[Reader-list] In the Name of Faith-Irfan Hussain (in Dawn)

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Rashneek,

Many thanks for the forwarded text that mentioned  the state of  
Ahmediyas in Pakistan. I found it interesting to read and think about.

Ahmediyas have for a long time suffered constitutional and systemic  
disabilities in Pakistan of an exceptional nature, which in my view  
are deserving of condemnation by any sensible human being. Hindus,  
Christians and Parsis (legally and constitutionally) have actually  
had a better deal in Pakistan, at least since the time the 'Anti- 
Ahmediya' laws promulgated initially by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's  
government in 1974 (which were then ruthlessly implemented under the  
dictatorship of Zia ul Haq [the favourite Islamist, together with the  
Ibn Saud family, of the Western world] ) than have Ahmediyas.

Given that Hindus, Sikhs, the Kalash and Christians, and even Shia  
Muslims, and Muslims unwilling to live by the dictates of zealots,  
have had a very rough time at the hands of Muslim Fundamentalists (in  
or out of power) in Pakistan, one can only imagine, how much worse it  
has been for Ahmediyas, who do not enjoy even the token  
constitutional protections that other 'minorities' in Pakistan have  
theoretical recourse to. Christians are attacked in Pakistan, their  
churches burnt, exactly as they are in India, and they are often made  
the special target of the repressive 'blasphemy' laws in Pakistan.  
The few Hindus, Sikhs and Kalash left in Pakistan are relatively  
unmolested, except for in stupid 'tit-for-tat' attacks that occur  
when Muslims are targeted in India. The Kalash, (inhabitants of the  
remote 'Northern Areas' of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) who are  
probably one of the few communities with an extant, surviving and  
continuous links to the nature worshipping Rig Vedic and pre Rig  
Vedic Indo-European religious traditions in the South Asian  
subcontinent, are largely ignored, and have survived, because of  
their relative obscurity. (See Alice Albinia's excellent recent book  
'Empires of the Indus' for a detailed chapter on the Kalash in Pakistan)

Recently, only a few days ago, I personally witnessed the lament of a  
group of poor Pakistani Shia pilgrims in the Shrine to the  
decapitated head of Imam Hussain in an annex to the Umayyad mosque in  
Damascus. In their prayers, they spoke openly, tearfully (and  
movingly) of the violent campaigns against Shias and their places of  
worship in Pakistan, which brought home to me the vulnerable status  
of all 'minority' communities in South Asia. But the attacks on  
Ahmediyas enjoy a degree of unprecedented state sanction and  
protection, that makes them even more, particularly vulnerable in  
Pakistan. People can be prosecuted (in theory) for tearing down a  
Shia Mosque, or a Hindu Temple in Pakistan, but it is the state that  
of its own, tears down an Ahmediya place of worship (if it dares to  
call itself a mosque) or limits or proscribes the actual life of the  
Ahmediya community in Pakistan. The Sarai Reader 05: Bare Acts has a  
very good  essay on the legal limitations on Ahmediyas in Pakistan  
by  which I would heartily recommend to everyone on this list.

Earlier, in the course of my research on the 'Danish' cartoon  
episode, I discovered that there was an earlier 'cartoon'  
controversy, which involved Sunni Muslim Fundamentalists reviling  
Ahmediyas with cartoons (in websites and publications)  that were  
just as obscene and pathetic as the ones now known popularly as the  
'Danish' cartoons. The Ahmediya protests at the insults hurled  
against them in the form of a cartoon were of course at that time met  
with deafening  and derisive silence, especially in Pakistan. As a  
believer in the freedom of speech and expression, I have consistently  
opposed the demand to ban or censor material such as the 'Danish  
Cartoons' even though I would myself argue very strongly  against the  
content of the same cartoons.

I was struck then by the hypocrisy inherent in the fact that many  
amongst those Muslim zealots in Pakistan and elsewhere who strongly  
called for a 'ban on the Danish cartoons' or even 'death to the  
Danish cartoonists' chose to see nothing wrong in similarly  
objectionable cartoons directed against their own adversaries (in  
this case the Ahmediyas). Its not as if they had anything against a  
bona fide and maliciously obscene image, its just that they were  
concerned about 'injury' only when it came to a matter of to their  
own sentiment. I see an exact mirror of this in the fact that Hindu  
fundamentalists who cry themselves hoarse over insults to their  
'honour' in the form of images, often deploy the most virulent  
imagery in their own descriptions of the things that are sacred to  
their antagonists.

Muslim fundamentalism, like all forms of religious bigotry (Hindu,  
Christian, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist) , is fuelled by a dehumanization  
of the one that it designates as its principal other. Often, the most  
violent form of animosity is reserved, paradoxically, not for the  
categorical 'other', (with whom some accommodation is arrived at over  
a protracted historical process) but for the 'other' close enough to  
resemble oneself most of all. Freud used to call this 'the narcissism  
of minor difference' and saw in it a secret reservoir of neurotic  
self-hatred and insecurity projected on to those who are different  
from, but still closely resemble, the self.

This explains why Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists (who have so much  
in common, doctrinally, and in terms of practice) hate each other so  
much today (even though ordinary non-fundamentalist but practising  
Jews and Muslims have co-habited, collaborated and shared cultures,  
spaces and ways of life peacefully, intimately and fruitfully for  
more than a thousand years in Spain, the Arab countries, Turkey, Iran  
and India) and this also explains the peculiarly lethal intensity to  
anti-Ahmediya sentiment in Pakistan, and more recently in Bangladesh,  
and the venality of anti-Bahai sentiment amongst the ruling Islamic  
fundamentalist clique in today's Iran.

Thank you for this opportunity to reflect (albeit fragmentarily on my  
part) on the 'narcissism of minor difference'. Though I agree with  
most of what the author of the text forwarded by you says, I do not  
necessarily agree that to 'fight' the Taliban, one has to do it in  
connivance with the United States of America's foreign policy goals.  
The United States of America was once just as happy arming Islamists  
in Pakistan as it is mobilizing everyone to fight them today, and,  
lest we forget, it continues to sustain the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,  
which, in my opinion is the single most oppressive and repressive  
state in the world today, and that is a state run by the worst, and  
most regressive kind of Islamic fundamentalists ever known in human  
history.

regards,

Shuddha

On 30-Sep-08, at 8:55 AM, rashneek kher wrote:

> IN a moving article on this page ('Not in the name of faith', Sept  
> 21),
> Kunwar Idris reminded us of the treatment being accorded to the  
> Ahmadis in
> Pakistan.
>
> He mentioned the three murders that took place this month in the  
> aftermath
> of a television talk-show in which one of the participants said  
> Ahmadis were
> 'wajib-ul-qatal', or deserving of death.
>
>