Rebels of modern era and loss of plot by Islam - contd

Shamelessly copied from writings of people I respect Dr Shiv, RajeshA, Brihaspatiji etc. did not know how paste the link! Very much in line to my thoughts


Over 165 million Indian citizens are Mohammedans and consider Islam their religion. So the question we always face in India is how to discuss Islam without hurting their feelings, exacerbating communal tensions in India, or for that matter isolating them from the Indian mainstream and Indian nationalism.

On the other hand, it would be irresponsible in not acknowledging how the Indian Civilization has been ravaged by groups who have availed of Islamic structures, its paroles and the mass of its adherents! In fact India still faces the threat from these groups.

Every Muslim in India is influenced by Islam, Humanism, their pre-Islamic cultural holdovers, the Modern World and religious apathy. Often Muslims would try to explain the rest - Humanism, Cultural Tendencies and Modernity in terms of Islam, trying to find sanction and confirmation in theology. That would always remain up for debate. Some may consider Humanism to be part of Islam others would consider both - Islam and Humanism, to be the two opposite ends of a spectrum, with every Muslim somewhere in between. Some may see the Muslim masses as simply people enslaved by the Ideology.

It is important to acknowledge that in such a discussion we should always be cognizant of the fact that Muslims belong to India and enjoy their inalienable fundamental rights in India. Also one needs to acknowledge that the discussion is not to humiliate them or hurt their feelings, but rather the aim of the discussion is to understand the nature of threat the Indian Civilization faces from Islamic groups and their ideology.

it is important that we remain dispassionate about it, that it be discussed without the use of vulgarity towards the symbols of Islam. There should be no name calling! However the truth be spoken as it is! Satyamev Jayate!

Muhammad is not really the issue, he was a man of his times, no more or less sanguinary than his contemporaries. The issue is those who fourteen centuries later take him as undebatable. One of the Hindu "ideal" persons is Shri Rama, and even so, Hindus debate whether he was right in shooting Baali and exiling Sita from Ayodhya. That does not make Hindus respect him or worship him less. (And a Rodinson can turn Rama into another unappetizing character, it is not difficult to do.) Muslims have to realize that being critical of Muhammad is not incompatible with considering him the epitome of integrity and the most beloved of Allah. The lack of that critical attitude among Muslims is no more because of Muhammad than the bloodiness of the church set up by St. Paul and made official by Constantine is the fault of Jesus!

The thought that occurs to me is one of "baseline". The baseline is how far you can go in expressing an opinion?

Expressing a contrary opinion in Islam invites punishment. Clearly a mullah who says "Suckle from your colleagues breast so you can work with her" or "Women drivers lead to prostitution" will not be considered sane or rational by most Muslims. So why don't we have hordes of Muslims ROTFL and mocking? One explanation is that they have blind faith and that they really are humorless morons. More likely their lips are sealed because otherwise their fate will be sealed. 

There is a group dynamic versus individual which Islam seeks to ensure through a militarization and constant expansion drive. This is all about using naturally existing physical coercive relations between humans - primarily between men and women, between intellectuals and non-intellectuals [men in power are at least exerting more of their intelligence and foxiness in manipulations to gather support] - to have a social-political system that enhances and reinforces these power-dominance-submission relations. Islam is thus providing at the basic level a platform where men can be "men", women can be "women", power-hungry ambitious men can become mullah and sultans - and the hunger for domination, [hence the peculiar persistence of sadism] biologically over women, and psychologically over society of less-ambitious-less-wily men.

In addition there is the added benefit of being free of guilt in the eye of peers whose support you need - if you are pursuing your own hungers, for women or for power. These desires have been explcitly sanctioned and approved as divine injunction. The main difference from philosophies that have retreated before Islam is that these others always put social shame on biological hunger and power-hunger. [Think of dominant Hindu/Buddhist/Christian philosophies - here "worldly" ambitions and "physical hunger" has come to occupy a socially undesirable value]

People always protect the most vulnerable thing they have. Footballers facing a goal kick cover their testicles. Mothers hold on to their babies. You hang on to your wallet in a crowd. Mohammad and Islam are protected by a death sentence because if you pick holes in either Islam is dead. Or that is the impression that has been created.

But I don't see Islam dying despite unprecedented modern day criticism of Mohammad and Islam. Only some practitioners of Islam are set to lose everything. And they protest the loudest. But Muslims need to figure that out. Muslims are not criticised for following isiam, but they will be attacked if they use Islam to attack others. If Islam's main crutch is the elimination of/opposition to all Kafirs then Islam is set to lose. Those people who call for endless war and violence against non Muslims will have to simply be vanished.

if one wants to actually engage with and help the Moslem peoples, one should use freethinkers and saints as an entry point. Just as it has been used as a pressure valve by the Ulema when they had control over the coercive machinery of the state as well as the cultural space, similarly we can turn the valve the other way by taking control of that cultural space. 

if one wants to see talented Moslems being helped, one must corral the Ulema and their thugs and put the Islamofascist machinery into the ICU. This must happen at least in some critical nodes and non-Arab Moslem societies, such as India, Iran.