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.

Human Rights Watch and Modernity

Reform in Saudi Arabia: At a snail's pace | The Economist: "A recent report on political reform in Saudi Arabia by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, argues that although gradual changes are welcome, unless they are properly institutionalised the kingdom risks sliding backwards again, as it has done many times before. “Newly gained freedoms are, for the most part, neither extensive nor firmly grounded,” the report concludes. “The limited reform that has taken place suggests the elite is still floating trial balloons, undecided about the type of government and society it wants to steer towards.”

On some specific human-rights issues, the report praises the kingdom’s progress: reform of the justice system, women’s rights and freedom of expression. Yet it notes with concern that, whereas legal reform is one of the areas where changes are under way, new courts have yet to materialise, and new, transparent procedures have yet to be put into practice. Greater freedom of speech is not codified, and so remains subject to arbitrary intervention by the state. Earlier this year, a newspaper editor made the mistake of printing a blunt critique of puritan religious beliefs, and was summarily fired. As for women’s rights, an official loosening of the ban against the mixing of the sexes in public places has not been widely implemented. The same goes for an ostensible liberalisation of rules that require women to have a male “guardian”. Women are still forbidden to drive.

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What business is it of Human Rights Watch to try to change Saudi Arabia's culture?

These westerners want all cultures to be the same - a universal monoculture. Western culture, of course. After all, there is only one legitimate civilisation in the world, Western civilisation. All other civilisations and cultures fail to measure up to this ideal.

Anthropologists and sociologists may foam at the mouth trying to explain that cultures are different, the product of their history and environment, but imperialists like Human Rights Watch will turn a deaf ear. If a woman does not drive, she is not a modern woman.

Thus Grace Davie, in her book 'Sociology of Religion, has pointed out that: "Once again, it is the application of the concept [of modernity] elsewhere that causes the difficulty - a way of working that leads quickly to the conclusion that any society or group of societies that does not conform to the patterns of Western modernity is in some sense less than modern (my italics)." Thus, she, and other sociologists, are more comfortable with the notion of 'modernities', rather than 'modernity'.

But reason is powerless against imperialists: they have to be beaten back with weapons of destruction. If your way of life is threatened, you have to fight back.

Democracy and Intolerance

EGYPT: Muslims protest Coptic Christian governor in Qena | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times: "Thousands of mostly Muslim protesters swelled through the streets of the Egyptian city of Qena on Friday to demonstrate against the recent appointment of a new Coptic Christian governor.

Crowds gathered Immediately after prayers outside the city’s mosques, chanting against Gov. Emad Mikhael and Prime Minister Essam Sharaf: “Oh Sharaf, say the truth … you’re being unfair to us or not?” and “Oh freedom where are you ... Mikhael is standing between us and you.”

Mikhael, a police general who served under former President Hosni Mubarak, is the only Copt among 18 new governors named by Sharaf on April 14. The decision was met by anger and exasperation from the city’s Islamic extremists and ultra-conservative Salafi groups.

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Democracy will bring out the worst in any people - Christians, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims.

The people of the Middle East should learn from the (brief) democratic experience of the world. The democracies unleashed two major wars in the previous century. The first has been described as the "most democratic war in history" by historian J.M.Roberts.

The question of whether democracy promotes violence is an old one and goes back to Thucydides (his answer was 'Yes'). Two thousand years later, Thomas Hobbes translated Thucydides to reveal the horrors of democracy.

The free world in history stands in sharp contrast to the subjugation of the rest of the world by it over 500 violent years. Where there was parliament, there was violence inflicted mostly on foreigners.

China could have conquered the world, and started out to do so, but then stopped. The Portuguese took up where they left off.

In Bangladesh, lynching - absolutely unknown during dictatorship - has become so commonplace, nobody even notices. In 2007, the country nearly experienced civil war between the two political parties, and the west had to call in the army to restore sanity.

We must remember that it's a western idea - democracy - that's causing all the mayhem.

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!

Democracy and Faith

Would you mind terribly if an artist in your country drew humorous cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh)? Or if a writer made fun of him in a novel? or if an artist painted verses from the Qur'an on to a naked female body?

All these things have been done, and Muslims have reacted with swift outrage, sometimes murder (Theo van Gogh, who filmed a naked women with verses from the Qur'an was murdered and beheaded by a Muslim jihadi).

For these are freedoms of expression - a central tenet of democracy. According to democrats, freedom of expression includes the freedom to shock and offend.

Yet Muslim men and women espouse democracy as if it won't hurt the religion - or the sentiment of 1 billion Muslims. In our country (Bangladesh), we have traitors who would love to make fun of the Prophet and Islam. That is one reason they love democracy.

Yet I know a devout Muslim woman who loves democracy - she doesn't realise, the idiot that she is, that democracy means freedom of expression - freedom to make fun of Islam and everything we consider sacred and holy. She is a misguided fool, who wants to appear an 'intellectual'.

Fundamentalists can take an idea to its logical conclusion - unlike the foolish woman mentioned above. They realise that in a democracy, everything will be permitted - from blasphemy to burning holy books (heaven forbid!).

The second khutbah of the Friday prayers forbid us to criticise our rulers - democracy means criticism of rulers. Surely, democracy was forbidden by our ancestors!

Curse democracy as you would curse the plague or snakes - for it pits brother against brothers, and leaves nothing sacred. Let democracy be preached only by the enemies of Islam and Muslim civilisation. They are friends of the Great Satan.

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.