[Reader-list] Lalon & Terror: Re-configuring Political Map During Emergency

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Kshmendra,

Thank you for your informative and well thought out response to my  
posting on the constitution of Bangladesh. I totally agree with you  
on much of what you have said. And yes, the pretensions to  
'Socialism' and 'Secularism' inserted into the Indian constitution  
during indira Gandhi's dictatorship of the Emergency years in India  
are about as sincere as the two explicit invocations of Islam  
inserted during the Zia and Ershad dictatorships in Bangladesh. I  
would view both as attempts by reigning dictators to give their venal  
rule a spot of doctrinal shine. Bangladesh is about as 'Islamic'  
today as India is 'Secular' or 'Socialist'.

And I have no doubt at all that in practice, the political  
dispensation in Bangladesh has favoured the majority community and  
sought to accommodate Muslim Fundamentalists, just as the ruling  
dispensation (regardless of whether it represented the interests of  
the Congress, the BJP, the Janata Dal or the so-called Left)  in  
India has favoured fundamentalists of both majority and minority  
communities, through a politics of sheer cynicism. I oppose Muslim  
fundamentalism in Bangladesh as stringently as I oppose both Hindu  
and Muslim fundamentalism in India. I think you will recall that in  
the matter of Taslim Nasrin, I had strongly advocated a position on  
this list that could not have been welcomed by Muslim  
fundamentalists, either in India or in Bangladesh. I maintain that  
position and believe that for me, the freedom of Taslima Nasrin and  
Salman Rushdie to write whatever they want about Islam is as  
important as the freedom of Inder Salim to perform as he wishes in  
the precincts of an archaeological ruin.

However, there is one point on which I am in disagreement with you.  
You say -

"As an illustratively blunt example, let me point out the words "  
together with the principles derived from them" in the Article 8.1  
that could extend to any domain the injunction of " absolute trust  
and faith in the Almighty Allah". (in the Fundamental Principles of  
State Policy). Shariah and Sunnah certainly can be seen as  
"principles derived from  ....absolute trust and faith in the  
Almighty Allah". Or at the very least that "Statues are Haraam, even  
if they are of Baul singers (Lalon or no Lalon)"

Now, for this to be true, we would have to accept that there is a  
consistency within Islamic scriptural sources about how to treat the  
making of graven images. I do not think this is the case, and I would  
like to take this opportunity to elaborate as to why I think so.  I  
have had occasion to undertake a detailed reading of the relevant  
sources pertaining to image making within Islamic scripture while  
thinking and working on the 'Danish Cartoon' question a few years  
ago. And I will base my observations in the remaining part of my post  
to materials gathered during the course of my research on this matter  
(and what I am writing below is in fact a quotation and paraphrasing  
of a larger, longer essay on this subject). I think you will find it  
of interest. (I had also shared some of these thoughts with Naeem,  
earlier, responding to queries by him on the 'Lalon Statues'   
controversy, off list)

So, what do Islamic scriptural sources actually say about images and  
image making:

The Quran in fact contains no explicit injunction against images or  
image making as such other than the commandment (common to all  
Abrahamic religions) not to worship a graven image. This aniconism  
can be said to lie in the belief that no image can do justice to the  
majesty of the divine. We could argue that since the statue of Lalon  
was not meant as an icon for worship, there is no strictly quranic  
injunction against its destruction.

There is however a more explicit injunction against image making per  
se in the Ahadith, the traditions of the prophet, which together with  
the Quran, are a source of Islamic law and conduct. Specifically, the  
ahadith, two to be precise, variations of the narrative of the same  
incident, attributed to the prophets young wife, Ayesha,  compiled in  
the Sahih Bukhari, goes like this - I quote from Hadith number 844 of  
the 72nd book of the Sahih al-Bukhari (Bukhari's compendium of Ahadith)

‘Aisha: (the wife of the Prophet) once narrated the following incident -
she said "I bought a cushion having pictures on it. When Allah’s  
Apostle saw it, he stopped at the gate and did not enter. I noticed  
the signs of anger (for that) on his face! I said, "O Allah’s  
Apostle! I turn to Allah and His Apostle in repentance! What sin have  
I committed?" He said, "What about this cushion?" I said, ‘I bought  
it for you to sit on and recline on." Allah’s Apostle said, "The  
makers of these pictures will be punished (severely) on the Day of  
Resurrection and it will be said to them, ‘Make alive what you have  
created.’" .

Thus, some jurists have concluded that the makers of images will be  
asked to breathe life into the images that they have created on the  
day of Judgement, and that their inevitable failure to do so (only  
God bestows life) will lead to their punishment.

What is of interest here is the fact that the offence is against God,  
for in making images, any images, the image makers are attempting to  
abrogate to themselves the power to 'make' life. In such offences,  
the verdict and the punishment, (which could include the destruction  
of the said image) too can only be pronounced and executed by God.  
For any human to undertake to do so (even on 'behalf' of God)  would  
also result in the commission of a grave offence, of trying to be  
divine, which is a crime of the same order as attempting to make  
life, because both are based on delusions of grandeur. Both in fact,  
involve the offence of 'acting as if' one were God.

This deferral of judgment and punishment (qualified by the hope of  
divine compassion and mercy) has actually been a means by which the  
activity of image making has always found theological protection. Let  
us also note that the crime is not to make this or that image, but  
any image at all.  To a certain extent, this aniconism has given us  
the baroque ornamentation of the Islamic decorative arts, but only to  
a certain extent. As is evident from even a cursory perusal of the  
miniature painting tradition in Islamicate cultures, even the so  
called ultimate offence of  images of the prophet himself (leave  
alone pictures of other beings and people) and other holy personages  
in Islam are far more common in Islamicate cultures than a complete  
ban on image making could have allowed for.

In other words, the injunction against image making, not dissimilar  
to an injunction against printing and the use of movable type, which  
was used by the Ottoman empire to ban the use of printing for Arabic  
because it was thought that printing could lead to the multiplication  
of errors, were such errors to occur, in the copies of the Quran. The  
clergy that argued for the ban, were aware, no doubt of the 'printers  
devil' that had crept into the earliest printed bibles, the first  
English bible, for instance had omitted the word 'not' in the  
commandment 'thou shalt not commit adultery' with an interesting  
doctrinal consequence. This did not mean a complete ban on printing,  
just that printing presses when they did exist in the Ottoman empire,  
were likely to be owned and used by Jews, for printing in hebrew,  
rather than in Arabic.

Over time, the fatwa against printing (based on a conveniently found  
minor hadith with a doubtful isnad or provenance) was overlooked,  
just as the ban on image making has been overlooked in practice. It  
was only with the ascendance of wahabi Islam in more recent times, as  
practiced in what is now Saudi Arabia that it returned to dominate  
the consciousness of Islamic societies worldwide. Here too, as we  
have seen in the Shia context,  and in even the predominantly  
heterodox Sunni-Barelvi religious context of South Asia, which is  
where the majority of the world's muslims live, it is completely  
ignored.

But let us return to the prohibition, and see what the Islamic  
tradition says about the relationship that the prophet himself has to  
images. The earliest extant account of Mecca, Abu al-Walid al-Azraki,  
in his "Akhbar Makka," relates that the Prophet, when he ordered the  
destruction of all the idols in the Haram in Mecca in 630, himself  
prevented the destruction of a Byzantine style fresco painting of the  
Virgin and Child on the wall. This figural fresco was nearly a  
century later destroyed by a fire at the Haram. However, while the  
Prophet preserved the fresco of the Virgin and Child in the Haram, at  
the same time a fresco, depicting the life of the Prophet Ibrahim  
(Abraham), and other fresco paintings, depicting other customs, were  
defaced.

This incident is also recounted by Ibn Shihab (the earliest  
biographer of the prophet, and who all Muslims rely on for the basic  
biographical information that informs the entire genre of 'Sirat' or  
prophet biographies in Arabic and other languages). Ibn Shihab  
writes, and I quote,

"Asma, the daughter of Shaqr, said that a woman of the Banu Ghassan  
(a long established Christian Arab tribe) had joined the pilgrimage  
of the Arabs (Muslems), and when she saw the picture of Mary in the  
Kaaba she said: 'My father and my mother be your ransom. Mary, you  
are surely an Arab woman!' The Messenger ordered that the pictures  
(in the Kaaba) be erased, except for those of Jesus and Mary."

T.M.P Duggan, a Tukish scholar of Islamic Art history considers this  
example to be of great importance because it happened within the  
sacred enclosure in Mecca with the Prophet of Islam, who himself  
ordered the preservation of paintings of Mary and the Prophet Jesus.  
Morover, I have myself seen images including of humanoid and human  
figures in murals and fresoces from the palace of the Umayyad caliphs  
in the National Museum in Damascus. These include the remnants of a  
life sized figure of the Caliph Abdel Malek the First. Even the grand  
Umayyad Mosque complex in Damascus, the fourth most important site of  
worship in Sunni Islam, (and visited by Shias for its shrine to Imam  
Hussain) has murals and frescoes which include figurative imagery.

Clearly, if the Islamic tradition can be quoted against image making,  
in an iconoclastic or aniconic way, it can be also the source of a  
different way of dealing with images, or at least with some images.  
This latitude and ambivalence in the way one deals with objects as  
powerful as images is not dissimilar to what we find in all major  
religions, with episodes of iconicity alternating with, or even  
overlapping with aniconic tendencies.

I am not suggesting that a 'liberal' Islam, or one that is  
sympathetic to image making, is necessarily a 'true' Islam, and  
unlike many liberal muslim commentators and others sympathetic to  
them, I am not interested in entering the discussion of whether the  
muslims who participate in violent protests or call for bans are  
'good Muslims' or 'bad Muslims'. To my mind, this distinction between  
'good' and 'bad', 'true' and 'false' Muslims, is a problematic one,  
because it involves value judgements on matters of faith that cannot  
be based on any evidence, and are simply matters of opinion, such  
that one persons good Muslim is always some one else's bad Muslim.

All I am interested in pointing out, is that with regard to the  
making of images, and dealing with them, the histories and living  
practices of Islamic societies are far more diverse and complex than  
those arguing for the removal of the Lalon statues in Bangladesh  
would have us believe. Both these responses stem from an arrogant  
ignorance of the complexity of islamic histories and cultures. It is  
this arrogance and bigotry that produces its own xenophobic mirror on  
the other side, and islamic fundamentalists of the wahabi variety and  
islamophobes are true mirrors of each other. Most importantly both  
premise their actions on a violent disregard for the actual history  
of Islamicate cultures and ways of life. There can be no greater  
enemy of an ordinary, even believing and pious Muslim than the  
ignorant  fundamentalist mullah who strangles his or her cultural  
inheritance to death.

It could be argued, and in fact it has been argued that the wholesale  
destruction of sacred sites and places of pilgrimage and piety is one  
of the most offensive acts that can be imagined, with regard to the  
religious sentiments of believers and devotees. One such process of  
destruction, which began in the early twentieth century, and  
continues unabated is the demolition of sites of prayer and devotion  
for millions of ordinary muslims in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The  
particular brand of Wahabi Islam that holds sway in Saudi Arabia has  
enabled the wholesale destruction of sites such as the 'Jannat al  
Baqui' or the graveyard of the companions of the prophet, and their  
redevelopment, as hotels, shopping malls, apartment complexes and  
condominiums. Intolerance and real estate development have gone hand  
in hand. It could be argued that this destruction of the  
architectural and religious heritage of the holy cities of Mecca and  
Medina and their environs is as injurious to the religious sentiments  
of millions of non Wahabi muslims as the Danish Cartoons were to some  
religious muslims.

Sami Angawi, an architect, expert on the region's Islamic  
architecture, and founder of the Haj Research centre, recently told  
Reuters, "We are witnessing now the last few moments of the history  
of Mecca,"... "Its layers of history are being bulldozed for a  
parking lot," he added. Angawi estimated that over the past 50 years  
at least 300 historical buildings had been leveled in Mecca and  
Medina, another Muslim holy city containing the prophet's tomb.

Angawi holds Wahabism, which was also responsible for the destruction  
of the Bamiyan Buddhas to account for the destruction of this  
component of the global Muslim heritage "They (Wahhabis) have not  
allowed preservation of old buildings, especially those related to  
the prophet. They fear other Muslims will come to see these buildings  
as blessed and this could lead to polytheism and idolatry."

What is interesting about this testimony is that it can so easily be  
ignored, by Islamophobes, because they are not interested in  
diversity within Islam, obsessed as they are with the one point  
agenda of seeing all Muslims as one, and by a majority of Islamists  
because they are bankrolled by the kind of regime that has also no  
problem insulting the religious sentiments of a majority of Muslims  
in the world. "

thanks and regards

Shuddha

On 05-Nov-08, at 8:20 PM, Kshmendra Kaul wrote:

> Dear Shuddha
>
> Thank you for the very informative comments on Bangladesh.
>
> Before raising some points, I must admit that, before joining this  
> List, my knowledge about Bangladesh was restricted to one of a  
> general sort. Not surprisingly so for the general sort of a person'  
> that I am. So I must thank this List for adding to it and provoking  
> further interest in Bangladesh - especially guys like Naeem  
> Mohaiemen and Shambhu Rehmat.
>
>