1 November 2020
There is never a good time to discuss this notion, yet as we see religious intolerance spread its tentacles across continents, we see its shadow stretching far across the horizons at a horrifying scale largely due to a sense of understanding and lack of effective pushback. For those who are critical of the French crackdown, they must remember that Macron as President wanted to ford the bridges between secular France and Islam and water down the Islamophobia that threatened to ruin the French polity, particularly after a hypothetical novel ‘Soumission’ (Submission) by Michel Houellebecq in 2015that suggested that in 2022, the French Republic could officially turn into an Islamic Republic.
Yet, if you see the event of the beheading of the teacher, in a Paris suburb https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54632353 or the beheadings in Nice inside a cathedral https://www.france24.com/en/france/20201030-a-day-after-the-fatal-church-attack-in-nice-here-s-what-we-know-so-far a religious place equally mentioned by Prophet Muhammad as venerable, is shows how, a select group of Islamic insurgents are operating in France to derail the assimilation of Muslims in that Western Country. This Wahabi project is one that needs concerted action, yet under Trump we saw Saudi fetters cast off, and the message was the impunity with which journalist Kashoggi was ‘removed from the scene’ within the Saudi consulate in Istanbul what was once called Constantinople and melting pot of cultures and meeting point for the new Islam and older traditions of Eurasian cultures and civilisations. Unlike the media players who are calling these attacks ‘Lone Wolf’ these are actually more like Suicide Bombers, only now we can term them Suicide Knifers. These are men motivated to undertake what is a suicide mission, and whose targets are predetermined and staged for them to carry out. Without inputs, the class teacher who just demonstrated the Hebdo cartoon to make students understand what is blasphemy and tolerance, and nothing could have been more relatable than the Charlie Hebdo works to his French pupils.
So if you bear me out, you must understand that firstly as a global community, we must make Blasphemy outlawed as a ‘crime’ wherever it exists on the statute books of countries even as we make countries signatories to ensure that it will not tolerate any Religious hate crime, and proceed uniformly against all acts motivated by religious feelings. From cow to love jihad in India to Pakistan’s Blasphemy prosecutions, to this pan Islamic stand on Prophet Muhammed that has seen passions stoked and bounties declared on Salman Rushdie to cartoonists and writers of Hebdo, we see unbridled religious cover being offered for what is essentially a turf war. At a deeper level, be it cow vigilante groups or harassing of Muslim youth for ‘love jihad’ the hyperlocal logic is economic turf, control over cattle trade and dairy industry, and to thwart youth who are aspirational and scare the competition away. It is socioeconomic at this local level, but at a strategic level, the Wahabi regime of the Sauds in Riyadh and their compact with Salafists is what drives this divide, using petrodollars to fuel and finance these movements. If you see how it operates in mofussil India, you will understand that each cow vigilante episode or love jihad attack https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/varanasi/strict-law-to-put-a-check-on-love-jihad-in-up-says-cm-yogi-adityanath/articleshow/78969023.cms, or more recently Jai Sri Ram attacks where the Muslim is forced to chorus the religious cry even as he is lynched, is how the Wahabis ensure subscription to their ideology and their madarsas and keep the Islamic faithful under their flock and lock. Iran too is equally complicit in this through its Jamaat, only operating at much lower scale and lower reach due to the splintered nature of Shia communities and financial status of Iran itself as she is suffering endless sanctions from the West. This is like a Sixth Column, where citizens are made to become suspicious of each other, a policy that was first introduced by the West, British East India Company could be its patent holder- Divide and Rule!
So can we have a mandate that says to all religionists that humour should invite humour, jokes must provoke jokes, derision must invoke derision, but nothing said or written or created can provoke murder or justify it? I remember how MF Hussain India’s iconic painter whose ‘horsing on canvas’ was simply modern art’s stamp, got into trouble over canvas of nude goddess Saraswati painted decades earlier and had to die in asylum in the Gulf. If Muslim law says that the Prophet or Allah cannot be depicted, it is a voluntary action for the faithful, not applicable to others. If in today’s social economic and technological situation, citizens cannot accept the limitations of religious texts encoded centuries ago before accurate transcription was available, we cannot as human civilisation be held to ransom by such religious edict. What was more curious is how Hindutva fanatics took umbrage to the depiction, when such depictions are found in stone and in lore, our divinities and royalties in their splendid bodily forms, our temples adorned with even amorous reliefs of copulating postures. It was an artificial rage worked up, and it was further ingenious on their part to argue why Hussein did not paint Allah or Muhammad the way he painted Saraswati. (Hussein did no depictions abiding by his personal faith of either.) The Tamil opus ‘Macchaganti’ ( Bhisma’s Mahabharata), or Saivite hymns written by Muslim poets were well received as were criticisms of caste system and examination of Dravidian society in Tamil by early Italian and Dutch religious teachers. After all, resilient societies are those that can accept and absorb views of outsiders, and critical thinking and examination is how Dharma as we know it managed to survive and thrive despite Islamic Rule in India and Christian Colonialism.
Actually the French secular model is better, when it insists that overt religious symbolism in attire is not French, when it insists that there is no blasphemy, and when it wants French culture to be held above religious and ethnic identities of her citizens. India too before Oil economy of 80s and Gulf based saw itself in this mould. In fact it is a unique phenomenon I have observed where post liberalisation India’s religiosity quotient just skyrocketed! Now it is clearly one where every sect and every order is in play for pound of power and pelf! One never heard Jaina demanding the ban of slaughter during their festivities or demanding vegetarian only school lunches in their institutions before this era began or the Lingayats demanding recognition as a distinct order for that matter.
Religion is like the genie out of the bottle, that political activity has unleashed at the local level, which is largely in Islamic context the very regime survival mechanism of the Sauds and the Fossil Fuel industry of the Persian Gulf. I feel sanguine hope that under an American leadership, a West that is actively on track to deaddict itself from Fossil Fuels will automatically force reform and revolution in these Oil exporting nations which will itself be a bigger force for more civilised and democratic outcomes. The first task of ridding West Asian dependence was carried out under Obama, the next of ridding fossil fuel dependence now awaits Biden and his successors. Over the next couple of decades, I foresee a world where renewable energy and battery technology will drive out our need for coal and petroleum to a large extent. Automatically it will make Persian Gulf littoral reinvent itself, a path already increasingly revealed by Oman and UAE. When funds dry up for fanaticism, automatically these Suicide Knifers and vigilante groups will vanish. It is green energy and a new future of technology that will deliver the world from this stranglehold of religious hate crime and terrorism.
The link between religious fundamentalism and terrorism, between blasphemy and terror has been made many times before. I do not quite agree with Western leaders who think that the West must be sensitive to ‘faith issues’, that includes Ms Ardern and Mr Trudeau both whom I otherwise admire for their Pandemic leadership. Any sensitivity to ‘faith issues’ only breaches the scientific temper and critical thinking so needed by humankind as we brace for #ClimateImpact! Our ham handed approach to this ongoing Corona Pandemic is the biggest evidence of such deficiency as it derails us from taming the waves of the pandemic and thwarts our efforts to universally embrace Covid19 Appropriate Behaviour!
indiarubberman.com 