Islam and Obama's USA

I saw the newspaper screaming headlines on Obama's 'reaching out to world Muslims' speech. So, didn't bother reading any further for couple of days. The sensationalism of our media these days compels you to not read further when headlines scream. The 'secular' ones have an obsession to overstate anyone 'reaching out to Islam'.  I have not bothered reading much about people's response as I am sure much of this will be based on what West is saying or in its response. I saw one of the younger friends, very enthused by this speech and wish he could talk like that!

Just now, I read the entire transcript as it has been forwarded by a friend I respect much. It is an important speech with several new messages to the world.

My first thoughts were, why deliver this lecture in Egypt? Reminds you of the drama of G.Bush delivering the victory speech atop a aircraft carrier. While Obama has spoken at length about, 'countries of Muslim majority', I wonder why he didn't chose to give his speech in one of the two countries of Muslim majority,  the largest population of Muslims in the world are Indonesia and India. Both relatively peaceful practitioners of Islam before the export of a globalized Islam. Why can't President of USA talk to the peaceful Islamic practitioners and strengthen them and make them assert their peace rather than talk in the midst of tension torn West Asia, where the chances that anyone knows how to transact peace, particularly with the Christian world, would require forgetting centuries of hatred and almost changing their disposition towards the world.  

But, America can only talk to people in conflict and engaged in violence, their language is same. Interestingly, Obama's examples of both Islamic innovation(Algebra, Vaccination,...) as well as personal experience of tolerance are from India and Indonesia respectively. Not from the West Asian world.

To me one of the points that came across was the first clear indication of the American divestment of  Democracy from the highest power centre. Days of promoting Democracy are over. Nations can take their own path to it. 

The other interesting point about tailoring the laws of the nation to suit the religions practices, including tax laws that control contribution to charity by American Muslims, indicate extending  statute liberties to religious edicts beyond Christianity, whenever it is politically convenient. Seen this way, it could also hurt many of our liberals and secular pundits. 

The other issue that was pointed out to me was the pre-occupation of the American President with the Abrahamic religions as key players in constructing future world and him not mentioning Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism. But, today, American government has acknowledged that the Islamic world is its nemesis, others are not. 

I am happily ignorant of any responses to this speech. We need to recognize that this is the Americans trying to resolve their own problems with the Islamic world and we will all be impacted by these changes. Certain scenarios I foresee:

(a) if Pakistan goes back to Musharraf or his successors, Americans may support him and forget Democracy as long as it suits its interests, it may even start a dialogue with Taliban in the coming years

(b) Global violence (and violence dependent commerce and industry) may look for softer targets to occupy themselves, we in India can be one, if Americans as large arms exporters and Terrorists from Islamic world can find a common soft target in India, we will see more attacks from the later and more sales of arms from the former, bleeding our economy both ways 

(c) the global Islamic agenda, particularly in financing social initiatives in Islamic countries may come to be dominated by American interests, this could mean more external funding for Islamic groups in India and elsewhere from American sources, promoting American idea of Islam

(d) a new global Islamic identity will be paraded across the world, the 'stereotyping of Islam' which we all suffered ever since Sept 11, will be corrected by American consent and collaboration and we will suffer a different 'stereotyping of Islam' now, perhaps with some sugar coating this time. With their global media domination, when America wants to change someone's image, the rest of the world has to suffer with it. 

(e) when the President of America says, 'countries of majority Muslims', he does not mean where majority of Muslims live as much as the countries who prescribe to and control the  Muslim identity of the world, largely from west Asia. This shows the American interests rest firmly with the globalized, centralized and controlled institutions, same for faith systems, same for economy, same for politics. 

The full text is available at:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_re_us/obama_text

Aparna Sen, Citizen Journalist and Violence in Politics

Citizen Journalist concept has its high moments - Aparna Sen as a Citizen Journalist reporting on the Kolkotta bandh!



But, frankly I think the entire intellectual move in Kolkotta to protest against the CPI-M doesnt add up to anything. Buddadeb now says that the Film Festival will not be affected because some people decide to boycott it, that could be G.Bush talking for you. And the intellectuals cannot launch a new party or a movement, it is an evening out or a day out for them (or a CJ for a day) as they get back to their businesses, the cadres get back to theirs.

Nandhigram is not a sign of a weakness in the Communist outlook, it is the growing culture of violence across the Indian political spectrum, be it the right wing or the left. Recently the leader of the Congress party in TN was stabbed with a spear and the police are yet to catch the culprits , there have been reports of violent attacks in even supposedly sane states not to mention the perinneal violent ones. Unless we understand this is a larger issue, we will keep fighting it as an isolated instance and will only indulge in a blame game.

The roots of the increase in violence as a genuine expression of political position lies elsewhere, it is important that this is acknowledged. Violence as an expression of the crowd and the most successful one to get any point across stems from our insensitivity to listen to crowds that are non-violent. Recently there was a large crowd that gathered in Delhi from all over India consisting of Tribals walking non-violently to highlight the issue of land rights. Except forming yet another committee to look into these issues, I don't think anything else has been done so far. When you fail to listen to a non-violent crowd, you contribute towards the creation of the violent crowd. There is no getting away from it. The media wallows in projecting the violent crowd, so much so, that the Tehelka expose has been reduced to a 'media strategy' or 'sting' whose efficacy and timing has been discussed more than its contents and significance. That the expose could not pull down a government and a nation wide protest shows how much of violence has been accepted in this country and people are no longer surprised.

September 11 (or should we say, 9/11) and what it entails…

Five years after Sept. 11, bin-Laden is still at large, a recent video supposedly of him plotting the twin-tower bombing is a reminder well timed that he continues to cast his shadow on the international policies, commerce and security.

A US govt. report released yesterday absolves Saddam Hussein of all connections with bin-Laden thereby knocking off one more of the primary reasons for invading Iraq by the USA, with many earlier reports already saying that there were no WMD in Iraq, the Bush administration stands with its head held high on a pedestal of lies, utter lies and nothing but lies w.r.to the Iraq war. They ought not to deny some of the lies as it would make them look like fools.

The five years have produced an annual ritual of ground zero articles, more on ‘clash of civilizations’, a witch hunt on Islam and more concretization and polarization of the world into small groups of those who believe in their faith’s ability solve all world problems – whether the faith be Islam, Christianity, Democracy, Trade or Modern Science & Technology.

Sadly, these groups don’t lead a mutually exclusive existence. The globalized world is so highly inter-connected that the life in many urban centres of the world are inter-connected and cannot survive without other cities functioning in other parts of the world. A new global inter-dependency means, more engagement with each other. In a concretization of groups through their faith systems, the first premise is the absolute and non-negotiable correctness of oneself with a corollary that everyone else is wrong. Such fanatical holding to ones’ position should have resulted in a highly fragmented world. But that is not the case, the world is not in fragments and seems to get more inter-connected, which means either there is something wrong with what is uniting the world or there is something wrong with such groupism. Perhaps there is something wrong with both.

However, this has resulted in each group accepting the globalized world order and giving it ones own interpretation and colour to hide ones’ opportunistic and hypocratic holding on to the faith system. The Communist CM of W.Bengal giving hurried clean chit to the Cola giants and so many myopic discussion on Vande Mataram rendering are recent examples in our own political sphere, which is only a sample of what is happening across the globe.

There are no puritans of any faith system, there are no ‘orthodoxy’ but more of the meaningless ‘fanatical’, there is no ‘ideologues’ or ‘conservatives’ any longer whom one can look up to for what is it to conserve a tradition, a view, a political ideology or a religion. The days of disciplined adherence to an idea that is not compromised in the day to day turmoil, seems to have disappeared even the realm of science which in earlier centuries saw the fearless adherence and pursuit of truth. Commerce and concretization of resources has ensured that the scientific enquiry too is pre-validated through investor’s microscope. Yet there is no lack of fanatics who hold science and technology as a solution to every human problem far superior to any other such solution ever found by humanity, this group may become one of the largest group of fanatics in the coming days (if not already).

The prejudices that are imposed by the polarized media, restrict even interaction across certain group boundaries, repeatedly emphasizing its point of view and ensuring that the status quo demons remain demons.

September 11th, 1893 saw Swami Vivekananda give a lecture in the Chicago Congress of Religions in which he stated that the day of ‘bigotory’ is over and mutual respect and inter-dependency has to be respected. Thirteen years later, in 1906, Mahatma Gandhi convened a meeting in which the idea of a Peaceful Struggle ‘with God as the witness’ was proclaimed (read the article by Venu and Dilip in the HINDU on this), and perhaps the most amazing social tool of the previous century, called Satyagraha was born.

Both Gandhiji and earlier Swami Vivekananda prescribed by the Bhagavat Gita and some of the verses from this ancient Hindu book illustrates our current situation. Arjuna (who represents the normal human being in the conversation between the human and the God), asks Krishna, “knowingly why does a human being commit crime? What is it that impels him, despite his knowledge to commit a crime?”, the response holds a lesson to modern society,
…

Kama esa, Krodha esa rajoguna samudbhava
Mahasano Mahapapma viddyenamiha
vairinam (3.37)
‘It is sensual desire, it is anger, born out of
rajo-guna;
Great Craving and Great Crime; know this as the enemy here (in
human life)

Consumerist attitude, fuelled by Desire and Crime fuelled by Anger these can over shadow any knowledge and overwhelm the knowledge holder. Aren’t these our problems today, unrestrained consumerism that is often promoted as a ‘way of life’ that wants to consume as much resources as possible even at the cost of destroying others and an anger so complete and blind that it deprives a group of its human-ness. And both these groups accepting their position as non-negotiable. Sept 11 is a celebration of this impasse, a statement on the failure of knowledge before consumerism and anger. A reminder that the commercialization of knowledge is but a subservient of a un-restrained desire of a fanatical trading community; that terrorism is but an angry response to such greediness.