Of Evil Zionists and the Great Satan

Asad:

A warm welcome...and hope you will continue to contribute here...

...now this article...a very broad sweep...you painted with broad strokes...and highlighted the obvious and some not so obvious traits...

...disagree with you in the portrayal of world-wide muslims as one `nation`...if they are as you seem to suggest...they must be confined within the hard covers of some obscure book...not in real life...

...and the second one...you say, `` We are on the very doorstep of an equally impressive Muslim resurgence...``...this is tongue in cheek at best...you did not establish the ground framework in your article as a necessary prelude for making such a blatantly sweeping statement...needless to mention this optimism is highly misplaced...

regards,

temporal

Except for the 2 Billion Muslims figure which I am not sure of, this article does make a great deal of sense, at least in the Pakistan context.

Ras

PS: Used to know a Asad Zaidi in the Progressive Days....

Welcome to Chowk, Asad.

[The rise of the Muslim nation was, by any standards, breathtaking in terms of sheer pace and scale. It changed the face of the world forever, forging a civilization in the fire of tribal fratricide and inspiring the European Renaissance. ]

What Went Wrong?

Zaidi Sahib

Interesting essay. Perhaps it might be instructive to ponder how other developing nations see themselves. Do eco/technologically competitive Asian countries see themselves as ``Buddhist`` ``Christian`` ``Shintoist`` foremost, or do they coalition on a shared Asian identity. What binds them? How has this collective identification helped them as nations and coops?

Similarly, are there other countries that define themselves as ``Christian`` (besides Israel) or by a religious identity other than Muslim? What are they and how does their identification manifest itself?

In other words, preaching Muslim solidarity is one thing. However, if dirty laundry is being washed here, why not just admit that the dirt on our clothes is that a great number of self identified messianic Muslims have shown their inability to live with the rest of the non Muslim world, and our inability to rescue Islam from their superiority complexes and our ambivalences and paralysis.

On a sobering note, (and I hate to bring it up)who is responsible for that young woman who was gang raped in Pakistan as revenge for the sighting of her TWELVE YEAR OLD brother with a girl from another tribe? What are WE going to do about it? Apparently this rape was sanctioned by a group of tribal elders and her father handed her over?!

Also, didn`t get the whole Hollywood adoration thing; could someone explain?

Theres an interesting debate between Tariq Ali and Christofer Hitchens on www.asiapacificforum.org on this very topic.

Honest article. Many people in the 3rd world grow up feeling oppressed by the West and blaming it for their poor condition. The reality is that many of the deprivations are self-inflicted. Is it any coincidence that 3rd world societies are also those that have not figured out democracy, capitalim and science?

I agree with temporal here. The days of the renaissance on the basis of religion have long past. You might have used the term, ``renaissance of Muslims somewhere in the world``, possibly Turkey or Indonesia than ``Islamic renaissance``. Right now Muslims should be totally focused on improbing their living standard instead of working for re-creating past geo-political glory.

//

...there is a set of Muslim-specific ills we must cure. ....

...the thorniest problems Muslims face are not of technology, intellect or resources. They are problems relating to the functioning of basic civil society, flaws of character, not ability.....

//

Now - Get ready for abuses from the resident arbiter of `pride & prejudice`: How dare you paint all muslims with such a ``broad brush``? You are a bigot - never mind the validity of the issues you are talking about.

Sarcasm apart - it is a good article. I hope it is well-received and acted upon by all muslims.

For a muslim `nation` comprising all muslims, there should be territorial continguity of the muslim majority lands. This is not the case today. However, I think those muslim majority countries that are already territorially continguous can strive for a muslim `nation` - the Arab countries, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, the various stans of former USSR. They could try forming a EU style union for starters - the Islamic Union, with common laws, common currency, link language of Arabic, common foreign policy etc. I wonder how much EU unity is helped by the fact that they are all Christian majority countries (except Turkey) and have a common history.

The Islamic Union (IU) would leave out countries like bangladesh, indonesia etc which are muslim majority but whose lands are not contiguous with the IU.

It would also leave out muslims living in countries who are not muslim majority, such as India, US, UK etc.

At the very least, the Islamic Union will have great economic clout, to rival the European Union and US.

But frankly, I do not see any of this happening. For an IU, the people in these countries should have common interests. But there is nothing to unite them except religion. Some of these islamic countries do not have good relations amongst themselves (eg iran-iraq, iraq-kuwait). They have various systems of govt ranging from monarchy to dictatorship to elected govt. Some of them have better relations with US and other powers, while others are part of the axis-of-evil. There is also great economic disparity between the muslim countries.

For all the above and several other reasons, I think an Islamic Union will continue to be a mirage in the near future.

What the muslim majority countries can definitely strive for is greater co-operation in economic matters, aid, sharing of technology, and foreign policy especially w.r.t how Islam is perceived by the rest of the world.

Good reading. Maybe you wil get pilloried by your own for it. But then, who are your own? Only those from your religion? I don`t think so.

Having said that, I think you are being a bit too harsh on Muslims. The Muslim world is not composed of Muslims from the Asian/Arab firmament only.

a) I think many Muslim ``leaders`` need to take into account that half their population (women) are also human. This is mainly the threatened variety of Muslim clerics.

Will there be a female backlash? Will some women start carrying guns under their hijabs in Saudi Arabia and killing anybody who beats them for showing an eyelash?

I think that will happen soon.

b) This small Russian Federation whose plane crashed, if you notice, many of the surnames like ``Rahimkov`` etcetc are very Muslim. If you look at the shots on CNN/BBC, it seems that those Muslims are about as much all there as any other people.

I think the main issue is that many Muslims have to start thinking clearly, that killing or haranguing other people, including other Muslim variants, is not going to solve their problems.

I also think that maybe some of the Muslim leaders need to stop taking themselves seriously, and maybe laughing some more.

And finally, I thank you for not blaming India anywhere in your article. In the same vein, may I suggest you write a second article explaining what a ``Muslim resurgence`` could be?

Howdy Asad,

You forgot to mention that we need to give up on `waiting for the messiah to spoon feed us` lark. I don`t mean the belief, just the attitude.

Yours truly,

Umer M.

PS. Matey, where did you get the 2 billion no. from???

Outstanding! Thank you, Mr. Zaidi - for long we have have felt our loss and have indulged ourselves in self pity and in the cult of victimization. Yes, we are have been and are no angels and we need not be depressed or be sorrowful - there is a way out, but it is not painless and it`s not without sacrifice; it begins with acknowledging the less than flattering truth about who and what we have been, what we are capable of being and to decide to take the course of our lives in our hands.

Is it an unfair criticism when we are reminded that universities were an idea born in Islam, yet what learning have we to show for it? Is it an unfair criticism to point out that as a group (diverse or not) Muslims remain by and large ignorant and unaware and uncivil? No, these criticisms are valid and are most necessary. Again, bravo, for this excellent peace; pathos without pity.

Asad,

This is probably one of the best sarcastic articles I`ve read. Well done. There has never been a better time for the Pakistanis to question everything they have done, from the moment of creation of Pakistan and death of Jinnah, to the secularist dictator Musharraf and the hunt for the terrorrists in Pakistan, and everything in between. Ummah is anachronism. It was practical only at Islam`s infancy. Now, it is a liability. Pakistan should shake it off.

Hopefully, Pakistan will rise from the ashes. Certainly, articles like these will help Pakistan rise.

``If we continue to sit hunched over, with the begging bowl in one hand and burnt effigies of American presidents in the other, we will, at best, be mocked, ridiculed and laughed at. Glory or ridicule? The choice is ours.``

Yes, indeed, the choice is ours.

I liked this article very much.

Am a little uncomfortable with your enthusiastic embracing of the ummah concept, but other than that, there`s nothing to be said but-- well done.

I fear top say more lest the dogs set themselves on me--- suffice to say, you seem to have thought of the topic a lot and if you can translate some of those good intentions into action, the wo0rld will be the better for it.

Good luck

A nice article, but the author falls into the same trap that he is so passionately warning against. Even when he is raving about the differences amongst the various sects of Muslim world, his horizon is not wide enough to include the entire world. His attitude is still, us against them. He talks about the Pakistani doing well in advanced countries, but fails to understand that those countries prosper by the fruit of the immigrants.

Exclusiveness may work for the short time, but in the long run, only societies that value excellence over brotherhood are the one who progress. Muslims themselves have proved that only the have-nots advocate ummah. The haves dont want to be bothered by the filthy poor trash.

Neither the evil Zionists, nor the US Satan, nor the Hindutva Hindus, nor the Serb Christians, nor the Filipino Buddhists, nor the Chinese Communists -- are the ENEMIES of the Muslims.

The bitter FACT is that -- ONLY a few hundered thousands of -- ``good muslims`` -- are the WORST and REAL ENEMIES -- of ONE billion Ordinary Muslims -- ALL over the World.

They have let us down -- EVERYWHERE -- and we can`t do a thing about it -- except watch helplessly -- or BLAME others.

hasan

I think that everyone should read this UN report, `Arab Human Development Report 2002` available at http://www.undp.org/rbas/ahdr/

There are lessons here for every country of the world.

This report is authored by a bevy of Arab intellectuals, and anwers questions like `What went wrong with the Arab world? Why is it so stuck behind the times?` A team of such scholars (it is indicative of the barriers to freely expressed thought that there are almost no worthwhile think-tanks in the Arab world) have now spent a year putting their experience to diagnostic use in the “Arab Human Development Report 2002”, published this week by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Chief reasons for Arab decline are blamed on a lack of freedom, knowledge and womenpower. The Economist summarizes them up:

FREEDOM. This deficit, in the UNDP`s interpretation, explains many of the fundamental things that are wrong with the Arab world: the survival of absolute autocracies; the holding of bogus elections; confusion between the executive and the judiciary (the report points out the close linguistic link between the two in Arabic); constraints on the media and on civil society; and a patriarchal, intolerant, sometimes suffocating social environment.

The area is rich in all the outward trappings of democracy. Elections are held and human-rights conventions are signed. But the great wave of democratisation that has opened up so much of the world over the past 15 years seems to have left the Arabs untouched. Democracy is occasionally offered, but as a concession, not as a right.

``The transfer of power through the ballot box is not a common phenomenon in the Arab world,`` the report says politely. Moreover, senior public servants, from ministers down, are seldom appointed solely on the basis of merit. People are given jobs not because of what they know, but because of whom they know. The result, all too often, is an unmoving, unresponsive central authority and an incompetent public administration.

Freedom of expression and freedom of association are both sharply limited. The report quotes Freedom House, an American-based monitor of political and civil rights, in recording that no Arab country has genuinely free media, and only three have ``partly free``. The rest are not free.

Civil society, in the Arab world, has a terribly long way to go. NGOs are hobbled by legal and administrative obstacles laid in their path by authorities deeply suspicious of what they might be up to. But they also suffer from internal weaknesses, often getting their money either from foreign sources, which adds to the suspicions, or from the government, which defeats the object of their creation.

KNOWLEDGE. ``If God were to humiliate a human being,`` wrote Imam Ali bin abi Taleb in the sixth century, ``He would deny him knowledge.`` Although the Arabs spend a higher percentage of GDP on education than any other developing region, it is not, it seems, well spent. The quality of education has deteriorated pitifully, and there is a severe mismatch between the labour market and the education system. Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Some 10m children still have no schooling at all.

One of the gravest results of their poor education is that the Arabs, who once led the world in science, are dropping ever further behind in scientific research and in information technology. Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6% of the population uses the Internet, and 1.2% have personal computers.

Another, no less grave, result is the dearth of creativity. The report comments sadly on the severe shortage of new writing, and, for instance, the decline in the film industry. Nor are foreign books much translated: in the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, say the authors, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in one year.

WOMEN`S STATUS. The one thing that every outsider knows about the Arab world is that it does not treat its women as full citizens.

The report sees this as an awful waste: how can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential? After all, even though women`s literacy rates have trebled in the past 30 years, one in every two Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries` political and economic life is the lowest in the world.

Governments and societies (and sometimes, as in Kuwait, societies and parliamentarians are more backward than their governments) vary in the degrees of bad treatment they mete out to women. But in nearly all Arab countries, women suffer from unequal citizenship and legal entitlements. The UNDP has a ``gender-empowerment measure`` which shows the Arabs near the bottom (according to this measure, sub-Saharan Africa ranks even worse). But the UN was able to measure only 14 of the 22 Arab states, since the necessary data were not available in the others. This, as the report says, speaks for itself, reflecting the general lack of concern in the region for women`s desire to be allowed to get on.