Moderate Muslims Need To Feel Some Tough Love

It seems appropriate to use the French term déjà vu to describe the reaction of Muslims to the murderous assault in Paris against the publishing house Charlie Hebdo.

Every time Muslim terrorists engage in an atrocity against humanity, moderate Muslims (whom no one in their right mind is blaming anyway) go into a huddle feeling sorry for themselves ("Now they'll blame us again", "Brace for a fresh round of Islamophobia"), disowning the perpetrators without acknowledging the problem ("These are not true Muslims", "This is not Islam", "Islam is a religion of peace") and engaging in whataboutery ("What about the crusades?", "What about Palestine?", "What about the drone attacks?", etc.) as if those are effective rebuttals.

These tweets by a Muslim (which have been eagerly retweeted) are an illustration of everything that is wrong with the wider Muslim community today.

The victim complex on full display.

No one (except a bigot) would tar an entire community with the same brush. It's acknowledged that only a tiny minority of Muslims are terrorists. At the same time, it's impossible to sweep under the carpet the fact that virtually all terrorists in recent times have been Muslims. Hence there is a problem within the Muslim community. (Let's not bring up those tired strawman counterexamples of Tim McVeigh and the IRA.) This is really what people are concerned about. The Muslim community has a problem within itself that Muslims are not acknowledging.

Victimhood on parade again

A community whose members regularly lash out with deadly force against critics, and which most people are afraid to offend, cannot be called "oppressed" by any stretch of the imagination. That's a cruel joke. Substitute "easily offended" for "oppressed" to get a truer picture. Satire challenges both power and the easily offended. It's meant to tell the latter not to take themselves too seriously.

Diversionary tactic #157

Yes, there is a serious problem with the surveillance state. Every act of terror makes people in government rub their hands in glee as they strip away more of our rights. But that doesn't make the conversation about freedom of speech "fake". It just means freedom has two sets of enemies - Islamists and the government. The former is the enemy we recognise. The latter is the enemy who pretends to be our saviour. The former empowers the latter.

Whataboutery sugarcoated with humour is still a non sequitur

Don't be misled by the humorous reference to Iggy Azalea. There is some serious whataboutery being engaged in here. He left out the Crusades and Palestine, because you know, everything bad that Muslims are doing today is a reaction to the terrible things the West has been doing to the Muslim world for centuries. So we mustn't blame Muslims for the terrible things Muslims are doing. The West has not only done worse, it is responsible for what Muslims are now doing! This is a seriously facetious argument that will only convince Muslims who want to be convinced. Worse, it blocks all criticism and introspection, justifying inaction and throwing the ball into someone else's court.

So what is the problem with the Muslim community?

It's two things - defensiveness and denial, i.e., feeling like the victims when confronted with difficult questions, and denying that the problem might actually lie with Islam itself.

Let me spell out what moderate Muslims are expected to do. This is not going to be pleasant reading for them, but I'm going to do it anyway. Think of it as tough love.

No, you don't have to apologise for what happened. It wasn't you who did it.

But you do need to seriously introspect instead of being defensive and feeling like the victims.

There is a problem with Islam as enshrined in the Quran, and that is a fundamental lack of respect (no, intolerance) for non-Muslims. Every page of the Quran drips with self-righteous hatred for unbelievers. If this is a religion of peace, the Quran doesn't seem to show it.

You need to actively challenge this thinking within your own community. And by that, I mean each and every one of you needs to start from yourself. You're not a terrorist, but ask yourself honestly if you hold any of the following views (take your time with each one):

1. You believe Islam is the best religion
2. You think non-Muslims should ideally convert to Islam
3. You feel happy when you hear that Islam is the fastest-growing religion
4. You think Muslims who renounce their faith are doing something wrong, and probably that they ought to be punished in some way
5. The community that you identify with is the 1.5 billion strong Ummah
6. You believe the Quran is the literal word of God and is perfect, requiring no change

If you have any of the above views, then I suggest that you are contributing to the problem the world has today. It is not enough to condemn acts of terror or to disown terrorists. These ideas are the root of the problem.

You could try entertaining the following ideas instead.

1. Islam is a religion like any other. There are good and bad aspects in every religion.
2. There are good people in all religions (and there are good atheists as well). There is no necessity for people to convert from one religion to another. All that is required is for people to be good.
3. It is better for Islam to rid itself of bad practices than to simply gain more adherents.
4. People have a right to change their minds. If someone thinks Islam is not for them, that's their business.
5. I belong to a 7 billion strong community called humanity. All of us are equal human beings, Muslims as well as non-Muslims
6. The Quran may quite possibly contain some ideas that are not in keeping with the times, and these may have to be discarded.

If you can accept these latter thoughts, then you are on your way to solving the problem with Islam, i.e., its arrogance regarding its own perfection and its fundamental inability to respect other people as equally good human beings. The next step is to challenge the more hard-line elements within your community and get them to change their thinking, and this is the hard part. But this is something non-Muslims cannot do for you. It is a task for moderate Muslims.

The secular world treats Muslims as equal human beings, but the sentiment isn't always reciprocated, not even by many moderate Muslims. If Muslims can effect these changes within themselves and propagate these new thoughts, then the basis of conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims will gradually dissolve and disappear. You won't feel alienated and threatened anymore.

In short, guys, we love you, but you really need to fix your attitude.

In India, A Partial Expiation For An Archaeological Crime

It was heartening to read in the news recently that an archaeological treasure, the 450 year old tomb of Mughal emperor Humayun, has been restored.

The newly-restored Humayun's Tomb in New Delhi

It's a pity that priceless archaeological artifacts often get imbued with religious, and consequently political, significance. Islamists are the regular villains in archaeological vandalism around the world. They destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan and similar relics of a Buddhist past in the Maldives. In Egypt, they are even calling for the destruction of the pyramids and the sphinx. One can only shake one's head in hopeless sorrow at such mindless fanaticism.

Countries like the US, Canada, Australia and new Zealand, with barely 3 centuries of European history, have nevertheless done a splendid job of preserving and showcasing this heritage. [One could blame the early European settlers in these countries for the destruction of native communities and their culture, but in modern times, these countries have demonstrated enlightenment through their commendable efforts to retrieve and preserve native heritage as well.] Why do people with a heritage stretching back millennia not recognise and appreciate what a priceless set of treasures they have?

The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan - the "after" photo shows a clear improvement over the "before" (if you're an Islamist)

The Islamic conquerors of India from the 12th century onwards were largely of the same breed as Islamists everywhere. Many Hindu temples were destroyed by them and mosques erected in their place.

And therein lies a tale of two wrongs that do not make a right. The Mughal emperor Babar (father of Humayun, whose tomb was recently restored) is thought to have destroyed (among countless others) a temple to the Hindu god Rama at Ayodhya and built a mosque over its ruins. That mosque remained standing until the last decade of the 20th century. It was called the "Babri Masjid" (Babar's mosque).

For centuries, this structure remained. It saw the passing of 7 generations of the Mughals and the advent of the British, and then it saw the passing of the British Raj as well, as Indians finally wrested back the power to rule themselves after at least 6 centuries of foreign rule.

And thereafter, with the move to democracy, the mosque's days were numbered.

This is the way the Babri Masjid looked before electoral arithmetic spelled its doom

Somewhere along the way, the Hindu right wing party, the BJP, decided that the only way it could improve its hitherto dismal electoral performance was to tap into militant Hindu sentiment that it would itself whip up. The Babri Masjid became the symbol and the focal point of the BJP's campaign. The mosque that was built on the ruins of a desecrated Hindu temple was projected as a historical humiliation of India's Hindu majority by its Muslim rulers, a humiliation that could only be reversed by the destruction of the mosque and a resurrected temple to Lord Rama built on its ruins. It was to be the righting of a historical wrong. More importantly, the site of the original temple was claimed to be the very birthplace of Lord Rama, so having the temple built anywhere but on the ruins of the mosque was preemptively made impossible!

The Hindu parties' emotive poster calling for the construction of the temple at Ayodhya, with a suitably militant image of Rama to drive home the message

By polarising society along religious lines, the BJP and its various allied Hindu organisations reckoned they could attract a significant number of votes from Hindus. (This cynical calculation, sadly enough, turned out to be correct. In 1984, the BJP had won 2 seats in parliament. In 1991, after having successfully raised a storm over the Babri Masjid, the party won 120 seats.) More importantly, the BJP formed the government in the state of Uttar Pradesh (the state to which the city of Ayodhya belonged).

[Quite some blood has been shed since the time that plan was put into action, and more is going to be shed in future, since the hardening of Hindu opinion and the consequent rewards to militant Hindu parties have now attained a momentum of their own. My own view on this is simple. We only have one history. We can learn from it, but we cannot erase it, no matter how humiliating it may seem. Destroying our own national monuments for religio-political reasons is cutting off our nose to spite our face. But of course, such arguments fall on deaf ears, since in times of strident militancy, reason itself seems weak and effete.]

After the 1991 elections, with the machinery of the Uttar Pradesh state government in its hands, the BJP began plans to demolish the temple while at the same time issuing reassuring public statements to allay suspicion. On 6th December 1992, the BJP did what Islamists worldwide have always done - destroyed their own country's archaeological monuments to satisfy religious bloodlust, and their own political ambitions.

There is grim irony in the fact that an avowedly anti-Islamic popular movement demonstrated the same intolerance and religious bigotry of their enemies. They also proved that, despite two historic changes in management, the degree of enlightenment of India's rulers had not improved in 500 years.

The armies of Hinduism sallying forth to do their sacred duty, no doubt

It stood for 450 years, then came down in one hour

And this is what was left of the Babri Masjid

Woohoo! We've destroyed a 450 year old archaeological treasure of our own country! Who needs foreign invaders?

And that's what I thought of when I read the news of the restoration of Humayun's tomb. The mosque named for the father was destroyed, but the tomb of the son was restored. I guess I could see the latter restoration as a partial atonement for the former archaeological crime, but something in me is not satisfied. When I look around me and see so many educated Hindu friends who cheer the destruction of the Babri Masjid, some openly and some less openly, I begin to think I must myself be a relic.

[Postscript:
One of my friends on Facebook commented as follows:

"I dont think even the most ardent secularist would call the Babri Masjid an archeological treasure. Especially in a country where there are many other monuments that are older. It is provocative to say Hindus thought the structure was humiliating. The movement was an act of reclaiming. A temple was not just "thought" to have existed. The Allahabad high court judgment validated that last year and awarded one third of the land to Hindus. You are being selective when you talk about restoration only of the 450 yr old "treasure". What about restoration/rebuilding of the temple which lies below."

I replied:

"QED. You have furnished proof of my statement in the closing paragraph that this is indeed the attitude of many educated Hindus today.

1. Most people around the world would find it strange that a structure 400+ years old is NOT considered an archaeological treasure by some. In your opinion, how old does a structure have to be in order to be considered an archaeological treasure?

2. The presence of older monuments does not invalidate the value of structures 400+ years old. All of them are part of the country's great archaeological wealth. None of them is expendable.

3. A chequered history like India's can only be narrated by a chronologically matching set of artifacts reflecting the power structure, dominant culture and values of the time. Our value judgement today of whether any of that was "good" or "bad" is irrelevant. It's part of our history. We can look at some of those monuments and decide, "Never again!" That indeed is the point of learning history. But destroying one's own monuments to erase part of one's history that some people in the current generation disapprove of is immature and self-harming.

4. The temple can never be "rebuilt" in any case, only recreated. As such, why not build it a short distance away and provide information to visitors about the history of the temple and the mosque? That way, you have both structures and your history intact. And from the perspective of history study and tourism, it would be wonderful.

5. If belief systems are to take priority over pragmatism in the here-and-now, then only bloodshed and strife lie ahead, not prosperity, because belief systems are mutually incompatible. We need to be less precious about our beliefs and more concerned with the real country we live in.

6. There is nothing selective about my position. You are reading an anti-Hindu bias into what I have written. My entire piece was anti-vandalism. The Islamists have vandalised monuments globally, as my 3 examples show. The saffron Islam that passes for Hinduism nowadays is doing exactly the same thing."]