The Conversion Chiaroscuro

Ref Field Marshal-turned-Religious-Affairs-Correspondent #47

By the same logic, pinning your enire hope on Allah is a poor business proposition. What if Allah isn`t the right God? That would mean you also have to worship Yahweh/Jehovah but then both Allah and Jehovah require that they be relied upon to the exclusion of others. The better solution would be to become a polytheist so that you are spreading your risk among several gods, all of whom may or may not have some power to rescue your soul.

Thus the only logical religion is Hinduism where you can choose Rama, Krishna, Vishnu, Siva, Brahma, Lakshmi, Kali, Saraswathi, Ganesh, Kartik, Harihar, and a thousand manifestations of these gods/goddesses. Not AMONG them but ALL of them. For good measure, you can throw in Karuppannasamy, Madurai Veeran, Mariamman, Bhagawathi, etc. Somebody is bound to help you somewhere!

Ref Mullah321 #48

[as for your presumption that muslim men dont marry nonmuslim women unless they convert - let me just say (i am tired of trying to reason with brainwashed people like you from india) that that is just a presumption.]

You are telling me that in Pakistan Hindu girls willingly marry Muslim men and that the girls are allowed to remain Hindus? And their children can be raised as Hindus?

Find someone else who might buy the Brooklyn Bridge from you.

Romair #47

{{Being an athiest is actually a very poor business proposition. .... How, you may ask?}}

That asinine line of argument is known as Pascal`s Wager. It is as good a demonstration as any of the brain-rotting effects of religious mania. Poor Blaise Pascal can be excused for coming up with this tripe in the 17th century after he got religion - he lived in a protoscientific age where the notion of a personal god along Judaic lines still held some residual plausibility. Today there is no excuse for recycling this bilge.

The argument relies on the supply of after-life goodies being contingent on holding specific religious beliefs during one`s life. The refutation is to consider, for any specific sytem of religous beliefs R, its negation R`, which moreover guarantees eternal hellfire and damnation for those perverse enough to believe in R. The R-believer has no way of knowing that R` is not the `true` religion. No specific system of religious beliefs R, out of the infinity of possible systems, is immune to this argument; consequently none is privileged with `better` expected prospects in the `afterlife`. Might as well be an atheist.

(The original refutation was to present the wannabe theist with the choice between two jealous desert gods, called, say, Allah and Yahweh, with each of these deities specifically threatening the most exquisite torments for belief in the other. Dammed if you do, dammed if you don`t).

harimau #43 i think what i wrote is clear enough. as for your presumption that muslim men dont marry nonmuslim women unless they convert - let me just say (i am tired of trying to reason with brainwashed people like you from india) that that is just a presumption.

hamidm #37: `` i have never met anyone who could rationally explain to me why they believe in what they believe in``

All right. I will take a shot at this one.

Being an athiest is actually a very poor business proposition. It`s all risk, with no potential for long-term profit. Believing in a religion has no risks or chance of loss, but does have potential for profit. How, you may ask?

Well, an athiest says, everything is over after death. No afterlife, no heaven, no hell. Everyone turns into carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and what not. Let`s say the athiest dies, and it turns out their is no afterlife, what does he gain? Nothing. No profit. He just doesn`t lose anything, that`s all. Now lets say, he dies, and finds out there is an afterlife. He`s more than a little bit screwed. Wouldn`t you agree? He denounced religion his whole life. His bet turned out to be wrong and now may end up in a loss.

Now, let`s say a guy who believes in religion dies. It turns out their is no afterlife. What does he lose, for believing in religion? Nothing. He makes no profit, but is still as well off as the athiest guy. However, let`s say it turns out their is an afterlife, after all. The religious guy`s belief in religion, will now pay off. He is in a potential profitable situation. If it turned out he believed in the wrong religion, it would mean he got on the wrong train. But at least he is in the subway station. Still a much better situation than the athiest guy, who doesn`t even believe in subways.

I am assuming you are an athiest. I would be highly disappointed to find out you are not. Since you may be correct is stating that it is idiotic to believe in a religion and follow it. But wouldn`t it be even more idiotic to not believe in a religion and still follow it.........

#23 by Tipu on June 25, 2003 0:02am PT

Tipu...I never have any problem what soever with the muslim friends who grew up with me in India ever since my childhood. Neither did they have any problem with me or any other Hindu.
These problems are a recent trend. Maybe due to internet.
Especially at chowk...the atmosphere is such that Indians and Pakis seem to be more freindly as they have same religion. And that makes me think again. What is the truth? Is it the `muslim brotherhood`? Is it what I grew up with?

And the conversion issue is complex. The party that converts doesn`t seem to mind. But the one that is left behind so as to embrace the new one, is the one who is left surprised and wondering. Oh! what was wrong with us that we were ditched.
Actually there might not have been anything wrong. People convert because `grass is greener on the other side of the pasture` and also because they just hope there is salvation around. Or they don`t see any difference in this God or that new God but like the new life style offered by the new religion(Like some people may find it modern to be Christian..sitting suited-booted on the chairs in a church...sipping wine than to sit on a desi `dari` in a mandir`)...just joking.. a conversion has to be deeper than that..I feel .. I don`t know.

But what V.S Naipaul wrote does seem to be true:
..`Converts are a confused lot..they don`t belong anywhere ...they have to reject their previous religion in order to like that new religon else they are scared of going back to the old one`
Probably it is this mentality that made Farzana`s converted Didi behave in an overtly religious fashion. Otherwise I haven`t seen many Hindu girls bothering too much about going to the temples of the every city they visit..or learning Bharatnatyam just because they happen to be Hindu girls...(anyone can learn it not just hindus)...
Especially...I haven`t heard anyone saying that they want to marry Krishna(although marrying krishna has spiritual connotations not the lusty ones..it means ..a marriage of the human soul with the supreme soul). So, probably..this part has been taken by Farzana from Meera`s story. It was Meera who was Krishna`s diwani(spiritually again)...and she as a little girl used to say she want to marry Krishna...so maybe Farzy got mixed up (or maybe her didi`s little girls got mixed up)..

Re: Farzana, #39

Yes, Farzana, I`m pretty good at getting to the core of it all!

Naive questions, you ask?

``Aren`t you mistaking the acts of humans to divine intervention?``
``but did you ever perform a surgery on your own life?``
``When a maulvi will perform a conversion ritual, will you be able to exorcise the Radha in you?``
``Where? Where? Where?...???``

Missing me? That *is* naïve! I`m like a wind...or a ship at night...

Ref FarzanaVersey #39

[temporal (#10):
A while ago when I was in Kochy I tried to get in touch with her (Kamala Das/Sorayya), and she sounded very confused and suspicious. She tried to stall the meeting, and after a couple of calls, I thought it was a waste of time. I was more interested in her because she used to be this grande dame who had an open house, where people would gather, drink and recite poetry…so I was told by friends in Mumbai. She has updated her autobiography and is continuing with her columns. I do not know what major change has come about in her life.]

Wears a burqa. Doesn`t go out without a male escort who is mehram to her. Stopped drinking/offering drinks to visitors.

Just guessing.

FarzanaVersey writes

[Children were born. When my niece was old enough, she would do an impromptu performance of Bharat Natyam, which she learned in America. That was nice. But one day, she casually said that Lord Krishna was her husband. While the others laughed it off as childish prattle, it registered in my mind sharply. Why had my cousin not inculcated the values of both religions in her children? After all, she had been born into one and had been a part of it for over two decades.]

Perhaps your Didi didn`t want her daughter to think of herself as a child bride to Prophet Muhammad. Sometimes, reality is too harsh to contemplate.

Ref tahmed32 #32

[For a woman to discard her religion in order to marry someone does not tell me anything about the woman. It tells me a lot about the man - it tells me that he neither understands what religion is all about, nor does he love his wife enough to insist that she retain her religion. So, in both cases, the men were lowlife.]

Are you concluding ALL Muslim men who marry non-Muslim women are low-life?

Farzana:

I admit so far I had not thought of your write-up as literary piece. I confess to looking only on the religio-political aspects of the presentation. Partly and only partly this is due to excessive obsession of the chowkis with religion. As a representative of rambling emotional state the piece does have merit. Though there are a few places where it still needs to be tightened up so that it can carry the reader through the self-centered scenario that it IS.

Now I return to the intellectual aspects of the presentation.

1. What is your position that you declare in the footnote has not changed? Is this just a set of questions?

2. Your Didi`s conversion event has relevance to others only in so far as it can throw light on the understanding/guidance of those converts/back converts/further converts.

3. What do you think should be the situation of your didi`s chldren? Why should not be the specific combination that she and her husband wanted it to be?

4. What happened to the Pandit that your didi converted for? Did he die or they got divorced? Whose faults and what? From your descriptions Kamala Das does not appear to be a very upright person.

5. Why are you making a big deal out of the narcisistic tendencies of your didi in younger and older ages?

6. Why are your resenting your didi`s effort to adapt the religious practices of her husband though somewhat overzealously?

7. What is this trademark vs identity deal that you are kicking dust about?

8. I am not sure what you expected to achieve from your open letter. Do you resent her return to Islam? What is wrong with fair devotion to one`s husband? Do gods punish or you are punished by people who you might offend or wrong? This is so in Islam or Hinduism; just the same. Why drag God in it? How many satis and devdasis have you seen?

9. Your letter hangs without any statement of position or resolution proposed. What did your didi say about it?

Finally, in summary, I would like to state that your write-up is an interesting description of a personal phantasm but no one should infer any thing general from it.

I agree that the format might seem confusing to some, but that was the reason I used the break. While editing suggestions (Samina?) would be welcome (I am not happy with the last para of the first segment – too many ‘buts’, which I was aware of, but on reading aloud it did not sound too bad), I would not change the letter to Kamala Das. As for the emotional quality of my writing, I thought Chowkies had got used to it by now. I do not pretend otherwise and, to be honest, I am not a particularly rational being. If you cannot feel about something, you cannot think of doing anything about it. My ‘logic’.

Let me share the reservations a friend had. A Pakistani. Not a Chowkie. He once told me that the moment I start revealing these aspects of my family/life, “all these Pakistanis who support you will show their true colours. That urstruly is always on your side, but just you wait and see what happens….”

I was surprised. One, I write for people, irrespective of their nationalities, but here there is the knowledge that the border is an issue. As for urstruly, I still do not understand what “whining” was there in this article. I gave two opposing versions and expressed my opinions on both, which are the same.

nazarhayatkhan (I type like a dervish…in some ways thoughts, words, emotions just get into a manic dance), veeresh (ah, you have confidence in meeee!), Brat, friend, driz459, digit (‘she’ is my cousin), aicha…thanks.

godot (#6):
[The only interesting aspect of this highly emotional outburst is a Muslim conversion to Hinduism and back.]
Well, that was the primary motive of this piece and am glad you could see it.

[Farzana, judging from your writings, I couldn`t tell you were capable of asking such naive questions. You come across as a good writer but a thought process of an adolescent.]
What are the naïve questions I have posed? Anyway, good to see you back. I was missing you…now that is naïve :)

yagacho (#9):
Didi IS a psychiatrist herself! I do not think she needs to get fixed…there are other issues I was discussing.

temporal (#10):
A while ago when I was in Kochy I tried to get in touch with her, and she sounded very confused and suspicious. She tried to stall the meeting, and after a couple of calls, I thought it was a waste of time. I was more interested in her because she used to be this grande dame who had an open house, where people would gather, drink and recite poetry…so I was told by friends in Mumbai. She has updated her autobiography and is continuing with her columns. I do not know what major change has come about in her life.

Studebaker (#11):
[Given the money a woman will run with it caring too hoot for religion]
Didi married a man who had very little money, and they both worked their way up.

Inquirer (#13):
I did not present my woes, but my opinion. I know it would help to have further explored Didi’s mental condition, which I think I did with Kamala Das. But as I indicated, there really was no protest in my cousin’s case, so one never quite got to know why. She had a supportive father, who was more into reading books of philosophy rather than religion. Her mother was a staunch Aga Khani, and as everyone knows, it is as secular as you can get within a religious framework. And Didi was always with grandma and my mother, who have been liberal in the truest sense. Then there is the age gap between us. Interestingly, she firmly believes that I am much too rebellious.

hamidm (15):
Since you mentioned…although didi married a Brahmin, they, having moved to the west, ate everything that moved. He ate beef, she ate pork, the kids ate whatever they could lay their hands on. Now she and the family have turned vegetarian, and it has to do with religion, not health (her son told me) and she has been trying to convert us to that way of thinking.

Many years ago the Jehovah’s Witnesses got into overdrive and started visiting homes. I was a sucker looking for succour, so I gave them my phone number and they would call and ask me to attend their meetings every Sunday. I think that put me off. Re. conversions, I have just one thing to say: one god/religion is tough enough to understand, so how on earth will one have the time/inclination for others?

......... maybe i don`t have any appreciation for this religion business, but i just don`t see why anyone would want to convert to anything ............. religion is a heriditary disease that you are born with, and conversion is like trading it for some other horrible affliction instead of going for a full cure ............. some of the rituals like eid, devali and christmas can be fun, but others like fasting, prayer and circumcision can be quite painful ............ i have never met anyone who could rationally explain to me why they believe in what they believe in ............ some say it is for the free wafers and wine in church, others like the bhang at the mazars, others just like running around half naked or are afraid to go to the barber ............ what`s the point of all this?

............. instead of converting, mixed couples should try to take advantage of the good stuff in both faiths ......for example, a shia-sunni couple could keep shia time for sehri and sunni time for iftari, thus saving twenty minutes at both ends and reducing the idiotic act of fasting by forty minutes .............

Deafening silence from those who believe I cannot think beyond Islam...but i am not surprised.
soysauce (#16):
Kamala Das did not reply; she probably did not even read it, though wish she had. For, most people taking potshots at her were Hindu. But I got a call from a person involved in an Islamic organisation and he was surprisingly supportive. The only problem he had was with my ‘open’ language!

I agree when you talk about powerplay. In India, even among educated urban families, the girl is always co-opted, whether she converts or not. Didi probably converted to fulfill her mother-in-law’s wish, but having never lived in the joint family and in fact in an open society, I could not understand her attitude. It does not appear that she resents it at all. In fact, she is clearly anti-Islamic as seen from the Western point of view. It ought not to bother me, except that she is family. We have shared moments. What I find strange is that she is more comfortable today with the other relatives who are practising Muslims, and rarely expresses her views on hijab etc to them.

[I cannot see myself carrying on a relationship if she were my relative and had undergone conversion. You could try brainwashing her kid!]
Oh, her daughter married young, and the guy she got married to is her husband’s nephew. And then they talk about Muslim’s marrying their cousins… we did try to have some fun when her son was here; I was of the belief that he should marry a Christian, just for variety… someone suggested a Muslim. Which is when we got the clear signal: her children would not even fall in love with a non-Hindu with marriage in mind. About carrying on a relationship with her, being emotional is a great help in these matters. You do not weigh these things…

ana (#19):
The footnote was put in there simply because the open letter was written in 1999; a lot has happened since then; I am seen as a jihadi of sorts here; political strife, riots…things that could have made me change my mind. But they have not.

The Kamala Das query has been answered in reply to t…

(Digression: why are the laundas being put on msgr, and not the ‘bimbo’??!)

Satire (#21):
How often do people choose their religion out of choice? I did mention the instances where ideology comes into play, but that is often a male preserve. Didi is pretty and strong-minded, which is why I find it difficult to understand. But we must not forget that she has had a stable family life…now whether one god united them is the reason for this, I do not know.

You contradict yourself when you say that, “The issue you reflect with the kids not getting a `balanced instruction` isn`t really religious” and then, “As for the kids, ahh a touchy subject, the parents should decide which religion: either, both, all or none. Usually in an educated setting, the stronger personality dominates”.

The problem is that children are inculcated with religious values because in our subcontinent everything ethical has a religious basis; while Western thought threw up socio-psychological theories, we made mythology into our foundation for a value system. It has some good elements, but rituals interfere.

In my own case, when I was a child I refused to read the Quran because I had a simple explanation, “I hate mugging and I do not like the Muliyanima’s face.” That was the end. And as a teenager, I just stopped doing anything. Again, I was asked if I had been hurt. I said, no, I just did not find the answers I was looking for. One still asks questions because there is a vacuum. I do mumble prayers, I wear lucky charms, I try and put wind chimes everywhere…these are things to make one feel good. Because I think that while I have got closer to my community due to the ground realities around me, I am still groping in the dark. I was recently resented the book ‘Imaginary Muslims’…I think it conveys how best I feel. This long ramble is because what ought to be simple decisions are tough. You have talked about giving children the choice…possible. But can they ever forget what they see around them? Every Friday agarbattis were lit up at home, and that is what I have seen all my life. Today I may bring the Green Apple fragrant one and make it a point that it is so sensual….but I do know that if I light them, I will say a small fateha and hope that god likes my impeccable taste…

Shandana (#25):
Thanks for sharing a personal experience. As for your being seen as a Pakistani Hindu on some website, I have been surprised to find a Christian organisation branding me together with the likes of Bal Thackeray…

Yes, I am glad for the liberal atmosphere at home. I am glad when my nephew’s thread ceremony was conducted, together with the Hindu priest, by my Muslim namaazi cousin. But it makes me sad that in the current environment, I have to be the ‘other’… being a misfit is different and can be fun! I am happy you could hold your head high and be yourself.

Samankhan (#27):
Thanks for giving an example. However, I do not agree when you say, “To discard the religion one was born into to marry another from a different religion speaks volumes about the character of the person, doesn`t it? If he/she could be disloyal to his/her deity couldn`t he/she be so to a mere human?”

I think you can be human without being religious. One’s character does not come from which god one worships, but what one does after worshipping that god. Conversion is not so much about disloyalty, but about whether you can truly shake of what is your history. And must you? Can’t both co-exist? I see it alas only in the so-called elite professions like films, theatre, media, and believe me there is often a conflict here too.

dost-mittarji (#28):
Good post. But I do not think that Islam put an end to metaphysical debate. Blasphemy too is a metaphysical debate, if we can get into a mature discussion about it. I do not agree that Kamala Das’ decision was mature, although it may been thought over and mulled for a while. We can think of a hundred things to do for long, but they need not be mature.

Ah, as for all being Buddhists in the end…sure, you must see those monks :)

Regards,
Farzana

Ref soysauce #16

[Your cousin, on the other hand, sounds like she is trying to be holier than the Sankaracharya. I cannot see myself carrying on a relationship if she were my relative and had undergone conversion.]

Finally, the mask has dropped from the face of the hypocrite.

Sangilikkaruppan who has been pretending to be egalitarian finally admits that he wouldn`t be able to handle an inter-religious marriage. You all know now that he won`t be able to stand his cousin marrying a Dalit. Or for that matter, one notch below his own caste.

One teeny-weeny notch ABOVE his caste: now, that is another story!