it is well known that American involvement was instrumental in formation of the Taliban, but the Taliban itself couldn't have been conceived in a vacuum without the agency of the Pakistani government and religious organizations, who continued to support such groups, long after the withdrawal of American support. Further, such arguments also disempower those working from the inside to reform religions/communities.
Next, coming to the issue of Western hypocrisy towards free speech. There are ample examples of hypocrisy as far as free speech is concerned, the right wing trash Jylland Posten is what comes to mind immediately due to their refusal to caricature Jesus Christ, despite publishing cartoons of Prophet Mohammad (As an aside, it is not satirising Prophet Mohammad that I have a problem with. Only that the Jylland Posten’s cartoon was neither intelligent, nor satirical). But Jylland Posten is not the representative of European media. Just as the assassins of the cartoonists aren't representative of the 1.7 billion Muslims of the planet, the same discourtesy should also be extended to the Danish magazine.
Another issue raised by an article I read on the Huffington Post was the Western double standards in maintaining a law against Holocaust denial while continuing to print cartoons ridiculing the Prophet. I agree that while the law forbidding Holocaust denial is perhaps not the wisest (Even if neo-Nazis are allowed to publish their hogwash, I doubt many people will believe it), but equating satire against a religion with denial of a historical incident is perhaps not on the same footing.
Lastly, by failing to adequately criticize, or in many cases, even mention, the role of Islamic fundamentalism, progressive opinion has virtually given right-wing conservative opinion the monopoly on criticizing organized religion, specifically Islam.
Progressive voices, for fear of being censured, and being labelled 'Islamophobic' have allowed the right -wing to engage in a crude demonisation of a religion and its followers. The aftermath of Paris would have been a good time for the Left to promote a reasoned critique of organized religion and fundamentalism.
Between the extremes of Islamophobia and the uncritical acceptance of Islam as being peaceful, there is a middle ground of critique (Let's call it Islamo-criticism, or generally, religio-criticism) that progressives could have engaged in without feeling the need to be apologetic.
Islamic extremism is a problem, and imperialism is at best, a catalyst. These attacks were the handiwork of lunatics but lunatics too do not exist in a vacuum. Paris apart, there are Muslim societies where there is tacit support for violence against heresy (real or alleged). There is a reason why no Pakistani government has dared repeal the blasphemy laws. Because it knows that any such move will be too unpopular. To give another example from the subcontinent, the spread of Hindutva as an ideology isn't solely the work of right-wing lunatics. It requires the tacit approval (or fearful silence) of a substantial segment of the population to sustain it. Babri Masjid was demolished in the minds of millions some time before it was actually razed to the ground in 1992.
This takes me back to 2011. After Salman Taseer's assassination, many well intentioned Pakistani friends said that killing for blasphemy is un-Islamic, and accused the extremists of selective interpretation. The point is, as vast (and often contradictory) the corpus of Islamic law is, the liberals can also be accused of picking those interpretations that suit them. Neither has the monopoly on the truth. My question to them was: Assuming for a second that the extremist interpretation is indeed correct and killing for blasphemy is sanctioned in the religion, would that make the assassin's actions any more justifiable?