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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

[chottala.com] Lahore Resolution outlined Bangladesh's separate entity

Lahore Resolution outlined Bangladesh's separate entity

M.T.Hussain

The New Nation – March 23, 2008

Is it not fantastic to hear from some section here that Bangladesh had its independence in March 1971 that owed everything for happenings and movements by people between 1952-1971? Did not the assertion mean that Bangladesh had only a background history of people's struggle of 18 years and nothing beyond prior to 1952 for independence?

Neither Bangladesh is a 'newfound land' nor all are newly settled people living here only after around 1952. Geographically, it is quite ancient a land and the people are equally old settlers, though composition of races changed and intermixed from time to time through millenniums of human habitation. Not only that it was so about the composition of the people but the country had also been independent as an entity, bigger in land size though, long before in the 15th century ruled by the Ilias Shah dynasty as a Muslim welfare state having everything of sovereignty at that point of history and human civility. Again soon after the weakening of the Mughals in Bengal, it is well known that our country had been similarly independent that the British conspired to take over from Seraj Ud Daula in 1757 A.D. through deep conspiracy based in the then Calcutta (now Kolkata). Our forefathers had to struggle hard afterwards for 190 years until 1947 to get rid of the
British and their local henchmen. And in the struggle a critical and culminating point of history was reached in 1940, in this month of March on the 23-24, 68 years ago, meeting then in a special session of their own political organization, All India Muslim League held in Lahore, the then provincial capital of the united province of the British Indian Punjab. The session though was presided over by the Muslim League President Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the resolution that outlined among other things the location and separate identity of what is now known as Bangladesh along with what constitutes Pakistan territory was spearheaded by Sher E Bangla A K Fazlul Haq, the then Prime Minister of the British Indian province of Bengal (united) having capital at Calcutta (Kolkata). Had there been no Lahore Resolution of 1940 passed unanimously and implemented through further follow up united struggle, there would have been neither Pakistan in 1947 nor Bangladesh in
1971. It is as such really amazing that while in March the independence of Bangladesh is celebrated with all razzmatazz, the March 23 commemoration of the Lahore Resolution is kept under the carpet for our present generation to forget everything about it.

If one would go in a bit of background, one is certain to see clearly that the Muslim League until 1940 and even after sought nothing more than the minimum as equal rights of citizen as would any other have which the Congress party hardly intended to accede. On the contrary, the Congress went on doing almost everything against the interests of the Muslims in every way they could lay hands on. That was what the Muslim minorities experienced shockingly in all cultural and economic matters when following the 1937 election Congress ministries were formed the seven of the eleven provinces in the British Indian dominion.

The governments in those provinces, for instance, imposed their party chorus Bande Mataram as the compulsory song for school class starting in all academic institutions that the Muslim children did distaste for religious belief in monotheism. They imposed further in schools bowing down to the portrait of Gandhi hung in class rooms that as well the Muslim students did not relish for religious faith. In employment and business the Muslims were sidelined. The frustration for such grievances led to jubilation of the Muslims at the fall of those Congress ministries in December 1939 followed by observance of the DAY OF DELIVERNCE by the Muslim League on the 22 December (See, S. Wolpert, The Jinnah of Pakistan, OUP, 1988/1992, p. 176). The Lahore Resolution soon followed the Day of Deliverance in about 12 weeks that spelled clearly two Muslim States, one in the North Western and the other in Eastern locality of the then British India meaning Bengal and Assam
provinces in this region.

Unfortunately, the eastern part, in particular, was later on in 1947 reduced to smaller size by the Radcliffe's evil mechanics than what was envisaged in the 1940 Lahore Resolution. The smaller and the 'moth-eaten' eastern part formed East Pakistan in 1947 what is `now called Bangladesh after 1971.

In independent Bangladesh since 1972 political rhetoric is full of partial truth. Such airing of half truths for mainly gaining narrowly selfish ends did not remain limited to ordinary vocabularies but penetrated deep into school textbook contents obviously for indoctrination through brainwashing of our younger generation to commit to memory many fictions and half-truths rather than whole truth about our authentic past and recent history just as the colonial British rulers of foreign land did hide our glory for their own selfish ends for two hundred years of their occupation of our dear land.
Whose interest is being served by presenting such tunnel vision view of our past history? Such distortion and half truths may hardly serve our own national interests but for the group who stood prior to 1947 for AKHAND BHARAT or united one India under the Indian Congress Philosophy destined perpetually to keep the minority Muslims on all India basis in subjugation, particularly, in this land where the ruling elite belonged to the Congress variety (See, MBI Munshi, The India Doctrine, Dhaka, 2006). Shying away from the Lahore Resolution, that is, tuning up with the Indian Congress view of issues certainly implies as before that the 'wrong' division of 1947 of the British India be remedied by forgetting the event, whatever historic significance that had had. How is the argument tenable?

Think for a moment, had there been no division following the Lahore Resolution what the fate of the people of Bangladesh following 1947 would have been. Anything other than the ill fate of the minorities of big India? How could then the sons and daughters of nearly illiterate peasants and subsistence farmers' of East Bengal who rose up fantastically in education, professions, businesses etc. directly owing to the partition of Bengal in 1947 have socio-economic mobility just only in a generation?

Well, the 23 March is celebrated in Pakistan as their national day to commemorate the adoption of the Lahore Resolution that made a taboo here. But there is no denying the fact that until the fateful 1971 we shared a common nationality decided in the 1946 general election through fully democratic means. How could one erase that past common history and legacy? Forgetting the past proud common legacy of our forefathers would in all likely lead to 'INDIANISATION' (See, Balraz Modhok, Indianisation, Delhi, 1970).

It is as such only befitting that the Lahore Resolution event be observed in Bangladesh with due fervor on the 23 March along with the Independence Day on the 26th March.

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Is Dhaka turning into Delhi�s client state?
M. Shahidul Islam
HOLIDAY– March 21, 2008
Much of the latest diplomatic dancing of the Caretaker Government (CG) is out of tune with the music the nation wants it to follow. Dealings with the USA and India in particular have become too controversial as the government is only giving away too much without taking anything substantive in return.
In recent months, a number of major power plant deals were contracted out to Indian companies without any scrutiny while suspected Islamic militants are being sent to gallows for reasons that remain at best obscure. The candid admission by the IGP that the charges brought against the accused of the April 2004 Chittagong port arms smuggling incident were false - and the real culprits were the HuJI- has made observers very suspicious of how the so called US-led war on terror is being conducted by the current administration.
If the charges were falsely laid, were the inputs in the investigations made for years by the Interpol, FBI, Scotland Yard and the RAW too were misleading? Did not the same IGP work under the previous administration when the false charges were brought against innocent people many of whom have long been languishing in custody? Even the frustrated widow of former finance minister SAMS Kibria had accused the government of blaming the HuJI for all crimes in order not to get into the real facts.
That aside, the style and the posture of diplomacy with India in particular is evoking serious concerns among experts who think, under the CG, Bangladesh is turning into a client state of our big neighbour. They say, having completed much of the border fencing, India has been aggressively pursuing to get land, air and sea transit facilities from the CG which it could not obtain from the elected governments of the past due to the entrenched geopolitical and economic implications, and the sensitivity of the issues among the estranged population of the Indian north east.
That partly explains why the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in mid-February with respect to mutual air services has allowed India to transport by air all types of military hardware to the troubled north eastern states without Dhaka being afforded an opportunity to raise question about the contents of the consignments being transported over its sky. Sources say the MoU also agreed to allow Indian military cargo aircrafts to land and take off inside Bangladesh soil, without any prior notification. Given that India has signed a deal with the USA to procure about two squadrons of transport aircrafts that can land and take off surreptitiously and on any terrain, those experts have much to be wary of how the air service deal entailed such a clause.
The blunder was, however, spotted belatedly by the DGFI and that is what has led to the chief of the Bangladesh delegation, secretary of civil aviation, being relegated into an Officer on Special Duty (OSD) upon his return to Dhaka from Delhi at the conclusion of the bilateral aviation meeting on February 15.
Land transit
Sources also say the land transit demand of India is on its way to be approved, albeit in a circuitous manner, once India is allowed to use Chittagong port facility for which a draft agreement is ready.
The veracity of this news came from Sudhakar Dalela, the councillor for trade and commerce at the Indian High Commission in Dhaka, who was quoted by an Indian media outlet as having said on March 13 that, "The Bangladesh government is actively considering the Indian proposal to allow Chittagong port to be used by India for easy communication with northeastern states." Chittagong port is only 75 km from Tripura's border town of Sabroom.
Dalela also confirmed he and other Indian officials, accompanied by Bangladeshi officials, have recently visited India-Bangladesh land custom stations along Tripura. Of the 32 land port custom outposts along the 4,095-km border, 24 are on the Indian side; 4 of them being in Tripura, 5 in West Bengal, 8 in Meghalaya and 3 in Assam. Only Mizoram, which shares 318 km long border with Bangladesh, has no custom outpost along the border. Delhi is now pressurizing Dhaka to open Demagiri-Thegamikh and Sabroom-Ramgarh routes between Bangladesh and Mizoram. Add to this the inland water transit facility India enjoys from Bangladesh, pursuant to the IWT&T Protocol of 1972 - which is renewed at an interval of every two year. The Protocol allows India to use port of call transit inside major Bangladeshi ports at Narayanganj, Sirajganj, Khulana and Mongla.
The demand from India for transit facilities has been one of the most persistent and controversial ones in the diplomatic history of the two neighbours. Yet, even the AL government did not concede to this sensitive issue due to fear of public anger, although everyone knows the distance between Kolkata and Agartala could be reduced from 1,500 to 350 km if Dhaka agreed to the Indian proposal.
Another major factor is: Indian geopolitical handicap in north eastern states predates the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent country and the fault does not lie with Dhaka. That the CG has chosen to ignore that historic fact and agreed to cure that long standing Indian handicap by compromising our national security and vital economic concerns is very unfortunate. Sources say, upon assurance from Dhaka, work toward Kolkata- Agartala rail link has nearly completed and Kumarghat and Agartala will be connected via rail within months. This fact is further corroborated by the information contained in the 2008-09 Indian railway budget outlays, which has earmarked special funds for rail link between Sabroom and Agartala.
Southeast via Ctg
Besides, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said in a recent interview, "If the Indian Railways extends its line up to Sabroom, it will be very easy to connect with the Chittagong international port, which is just 75 km from the bordering town." Sarkar added, "After extending the railway line to Sabroom, Tripura and the entire northeast would be linked with Southeast Asia too."
One might be tempted to ask what the CG had received in return for fulfilling all the pending demands of India which the elected governments of the past did not dare to comply with? Records show, only US$150 million line of credit for railways development in bordering areas. Interestingly, this measly offer of credit has created so much impetus among the CG stalwarts that the Dhaka-Kolkata train service has been slated to begin soon, according to army chief General Moeen U Ahmed who has personally visited the train crossing point at the border during his recent high profile India visit.
No one, however, cared to examine how these deals would change the entire geopolitical landscape of a region where Delhi has been fighting a series of insurgencies since the 1950s. None also bothered to ponder how the Bangladeshi producers of goods and services will compete and survive if India is given further opportunities to take over our internal market by using this cobweb of connectivity? The government also overlooked the ramifications the newly acquired land, air and sea connectivity will engender by changing the very fundamentals upon which the geopolitical and economic landscapes of the region have evolved over the ages.
Until now, northeast India obtained its major access to Bangladesh through Dawki (India)/ Tamabil (Bangladesh) route and all freight traffic by road to and from Bangladesh needs transshipment at the border. Trucks from other neighbouring countries are not allowed to travel on the road networks of Bangladesh due to differences in the axle load limit and India do not allow Bangladeshi trucks to travel to India. Given that Bangladesh imports many time more than it exports to India, the Benapole - Petrapole route carries the heaviest traffic, accounting for about 80 per cent (in terms of value) of India's export to Bangladesh. Currently, around 300 trucks are moving daily via Benapole - Petrapole border point.
With the added Tripura-bound traffic movement from Chittagong port, Bangladesh must not only cater for extra traffic and extra vigilance at the Tripura border points to guard against cross border arms smuggling of north eastern insurgents, surveillance is also needed to ensure that goods imported for Indian northeast via Chittagong port do not end up in Bangladesh markets to inflate the fortunes of Indian importers by inspiring smuggling within Bangladesh. Geopolitically, by obtaining facilities to use Chittagong port to connect Tripura - and the forthcoming Dhaka-Kolkata rail link affording transportation of Indian goods between Kolkata and the northeastern states of Assam, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh - the Indian authorities will have obtained almost everything it needed to connect Delhi with the landlocked north east. This must make Delhi happy enough to celebrate as such a feat had denied India since 1947.
Wrath of NE insurgents
With respect to the dividend for Bangladesh, no one needs reminding as to who will dominate that connected market while Bangladesh will earn the wrath of the northeastern insurgents for allowing Delhi such an opportunity. Militarily, the insurgents have so far proven insurmountable to the mighty military capability of India and, our own military may seem like helpless insects before them.
These fundamental concerns aside, there is something more in the offing as Delhi's appetite for more economic and geopolitical advantages remains insatiable. Since January 2008, India began to insist on the signing of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Bangladesh. "India is ready to sign an FTA with Bangladesh in view of the positive outcome of a Delhi-Colombo FTA," Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty said in Dhaka before a delegation of the foreign and international chamber of commerce. The envoy lamented as, what he said, "There had been no progress on FTA discussion after the latest negotiations of 2002."
Chakravarty might have outsmarted many of his predecessors, but he ought to have been mindful that the last elected government of the country made much of those deals contingent upon India agreeing to facilitate energy transfer from Nepal and Bhutan by allowing the intervening Indian land for such usage, among some other preconditions. Brushing aside as a 'wrong concept' the usage of Indian land as a transit route between Bangladesh and Nepal, the Indian envoy quipped, "Both Bangladesh and Nepal are now enjoying such a facility in other ways." Are they really?
In that January gathering, the Indian envoy also made hints of the ongoing construction of the Agartala-Akhaura rail link and Delhi's hoped for access to New Mooring Terminal at Chittagong Port. Thus began the hurry-scurry among the CG officials which has resulted, in weeks, Dhaka agreeing to allow India to use Chittagong port. Coincidentally perhaps, the decision came on the heel of army chief's return from Delhi after a series of meetings with senior Indian officials and ministers.
Now that Delhi has got in months what it could not obtain in decades, will India lift all restrictions on Bangladesh-Nepal relations; something Bangladesh can legitimately claim due to the prevalence of a number of bilateral agreements signed between Nepal and Pakistan, and, for which, Bangladesh is the lawful inheritor?
By not allowing corridor facility to Bangladesh in the by gone years, India has obstructed the execution of many international agreements signed between Pakistan and Nepal since the two countries established full diplomatic relations in 1962. Two such agreements between Kathmandu and Karachi (then Pakistan's capital) were signed in October 1962, calling for reciprocal most-favoured- nation treatment. And, a January 1963 agreement provided Nepal with free trade and transit facilities through the port of Chittagong. This arrangement reduced the landlocked Nepal's dependence on India for import privileges, particularly after the establishment of an air link with East Pakistan later that year. The efforts to secure another transit route through East Pakistan were blocked by India as it contained proposal for the use of the intervening Indian territory. Bangladesh too failed to secure that accord in the last 36 years.
Although a turning point in Nepal-Bangladesh relations arrived in April 1976 once the two countries signed four new agreements relating to trade, transit, civil aviation, and technical cooperation, Indian obduracy prevented the implementation of the commitments expressed by the two neighbours in a joint communiquéthat promised to maintain close cooperation in the fields of power generation and water resources development.
All these agreements also laid out the legitimate foundation for unobstructed dealings between Bangladesh and Nepal on all bilateral matters, provided the Indian authorities facilitated the use of the land corridor to such purposes and did not create pressure on Nepal not to cooperate with Bangladesh.
The lesson for our government is hence an instructive one: Decades of India's highhandedness over Nepal has turned that country into a Maoist bastion. Bangladesh too is likely to be swept by radical elements if the Indian regional desires are not treated with discrimination, case by case, and without jeopardizing our vital national interests. After all, globalization is a bogey for exploitation which small and poor nations must brace with care and caution. And, pass up altogether if possible.


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[chottala.com] “The new atheists are secular fundamentalists”






Author Chris Hedges
"The new atheists are secular fundamentalists"
 
 
Author Chris Hedges has an issue with the "new athiests," namely that they're no better than those they profess to oppose, the Christian fundamentalists. Muslims and other religious minorities are often stuck in the middle.

For many Americans, the rise of religious fundamentalism rides shotgun in the Republican bandwagon. The Evangelical movement, in particular, has emerged as an influential and lucrative voice throwing considerable weight in the political arena. To appease concerns that a politician lacks "piety," both Republicans and Democrats, including John McCain and Barack Obama, stress their "faith" and "Christian values." Recently, a growing wave of "anti-religious" texts, most notably those authored by Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, has emerged to combat the arrogance of religiosity while making a case for atheism and secularism. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, Chris Hedges, who received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism, has spent several years researching both groups and concludes that although their ideologies differ, their shared elitism, ignorance and reactionary rhetoric is soaked in bigotry, racism and exclusivity. In his book American Fascists, Hedges tackles the poisonous marriage of extremist, right wing religious narrative with big money politics. In his latest work, I Don't Believe In Atheists, Hedges condemns the "New Fundamentalists," such as Hitchens and Harris, as profiteers who "trade absurdity [religious extremism] for absurdity [fundamentalist secularism]" and justify foreign invasions, the Iraq War, and racism under the guise of secular enlightenment. Chris Hedges spoke with altmuslim Associate Editor Wajahat Ali to discuss these issues in detail.

Congratulations on the publication of your new book, "I Don't Believe in Atheism". Let's start off with that and bridge into the themes of your previous book, "American Fascist"

HEDGES: I spent almost 20 years abroad as a foreign correspondent and 7 of those years in the Middle East as bureau chief of the New York Times. But before I went into journalism, I began as a freelance reporter covering the war in El Salvador. I was a seminary student, having graduated from Harvard Divinity School. And I met a man there named James Luther Adam, who had actually been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 working for the so-called "confessing church," this group of individuals – Martin E. Muller, Bonhofer, Albert Schweizer. And he was eventually picked up by the Gestapo and thrown out of Germany.

When I was a student in the early 1980's, it was the beginning of this rise of this Christian movement that wanted to take political power and create a so-called "Christian nation," which was something going back to 1740. And Adams told us that when we were his age, which was 80, that we would all be fighting the Christian facists.

I came back to the United States and saw how these groups had moved from the margins of American society to literally the epicentre of power in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. They had set up powerful systems of indoctrination through Christian radio and television as well as Christian schools.

I've been primarily a war correspondent (mentions book) and knew that I really had to turn my attention to the Christian right. They reminded me very much of this sort of proto-fascist movements that I covered, for instance, in the former Yugoslavia, the ethnic nationalist movements of the Serbs, the Croats in particular. So I spent 2 years researching this book. I travelled all over the country. I sat in pro-life weekends in Pennsylvania and creationist seminars and conversion workshops and came away with the belief that the radical Christian right is the most dangerous mass movement in American history.

And my book is fierce – it's called American Fascists. Now, I finished that book as a three-year project and one of the things that disturbs me most about this movement is its racism, bigotry, and intolerance, not only towards Muslims, but towards gays and lesbians, women, and immigrants. The language they use from the inside of the movement is terrifying. It is really an attempt to dehumanise, to take away the legitimacy of people who have other ways of believing or being. And that's part of my anger towards the movement, that they cloak this in religious language.

When the book came out and I was asked to go, in May a year ago, to UCLA to debate Sam Harris, who had written Letter to a Christian Nation and The End of Faith. Two days later, I flew to San Francisco and went to Berkeley to debate Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God is Not Great. I hadn't paid attention to these so-called "new athiests." They're not a political threat the way the radical Christian right is. Athiesm has a long and honored tradition in Western intellectual thought. Most of the great theological reformers, both philosophical and religious were in their day attacked as atheists and heretics – from Spinoza to Martin Luther. No serious student of religion can ignore the writings of Nietschze or Sartre or Camus. I mean, Nietschze, who was a mixture of brilliance and insanity, understood the moral consequences of a world where God was dead – the moral nihilism that it engendered.

So I actually came fairly predisposed to accept that there's nothing dangerous about people who don't believe in God. And I have lived in enough cultures to know that there are many people of great moral probity and courage who rise to fight the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed who don't resort to religious language, religious ritual or other meaning in religious symbols. Just as there are many people who use religion as a cloak to play out acts of bigotry, oppression, and intolerance.

But when I sat down and read their work, and then of course had to debate them in a public forum, I was appalled at how they essentially co-opted secular language to present the same kind of chauvinism, intolerance, and bigotry that we see in the Christian right.

Is that why you labelled them the "New Fundamentalists"?

They are. They're secular fundamentalists. They divide the world into us and them – those who are worthy of moral consideration and those who are not. They externalise evil. Evil is not something that you struggle with within yourself. Evil is embodied in religion. And therefore, once you eradicate religion and religious believers, you take a huge step forward in terms of human progress.

I find that it's, like the Christian right, a fear based movement. It's a movement that is very much a reaction to 9/11. The kinds of things that they write about Muslims could be lifted from the most rabid sermon by a radical fundamentalist. I mean Sam Harris, in his book The End of Faith, asks us to consider carrying out a nuclear first strike on the Arab world. He has a long defense of torture. Christopher Hitchens is an apologist for pre-emptive war and also speaks in the crude, racist terms that Harris uses to describe 1 billion people – one fifth of the world's population.

You're right, and yet they're deemed the new intellectuals of the 21st century by certain proponents. Why have they emerged as these "intellectuals" who defend what many say is a defenseless war?

Well, they're not intellectuals, that's the whole point. They're culturally, historically, linguistically illiterate. They don't know anything about the Middle East. They don't speak Arabic. They don't know anything about Islam. They have a cartoonish vision of Islam and the Muslim world that is, from somebody who spent 7 years living there, is untrue. Of course, this is a quality they share with the fundamentalists. They don't need to investigate other ways of being, thinking, other cultures, because they have adopted this repugnant moral superiority that our way is the best and either you are converted to our way of believing and thinking or you should be eradicated. And that's what the Christian right does.

So you have, within these new athiests, a convergence, a political convergence with the Christian right who, supposedly, they've set themselves up against. If you look at the kinds of things that Christopher Hitchens writes and says about the Muslim world, it could be lifted from the most rabid sermon from a Christian fundamentalist.

It's appalling. What stunned me was how they have seduced so many people on the secular left with what is garbage. They even corrupt science, saying to the proponents of science that what they have done is corrupt evolutionary biology. I mean, Darwin never argued that we were morally advancing as a species. In fact, Darwin argued the opposite and, I think, correctly that humans are victims of our irrational, animal nature. Darwin was just too good a scientist. He knew the species accrued mutations, but never knew where it ended up.

Well, these people have distorted evolutionary biology to argue that we can morally advance as a species and that there are human impediments to progress - in this case, they go after Muslims, in particular – and that we have to remove these impediments to advance forward. It's just a naïve, utopian vision that is embraced by the radical Christian right and the reason it's so frightening is because they think they have a right to use violence in order to achieve this form of self delusion, which is a more perfect world.

And that's what terrifies me. These people are apologists for catastrophic, apocalyptic violence wielded against people that they have dehumanised, people who no longer have human qualities, people who are just abstractions of hate and evil who have to be done away with. And while I don't see that the athiests as a political threat the way that the radical Christian right is a political threat, what worries me is that – I spent a year of my life covering Al Qaeda for the New York Times and every intelligence team I ever interviewed never used the word "if" we would suffer another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, but "when."

So when we suffer another attack, what I worry about is a convergence of two apocalyptic, fundamentalist movements within American society who call for horrific bloodletting, especially against the Muslim world, if it's deemed that this terrorism came out of the Muslim world. As well as I believe that a persecution of 6 million Muslims who live in the United States. I think my anger towards the Christian right and my anger towards these new athiests is at its core really a plea for complexity, for more understanding, for empathy, and for an understanding of our own complicity in acts of atrocity.

I mean, the idea that someone reads the Quran and becomes a suicide bomber is naïve and frighteningly ignorant of the reality of oppression. What is it that goes into creating an act that desperate? It's the long, slow drip of abuse, repression, indignity, collective humiliation and until we understand what it is that creates these kinds of activities, we won't be able to deal with them.

I think we also have to understand, as someone who has stood in Gaza as Israeli pirated F-16 jets dropped 1,000 lb iron fragmentation bombs on refugee camps – something that even the apartheid regime in South Africa didn't do – we have to begin to face the fact that we do not represent virtue and good and nobility many times. Certainly we don't in Iraq.

Iraq, by the way, is a perfect example of the danger of utopian vision. If you took the 1,000 to 10,000 Arabists in this country – and by that I mean people who speak Arabic and who have lived for a long period of time in the Middle East – you could not have found probably more than 10 that thought invading and occupying Iraq was a good idea. The idea that we would be greeted as liberators, the idea that the oil revenues would pay for reconstruction, the idea that democracy would be implanted in Baghdad and emanate outwards to transform the Middle East was a non-reality based belief system. And that's why utopian visions backed by violence are dangerous. They're not connected with reality. Athiests and the Christian right are essentially violent, utopian movements.

As a Muslim-American who actually went to an all-boys Catholic school, believe it or not, for four years and read the Bible… after reading the Bible, I always felt perplexed by the actions and rhetoric of those who claim that America is a "Christian" nation or a "secular" nation. Why are humbleness, conciliation, apology, admitting ones mistakes – even with the new foreign policy in Iraq – seen as such signs of weakness when in the Bible, these are seen as acts of virtue.

Well, let's be clear. There are passages in the Bible that are morally repugnant. You know, God blesses acts of righteous genocide in Exodus. The Gospel of John has very raw anti-Semitism. Paul's letters are filled with misogyny and homophobia. There's a great line by the theologian Reinhold Lieber, "Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people." You can find anything you want to justify any moral action you want. That's true of every religious text, from the Quran to Bible to the Bhagavad Gita. That's true.
And so, the Christian right will pull these repugnant passages from the Book of Daniel, the Book of Revelations – which are bloody books about apocalyptic violence – and use it to promote an ideology that is immoral and, I think, deeply at its core, anti-religion.

But I'm not naïve about the Bible. I spent many years studying it. I think what's most frightening is what this movement has done – the Christian right – is that they have fused the iconography and language of Christianity with the iconography and language of American nationalism. Once you do that, you essentially create a fascist ideology, which is what they've done.

And what's fascinating about the new athiests is that while they hate the Christian right, their ideology is no different. It is an ideology that really seeks to dehumanise everyone who's not like us. Is it anti-religious? Of course. It's anti-Muslim, it's anti-Christian, it's anti-Hindu, it's anti-Jewish, if you look at what are the core values of authentic religious belief. But there's no shortage of people who have used religion – in the Islamic world, in the Christian world, in every religious tradition – to countenance abuse and violence.

The Christian right talks often about acculturating America with the Christian religion. What they've done, in fact, acculturate the Christian religion with the worst aspects of American capitalism and American imperialism. Whatever you think of Jesus, he was clearly a pacifist. I'm not a pacifist, by the way, but Jesus clearly was. The idea that Jesus would somehow exhort us on to bomb Afghanistan and Iraq is, as you frankly point out, a phenomenal misreading of the Four Gospels.

Why does religion seem to be such a susceptible and successful vehicle for selfish political ideologies to hijack.

It's not just religion. I think any essentially fundamentalist view that divides the world into us and them and externalises evil – evil is embodied in those who are outside of us – you can do that through communism, fascism, Baathism – any system can do that. Religion has certainly been used like that many, many times. I think what is effective about it is that you sanctify yourself, you sanctify your group. And by sanctifying your group, you give yourself the right to carry out sacred violence. That's why the mixture between religious belief and violent utopian projects is so frightening. We see it here and we see it in the Middle East. These people are, frankly, cut from the same cloth.

We've heard again and again - religion is the opiate of the masses or without religion there would be no global warfare, separation, and hatred. Yet we all see examples of widespread chaos with "secularists" such as Mao, Stalin…

Of course. But the danger is not religion, the danger is the human heart. People will misuse a religious system to commit genocide and if it's not religion, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot will find other religions. That's part of my anger with the new athiests. The idea that religion is the core of these acts of evil is just childish and stupid. Religious institutions have certainly lent themselves enthusiastically often to these projects.

But it's not the fault of religion, it's the fault of human nature. There's frankly nothing in human history or human nature to suggest that we're advancing morally as a species. I'd argue it's the opposite. Certainly, technology, science, and industry made advances and they have been used to preserve and conserve and nurture life in many ways, but it's also creative forms of industrial killing that have never been seen before on the planet. It is science and technology and industry that is destroying the very ecosystem that sustains the human species.

The tools change, human nature remains the same. That is something that neither the Christian fundamentalists or the new athiests understand. They adopt this vision that they can reform human nature into something that it's not. And what it doesn't reform into ways they deem to be moral and good, they abrogate for themselves the right to use violence.

I want to discuss the bridging of religion and intellectualism in an age of, what I'll just call, materialism. You've heard that religion is a crutch for the weak, but why is the spiritual crutch so mocked by those who consider themselves enlightened or "the left," when it seems that all human beings use some semblance of a crutch to make sense of the complexities of life?

I don't look at religion as a crutch. I look at fundamentalism as a crutch. But the religious impulse is like the artistic impulse – and let's separate religious institutions, which are about their own power and their own perpetuation. To be religious is a way of looking at the world. Great religious thinkers out of all traditions have called us to a kind of humility, a kind of introspection, self-criticism, an acceptance of mystery. When one accepts the mystery of the Divine, the strangeness of life, the fact that there are so many things that we will never control, our place as infintessimal beings in this infinite universe – this is not about self-aggrandizement.

Certainly, religion has been used to self-aggrandize. But I think religion is a way of stripping away the crutches and exposing our meekness and our human flaws and, to use a religious term, to expose sin. The fact that we are – all of us – captive to irrational, subliminal forces, many of which we don't understand. The narratives we tell about ourselves are fictions and the narratives we use to explain ourselves to others are fictions. That's what religion at its core does. Religion is an attempt to deal with non-rational forces. Not the irrational, but non-rational. By that I mean love, beauty, grief, alienation, our own mortality. These are all real and powerful, but they're not quantifiable. We can't measure them. It's why Freud could never write about love.

At its best, religion – like art – is an attempt to create wisdom. In the Buddhist tradition, you can memorise as many sutras as you want, you will never be wise. Wisdom doesn't come through knowledge. It comes through intuition. It comes from that ability to lead human nature, human society, and the world around us.

In all the polls, compared to European nations, everyone is amazed at how religious the US population professes itself to be. And now, with the upcoming 2008 election, Democrats – who were apparently lagging in the religious card – are now amping up their own religiosity. What's the sincerity of both – the US population and the political parties – in professing "piety?"

What surprises me is that most Americans who profess a kind of piety are Christian fundamentalists. There's no shortage of great theologians who describe piety as a belief system as a form of idolatry – essentially a form of self-worship. And that's what I believe this movement is about. I think, in fact, it's deeply anti-Christian. It is about self-exultation. It is about embracing the darkest aspects of American imperial power and sanctifying that.

And so, when I read those polls… I've debated Christian fundamentalists, I've debated these new athiests, and they both seek to de-legitimise my own religious tradition, which is one that comes out of real social activism. My father, who was a Presbyterian minister, worked in the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement during the Vietnam war, even though he himself had been a veteran of World War II, and the gay rights movement.

They may not like it, both the Christian right and the new athiests, but it's a real tradition. But of course the Christians describe me as a secular humanist who wants to destroy Christian America. And the new athiests say that's not really religion, because they argue against their own narrow definition and are incapable of discussing religious complexity. Religion is like art. It takes a long time to do well. I spent many years of my life studying Christian ethics and the notion that grappling with moral ambiguity is somehow easy is possible only when you are as ignorant as these people are.

What do you think about this whole Democrats and Republicans - the candidates Obama and McCain – bending over backwards to prove to everyone that we are indeed truly religious? Why the need to profess their piety?

They're pandering to the movement, which I find frightening. It's a very peculiar form of religion and one that I detest. They're not trying to reach out to people like me. They're trying to reach out to a bunch of homophobic, bigoted racists. That's what constitutes the core of Bob Jones University. These people rose out of racism, first primarily towards African Americans.

The kinds of stuff that they say on Christian radio and television and within their own gatherings about Muslims is deeply disturbing. Unfortunately, that kind of demonization of Muslims has infected mainstream discourse. What terrifies me about it is that when you get people to speak in the language of violence and hate, it's a short step to get them to act in the language of violence and hate. I saw it in the former Yugoslavia. There are too few people standing up and confronting these people with their racism, which is a cancer. It's poisoning our civil and political discourse.

Last question, Chris. Something on a hopeful note. You've been a reporter who actually has lived in the Middle East and actually talked to Muslims and seen them first hand. You have this rich tradition of learning Christianity, Christian morals, Christian ethics and seen the rise of the American Christian fascist movement. What can be done, on a global scale, perhaps, for Muslims and Christians – well intentioned ones – to wrest away the control of their religiosity and religions by self interested political individuals, like the ones you've mentioned. What can be done to reclaim the faith?

Well, I think the churches have failed us in that they don't stand up and confront this racism. The media has failed us because it no longer reports how others see us or other ways of being. It's all trivia, gossip, it's news for entertainment. The kind of war hysteria that grips the country makes a voice like mine very difficult to be heard. You know, my opposition to the war in Iraq saw me receive death threats on my phone system at the New York Times. I was shouted down, heckled. And I wasn't offering a political position, I was trying to offer the accumulation of knowledge of someone who has spent a lot of time in Iraq and many, many years in the Middle East. It was very difficult to be heard.

So, I think the major institutions that are tasked with offering to Americans different viewpoints have failed us. And we're paying a huge price for that. These institutions are largely bankrupt and we are becoming a country of children with vast weapons systems. I don't have to tell you or many of your readers but turn on the television and hear the kind of crap people spew out on the Muslim world. They've never been there, they've never lived there, they don't speak Arabic – only 20% of Muslims speak Arabic anyway. It's as if I would get up and start talking about China, a country I've never been in.

I think the kinds of things we say about Muslims now – and I'm not talking about the fringe – would not be acceptable to say about any other ethnic or religious group in the United States. Having seen what happens when you demonise a group in, for instance, the former Yugoslavia – I was in the Balkan territory for the New York Times during the war there – this kind of language. Language is not benign. This kind of language is terrifying and there has to be a concerted effort on the part of institutions that are tasked with defending democracy and plurality, and they're not doing it.

Wajahat Ali is a Pakistani Muslim American who is neither a terrorist nor a saint. He is associate editor of altmuslim.com, a playwright, essayist, humorist, and attorney at law, whose work, "The Domestic Crusaders," (http://www.domesticcrusaders.com) is the first major play about Muslim Americans living in a post 9-11


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[chottala.com] South Asia Violent Risk - 30th July, 2008

  • [BANGLADESH] BSF kills 1
  • [BANGLADESH] BSF returns bodies of 2 Bangladeshis
  • [BANGLADESH] PBCP leader Tufan killed in 'encounter' in Rajbari
  • [BANGLADESH] Security beefed up in northern dists
  • [BANGLADESH] Shotgun, bullets looted from police in Mymensingh
  • [INDIA] 18 bombs found in Indian city
  • [INDIA] Firing along LoC halted; Pak blames India at flag meet
  • [INDIA] High alert near Tata plant site
  • [INDIA] Insurgents hit Arunachal again, 6 abducted
  • [INDIA] Militants attack Manipur Minister's house
  • [INDIA] Modi visits Surat, another live bomb defused
  • [INDIA] Pak violated Indian airspace thrice: IAF
  • [INDIA] Threat mail triggers panic, traced to Salt Lake
  • [INDIA] Two Lashkar-e-Taiba militants held
  • [PAKISTAN] Gas pipeline blown up
  • [PAKISTAN] Indian claims over LoC skirmishes rejected
  • [PAKISTAN] Policeman gunned down in Quetta
  • [PAKISTAN] Shelling ends Taliban control of PTV booster in Bajaur
  • [PAKISTAN] Ten militants arrested in Dera Bugti
  • [PAKISTAN] Two security personnel killed, 30 kidnapped
  • [PAKISTAN] US being impatient in war on terror: PM
  • [PAKISTAN] `Army planning push into Tribal Areas'
  •  

    Bangladesh Open Source Intelligence Monitors 

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