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

[Vivek Narayanan]

Just to footnote Shuddha's comments, here is the link to the intense 
article about Ahmadiyyas from Sarai Reader 05.  Warning: the first link 
below goes directly to the pdf file; if that causes a hiccup for your 
browser, the link below it takes you first to the page where you can 
access and download the pdf file separately.

http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers/05-bare-acts/01_naveeda.pdf
http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers/05-bare-acts

I am neither a Muslim nor a Hindu, but let us resist attempts to reduce 
either "religion" to one set of beliefs and practices!

Vivek


Shuddhabrata Sengupta wrote:
> 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.
>>
>>
>>     
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