SACW - 12 July 2011 / Retro-Islamic paraphernalia / Gender and 'Patriotism' / Vigilante Militia / Homophobia / Fatwa violence / Assimilation's Failure / Is Sex Passe?

[Harsh K]

   South Asia Citizens Wire - 12 July 2011 - No. 2721
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Contents:

1. Pakistan: Talking tall (Nadeem F. Paracha)
2. India:  Politics of gender and ‘patriotism’  (J Sri Raman)
   2.2 [Homophobia] Black Tongue (Editorial, The Telegrapgh)
   2.3 Homophobia persists in India despite court reforms (Rahul Bedi)

3. Content updates from sacw.net
 +  Bangladesh: 'Fatwa' violence against women goes on unabated - Human Rights Watch
 +  India: People vs the people (Ramachandra Guha)
 +  India: Press release by petitioners in response to supreme court order on Salwa Judum
 +  India: Mental Health Professionals Criticise Union Health Minister’s Statement on Homosexuality

4. International: 
   4.1 America's secret romance with Islamism (Praveen Swami)
   4.2 Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise (Kenan Malik)
   4.3 Is Sex Passe? (Erica Jong)

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PAKISTAN:

1.

Dawn, 10 July 2011

SMOKERS’ CORNER: TALKING TALL

by Nadeem F. Paracha

The roots of the modern-day Hindu-Muslim antipathy in India and sectarian violence in Pakistan lie not in the distant past, but a mere 150 years back in history; or soon after the failure of the 1857 Indian Mutiny.

As the British became a lot more imposing after the failed mutiny, they also began introducing a greater number of modern ideas and technology, some of which suddenly awakened the Muslims to a stark reality. Muslims realised that they were actually a minority in India, something that was ignored by them due to hundreds of years of Muslim rule in India.

As the region’s Muslims finally resigned to the fact that the age of Muslim kings was as good as over, a number of Muslim scholars and reformers emerged and attempted to tackle this dilemma. Four strains of such reforms emerged: The conservative Deobandi movement, the puritanical Ahl-i-Hadidh movement, the ‘folk-Islam’ of the majority Berelvi creed of Islam and the modernist Islam.

The conservative as well as modernist reformers, though disagreeing on a number of issues, agreed that to tackle their community’s sudden minority mindset, Muslims of the region must now start identifying themselves as citizens of a worldwide Muslim ummah. It is also interesting to note that in spite of the fact that many among the modern-day Pakistani clergy and sectarian elements insist that their actions are tied to ideas of the first communities of Islam, a lot of literary material used in Pakistan ever since the 1980s in the shaping of various ‘Islamic’ laws and the rhetoric used to fan sectarian/communal hatred first emerged among the subcontinent’s Muslims not more than 200 years ago.

For example, the Mughals and the Muslims of the subcontinent weren’t all that bothered by the whole concept of the caliphate or for that matter the imposition of Sharia. The Mughals, though Central Asian by decent, were deeply entrenched in the political and social traditions of the subcontinent and so was their Muslim polity.

Also, till even the reign of the last major Mughal ruler, Aurangzeb, there are only a handful of documented episodes involving any serious physical clashes between the Hindu majority and the ruling Muslim minority.

Compared to the communal violence between the two groups in India and sectarian violence in Pakistan today, relations between the two communities and between Islamic sects were largely harmonious—especially during the reigns of Akbar and Shahjehan. What’s more, even after the emergence of the 18/19th century Islamic reformist movements, some of which attempted to reorganise India’s Muslim identity through a more strict and puritanical theology, tolerance between various competing sects amongst Muslims was a lot greater—until (beginning in the 20th century) the intellectual battles between these sects began degenerating into sectarian violence.

As tensions between Muslims and the Hindus and between Muslim sects began to grow, conservative Muslim scholars started reshaping Muslim history of the region as well. To them Mughal kings in general, and Akbar in particular, became villains, mainly for their ‘liberal views’ and detachment from the Ottoman caliphate (which ironically was largely secular and based on kingship). Yet, according to such scholars, it led to the downfall of Islam (secular Mughal rule?) in India.

Of course there was nothing academically or historically sound about such theories, and the scholars espousing them simply failed to look into the obvious political and economic reasons behind the fall of the Muslim rule, but the emotionally-charged claims in this respect resonated with a Muslim milieu ruing its lost status. The rewriting of the history of Muslim India by such scholars soon saw the Muslims of India talking more about ancient Muslim conquerors, and gleefully celebrating plunderers like Mehmood Ghaznavi and Muhammad Ghori, all the while downplaying Muslim rulers who had made India their home and played a leading role in uniting the region as a distinct and diverse empire.

The legacy of communalism in India and anti-Hindu sentiment in Pakistan today are a product of two main historical events: The suddenly discovered political majority status amongst the extremist Hindu fringe, and the Utopian intellectualisation of the Muslims’ minority complex, who were urged to look outside India for inspiration and somewhat ignore the brilliant legacy of (the supposedly Hindu-friendly) Muslim rulers of the region.

Today in Pakistan Muslims comprise a huge majority. So why do many Pakistanis spend more time celebrating Islamic history of regions outside India (especially Arabia), and seem to show more concern over what is happening to their brethren in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and Kashmir, while drowning out the havoc being perpetrated by Muslims against Muslims inside their own country?

If we study the recent trend of intransigent thinking and of denials doing the rounds, we will notice this denial has now become the vocation of the urban middle class. In an era of populist democracy (mostly associated with the urban working class and the rural peasantry), the middle class feels that it is a minority. Thus, it can be suggested that this class too seems to be suffering from the same kind of a minority complex that Muslims of the subcontinent suffered from after 1857.

Perhaps that’s why, comparatively speaking, it is this class that is today enthusiastically responding to all the retro-Islamic paraphernalia (Caliphate, Sharia, etc.), anti-democracy sentiment and empty, rhetorical muscle-flexing based on glorified fables and myths of “Muslim power” doing the rounds today in the drawing rooms, the popular media and cyber space.


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INDIA:

2.

Daily Times,
July 01, 2011

POLITICS OF GENDER AND ‘PATRIOTISM’ 

by J Sri Raman

Women in politics and power have needed a macho image more than the men. And nothing helps acquire the image, in politics beyond the provincial, more than ultra-nationalism

This may be far from the politics of gender as it figures in the pundits’ jargon. But we have been hearing a lot about women leaders in politics ever since the last round of state assembly elections in April-May. India now boasts three strong chief ministers of the ‘weaker’ sex — Mayawati Naina Kumari, Jayalalithaa Jayaram and Mamata Banerjee. Waiting in the wings, meanwhile, are at least two female luminaries of the far right, bidding for a bigger role in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Polls in the states of Tamilnadu and West Bengal have respectively put Jayalalithaa and Mamata in power, while Mayawati awaits assembly elections due in her Uttar Pradesh next year. All the three have acquired the reputation of giant-slayers. Jayalalithaa has routed a formidable alliance of the regionally entrenched Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Congress. Mamata has put an end to the three-decade-long rule of West Bengal by the Marxist-led Left. Mayawati, a dalit (untouchable) leader, performed a similar political feat in 2007 by achieving a massive electoral victory in the country’s most populous state.

All the three belong to a league of leaders whose strength is largely identified with ‘law and order’. They are credited with a particularly strong-arm approach to what seems to them lawless and disorderly conduct on the part of the political opposition.

So were a trio of prime ministers in the turbulent 70s — India’s Indira Gandhi (in office from 1966 to 1977 and from 1980 to 1984), Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo Bandaranaike (1960–1965, 1970–1977 and 1994–2000) and Golda Meir, the ‘Iron Lady’ of Israeli politics until Britain’s Margaret Thatcher was to snatch the title subsequently. In their case, however, the emphasis was less on law and order than on external and internal security. They were upheld as symbols of a ‘sovereignty’ that can be strengthened only by military means.

Unconcealed misogyny, of course, has always marked much of the witheringly contemptuous criticism, to which successful women leaders have been subjected. Males of the political species have not exactly been models of soft power. Ironically, however, women in politics and power have needed a macho image more than the men. And nothing helps acquire the image, in politics beyond the provincial, more than ultra-nationalism.

Which brings us back to the femme fatales of the far right, bidding for a bigger role in the BJP. An image of ultra-nationalism is not something they must invent and acquire. The halo may be hard to achieve for a Hema Malini, who has also to preserve her Bollywood-given Dream Girl image even while advertising a particular brand of purified water. It may also not quite tally with the telly-generated image of a Smriti Irani, the traditional Tulsi of a trite serial with the tell-tale title Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (literally, ‘Because the mother-in-law was also once a daughter-in-law’). But there are others, including two saffron-clad ‘saints’.

We are not talking, for the moment, of Sadhvi Ritambhara. The lady played a leading role in the mosque demolition of December 6, 1992, with her taped speeches branding India’s biggest minority as “Babar ki aulad (Babar’s off springs)”, marking the trail of violence to perhaps the most traumatic event in post-independence India. She was the founding chairperson of Durga Vahini (Army of Durga), the women’s wing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

After lying low for a long time, she sprang a surprise on the nation by making an appearance on the dais of an ‘anti-black money’ campaign under Baba Ramdev, known for his billionaire devotees and their extravagant donations, including a Scottish island. Ritambhara did raise eyebrows with some voicing reservations about continuing their earlier support for the campaign. Whether this augurs her return to a frontline role in the parivar (the far-right ‘family’) remains to be seen.

Uma Bharti, the other orator of the Ayodhya movement in an ochre sari, on the other hand, has already returned to the BJP after expulsion from it six years ago. She is remembered not only for her on-site call to the far-right hordes to give a final ‘push’ (ek dhakka aur do) to a crumbling Babri Masjid. Also cherished is the memory of her attempt to create an Ayodhya in Hubli in the southern state of Karnataka in 1994. Her provocation to the minority there led to riots which, in turn, paved the way for the BJP capturing power in Karnataka on the strength of a communal constituency.

The BJP leadership says she has been entrusted with the task of wining UP back for the party in the coming assembly elections. Observers, however, wonder if she is not just being kept away from her home-state of Madhya Pradesh, where she was the BJP chief minister for a brief year (2003-04). It was her campaign against current Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan that cost her a place in the party in 2005. Some more speculation has been raised by her recent meeting with Congress President Sonia Gandhi, avowedly to seek support for a ‘Clean Ganga’ project, and her subsequent statement in praise of the “foreign-origin” target of so much far-right fury.

We can count on Sushma Swaraj, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha (lower house of India’s parliament) not to seek any such meeting with Sonia. Sushma’s claim to a special status inside the party, possibly as its candidate for prime ministership in the next general election of 2014, in fact, rests on her record of uncompromising opposition to the alien in India’s midst. The BJP leader is proud of having contested a parliamentary election against Sonia. She is even prouder of her vow in 2004 to shave off her tresses and wear white, in emulation of a traditional Hindu widow, if Italian Sonia was sworn in as India’s Prime Minister.

Sushma has strengthened her case for the candidature with her recent dance at the Raj Ghat, the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi, chosen by the BJP as a venue of anti-corruption protest. She swayed to the song of celebrated Sahir Ludhianvi in Naya Daur, a film from the 1950s: “Ye desh hai viir javaanon kaa/Alabelon kaa mastaanon kaa/Is desh kaa yaaron kyaa kahanaa/Ye desh hai duniyaa kaa gahanaa” (This is the country of brave youth/proud and playful/what can one say of this country, friends/this country is the world’s jewel).

Another song by the same poet, from another film (Dhool kaa Phool) of the 1950s, comes to mind. Sung to a child, the climactic lines say, “Yeh deen ke tajar ye watan bechne waale/yeh insaano ki laashon ke qafan bechne waale/tu in ke liye maut ka elaan banega/tu hindu banega na musalmaan banega/insaan ki aulaad hai, insaan banega” (These traders in faith, these merchants of the country/these sellers of the coffins of human bodies/you will become the proclamation of their death/you are neither a Hindu nor a Musalmaan/you are a human progeny, and you will remain a human being).

No leader of the BJP and its band, whether female or male, will dance to this song and tune of a different patriotism.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint

o o o

2.2

The Telegraph, 8 July 2011

Editorial

BLACK TONGUE

The Union health minister’s recent denunciation of homosexuality as being a form of disease betrays a shockingly unhealthy attitude. Apart from being thoroughly unscientific, such a comment assumes a particularly nefarious edge, given that it was made at a national conference to raise awareness on HIV/AIDS. But Ghulam Nabi Azad did not stop there. He went on to bolster his argument by claiming that male homosexuality is foreign to Indian culture and a Western import to the country. Although, as a citizen of a liberal democracy, Mr Azad is entitled to his personal views, backward and ignorant as they may be, he has no right to air them on a public platform as the health minister of the nation. Mr Azad has not only seriously undermined the fight against HIV/AIDS in India but has also tainted the image of an aspiring superpower on the international stage. Going by Mr Azad’s logic, the West must be a breeding ground for unnatural practices, and so, best avoided. In the 21st century, with a seat in the United Nations security council and as a major ally of the United States of America — where gay marriage is steadily gaining credence — India, and its citizens, will certainly not wish to be identified with such crassly xenophobic sentiments.

Mr Azad’s indiscretion becomes graver still with his call to the nation to expose homosexuals. Such injunctions hark back to some of the darkest periods of human history, when religious, ethnic and sexual minorities were singled out for extermination. Although it is not clear what Mr Azad intends to do with homosexuals, the possibilities are quite terrifying in a country that is yet to decriminalize consensual homosexual relations. Exactly two years ago, the Delhi High Court had struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes consensual sex “against the order of nature” between adults in private. The court found it violating Articles 21 (right to protection of life and personal liberty), Article 14 (right to equality before law) and Article 15 (prohibition of discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth) of the Constitution. In 2008, the Union minister, Oscar Fernandez, as well as the former health minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, had also called for the reading down of this archaic law. Given such progressive precedents, Mr Azad’s views call into question his credibility as the health minister of the country.

o o o

2.3

The Telegraph (UK)
11 July 2011

HOMOPHOBIA PERSISTS IN INDIA DESPITE COURT REFORMS

Homophobia remains rampant across India despite the 2009 court ruling overturning a colonial law declaring homosexuality to be a crime punishable by 10 years in jail.

Indian minister says homosexuality is a Western 'disease'
Indian Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad  Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

By Rahul Bedi, New Delhi

5 July 2011

A recent countrywide survey by the CNN-IBN television news channel revealed that as many as 73 per cent of Indians believe homosexuality should be illegal.

The poll, which was conducted in urban neighbourhoods, showed that 83 per cent of respondents felt that homosexuality was not part of Indian culture whilst 90 per cent said they would not rent their houses to a gay or lesbian couple.

The majority of Indian homosexuals – many of whom still live with the parents – refer to their partners as “friends” for fear of being disowned by their families.

Many are forcibly married off, trapped in a cycle of pretence and deception and facing social ridicule if they attempted to come out.

And those who can live together do not advertise their sexuality, for fear of being evicted by landlords or preyed upon by the corrupt police who extort money from them on threat of exposure.

Over the past decade there have been several press reports of lesbian and gay couples exchanging marriage vows, but these stories invariably excite crude humour.

More recently hundreds of homosexuals from both sexes have attended pride parades in Delhi and Bangalore to lobby their cause.

In one march men wore sparkling saris, women sported rainbow boas and hundreds of people chanted for gay rights on a short walk through Delhi’s centre. But fear of ostracism was evident amongst many marchers who preferred to wear masks to conceal their identity.

Even mainstream political and religious groups venomously oppose homosexuality.

Former MP B P Singhal from India’s main Opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party believes homosexuality to be an “evil exported from the West” - a view echoed by many other parliamentarians.

And Father Dominic Emanuel of India's Catholic Bishop Council reacted angrily when the legal ban on gays was lifted saying that the church did not "approve" of homosexual behaviour as it did not consider it “natural, ethical or moral".

The Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference in southern India went a step further by declaring that homosexuality was against Indian culture.

“We will oppose it and since our country is a democratic one, there is no way that this can be legalised through legislation. The church's views will have to be sought" conference spokesperson Father Stephen Alathara said.


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3. CONTENT UPDATES FROM SACW.NET

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BANGLADESH: ’FATWA’ VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN 
GOES ON UNABATED - Human Rights Watch
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Bangladesh government should take urgent measures to make sure that religious fatwas and traditional dispute resolution methods do not result in extrajudicial punishments, Human Rights Watch said today. The government is yet to act on repeated orders of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court, beginning in July 2010, to stop illegal punishments such as whipping, lashing, or public humiliations, said the petitioners who challenged the practice.

http://sacw.net/article2187.html

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PEOPLE VS THE PEOPLE (Ramachandra Guha)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Supreme Court order against the Salwa Judum’s vigilantism in Chhattisgarh must be read by all, especially government officials. The details of the civil war in the tribal districts of Chhattisgarh are largely unknown to most readers of this newspaper. For the region is remote and inaccessible, and easily ignored by the national media. This civil war pits, on the one side, Maoist extremists, and, on the other, a band of vigilantes funded and armed by the state government. These vigilantes, originally promoted by a Congress politician named Mahendra Karma, were then appointed ‘Special Police Officers’ (SPOs) by chief minister Raman Singh, who belongs to the BJP.

http://sacw.net/article2190.html

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
INDIA: PRESS RELEASE BY PETITIONERS IN RESPONSE 
TO SUPREME COURT ORDER ON SALWA JUDUM
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We warmly welcome the order by Justice Reddy and Justice Nijjar directing the State of Chhattisgarh to stop using SPOs in counterinsurgency operations, disarm them and stop supporting vigilante movements by any name. We also welcome the order to the Centre directing it to cease from financially supporting SPOs to engage in counterinsurgency. Judging from the personal reactions we have had – from a very wide variety of people many of whom we do not even know – the order has been widely hailed as a landmark restatement of constitutional values. If the state is to be recognised as legitimate it must act lawfully and cannot sacrifice the law and Constitution for immediate expediency.

http://sacw.net/article2188.html

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
INDIA: MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS CRITICISE UNION 
HEALTH MINISTER’S STATEMENT ON HOMOSEXUALITY
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

We are a group of highly qualified mental health professionals who are practicing as psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and behavioural psychologists from across the country. We regret the statement made by Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday where he called homosexuality a “disease”, as being “unnatural”, and a having “come from western shores”.

http://sacw.net/article2189.html


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4. INTERNATIONAL :

The Hindu, 6 July 2011

America's secret romance with Islamism

by Praveen Swami

In this June 4, 2009 photo, U.S. President Barack Obama waves at the audience after delivering a speech at the Cairo University in Egypt. Speaking at the ancient seat of Islamic learning and culture, and quoting from the Quran, the President called for a
AP In this June 4, 2009 photo, U.S. President Barack Obama waves at the audience after delivering a speech at the Cairo University in Egypt. Speaking at the ancient seat of Islamic learning and culture, and quoting from the Quran, the President called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims".

Kamalshah, son of Pahlawanshah, son of Said Ahmad Faqir, a resident of Laqlick, stormed into the shari'a court of the remote Afghan district of Kunnar in February 1886, demanding justice.

His wife Qalandar Bibi, Kamalshah told the qadi, or religious judge, had eloped with another villager and was pregnant with his son. But, it turned out, that wasn't the problem he wanted dealt with.

“This woman has jewels belonging to me,” he declared, “two necklaces, one bracelet, one hundred and ninety pins and one pair of golden earrings — the price of which amounts to sixty rupees.”

“I want my things,” Kamalshah complained, “but she refuses to give them up.”

Eight years before Kamalshah appeared before the qadi of Kunnar, journalist Howard Hensman, embedded with British forces during the Afghan war of 1879, offered a somewhat different account of the culture of Afghan men.

The Afghan woman, he claimed — though he never met one — was “shut up and kept from mischief within the four walls of her master's harem.”

The men were “particularly jealous of their women”; insults to their honour were certain to be “confronted by some buck Afghan with a knife in his hand and an oath in his mouth.”

Kamalshah's subversion of our stereotypes of the Afghans offers a prism through which we may reflect upon the intellectual foundations of an extraordinary project that will be key to United States foreign policy in the first decades of this century: its effort to undo the seismic ruptures opened up by 9/11 by seeking a rapprochement with the global Islamist movement.

Envoys from Ennahda, the Tunisian Islamist party, met with key lawmakers and State Department officials in Washington DC in May. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also said she would welcome dialogue with those of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, long reviled as irredeemable fascists, “who wish to talk with us.” In Afghanistan, President Barack Obama's administration is locked in a secret dialogue with the Taliban.

America's secret romance with the Islamists has a disturbing history — and its renewal ought be a real source of concern for those concerned with democracy.

America's Islamist project

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's appointment book for 1953 bears the record of a meeting with “the Honourable Saeed Ramadhan.” Mr. Ramadan, as his name is commonly spelt today, had travelled to the U.S. as part of a delegation of three dozen religious scholars and political activists, who its government hoped to cultivate to promote its anti-communist agenda in newly independent Arab states.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts, declassified documents show, described Mr. Ramadan as a “Phalangist” and a “fascist.” In the Cold War, these weren't necessarily disqualifications.

“By the end of the decade,” journalist and historian Ian Johnson has recorded, “the CIA was overtly backing Ramadan. While it's too simple to call him a U.S. agent, in the 1950s and 1960s the United States supported him as he took over a mosque in Munich, kicking out local Muslims to build what would become one of the Brotherhood's most important centres.”

British geostrategic doctrine likely had something to do with the making of this alliance. Francis Tucker, the last General Officer-Commanding of the British Indian Eastern Command, believed that the creation “of a new Muslim power supported by the science of Britain” would “place Islam between Russian Communism and Hindustan.”

From Dennis Kux's book, Disenchanted Allies, we learn that John Foster Dulles — Eisenhower's Secretary of State and a key architect of the United States' wars against democracy in Iran, Guatemala and Indo-China — believed that the Gurkhas were Pakistani Muslims, and wanted men he believed were racially-superior fighters to be on the anti-communist side.

In the wake of the Soviet Union's intervention in Afghanistan, the U.S. would use those connections, funnelling arms and logistical support through Pakistan to the jihadists it is now locked in war with. President Ronald Reagan famously described the Afghan jihadists as “freedom fighters”: he and others on the American religious right saw in them, not without reason, ideological soulmates.

Less well known are the U.S.' efforts to rebuild bridges with Islamist groups after the horrific events of 9/11. During President George W. Bush's second term in office, the U.S. reached out to Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisations in Europe. In 2006, for example, the State Department organised a conference in Brussels, bringing together western Islamists.

The objective was to play on the fissures within the Islamist movement: Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's successor, was bitterly opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, and its cadre were engaged in pitched battles with al-Qaeda-linked organisations in Palestine, Egypt and Iraq.

Mr. Obama was mocked when, in 2009, he began reaching out to what was called the “moderate” Taliban: David Rothkopf, writing in Foreign Policy, imagined the CIA being tasked with seeking men who “advocate stoning unfaithful women to death with only small rocks and pebbles,” and “offer Bin Laden refuge in his home only during inclement weather.”

Now, though, Mr. Obama's Islamist efforts at Islamist outreach form the stuff of America's new consensus: there is, more than one commentator has said, no other way.

Part of the reason for this is tactical. The U.S. allied with reactionary regimes throughout West Asia — as it did in South America — in an effort to beat back nationalism. Egyptian rulers from Anwar Sadat onwards flirted with the Muslim Brotherhood, in an effort to legitimise their power — all the while cracking down ferociously on democratic opponents. In Pakistan, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq pursued a similar trajectory.

Now, as popular dissent evicts American-allied despot after American-allied despot, the U.S. finds it has no credible secular-democratic partners to engage with.

There is also, however, an ideological foundation for America's new policies: the notion that Islamists, unlike secular democrats, are in some way authentic, organic representatives of their peoples and cultures. The idea is tied profoundly to the role of religion in America's own civic life. In his 2009 speech to what is often called “the Muslim world,” Mr. Obama repeatedly invoked the common traditions of religion to legitimise his defence of democratic rights — not the secular traditions of the Enlightenment, from which they emerged.

Back in 1978, scholar Edward Said pointed to the pervasive influence essentialist ideas about faith and identity had on western thought. The notion of that Islam explained the workings of societies as diverse as Algeria and Indonesia suffused not just scholarship, but also popular culture: Charles Deveraux's novella Venus in India, first published three years after Kamalshah approached the qadi of Kunnar, is replete with images culled from Hensman.

Intellectuals belonging to quite different traditions projected on Islamic societies their own fantasies. Deborah Baker's superb biography of Maryam Jameelah, an enormously influential American-born writer, shows she saw in the reactionary ideas of Islamist ideologues Sayyed Qutb and Abul Ala Maududi a means of resistance against modernist materialism. French philosopher Michel Foucault's uncritical support for Iranian Islamism, Janet Afary and Kevin Anderson have shown, rested on similar propositions.

Even now, the ideas survive: historian William Dalrymple, no reactionary, described the Taliban as being “in many ways the authentic voice of rural Pashtun conservatism.”

Claims like these have in fact at best problematic empirical foundations. In a nuanced 2010 essay, scholar Thomas Ruttig noted that three decades of conflict brought about dramatic changes in the structures of Pashtun society. Education, generational change and urbanisation also brought transformations — as did ideology. Even though Taliban leaders were rooted in tribal societies, Dr. Ruttig noted, “their self-identification, the balance between being Pashtun and being Muslim has changed, as in the case with many Afghans.”

Little of this nuance, though, informs reportage or scholarly writing: a few minutes with an internet search engine will demonstrate that the word “fierce” and its variants preface references to ethnic Pashtuns with mind-numbing frequency. The word, needless to say, almost never presages discussions of European nations where killing has taken place on an industrial scale.

Islamism is thus almost never understood as just one of several competing modernist movements — its influence a consequence not of its organic character, but of the geopolitical patronage.

Even though Islamists have moderated their positions in recent years, their politics remain disturbing. The Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Youssef al-Qaradawi, for example, says he appreciates music and supports the right of women to work — but also describes the Holocaust as divine punishment of Jews. He remains committed to “the spread of Islam until it conquers the entire world and includes both the East and West which marks the beginning of the return of the Islamic Caliphate.”

In the decades to come, it is possible that the rigours of democratic politics will compel figures like al-Qaradawi to temper their positions: to engage in the kind of alliance-based politics that has allowed the American religious right to work within the democratic system.

The U.S. patronage of the Islamist cause, however, will legitimise and strengthen it — not allow the regeneration of genuine, competitive democracy. Its current course threatens to compound the tragic consequences America's anti-communist crusade had for the lives of millions across the world. 



4.2


The New York Times
6 July 2011

ASSIMILATION’S FAILURE, TERRORISM’S RISE
By Kenan Malik

London

SIX years ago today, on July 7, 2005, Islamist suicide bombers attacked London’s transit system. They blew up three subway trains and a bus, killing 52 people and leaving a nation groping for answers.

In one sense the meaning of 7/7 is as clear to Britons as that of 9/11 is to Americans. It was a savage, brutal attack intended to sow mayhem and terror. Yet whereas 9/11 was the work of a foreign terrorist group, 7/7 was the work of British citizens. The question that haunts London, but that Washington has so far barely had to face, is why four men brought up in Britain were gripped by such fanatic zeal for a murderous, medieval dogma.

British authorities have expended much effort in seeking to understand how the 7/7 terrorists acquired their perverted ideas and became “radicalized.” In the immediate wake of the attacks, much ink was spilled over the role of extremist preachers and radical mosques. More recently, the focus has shifted to universities as recruitment centers for terrorists.

But this obsession with radicalization misses the point. The real question is not how people like Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 bombers, came to be radicalized, but why so many young men, who by all accounts are intelligent, articulate and integrated, come to find this violent, reactionary ideology so attractive. To answer it, we need to look not at extremist preachers or university lecturers but also at public policy, and in particular the failed policy of multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism has become a fraught issue throughout Europe in recent years. A rancorous chorus of populist politicians, like Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Jimmie Akesson in Sweden, have made major electoral gains by stoking fears about multiculturalism. Mainstream politicians have joined in, too. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have recently made deeply critical speeches, and the Dutch government decided last month to dump a decades-old policy of multiculturalism.

The real target of much of this criticism, however, is not multiculturalism but immigration and immigrants — especially Muslims. Mr. Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, the third largest in the Dutch Parliament, has campaigned for an end to all non-Western immigration, a ban on mosque building and the outlawing of the Koran. Mr. Akesson, whose far-right Sweden Democrats shocked the nation by winning 20 seats in last year’s parliamentary elections, denounces immigration as the biggest threat facing Sweden since World War II. Centrists have responded not by challenging such prejudice but by appropriating the right’s arguments in an effort to hold on to votes.

Part of the difficulty in thinking about multiculturalism is that it has come to have two meanings that are rarely distinguished. On one hand, it refers to a society made diverse by mass immigration, and on the other to the policies governments employ to manage such diversity. The failure to distinguish between these meanings has made it easier to use attacks on multiculturalism as a means of blaming minorities for the failure of government policy.

Mass immigration has been a boon to Western Europe. It has brought great economic benefits and helped create societies that are less insular, more vibrant and more cosmopolitan. But the policies designed to manage immigration have been largely a disaster. To see why, one needs only to look at the experience of Britain and Germany. Both have adopted multicultural policies, though they have taken different paths. The consequences, however, have been similar.

Thirty years ago, Britain was a very different place than it is now. Racism was vicious, visceral and often fatal. “Paki bashing,” the pastime of hunting down and beating up Britons with brown skin, became a national sport in certain circles. I remember organizing patrols on the streets of East London during the 1980s to protect South Asian families from rampaging racist thugs. Workplace discrimination was endemic and police brutality frighteningly common. Anger at such treatment came to an explosive climax in the riots that rocked London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol and other cities during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was in response to this rage that Britain’s multicultural policies emerged.

The British government developed a new political framework for engaging with minority groups. Britain was now in effect divided into a number of ethnic boxes — Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, African, Caribbean and so on. The claims of minorities upon society were defined less by the social and political needs of individuals than by the box to which they belonged. Political power and financial resources were distributed by ethnicity.

The new policy did not empower individuals; instead, it enhanced the authority of so-called community leaders, often the most conservative voices, who owed their positions and influence largely to their relationship with the state. In 1997, the Islamist groups that had led the campaign against Salman Rushdie’s “Satanic Verses” during the 1980s helped set up the Muslim Council of Britain. Its first general secretary, Iqbal Sacranie, had once declared death “too easy” for Mr. Rushdie. Polls showed that fewer than 10 percent of British Muslims believed that the council represented their views, yet for more than a decade the British government treated it as their official representative.

Politicians effectively abandoned their responsibility to engage directly with minorities, subcontracting it out to often reactionary “leaders.”

If the prime minister wanted to get a message to the “Muslim community,” he called in the council or visited a mosque. Rather than appealing to Muslims as British citizens, politicians preferred to see them as people whose primary loyalty was to their faith and who could be politically engaged only by other Muslims. As a result religious — and Islamist — figures gained new legitimacy in their own neighborhoods and came to be seen by the wider society as the authentic voice of British Muslims.

More progressive movements became sidelined. Today “radical” in an Islamic context means someone who is a religious fundamentalist. Thirty years ago it meant the opposite: a secularist who challenged both racism in the streets and the power of the mosques. Secularism was once strong within Muslim communities, but it has been squeezed out by the new relationship between the state and religious leaders.

Many second-generation British Muslims now find themselves detached from both the religious traditions of their parents, which they often reject, and the wider secular society that insists on viewing them simply as Muslims. A few are drawn inevitably to extremist Islamist groups where they discover a sense of identity and of belonging. It is this that has made them open to radicalization.

A similar process has taken place in Germany. Postwar immigrants, primarily from Turkey, came not as potential citizens, but as “gastarbeiter,” or guest workers, who were expected to eventually return to their native countries. Over time, immigrants became transformed from a temporary necessity to a permanent presence, partly because Germany continued relying on their labor, and partly because they — and especially their children — came to see Germany as home.

The German state, however, continued to view them as outsiders and to refuse them citizenship. Unlike the practices in Britain, France or the United States, German citizenship is based on blood, not soil: it is granted automatically only to children born of German parents. Germany has nearly four million people of Turkish origin today, many of them born there, but fewer than 25 percent have managed to become citizens. Instead, multiculturalism became the German answer to the “Turkish problem.”

In place of citizenship and a genuine status in society, the state “allowed” immigrants to keep their own culture, language and lifestyles. One consequence was the creation of parallel communities. Without any incentive to participate in the national community, many Turks became dangerously inward-looking. Today, almost a third of Turkish adults in Germany regularly attend mosque, a higher rate than elsewhere in Western Europe and higher than in many parts of Turkey. The increasing isolation of second-generation German Turks has made some more open to radical Islamism. The uncovering last year of German jihadis fighting in Afghanistan should therefore have come as no surprise.

In Britain, the promotion of multicultural policies led to the de facto treatment of individuals from minority groups not as citizens but simply as members of particular ethnic units. In Germany, the formal denial of citizenship to immigrants led to the policy of multiculturalism. In both cases this has resulted in the creation of fragmented societies, the scapegoating of immigrants and the rise of both populist and Islamist rhetoric.

IN neither Britain nor Germany did multiculturalism create militant Islam, but in both it helped clear a space for it among Muslims. The challenge facing Europe today, therefore, is how to reject multiculturalism as a political policy while embracing the diversity that immigration brings. No country has yet succeeded in doing so.

In principle, the French assimilationist resolve to treat everyone as a citizen, not simply as an inhabitant of a particular ethnic box, is welcome. Yet as evidenced by police brutality against North African youth and the state ban on burqas, France continues to tolerate, and even encourage, policies that polarize society in the name of colorblindness. And although the relationship between Muslims and the state is healthier in America than in most European countries, the furor over a proposal to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero in New York reveals that the same fears and problems that haunt Europe exist in the United States.

There is no off-the-shelf solution. But the anniversary of 7/7 should remind us of how much is at stake in finding one.

Kenan Malik, a British writer and broadcaster, is the author of “From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and Its Legacy.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 7, 2011

An earlier version of this Op-Ed article incorrectly described the origins of one of the four men who bombed the London transit system in July 2005. One of the men was born in Jamaica and emigrated to Britain as a child; not all four were born in Britain.

o o o

4.3


The New York Times Sunday Review

IS SEX PASS[E}?

By Erica Jong

Published: July 9, 2011

WHAT could be more eternal than sexuality? The fog of longing, the obsession with the loved one’s voice, smell, touch. Sex is discombobulating and distracting, it makes you immune to money, politics and family. And sometimes I think the younger generation wants to give it up.

People always ask me what happened to sex since “Fear of Flying.” While editing an anthology of women’s sexual writing called “Sugar in My Bowl” last year, I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers. The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy.

It makes sense. Daughters always want to be different from their mothers. If their mothers discovered free sex, then they want to rediscover monogamy. My daughter, Molly Jong-Fast, who is in her mid-30s, wrote an essay called “They Had Sex So I Didn’t Have To.” Her friend Julie Klam wrote “Let’s Not Talk About Sex.” The novelist Elisa Albert said: “Sex is overexposed. It needs to take a vacation, turn off its phone, get off the grid.” Meg Wolitzer, author of “The Uncoupling,” a fictional retelling of “Lysistrata,” described “a kind of background chatter about women losing interest in sex.” Min Jin Lee, a contributor to the anthology, suggested that “for cosmopolitan singles, sex with intimacy appears to be neither the norm nor the objective.”

Generalizing about cultural trends is tricky, but everywhere there are signs that sex has lost its frisson of freedom. Is sex less piquant when it is not forbidden? Sex itself may not be dead, but it seems sexual passion is on life support.

The Internet obliges by offering simulated sex without intimacy, without identity and without fear of infection. Risky behavior can be devoid of risk — unless of course you use your real name and are an elected official.

Not only did we fail to corrupt our daughters, but we gave them a sterile way to have sex, electronically. Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement. We want to keep the chaos of sex trapped in a device we think we can control.

Just as the watchword of my generation was freedom, that of my daughter’s generation seems to be control. Is this just the predictable swing of the pendulum or a new passion for order in an ever more chaotic world? A little of both. We idealized open marriage; our daughters are back to idealizing monogamy. We were unable to extinguish the lust for propriety.

Punishing the sexual woman is a hoary, antique meme found from “Jane Eyre” to “The Scarlet Letter” to “Sex and the City,” where the lustiest woman ended up with breast cancer. Sex for women is dangerous. Sex for women leads to madness in attics, cancer and death by fire. Better to soul cycle and write cookbooks. Better to give up men and sleep with one’s children. Better to wear one’s baby in a man-distancing sling and breast-feed at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him. Our current orgy of multiple maternity does indeed leave little room for sexuality. With children in your bed, is there any space for sexual passion? The question lingers in the air, unanswered.

Does this mean there are no sexual taboos left? Not really. Sex between older people is the new unmentionable, the thing that makes our kids yell, “Ewww — gross!” You won’t find many movies or TV shows about 70-year-olds falling in love, though they may be doing it in real life.

The backlash against sex has lasted longer than the sexual revolution itself. Both birth control and abortion are under attack in many states. Women’s health care is considered expendable in budgetary negotiations. And the right wing only wants to champion unborn children. (Those already born are presumed able to fend for themselves.)

Lust for control fuels our current obsession with the deficit, our rejection of passion, our undoing of women’s rights. How far will we go in destroying women’s equality before a new generation of feminists wakes up? This time we hope those feminists will be of both genders and that men will understand how much equality benefits them.

Different though we are, men and women were designed to be allies, to fill out each other’s limitations, to raise children together and give them different models of adulthood. We have often botched attempts to do this, but there is valor in trying to get it right, to heal the world and the rift between the sexes, to pursue the healing of home and by extension the healing of the earth.

Physical pleasure binds two people together and lets them endure the inevitable pains and losses of being human. When sex becomes boring, something deeper is usually the problem — resentment or envy or lack of honesty. So I worry about the sudden craze for Lysistrata’s solution. Why reject honey for vinegar? Don’t we all deserve sugar in our bowls?

Erica Jong is the author of 22 books, most recently “Sugar in My Bowl.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 10, 2011, on page SR7 of the New York edition with the headline: Is Sex Passé?.


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