A season to reflect

For the atheist that I am, following the news means that I am always updated on some of the major religious observances.  Thanks to the Mardi Gras parties in New Orleans, for instance, I know that we are in the season of Lent.  Oddly enough, Fat Tuesday nearly coincided with Mahashivarathri--one could have combined both the religious/social practices and had parties throughout the night ;)

I wonder how many serious Catholics gave up anything tRump for Lent ;)

Soon after the Easter yard signs--with evangelicals reminding even non-believers that he died to save us--are put away, it will be Ramadan.

Of course, this year, too, we can expect the fake-Christian-in-chief, tRump, to stay away from saying anything about the fasting and god, or, at best, he will use that as an opportunity to remind his base that Muslims are terrorists.

But, this year, he will have at least two women across from the White House to remind him that there are Muslims in America.  And one even wears a hijab!

Bush junior, who now in contrast to tRump comes across as the grand old sage of the Grand Old Party, took the higher and correct road even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11:

Former President George W. Bush’s Ramadan message, delivered just months after the September 11 terrorist attacks, didn’t mention terrorism at all. Instead, it focused on the diversity within the American Muslim community, whose members “serve in every walk of life, including our armed forces.”

What a contrast now with the evil simply oozing from the Oval Office and through his 63 million voters :(

And when Ramadan ended last year? No iftar!

Despite events held by previous administrations from across the political divide, this year’s Ramadan – which began on 26 May – passed nearly unobserved by the White House. It was marked only by a statement published late on Saturday afternoon, coinciding with the end of the holy month.
The first White House iftar dinner is said to have been hosted by President Thomas Jefferson in 1805. Guests included a Tunisian ambassador to the US.
Hillary Clinton, when she was first lady, resurrected the event in February 1996, hosting about 150 people for a reception for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month.

Muslim-loving Crooked Hillary; Lock her up!

For all the non-believer that I am, I consciously think about my existence, and worry about what it means to be human.  "Shit happens" I tell myself.  After all, it is not as if the entire cosmos exists only to serve me!  The cosmos is.  Yet, I seem to consciously mark the passing of time as memorialized by religious days like Ramadan, Lent, Deepavali, ...

Whether it is Lent, or Ramadan, or whatever, I am not ever sure that most of the believers really use that designated time in order to reflect on our fleeting existence on this "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam," as Carl Sagan so poetically put it.

Tamil becoming modern

Even in the title, David Shulman makes clear that he is writing a biography of Tamil, and not a history.

Old languages like Tamil, given to intense reflection of many centuries, write their own autobiographies, in many media, though we may not know hot to read them.  Sometimes they ask the assistance of a ghostwriter, a biographer, like me.

What a wonderful storyteller he is!  In this biography of Tamil, he educates me on how the grammar evolved, which then made the rich poetic literature happen, and then as the times changed, well, prose also developed.

Modernity is always a relative concept, privileging the more recent over the more distant past and thereby habitually distorting the latter.  It never happens in a single shot.

That applies to the changes in the language as well as to any aspect of life, it seems.

From the Sangam poetry to modern prose is one hell of a journey over nearly 2,000 years.  "Modern literary prose," for which the Tenkasi period played a critical role, is very different from the poetry of the past.  "Nothing can quite prepare us for the expressive power and stylistic range of nineteenth-century Tamil prose works, which 'bespeak a change of consciousness, of conscience'"

In addition to Sanskrit being woven into Tamil, "by the late seventeenth century, two new languages have entered into Tamil-ness from the outside--Persian and Arabic."  The biography of Tamil, it seems, is also about assimilation.  Perhaps this cosmopolitanism that is innate in the language in which we grew also contributes to how easily we move around and assimilate into societies that are completely unlike the Tamil country.

Shulman discusses "the great Muslim poet Umaruppulavar."  Of course, I had no idea about him either.  Even though he was from the part of the Tamil country that was home to my people. He was born in Ettayapuram, the same place that also claims as its own the poet whose verse I have in a tshirt!

Umaruppulavar's opus was:

the best-known literary work of Muslim Tamil, the Cirappuranam, probably the finest large-scale narrative poem in Tamil in the seventeenth-century; this vast work, largely modeled on Kamban, tells the story of Muhammad in a Hijaz that has reimagined as the verdant Tamil land

I had no idea that my ancestral areas in the old Tamil country played such roles in the evolution of the "modern" Tamil.

People, who don't need people?

Two years ago, the university where I work invited interested faculty members to self-nominate themselves to serve on the Strategic Planning Committee.  Given my interests in higher education, and given that the directions that the university sets through this committee will be in place until I retire or am fired, I nominated myself and provided evidence of my track record in thinking above and beyond mere courses and the small little bubbles in which most discussions are trapped.

Of course, I was not selected to be on that committee.  What do I know about higher education, right? 

In a brief thank-you email after receiving the notification that also included the list of faculty named to serve on the committee, I added a sentence that I hoped would make them all think about the committee's composition:

BTW, it seems kind of odd that faculty membership does not include any "people of color" as they say ;)

It was not diversity for the sake of diversity that I pointing out, but was instead about the need to think of the demographic reality.  Strategic Planning is about consciously developing specific action items for the future.  The demographic future of the country is in beige, the 2042 that even comedians joke about.  Oregon is notorious for not knowing how to deal with diversity, whether based on the superficial skin or on religion.   Especially Islam.

Everybody is talking and writing about Islam and the Arab world and Muslims.  The more one delves into the news, the more we realize we don't know anything about Islam, the Arab world, and Muslims.   It is bizarre that we are madly against something about which we know nothing!

Edward Said covered all these and more in his Orientalism.  Naturally.  Said had plenty of profound observations on the distorted--and intentional at that--understanding that the "West" has about Islam and the Arabs.

The scholar Edward Said took this point further, writing in his book Orientalism in 1978 that Islam had defined Europe culturally, by showing Europe what it was against. Europe’s very identity, in other words, was built in significant measure on a sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world on its periphery. Imperialism proved the ultimate expression of this evolution

In a lengthy essay after his book was published, Said wrote--keep in mind that this was in 1980:

 If you were to ask an average literate Westerner to name an Arab or Islamic writer, or a musician, or an intellectual, you might get a name like Kahlil Gibran in response, but nothing else. In other words, whole swatches of Islamic history, culture and society simply do not exist except in the truncated, tightly packaged forms made current by the media. As Herbert Schiller has said, TV’s images tend to present reality in too immediate and fragmentary a form for either historical or human continuity to appear. Islam therefore is equivalent to an undifferentiated mob of scimitar-waving oil suppliers, or it is reduced to the utterances of one or another Islamic leader who at the moment happens to be a convenient foreign scapegoat.        

If that is the case with the average literate Westerner then do we need to even wonder why there are plenty of Americans today who eagerly embrace the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric from the likes of trump!

Even at the university, the numbers of students from Saudi Arabia and their families have not been strategically used as opportunities to truly understand "them."  Instead, it seems that my university, like many others, merely continues to treat the foreigners as revenue sources, which is not that different from the "scimitar-waving oil suppliers" caricature that Said was upset about. 

The American Carnage

When visiting with the folks, which typically happens in December, every morning I wake up, have coffee, and head out for a five-mile walk well before six.  As I exit the compound, it is almost always the same time when a group (all-Brahmim?) goes by reciting the Vishnu Sahasranamam.

Most of the words echo deep within my memories--I used to recite those verses when I was an obedient teenager ;)

The sing-song recitation in the pre-dawn darkness when the rest of the city is quiet is a sound that is soothing.

As I walk towards the public park, which is where I walk the laps, I pass by a masjid.  Their sing-song recitation of the Quran in the pre-dawn darkness when the rest of the city is quiet is a sound that is soothing.

I thought about these when I read about mike pence reverently visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem.  And that reminded me about trump at the Western Wall a few months ago.

Which is when I got to thinking ... Has trump ever been to a mosque?  At least once?  Either as a private citizen, or as the President?  Has pence ever been to a mosque?  Have they ever been to a Hindu temple?

I wonder what the response would be if a journalist were to ask trump that question.  Perhaps he will simply ignore the question.  After all, his base would not want to hear him say anything other than bashing up Muslims as evil.

I wonder how many of the trump voters, including past commenters and neighbors, have ever participated in a religious worship gathering that was not Christian.  I wonder if any of them have any in their immediate or extended families a person who married outside their religion.  Chances are nil, I assume.

In these aspects, too, Obama was truly presidential and one who set a wonderful example for impressionable kids and youth.  Obama even hosted Iftar dinners at the White House!  Imagine trump or pence ever doing that!!!

At the Iftar dinner in 2015, Obama said this about "those who seek to divide us by religion or race or sect.:

Here in America, many people personally don’t know someone who is Muslim.  They mostly hear about Muslims in the news -- and that can obviously lead to a very distorted impression.
We saw this play out recently at a mosque in Arizona.  A group of protestors gathered outside with offensive signs against Islam and Muslims.  And then the mosque’s leaders invited them inside to share in the evening prayer.  One demonstrator, who accepted the invitation later, described how the experience changed him; how he finally saw the Muslim American community for what it is -- peaceful and welcoming.  That’s what can happen when we stop yelling and start listening.  

In contrast, we now we have a President who constantly feeds the yelling and screaming, and actively promotes hate.

In wrapping up that speech, Obama said:

Together, we can overcome ignorance and prejudice.  Together, we will overcome conflict and injustice -- not just with words, but with deeds.  With what a hero of mine, the civil rights icon John Lewis, calls using our feet -- getting out in the real world to organize and to create the change that we seek.  

And we know how trump described John Lewis.

We have fallen a great deal over the past two years, and we continue to descend deep down into darkness with the Republican "leaders" that we now have in the White House and Congress.

History is just one damned thing after another

The seventh and eighth centuries were the years were when the Pallava Empire in the southern peninsular India was at its peak.  (Click here for my favorite post after visiting an old Pallava temple.)  About that time, the concept of zero in mathematics was a breakthrough invention in a different part of India. The Hindu-Arabic number system, along with zero, then spread to Europe, as interactions between Muslims and Europeans escalated after the first conquest in of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 by the invading Muslims.  Thus, as Bertrand Russell is supposed to have remarked to Jawaharlal Nehru, India gave "nothing" to the world.

While the mathematician-philosopher Russell was punning about the "nothing," there are quite a few white supremacists who passionately believe, out of their arrogance and ignorance, that nothing good ever came from any part of the world that was not European and Christian.  The GOP's Steve King spoke for them all:

"I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

How conveniently we forget history, and how easily do we spin stories that do not have to resemble truth in any form!  King went on to talk about the glories of Western Civilization and Christianity, before the host of the show effectively cut him off.

Oh well ... The world seems to have forgotten about the long and rich history of Islam in Europe.  A year ago, Robert Kaplan argued in his short essay that Europe's identity itself was nothing but a response to Islam:

Europe was essentially defined by Islam. And Islam is redefining it now. ... the swift advance of Islam across North Africa in the seventh and eighth centuries virtually extinguished Christianity there, thus severing the Mediterranean region into two civilizational halves, with the “Middle Sea” a hard border between them rather than a unifying force. Since then, as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset observed, “all European history has been a great emigration toward the North.”

The Crusades, and then the colonial empires.

Europe’s very identity, in other words, was built in significant measure on a sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world on its periphery. Imperialism proved the ultimate expression of this evolution: Early modern Europe, starting with Napoleon, conquered the Middle East, then dispatched scholars and diplomats to study Islamic civilization, classifying it as something beautiful, fascinating, and—most crucial—inferior.

That "inferior" is what now King and his fellow white supremacists in the GOP talk about!

The colonial era of the recent times brings us to Nice, which "was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia":

It was not until 1860 that Nice would become a permanent part of France, thirty years after France invaded and occupied Algeria. In the Second World War the region was occupied by Italy, and Nice became a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in Vichy France, allied with Nazi Germany. When the Germans seized the city in 1943, they deported thousands of Jews to be murdered in occupied Poland.
When France’s 132 year colonial history in North Africa came to an end in 1962, more than a million people left Algeria, and others left Tunisia and Morocco to “return” to a France that was not their home.
Among them were Europeans of different origins, many North African Jews, and Muslims who had fought for the French in Africa. 

All that complicated history, along with the recent economic migration, is why at least 30 of the dead in the attack in Nice were local and visiting Muslims.  Including children.

Oucine Jamouli, 62, the head of a Moroccan association, attributed the heavy Muslim turnout at least partly to the fact that there is less drinking at the Bastille Day festival than at other big events in Nice because it is a family-oriented celebration.
It is also less religious than Nice’s other major festivals: a Christmas market, the Carnival festival at Mardi Gras and the fireworks for Aug. 15, which marks the Catholic feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary to heaven.  

Nice is, thus, more than the mere French Riviera, and is a city that is increasingly divided by religion and ethnicity, and the political leaders who want to deepen this divide;

Muslim and non-Muslim, lived alongside each other in relative peace for generations, but that has begun to change along with the rise of France’s far-right National Front party, led by Marine Le Pen. Nice is governed by the center-right, which includes the Republicans, but some say its leaders increasingly play the politics of division.

I suppose getting along will become increasingly difficult in such a political climate.  But then, history is one damned story of people not getting along! :(

Understanding ‘others’ essential in today’s world

(For The Register-Guard: June 8, 2016)

My childhood classmates came from diverse religious backgrounds. This included Farooq and Yasmeen, among others, who were Muslims. Of the teachers, I still recall Yusuf Ali, who was the machine shop instructor. Thanks to India’s diversity, and to life in an industrial setting, we Hindu kids went to school with Muslims and Christians, and even my highly religious and orthodox grandmothers did not worry about “traditional values.”

As a kid, I did not know that there were Muslims in America. When the name of a boxer, Muhammad Ali, appeared in the newspaper, The Hindu, I assumed he was one of our people who had moved to America.

In the grainy black-and-white news photographs more than four decades back, Ali easily looked like one of us — only immensely more handsome. When my brother and I fought, much to our mother’s displeasure, we sometimes imagined that we were boxing like Ali, though neither one of us knew anything about the sport.

As a fresh-off-the-boat student, I made friends for the first time ever with a student, Siddiqui, who was from India’s arch-enemy — Pakistan. Toward the end of my first year of graduate school, when I was getting introduced to life here in America, I was amused by the sight of my classmate John — a white skateboarding dude — practically worshiping a basketball player named Kareem.

Even while the mullahs of Iran were always in the political crosshairs, the Iranian-­Americans in Southern California went freely out and about — and were seemingly one of the more prosperous groups, too. In those early years of my life in America it seemed as though nothing was said or written in public that was against Islam and Muslims.

After such a healthy head start in my life in the old country and then in this adopted home, it shocks me to no end now when I hear or read virulent anti-Muslim remarks, especially from those seeking or holding elected office. The anti-Muslim rhetoric makes a mockery of the noble idea of freedom to practice religion — a freedom that has been a foundational principle of the United States.

While neither Farooq nor Yasmeen lives in the United States, I think of those old schoolmates when very serious people make yet another anti-Muslim comment. I recall how Siddiqui and I shared the foods that we made as struggling graduate students. When we know people and have developed meaningful relationships with the “other,” it becomes difficult to tolerate sweeping statements that condemn hundreds of millions of Muslims because of a minuscule minority that bombs and kills.

Muhammad Ali’s death provides us with yet another context for learning about Islam, and about Muslims in America.

Islam in America is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the Quran, which provided him with more than a passing familiarity with the religion and its practices.

Researchers estimate that between 15 percent to 30 percent of slaves were Muslims. One of those was Omar Ibn Said, whose life-story has been well documented. Imagine the double whammy of being a slave who was also a Muslim, after having been raised in what is now the West African country of Senegal!

Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday, is another opportunity to get to know the religion and its faithful. For a month, most of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims will fast from sunrise until sunset, to remind themselves about the mortals that we humans are and about the fragility of life without food and water. This fasting alone, which humbles the rich and the poor alike, ought to trigger the curiosity of those who harbor only suspicions about the “other.”

One of the challenges in this rapidly globalizing world is for us to understand the “other.” While in centuries past it might have been easier for people to spend an entire life fully within their own respective tribes, we live in a world in which mixing of people and ideas is the norm, not the exception.

It is also clear that the momentum of globalization will not slow down — it will only pick up more speed. This requires all of us to broaden our horizons. To borrow from the late Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s “Where the mind is without fear” — a poem Yasmeen, Farooq and I read in school — we need to create a world of freedom that has not been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls. It is difficult work to create such a heaven right here on Earth, but is an effort worth pursuing.

Hey, the Donald has issued his Ramadan greetings!

Think about May 27th next year--as in 2017.  I know it is difficult to think about a year from now.  But, go ahead,  Think about it.

By then, the new President of the US would have been in office for four months.  Now, imagine President Donald Trump issuing a Ramadan greetings message on May 27, 2017.

If you are not a Trump supporter, then you won't be able to imagine the fascist wishing the Muslims in America and the world.  If you are a Trump supporter, then you know well that he ain't gonna wish Muslims anything good, which is one of the few reasons that you are supporting him in the first place!  (Editor's note: What?  You have Trump supporters reading your blog?)

Trump saying anything informed about Muslims is beyond anybody's wildest imagination.  As Sam Harris remarked, everything that Trump knows about Islam and Muslims won't even take up the 140 characters that Twitter allows!

The current President, Obama, who--along with his wife--have set themselves as examples of class act for children all over the world, and who will be sorely missed after the new year--included in his Ramadan message this:

Far too many Muslims may not be able to observe Ramadan from the comfort of their own homes this year or afford to celebrate Eid with their children. We must continue working together to alleviate the suffering of these individuals. This sacred time reminds us of our common obligations to uphold the dignity of every human being.

Trump, who doesn't care about "the dignity of every human being", had this to say about Muslim judges in this country, when asked by John Dickerson:

Mr. Dickerson asked Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, if a Muslim judge would be similarly biased because of Mr. Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigrants. “It’s possible, yes,” Mr. Trump said. “Yeah. That would be possible. Absolutely.”
When Mr. Dickerson said there was a tradition in the United States, a nation of immigrants, against judging people based on heritage, Mr. Trump replied, “I’m not talking about tradition, I’m talking about common sense, O.K.?”

Can you imagine a President Trump having a Eid celebration dinner at the White House to mark the end of Ramadan, after uttering one contemptuous statement after another?

Meanwhile, in the old colonial headquarters, London, from where the white supremacists bled half the world in order to make themselves rich and fat, it will be the first Ramadan while in office for the newly elected mayor, Sadiq Khan, who is the son of Muslim immigrants.  Khan embodies two words that fire up Trump and his faithful fanatics: "Muslim" and "immigrants"

Khan said that Trump's "inflammatory remarks about Islam could threaten security in Britain and the United States":

“Trump’s ignorant view of Islam could make both our countries less safe,” Mr. Khan wrote on Twitter on Tuesday morning. “It risks alienating mainstream Muslims. London has proved him wrong.”

Reports suggest that Trump will soon be visiting the UK.  No, it is not to meet with political leaders and show that he can be presidential.  Trump will be there in less than three weeks to, get this, "at the Turnberry hotel at the golf course in south-west Scotland on 24 June for its official relaunch following a £200m redevelopment."  Which draws the appropriate response from across the party divide:

Tommy Vietor, a longtime aide to President Obama and a former US National Security Council spokesman, said the fact that Trump is “leaving the country this close to the election to promote his golf resort is another reminder that he cares more about himself and making money than his campaign”. 

So, yes, go ahead and imagine President Trump!!!

My university and Europe

The university where I work invited interested faculty members to self-nominate themselves to serve on the Strategic Planning Committee.  Given my interests in higher education, and given that the directions that the university sets through this committee will be in place until I retire or am fired, I nominated myself and provided evidence of my track record in thinking above and beyond mere courses and the small little bubbles in which most discussions are trapped.

Of course, I was not selected to be on that committee.  What do I know about higher education!

In a brief thank-you email after receiving the notification that also included the list of faculty named to serve on the committee, I added a sentence that I hoped would make them all think about the committee's composition:

BTW, it seems kind of odd that faculty membership does not include any "people of color" as they say ;)

It was not diversity for the sake of diversity that I pointing out, but was instead about the need to think of the demographic reality.  Strategic Planning is about consciously developing specific action items for the future.  The demographic future of the country is in beige, the 2042 that even comedians joke about.  Oregon is notorious for not knowing how to deal with diversity, whether based on the superficial skin or on religion.   Especially Islam.

Everybody is talking and writing about Islam and the Arab world and Muslims.  The more one delves into the news, the more we realize we don't know anything about Islam, the Arab world, and Muslims.  Robert Kaplan writes that "Europe was essentially defined by Islam. And Islam is redefining it now."

The cultural purity that Europe craves in the face of the Muslim-refugee influx is simply impossible in a world of increasing human interactions.
“The West,” if it does have a meaning beyond geography, manifests a spirit of ever more inclusive liberalism. Just as in the 19th century there was no going back to feudalism, there is no going back now to nationalism, not without courting disaster.

In his short essay, Kaplan makes extensive reference to Edward Said's Orientalism.  Naturally.  Said had plenty of profound observations on the distorted--and intentional at that--understanding that the "West" has about Islam and the Arabs.

The scholar Edward Said took this point further, writing in his book Orientalism in 1978 that Islam had defined Europe culturally, by showing Europe what it was against. Europe’s very identity, in other words, was built in significant measure on a sense of superiority to the Muslim Arab world on its periphery. Imperialism proved the ultimate expression of this evolution

In a lengthy essay after his book was published, Said wrote--keep in mind that this was in 1980:

 If you were to ask an average literate Westerner to name an Arab or Islamic writer, or a musician, or an intellectual, you might get a name like Kahlil Gibran in response, but nothing else. In other words, whole swatches of Islamic history, culture and society simply do not exist except in the truncated, tightly packaged forms made current by the media. As Herbert Schiller has said, TV’s images tend to present reality in too immediate and fragmentary a form for either historical or human continuity to appear. Islam therefore is equivalent to an undifferentiated mob of scimitar-waving oil suppliers, or it is reduced to the utterances of one or another Islamic leader who at the moment happens to be a convenient foreign scapegoat.        

If that is the case with the average literate Westerner then do we need to even wonder why there are plenty of Americans today who eagerly embrace the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz!

Even at the university, the numbers of students from Saudi Arabia and their families have not been strategically used as opportunities to truly understand "them."  Instead, it seems that my university, like many others, merely continues to treat the foreigners as revenue sources, which is not that different from the "scimitar-waving oil suppliers" caricature that Said was upset about.

At this rate, it seems like it will be a close race between my exit from the university and the ultimate exit itself ;)

Why do Republican candidates always say Allahu Akbar?

Last week, after the show ended at the Iowa political theatre, I watched, thanks to my favorite television channel, Marco Rubio's "victory" speech after he came third.  Towards the end of that speech, Rubio said:

I thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ, I thank God for allowing me the opportunity to come this far with each of you

I find "God bless America" and "In god we trust" difficult to handle, and Rubio went far above and beyond those.

Which is when I got to thinking, what Rubio says so publicly is no different from saying "Allahu Akbar" when all that phrase means is "god is great."  If at all, Allahu Akbar is a lot more succinct than the lengthy manner in which Rubio phrased it.

The winner of the Iowa circus, Ted Cruz, opened his speech with, "Let me first of all say, to God be the glory."  There, isn't that also nothing but his version of "Allahu Akbar"?

Why is it ok for the GOP presidential contenders to walk around saying god is great, but then they want to hassle Muslims who want to come here as refugees fleeing dictators and chaos, and the Muslims who are here, only because they say "god is great" but in Arabic?

Can't we all agree to keep god out of the public square and refer to whatever gods in private spaces?  I am with Susan Jacoby when she writes about being Sick and Tired of ‘God Bless America':

our political campaigns are still conducted as if all potential voters were among the faithful. The presumption is that candidates have everything to gain and nothing to lose by continuing their obsequious attitude toward orthodox religion and ignoring the growing population of those who make up a more secular America.

How significant is the secular population?

Americans who say religion is not important in their lives and who do not belong to a religious group, according to the Pew Research Center, have risen in numbers from an estimated 21 million in 2008 to more than 36 million now.

Which means

At 22.8 percent, according to Pew, the unchurched make up a larger group than Catholics, any single Protestant denomination and small minorities of Jews, Muslims and Hindus.

The god (or the son of god) references by politicians means that "“religious freedom is in danger of becoming code for accepting public money while imposing faith-based values on others."

Jacoby ends with this:

Just once in my life, I would like the chance to vote for a presidential candidate who ends his or her appeals with Thomas Paine’s observation that “the most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason.”

We can dream, right?

What could have been ... a point of no-return ... it is Pakistan!

Modeled after "How to write about Africa" was this piece on "How to write about Pakistan," in which the author noted, with sarcasm:

Pakistan is just like India, except when it’s just like Afghanistan. (Has anyone else noticed how we seem to have geographically shifted from being a side-thought of the subcontinent to a major player in the Greater Middle East? Is this progress?)

The more years go by, the more things change, the more things stay the same.  A recent piece in Foreign Policy on Pakistan's identity problem begins with:

When you hear about Pakistan, what most often comes to mind? The place where schools, markets, and neighborhoods are routinely bombed? The terrorist haven where Osama bin Laden hid for almost a decade? The “Pak” in Af-Pak? The difficult ally America can’t drop because of its nuclear capabilities? The country where Malala Yousafzai was shot? All of this is true, but there is so much more to this country of 182 million people.
The common perception of Pakistan is more similar to its neighbor in the west (Afghanistan) than the one in the east (India), the country with which it shares its history.

What a mess, since the horrific partition in 1947, which only worsened after East Pakistan became Bangladesh!  Terrible!

Who caused this mess, which has made the daily lives of the 182 million miserable for the most part?

This is a direct result of how Pakistan’s “establishment” — its military and political elite — has defined its identity. This definition emphasizes Islam above all else, and pitches Pakistan as completely different from India.

If only I believed in something after death, I will curse all those to eternal damnation!  I would wish that Zia-ul-Haq be subject to every possible torture in that hell.  The maniac got away relatively easily in an unexplained plane crash, when he should have had an exit that would have made Gaddafi's last minutes seem painless!

Thanks to all those maniacs:

Because Pakistan has disavowed large parts of its past and its identity, it is easier to define it in terms of its present struggle with terrorism. There is little else people know about it. Few people ask me about what Pakistan is really like, about life in my hometown, Lahore, the city of gardens.

Lahore.  Remember the events there thanks to which the country hasn't had any international cricket played there?  I wonder whether they have at least changed the name of the stadium. I hope so.

Zia the maniac made it uber-Islamic.  And then the drive towards the "Islamic bomb" brought Pakistan and Saudi Arabia close, and with that money came the Wahhabi madrasas too.

Since the 1970s, Pakistan’s military and political elite have chosen religious fundamentalism over a democratic plurality. The establishment has emphasized a Sunni Muslim identity at the exclusion of all other ethnic, religious, and sectarian identities. Saudi-imported Wahhabism — an ultra-conservative version of Sunni Islam that lies at odds with South Asia’s tradition of Sufi-influenced Barelvi Islam — has been making in-roads in Pakistani society since the 1980s.

The House of Saud is one screwed up government; oh well, that has to be for another day.

Pakistan could have been so different.  Even with the partition, which I will always believe was one of the worst ever ways to end the Raj.  It could have been a model Muslim country, way better a model than Turkey is hailed to be.  Had it worked out that way, odds are that Afghanistan's story would have been very different too.

If things were different, the image of Pakistan would not be one of terrorism.  Instead, it will be like this:

Will end the post with this; try watching and listening without moving your feet ever, without ever cracking a smile, without rhythmically swaying your head!

J'accuse ...!

I was one of the last few to board the plane.  I slowly walked towards my aisle seat in the back half of the plane.  An hour delayed already for the transatlantic flight, which made me worry about the connection to India.  "Ja, ja, you will make it" reassured the Lufthansa staff at the gate.  But, this worrywart was not convinced.

The consolation was that my adjacent seat was empty.  "They don't upgrade me to business class anymore" I thought to myself.  The older I get, the longer and more painful is a trip to India, and it gets more painful as the airlines keep shrinking the seat size and the space between the seats.

In the row ahead of me were two young couples.  The two women sat together and giggled and talked nonstop, and from the responses from the males, it seemed like they were having jokes on their men.  And jokes on other men in their group--the guys from behind my row and across the aisle from me also jumped in with their responses.

I couldn't understand anything because, well, it was not in English.  Arabic was my guess because of the whole lot of "h"sounds coming from them.

The guy across the aisle from me took out his cellphone.  And put that back.  He then turned to his seatmate. "My Jordan phone won't work.  Can I use your local phone to call my friend?  A quick call" he told her.

"Oh, I am a German tourist going home" she replied.

A few seconds later, he approached me with the same question.  I nodded a yes.  He read out the number from his phone and I dialled it for him.  And handed him the phone.

He left a voicemail, all in Arabic.

"Thank you" he said as he returned the phone to me.

A minute later, he asked me if it will be ok for him to try again.  "The same number."

This time, he had a conversation for a minute or two, and handed the phone back to me with an even bigger thank you in his voice.

The following happened in a fraction of a nanosecond, for which I stand accused.

I thought to myself that if the plane were to crash, the investigation will reveal that one of the last calls from the plane's passengers was made from my phone to somebody with a Middle Eastern background.  And, therefore, that I will be associated with the crash.

That fraction of a nanosecond revealed that deep down, I  have become a bigoted person that I never would have imagined existed within me.  I was ashamed, and still am, for having made that thought-association of the Arab Muslim and the plane crashing.

I am the accused.
I am guilty as charged.
I am defenseless.

I am sorry!

Yes, Virginia, there are Muslims in Mexico, too!

I stayed away from blogging anything yesterday because of a nagging suspicion that I might end up ranting about Earth Day.  As much as I am worried about the natural environment in my own way, I am convinced that we misplace our emphasis when we worry more about the plastic bags that are tossed about while ignoring ... see, this is the kind of rant I wanted to avoid!

I am far more interested in the "Muslim" angle of the Boston bombers.  The brothers Tsarnaev.  From my observation deck, it seems more a case of disgruntled losers taking to violence, which is, unfortunately, an all too familiar American happening.  Yet, it is the "Muslim" connection that fascinates many.  Unsuspecting Americans who do not know where Chechnya is can easily be misled into thinking that it is one of "those" Middle Eastern countries.  As I noted here a couple of days ago, "The Islamophobes who now will consider any Muslim with ultra-suspicion might be shocked to know that the brothers are Caucasians. "

Here in the US, we do not seem to be investing any time and effort to understand Islam and Muslims.  Sometime soon after I re-started this blog, I noted about the global Muslim population.  The web and blogging are simply fantastic when it comes to getting updates, discussing policies, ..... Many academics have also taken up blogging big time.  I suspect that in many cases, blogging provides a lot more interactive discussions than a journal article can.  Juan Cole is one of those academics who has blogged a lot--on the Middle East in particular.  Here, he responds to the news item that a quarter of the world's population is Muslim:

I don't think most people in the West realize the implications of the likelihood that one-third of humankind may soon be Muslim. We don't have a real sense of scale in the US. We don't realize that Brazil alone is nearly as big as the US in area, or that the US could be fitted into East Africa. We don't realize how huge Iran is, or what it implies when we call India a subcontinent.

One of the implications is that the US is a little unlikely to thrive as a superpower in the 21st century if its more venal and bloodthirsty politicians go on barking about "Islamo-fascism" (they never said Christo-Fascism even though Gen. Franco in Spain was a good candidate for the label) and denigrating Islam and Muslims and seeking to militarily occupy their countries and siphon off their resources. That kind of behavior may have worked in the 19th century before Muslims were mobilized, but it does not work now.

The Muslim world is the labor pool of the next century, and is also the custodian of much of the world's fuel. New American crusades of the sort favored on the right of the Republican Party may finally induce imperial overstretch and deeply harm the US. Some 5 percent of the population cannot dominate by force 25 percent of the globe and what may eventually be 33% of the globe.

Even from that pragmatic demographic perspective, we need to spend a lot more time understanding Islam.  I am always shocked that it is possible for students at many colleges and universities to graduate from an undergraduate program without learning anything about Islam and Muslims.  Twelve years since 9/11, and how can that be possible, right?  Absolutely bizarre!

It is not as if Muslims live only in certain geographic areas either for us to ignore understanding them.  When I was in the Avis shuttle bus to LAX, a family got in.  Four kids hopped in followed by their hijab-wearing mother and then the father with a scratchy beard on his chin.  The couple looked like they were in their early to mid-thirties.  The bus driver, a Hispanic woman, went to help the couple with their bags and hesitantly spoke in English to them.

She was surprised, and so was I, when the hijab-wearing woman replied in Spanish.  I paid attention to whatever words I could recognize, and I understood the driver telling them that she was from Guadalajara.  The man joined in the conversation and told her that they were from very near Guadalajara.  Then a whole lot of jabbering--the driver even forgot that she had a job to do!

The driver looked at the kids and asked them for their names.  And then asked what their mother's name was.  One kid with glasses said "Fatimah."  A name that Muslims revere.

I am yet to recover from the shock of a Spanish-speaking Muslim family, and hijab-wearing mother in that, from Mexico!

So, the nerd in me, I went to the Pew Survey that I had linked in that old post.  An estimated 110,000 in Mexico are Muslims.  A tiny, tiny, minority, yes.  But, who would have thought that; certainly not I!

If Mexico has about 110,000 Muslims, then any guesses on the Muslim population in Russia, of which Chechnya is a part?  Think of a big number.  Way bigger than 110,000.  Way bigger than the Muslim population here in the US.

Ready for that answer on Muslim population in Russia?  Hold on to your seat:

The country with the largest Muslim population in  Europe is Russia, with more than 16 million Muslims, meaning that more than four-in-ten European  Muslims live in Russia

Yet, we choose not to make any effort at understanding Islam and Muslims because ....?

Fatehpur Sikri (India) 2012

Déjà Vu. It is about 1979, all over again.

The anti-American protests and the violent killing of the US ambassador to Libya has prompted quite a few commentaries on 1979--from the chest-thumping Newt Gingrich, to this more nuanced piece in the New York Review of Books, which is titled "Islamist Déjà Vu: The Lessons of 1979."

Well, all this is déjà vu all over again for me--because, I wrote a column on how 1979 was a pivotal year, and that we are continuing to deal with those issues because we never really resolved them. (I should have added in that commentary that 1979 was also the first year in Congress for Gingrich--yet another unresolved problem since then!)

Anyway, the following is what I wrote, which was published in the Register Guard back, way back, in January 2008:

With the presidential primaries heating up, commentators are tempted to compare the 2008 election with 1960 - when a young and charismatic John F. Kennedy edged out Richard Nixon - and a few others point out to 1968, when the Democratic Convention in Chicago was the scene of chaos and protests. And, of course, we hear the comparisons to the Vietnam War.

Well, we are focusing on the wrong years and the wrong decade. I can't wait for all the brouhaha to die out so that the candidates, the media, and all of us can focus on the national and international issues, almost all of which were caused by events in one single year: 1979.

If ever there was a competition for which year since World War II will qualify for the title of Annus Horribilis, 1979 could be a leading candidate. First, a list of some of the events from that year:

• Jan. 16: The shah of Iran flees the country, and goes into exile.
• Feb. 1: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran, and is warmly welcomed by millions of Iranians.
• April 4: Former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is hanged in Pakistan.
• July 3: President Jimmy Carter signs a directive to support the opponents of the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan.
• July 16: Saddam Hussein becomes the president of Iraq.
• Nov. 4: Americans in the U.S. embassy in Tehran are taken hostage.
• Dec. 25: The Soviet Union begins to deploy troops in Afghanistan.

After ousting Bhutto in a military coup in 1977, Gen. Zia ul-Haq initiated a number of policies that made the country's politics and governance explicitly Islamic. The death of Bhutto in April of 1979 formalized Zia's power over the country and stoked the growth of fundamentalism that was characterized by violence and an inflexible anti-Western dogma.

The rise of a theocratic Iran provided Islamic fundamentalists with a real example that they wanted to emulate everywhere - even if they were Sunni or Wahhabi Muslims, who may not exactly be fond of the Shiites of Iran. One such individual was Osama bin Laden, who led many foreign fighters to take up jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden and Khomeini belonged to different sects of Islam, but shared a common belief that the Saudi Arabian kingdom had become corrupt and was engaging in un-Islamic agreements with the infidels. Protests became increasingly violent in the kingdom, and erupted into a finale at Islam's holiest place - the Grand Mosque in Mecca. On Nov. 20, more than 500 armed dissidents and their families stunned the ruling family by seizing the Grand Mosque.

Even though most of the dissidents died in the armed struggle, the act resulted in religious orthodoxy gaining more influence in society and politics. Further, violence mixed with religion has since then become a frighteningly common occurrence, as we found out on the fateful morning on Sept. 11, 2001.

Here we are in 2008, still reeling from these events that happened in 1979. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan sum up our current predicament with that part of the world.

Yet after listening to presidential contenders of all political stripes, I am not convinced that our understanding of any of these countries and the underlying dynamics has improved even a tad in the 29 years since Khomeini made a triumphant return to Iran. We continue to make simplistic statements about these countries, their peoples, and their beliefs. It is no wonder then that the United States has not engaged in consistent, systematic and productive long-range actions and has, instead, jumped around from one hot issue to another.

I hope we will all soon drop our collective preoccupation with the elections of 1960 and 1968, and instead challenge the candidates with tough questions about 1979 and its aftershocks. The '60s are so over! 

Photos of the day: religious observances

Caption at the source:

A devotee takes the ritual bath at the water tank of the illuminated Bangla Sahib Sikh temple on the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak in New Delhi. Photo: AP

 

 Caption at the source:

Devotees perform 'Anushthan' in Yagya Shala at Shanti Kunj in Haridwar.

 

Caption at the source:

Muslims offer prayers during Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, at the Taj Mahal monument, in Agra.

Of three different religions, spaced within a couple of days, and all from the same country ... one of the unique aspects of India.

Photo of the day: Eid al-Adha

Caption at the source:
Acehnese Muslims pray at Baiturrahman Grand Mosque during Eid al-Adha in Banda Aceh, Indonesia

Fox News revs up the anti-Muslim hysteria :(

I am so glad I don't get Faux News.  Why this anti-Muslim propaganda?  Awful!  The "mosque-ing of America?" Seriously, how low will these guys go?  One of the worst things that Murdoch could have ever done to America ... am so glad he is in trouble across the waters :)

The strengthening democracy in the Islamic world: Turkey

When they became independent in 1947, there was a lot of hope for India and Pakistan, which adopted the British parliamentary system.  If only Pakistan had continued on along a democratic path, instead of all the chaotic military rulers who created a whole bunch of unholy alliances that have led to a near-complete de-legitimization of government and social institutions.  A successful Pakistan, on the other hand, could have become a model for so many countries that are overwhelmingly Islamic.  But, that was not to be.

And then there was promise with Egypt.  But then Nasser went all anti-Israel, and soon the country became a property of the military.

A contrast to all that is the case of Turkey, which has slowly outgrown the Kemal Ataturk version of society and governance.  As the Arab Spring bloomed--even in Egypt--and as the rest of the world started wondering whether indeed democracy will take firm roots in the Islamic countries, eyes turned to Turkey as the role model.

Of course, there are some lingering problems within Turkey.  The treatment of Kurds is one serious issue, among others.  But then which country doesn't have problems within its democratic structure.

We need to keep in mind a unique aspect of Turkey's history, which Bernard Lewis pointed out back in the early 1990s:

Turkey alone, it is argued, was never colonized, never subject to imperial rule or domination, as were almost all the Islamic lands of Asia and Africa. The Turks were always masters in their own house, and, indeed, in many other houses, for a long period. When their mastery was finally challenged, they won their war of independence, and are therefore able to achieve a degree of realism, a detachment, and of self-criticism that is not possible in countries where political life was dominated for generations by the struggle for independence, and in which freedom and independence become virtually synonymous terms, to the detriment of the former.
In Turkey, democratic institutions were neither imposed by the victors, as happened in the defeated Axis countries, nor bequeathed by departing imperialists, as happened in the former British and French dependencies, but were introduced by the free choice of the Turks themselves. This surely gave these institutions a much better chance of survival.

So, yes, the odds were in Turkey's favor.  But, there was more to the country's democracy:

Successive governments of Turkey wisely did not attempt to introduce full democracy all at once, but instead went through successive phases of limited democracy, laying the foundation for further development, and, at the same time, encouraging the rise of civil society.

Democracy works really well as a political structure only when it is home-grown. It does not mean all the home-grown ones survive either--Pakistan is a prime example here.  But, the probability of democracy taking hold seems to be higher when it comes from within than from the outside.

Which is all the more why the Arab Spring was, and continues to be, so promising.

But, at the same time, some of the developments in Turkey are not necessarily encouraging:

Politically Turkey has changed more in the last ten years than it did in the previous eighty. For generations the army was able to enforce strict secularism in the tradition of Ataturk, but a new ethos, more open to religious influence, has changed the terms of politics and public life. Erdogan prays daily and his wife wears a headscarf. In some Turkish towns, Justice and Development mayors have sought to restrict the sale of alcohol or establish single-sex beaches. This has alarmed many secular-minded citizens. Erdogan could help calm their fears, but instead he has become increasingly strident. Turkey has emerged from the shadow of military power, a breakthrough of historic proportions. Whether it is moving toward an era of European-style freedom or simply trading one form of authoritarianism for another is unclear.

 The NYRB article concludes thus:

Turkey has great potential as a twenty-first-century power, but can only fulfill it by reuniting its own fragmented society.

The latest development is quite a head-scratcher for me--the military chiefs quit en masse. On the one hand, it could be a sign of the weakened military being subordinate to the democratically elected government.  But, on the other hand, given the relative strengthening of religion in politics, are there enough institutions for the checks and balances that are needed for a successful democracy?

I bet Egypt and Tunisia and the rest are closely following the developments.

Pakistan needs a lot more Veena Maliks!

From the Spectator 

we are going to need many more like the Pakistani actress Veena Malik. Watch her take on a mullah, who is trying to accuse her of immoral behaviour. This is no small accusation in Pakistan where Islamist death squads and their collaborators in the state intelligence service, operate at will. The talk show setting of the attempt at trial by media is commonplace too. The murder of Salman Taseer followed days of hacks whipping up “Muslim rage” against him.
Instead of being frightened, Malik turns on her accuser and the journalist, who helped set her up, and lets them have it.
Brave, beautiful and utterly magnificent.

Yes, it is one powerful video that MEMRI has made available with English subtitles.  Hey, this is a must watch video.



Secular Right, where I came across this, notes:

So long as there continue to be people in traditionally Muslim countries with the courage to speak out against bullying clerics and the rising tide of retrograde and brutal religious intolerance there are, I think, still some grounds for some hope. 

Yes, indeed.

I didn't know anything about Veena Malik until now.   Slate notes:

Malik is a Pakistani actress who appeared on the Indian reality show Big Boss 4. Like Sheen and Brown, she’s a celebrity with a lot of anger. Unlike those miscreants, her anger is just and well-placed. Since her return to Pakistan, Malik has faced death threats for “humiliating Islam” and faced harsh criticism from conservative mullahs. Fortunately, she’s not running and hiding. She appeared on a show called Express News TV (think The O’Reilly Factor, only not as polite) in late January and first dismissed the question from the host asking whether her appearance on the show—as well as her “dresses and action—was an affront to the “ideological foundations of Paksitan.”

India's NDTV reports on this:

"Maulvis sexually assault children in madrassahs under their care. People are burnt alive in Pakistan. Corruption is rampant. Women are gang-raped and there is extremism everywhere and yet no one talks about these evils but everyone is concerned about me what Veena Malik did," she said.

Malik broke down when the host of the show called her "Begairat" (shameless) and she shot back at him.

"Who are you pass such indecent remarks about me who gave you this right," she questioned.

The criticism on Malik comes at a time when the country is facing a clear divide over the blasphemy law and religious fundamentalism appears to be spreading and where the liberals and moderates are afraid to express their views.

Read more at: http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_story.aspx?id=ENTEN20110167602&keyword=television§ion=Movies&subcatg=MOVIESINDIA&cp

But, for various reasons, including romance, it appears that Veena Malik will be in India, and not in Pakistan, for quite a while.

The Qu'osby Show: The All(ah) American Muslim sitcom :)

- Allah in the Family

Hajj and Eid

From a slide show at FP

caption at the source:

Muslim pilgrims perform the evening prayer near the Grand Mosque in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia on Nov. 12. The annual pilgrimage, or hajj, must be performed at least once in their life of all believers who have the health and the means to make the journey.