जो हिंदुस्तान का भविष्य है, वही मुसलमानों का भविष्य है: आरिफ़ मोहम्मद ख़ान

Arfa Khanum interviews Arif Muhammad Khan.

PS: OpIndia has provided a translation of some of the salient exchanges.

Book memo: The Crucible of Islam

The Crucible of Islam by B.W. Bowersock presents what little is known about the history of Arabia in the years preceding the emergence of Islam and immediately after.  Since not a lot is known, the volume is a slim one.

Some of the history appears to be a replay of our times - Arabia as one of the arenas of great power politics, with the Zoroastrian Persians backing the Jews and the Christian empire of Byzantium backing the Ethiopian Christians despite sectarian differences.  Mainly I learned that apparently in 614, when the Persians besieged Jerusalem, the Jews supported them; and in 638 it was the Christians that turned over the city to the armies of the Muslim Caliph 'Umar al Khattab. Archaeology suggests that neither the 614 nor the 638 invasions significantly damaged Jerusalem, and that the kind of Islamization we moderns are more familiar with began only after a generation or so.  I also learned of Michael Lecker's hypothesis about the Prophet's migration to Medina.

Lecker begins with a straightforward observation of a remarkable coincidence-- a coincidence so obvious that it is astonishing to find that it has failed to engage the attention of most historians of the hijra.  The year of the hijra, 622, was precisely the year in which the Byzantine emperor Heraclius began his military onslaught on the Persian Empire......Heraclius must have known from Arabian history of the sixth century that his Persian antagonists supported the Jews, much as the Byzantines supported the Christians, and it was no secret that the Jewish population of Medina was among the most significant community of Jews in northwestern Arabia....He would have certainly seen in the city's Jewish population a political resource that the Persians might exploit against the Byzantine Christians.  This was, after all, exactly what they had done when the captured Jerusalem in 614 by offering support to the Jews in the process of dislodging the Christians and their sacred relics. In planning his Persian offensive in 622 Heraclius would have had every reason to ensure that the Persians would not stir up trouble in the Hijaz of the kind that they had already provoked in the Palestine.   It made perfect sense for him to turn to his Ghassanid clients to address this contingency and what Lecker has now demonstrated is that those clients were in a position to influence the Khazraj and the Jews.  He has meticulously noted the Ghassanid presence in groups that are listed in the Constitution of Medina, notably among both Khazraj and Jews.   This link across the various tribes and religions would explain the otherwise puzzling cooperation of the pagan, anṣa̅r, and Jews, after a recent history of hostility, in both the invitation to Muḥammad and the subsequent incorporation of the Believers into the community of Medina.

 Well, if Lecker is correct, both the Persians and Byzantines were consumed and displaced by what ensued.

The mythical link between poverty and terrorism

Back in 2014:

New research from Queen Mary University of London has found youth, wealth, and being in full-time education to be risk factors associated with violent radicalisation. Contrary to popular views – religious practice, health and social inequalities, discrimination, and political engagement showed no links.

The recent terror attack in Dhaka was committed by young, educated, highly privileged Bangladeshi youth.

Meanwhile, The Straits Times reports:

Two terror groups spread tentacles in Bangladesh
Officials say new breed of militants is efficient, highly educated, more organised.

Tacit approval of jihad in Bangladesh

From a June 8, 2016 article in the New York Times, Bangladesh Says It Now Knows Who’s Killing the Bloggers:

In a lengthy interview, the chief of the police counterterrorism unit, Monirul Islam, who assumed his post in February, laid out the findings of his investigation in minute detail.
....
.....

But secularism is far from universally accepted in Bangladesh, and has always had to contend with a conservative Islamic culture.

To a surprising extent, the militants have succeeded in their aim of discrediting secularism, the chief investigator said.

“In general, people think they have done the right thing, that it’s not unjustifiable to kill” the bloggers, gay people and other secularists, he added.

Life as a dhimmi - 17

During April-May, 18 Christian women kidnapped and converted to Islam in Pakistan.

The gloomy report for Pakistani Christians stated that charge sheets were not brought against the abductors in any one of the case after the abductors presented the Christian abductees’ certificates of conversion to Islam.
....
In none of the cases, the parents or family members of the Christian abductees were ever allowed to meet their daughters, they were just informed that their daughters have married Muslim men after converting to Islam.
....
The NGO stated in its report that there has been a sharp rise in cases of abduction of Christian girls, and their forced conversions and forced marriages with Muslim men after a Fatwa issued by Islamic clerics on electronic media. The report detailed the fatwa declared “Islam permits Muslim man to keep non-Muslim women as mistresses and perform sex with them without marriage while he is married to Muslim woman.”

In contrast to the Christian marriage Act under which the Christian marriage stands in effect even after conversion to Islam, there are claims that after conversion to Islam, the previous marriage becomes invalid and the kidnappers misuse this fatwa while the police fervently drops charges of kidnapping filed by the Christian families. On the other hand, Hindu girls are being kidnapped and forcefully given in marriage to Muslims in Sindh.

The Mayor of Londonistan

The just-elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan is reported to have said:

"This isn't just about me - it's about my friends, my family and everyone who comes from a background similar to mine, anywhere in the world," he said.

Mr Khan added: "Donald Trump's ignorant view of Islam could make both of our countries less safe - it risks alienating mainstream Muslims around the world and plays into the hands of extremists.

"Donald Trump and those around him think that Western liberal values are incompatible with mainstream Islam - London has proved him wrong."

The second sentence is quite infelicitous.  He seems to be saying -- "If you offend mainstream Muslims, then Muslim extremists will attack you".  "Or you alienate us, and we will dump Western liberal values."

If you look around, that is how it is being interpreted by some: The Daily Caller headline is "London’s New Mayor Warns Trump: Let In Muslims Or They Will Attack America".

This is not going to build any bridges.

The Mystery of ISIS

"The Mystery of ISIS" in the New York Review of Books - a must-read.

I have often been tempted to argue that we simply need more and better information. But that is to underestimate the alien and bewildering nature of this phenomenon. To take only one example, five years ago not even the most austere Salafi theorists advocated the reintroduction of slavery; but ISIS has in fact imposed it. Nothing since the triumph of the Vandals in Roman North Africa has seemed so sudden, incomprehensible, and difficult to reverse as the rise of ISIS. 

and

We hide this {our lack of understanding of ISIS} from ourselves with theories and concepts that do not bear deep examination. 

Tufail Ahmad on "the Amartya Sen model of semi-literacy"

In an article so clear that I don't have to explain it, MEMRI's Tufail Ahmad takes on Saba Naqvi, but it could really be any of a huge number of Indian journalists and writers:

In India, a generation of journalists have been trained in the Amartya Sen Model of Intellectual Semi-literacy, which loves to amplify an isolated statement of a fringe extremist Hindu into a national conversation while hard-core Islamists like Raza Academy that threaten the nation’s rule of law are declared non-entities.

and

Someone said that ignorance is bliss, but pretending to be ignorant can be murderous. There are three possibilities of Saba Naqvi’s line of argument. One, she is genuinely not reading the country’s newspapers. Two, honesty is no longer a creed of Indian journalism.Three, liberalism prevents her from seeing realities on the ground.

This second reminds me of Sarah Haider's speech.

and

...Journalists must annihilate extremist Muslim leaders with the same intellectual ease with which they butcher the “extremist” Hindus.

However, the Amartya Sen Model of Intellectual Semi-literacy requires that its members speak, rightly, from rooftops when a fringe extremist Hindu issues a statement, but support the Islamists like Raza Academy in numerous ways: by avoiding a direct comment, by ignoring them altogether, by paying lip service, by presenting them as non-entities, by going into lengthy discussions of how these groups are small and irrelevant, or to put it simply, by tolerating the mainstreaming of the so-called fringe Islamists.

Bonya Ahmed: Fighting machetes with pens

Wiki:

Avijit Roy (Bengali: অভিজিৎ রায়; 12 September 1972 – 26 February 2015) was a Bangladeshi American online activist, writer, blogger known for pioneering Bengali freethinkers’ weblog-forum, Mukto-Mona. Roy was a prominent advocate of free expression in Bangladesh, coordinating international protests against government censorship and imprisonment of bloggers. He founded Mukto-Mona, an Internet community for freethinkers, rationalists, skeptics, atheists, and humanists of mainly Bengali and other South Asian descent. He was hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 26 February 2015; Islamic militant organization Ansarullah Bangla Team claimed responsibility for the attack.

Avijit Roy's wife, Bangladeshi American Rafida Bonya Ahmed gave a talk to the British Humanist Association, "Fighting Machetes with Pens". Here is the 2015 Voltaire Lecture by Rafida Bonya Ahmed hosted by the British Humanist Association. It is a must-listen.  If you can't watch, then a full transcript is available on the British Humanist organization's website.

Sarah Haider - transcript

"....an audience on the Left now frightens me nearly as much as an audience of Islamists does."



Transcript of

Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique
delivered at the
American Humanist Association 74th Annual Conference, May 7-10, 2015, Denver, Colorado.

The War on Bangladeshi Bloggers

The Times of India reports:

He will be 'The Next', Ananya Azad was warned on a social networking site. A day after 'The Guardian' broke the story of how the 25-year-old Bangladeshi blogger was living a life of fear, Ananya spoke exclusively to TOI on Friday.

Speaking from Dhaka, Ananya — who is on a hit list containing the names of 84 atheist bloggers — said: "I am no stranger to death threats and bloodshed. My father, author Humayun Azad, was attacked on the streets. But what shocked me was the nature of threat that I got on Facebook. It addressed my father as 'Nastiker sardar'. It means the leader of atheists. It said being his son, I would meet a gruesome death. My throat would be slashed at Dhaka University's Raju Bhaskarjya! I feel lodging a police complaint is pointless. Eleven years have passed and the cops haven't been able to do anything about my father's assassins."

Today, Ananya wears a helmet even while walking the streets of Dhaka and moves around in a car with tinted glasses. Leaving Bangladesh is something he is considering after the threat. "Perhaps I need to rethink now. I've stopped writing my blog. I had begun writing a book that's halfway through. Next week, I am planning to go to India." 

Further:

TOI traced another blogger who is now in hiding in Dhaka. On May 12, a gang of masked assailants had chopped blogger Ananta Bijay Das. Ever since Ananta's death, his fellow blogger Monir Hussain has gone into hiding.

Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin, who is now in New York, is trying to help him move out of his country. Monir has stopped writing his blogs. Speaking from an undisclosed location in Dhaka, he said: "For 15 days, I have been locked in a room. No television. No newspapers. I've deactivated my Facebook profile."

Taslima said: "I'm trying to help these bloggers get out of Bangladesh. I am requesting organizations in America and Europe to invite these bloggers to their countries. I have requested the Swedish embassy to grant visa to Monir. Bloggers in Bangladesh are panic-striken. The government isn't giving them any protection."

Monir has heard about Ananya's threat. "Ananta, I and four others had set up the Bigyan O Juktibadi Council since 2005. We also run the Jukti Patrika in Bangladesh. Threats have been coming for the past eight months. On the day Ananta died, I got a call around 9.20 am saying: 'Are you still sleeping? Ananta is lying in the hospital bed. Run...' Three minutes later, I got the same call again. I was numb. I rushed to the hospital to find Ananta dead," the 31-year-old Monir said.

The next day, Monir lost his job of a Bengali lecturer in a private college. "One day, I got a call from an unknown international number and was played a recording from the Holy Quran. I left my rented house in Sylhet to Dhaka. My neighbours later told me that two bikers, their faces covered with helmets, had repeatedly come looking for me. Today, I can't sleep without taking pills. I can almost hear Ananta say — 'they will kill anyone they can lay their hands on. That's how they want to make a name for the organization (Ansarullah Bangla Team)'," he added. Monir, like Ananya, doesn't want to inform the cops. "We believe cops leak most of the information to these extremists," Monir said. 

Further:

However, Bangladeshi film-maker Shahriar Kabir says, "Seeking asylum in another country won't help. One has to ban Jamaat e Islami. There have been 13 attempts on my life. Yet, I haven't left Bangladesh. I carry a gun and don't move out of my house alone."

*On February 15, 2013, Ahmed Rajib Haidar, an architect by profession and an activist in the Shahbagh Ganajagaran Mancha movement, was stabbed to death in Dhaka

*On February 26, 2015, Bangladesh-born US citizen Avijit Roy was hacked to death on the streets for his blogs

*On March 30, 2015, blogger Oyasiqur Rahman was killed.

Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique (AHA Conference 2015)

Please listen to Sarah Haider on the timid response of liberals to the problems posed by Islam.

My opinion is that absent a liberal critique of Islam, which is often muted from fear of being labelled Islamophobes or racists in the West or communal and non-secular in India, the narrative will be taken over by the violent right-wing in non-Muslim societies. When the topic is a difficult one, the most reason-oriented and committed-to-peace people must speak up and speak up forcefully, without mincing words. They need to own the narrative, they need to be the most outspoken.

Or else, it is my belief, that there will be eventually a global reaction led by people for whom violence is always justifiable and the ensuing war will be the most devastating the world has yet seen.

(Non)preservation of historical heritage

Mecca:

The authorities in Saudi Arabia have begun dismantling some of the oldest sections of Islam’s most important mosque as part of a highly controversial multi-billion pound expansion.

Commentary:

Muslim silence on this issue isn’t just cowardly, it’s deeply hypocritical. When an obscure group of foam-at-the-mouth Islamophobes got together in the United States to make an utterly pointless and deliberately provocative film about the Prophet Mohammad, or when a group of Danish cartoonists exercised their democratic right to lampoon a religious leader and the creeping self-censorship of the European press, protests broke out around the world.

At Friday prayers, imams and sheikhs wasted little time in giving rousing speeches about how Islam was being sullied and the Prophet insulted. The mobs came out, people died (mostly Muslims).

How many of those imams have bothered to get animated about what has happened in Mecca and Medina? How many are outraged that the house of Muhammad’s first wife Khadijah was pulled down and replaced with a block of public toilets, or that five of the seven mosques marking the Battle of the Trench outside Medina have been destroyed, or that religious police cheered when a mosque linked to the Prophet’s grandson was dynamited? It’s politically a lot more convenient to blame infidels for disrespecting your religion’s founder than it is to point the finger of blame at your own kind.

Is the commentary misplaced?  Maybe Muslims on the whole do not want these historical monuments preserved.   Maybe this is the inevitable price of progress.   Maybe this is what is needed for more Muslims to be able to make the Hajj, which may be more important in the scale of things than historical buildings.

Of course, it leaves the question of why all the conflict over, say, the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya? Is it because it cedes ground to the infidelators?

Life as a Dhimmi - 12

Here:

About a dozen people have been mildly injured and three have been booked under blasphemy laws for staging a rally against forced conversions of Hindu girls in Hyderabad, Sindh today.

Life as a dhimmi - 11

http://criticalppp.com/archives/73624

This has been going on, in pre- British India, in British India, and now in Pakistan.

Life as a Dhimmi - 9

Maldives

The Maldives' national museum reopened Tuesday without some of its most valuable exhibits a week after a mob of suspected religious extremists smashed images from the pre-Islamic era of this Indian Ocean archipelago.

About 35 exhibits — mostly images of Buddha and Hindu gods — were destroyed. Some of the artifacts dated to the sixth century, museum director Ali Waheed said.

Waheed says 99 percent of the Maldives' pre-Islamic artifacts from before the 12th century, when most inhabitants were Buddhists or Hindus, were destroyed.

"Some of the pieces can be put together but mostly they are made of sandstone, coral and limestone, and they are reduced to powder," he said.

Nothing new here.  Thor Heyerdahl noted this behavior years ago.

Life as a Dhimmi - 8

The story of Radha.

Life as a Dhimmi - 7

Inshallah (I say this as a bonafide idolatrous infidel) the Malays will come to their senses soon.

The attacks, unlike anything Malaysia has seen before, have shaken a country where many Muslims are angry over a Dec. 31 court ruling that overturned a government ban on the use of the word Allah to denote the Christian God.

Though that usage is common in many countries, where Arabic- and Malay-language Bibles describe Jesus as the “son of Allah,” many Muslims here insist that the word belongs exclusively to them and say that its use by other faiths could confuse Muslim worshipers.

Wiki: Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram (one of Gandhi's favorite bhajans)

Transliteration (ITRANS):

raghupati raaghav raajaaraam,
patit paavan sitaram
siitaaraam, sitaram,
bhaj pyaare tu sitaram
iishvar allaah tero naam,
sab ko sanmati de bhagavaan

Translation:

Lord Rama, Chief of the house of Raghu,
Uplifters of those who have fallen, (O divine couple) Sita and Rama,
Beloved, praise Sita and Rama,
God or Allah is your name, (meaning that the supreme can be called by many names)
Lord, bless everyone with this wisdom.

Kabir (1435-1518)

Does [the Muslim's God] Khuda, live only in the mosque?
Is [the Hindu's God] Ram, only in idols and holy grounds?
Have you searched and found Him there?
You imagine that Hari [Vishnu] is in the East, and Allah is in the West;
But search for Him only in the heart-that is where Ram and Karim both live.
Which, then, is false, the Quran or the Vedas?
False is the man who does not see the Truth.
It is One;
It is the same One in all.
How can you imagine that It is two?
Says Kabir: 0 Lord, every man and every woman are Your own forms;
I am the simple child of Allah-Ram;
He is my Guru, my Pir
Brother, where did your two gods come from?
Ram, Allah; Keshav, Karim; Hari, Hazrat-so many names!
There may be many golden ornaments, but there is one gold;
it has no two-ness in it.
Merely for the sake of exposition, we make of the One, two.

Life as a dhimmi-5

As Gerard put it on bharat-rakshak:

Meanwhile, in the Islamic Emirate of England, Wales, Held Scotland and English-Administered-Ireland, the dhimmis accept sharia...

He was referring to this news-item:

Quote:
Passport photograph of girl's bare shoulders rejected 'as it may offend'
By Paul Stokes

A five-year-old girl's passport application was rejected because her photograph showed her bare shoulders.

Hannah Edwards's mother, Jane, was told that the exposed skin might be considered offensive in a Muslim country.
End quote.

The offending photograph :

Life as a dhimmi -4

From the Hindustan Times (via BRF)

Malaysian Hindus protest demolition of temples
Press Trust of India

Kuala Lumpur, May 25, 2006

Minority Hindus staged a rare protest on Thursday to condemn the demolition of temples by authorities.

About 50 protesters gathered on the sidewalk outside the headquarters of Kuala Lumpur City Hall, and threatened to file a civil suit against the government and local councils if the destruction of Hindu temples doesn't stop.

Waving banners that read "Demolishing temples is criminal," the protesters chanted prayers to the Hindu God of destruction, Shiva, and smashed a coconut as a prayer offering.

The activists said hundreds of Hindu houses of worship have been destroyed in the past 15 years across the country, blaming a growing "Islamisation" of Malaysia.

At least seven temples have been torn down, partly destroyed, served demolition notices or torched since late February in various parts of the country, they said.

"We are not asking for a club to play billiards. We are not asking for a prostitution centre," said P Uthayakumar, the group's lawyer. "We are asking for our temples to pray."

About 60 per cent of Malaysia's 26 million people are Malay Muslims.

Chinese, most of them Buddhist or Christian, represent about 25 per cent of the population and ethnic Indians -- mostly Hindus -- make up 10 percent.

The activists -- gathered in a coalition calling itself the Hindu Rights Action Force -- were turned away by City Hall police officers who refused to accept a petition denouncing the temple destruction.