Culture or Religion?
An e-mailer to Andrew Sullivan (presumably a Hindu, from the tone of it) raises the question: is it cultural and social circumstances that create these violent outrages in Islamic countries, or is it the religion itself?
The flashpoint in this current contretemps is Pakistan, which among all others has reacted most violently to the Danish cartoons. It's next door to India - which has a Muslim population of equal size - which in recent years has undergone something of a renaissance on the world stage. But Pakistan remains what it remains: an unstable dictatorship.Thoughts?
The flashpoint in this current contretemps is Pakistan, which among all others has reacted most violently to the Danish cartoons. It's next door to India - which has a Muslim population of equal size - which in recent years has undergone something of a renaissance on the world stage. But Pakistan remains what it remains: an unstable dictatorship.Thoughts?
posted by Joshua @ 8:18 PM
4 Comments:
A similar question would be whether the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades and the rest of the fruits of the dark ages were a natural occurnece of Christianity. No, they, like the abhorent and violent outrages coming from the Musilim world are the offshoot of a fundamentalist (as opposed to religious) culture, long out of dominance in the world community, and struggling under the axe of assimilation. Clearly, as non-religious as I am, I don't think that religion is worth the cost they are paying for it, but I'm not in the culture.
"India on the other hand is a striving (albeit Third World) democracy that is home to Gandhi, yoga, computer programmers, hugging saints, doctors and spelling bee enthusiasts."
Classic case of the spotlighting argument. Evidently somebody forgot the Babri Mosque attack in 1992, the riots in Gujarat in 2002, the odious Hindutva movement, and the 30 year terrorist campaign by the Sikhs to get their Khalistan, and the subsequent anti-Sikh riots that erupted in the wake of the Indira Gandhi assassination, among many, many other things. "Hugging saints" my ass.
Your ass or not, Asiansmiths, I ask you to consider this: what has been the recent fate of the BJP, whose Hindutva sympathies you so rightly condemn?
You know the answer as well as I do: they lost the mandate of the people and the leadership of the country now lies in the hands of the Congress Party.
When they lost the election, the BJP did not declare the country "unready for democracy," install a military dictatorship, and ban Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh from the country; you know, the sorts of things that are familiar to any watcher of Pakistan in the last decade.
Now, I personally do not think that Pakistan's troubles are indicative of weakness in the core tenets of Islam. Nor do I assert that India is the model of harmony! But can we agree that Pakistan is in rough shape?
Let see if this post will stick this time.
Tacitean: Agreed that Pakistan is in much rougher shape politically and economically than India. Forgive me if my ire gets the better of me; spotlighting arguments seem to get a bigger rise out of me than anything else, as it implies plain ignorance at best and plain dishonesty at worst. If I fall into the same trap, I would hope you fellows come down on me just as hard.
Also agreed that Islam should not shoulder the blame for Pakistan condition, as the emailer suggested; if you would like to discuss how Pakistan got to where it is, and why India isn't there alongside it, then I'd welcome discussing it on a separate thread. However, I do believe it is necessary for Muslims to re-examine where their faith and interpretations of their faith has taken them, and what the fundamentals of their faith actually are. The Islamists already made plain what they consider the fundamentals of their religion are; the longer they hold onto the title of those who defend the fundamentals of their religion without challenge, the more power and strength they will obtain within Islam. It is also time for non-Muslims to drop the trope about Islam simply being a religion of peace and pretend that Islamism is just a phase that Muslims as a whole will get over when they have enough freedom and liberty and Adidas. A very long and very uncomfortable look, from both sides of the religious divide, will be necessary to determine if (and I will be extremely blunt here) Islam is compatible with modern Liberalism. Thoughts?
-WuP
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