Clash of civilizations

[Guest]

I receivd this in my email

<span style='color:red'>How does God want my husband to beat me??.</span>

To: <Unitedminorities@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: <CaribbeanHindus@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [unitedminorities] How does God want my husband to beat me??.
Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 18:45:40 -0500


In an open correspondence (copies to others) I responded as follows
(23/10/03):

".....You advocate that Muslim women should read the Quran translated into
their mother tongues, and not in the original Arabic. But wasn't the Word
of God revealed only in Arabic, so how is a Muslim woman - or anyone else -
to know that the translation reports God's Word authentically?

Assume I am a Muslim woman and my mother tongue is English. Here are six
translations of the Koran 4.34 that is the basic verse in regard to us:

1. "Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God
has gifted the one above the other, and on account of the outlay they make
from their substance for them. Virtuous women are obedient, careful, during
the husband's absence, because God has of them been careful. But chide those
for whose refractoriness you have cause to fear; remove them into beds
apart, and scourge them: but if they are obedient to you, then seek not
occasion against them: verily, God is High, Great!" (Rodwell's version of
the Koran, Quran, 4:34)

2. "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior
to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good
women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded
them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send
them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further
action against them. Surely God is high, supreme." (Dawood's version of the
Koran, Quran, 4:34)

3. "Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to
excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support
of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which
Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them
and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Then if they obey you, seek
not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great." (Pickthall's
version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)

4. "Men are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has
preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have
expended of their property. Righteous women are therefore obedient, guarding
the secret for God's guarding. And those you fear may be rebellious
admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them. If they then obey
you, look not for any way against them; God is All high, All great."
(Arberry's version of the Koran, Quran, 4:34)

5. "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them
to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women
are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as
to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them
alone in their sleeping places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not
seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great. (Shakir's version of
the Koran, Quran, 4:34)

6. "Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has
given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them
from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and
guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to
those women on whom part you fear disloyalty and ill conduct, admonish them
(first), (next), refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly);
but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance)
for Allah is Most High, Great (above you all). (Ali's version of the Koran,
Quran, 4:34< /FONT>)
I understand the sixth translator interpolated the bracketed words. You
will see that there are significant variations in the six versions. Now, as
a disobedient wife, not only can my husband deprive me of sexual relations
(with him, and therefore totally, since I'm told - I don't know Arabic -
only men are authorised by God to have sex outside marriage) but the degree
of pain/humiliation God authorises my husband to inflict on me is naturally
of considerably import to me: there is a major difference between beating
(lightly?) and scourging. Does God want my husband to tap me on the cheek,
give me a tight slap, buffet me, or whip me, or any or all according to his
mood? Of course, I don't suppose it matters to me as a woman (Muslim or
not) that God does not give females any comparable right over their errant
males. And while my husband& nbsp;can deny me sex, I must always be
availabe to him (2.223).
You refer to oppression by Muslim men, and Muslim women claiming their
God-granted rights. Do I presume correctly that here we must distinguish
between sub-categories of women (Muslim/infidel/slave/captive - e.g., 23.6,
70.30) since not only has God apparently granted preferential rights to all
Muslim men over women as a category, but the rights appear to vary amongst
the sub-categories.
In the context of your impassioned plea for enabling "Muslim women to climb
out of the black hole of ignorance, inequality, and indignity", and your
very valid critique that historically almost all interpretation of God's
Word has been by men, I am not quoting from the Hadith but only from the
Quran (because only the latter is actually God's Word; the former are
interpretations mainly by males and, as you note, "it is safe to say that
they can't be relied upon to produce interpretations that are favourable to
women's rights"). Again, I don't suppose it matters to me as a woman
(Muslim or not) that God, the Archangel Gabriel, and The Prophet are also
all male - but, perhaps, as is suggested from your essay, these three are
really pre-Islamic ("the first person to accept Islam was Khadija") and we
may define them as incapable of gender bias. < /P>
You report Khadija was "an independent and wealthy businesswoman". Clearly,
pre-Islamic women had civic and commercial rights in addition to the
freedom/right to choose their husbands, even much younger men and from
amongst their employees. In the context of the "struggle for the rights to
Muslim women" of which you write, please do clarify whether Khadija, after
accepting Islam, retained her civic/commercial rights, or did she become
subordinate in these and all other respects to her former employee? We know
that God granted Muslim men polygamous rights - but did God grant women
comparable rights to polyandry and divorce?
From the feminist perspective, the only Islamic law should be the Quran
itself. As you suggest, all else is interpretation, and women have as much
a right to interpret as men, including interpretation of the Quran itself.
I'm not clear why you lay so much stress on the translated Quran. Instead,
for Muslim women to understand God's Word correctly, I believe it is
imperative that they all learn to read the Quran in Arabic. Or
alternatively, that authorised versions by women scholars be brought
out....."
In reply, Gandhi (now writing as Majid) clarified (24/10/03):
".....The Quran is written in classical Arabic, and even native Arabic
speakers are unable to understand classical Arabic easily. So that's one
reason for my suggestion. Secondly, there is a tradition among muslims in
the sub-continent to make their children learn to read the Quran in Arabic,
without understanding a word of it. You'll come across many many women whose
only education consists of reading and /or memorizing the arabic script of
the Quran. Which is why I think, it would be better for such women to read
it in their own language, provided they are literate in that language....
As far as interpretation goes, even when scholars have read the Quran in
Arabic, they have come up with differring interpretaions. There is no
guarantee that reading it in Arabic would give somebody an interpretation
which is unanimous across history and across cultures. As you yourself cite
from the verses about women, in which men are supposed to be the protectors
and maintainers of women, there can be several interpretations of it, even
when interpreted by those who know Arabic.
The verses you have quoted are the subject of active discourse among muslim
women scholars of the Quran....They propose that the Quran can't be
interpreted in isolation from the socio-cultural and historical context in
which it was revealed.

Men were (or can be ) a degree above women because of their financial
superiority over women, and can claim to be protectors or maintainers of
women if the woman is not economically independant. If a woman is
economically independant, no man has a right to be her maintainer or
protector. This is a contextual interpretation of those verses by some
contemporary women scholars.

AS far as I know, Khadija was able to maintain her business and her
independance after marriage. Islam grants women the rights to retian their
property after marriage, and there is no need for the wife to hand over her
property or other income to her husband. Or to even change her surname.
However, this is a far cry from what happens in reality today......"

But my very specific question about how I'm to be beaten hadn't been
answered. So I wrote again (24/10/03):

".....As far as I understand, the Quran is a defining and a definitive
text - it is THE and only identifying text for Muslims...Morever, the Quran
literally represents the Word of God. And God's Word was revealed in
(classical) Arabic. To a true Muslim, adherence to God's Will as revealed
through His Word is NECESSARY. Okay, given the revelation was in classical
Arabic, it needs authorised interpreters to translate it AUTHENTICALLY, so
that the true Muslim knows s/he is conforming to God's Will.

To interpret contextually, which is clearly what you favour, is to go beyond
and outside the defining/definitive text. For example, you interpret 4.34
only in terms of financial superiority. But isn't this sociocentric? Why
must superiority be linked to earning capacity? Why not to learning? So
that a learned wife can be considered superior to her husband even as he
provides for her financially? A plain reading of 4.34 (I use the Pickthall
translation) has God DEFINING men as superior to women. That women earn or
have their own property does not - at least in 4.34 - change their
hierarchical inferiority in relation to men. It is as the Ali Brothers said
of Mahatma Gandhi, that even the worst Muslim is definitively superior to
the Mahatma.

Context can also be disputed. In a letter in The Pioneer, Sept 5, 2003, Mr
Badrul Islam of Aligarh wrote that "before Islam’s advent, women in Saudi
Arabia were treated worse than animals. They were buried alive, and the
birth of a girl in any family was thought of as a curse. Islam gave to women
status and honour equal to men domestically and socially". I've heard this
version of pre-Islamic history from a leading Indian (woman) feminist too.
Indeed, it seems to be the popularly accepted version. Yet, surely Khadija's
example that you gave was not a unique case. And she was socially and
financially superior to the man she married. So, in acquiring equality, she
actually lost status!

Whom are we to believe?

And so who is to approve an interpretation as authentic? So far, generally
speaking, in the Islamic world such interpretation has been by mullahs and
through fatwas. There was a recent news item that there are now mullahnis
(do I have the words right??) in Hyderabad who have been deemed competent
(note, by males!!) to issue fatwas but (if I recall correctly) only in
matters pertaining strictly to women. However, at least that is a
beginning. Frankly, in regard to determining God's Word for ourselves
across the world, I don't see any alternative to authorised versions in the
different languages - though, as we know, every translation takes away from
the original (especi ally crucial in this case, because it is the original
that is God's Word) and, as we know from the history of the Bible or, from
the example of the six versions of 4.34 that I quoted, meanings do change
across versions.

I think the essence of the point I'm trying to make is in my question that
you did not answer. A "good" woman is an "obedient" woman - this has
nothing to do with my earning capacity, but is as God says it. As a
disobedient wife, must I be tapped on my cheek, or flayed with a whip? If
you say wives who are not obedient should not suffer corporal punishment
because times have changed, I respectfully submit to you that you are
committing blasphemy." [emphasis added]

And Majid replied (29/10/03):

"According to Muslims, the Quran is the definitive text for them. Agreed.
However, I don't see a problem in interpreting it in the light of prevailing
contemporary social and clutural conditions.
As an example, Islam does not outright abolish the institution of slavery.
What are we to make of that? it does place great emphasis on freeing slaves,
and provides several methods and opprotunites for doing so. Islam also
allows men to have sexual relationships with their slave women. Since the
institution of slavery does not exist in our culture, it follows that, the
passages pertaining to it, can't be applied in our present time.
I think that's the approach I would take with the question of men being the
maintaners/protectors of women. If the socio-cultural context for such
superiority can be abolished, then that precept can't be applied to
present-day gender relations. Which is why my great emphasis on the
educational and economic empowerment of muslim women.

And if the first step towards this empowerment can come from a thorough
knowledge of their religious book, the Quran, well, let's use it as an
empowerment tool. It's a tool, and if used with creativity, like all tools,
the fruits of this endeavor may offer some happy and unexpected
consequences.

My reference to economic reasons for men's perceived superiority over women
was simply an assertion of the fact that so often, it is due to their
superior financial assets that men are able to exercise their power over
women, and even over other men.

The Ali brothers may have said that illogical thing about Gandhi, but no
enlightened muslim or other human being can possibly endorse such a
statement. I would again urge that we (esp women) need to pay more
attention to the ethical and egalitarian voice of Islam, where it is clear
that the most righteous person (man or woman) is the closest to God. And not
one who is muslim only through birth or conversion.

As far as the status of women in pre-islamic Arabia, I'm not an expert in
that area. My limited knowledge tells me that it wasn't an all out bleak
scenario, which is what most male Muslim scholars would have you believe.
There were aspects of women's lives that afforded them more independance
then. Some tribes allowed the practice of polyandry, and women were also
renowned as poets and ran their own businesses. Did Islam lower that status?
it might be appropriate to say that it refashioned it. It did allow women
more rights in many areas. But it restricted others, for instance, it
abolished polyandry. Then again, I'm not an expert in this area, and my
concern is more with the plight of women in our present times .

Adherence to social roles is stressed in Islam. So wives are expected to
perform their duties, but so are husbands. My reading tells me that each
has to adhere to their roles, in order to maintain the family, familial
harmony and social order. The gender heirarchy that you mention in spousal
relationships is something that the male ulema have reinforced, to their own
advantage and ofcourse, to maintain the status quo. And unless a substantial
number of new women (re)interpreters of the Quran free themsleves from the
patriarchal mindset, and take a woman-centered approach to Islam, I don't
see much change taking place in gender relations in muslim societies."

Fair enough, but note my unanswered question - how am I to be beaten by my
husband? So I wrote once more (3/11/03):

"The basic point, as you so very rightly indicate, is whether the Quran is
to be taken literally or contextually. My submission is that, given that it
is the Word of God, an interpretation can be contextual only when there is
an ambiguity in the Word. When the Word is unambiguous, there is no scope
for interpretation. Such is the case with the (at any rate, sexual and role)
submissiveness mandated by 4.34 and 2.223. Interpreting differently from
the plain text would be to question the Word of God, and that is blasphemy
punishable (if I am not mistaken) by death. How else, Nighat ji, am I to
interpret your repeatedly avoiding answering a very specific question I've
requested you more than once to answer ??

A useful analogy in regard to literalism vs contextualism can be drawn from
the historical development of Christianity. I shall be happy to place it
before you for your comments but, Nighat ji, you must forgive me for
suggesting that a rational discussion to be continued fruitfully needs to
face issues - and answer questions - boldly and honestly !"

And that was that!!

Till today Majid/ has not explained how a good Muslim husband must obey
God's commandment to beat a disobedient wife.

My position is very straightforward:

1. The Holy Koran is God's Word revealed to His Only Prophet.
2. To question God's Word is blasphemy; to deny it is apostasy,
punishable with death.
3. Through Koran 4.34, God DEFINES women as subordinate to men and
ORDAINS that a disobedient wife be beaten. There is NO ambiguity about this
whatever, and the husband - or other interpreter of Koran 4.34 - commits
blasphemy by questioning this, or apostasy by denying it.
4. The only ambiguity is apparently in how the disobedient wife must be
beaten. It is here that interpretation can be contextual.
Perhaps my reasoning is erroneous.

How does God want my husband to beat me??.

[G.Subramaniam]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.j...w=Beni%20Morris

"There is a deep problem in Islam. It’s a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn’t have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide.”

I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.

“True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it’s not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What’s important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him.”

------

Survival of the fittest

By Ari Shavit

Benny Morris says he was always a Zionist. People were mistaken when they labeled him a post-Zionist, when they thought that his historical study on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem was intended to undercut the Zionist enterprise. Nonsense, Morris says, that's completely unfounded. Some readers simply misread the book. They didn't read it with the same detachment, the same moral neutrality, with which it was written. So they came to the mistaken conclusion that when Morris describes the cruelest deeds that the Zionist movement perpetrated in 1948 he is actually being condemnatory, that when he describes the large-scale expulsion operations he is being denunciatory. They did not conceive that the great documenter of the sins of Zionism in fact identifies with those sins. That he thinks some of them, at least, were unavoidable.

Two years ago, different voices began to be heard. The historian who was considered a radical leftist suddenly maintained that Israel had no one to talk to. The researcher who was accused of being an Israel hater (and was boycotted by the Israeli academic establishment) began to publish articles in favor of Israel in the British paper The Guardian.

Whereas citizen Morris turned out to be a not completely snow-white dove, historian Morris continued to work on the Hebrew translation of his massive work "Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001," which was written in the old, peace-pursuing style. And at the same time historian Morris completed the new version of his book on the refugee problem, which is going to strengthen the hands of those who abominate Israel. So that in the past two years citizen Morris and historian Morris worked as though there is no connection between them, as though one was trying to save what the other insists on eradicating.

Both books will appear in the coming month. The book on the history of the Zionist-Arab conflict will be published in Hebrew by Am Oved in Tel Aviv, while the Cambridge University Press will publish "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited" (it originally appeared, under the CUP imprint, in 1987). That book describes in chilling detail the atrocities of the Nakba. Isn't Morris ever frightened at the present-day political implications of his historical study? Isn't he fearful that he has contributed to Israel becoming almost a pariah state? After a few moments of evasion, Morris admits that he is. Sometimes he really is frightened. Sometimes he asks himself what he has wrought.

He is short, plump, and very intense. The son of immigrants from England, he was born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh and was a member of the left-wing Hashomer Hatza'ir youth movement. In the past, he was a reporter for the Jerusalem Post and refused to do military service in the territories. He is now a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva. But sitting in his armchair in his Jerusalem apartment, he does not don the mantle of the cautious academic. Far from it: Morris spews out his words, rapidly and energetically, sometimes spilling over into English. He doesn't think twice before firing off the sharpest, most shocking statements, which are anything but politically correct. He describes horrific war crimes offhandedly, paints apocalyptic visions with a smile on his lips. He gives the observer the feeling that this agitated individual, who with his own hands opened the Zionist Pandora's box, is still having difficulty coping with what he found in it, still finding it hard to deal with the internal contradictions that are his lot and the lot of us all.

Rape, massacre, transfer

Benny Morris, in the month ahead the new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians?

"The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.

"At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself."

According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?

"About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?

"From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."

Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"?

"Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist."

I don't hear you condemning him.

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."


When ethnic cleansing is justified

Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?

"There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.

"A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."

There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that.

"If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that."

So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?

"I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being."

You do not condemn them morally?

"No."

They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing."

And that was the situation in 1948?

"That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."

The term `to cleanse' is terrible.

"I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed."

What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hard-hearted.

"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.

"Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."

And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?

"That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."

And in our case it effectively justifies a population transfer.

"That's what emerges."

And you take that in stride? War crimes? Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of the Nakba?

"You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well."

The next transfer

You went through an interesting process. You went to research Ben-Gurion and the Zionist establishment critically, but in the end you actually identify with them. You are as tough in your words as they were in their deeds.

"You may be right. Because I investigated the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic character of the situation they faced and maybe I adopted part of their universe of concepts. But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered."

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?

"If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

I find it hard to believe what I am hearing.

"If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."

In his place, would you have expelled them all? All the Arabs in the country?

"But I am not a statesman. I do not put myself in his place. But as an historian, I assert that a mistake was made here. Yes. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake."

And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?

"If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs?

"The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified."

Cultural dementia

Besides being tough, you are also very gloomy. You weren't always like that, were you?

"My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or Sheli [a dovish party of the late 1970s], and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa."

If that's so, then the whole Oslo process was mistaken and there is a basic flaw in the entire worldview of the Israeli peace movement.

"Oslo had to be tried. But today it has to be clear that from the Palestinian point of view, Oslo was a deception. [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat did not change for the worse, Arafat simply defrauded us. He was never sincere in his readiness for compromise and conciliation."

Do you really believe Arafat wants to throw us into the sea?

"He wants to send us back to Europe, to the sea we came from. He truly sees us as a Crusader state and he thinks about the Crusader precedent and wishes us a Crusader end. I'm certain that Israeli intelligence has unequivocal information proving that in internal conversations Arafat talks seriously about the phased plan [which would eliminate Israel in stages]. But the problem is not just Arafat. The entire Palestinian national elite is prone to see us as Crusaders and is driven by the phased plan. That's why the Palestinians are not honestly ready to forgo the right of return. They are preserving it as an instrument with which they will destroy the Jewish state when the time comes. They can't tolerate the existence of a Jewish state - not in 80 percent of the country and not in 30 percent. From their point of view, the Palestinian state must cover the whole Land of Israel."

If so, the two-state solution is not viable; even if a peace treaty is signed, it will soon collapse.

"Ideologically, I support the two-state solution. It's the only alternative to the expulsion of the Jews or the expulsion of the Palestinians or total destruction. But in practice, in this generation, a settlement of that kind will not hold water. At least 30 to 40 percent of the Palestinian public and at least 30 to 40 percent of the heart of every Palestinian will not accept it. After a short break, terrorism will erupt again and the war will resume."

Your prognosis doesn't leave much room for hope, does it?

"It's hard for me, too. There is not going to be peace in the present generation. There will not be a solution. We are doomed to live by the sword. I'm already fairly old, but for my children that is especially bleak. I don't know if they will want to go on living in a place where there is no hope. Even if Israel is not destroyed, we won't see a good, normal life here in the decades ahead."

Aren't your harsh words an over-reaction to three hard years of terrorism?

"The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us. They made me understand that the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim hostility toward Jewish existence here is taking us to the brink of destruction. I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want. They want what happened to the bus to happen to all of us."

Yet we, too, bear responsibility for the violence and the hatred: the occupation, the roadblocks, the closures, maybe even the Nakba itself.

"You don't have to tell me that. I have researched Palestinian history. I understand the reasons for the hatred very well. The Palestinians are retaliating now not only for yesterday's closure but for the Nakba as well. But that is not a sufficient explanation. The peoples of Africa were oppressed by the European powers no less than the Palestinians were oppressed by us, but nevertheless I don't see African terrorism in London, Paris or Brussels. The Germans killed far more of us than we killed the Palestinians, but we aren't blowing up buses in Munich and Nuremberg. So there is something else here, something deeper, that has to do with Islam and Arab culture."

Are you trying to argue that Palestinian terrorism derives from some sort of deep cultural problem?

"There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide."

I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.

"True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him."

Explain the image: Who is the serial killer in the analogy?

"The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some way the Palestinian society itself as well. At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers."

What does that mean? What should we do tomorrow morning?

"We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us."

To fence them in? To place them under closure?

"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

War of barbarians

Benny Morris, have you joined the right wing?

"No, no. I still think of myself as left-wing. I still support in principle two states for two peoples."

But you don't believe that this solution will last. You don't believe in peace.

"In my opinion, we will not have peace, no."

Then what is your solution?

"In this generation there is apparently no solution. To be vigilant, to defend the country as far as is possible."

The iron wall approach?

"Yes. An iron wall is a good image. An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation. My colleague Avi Shlein described this well: What Jabotinsky proposed is what Ben-Gurion adopted. In the 1950s, there was a dispute between Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Ben-Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence here. He was right. That's not to say that we don't need diplomacy. Both toward the West and for our own conscience, it's important that we strive for a political solution. But in the end, what will decide their readiness to accept us will be force alone. Only the recognition that they are not capable of defeating us."

For a left-winger, you sound very much like a right-winger, wouldn't you say?

"I'm trying to be realistic. I know it doesn't always sound politically correct, but I think that political correctness poisons history in any case. It impedes our ability to see the truth. And I also identify with Albert Camus. He was considered a left-winger and a person of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts."

Are you a neo-conservative? Do you read the current historical reality in the terms of Samuel Huntington?

"I think there is a clash between civilizations here [as Huntington argues]. I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries: The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it."

The Muslims are barbarians, then?

"I think the values I mentioned earlier are values of barbarians - the attitude toward democracy, freedom, openness; the attitude toward human life. In that sense they are barbarians. The Arab world as it is today is barbarian."

And in your view these new barbarians are truly threatening the Rome of our time?

"Yes. The West is stronger but it's not clear whether it knows how to repulse this wave of hatred. The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat. A similar process took place in Rome. They let the barbarians in and they toppled the empire from within."

Is it really all that dramatic? Is the West truly in danger?

"Yes. I think that the war between the civilizations is the main characteristic of the 21st century. I think President Bush is wrong when he denies the very existence of that war. It's not only a matter of bin Laden. This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."

The situation as you describe it is extremely harsh. You are not entirely convinced that we can survive here, are you?

"The possibility of annihilation exists."

Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic person?

"The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. Nevertheless, it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next 20 years there could be an atomic war here."

If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?

"No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings."

Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the forgoing of Zionism.

"Yes. That's so. You have pared it down, but that's correct."

Would you agree that this historical reality is intolerable, that there is something inhuman about it?

"Yes. But that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."

So what you are telling me is that you live the Palestinian Nakba of the past less than you live the possible Jewish Nakba of the future?

"Yes. Destruction could be the end of this process. It could be the end of the Zionist experiment. And that's what really depresses and scares me."

The title of the book you are now publishing in Hebrew is "Victims." In the end, then, your argument is that of the two victims of this conflict, we are the bigger one.

"Yes. Exactly. We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late."

[G.Subramaniam]

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArt...p?ID=11483

The Conspiratorial Mind of the Arab World
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 29, 2003


Have you heard? Saddam Hussein is in Tel Aviv. He has been an agent for the U.S. and Israel since 1980, and followed instructions given him by George W. Bush himself in a phone conversation last winter about how to behave when American troops entered Iraq. The capture of Saddam was an elaborate charade designed to bolster the flagging morale of American troops in Iraq. The bearded, broken man who was captured wasn’t Saddam; any keen observer would know that Saddam had a mole or wart on his cheek, but that the crude double in the hands of the Americans has no such mark. What’s more, in the footage of Saddam’s hideaway, the foliage is from late summer! Clearly the Americans are trying to fool us with months-old archival footage that has nothing to do with Saddam at all!

Saddam’s sons Uday and Qusay, meanwhile, are in Monte Carlo, continuing to live the high life. American troops spirited them out of the country and staged their deaths in order to demoralize the Iraqi resistance.

This kind of talk, fantastic and unbelievable as it is, is rampant in the Muslim world today. The idea that the Americans faked the capture of Saddam, and that the genuine article is still at large somewhere, is just the latest installment in a string of paranoid fantasies that have captured the imagination of untold numbers of Muslims worldwide. Most notorious, of course, is the idea that Mossad or the CIA, or both, actually flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. If Muslims were involved at all, goes the story, it was only to take the rap and justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan (as well as, coming soon to a theater of war near you, Syria and Iran).

While courageous souls such as the American Ambassador to Egypt, David Welch, have confronted these lurid fictions head-on in meetings with Muslim media figures, the stories persist — in no small part because some of these have been spread at the highest levels. Not long after 9/11, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Yasir Arafat declaimed to an appreciative audience in Ramallah: "Oh brothers, there is a conspiracy to Judaize Jerusalem." MEMRI also reports that Uday, before he took up his place at those great Monte Carlo gaming tables in the sky, wrote in an Iraqi paper in 2002 that Iran was "part of the new conspiracy against Iraq and that the Iranians were ready to cross the border at any moment to materialize their ambitions."

And of course, the mother of all conspiracy theories, that noxious incitement to genocide known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, still circulates widely in the Muslim world. Nor would an inquiring mind have to go to a seedy bookstore in a shabby part of town to pick up a smudgy copy of this implausible account, cooked up by the Czar’s secret police in the 19th century, of the Zionists’ plot to rule the world. An up-to-date conspiracy theorist would need only a television: during this past Ramadan, Hizballah’s worldwide satellite TV network broadcast a thirty-part dramatization of "the criminal history of Zionism" that was quite similar to the Protocols — the genuine article was already dramatized on Egyptian television the previous year. More literary types could repair to the new Library of Alexandria, the heir to the legendary collections that shone in antiquity as beacons of civilization. There, until an international outcry forced its removal, the first Arabic translation of the Protocols was prominently displayed next to a Torah in a manuscript exhibit. According to MEMRI, a library official, Dr. Yousef Ziedan, explained that the Protocols "is more important to the Zionist Jews of the world than the Torah, because they conduct Zionist life according to it... It is only natural to place the book in the framework of an exhibit of Torah [scrolls]."

Amid all this there are glimmers of self-awareness, particularly in post-Saddam Iraq. "Every time Arab peoples are afflicted with disaster, defeats, or tragedies, it is always blamed on a Zionist, colonialist, or American imperialist conspiracy." This strikingly honest assessment comes from Iraq’s Al-Ittihad daily. Unfortunately, however, it’s unlikely that conspiracy paranoia will be extinguished in the Islamic world anytime soon. After all, it has deep roots.

A fundamental element of Islamic culture is an implacable belief in its own superiority. This idea is rooted in the Qur’an and Islam: the revelation to Muhammad, according to orthodox Muslim belief, is the final and perfect revelation from the one true God. It corrects and abrogates all previous revelations, including the Torah and Gospel that form the foundation of the culture of the non-Muslim West. The Jews and Christians who remain in the world after the time of Muhammad are renegades who have rejected this final revelation out of corruption and malice. At certain points in the Middle Ages, this Muslim self-understanding meshed quite well with the realities of the world: a unified Muslim empire encroached inexorably upon a Christendom riven by squabbles and overmatched in both military might and technology.

But when all that began to change, and when the squabbling mini-states of Western Europe began to chip away at the former domains of the Mehmet the Conqueror and Suleiman the Magnificent, the Muslim world found that it had no framework to deal with defeat. The superiority of the House of Islam was a given. How then did it lie defeated, divided, colonized? Well, it must not have been a fair fight. The Muslims must have fallen victim to shabby, shadowy trickery — to a conspiracy. After all, even the Qur’an itself portrays Jews and Christians as scheming liars: "When they come to [Muhammad], they say: ‘We believe’: but in fact they enter with a mind against Faith, and they go out with the same, but Allah knoweth fully all that they hide" (Sura 5:61). Jews are even portrayed as fabricating divine revelations in their lust for money: they "write the Book with their own hands, and then say: ‘This is from Allah,’ to traffic with it for miserable price!" (Sura 2:79).

The orthodox Muslim view of verses like these (and there are many others like them) is not that they are seventh-century polemic, but words spoken by Allah himself which retain their validity for all time. Consequently all too many Muslims today see them as revelatory of the twenty-first century world. The crafty, dishonest Jewish and Christian renegades are up to their same old tricks. But even though Bush, Sharon and Co. have all the world’s resources at their disposal as they weave their conspiracies and deceptions to ensnare the Muslim world, the Muslim can see through them: he has the Qur’an.

This is the point at which all these conspiracy theories stop being merely amusing or pathetic and start to appear genuinely lethal. For what bridges of genuine trust can be built with people who view the world from this perspective? The epidemic of conspiracy stories in Middle East and Iraq in particular today betrays a mistrust that is far deeper than most anyone has imagined, and is in fact founded upon fervently held religious concepts. We may fervently hope that cooler heads will prevail, and it isn’t inconceivable that they ultimately will. But it would be wise not to expect too much in the short term.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery Publishing), and Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter Books).

[G.Subramaniam]

Arun Shourie has written that similar indoctrination goes on against hindus in Pakistani and BD madrasas


http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/webl...ive=122003

For those people, MEMRI translates a mind-blowing selection of Palestinian Authority Sermons 2000-2003. Every preacher in this report is on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority, and the sermons are not only heard by those who attend the mosque; they are broadcast every Friday on official PA TV.

And these are the rantings of madmen:

Sheikh Muhammad Abu Al-Hunud stated in a sermon on March 28, 2003, “If, God forbid, something happens to Iraq, the aggression and the Crusade will turn tomorrow against the Koran… God forbid, his second assault is on the Koran, [he wants] to change verses and to mess with Allah’s book, to Americanize the region, Americanize the religion, Americanize the Koran, Americanize Muhammad’s message… To my brothers in Iraq, to the President of Iraq, to the Iraqi leadership, to the Iraqi people… Strike, my brother; may your right arm, oh proud Iraq, be strong… strike Allah’s enemies with it. Strike with it the enemies of humanity… from the pulpits of Al-Azhar and other mosques around the world, that any Muslim who does not stand by Iraq and support it against the American-British-Crusaders cruel attack… Allah, grant victory to the Iraqi army… Allah, defeat America and its allies… Allah, purify the Islamic soil from the American and British treason and defilement… Allah, make their possessions a booty for the Muslims, Allah, annihilate them and their weapons, Allah, make their children orphans and their women widows…”
Madmen with long, long memories:

Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris also frequently states that the battle between Muslims and the U.S. is a religious war that has its roots centuries ago. In a sermon on September 5, 2003, he stated, “If we go back in the time tunnel 1400 years, we will find that history repeats itself… Byzantium represents America in the west… America will collapse, as Byzantium collapsed in the west… The Prophet [Muhammad] could, by means of unbroken ranks, conquer Byzantium, the greatest power compared to today’s America - and this without a single martyr falling from among the Muslims… The Prophet could, by means of the unity of the Muslim ranks and its awakening, defeat the America of that time, as we will defeat America as long as it supports our enemy, as long as America insists on being against our people and against our cause and our holy places, and against our people and our leadership… Indeed, we consider America to be our No. 1 enemy… America is our No. 1 enemy, and we see it as our No. 1 enemy as long as we learn from the lessons of the Battle of Tabouk [which took place in October 630 AD ] :’Make ready for them whatever you can of armed strength and of mounted pickets’ [Koran 8:60]. We are prepared and ready, but victory is from Allah…”
Madmen enraptured with sick visions of martyrdom and a paradise that’s an adolescent sexual fantasy:

Sheikh Isma’il Aal Radhwan stated, “[Even when] a martyr’s organs are being chopped off, and he turns into torn organs that spread all over, in order to meet Allah, Muhammad, and his friends, it would not be [considered] a loss… This is the honor given to our martyrs, the martyrs of the Islamic nation, who were killed due to their loyalty to Allah... The sacrifice of convoys of martyrs [will continue] until Allah grants us victory very soon. The willingness for sacrifice and for death we see amongst those who were cast by Allah into a war with the Jews, should not come at all as a surprise… Oh believing brothers, we do not feel a loss... The martyr, if he meets Allah, is forgiven with the first drop of blood; he is saved from the torments of the grave; he sees his place in Paradise; he is saved from the Great Horror [of the day of judgment]; he is given 72 black-eyed women; he vouches for 70 of his family to be accepted to Paradise; he is crowned with the Crown of glory, whose precious stone is better than all of this world and what is in it…”
Madmen disseminating a foul death culture that may be unlike anything ever seen before on this sad planet:

Palestinian Mufti Sheikh Ikrimeh Sabri also praises martyrdom in his sermons: “We tell them: in as much as you love life - the Muslim loves death and martyrdom. There is a great difference between he who loves the hereafter and he who loves this world. The Muslim loves death and [strives for] martyrdom. He does not fear the oppression of the arrogant or the weapons of the blood-letters. The blessed and sacred soil of Palestine has vomited all the invaders and all the colonialists throughout history and it will soon vomit, with Allah’s help, the [present] occupiers.”

The concept of educating children to become martyrs occurs regularly in PA sermons. Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi, one of the most popular Imams, is especially vocal on this issue. During one sermon, he repeats the following discussion he had with a child who approached him about becoming a suicide bomber: “ A young man said to me: ‘I am 14 years old, and I have four years left before I blow myself up’ ... We, the Muslims on this good and blessed land, are all - each one of us - seekers of Martyrdom ... The Koran is very clear on this: The greatest enemies of the Islamic nation are the Jews, may Allah fight them ... Blessings for whoever assaulted a soldier ... Blessings for whoever has raised his sons on the education of Jihad and Martyrdom; blessings for whoever has saved a bullet in order to stick it in a Jew’s head ... “ On another occasion, Madhi stated, “ Shame and remorse on whoever refrained from raising his children on Jihad ... Blessings to whoever waged Jihad for the sake of Allah; blessings to whoever raided for the sake of Allah; blessings to whoever put a belt of explosives on his body or on his sons’ and plunged into the midst of the Jews, crying ‘Allahu Akbar, praise to Allah, There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His messenger’ ... Allah, show us a black day for the Jews, like the day of ‘Aad and Thamud. Allah, turn them into pillage for us. Allah, we strive for martyrdom for your sake...”

Even if there was only one Palestinian child left, he or she would sacrifice himself for the sake of Jihad, Madhi stated in another sermon : “Even if they slaughter all of the Palestinian people and the only survivors will be one single Palestinian baby girl and one single Palestinian baby boy, the baby boy will marry the baby girl and they will give birth to the one who will liberate Jerusalem from the defilement of the Jews ... While they [the Palestinians] sacrifice the last Palestinian child and the last Palestinian fetus, they [the Arab nations] will satisfy themselves with victories on the soccer courts ... It was rightly claimed that a thousand verbal shells cannot compare to one shell made of iron. It was rightly claimed that what was taken by force will be regained only by the use of force. We must prepare ourselves in accordance with the religion of Allah and the Law of Allah. We must educate our children on the love of Jihad for the sake of Allah and the love of fighting for the sake of Allah.”

There’s much more in this vein in MEMRI’s report; it’s all worth reading, to see the mentality of the Islamic death cult that has reached its full flower in the Palestinian Authority. One more quote, because it features one of our least favorite people: Hanan Ashrawi, interviewed about these hate sermons by Tony Snow:

Tony Snow: What I would like to do is read to you just a few statements that appeared on Palestinian TV on August 3 of this year, in a sermon broadcast over the television network, here is the quote:

“All weapons must be aimed at the Jews… Whom the Koran describes as monkeys and pigs. Whoever can fight the Jews with his weapons should go out to the battle; whoever can fight with a machine gun should go out; whoever can fight with a sword or knife should go out; whoever can fight them with his hands should go out… Nothing will deter them, except the color of their filthy people’s blood; nothing will deter them except for us voluntarily detonating ourselves in their midst.”

That is from Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi . Now, the question is, that being on your national TV, should people not view that as an endorsement of those tactics?

Hanan Ashrawi: Well, frankly, I haven’t heard this sermon, but had it been actually said, I certainly question the sources, but had it been broadcast, certainly I would condemn it.

Tony Snow: We understand that, as a matter of fact, hate language is used by both sides. The unusual factor here is that it is on a television channel that you and the Legislative Council and Yasser Arafat control. You’re responsible for the content…

Hanan Ashrawi: No we don’t control it.

Tony Snow: You don’t control your own television network?

Hanan Ashrawi: No, no. There is no censorship or control on those and I never heard this speech, and I will have to take your word for it, although I would like to know your sources.

[acharya]

INDIANS HAVE NEVER TALKED ABOUT INDIA IN THIS WAY BEFORE: VS NAIPAUL
Times of India, Dec. 5, 1993

Mr L.K. Sharma (LKS)'s remarks:...Naipaul's remarks about Hindu resurgence were
all the more shocking because they came in the aftermath of the demolition of
the Ayodhya mosque, when India was emotionally surcharged. The context can
change the message. Now after months have gone by, I met Naipaul to let him
eleborate on his comments:

LKS: If the present assertion by a section of Hindus is to be seen as a
reaction to repression by past rulers belonging to a different faith, why
did it take so long? Why now and not 25 years earlier?

VSN: Things take an immense amount of time. Things do not occur in a month.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Essentially the awakening to history and getting to understand your place in
the world depends on the re of your society, and societies change over
generations. </span>From what I notice, everyone in India is feeling these stirrings.
This is what development over the past decades has led to. Development is not
simply something that you talk about. It does not occur in isolation. It
affects everything. When people begin to have more food and more security,
they begin to have a greater sense of themselves.
And you have to go back to recent history. When Iqbal began to do his
thinking in the 30's, he laid the foundation of some of the problems we have
today (by providing a theoretical underpinning to the idea of partition on the
basis of religion). Iqbal said that the Islamic religion is not a matter of
private conscience like some other religions. Islam required a society on
its own because of the nature of its beliefs. What is happening in India now is
a delayed response to Iqbal. Why not 10 years earlier? Because things were
wretched. Things have got better. People were not ready earlier. The better
things get, the more these feelings of self become accentuated...

LKS: Some may say that time is a great healer and if one goes on talking
about the historical burden and about a history that is not kind, one will
only be licking one's wounds. It will interrupt the process of reconciliation,
progress and modernisation and set the stage for perpetual conflict of a
somewhat tribal nature.

VSN: No, I don't see it like that. The absence of a sense of history and of
a feeling of responsibility for your people has led to the enslavement of the
country. History is not a matter of licking your wounds. It is matter of self
knowledge, self-appraisal.
Many groups in India now have a very rudimentary idea of their past. Many of
them believe in a golden age. That actually is the opposite of the historical
sense. But when there is a movement which starts from b like this, and is
so profound and is affecting millions of people - am I right? - You can't deal
with these deep emotions by abusing the people. This particular argument in
India - between secularists and their opponents - is becoming a rough shouting
match. There is a kind of village, hatred that is coming out. I can't get
involved in a thing like this.

LKS: Then what is the real battle? What is your vision of India or of Indian
society?

VSN: If you have spent decades, perhaps even a century moving economically,
educationally and politically - very important in a country like India, with
all its wounds - once it starts moving, there is a convulsion. You do not get
people behaving nicely. There is a movement forward now. It is wrong to
abuse it. It has immense creative capacity and it has to be understood by
every one, especially by the people trying to manipulate it.

LKS: Is there a link between violence, upheaval and creativity?

VSN: There can be no rules about these things. To me the creative side is that
in India they are talking about India. Indians have never talked about India
in this way before.
The actual creativity occurs when people apply their minds to the state of
India and do not speak mantras alone. Probably you are worried about something
else. May be you are worried that elements in Hindu movement are pushing
people backward intelelctually?

LKS: There are many worries. No social movement is promoted by a religious
impulse which is destructive and not constructive. Sitting in London, one can
recall Europe history. How can one say that the fate of this religious or
pseudo-religious impulse will be different?

VSN: It is part of the interest of what is happening now. One has to see what
happens. If you have a huge intellectually-aware section of population, I think
this can be managed. Various expressions of this religiousulse can be
contained.

LKS: Religion of the post-reformation period was a source of social strife
and division which led to a century of religious warfare and chaos. They
learnt the lesson that hope of peace and order lay in the establishment of
some form of mutual tolerance, a tradition inherent in the Indian tradition.
They discovered that even the spiritual unity of Christendom could not be
restored by war and diplomacy. Thus evolved the concept of secularisation of
the state.
The rise of secularist tolerance brought religious strife under control.
Europe went on to develop a new literary culture, new scientific knowledge
and a new creed reflected in the works of Pope and Voltaire. Religious strife
inspired the men of the 18th century with ideals of humanity and a new social
order. India was lucky. Why should India, at the end of the 20th century, have
to go through that earlier cycle?
VSN: These historical comparisons have very little meaning. What is happening
in India is happening in the 20th century. The century is all around and is
leaking through to India at hundreds of points.

LKS: What about the danger to Hinduism itself? Many fear it is being distorted
- a task that has been made easy by the long neglect of classical learning
in India.
VSN: Your question is a fundamentalist question, in fact, I hope that Hinduism
is a living thing, a living culture. Such things constantly change. The neglect
of classical learning that you talk about is part of the degeneracy of recent
centuries. Debate about Hinduism now is necessary. It has to be gone through.
It is very good that it is occurring. These things have to be thought out and
fought out.
LKS: Hinduism can perhaps look after itself but what about the practicalities
of running a multi-religious nation? A strife-ridden polity has retarded the
constant process of the construction of Indian society. It may make the
nation more vulnerable to external and internal pressures. Do you have no
fears on that count?

VSN: A big country like India has to deal with the big issue. You can't deal
only with the village politics. You have to rise to these challenges - and
I feel the people will. Something will come out of this debate. Not tomorrow,
not in the next elections, but some form will evolve.

LKS: Those engaged in religious mobilisation seem to distrust a section
belonging to the same civilisation, same nation, sharing common languages.
But they are not talking of reform of Hinduism or of outdated religious
rituals or social customs. Not even of proper maintenance of undisputed places
of religious importance. Are they proposing new centers of learning or classi-
cal studies? Is there a movement for the cleansing of public life? They are
not debating western social influences or the new obsession with material
success. One may ask religious impulse for what? For invigorating culture
and civilisation or for narrow political ends and immoral violence?

VSN: I feel you are pinning in a Gandhian way for the simple old days of
poverty. But once the simple old days of poverty have gone, they have gone.
People will change. It is an aspect of a living culture that people should
change. That is why India is so interesting, so full of possibilities.
People are being forced to change. To you it may appear to be the problem, I
see it in another way.
I see the upheaval. I see even your feeling of despair as creative. You
despair, but what am I to do? There is this apparent mess in the world. But
you know there always has been. Consider the great turmoil in a country like
Britain over two centuries as a result of the industrial revolution. Major
countries have to regenerate themselves constantly.And India has been luckier than most in last 100 years. It has had a
period of comparative order. Would you have liked to be a Russian or a
German, with the histories they have had? Think even of France. Let us begin
at 1870 with the Prussian war and the mess of the Paris commune. Go on to
1914, the war, the depression, the second war, the German occupation and then
Indo-China and Algeria. Most of the world has been convulsed in the past
century. Only some small countries got away. India so far has had an easy
ride. Much easier than China for example.

LKS: Even if it is an awakening, I see no wise and charismatic leader who can
channelise this 'awakening' to reassert the genuine Indian tradition, carrying
the Indian society with him and sensitising it to that which is noble in our
civilisation.

VSN: I see you are not only pining for the simple old days but you also have
a feeling that some great leader should emerge and sort all this out, take
the burden from your shoulder, and put everything right. But no. India can't
have that kind of a leader. When you have this large educated body of people,
you can't have those charismatic leaders that you are talking about. Perhaps
this is the blessing of the situation. You do not have a great charismatic
leader who might do an awful lot of damage. We do not want that kind of a
leader at this stage. Peasant culture needs leaders. Tribal cultures need
leaders.

LKS: Does not communal hatred and violence appear to be tribal? What about the
hatred among the normal people, the new kind of discourse in the drawing rooms?
It is so far removed from the robust commonsense of the villager who says, you
follow your religion, I will follow mine.

VSN: You have a real problem now in India. Very few Hindus know what Islam is.
Very few Hindus have studied it or given it any thought. And you cannot appeal
to Muslim intellectuals. Islam is a religion of reveion. The Prophets's
revelations are final. The laws have all been issued.

Other societies adapt as the need arises, as traditions change, as the
world changes. You adopt new attitudes to crime and deviance. This constant
reassesment is impossible in Islam. All you can do is to reinterpret the
Prophet's decrees. This is one reason why on the Muslim side reforms are not
talked about much. If someone says we have to rethink, the believer would say,
how dare you. You can be a reformist in the Hindu tradition and you will not be
considered a heretic. But any Muslim who talks about reforms in a fundamental
way will commit heresy. It was so in Christianity at the time of Galileo. It
is an immense intellectual problem for the educated Muslims of India. I would
like to hear more from them...
This matter of Hindu-Muslim co-existence has to be talked about. It is not
enough to talk about a tradition of tolerance. For Hindus, religion is a
matter of conscience. For Muslims, it is not. It is a matter of laws that have
been laid down. There can be no debate, no compromise. I was mentioning the
Shia emotion that buttressed social change in Iran? Do the Muslims in India
talk about reforms?

LKS: There is some movement in this direction. Just as there is a debate among
Hindus, there is one within the Muslim community also. Many young educated
Muslims want to resist orthodoxy. But I want to return to an earlier question.
What is your vision of the India of the future?

VSN: I would like Indian cities to be rebuilt. I do not know to what extent the
riots in Bombay were political or communal or to what extent they were also
Nihilist expressions of self-disgust at the conditions in which people are
living. As my Jain stockbroker guide to the slums of Dharavi in Bombay told
me: "They say, the people in this little part are fundamentalists, but if you
were livhere, don't you think you could be made a fundamentalist by just
about everything?" People are living on their nerves all the time. If people
liked where they lived, they would not like to burn it down.
I heard that in India architects have to build badly because it is a poor
country. You see how people are misusing their minds and the Gandhian idea of
poverty to lock the country in a prison house? You are a poor country, you
build badly, you therefore create pressure cookers which constantly explode.

LKS: Let me ask you about Hinduism, about your own beliefs. Some of your
readers interpret your enthusiasm for a Hindu awakening as a typical response
of an expatriate Hindu who is sinking under the load of insecurity in a sea
of lost identities and looking for a lifeboat in India.

VSN: I do not know whether the expatriate definition is valid. I am 100 years
away from India. I am not an expatriate in that way. I am an overseas Indian
and because of that, I do not have a sectarian view. I do not have a caste
view. I do not have a regional view. Because after 100 years, you do not
possess these things any longer. People like me have a more universal view,
as Gandhi discovered among the Indians of South Africa 100 years ago. That
is the view I have.
It is a distant view that sees a totality. I say Hinduism is a culture. And
that is how I would define my kind of Hinduism. I regard it as a part of my
cultural identity. I don't regard myself as a believer. I was born without
belief. Hinduism gives me a past. I think people should understand that to
discover the past should not be a wish to recreate the past. Many people
will thnk it means that, but it does not mean that.
The discovery of the sense of history means understanding where we have come
from, and also being able to put the gap of years and centuries between that
and what you are. is what historical sense means. The art scholars of the
European renaissance tell us that the renaissance took root in Europe when men
understood that the past was the past. The past was not simply living on in a
decadent world. That the past was therefore something to be understood and
analysed, and elements could be taken from it to create something new. The
discovery of history should make people understand that any culture is worth-
while only if it is constantly remaking itself, invigorating itself, becoming
new. Restating the past is the way of death.

LKS: What is your concept of Hinduism? Is it a religion? Is it a way of life?

VSN: It is a culture. There is always some kind of Hinduism. Everyone possesses
it in his own way. You will have to consider me also some kind of Hindu, though
I don't do the temple stuff...
Because it is part of a culture, the state of Hinduism depends on the
condition of the people. If they are educated and secure, it is humane and it
looks after itself. I suppose we are Hindus because we have a certain attitude.
One thing that is deep in us and one that we should really get rid of is the
feeling of negation. It is the consolation of the defeated man. We have lived
with defeat so long.
It is hard to be a man, you know, to be responsible for one's destiny. It
is not only pleasure and raising a flag and singing an anthem. I met a
scientist in Bangalore who said Hindus, because of the past, are like bees in
a garden content to go happily from flower to flower without caring who is the
mali. But now we are all the malis.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Guest]

Excellent article. <!--emo&:cool--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[acharya]

http://www.truthindia.com/page58.html

The Origins & Development of Deendar Anjuman (1924-2000) *
By Yoginder Sikand
Posted on September 28, 2000


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Between Dialogue and Conflict: The Origins and Development of the Deendar Anjuman (1924-2000) by Yoginder Sikand

Introduction

Between May and July 2000, a series of bombs went off at twelve places of worship in different towns in the south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa. Most of these were churches, but a Hindu temple and a mosque were also targeted and were badly damaged. Anti-Christian hate literature, purported to have been issued by Hindu chauvinist groups, was found at the site of many of the blasts. Fingers of suspicion were initially pointed at Hindu groups, who have, in recent years, been involved in violent attacks on Christians and Christian-owned properties in large parts of India. However, in July 2000, the police and Union Home Ministry sources claimed to have discovered evidence of a hitherto little-known Muslim group, the Deendar Anjuman, in masterminding the blasts, accusing it of seeking to provoke further hostility between Hindus and Christians. The Indian press gave much publicity to these reports, indeed much more so than it had to confirmed evidence of earlier Hindu attacks on Christian churches and priests. The manner of reporting about the alleged role of the Deendar Anjuman in the incidents strongly suggested that the events were sought to be given the image of a Muslim-Christian confrontation or as yet another expression and evidence of Muslim ‘terrorism’ and Islamic ‘fundamentalism’. Further, the distinct impression was sought to be created that Hindu militant groups, whose role in previous attacks on Christians in India had been clearly proven, had been all along wrongly blamed, and that behind much of the current anti-Christian wave in India was a hidden ‘Islamic’ or ‘Pakistani’ hand. For right-wing Hindu organisations, the attacks came as a blessing in disguise, which they sought to use to absolve themselves of accusations of violent anti-Christian activity in order to salvage their sagging public image, which had attracted sharp criticism at home and abroad.

In the wake of the attacks, many Indian papers went so far as to claim that the alleged involvement of the Deendar Anjuman in the incidents was part of a larger Pakistan ‘plot’ engineered by its secret service, the Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI) to instigate Hindu-Christian conflict and, thereby, further ‘destabilise’ India. ‘ISI Twin-Plan: Attack Christians, Blame Hindus’, screamed a headline in the influential daily Economic Times, accusing the Anjuman of working at the behest of the ISI and the Lashkar-i-Taiba, a militant group based in Pakistan and active in the ongoing struggle in Kashmir. It was said that the next target of the attackers had been the famous Venkateshwara temple at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, which they had planned to blow up, and thereby trigger of large scale communal rioting all over south India. The Home Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Devender Goud, claimed that these attacks were merely a prelude to a grand conspiracy planned by Deendar Anjuman leaders based in Pakistan to launch a jihad against India with a vast army of 9,00,000 Pathans from Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, reportedly ‘planned as per the dictates of the ISI’. A Union Home Ministry source claimed to have discovered ‘significant evidence’ of the Anjuman’s involvement in the blasts, and declared that this was part of a sinister campaign to ‘spread terror among Christians and hatred between Christians and Hindus’. Echoing this view, the influential English fortnightly India Today commented, ‘It is clear that the followers of the sect …are now part of a larger game of waging jehad against the Hindus and Christians in India…and [their] long term goal is to make Indian an Islamic state’. For this purpose, police sources claimed, members of the Anjuman had, from 1992 onwards, been crossing to Pakistan, ostensibly on pilgrimage, but actually for receiving armed training at camps set up by the head of the Anjuman’s Pakistan wing, Zia-ul Hasan, son of the founder of the sect, based at Mardan in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Hasan, a Indian newspaper report alleged, had been ‘brainwashed’ by the ISI into helping it in its alleged mission of ‘destabilising’ India. A special report prepared by the Andhra Pradesh police claimed that in 1995, Zia-ul Hasan had ‘hatched a conspiracy to disturb communal harmony and the secular fabric of Indian society, thereby affecting internal security’. The report accused him of a plot to ‘create nifaq (hatred)’ between different communities in India, as a prelude to a grand jihad to invade India and convert the Hindus to Islam. As the initial stage in this ‘conspiracy’, Indian Anjuman members are claimed to have been trained at an Anjuman camp in Pakistan in handling explosives, after which they returned to India, and were reportedly involved in the destruction of several statues of the Dalit hero Ambedkar at several places in Andhra Pradesh, in an effort to instigate conflict between Dalits and the caste Hindus. It was alleged that Hasan had paid a visit to Hyderabad in mid-May, 2000, and at a secret meeting had selected a group of his Indian followers, taken them to Pakistan to be given armed training, and sent them back to south India to bomb places of worship, so that, as J.Dora, the Director General of Police, Andhra Pradesh, put it, with the south torn apart with communal rioting, the Anjuman, leading an army of almost a million Pathans from Pakistan, could invade India from the north some time in 2001. An arrested member of the Anjuman is said to have revealed to the police during his interrogation that Zia-ul Hasan had announced to his followers that, ‘The time had come for attacking Hindustan and that everybody should be ready to give up their lives [sic.] and become a mujahid’. He had allegedly promised them that all of India would soon turn Muslim. In the wake of these allegations, the Indian government came out with a statement asking its intelligence agencies to expose the ‘grand design’ of the Anjuman to ‘foment communal tension in the country’ with what it alleged to be the ‘active support’ of the ISI. The Indian Home Minister, L.K.Advani, declared that the Government of India was contemplating a ban on the sect.

Predictably, leaders of the Deendar Anjuman based at the group’s headquarters in Hyderabad (Deccan) strongly rebutted the allegations levelled against them. They asserted that the Anjuman had nothing to do with the forty persons said to be responsible for the attacks, almost all members of the Anjuman, who were later taken into police custody. The acting president of the Anjuman, the eighty year-old Maulana Muhammad Usman ‘Ali Mallana, declared that his organisation ‘strongly condemned any such activity that would hurt the religious sensibilities of people’ and offered to co-operate with the police in tracking down the attackers. He went on to add that the Anjuman firmly ‘believes in peace, brotherhood, tranquillity, tolerance and communal harmony among the followers of various religions’, and that it had full respect for the law of the land and the Indian Constitution. He claimed that the Anjuman was itself set up for the purpose of promoting brotherhood, unity and understanding between people of various different faiths, and that this it had always been doing, using strictly peaceful means such as organising inter-religious dialogue conferences. Given this history of the sect, Mallana claimed that the members of the Deendar Anjuman ‘are the last persons to preach hatred or intolerance’. He also categorically denied any association with the ISI, and said that allegations of the Anjuman’s links with it and of its involvement in the attacks were ‘a conspiracy’ to defame the group. He claimed that it was the CIA that had possibly masterminded the blasts. Some Anjuman members commented that their success in winning converts to their version of Islam had won them the wrath of the Indian establishment and that the entire controversy about the blasts was simply a means to defame them and put a halt to the spread of their faith.

Just as the various reports of the involvement of the Anjuman in the blasts presented contradictory images, so, too, did reports about the nature, history and identity of the organisation. Several Muslim groups denied that the Deendar Anjuman was Muslim at all, for the sect believes that Allah and the Hindu Ishwar are one and so are Imam ‘Ali and the Hindu god Ganesh. The Amir-i-Shari‘at of Karnataka, Mufti Ashraf ‘Ali, reiterated a fifteen year-old fatwa declaring the founder of the Anjuman as a kafir and well outside the pale of Islam for having claimed that he was the incarnation (avatar) of a Hindu deity, Channabasaveswara. Some described it as a strange, and, in many ways, unique syncretistic cult, drawing upon Islam as well as local religious and cultural traditions. According to one newspaper account, it was ‘a concoction of Hinduism and Islam’ which was ‘not acceptable to a large number of Muslims’ because it believed that ‘Allah and Om were the same’. According to another version, it represented ‘a strange alchemy of religion and mysticism’, ‘propagating the concept of the universal appeal of all religions’ and ‘giving a new meaning to the principle of showing mutual respect and peaceful co-existence’. It was portrayed as ‘a fighting team taming the rising communal passions’, preaching ‘harmony and peace’ between followers of different religions, and ‘doing yeoman service in bridging the differences based on religion, race, caste and colour’. Likewise, according to another report, it was a group based on ‘liberal teachings’, representing a ‘syncretic culture’. For their part, the Anjuman authorities based in Hyderabad claimed that the main focus of the community ever since its founding some three-quarters of a century ago, had always been to ‘propagate peace and harmony’ and asserted that never in its history had the Anjuman ever been ‘involved in controversies’. They maintained that the organisation had ‘never indulged in activities detrimental to mankind’. A report prepared by the Andhra Pradesh police presented quite a different image of the Anjuman, describing it as ‘a highly fanatical and shrewd Muslim militant organisation’, with its ‘sole objective’ being ‘to Islamise India through proselytisation and preaching’. The Anjuman was said to have ‘cleverly masked its hatred towards other religions under the guise of universal peace and brotherhood’, using this as a cover to carry on with its agenda of Islamising India. In a similar vein, the Andhra Pradesh Home Minister, echoing the views of senior police officials, claimed that the Anjuman’s annual inter-religious dialogue and peace conferences and other such activities were simply a ‘guise’, under which, he declared, ‘the organisation planned to spread terror through violence and incite communal trouble in the state and in other parts of the country’.

These widely differing representations of the Anjuman clearly point to the fact that little seems to be actually known about the group. This article seeks to unravel several complex issues involved in the present controversy in which the Anjuman has been implicated. While it is not possible, for lack of any firm evidence, to ascertain whether or not the Anjuman has actually been involved in the recent bomb attacks in south India, a critical analysis of the history of the group can provide critical insights into how the Anjuman has tended to perceive other religious groups and how it has sought to relate to them over time. This could provide valuable clues to as to the how the group today sees its place in and engages with the contemporary Indian context of religious pluralism, which is being increasingly challenged by the rise of ethnic and religious chauvinist groups. In particular, the Anjuman’s own inter-religious dialogue project is closely looked at, to see what this entails as regards the group’s relations with members of other religious communities. Is this project geared to the creation of universal brotherhood and love between people of all faiths, as the Anjuman authorities insist it is, or is it simply a cover-up for a political agenda or for religious proselytisation, as Indian police and newspaper accounts allege? Focusing on the Anjuman’s peculiar doctrinal positions which mark it as quite distinct from other Muslim groups, this booklet traces the origins and development of the Anjuman in early twentieth century south India and, in the process, looks at the ways in which it has sought to position itself vis-à-vis other groups, Muslim as well as Hindu. This examination of the historical development of the Anjuman might help shed some light on the present controversy.
The central argument that this booklet seeks to advance is that the genesis and the development of the Deendar Anjuman cannot be seen apart from the charged political context of the 1920s when it was founded, a period of intense hostility and conflict between Muslim and Hindu groups. Indeed, the setting up of the Anjuman in 1924 by Siddiq Hussain, the founder of the Anjuman, is said to have been a response to the shuddhi movement of the Arya Samaj, in the course of which several thousand Muslims in north India are believed to have been brought into the Hindu fold. At this juncture, Siddiq Hussain publicly declared that he had been appointed by God as the incarnation of the Hindu deity Channabasveswara to bring all Hindus to Islam. From then on till his death in 1952 he was actively involved in efforts to spread Islam in south India, presenting Islam as a fulfilment of Hinduism rather than as a completely separate religion. In the course of his missionary work he came into conflict with other Muslim groups who suspected the Islamic credentials of the peculiar claims that he put forward for himself. He was also confronted with stiff opposition from various Hindu groups, particularly the Lingayats, the Arya Samajists and the Sanatanists, for his religious views and his missionary activities. Indeed, it can be said, contrary to what Anjuman authorities have claimed in response to allegations about their involvement in the recent bomb blasts, that conflict with other groups, rather than peaceful co-operation, has been a characteristic feature of much of the history of the Anjuman. Although the organising of an annual inter-religious conference became a regular feature of the Anjuman as early as in 1929, such activities must be seen as part of a broader agenda. In this way, the Anjuman’s inter-religious dialogue work, which its leaders today present as proof of their commitment to inter-religious harmony, was seen as just another means for combating rival religions, including, implicitly, rival expressions of Islam, and asserting its own claims to truth. In other words, this booklet argues that conflict has been a defining feature of the Anjuman, a pervasive feature of the life of its founder, although in the period after 1947 this has taken on less overt forms in order to carry on with the mission of Siddiq Hussain in the changed political context.

Siddiq Hussain: The Founder of the Deendar Anjuman

Sayyed Siddiq Hussain, the founder of the Deendar Anjuman, was born to Sayyed Amir Hussain and his wife Sayyeda Amina, in 1886 at Balampet in the Gurmatkal taluqa of the Gulbarga district, then part of the Nizam’s Dominions and now in the Karnataka state in south India. His family traced their descent to the Prophet Muhammad, and were known for having produced numerous leading Sufis belonging to the Qadri order. Siddiq Hussain received his primary education first at Gulbarga and then at Hyderabad, where he learnt Arabic from one Maulana ‘Abdul Nabi. Later, he enrolled at the Muhammadan Arts College, Madras, and from there he went on to the Bursen College, Lahore, for his higher education. In the course of his studies he is said to have mastered eleven languages and developed an expertise in medicine and the martial arts.

As a young man, the hagiographic accounts tell us, Siddiq Hussain developed a great interest in various religions, and came into contact with several noted Sufis and Islamic scholars of his time. These included Shibli Numani, the noted ‘alim, Baba Tajuddin of Nagpur, Maulana ‘Abdullah of Tamapur, Hazrat Miskin Shah Baba, and Zohra Bi and Maulana Mir Muhammad Sa‘id of Hyderabad. From the last mentioned he took the bai‘at or oath of initiation in the Qadri Sufi order. In 1914, in his ‘passion’, as he puts it, ‘to study the Qur’an’, he joined the Qadiani branch of the heterodox Ahmadiyya community, considered outside the pale of Islam for its belief that its founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, was a prophet sent by God, and, in doing so, denying the Islamic belief in the finality of the prophethood of Muhammad. He took the oath of allegiance at the hands of the then head of the Qadiani jama‘at, Miyan Bashiruddin Mahmud Ahmad, son of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, but fourteen days later he renounced his membership, accusing the Qadianis of being kafirs for considering the Mirza as a prophet. It is likely that at this time he moved closer to the rival Lahori branch of the Ahmadis, who split off from the main Ahmadi jama‘at in 1914 on the question of the status of the Mirza. Unlike the Qadianis, the Lahoris, led by the well-known Islamic scholar Maulana Muhammad ‘Ali, insisted that the Mirza was not a prophet but simply a mujaddid (‘renewer of the faith’). He quoted the well-known tradition attributed to Muhammad that at the end of every Islamic century God would send a mujaddid to the world to revive the faith, and claimed that the Mirza was the mujaddid of the fourteenth century of the Islamic calendar. It is possible that Siddiq Hussain might actually have formally joined the Lahori jama‘at, for in his tract A‘ada-i-Islam (‘Enemies of Islam’), dating to the mid-1920s, he wrote that he and members of his Anjuman believed that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad had been sent by God as the mujaddid of the fourteenth century, indicating the regard he continued to hold the Mirza in great esteem, despite having parted ways with the Qadianis. In one of his early writings, dated to the late 1920s, he wrote that after he left the Qadiani jama‘at, he spent some time in the company of Maulana Muhammad ‘Ali and Maulvi Khwaja Kamaluddin, the leading lights of the Lahori branch of the Ahmadis.

The Launching of the Mission

In the early hagiographic accounts of Siddiq Hussain written by his followers and even in his own writings, we hear little of his activities till 1924, when he publicly declared what he claimed was his divine mission, and established the Deendar Anjuman (‘The Religious Association’). The 1920s were a crucial period for Hindu-Muslim relations in India, witnessing a marked rise of Hindu-Muslim conflict after a brief spell of inter-communal harmony in the course of the short-lived Khilafat and Non-Cooperation movements. In early 1923, the Arya Samaj, a militant and openly anti-Muslim Hindu chauvinist group, launched a massive drive to bring into the Hindu fold hundreds of thousands of Rajput Muslims in the north-western districts of the United Provinces. Soon, the campaign, which the Aryas referred to as the Shuddhi Andolan (‘The Purification Movement’) and the Muslims as the Tehrik-i-Irtidad (‘The Apostasy Movement’), spread to other areas of India, and Arya leaders began issuing calls for converting all the Indian Muslims. Muslim leaders responded with alarm, launching efforts at countering the Aryas through various Islamic missionary (tabligh) groups. Siddiq Hussain is said to have actively worked with one of the leading Tablighi activists of this time, the Amristar-based lawyer, Ghulam Bhik Nairang, and his Anjuman Tabligh-ul Islam, in attempting to prevent the Aryas from making further inroads among the Muslims and also in spreading Islam among non-Muslim groups, particularly the ‘lower’ castes. This is the first evidence that we have of the beginning of what was to become his life-long involvement in missionary work and in combating the Arya Samaj.

After spending some time in the north with the Lahori Ahmadis, with members of the Ahl-i-Qur’an and with Nairang and his Tablighi group, Siddiq Hussain returned to Hyderabad and established a medical practice there. By this time, aggressive communal politics, which had become such a characteristic feature of north Indian life, had made its way into the state. Ruled by a Muslim Nizam and a small, feudal class, largely Muslim, Hyderabad was a Hindu-majority state, with a Muslim population of hardly one in ten. By the 1920s, resentment against the predominance of Muslims in the upper echelons of government service increasingly led a rising generation of newly-educated Hindus to the path of confrontation, which soon assumed the form, as elsewhere in India, of Hindu-Muslim antagonism. In response to this growing Hindu aggressiveness, the Majlis-i-Ittihad ul-Muslimin (‘The Committee for the Unity of Muslims’) was set up in 1927, with its headquarters at Hyderabad, whose avowed purpose was to protect Muslim interests, reflecting, as ‘Alam says, ‘a concern with the growing dissatisfaction of the Hindus with the government’. In 1933, the Arya Samaj, which, till then, had been limited by its predominantly north Indian base, turned its attention to Hyderabad, where it had already established a small presence in the late nineteenth century. Beginning in 1931, a series of clashes took place between the Aryas, who saw themselves as defenders of the Hindus, and the Nizam’s forces. Several branches of the Samaj were now set up in the Nizam’s Dominions. In 1938, the Aryas launched a mass struggle, along with the Hindu Mahasabha, against the Nizam which carried on for several months, in the course of which some 8000 Aryas and other Hindus were arrested. The Arya agitators, according to one report, are said to have exhorted the local Hindus to ‘rise and fight the Muslims, kill them and overthrow them, as the country belonged to the Hindus and not the Muslims’, in addition to appealing to them not to pay their taxes to the Nizam. A fierce communal riot broke out that year, in which scores of Muslims living in Hindu localities were killed. In January 1939, the Aryas launched a fresh agitation against the Nizam, this time assisted by the Hyderabad State Congress, which came to an end six months later, when the Nizam was forced to agree to many of the demands of the agitators. In the aftermath of the 1938 riots, the Majlis, alarmed at the rising tide of Hindu aggressiveness, took on a more militant posture. It now modified its Constitution to declare that ‘The ruler and the throne are the symbols of the political and cultural rights of the Muslim community in the state’, and that, therefore, ‘this status of the Muslims must continue forever’. As ‘Alam puts it, beginning in the late 1920s ‘a warlike atmosphere’ between Hindus and Muslims seems to have taken hold of Hyderabad.
Deeply involved as he was, by this time, with various Islamic movements, having spent many years in the company of Sufis and leading ‘ulama, the Qadianis and then the Lahoris, followed by his association with Nairang’s Anjuman Tabligh ul-Islam, Siddiq Hussain seems to have been greatly affected by what he saw as the grave threats to Islam and Muslim interests at the hands of aggressive Hindu groups at this time. Launching a large-scale missionary campaign, aimed at nothing less than the conversion of all the Hindus of India to Islam, suggested itself to him as the need of the hour. This was to go on to become his life’s major vocation, in response, he asserted, to a divine command which he claimed to have received.

Siddiq Hussain’s missionary career may be divided into three phases, each related to the changing nature of Hindu-Muslim relations and the general socio-political context of the times. To begin with, roughly from 1924 to 1930 is what could be called the phase of ‘peaceful persuasion’, in which preaching, persuasion and distribution of literature were adopted as means to spread his message among, first, the Lingayats, and then the Hindus in general. This phase corresponded with the emergence of rumblings of discontent among the Hindus of Hyderabad, but which had yet to take on violent, aggressive forms. The period from 1930 till 1948 could be termed as the phase of ‘violent aggression’, in which, among other means, Siddiq Hussain advocated the declaration of actual war, styled as a jihad, in addition to being involved in several court cases with his detractors. This corresponds to the period when the Arya Samaj had grown into a powerful oppositional force in Hyderabad, challenging, like the emerging Communist and the Congress parties sought to do, the power of the Nizam and the largely Muslim feudal elite. After his release from prison two months before his death in 1952, Siddiq Hussain once again seems to have gone back to his earlier mode of preaching, and this short phase can be termed as one of ‘pragmatic accommodation’.

Missionary Work Among the Lingayats

Siddiq Hussain began his missionary career among the Lingayats, a group of Shiva-worshippers living mainly in the Kannada-speaking districts of the Nizam’s Dominions and in neighbouring Mysore. According to Anjuman sources, once, while on a trip to the shrine of Kodekkal Basappa, a Sufi highly venerated by the local Lingayats, he reportedly heard that the Sufi had predicted the arrival of a saviour of the Lingayats, in the form of ‘Deendar Channabasaveswara’, who would be born in a Muslim family and would ‘make the Hindus and Muslims one’. This, he was to later claim, was a prophecy heralding his own arrival. By this time, as he writes, he had already dedicated his life to the cause of the spread of Islam, and, noting the ‘special features’ (khususiyat) of the Lingayats, decided to work among them. In order to communicate with them, he married a Kannada-speaking Muslim woman from Talikotta who taught him their language. After his marriage, he visited several Lingayat temples and monasteries, spending much time with the priests, learning Sanskrit and their scriptures from them. Then, it is said, he received divine inspiration in the form of a dream informing him that he had been appointed by God as an avatar of the Lingayat saint Channabasaveswara, in the form of Deendar Channabasaveswara, to bring all the Hindus of India to Islam. Accordingly, he travelled to Gadag, a small town near Hubli, and on 7 February, 1924, publicly announced that he was much-awaited messiah of the Lingayats, the Deendar Chanabasaveswara and the saviour of the Hindus. ‘Oh Hindus!’, he declared, ‘I am the guru who has been predicted in your scriptures’. Besides claiming to be the Deendar Channabasaveswara, he also, at this time, declared himself to be the kalki avatar, the tenth and last incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu, who, the Hindus believe, would arrive to extirpate misery from the world, put an end to the ‘evil age’ of kali yug and herald the arrival of the ‘age of truth’(sat yug). This, he said, had been revealed to him by God Himself, who had told him that he would establish the sat yug in 1943. As he put it, ‘ Shri Bhagwan has informed me that I will appear as the kalki avatar. The kali yug is soon to be abolished and the sat yug inaugurated’. Shortly after that, he said, in the second half of the fourteenth (Islamic) century, the Day of Judgement (qayamat) shall come.

In his A‘ada-i-Islam, a tract penned to convince Muslims of his claims, Siddiq Hussain wrote that it was as a response to the successes of the Arya Samaj in bringing to the Hindu fold several thousand Muslims in northern India that he received a divine inspiration, informing him that ‘God had willed that the greatest incarnation (avatar) of the Hindus should emerge to declare to the Hindus that their only hope for salvation lay in converting to Islam’. Elsewhere, he wrote that in the wake of the shuddhi movement of the Aryas, India had witnessed ‘heinous assaults’ on Islam and the person of Muhammad. ‘God’, he said, ‘was watching this, and had decided to take revenge by making all India Muslim’. He now assumed the name of Siddiq Deendar Channabasaveswara, and in doing so, he claimed that he was simply fulfilling the prophecies contained in the holy books of the Lingayats and the Hindus, which, he claimed, had predicted his arrival and had also indicated the truth of Islam. In his words:

Allah has appointed their biggest avatar in order to make them Muslim by pointing out the directions contained in the books of the enemies of the Muslims (dushmanan-i-islam), and he [this avatar] has announced: ‘Oh Hindus! If you seek salvation then become Muslim because you can see that till your avatars recited the creed of confession (kalima) of our Master, Muhammad, peace and Allah’s blessings be upon him, they did not gain salvation, so how can you be saved if you do not do so?’.

Siddiq Hussain’s choice of the Lingayats as the first group to direct his missionary concerns to was probably motivated by the fact that the Lingayat tradition, being, in its original form, sternly monotheistic and having emerged from a powerful protest movement against idolatry and caste dating back to the twelfth century, shared much in common with Islam. Aware of the powerful anti-Brahminical traditions of the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain probably believed that his claims would fall on receptive ears and that the Lingayats would respond warmly to his appeals. Many Lingayats of what is today northern Karnataka are also followers of the cults of the Sufis, whose shrines are found scattered all over the countryside. Some of these are revered as local deities by the Lingayats, such as the Bahmani ruler Ahmad Shah Wali, worshipped as an incarnation of the Lingayat deity Shah Allama Prabhu, or the Sufi Shah Muinuddin of Thinthini, known to the Lingayats as Munishwar. Given this syncretistic tradition among the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain probably felt that his appeals to them to convert to Islam, claiming himself to be the incarnation of Channabasaveswara, son-in-law of the founder of the Lingayat sect, Basava, and the one responsible for consolidating and leading the community texts after Basava’s death, might evoke a positive response.

In a pamphlet written in the mid-1920s addressed specifically to the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain declared that the time had come for the entire world to be united as one on the basis of Islam. He claimed that if the Muslims were only to fulfil their religious duties, ‘all the people of the world are ready to fall into their lap’. In particular, he said, the Lingayats, whom he estimated numbered some 50,00,000, were ripe for conversion to Islam, because, in his words, they were ‘pitiable, powerless, bereft of friends’ and ‘their source of support has always been the Muslim community’. He described the Lingayats as an oppressed group, awaiting a messiah who would deliver them from the persecution of the Brahmins, and saw himself as having been appointed by God for that purpose. As he put it:

This community is crying out, saying: ‘Oh Mercy of the Worlds (rahmat al lil ‘alamin)! You are most merciful. Take pity on us. We are without any support and helpers. Save us from the clutches of our oppressors and take us into your refuge. For thousands of years the worshippers of Vishnu (hari wale) have oppressed us and our neighbours, the Dravidian communities, and have reduced us to the status of Shudras. They snatched away our political power and forced us to flee to the forests, where, for thousands of years, we roamed the jungles like barbarians’.

Employing the logic so central to the discourse of the emerging Dravidian and Dalit movements of his times that saw Brahmin/Aryan hegemony as the source of the plight of the ‘lower’ castes, Siddiq Hussain then went on to suggest that it was Islam that has historically played a crusading role in liberating the downtrodden castes from the shackles of caste oppression, a role that it can once again play in mobilising the Lingayats and other Shiva-worshipping ‘lower’ caste groups against the control of the Brahmins, the worshippers of Vishnu [hari wale]. Thus, he added:

The Lingayats now tell us : ‘Some eight hundred years ago, when the Muslims arrived in the Deccan and established their political power, they helped us to rise again and, with their help and in the face of the opposition of the worshippers of Vishnu, we set up large thrones (singhasana) in many towns, but, now, unfortunately, our helpers (Muslims) have been ousted from power’.

The message then is clear: the Lingayats must join hands with the Muslims and work to re-establish Muslim political power if they are to be able to effectively counter the forces of Brahminical revival which is set to reduce them, once more, to the status of slaves. Siddiq Hussain claimed that the Dravidians were being rapidly absorbed into the fold of Vaishnavism as part of a conspiracy on the part of Vishnu-worshipping ‘high’ caste Hindus to enslave them. On the other hand, the Dravidians wer, he said, also being targeted for conversion by the Christian missionaries and the Arya Samajists. The time was not far off, he predicted , when the entire Dravidian race might finally be extinct. If this happened, the Lingayats would be ‘forced into free labour ( begar)’ by the Brahmins, a form of social slavery that had been imposed on the Dravidians for centuries. In this context, Siddiq Hussain saw a glimmer of hope for the Lingayats, and wrote:

[The Lingayats say]: ‘Our only source of hope is the prediction in our sacred scriptures that one day a saviour will appear who will deliver us from all our woes and will take us to the pinnacle of glory and will make us triumph over all our enemies. He will come in the form of Deendar Channabasaveswara, who, in accordance with the predictions of Mauneswara, will make the Hindus and the Turukus (Muslims) one’.

Siddiq Hussain then went on to claim that it was he who had been foretold of in the Lingayat scriptures and by some seventy medieval Puranthanars or saints of the Lingayat tradition, as the would-be saviour of the Lingayats, the Deendar Channabsasveswara, and that now the only way for salvation for the community was by following his instructions and converting to Islam. What is interesting about Siddiq Hussain’s appeals to the Lingayats is that in appealing to them to convert to Islam he did not repudiate the legitimacy of the Lingayat scriptures or deny that they might also be of divine origin. On the contrary, he accepted that these scriptures were true and had a certain validity, at least insofar as he claimed that they had foretold his arrival in the form of Deendar Channabasaveswara. In his writings, he presented the Lingayat tradition as almost identical with Islam. This entailed a radical revisioning of Lingayat history, of course. Thus, he claimed that the Lingayats were ‘actually Arab by race’ and so ‘are neighbours and, in matters religious, very close to the Muslims’. In effect, he sought to present the Lingayats as a people Muslim in origin, whose own real history they have forgotten, and which he saw himself as resurrecting. Thus, he wrote that the founder of the Lingayat community, Basava, was himself a Muslim and that he actually preached Islam. As evidence for this he cited the fact that the colour of the flag of most Lingayat monasteries (mutths) is green, and claimed that Basava himself recited the Islamic kalima on his death-bed. He also claimed that Channabasaveswara, nephew and successor of Basava, had installed a medallion with the kalima inscribed on it, which, he said, was still to be found in the sprawling Lingayat mutth at Chitradurga. If the Lingayats were actually Muslim in origin, then, Siddiq Husain suggested, they must now go back to Islam. He explained the consequent ‘straying’ away of the Lingayats from what he saw as the original teachings of Basava as a result of the conspiracy of ‘some biased people’ who had misled them and created hatred between them and the Muslims. However, he hoped, now that he had appeared as an avatar of Channabasaveswara, the Lingayats would ‘realise their real roots’.

In another booklet, titled Deendar Channabasaveswara, Siddiq Hussain sought to impress upon the Lingayats as well as other Hindu groups the truth of his claims of being the much-awaited messiah prophesied in their ancient texts. He wrote the various Hindu scriptures speak of the Deendar Channabasaveswara being sent by God to unite the world, bearing 56 ‘bodily signs’ and coming at a time when 96 ‘evidences’ would be apparent ‘in the earth and the skies’. All these, he argued, had been fulfilled with his arrival. He claimed that the Hindu and Lingayat scriptures predict that through Deendar Channabasaveswara ‘the entire Hindustan will turn Muslim’. This, however, will not be by gentle persuasion alone. It will be accompanied by much tumult and conflict. The Deendar Channabasaveswara, along with his army of Pathan followers will, so he claimed that the Lingayat scriptures foretell, ‘empty the treasuries of the [temples of] Tirupati and Hampi’, the latter allegedly containing the riches that belonged to the legendary Ravana and the monkey-king Vali. They shall ensure that ‘there is not one idol left standing in any temple’ in the country. The first idol to be destroyed will be that of the temple at Tirupati. This will be followed by the idols at Hampi and then in the great temples at Amapur and Pandharpur, and ‘there will be a great destruction of idols’ (buton ke todne ki dhum hogi) throughout the country. <span style='color:red'>Deendar Channabsaveswara would then set about ‘uniting all the 101 castes [zat]’, by making all Hindus Muslim. In the process, the power of the Brahmins will be completely destroyed.</span> Finally, Deendar Channabsaveswara will be recognised as the ‘king of kings’ (badshahon ke badshah).

By this time, Siddiq Hussain appears to have made a small band of disciples, almost all from Muslim families, attracted to him by his messianic appeal and charisma. He now set about training them in the Qur’an as well as in the Lingayat and Hindu scriptures, taking them along with him on his missionary tours of Lingayat villages, temples and monasteries. Among the prominent disciples whom he made at this point was one Abu Nazir Vitthal, who was earlier a priest (swami) of the Manvi Lingayat monastery at Belgaum. He gave several of his disciples Hindu names, in order to make them more acceptable to the Lingayats and the Hindus among whom he was preaching. Thus, four of his chief followers were given names of Hindu deities-Vyas, Shri Krishna, Narasimha and Virabhadra. He styled himself as Dharamraja or ‘the Righteous King’. He and his disciples donned robes which, in many respects, closely resembled those of Lingayat priests-ochre coloured cloaks, green turbans and white lungis. Despite these attempts to inculturate his message in a form he thought would be acceptable to his audience, Siddiq Hussain’s appeals to the Lingayats to accept him as Deendar Channabasaveswara and to convert to Islam raised a storm of protest. ‘The Hindu world was shaken from its roots’ when Siddiq Hussain declared his ‘divine mission’ to the Hindus, following which ‘many Hindus, including their gurus converted to Islam’ says an Anjuman source, obviously exaggerating the success of Siddiq Hussain’s missionary efforts among the Lingayats. Apparently, while some Lingayats are said to have heeded his call and accepted Islam at his hands, several attempts were made on his life by enraged Lingayats, egged on, Siddiq Hussain alleged, by enraged Arya Samajists. According to one account, in 1924 alone he was physically attacked 25 times in an effort to eliminate him. He was to claim that these attempts failed because he was under divine protection.

The Aryas, according to him, rose in furious protest against his efforts to spread Islam among the Lingayats. In a bid to discredit him among the Muslims, whose support he had hoped for in his work among the Lingayats, the Aryas of Lahore are said to have published an Urdu tract titled Naqli Channabasaveswara Ya Khanjar-i-Zalim (‘The False Channabasaveswara or the Dagger of the Tyrant’) and distributed it in thousands among Muslims, claiming that the Deendar Anjuman was actually a secret branch of the Ahmadis. The alleged Ahmadi link was hardly surprising. After all, Siddiq Hussain had earlier joined the Qadiani Ahmadis, and although he disassociated himself from them a fortnight later, he did, as he himself admitted, maintain a close relationship with the leaders of the Lahori branch of the sect. Moreover, the fact that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadi community, had himself made similar claims for himself, of being the promised messiah and the kalki avatar of the Hindus, suggests the possibility of a distinct Ahmadi influence on Siddiq Hussain’s own missionary strategy among the Lingayats.
In response to the publication of the booklet by the Aryas, Siddiq Hussain announced a sum of Rs.5000 to anyone who could prove that he was a false claimant of being the Deendar Channabasaveswara of the Lingayats. The Aryas took up the challenge and instituted a case against him in the courts, accusing him of creating religious disharmony. The case lasted eight days, after which, so he claimed, the court decided that he had ‘solid proof’ of being the real Deendar Channabasaveswara. The Aryas, not to be cowed down, are accused of having ‘bought’ some Muslims to argue the case that Siddiq Hussain was an imposter and that his claims effectively put him outside the pale of Islam. Siddiq Hussain later wrote that the opposition to him by certain Muslims, in addition to the Aryas, was to last several years, after which, despairing and disillusioned, he decided to migrate to Yaghestan, in the Pathan borderlands, following in the footsteps of Muhammad in his migration (hijra) from Makkah to Madinah.

Siddiq Hussain’s Missionary Efforts Among the Hindus

It is possible that, not finding a warm response to his appeals among the Lingayats, Siddiq Hussain now turned his attention to other Hindu groups as well. An interesting shift may be observed here in his missionary strategy. While addressing the Lingayats his focus was largely on himself, claiming to be the avatar of the revered Lingayat figure Channabasaveswara. Turning to other Hindu groups, for whom the figure of Channabasaveswara held little or no appeal, the image of the Prophet Muhammad was now given central prominence. Muhammad, insisted Siddiq Hussain, was the much-awaited kalki avatar of the Hindus, the promised messiah who would deliver the world from sin and misery. It is interesting to note, in this regard, that earlier, as we have seen, Siddiq Hussain had claimed himself to have been the kalki avatar, this status being attributed to the Prophet only later. As in his missionary work among the Lingayats, here, too, Islam was presented not as the negation but, rather, as the fulfilment of Hinduism. Yet, as will be seen presently, despite accepting the legitimacy of the Hindu scriptures, a strong strain of opposition and animosity characterised Siddiq Hussain’s attitude towards the Hindus, which was to bring him and his followers into conflict with the Hindus of Hyderabad.

What appears to have sparked off a vehement protest on the part of the Hindus of Hyderabad against the activities of the Deendar Anjuman was the publication in 1926 of Siddiq Hussain’s two-volume Kannada book, Jagat Guru Sarwar-i-‘Alam, in which he argued that the Prophet Muhammad was actually the kalki avatar whose arrival had been predicted in the scriptures of the Hindus, and that, therefore, the salvation of the Hindus lay in converting to Islam. In the book Siddiq Hussain contended that God had sent him on a special mission to reveal this ‘truth’ to the Hindus. According to Deendar Anjuman sources, in early 1926, 33 gurus of India put forward the claim of being the jagat guru or ‘Teacher of the Whole World’. So enraged was Siddiq Hussain by these claims that he at once set about penning a book countering these ‘false’ claims and asserting, instead, that the real jagat guru was none other than the Prophet Muhammad. The publication of the book is reported to have raised a storm of protest. On 9 September, 1927, a large rally of Hindu nobles was held at Hyderabad, demanding that the book be banned. A case was instituted in the Nizam’s court to this effect. Although the court dismissed their plea, the Hindu opposition to Siddiq Hussain continued, and some years later, in January 1932, another large rally of Hindus held at Hyderabad demanded that the Nizam should curb Siddiq Hussain’s activities, which, they alleged, were calculated to defame their religion and incite communal strife. Accordingly, the Nizam issued a decree banning Siddiq Hussain from addressing public gatherings. The controversial book was confiscated by the state authorities, but later allowed to be circulated without any pictures included. According to Siddiq Hussain, because of his untiring efforts at spreading Islam among the Hindus, he was sent to jail 84 times, spending a total of almost ten years in prison.

In his Jagat Guru, Siddiq Hussain sought to present Islam, and his own personal mission, as a fulfilment of the scriptures of the Hindus. He wrote that God has sent prophets to all peoples, including to the Indians, all of whom taught the same religion (din), al-Islam, and that the last of these was the Prophet Muhammad. The holy books of other peoples had been distorted over time and the only scripture that had maintained its purity was the Qur’an. Yet, he argued, the previous scriptures had predicted the arrival of Muhammad as God’s last prophet for all mankind, whereas all the previous prophets were sent by God only for their own particular communities. In other words, Muhammad is the jagat guru, the ‘Teacher of the Entire World’. His scripture ‘envisages or comprises the teachings of all the scriptures of the foregone prophets’ and does not in any way ‘confront’ them. Rather, as ‘the World Teacher’, Muhammad will ‘provide protection’ to all of these other prophets ‘under his banner’ on the Day of Resurrection. Therefore, it is the duty of all non-Muslims to accept Muhammad and his teachings in accordance with what their own prophets and scriptures have predicted about him. In effect, therefore, what Siddiq Hussain sought to advance was a plea for non-Muslims to convert to Islam, in accordance with what he saw as the teachings of their own holy books. These holy books, insofar as portions of them have survived corruption and distortion, were accepted as legitimate and of divine inspiration, but were employed merely a means to lead their followers to the Qur’an. As Siddiq Hussain put it, ‘Islam is like an ocean and all other religions, in comparison, are rivers which ultimately drain into the ocean. In other words, other religions are comparable to the branches of a tree, while Islam is like the seed’.

Siddiq Hussain argued that all other prophets had predicted the arrival of Muhammad and that ‘Allah Almighty has taken from them a ‘covenant regarding the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)’, ‘compelling them’ to believe in him as ‘the World Teacher’ and to ‘help him in every possible way’. Since all the prophets before Muhammad had attested to their faith in him before God, it was the duty of their followers, to follow in their path and do the same. Here, Siddiq Hussain quoted not only from the scriptures of the Jews and Christians to prove the coming of Muhammad as ‘the World Teacher’, but also from the books of ancient Egyptian, Chinese, Zoroastrian, Greek and Roman scholars. Since his particular concern was to present Islam to the Hindus, he devoted a large section to seeking to show that the coming of Muhammad as the universal saviour had been predicted in many Hindu scriptures.

Quoting liberally from the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagwat, Kalki and Bhavishyokt Puranas, Siddiq Hussain remarked that the arrival of Muhammad as ‘the World Teacher’ had been ‘prophesied so vividly and in such detail’ in the books of the Hindus as ‘cannot be found in any other religious texts’. He wrote that ‘they have not spared any incident of his life from his birth till his demise, whether of great significance or of no significance at all’ and even claimed that the ancient Hindu seers had prepared an exact horoscope of Muhammad’s life some three thousand years before his birth. The Vedas [Atharva Veda Ch. 20, v.3] were claimed to have predicted Muhammad’s arrival, using the two names of Mamahe (which Siddiq Hussain interpreted as a corrupted form of the Prophet’s own name) and Narashams, ‘the Praised One’, the Sanskrit form of the meaning of the word ‘Muhammad’. Narashams was said to have been described in the Atharva Veda as possessing ‘one hundred gold coins, ten chaplets, three hundred steeds and ten thousand cows’, which Siddiq Hussain explained as referring to Muhammad’s ten close companions, their three hundred horses and the ten thousand Muslims who accompanied Muhammad in his victorious entry into Makkah. The mantra in the Sama Veda recited by a person on his death-bed when a Brahmin priest pours water into his mouth, ha ha hu hu hi hi, was, Siddiq Hussain maintained, actually an ‘abbreviation’ of the Islamic creed of confession (kalima),’ la ilaha ilallahu muhammadur rasulullahi’.

According to Siddiq Hussain, the post-Vedic literature of the Hindus also contains ample references to the arrival of Muhammad as the jagat guru or kalki avatar. Thus, he wrote, the Bhagwat and the Kalki Puranas both mention that the father of the kalki avatar/jagat guru would be called ‘Vishnu Bhagat’ or ‘servant of God’, which is the meaning of the word ‘Abdullah’, the name of Muhammad’s father. They also predict that the kalki avatar’s mother would be called ‘Sumati’ or ‘peaceful’, which is the Sanskrit equivalent of ‘Amina’, the name of Muhammad’s mother. Both these texts predict that the kalki avatar/jagat guru would gain divine knowledge from Parasuram, an incarnation of Vishnu, whom Siddiq Hussain equated with the angel Gabriel (Jibra’il). The Bhavishyokt Puarana is said to have predicted the coming of Muhammad thus: ‘A great person would manifest himself among the Mlecchas, along with his disciples. His most famous name would be Mahamad’. Interestingly, Siddiq Hussain presented Muhammad in a form reminiscent of that of Manu, the progenitor of the human race according to the Hindus, from whose sacrifice the four castes (varnas) were born. Thus, Muhammad is described as ‘a perfect model to the four religions’, being the perfect scholar (Brahmin), a brave warrior (Kshatriya), an enterprising trader (Vaishya) and one who serves humanity (Shudra). Further, the Kamadhenu, the vehicle which Hindus believe will transport the kalki avatar through the seven heavens, is shown to be the same, even in physical terms, as the Buraq, on which many Muslim believe the Prophet Muhammad rode while on his ascension to heaven (mi’raj). Both the Kamadhenu and the Buraq have a woman’s head, a horses’ body, a peacock’s tail and the wings of an eagle. Ganapati or Gansesha, the elephant-headed god whom the Hindus regard as the deity of wisdom, Siddiq Hussain asserted, was none other than Imam ‘Ali, son-in-law of Muhammad, whom the Sufis regard as the ‘gateway of knowledge’, most Sufi orders tracing their spiritual descent from him, claiming that he was the recipient of esoteric wisdom from the Prophet. Siddiq Hussain observed that the figure of Ganesha in the form of half-man half-elephant resembles the word ‘Ali as it is written in Arabic, as well as the Hindu holy syllable ‘Om’. Om, the most sacred mantra of the Hindus, is, then, nothing but ‘Ali.

The Ramayana, arguably the most popular post-Vedic text for the Hindus, is also said to have predicted the arrival of Muhammad. Thus, Siddiq Hussain wrote, the method of prayer that Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, taught the monkey Hanuman, was identical with the form of worship (salat, namaz) that Muslims perform. Hindus, therefore, must also pray in the Muslim fashion if they are truly devoted to Rama. He explained that Ayodhya, the legendary city of Rama, actually referred to Makkah, the word ‘Ayodhya’ translating as ‘the place where war is prohibited’ or, alternately, ‘the place which is unconquerable’, both of which, he argued, held true for the Muhammad’s Makkah. He claimed that many religious figures whom the Hindus revere had held the Prophet Muhammad in great esteem and were actually Muslims themselves, although this had been forgotten by their followers. Nanak, for instance, is said to have been a Muslim Sufi, and several of his utterances in praise of Muhammad as well as his cloak, preserved at the gurudwara at Dera Baba Nanak with verses from the Qur’an embossed on it, were presented as evidence in this regard. Manak Prabhu, a saint with a large following among the Hindu agriculturist castes of the Deccan, whose shrine is located at Manak Nagar near Gulbarga, was also presented as a Muslim. Likewise with the case of several Lingayat saints. In other words, Siddiq Hussain concluded, ‘The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) as a sublime entity seems to pervade the entire India’.

This technique of quoting Hindu scriptures to prove the truth of Islam and to commend Islam to the Hindus is also used in a tract penned by Siddiq Hussain in 1361 AH (1942) titled Jami‘a al-Bahrain (‘The Union of the Two Oceans’), patterned and probably named after the well-known treatise by the seventeenth century Mughal Sufi Dara Shikoh, the Majm‘a al-Bahrain. Like Dara Shikoh, Siddiq Hussain also draws parallels between the doctrines and practices of Hindu and Muslim mystics. Unlike Dara, however, Siddiq Hussain uses this to suggest the need for Hindus to convert to Islam, this being presented as the only effective mean to solve the Hindu-Muslim conflict that had assumed such alarming proportions by this time. He opens his essay with a curious remark to the effect that India is ‘heaven on earth’ (jannat-i-nishan), and he quotes a hadith according to which the Prophet Muhammad is said to have ‘felt cool breeze coming from India’, this being the land where Imam Hussain had wished to migrate to in order to spread Islam. He writes of Rama (‘Shri Ramji’) and Krishna (‘Shri Kishanji’) as ‘exalted incarnations’ (buland paye ke avatar), but says that unless the various communities in India come together on the ‘point of unity’ (nukta-i-wahdat), which is religion, true unity can never be established in the country. He notes that several efforts have been made over the centuries to bring Hindus and Muslims closer to each other by Sufis as well as Muslim kings, such as Babar, who forbade cow-slaughter, or Akbar, through his din-i-ilahi. They had all been inspired by the spirit of Imam Hussain, grandson of the Prophet, who had expressed the wish, before the battle of Karbala, to migrate to India to spread Islam there. The cult centred round the martyrdom of Imam Hussain played, he writes, a particularly important role in cementing Hindu-Muslim unity, for in the annual lamentation rituals marking Hussain’s murder at Karbala, both Hindus as well as Muslims traditionally participated with equal faith and fervour. The British, he remarked, plotted to destroy this close relationship between Muslims and Hindus when they came to power, and, following them, the Arya Samajists had taken it upon themselves to persuade Hindus not to participate in the Muharram observances. However, Siddiq Hussain wrote, ‘Allah wished to preserve the honour of Imam Hussain’ and ‘respected his mission of Hindu-Muslim unity’, and so, from among the Imam’s descendants, He had chosen him as an avatar of a Hindu deity, born in a Muslim family, to preach Islam to the Hindus, thereby carrying on the Imam’s mission. By combining the ‘Muslim’ and ‘Hindu’ titles of ‘Siddiq Deendar’ and ‘Channabasaveswara’ respectively, he had, he said, ‘destroyed the conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims’ and had showed to them ‘how the mysticism (tasawwuf) of Shri Ramji and Shri Kishanji were in full accordance with Islamic Sufism’.
At this point Siddiq Hussain refers to Dara Shikoh’s own efforts at uniting Hindus and Muslims through his Majm‘a al-Bahrain, but comments that Dara does not point out what exactly can unite the two, and, consequently, failed in his endeavours. Some argue, he says, that Hindus and Muslims can unite to jointly fight the British for self-rule (swaraj), but he remarks that God has created human beings not simply for ‘material pursuits’ but for ‘spiritual progress’. Hence, the joint struggle for swaraj cannot really provide a firm foundation for Hindu-Muslim unity, as the abortive attempts during the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movement show. God is now said to have stepped in to resolve this seemingly insoluble tangle and, Siddiq Hussain says, has sent him in the form of an avatar of a Hindu saint, confirming the prophecies contained in various Hindu scriptures relating to Muhammad as the jagat guru/kalki avatar and of himself as Deendar Channabasaveswara. To the Muslims the Deendar Channabasaveshwara would prove that these scriptures and the prophets unto whom they were revealed, which most Muslims had dismissed as false, were ‘actually true’. In other words, if Hindus were to accept Muhammad and Islam as the final truth and thus convert to Islam, the Muslims, in turn, would be made to understand that the Hindu prophets and scriptures, too, are of divine origin. In effect, then, what Siddiq Hussain is arguing for is a ‘conversion’ on the part of Hindus as well as Muslims, with Hindus recognising Muhammad as the last prophet of God, and Muslims recognising and respecting the prophets of the Hindus. ‘Creating inter-religious harmony’, Siddiq Hussain stresses, is a two-way process, for ‘it takes two hands to clap’. ‘Love and cordiality’, he asserts, ‘can only be cemented when both [Hindus and Muslims] cleanse their hearts and let the fire of unity burn brightly’.

While the Hindus are expected to convert to Islam, for Muhammad is the last prophet of God and, as Siddiq Hussain, echoing Muslim belief, says, Islam is the only true religion, Muslims are expected to considerably revise their own views about Hinduism. Before his advent, Siddiq Hussain claimed, the Muslims were completely ignorant of the scriptures of the Hindus. They looked upon them and their avatars contemptuously ‘as kafirs’, as ‘without religion’ (be-din), as having had no prophet sent to them by God and as lacking in any ‘truthfulness’ (sadaqat) and spirituality (ruhaniyyat). No Muslim, he says, would ever assume the name of a Hindu avatar, while, on the other hand, many Hindus used Muslim names. Prior to his advent, Muslims would never take the name of Rama, Krishna or Shiva in a mosque, but now the missionaries of the Anjuman ‘freely talk of these avatars in mosques and their teachings are discussed’. As a result, he claimed, ‘Many Muslims are taking the name of Hindu elders (buzurgan) and are talking about them in mosques and in religious gatherings’. Now, because of his work, he remarked, he had convinced the Muslims that ‘there is light [nur] even in the religion of the Hindus’, and that prior to Muhammad God had indeed sent many holy men, including prophets (nabi), saints (wali, ghawth and qutb) to India. In this way, Siddiq Hussain argued, true Hindu-Muslim unity was being established by his efforts, and that soon ‘Hindustan would be converted into a veritable heaven’.

Echoing Dara’s own writings on the subject, Siddiq Hussain, in his Jami‘a al-Bahrain, seeks to draw out similarities in the teachings of the Hindu and Muslim mystics, reinterpreting Hindu mystical doctrines so as to present them as identical to their Islamic counterparts. The numerous deities whom the Hindus worship are explained away as simply different names for the one God or as terms used to describe His various attributes (sifat). Thus, for instance, Brahma, considered by Hindus to be the Creator, is said to actually be a term to describe Allah in his capacity of being khaliq (the Creator) or rahman (the Beneficent). Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation, is said to refer to Allah’s attribute of rahm (mercy) and Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, denotes Allah in his capacity of ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’ (malik). Just as Hindu mysticism and Islamic Sufism share a common stress on monotheism, so, too, Siddiq Hussain contends, do they have identical views on issues such as God’s powers, His essence and His attributes, the creation and position of Man in the cosmos, the soul, divine revelation, prayer, meditation, the concept of the five elements and the notion of life after death. The ‘union of these two oceans’ of spirituality (jami‘a al-bahrain), he argues, holds the key to the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity. The two streams are shown as being united by one person, the Prophet Muhammad, whom the pre-Muhammadan ‘mystics of India’ (fuqara-i-hind) have referred to as the sangamnath, the ‘Master of the Confluence’. By bringing to fulfilment the prophecies of the Hindu scriptures and by stressing the oneness of the spiritual traditions of the Hindus and the Muslims, their differences being merely apparent, owing to the different languages in which they are expressed, Muhammad is said to be the ‘Master of the Union of the Oceans’ (sardar-i-majm‘a al-bahrain). To the Hindus, he is also the kalki avatar, the jagat guru and ishwar.

This appropriation of Hindu figures and reading new meanings into Hindu religious texts is the means that Siddiq Hussain employs to further his mission of propagating his version of Islam to the Hindus, which emerges as a far more central concern for him than to present the message of the Hindu prophets to the Muslims, although this is not completely ignored, as we have seen. For Hindus to convert to Islam, he suggests, is not to betray their ancestral faith. On the contrary, a ‘true’ reading of the ‘prophecies’ in their scriptures demands that Hindus should, in fact, declare their faith in Muhammad as the kalki avatar/jagat guru/sangamnath, and, accordingly, embrace Islam. In this manner, the Hindu scriptures are not denied, but, rather, used in order to be superseded by the Qur’an. In line with orthodox Muslim opinion, Siddiq Hussain asserts that all prophets of God, from Adam to Muhammad, have preached the same din-al-Islam-al

[acharya]

http://www.muslimuzbekistan.com/eng/islam/.../a28012003.html

January 28, 2003

CONQUEST OF INDIA PRIOR TO THE DAY OF JUDGMENT

Source: Islaam.Com
By Sh. Ali Al-Timimi
Reference: At-Tuwaijiri's Ithaf al-Jama'a, Vol. 1, pp. 365-366.

The latest conflict in Kashmir between the mujahideen and India brings to mind
the ahadeeth regarding the conquest of India prior to the day of Judgment.

Thawban - may Allah be pleased with him - that the Messenger of Allah
(sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam) said, "Two groups of my umma Allah has protected
from the hellfire: a group that will conquer India and a group that will be with
'Isa b. Maryam - 'alaihimas- salat was-salam." Reported Ahmad, an-Nisa'i, and
at-Tabarani.

Na'im b. Hammad in al-Fitan reports that Abu Huraira - may Allah be pleased with
him - said that the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam) mentioned
India and said, "A group of you will conquer India, Allah will open for them
[India] until they come with its kings chained - Allah having forgiven their
sins - when they return back [from India], they will find Ibn Maryam in Syria."

While Abu Huraira said, "The Messenger of Allah (sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam)
promised us the conquest of India. If I was to come across that I will spend my
soul and wealth. If I am killed then I am among the best of martyrs. And if I
return then I am Abu Huraira the freed." Reported by Ahmad, an-Nisa'i, and
al-Hakim.

In another narration reported by Ahmad, Abu Huraira says, "I was told by my
khalil, teh truthful and believed in, the Messenger of Allah (sallallahu 'alaihi
wa sallam) that there will be in this umma an expedition sent to Sind and Hind
(India) ... ." The rest of the narration is the same but it has the following
addition, "... then I will be released from the Hellfire." At-Tuwaijri remarks
this addition explains what is meant by "the freed" above.

Historical background:

Ibn Kathir remarks in al-Bidaya wa n-Nihaya, "The Muslims invaded India during
the days of Mu'awiya in the year 44 A.H and [great] events transpired then. And
[likewise] the mighty and magnificent King Mahmud b. Subuktikin the ruler of
Ghazna invaded the lands of India at the turn of the fifth century. He entered
India and killed, took captive, [and] enslaved [many]. He took [muc] booty. He
entered as-Sumanat (*) and destroyed the great al-Budda which they worship and
he stripped it of its jewlery. He then returned [to Ghazna] safe,
[Divinely-]aided, and victorious."

* as-Sumanat is a costal city where India's scholars, monks, and the idol
al-Budda are found.

At-Tuwaijiri remarks that Ibn al-Athir has detailed the campaigns of Mahmud b.
Subuktikin in his book al-Kamil fi t-Tarikh.

Reference: At-Tuwaijiri's Ithaf al-Jama'a, Vol. 1, pp. 365-366.


----

http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/.../fop11.ht\
m

It is reported by Thauban, the freed slave of the Holy Prophet that the holy
Prophet (PBUH) observed: "God will grant protection from Hell-fire to two groups
from among the people of my Ummah. One group consists of those who will invade
India; the other group will consist of those who will align themselves with
Christ, son of Mary(PBUH)." (Nasa'i,Kitab ul-jihad;Musnad ahmad, Bisilsila
Riwayat Thauban)

-----

http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?...D=1318&TagID=24

The Messenger of Allah (saw) motivated us with the prophecy of our fate. He
(saw) foretold of people from amongst this Ummah that will conquer India
entirely and then meet 'Isa b. Maryam (as) in Bilaad ash-Sham. "A group of you
will conquer India, Allah will open for them [India] until they come with its
kings chained - Allah having forgiven their sins - when they return back [from
India], they will find Ibn Maryam in Syria" [Na'im b. Hammad in al-Fitan reports
from Abu Hurairah].

Abu Huraira said to this: "the Messenger (saw) promised us the conquest of
India. If I was to come across that, I will spend my soul and my wealth. If I am
killed then I am among the best of martyrs, and if I return then I am Abu
Huraira the freed" [Ahmad, An-Nisa'i, Al-Hakim

[Guest]

<b>The Return of Paganism As Christianity Declines, Superstitions Gain Force</b>

LONDON, FEB. 7, 2004 (Zenit.org).- Like European politicians who continue to block any mention of Christianity in the draft of the continent's Constitution, public officials around the globe increasingly are adopting measures that favor a return to pre-Christian paganism.

Denmark has announced it will allow a group that worships Thor, Odin and other Norse gods to conduct legally-valid marriages, the Associated Press reported Nov. 5. "It would be wrong if the indigenous religion of this country wasn't recognized," said Tove Fergo, the government Minister for Ecclesiastic Affairs and a Lutheran priest.

The 240-member Forn Sidr sought recognition in 1999, said its president, Tissel Jacobsen. About 1,000 people worship the ancient gods in Denmark, Jacobsen said.

Across the ocean, a U.S. federal judge in the state of Virginia ruled in favor of a Wiccan who was barred from saying a prayer to open a Chesterfield County board meeting. U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Dohnal said the board discriminated against Cyndi Simpson when it prohibited her from joining a list of clergy who deliver the invocations, the Associated Press reported Nov. 14.

Wiccans consider themselves witches, pagans or neo-pagans, and say their religion is based on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons, according to the Associated Press. The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed the lawsuit on behalf of Simpson after she was turned down by the board.

Wiccans are also active in Canada, where recently they celebrated the winter solstice, the Vancouver Sun reported Dec. 22. Heather Botting, a pagan chaplain at the University of Victoria, told the newspaper that the solstice, marking the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, is a sacred day.

An ex-Jehovah's Witness, Botting was appointed five years ago by university authorities. She is also authorized to perform marriages. At the university interfaith chapel, members of the 30,000-strong student body were able to mark the solstice with dances that paid to reverence to stag antlers as symbols of the cycle of life. Revelers dipped a ceremonial knife into a cast-iron cauldron of wine, to symbolize the unity of male and female divinity.

In the Greater Victoria area, population 280,000, more than 1,000 people officially told Canadian census-takers they were pagans, the Vancouver Sun said. Paganism is Canada's fastest-growing religion, according to Statistics Canada. There are 21,080 declared pagans in Canada.

The census figures underestimate Wicca's spread, claims Inar Hansen, vice president of the university's 150-member Thorn and Oak Student Pagan Club. Hansen maintains that tens of thousands of residents on Canada's West Coast practice paganism.

Meanwhile, in the state of Victoria, Australia, a legal battle is being played out between Olivia Watts, a self-proclaimed witch and transsexual, and Rob Wilson, a Christian.

The conflict began last June when Wilson, a council member in the Melbourne-area municipality of Casey, issued a statement warning against a satanic cult that was allegedly planning to take over the area, the Age newspaper reported Dec. 27. Watts, who was named in the statement by Wilson, took the matter to the Equal Opportunity Commission. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal will also look into Watts' case. Watts is getting help from the Sydney-based Pagan Awareness Network.

Rebirth for the Blairs

On Jan. 26 and 27, the Guardian newspaper in Britain published ample extracts from Francis Wheen's new book, "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions." Wheen recounts the rise of gurus, spiritualists and assorted pagan beliefs. One of the most successful modern gurus is Deepak Chopra, who earns around $20 million a year. Since his 1993 appearance on the Oprah Winfrey television show --which led to sales of 400,000 copies of his book within a week -- Chopra has authored 25 books. He heads the Chopra Center for Well-Being in La Jolla, California. His admirers run a wide gamut, from Michael Jackson to Mikhail Gorbachev and Hillary Clinton.

Wheen also recounts that Cherie Blair, wife of the British Prime Minister, is keen on alternative forms of spirituality. Her adventures include inviting a feng-shui expert to rearrange the furniture at 10 Downing Street, and wearing a "magic pendant" known as the BioElectric Shield, which has "a matrix of specially cut quartz crystals" that surround the wearer with "a cocoon of energy" to ward off evil forces. Both Cherie and Tony Blair underwent a Mayan rebirthing experience
while on holidays in Mexico in 2001.

Also increasingly popular in England is Kabbalah, an ancient Hebrew philosophy. At London's Kabbalah Center -- whose premises were reportedly paid for by the singer Madonna for 3.5 million pounds ($6.3million) -- followers can buy books, sign up for a 10-week course, or buy bottles of Kabbalah water, the Financial Times reported Dec. 20.

According to recent figures, fewer than 3% of Londoners are now regular churchgoers. At the same time, non-Christian practices such as Kabbalah, Buddhism, Hinduism and crystal healing are flourishing, the newspaper noted.

"For many westerners, particularly women, it has become the norm to master Buddhist chanting in a meditation class, learn about ancient Hindu philosophies during a yoga class, light an (aromatherapy) candle and say a prayer (to a nameless God) back at home," commented the article. A further sign of the triumph of alternative spiritualities came with the recent appointment of a spirituality editor by the British womens magazine Cosmopolitan.

Christless Christmas

While paganism gains legal protection, Christianity continues to be singled out for exclusion. Last Christmas season, for example, the British Red Cross banned the mention of Jesus from its shops, the Sun newspaper reported Nov. 11. Also barred were Christmas cards with nativity scenes and Advent calendars showing Mary and Joseph and the three wise men.

Meanwhile, the Christmas card sent out by the United Kingdom's culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, featured Hindu dancers and drawings of mosques, the Telegraph reported Dec. 7. What the card failed to show was anything about Jesus or Christmas.

And, in Australia, the Victorian state minister for transport, Peter Batchelor, opted for a Christmas card with an Aboriginal dream scene, without any Christian reference, the Age reported Dec. 19.

Scotland's Parliament also abolished any reference to Christianity in its cards. That was too much, even for self-declared agnostic Jim Sillars, who complained of the move in a commentary published by the Scotsman newspaper on Dec. 3. "Such decisions aren't a matter of showing greater tolerance of non-Christian religions," observed Sillars. "I have yet to meet the Jew, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh who has ever objected to us having Christ as the center of Christmas. Take Christ out and you have a pagan celebration."

Delving into the reason behind anti-Christian prejudices, Christine Odone, deputy editor of the British magazine New Statesman, commented that the "chattering classes" share a common prejudice against Christians. In an extract of the annual Tyndale lecture given by Odone and published Oct. 28 in the Guardian, she noted that in an era that prizes individual freedom, Christians believe in authority and have a clear sense that there is a right and a wrong.

"Moral certainty grates against the spirit of the age," she observed. And this certainty "throws into relief the brittle edifice that houses the secularist's morals." <b>Re-Christianizing an increasingly pagan society will not be easy.</b>

[acharya]

Church versus Church

CHARU SINGH
AP
Walter Cardinal Kasper with Patriarch Alexy II.

A RECENT high-profile visit by a cardinal from Rome, as a papal emissary, brought to Moscow a taste of centuries-old Church battles and medieval intrigue. Walter Cardinal Kasper, head of the pontifical council for the promotion of Christian unity, deliberated with officials of the Russian Orthodox Church on issues of an extremely sensitive nature.

The talks culminated in the cardinal being given a rather reluctant and delayed audience by Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. The dialogue centred on the dispute that began with the `Great Schism' in A.D. 1054 when the two churches ex-communicated each other's followers. Today, the dispute is rearing up once again. The intra-church politics that fuels it is as lethal as church politics ever was.

The issue of immediate concern is Pope John Paul II's desire to visit Moscow, an opportunity for which has been denied time and again by the Orthodox Church. The cardinal's visit was a peace offering on the part of Rome. On the whole the talks remained inconclusive, the only gain being the possibility of setting up a commission to look into the differences between the two churches. Cardinal Kasper failed to secure an assurance on Pope John Paul II's visit.

The tensions between the two churches deepened after the breakdown of the Soviet Union. The Orthodox Church feels increasingly threatened by the aggressive proselytising undertaken by the Vatican in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Two developments have become particularly contentious. In 2001, Pope John Paul II announced the creation of four new dioceses in Russia. The Vatican proceeded to raise the status of four Catholic missions in Russia to full bishoprics and `forgot' to inform the Russian Orthodox Church about the move. This antagonised the Russian Orthodoxy. The Patriarch told a news agency: "We still believe that the ecclesiastical principle on relations between the churches as between sisters, established by the Second Vatican council, should be followed. However, of late this principle has not been functioning, and we have received an impression that the Roman Catholic Church has given it up. The Vatican has forgotten the agreement that when creating its new structures on the canonic territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church should notify heads of the Russian Church."

If the establishment of Catholic dioceses on Orthodox territory is one source of strain in the relations, another is the imminent creation of a Greek Catholic patriarchate in Kiev, Ukraine. Tensions arose with Pope John Paul II's visit to Ukraine in 2002 and his support for the creation of the patriarchate.. In fact, Cardinal Kasper presented a memorandum on the establishment of a patriarchate before his Moscow visit. Fourteen Russian Orthodox churches made their opposition clear. They construed the move as an attack on Orthodoxy and something that would irreversibly damage the relations between the two churches. In a widely publicised comment, the Patriarch indicated that "the creation of a patriarchate of Kiev will destroy our relations for decades".

The tension surrounding the patriarchate has a history spanning centuries. The Greek Catholic Church broke away from Russian Orthodoxy 400 years ago. However, despite recognising Rome's authority, it continues to retain Orthodox ritual (eastern rite ritual). The Russian Orthodox Church has traditionally viewed its members as renegades. However, the roots of the current tension lie in a 1946 development in which Joseph Stalin gave the Greek Catholics in Ukraine the options of exile, imprisonment and conversion to Orthodoxy. Consequently, many Catholics disappeared and the Moscow patriarchate took possession of all Greek Catholic churches. The situation changed after the fall of the Soviet Union. The Catholics forcibly took back the churches. The Greek Catholic church in western Ukraine has been accused of assaulting Orthodox priests, scaring believers and demolishing churches.

Expressing his displeasure at the current state of affairs, Alexy II told the press that "many of those who today serve in the Greek Catholic Church have received education in our ecclesiastical schools. Throughout the 1950s, after the War, Greek Catholics received spiritual fare in our Orthodox churches." However, he added: "When religious freedom came, they should have expressed their gratitude to their sister church. Instead, a wave of wild nationalism destroyed three Orthodox episcopates in Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk and Ternopol." He further complained that "Orthodox Christians were driven out of their churches, priests were beaten, relics desecrated, churches taken by force." He criticised the Roman Catholic Church for "trying so stubbornly to move the cathedra of the Greek Roman Church from Lvov to Kiev and to establish a patriarchy." He also criticised the aggressive proselytising by the Roman Catholic Church within both Russia and the CIS. The Orthodoxy views Rome's backing of the Greek Catholic Church as evidence of attempts at poaching on the territory of a sister church.

The fact remains that Russia, the CIS and Eastern Europe, after the collapse of the socialist system, constitute one of the most fertile grounds for Christianity. Both the churches are aware of this and the battle is for the "soul" of this vast territory.

[Guest]

Islam’s Other Victims: India
By Serge Trifkovic
FrontPageMagazine.com | November 18, 2002

Adapted from The Sword of the Prophet: A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam by Dr. Serge Trifkovic.

The fundamental leftist and anti-American claim about our ongoing conflict with political Islam is this: whatever has happened or does happen, it’s our fault. We provoked them into it by being dirty Yankee imperialists and by unkindly refusing to allow them to destroy Israel. But two things make crystal clear that this is not so:

1. The political arm of Islam has been waging terroristic holy war on the rest of the world for centuries.

2. It has waged this war against civilizations that have nothing to do with the West, let alone America.

This is why the case of Moslem aggression against India proves so much. Let’s look at the historical record.

India prior to the Moslem invasions was one of the world’s great civilizations. Tenth century Hindustan matched its contemporaries in the East and the West in the realms of philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. Indian mathematicians discovered the number zero (not to mention other things, like algebra, that were later transmitted to a Moslem world which mistaken has received credit for them.) Medieval India, before the Moslem invasion, was a richly imaginative culture, one of the half-dozen most advanced civilizations of all time. Its sculptures were vigorous and sensual, its architecture ornate and spellbinding. And these were indigenous achievements and not, as in the case of many of the more celebrated high-points of Moslem culture, relics of pre-Moslem civilizations that Moslems had overrun.

Moslem invaders began entering India in the early 8th century, on the orders of Hajjaj, the governor of what is now Iraq. (Sound familiar?) Starting in 712 the raiders, commanded by Muhammad Qasim, demolished temples, shattered sculptures, plundered palaces, killed vast numbers of men — it took three whole days to slaughter the inhabitants of the city of Debal — and carried off their women and children to slavery, some of it sexual. After the initial wave of violence, however, Qasim tried to establish law and order in the newly-conquered lands, and to that end he even allowed a degree of religious tolerance. but upon hearing of such humane practices, his superior Hajjaj, objected:

"It appears from your letter that all the rules made by you for the comfort and convenience of your men are strictly in accordance with religious law. But the way of granting pardon prescribed by the law is different from the one adopted by you, for you go on giving pardon to everybody, high or low, without any discretion between a friend and a foe. The great God says in the Koran [47.4]: "0 True believers, when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads." The above command of the Great God is a great command and must be respected and followed. You should not be so fond of showing mercy, as to nullify the virtue of the act. Henceforth grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of them, or else all will consider you a weak-minded man."

In a subsequent communication, Hajjaj reiterated that all able-bodied men were to be killed, and that their underage sons and daughters were to be imprisoned and retained as hostages. Qasim obeyed, and on his arrival at the town of Brahminabad massacred between 6,000 and 16,000 men.

The significance of these events lies not just in the horrible numbers involved, but in the fact that the perpetrators of these massacres were not military thugs disobeying the ethical teachings of their religion, as the European crusaders in the Holy Land were, but were actually doing precisely what their religion taught. (And one may note that Christianity has grown up and no longer preaches crusades. Islam has not. As has been well-documented, jihad has been preached from the official centers of Islam, not just the lunatic fringe.)

Qasim’s early exploits were continued in the early eleventh century, when Mahmud of Ghazni, "passed through India like a whirlwind, destroying, pillaging, and massacring," zealously following the Koranic injunction to kill idolaters, whom he had vowed to chastise every year of his life.

In the course of seventeen invasions, in the words of Alberuni, the scholar brought by Mahmud to India,

"Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all directions, and like a tale of old in the mouth of the people. Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion toward all Moslems."

Does one wonder why? To this day, the citizens of Bombay and New Delhi, Calcutta and Bangalore, live in fear of a politically-unstable and nuclear-armed Pakistan that unlike India (but like every other Moslem country) has not managed to maintain democracy since independence.

Mathura, holy city of the god Krishna, was the next victim:

"In the middle of the city there was a temple larger and finer than the rest, which can neither be described nor painted." The Sultan [Mahmud] was of the opinion that 200 years would have been required to build it. The idols included "five of red gold, each five yards high," with eyes formed of priceless jewels. "The Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naphtha and fire, and leveled with the ground."

In the aftermath of the invasion, in the ancient cities of Varanasi, Mathura, Ujjain, Maheshwar, Jwalamukhi, and Dwarka, not one temple survived whole and intact. This is the equivalent of an army marching into Paris and Rome, Florence and Oxford, and razing their architectural treasures to the ground. It is an act beyond nihilism; it is outright negativism, a hatred of what is cultured and civilized.

In his book The Story of Civilization, famous historian Will Durant lamented the results of what he termed "probably the bloodiest story in history." He called it "a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within."

Moslem invaders "broke and burned everything beautiful they came across in Hindustan," displaying, as an Indian commentator put it, the resentment of the less developed warriors who felt intimidated in the encounter with "a more refined culture." The Moslem Sultans built mosques at the sites of torn down temples, and many Hindus were sold into slavery. As far as they were concerned, Hindus were kafirs, heathens, par excellence. They, and to a lesser extent the peaceful Buddhists, were, unlike Christians and Jews, not "of the book" but at the receiving end of Muhammad’s injunction against pagans: "Kill those who join other gods with God wherever you may find them." (Not that being "of the book" has much helped Jewish and Christian victims of other Moslem aggressions, but that’s another article.)

The mountainous northwestern approaches to India are to this day called the Hindu Kush, "the Slaughter of the Hindu," a reminder of the days when Hindu slaves from Indian subcontinent died in harsh Afghan mountains while being transported to Moslem courts of Central Asia. The slaughter in Somnath, the site of a celebrated Hindu temple, where 50,000 Hindus were slain on Mahmud’s orders, set the tone for centuries.

The gentle Buddhists were the next to be subjected to mass slaughter in 1193, when Muhammad Khilji also burned their famous library. By the end of the 12th century, following the Moslem conquest of their stronghold in Bihar, they were no longer a significant presence in India. The survivors retreated into Nepal and Tibet, or escaped to the south of the Subcontinent. The remnants of their culture lingered on even as far west as Turkestan. Left to the tender mercies of Moslem conquerors and their heirs they were systematically destroyed, sometimes—as was the case with the four giant statues of Buddha in Afghanistan in March 2001—up to the present day.

That cultivated disposition and developed sensibility can go hand in hand with bigotry and cruelty is evidenced by the example of Firuz Shah, who became the ruler of northern India in 1351. This educated yet tyrannical Moslem ruler of northern India once surprised a village where a Hindu religious festival was celebrated, and ordered all present to be slain. He proudly related that, upon completing the slaughter, he destroyed the temples and in their place built mosques.

The Mogul emperor Akbar is remembered as tolerant, at least by the standards of Moslems in India: only one major massacre was recorded during his long reign (1542-1605), when he ordered that about 30,000 captured Rajput Hindus be slain on February 24, 1568, after the battle for Chitod. But Akbar’s acceptance of other religions and toleration of their public worship, his abolition of poll-tax on non-Moslems, and his interest in other faiths were not a reflection of his Moslem spirit of tolerance. Quite the contrary, they indicated a propensity for free-thinking in the realm of religion that finally led him to complete apostasy. Its high points were the formal declaration of his own infallibility in all matters of religious doctrine, his promulgation of a new creed, and his adoption of Hindu and Zoroastrian festivals and practices. This is a pattern one sees again and again in Moslem history, down to the present day: whenever one finds a reasonable, enlightened, tolerant Moslem, upon closer examination this turns out to be someone who started out as a Moslem but then progressively wandered away from the orthodox faith. That is to say: the best Moslems are generally the least Moslem (a pattern which does not seem to be the case with other religions.)

Things were back to normal under Shah Jahan (1593-1666), the fifth Mogul Emperor and a grandson of Akbar the Great. Most Westerners remember him as the builder of the Taj Mahal and have no idea that he was a cruel warmonger who initiated forty-eight military campaigns against non-Moslems in less than thirty years. Taking his cue from his Ottoman co-religionists, on coming to the throne in 1628 he killed all his male relations except one who escaped to Persia. Shah Jahan had 5,000 concubines in his harem, but nevertheless indulged in incestuous sex with his daughters Chamani and Jahanara. During his reign in Benares alone 76 Hindu temples were destroyed, as well as Christian churches at Agra and Lahore. At the end of the siege of Hugh, a Portuguese enclave near Calcutta, that lasted three months, he had ten thousand inhabitants "blown up with powder, drowned in water or burnt by fire." Four thousand were taken captive to Agra where they were offered Islam or death. Most refused and were killed, except for the younger women, who went into harems.

These massacres perpetrated by Moslems in India are unparalleled in history. In sheer numbers, they are bigger than the Jewish Holocaust, the Soviet Terror, the Japanese massacres of the Chinese during WWII, Mao’s devastations of the Chinese peasantry, the massacres of the Armenians by the Turks, or any of the other famous crimes against humanity of the 20th Century. But sadly, they are almost unknown outside India.

There are several reasons for this. In the days when they ruled India, the British, pursuing a policy of divide-and-rule, whitewashed the record of the Moslems so that they could set them up as a counterbalance to the more numerous Hindus. During the struggle for independence, Gandhi and Nehru downplayed historic Moslem atrocities so that they could pretend a facade of Hindu-Moslem unity against the British. (Naturally, this façade dissolved immediately after independence and several million people were killed in the religious violence attendant on splitting British India into India and Pakistan.) After independence, Marxist Indian writers, blinkered by ideology, suppressed the truth about the Moslem record because it did not fit into the Marxist theory of history. Nowadays, the Indian equivalent of political correctness downplays Moslem misdeeds because Moslems are an "oppressed minority" in majority-Hindu India. And Indian leftist intellectuals always blame India first and hate their own Hindu civilization, just their equivalents at Berkeley blame America and the West.

Unlike Germany, which has apologized to its Jewish and Eastern European victims, and Japan, which has at least behaved itself since WWII, and even America, which has gone into paroxysms of guilt over what it did to the infinitely smaller numbers of Red Indians, the Moslem aggressors against India and their successors have not even stopped trying to finish the job they started. To this day, militant Islam sees India as "unfinished business" and it remains high on the agenda of oil-rich Moslem countries such as Saudi Arabia, which are spending millions every year trying to convert Hindus to Islam.

One may take some small satisfaction in the fact that they find it rather slow going.

Serge Trifkovic received his PhD from the University of Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past journalistic outlets have included the BBC World Service, the Voice of America, CNN International, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is foreign affairs editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. This article was adapted for Front Page Magazine by Robert Locke.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Pri...sp?ID=4649

[Hauma Hamiddha]

REceived by mail from forumite: An essay of tremendous importance- Acharya take a look
The logic presented by Huntington is clearly understandble for any Hindu who has been in the US for sufficient time.
<span style='color:purple'><b>
By the same token India is Hindustan and a Hindu nation. People's minds have been subverted into wrongly thinking otherwise. At least Huntington states the truth plainly, just as he did earlier.
</b></span>

THE WALLSTREET JOURNAL, JUNE 16, 2004
PRINT EDITION, PAGE A14

'Under God'

By SAMUEL P. HUNTINGTON
June 16, 2004; Page A14


The battle over the Pledge of Allegiance has stimulated vigorous controversy on an issue central to America's identity. Opponents of "under God" (which was added to the pledge in 1954) argue that the United States is a secular country, that the First Amendment prohibits rhetorical or material state support for religion, and that people should be able to pledge allegiance to their country without implicitly also affirming a belief in God. Supporters point out that the phrase is perfectly consonant with the views of the framers of the Constitution, that Lincoln had used these words in the Gettysburg Address, and that the Supreme Court -- which on Monday sidestepped a challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance -- has long held that no one could be compelled to say the pledge.

The atheist who brought the court challenge, Michael Newdow, asked this question: "Why should I be made to feel like an outsider?" Earlier, the Court of Appeals in San Francisco had agreed that the words "under God" sent "a message to unbelievers that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community."

Although the Supreme Court did not address the question directly, Mr. Newdow got it right: Atheists are "outsiders" in the American community. Americans are one of the most religious people in the world, particularly compared with the peoples of other highly industrialized democracies. But they nonetheless tolerate and respect the rights of atheists and nonbelievers. Unbelievers do not have to recite the pledge, or engage in any religiously tainted practice of which they disapprove. They also, however, do not have the right to impose their atheism on all those Americans whose beliefs now and historically have defined America as a religious nation.

Statistics say America is not only a religious nation but also a Christian one. Up to 85% of Americans identify themselves as Christians. Brian Cronin, who litigated against a cross on public land in Boise, Idaho, complained, "For Buddhists, Jews, Muslims and other non-Christians in Boise, the cross only drives home the point that they are strangers in a strange land." Like Mr. Newdow and the Ninth Circuit judges, Mr. Cronin was on target. America is a predominantly Christian nation with a secular government.
<b>Non-Christians may legitimately see themselves as strangers because they or their ancestors moved to this "strange land" founded and peopled by Christians -- even as Christians become strangers by moving to Israel, India, Thailand or Morocco.</b>

<b>Americans have always been extremely religious and overwhelmingly Christian. The 17th-century settlers founded their communities in America in large part for religious reasons. Eighteenth-century Americans saw their Revolution in religious and largely biblical terms. The Revolution reflected their "covenant with God" and was a war between "God's elect" and the British "Antichrist." Jefferson, Paine and other deists and nonbelievers felt it necessary to invoke religion to justify the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence appealed to "Nature's God," the "Creator," "the Supreme Judge of the World," and "divine Providence" for approval, legitimacy and protection.</b>
The Constitution includes no such references. Yet its framers firmly believed that the republican government they were creating could last only if it was rooted in morality and religion. "A Republic can only be supported by pure religion or austere morals," John Adams said. Washington agreed: "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles." Fifty years after the Constitution was adopted, Tocqueville reported that all Americans held religion "to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions."

<b>The words "separation of church and state" do not appear in the Constitution, and some people cite the absence of religious language in the Constitution and the provisions of the First Amendment as evidence that America is fundamentally secular. Nothing could be further from the truth.</b> At the end of the 18th century, religious establishments existed throughout Europe and in several American states. Control of the church was a key element of state power, and the established church, in turn, provided legitimacy to the state. The framers of the Constitution prohibited an established national church in order to limit the power of government and to protect and strengthen religion. The purpose of "separation of church and state," as William McLoughlin has said, was not to establish freedom from religion but to establish freedom for religion. As a result, Americans have been unique among peoples in the diversity of sects, denominations and religious movements to which they have given birth, almost all embodying some form of Protestantism. When substantial numbers of Catholic immigrants arrived, it was eventually possible to accept Catholicism as one more denomination within the broad framework of Christianity. The proportion of the population who were "religious adherents," that is church members, increased fairly steadily through most of American history.

* * *
Today, overwhelming majorities of Americans affirm religious beliefs. When asked in 2003 simply whether they believed in God or not, 92% said yes. In a series of 2002-03 polls, 57% to 65% of Americans said religion was very important in their lives, 23% to 27% said fairly important, and 12% to 18% said not very important. Large proportions of Americans also appear to be active in the practice of their religion. In 2002 and 2003, an average of 65% claimed membership in a church or synagogue. About 40% said they had attended church or synagogue in the previous seven days, and roughly 33% said they went to church at least once a week. In the same period, about 60% of Americans said they prayed one or more times a day, more than 20% once or more a week, about 10% less than once a week, and 10% never. Given human nature, these claims of religious practice may be overstated, but the extent to which Americans believe the right response is to affirm their religiosity is itself evidence for the centrality of religious norms in American society.

<b>Only about 10% of Americans, however, espouse atheism, and most Americans do not approve of it. Although the willingness of Americans to vote for a presidential candidate from a minority group has increased dramatically -- over 90% of those polled in 1999 said they would vote for a black, Jewish or female presidential candidate, while 59% were willing to vote for a homosexual -- only 49% were willing to vote for an atheist. Americans seem to agree with the Founding Fathers that their republican government requires a religious b se, and hence find it difficult to accept the explicit rejection of God.</b>

These high levels of religiosity would be less significant if they were the norm for other countries. Americans differ dramatically, however, in their religiosity from the people of other economically developed countries. This religiosity is conclusively revealed in cross-national surveys. In general, the level of religious commitment of countries varies inversely with their level of economic development: People in poor countries are highly religious; those in rich countries are not. America is the glaring exception. One analysis found that if America were like most other countries at her level of economic development, only 5% of Americans would think religion very important, but in fact 51% do.

An International Social Survey Program questionnaire in 1991 asked people in 17 countries seven questions concerning their belief in God, life after death, heaven and other religious concepts. Reporting the results, George Bishop ranked the countries according to the percentage of their population that affirmed these religious beliefs. The U.S. was far ahead in its overall level of religiosity, ranking first on four questions, second on one, and third on two, for an average ranking of 1.7. According to this poll, Americans are more deeply religious than even the people of countries like Ireland and Poland, where religion has been the core of national identity differentiating them from their traditional British, German and Russian antagonists.

Along with their general religiosity, the Christianity of Americans has impressed foreign observers and been affirmed by Americans. "We are a Christian people," the Supreme Court declared in 1811. In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln also described Americans as "a Christian people." In 1892 the Supreme Court again declared, "This is a Christian nation." In 1917 Congress passed legislation declaring a day of prayer in support of the war effort and invoking America's status as a Christian nation. In 1931 the Supreme Court reaffirmed its earlier view: "We are a Christian people, according to one another the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God."

While the balance between Protestants and Catholics shifted over the years, the proportion of Americans identifying themselves as Christian has remained relatively constant. In three surveys between 1989 and 1996, 84% to 88% of Americans said they were Christians. The proportion of Christians in America
rivals or exceeds the proportion of Jews in Israel, of Muslims in Egypt, of Hindus in India, and of Orthodox believers in Russia.

America's Christian identity has, nonetheless, been questioned on two grounds. It is argued, first, that America is losing that identity because non-Christian religions are expanding in numbers, and Americans are thus becoming a multireligious and not simply a multidenominational people; second, that Americans are losing their religious identity and are becoming secular, atheistic, materialistic and indifferent to
their religious heritage. Neither of these propositions comes close to the truth.

The argument that America is losing its Christian identity due to the spread of non-Christian religions was advanced by several scholars in the 1980s and '90s. They pointed to the growing numbers of Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists in American society. Hindus increased from 70,000 in 1977 to 800,000 in 1997. Muslims amounted to at least 3.5 million in 1997, while Buddhists numbered somewhere between 750,000 and two million. From these developments, the proponents of de-Christianization argue, in the words of Prof. Diana Eck, that "religious diversity" has "shattered the paradigm of America" as an overwhelmingly Christian country with a small Jewish minority.

The increases in the membership of some non-Christian religions have not, to put it mildly, had any significant effect on America's Christian identity. As a result of assimilation, low birth rates, and intermarriage, the proportion of Jews dropped from 4% in the 1920s to 3% in the '50s to slightly over 2% in 1997. If the absolute numbers claimed by their spokesmen are correct, by 1997 about 1.5% of Americans were Muslim, while Hindus and Buddhists were each less than 1%. The numbers of non-Christian, non-Jewish believers undoubtedly will continue to grow, but for years to come they will remain extremely small. Some increases in the membership of non-Christian religions come from conversions, but the largest share is from immigration and high birthrates. The immigrants of these religions, however, are far outnumbered by immigrants from Latin America, almost all of whom are Catholic and also have high birthrates. Latin American immigrants are also converting to evangelical Protestantism. In addition, Christians in Asia and the Middle East have been more likely than non-Christians to migrate to America. As of 1990, a majority of Asian-Americans were Christian rather than Buddhist or Hindu, and about two-thirds of Arab-Americans have been Christian rather than Muslim, although Arab Muslim immigrants have become much more numerous. While a precise judgment is impossible, at the start of the 21st century the U.S. was probably becoming more rather than less Christian in its religious composition.

Americans tend to have a certain catholicity toward religion: All deserve respect. Given this general tolerance of religious diversity, non-Christian faiths have little alternative but to recognize and accept America as a Christian society. "<b>Americans have always thought of themselves as a Christian nation," argues Jewish neoconservative Irving Kristol, "equally tolerant of all religions so long as they were congruent with traditional Judeo-Christian morality.</b> But equal toleration . . . never meant perfect equality of status in fact." Christianity is not legally established, "but it is established informally, nevertheless."

* * *
But if increases in non-Christian membership haven't diluted Christianity in America, hasn't it been supplanted over time by a culture that is pervasively irreligious, if not antireligious? These terms describe segments of American intellectual, academic and media elites, but not the bulk of the American people. American religiosity could be high by absolute measures and high relative to that of comparable societies, yet the secularization thesis would still be valid if the commitment of Americans to religion declined over time. Little or no evidence exists of such a decline. The one significant shift that does appear to have occurred is a drop in the 1960s and '70s in the religious commitment of Catholics. This shift, however, brought Catholic attitudes on religion more into congruence with those of Protestants.

Over the course of American history, fluctuations did occur in levels of American religious commitment and religious involvement. There has not, however, been an overall downward trend in American religiosity. At the start of the 21st century, Americans are no less committed, and are quite possibly more committed, to their religious beliefs and their Christian identity than at any time in their history.


Mr. Huntington, the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard, is the author of "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" (Simon & Schuster, 1998). This is adapted from the current issue of The American Enterprise.

[acharya]

While the balance between Protestants and Catholics
shifted over the years, the proportion of Americans
identifying themselves as Christian has remained
relatively constant. In three surveys between 1989 and
1996, 84% to 88% of Americans said they were
Christians. The proportion of Christians in America
rivals or exceeds the proportion of Jews in Israel, of
Muslims in Egypt, of Hindus in India, and of Orthodox
believers in Russia.
I think this is important to note for Indians and reflect on their own country

and how it will look and feel in future

[Guest]

Not sure if it's been posted before:
THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
Samuel P. Huntington
Foreign Affairs. Summer 1993, v72, n3, p22(28)
from the Academic Index (database on UTCAT system)

[Guest]

America may be becoming more Christian but it is becoming less white.
As of the 2001 census America is only 69% white.


Most white americans consider their race more important than their religion.


They don't consider phillipinoes, africans, hispanics, asian christians and other "devout" christian converts as their equals.

[G.Subramaniam]

I know of instances where desi xtian converts went to white churches and were asked to go to hispanic churches

[Guest]

Exactly!

I have seen desi christians being asked by whites what their real name was!
They believe that these christians have fake western names for business reasons.

[Guest]

I had an Irish colleague who used to have a smirk on the face when we encountered Chinese with names like Tony Chu or Harry Shi etc. He was dismissive (if not contemptuous) of the people who changed their names to western-sounding names - probably thought the same of those who changed their religions too.

[acharya]

As the relative strengths of leading nations in world affairs never remains constant, there is an optimum balance between wealth creation and military strength over the long term. Time and again the leading power believed that it could neglect wealth production in favor of military adventures but others waiting in the wings closed the gap, the relative strength was eroded and a long, slow decline of the once-leading power followed. The rise of Europe was not obvious in 1500 considering Ming China, the Ottoman Empire, the Mogul Empire, Muscovy and Tokugawa Japan which were well organized, had centralized authority and insisted on uniformity of practice and belief. European knowledge of the Orient was fragmentary and often erroneous, although the image of fabulous wealth, and vast armies was reasonably accurate. Constantinople fell in 1453 and the Ottoman Turks were pressing towards Budapest and Vienna. Compared with the world of Islam, Europe was behind culturally, technologically and militarily. Few at that point would have predicted that Europe would soon be at the top of the pack.

Warlike rivalries between European states stimulated advances, economic growth and military effectiveness. The Habsburg bid for power was ultimately unsuccessful because other European states worked together, the Habsburgs overextended in repeated conflicts during which they became militarily top heavy upon a weakening economic base. The other European states managed a better balance between wealth creation and military power. The power struggles between 1600 and 1815 were more complicated as Spain and the Netherlands declined while France, Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia rose to dominate diplomacy, and warfare. Britain gained an advantage by creating an advanced banking and credit system and, together with Russia had the capacity to intervene while being geographically sheltered from the center of conflict. Britain also started the industrial revolution before the others, providing a great wealth creation advantage. For a century after 1815 no single nation was able to make a bid for domination, allowing Britain to rise to its zenith in naval, colonial and commercial terms based on its virtual monopoly of steam-driven industrial production. Industrialization spread in the second half of the 19th century tilting the balance of power but also introduced more complicated and expensive weaponry that transformed the nature of war and made the world less stable and more complex. The European Great Powers declined while the US and Russia moved to the forefront. Germany was the only European country to stay with the future world powers; Japan was intent only on domination in East Asia and Britain, with its declining relative position, found it more difficult to defend its global interests. World War I was an exhausting struggle that left Europe and Russia weakened, Japan better off and the US indisputably the strongest power in the world. However, US and Russian isolationism allowed France and Britain to remain center-stage diplomatically - a position they did not justify in power terms - but by the 1930s Italy, Japan and Germany became challengers while Russia was becoming an industrial superpower. World War II eclipsed France, irretrievably weakened Britain, brought defeat to the Axis nations and left a bipolar world with military and economic resources roughly in balance.

Most of the book is devoted to tracing these events but the really interesting part of the book lies in the last two chapters where nuclear weapons, long-distance delivery systems and the arms race between the US and Russia changed the strategic and diplomatic landscape. But the global productive balances changed faster than ever before with the EU now the world's largest trading unit, China leaping forward, and Japan experiencing phenomenal economic growth. The US and Russian growth rates have been sluggish and their share of global production and wealth have shrunk dramatically since 1960. In economic terms we are in a multipolar world once again with five large power centers - China, Japan, the EU, the Soviet Union and the US - grappling with the age-old task of relating national means to national ends. Although the US appears to be supreme, the history of the rise and fall of great powers has in no way come to a full stop. Great powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on security and thereby divert potential investment resources, compounding their long-term dilemma. Human kind makes its own history but within certain natural laws which become clear as the reader travels through this absorbing narrative.

In Chapter 8 Kennedy says: "What follows is speculation rather than history, therefore it is based upon the plausible assumption that these broad trends of the past five centuries are likely to continue." But certain trends are firmly in place. In 1951 Japan's GNP was 1/3 of Britain and 1/20 of the US; three decades later it was three times Britain and half the US. Japan has grown to be the world's biggest creditor nation while the US has changed from being the world's biggest creditor nation to the world's biggest debtor nation. This book was written before the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism so the projection is outdated. Nevertheless the grand sweep of history presented lends support to Kupchan's argument in 'The End of the American Era' that the defining element of the global system is the distribution of power, not democracy, culture, globalization, or anything else. <b>Add to that more recent projects that by 2020 China will be the largest world economy and that seven of the ten biggest economies will lie in Asia and the picture of the future becomes clearer. If you have the gut feeling that the US has over extended itself militarily compared to its economic base and its position in relation to its competitors, this book will make clear your worst fears. </b>

[acharya]

The Clash of Civilizations: A View from Japan

Seizaburo Sato

(Professor of Political Science, Tokyo University)


Images of the world system in the post-Cold War era The most salient feature of relations between the world's nations during the second half of the twentieth century was the Cold War between the Eastern and Western blocs. While some countries avoided joining either camp and maintained a neutral posture, none of them, with the exception of China after the Sino-Soviet rift, was a power capable of exercising major influence internationally. Besides, even countries that tried to remain neutral in terms of the East-West confrontation were nevertheless drawn, if passively, into the magnetic field of the Cold War. In this respect even China was no exception. After World War II, a number of conflicts arose, most of them not caused directly by the Cold War but intrinsic to the structural framework of East-West confrontation. It is only natural, therefore, in these days when the Cold War has come to an end following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite countries, that most scholars have tried to understand the future landscape of the world from a "post-Cold War" viewpoint. Among these attempts, two that are especially noteworthy and that have attracted the attention of the world's intellectual community are Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992) and Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Particularly interesting is the fact that these books stand in stark contrast in terms of the authors' standpoints when it comes to their understanding of liberal democracy, and of Western civilization in general. Fukuyama's thesis is that liberal democracy has finally overcome all other ideologies, literally putting an end to history seen as a series of confrontations between ideologies. This does not mean, however, that Fukuyama welcomes without qualification the West's victory in the Cold War. He is not so optimistic about the world that will come after the "end of history," as indicated by his use in the title of the expression "the Last Man," an expression used by the Western philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, who was among the first to lose faith in the future of the Western "Modern Age." Fukuyama's proposition is that liberal democracy, which first developed in the cradle of Western civilization, is a universally acceptable concept, and that the world is now moving in a fundamental way toward embracing it. Huntington, in contrast, argues that it is not only wrong, but also conceited and dangerous, to think that Western civilization has a universalist nature. His new book has more than 300 pages of text alone, and, frankly speaking, the lack of consistency in this author's analysis makes it difficult to follow his train of thought. The essence of Huntington's contention is that world politics is entering a new phase in which the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. During the several hundred years leading up to World War I, confrontation between nation-states within the Western civilization was the dominant type of conflict in the world. In the twentieth century, confrontation between ideologies came to the fore. Now, in the post-Cold War era, the identities and loyalties of the people of the world are shifting to a focus on civilization, defined as the "broadest cultural entity." As a result, the foundations of world order have begun to change. For the first time in the history of mankind, a new world system of multipolar and multi-civilizational global politics is emerging, each civilization with its own member countries clustered around a core state functioning as an independent pole. In this context, Western civilization is just one of a number of major civilizations, and since mature civilizations tend strongly to reject the influence of other civilizations, it is not likely to become universal. Western countries should, therefore, suspend their fruitless and dangerous efforts to spread their civilization to the rest of the world, and should join forces to defend themselves against the challenges posed by other civilizations. With respect to any conflicts that arise within each civilizational sphere, the best thing for the West to do would be to leave the management and control of problems to its core state. According to Huntington, there exist at present six major civilizational groups: Western civilization built upon Catholicism and Protestantism (Western Europe and North America); the civilization built upon the Orthodox Church (Russia and Eastern Europe); the Islamic civilization; the Hindu civilization; the Chinese civilization; and the Japanese civilization. Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa exist as "candidates for civilization," with the implication that they have the potential to become distinct civilizations of their own. Five of these have their respective core state or states: for Western civilization it is the European Union (EU) and the United States; for the Orthodox civilization it is Russia; for the Hindu civilization, India; for the Chinese civilization, China; and for the Japanese civilization, Japan. There is no such core state for the Islamic civilization, nor for Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Huntington regards the Chinese and the Islamic civilizations as presenting the most dangerous challenges to Western civilization. He goes on to suggest that when China becomes a powerful state, Chinese civilization will constitute a threat to the West, especially if Western countries decide to get involved in an intra-civilizational conflict, such as a dispute between Vietnam and China. Similarly, Islamic civilization may pose a threat if intra-civilizational conflicts continue to deepen and there is no core state to play an effective role as mediator. Huntington is not only inaccurate or wrong in some of the historical facts he presents in his analysis, but his thesis has the potential to be extremely dangerous if taken as a prescription for making policy. If the leadership of a major power--particularly of the United States, the only remaining superpower--were to accept this world-view and systematically adopt and implement policies based upon it, countries belonging to other civilizational spheres would be forced to take counter-measures, and this would in turn cause a series of interactions that would turn Huntington's propositions into self-fulfilled reality. As far as I can see, judging by the number of largely critical reactions from around the world, including from the United States and Western Europe, it seems quite unlikely that Huntington's propositions will be adopted as guidelines by the world's policymakers.1
Classic civilizations and their interactions For Huntington, civilization and culture are linked: both involve "the overall way of life of a people." Civilization is "the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity . . . defined by . . . language, history, religion, customs, institutions, and by the subjective self-identification of people."2 With respect to both culture and civilization, there are as many divergent definitions as there are cultural anthropologists and cultural sociologists, and Huntington's definition is nothing beyond what is accepted as common sense by the academic community, and largely within the limits of what is generally considered acceptable. The six major civilizations, as depicted by Huntington, are based on what have been termed the "classic civilizations," and, with two exceptions, all are associated with a major world religion. Over the period from roughly the sixth century BC to the sixth century AD, long after the introduction of agriculture caused revolutionary changes in the organization of human communities, in parts of the Eurasian continent where contacts between diverse cultures had been especially intense emerged the great religions--Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam. Each of these was differentiated from the tribal religions of the past by a vastly superior universality and transcendence, and each served as a force to integrate various peoples living in vast geographical regions through common values and social orders. The classic empires arose when these great religions were harnessed in the service of specific political authorities of the times. By the same token, it was through becoming entwined with secular political authority that the capacity of the great religions to survive was greatly enhanced. The pre-modern empires which were not closely combined with great religions collapsed relatively easily, as was the case with the Yuan dynasty of China, while major religions which lost the protection of secular authorities also tended to wane, as did Zoroastrianism in Persia. This is also why Buddhism, which has the longest history among the great religions and at one time had an established position in both India and China, lost ground in both countries, only surviving until today in regions such as Japan, the Indochinese peninsula, Tibet, Mongolia, Bhutan, Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka, all in the peripheries of the Chinese and Indian civilizations. Neo-Confucianism and Hinduism developed intimate ties with the ruling authorities in China and India respectively, and in the central parts of both these civilizational spheres Buddhism lost the political protection it needed to survive. Hinduism, while not as transcendent or universal in nature as other great religions, nevertheless had a vast capacity to tolerate alien elements, and thus proved capable of integrating different cultures and producing a unified lifestyle and social order. The exceptions among the existing six major civilizational groups identified by Huntington were Japan and Western Europe (after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire), for in neither was religion entwined with political authority in the same way as in other pre-modern civilizations. Outside the Eurasian continent there have been some indications of cultural civilizations germinating in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, but these incipient civilizations were too isolated from the rest of the world to develop a sufficient degree of universality. One serious fault of Huntington's analysis is that he ignores the possibility that while different civilizations that come into contact may clash with each other, they can also learn from each other, and may thereby revitalize themselves. Even in the case of encounters between the classic civilizations of the pre-modern era, there have been divergent outcomes and different consequences for history depending on the levels of maturity of the cultures in question as well as the intensity of the encounters. Generally speaking, conflicts based on cultural encounters can be grouped into three categories. The first type of conflict is when an incipient culture comes in contact with a mature classic civilization: the incipient culture will either be fully absorbed or be wiped out by the overwhelming superiority of the mature civilization. In either case, rapid extinction is the rule. In contrast, the second type of conflict covers encounters between a mature classic civilization and another culture which has already reached a considerable level of development of its own. While the former remain unchanged, the latter are not infrequently stimulated by the former and launch a spectacular process of change. Especially when such encounters are not accompanied by military conquest, so the intensity of the encounter remains relatively low, it is quite likely to spur the development of new features in that civilization that are quite different from what prevailed formerly. The rise of the Japanese civilization, which is known for its deeply entrenched indigenous culture, is a typical case in point. As an island nation, divided from the Eurasian continent by the Japan Sea, Japan was able to nurture and develop its own unique culture, absorbing elements of Chinese civilization over an extended period of time. In the case of China, neither the resurgence of Confucianism as orthodox learning, nor the literary exaltations of the Tang and Sung cultural renaissance would have been possible without the external influence of the mature Indian and Hellenistic civilizations on the younger Chinese civilization. In the West, the Renaissance, which was the initial spark for the development of modern Western civilization, would not have occurred had it not been for the West's contact with Islamic civilization. The third category covers contact between mature classic civilizations; ordinarily this has resulted in either deadly confrontation or mutual repulsion. A typical example of the former is the encounter between Islamic civilization as represented by the Ottoman Empire and Western Christian civilization rallying around Catholicism. Examples of mutual repulsion include the relationships between the post-Sung Chinese civilization and the Indian civilization, and the various contacts between Western civilization and Asian civilizations--with China during the Ming and Qing dynasties, with Korea during the Yi dynasty, and with Japan during the Tokugawa period. Thus, it cannot be said that encounters between different cultures inevitably result in a head-on clash.
Classic civilization and modern industrial civilization Another of Huntington's failures is that his definition of civilization does not take into account the existence of major differences of substance and quality between pre-modern classic civilizations and modern industrial civilizations. Huntington further confuses the issue by interpreting modern industrial civilization within the framework of the classic civilization, equating it with Western civilization as a classic civilization, and limiting the concept of civilizational encounter solely to encounters between modern industrial civilizations and pre-modern classic civilizations. This confusion is closely related to the fact that he grossly overestimates the meaning of the end of the Cold War, and in so doing, loses sight of the more fundamental changes that lay behind this historic event. Huntington asserts that such institutions as a democratic political system, checks and balances on power, and the rule of law are all products, as well as components, of Western civilization. It is true that these were first articulated in Western Europe, but today many of these values and institutions have taken root in a number of non-Western regions of the world, while many countries included in the Western bloc have not, or not until recently, incorporated these "fruits of Western civilization" into their societies. These concepts should be seen rather as the products of modern industrial civilization, not of Western civilization as a classic civilization. It might also be noted here that, if the birthplace of concepts or ideas is the issue, it should be remembered that Christianity was not born in the West, nor was Classical Greek civilization of Western origin. Ever since the emergence of pre-modern empires, human beings (at least those inhabiting the Eurasian Continent) have lived inside, or on the peripheries of, one or another kind of imperial order. But in the West, by the end of the seventeenth century an entirely new political system composed of sovereign states had emerged. As the people's sense of identity with and loyalty to the sovereign state increased, these evolved into nation-states. The ideology of the nation-state (or, as it is called, nationalism) found its most eloquent expression in the French Revolution, and was subsequently spread across Europe by the Napoleonic Wars. The emergence of sovereign states and later nation-states prompted the global expansion of the Western world. This expansion was greatly stimulated by the Industrial Revolution, which began in England toward the end of the eighteenth century, roughly contemporaneous with the French Revolution. Industrialization markedly extended man's capacity to systematically control his environment, and in particular enhanced his ability to move himself and his supplies around the world, with the result that the world seemed smaller than ever before. But industrialization also caused gaps in national strength, between those countries which had succeeded in industrializing and those others which had not, that gradually widened. Modern industrial civilization surpasses the classic civilizations in universality, and the contrasts between them in thinking and behavior patterns are great. The fundamental role of the mature classic civilization was to maintain and preserve the established ways of life, from thinking patterns to social order. The caste system erected by the Hindu civilization has survived for several thousand years, and the Chinese family system persisted from the days of the Tang dynasty up till when the communist government was established in China. These are two outstanding examples of the capability of the classic civilizations to preserve traditional forms. In contrast, modern industrial civilization is characterized by constant change, and its driving force has been the desire to improve man's ability to control his environment. Thus when it comes to the clash of civilizations, the most violent conflicts are those between a classic civilization and a modern industrial civilization, as was the case with the Opium Wars. In this sense, and contrary to Huntington's assertion, it was during the period often called the "Age of Imperialism," from the mid-nineteenth century into the twentieth century, that the clash of civilizations reached its highest peak. Whatever the level of violence, the outcome of a clash between a modern industrial civilization and a classic civilization is clear from the beginning. As a result, most regions within the sphere of classic civilizations where the process of industrialization could not be launched soon enough fell victim to the drive by the Western powers (as well as the late industrializing states like Russia and Japan) for colonization. For most people, modern industrial civilization possesses irresistible attractions at several levels, and in that sense can be very fairly called a universal civilization. In the non-Western regions which faced the threat of Western colonial aggression, there naturally arose a nationalist response against the inroads of the alien intruders. And, since it was obvious that the failure to industrialize would leave the countries of these regions with no option but to remain weak and succumb to colonization, it became the goal of all active nationalists to emulate the achievements of industrial civilization. Japan, which pursued the proclaimed national goal of "Wealthy Nation, Strong Army" from the beginning of the Meiji period (1868–1912), was the first case of successful industrialization and formation of a nation-state in a non-Western region. The tide of industrialization that originated in the West spread worldwide, and along with it the flame of nationalism burned bright. In addition, the affluent consumer lifestyle which developed in countries that had industrialized successfully naturally became a subject of envy among the peoples of poorer countries. This is exactly the reason why the success of a country in launching sustainable economic development became the commonly accepted criterion of political legitimacy not only among developed countries but also among developing countries. Modern industrial civilization is built upon faith in man's rational capacity, and aims at improving his ability to control the environment. Therefore, its character is fundamentally secular, lacking an ideology of its own to give spiritual meaning to life. This is the reason why the values nurtured under the classic civilizations still live on tenaciously, even if in fragmented forms. They continue to function as the fundamental framework of thought in the modern world despite the fact that industrial civilization prevails everywhere and relentlessly continues to encroach upon the established forms of classic civilization. The revival of religion that we are witnessing today in North America, East Asia and the sphere of the Orthodox civilization (although not to any great extent in Western Europe) can also be plausibly explained in the same context. With this in mind, it is not difficult to understand why Huntington, who lives in America where there is an especially visible revival of evangelical Protestantism, chose to use a definition of civilization that is modeled on the classic civilizations, and why he includes modern industrial civilization with classic Western civilization.
The post-Cold War world It is this writer's contention that the world order of the twenty-first century should be discussed and understood in terms of the fundamental features of modernization, such as industrialization and nationalism, rather than in terms of the framework of the "post-Cold War" era. From this viewpoint, Akihiko Tanaka's Atarashii Chusei [New Middle Ages] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha, 1996) presents a much more persuasive and insightful perspective than the treatises of either Fukuyama or Huntington. In this book, Tanaka groups the countries of the world into three "spheres," and analyzes the interrelationships among them. The first sphere, or Neo-Medieval Sphere, consists of the countries in which industrialization has already given rise to affluent societies with "thinning" national borders (basically the OECD member countries). The second sphere, or Modern Sphere, comprises those countries that have embarked on the road to modernization but in which nationalism is still a potent force and which still live in the world of power politics of the nineteenth century (most of the developing countries and the countries of the former Soviet sphere of influence). The third sphere, or Chaotic Sphere, is made up of all other countries, which have failed to become nation-states and remain to a greater or lesser degree in a chaotic condition (for example, sub-Saharan Africa and some parts of the former Soviet camp). But Tanaka's use of the expression "New Middle Ages," which ignores salient features of the characteristics of the modern industrial civilization, cannot be the appropriate nomenclature with which to describe relationships among the affluent democracies of our times, since the name carries with it an inescapable image of the strife-ridden and stagnant centuries of Europe during the Middle Ages. What Huntington calls the "clash of civilizations" is in fact neither a clash between classic civilizations, nor between classic civilization and modern civilization. The conflicts that exist have, rather, arisen as a result of the diffusion worldwide of industrial civilization, and can be divided into three types. The first type of conflict is competition between institutions that are characteristic of most industrialized societies but which have taken divergent forms in different societies, due partly to having different social foundations formed by diverse cultural heritages long before industrialization, and partly also to differences in the timing of industrialization. As a result of the collapse of communism, in terms of economic and political systems, the market economy, taken in a broad sense, and liberal democracy have established themselves as the only feasible models for modernization. However, in practice there are wide variations between market economies and between systems of liberal democracy, and none can claim absolute superiority. Obviously there are no grounds for placing the American model of market economy and democracy ahead of all others. These institutional differences, however, are differences that exist within the common framework of modern industrial civilization, and as such cannot be considered to represent a clash between civilizations. While it may be exceedingly difficult for a process of mutual learning to occur when one mature classic civilization encounters another, it is quite possible that it will occur as a result of contacts between industrial societies with divergent institutions, and through such encounters, these societies may find they undergo economic or political revitalization, or both. To begin with, since modern industrial civilization is characterized by constant technological innovation, it cannot be expected to develop the same entrenched tendencies to preserve established ways of life that the mature classic civilizations exhibited. The positive results such a process of mutual learning can yield has been demonstrated most widely in relation to methods of quality control in factories--methods first developed in the United States were introduced into Japan, where they underwent considerable development and improvement, and were eventually re-exported back to the United States, where they contributed to improving the productivity of American manufacturers. Huntington errs when he presents institutional differences among the industrial nations as representing inter-civilizational confrontation, and thereby intentionally seals off the possibility that a society may become revitalized through mutual learning. It is still fresh in this writer's memory that until several years ago, Huntington was asserting forcefully that the worst threat to America in the post-Cold War era was Japanese economic power. Fortunately or not, his opinion has shifted, and today he sees the worst enemies as being China and the Islamic world. In the book now under review, Huntington emphasizes the need to develop links between Japan and the West, civilizations that are very different. Such a willful shift in the designation of principal enemies within such a short time span is concrete evidence of the extent of Huntington's confusion in defining what he means by "the clash of civilizations." Further, by regarding institutional differences as the cause of unavoidable conflict, Huntington's theory, if taken as a guide to policy-making, has the potential to become dangerously self-fulfilling, as pointed out earlier. There has been enough experience in US-Japan bilateral relations of exaggerated confrontation over economic and trade issues to give evidence of what could happen. The second type of conflict should be termed "confrontation" rather than "competition," and describes what occurs between "second sphere" states (as defined by Tanaka) that are in the process of achieving economic takeoff toward industrialization but which have not yet established well-developed political and economic systems of their own, and "first sphere" states, the developed democracies. This type of confrontation often involves trade friction caused by the inroads these newly industrializing countries, in their relentless efforts to catch up, have made into the manufacturing sectors of older economies that are built on standardized technologies, economic policy friction over how far and how fast economic liberalization should proceed, and ideological confrontation with respect to human rights and democratization. The leaders of China, Malaysia, and Singapore have been emphasizing "Asian values" and "Asia's own way of modernization," partly in protest against the West's criticism of these countries' human rights practices and Western demands for increased market access. In doing so, they are not expressing a position against modernization per se, nor are they confidently exalting the superiority of their "Asian values" or "Asia's own way of modernization." Rather, their real motives lie in these leaders' awareness of the weakness of their own countries' competitive position vis-a-vis the developed countries and of the need to provide protection for their home industries, and their fear that chaos may ensue if the traditional social order is swept away by the tides of modernization. In addition, although some Asian countries that are enjoying robust economic development have acquired a degree of confidence based on their achievements, at the same time they are especially sensitive to Western demands on human rights issues and economic liberalization because their memories of living under colonial rule are still fresh. This mechanism of confrontation and the thinking behind its manifestations are not essentially different from when Germany and Japan, both countries that modernized late and suffered severely during the Great Depression, used ideas and slogans such as "the superiority of the Aryan race" and "Liberate Asia from the White Man's Yoke" in their confrontation with the developed countries led by the United States and Great Britain. The Asian leaders who employ this strategy resemble Huntington in that they interpret (or pretend to interpret) confrontations caused by differences in stages of development toward modernization as inter-civilizational confrontation. Of course, there is one major difference between the Nazi Germany and militarist Japan of yesteryear and the East and Southeast Asian countries of today, in that there is hardly any possibility that another war on the scale of this century's two world wars will break out between the developed countries and these rapidly developing Asian nations. The third type of conflict is also better seen as a kind of confrontation rather than as competition. It takes the form of outbursts of radical criticisms against the affluent developed nations by disgruntled countries and regions that are unable to launch successful industrialization. To use the divisions proposed by Akihiko Tanaka, it is a confrontation between less developed members of the Modern Sphere who join forces with countries and regions of the Chaotic Sphere on the one hand, and the countries of the Neo-Medieval Sphere on the other. It is conceivable that this kind of radical movement could also be directed against some countries of the Modern and Chaotic Spheres against others of the same spheres, or by classes or tribes against more fortunate classes or different tribes within their own societies, but this aspect is outside the scope of the present analysis. Such radicalism often takes the form of religious fundamentalism of one kind or another, and is therefore liable to be mistaken for confrontation between classic and modern civilizations. It is perhaps due to this confusion in appearances that Huntington presents Islamic civilization, along with Chinese civilization, as posing the greatest threats to Western civilization. What stands out is that radical outbursts of anti-Western or anti-modern ideological movements do not occur unless the countries concerned do themselves have ambitions to develop a modern industrial civilization and are taking steps in that direction. Malaysia and Indonesia, for example, are both predominantly Islamic but are successfully industrializing. There are no visible signs of the emergence of a politically radical religious fundamentalism in these countries, in spite of the fact that they have running political and economic disputes with the developed countries. In the opinion of this writer, the so-called "Islamic Threat" will disappear naturally if the countries of the Islamic world succeed in the process of industrialization. This raises a question: Will Islamic civilization prove to be compatible with modern industrial civilization? It should be noted that launching an economic takeoff into industrialization has become easier in today's world, where investment and trading activities across national borders are reaching astounding levels, and where, moreover, with the era of colonialism behind us, there is no longer any fear of encroachment upon state sovereignty resulting from the influx of foreign capital. Granted there are some preconditions necessary for industrialization to be successful, such as the maintenance of domestic law and order to allow the market mechanism to function well, as well as the establishment of some basic economic rules, but there is no evidence to suggest that having the background of a particular classic civilization would render any society intrinsically unsuited to industrialization. At one time in the past, the Protestant work ethic was viewed as one cultural prerequisite for industrialization, but it should be remembered that although England, where the Industrial Revolution began, was predominantly Protestant, many of the other countries of Europe were in the nineteenth century predominantly Catholic, and this did not at all hinder industrialization. Japan's remarkable economic growth used to be explained by the reasoning that, among the Asian countries, the Japanese culture was exceptionally akin to that of the West. However, as neighboring countries like South Korea and Taiwan, which fall broadly into the sphere of Chinese civilization, have successively achieved astounding economic growth, Confucian civilization has been added to the list of the classic civilizations compatible with industrialization. Among Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines is largely Catholic, while Malaysia and Indonesia are predominantly Islamic, and Thailand is Hinayana Buddhist. Those scholars who have regarded Confucian civilization as the only one outside Western civilization that is compatible with industrialization have more often than not tried to explain the successful industrialization of these countries as a result of the contribution of overseas Chinese within the population. Indeed, the economic influence of the overseas Chinese should not be underestimated, but with the single exception of Singapore (whose population is 75.9 percent Chinese), it is plain that these Asian countries would not have been able to develop their national economies by relying solely on the small segment of their populations comprised of resident Chinese. It seems quite likely that both Malaysia and Indonesia will follow in Turkey's footsteps to become some of the first representatives of the Islamic civilization not totally dependent on oil and gas to succeed in fully-fledged industrialization. India will surely also provide further proof that the cultural characteristics of a specific classic civilization do not necessarily place serious constraints on industrialization. While the remnants of the traditional caste system still have a strong influence, India is now turning away from its former protectionist economic policies aimed at import substitution and embracing a new approach, appearing ready to implement an open-door economic policy aimed at export-driven economic growth. It is true that Islamic civilization as manifested in Middle Eastern countries has a much more constrained attitude toward the people's lifestyle and the organization of social order in general than in Indonesia or Malaysia, and for this reason industrialization may perhaps take longer to achieve. However, this does not mean that Islamic civilization is in fundamental conflict with industrialization per se. Every classic civilization has some aspects which conflict with aspects of modern industrial civilization, and each faces the threat of disintegration caused by the relentless progress of industrialization.
The clash of civilizations internalized Huntington asserts that, during the nineteenth century, confrontation among the major powers of Western civilization was centered on conflict between nation-states. He depicts the situation after the end of the Cold War as one in which a multipolar and multi-civilizational world is emerging for the first time in the history of mankind. But if, as Huntington also asserts, Russia did not belong to the sphere of Western civilization, but instead constituted the core state of the Orthodox civilization, then major wars of the nineteenth century such as the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War included among the belligerents some of the principal powers identified with different classic civilizations, and cannot therefore, by definition, be described simply as conflicts between nation-states that belong to the Western world. Furthermore, if we are to use Huntington's criteria for membership of the Western civilization--that a nation was fundamentally a democracy with mechanisms for effectively controlling the exercise of power--then Germany cannot be said to have become a full member until after World War II. Of course Japan, which does not belong to Western civilization, was a principal participant in World War II. This highlights the fact that confrontation between major powers from different civilizational backgrounds has never been purely a post-Cold War phenomenon. And, as has already been pointed out, the most violent clashes between civilizations manifested themselves when modern industrial civilization, which developed first in the West, came into direct contact with the pre-modern classic civilizations of the non-Western world. For all the reasons given in the foregoing pages, it is the opinion of this author that Huntington's assertion that the post-Cold War world will be the stage for confrontations among civilizations is a concept fundamentally in error. This does not mean, however, that the "End of History" has arrived, as Francis Fukuyama asserts, nor that "the clash of civilizations" has disappeared forever. The most serious type of inter-civilizational clash manifests itself today in the form of an identity crisis deep inside an individual's own mind. Huntington claims that over the last century ordinary people have shifted away from their identification with and loyalty to the nation-state, first toward various ideologies, and now toward particular civilizations, but the situation is not as simple as it appears on the surface. Modern industrial civilization, which is characterized by anthropocentricism, an overblown expectation that mankind will apply its rational abilities in dealing with the world, and a denial of spiritual matters, cannot give positive meaning to life, nor can it fully quench man's spiritual thirst. No new religious system totally different from the classic major religions has been established; instead, a variety of new religious movements, including many cult groups, merely recycle the framework of the classic religions, or parts of their teachings. In this sense, it could be said that a peaceful and stable spiritual life cannot be achieved by those living within modern industrial civilization. However, for the citizens of the contemporary world who have already tasted the enticing advantages of industrial civilization, it is no longer possible to go back to the world of the pre-modern classic civilization. Even devoted environmentalists, who express their concern over how mankind is causing the extinction of many species, do not oppose the extinction of micro-organisms such as those that cause the bubonic plague and cholera and that are harmful to man, nor do most of them want to go back to the enforced self-sufficiency of the pre-industrial era and a way of living that lacks electricity, city gas, railroads, and automobiles. At the same time, no matter how easy and commonplace it becomes to move and act across national borders, it will remain impossible for most people to transcend linguistic and cultural differences, or freely move their place of abode. On the contrary, the more frequent one's direct contact with different cultures, the more aware one becomes of one's own cultural identity. Yet, as part of the same process, the progress of modernization will destroy the established forms of individual cultures and hollow them out. That in the contemporary world mankind can neither live happily within modern civilization nor return to pre-modern culture, and is therefore destined to suffer from ever-more ambiguous problems of identity, is the essence of inter-civilizational clash. It has become minutely subdivided, internalized, and fallen into a state where there is no resolution in sight. That Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man ends on a pessimistic note is no accident. On the other hand, Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations appears superficial, even optimistic, despite its negative predictions about the future of world politics, because it fails to recognize this most fundamental inter-civilizational conflict.


Notes
1. Among the critical reactions to Huntington's treatise, the following papers are of especially excellent quality and have been of great assistance to me. John Ikenberry, "Just Like the Rest," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 76, No. 2 (March-April 1997), pp. 162-3; Donald J. Puchala, "International Encounters of Another Kind," Global Society, January 1997; and Stephen M. Walt, "Building Up New Bogeyman," Foreign Policy, No. 106 (Spring 1997), pp. 177-89.

2. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 43.
The Clash of Civilizations: A View from Japan

Seizaburo Sato

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