Sayyid Qutb has been described as the father of Islamic fundamentalism, but that's inaccurate. Islamic fundamentalism has several progenitors, but he was unique in his advocacy of violence. He was also innovative in his use of the term 'jahiliya'. Jahiliya was the period before Islam, a period of unknowing and iniquity.
Qutb felt that the contemporary Muslim world had ceased to be Muslim, and he described this as jahiliya. Clearly, this was an emotionally powerful slogan. Here I am concerned with how the term (as used by Qutb) would apply to Bangladesh.
Clearly, between 1971 and 1975, Bangladesh belonged to the period of jahiliya (Jahiliya 1). Over these years, we were concerned with what Arnold Toynbee has called "the worship of our collective selves", that is, nationalism. Nationalism, for a Muslim, is idolatry.
After the killing of Sheikh Mujib, Islam was reestablished in our constitution and in practice. Jahiliya had been overcome: not by fundamentalists, mind you, but by military officers, especially General Zia. This was the reverse of the experience of Egypt, Qutb's homeland, under Nasser.
General Ershad carried on this post-jahiliya period over nine years.
However, after the election of December 2008, jahiliya has returned with a vengeance (Jahiliya 2). Islam has again been disestablished: the democratic government hasn't dared to wipe Islam from the constitution, but it clearly would have loved to do so. The clause expressing our solidarity with the umma has been erased. The country is now a vassal of India. Language-worship and Mujib-worship are back.
Who will take us out of the present jahiliya - military officers or fundamentalists? Let's wait and see.
Showing posts with label General Zia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label General Zia. Show all posts
Monday, March 14, 2011
Saturday, January 15, 2011
China and Us
New Age | Newspaper: "China will give scholarship to 100 Bangladeshi students to study in China in 2011
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
I remember how the Soviet Union used to offer scholarships to high-scoring students during the cold war. This, however, is not the Cold War Redux.
Bangladesh has a golden opportunity to move away from the India-America nexus and towards the China-Middle East one. An ambitious and patriotic army officer can save the nation like General Zia did, and, after a coup, snuggle up to China and the Middle East. These countries will have no objections to a coup, and a long military-led period of growth can begin.
It would be foolish of us not to take up this opportunity.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
I remember how the Soviet Union used to offer scholarships to high-scoring students during the cold war. This, however, is not the Cold War Redux.
Bangladesh has a golden opportunity to move away from the India-America nexus and towards the China-Middle East one. An ambitious and patriotic army officer can save the nation like General Zia did, and, after a coup, snuggle up to China and the Middle East. These countries will have no objections to a coup, and a long military-led period of growth can begin.
It would be foolish of us not to take up this opportunity.
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Prophet Motive
When I was at university, a friend of mine wrote inside her book: "There is no God, and Marx is His prophet'.
She didn't know much about Marxism, of course, but she sure hated Islam. Back in the early and mid-80s, if you weren't a Marxist, you weren't respected at Dhaka University, or any university in Bangladesh for that matter (there were no private universities then).
Consequently, universities were hotbeds of communist hotheads. One can imagine the hatred inspired by General Zia and General Ershad's privatization policies, reversing the property-grab of the Sheikh Mujib era. However, we were never immune to the blandishments of money.
My friend – a staunch feminist – received an offer of marriage from a rich Bangladeshi expatriate resident in the USA (yes, the devil's lair). Moreover, this man was a devout Muslim. He would wake up and recite the Koran every day!
Did she agree to such a marriage? In an eye-blink.
I remember how senior students, seemingly addicted to Marxism, would suddenly disappear. On inquiry, it would be learned that he had taken off for some university in America. Ah well! Nothing wrong with acquiring knowledge. Then, after some time, one would learn that he had joined the IMF!
Today, public university teachers routinely moonlight at the (more lucrative) private universities, against the regulations.
You see, there's one thing we can't resist: money.
Marxism brought prestige, which was good for an undergraduate, when your father footed your bills; but the moment you graduated and found yourself in the international labour market, and realized your potential, well, money determined everything. Without a murmur, university teachers went over to democracy and capitalism after the Berlin Wall came crashing down.
Now, there's one idea that pays no earthly dividends: Islam in particular, and religion in general. The old hatred for Islam (that ideological state apparatus, remember?) has, therefore, remained on the campuses. Teachers take every opportunity to instill it into their students. If 90% of American university teachers are democrats (according to The Economist), then 90% of Bangladeshi teachers are supporters of the dynasty of Sheikh Mujib, the apostle of secularism (for which read anti-Islamism).
Hence, when a member of the dynasty was arrested by the army, the teachers incited their indoctrinated students (and paid goons) to burn cars, lorries, restaurants…anything that could be broken and torched.
The intelligentsia squarely blamed the military rulers for raising prices: even though the international media made it abundantly clear that the blame lay on the wrongheaded policy of oil-substitution through ethanol and the planting of maize. From 2007, a chart in The Economist showed a steady rise in international food prices – and January 2007 was when the army took over from the psychopaths
(For international food prices - including Bangladesh's - see http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=13886235 Conveniently for our intellectuals, international food prices began to fall just when their psychopathic leader came to power in a rigged election!)
A teacher at a local university blankly accused a bureaucrat of raising food prices – and she was a teacher of (you won't believe this) economics! A banker brazenly asked my wife, "What have international prices got to do with us?"
This year, prices, especially of sugar and ahead of Eid, have risen again – but not a whisper has been heard from the "secular" intellectuals because the dynasty is now in power.
For sugar prices, see http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=14209265
She didn't know much about Marxism, of course, but she sure hated Islam. Back in the early and mid-80s, if you weren't a Marxist, you weren't respected at Dhaka University, or any university in Bangladesh for that matter (there were no private universities then).
Consequently, universities were hotbeds of communist hotheads. One can imagine the hatred inspired by General Zia and General Ershad's privatization policies, reversing the property-grab of the Sheikh Mujib era. However, we were never immune to the blandishments of money.
My friend – a staunch feminist – received an offer of marriage from a rich Bangladeshi expatriate resident in the USA (yes, the devil's lair). Moreover, this man was a devout Muslim. He would wake up and recite the Koran every day!
Did she agree to such a marriage? In an eye-blink.
I remember how senior students, seemingly addicted to Marxism, would suddenly disappear. On inquiry, it would be learned that he had taken off for some university in America. Ah well! Nothing wrong with acquiring knowledge. Then, after some time, one would learn that he had joined the IMF!
Today, public university teachers routinely moonlight at the (more lucrative) private universities, against the regulations.
You see, there's one thing we can't resist: money.
Marxism brought prestige, which was good for an undergraduate, when your father footed your bills; but the moment you graduated and found yourself in the international labour market, and realized your potential, well, money determined everything. Without a murmur, university teachers went over to democracy and capitalism after the Berlin Wall came crashing down.
Now, there's one idea that pays no earthly dividends: Islam in particular, and religion in general. The old hatred for Islam (that ideological state apparatus, remember?) has, therefore, remained on the campuses. Teachers take every opportunity to instill it into their students. If 90% of American university teachers are democrats (according to The Economist), then 90% of Bangladeshi teachers are supporters of the dynasty of Sheikh Mujib, the apostle of secularism (for which read anti-Islamism).
Hence, when a member of the dynasty was arrested by the army, the teachers incited their indoctrinated students (and paid goons) to burn cars, lorries, restaurants…anything that could be broken and torched.
The intelligentsia squarely blamed the military rulers for raising prices: even though the international media made it abundantly clear that the blame lay on the wrongheaded policy of oil-substitution through ethanol and the planting of maize. From 2007, a chart in The Economist showed a steady rise in international food prices – and January 2007 was when the army took over from the psychopaths
(For international food prices - including Bangladesh's - see http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=13886235 Conveniently for our intellectuals, international food prices began to fall just when their psychopathic leader came to power in a rigged election!)
A teacher at a local university blankly accused a bureaucrat of raising food prices – and she was a teacher of (you won't believe this) economics! A banker brazenly asked my wife, "What have international prices got to do with us?"
This year, prices, especially of sugar and ahead of Eid, have risen again – but not a whisper has been heard from the "secular" intellectuals because the dynasty is now in power.
For sugar prices, see http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=14209265
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