Oriana Fellatio

Oriana Fellatio, better known perhaps as Oriana Fallaci, was an Italian journalist who made a second career out of loudly hating Muslims.

"The increased presence of Muslims in Italy and in Europe is directly proportional to our loss of freedom."

That's one of her milder diatribes.

It is surprising that Ms. Fellatio found the events of 9/11 so outrageous: only 3,000 Americans had been killed. And that was promptly made up for by killing an equal number of civilians in Afghanistan.

There's one thing people like her can't stand: it's the fact that, for the very first time, the South had struck a blow in the heart of the North.

People like Ms. Fellatio though it was only the North's privilege to murder people in the South. For 500 years, the North did just that: crime after crime was visited on the hapless South. Did they think it could go on forever?

It was Nemesis at work on 9/11, and what pathetic nemesis at that, too. Whereas the North kills people by the millions - in seven digits - the South could kill only in four digits. That's pathetic.

But you have to look at the competition. The South (meaning the Muslim world in this case) has amateurs at work, whereas the North has expert bureaucracies and professional spy networks attacking the Muslim jihadis. Yet what a wonderful job Muslims have done in Afghanistan - they have brought the combined military might of the North to its knees. Who cannot but admire these people?

"The Muslims refuse our culture and try to impose their culture on us. I reject them, and this is not only my duty toward my culture-it is toward my values, my principles, my civilization."

Muslims do not try to impose their culture on anyone. They don't tell French women not to strip half- or even fully naked on the beaches. And Ms. Fellatio could perform as many as she liked. Muslims have their own culture, just as other civilisations do. No, she was projecting her culture's hegemonic tendencies on to Muslim civilisation.

And what kind of civilisation did Ms. Fellatio have? As stated, a murderous, genocidal monstrosity.

Killing Muslims

Killing Muslims - in Lybia or Somalia - is popular with the American or European public back home. It is good for electoral prospects, a democratic sport. And we in the Muslim world who espouse democracy endorse the practice because it is carried on by 'democratic' countries. We have become monsters to our own brothers and sisters.

Have we no conscience? Have we sold it for a few dollars? For a little appreciation? What happened to our 1,400-year-old civilisation? How can we admire nations that kill Muslims? For surely, then, we are fratricides and sororicides!

The Last Virus

The first western virus to penetrate the Muslim world was nationalism Imagine! Seven hundred years of Ottoman civilisation was permeated by nationalism. Where once, different nationals coexisted cheek by jowl under one government - the Sultan's - now Turkish nationalism reared its ugly head. Today, we have Muslims fighting Muslims, Turks fighting Kurds....What could be sadder?

Then came the second virus, Marxism. Leaders like Nasser ousted their kings and proclaimed Arab nationalism....This didn't work. They married nationalism with another western ideology, Marxism, and even that didn't work. The Arab-Israeli war of 1967 discredited both ideologies, paving the road for Islamic fundamentalism.

Today, the third virus has been taken up by the Arabs: the virus of democracy. How will this end? No doubt in some terrible upheaval.

Why does the Muslim world have to borrow from the west? We have our own political philosophy: the zel Allah, the shadow of Allah. The ruler is the shadow of Allah, but, thanks to western ideology, we demand democracy. That is not our heritage. The khutbah of the mosque prayer prohibits us from criticizing our rulers. How dare we do that?

Surely the Middle East is destined to wickedness...it has sold out to the west, the Great Satan. In a year's time, we shall see chaos in the Maghreb, for these people have disobeyed.

Muslim Amnesia

"When the streets of Damascus were lined with lamps, London was a village."

- Peter O' Toole in Lawrence of Arabia

I was chatting with a devout Turkish girl. She had resisted her family since the age of eighteen, and worn a headscarf. I thought she must truly be a Muslim. I was wrong.

We got on the subject of dictators, as the Arabs were trying to topple them. She asked me if I liked dictators. I said I loved them. She did a double take. She couldn't believe how I could love dictators. Incidentally, she said that probably I knew more about her ancestors than she did.

It seems that was correct.

I know that under the Sultans, Muslim civilisation made room for diverse religions and created one of the long-lasting civilizations of the world.

And all this was achieved under dictators, autocrats, despots....

The tragic thing about Muslims is their loss of memory. They have lost all sense of time. They don't realise that 1,400 years of Muslim history - a glorious, benign and noble history - have passed. They are either fundamentalists, or 'modern' Muslims like the Turkish girl. The latter group look to Europe and America for inspiration.

When I said that she was hopelessly westernised, she reacted quickly. "Hey," she said, "I am not westernised." Yet, unbeknownst to her, she was.

Why are Muslims so servile?

The encounter with the west has so knocked the stuffing out of us that we have lost all self-respect. We have become thoroughly defensive. We have forgotten that Hazrat Uthman liberated thousands of slaves, and that the west was based on slavery. Ours, and the Chinese civilization, were benign. In this, lies our greatness.

Death Of A Civilisation

The events in the Middle East have upset me no end: I see in these 'people's insurrections' the death of Muslim civilisation.

Over 1,400 years, Muslim thinkers from Ibn Hanbal to al-Ghazali to ibn-Jamma have painstakingly, bit by agonising bit, built up an edifice of political thought: the repeated injunction of that body of thought has been that one must not resist a leader.

In Bangladesh, a land of 140 million Muslims, it has become received wisdom to celebrate the overthrow of a military ruler. I know pious Muslims, who say their prayers five times a day and observe every fast during Ramadan, who accept calmly and casually an insurrection against a Muslim military ruler. These people have wholly, knowingly or otherwise, accepted the odious political philosophy of John Locke. Indeed, it is to be doubted if these people are Muslim at all.

It seems that the west has conquered us with its ideas, money and military might - the first copiously assisted by the latter two. We have been bought and bribed. I fear that the murder of Muslim civilisation by the west is not far distant.

However, recent events elsewhere give me pause and hope: China once embraced a disgusting western philosophy which led to the death of millions of Chinese. But today China is beginning to cast off its slavery to western ideas, and has happily rediscovered its Confucian roots. Will such a rebirth happen in the Muslim world?

Perhaps it will; perhaps it won't. Either way, by then, I will be six feet under the earth.

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.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"


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.

Plassey Day

Two hundred and fifty three years ago this day, the Muslims of South Asia lost their independence at Plassey.

Mir Zafar Ali Khan, we well know, betrayed the last Nawab. Ever since then, we have had a long line of Mir Zafar's up to the present day.

We've had sixty years of nominal independence (and thirty years here) but on that fateful day we became mental slaves. Shall we ever again think like free human beings? I doubt it very much.

We may do so only if we reclaim our lost Muslim heritage: emancipate ourselves from the white man's spell and the spell of the Indian. Having studied Persian for the last couple of years, I know how strong and great our civilisation is. What is English literature compared to the power of Persian poetry? What is Shakespeare compared to Sheikh Sa'di?

But this is casting pearls before swine.

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!