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.

Theory and Data

Even sociologists tend to put theory before data (and not just economists and imperialists).

In the sociology of religion, European and British sociologists have maintained that, just as Europe became secular over the centuries, modernity in the rest of the world would lead to a similar demise of religion.

Thus, according to Steve Bruce, secularization is an integral process in a liberal democracy: given religious choice, people will lose faith and turn away from religion.

Yet America has been a democracy for two hundred fifty years, and it is still a vigorously religious place. It seems that Bruce et al just don't want to acknowledge facts.

"Towards the end of the twentieth century, however, a step change occurred in the debate," observes Grace Davie in her book 'The Sociology of Religion'. Until the early 1990s, the links between modernization and secularization were still generally assumed." However, looking at America "Europe begins to emerge as the exceptional case".

Sociologists like Peter Berger began to renounce the secularization thesis. "My point that the assumption that we live in a secularised world is false," notes Berger. "Although the term 'secularisation theory' refers to work from the 1950s and 1960s, the key idea of the theory can indeed be traced to the Enlightenment. The idea is simple: Modernization necessarily leads to a decline of religion, both in society and in the minds of individuals. And it is precisely this key idea that turned out to be wrong."

In fact, the wellsprings of the sociology of religion are themselves poisoned. The founding fathers of sociology, from Marx to Weber, were convinced of the inevitable redundancy of religion. Subsequent researchers have simply mimicked them.

Interestingly, in the 2001 British Census, when religious identity was first included in the survey, it was found that, against expectations, it was not the inhabitants of the industrialized North who revealed themselves to be non-traditional; those with 'no religion' were concentrated in the cities in the South, largely in the university towns, among the faculty and the employees.

At this point the subjects becomes terribly relevant to Bangladesh and the Muslim world. Bangladesh was founded on the principle of 'secularism', a principle that was shot down by successive military governments. Recently, there has been an attempt to sideline Islam and resurrect the corpse of secularism by the ruling political party (whose leader is the daughter of the pater patrie) and the intelligentsia.

These dinosaurs hark back to the earlier views on modernity and secularism: indeed many, if not most, were trained in universities here and in Europe, in the doctrines of the founding fathers.

Let us hope they go the way of those earlier beasts.

democracy, religion and violence

Holy places: Unholy rows | The Economist: "For all the rhetoric of ancient hatred, religious rows have grown worse in modern times. Across the Ottoman empire, from the Balkans to Anatolia to Palestine, Christians and Muslims mingled peaceably at shared sacred places.

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In Bangladesh, Muslims and Hindus lived peaceably until the election of 2001. The Hindus tend to vote for the Awami League, as Muslims in India tend to vote for the Congress Party. In 2001, the League lost, and a coalition of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and an Islamist Party won.

Immediately, an anti-Hindu pogrom swept the land: there was arson, looting, raping...the nation was stunned.

Clearly, religion had nothing to do with it: it was politicians stirring up hatred, and, of course, greed for the spoils of victory, which seems to include women.

Interestingly, the parties went on to persecute a heretical Muslim sect, the Aḥmadīyahs, with almost equal ferocity. Again, secular observers blamed it on religion.

Not so.

Consider the following extract from the Britanica:

"In their theology, the Ismāʿīlīs have absorbed the most extreme elements and heterodox ideas. The universe is viewed as a cyclic process, and the unfolding of each cycle is marked by the advent of seven “speakers”—messengers of God with Scriptures—each of whom is succeeded by seven “silents”—messengers without revealed scriptures; the last speaker (the Prophet Muḥammad) is followed by seven imāms who interpret the Will of God to man and are, in a sense, higher than the Prophet because they draw their knowledge directly from God and not from the Angel of Revelation. During the 10th century, certain Ismāʿīlī intellectuals formed a secret society called the Brethren of Purity, which issued a philosophical encyclopaedia, The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, aiming at the liquidation of positive religions in favour of a universalist spirituality.

The late Aga Khan III (1887–1957) had taken several measures to bring his followers closer to the main body of the Muslims. The Ismāʿīlīs, however, still have not mosques but jamāʿat khānahs (“gathering houses”), and their mode of worship bears little resemblance to that of the Muslims generally."

You can't get more heretical than this! Yet the Aga Khanis - as the Ismailis are known in Bangladesh - are some of the richest people here. Their location is highly conspicuous (many live in flats near Bailey Road, Dhaka across from one of the best schools in Dhaka) and their mode of worship is strikingly different. They have a jamaat khanah, where they gather every evening, and regular Muslims are not allowed in there. Naturally, weird stories proliferate about the goings-on in the jamaat khanah. When I set up a poultry farm, some of my best customers were Aga Khanis: they are extremely rich, as I said.

Their influence is international.

When General Ershad arrested Aziz Mohammed Bhai, probably the richest Aga Khani in Bangladesh, Prince Aga Khan himself came down to secure his release.

All this influence and wealth explain why the pogrom never extended to these people: it wasn't a religious pogrom at all.

The fuse was democracy, and the politicians vented their anger on the weakest members of society: as happens in India during anti-Muslim pogroms.

The spread of democracy throughout the world will bring disaster for religious minorities: in Egypt, Christians are already worried - as they well should be.

A Question Of Inheritance

New Age | Newspaper: "A skirmish between Islamic Law Implementation Committee activists and law-enforcers left one man killed and at least 30 people injured in Jessore on Sunday.

The clash erupted when the police intercepted a procession brought out by the Islamic bigots to drum up support for today’s countrywide general strike called by the ILIC in protest against the Women Development Policy 2011 that they claim to contain anti-Islamic provisions ensuring a spectrum of women’s rights.

The deceased was identified as Hafiz Hossain Ahmed, a student at Madaninagar Hafezia Madrassah and son of Ismail Ahmed of Chakla under Monirampur upazila of Jessore.

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Notice the language of the New Age: the protesting mullahs are 'bigots' and 'zealots'. Is this reportage? Naturally, such language diminishes the death of the young student, who was nothing but a 'bigot' and a 'zealot'.

I sympathise with Anjuman-e-Hefajat-e-Islam (Society for the Protection of Islam), though I deplore their method: instead of a hartal, they could have resorted to peaceful protest.

These people are struggling against 'desacralisation', though they would not use the term. Islamic law has, since the encounter with the west, been whittled down to Muslim Family Law: the clerics are struggling against even this remnant being whittled away. For the government, NGOs and western donors want to repeal the Muslim law of inheritance and give equal inheritance rights to women. The mullahs have nothing against women: women are the safest in the Muslim world, thanks to Islam.

In a brilliant letter to the editor in the now-defunct Bangladesh Observer (no other newspaper would have printed it, certainly not the New Age or the Daily Star), a writer argued thus: "...whenever questions of inheritance comes it seems that a hundred per cent of the people take for granted that each and every parent leaves behind a (sic) huge property and their heirs are just to distribute them and enjoy. In fact, this is a misconception. Many a father leaves behind huge debts. Who pays back the debts? Usually in our society not a single girl is asked to pay the debt of her father (Md. Shah Jahan, Letter, 4 April 2008). "

When a father passes away, and his janaza is held at the mosque, it is the son who tells the congregation that if his father had any debts, the debtor should come to him. Daughters never do this. Culture, religion and law are perfectly aligned here.

The above writer foresees "doomsday" for women if they are also expected equally to inherit assets as well as liabilities. It is only the propertied elite that leave behind property.

"It is the microscopic wealthy section of society, which may claim for equal right of inheritance for boys and girls but the majority of girls will not prefer to pay debts of their parents. They are far greater in number and their voice is not heard." True.

Equality is a western obsession born of the experience of freedom, a preoccupation unknown in the rest of humanity.

More generally, people who hate Islamic law are quite happy to live and work in the UAE, for instance, protected by the sharia and the monarchy. My uncle lived in Abu Dhabi for years, made a packet and moved to Canada, from where he looks down on 'autocracy'. It seems that people like to go where the money is: mullahs can offer very little cash unlike NGOs and western donors.

I hope for the best for the Anjuman-e-Hefajat-e-Islam.

Getting To Know The General

I had the privilege of meeting General Ershad, our former dictator of nine years, at his suite in Baridhara.

During the conversation, I asked him if he was aware of Muslim political philosophy. He grinned and said he knew nothing about Muslim political philosophy.

This was unfortunate ignorance on the General's part, for his long and fruitful rule rested on no ideology. He had built, as he told me, 8,000 kilometres of highway, 3,000 MW of generating capacity...all of which I knew to be true.

Nevertheless, he had groped towards an ideology: he amended the constitution to make Islam the state religion, for instance. He was seeking a rapport, a religious rapport, with the people.

More interestingly, the General tried to tap into the people's native Sufism. As the reader may know, Islam was spread in South Asia by Sufis, dervishes, ascetics. I know the son of a holy man whose father's death is still celebrated as an urs and to which many people come - including Hindus. This is very common here.

The holy man whom General Ershad cultivated was the Pir of Atroshi, famed as having a jinn of his own. It was said that he could not leave his khanqua because then he would be killed by jinns, or something of the sort. A friend of mine, Samuel Peter Landell-Mills, did his PhD thesis (unfortunately unpublished, with a copy on my shelf) on the pir as part of his work on Islamic holy men. He used to regale us with vivid descriptions of the pir's goings-on: thousands used to flock to his dargah, from president and bureaucrat to humble shopkeepers.

However, this holy man was unable to help the General keep his throne. For the power that matters in Bangladesh is of a less mystical nature: it is the power of western donors. And as soon as the cold war was over, they pulled the rug from under him.

Now, to get back to the General's suite. If the General had implored Muslim political thought, and insisted on the philosophy of nonresistance that sunni thinkers have insisted on, then the donors might not have been able to use a rent-a-crowd of students to overthrow him on December 6, 1990.

Muslim Women Gain Higher Profile in U.S. - NYTimes.com

Muslim Women Gain Higher Profile in U.S. - NYTimes.com: "we will have some communities in the future that have female imams

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These women praise the 'freedom' that American society gives them: the freedom to form associations, for instance. As I have argued elsewhere, freedom is an unimportant issue outside western civilisation because of the lack of large-scale slavery. But these women have become Americanised - indeed one of them is an American, and she longs to have a 'female imam'. Doesn't she know that innovation in religion is strictly forbidden in Islam?

“Muslims coming to North America are often seeking an egalitarian version of Islam,” says Ebrahim Moosa of Duke University. Implication: Islam outside America is inegalitarian. But egalitarianism is itself a western concept born out of slavery. Our societies are not equal/unequal but hierarchic. Every man has a superior in his mother and aunts, just as every woman has a superior. The notion of 'equality' is a non-concept: it can have meaning only for western Muslims or westernized Muslims.

If you wish to live in a slavery-infected society, go ahead, but keep the resulting ideological garbage to yourself.

The army, our constitution and our history

Front Page: "‘Two military regimes, the first being with effect from 15th August 1975 and the second one being between 24th March 1982 and 10th November 1986, put the country miles backward. Both the martial laws devastated the democratic fabric, as well as the patriotic aspiration of the country,’ the verdict said.

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Did the military regimes put the country miles backward?

Let us review the facts. 50,000 people starved to death even when there was enough food in the country - and that food, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (15th edition,'famine'), was exported to India. Was this part of the 'democratic fabric' and 'patriotic aspiration of the country'?

Next, a one-party rule was instituted by the beloved Bangabandhu, thereby being guilty of violating the constitution himself, yet, to the learned judges of the Supreme Court, he is 'Bangabandhu' - friend of Bengal.

"The original constitution of the republic of 1972 was mercilessly ravaged by General Ziaur Rahman who erased from it, one of the basic features, “Secularism” and allowed communal politics, proscribed by Bangabandhu, to stage a comeback." This language, with all due respects, doesn't sound like the language of an apex institution of the country. 'Bangabandhu' was not the name of the first prime minister and president of Bangladesh. His name was Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. One would expect the learned court to use the legal, certified name of an individual, no matter who he is, instead of a popular appellation in a landmark judgment. The uncharitable may discern a certain servility here, of which our honourable judges are surely incapable.

Besides, the 'original constitution of the republic of 1972 was mercilessly ravaged by' Sheikh Mujib himself, as we find in the fourth amendment. It was the fifth amendment that nullified the fourth. One tyranny was replaced by another - a far better one. The country moved away from the choking socialism of the early '70s towards capitalism and free trade. Today, it is because of the move away from socialism undertaken by General Zia and General Ershad that the country's private sector is flourishing and GDP growth rate is high (although the poor have not benefited much, yet they are not starving in their thousands either).

Again, the military had to take over the country in 2007 because democracy was driving us to civil war. The current prime minister was indicted on five counts of murder - and yet there she sits in power and pomp. The two begums spent nearly a year in prison, where they, unfortunately, could not be kept confined for all 'eternity' (to borrow one of the words used by the judges) because of our constitution and its supporters. It seems that the people exist for the constitution, not the constitution for the people. But we will not commit 'shirk' and worship a few pieces of paper.

‘Martial law is totally alien a concept to our constitution.’ Fair enough. But it is not alien to out culture and civilisation - the Muslim civilisation. In his prayer for the emperor, Sheikh Saadi in the Golestan, refers to him as 'The shadow of Allah' - 'zel Allah' in the original language. Al-Ghazali and Al-Mawardi find no place for democracy in a Muslim polity. Sheikh Saadi observes: "A sultan rules by means of his troops'. Every learned person with whom I have discussed the subject, be he Bangladeshi or Iranian, has concurred with my view of the subject. "Zel Allah" is the attribute of a Muslim ruler. He is beyond criticism and controversy - the very opposite of democracy.

The Muslim polity - autocracy - has been the most tolerant of polities in history. A civilisation cannot be eliminated by a mere flourish of words; the apex court may command that a man be put in prison, but it cannot command that a man rid himself of his civilisation - or that an entire society comprising mostly of Muslims should do that.

History cannot be writted away.

The new constitution of Bangladesh

The revised, complete and unexpurgated edition of the constitution is forthcoming. I see that we draw our inspiration from Islam as well as the Franco-German religion called nationalism (which the Franco-Germans have been trying to inter for the last sixty years).

At any rate. I shall no doubt sleep better knowing that the next morning I might find that my assets have been nationalised. There will be an equally soporiferous effect on foreign investors.

Now that the document has been revised, we are surely about to take off like a rocket. After all, the only obstacle between Bangladesh and development has been a few sheets of paper.

mohajer in eblestan

The devout Muslims in the foreground don't seem to realize what they're doing: they're swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States, that is, to ebles.

Thousands of Muslims emigrate to these eblestans without a thought as to what their actions mean. They are swearing to kill the enemies of their new civilization, and in our case today, it happens to be Muslims.

Furthermore, they're going to pay tax (only net tax-payers are encouraged to emigrate) with which their adoptive nation is going to build bombs to drop on men, women and children in Muslim countries.

This is munafiqi of the highest degree.

From whence the hereafter?

One of the first things to strike a reader of the Old Testament is the total absence of the hereafter - there's no life after death. When Moses dies, he just dies; he isn't resurrected somewhere else. That's the end for him. Finito.

To the recalcitrant, God (or, rather, Yahweh) never says "If you don't do what I say, I'll send you to Hell!"; nor, to the obedient, does he proclaim, "Since you have done my bidding, I shall send you to Heaven!" There simply is no Heaven or Hell.

Instead, to the recalcitrant, Yahweh says, "Listen to me or else I'm going to make your life a living Hell"; and to the obedient, He says, "I'm happy with you, so you shall have good food and nice clothes and lots of land, etc. etc." This is all the more surprising since the Egyptians believed in a posthumous existence, and the Jews were said to have spent a great deal of time in Egypt. But, of course, Egyptian polytheism would have been abhorrent to them.

Now, Christianity is supposed to be an epilogue to the Mosaic story: but the question must surely bother one - where one earth (or elsewhere) did the notions of Heaven, Hell, resurrection, the Devil and so on and so forth come from? They couldn't have come from Judaism. From Christianity, the ideas penetrated Islam.

One explanation that's been offered is that the dualities - good God, evil Satan, nice Heaven, awful Hell - came from Zoroastrianism, that is, they are Iranian influences. Zoroastrianism posits a struggle between Evil and Good as personifications. Good and Evil battle each other, but the former is assured of triumph. God's omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited.

There is resurrection as well, and a crossing of the Bridge of the Requiter: it takes the good to paradise, but the evil fall into Hell. After death, the soul meets its own religion (daena) in the form of a beautiful girl; but the wicked soul encounters a hag.

The Father Figure

Sheikh Hasina, the current prime minister of Bangladesh, was charged with murder under the caretaker government (2007 - 2008). The charge was entirely justified: the workers of her party killed several opposition activists in broad daylight during a riot witnessed by the entire nation. Of course, she never killed anyone with her own hands: neither, presumably, did Al Capone. But the authorities couldn't get her even for tax evasion, although several cases of extortion were lodged against here. The dirty nature of politics in Bangladesh was underscored by the release of Sheikh Hasina from a makeshift jail - to become the prime minister once again. And this wasn't the first time that her henchmen had committed murder. Yet the loyalty of her supporters - which included my parents and my wider family - never diminished, never wavered.

Why?

Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first member of the dynasty, was a murderer on an even greater scale. He is also known as the father of the nation, and it is true that his demagoguery created the conditions for a civil war that led to the creation of Bangladesh. A detailed record of the murders and the deliberate famine that led to his killing by the army appears here.

The paradox that needs to be explained is the continuing loyalty towards the dead monster on the part of a section of the educated of Bangladesh (the uneducated never count in this country: as a writer put it, Bangladesh never represents Bangladeshis). That immoral loyalty has been transferred to his living daughter, as we saw above.

How do we explain this phenomenon?

I was baffled by this question for years until I began to study anthropological psychology, especially the role of anxiety in national culture.

What is the biggest anxiety of middle class persons? That they would cease to be middle class, and fall below their station - or, more accurately, that their children will. For the parents have struggled towards a certain elevation, and can see their way clear for some distance in time. Still, even they might slip....But they don't want their children to struggle...and slip.

Now, the working classes have their ability to labour, as Marx astutely pointed out, so their dread is of a different calibre - the dread of illness, and injury. In fact, anthropological studies have revealed that in Bangladesh, the working class define health in terms of the ability to work. This has unnerving implications: infections like HYV would not be regarded as a threat so long as full-blown AIDS did not occur. Also, doctors know that the poor suffer from chronic depression and ulcers through worry.

But the middle class is a class-unto-itself. They are highly articulate, clubby and ambitious. They can make and break nations. When Bangladesh was East Pakistan, the eastern wing of Pakistan, with the western king a thousand miles away, known as West Pakistan, the middle classes had just emerged from two hundred years of British rule. They had seen what the Indian middle class achieved - independence for India, and the devil take the poor. Today, 800 million Indians labour for a minority of 200 million of the middle class. This was to be their paradigm for Bangladesh.

A full-blown mythology was created - that the West Pakistanis spoke Urdu, and the East Pakistanis Bengali, when in fact Urdu was the language of a minuscule minority of the polyglot West Pakistanis. But the trick worked: the Urdu-speakers were exploiting the Bengali-speakers.

And the man who delivered the message on behalf of the middle class was Sheikh Mujib, rabble-rouser extraordinaire. His speeches remind one a great deal of the speeches of Hitler, the leader who led a ruined middle-class to horror.


Thus, the Bengali-speaking intelligentsia identified completely with Sheikh Mujib, who was to relieve them of their anxiety. Psychiatrists have long known that patients tend to identify them as father figures: indeed, Freud spoke of the need to transfer feeling to the pseudo-father figure to cure neurosis.

Freud observed: "It is clearly not easy for men to give up the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression. They do not feel comfortable without it. The advantage which a comparatively small cultural group offers of allowing this instinct an outlet in the form of hostility against outsiders is not to be despised. It is always possible to bind together a considerable number of people in love, so long as there are other people left over to receive the manifestation of their aggressiveness (Civilisation and Its Discontents,tr. James Strachey, W.W.Norton & Co: New York, p 61). Recent research has confirmed this to be true of chimpanzees as well.


What Freud has to say about the father in the same book is most illuminating: "In my Future of an Illusion" I was concerned much less with the deepest sources of the religious feeling than with what the common man understands by his religion - with the systems of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father." One doesn't have to agree with Freud here: current research has shown that identification with a father figure is important for a child's emotional well-being. Infantile powerlessness clearly has a great deal to do with it.

However, Freud is completely wrong in his definition of religion: there are religions which have no transcendent father figure, such as Confucianism (Confucius was an earthly father figure). And that modern religion - nationalism - needs no father figure at all. Nevertheless, Sheikh Mujib was a father figure of the Mosaic type: he led the chosen people - the Bengalis - against the West Pakistanis, the Canaanite equivalent, promising the former a land of milk and honey. Sheikh Mujib was the prophet of Bengali Nationalism - perhaps even the God. There are many young kids among the foot-soldiers of the Awami League, the party he led, who reject their own fathers for Sheikh Mujib: I have done a systematic study of the subject.


Hence, Sheikh Mujib's infallibility: he assuaged a terrible anxiety, delivered the land of milk and honey for narrow, corrupt elite, and drove out the Canaanites. His lineage must equally be infallible: hence the idolatry of the Mujib family against Islam, the religion of Pakistan. Awami Leaguers favourite - intramural - pastime is ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed

Naturally, the middle class are a bookish people, like all scribes: their only source of success was through education. These were the people Mujib led. Consequently, the Awami League's biggest supporters are to be found among the university teachers, and the intelligentsia. They are in a position to refute history and sanction murder.

Bangladesh blocks Facebook over prophet drawings | Seattle Times Newspaper

Nation & World | Bangladesh blocks Facebook over prophet drawings | Seattle Times Newspaper



For once the governments of Pakistan and Bangladesh did the right thing by blocking Facebook, and forcing it to behave correctly.

That's more than can be said for the spoiled elite who use the ridiculous site: they were inconvenienced, and didn't care a hoot about the offence to Islam. This goes to show that our elite are a decadent lot of pseudo-Americans.

munafiq

Just before the second Iraq War, Mrs. Rowshan Jahan (wife of Dr. Mozaffar Ahmed, former teacher at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) and Chairman, Transparency International, Bangladesh) came to visit my wife and myself in our apartment.

"Mata bimata ho-e jachche," she exclaimed. Translation: "Mater is becoming nonmater!"

Her 'mater' was apparently the United States of America, not the Muslim civilisation, even though she (and her husband) say their prayers five times a day (Dr. Ahmed has the marks on his forehead to prove that he bows before the Almighty on his prayer mat).

She was confident Congress would never furnish the money for the war. I knew it would, and it did.

What does one make of these people? They claim to be Muslims and yet their entire careers depend on the USA. We respect them because the West respects them. I know the couple very well: they were my father's friends. They are the munafiq against whom we have been warned. There are countless munafiq like them.

Between 1991 and 2001, the US killed nearly 2 million Iraqi children with sanctions - a Holocaust. Yet Mrs. Rowshan Jahan could still call the US her 'mater'! But the second Iraq war was too publicized an event for her to ignore.

With munafiq like these, we don't need enemies!

reverse circumcision

Sheikh Hasina has trumpeted the banning of jihad – Islam's sixth pillar. She has boasted that she'll never permit anybody to wage jihad from Bangladeshi soil, thereby violating one of the six major precepts of Islam.

But there's more.

And it has been recently leaked to the press (who are shy of publishing the information) that she plans gradually to prohibit – circumcision.

But there's more.

She'll not only prohibit circumcision, she'll even reverse it in the next few years.

Since the doctors all belong to her party, she'll have no trouble making sure no circumcisions are carried out in hospitals.

That leaves the informal sector: how to snip the snipping there? Cabinet ministers have been discussing the subject with bureaucrats and the police. So far, no solution has been reached, but a model inspired by Indira Gandhi is emerging.

The plan is this: men will be picked up at random and then REVERSE circumcision will be performed on them.

What is reverse circumcision? It's a technique perfected in Zimbabwe for those men who regret losing their foreskin. Quite simply, a surgeon takes a foreskin from a donor and grafts it on the dick of the recipient. Drugs are then administered to prevent organ-rejection (but this is only for rich patients; poor patients simply have to tolerate rejection and kick the bucket).

A few married women murmured disapproval, saying that it would reduce sexual pleasure; since Sheikh Hasina is a widow, the dissentients were quietly ignored. Besides, it is believed that many staunch party members have had foreskin-implantation as a symbol of rejection of Islam.

At one such high-level meeting, it was queried where so many foreskins would come from if circumcision is banned in the country.

Pat came the answer.

From Israel.

attacking the sixth pillar

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/21302.asp

The present government has illegalised the sixth pillar of Islam - jihad. Which pillar will be banned next: namaaz, zakat, hajj...?

You cannot prohibit jihad in a Muslim country: there will always be intrepid and pious souls ready to come to the rescue of their coreligionists in other parts of the world.

What will happen is foreseeable: a government that tries to reward treachery, and punish loyalty, will end up on the jihadis' list of people to attack. So far, Bangladesh - and the Awami League - has attracted the least well-trained of the jihadis from the Muslim diaspora.

That is about to change.

The next lot will be more thorough, better-skilled, better-armed...they will be inspired by the sight of a supposedly Muslim prime minister holding hands with a member of a Hindu dynasty.

If the Taliban can fight the world's most powerful military machine, think how easily similar groups can take on the Bangladesh armed forces. Pakistan has one of the most highly-trained armies, and yet the Taliban and al-Quaeda have been inflicting heavy casualties.

The Bangladesh armed forces will have no choice but to join hands with the jihadis. Even if the present government bribes and politicizes the upper ranks of the armed forces, the lower ranks will not be bought or coerced.

Just think about this simple truism: you can't bribe everyone, and you can't kill everyone, and you can't intimidate everyone.

This is going to be one long, bloody year.

The Sixth Pillar of Islam

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=335814&version=1&template_id=44&parent_id=24


Since jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam, the present government's avowed intention to prevent jihadis from entering India or finding sanctuary in Bangladesh is scandalously anti-Islamic. While other non-Muslim governments kill and maim Muslims with impunity, we are going to hogtie them within a thicket of laws.
No Bangladeshi Muslim, therefore, need abide by these laws, or obey the government in these matters. Al-Ghazali had said "Better twenty years of injustice than one hour of chaos". But he was referring to Sultanate rule, not to democracy, which he would have found shocking, with its change of government every five years and an opposition criticizing the government (criticism is treasonous for al-Ghazali).

However, we are not all brave or capable enough to be jihadis: but there are others who are. Living in an Indian and American colony, if they wish to strike at the nation, they have every authority to do so. "Know that the unbelievers are your enemies," states the Koran. If the country had been an autocracy, then things would have been different: al-Ghazali's and al-Mawardi's interdiction would have applied. But that is not the case.

If we are unable to perform the sixth pillar ourselves, we can at least – as least – pray for those who are, and offer public prayers on Fridays for their souls and their success. We can offer public or private sacrifices for the nobility of their cause. Between 1991 and 2001, nearly two million Iraqi children were murdered by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton – with the full acquiescence and knowledge of the western word, and the criminal United Nations (whose representative was killed in Baghdad, possibly by a relative or father of one of these dead children).

With so much hostility against Muslims, so many dead Muslims from Iraq to Gaza, Kashmir to Somalia, to prohibit the performance of the sixth pillar is an act of the utmost impiety. If not within Muslim polities, then against the oppressors, Muslim should have unfettered freedom from their coreligionists to wage a just war.

I hope those who read this will offer at least a prayer for the jihadis tonight. Tomorrow….

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

An Evening With Nationalists

As I've mentioned before, most of my wider family are nationalists – they are supporters of the Awami League. That they are beyond reason and sanity, everyone knows: that they are beyond humanity should not be a well-kept secret either.


My wife and I spent an evening with them: it was supposed to be a getting-together to mourn a dead relative, but we found the booze flowing merrily enough, and, naturally, singers at the podium.

But that was nothing compared to what followed.

My cousin and his wife had recently come here for a short visit. A more tragic couple I have yet to meet. She had breast cancer, and had had a mastectomy performed. She was under chemotherapy. They were devout Muslims, and thoroughly apolitical.

But she had a major defect in the eyes of her nationalist relatives: she wore a hijab (albeit with the face showing). That she was very religious seemed to earn her the scorn of everyone present. And they were both revolted by the booze, which the company sensed.

The girl was crying. She spoke, sobbing, to one of my uncles: "Nobody knows what we're going through" I heard her say. And I could imagine: besides the Damocles' sword of cancer hanging over you, there's the sheer cost of treatment in America; even insurance was expensive and my cousin had lost his job in the economic downturn, and his wife couldn't work.

And my uncle told her: "Try to take things lightly".

How do you take cancer lightly? Is religion an inappropriate response to the prospect of imminent death?

So, there were these secular nationalists, swilling booze and listening to the songs of Tagore, and looking down their collective noses at my cousin and his cancerous wife for being practicing Muslims, non-Awami Leaguers.

Isn't that our country writ small?

All for a few dollars

Suppose somebody makes me this offer: "If you give $100 to a poor person, I'll give you $200."

Would my action, then, be a moral action?

Yet that is exactly what western donors are urging us to do: to pretend to be altruistic, when we are being supremely egotistic.

A moral action must be performed by an agent who has no ulterior motive: otherwise, it is sheer corruption.

And that is what we are: massively corrupt, with the donors corrupting us daily.
Mind you, I'm not saying that the mere act of making money is corrupting: far from it. Trade and industry are dignified pursuits. The western donor corrupts us by making us seem altruistic, by making us lie to ourselves and to others.

The NGO-wallahs know, deep down, that they have been corrupted in the worst possible manner: the man who takes a bribe and does not pretend to be honest is far less corrupt than the donation-receiving NGO-wallah. Self-deception is the supreme corruption.

Then comes pride in your corruption: the command of so much wealth, the adulation of other members of society, the prizes received…all conspire to elevate you above the rest of humanity. We begin to take pride in our fallen nature, like Satan.

"Let not thy right hand know what thy left hand doeth." But our 'philanthropy' consists precisely in letting everyone know what we are doing – noble deeds, generous acts, all for the most selfish and self-centred of reasons.

The Satanisation of our souls is complete. We have sold away our most precious possession – and for what? For a few moments of glory? For a few dollars? In a cost-benefit analysis we would appear supremely idiotic.

The worst cases are those that exhort us to go against our own civilization: for a few dollars, they denounce our culture and our traditions, our sacred and our profane heritage…all for a few dollars.

Take Transparency International, Bangladesh (TIB). Do we need to be reminded that corruption is evil by Berliners? Doesn't the Muslim ethical code serve the purpose? Why do we need an alien civilization to instill in us what we can learn better from our own? And aren't those serving the TIB corrupt to the highest extreme? They have given away not only their conscience but their very own heritage.