My latest is up at Huffington Post.
Man, this has been going on since I was a kid in Pakistan. Salman Rushdie does something; fundamentalist Muslims start burning stuff; start agitating for strikes; collecting money for the big pot that will go to the guy who cuts off his head.
When I was but a wee boy, seeing grown men hop around big bonfires, their eyelashes and beards singed from the flying embers, all agitated over a book that they hadn’t even seen, much less read, was embarrassing. Now, 20 years later (the first Salman Rushdie riots were in 1987), it’s just downright pathetic. This time Rushdie didn’t even do anything; he just got knighted by the Queen (who herself doesn’t choose the people who get knighted). As a result, Iranians and Pakistanis are getting worked up, this time demanding apologies from the British, reconfirming their desire to kill Rushdie, and organizing strikes.
So, once again, the response has to be direct and straight forward: no compromise on freedom of conscience; no compromise on freedom of expression; no compromise on freedom of speech. Forget if people’s religious sensibilities are hurt. They will have to get over it and live with it like all the rest of us whose sensibilities are assailed by burning tires, burning cars, strikes, and demagoguery.
{ 5 comments }
Ali: Terrific article. Thank you!
Since the collapse of the Ottoman and Mughal Empires, liberal visions of Islam have seemed on the wane. In the 15th century, ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami, one of the most prominent Sunni scholars of the time, could write:
“From all eternity the Beloved unveiled His beauty in the solitude
of the unseen;
He held up the mirror to His own face, He displayed His loveliness
to Himself.
He was both the spectator and the spectacle; no eye but His had
surveyed the Universe.
All was One, there was no duality, no pretence of ‘mine’ or ‘thine.’
The vast orb of Heaven, with its myriad incomings and outgoings,
was concealed in a single point.
The Creation lay cradled in the sleep of non-existence, like a child
ere it has breathed.
The eye of the Beloved, seeing what was not, regarded nonentity as
existent.
Although He beheld His attributes and qualities as a perfect whole
in His own essence,
Yet He desired that they should be displayed to Him in another mirror,
And that each one of His eternal attributes should become manifest
accordingly in a diverse form,
Therefore He created the verdant fields of Time and Space and the
life-giving garden of the world,
That every branch and leaf and fruit might show forth His various
perfections,
The cypress gave a hint of His comely stature, the rose gave tidings
of His beauteous countenance.
Wherever Beauty peeped out, Love appeared beside it; wherever Beauty
shone in a rosy cheek, Love lit his torch from that flame.
Wherever Beauty dwelt in dark tresses, Love came and found a heart
entangled in their coils.
Beauty and Love are as body and soul; Beauty is the mine and Love
the precious stone.
They have always been together from the very first; never have they
travelled but in each other’s company.”
And artists would make sensual representations like this one of Emperor Jahangir’s wife Nur Jahan. I suppose the increased prudishness of Muslim culture, paradoxically, has something to do with the process of democratization. The Muslim elite, with its Sufi and philosophical ideas, was always more liberal than the masses. As the elite has lost power, the conservatism of the commoners has increased in influence. Perhaps the Islamic world is just passing through its own Victorian Era (which coincided with the period of democratization in England), and later this century we’ll see pictures of Iranian soldierettes in bikinis too.
Ali,
That was good, very good, so good, it was excellent.
My suggestion for Salman Rushdie’s knighthood ceremony is to have Elton John to sing,
“Don’t go breaking my heart”.
It seems that most anyone can goad them into action, and thereby control they. It is not a show of strength by them, but weakness.
At a word, they will drop what they’re doing and jump around like marionettes. Pathetic.
That doesn’t doesn’t warrant “standing firm”. That would be more respect than they deserve. It warrants calling them pathetic and weak-minded.
Pakistan has its flavor of demagogues. Here in the US, we have our own flavor. Far too many of ours hold elected positions, unfortunately.
Ali: It’s an excellent piece.
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