Law and Morality

In Bangladesh, thanks to the donors, we are focussing exclusively on legal measures to improve our society. This is disastrous.

What happens to morality? A society that attempts to rely exclusively on law is already moribund. Law without morality means a dead end. The NGOs have focussed attention on a 'rights-based' society. There's a reason for that. They have a parallel agenda of secularism, and the promotion of 'univeral [western] values'. And this precludes the morality that we have learned from religion. A hatred of religion is prevalent among the intellectuals - instead they import werstern ideas that have no resonance here.

Values such as compassion, empathy, altruism, commiseration are dead or dying. Without these values no society can function as a group of human beings, but as a bunch of animals - for even animals have their natural laws. When Nelson Mandela was faced with the task of nation-building, he went beyond rights and appealed to the Christian value of turning the other cheek. Unfortunately, he also imported secular western values which have devastated his society.

The Ethnocidal Civilisation (essay)

The Ethnocidal Civilisation

(click above for article)

Western civilisation commits ethnocide and menticide, as seen in India and recently in the Middle East.

Ethnocide – culture murder – has been the repeated behaviour pattern of western civilization, as testified by Alexis de Tocqueville. The culture is not content with mere conquest: it must control the very thoughts of those conquered. A recently published book on a Christian mission in Bangladesh retells an old story against the background of both the Muslim and British invasions of India, centering the Garos and the loss of their ancestral religion.

closed jamaat

The spectacle of high-rise buidlings has given rise to another: the closed jamaat. Nowadays, prayers are performed in some high-rise buildings - with the gates locked, and everyone except residents excluded. Keeping out the umma is not permissible in Islam.

A place of prayer must be open to everyone - the high and the low, the poor and the rich, the beggar and the millionaire. If you don't trust in the Almighty for security, you should at least have the decency and piety to go and say your prayers in a public mosque and not behind closed, guarded gates.

Demoncracy

This installation art from the UAE deserves high praise. Firstly, it is from the UAE, where there's no voting and no protests. Secondly, it is an Arab country, and many misguided Arabs have chosen anarchy over stability. Third, it captures essentially the evil of western civilisation as well as the evil that comes to a democratising country like, say, Bangladesh.

The neon artwork is by Kader Attia and is from from the private collection of Sultan Sooud al-Qassemi, a cousin of Sheikha Hoor al-Qassemi, the daughter of Sharjah's ruler.

The N in 'demoncracy' should no longer be silent.

A Disarticulated Body

A disarticulated body was found in Dhaka, Bangladesh. That was nearly two days ago. In a civilised polity, this would have set off a nation-wide alarum. Nothing of this kind has happened. The incident has been quietly ignored.

Why?

Democracy unleashed violence on a massive scale: by now, we have become inured to decapitations and disrticulations. This is what democracy has done for us.

The nation is agog at the spectacle of the opposition laying 'siege' to the capital tomorrow: dismembered bodies? Who cares?

Yesterday, the decomposed body was found in Kushtia, a small city in Bangladesh. It was reported in the inside pages of a daily. It just barely made the news.

We have become desensitised: indifferent to murder, no matter how gruesome. I have lived through autocracy and democracy, and I have seen the change in human nature.

On Clothes and Modernity

On clothes and 'modernity'

(click above for article)

"For example, I prefer to wear jeans and T-shirt too. Because I need easily to use my legs and arms." My 'modern' Turkish friend pleads efficiency for her attire; oddly, though, efficient farm girls in Turkey wear the shalwar, as they do in Bangladesh, along with the saree. 'Modernity' comes in many covers, and this one conceals less of its sinister side than most.

Permanent News (poetry)

Permanent News

(click above for poems)

A great poet described poetry as news that stays news. I hope these 8 poems on political violence in post-democratic Bangladesh - especially the murder of young politicians by themselves - remain permanent memorials.

Last year, around 38 student politicians killed each other. They have been hailed as the champions of democracy when, in fact, they are mere foot-soldiers of the political parties involved in criminal activity. This is the reality of Bangladeshi democracy that's never revealed.