Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 10:49:25 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: fundamentalism (was Re: helping victims of terror) Message-ID: <20010926104925.A318@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <1001463692.3bb11f8ccca43@webmail.neomedia.it>; from bartequi@neomedia.it on Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 02:21:32AM %2B0200 References: <1001447850.3bb0e1aa11dfc@webmail.neomedia.it> <20010925222900.A71817@lpt.ens.fr> <1001463692.3bb11f8ccca43@webmail.neomedia.it>
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Long mail, read only if this whole issue does genuinely interest you. Salvo Bartolotta said on Sep 26, 2001 at 02:21:32: > Ooops, my fault, sorry. I was thinking of the "Islamic" leaders > (using religion as a means of goverment, or "instrumentum regni"), > and of [more or less large] unlettered masses following them. Yep, > a good number of people are just victims, I agree. > > > This holds to a varying extent in a few countries, where populations > are needy and -- key factor -- illiterate, so a [more or less great] > number of "religious" leaders teach them fundamentalistic ideas -- > for their own **filthy** political/ideological/pseudoreligious > purposes; which purposes involve, inter alia, that the Western World > is irremediably rotten, etc. You're quite right there, actually. And this is true with India too. In fact, Hindu fundamentalist organisations are growing too; the only good things I see are that (a) as they grow they seem to be somewhat toning down their vile rhetoric to try and attract more "mainstream" people, and (b) even so, they're not succeeding all that much. India's ruling coalition is headed by one such party, but it only stays together because of one man, the prime minister, who's regarded as a "moderate" (a few others are moderates too but not powerful); and that party has a following only in a few states and seems to be losing it there too. As for Muslims in India (India has the second largest population of Muslims in the world, Indonesia being first) -- there's an ongoing debate where Muslim leaders (many of them fitting closely with your description above, actually) claim that successive governments have "neglected" muslims and caused them to stay backward; others retorting that it is the Muslim religious leaders who conspire to keep their illiterate flock in their madrasas, instead of letting them join the mainstream; and the educated, liberal, forward-thinking Muslims (there are *many* of them, in the government and in all walks of life) don't seem to care about their "community" all that much. And, where India (perhaps Pakistan too) is concerned, *this* is the problem. The Muslim masses look to their mullahs for inspiration and not to their scientists, artists, writers or even the forward-looking politicians, while these latter don't make an effort to reach to the masses (well, maybe some of the politicians do, but they're not very successful). It's a deep sociological problem, but today with the increasing penetration of mass media, I'm hoping that the hold of the mullahs will break -- that is, people living in such conditions will realise that there are other things in life to aim for. In Pakistan things became much worse under General Zia's regime; that is when fundamentalism really took off there. I'm not very familiar with Egypt and other north African countries. Unfortunately, most of them haven't been democracies either, so Islamic fundamentalism often, as I understand it, became a front for anti-Government activity (as in Iran). In fact, in Iran, after the revolution, the muslim clergy gained immense power, but the people clearly got tired of it after a while and have been making it known that they want reforms. As I wrote earlier, while women have restrictions on dress and some other things in Iran, in other ways they have much more freedom than in many middle Eastern countries. Perhaps education and literacy levels were much higher in Iran, I don't know. > I believe that 1) the distortion of Islam/any religion has nothing > to do with Islam and with religion at large; 2) these ideas can only > be accepted by **ignorant** and [more or less large] [more or less] > poor masses; 3) most of these religious/political leaders, for a > variety of reasons, wish to keep these populations as ignorant [and > poor] as they can. Partially right on 1: I think every religious text has things in it which seem barbaric from our present-day point of view, and while we can justify moderate behaviour by quoting the Koran, these people can equally well justify their extremism from the same source. I won't argue with them there, since their knowledge of the Koran is obviously vastly greater than mine. Quite right on 2 and 3. > My pessimism arises from the extreme difficulty in attacking the > roots of the problem, viz hunger & ignorance, which constitute ideal > humus for [Islam] fundamentalism and other BS. It can only be done locally, by the more forward looking people in the community itself. Unfortunately such people are getting marginalised in Pakistan, while they barely exist (and hardly ever existed) in Afghanistan. One of the best descriptive articles I've read on Afghanistan, by filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is here: http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2001/June/Afghan/index.html It shows you how difficult the problem is. America obviously wants a change of government in Afghanistan, but finding a good replacement and making sure it has popular support will be very difficult, especially if it is perceived as having US backing. Bush is doing the right thing in seeking the support of Muslim countries for his actions. But already it looks like Pakistan is not happy with talk of overthrowing the Taleban. Iran would be quite happy with it, but America will not talk to them; besides Iran has deeper problems with much of Afghanistan anyway (shia v/s sunni). Makhmalbaf's article points out that regional identity is much stronger than national identity in Afghanistan, and the Pakhtuns are the dominant regional tribe. So a pakhtun leader would be the best choice. Pakistan will be bitterly opposed to it however, because the Durand line separating the Pakhtun parts of Pakistan from Afghanistan expired a few years ago, and they are likely to face separatist problems if the Pakhtun "national identity" is strengthened in any case. The article by Rajmohan Gandhi which I sent yesterday suggests that Pakhtun nationalism is, in fact, a stronger force than Islam in those parts. The Northern Alliance is mostly non-Pakhtun, which is why imposing it on the rest of Afghanistan is unlikely ever to be a workable solution. They're talking now of reinstalling 86-year-old King Zahir Shah, which shows how desperate they are. Changing the world is difficult, and change in these societies has to come from within, not be imposed from outside... right now the US has plenty of sympathy, even from governments of Muslim countries, and as long as they are careful to involve other countries, act under the UN banner and not unilaterally, and step very carefully indeed and be prepared for a very long process, we can still be optimistic. Any perception that the US is "invading" Afghanistan, however, will instantly antagonise Muslims everywhere. Bush has certainly learned the hard way the dangers of his unilateralism and the need of support from the rest of the world. R To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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