Rushdie and the British Establishment

ts,
that's right, and will state again as I have in the past, that Mahfouz, Edward Said, the Abu-Lughods, Eqbal Ahmed were staunch defenders of Rushdie's right to have written TSV. If I'm not mistaken, Mahfouz had challenged Ayotallah Khomeini's fatwa to which some fundamentalists opined that they should have killed Mahfouz first-he would not have fathered Rushdie.

Sure, the Queen knighted Rushdie. But she's also recognized Harry Potter...which has not been received well by the Church...lets see how they react....

#15 neembu

Unfortunately Najeeb Mahfouz passed away not that long ago. Brilliant writer and film director.

Re: # 13

True, a lot of the silence and lack of action does make fundamentalism run amok (much to the misery of the very people that were silent).

Some of the BUT is pointing out the CAUSE in the cause and effect. You cannot ignore cause either in a rational understanding of things.

-thinking

re: 12

Rushdie is also a unfailingly sharp critic of the West and Western biases. Readers may find his satire of materialism, celebrity culture, hybridity in his collection of short stories EastWest. He is truly in the pantheon of Morrison, Borges, Marquez, Sembene, Almodovar, Soyinka, Wa Thi'ongo -artists who have transcended their genres, their cultures, their languages and yes, their religions. Ultimately, I'd argue that each is a humanist.

And no one has mentioned the genius of Naguib Mahfouz, a brilliant writer who is harassed by the Egyptian govt. itself.

Re:#13 Posted by arjun2

(((((bad BUT if you didn't oppress muslims in iraq/afghanistan/kashmir...

The "but" part provides justification...))))

And His excelency maharaaj arjun justifies oppression of muslims in iraq/afghanistan/kashmir because it makes her feel good. He enjoys the sight of muslims being killed on t.v channells while drinking bacardi gao-muttar flavour and eating gao-goaber kababs (non-veg).

#11 Posted by thinkingstorm on July 17, 2007 11:13:56 am


But if you total all the people "outraged" at these things...that go and burn things and riot...it would not account to a 0.00000001 percent of the muslim population.


The majority of the other 99.99% are enablers..these are the people who say suicide bombing is bad BUT if you didn't oppress muslims in iraq/afghanistan/kashmir...

The "but" part provides justification...

Dear Moeed

I found the knighting of Rusdie an amusing interplay of messages. The irony was supreme. Unfortunately Rushdie a brilliant author has become the key element in the messages to and fro about who is a good muslim and who is not. The protests in Islamabad over the knighting were also similar, they too sent a message about who is a good muslim and who is a bad muslim.

To be a good Muslim for some people, a deep unwavering, illogical, literal and dogmatic faith in the 'quran' or rather its interpretations is necessary. There is no room for reflection or questioning in this world view.
All 'others' are seen as enemies and the world of true Islam a victim of others' hatred. This is a frightening and scary message for the rest of the world. It is also a dangerous lie for Muslims to believe in, because it keeps their populations ignorant and subdued.

For others, it is important to give the message that 'good' Muslims are those who don't believe at all in 'the book', and in fact are willing to ridicule the naive faith of millions in a book, after learning better from the West. This is as brutal and cruel as the dogma of the believers. Both are fundamentalist and ultimately inhuman.

Taking a compassionate view of both sides helps to put things in perspective. A writer is always exploring ideas. Tomorrow Mr Rushdie may write something beautiful about Islam, then would the British govt. take back the knighthood? no. What is done is done, and there is great good in it. Those who understand messages, yet have a bigger message to give, can change the very messages. I think the world of Islam should be proud that a 'Muslim' writer used the grand literary traditions of Persian Muslims to write wonderful books about Muslim people. There are only a handful of books about Muslim communities and it is a great honour to Pakistan/India/kashmir and the Middle East that he wrote about these worlds. It was after him, that a whole generation of writers from that part of the world came on to the center stage.

The third world has been badly suppressed through colonialism for the last several hundred years. If authors like Rushdie have to joke and ridicule it to educate the world, let him. If I were a leader in the Muslim world, I'd honour and congratulate Mr Rushdie and let him know that I hope that one day he may write about the great beauty of my culture in the same way that he wrote of its ugliness. After all, wherever there is great ugliness there must have been great beauty.

re: Harish

Look, I am a muslim and I respect other religions. Including Hinduism and Judaism.

Unfortunately, the reactionary fundamentalist forces are outspoken and make a lot of noise. But if you total all the people "outraged" at these things...that go and burn things and riot...it would not account to a 0.00000001 percent of the muslim population. If these voices were not so vocal, like the hindus, we would be offended, and the world would carry on.

-thinking

#8 Posted by echoboom on July 17, 2007 7:51:15 am

You're al-clutching at al-straws...

very interesting boomboom chacha, thanks!

#6 Posted by neembu on July 17, 2007 5:33:18 am
__________________________________________________________
You, and others, might find this fascinating
____________________________________________________________

Islam in America

MUSLIMS IN THE AMERICAS BEFORE COLUMBUS
by
Dr. Youssef Mroueh



Introduction
Numerous evidence suggests that Muslims from Spain and West Africa arrived in the Americas at least five centuries before Co1umbus. It is recorded, for example that in the mid-tenth century during the rule of the Umayed Caliph Abdul-Rahman III (929-961), Muslims of African origin sailed westward from the Spanish port of Delba (Palos) into the “Ocean of darkness an fog.” They returned after a long absence with much booty from a “strange and curious land.” It is evident that people of Muslim origin are known to have accompanied Columbus and subsequent Spanish explorers to the New World.
The last Muslim stronghold in Spain, Granada, fell to the Christians in 1492 CE, just before the Spanish inquisition was launched. To escape persecution, many non-Christians fled or embraced Catholicism. At least two documents imply the presence of Muslims in Spanish America before 1550 CE. Despite the fact that a decree issued in 1539 CE, by Charles V, King of Spain, forbade the grandsons of Muslims who had been burned at the stake to migrate to the West Indies. This decree was ratified in 1543 CE, and an order for the expulsion of all Muslims from overseas Spanish territories was subsequently published. Many references on the Muslim arrival in the Americas are available. They are summarized in the following notes:





Historic Documents

l. A Muslim historian and geographer Abul-Hassan Ali Ibn Al-Hussain Al-Masudi (871 - 957 CE) wrote in his book ‘Muruj Adh-dhahab wa Maadin al-Jawhar’ (The Meadows of Gold and Quarries of Jewels) that during the rule of the Muslim Caliph of Spain Abdullah Ibn Muhammad (888 - 912 CE), a Muslim navigator Khashkhash Ibn Saeed Ibn Aswad of Cordoba, Spain sailed from Delba (Palos) in 889 CE, crossed the Atlantic, reached an unknown territory (Ard Majhoola) and returned with fabulous treasures. In Al-Masudi's map of the world there is a large area in the ocean of darkness and fog (the Atlantic ocean) which he referred to as the unknown territory (the Americas).
2. A Muslim historian Abu Bakr Ibn Umar Al-Gutiyya narrated that during the reign of the Muslim Caliph of Spain, Hisham II (976 -1009 CE), another Muslim navigator Ibn Farrukh of Granada sailed from Kadesh (February 999 CE) into the Atlantic, landed in Gando (Great Canary Islands) visiting King Guanariga, and continued westward where he saw and named two islands, Capraria and Pluitana. He arrived back in Spain in May 999 CE.

3. Columbus sailed from Palos (Delba), Spain. He was bound for Gomera (Canary Islands) - Gomera is an Arabic word meaning ‘small firebrand’ - there he fell in love with Beatriz Bobadilla, daughter of the first captain General of the island (the family name Bobadilla is derived from the Arab Islamic name Abouabdilla). Nevertheless, the Bobadilla clan was not easy to ignore. Another Bobadilla (Francisco), later as the royal commissioner, put Columbus in chains and transferred him from Santo Domingo back to Spain (November 1500 CE). The Bobadilla family was related to Abbadid dynasty of Seville (1031 -1091 CE).
On October 12, 1492 CE, Columbus landed on a little island in the Bahamas that was called Guanahani by the natives. Renamed San Salvador by Columbus, Guanahani is derived from Mandinka and modified Arabic words. Guana (Ikhwana) means ‘brothers’ and Hani is an Arabic name. Therefore the original name of the island was ‘Hani Brothers.’



Ferdinand Columbus, the son of Christopher, wrote about the blacks seen by his father in Honduras: “The people who live farther east of Pointe Cavinas, as far as Cape Gracios a Dios, are almost black in color.” At the same time in this very same region, lived a tribe of Muslim natives known as Almamy. In Mandinka and Arabic languages Almamy was the designation of “Al-Imam” or “Al-Imamu,” the person who leads the Prayer, or in some cases, the chief of the community, and/or a member of the Imami Muslim community.
4. A renowned American historian and linguist Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book Africa and The Discovery of America (1920) wrote that Columbus was well aware of the Mandinka presence in the New World and that the West African Muslims had spread throughout the Caribbean, Central, South and North American territories, including Canada, where they were trading and intermarrying with the Iroquois and Algonquin Indians.

Geographic Explorations
1. The famous Muslim geographer and cartographer Al-Sharif Al-Idrisi (1099 - 1166 CE) wrote in his famous book ‘Nuzhat al-Mushtaq fi-Ikhtiraq al-Afaq (Excursion of the longing in crossing horizons) that a group of seafarers (from North Africa) sailed into the sea of darkness and fog (the Atlantic ocean) from Lisbon (Portugal), in order to discover what was in it and what extent were its limits. They finally reached an island that had people and cultivation....on the fourth day, a translator spoke to them in the Arabic language.
2. The Muslim reference books mentioned a well-documented description of a journey across the sea of fog and darkness by Shaikh Zayn-eddine Ali ben Fadhel Al-Mazandarani. His journey started from Tarfay (south Morocco) during the reign of the King Abu-Yacoub Sidi Youssef (1286 - 1307 CE) sixth of the Marinid dynasty, to Green Island in the Caribbean sea in 1291 CE (690 AH). The details of his ocean journey are mentioned in Islamic references, and many Muslim scholars are aware of this recorded historical event.

3. The Muslim historian Chihab Addine Abul-Abbas Ahmad ben Fadhl Al-Umari (1300 - 1384 CE, 700 - 786 AH) described in detail the geographical explorations beyond the sea of fog and darkness of Male’s sultans in his famous book ‘Masaalik al-absaar fi Mamaalik al-amsaar (The Pathways of Sights in The Provinces of Kingdoms).
4. Sultan Mansa Kankan Musa (1312 - 1337 CE) was the world renowned Mandinka monarch of the West African Islamic empire of Mali. While traveling to Makkah on his famous Hajj in 1324 CE, he informed the scholars of the Mamluk Bahri Sultan court (an-Nasir-eddin Muhammad III, 1309 - 1340 CE) in Cairo that his brother, Sultan Abu Bakari I (1285 - 1312 CE) had undertaken two expeditions into the Atlantic ocean. When the sultan did not return to Timbuktu from the second voyage of 1311 CE, Mansa Musa became sultan of the empire.

5.Columbus and early Spanish and Portuguese explorers were able to voyage across the Atlantic (a distance of 24,000 Kilometers) thanks to Muslim geographical and navigational information, in particular maps made by Muslim traders, including Al-Masudi (871 - 957 CE) in his book ‘Akhbar Az-Zaman’ (History of The World) which is based on material gathered in Africa and Asia. As a matter of fact, Columbus had two captains of Muslim origin during his first transatlantic voyage: Martin Alonso Pinzon was the captain of the Pinta, and his brother Vicente Yanex Pinzon was the captain of the Nina. They were wealthy, expert ship outfitters who helped organize the Columbus expedition and repaired the flagship Santa Maria. They did this at their own expense for both commercial and political reasons. The Pinzon family was related to Abuzayan Muhammad III (1362 - 66 CE), the Moroccan sultan of the Marinid dynasty (1196 - 1465 CE).






Arabic (Islamic) Inscriptions
l. Anthropologists have proven that the Mandinkas under Mansa Musa's instructions explored many parts of North America via the Mississippi and other rivers systems. At Four Corners, Arizona, writings show that they even brought elephants from Africa to the area.
2. Columbus admitted in his papers that on Monday, October 21, 1492 CE while his ship was sailing near Gibara on the north-east coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on the top of a beautiful mountain. The ruins of mosques and minarets with inscriptions of Qur'anic verses have been discovered in Cuba, Mexico, Texas and Nevada.

3. During his second voyage, Columbus was told by the Indians of Espanola (Haiti), that Black people had been to the island before his arrival. For proof they presented Columbus with the spears of these African Muslims. These weapons were tipped with a yellow metal that the Indians called Guanine, a word of West African derivation meaning ‘gold alloy.’ Oddly enough, it is related to the Arabic world ‘Ghinaa’ which means ‘Wealth.’ Columbus brought some Guanines back to Spain and had them tested. He learned that the metal was 18 parts gold (56.25 percent), six parts silver (18.75 percent and eight parts copper (25 percent), the same ratio as the metal produced in African metal shops of Guinea.
4. In 1498 CE, on his third voyage to the New World, Columbus landed in Trinidad. Later, he sighted the South American continent, where some of his crew went ashore and found natives using colorful handkerchiefs of symmetrically woven cotton. Columbus noticed the these handkerchiefs resembled the head dresses and loincloths of Guinea in their colors, style and function. He referred to them as Almayzars. Almayzar is an Arabic word for ‘wrapper,’ ‘cover,’ ‘apron’ and or ‘skirting,’ which was the cloth the Moors (Spanish or North African Muslims) imported from West Africa (Guinea) into Morocco, Spain and Portugal.
During this voyage, Columbus was surprised that the married women wore cotton panties (bragas) and he wondered where these natives learned their modesty. Hernando Cortez, Spanish conqueror, described the dress of the Indian women as long veils and the dress of Indian men as ‘breechcloth painted in the style of Moorish draperies.’ Ferdinand Columbus called the native cotton garments ‘breechclothes of the same design and cloth as the shawls worn by the Moorish women of Granada.’ Even the similarity of the children's hammocks to those found in North Africa was uncanny.

5. Dr. Barry Fell (Harvard University) introduced in his book Saga America - 1980 solid scientific evidence supporting the arrival, centuries before Columbus, of Muslims from North and West Africa. Dr. Fell discovered the existence of Muslim schools at Valley of Fire, Allan Springs, Logomarsino, Keyhole Canyon, Washoe and Hickison Summit Pass (Nevada), Mesa Verde (Colorado), Mimbres Valley (New Mexico) and Tipper Canoe (Indiana) dating back to 700-800 CE. Engraved on rocks in the old western US, he found texts, diagrams and charts representing the last surviving fragments of what was once a system of schools - at both an elementary and higher levels. The language of instruction was North African Arabic written with old Kufic Arabic script. The subjects of instruction included writing, reading, arithmetic, religion, history, geography, mathematics, astronomy and sea navigation.
The descendants of the Muslim visitors of North America are members of the present Iroquois, Algonquin, Anasazi, Hohokam and Olmec native people.

6. There are 565 names of places (villages, towns, cities, mountains, lakes, rivers, etc.) in USA (484) and Canada (81) which are derived from Islamic and Arabic roots. These places were originally named by the natives in pre-Columbian period. Some of these names carried holy meanings such as: Mecca (Indiana) - 720 inhabitants, Makkah Indian tribe (Washington), Medina (Idaho) - 2100, Medina (NY) - 8500, Medina and Hazen (North Dakota) - 1100 and 5000, respectively, Medina (Ohio) - 12,000, Medina (Tennessee) - 1100, Medina (Texas) - 26,000, Medina (Ontario) -1200, Mahomet (Illinois) - 3200, Mona (Utah) - 1100, Arva (Ontario) - 700, and many others. A careful study of the names of the native Indian tribes revealed that many names are derived from Arab and Islamic roots and origins, i.e. Anasazi, Apache, Arawak, Arikana, Chavin Cherokee, Cree, Hohokam, Hupa, Hopi, Makkah, Mahigan, Mohawk, Nazca, Zulu, Zuni, etc.




Dr. Youssef Mroueh
Courtesy BIC, UK and MSANews/MSANet, USA. Explanatory text in [...] and the web version by Dr. A. Zahoor.

The timing of knighting Salman Rushdie is critical. But this is not all about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The hatred of Muslims towards West is mainly due to the imperialist policies of the latter. Incidentally the fatwa came from Iran. The same Iran which had a democratic government under the leadership of Dr. Mossadeq who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian oil company (British Petroleum) in 1953. CIA staged a coup against him and the Islamic revolution in Iran was a result of highhandedness of the Shah of Iran. Thus British establishment is not only responsible for knighting Rushdie but also for the Islamic revolution in Iran.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossadeq

"...Or the kind of Muslim immigrants that first arrived at its shores?..."

May I respectfully point out that the first Muslims that "arrived" at North America's shores were not South Asian or Middle Eastern immigrants, but enslaved Africans?

Pirzada-"This only shows the depth of chaos and depravity to which a once proud imperial power has unwittingly allowed itself to sink under the comradeship of Tony Blair."

Lets hope Gordie Brown does better.......like giving Tasleema Nasrin British citizenship.........

In the past, images of Hindu gods like Ganesha and Shiva were carried on toilet seats and even footwear. Were Hindus offended? Yes of course, they were. But did they go to town burning everything they found? Nope. Do Muslims respect other religions? In my experience, only common courtesy prevents them from expressing their outright disgust at other religions and their practices. Even so, they subtly try to express why Islam is better than any other religion. Why then do they expect others to respect Islam and Prophet Mohammed?

Muslims in Britain — who first sparked the controversy — and elsewhere were stunned by what they saw as ridicule and derision of the Holy Prophet


OOh...the allah given right of the practioners of the religion of peace to not be offended was violated...


The identity crisis of youth of mostly Pakistani-origin has proved a fertile ground for Islamisation


yes..the propensity among brit-pakis to blow up subways, make plans to poison a whole bunch of people and carry around signs demanding the beheading of anyone who insults islam is caused by an "identity crisis"...as in the west thought they are civilized while, in fact, they are islamofascists