Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Abraham’s Quarrelsome Children
Paper no. 3976
10-Aug-2010
Abraham’s Quarrelsome Children
By Kazi Anwarul Masud
The West in general enjoying unprecedented prosperity in human history in the post-war period was more or less indifferent to different faiths till a few wayward Muslims rained terror on the US mainland on 9/11. And thus began an intrusive and often ignorant enquiry into the tenets of Islam and its impact on the Western way of life.
George W Bush’s Presidency saw the dethroning of the dreaded Taliban, supported by the international community, from the ruling seat of Afghanistan. But his invasion of Iraq, threats against Iran and declaration of the “war on terror” have been seen by the Muslim world as a war on Islam. Even before the terrorist events of 9/11, London and Madrid bombings, and the ones preceding these terrorism by Islamic militants has been rife against the US interests in different parts of the world. As were Western intellectuals like Bernard Lewis who wrote the book The Crisis of Islam and asked “what went wrong” and Samuel Huntington whose controversial Clash of Civilization thesis caught the eye of Western policy makers as possible answer to the global violence afflicting both the developing and developed countries.
Recent additions to introspective enquiry into the quarrels among Abraham’s children have been Paul Berman’s new book The Flight of the Intellectuals and Christopher Caldwell’s book titled Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, to name among many others. Paul Berman has been particularly critical of Tariq Ramadan, Swiss-born Islamic theologian and Oxford University Professor apparently because he is the grand son of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of Muslim Brotherhood, who should be condemned, Berman insists, by Tariq Ramadan.
As if inquisition by the Catholic Church in Europe and the Thirty Years War (1618-48) and the Irish insurgency were not enough, relevantly observed by Professor Joseph Runzo (Human Rights and Responsibilities in the world religions) as follows: “Religions have too often been used to justify the violation of human rights, in part through the hierarchical and selective use of role ethics and the postponement of temporal justice to divine judgment or future karmic consequences”; the world today is now engaged in stoking the fire of another crusade with Islam as the enemy.
It would be unfair to label the Western world as peopled by neo-cons like Christopher Hitchens, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and Richard Perle; there are intellectuals who can logically argue case against or for Muslim civilization like Oxford Professor Timothy Garten Ash or Yale University Professor Andrew March and many others. Andrew March described The Flight of Intellectuals of adopting “a skipping stone approach” and of Berman’s fear that writings of Tariq Ramadan hold “dark smudge of ambiguity” and that Ramadan at the end of the day would be a reverent and obedient servant of the “obscurantist jurists in the Middle East” as misplaced. One can support the civilizational paradigm but to condemn a person because he is the grandson of the founder of Muslim Brotherhood or to find vicious connection between the Grand Mufti of Mecca and the Nazi party during the Second World War without taking into account that the move was aimed at removing the British from the Middle East and had nothing to do with the Holocaust was not expected of a person who is read by millions of people worldwide.
In India, for example, Subash Chandra Bose is respected and lionized for forming the Azad Hind Force to fight the British with Japanese help. So is the case of a political leader in Iceland who had relations with the Axis power and was elected President of the country. It would be unfair to ignore the context that these nationalist leaders were forced to seek the help of Axis power because of their thirst to be free from the yoke of colonialism and their acts had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
In the case of Ramadan, Berman could have called him to account for his call for moratorium of stoning to death , in his debate with then Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, of women guilty of adultery, a sort of honour killing practiced not only in the Muslim world but also in caste based societies, as weak and monstrous. Mark Lynch (Foreign Affairs-July/August 2010) came down heavily on Berman for stating that violent extremists do not pose the greatest danger as do their so-called moderate cousins because their rejection of violence is both partial and misleading. Berman ignored the fact that Tariq Ramadan’s main adversary is not liberals in the West but the ascendancy of extremist Muslim community from Egypt to Persian Gulf to Europe. They believe in the literalistic Salafism that intend to use a stricter interpretation of the scriptures. The principal tenets of Salafism is that Islam was perfect and complete during the days of Prophet Mohammad( SM) and later innovative interpretations due to materialistic and cultural influences should be rejected. Unfortunately Paul Berman’s demystifying Tariq Ramadan appears to be a crusade against an individual, albeit a highly regarded Islamic theologian, that has the potential to explode into a highly charged Manichean struggle between two great religions despite Western leaders pronouncements to the contrary.
But the perception of Muslims across the world about the US has changed since Barrack Obama became the US president according to Rashad Hussain, Obama’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). President Obama’s stand is that terrorism has no religion and that Islam rejects terrorism and also rejects what happened on 9/11. He views people around the world as human beings and is concerned about their education, health, economy and job. His philosophy is to look at people as human beings not as Muslims or Hindus or Christians. Notwithstanding such words from Western leaders the fact remains that a Muslim problem remains both in Europe, North America and Australia. Christopher Caldwell’s book Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe voices European concern about Islamic impact on European culture. Caldwell claims that Europe is now a “continent of migrants” with more than 10% of its people living outside their countries of birth. A substantial body of immigrants being Muslims poses, according to Caldwell, “the most acute problem” due to their religion.
Europe today has now between 13-20 million Muslims with largest concentration in France followed by Germany, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. US National Intelligence Council estimates European Muslim population to be doubled by 2025. Caldwell questions the rationale of post-Second World War Europe of inviting guest workers from Turkey and North Africa to resurrect destroyed European economies that he said took away the innovative and technological initiative of European entrepreneurs to take European economies to greater heights. The cost-benefit ratio, according to Caldwell, went in favor of the Muslim immigrants as, for example, in 2003 Moroccans living in Europe sent back home US dollars 4 billion as remittance.
On the other hand political scientist Jytte Klausen demonstrated that European Muslims are overwhelmingly hostile to extremism, support democracy, and assimilate them with local culture. Despite sensational reports on honour killings a French study found that only 10% of the Muslims were observant of traditional Islamic rituals while 60% French men and 70% women do not strictly observe the tenets of Islam. This is true of second and third generation Muslims who suffer from a kind of bipolarity because the native European society refuses to integrate them fully and they cannot relate to the countries of birth of their ancestors. This socio-economic exclusion fosters rebellion among the young generation Europeans who are condemned to live as second class citizens in their own country of birth. The tendency of some intellectuals to band together all sects of Islam as one determined to fight the West is fallacious and should be discarded. President Obama in his speech at Cairo had made it abundantly clear that the fight was against the al-Qaeda and it’s off shoots and had nothing to with the Muslim community. In fact Obama said that Islam has always been a part of American story and Morocco was the first country to recognize the newly independent US Confederacy. Quoting President John Adams President Obama told his Cairo audience “The United States has itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims”.
Evidently the Western concern is for its security and those of its citizens. In this fight against the extremists Afghanistan and Pakistan are playing the role of front line states. Unfortunately Afghanistan, described by Henry Kissinger as more of a nation than a state, the US led NATO forces do not appear to have made a decisive headway that would make possible to start President Obama to draw down US forces stationed there. George Washington University Professor Amitai Etzioni( Religion and social orderHoover Institution) quoting UN estimate states that opium production in Afghanistan doubled between 2002 and 2006 and currently 92% of the global heroin comes from poppies grown there. Obama’s National Security Advisor General James Jones calls Afghanistan a “narco-state”.
Etzioni doubts whether any discussion with “moderate” Taliban can start by quoting Locke, Kant or Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He suggests the way that leads to the dissolution of the Soviet Union because the Cold war contained a cultural element of what makes a good society. French journalist Caroline Fourest’s description of Tariq Ramadan as a fundamentalist wolf in reformist clothing, given to “double talk” reflects an inelastic thought process in the West that would take time to go away. What then is the world to do in the meanwhile? Domestic political pressure would force the US to withdraw from Afghanistan. But then if the US forces have continued to stay in Japan and South Korea for more than fifty years and has established new bases in Central Asia, Czech Republic and Poland, there is no reason why an indeterminate number of US forces cannot be stationed in Afghanistan. However unpopular the “war on terror” can be, it is difficult to imagine American psyche to accept another defeat like Vietnam being fully conversant with the differences that President Obama had told the American people between Vietnam and Afghanistan. The problem the US administration is likely to face is the reluctance of the Congress to approve an open ended expenditure at a time when the US economy is going through rough weather.
The west may also find a windfall in the coalition of fundamentalists of different faithsMormons, Conservative Jews and Catholicswho got together in opposing Equal Rights Amendments for Women swallowing their theological distaste for each other.
It would be wise for the Western leaders to embrace moderate Muslim countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and several others that the US administration can do business with. Obama administration is surely well informed of the measures taken by the Bangladesh government in rooting out the Islamic militants. The recent ruling of Bangladesh Supreme Court reinstating secularism as one of the basic pillars of the Constitution has given winds in the sail of the moderates who are and have been opposed to socio-economic discrimination on religious ground. Since it is generally accepted that use of hard power alone would not bridge the divide between the two religions the US in particular may wish to have interfaith dialogue with the Islamic theologians from moderate Muslim countries. The problem arises when the Muslim theologians insist that Islam as the last divinely revealed religion embraces within its teachings all the other religions and thereby claims “exclusive superiority” over other faiths. The Muslims throughout the world have to give space to other faiths and let, as Frederick the Great advised, let every person choose his/her path to heaven.
Controversial though, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization concept gains importance for South Asia because Huntington identifies six out of 21 by Arnold Toynbee that would shape in large measure the future of the world. Of the religions spoken of by Huntington are Western, Islamic and Hindu and, he says, the most important conflicts would occur along the fault lines of these civilizations. The Indo-Pakistan rivalry originates from the partition of the Indian sub-continent along religious lines. The main claim of Pakistan on Kashmir is that the disputed territory is majority Muslim inhabited. Therefore, however we may try to be multi-cultural and multi-religious, religion’s influence on politics is undeniable.
Kofi Anan appointment of High Level Eminent Persons Group in their report underlined the growing urgency of a settlement of the Palestinian issue which the group judged “a major factor in the widening rift between Muslims and Western societies”. The Group’s report, however, concluded that “assertions that Islam is inherently violent and related statements by some political and religious leaders in the West- including the use of terms such as “Islamic terrorism” and “Islamic fascism” have contributed to an alarming increase in Islam phobia which further exacerbates Muslim fears of the West”.
In India the ruling Congress Party is essentially secular with a Sikh Prime Minister and a Christian leader of the Parliamentary Party. In all of its national or international conduct the Congress Party has always displayed its secular character. Even in its dealings with arch rival Pakistan Congress under the Prime Minister ship of Dr. Man Mohan Singh, a globally respected economist and a leader admired by President Obama, the government has taken a policy of negotiations that admittedly is proceeding slowly giving the impression that the negotiations are not leading to their desired objective.
The Congress government has the advantage of having the main opposition party Bharatyia Janata Party(BJP) whose emphasis on Hindudtva as the ideology is being increasingly questioned by the Indian voters( Does India need a Hindu Nationalist PartyElliot Hannon-Foreign Policy). The 2002 religious riots in Gujarat that left 200 Muslims dead, the destruction of age old Babri mosque and its fall out, the expulsion of BJP leader Jaswant Singh( he has since been re admitted) for praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Pakistan and writing a book on the partition titled Jinnah-India-Pakistan-Independence, close association with RSS and Shiv Sena who believe in assertive Hindu nationalism, has effectively deprived the party of Muslim votes who account for 13% of the votes and 26 million Christians skeptical of Hindutva. BJP’s efforts to explain Hindutva in terms of cultural nationalism has not cut much ice with the minorities. Besides hold of the Upper caste Hindus on the party has given the reins of governance to Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time with Mulayam Singh Yadav also holding the card of lower caste Hindus. The urban voters, particularly the property and durable consumer goods owners prefer non-conflictual politics that Congress rather than BJP can perhaps provide. Good governance provided by the Congress led UPA and ineffectual opposition by BJP led NDA gives the ruling party the advantage of pursuing a foreign policy( voters are generally indifferent to foreign policy both in developed and developing countries unless it hurts or emotionally affects them as in the case of Indo-Pak relations) of its choosing.
The days of quarrels based on religion alone should be abjured by the civilized world and the international community should not hesitate to use Roman method of annihilation of the obdurate elements who stand in the way of economic development the lack of which they desire inflame frustration for recruitment of suicide bombers. The debate is not about Tariq Ramadan or Paul Berman. The debate is to find ways to a better world that would make Nail Ferguson’s apocalyptic world a fable and not a reality.
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Copyright © South Asia Analysis Group
All rights reserved. Permission is given to refer this on-line document for use in research papers and articles, provided the source and the author’s name are acknowledged. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.
10-Aug-2010
Abraham’s Quarrelsome Children
By Kazi Anwarul Masud
The West in general enjoying unprecedented prosperity in human history in the post-war period was more or less indifferent to different faiths till a few wayward Muslims rained terror on the US mainland on 9/11. And thus began an intrusive and often ignorant enquiry into the tenets of Islam and its impact on the Western way of life.
George W Bush’s Presidency saw the dethroning of the dreaded Taliban, supported by the international community, from the ruling seat of Afghanistan. But his invasion of Iraq, threats against Iran and declaration of the “war on terror” have been seen by the Muslim world as a war on Islam. Even before the terrorist events of 9/11, London and Madrid bombings, and the ones preceding these terrorism by Islamic militants has been rife against the US interests in different parts of the world. As were Western intellectuals like Bernard Lewis who wrote the book The Crisis of Islam and asked “what went wrong” and Samuel Huntington whose controversial Clash of Civilization thesis caught the eye of Western policy makers as possible answer to the global violence afflicting both the developing and developed countries.
Recent additions to introspective enquiry into the quarrels among Abraham’s children have been Paul Berman’s new book The Flight of the Intellectuals and Christopher Caldwell’s book titled Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, to name among many others. Paul Berman has been particularly critical of Tariq Ramadan, Swiss-born Islamic theologian and Oxford University Professor apparently because he is the grand son of Hasan al-Banna, the founder of Muslim Brotherhood, who should be condemned, Berman insists, by Tariq Ramadan.
As if inquisition by the Catholic Church in Europe and the Thirty Years War (1618-48) and the Irish insurgency were not enough, relevantly observed by Professor Joseph Runzo (Human Rights and Responsibilities in the world religions) as follows: “Religions have too often been used to justify the violation of human rights, in part through the hierarchical and selective use of role ethics and the postponement of temporal justice to divine judgment or future karmic consequences”; the world today is now engaged in stoking the fire of another crusade with Islam as the enemy.
It would be unfair to label the Western world as peopled by neo-cons like Christopher Hitchens, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan, and Richard Perle; there are intellectuals who can logically argue case against or for Muslim civilization like Oxford Professor Timothy Garten Ash or Yale University Professor Andrew March and many others. Andrew March described The Flight of Intellectuals of adopting “a skipping stone approach” and of Berman’s fear that writings of Tariq Ramadan hold “dark smudge of ambiguity” and that Ramadan at the end of the day would be a reverent and obedient servant of the “obscurantist jurists in the Middle East” as misplaced. One can support the civilizational paradigm but to condemn a person because he is the grandson of the founder of Muslim Brotherhood or to find vicious connection between the Grand Mufti of Mecca and the Nazi party during the Second World War without taking into account that the move was aimed at removing the British from the Middle East and had nothing to do with the Holocaust was not expected of a person who is read by millions of people worldwide.
In India, for example, Subash Chandra Bose is respected and lionized for forming the Azad Hind Force to fight the British with Japanese help. So is the case of a political leader in Iceland who had relations with the Axis power and was elected President of the country. It would be unfair to ignore the context that these nationalist leaders were forced to seek the help of Axis power because of their thirst to be free from the yoke of colonialism and their acts had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
In the case of Ramadan, Berman could have called him to account for his call for moratorium of stoning to death , in his debate with then Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, of women guilty of adultery, a sort of honour killing practiced not only in the Muslim world but also in caste based societies, as weak and monstrous. Mark Lynch (Foreign Affairs-July/August 2010) came down heavily on Berman for stating that violent extremists do not pose the greatest danger as do their so-called moderate cousins because their rejection of violence is both partial and misleading. Berman ignored the fact that Tariq Ramadan’s main adversary is not liberals in the West but the ascendancy of extremist Muslim community from Egypt to Persian Gulf to Europe. They believe in the literalistic Salafism that intend to use a stricter interpretation of the scriptures. The principal tenets of Salafism is that Islam was perfect and complete during the days of Prophet Mohammad( SM) and later innovative interpretations due to materialistic and cultural influences should be rejected. Unfortunately Paul Berman’s demystifying Tariq Ramadan appears to be a crusade against an individual, albeit a highly regarded Islamic theologian, that has the potential to explode into a highly charged Manichean struggle between two great religions despite Western leaders pronouncements to the contrary.
But the perception of Muslims across the world about the US has changed since Barrack Obama became the US president according to Rashad Hussain, Obama’s special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). President Obama’s stand is that terrorism has no religion and that Islam rejects terrorism and also rejects what happened on 9/11. He views people around the world as human beings and is concerned about their education, health, economy and job. His philosophy is to look at people as human beings not as Muslims or Hindus or Christians. Notwithstanding such words from Western leaders the fact remains that a Muslim problem remains both in Europe, North America and Australia. Christopher Caldwell’s book Reflections on the Revolutions in Europe voices European concern about Islamic impact on European culture. Caldwell claims that Europe is now a “continent of migrants” with more than 10% of its people living outside their countries of birth. A substantial body of immigrants being Muslims poses, according to Caldwell, “the most acute problem” due to their religion.
Europe today has now between 13-20 million Muslims with largest concentration in France followed by Germany, Britain, Spain and Bulgaria. US National Intelligence Council estimates European Muslim population to be doubled by 2025. Caldwell questions the rationale of post-Second World War Europe of inviting guest workers from Turkey and North Africa to resurrect destroyed European economies that he said took away the innovative and technological initiative of European entrepreneurs to take European economies to greater heights. The cost-benefit ratio, according to Caldwell, went in favor of the Muslim immigrants as, for example, in 2003 Moroccans living in Europe sent back home US dollars 4 billion as remittance.
On the other hand political scientist Jytte Klausen demonstrated that European Muslims are overwhelmingly hostile to extremism, support democracy, and assimilate them with local culture. Despite sensational reports on honour killings a French study found that only 10% of the Muslims were observant of traditional Islamic rituals while 60% French men and 70% women do not strictly observe the tenets of Islam. This is true of second and third generation Muslims who suffer from a kind of bipolarity because the native European society refuses to integrate them fully and they cannot relate to the countries of birth of their ancestors. This socio-economic exclusion fosters rebellion among the young generation Europeans who are condemned to live as second class citizens in their own country of birth. The tendency of some intellectuals to band together all sects of Islam as one determined to fight the West is fallacious and should be discarded. President Obama in his speech at Cairo had made it abundantly clear that the fight was against the al-Qaeda and it’s off shoots and had nothing to with the Muslim community. In fact Obama said that Islam has always been a part of American story and Morocco was the first country to recognize the newly independent US Confederacy. Quoting President John Adams President Obama told his Cairo audience “The United States has itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims”.
Evidently the Western concern is for its security and those of its citizens. In this fight against the extremists Afghanistan and Pakistan are playing the role of front line states. Unfortunately Afghanistan, described by Henry Kissinger as more of a nation than a state, the US led NATO forces do not appear to have made a decisive headway that would make possible to start President Obama to draw down US forces stationed there. George Washington University Professor Amitai Etzioni( Religion and social orderHoover Institution) quoting UN estimate states that opium production in Afghanistan doubled between 2002 and 2006 and currently 92% of the global heroin comes from poppies grown there. Obama’s National Security Advisor General James Jones calls Afghanistan a “narco-state”.
Etzioni doubts whether any discussion with “moderate” Taliban can start by quoting Locke, Kant or Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He suggests the way that leads to the dissolution of the Soviet Union because the Cold war contained a cultural element of what makes a good society. French journalist Caroline Fourest’s description of Tariq Ramadan as a fundamentalist wolf in reformist clothing, given to “double talk” reflects an inelastic thought process in the West that would take time to go away. What then is the world to do in the meanwhile? Domestic political pressure would force the US to withdraw from Afghanistan. But then if the US forces have continued to stay in Japan and South Korea for more than fifty years and has established new bases in Central Asia, Czech Republic and Poland, there is no reason why an indeterminate number of US forces cannot be stationed in Afghanistan. However unpopular the “war on terror” can be, it is difficult to imagine American psyche to accept another defeat like Vietnam being fully conversant with the differences that President Obama had told the American people between Vietnam and Afghanistan. The problem the US administration is likely to face is the reluctance of the Congress to approve an open ended expenditure at a time when the US economy is going through rough weather.
The west may also find a windfall in the coalition of fundamentalists of different faithsMormons, Conservative Jews and Catholicswho got together in opposing Equal Rights Amendments for Women swallowing their theological distaste for each other.
It would be wise for the Western leaders to embrace moderate Muslim countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia and several others that the US administration can do business with. Obama administration is surely well informed of the measures taken by the Bangladesh government in rooting out the Islamic militants. The recent ruling of Bangladesh Supreme Court reinstating secularism as one of the basic pillars of the Constitution has given winds in the sail of the moderates who are and have been opposed to socio-economic discrimination on religious ground. Since it is generally accepted that use of hard power alone would not bridge the divide between the two religions the US in particular may wish to have interfaith dialogue with the Islamic theologians from moderate Muslim countries. The problem arises when the Muslim theologians insist that Islam as the last divinely revealed religion embraces within its teachings all the other religions and thereby claims “exclusive superiority” over other faiths. The Muslims throughout the world have to give space to other faiths and let, as Frederick the Great advised, let every person choose his/her path to heaven.
Controversial though, Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilization concept gains importance for South Asia because Huntington identifies six out of 21 by Arnold Toynbee that would shape in large measure the future of the world. Of the religions spoken of by Huntington are Western, Islamic and Hindu and, he says, the most important conflicts would occur along the fault lines of these civilizations. The Indo-Pakistan rivalry originates from the partition of the Indian sub-continent along religious lines. The main claim of Pakistan on Kashmir is that the disputed territory is majority Muslim inhabited. Therefore, however we may try to be multi-cultural and multi-religious, religion’s influence on politics is undeniable.
Kofi Anan appointment of High Level Eminent Persons Group in their report underlined the growing urgency of a settlement of the Palestinian issue which the group judged “a major factor in the widening rift between Muslims and Western societies”. The Group’s report, however, concluded that “assertions that Islam is inherently violent and related statements by some political and religious leaders in the West- including the use of terms such as “Islamic terrorism” and “Islamic fascism” have contributed to an alarming increase in Islam phobia which further exacerbates Muslim fears of the West”.
In India the ruling Congress Party is essentially secular with a Sikh Prime Minister and a Christian leader of the Parliamentary Party. In all of its national or international conduct the Congress Party has always displayed its secular character. Even in its dealings with arch rival Pakistan Congress under the Prime Minister ship of Dr. Man Mohan Singh, a globally respected economist and a leader admired by President Obama, the government has taken a policy of negotiations that admittedly is proceeding slowly giving the impression that the negotiations are not leading to their desired objective.
The Congress government has the advantage of having the main opposition party Bharatyia Janata Party(BJP) whose emphasis on Hindudtva as the ideology is being increasingly questioned by the Indian voters( Does India need a Hindu Nationalist PartyElliot Hannon-Foreign Policy). The 2002 religious riots in Gujarat that left 200 Muslims dead, the destruction of age old Babri mosque and its fall out, the expulsion of BJP leader Jaswant Singh( he has since been re admitted) for praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah in Pakistan and writing a book on the partition titled Jinnah-India-Pakistan-Independence, close association with RSS and Shiv Sena who believe in assertive Hindu nationalism, has effectively deprived the party of Muslim votes who account for 13% of the votes and 26 million Christians skeptical of Hindutva. BJP’s efforts to explain Hindutva in terms of cultural nationalism has not cut much ice with the minorities. Besides hold of the Upper caste Hindus on the party has given the reins of governance to Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time with Mulayam Singh Yadav also holding the card of lower caste Hindus. The urban voters, particularly the property and durable consumer goods owners prefer non-conflictual politics that Congress rather than BJP can perhaps provide. Good governance provided by the Congress led UPA and ineffectual opposition by BJP led NDA gives the ruling party the advantage of pursuing a foreign policy( voters are generally indifferent to foreign policy both in developed and developing countries unless it hurts or emotionally affects them as in the case of Indo-Pak relations) of its choosing.
The days of quarrels based on religion alone should be abjured by the civilized world and the international community should not hesitate to use Roman method of annihilation of the obdurate elements who stand in the way of economic development the lack of which they desire inflame frustration for recruitment of suicide bombers. The debate is not about Tariq Ramadan or Paul Berman. The debate is to find ways to a better world that would make Nail Ferguson’s apocalyptic world a fable and not a reality.
Back to the top
Home | Papers | Notes | Forum | Search | Feedback | Links
Copyright © South Asia Analysis Group
All rights reserved. Permission is given to refer this on-line document for use in research papers and articles, provided the source and the author’s name are acknowledged. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes.
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