What’s religion got to do with it?
The place for religion in public life remains one of our biggest conundrums. And no matter how far we seem to progress in other ways, the tendency, need, desire, whatever it may be, to believe in divinity spills over into the rest of our lives.
The past few weeks have seen Belgium banning the burkha, Deoband issuing fatwas against women in the workplace among other things and, interestingly, a Lebanese Muslim woman winning the Miss America title.
Also, someone set up a page on Facebook encouraging people to post images of prophet Mohammed —which is forbidden in Islam — as a reaction to a death threat against the creators of the cartoon South Park, which had portrayed Mohammed as a bear. This led to Pakistan banning Facebook.
There is no doubt that Islam is public enemy number one in many parts of the world today. Some of this comes from the current threat of Islamist terrorism, especially after the September 2001 attacks on New York.
The subsequent Iraq war added to the anger — on all sides. The use of Christian terminology by the then US president George Bush to justify the war aggravated the tension and the clash of civilisations theory was presented to explain why the “Islamic” world would always be different from the rest. Of course, finally, there was always the Israel-Palestine conflict to explain the matter although there is a fine historical irony in the idea of Jews versus Muslims with Christians as the arbitrators of peace.
But even a cursory glance at all these events and beliefs seems to suggest that we are not dealing with a simplistic us-versus-them battle. The burkha ban in Belgium and France comes from an apparent liberal desire — if misguided — to save women from patriarchy, happily ignoring the fact that forcing women not to wear something is also a form of oppression.
Deoband’s sudden flurry of fatwas seems to come from a desire to re-establish its supremacy amongst India’s Muslims. India’s Muslims — like Muslims all over the world — are as fragmented and diverse as any other so-called homogeneous group.
So there was a series of reactions to Deoband’s ideas and most of them were opposed to the fatwas. Noted lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar was most vociferous and got a death threat for his pains.
The new Miss America found she had to deal with her own share of controversy. This time it was not the outrage of Muslim conservatives so much as non- Muslim conspiracy theorists who felt that her winning was some kind of an appeasement policy to placate Muslims .
Of course, it is likely that by cavorting about in a bikini, the young lady has now upset everybody. As a Saudi female columnists pointed out, women in the Arab world make news either for being covered up or for being half-naked.
The Facebook-South Park skirmish was to do with something that we in the subcontinent understand only too well — public sentiment. Our governments, the minute they think that law and order might be in jeopardy, have no compulsion in trampling on fundamental rights and banning and proscribing things left, right and centre. All major world religions have to learn to deal with criticism and blasphemy. Sad but true.
So what have we found from this mixing up of religion with everything else? Feminism of more than one kind (pro-choice, anti-burkha, anti-bikini and commoditisation of women, pro freedom), liberalism of more than one kind (freedom of choice, no freedom to cover your face, freedom from oppression), cultural disconnects (us versus them, me versus you), patriarchy and fear (women must not mix with men, true Muslims believe this, that, the other, whatever I say), freedom of expression (I have a right to insult your religion, you have the right to object) and finally politics (war, conflict, history, resolution, anger, mistrust, diplomacy).
In which case, maybe nothing has anything to do with religion in the first place!
The place for religion in public life remains one of our biggest conundrums. And no matter how far we seem to progress in other ways, the tendency, need, desire, whatever it may be, to believe in divinity spills over into the rest of our lives.
The past few weeks have seen Belgium banning the burkha, Deoband issuing fatwas against women in the workplace among other things and, interestingly, a Lebanese Muslim woman winning the Miss America title.
Also, someone set up a page on Facebook encouraging people to post images of prophet Mohammed —which is forbidden in Islam — as a reaction to a death threat against the creators of the cartoon South Park, which had portrayed Mohammed as a bear. This led to Pakistan banning Facebook.
There is no doubt that Islam is public enemy number one in many parts of the world today. Some of this comes from the current threat of Islamist terrorism, especially after the September 2001 attacks on New York.
The subsequent Iraq war added to the anger — on all sides. The use of Christian terminology by the then US president George Bush to justify the war aggravated the tension and the clash of civilisations theory was presented to explain why the “Islamic” world would always be different from the rest. Of course, finally, there was always the Israel-Palestine conflict to explain the matter although there is a fine historical irony in the idea of Jews versus Muslims with Christians as the arbitrators of peace.
But even a cursory glance at all these events and beliefs seems to suggest that we are not dealing with a simplistic us-versus-them battle. The burkha ban in Belgium and France comes from an apparent liberal desire — if misguided — to save women from patriarchy, happily ignoring the fact that forcing women not to wear something is also a form of oppression.
Deoband’s sudden flurry of fatwas seems to come from a desire to re-establish its supremacy amongst India’s Muslims. India’s Muslims — like Muslims all over the world — are as fragmented and diverse as any other so-called homogeneous group.
So there was a series of reactions to Deoband’s ideas and most of them were opposed to the fatwas. Noted lyricist and scriptwriter Javed Akhtar was most vociferous and got a death threat for his pains.
The new Miss America found she had to deal with her own share of controversy. This time it was not the outrage of Muslim conservatives so much as non- Muslim conspiracy theorists who felt that her winning was some kind of an appeasement policy to placate Muslims .
Of course, it is likely that by cavorting about in a bikini, the young lady has now upset everybody. As a Saudi female columnists pointed out, women in the Arab world make news either for being covered up or for being half-naked.
The Facebook-South Park skirmish was to do with something that we in the subcontinent understand only too well — public sentiment. Our governments, the minute they think that law and order might be in jeopardy, have no compulsion in trampling on fundamental rights and banning and proscribing things left, right and centre. All major world religions have to learn to deal with criticism and blasphemy. Sad but true.
So what have we found from this mixing up of religion with everything else? Feminism of more than one kind (pro-choice, anti-burkha, anti-bikini and commoditisation of women, pro freedom), liberalism of more than one kind (freedom of choice, no freedom to cover your face, freedom from oppression), cultural disconnects (us versus them, me versus you), patriarchy and fear (women must not mix with men, true Muslims believe this, that, the other, whatever I say), freedom of expression (I have a right to insult your religion, you have the right to object) and finally politics (war, conflict, history, resolution, anger, mistrust, diplomacy).
In which case, maybe nothing has anything to do with religion in the first place!
No comments:
Post a Comment