The new leadership of the Taleban have openly laid out their formal objectives. Once they establish “purer” Islamism on Pakistan they are going to target India. This was stated in an interview broadcast by the Sky. This fits perfectly the scenario that I have been promoting as possible- perhaps for many, a bit too paranoid.

There can be all sorts of explanations and possibilities of deception to explain this away. One of the most plausible ones will be that of the need in some school of opinion within the USA to create the impression that India should contribute towards US plans as India is also “threatened” – or that if the collapse of Pak is not staved off with Indian contribution also, India will “suffer”. UK’s inner strategy or secret services may also be interested in maintaining their own strategic asset which they had created by the Partition on the subcontinent – Pakistan. China has contributed its own towards this “save Pakistan” bandwagon by raising the spectre of a “threat” in Arunachal Pradesh. At the same time Naxals have been activated inside India.

This means that all of the non-Indian parties involved in this merry game think that for one reason or the other, the time for loss of direct handle on the Pakistani Jihadi state is imminent. The Jihadis have organized and overcome their factional divisions, to further the overall aims with which the Islamists joined the British project of creating Pakistan. This overall aim on the part of the Islamists, was a revival of the legendary and mythical Caliphate that sat astride the main economic exchange route between the main production centres of the world – East and the West. The Islamists’ extremely low intellectual and educational level, combined with the aridity and nonproductivity of the lands they occupied, implied they could only live off the produce of others. Once oil runs out or is replaced by alternatives, the temporary productivity in economic terms that allowed them to flourish – will be lost. Then they will need to go back to the Caliphate model – which was essentially a way of justifying the basically looting economy of Islam – to extract surplus from allowing trade between the east and west.

Islamists cannot allow modern educational pursuits that could have allowed them to try and climb back on to the current knowledge based economy. Modern education is typically based on open exploration and unrestricted questioning. This is dangerous for Islam – as learning to question in one direction can spill over on to questioning the very claims based on which theologians and Islamic social system imposes itself on human society. So the Islamists’ very own obsessive search for permanent and absolute power, limits their educational, research and knowledge-base improvement. This leaves them only with the old Caliphate model to extract a peace-tax on global trade between the two main regions of innovation and productivity.

The Islamists have seen their chance now. USA the main thorn in their side (as the controller and chief patron – although supportive but still restraining beyond a certain limit) has been weakened. China has come up as a competitor economy to the USA, and is willing to take up the role of the patron. Also because of the competition, China will be more lenient than the USA in allowing the Jihadis greater freedom in their murderous objectives as long as such objectives do not directly infringe on China’s own imperialist designs.

Contrary to popular speculation I  had tried to emphasize that Pakistan will not implode on its own. Instead, the basic Jihadi core behind Pakistan’s state will activate its programme of Jihadi expansion in both directions – Afghanistan and India. This is part of recreating the only economic model they can understand and which they feel will still allow them to maintain their lifestyle and power structures – that of the mythical Caliphate (in historical reality a very short period of success).

The conflict we see now is a superficial one – maintained only because of external interest and pressure. This does not mean that every part of the state machinery of Pakistan is insincere in its formal confrontation. But only those parts which are vulnerable to western pressure or believe in a middle road between the Jihadis and the west are participating actively. This is a minority in Pakistan. Over the years, Arab patronization of Wahabi radicalization through education and other sociopolitical means have practically erased all resistance to the core Jihadi ideology within Pakistan. The society itself has no firm ideological and cultural basis to resist the Jihadis.

Sooner or later, India will have to face the Jihadis. It cannot do so by imagining and trying to convince the Indian people – that Islamic ideology is completely detached from what Islamists are practising. It cannot pretend that preserving the roots and basis of Islamic culture on the subcontinent will allow peaceful coexistence of Pakistan and India. By doing any such pretension, any Indian regime betrays its people – for it creates the false impression and expectations of inherent “benevolence” that is the source of confusion in being ruthless towards Jihadis.

There is only one solution for this whole problem – dissolution of Pakistan as a state, and complete dismantling of Islamic educational system, complete deactivation of those theologians already brought up in the Wahabi tradition. These in turn can only be done if the current populations under Pakistan comes under direct  control of  a secular regime that is also firmly anti-Islamist.

One way of course is the reunification of the people and land currently under the control of Islamophile and Jihad-tolerating-supporting regime in Pakistan, with that of a firm and no-nonsense secular power based in India. That will be the opening of untold opportunities for the people now living in Pakistan in terms of health, education and an open society where voices of dissent and protest against arbitrariness cannot be silenced by fatwas and fanatical Islamist zealots. Freedom from the terror of violent and personal-greed-hiding imposition of Sharia – is something which these people have even forgotten to dream about. The Indian ruling elite has proved its secular credentials by being more ruthless on what it dubs “Hindu right wing fascism” than it ever showed the teeth against Islamic Jihad. The “Muslims” of Pakistan will actually be treated more fairly than the “native” Hindus under such Indian regimes.

Those who will oppose this objective will do so from a variety of covert and overt interests and positions. This will include excuses of humanitarian values, claims of inherent benevolence of the ideology and all blames only on “misinterpretation”, supposed positive and inseparable cultural contributions, as well as claimed inherent superiority of the ideology compared to all other pre-existing ones on the subcontinent in terms “equality/fraternity” etc. with attendant suppression of real historical experience.

Covert interests will primarily be external – with strategic interests of  continued energy, economic and territorial imperialism. These can also be tackled, if India shows the will and determination to do so.

Manmohan Singh (MMS), the economist PM of India is being buffeted from both sides of the political divide about the mysterious origins of the supposed joint statement in Egypt at Sharm-el-Sheik (S-e-S). He has apparently conceded a lot to his Pakistani counterpart.

Any strengthening of the hands of the semi-feudal elite at the head of Pakistani regime and military, means strengthening of Jihadi Islam. For only by propagating Jihad, Pakistan has been able to ransom the world, and particularly the West, to survive on a state which was, right from its paranoid conception, unsustainable.

So what really could have been the run-up to the supposed concession by the Indian Prime minister?

Suppose we have the following hypothesis :

The inner echelons of decision making within the Congress hierarchy decides in tandem with (or is persuaded by) USA and UK, that, in the short term – stabilization of the Gilani government is necessary. If the Gilani government falls, and the unreliable Pakitani Army (PA)  is left with government powers, or Musharraf makes a comeback, or the PA teams up with the Talebs, or atleast some sort of  Terrorist State of Pakistan (TSP) government pressure is not mounted against the Talebs until the Afghanistan elections are over, USA will lose all its bases in TSP although TSP will still carry on with support of China.

This could panic the Congress leadership, if they do not have much faith in the fighting ability of the Indian people. The current Congress-top-think is probably geared towards equating survival with the proximity of USA. USA could convince the Congress leadership that, it was more important to increase the prestige of Gilani in the eyes of the “commons” of TSP, since Gilani was actually on amuch weaker political basis and is only being propped up because of USA. The Congress on the other hand has been given a strong electoral mandate recently to do as they please. So some concessions, to Gilani, would be important.

As is usual in such cases, MMS might have been reassured that it would all only be verbal, and not meant concretely and as a commitment. The coterie around the dynasty however were not sure of the political fallout, and hence the “future leader” was solidly kept out of any association with this. If any negative thing comes out of S-e-S, it will be blamed on the benign ego of a well-meaning but elderly gentleman inching towards senility (no MMS is not senile – but I am saying it could be passed off as such).

I also think of  him as amenable to “persuasion”. Of course he is subject to “influence”. But he is too weak politically to take such decisions all alone. Such decisions have to come from a more protected and better hidden core. The script is definitely there – and I had been worrying for quite some time that the new Government of India seemed too “eager” and over-ambitious and was in a hurry, and for me that was a possible indication that they knew they had little time before something quite negative was possible.

My worry is that the phenomenon that happened around Sanjay, is repeating itself around Rahul Gandhi. A so-called young gun think-tank could be forming. But this time around, the interested “outsiders” will not take the risk, and will ensure that at least some of their controllers belong to this circle. Likely candidates will be those who have had long “foreign” stints – I have a certain gentleman from “God’s own” in mind.

A Bharatyia society that takes the decision to reincorporate territories currently under Government of  TSP occupation, will only do it after it has come to certain decisions about TSP and the people under it. People are not born with genes for Islamic Jihad and universal hatred for the Quafir. Children born in TSP and Afghanistan are not born with a gene for Jihad either. These are people, who are  kin of the Indic (in spite of their tall-claims of having Arabic descent) – they have almost entirely Indic roots. I, for one think of them simply as blood brothers and sisters of Indians who are forced into a crucible of hatred from birth and not given any other options to even think of other options. Incorporation under a liberal, democratic and modernizing nation of India gives them that option to be otherwise – to be different from the rabid pack of animals they seem to be headed towards.

I would consider it a civilizational duty of Bharat to create conditions under which branches of the Bharatyia civilizational family, however distant they might have become, and however wayward they might have become, are brought back to the family hold – by the ears, if need be, kicking and screaming if needs be. To be thrashed if they want to go back to the lawless streets, and loved if they behave. This is to ensure that we do not have a vicious bandit on the loose whom we could have easily controlled and made otherwise useful.

It will also be much safer for the “neighbours”.

So at last we see the real reason behind getting B. Hussein Obama elected US president – the calculation by the power elite of USA was to use Obama to try and divide the Muslim world into as many fractures as possible. Construct “moderate” versus “extremist”, “modernizing” versus “retrogressive”, etc. Iran is the first gamble after the “coming out” debutante speech of extending a warm handshake to “Islam”. But the Iranian attempt was too quick. Is Obama in a hurry? Or is the US power elite in too much of a hurry? The danger is the possibility of a wave of reaction that the US simply cannot fathom, and will escape from as quickly as possible leaving the hapless neighbours and caught-in-betweens who cannot jump on to the evacuation flight.

In countries like Iran, urban “revolutions” against religious or theological establishment cannot sustain themselves at this stage of economic organization, unless these are staged and led by the armed forces. The rural Iran is still solidly behind the Ayatollahs. If Mousavi and Khatami are not careful they will simply serve as agents for liquidation of a generation of urban youth.

If we go back to Napoleon’s period, then there would be many examples – for example all the urban uprisings in Europe in the 1830’s and the widespread ones of 1848 – all of which failed or actually led to being defeated and creating conditions for more despotic or dictatorial regimes. The Chinese communist uprising is another example whose urban uprising phase failed horribly with the spectacular example of the Shanghai massacre. The crucial factor in urban uprisings is whether the army joins in or stays neutral or not. Consider the Afghan “revolutions”, the Iraqi -earlier Marxist revolution and then the Baathist “revolution”, same for the Iranian ones. Significantly, in Afghan, Iran, Iraq, no revolution/palace coup/ urban putsch succeeded without backing and involvement from the clergy and rural theologian networks.

Iran is no longer going to be pro-west. What the younger Iranians are looking for is a greater freedom to pursue modern “happinesses”. They will remain strongly nationalistic and in fact any overthrow of the Ayatollahs will lead to a stronger nationalistic reconstruction of the foundational values of Iran as a replacement for the “binder” of Ayatollahaic Islamic authority.

The Islamic clergy already senses the change in the mood of the younger generations and they have begun to hedge their bets as Islamic theologians always do historically. They try to dissociate in factions away from established but doomed or unpopular Islamic regimes so that the theologians ultimate hold on the population does not come under attack. In time they will grow back again in military and political power if they manage to survive with their ideological “sanctity” undamaged.

The pivotal changing years in Iranian history in the modern period have been 1919 (post WWI British+US penetration and disruption of Ahmad Shah’s hold – leading to the Pahlavi coup in 21-25), 1949 – the post WWII start of the replacement by a younger Pahlavi more likely to be open to western manipulation – leading to the upheaval of 51-53, 1979 – the Iranian “revolution” led again by “modernizers” and “leftists” giving vent to popular generational anger against the Shah’s regime and its western counterparts but taken over by the Ayatollahs because of their wider support base in the countryside and among rural populations. This was followed by the typical period of crisis from 1981-1983 when Iran won the psychological warfare with USA with perhaps secret Reagan help but forced to compromise and get mauled by Iraq. This 30 year generational cycle comes back in 2009. So the processes that started post WWI will start unravelling in the next 30 years.

Countries in the region like India should cultivate “nationalism” in Iran, and be firmly on the side of democracy. They should look for future populations who are going to increasingly take over the country and not bank calculations solely on the short term adhoc approaches so typical of the regimes in Indian politics. The US influence in the Caspian region is on the wane. Does the “West” want Russia and China to step in completely and fill in the blanks? A cautious but firm ideological commitment to see democracy in Iran cannot harm the “western” or Indian interests. It holds out hopes to the future generations, but it does not immediately threaten the Ayatollahs. But any country in the region or in Europe should be very very careful about being seen by the Iranians to be dealing with the “devil” – that is something that will be remembered.

As I have mentioned before, when popular support indicates anger turning against state authority which in classical Islamic terms is a fusion of theologian+military+executive, then the theologians typically split themselves into factions. One or more factions then disassociate themselves from the existing setup, and allow a change of faces. This is done so that the basic image of the theologians and the theology itself is not delegitimized. In time, when heads cool, the theologians can crawl back to their supreme seats of power.

The Taliban thrust towards India is now probably materializing. Those who have been dreaming for implosion of Pakistan should sit up and notice. A lot of the strategic negatives for India I had scoped for are possibly coming together now. Obama’s policy as I mentioned before was about stabilization and all his initial bluster would be simply to not be outdone by Bush’s legacy. His ultimate goal would be a compromise with Jihad, minimize US commitments and withdraw without appearing to withdraw. The US is leaving the neo-caliphate, and Obama is simply trying to buy it out by paying Pakistan lavishly.

Whether India likes it or not, my envisioned TalebaniPakistani caliphate expansive thrust from their base area in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, into the South East will start now in earnest. They will be helped by China, who will see this as a golden opportunity to seal off India’s potential linking up with Afghanistan and blocking Chinese access to the subcontinent through north Kashmir. The Caliphate’s expansion into Kashmir is a big strategic gain for Jihad. A weak and Islam-appeasing Government of India will simply give this as proof that Indians are not doing sufficiently in appeasement. Even the unthinkable could happen – the Indian state could fall before Jihad in the North. And this would then be an unrelenting aggression from neo-caliphate jihad.

With the declared and proposed “army action” by Pakistani Army against the Talebs, one of two things is going to happen. Either the Pakistani Army command arranges for an “eyewash” of temporary retreat by the Talebs so that international pressure can be staved off a bit. But a worse future scenario would be the formal switching over of sides by the Pakistani Army troops once they are in the “contact zone”. This would lead to a very rapid “collapse” of the entire north of Pakistan.

For the moment, it is not in the interests of the Pakistani Army to reveal to the world that the entire north collapses before the Talebs or that the Talebs are simply the irregular wing of the theologian-Jihadi-military structure of the Pakistani Army. This will choke up the material resources supply that it needs to finance and support its long term Jihadi ambitions for the subcontinent. With the recent phased supply promised by the “west” it needs to formally wait until this resource is delivered. Also, China would be under pressure to and there could be concerted effort by the US to remove the nukes from within Pakistani territory. Which would be a great loss of bargaining power for the Pakistani Army.

So my guess will be a formal temporary retreat by the Talebs, and much fanfare about assembling troops for military action against the Talebs. This will never materialize fully on the ground. Any formal engagement that Pakitani Army is forced to go in with the Talebs now, is problematic. If they really have to take action, for the sake of the media and the western opinion, this would mean a war of attrition between irregulars and regulars of the same force. This is not good for the future projections and ambitions of the Pakistani Army. So there is going to be no serious fight. At most those units will be sacrificed deliberately whose loyalty to the essential Jihadi cause of the Pakistani Army leadership, is suspect. Or whose future preservation could preserve military expertise in “undesirable” ethnic communities.

The promised huge western help and the undercover help provided by China and the Islamic powers has to be built up sufficiently, as stocks have been depleted to provide for the success of the Taleb adventure in Afghanistan, and maintaining terrorist activities against India. Once sufficiently built up, the resources will be used to plan and support the next phase of Jihadi expansion – more into Afghanistan and east and north into Pakistan, and finally on to India – the ultimate target.

But any serious attempts by the Pakistanis to use the Talebs to finish their unfinished agenda of grabbing Kashmir by People’s Liberation Army, will necessitate actions on many fronts, both to the general direction of south-west and west from Srinagar. The complication can be facilitation by the PLA of the Talebs from the “north” or Karakorum highway, and any diversionary attacks or movements by the PLA in Chinese occupied sectors of India.

Hopefully the USA is not at the same time manipulated by its allies and “business interests” like UK or China, to treat this as an opportunity where the Talebs appear to be less strong in the Afghanistan sector as they appear to have moved their momentum to the east. There could be genuine agreements between the so-called good-Talebs and the USA to “shift east”. On the other hand it could all be a part of ruse and deception, where the Talebs want to appear to have moved to the east, but in reality preparing to trap the NATO forces in the west.

Some Indian political parties have promised Indian army support to tackle terrorism inside Pakistan. Promising openly, Indian soldiers to fight Taleban in Pakistan, can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, this can activate US and western forces who have interests in the outcome of Indian elections in favour of the “promiser”. But on the other hand this will prompt the Taleb-Pakistanis to intensify their campaign against Kashmir and western India in general. Given that the grounds have been prepared for both “withdrawal to save the skin” as well as “jingo” mentality, this can lead to an uncertain outcome. There can be loud cries of, “more needs to be done to assure the communities, since all these attacks are actually because of rise of right-wing Hindutva”.

What appears to be lack of control by the government, is actually an appearance. This is partly true but represents possibly a deliberate attempt by the ISI+Pakistani+Taleb combination to delegitimize the civilian governmental structure. Behind all this facade, the combination is working towards its traditional goal – the overall subjugation of the subcontinent under an Islamic regime, and restoration of what they consider their glory days of lording it over India.

They have managed to coax Obama admin’s funds, which in-spite of all attempts to the contrary, will still be surreptitiously diverted to fund the Pakistani national project of conquering at least part if not whole of India. USA is trying to find glorious ways of covering up withdrawal from Afghanistan. Already this has led to inventing a “moderate” Taleban (Islamic Jihadis always pretend to be moderates when they think they can extract resources, or buy time). If the plan has been hatched between Pakistan+China on one side and USA+UK on the other, it can be a dangerous trap for India, if India has to divide its forces and get bogged down in a war which China and allies sponsor as a proxy war, while the entire north-west of India lies vulnerable.

Suppose, US cuts a deal with its invented “moderate Taleban” and brokers an agreement between Zardari and the Talebs for power-sharing in the North West. This will simply be a ratification, according to my thinking, of the TalebPakistaniArmy plan to coax USA into a position where, the defacto transition to a TalebPakistaniArmy Islamic state is tacitly endorsed by the USA in the “hope” of showing to its electorate and the world media that USA has retreated “ethically”. This plan could have the support of UK+China. Karazai could be brought in on this out of necessity on his weak power and resource basis. Russia+Iran could be made to wait and watch. So in that case the entire brunt of the TalebPakistaniArmy expansionist plan would fall towards India. Why India? Because of many different possible calculations.

TalebPakistaniArmy can hope to get tacit Chinese support. It can hope to get US reluctance to commit forces in this theatre as a favourable scenario. It can calculate that Government of India can be made to negotiate in an international form of “zazyia” extraction. This can be made in a form very similar to the way in which “zazyia” was extracted from the USA – by posing as “funds” required to “develop” sufficiently “to alleviate poverty and economic factors that gives rise to terrorism”. A situation can easily be developed by which India is made to look like a “miser” “who is reluctant to share her fortune” with the poor “neighbour”, and therfore must face the consequences of continuing “terror attacks”.

Internal divisions, fractured and antagonistic opinions within the “anti-Jihadi” section in India, who still agonize over the “hows” and “why’s” of Jihad and what strategy should be appropriate, can be banked upon to provide the typical scenario of lack of ruthless retaliation that probably existed during the early years of Islamic invasions into India. It can also be a military preemptive move to prevent India participating in any joint military operations in the core areas of Pakistan. China could panic if Indians start talking too much of sending expeditionary forces into Pakistan.

The asinine policy of inventing a “moderate Taleban” to cover up the eventual retreat from the Afghan theatre, is the latest in the superb series of contributions from the Anglo-US to human civilization. The help provided to Pakistani Army (the state and the army is the same in Pakistan, at least from the army viewpoint – so resources provided formally to the civilian government will be surreptitiously moved to Pakistani Army disposal or manipulation) will simply be used against remaining “divergence” in Afghanistan and the final push towards the Jihadi dream of an uninterrupted Islamic empire running from Arabia to Indonesia.

Whether that dream is realistic or feasible is an entirely different question, but the enormous pain and horror on the way even towards the eventual demise of that dream, is something that the west will forever be guilty of.

I began to write this post on the 26th of December last year, but held it as I thought it might appear too paranoid. Now the drama of the BDR uprising made me rethink that my earlier worry about the real strengths of the Jihadis within the Bangladesh state machinery and armed forces were justified. I have already written at some length about the general long term societal balance of forces within Bangladesh society. Here I have maintained that the forces of Bengali nationalism is slightly weaker than the forces of Islamic retrogression – and it has been so right from the post-47 start of the journey as part of Pakistan.

The immediate background of the BDR uprising could turn out to be a damp squib officially – it will be blamed on long-standing grievances, and “wayward” soldiers. But it takes a greater significance in the light of the recent urging by the emissary of Pakistan to the BD  government to drop the proceedings towards war-crimes trials of the Rajakaras and the AlBadrs, Al shams for their atrocities during ‘71.  On top of that the AL led government moves ahead with transit and trade agreements with India, a reasonable and pragmatic move on the part of Bangladesh as the country is even now crucially dependent on Indian imports of essential commodities. This draws immediate vehement protests by the nearly decimated BNP, as expected. Just like many political parties in Pakistan, a lot of political careers are made in Bangladesh by inflating up the “demonic” “Hindu” India.  However, it is Pakistan’s palpable fear at possible re-exposure of Pakistan’s role in the ‘71 war of liberation that is significant.

Why does Pakistan have to be so paranoid about it ? It is already almost 40 years old – and could be passed off as a historical event, and not redounding on the current regime! There could be question of compensation and fear  by a bankrupt Pakistan government. But financial compensation is a lesser worry, given the Pakistan government’s traditional expertise in moving money around meant for one purpose to fuel another pet agenda, and the fact that it can still milk the USA for some time into the near future. With the increasing acceleration of the Pakistani Army and the Taleban coalescing into a neo-Caliphate on the gray borderland between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the now overtly Jihadi Pakistani state can be worried that the war-crimes trials could damage and expose the true character of Jihadi Islam, to a population which has so far proved a safe haven for Jihadi terror to be launched on India. It is the ideological delegitimization that worries the Jihadis of the subcontinent, and the transit agreements could actually cover eventual move towards military agreements between India and Bangladesh to destroy the Jihadis themselves in the eastern part of the subcontinent.

I will primarily characterize this election as a four-cornered struggle for state power in which the forces in order of “strength” are (1) the military establishment (2) the Jamaat (3) the Awami League and associates (the so called  “great alliance”) (4)  the BNP +non Jamaat associates.  The military as per my earlier analysis is in favour of Islamic consolidation of the state regime – in tune with the power base of the military command among the elite of Bangladeshi muslim society, whose prime feudal motivations of gaining and controlling “land” and dominance over society is best served under strengthened Sunni Wahabi authoritarian framework. The military has consistently reasserted its dominance over the state machinery whenever it had felt that its long term strategy of bringing Bangladesh closer to the Islamic axis centred in Saudi Arabia is being threatened – this was why it eliminated Mujibur and even its own – like Jia, or leftist “heretics” like Col. Taher. At present, the  prime tool is the Jamaat. As I have mentioned before, the Jamaat will be the key political force which can be used by the military to serve its agenda. The Jamaat was allowed to suffer the least in the anti-corruption drive against the political establishment. To be fair, the military’s weakness for the Jamaat could be coming out of reasons very similar to those that kept the two major political groups also “strangely” weak towards the Jamaat – that all the political elite including the Jamaat share core social networks at the same level and that all the non-Jamaat political elite share political secrets as to activities during the 71 struggle as well as post-Independence that could be used by the Jamaat to manipulate them.

The Jamaat is the direct descendant of the philosophy of Moududi – the ideologue and founder of a strict Wahabi/Sunni interpretation of Islam whose core message therefore almost always inevitably landed up into the domain of cataclysmic confrontation with everything deemed “unIslamic and therefore anti-Islamic”.  The top leadership has been accused persistently of war-crimes but they take pride in claiming that apparently none of these accusations could be proved – they can do so, as the Bangladesh military post-Independence ensured (with the help of factions within the “liberators”) that cases/investigations/charges were withdrawn and that the Jamaat were politically rehabilitated.  The Jamaat has minuscule vote share, but displays an impact and influence on Bangladesh state power hugely out of proprtion to its apparent electoral strength. The Jamaat will be the most likely stable political Islamic group to receive Saudi and extended Islamic expansionist network support, and this Islamic axis will see Bangladesh and Jamaat’s role as crucial to its overall expansionist agenda of takeover of the subcontinent in the name of Islam. The Jamaat of course has now turned ultra-nationalist and pretends to fight “colonial aggression” which of course as conveniently for Islamic agenda is seen only in India which is portrayed as “Hindu/Kaffir”. Hiding under the ultra-nationalist slogans is of course the mother of all colonialism – the ultimate Jihadi Islamic takeover of not only Bangladesh but the entire subcontinent – an experiment already started by the Taleban in the west of the subcontinent.  The recent Mumbai attacks is a signal that Islamic agenda for the subcontinent is intensifying and Indian “war posturing” will be used as a rallying cry and panic button to push further for Islamic consolidation in Bangladesh. (Mumbai Islamic message)

The Jamaat’s strength does not lie in numbers, but the social networks among the elite, the theologians and the international Jihadi and Sunni Wahabi fundamentalism – (1) the military has ensured that it suffered almost nothing in the anti-corruption drives and so will claim themselves as “pure” and untainted compared to the others – and is likely to be rewarded for this by the electorate (2) the various military regimes as well as political ones, by failing to try the culprits of war-crimes and infighting among the “liberators” has ensured that newer generations have far less concerns about what happened almost 40 years ago than other “more pressing” concerns (3) the Islamic propaganda machinery allowed to flourish under the pro-Islam military regimes as well as political forces have been able to increase the rate of Jihadi Islamization of the rural as well as a section of urban Bangladeshi youth – Islam holds several attractions for males especially – it promises all that they biologically desire, consumption, women and power – without having to make the hard effort of intellectual skills development required to compete in a modern knowledge based economy, or having to tolerate modern rights given to women over their sexuality or their bodies. (4) sections of the younger generations are likely to be relatively free of qualms about experimenting with an authoritarian Islamic system which of course at first they would like to believe would be along the lines of Malaysia or Iran- especially since the military has succeeded in discrediting the pre-existing political establishments. All these factors could have been instrumental in repeating the general pattern observable all over the subcontinent – of increasing radicalization of younger recruits who gravitate to the armed forces in Islam dominated countries.

The Awami League represents strongest electoral combine as of date but will have to reckon with the Jamaat. The BNP has taken a bad knock but will not lag far behind the Awami League, as the military would have strong connections with the setup and would like to keep it afloat as a second line of defence and the major political face of the Islamic agenda which will be led from behind by the Jamaat – this is simply a tactic to allow the Jamaat to grow and takeover.

The uprising was most likely to have been carefully planned, with sleepers trained by Pakistan and Jihadi organizations acting in careful coordination to use genuine grievances and liquidate the older generation of commanding officers – a group less likely to be submissive completely to the charms of the Jihadis. The core group has most probably now vanished, and been taken to safe havens maintained by the Jihadis in West Bengal under a tolerant Leftist regime. This was simply a warning, in showing that the force which is on the border of Bangladesh is out of  control, and that the Jihadis still hold the keys of state power. It could not have happened unless key elements of the security apparatus allowed it to happen.

Obama’s takeover could actually be a dampener for all those hoping to see more positive action in favour of India. His primary concern will be restoration of the US economy. US strategic interests in Asia will therefore be intimately tied in with strategies for growth of the US economy. In spite of rhetoric, economic calculations will impose restrictions on where and how far Obama will go. It seems most unlikely that Obama will increase overseas military commitments and war or surgical strikes against Iran is most unlikely unless Iran deliberates provokes US into a position where it will be embarrassed internationally if it does not retaliate. Obama will try to hold the “line” rather than expand or contract. His main tactic will be to retain the bluster to outshine Bush in foreign affairs but basically do nothing. He will try to achieve more with bluffs and diplomatic pressure and nerve wars rather than do anything that escalates military commitments. He will be under pressure to be seen not to retreat compared to Bush’s legacy, which will be a dampener for those within and outside US who hope that Obama will reverse many of the aggressive Bush moves.

For the subcontinent, Obama’s main strategic steps will be to reassure and to a certain extent increase cooperation with India mainly in the economic arena. Obama will also see to it that Indian regimes are not penalized at the elections by not taking aggressive retaliatory measures against Pakistan. Obama’s tactic will be to increase public visibility of military collaboration with India, and a declared programme of strengthening defence capabilities of India, and maybe even some kind of enhanced NATO type guarantee of alliance/protection in case of third party aggression. Similarly Obama will see to it that any Pakistani regime is not penalized by the people, by holding off India from POK. If India can bargain here properly, it can wrangle out an agreement to station troops on the eastern border of Afghanistan as part of a strategy of anti-terror and disruption of Taleban supply lines to the POK.

The key here again will be to stabilize rather than expand. This is here where Obama and US policy will begin to unravel. The situation in the Afghan+Pakistan front needs expansion and dynamic rather than stabilization. Stabilization of control would mean the beginning of loss of initiative on NATO part and the turning point of the campaign. The reason static war would be disastrous for the US, is because of the peculiar ground situation. So far the anti-US forces have been fighting Chinese Red army style mobile warfare. Such war style can only be matched by continuous positional movement and encirclement of mobile warriors. As soon as this movement is lost, the mobile warriors gain advantage. For now, in an unfamiliar and unaccustomed territory, positional static NATO can be picked off at ease by its opponents.

Obama’s concentration on economic affairs out of necessity, is likely to lead to less stress on foreign affairs that are seen to be expensive and without direct long term benefits. This in turn is likely to lead to less clarity on strategic military objectives, and a corresponding confusion in the military command over operations. It will not be as if Obama himself will be directly responsible, but his preoccupation with internal affairs and priority to world economic manipulation will lead to a neglect of military expansion and therefore adoption of stop-gap stabilization tactics. Obama will try to get India onboard for the US economic recovery programme, and formulate joint policies to counter China. Strategically, this can benefit the entire Indian subcontinent, especially those economies in a position technologically and educationally to benefit from such US-India relationship – especially India, Bangladesh and SriLanka. But this will also be a great opportunity for India to push through in strategic initiatives of its own about the central Asian republics. India can shrewdly play around to force US acceptance of Indian military presence, if India offers to provide substantial military and economic help directly to the Afghan government. Most diplomatic pressures are only effective when the other party realizes that the pressurizing party will go ahead and do something anyway – and that it is better to join in before it is too late to appear to be a reliable “friend”.

US current needs coincides with India’s on the economic front, primarily against Chinese capture of world markets, and I think there will be no problems in the evolution of collaboration here. But overall this economic movement will subtly and in a very complex way, leave its mark on the military/political strategic scenario, whereby the US and the NATO will ultimately retreat from the Afghan front. This is both a danger as well as an opportunity for India, if it has the correct leadership.

The obsessively attention seeking, “God remembers”, a Muslim from India whose propaganda work in favour of Islam is carried out under a soc alled “research centre” from Mumbai, and thus can be assumed to be protected by the Indian state, the same Indian state which places gag orders on Tasleema Nasreen, an exiled Bangladeshi lady fleeing her country for safety after exposing Islam sponsored rape of Hindu women in Bangladesh, or bans Salman Rushdie’s books – claims that all religions sponsor war to establish “what is right”, and his favourite example is the “Geeta”, primarily a portion of the Indian epic Mahabharatam (The Great – Bharat – an ancient Sanskrit name given to the subcontinent after a supposed king whose origin and political decisions as reproted in literature are surprisingly advanced any historical period before the modern one). “God remembers” consistently tries to cite “Geeta” as the “Hindu” religious text that sponsors and supports war to establish “righteousness” and tries to use this to say that the “Quranic” verses that urge violent war on “opponents” are similar in context and purpose. Let us compare the actual contexts and purposes as claimed even in the texts.

The “Geeta” ["that which has been sung"] is also called Srimadbhagavatam, or simply Bhagavat, ["from Bhagavan - owner of the creative principle - a close approximation would be the "supreme creator" of the revealed traditions] and is actually a part of the epic Mahabharatam and starts with the section entitled “survey of forces”. Some of the clearest statements of the Vedantic or Upanishadic “Hindu” philosophies are available in this part, and there are long standing debates about the timing, source, and authenticity of these verses relative to the whole of the text of the epic. I would like to give my own commentary on the Mahabharatm later separately in a page, and non-Indians will find this epic in truthful unabridged translations a real eye-opener as to the basic views the ancient Indians held about society, state, politics, the relationship between individual and the group, and life and its aims. However for our purposes, only relevant portions from the Geeta will suffice.

Briefly, the context is that of the great war between two forces led by two royal factions who are also cousins of each other. When the most skilled warrior of one side, that led by the Pandavas [sons of Pandu], called Arjuna, hesitates and almost breaks down seeing his blood-relatives, or respected elders and teachers arrayed against him on the other side, and whom he would have to slaughter in due course, his chariot driver, Krishna intervenes and gives him a psychological pep-talk [a very realistic modern day version would of course be the psychological conditioning given before active field duty]. Krishna is no ordinary chariot driver, but a key politician of the time, with dreams of unifying the subcontinent under a single political authority and establish rule of “law”. Krishna is also thought to be an “avatar”, a human form of “Vishnu”, the creator version of the “supreme one”, who “descends to the world” from time to time in each “historical” era to re-establish “law”.

It is significant that the actual description of the war in the epic is mostly given in the narrative of Sanjaya, a person gifted with “remote vision and hearing”  who describes events as they unfold on the battlefield to the blind king and father of the opponents of the Pandavas, Dhritarashtra.

SECTION XXV  [(Bhagavad Gita Chapter I)] ([This where is the Bhagavad Gita proper starts])

Dhritarashtra said,–”Assembled together on the sacred plain of Kurukshetra from desire of fighting what did my sons and the Pandavas do. O Sanjaya.”

“Sanjaya said….when, the throwing of missiles had just commenced…Arjuna said,–’O thou that knoweth no deterioration, place my car (once) between the two armies, so that I may observe these that stand here desirous of battle, and with whom I shall have to contend in the labours of this struggle. I will observe those who are assembled here and who are prepared to fight for doing what is agreeable in battle to the evil-minded son of Dhritarashtra….[Krishna] placing that excellent car between the two armies…said,–’Behold, O [Arjuna] these assembled Kurus,–And there [Arjuna] beheld, standing (his) sires and grandsons, and friends, and father-in-law and well-wishers, in both the armies. Beholding all those kinsmen standing (there), the son of Kunti, possessed by excessive pity, despondingly said (these words).

“Arjuna said,–’Beholding these kinsmen, O Krishna, assembled together and eager for the fight, my limbs, become languid, and my mouth becomes dry. My body trembles, and my hair stands on end. Gandiva slips from my hand, and my skin burns. I am unable to stand (any longer); my mind seems to wander. I behold adverse omens, too, O [Krishna]. I do not desire victory, O Krishna, not sovereignty, nor pleasures. Of what use would sovereignty be to us, O Govinda, or enjoyments, or even life, since they, for whose sake sovereignty, enjoyments, and pleasures are desired by us, are here arrayed for battle ready to give up life and wealth, viz., preceptors, sires, sons and grandsires, maternal uncles, father-in-laws, grandsons, brother-in-laws, and kinsmen. I wish not to slay these though they slay me, O slayer of Madhu, even for the sake of the sovereignty of the three worlds, what then for the sake of (this) earth? What gratification can be ours, O Janardana, by slaying the Dhartarashtras [sons of Dhritarashtra]? Even if they be regarded as foes, sin will overtake us if we slay them. Therefore, it behoveth us not to slay the sons of Dhritarashtra who are our own kinsmen. How, O Madhava [Krishna] can we be happy by killing our own kinsmen? Even if these, with judgments perverted by avarice, do not see the evil that ariseth from the extermination of a race, and the sin of internecine quarrels, why should not we, O [Krishna], who see the evils of the extermination of a race, learn to abstain from that sin? A race being destroyed, the eternal customs of that race are lost; and upon those customs being lost, sin overpowers the whole race….Alas, we have resolved to perpetrate a great sin, for we are ready to slay our own kinsmen from lust of the sweets of sovereignty. Better would it be for me if the sons of Dhritarashtra, weapon in hand, should in battle slay me (myself) unavenging unarmed.–’”

Sanjaya continued,–”Having spoken thus on the field of battle, Arjuna, his mind troubled with grief, casting aside his bow and arrows, sat down on his car.” [Here ends the first lesson entitled "Survey of Forces"]

SECTION XXVI
[(Bhagavad Gita Chapter II)]

Sanjaya said,–”Unto him thus possessed with pity, his eyes filled and oppressed with tears, and desponding, [Krishna] said these words.”

The Holy One said,–”Whence, O Arjuna, hath come upon thee, at such a crisis, this despondency that is unbecoming a person of noble birth, that shuts one out from heaven, and that is productive of infamy? Let no effeminacy be thine, O son of Kunti. This suits thee not. Shaking off this vile weakness of hearts, arise, O chastiser of foes.–”

Arjuna said,–”How, O [Krishna], can I with arrows contend in battle against Bhishma and Drona, [both teachers of Arjuna] deserving as they are, O slayer of foes, of worship? Without slaying (one’s) preceptors of great glory, it is well (for one), to live on even alms in this world. By slaying preceptors, even if they are avaricious of wealth, I should only enjoy pleasures that are bloodstained! We know not which of the two is of greater moment to us, viz., whether we should conquer them or they should conquer us. By slaying whom we would not like to live,–even they, the sons of Dhritarashtra, stand before (us). My nature affected by the taint of compassion, my mind unsettled about (my) duty, I ask thee. Tell me what is assuredly good (for me). I am thy disciple. O, instruct me, I seek thy aid. I do not see (that) which would dispel that grief of mine blasting my very senses, even if I obtain a prosperous kingdom on earth without a foe or the very sovereignty of the gods.’”

Sanjaya reports that Arjuna once more said, ‘I will not fight,’–and then remained silent.

Note that no such hesitation, and no such “lofty” sentiment of allowing oneself to be slaughtered at the hands of enemy which includes revered relatives or teachers is ever seen anywhere in the Quran.

Krishna then says “‘Thou mournest those that deserve not to be mourned. Thou speakest also the words of the (so-called) wise. Those, however, that are (really) wise, grieve neither for the dead nor for the living. It is not that, I or you or those rulers of men never were, or that all of us shall not hereafter be. Of an Embodied being, as childhood, youth, and, decrepitude are in this body, so (also) is the acquisition of another body. The man, who is wise, is never deluded in this. The contacts of the senses with their (respective) objects producing (sensations of) heat and cold, pleasure and pain, are not permanent, having (as they do) a beginning and an end. Do thou. O Bharata, endure them. For the man whom these afflict not, O bull among men, who is the same in pain and pleasure and who is firm in mind, is fit for emancipation. There is no (objective) existence of anything that is distinct from the soul; nor non-existence of anything possessing the virtues of the soul. This conclusion in respect of both these hath been arrived at by those that know the truths (of things). Know that [the soul] to be immortal by which all this [universe] is pervaded. No one can compass the destruction of that which is imperishable. It hath been said that those bodies of the Embodied (soul) which is eternal, indestructible and infinite, have an end. Do thou, therefore, fight, O Bharata. He who thinks it (the soul) to be the slayer and he who thinks it to be the slain, both of them know nothing; for it neither slays nor is slain. It is never born, nor doth it ever die; nor, having existed, will it exist no more. Unborn, unchangeable, eternal, and ancient, it is not slain upon the body being perished. That man who knoweth it to be indestructible, unchangeable, without decay, how and whom can he slay or cause to be slain? As a man, casting off robes that are worn out, putteth on others that are new, so the Embodied (soul), casting off bodies that are worn out, entereth other bodies that are new. Weapons cleave it not, fire consumeth it not; the waters do not drench it, nor doth the wind waste it. It is incapable of being cut, burnt, drenched, or dried up. It is unchangeable, all-pervading, stable, firm, and eternal. It is said to be imperceivable, inconceivable and unchangeable. Therefore, knowing it to be such, it behoveth thee not to mourn (for it). Then again even if thou regardest it as constantly born and constantly dead, it behoveth thee not yet, O mighty-armed one, to mourn (for it) thus. For, of one that is born, death is certain; and of one that is dead, birth is certain. Therefore. it behoveth thee not to mourn in a matter that is unavoidable. All beings (before birth) were unmanifest. Only during an interval(between birth and death), O Bharata, are they manifest; and then again, when death comes, they become (once more) unmanifest. What grief then is there in this? One looks upon it as a marvel; another speaks of it as a marvel. Yet even after having heard of it, no one apprehends it truly.

Compare this with the Quranic injunction :
047.020 Those who believe say, “Why is not a sura sent down (for us)?” But when a sura of basic or categorical meaning is revealed, and fighting is mentioned therein, thou wilt see those in whose hearts is a disease looking at thee with a look of one in swoon at the approach of death. But more fitting for them-
047.021 Were it to obey and say what is just, and when a matter is resolved on, it were best for them if they were true to Allah.
047.003 This because those who reject Allah follow vanities, while those who believe follow the Truth from their Lord: Thus does Allah set forth for men their lessons by similitudes.
047.004 Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. Thus (are ye commanded): but if it had been Allah’s Will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them (Himself); but (He lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the Way of Allah,- He will never let their deeds be lost.

004.066 If We had ordered them to sacrifice their lives or to leave their homes, very few of them would have done it: But if they had done what they were (actually) told, it would have been best for them, and would have gone farthest to strengthen their (faith);
004.067 And We should then have given them from our presence a great reward;

009.088 But the Messenger, and those who believe with him, strive and fight with their wealth and their persons: for them are (all) good things: and it is they who will prosper.
009.111 Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Qur’an: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme.

004.074 Let those fight in the cause of Allah Who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fighteth in the cause of Allah,- whether he is slain or gets victory – Soon shall We give him a reward of great (value).
004.095 Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward.

The Embodied (soul), O Bharata, is ever indestructible in everyone’s body. Therefore, it behoveth thee not to grieve for all (those) creatures. Casting thy eyes on the (prescribed) duties of thy order, it behoveth thee not to waver, for there is nothing else that is better for a Kshatriya than a battle fought fairly. Arrived of itself and (like unto) an open gate of heaven, happy are those Kshatriyas, O Partha, that obtain such a fight. But if thou dost not fight such a just battle, thou shalt then incur sin by abandoning the duties of thy order and thy fame. People will then proclaim thy eternal infamy, and to one that is held in respect, infamy is greater (as an evil) than death itself. All great car-warriors will regard thee as abstaining from battle from fear, and thou wilt be thought lightly by those that had (hitherto) esteemed thee highly. Thy enemies, decrying thy prowess, will say many words which should not be said. What can be more painful than that? Slain, thou wilt attain to heaven; or victorious, thou wilt enjoy the Earth. Therefore, arise, O son of Kunti, resolved for battle. Regarding pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, as equal, do battle for battle’s sake and sin will not be thine. This knowledge, that hath been communicated to thee is (taught) in the Sankhya (system). Listen now to that (inculcated) in Yoga (system). Possessed of that knowledge, thou, O Partha, wilt cast off the bonds of action. In this (the Yoga system) there is no waste of even the first attempt. There are no impediments. Even a little of this (form of) piety delivers from great fear. Here in this path, O son of Kuru, there is only one state of mind, consisting in firm devotion (to one object, viz., securing emancipation). The minds of those, however, that are not firmly devoted (to this), are many-branched (un-settled) and attached to endless pursuits. That flowery talk which, they that are ignorant, they that delight in the words of the Vedas, they, O Partha, that say that there is nothing else, they whose minds are attached to worldly pleasures, they that regard (a) heaven (of pleasures and enjoyments) as the highest object of acquisition…. and promises birth as the fruit of action and concerns itself with multifarious rites of specific characters for the attainment of pleasures and power,–delude their hearts and the minds of these men who are attached to pleasures and power cannot be directed to contemplation (of the divine being) regarding it as the sole means of emancipation.

The Vedas are concerned with three qualities, (viz., religion, profit, and pleasure). Be thou, O Arjuna, free from them, unaffected by pairs of contraries (such as pleasure and pain, heat and cold, etc.), ever adhering to patience without anxiety for new acquisitions or protection of those already acquired, and self-possessed, whatever objects are served by a tank or well, may all be served by a vast sheet of water extending all around; so whatever objects may be served by all the Vedas, may all be had by a Brahmana having knowledge (of self or Brahma).

Thy concern is with work only, but not with the fruit (of work). Let not the fruit be thy motive for work; nor let thy inclination be for inaction. Staying in devotion, apply thyself to work, casting off attachment (to it), O [Arjuna], and being the same in success or unsuccess. This equanimity is called Yoga (devotion). Work (with desire of fruit) is far inferior to devotion, O [Arjuna]. Seek thou the protection of devotion. They that work for the sake of fruit are miserable. He also that hath devotion throws off, even in this world, both good actions and bad actions. Therefore, apply thyself to devotion. Devotion is only cleverness in action. The wise, possessed of devotion, cast off the fruit born of action, and freed from the obligation of
(repeated) birth, attain to that region where there is no unhappiness. When thy mind shall have crossed the maze of delusion, then shalt thou attain to an indifference as regards the hearable and the heard.
When thy mind, distracted (now) by what thou hast heard (about the means of acquiring the diverse objects of life), will be firmly and immovably fixed on contemplation, then wilt thou attain to devotion.’

“Arjuna said,–What, O [Krishna], are the indications of one whose mind is fixed on contemplation? How should one of steady mind speak, how sit, how move?” “The Holy One said,–’When one casts off all the desires of his heart and is pleased within (his) self with self, then is one said to be of steady mind. He whose mind is not agitated amid calamities, whose craving for pleasure is gone, who is freed from attachment (to worldly objects), fear and wrath, is said to be a Muni of steady mind. His is steadiness of mind who is without affection everywhere, and who feeleth no exultation and no aversion on obtaining diverse objects that are agreeable and disagreeable. When one withdraws his senses from the objects of (those) senses as the tortoise its limbs from all sides, even his is steadiness of mind. Objects of senses fall back from an abstinent person, but not so the passion (for those objects). Even the passion recedes from one who has beheld the Supreme (being). The agitating senses, O [Arjuna], forcibly draw away the mind of even a wise man striving hard to keep himself aloof from them. Restraining them all, one should stay in contemplation, making me his sole refuge. For his is steadiness of mind whose senses are under control. Thinking of the objects of sense, a person’s attachment is begotten towards them. From attachment springeth wrath; from wrath ariseth want of discrimination; from want of discrimination, loss of memory; from loss of memory, loss of understanding; and from loss of understanding (he) is utterly ruined. But the self-restrained man, enjoying objects (of sense) with senses freed from attachment and aversion under his own control, attaineth to peace (of mind). On peace (of mind) being attained, the annihilation of all his miseries taketh place, since the mind of him whose heart is peaceful soon becometh steady. He who is not self-restrained hath no contemplation (of self). He who hath no contemplation hath no peace (of mind).
Whence can there be happiness for him who hath no peace (of mind)? For the heart that follows in the wake of the sense moving (among their objects) destroys his understanding like the wind destroying a boat in the waters. Therefore, O thou of mighty arms, his is steadiness of mind whose senses are restrained on all sides from the objects of sense. The restrained man is awake when it is night for all creatures; and when other creatures are awake that is night to a discerning Muni. He into whom all objects of desire enter, even as the waters enter the ocean which (though) constantly replenished still maintains its water-mark unchanged–(he) obtains peace (of mind) and not one that longeth for objects of desire. That man who moveth about, giving up all objects of desire, who is free from craving (for enjoyments) and who hath no affection and no pride, attaineth to peace (of mind). This, O [Arjuna], is the divine state. Attaining to it, one is never deluded. Abiding in it one obtains, on death, absorption into the Supreme Self.’

These are “controversial” Quranic verses :

022.039
To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged;- and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid;-
022.040
(They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right,- (for no cause) except that they say, “our Lord is Allah”. Did not Allah check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid his (cause);- for verily Allah is full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (able to enforce His Will).
022.041
(They are) those who, if We establish them in the land, establish regular prayer and give regular charity, enjoin the right and forbid wrong: with Allah rests the end (and decision) of (all) affairs.
022.042
If they treat thy (mission) as false, so did the peoples before them (with their Prophets),- the People of Noah, and ‘Ad and Thamud;

002.190
Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.
002.191
And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.
002.192
But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
002.193
And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression.
002.194
The prohibited month for the prohibited month,- and so for all things prohibited,- there is the law of equality. If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, Transgress ye likewise against him. But fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves.

009.073
O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell,- an evil refuge indeed.
009.123
O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him.

008.060
Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.

As we can see, there is a wide divergence between the basic motivations in the two – the Geeta wants Arjuna to fight without thinking of fruits of  action. Geeta wants detachment, moreover the entire motivation of war is to set right “injustice” done upon the injured party – in this case the Pandavas, and not because their enemies believe in a different religion. What were the injustices done on Pandavas – they were setup to lose a game of chance in which they were made to lose and sell themselves into slavery, including their wife whom one of the victors attempts to strip in public, they were disinherited from their share, there were assassination attempts on them even in exile, and finally their peace offer of being given just five villages for the five brothers were rejected. We do not see, any such sequence of injustices on Muhammad from the start. In spite of propaganda, we can see, that the Qureysh did not try to enslave the women of  Muhammad’s party or strip them in public – in fact there are stories of how one of the daughters of Muhammad was secretly and safely escorted out of Mecca to her father when the city was boiling with news of the Muslim’s treacherous and murderous ambushes. The Qureysh hit back only after repeated ambushes and murders of Qureysh businessmen leading their caravans. Muhammad never offers to be happy with a village for himself – although we do not know under what inheritance claim this would be valid. In fact  Muhammad urges war simply for not believing in his religion, or on suspicion of treachery without proof, or simply an opponent defending their property or family from unexpected attacks, or simply because his opponent is relatively wealthy in camels and beautiful women.

Mumbai’s recent Jihadi terror attack is big media story now. Pakistan has played its cards well – its military and secret service has long been in alliance with the Islamic theologians to promote Islamic Jihad all over Asia. This definitely has been going on for a long time with full knowledge and resourcing by the West from the days of the Cold War – and it is these same leaders of the West  who are now desperate to see to it that India does not militarily retaliate. Pakistan has warned already with great alacrity that it will move the Pakistani Army to the Indian border if “tension” increases due to “India” and its fight in the North West against Talebani/Al Qaeda terror will “suffer”! This is hilarious for it simply covers for the complete lack of effort and effectiveness or will to fight against the Islamic Jihad on behalf of the Pakistani state, obvious for years now.  It is practically impossible for the Pakistani establishment too – for its primary reasons for existence since its formation by the British was to subjugate India once again in the name of Islam – nothing else, absolutely no other goal exists for Pakistan. Islam imposes unquestioning obedience to Islamic theologians who are increasingly unable to cope with the intellectualal complexity of modern science and society and knowing fully well that only the retrogression and imposition of primitive 7th century Arabian desert culture of looting kafelas and women and property of neighbouring tribes in Ghazwas was the only safe bet to continue in power. Pakistan’s state establishment and its theological establishment know that as a failed state and a gift of blind British shortsightedness, the only way to extend their existence is to live off the wealth and productivity of India. Wherever the Muslims invaded in its historic past, it looted and destroyed without even understanding the basics of sophisticated economies – and inevitably ruined these invaded countries over the long run – leading to their vulnerability against European colonization.

Pakistan’s state promoted the Taleban with Western blessing, and the madrassahs were utilized to brainwash and train generations of Jihadi males – the resources were a heaven-sent for the Muslims since the western support could be used to radicalize more of the youth in Jihad and ultimately use it to carry out “Ghazwa-e-Hind” – total liquidation of the “Hindus”, looting their wealth, land and women – the lucrative incentive to participate in Jihad for the millions of products of only feudal Islamic preaching and nothing else. The military-secret service establishment, probably already moved a major portion of the army to the Indian border knowing fully well about the planned attacks on Mumbai. This army movement would have served a dual purpose (1) the brainwashed Jihadi tutoring of the younger generations most likely to provide the lower ranks of the army are in all likelihood collaborating with the Taleban in the North Western provinces or deserting to them, or supplying the products of the ordnance factories of Pakistan to the Taleban. Moving the remnant under the control of the government to the eastern borders separates them from the Talebani contagion (2) since the elected government (but not the army) has already lost control over the north-western areas and the tribal belt, and failed to contain the Taleban and Al Qaeda, this attack provides a good excuse for abandoning the sham fight against “Jihad” from Afghanistan altogether, and practically leave it in Talebani hands. All these indicate that the theologian-elite nexus of Pakistani society has already come to an agreement with the Taleban-Qaeda to form an alliance to takeover the Pakistani state, and turn it into a hardcore Islamic regime able to strategically extract support from Iran and China and the blindly shortsighted opportunist imperialist elements within European elite  to liquidate the only thorn in Islam’s side in Asia and the Indian Ocean region – India. Once India can be subjugated to Islamic sadism, the pan-Islamic belt runs in an uninterrupted belt from Africa, middle East, through to Indonesia – the weak and pacifist societies of Myanmar and Thailand will be mere tasty morsels before Jihadi Islamic greed.

What was the hidden Quranic and Hadithic message within the Mumbai attacks ? This was more a message for the remaining terror modules within India and their support bases within Indian state protected Islamic communities, networks and theological establishments.

22nd-27th of November must be the second half of the Islamic month of Dhu’l Qadah – and as far as I can remember, this is a very significant month in the Islamic calendar. This is the first pilgrimage or Umrah that the Muslims made after the migration/hijra to Medina under Muhammad. The Muslims came on the morning of the fourth day of Dhual-Qadah, in the 7th year after migration, after the treaty of Hudaybiyyah the previous year. The entire event lasted for three days. Any pilgrimage during the month of Dhul-Qadah is named a “major pilgrimage”, or just “pilgrimage” (Hajj), while pilgrimages on all other month are called “minor pilgrimage” (Umrah). The Muslims were armed even though the prevalent practice was not to carry weapons on pilgrimage. The treaty had provided for temporary abandonment and evacuation of the town of Mecca, by the Qureysh when the Muslims entered it, and was primarily meant as a show of strength by Muhammad to the Qureysh.

I find it highly significant in the context of Islamic viewpoint to mount the attack on Mumbai at this date -we have to consider actual terror activities described unemotionally and compare with Mumbai outcomes. A highly significant incident in this month was the destruction of the Banu Quraiza Jews. The Banu Quraizah Jews were originally part of an alliance of Jewish tribes who managed and cultivated the oases farms in the desert of northern Arabia who had been alarmed at the systematic expulsion, sudden ambush and slaughter, and looting of all their camels, women and children. They tried to form alliances with expelled Jews and defend themselves against the Muslim raids. There is hardly any evidence of their having done any atrocity on the Muslims even by Islamic chroniclers – their only crime seems to have been resisting ethnic cleansing, eviction from land which they had worked hard on, and defend their women and children – typically described by the chroniclers as “conspiracy against Islam and Allah’s messenger”. After a siege lasting for 25 days, the Jews surrendered:

Sahih Bukhari records: [Original Sahih Al-Bukhari]
The women and children were then separated from their husbands, others were put under the care of Abdullah, a renegade Jew. All the goods and possessions of the B. Qurayzah Jews, their camels and flocks were all brought as spoils of war. The B. Qurayzah Jewish men were handcuffed behind their backs with their women and children having already been separated. They were placed under the charge of Mohammad ibn Maslama, the assassin of Ka’b ibn Ashraf, to be sent to Medina before their execution in batches. A long trench was dug in the marketplace of Medina. The Prisoners were then taken there, made to kneel down and beheaded in a group of five or six. Muhammad was personally present to witness this slaughter. Ali and Zubayr cut off the heads of the Jews in front of Muhammad. Sourcing from Al-Waqidi, Tabari writes:
“…the messenger of God commanded that furrows should be dug in the ground for the B. Qurayzah. Then he sat down, and Ali and al-Zubayr began cutting off their heads in his presence.” Ibn Ishaq writes that they were taken in groups to Muhammad for beheading in front of him.

Tabari further writes:
‘The messenger of God went out into the marketplace of Medina and had trenches dug in it; then he sent for them and had them beheaded in those trenches. They were brought out to him in groups. Among them were the enemy of God, Huyayy b. Akhtab, and Ka’b b. Asad, the head of the tribe. They numbered 600 or 700-the largest estimate says they were between 800 and 900. As they were being taken in groups to the Messenger of God, they said to Ka’b b. Asad, “Ka’b, what do you understand. Do you not see that the summoner does not discharge [anyone] and that those of you who are taken away do not come back? By God, it is death!” the affair continued until the Messenger of God had finished with them.’

The Sahi (authentic) Hadith of Abu Dawud: Book 14, Number 2665:
Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin: No woman of Banu Qurayzah was killed except one. She was with me, talking and laughing on her back and belly (extremely), while the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) was killing her people with the swords. Suddenly a man called her name: Where is so-and-so? She said: I I asked: What is the matter with you? She said: I did a new act. She said: The man took her and beheaded her. She said: I will not forget that she was laughing extremely although she knew that she would be killed.”
The very old Jewish man Az-Zabir had saved the life of a Muslim convert, Thabit b. Qays in the Bu’ath war. When Az-Zabir was about to be beheaded Thabit requested Muhammad to save the life of Az-Zabir and his family as a return to his favor. Muhammad agreed. Az-Zabir then asked Thabit b. Qays about the Jewish leaders such as Ka’b b. Asad and Huayy b. Akhtab, as he preferred to die rather than to live without them. Az-Zabir replied, “Then I ask you for the sake of the favor I once did for you to join me to my kinsmen, for by God there is no good in living after them. I will not wait patiently for God, not even [the time needed] to take the bucket of a watering trough, until I meet my dear ones.” So Thabit brought him forward, and he was beheaded. Abu Bakr commented “He will meet them, by God, in the Gehenna, there to dwell forever and forever.”
[this is the battle that gives explicit culling of all adult males including those that had begun to show pubic hair] Hadith from Sunaan Abu Dawud: Book 38, Number 4390: Narrated Atiyyah al-Qurazi: I was among the captives of Banu Qurayzah. They (the Companions) examined us, and those who had begun to grow hair (pubes) were killed, and those who had not were not killed. I was among those who had not grown hair.
After executing all the adult male Jews, Muhammad sent Sa’d b. Zayd al-Ansari with some captive women and children from the B. Qurayzah to Najd to sell them in the slave market.  Among the captive was a young woman called Rayhanh bt. Amr b. Khunafah [all her male relatives including her husband were executed under personal supervision of the prophet of Islam] and took her as his concubine. It is said that when Muhammad offered to make her his wife by embracing Islam, she declined. She preferred to remain a concubine to becoming a Muslim and said, “Messenger of God, rather leave me in your possession [as a concubine], for it is easier for me and for you.” [Some biographers claim that Rayhana eventually accepted Islam].

I think this is highly relevant as the terrorists were perhaps trying to send a message not only to non-Muslim Indians but more so to the Muslims of India who would connect the significance better than non-Musilms. If the reports of supposed torture [comment by Dr. Aaron Abraham, physician friend  of the slain Rabbi in Mumbai on Indian media, who has claimed the Rabbi's body] on the Jewish family, separate execution of the women, and deceptive negotiation with the commandos about hostages when they had already been executed, are confirmed then this will tie in exactly with the significance of this raid in Islamic theologian eyes.

For the Taleban-Qaeda and their various backers all over the middle-east, China, Iran, theologians of Saudi Arabia – this is the start of the signal for Muslims in the subcontinent, that those who are really “faithful” should see this as the command of the final offensive towards annihilation of the Jews and the “Qureysh” of the modern world – the Americans. The month of Dhul Quadah was used to attack Mumbai so ferociously and target Israelis because of Islamic historical significance of notorious Jew-liquidation campaigns by the prophet of Islam and show of strength to his opponents at Mecca in this “sacred month”. The genocide of the Banu Quraizah Jews by the Muslims in this context came immediately after the battle of the “trench” in which the leader of Islam was almost killed and was only saved by “falling into a ditch” and another Muslim resembling him becoming the centre of wrath of the enemy and being killed in error. This could be a message to the remaining terror modules and community support networks of Jihad within India to the effect that recent advances and attacks by the NATO forces with elimination of key commanders, is like the temporary setbacks of the “battle of the trench” and that the “faithful” should take this as the signal for the final campaign – to eliminate all “tribes” (read India, Israel etc) allied to the “Meccan Qureysh” (read Americans) before “conquering Mecca” (read USA).

But, I hope, the Islamic Jihadis get this message clearly into their heads – that they have made a tremendous blunder. Since many from the middle east do visit this site – they should clearly understand, that they have fallen a victim to propaganda from a certain section of regime sponsored historians of India and colonial neo-imperialist historiography of European origins, that “Hindus” are soft targets, and that they can be beaten to a pulp without much damage to Islam. Reality was that “Hindus” managed to survive, still maintaining all their liberal practices compared to Islam, over more than 1300 years of brutal fighting and resistance – a history of conflict and resistance that brought successive Islamic regimes to their knees, completely erased out of public discourse by Indian official historians under Western pressures for tactical reasons of the Cold War. What Islamists have done in Mumbai, has set in motion a process, by which the Hindu will galvanize into a nation and regime that will visit terrible retribution and possible complete eventual liquidation of Islam in most parts of Asia – this time around no imperialist regime will succeed to keep it in check.

It will be the height of political stupidity to think that this is going to be led by this or that party of Indians, the Congress or the BJP – not really, it will be a political force in the making from the grassroots that will coerce even the BJP if necessary to pursue a less opportunistic line, and will leave the shattered remains of both parties by the roadside in its march towards an extreme rightwing reaction against all things Islamic. I already feel sorry for the “common” Muslim who will have to bear the brunt of this reaction if they do not liquidate their theologians and reject the Jihadi core of Islam as ant-Islamic and not just un-Islamic – an outcome most unlikely I think!

There is now candlelight vigils all over India, mourning and showing anger at the Mumbai attacks – and the media is hawing and hemming about recognizing the anger of the common Indian but still ordering on the behalf of Islamophile regimes that people should do nothing that hurts Islam for the survival of the political regime crucially depends on the roughly 13-14% Muslim swing vote factor in Indian elections. Although some Muslim voters do appear to vote outside of religious affiliation, it has been always a recognized fact of Indian elections that groups like the Deobandi fatwaists or the Imam of the Jame Mosque in Delhi decide for whom the majority of the Indian Muslims vote.

India’s Islamophile regimes’ typical obsession is about giving highest priority to protection of Islam, and is the only non-Muslim majority country that sponsors and hugely subsidizes costly Hajj pilgrimage for Muslims and even uses government infrastructure overseas especially to provide for such pilgrimage. The reason for this is the steady decline in the voter fraction of the Congress as evident right from the first general elections in independent India (less than 50%) when it had hardly any opposition left thanks to the British who selectively wiped off the competitors of Nehru, their lackey and choice for continuation of their interests in India. In fact electoral laws that appeared to go against the Congress even as apparent in the that very first elections were amended at the behest of the Nehru government. This was thus a problem right from the start even as the two major most populous and influential opposition from people, those from Punjab and Bengal, were partitioned and traumatized and decimated under Islamic Jihad as allowed to develop by the British with most of their policymakers deciding to side in favour of Islam probably out of revenge for the loss of the Indian empire resulting from the anti-British movement spearheaded predominantly by the Hindus.

Indian Hindus have known for 1300 years what Islamic terror means, (see here) and Indian Hindus have fought back with the only tactic that is effective against Islamic terror – with similar tactics of deceptive, violent, sadistic attacks – this is how the non-collaborator Rajputs, the Vijaynagar empire, or the Marathas under Shivaji, or the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh were able to bleed the Sultanate and the Mughals to getting dismembered. Only after independence, which coincided with the start of Cold War, British pressure was high on India to protect and nurture Islam as part of whole range of strategy based around immunizing the south and middle east of Asia against communism. This was the reason, combined with Nehru’s increasing realization that over time, the British suppression and removal of credible opposition to him and his coteries would be neutralized as the basic forces within Indian non-Muslim society would reassert, that for the future the marginal Islamic vote would be crucial for the survival of the Congress in power. This led to a huge campaign to whitewash the record of Islam in India, by regime sponsored and dependent historians so that future generations of non-Muslims did not have access to knowledge and evidence that showed the real agenda and modus-operandi of Islam – while the madrassahs and Muslim religious educational institutions, systems were protected and continued to disseminate the actual Jihadic core message of the texts of Islam.

This has made generations of Indian Hindus unprepared psychologically for Islamic violence. But the trend has reversed once the British nurtured intelligentsia, historians, academics, and politicians began to die out from natural demographic factors – with more and more Indians being educated within India and being able to move out of India as well and becoming independent of government control and influence and finding out on their own about the real nature of Islam from resources not restricted (even if the rulers wish to) in the free world.  They are vilified by the whitewashers of the Thaparite school of Indian history for they realize the danger these new generations of India pose for the existence of the Islamophile regimes.

In the short term the only thing Indians can do is to have zero tolerance for politicians, media and academics that protect, justify, or do nothing against the ideological motivator for terror – Islam, and especially politicians at the centre of the federal system in whose tenure terrrorist attacks take place -simply try to give zero votes to each candidate of the regime in the next general elections – that is the only thing that will hurt these callous bootlickers of Islam.

Related previous post

What Islamic Jihadis have done in Mumbai has been micro-covered by the world media now. It is not my task to repeat what cameras and anchors have been ranting about. However, it is a day of great sadness as well as a day of great hope. For with this attack Islam has sealed its fate in India. It will continue to survive for years but its end has begun. The Hindu has now essentially broken its final shred of shyness and philosophical disregard of its own relentless annihilation. I have warned in this blog before that this is one community that appears docile on the outside, but with great resilience, persistence and determination that had fought the Islamic hordes for more than a 1000 years – this is how nearly 80% still survive within the borders of India.

The media under the overwhelming influence of a leftist political correctness imposed by almost 60 years of Islamophile and blatantly anti-Hindu propagandist regime dependent Thaparite school of Indian history, will continue to do damage control in favour of Islam, and the Indian political establishment will try to divert attention by hinting at “foreign hands”. But this is one damage that cannot really be covered. The bulk of the Indian population has disjointed itself psychologically from everything Islamic – including every element in the apparatus of state and civil society that appears to have sided with Islam, protected Islam or patronized Islam. If the BJP fails to give shape to this disjunction, the momentum of the “Hindu” will not stop, and we will see a new nationalist avowedly Hindu movement taking birth.

The Taleban, the Al Qaeda, Pakistani state and security apparatus that supplies and sources terror outfits and outrages in India, the ideological backbone from which modern Jihad took its inspiration – the return to orthodoxy movements of the Tabliqi Jamaat and the Deobandis in the subcontinent, in spite of all their tactical show of condemnation of terrorists as unIslamic (but not antiIslamic and not punishable like sexual offences by stoning or death), the communist imperialism of China which sponsored both Iran and Pakistan, all will now be clubbed together by the “Hindu” as the enemy – and anyone, any force in the world that sympathises, patronizes, justifies Islami Jihad will be silently assigned the status of enemy by the “Hindu”. The Congress’s political future is doomed, the BJP may not fare much better if it does not reflect this rising silent rage in the Hindus. The Congress will still survive in the next general elections but its political pre-eminence is now on inevitable decline.

As I have tried to warn many times in this blog, once this Hindu consolidation takes place, the days of Islam on the subcontinent are numbered. Once India itself frees itself of Islam, the new “Hindu” India will turn its attention to Pakistan and Bangladesh and the next round of retaliatory and liquidation moves against Islam will take place. Its start of the endgame in the  Indian subcontinent at least for Islam – a faint glimmer of hope in an otherwise overwhelming gloom.

All Indian media has been buzzing with images and sounds of the Mumbai Taj hotel burning as a result of an encounter between Jihadi terrorists and Indian security forces. There could be more fatalities, and more casualties. Encounters have been going on in other places in Mumbai too. But the main target of the Taj was also an important place where corporate India met regularly and at the time of the Jihadi attack several important trans-national business meetings were going on. The Trident is another hotel where terrorists have struck.

Why did the Jihadis get so bold? They have got the clear message from the Left of Centre Indian regime currently in power that with the general elections next year in sight, the regime will do everything to convince the Muslim populations of India that the regime is prepared to go to any lengths to please Islam – what better method than to try and paint the “Hindu” – the  hated “infidel”, the “qufr”, whose land is to be looted by Jihad, whose women are to be raped and captured and enslaved by Jihad, and all whose cultural icons to be erased by Jihad, as the “bad guy” and therefore gain the gratitude of Islam.

The Islamists know that the Islamophile regime of India will use its state power to prevent any retaliation – the only language of retaliation and revenge that Islam understands will not be spoken to the Muslims. This whole game of Islamic Jihadi sadism on the non-Muslims of India would have been over forever in a matter of months if the “Hindus” decided and were allowed to take matters into their own hands. The Islamophile regime at the centre knows this very well and has used every means possible to prevent the majority community come to exactly such a conclusions – including traditional state influence and regime sponsored academics’ control over the media. It is possible, that Centre-Left has already decided or panicked that the next general elections could be quite bad for them and that the majority sentiment was veering away from them – so they desperately went out to ensure minority support which because of long term steady mobilization by Muslim theologians and infiltration from the neighbouring Muslim countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh has now significant vote swing capabilities in terms of sheer numbers.

The Centre-Left regime’s tactic is self-defeating. Its antics and Jihad’s singleminded agenda of destroying non-Muslim cultures has now more or less ensured that non-Muslims of India mostly have now come out of the traditional illusion of mythical peaceful advent of Islam in India propagandized by the Thaparite school of Indian history. There will be a huge campaign now mounted by the Indian media and the regime in power that the greatest need of the hour is for Indians to respect “communal harmony” – so that the only language Islam understands (and if spoken, historically, Islam always turned “peaceful” – for their greatest theological concern is to survive and increase in numbers) that of retaliation and liquidation of Islamic leadership and support bases, will not be used – giving time and confidence for Jihad to expand further in India. There will also be an attempt perhaps to divert attention and justify Jihadi action in two cliche modes (1) “we have to understand the frustrations that lead to such desperate actions!” (implying that Indians should concede more and more to Islam while similar logic should not be applied to non-Muslim frustration) (2) “it was because of the Hindu terror that Muslims reacted” – implying that Hindus should never think of resisting Jihad.

Non-Muslims of India should identify which political groups appease Jihad and Islam and vote accordingly.  At this stage, India will not survive, if Islam and its Jihadi agenda cannot be contained and liquidated – this will be the primary issue for the nation’s existence. If India survives only then can it deal with its economic problems – and non-Muslims have to consolidate their position with respect to Islam. For those in the West who have been supporting and still continue to think of protecting Islam in India as continuation of British Imperialist and Cold war western strategy – should get it into their myopic thick heads, that the fall of India to Islam will complete the pan Islamic regime running from NorthAfrica through the Middle East to Malaysia and Indonesia and will nicely cut the West off from all the major sources of world’s oil and the Asian markets.

It is unimaginable how the wise-old political wizards of the Centre-Left in India committed this monumental blunder of allowing the Mumbai ATS to suddenly discover “Hindutva terror” before regional elections and the general elections peeping in the horizon. The key figures chosen for media highlighting and vilification are significant : a mid-ranking male army officer and female religious activist. We can speculate whether these figures were deliberately chosen to make a plausible story (sourcing of explosives and technology from “military” experience and ideological motivation from religious activist – a “female” terrorist is also a scoring point in favour of Islam as apologists can shout – look, at least in India Islam is so good as not to make females into terrorists, and therefore how bad the “Hindus” are! the more this drama goes on the more it becomes too convenient a political scoring point for the Centre-Left). We can speculate if it was done to reassure Muslim voters that the Centre Left was doing all it could to demonize the “Hindu” and therefore the Muslims should vote overwhelmingly in their favour. However I am less concerned with motivations if any for concocting such a storyline – for as the future will show, the Centre Left loses the game in all possible ways.

It will not matter if the “Hindu” accused really were or were not involved in the blasts. Any calculation by the Centre Left of using this “case” to serve one or more of the three main possible objectives (1) in regional/provincial elections to gain  Muslim votes (2) demonize the “Hindu” and make it embarrassing for the common “Hindu” to vote from community and cultural affiliations (3) to distract the general and rising anger in non-Muslim populations of India about the de-facto helplessness or lack of political will in the Centre Left whose only strong stands against Islamic Jihadi terrorism excel in the volubility of their media statements, will prove futile. The Centre Left completely fails to understand the long-term shift in the general non-Muslim Indian consciousness towards a open recognition of the extremely retrogressive and traumatic role of Islam on the subcontinent (this recognition remained deeply submerged but dormant under official educational propaganda and patronage of Islam compared to denigration and demonization of the Hindu starting officially approved school textbooks which detail plenty of “evils” of “Hinduism” but none whatsoever in the revealed traditions).

By picking on a “Hindu” armyman  and a “Hindu” woman religious activist, ironically the Centre Left will realize soon what cultural icons they have created for the “Hindu” – symbols that will only gain stature if the government manages to prove them “guilty”. To the common Hindu mind, if they really carried out the “blasts”, they were for the first time in decades doing something in revenge or retaliation against persistent Islamic terror that started within India through Pakistan sponsored Talebani Jihad in Kashmir – in the face of what will appear to be consistent failure by the Centre Left to protect non-Muslims of India from Jihadi Sadism. This is the same strategy of “retaliation” from the population in a situation that appears to continue to provide relentless terror and repression “tolerated” or “indirectly protected” by a national government that was followed by the Palestine “Liberation” movement against Israel and was romantically lauded by the Centre Left for decades. This has proven quite successful for the Palestinians with Israel politically cornered, and the basis for this success, the gain of political legitimacy in the the minds of populations who had felt helpless and unprotected before has every likelihood of being repeated in the arena of social consciousness in India.

It is this tremendous blunder by the Centre Left in failing to read the basic social trend that will cause them to regret this incident in the decades to come. The Right of course in the future will come to realize this as a turning point that indicates the fundamental changes taking place in Indian society that ultimately will lead in its favour.

part 4

Before I continue with my series on the “immensely significant periphery” of the Indian subcontinent, I would like to touch here briefly on the “heartland” India itself, as its fundamental trends are going to have an impact on the developments in the periphery. India is crucially and deeply involved in almost all the countries of the “periphery”.

The recent investigations and attempts by the Mumbai ATS to implicate the so-called “Hindu Right Wing” in the blasts in the predominantly Muslim areas of Nanded and Malegaon in Maharashtra is significant for more reasons than the obvious immediate ones in the minds of the investigators or in their political “motivators” within the Congress led government both at the state as well as the national level as suggested by the political detractors of the Congress. Any speculation as to the political motivations to paint the “Hindu” as terrorist and equate with the “Islamic” terrorists with the next general elections in sight is good food for the “political” media. So far all the “brain mapping” and “modern” techniques of extraction of truth has failed to provide any basis for the speculative allegations against the so called “Hindu Right”. Scanning the media reaction and media trial by “secular” forces of the security apparatus’ attempts at “nailing” Islamic terrorists we can find a deep suspicion and derision of any “identification” of Islam with “terrorism” and where it becomes really indefensible – we hear loud protests that we should all actually look into the real “provocations” behind such “Muslim reactions”. The same voices appear to be instantly convinced about the legitimacy of the Mumbai ATS’s claims, and leads us to realize the real political affiliations of this “progressive” “neutral and objective” voices which are allowed solely to be voiced on the media. In any case these are all processes of short term duration played out in the immediate future.  We should look at the real significance of this phenomenon for the longer term.

The fact that some “Hindus” could decide to take matters into their own hands, was always a possibility, and I have repeatedly stressed this out here in my blog.  The root of this phenomenon goes back a long way into the history of the Indian subcontinent and how that history has been reconstructed in the modern period under the British and its successor regimes for their own hegemonistic purposes. The fundamental problem is that of the complete denial by regime dependent historians of the Nehruvian and post Nehruvian Congress-(pro-Soviet)-Leftist schools of Indian history of Islamic atrocities on the non-Muslims of India throughout the numerous invasions and conquests and the various Islamic state authorities, and the struggle carried on by the non-Muslims against such Islamic behaviour. The fact is that the memory of Muslim torture, rape, abduction and forced marriage of women, enslavement, extreme economic exploitation with religious justifications, carries on in non-Muslim groups who have strong traditions of intergenerational transfer of knowledge and experiences. The handing down of this memory, a basic distrust of all things Islamic, runs deep in most strongly bonded “Hindu” clans and communities that have faced Islamic onslaught and survived still maintaining their “Hindu” identity, and does not need the “official” vehicle of “historical education” under the watchful reconstructive eyes of the Thaparite school of Indian history.

Just as Islam failed to completely convert all Indians because of the intensive and long drawn out struggle against Islam – an aspect completely suppressed by the Thaparites as it would jeopardize their “idyllic” myth of peaceful conversions and perfect communal amity – the Thaparites failed to completely brainwash all Hindus and rewrite the history of Islam in India in their minds. The Hindu appears docile, compromising, philosophical, “other-worldly” etc., but this is a deceptive impression – for the story of their struggle and their survival against the ruthless barbarities of Islam have been edited out of public representation through the media or education. This long struggle, which preserved their culture to a great extent (although traumatized and showing the cultural effects of such trauma in “self-repression”) if studied properly and honestly, will show that this is a community which appears “loose”, divided, ritualistic and carrying a lot of baggage like “caste” which can mostly be traced surprisingly to modern colonial regimes of Islam and the British – but all these are mere superficial features, the social veneer hiding their actual strategic flexibility and determination that have continuously produced characters like the legendary founders of the Vijaynagar empire, or Shivaji and Ranjit Singh.

The transition to “independence” in India followed the general subcontinental pattern of elite mobilization to get control of state power and machinery established by a colonial regime for the elites’ monopolistic hegemonistic enjoyment. This meant that the British actually handed over power to a regime that was likely to remain in the British sphere of influence and carry out policies in favour of British interests. The British helped liquidate opposition to Nehru within India by using discriminatory repression against likely alternative popular candidates, because Nehru showed significant psychological disjunction from the majority culture on the one hand and great affinity for the British “taste” or Islam on the other- thereby ensuring continuation of long term British imperialist design on the subcontinent.

The apparatus of state control under colonial regimes depended on the apparatus of personal power, and this structure was retained essentially even after transition. This implies retention of personnel and systems faithful to the previous colonial masters, with direct and indirect structures of ideological and cultural hegemony of the British continuing through various mechanisms like education (the current Prime Minister proudly reminded his British audience once that he was an “Oxonian” himself and that “many Oxonians” have in the past gone forth to rule India). This regime embarked on the project of redoctrinating the forthcoming generations of Indians into a soporific mythical history of India where everything “Hindu” was retrogressive and evil, and only those aspects of Hinduism which tried to be syncretic with the revealed traditions were worth treating without disdain – and all the revealed traditions as practised or introduced in India as paragons of virtue and as liberating for Indian society (The Thaparites actually manage to “confess” this agenda in their public posturings).   Such indoctrination programs could be maintained only as long as the generation represented in the state apparatus derived from colonial affiliations, remained active. Natural causes progressively diminish the proportion of such elements in the apparatus of social control, and it was a matter of time only that newer generations of Indians from the majority community would reassert their deep cultural affiliations to their own community.

All this will lead to a gradual strengthening of the “Hindu” community bonds, and cultural affinities. Modern generations of professionals or intellectuals will gradually erode or eliminate practises that are seen as retrogressive or obstructive towards reassertion of “Hindu” hegemony.  This cultural consolidation would not have taken a political turn, if the Indian regimes did not try to denigrate or delegitimize this “Hindu” cultural identity. Blatant whitewashing and patronizing of religions like Islam, in complete contradiction to social historical memory of the “Hindus”, alienated the community from political forces that supported such regimes. We have to remember, that there are concrete case studies of how Islamic forces were encouraged by such regimes when faced with possible electoral defeat at the hands of “leftists”, beginning in the 60’s – long before the rise of the BJP.  Similarly the Kashmiri Islamic aggression, the atrocities and ethnic cleansing of non-Muslim Kashmiris, continued without hindrance under these very same regimes beginning in the 70’s and intensifying into the late 80’s, long before the BJP became a significant electoral force. Early 70’s also showed that the essential character of Islam on the subcontinent had remained unchanged from its first appearance through the Arab raids into Sindh – through the brutal massacre, organized rape, and destruction of cultural icons of the “Hindus” in the then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. All these factors combined with the relentless terrorist activities of Islamic groups supported by Pakistan, forced the “Hindu” cultural consolidation process to take a political turn -as Hindus probably came to realize that they would need to control the apparatus of state power to ensure survival against violently retrogressive Jihadi Islam whose sole aim is to completely liquidate all traces of non-Muslim cultures.

The more the “Hindu” is demonized, and Islam raised sky-high in praise, the greater will be the politicization of this essentially cultural reassertion. Retaliation against atrocities that appear to continue under state “non-chalance” has been found to be effective – and is romantically praised in many circles both in the West and India – take the case of the Palestine “Liberation” movement for example. The Indian state has not been able to stop Kashmiri Jihadi Islami atrocity nor has it been able to prevent explosions at huge human costs sourced by Islamic militants. It was only a matter of time before some “Hindu” thought of retaliation seeing in the government’s consistent failure  and indirect “encouragement” and protection of Islam – the root ideological cause and motivation for such violence (and not the humans who are brainwashed at madrassah’s from childhood in hatred of the Qafir). Just as in Palestine, or Algeria, such retaliation will unfortunately prove quite effective – and the “villains” of today have every likelihood of turning “heroes” or “liberators” of the future. A long term side-effect of continued demonization of the “Hindu” will be an increasing acceleration of the community towards the “Right”, and I feel that the process has now become irreversible. The next general elections may not reflect this, but over a longer span of 10-20 years the trend will be evident.

This Right-wing tendency will not necessarily be characterized by a dominance of “Brahmins” (as its opponents hopefully try to prophecy). The leadership is more likely to come from the “middle/upper middle” order of the social hierarchy, and surprisingly or in complete contradiction to “social wisdom” could even contain so-called “backward castes”. This wil be a defensive consolidation initially, and then turn increasingly aggressive towards all forces it sees as potentially hazardous for its cultural survival. Once this trend takes political shape, there is hardly any force left in the subcontinent that will be able to survive against it without huge foreign intervention. This Right wing consolidation also has effects on the periphery. Its immediate beneficial effects will perhaps be first felt by Sri Lanka and Nepal. But more of this later!

part 5

Now that the Election Commission “of” (the technical and formal legal separation of the Election Commission as a completely independent entity can have some legal complications in the future as part of the broader problem of legitimacy of entire “reformation” process)  the “interim” “Caretaker” government of Bangladesh has announced a tentative schedule for the December parliamentary elections, the question of the nature of the future regime comes up. The case of this “regime to be” is of crucial significance as an indication of how Islamic politics in South Asia is going to transform itself in the near future.

As I have speculated before, the elections will take place only if the two major groupings in Bangladeshi elite can be coerced into agreeing to the long term agenda of the military and its international allies – which come under two major mutually dependent but antagonistic international groups – the predominantly Christian, white industrial export oriented West, and the Islamic oil-gas exporters of the Middle East (historically no less colour based racist compared to Europe – for this it is enough to look at the Arabic and Persian Islamic chroniclers who inevitably refer to the people of Indic origin abusively and derisively as “black faced Hindoo”, or are always very conscious of “white” or “black” colour in the Indians and write appreciatively of “white” whenever they see them in an otherwise “dark” subcontinent – see Firishta, Biladuri, Masudi, and many others, especially the Arabic ones). The mutual dependence between these two international “blocks” (not homogeneous, they have their own internal conflicts, but here I refer to their block nature in terms of Bangladesh only) is over “energy” and “markets”, and the conflict is of course over “ideological domination” over the world (in both religions, historically at a practical implementation religion has always been very nearly indistinguishable from biological greed – i.e., religions simply justify and “legalize” taking over of the biological resources of the “others”).

The Awami League has shown its flexibility already (as it has done also on many occasions previously) by possibly agreeing to the terms and conditions which like many other such “agreements” before, will never be made public. As I have also speculated before, the two weapons of “persuasion” in this has most likely been (1) mediation by the West (which probably affected the change in the “mood” and “modus operandi” of the caretaker government over the last one year from aggressive deconstruction of the political apparatus to rehabilitation of the political apparatus) (2) the use of the trump card of the “Jamaat” – which typically is used by the military-feudal-business elite leadership to keep the “anti-Urdu non-Jihadist Bengali” elements in check.

The case of the BNP is more interesting. I have already written about my assessment that the elite and its social support heavily leans towards Islamic authoritarianism, and they remain the overall dominant force in Bangladesh politics. This ideological leaning should not be confused with formal party affiliations, as its elements will appear all across the political spectrum with the exception of perhaps the extreme Left. One of the features of any society where Islam has managed to finish off “almost all ideological opponents” is a distinctive feature  of the mass psychological acceptance of “authority” endorsed by the Islamic theologians- which is consistent with the basic tenor of the Quranic and Hadithic “revelation”  as a submission to some authority – and inevitably to the personification of that authority. In the struggle for claim over this authority the theologians always appear to have been stronger, and have always managed to keep Islamic societies closer to their own fossilized mindset that lives in the 7th century Arabian desert. Because Islam cannot deal with the complexity of modern science and technologically complex socio-economic superstructure, the theologians whose sole power derives from the existence of as near a copy as possible to the society of the prophet of Islam, the theocracy is ruthless in taking societies back as far as possible to their primitive ideal.

In the background of the history of Bangladesh, all this implies the incomplete Islamization of the region stemming from the late intrusion of Islam into the heartlands of Bengal, and the protracted struggle between predatory Islam and the non-Muslims as evident in numerous legends (which sometimes reveal the military resistance and the essentially initial military subjugation of mainly non-violent Buddhist groups followed by supposedly “peaceful” conversion as per modern propaganda – typically in modern renditions of the “spiritual” conquest by Islamic preachers and adventurers the chronicled accounts of initial military raids are either completely avoided or when undeniable are “mumbled” away  as “defensive” actions, and the historically significant clues as to the presence of some major Islamic state-military machine in close proximity is also suppressed) and significant clues in the British censuses which indicate slightly less than half the population still remaining non-Muslim at the beginning of British Imperialist presence. This “incomplete” Islamization of Bengal was always a problem with the theocracy of Islam and their closely linked patrons in Islamic state machinery. To a certain extent, with the help of the British, and the political dishonesty of the Nehru-Gandhi axis, they managed to revive the classic Jihadi Islamic strategy of ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims to capture land, wealth and women of non-Muslims, during the partition of India to create Pakistan, and thereafter manipulate social conditions to ensure that non-muslims continue to “emigrate” out of Islamic Bengal.

The process having accelerated during the buildup to the Liberation War of 1971, (exact proportions of non-Muslims raped, murdered or forced to flee as refugees compared to overall estimates are never concretely discussed, and typically “patriotically” dismissed as all part of overall Bangladeshi casualties implying that any further demographic analysis which might reveal the basic Islamic Jihadi bias against non-Muslims would be “unpatriotic”), Bangladesh’s elite cleverly managed three basic objectives (1) reducing the number of non-Muslims (the census revelations of missing Hindu populations are indirectly blamed on the “unpatriotic” India leaning mindset of “Hindus”) and gaining their lands (the Enemy Property Act which was practically a license for Muslims to take over “Hindu” property without any compensation enacted by Pakistan was retained for a long time in independent Bangladesh) (2) manage to exclude West Pakistani elite from exploitation of Bangladesh resources which the elite could now control for their own private profit through the achievement of an independent nation (3) reestablish more direct ties and connections with the Islamic heartland as an independent nation without having to go through the regimes of Pakistan.

We have to remember that a substantial portion of Bangladeshi elite are ethnically descended from pre-Islamic non-Muslim elite, who as late as the waning Mughal period were converting into Islam to preserve their political and feudal existence. This is also evident in the anthropological composition and appearance of the spectrum of elite leadership – even if they have high flying claims of descent from “illustrious” Arabic or Persian Islamic roots.  The fundamental concern of this elite is to hold on to power and hence overall control of exploitation of resources. There could also be a basic continuity of cynical Brahmanical priestly theocracy under the new garb of Islam which provides lots of opportunities to reduce embarrassment for evidence of personal biological greed compared to pre-Muslim ideologies. The incomplete Islamization has paradoxically given rise to this peculiar situation of polity in Bangladesh – it has transformed Brahminical theocratic exploitation (the Brahmins could have been eager converts as they were numerically weaker compared to the Buddhists, and could have found a better excuse for their greed  in Islamic formalism) into a Islam justified feudal mindset and claims of authority. Having separated from the main subcontinental culture with violence, the elite needs the support of the Islamic power centres of Saudi Arabia and Iran, to maintain the predominance of Islamic theology which would allow a more natural submission of the non-elite to that of the elite – this comes out in the frequent defiant admissions of favouring “Islam” or “refusal to take action against Islamic theocracy” by spokespersons of the military-elite “caretaker” governments as well as “past” leaders from the military.

In the mindset of the elite, the key to holding onto state power is the deepening of Islamic authority under their political control, as otherwise the cultural tendencies of the Bengali’s (like their non-Muslim brothers in West Bengal) would lead them to experimentation of the most radical of modern ideologies which usually spells disaster for what one Bangladeshi author has translated as “timber mullah’s” (I would rather translate it as “dimwit”).

The Jamaat has been re-kitted out in formal political clothes that would make it less embarrassing for the military political elite  in its international posturing towards the West, and promptly adopted into the political process. This is the key force of Islamic theocracy, and will never be abandoned by the elite. It will be used to keep those in favour of modernization and weakening of theocracy in the left-of-centre/centre as in the fourteen party alliance around the AL, under pressure. It will also be used to bring around the remaining right wing of the elite’s broader social basis of support  based around the BNP into the agenda of the military leadership. The BNP leadership may rail its rhetoric against the “current government” in field “rabble-rousing” for political credibility, but incredible as it may sound, it is the wee little tail of Jamaat that will wag the dog of the right wing “led” by the BNP.

With consistent and persistent state patronage and extensive foreign support, Islamic theocracy has substantial hold on the common Bangladeshi now. It will be the height of political stupidity to assume that the Right has taken a knocking and will come out the worst in the “elections”. The campaign of the sector Commanders against the Jamaat and the existing “Rajakars” will not be very successful, as Jamaat’s role has been carefully politically rehabilitated by the military and allied political elite. Unless the West has worked out a compromise with the Saudis, to include and give a share of power to the AL, the military will actually ensure that the forces “centred” around Jamaat will win the elections to form the new regime.

This regime will be characterized by a strengthened Islamic theocracy, greater role of Islam in the long term internal and international policies, greater indirect military support, involvement in, control and mobilization of the Islamic forces, long-term eventual rise of Jamaaat as the dominant political force, greater penetration of the influence of the theologians into academics and the media and overt and covert liquidation of cultural entities deemed to be a threat to absolute eventual control by the Islamic forces (more of incidents like vandalization of the statue of the “integrative” “syncretic” Baul “emperor” will take place without any state retribution).

Part 2

Obama’s rather rash remark about Pakistan should not be held against him by the Islamic Jihadist world. Democrats usually make such statements on the heat of the moment, but they have almost always turned out to be the greatest patrons and protectors of Islamic fundamentalism, alongside Republican manipulations in favour of strategic utilization of Islamic Jihad to settle international and domestic political scores – like that by Reagan in the case of Iran. In fact some of the greatest friends of Islamic Jihadi progress have come from the most vociferous of their “expected” ideological enemies – like Kissinger of Jewish origin, the friend of Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and one who claims to have even “opposed” his own administration over its support to Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Similarly the communist Soviet Union, or the socialists and leftists of various shades where Islam is non-dominant, in spite of posturing about themselves being the only legitimate “progressives” of the world, (except in the Islam dominated countries like that of the middle-East, in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, or Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh where the leftists were dealt with in true Islamic style – Sadistic enjoyment of physical torture and liquidation of ideological opponents) turn out to be staunchest of friends and protectors of Islamic Jihad until they are themselves wiped clean off by Islam.

If he wins, he will scale down US military involvement against Islamic Jihad to a certain extent, although the traditional military-industrial-business complex’s interests will oppose this scaling down if it threatens their existence.  Also I have a feeling that the financial situation will suddenly “ease up” if Obama wins, and a short term miraculous return of “confidence” will take place, with loosening up of apparent financial flows. The restriction of financial flows coincided with a timeline that is intimately connected with the US presidential elections, and without going into a lot of technical discussion about international capital flows from “hot sources” like the oil-profit flush mainly Islamic countries or trade-surplus flush China, we can apply a very old principle in crime detection – who benefits from the “crime”, in this case who benefits from the “financial crisis”? The immediate tying up of the “crisis” with “Bush” and the “Republicans”  is perhaps an important pointer. This will become more obvious, if “confidence” and financial flows “return” on the election of Obama. In that case this “high” will continue for some time, probably for the next financial year, and then the western economy will be in for another shock. The reason for this short term recovery and subsequent further damage and financial mayhem, is the essentially political motivation behind capital that is generated and controlled under state regimes with strong ideological leanings and commitments. Capital from such regimes will be used for political purposes, and it is in both the oil-rich OPEC and China’s interests that the financial system of the West is weakened sufficiently for their initial targets of removing western penetration into Asia.  For these forces, a short term revival of the financial situation will be conducive to ensuring that the west turns its attention inwards and relieves the military pressure on Islamic Jihad. The rolling back of US pressure on the middle east will give time to the Jihadis to recuperate and recapture “lost” ground both in a military and ideological sense – a situation similar to the one following the withdrawal of US helpers of Mujahideen after withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan – paving the way clear for PakistanI and Saudi Jihadi takeover of the region.

In the long run however, it is not in the interests of Islam and China to continue to allow the west to flourish “financially” as strengthening of the economy of the west will in its turn revive Western interests in blocking Jihadi takeover of Asia. So eventually the financial crisis will return to the west.

What are the ways out?

(1) The west has to make its single societal obsession to be self-sufficiency in energy, and food.

(2) Be “patriotic” in spending – buy “local” and produce, produce, produce – all the basic necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter. Stop buying products sourced from Islamic countries or China – this will at least partly address the huge trade gap problem. Rather cooperate and take community initiatives to “produce” locally and develop local economies and markets, and not depend on international trade and exports for prosperity.

(3) Address problems of racial, ethnic and other forms of discrimination within western societies that provide opportunities for propaganda and misrepresentation of ulterior motives and agenda of aggressive and retrogressive ideologies like Islam.

(4) force governments to make “capitalism” social – bring the real “free market” conditions of Hayek by preventing concentration of capital in the hands of the few, and instead of socialist largesse or benefit, provide access and capability to use capital to the “lowest of the low” and encourage individual initiative.

(5) Reject and boycott politicians or political forces that compromise with or protect Islamic or Chinese propaganda and interests out of greed for profit from otherwise non-productive huge accumulated capital of the small elite groups that support such political entities, or out of greed of capital from middle eastern oil profits.

Americans are going to vote for one or the other of the two contenders for the President’s chair at the White House, but who is going to be chosen by the United States? And how much is that choice going to be influenced by the desires and tantrums of the “significant others” in the international frienemy partnerships of the US?

As in any formal democracy, apparently or officially it is the common voter who chooses the winner in the US elections, although there are perhaps much simpler electoral mechanisms available as alternatives. But how are the choices of voters in their turn “chosen”? The common voter is always working under imperfect and incomplete and sometimes deliberately misleading information. The common voter is also guided by his or her personal history and learned responses to situations or decision problems. It can be shown through a simple game theoretic model, that in a two-party situation, both party’s positions or policies tend to converge to the average or median voters preferences’. In a broad sense this has been happening to the Obama-McCain campaigns too  – they have little difference in their vagueness and the few points of clarity in claimed future economic policy – supposed to be a crucial factor in the current elections.

It is surprising that there is little speculation about the international perspectives and significance of the timeline of the so-called “financial crisis” in the US. Crucially the “crisis” began to accelerate in the very election year, when there is a perception in many international quarters that an actual change of party in power could have significant political ramifications for US foreign policy and and its effects on international alliances both in competition and partnerships with the US. As many in the banking and financial industries have tried to point out and not without some justification that the crisis was more a crisis of confidence than a real one. Although I disagreed with this view from the economic viewpoint in my previous posts, as I have tried to point out repeatedly that there was a trade in “fictitious commodities” not backed up by real production, and the only thing that kept it going was the expectation of the general inbuilt trend of the world economy to grow over time, and current “fictitious trade” being balanced against future production. Such a scenario will always be vulnerable to manipulation of “confidence”.

The US and UK led western coalition’s heavy dependence on middle-eastern oil profit investment back into their economies is a fundamental vulnerability of not only their economies but also their political systems. China is sympathetic to the Islamic cause, which it sees as a tool that can be effectively used to prevent western dominance of Asia, and which it then hopes to lap up for itself in the future when it increases its economic and military power sufficiently. China has already begun tasting the fruits of its own Islamic and ethnic separatist medicine it applied with glee on the Indian subcontinent, in its own backward of the Muslim tribal belts in North Western China. But the severe ideological blindness which the remnants of “Sinified” Marxism still imposes on the Party-state structure will continue to propel  its leadership towards an imperialist program covered under either genuine self-delusion or deliberate propaganda that it is after all the propagation of a “better philosophy of living”. In this sense China is falling into the same delusional trap that the pre-WWII imperialist Japan fell into – declaring that in conquering and administering Asia it was liberating it from “pernicious” Gai-Jins. China’s trade gap with the US has continued soaring in its favour, and a huge part of this trade gap is reinvested into the US financial markets. The combined effect of Middle eastern oil capital and Chinese trade surplus capital is at most studied in its economic context only, if at all recgonized. But what is being crucially left out is the political consequence of capital from these two sources.

Having faced the Bush administration’s eight years of onslaught on the middle east, and its utilization of the fanaticism of an increasingly Jihadist Islam to re-penetrate into the Islamic world after the devastating bunglings in the 50’s to the 70’s (the paranoid obsession to eliminate “communism” leading to supporting and establishing fundamentalist Islamic regimes as an antidote, in Iraq, and Iran, with complete misunderstanding of the core tenets of Islam and seduced by the deceptive propaganda of these forces as to the real objectives of Islam), the Islamic world now dominated by two main state establishments of the Saudis and Iran, are likely to do everything to see to it that Bush policies are reversed. To a certain extent Bush’s agressive intervention against Islamic forces who ultimately draw their inspriration from the orthodoxy of Sunni Wahabi Arabian Islam, is actually damaging for the Saudi royal establishment which patronizes at least officially by “default” but actually by various indirect state sponshorships the Wahabi Islamic propaganda aimed at eradicating non-Muslim cultures. This fear would be sympathetically echoed by China, and the two could actually coordinate to ensure that Bush’s policies are discontinued. In political terms this could translate into a destabilization of the vulnerable economic infrastructure of the USA.

Sections of the American middle class can hope to have reversal of government policy in favour of job generation if Obama comes to power. Given the basic capitalist strutcure, even Obama will have little power to redsitribute capital among the middle class. There are two ways forward – one is to go back to the 1933 FDR policy of Keynesian public spending to generate jobs from infrastructure development. But we have to remember that at the time of FDR, there was still a lot of “infrastructure” to be developed in the USA, and to a certain extent similar public spending on building or other development has relatively less significant scope. The other way forward is going to the microcredit route, and giving access to capital specifically to those people who would be considered too risky by standard or classical banking model. Such a way forward will be severely opposed by big business, and we have to remember that big business is represented equally in the leadership of both sides. There is also the crucial question of consistent neglect of devloping the capabilities of the American population in terms of increasing competitiveness, with an alarming rate of declining educational achievement compared to levels and skills in the growing or emerging economies. Without such capability development, and given the lack of small-scale industrial or agrarian opportunities in the US system, even microcredit will have a difficult time launching.

The democrats in general represent popular dreams and hopes but as with leftist tendencies anywhere, ultimately become more authoritarian, and conservative that the “Right”. Eric Hoffer, the Californian longshoreman,  once  observed along the lines that it is “best” and the “worst” of any society that really takes it forward. The weak knee of democracy is the bane of mediocrity, which makes it more stable, but also wary of individual ability, and historically a societal transition almost always takes place under authoritarian leadership – the so-called Gramscian dictatorship that is sufficiently detached from partisan affiliations to impose drastic beneficial changes.

To a great extent the success of the US system was its copying and modernization of the concept of the Roman dictator (not emperor or the Imperator – a title typically won out of voluntary adulation by soldiers on the field, and other similar practises – like corona graminae), and to a great extent the troubles of the US echo uncannily the problems of the Roman Republic. The significant frienemies of the USA want a change, but will such a change be beneficial to the USA in the long run? The Roman mob, maintained by grain imported from African and Egyptian colonies and distributed freely by the Roman elite, ensured that the populist Caesarian cause  prevailed. The Roman elite in its bid to monopolize newly captured land and slave labour, had kept the Plebeians from having access to “productive capital” of the time (the dynamic used by Caesar’s uncle Marius to recruit soldiers and settle them in conquered lands) and made them dependent on largesse.  But this Caesarian cause ultimately gave the Julian dynasty which with the exception of its practical founder Octavian, foisted on Rome and its empire the horrors of Caligula or Nero, and started the long ultimate process of decline. Spectacular populist dictators were almost always bad for the health of the Roman republic.

So the question, a populist dictator of the Caesarian type or a more stable, less flamboyant and duller dictator with lesser capacity to do damage – which one is going to be chosen by the United States and not necessarily by American voters? To be or not to be….that is the question!

A leading web search engine flashed today the news of a serial blast in the far-eastern province of Assam in India, perhaps better known to most of us in the west as a label appearing on certain brands of tea. The blasts killed perhaps at least 65 people. Blasts are becoming an acceptable part of the common Indian’s life, so it no longer raises shockwaves. Indians go on about their daily business, and there is little reflection of ripples in the remote corners of the country. It is perhaps how Indians went on with their daily business when the Islamic hordes overran the north, in search of food, wealth, and women which their rapacious lifestyle had already denuded from the hinterland of India, in Persia and Central Asia. But what caught my attention was the casual mention of “possible involvement of suspected Hindu extremists” also in the recent blasts in India, along with the general statement and reference to Indian governmental claims of Pakistani secret service involvement along with suspected separatists and Islamic infiltrators. Just as the alleged attacks of the “Hindu” King of Kashmir, Harsha, on some “Hindu temples” is repeatedly shouted about by the Thaparites as claim that “iconoclasm” was of the same scale between Hindus and Muslims, while quietly suppressing the comment that the source of this claim Kalhana the chronicler makes  – that in doing so Harsha was behaving like a “Turushka” (Turk – a generic name used by early Indian chroniclers for Muslims, which the Thaparites twist into trying to exclude “Arabs” from the records of Islamic barbarism) – the authors and editors of this web-piece have been careful to try and associate “Hindus” also as potential terrorists at par with “Muslim” terrorists.

It is understandable that a for a lot of people, it is urgent to demonize the “Hindu”. It is crucial for political elite in India who are dependent on divisions of the “Hindu” vote. It is crucial for Islamic organizations who follow the Quranic and Hadithic injunctions to utilize the divisions in “unbeliever’s” attitudes towards Islam to utilize support or sympathy of one “unbeliever” group against another, until all “unbeliever” groups are weakened and assimilated or conquered – typically, the best and preferred method being execution of adult males,  and enslavement of children (pre-puberty males) and the women, and taking over all lands and wealth of non-Muslims. It is also crucial for the ideologically committed and therefore of limited statesmanship in the Left, for possible reasons ranging from a cynical recognition that the “mainstream” Indian society still abhors “communism” based on their loose “Hindu” religious identities, or a secret admiration and attraction for the colonial period reconstructed claims of “Islamic brotherhood and community feeling” , or as some scholars have speculated, may even have its origins from the failure and frustration of the Bengali “armed anti-British insurrectionists” (who dominate among the founding fathers of  Indian Communism) to mobilize the Muslims of Bengal in their anti-colonial cause.

For long I have had my own debates with myself about the “Hindu”. In my study of the “Hindu” sources, I have increasingly come to the realization that at least at one level the Thaparite criticism that the “Hinduism” of today did not exist in the past, is correct. For the Thaparites, this non-existence is confirmed by what they interpret as (1) lack of a unified centre and presence of sects (2) lack of surviving records of the term “Hindu” (3) literary evidence of practises that are taboo in modern “Hinduism”.  Although I do find a severe and crippling lack of logical clarity on the part of the Thaparites, I agree with their conclusion – that many of the features of “modern Hinduism” never existed. Where the Thaparites stop short, for obvious reasons of their political agenda and affiliation, are the exploration of historical causes behind introduction of “such features” into the philosophy, ritual and practice of the survivors of pre-Islamic Indians among Islamic state authorities.

I am going to raise a few simple ideas that the “Hindus” can possibly consider. I will justify where I feel direct justifications exist from within “Hindu” literary sources, and where no such justifications exist, I will simply ask that the proposed idea be considered as an extension or interpretation of an idea contained within the basic philosophical and logical texts of the Upanishads.

My proposition consists of four basic and simple ideas :

(1) Replace the use of the word “Hindu” with the word “Bharatyia”. The word definitely does not exist in the core literature, and although occuring early among the Islamic scholars the earliest references from the “Hindu” side appear only in certain royal inscriptions in the medieval period in Central and South India. Almost certainly the etymology of the word comes from a corruption of a root derived from the Sanskrit “Sindhu” and transformed by the tongue of foreigners, especially foreigners who have been associated beyond doubt with the “Hatem” divide of “Satem/hatem” linguistic divide in the Indo-European – and therefore a distinct region beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Indian subcontinent. The Bharatyia is a better description of the body of the nation as it connects solidly and consciously with the geographical territory of the subcontinent, as mainly established in the highly political tract of the epic Mahabharatam. I will later give my commentary on the Mahabharatm as embodied political ideology of the “Bharatyia” nationhood, and here only mention my suspicion that the name of “Bharat” was deliberately chosen by the constructors of the epic not as a mere name of  king or emperor – but for very specific features and actions by this mythical king which set him apart from other mere royalty and made him a representation of an ideal of “statehood” or “nation” (Bharat disinherited his biological heirs, and gave the reign to someone outside royal birth, because he valued the “nation” and its interests higher than his own personal feelings or attachments).

(2) “Varna” is a descriptive attribute and not a classificatory one and not an inherited one.  Each person should be considered as having all the four “Varnas” inside him or her, and depending on the context, each person can and should manifest features of all four “Varnas” as and when required. The same individual when a student or participating in a ritual is a “Brahman”, when fighting a war is a “Kshatryia”, when carrying on “trade” or commerce is a “Vaishya” and when doing physical labour is a “Shudra”.  At different time points in life, all these roles can become important and necessary for the single human being.  I will give both textual justifications for this more elaborately later, as well as my own interpretations and justifications.

(3) Give the formal symbol of “Yognapobita” (the “sacred thread”) to all students of “Bharatyia darshan” (Bharatyia philosophy) irrespective of origin, class, region, gender. Once given the symbol could be worn also when participating in a ritual, but only in these cases of being a student or participating in a religious ceremony. This definitely does have precedence in the literature.

(4) Make the Upanishadic concept of “Charaibeti” – “never become stationary – move on” as the central concept of “Bharatyia Darshan”. The continuous “quest” for understanding, revisiting previous understanding and requestioning continuously as and when new understanding or knowledge is achieved. All else, rituals, practises, laws, injunctions, should be subordinate to this central concept. Only the act of “quest” should be the permanent feature and all else should be taken as transitory and temporary, and understood as an imperfect response to current conditions and limitation of knowledge. Views of the world, including that of any supra-human conscious authority controlling all processes, or the absence of any such, should be treated the same – subordinate to the quest. This can seem a bit too strong on the agnostic or atheist side, but there are substantial references to the basics of this concept in the Upanishads. Moreover, as stated, the concept is far from pure agnosticism (the concept does not rule out searching or questing the possibility of existence of such an “authority”) or pure atheism (it does not rule out any current understanding by some of what they experience or what some in the future may experience as “God”).  However, as I have said in the introduction, I see no reason to be limited by the exact wordings of a text, and we can extend or interpret – for it is the human mind which thinks of the text, it is the human hand which writes it or gives words to it, and it is another human mind which reads it or hears it.

I think these four basic concepts can be worthwhile to explore, having foundational basis in the preexisting philosophical and religious texts and therefore not completely alien or rejectable by those who need the reassurance of continuity – as tools for moving forward, for unifying the people of the subcontinent into a forward looking nation, the ultimate dream of the ultimate statesman in the Mahabharatam – Krishna.

Who is hit the worst in a liquidity crisis? Not those who never had really any access to capital – the vast majority in any system who are deemed to be too “risky” by the dispensers of capital, the banks and the financial institutions. Not the big corporates, who hold sufficient capital stock or have sufficient power over policy-makers to “bail” them out with more “funds” filched from the public through the compulsory extraction process of taxation. It is the small producer, manufacturer, and the employees of such small production processes, who suffer the most, together with those employees at the bottom income segment of larger concerns who have little or no negotiating powers with their “fett Katz” bosses.

If it is the Government which needs to use public money, then where should this money go? This money should go the people who never really had access to capital. This should go to the small manufacturers and producers, either to established businesses or to promote new entrepreneurs. This money should go to form new community development and self-sufficient urbanization programs with built in agrarian, small-scale industries, and power generation components.

We can use this great opportunity to build a new way of living. At the moment we live in a world of super specialization, not only in industrial production or professions, but also in our lifestyles. Conditions of business, commerce and economic production processes ensure that professions define completely and entirely what the lifestyle, source of income, and culture of a person or his/her immediate network would be. Contrary to popular academic sociological representations of a “networked” society, all our societies, are deeply divided – with closed “networks”, giving rise to class and deeply resented social fractures. Such closing off of “subnetworks” also means inefficiency in terms of the economy and productive forces or development, since opportunities and stimulating exposures to alternatives are not available to increasingly large portions of the society, and the society overall loses out on “brains” and “innovations”.

On the other hand, socio-economic groups can monopolize items or entities of broad demand in the society. Thus in many economies, agrarian producers are completely “disjoint” from industrial producers, and financial services are disjoint from both, all these interact only through the “market” or pure process of exchange, and each can try to exploit the others. This is a different kind of “monopoly” – a social kind, where these self-closed networks ensure that the corresponding economic basis of their negotiating power remains within the network, and that “outsiders” do not have access to it. This means “departure” from “free market” conditions in the social situation, and is bound to be “inefficient” in the social sense.

What I visualize may appear to be a fantasy for many, but it is possible to go along this way. I visualize a world where human settlements are both agrarian and industrial with living conditions driven by “urban” concepts – the agrarian-industrial city.  Each such settlement recycles its waste, produces most if not all of its energy, contains the entire spectrum of habitats from managed forests, water bodies, farms and industries. Crucially the residences should never be far from farms, as well as industries, and that both “farmers” and “industrial workers” share the same living locations. This increases energy efficiency, by cutting down on transport and storage requirements, and increases financial efficiency as system loss due to the intermediaries who live off on the pure process of circulation or movement of commodities. There are obvious health benefits too. Ideally, people from both sectors should have some direct participation in the other sector, for example it would be crucial for industrial workers to have access to farming jobs on a part time basis, or small plots of land on their own to cultivate. Similarly “farmers” should have access to small scale industrial jobs, or access to trade-sheds to carry out small-scale industrial or processing works. Hands on experience on economic processes of vital importance but not of personal specialization, provides two important buffers – (1) increased negotiating power with these “other” sectors in the larger economy (2) a fall back option to produce the bare essentials if the larger economy fails to provide it.

All these can be done within well-experimented frameworks of small-credit, or “micro-credit”, and cooperatives. Financially it makes sense, as the capital is spread around in “many baskets” rather than one small “basket” which has shown time and again to lead us into “crises” like the present one. Especially in conditions when huge capital accumulation has taken place, and therefore comes under the effects of the “law of diminishing returns”, spreading this capital around in micro-credit raises the overall capital appreciation rate (rates in micro-credit are astronomically higher than in conventional “lend only to those who already have” practises of banks).  This will also produce a much broader base for economic growth and distribution of “prosperity”.

I am limited here in how far of “academic exposition” of my vision in economic terms I can give. Formal models will involve meso-economic processes, and interactions both at the macro as well as the micro.  However, the broad sense of what I am implying and its consequences can be worked out by readers on their own, based on their own personal understandings and experiences, without going through mathematical models. Political will to carry out and implement such a program is lacking, as even in “full fledged democracies”, the political “power” elite form semi-closed “subnetworks”, from which the general electorate are forced to choose what appear to them to be the best instantaneous “choice”. These subnetworks of necessity develop economic “contacts” and mutually enforceable ties with the corporate world – sometimes out of the sheer necessity of dealing with the corporates as the dominant force of the national economy. The corporate sector will desperately and ruthlessly try to hog the share of public funds, and it is the task of the “electorate” to see to it that they do not get it without at least some compromise to allow a portion to be released into programs of the sort I have described above. In the end even the corporates will benefit from the overall deepening and broadening of the “market” arising out of such redistribution of capital.

In my previous post on the latest series of blasts in India, at Malegaon, I had raised three possible scenarios -

” ….(1) If Islamic terrorists did this, why would they want to have Muslims killed in the blast? Or is it that this was the safest place to carry out blasts, given that deep cover was necessary now when the security forces would be combing the whole country – and such cover could only be provided by a sufficiently large and entrenched Muslim community, and therefore the momentum of Jihad could only be maintained by continued explosions but now only within a smaller feasible radius around the base of the cover. It could also be punishment to the local Muslims at large, who might have shown reluctance or lack of sufficient enthusiasm to join the Jihadi network – there is strong disapproval in the Quran for those Muslims who show “reluctance” in joining militant Jihad or providing material support for such Jihad.

(2) A second more sinister aspect could be a tactical calculation that, these attacks could be attributed to the so-called “Hindu Right wing”, and thus help in the current apparent campaign of the UPA to try to equate “Islamic terror” with “Hindu Right”. If true this would be a very subtle and cynical tactic on the part of the Jihadists, as it achieves many objectives – (1) this makes Jihadi terror appear more “palatable” (2) helps the Congress in its desperate fight to utilize minority support in the coming elections and attempt at delegitimizing the BJP  (3) makes the vacillating among the “secular” Hindus shaky in identifying with or leaning  towards the “Hindu Right”.

(3) A third possibility could be a copy-cat retaliation from among the non-Muslims of India, as a part of making Muslims share the pain of Jihadi and Islamic terror. This could be an increasing possibility if the Islamophile state policy of India continues. The reaction to Islamic terror is coming, in spite of my deep reluctance to accept the reality of such reaction which will tend not to distinguish between the barbaric theologians of Islam and the common brainwashed followers who in the case of India will be descended from the most unfortunate of pre-Muslim Indians, and one day it will sweep Islam away and deposit it in history’s garbage heap.”

The Mumbai Anti Terror Squad (ATS) has apparently suddenly found “evidence” of possible “extremist Hindu” groups in the Malegaon blasts. This is the same ATS whose “evidence” was severely questioned and doubted by the so-called “right-minded” secular “intellectuals” and “activists” when such “evidence” concerned “possible extremist Islamic” groups. The so-called secular forces fail to realize that by dismantling the credibility (in India, such issues are usually decided by trial by the media, who appear to be under strict compulsions to always portray the “Hindu” as “fascist” – for example in a documentary on the Kandhmal incident, I saw the commentator consistently describe tribals converting out of Christianity and describing their reasons for  “disillusionment” openly on the camera as evidence for “conversion into Hinduism out of terror”, or another commentator with great reluctance mumbling briefly about “the general atmosphere of fear” when she discovers on camera that the tribal family hiding out in the forests every nightfall away from their homes was actually “Hindu” as obviously this would be a “blot” in the overall representation of a “one-sided” Hindu “assault”) of the ATS when it “went against Muslims” it leaves the door open to raise similar doubts when the ATS “goes against Hindus”.

Those who would want to see a pattern, could perhaps easily find a pattern of “finding” evidence of implication of “Hindu extremism” in those parts of India, where either the BJP is dominant, or is likely to be a strong contender for state power in the upcoming general elections. There is now increasing symptoms of what is possibly a very cynical political tactic – try to equate “Islamic terror” with an invented “Hindu terror”, and thereby try an prevent “Hindu consolidation” as a political force. This is only the result of extreme panic on the part of portions of the political elite who have thrived on maintenance and strengthening of fissures in Indian society (some of which like caste by birth, are of dubious historical authenticity although declared by historians to be of endemic and ancient in nature) that the processes of “Hindu consolidation” are accelerating.

In my previous post I have written about the current political situation in Bangladesh, where I have expressed my serious concerns about the role of the army in consolidation of the Saudi theologian led radicalization of Bangladeshi Islam, and Islam’s agenda for the subcontinent as a whole. But in the introduction I have also promised visions of revolutionary and positive changes for the “immensely significant periphery”.  In this post we will look at the potential for “positive changes” for Bangladesh.

Historically, Bengal (the undivided province) was one of the richest areas of the subcontinent, with a thriving agrarian and “industrial” economy – with records and evidence for a flourishing trade link with Egypt, South East Asia, as well as the Roman empire, in commodities like sugarcane molasses, cotton and fine cotton textiles. The province was sufficiently rich to support independent Sultanates against the nominal control of the Delhi Sultanate, and whenever the central-Northern Indian empires weakened, this tendency of the region to secede politically revived. The same pattern emerged when the Mughal empire weakened, with the Subahdars, and the Nawabs emerging as semi-independent rulers of the region (the highly emotional claim in Bengali literature of the “last independent” Nawab is fallacious – technically and formally, the Nawabs were “vassals” of the Mughal emperors, and Siraj was not the last Nawab either, as he was “legally” followed by Mir-Jafar and Mir Qasim who were “formally” endorsed by the Mughal emperor). The revenue and the products of the province supported and provided a substantial portion of the income of Aurangzeb, towards the beleaguered dusk of his reign.

Bengal was also the first rich Indian plum in the East India Company’s pocket, whose looting of the province and its economy is far better recorded (and less suppressed than the records of destruction and denudation under Islamic rulers). The cumulative effect of Islamic looting for 600 years and British looting for 200 years  could be seen in the Bengal famine of 1943 – as official records indicate that by this period, this once rich, net exporter province had become a net importer of its staple food -rice, and any obstruction in the flow of such imports could land up Bengal in severe famine. The previous notorious large scale famine of 1769 can be tied up very well with extreme taxation at the hands of tax-farmers employed by the Company, but once the tax regime normalized the province regained its vitality to a certain extent, although it never regained its pre-Mughal or pre-Islamic prosperity.  The extent of Mughal and Sultanate period extraction and impoverishment of Bengal is well attested to by foreign travellers, [see my series on How Islam came to India...economic decline], but systematic British exploitation brought Bengal to its knees.

After Partition from India, Bangladesh was virtually treated as a semi-colony by west Pakistan, and the issue was partly a motivator for the independence movement. Even after independence and a tremendous growth in its productive capacity, population pressure has ensured that Bangladesh is still crucially dependent on imports of essential commodities from its neighbours, and mainly from it’s supposed nemesis-India. The main export earnings of Bangladesh comes from its historical main commodity of export – cotton textiles. Since the ethnic and cultural (in spite of religious divides) composition of Bangladesh is essentially similar to that of  neighbouring Indian province of West Bengal, we should expect cultural biases in favour of intellectual and technological achievement. Thus with proper modern and widely accessible scientific and technological education, Bangladesh can achieve the potential it originally enjoyed before the advent of Islam or the British.

While most of Indian populations have had greater success with modern education and technological elevation, the main obstruction in the progress of Bangladesh has been the grip of Islam over its society. On the one hand Islam prevented the majority of Bangladeshi populations from joining the secular and modernizing trends within British India, and led directly to their subservience to Pakistani exploitation without any benefits of modernization. On the other hand Islam of the Arabic version had never had it easy with the ingrained traditions, beliefs and culture of the Bangladeshis – and nowhere in the subcontinent are syncretic tendencies between Islam and Hinduism so vividly apparent as in Bangladesh. This second largest community of Islam remained quite consciously distant from the Wahabi versions of Islam and the Islamic theologians are forced to tolerate the indignities of hearing the appearance and peaceful coexistence of Hindu Krishna or Radha together with calls towards the God of Islam in the ever-popular songs of Hason Raja (descendant of converted Hindu elite).

With the realignment of Bangladesh elite under pressure from the army to the Islamic axis, this struggle between syncretic Bengali Islam and the revivalist, orthodox, and extremely retrogressive Sunni Wahabi Jihadi Islam has been gaining virulence since the formation of Bangladesh. The Islamic Jihadi theologians are quite worried that left to its own wiles, Bangladeshi Islam will forget the Arabic Islam’s agenda of Jihadi expansion and total liquidation of all non-Muslim cultures. This is the reason there has been increasing flows of funds to strengthen the Islamic propagation networks of the madrassahs and maqtabs or “charitable institutions” – the net effect of all such efforts being visible in the increasing militancy of overground and underground Islamic organizations in Bangladesh. In spite of all propaganda as to the early “peaceful Sufi” converters of Hindu Bengalis, the general pattern on the subcontinent is also found with Sufi or other modes of conversion – that their “huge” success almost always coincides with the presence of Islamic military forces in close proximity – and just like other Sufis, the more famous Sufis of Bengal show fondness for direct military action to win converts or wives.

If the Bangladesh army’s command core, and the elite whose networks give support to this core, can be prevented in this agenda of Wahabi Islamization of Bangladesh, the natural tendencies of this emotional and spirited community will move against Islamic retrogression – the socio-cultural aspects of Arabic Jihadi Islam being completely alien to this more diverse, productive, and flexible Bengali culture. Bangladesh can realize its full intellectual, economic and technological potential only if it is no longer burdened with Islam – the creed that most violently suppresses all “quests”,  “quests” that are the key towards progress. Modernization and technological upgrading of the productive forces would also bring in a fundamental change in the historical dynamic that at least partly fuelled Islamic conversions – the hunger for land in a highly productive agrarian economy, that forced Hindu elite to convert to preserve land ownership in the face of Turko-Afghan or Mughal aggression, or tempted the landless to convert and use the Jihadi sanctions to grab land from non-Muslims. In the process of this  national redirection, such a liberation from the authoritarianism of retrogressive Islam, will also transform or redefine “Islam” as represented by the Bangladeshi Muslims, and could be a way forward or an example for other Islamic communities not under direct and total control of Wahabi Sunni Islamic theologians.

Part 1

Part 3

The future scenario for the subcontinent is intricately linked with what happens in what we can loosely call the “greater” Bharatavarsha – the original Sanskritic name in literature for not only the subcontinent as we understand today but also including adjoining areas currently in Afghanistan, Iran, and central Asia. India derives from Graeco-European corruption of possibly Persian rendering of Sindhu [the Satem/Hatem divide in Indo-European] and is used mostly in European colonial terminology.

I am starting this series with what I choose to call the “immensely significant periphery”,  the countries of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan. I feel that the force of historical development is accelerating now in all the countries of the “immensely  significant periphery” and the future trends are dangerous, revolutionary on the one hand and hold also tremendous possibilities for positive change on the other hand and at the same time.

I will deal with the case of Bangladesh first, as it has been going through a peculiarly significant phase in its tumultous political history. I have already written about my analysis of the balance of forces in Bangladesh society as developed through its separation from India during the Partition, and its separation from Pakistan in 1971,  previously in this blog. I see no reasons to change my estimate, that forces of modernization and Bengali nationalism is slightly weaker than Islamic retrogression. The 1971 war against Pakistan was an anomaly in the sense, that apparently this weaker force managed to get rid of Pakistan’s grip on Bangladesh. However, we can see, that this tilting the balance in favour of the nationalists and modernizers was essentially due to the long covert and finally short overt support given by India. The two forces within Bangladesh fought under their respective leadership which however as in most Asian nationalist struggles, were mostly derived from the same social elite class networks. Factions within the elite fight it out for their personal ambitions and look for support among potential social groups whom they can manipulate to bolster their personal claims for state power. Thus, at the upper levels of this political contest, dividing lines of ideology tend to get blurred. As members of elite have the same social networks tugging on their sentiments, leanings and deep hidden inclinations.

It is critical to understand and identify this distinction between supporting social groups and their leadership to understand the evolution of subcontinental politics. In Bangladesh for example, the “nationalist” faction leadership originally evolved out of the Indian Muslim League (both radicalized under and radicalizing Jinnah), and contained leaders like Suhrawardy (a great hero of “nationalist” Bangladesh) whose role in the Calcutta riots has remained questionable. The core elite leadership around Mujibur Rehman, managed to retain elements like Khondokar Mushtaq, and representatives of the strong force of Islamic fundamentalism which in the case of Pakistan or Bangladesh is usually only expressed in ethnic cleansing of Hindus or Buddhists, or abduction, rape and forced marriages of non-Muslim women, and grabbing non-Muslim property. Mushtaq later turned out to be the figurehead of a coup by officers of the Bangladesh Army that assassinated Mujibur and his entire family then present, in classic Islamic style reminding us of the great traditions of Caliphate – wipe out even the toddlers, so that no male descendants can turn up later to become focus and claim for political power (another sign of the medieval Islamic thought patterns of the Bangladesh elite that dominated the Army).

Subsequent history of Bangladesh has shown clearly that its armed forces are dominated by an Islam leaning leadership. The Army managed to liquidate “left leaning” army officers and members, (like Col. Taher) but brought to power commanders with overt, distinct, and explicitly Islamic agenda – like Gens Jiaur Rahman and his successor H.M.Ershad. These army regimes protected, and revived the Islamic fundamentalists represented and regrouped under the Jamaat e Islami, an organization openly against the nationalist liberation movement and many of whose leadership are also implicated in genocide, organized rape, and torture of people they considered “pro-India”, Hindu, and anti-Pakistan or anti-Islamic. The military regimes saw to it that war-crimes accusations were never seriously taken up, promoted Islamic education and propaganda machinery primarily through the madrassahs, and began to steer the country back towards the Islamic axis of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.

Popular discontent with the political and military regimes have erupted from time to time, which were most likely to have been prompted and utilized by elite factions desperate in their “prolonged” lack of access to state power. But the character of the social elite that thrived on Islam, in their early land-grabbing from Hindus under the Sultans or the Mughals (or conversion of Hindu elite to preserve their land), and Islam sanctioned Jihads or Ghazwas to loot women and property of non-muslims, never changed. This elite is obsessed with possession of land, (the only country in the subcontinent that maintained and justified looting of non-Muslim land and property under an “enemy property act” was Pakistan, and Bangladesh continued to enjoy this law long after its independence from Pakistan – a clue to the mindset of the Bangladeshi elite) and they need Islam to complement and maintain the semi-feudal rural social structures that ensure elite control (just as in Pakistan).

The latest feather in the cap of the Bangladesh army is what is popularly mentioned in the Bangladeshi media as “1/11″  (1/11/2007) in that the army engineered what can only be seen as a coup – with possibly active involvement and covert support from a host of Western powers – a formal replacement of the “caretaker” government with a group that quite ruthlessly moved towards dismantling the established political power centres. The military elite quietly and quickly eliminated the captured alleged leaders of extremist Islamic outfits, in total secrecy from the media – possibly to suppress any potentially damaging leaks of connections to the elite itself, and we cannot completely rule out the possibility of covert connections between military intelligence and the so-called Islamic extremist as part of a much broader pattern of connections and support of the military of Islamic countries provided to hardline Islamic militant organizations like that of the ISI in Pakistan.

The military continues to be extremely shy of appearing to be “hard” on the Jamaat, or any Islamic organization – the latest parody being the “inability” of the police to arrest the secretary general of the Jamaat, who freely roams the country and the capital giving speeches or meeting politicians from the Right side of the political spectrum.

The army had managed to chastize the existing politicians under corruption charges, and given the history and record of Islamic armies or secret services, it is safe to assume that substantial doses of torture and ruthless psychological manipulation was liberally applied to neutralize the leadership or make them sufficiently pliable – the favourite method of dealing with those whom the Bangladesh Army finds unpleasant was recently illustrated by the fate of an expat Bangladeshi barrister from London by Air Force personnel. What the army is aiming for is quite clear : it wants the ruling social-military  elite’s interests protected. Given the close alliance the Bangladesh army has developed over the years with the Islamic axis, this also means forwarding the agenda of Islamic absolute control over the subcontinent.

The army needs the two main factions within the ruling class to converge to this overall agenda, and for this it is prepared to sacrifice or coerce individuals from among its own class who have become more a liability than an advantage – as it eliminated Jia or sent Ershad to jail, and turned the “next generation of political inheritors” either “physical wrecks” like Jia’s sons or ensure Haseena’s son’s virtual exile in the USA.  Political legitimacy independent of Islamic control and dependent on charismatic tradition is an obstacle in the army’s overall plans, and it appears that the army is desperate to ensure subservience of the two elite factions into a national “consensus” framework, and in this a key role will be played by the hardcore Islamic faction led at least superficially by the Jamaat. The Jamaat’s involvement in crucial “dark episodes” of Bangladesh’s history ensures its continued influence within the elite including perhaps even the core driving the military – with mutual dependence and “sensitive knowledge” about each other. The Jamaat is the hidden trump card to “soften up” one faction and “threaten” the other, and will be used by the military to enhance its agenda for Bangladesh.

The promised elections in December will not be held unless concrete commitments are obtained from both elite factions to follow and toe the line given by the army, and this will involve the strengthening of the Jamaat’s role in Bangladeshi politics, as well as overall gradual manifestation of the agenda of Islam for the subcontinent. In its turn it means continued sheltering of Islamic militants for infiltration into India through the border state of West Bengal ruled at present by a sympathetic “Left”, continued protection and enhancement of the madrassah system of education, continued attacks on cultural items deemed “un-Islamic”, and providing a second base for the flourishing and operations of the Islamic theologians hell-bent on returning the world to the looting, raping, genocidic, ethnic cleansing ideology of 7th century Arabic Islam.

The media has had a field day in blaming the politicians for this situation. But in reality the politicians were never strong enough to override the military, and the nationalists who emotionally fought for a “Bengali culture” as distinct from the “Urdu-Pakistani” Islamic state were of necessity too humane to match the cunning, ruthlessness and pathologically Sadistic upbringing of the Islamic elite of Bangladesh. It was only a matter of time, before the Islamic leadership panicked sufficiently that if they delayed any further they might never recoup their agenda at all.

Part 2

On October 03, 2008 Barnabas Fund reported that, ‘The Iranian Parliament has given provisional approval, by a majority of 196 to seven, to a bill that mandates the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. Until now Iranian judges could impose the death penalty in such cases only on the basis of Islamic law and fatwas, not on the basis of Iranian law”.

The bill prescribes a mandatory death sentence for any male Muslim who converts from Islam to another religion, and lifelong imprisonment for female converts from Islam. It also gives the Iranian secular courts authority to convict Iranians living outside the country of “crimes relating to Iranian national security”. This could be used against the many Iranian Christians who live outside Iran but are involved in evangelism within it. The bill, which was drafted earlier this year, is now being reviewed in parliament, giving MPs the opportunity to amend it. Before it becomes law the bill will also be vetted by the Council of Guardians, a twelve-member legislative body with the power to veto any bill that does not conform to Islamic law and the constitution.

Killing ex-Muslims who have converted out of Islam is never explicitly given out in the Quran. This is usually added to by the various Muslim interpreters and commentators of the Quran, based primarily on the authority or citation of certain Hadiths, where the Prophet of Islam is explicitly shown as executing or ordering the execution of an ex-Muslim who had “apostasized” – the Sunnah route for justification of all sorts of barabarities aimed essentially at keeping tight biological control over a captive population under the class of most retrogressive and biologically greedy, fanatical, male Islamic theologians.

We can debate a lot about the legal validity of death penalty for apostasy in the core texts of Islam. Some Muslims, concerned about maintaining the “humane” face of Islam for propaganda purpose until Islam gets militarily strong enough to obliterate all other cultures by Jihadic violence, would try to shout that it is the Quran which is the supreme authority and the Hadiths are dubious, and any contradiction between the Quran and the hadiths should always be settled in favour of the Quran. The problem is the Quran does not rule out death penalty for apostasy explicitly either. So technically, Islamic countries can bring in this law.

However debating about this in academic fora will never stop these increasing hardcore tendencies within Islamic countries. This tendency will increase as the Islamic theologians are realizing that their grip over their flock is growing increasingly tenuous – given the growing penetration of modern scientific knowledge and a much greater awareness of the violent and almost primitive, biologically greedy basic agenda of Islam, among the non-Muslims. I believe, that due course of history will remove these Muslim theologians in bloody revolutions of the Jacobin type – where the fanatical head of Robespierre that chopped off the heads of Danton or Marat, itself rolled off soon after. This process should be encouraged and helped so that Muslims forced to live under these Ulemas and Ayatollahs decide to get rid of them.

However, until that happens, there should be a concerted agreement among the non-Muslim national legislatures that behaviour towards Islam should be determined by the attitudes, laws and behaviours in the worst offender among the Islamic countries. Thus until a single Islamic country remains that awards death penalty for apostasy out of Islam, all non-Muslim countries should award the maximum penalty possible under their respective laws for conversion into Islam. Until a single Islamic country remains that forcibly separates couples and annuls marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims, no marriage should be allowed between Muslims and non-Muslims in non-Islamic countries.  As long as there is evidence of destruction of non-Muslim cultural sites in any Islamic country, no new Islamic cultural sites should be allowed to come up in non-Islamic countries. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights should be amended to incorporate reciprocality clauses. Only under such concerted non-Islamic efforts would the OIC and other fronts representing Islam at the governmental and international level feel sufficient pressure to stop the persecution of non-Muslims.

The non-Muslims should begin to learn from the Muslims what to do with those among the non-Muslims sufficiently “seduced” to submit to Islam – be it the attraction of “exotic charms” of “kohl marked eyes” and harem fantasies [a huge erotica industry in the West flourishes on extreme Harem fantasies], “oil wealth”, the religiously sanctioned and enjoined possessiveness of Islamic males misinterpreted by non-Muslim females as “love”,   or the simplification and certainty of “rules” of behaviour and faith for those in severe need of submitting to an authority and not finding it within Christianity [perhaps the danger of bringing up children in extreme rule based and authoritarian implementation of Christianity, and not encouraging independent questioning, or not giving proper unrestricted exposure to all scholarly research on the origins of the revealed traditions without suppression of uncomfortable aspects ].

The influential central banks of influential national economies of the world have cut down interest rates. President George Bush has struggled but succeeded to get a moth-eaten financial bail-out package approved. The British have gone one step further, taking a page out of their historical experiments with “socialism of the right-wing kind” and started processes for nationalizations. But the apparent “confidence” of “investors” appear to slide. I have already talked in these pages about why and how, the national governments of the so-called “super economies” cannot shake off their responsibilities about allowing this to build up.

The financial smoothies can blabber about smugly in technicalities on the media – about a “system collapse”, and how “surprisingly” and “otherwise sound” financial system seems to “puzzlingly work no more” – and that the “governments” must do something “drastic” and “do more”. It sounds like a wayward teenager’s pout, that she has crashed her mom’s convertible, and dad should do “something” to clear this “puzzling accident”.

The main problem has been building up for a long long time, explicitly in the manipulation of the world market to ensure fat profits for the controllers of these markets. The process had started before the second world war, and after the war simply consolidated as the Euro-American control over the world markets adpated itself to the more efficient extraction of profits through transnationals compared to the less efficient and politically increasingly costly or risky direct colonial form of extraction of capital and profits for the benefit of the Euro-American home nations. Without going into jargon and technicalities, the original source of this departure from free market conditions can be understood in very simple terms.

Suppose two countries A and B are engaged in international trade. A is capital rich, held in currency reserves in a dominant currency [a currency against which the currency of country B is pegged, or fixed, so that changes in the face-value of this dominant currency immediately forces corresponding changes in the currency of B]. For example, the south east Asian currencies involved in the 90’s crash were all typically pegged or fixed as a predetermined weighted combination of Euro-American currencies, and the effect of the transition of the Euro zone in triggering the south-east Asian currency crisis is still being debated. Country B on the other hand was an ex-colony, and therefore had been sucked dry of all capital, or capital producing economic elements, and is trapped in  a low-surplus production process.   Further  as part of the transition from colony to ex-colony let us suppose that country B has inherited elements of dependent capitalist production and market systems, which are dominated by the capital and market control mechanisms of the ex-colonizer which is either A or a third country having mutually interdependent and mutually profitable capital and financial exchanges with A.

By the market and hence the indirect political control required to maintain such market control, country A can extract surplus from country B by marking up prices of commodities on which the economy of B depends – as B’s colonial inherited production systems had been deliberately kept dependent on primarily “high-value” capital goods produced in country A or its allied colonizer economy. This sort of profiteering is a kind of “investment”. In financial terms there is no problem with this as long as the rate of such profit is not very “large”.

But it all gets out of hand, if the profit rate exceeds a certain critical value determined by the conditions of the economy of country A. Beyond a certain value, any excess profit cannot be balanced against commodities produced by country B and of value to the consumers of A, and will then have to be balanced against the purely financial commodity aspect of “money” – that is against the currency of A. This can mean either printing of money which will not immediately appear as “inflation” as accounts are being balanced formally against external trade. However, over time this excess profit translates into a fictitious commodity, that of pure currency reserve, which cannot be balanced at fixed and adjusted prices against the real commodity production of country A. This means either prices of commodities in A have to be marked up or there is excess monetary capital that cannot be balanced against the surplus production of the economy of A  at constant prices.

To a significant extent, the current crisis was ultimately triggered formally through the collapse of the housing finance sector in the USA. There will of course of be thousands of papers published in the finance journals over the coming months justifying extension of tenures – but with little real insight or corrective prescriptions. The fact is that the excess accumulated capital under the control of the US economy, as well as excess capital flowing in from growing economies like China or the demand-fuelled monetary super-profits of the oil-rich Gulf countries, have been super-inflated due to conversion of capital as balanced against real commodities in demand into fictitious purely numerical monetary commodities.  The financial wizadry of the type of Wall-street flyers, have simply devised more and more elaborate forms of “exotic” fictitious commodities in the form of options to absorb this excess currency in circulation or held in the accounts books of the investor chains. As the profitability of the capital rich economies decline internally, there has been a systematic  tendency towards preying on the essential commodities within their domestic economies – commodities like housing, or health care, or insurance which are also typically lucrative because of government legislations that make them compulsory and therefore convert the domestic populations into captive markets. This makes it obvious, that surplus monetary capital would prey on the most vulnerable consumer in order to extract higher profit rates using the weaker negotiating power of the consumer. This being risky, government legislations that require compulsory protection of such “risks” which provide opportunities to other financial service providers to put their teeth into the fat profits being made by marking up their own prices as coverage of risks, and this then gets spread around by the financial wizards through their exotic fictitious commodities.

There will now be a huge hue and cry to nationalize, conversion of deflated assets into public liabilities, and maintain minimal profits or high levels of conspicuous consumption by the controllers of the financial systems. But this will simply restore the power of the controllers of the financial system and will retain the highly manipulated market system under heavy control by the few.  For a truly free market, all economic agents have to be empowered. This means that the small consumer too has to have greater power in the markets. Instead of concentrating capital in the hands of a few managers who have shown how “unfree” the “free” market can be made to be, the task of the hour is to give access to capital to those who have least access to it. Basic housing, education  and healthcare are important components of empowerment  in addition to access to capital and means of production.

It will be crucial to develop local markets, and for communities to try and be self-sufficient in the basic commodities. As far as possible, communities should not only stress on pure urbanization but also try and develop the agrarian and small-scale industrial potential of lands and facilities surrounding them. Production, production and more production of the basic necessities through a process in which everyone in the community or the local system participate. Production and consumption on site is more efficient in energy usage and infrastructure, and over specialization should be discouraged. There should be government policy and legislation now that requires urbanization to be also concurrently agriculturally productive, and such urban-agrarian land usage to provide sustainable energy and housing generation – such as managed forests within the defined urban area that provide renewable fuel, power and building material.

This does not mean that international commerce or trade and capital formation or exchange has to be abandoned. But what it means is to reproduce national economies in ever smaller scales within larger and overlapping economic systems, so that all financial “eggs” are not put in one “investment” basket. This will provide a basic safety net within the “free market” system so that people have their fundamental requirements for sustenance satisfied, and risks entailed by investments of large capitals cannot then affect or damage lives to the extent they can do now. The multifarious sectors and aspects of these local economies can provide sufficient diversifications to cushion communities from large scale financial blows. This will also mean much more efficient and clean resource usage, and less dependence on distant economies mediated by those who concentrate capital in their own hands through the pure process of  managing exchange and capital circulation. In its turn this will lead to capital formation that cannot leave real production processes and commodities far behind in “value”. Strong local economies will also serve to increase the number of “free” economic agents and factors in national as well as global markets, leading to the results expected of efficient market clearance, and sustainable growth equilibriums.

Try to grow something in your back garden, in empty and unused patches of land, in a corner of your window in an urban high-rise, get together with your community to start a small farm with the help of local administration, form small cooperatives or companies to produce items needed in the community, absorb and use as many of the population in these production processes, teach yourself about economics and the financial system, try to organize a basic local healthcare system, invest in a child or teenager to become a doctor with clear legal commitments to practise at reasonable compensation for a period of time as part of the healthcare system, try to ensure education so that generations of producers can keep abreast of technological change.

At the global level, the tendency will be towards global financial system consolidation and homogenization, with greater regulation at the international level. However, political expediencies and persistent racial, religious, and xenophobic fractures will desperately fight against this consolidation, as just like within national economies these fractures are crucial in extracting profits from the pure circulation of capital for those entities and transnationals who own large amounts of capital.

Hamid Karazai has offered safe passage and “safe return” to one of the founders of the Taleban – “the students” – Mullah Omar. This is perhaps based on the assumption that the Taleban leadership is still roaming freely and safely somewhere in the grey zone in North West Pakistan and North Eastern Afghanistan. Hamid Karazai would not have made this offer, unless NATO and primarily the USA approved of it. What are the tactical calculations behind such monumental blunders?

(1) NATO and the USA thinks that they have to somehow lure the Taleban leadership out of the “protection” of the Pakistani ISI establishment, into Afghanistan where they can have a greater freedom in dealing with the Taleban. This calculation is asinine – even if the Taleban agrees to this truce, they will leave their bases in Pakistan intact under the protection of the Pakistani army top brass and the ISI. None of the real military strength of the Taleban will be compromised. The Taleban and the Al Quaeda will hold on to this strategically crucial area between Afghanistan and Pakistan as the new base of expansion for their brand of Islam. One just has to look at Google earth to see how militarily important this particular region is – and together with Syria-Anatolia-Turkey, has been crucial in the overall Islamic expansionist plans since its inception in Arabia in the 7th century.

(2) An even more stupid idea would be thinking of luring Mullah Omar and his cronies in Taleban to come and share some form of political power in Afghanistan, and thus gradually soften them up a bit in standard politics. Mullah Omar’s brand of politics is that laid down in the Hadiths, the Shariah and the Hidaya – where politics is simply following the orders of “higher ups”, doing everything as dictated by the existing Islamic texts which claims to be word of a supra-human authority beyond any questioning or negotiations by mere human beings – and these higher ups typically are the Mullahs and the Imams – most of the time whose qualifications do not rise beyond a learning of the Arabic texts by heart, and the various compilations and addendums accumulated over the centuries facilitating and justifying the most horrible of inhuman measures to be applied on society to ensure control by these demented, perverted and self-serving megalomaniac theologians for the satisfaction of their biological needs. A modern democracy will be beyond their personal control, and will require rights to be given to people not allowed under Islam, and a modern technologically and knowledge-based sophisticated society can throw up severe questions on the fundamental premises of Islam itself. Mullah Omar’s entry into Afghan politics will mean beating up cloth-entombed women for imaginary infractions of Islamic virtue, or the public execution of rape victims for adultery, a rolling back of science education, and the imposition of Islam’s barbarity that is always trying to drag us back to the darkness of  the male founders of Islam and their essential greed for wealth, women, and the sadistic enjoyment of the pain of those under their power.

(3) With the Bush presidency at its fag end, those Islamophile elements within the USA or the European countries behind NATO, who are ever-willing to compromise with Islam are trying to reassert their position of tactical as well as strategic co-existence – the same strategy that has led to the flourishing  of Islamic Jihad over the better part of the twentieth century. Islam’s agents would convince western decision-makers that it is possible to tackle Islam through democracy and that all we need is “love” and “peace” – it is only a few disgruntled Muslims who are to blame, and not Islam as a whole. These disgruntled Muslims can be bought over with “power” and “luxury” just as the Saudi Royal house could be – most of whose young princes while being educated out in the “decadent West” had shown consistent and wide departures from Shariati “Islamic purity”. But the fundamental problem is the complete lack of understanding of Islam itself, and the convenient overlooking of the fact that the “buying” was only successful in a land and system on which Islam had no influence or ideological control, where the state was not a totalitarian Islamic state, and which therefore placed limitations on the satisfaction of the immense biological greed that drives the male-centric ideology of Islam. Where an Islamic state has already successfully established itself, no buying is successful.

Mullah-Omar or his representative’s return will only mean re-emergence of the Talebani-Al-Qaeda power base back in Afghanistan, and it will have then formally expanded from its current power base within the state of Pakistan, into Afghanistan again. Hamid Karazai and his “Mujahideen” were very effective against the Russians, but will be no match against the Taleban without US help – as the Taleban and Al Qaeda follow the Sadistic and cynical [and therefore highly effective against modern "civilized" military forces] military theory proposed in the core texts of the Islam and as reported to have been practised by the prophet of Islam himself. It is always, deception, deception and deception – probably very closely matched by the infamous Dantonist slogan of “de l’audace, encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace”.

Pakistan has been the refuge of the worst forms of Islamic fundamentalist theologians right from its inception. On the Indian subcontinent, this Muslim theologian class is mostly descended from imported “foreign-born” adventurers, who had little cultural or educational qualifications beyond that of the few injunctions of the Quran or the Hadiths. The “real” Muslim intellectuals, mostly descended of pre-Muslim Persian and Afghan-Hindu or Buddhist elite, visited or were “forced to visit” (like Al Beruni) but did their best (like Ibn Sina) to stay away from the Islamic invaders and marauders like the Turks, Mongols or earlier Arabsinto Persia, outer India (Afghanistan/Seistan) and the Indian subcontinent itself. It was the nearly criminal British colonial policy that revived this Islamic theologian class through the so-called colonial law reforms, which ignored and overturned the syncretic and modernizing trends that had evolved in interaction over centuries of successful defence by the Hindus of their traditions and more liberal polity, and simply asked the theologians to dust-off their copy of the Sharia or the Hidaya (just as they did damage the Hindu modernization process by naively supporting the clamour by certain Brhamins that their copy of the  Manu-Smriti/Samhita was the sole repository of “Hindu” law – a mistake obviously committed by AlBeruni too who reports textual claims of “caste” but shows no awareness of “sects” which were typically never recognized by Brahminical texts).

With the legitimization of the existence of Pakistan, the British and the Congress under Nehru, who appeared to swallow all pride and shame and had not a single strong word to utter against the Islam inspired Jihadi outrage perpetrated on the common woman, child and man of the Sikhs and the Hindus, in his eagerness to slip into the “Indian vice-regal throne” with British blessing, connived to protect and give shelter to Islamic Jihad. Muslims deciding to remain in India were not “encouraged” to leave India for Pakistan as the Hindus in Pakistan were repeatedly “encouraged” to do, as the very clear calculation of the British and hence of Nehru dependent on their tutelage was that if Pakistan failed to become the centre of Jihad and Islamic proselytization, the remnant Islamic populations within India as nurtured by Nehru could be used to further continuing British designs on the subcontinent given that the middle-east was coming increasingly under US control.  All this also tied in nicely with the then prevalent paranoia and the “neo-crusade” against Communist Russia, as some dimwit with typical European shortsightedness had  decided that Islam would be the best antidote to Marx, and the Islamic worldview should be protected and encouraged and its spread through the Mullahs and Imam’s ensured and encouraged.

This sort of Islamic insurgency, as in most insurgencies, utilizes the ruggedness of the terrain and terror to survive or flourish. If we look at historical commanders (like Alexander) who succeeded in subduing these regions, we can see that they were relentless in liquidating centres of resistance, typically after complete and absolute encirclement, by first cleaning up the plains surrounding the rugged lands and then cornering and trapping the insurgents and liquidating them giving no quarters . This whole area, including that of Pakistan can only be rid of the menace of Islam, by a similar military doctrine, that emphasizes tight encirclement and complete liquidation.

But the west will continue in its muddled understanding of Islam, trying to model it by their own religions and failing to understand its predatory and sadistic essence. The perhaps secret sadistic tendencies in some of the males, and masochistic tendencies in some of the females among the non-Muslims are expressed in their outward defence and sympathy for Islam, and provides support for the shrewd observation in the Quran and directly from Muhammad as reported in the Hadiths, that the “unbelievers” are themselves divided over attitude towards Islam, and that the Muslims should use this tactically to finish off one group after another using this division of opinion.

It is time to identify this fifth column in our societies, and try and expose their ideological dishonesty and opportunism or simple befuddlement. If non-Muslims do not consolidate and come to tactical and strategic understanding for ultimate erasure of Islam as an ideology and re-humanization of ex-Muslims as modern human beings, the fate of civilization is Islamic barbarity, injustice, superstition and darkness over all knowledge and quest.

President George Bush refuses to be beaten. He will push for his bailout plan for the financial industry of the USA, and in an era of increasingly networked international finance, therefore for the financial industry of the whole world. 700 billion dollars of money is a lot of money. Why has the bailout amount to be this large? The answer is simple, this is the amount which simply did not exist in real economic terms – this was the monetary difference between reality and speculation – 700 billion dollars did not represent any real commodity, but a tentative value put on expectations of people. When there are no checks and balances on expectations, assessment of expectation in monetary terms can be quite tricky, and mostly imaginary.

The simplest check on such speculative assessment of expectations is supply of money to fuel such speculations. In the US economy for example, if the total money supply remained constant in real terms, or increases in money supply were proportionate to increases in commodity production at constant prices, any diversion of monetary funds into the housing market would have to have been balanced against lowering of prices of commodities or products not involved directly with housing. Since this did not happen, it meant that there was sufficient money to play around with over and above that could be balanced against the products of the US economy.  This could happen in only one of two ways.

The first possibility is an accumulation of unbalanced surplus money from within the US national economy in dollars, which would therefore implicate the US treasury and the government. The second possibility is that of an accumulation of surplus money provided to balance demand for dollar in the international economy, to either pay for speculations in globally “essential” commodities like oil, or to balance profits from pure speculation undertaken by managers of US capital in the global financial market.

This accumulation of unbalanced surplus money from within the US national economy is an important departure from “free-market” conditions, as in ideal free market conditions, even the supply of money would have been balanced by the net national or international income in real terms. At some stage US capital has indulged in speculative profiteering, either within its own national borders or internationally in exchanges with other national economies. Such exchanges can no longer be formally traced as mostly such exchanges would have been taking place through transnational entities, and there are few existing controls over the functioning of transnationals comparable to those that exist within national boundaries.

If US capital could make speculative profits not balanced against real production in the international markets, then it means that “free market” conditions were not existing in the international markets. This was to be expected because much of the post WWII world economy was under the shadow of the Bretton Woods regime, with the US dollar imposed as the monetary pivot. Many currencies in Asia or the Latin Americas, were pegged with the dollar or closely related and financially tied currencies in Europe, until the last decade of the 20th century long after the Bretton Woods regime was weakened and supplanted by monetary regimes aimed at facilitating transnationals.

If US capital could make speculative profits within its own national borders in “peculiar” commodities like land and housing, this also means that “free market” conditions did not exist within the US domestic economy. Essential commodities like housing maintain sustained demand in any economy, given non-decreasing populations, and can usually be balanced by provision of sufficient economic capabilities on the populations. The US has pretty strong anti-trust and pro-competition laws, but the scale and reach of these laws are not sufficient to cover the entire economy at all levels and at all scales. An excessive concentration of capital in the hands of the few implies indirectly manipulation of and departures from “free market” conditions even in the domestic economy. Such excessive concentration of capital would behave as excessive accumulation of a “commodity” in the hands of a few, raising speculative profits even on capital as a commodity.

Like many other countries, the US has to bring back competition and free market conditions even within its own boundaries, by raising the economic capabilities of all its people. This economic empowerment of its citizens entail wide ranging reforms in development, starting from education and healthcare to access to capital and rights to land or shelter – as only economic agents with sufficient power and resources to influence economic outcome can ensure the vitality and “free”dom of the market.

Blasts again shook two cities of India late Monday night and took human lives – they appear to be similar in pattern to what probably accidentally happened in Delhi two days ago. What is highly significant is that blasts are now taking place in areas which are Muslim majority regions. The nature of explosives also point to a highly effective but cruder technology.  One of the cities to have the latest of these blasts is Malegaon – literally derived from a 18th century place-name meaning “village/town of gardens”. It was originally strategically located between Gujarat and Agra, the early Mughal military and administrative centre. A local jahagirdar, Naro Shankar Raje, started building a fort in the area in 1740, a project that took 20 years, and this construction work attracted a large number of Muslim workers and artisans from places like Surat and northern India. When the British captured the Malegaon fort in 1818, Muslims from Hyderabad migrated to Malegaon. After the failure of the 1857 “first war of independence” British brutality of reprisals forced many Muslims to migrate from around Delhi and other places of UP into Malegaon as a convenient community refuge. Famine in 1862 forced Muslim weavers in the Varanasi area to move to Malegaon. In my series on the effect of Muslim rule on the economic decline of India I have extensively written on how the producing classes were ruthlessly exploited by the imported “Ashrafi” (literally pure – this is the title given to themselves by the descendants of those whose records show no more qualifications than an infinite capacity for bloodlust, murder, rape and loot, and of course an extreme devotion to “Islam” which of course very conveniently always condones such acts as part of Jihad)  Muslim elite almost to the point of ruin.

The non-Muslim artisans of northern India at the time of the Muslim invasions were in severe straits. India had been famous as a producer, and exporter of cotton and fine cotton based material as well as in constructions and architecture. The early pre-Muslim towns and cities of Northern India therefore had a concentration of artisans specializing in weaving, dyeing or construction and masonry. By the very nature of their work, they were dependent on the urban environment and a concentration of necessary infrastructure not only for their particular skills but also for trade and markets. As the Hindu kingdoms fell before the Muslim invasions, the artisan’s survival (which had already been quite jeopardized because of the Muslim interference in Indian trade through Central Asia and the Indian Ocean sea-trade using piracy) was crucially dependent on holding on to their urban production infrastructure. This probably led to their acceptance of Islam as there are countless indications and claims by the Muslim chroniclers [like Ferishta and many many others] of the only choice given to the inhabitants of a city that fell to Muslim armies, as being either conversion to Islam  or death.

Thus we do find a concentration of Muslim weavers in Varanasi, the very ancient centre of Hindu cultural development, and the capital of a long surviving kingdom. These were in fact descendants of the Hindu artisan class converted under extraordinary circumstances.  If they are now concentrated in Malegaon, they should be treated as Hindu descendants who were converted under extreme pressure, when they were defenceless and without protection of their rulers, when their livelihoods and survival were at stake. There has been a similar blast in 2006 in Malegaon, exactly on similar dates of religious significance to  the Muslims – the Shab-e-barat, with the end of the Ramadan month in sight.

If Islamic terrorists did this, why would they want to have Muslims killed in the blast? Or is it that this was the safest place to carry out blasts, given that deep cover was necessary now when the security forces would be combing the whole country – and such cover could only be provided by a sufficiently large and entrenched Muslim community, and therefore the momentum of Jihad could only be maintained by continued explosions but now only within a smaller feasible radius around the base of the cover. It could also be punishment to the local Muslims at large, who might have shown reluctance or lack of sufficient enthusiasm to join the Jihadi network – there is strong disapproval in the Quran for those Muslims who show “reluctance” in joining militant Jihad or providing material support for such Jihad.

A second more sinister aspect could be a tactical calculation that, these attacks could be attributed to the so-called “Hindu Right wing”, and thus help in the current apparent campaign of the UPA to try to equate “Islamic terror” with “Hindu Right”. If true this would be a very subtle and cynical tactic on the part of the Jihadists, as it achieves many objectives – (1) this makes Jihadi terror appear more “palatable” (2) helps the Congress in its desperate fight to utilize minority support in the coming elections and attempt at delegitimizing the BJP  (3) makes the vacillating among the “secular” Hindus shaky in identifying with or leaning  towards the “Hindu Right”.

A third possibility could be a copy-cat retaliation from among the non-Muslims of India, as a part of making Muslims share the pain of Jihadi and Islamic terror. This could be an increasing possibility if the Islamophile state policy of India continues. The reaction to Islamic terror is coming, in spite of my deep reluctance to accept the reality of such reaction which will tend not to distinguish between the barbaric theologians of Islam and the common brainwashed followers who in the case of India will be descended from the most unfortunate of pre-Muslim Indians, and one day it will sweep Islam away and deposit it in history’s garbage heap.

Two young men on a bike were riding through a busy market in the Mehrauli area of South Delhi. A black polythene wrapped box dropped off from the bike. A young girl called after the bikers, to tell them that they had dropped a package, and picked it up  and gave a young boy to return it to the bikers. The bikers however sped away. And then the box exploded killing the boy on the spot, injuring three others seriously, and in all injuring 17 people. These were perhaps terrorists on the way to planting explosives to catch maximum population densities over the weekend markets leading up to the festive season in Northern India. These were perhaps terrorists simply carrying explosives in small packets from one storage to another. Several pointers indicate the stamp of Islam in this – this is a Muslim dominated area, with most traders and clients belonging to the Muslim community, with a “prestigious” mosque nearby, and the time of the day was not the point at which Hindus from outside the area would be likely to be in sufficient number, which makes it unlikely that the blast was pre-planned. Secondly, it would be typically Islamic ethics as in historical practice [and not as per lofty claims in the modern sanitized reconstructions of the history and practice of Islam] which considers preservation of the life of the Muslim soldier or raider to be much more important than show the courage or chivalry of saving the innocent child by accepting the package back. Especially as I have pointed out many times in my posts here before, the Quran as well as the Hadiths indicated that the life of children of non-Muslims was not really important for Muhammad – “they[children and women of "pagans"] are from them["pagans"]” in the context of possibility of danger to the children and women of non-Muslims when Muslims attack at night.

While we have this in the capital of India, we have the eminent wisdom of Eddy Markey whose argument against the Indo-US civil N-deal  in the last desperate attempt by the Islamophile lobby in the US to block the deal in the House and the Congress, is simply that Pakistan “warned of arms race” if the N-deal with India went through. No wonder that Islam gains converts in the USA, if such asinine statesmanship is voted to represent the American people in the legislature.

India is strategically crucial in the defence of non-Muslims against the last scourge of 21st century human civilization – Islam. Christianity has not proved to be a strong antidote to Islam. The reason lies in the very origins and nature of both the aggressive proselytizing branches of the revealed traditions. The Jews had long decided in favour of a restriction of their faith to ethnicity and strictly by biological descent, for various possible reasons, perhaps not excluding the severe political and military repression they apparently went through in the final stages of their theological development [however, by the logic of the Thaparite School of Indian History applied to prove absence of historical Islamic terror in India, we have little record of "trauma" at the hands of the Romans from the side of the Jewish victims, and therefore the "trauma" theory should normally be suspect as per "professional" historian's standards - copying the logic of Thaparites, we could say that Romans including the "Romanized" Josephus, after all always had boasted and prized military ruthlessness and therefore could have written in all the gory details of the liquidation of the Jews as propaganda for self-glorification]. Hindus have no formal mechanism for conversion, and for a non-hindu to become a “Hindu”, they also have to take the socio-biological route – either getting married to a Hindu or getting “adopted” by a Hindu. Hindus are not congregational, and do not insist on collective religious action under a centralized religious organization. Both Islam as well as the more radical offshoots of Christianity starting from the medieval period have been on the other hand distinctly aggressively proselytizing – this is the characteristic of minority ideologies without strong social roots desperately struggling to increase following and power in competition with established ideologies. Both Islam and Christianity could significantly expand only through military imposition of the faith – as in their original forms they represented a simplification of the world view that was far less complex and sophisticated compared to some of the cultures they were in conflict with. It is usually not remembered that Christianity really expanded in Europe only two significant phases – the first under the aggressive military imposition under Constantine and second under the Frank Charles [Charlemagne]  who reputedly chopped off thousands of Saxon chief’s heads to establish acceptance of Christianity but himself showed just like Constantine many persistent departures from the Ten Commandments.

As I have pointed out earlier, such minority ideologies would be attractive to (1) those who have not been able to keep up with increasing technological and therefore socio-economic superstructural complexities of a given civilization (2) those who are insecure and feel bewildered faced before the increasing number of multiple and myriad choices and decisions (3) low sense of self and self-esteem who need the esteem of a group to compensate (4) to men if these ideologies promise the sexual and social subjugation of women especially if such men feel threatened by the independence and control of women over their own sexuality and are only reassured if the entire activity of women are restricted to reproductive and physically submissive sexual roles only (5) to the economically and politically disadvantaged if such ideologies promise to legitimize the transfer ownership of wealth, power and women from the current elite irrespective of qualifications of the “neo-converts”.  This is indeed the attraction of Islam, and it remains true for those Americans who satisfy the criteria mentioned above.

Europe is actively allowing the main organizational units for aggressive Islamic proselytization, the mosques where theologians inevitably having training and connections to the Sunni Wahabi orthodoxy safely operating out of Saudi Arabia and definitely benefiting from the price of oil, carry out the real agenda of Islam – the brainwashing and preparing of future adult Muslims to undertake violent military Jihad to capture the lands, wealth and women of non-Muslims.

Islam actively and openly promotes the destruction of or taking over of as well as prevention of the construction of new cultural centres of non-Muslims, including shrines, temples, or holy sites, and therefore it has no ethical right to protection of its own cultural centres. Attitude towards any ideology should be based on reciprocal basis – and new constructions of mosques or Islamic cultural or religious  centres should not be allowed unless the Islamic countries allow the construction of non-Muslim centres. Further, since Muslims have and continue to destroy non-Muslim cultural icons or religious places wherever they have military and political authority or so called “land of Islam”, no protection should any longer be  given to Muslim centres in “non-Muslim lands”. Every terrorist activity by Muslims should actually be made to be responded with an actual reduction in number of practising Muslims, not the Islamic method of reducing non-Muslims by chopping off the head of anyone who refuses to follow Islam, but by either disenfranchising, expelling, or exchanging populations, if the Muslims refuse to give up their religion publicly. It is Islam as a practising religion which must go – it will not be the first time a religion has bitten the dust because people leave it in droves.

Both in India and the USA, the non-Muslims should now decide on and identify the forces in their respective countries that are Islamophiles – and are trying to bring in Islam for various personal, political and economic tie-ups with the Islamic establishment as well as a mistaken perspective of the strategic importance of Islamic oil and Islamic markets. Pressure should be mounted for more self-sustainable energy sourcing within their own national boundaries, and develop internal markets rather than depend on the easier route of enjoying excessive profits from trade with the Islamic markets. Economic activity of non-Muslim countries should try to bypass the Islamic countries as much as possible.  The thorny issue of conversion into Christianity in India can be tackled easily, if the Christian and Hindu groups come to an understanding that they will not proselytize on each other’s existing following, but coordiante or concentrate on converting Muslims. Also in India, it is important to delink religion or ethnicity from social opportunities and benefits but which will be hotly resisted by the Congress as its management of political power at the centre is crucially dependent on the maintenance of these social fractures.

The world will never know peace from the threat of Islam, unless the last practising Muslim is no more, for as long as the practise of Islam remains, its Jihadist violent greed for the Sadistic enjoyment of the pain of the non-muslim under its power, its continuing agenda of promoting war on non-Muslims [just type in Google "ghazwa-e-Hind"  -literally translating as the Arabic tribal style raid to loot wealth, and women of another tribe to be launched on/in India] , and its fundamental driving force of greed for the lands, wealth and women of non-Muslims, will plague the human civilization – as it crystallizes, sanitizes and gives suprahuman “divine” justification for all the most biologically powerful and dark motivations  in humans.

A frustrated and dejected Hayek had once returned to his home country of Austria, leaving the Chicago school of economics alone to fight for the acceptance of their theory of the superiority of “free market forces” over that of centralized or planned/controlled economies which were constantly being intervened in or needed intervention by the Government or financial regulatory authorities. Hayek’s eventual rehabilitation started with the fascination that the Iron Lady had for his interpretations, and of course the Iron Lady’s success [perhaps with a heavy dose of Lady Luck smiling through the success in the Falklands war - or was it not so much an "accidental" war after all?] in deregulating most of the UK’s economic sectors. Friedman was the face of “free market” in the USA, the focus of intense vilification as the “devil’s advocate” who thought nothing of the heavy human cost of “reforms”, and the man who visibly flinched at the abuse hurled at him from the galleries while even receiving the Nobel Prize.

The association of the Latin American dictatorships with these reforms were not a help to the Hayekists. The Chilean example would be a permanent blot on the Hayekists, because of the fascist methods of torture and liquidation of political opposition, especially those who could be  represented by the authorities as “leftist”. European countries who recently appear to pander to “leftist” demands to “equate anti-Islam” with “fascism”, never uttered a single word of censure against the Chilean regime in defense of the Chilean “Left” then.  This was consistent with their behaviour when similar barbarities were being carried out on “Leftists” in the middle-Eastern Islamic countries. The only European country to have opened its mouth on humanitarian concerns about the atrocities in Latin America, appears to be the post-post-Franco Spain, still too deeply agonized and guilt-ridden over its spectacular achievements on the human-rights front under Franco. However, utilization of or experiments with spontaneous market forces to revive stagnating economies had started not only in the USA under Reagan following Thatcher, but unknown and unpublicized in the western media, had been going on in the “Communist” world surreptitiously. Communist China had never really fully given up on markets, with records showing existence and encouragement of local markets from the beginning of Communist power. With the admirable strategic and tactical flexibility shown by the Chinese communists as always,  the CCP showed its grasp of economics quite early – when it used a combination of markets and hedging against real commodities to slash down on inflation. Subsequently it retreated quickly as and when necessary from disastrous experiments with centralization, and did not believe in continuing on an error because of pride or ideological commitment.

In contrast to Keynesian theory, which at least gave a crucial importance to the role of the Government spending in jump-starting a stagnant or crisis ridden economy, and was taken up with enthusiasm by FDR leading definitely to the recovery from the Great Depression of the 30’s in the USA, a simplistic reading of Hayek indeed gives the impression that Government intervention only leads to further chaos.  There are two important objections to this simplistic reading of Hayek.  When Hayek is talking of leaving markets forces to adjust themselves, he is talking of small departures from equilibrium – this is the reason, where there had already been cumulative large departures from equilibrium, the adjustments were extremely costly in human terms. The US case is the case of a large departure. But then inevitably the question arises as to how large is “large”?  And this is where the second objection comes in.  Hayek was essentially formulating his theory in the framework of national economies, and to a certain extent we still cannot completely come out of the implicit conditions in Hayek’s theory. The fundamental problem is because our mechanisms of financial and economic accountability is still tied primarily with the political boundaries and institutions of the nation state, whereas financial capital is no longer national.  Global capital now flies where it senses profit, with very little of the actual market forces being integrated between the source and sink of this capital.

Taking the very simple example of the US mortgage crisis, which probably resulted at least partly from the ruthless exploitation of endemic vulnerability of non-dominant racial and ethnic and social groups in having access to resources, to pump up prices and profit rates. This not only creates a fictitious commodity in economic terms, [a value which cannot be supported in reality by a real commodity of utility - especially peculiar commodities like land or buildings which do not generate new buildings or lands on their own, unlike other material input into industrial processes] but also definitely needs increased money supply. Now in the older framework of national economies, this increased money supply and therefore inflationary pressures could have been controlled by tightening the national money supply itself. However in the strange modern world economy, money supply itself cannot be controlled within the national economy itself, as finance capital flows constantly in and out  of the national economy. The nations have no real control over the global money supply, and the crucial equilibrium factors of a tight money supply, free movement of labour and other factors of production [as would have more or less naturally been obtained for a "free market" system within a single "national economy"] are practically absent in the international economic exchanges between national economies.

Exceptionally high prices for basic housing could only be sustained if there was unusually large financial capital on the money supply side not really balanced against the productive capacity of the national economy and  development of monopolies and cartels in the housing provider market also with the help of excessive accumulation of finance capital in the hands of a few – both conditions not conducive to a Hayekian “free market” self correcting mechanisms.

There are two components to solving this problem over the long run – (1) go for a solid, international fully integrated monetary regime not constrained by national boundaries, but subject to overall control of money supply, backed up by a freeing of the crucial market forces of free movement of labour and technology (2) include a basic social security net that still is consistent with encouragement of performance and the role of incentives. Even in the USA, the land of “opportunities”, the ideas of “microcredit” or “community land trusts” should not be “untouchable”!

A proposed demonstration against the proposed construction of a mosque at Cologne, Germany, which was supposed to be raising “stop Islam” slogan, was banned – ostensibly in the face of “communist” or other “leftist” counter demonstration. I wonder why Germans do not burst out laughing at the sheer absurdity and farce of it all! (I am holding back my temptation to make a very politically incorrect joke about why we should not expect them to laugh at all about this). Germany’s weakness for Islam seriously started with the realpolitik of a Kaiser who played a pivotal role in the initiation of the trans-Syrian “holy rail” to Mecca in the 1890’s, that ultimately connected all the way through to Baghdad. This is the rail line which probably significantly fuelled the industrial demand and market for steel in Germany, as the whole railway, with all its supporting infrastructure was manufactured in Germany and shipped to the building site. This is also the rail line which served as the iconic backdrop to the fictionalized hagiographies of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Germany’s relationship deepened with the Ottoman Turkish empire, perhaps not only as a strategic and tactical countermove to the British Empire’s hogging of all of the world’s colonial “goodies” and British Imperialism’s persistent refusal to “share” markets – a position it now has strongly reversed and demands all the world’s markets to open up after losing imperial dominance. German scholars have left us some important translations of works from the middle east, which perhaps in the hands of the likes of some of the British “scholars” who plastered up “obscene” ancient figurines on Indian temples, would have been destroyed forever. But Germany’s fascination with the “Orient” and especially Islam took a much more serious turn during the march of Nazism – the anglicized shortened form of the original in Deutsche meaning “National Socialism”.

We have the following gems about how intensely antagonistic the Nazis and Muslim leadership of the Middle East were to each other: the first is a message from  Himmler to The Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini, ["GrossMufti" in Deutsche]  dated November 2, 1943,

[message from Heinrich Himmler to an anti-Balfour Declaration meeting]:

To the Grand Mufti:
The National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany has, since its beginning,  inscribed upon its flag the fight against world Jewry. It has, therefore, followed with particular sympathy the struggle of the freedom-loving Arabians, especially in Palestine, against the Jewish interlopers. It is in the recognition of this enemy and of the common struggle against him that lies the firm foundation of the natural alliance that exists between National-Socialist-Greater Germany and the freedom-loving Moslems of the whole world. In this spirit I am sending you on the anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration my hearty greetings and wishes for the successful pursuit of your struggle until the certain final victory.
Signed: Reichsfuehrer-S.S. Heinrich Himmler

Better still is the following recording by Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti ["GrossMufti"] in Berlin, November 21, 1941, in his own handwriting about his meeting with Hitler in his diary:

The words of the Fuehrer on the 6th of Zul Qaada 1360 of the Hejira (which falls on the 21st of November 1941) Berlin, Friday, from 4:30 P.M. till a few minutes after 6. The objectives of my fight are clear. Primarily, I am fighting the Jews without respite, and this fight includes the fight against the so-called Jewish National Home in Palestine because the Jews want to establish there a central government for their own pernicious purposes, and to undertake a devastating and ruinous expansion at the expense of the governments of the world and of other peoples.
It is clear that the Jews have accomplished nothing in Palestine and their claims are lies. All the accomplishments in Palestine are due to the Arabs and not to the Jews. I am resolved to find a solution for the Jewish problem, progressing step by step without cessation. With regard to this I am making the necessary and right appeal, first to all the European countries and then to countries outside of Europe.
It is true that our common enemies are Great Britain and the Soviets whose principles are opposed to ours. But behind them stands hidden Jewry which drives them both. Jewry has but one aim in both these countries. We are now in the midst of a life and death struggle against both these nations. This fight will not only determine the outcome of the struggle between National Socialism and Jewry, but the whole conduct of this successful war will be of great and positive help to the Arabs who are engaged in the same struggle.
This is not only an abstract assurance. A mere promise would be of no value whatsoever. But assurance which rests upon a conquering force is the only one which has real value. In the Iraqi campaign, for instance, the sympathy of the whole German people was for Iraq. It was our aim to help Iraq, but circumstances prevented us from furnishing actual help. The German people saw in them (in the Iraqis-Ed.) comrades in suffering because the German people too have suffered as they have. All the help we gave Iraq was not sufficient to save Iraq from the British forces. For this reason it is necessary to underscore one thing: in this struggle which will decide the fate of the Arabs I can now speak as a man dedicated to an ideal and as a military leader and a soldier. Everyone united in this great struggle who helps to bring about its successful outcome, serves the common cause and thus serves the Arab cause. Any other view means weakening the military situation and thus offers no help to the Arab cause. Therefore it is necessary for us to decide the steps which can help us against world Jewry, against Communist Russia and England, and which among them can be most useful. Only if we win the war will the hour of deliverance also be the hour of fulfillment of Arab aspirations.
The situation is as follows: We are conducting the great struggle to open the way to the North of the Caucasus. The difficulties involved are more than transportation because of the demolished railways and roads and because of winter weather. And if I venture in these circumstances to issue a declaration with regard to Syria, then the pro-de Gaulle elements in France will be strengthened and this might cause a revolt in France. These men (the French) will be convinced then that joining Britain is more advantageous and the detachment of Syria is a pattern to be followed in the remainder of the French Empire. This will strengthen de Gaulle’s stand in the colonies. If the declaration is issued now, difficulties will arise in Western Europe which will cause the diversion of some (German-Ed.) forces for defensive purposes, thus preventing us from sending all our forces to the East.
Now I am going to tell you something I would like you to keep secret. First, I will keep up my fight until the complete destruction of the Judeo-Bolshevik rule has been accomplished.
Second, during the struggle (and we don’t know when victory will come, but probably not in the far future) we will reach the Southern Caucasus.
Third, then I would like to issue a declaration; for then the hour of the liberation of the Arabs will have arrived. Germany has no ambitions in this area but cares only to annihilate the power which produces the Jews.
Fourth, I am happy that you have escaped and that you are now with the Axis powers. The hour will strike when you will be the lord of the supreme word and not only the conveyer of our declarations. You will be the man to direct the Arab force and at that moment I cannot imagine what would happen to the Western peoples.
Fifth, I think that with this Arab advance begins the dismemberment of the British world. The road from Rostov to Iran and Iraq is shorter than the distance from Berlin to Rostov. We hope next year to smash this barrier. It is better then and not now that a declaration should be issued as (now) we cannot help in anything.   I understand the Arab desire for this (declaration-Ed.), but His Excellency the Mufti must understand that only five years after I became President of the German government and Fuehrer of the German people, was I able to get such a declaration (the Austrian Union-Ed.), and this because military forces prevented me from issuing such a declaration. But when the German Panzer tanks and the German air squadrons reach the Southern Caucasus, then will be the time to issue the declaration.
He said (in reply to a request that a secret declaration or a treaty be made) that a declaration known to a number of persons cannot remain secret but will become public. I (Hitler) have made very few declarations in my life, unlike the British who have made many declarations. If I issue a declaration, I will uphold it. Once I promised the Finnish Marshal that I would help his country if the enemy attacks again. This word of mine made a stronger impression than any written declaration. Recapitulating, I want to state the following to you: When we shall have arrived in the Southern Caucasus, then the time of the liberation of the Arabs will have arrived. And you can rely on my word.
We were troubled about you. I know your life history. I followed with interest your long and dangerous journey. I was very concerned about you. I am happy that you are with us now and that you are now in a position to add your strength to the common cause.” [Source: The Arab Higher Committee. Its Origins, Personnel and Purposes. Documentary Record Submitted to the United Nations, May 1947, by the Nation Associates].

Huseini, was after all, being consistent with the core teachings of Islam in his fanatical anti-semitism. The Quran does not give direct incitement to massacre of Jews, but gives hints and references consistent with the more gory details supported by all the principal Hadiths. There was only one significant difference between the teachings of the Quran and the Hadiths on one side and the Nazi philosophy on the other side, the Prophet of Islam categorized the Jews as “people of the book” and hence at least in the Quran, they should be allowed to survive only on condition they pay a “survival tax” or Jiziya or they convert to Islam, whereas in the Hadiths of course, their males are declared to be fit to be “killed”, their lands to be “appropriated by Muslims”, and especially their women to be taken over by the Muslims. Although there are some allegations of sexual contact between the Jewish captive women and Nazi soldiers or officers, formally there were severe laws against such practices, and there are known instances of convictions and sentences carried out.

At the time of his death, Hitler’s official place of residence was in Munich, which led to all rights to Mein Kampf, coming under the ownership of the state of Bavaria. The government of Bavaria, in agreement with the federal government of Germany, does not allow any copying or printing of the book in Germany [and opposed it also in Sweden without success]. Owning and buying the book is legal. Trading in old copies is legal as well unless it is done in such a fashion as to “promote hatred or war”, which is, under anti-revisionist laws, generally illegal.   In Austria, the possession and/or trading of Mein Kampf is illegal. In France, the selling of the book is forbidden unless the transaction concerns a historical version including commentaries from specialists and states the law allowing its special historical edition.  In the Netherlands, selling the book, even an old copy, can be illegal as “promoting hatred”, but possession and lending is not. The Dutch states treats this as claims of copyright infringement (as acclaimed owner of the translation) and does not allow any publishing. In 1997, the government explained to the parliament that selling a “scientifically annotated version” might escape prosecution, and the debate was repeated in 2007 with similar conclusions. In Indonesia the book is available in Indonesian language, in Lebanon, an Arabic edition of Mein Kampf was published in 1995 by Bisan/Beisan.  In Turkey, the book is freely available and a Turkish edition was reported to be a bestseller in Turkey in March 2005, and claimed to have sold over 100,000 copies in two months. Note that the European nations which had significant collaborators with the Nazi ideology during the war, have turned the strongest protectors of the European populations who are considered to be completely immature, from the possible insidious infection in contact with the words of a “demented fanatic” by trying to ban these words, whereas these very same words are not deemed to be “antagonistic” or “revisionist” in the Muslim countries.

If the European populations are so intellectually immature that they cannot handle “Mein Kampf”, how can they handle the Quran, which says in the context of the first successful looting and massacre mission by the Prophet of Islam after six earlier unsuccessful ones on his relatives from Mecca engaged in their traditional trading journeys [and after having been allowed to leave and "migrate" from Mecca with full life, limb and liberty, and with indications of having abused profusely the beliefs, sentiments, as well as the hospitality of the Meccan Qureysh with his associates sometimes having also shed blood of those who had refused to submit to their ideology] – the “famous” Nakhla raid:

022.039 To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight), because they are wronged;- and verily, Allah is most powerful for their aid;-
022.040 (They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right,- (for no cause) except that they say, “our Lord is Allah”. Did not Allah check one set of people by means of another, there would surely have been pulled down monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, in which the name of Allah is commemorated in abundant measure. Allah will certainly aid those who aid his (cause);- for verily Allah is full of Strength, Exalted in Might, (able to enforce His Will).
022.041 (They are) those who, if We establish them in the land, establish regular prayer and give regular charity, enjoin the right and forbid wrong: with Allah rests the end (and decision) of (all) affairs.
022.042 If they treat thy (mission) as false, so did the peoples before them (with their Prophets),- the People of Noah, and ‘Ad and Thamud;

002.190 Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors.
002.191 And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have Turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but fight them not at the Sacred Mosque, unless they (first) fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith.
002.192 But if they cease, Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.
002.193 And fight them on until there is no more Tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah; but if they cease, Let there be no hostility except to those who practise oppression.
002.194 The prohibited month for the prohibited month,- and so for all things prohibited,- there is the law of equality. If then any one transgresses the prohibition against you, Transgress ye likewise against him. But fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who restrain themselves.

Those who were reluctant to join in the war of plunder were reproved. Allah’s revelation on this came down in verses 47:20-21. These verses granted paradise to those who fight (or terrorize and plunder) for Islam i.e., Jihad and are killed.

047.020 Those who believe say, “Why is not a sura sent down (for us)?” But when a sura of basic or categorical meaning is revealed, and fighting is mentioned therein, thou wilt see those in whose hearts is a disease looking at thee with a look of one in swoon at the approach of death. But more fitting for them-
047.021 Were it to obey and say what is just, and when a matter is resolved on, it were best for them if they were true to Allah.

Allah then asked the Jihadis to “strike off the heads of the unbelievers; to make a great slaughter and bind them fast in bonds” in verse 47:3-4

047.003 This because those who reject Allah follow vanities, while those who believe follow the Truth from their Lord: Thus does Allah set forth for men their lessons by similitudes.
047.004 Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers (in fight), smite at their necks; At length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly (on them): thereafter (is the time for) either generosity or ransom: Until the war lays down its burdens. Thus (are ye commanded): but if it had been Allah’s Will, He could certainly have exacted retribution from them (Himself); but (He lets you fight) in order to test you, some with others. But those who are slain in the Way of Allah,- He will never let their deeds be lost.

Furthermore, the true believers were expected not only to fight but also to contribute materially towards the cost of war (4:66-67, 9:88, 9:111), to kill and be killed. Those who did this were promised a higher rank in paradise (4:74, 4:95). The believers were asked to prepare with whatever force in their ability, troops, horses, etc. to strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.

004.066 If We had ordered them to sacrifice their lives or to leave their homes, very few of them would have done it: But if they had done what they were (actually) told, it would have been best for them, and would have gone farthest to strengthen their (faith);
004.067 And We should then have given them from our presence a great reward;

009.088 But the Messenger, and those who believe with him, strive and fight with their wealth and their persons: for them are (all) good things: and it is they who will prosper.
009.111 Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Quran: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme.

004.074 Let those fight in the cause of Allah Who sell the life of this world for the hereafter. To him who fighteth in the cause of Allah,- whether he is slain or gets victory – Soon shall We give him a reward of great (value).
004.095 Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) and receive no hurt, and those who strive and fight in the cause of Allah with their goods and their persons. Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home). Unto all (in Faith) Hath Allah promised good: But those who strive and fight Hath He distinguished above those who sit (at home) by a special reward,-

009.073 O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the Hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell,- an evil refuge indeed.
009.123 O ye who believe! fight the unbelievers who gird you about, and let them find firmness in you: and know that Allah is with those who fear Him.
008.060 Against them make ready your strength to the utmost of your power, including steeds of war, to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know. Whatever ye shall spend in the cause of Allah, shall be repaid unto you, and ye shall not be treated unjustly.

This does not seem to promote “hatred” or “war”? Or the Hadithic description of ethnic cleansing of the Jews which have an uncanny resemblance to what happened to the Jewish areas or ghettos under the Nazis? -for example the genocide of Bani Qurayzah Jews by Muhammad-February-March, 627 : The Muslim soldiers marched toward the fortress of Bani Qurayza that lay two or three miles to the south-east of Medina. Muhammad rode an ass, while an army of three thousand Muslims, with thirty-six horses followed him. After twenty-five days of siege, the Jews grew desperate, exhausted and terrified at their future. They were on the verge of starvation.

Tabari writes: ‘When they saw him (i.e Abu Lubabah), [ A Muslim from a friendly tribe whom the Jews hoped to intercede on behalf of them] the men rose to meet him, and the women and children rushed to grab hold of him, weeping before him, so that he felt pity for them. They said to him, “Abu Lubabah, do you think that we should submit to Muhammad’s judgment”? “Yes”, he said, but he pointed with his hand to his throat, that it would be slaughter.”’ Haykal writes that the Jews thought that the former allies from al-Aws tribe would give them protection if they migrated to Adhriat in al Sham, and that Muhammad would allow them. Muhammad rejected their proposal and insisted on their waiting for his judgment.

In the morning, B. Qurayzah Jews surrendered. The male Jews were chained and kept in the fortress till a decision was made about their fate. The B. Aws were friendly with the B. Qurayzah Jews and pleaded with Muhammad for mercy and a fair judgment for their Jewish allies. On this, Muhammad proposed that the judgment be passed by Sa’d b Muadh who was the B. Aws leader, trying to recuperate from his eventually fatal wound in a tent at Medina. B. Aws and the B. Qurayzah both agreed on this proposal of Muhammad, hoping to have some mercy from Sa’d b. Muadh. Muhammad dispatched some B. Aws men to bring Sa’d to deliver his judgment. Many B. Aws people requested Sa’d to deal with the Jews with leniency and mercy. Sa’d then asked his people if they would accept whatever judgment he pronounced. The assemblage agreed.

On being asked by Muhammad Sa’d b. Muadh replied, “I pass judgment on them that the men shall be killed, the property divided, and the children and women made captives.” Muhammad praised Sa’d for proclaiming a solemn judgment of the Almighty and termed Sa’d’s judgment as fair and said, “You have passed judgment on them with the judgment of God and the judgment of His Messenger.” Sahih Bukhari records:

Volume 5, Book 58, Number 148: Narrated Abu Said Al-Khudri: Some people (i.e. the Jews of Bani bin Quraiza) agreed to accept the verdict of Sad bin Muadh so the Prophet sent for him (i.e. Sad bin Muadh). He came riding a donkey, and when he approached the Mosque, the Prophet said, “Get up for the best amongst you.” or said, “Get up for your chief.” Then the Prophet said, “O Sad! These people have agreed to accept your verdict.” Sad said, “I judge that their warriors should be killed and their children and women should be taken as captives.” The Prophet said, “You have given a judgment similar to Allah’s Judgment (or the King’s judgment).”

[Original Sahih Al-Bukhari] The women and children were then separated from their husbands, others were put under the care of Abdullah, a renegade Jew. All the goods and possessions of the B. Qurayzah Jews, their camels and flocks were all brought as spoils of war. The B. Qurayzah Jewish men were handcuffed behind their backs with their women and children having already been separated. They were placed under the charge of Mohammad ibn Maslama, the assassin of Ka’b ibn Ashraf, to be sent to Medina before their execution in batches. A long trench was dug in the marketplace of Medina. The Prisoners were then taken there, made to kneel down and beheaded in a group of five or six. Muhammad was personally present to witness this slaughter. Ali and Zubayr cut off the heads of the Jews in front of Muhammad. Sourcing from Al-Waqidi, Tabari writes:

“…the messenger of God commanded that furrows should be dug in the ground for the B. Qurayzah. Then he sat down, and Ali and al-Zubayr began cutting off their heads in his presence.” Ibn Ishaq writes that they were taken in groups to Muhammad for beheading in front of him.

Tabari further writes: ‘The messenger of God went out into the marketplace of Medina and had trenches dug in it; then he sent for them and had them beheaded in those trenches. They were brought out to him in groups. Among them were the enemy of God, Huyayy b. Akhtab, and Ka’b b. Asad, the head of the tribe. They numbered 600 or 700-the largest estimate says they were between 800 and 900. As they were being taken in groups to the Messenger of God, they said to Ka’b b. Asad, “Ka’b, what do you understand. Do you not see that the summoner does not discharge [anyone] and that those of you who are taken away do not come back? By God, it is death!” the affair continued until the Messenger of God had finished with them.’

Sir William Muir describes: ‘The men were penned up in a closed yard, while graves or trenches were being dug for them in the chief marketplace of the city. When these were ready, Mahomet, himself a spectator of the tragedy, gave command that the captives should be brought forth in companies of five or six at a time. Each company was made to sit down by the brink of the trench destined for its grave, and there beheaded. Party by party they were thus led out, and butchered in cold blood, till the whole were slain. One woman alone was put to death; it was she who threw the millstone from the battlements.’

Huyayy b. Akhtab, the banished B. Nadir Jewish leader was taken to the execution field. Tabari describes his execution:

‘Huyayy b. Akhtab, the enemy of God, was brought. He was wearing a rose-colored suit of clothes that had torn all over with fingertip-sized holes so that it would not be taken as booty from him, and his hands were bound to his neck with a rope. When he looked at the Messenger of God, he said, “By God, I do not blame myself for being hostile to you, but whomever God forsakes is forsaken.” Then he turned to the people and said: “People, there is no injury in God’s command. It is the book of God, His decree, and a battlefield of great slaughter ordained against the Children of Israel. Then he sat down and was beheaded.’

Only one woman of the B. Qurayzah, the wife of Hasan al-Qurazi and a friend of Aisha, was killed. Aisha’s narrated her story of beheading thus:‘Only one of their women was killed. By God, she was by me, talking with me and laughing unrestraintedly while the Messenger of God was killing their men in the marketplace, when suddenly a mysterious voice called out her name, saying, “Where is so and so?” She said, “I shall be killed.” “Why?” I asked. She said, A misdeed that I committed.” She was taken away and beheaded. (Aisha used to say: I shall never forget my wonder at her cheerfulness and much laughter, even when she knew that she would be killed.).’

The Sahi (authentic) Hadith of Abu Dawud: Book 14, Number 2665: Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu’minin: No woman of Banu Qurayzah was killed except one. She was with me, talking and laughing on her back and belly (extremely), while the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) was killing her people with the swords. Suddenly a man called her name: Where is so-and-so? She said: I I asked: What is the matter with you? She said: I did a new act. She said: The man took her and beheaded her. She said: I will not forget that she was laughing extremely although she knew that she would be killed.”

Ther very old Jewish man Az-Zabir had saved the life of a Muslim convert, Thabit b. Qays in the Bu’ath war. When Az-Zabir was about to be beheaded Thabit requested Muhammad to save the life of Az-Zabir and his family as a return to his favor. Muhammad agreed. Az-Zabir then asked Thabit b. Qays about the Jewish leaders such as Ka’b b. Asad and Huayy b. Akhtab, as he preferred to die rather than to live without them. Az-Zabir replied, “Then I ask you for the sake of the favor I once did for you to join me to my kinsmen, for by God there is no good in living after them. I will not wait patiently for God, not even [the time needed] to take the bucket of a watering trough, until I meet my dear ones.” So Thabit brought him forward, and he was beheaded. Abu Bakr commented “He will meet them, by God, in the Gehenna, there to dwell forever and forever.”

Muhammad commanded that all those Jewish men with pubic hair were to be executed. Hadith from Sunaan Abu Dawud:

Book 38, Number 4390: Narrated Atiyyah al-Qurazi: I was among the captives of Banu Qurayzah. They (the Companions) examined us, and those who had begun to grow hair (pubes) were killed, and those who had not were not killed. I was among those who had not grown hair.
After executing all the adult male Jews, Muhammad sent Sa’d b. Zayd al-Ansari with some captive women and children from the B. Qurayzah to Najd to sell them in the slave market. While we do not have an accurate price of a female slave during that time, Ibn Sa’d writes that Khadijah, Muhammad’s first wife, bought her slave, Zayd b. Haritha, (who would later become Muuhammad’s adopted son), for four hundred Dirhams at the slave market of Ukaz, Mecca. [the price of young slave varied from five hundred dirhams to eight hundred dirhams - Sunaan Abu Dawud hadith numbers, 3946 and 4563]. Among the captive was a young woman called Rayhanh bt. ‘Amr b. Khunafah and took her as his concubine. It is said that when Muhammad offered to make her his wife by embracing Islam, she declined. She preferred to remain a concubine to becoming a Muslim and said, “Messenger of God, rather leave me in your possession [as a concubine], for it is easier for me and for you.”

I have not heard of the Quran or the Hadiths being banned in Europe. As for the communists or the leftists, they need simply to look for a functioning leftist, socialist or communist party working in any of the core Islamic countries in Asia – other than a few intellectuals tolerated here and there – with two notable exceptions, one without a country among the Kurds, and the other in Turkey where the nationalist modernization started by the army under Ataturk is still battling it out with headscarfs and explosions. The communists can also ponder the fate of the communists at the hands of Muslims in Afghanistan, or the “Marxist” army commander in Iraq who took over from the boy-king and was then replaced by the mentor of Saddam. Forgetting history is a serious lapse, but selective percolation of politically motivated reconstructions or “scientifically annotated” histories in favour of a particular group or ideology and against others is a “criminal” offence against freedom of thought and speech – for ultimately it always leads to the most pernicious of ideologies to take over our lives by not revealing to us the real agenda behind the sugar-coated pills provided by the “ideologues”.

With the Marriott Hotel in the capital of Pakistan, being the latest of targets of a blast from an estimated 1000 Kg of explosives, the old question becomes obvious again – who is supplying the military hardware and the logistics for such attacks? It is not only about who is supplying, but also the question of who has the capability of supplying such necessary ingredients of terror? Both in Isarel and India, Islam’s terrorists are showing up with the latest military technology and knowledge of explosives and using such hardware which are only typically available only in the armies of modern nation states. Weapons in modern warfare come from sophisticated defence establishments and are a result of long and intensive research, and are necessarily products of highly sophisticated and centralized industrial networks with the end product almost inevitably coming from the top of the industrial pyramid. Thus, increasingly it is becoming impossible for the non-military common population to mount any successful rebellion against a national government – as even veterans or those who have been trained  in the military as reserve cannot do much without access to the hardware, and continued supply from these industries for military consumables and replacements.  Thus it is crucial to note that in Islam’s continued aggression on Israel and India, two things have to coincide to sustain this onslaught – (1) the preservation and stoking the fire of the hardcore Sunni Wahabi or closely allied in agenda (but not necessarily allied in practical terms) Shia sectarian aggressive proselytization and an obsessive intent on capturing the lands and the non-muslim people of Israel and India (2) the continuous provision of finance and military hardware for the various levels of Islamic terror- ranging from  paramilitary/semi-armies like that of the Hezbollah, Pakistani Taleban, or regrouping Al Qaeda in Afghanistan all the way through to the individual suicide bomber in Iraq, or the executors of blasts in Pakistan and India.

In India, the situation is rather more complex than in Israel. It appears to me that now there are indications of a disturbing possible collaboration between Islamic forces and other ideologies. The other ideologies involved in this collaboration may not be fully aware of their own place in the overall Islamic strategy for the Indian populations. The Islamic strategy appears to be heading now towards utilizing the existing divisions between the various ethnicities and non-muslim religions or ideologies. There is a strong possibility that various so-called Maoist outfits, ethnic separatists, as well as some proselytizing religious groups could be playing into the hands of the Islamic Jihadi leadership. The Quran, and the Hadiths repeatedly stress, as well as provide examples of how Islam utilizes the conflicts and misunderstandings between various groups of “unbelievers”, to weaken all unbelievers until they are no longer militarily strong to resist Islam when it suddenly reveals its actual Jihadi militant agenda. A part in this could also be played by the clever use of political anxieties within anti-”Hindu” political parties that a cultural consolidation of the “Hindu” is taking place within India, and showing signs of a political consciousness as well. This could be behind the recent string of attacks on churches in BJP led states or states where BJP has come to a sharing of state power, as, if we apply the principle of who benefits from a “crime”, we can see that everyone gains apart from the BJP – the Congress gains by posing as the protector of minorities and then can curry for votes from these sections, the proselytizing groups gain by posing as the “leader” among all the different sects of this religion and polarize religious sectarian sentiments in favour of their particular sectarian group [especially if their prestige and funding is dependent on the number of "conversions" of the "heathen" they have benn able to make], and “Maoists” gain money or arms in return for supporting actions against the majority groups in favour of a particular religious sect. In all this Islamic Jihadis gain the most, by engaging the majority community in basically what amounts to “death by a thousand cuts”, and could be behind supporting all these groups with money and arms.

For India, two things are working in its favour – its military is still relatively free from the presence of Islamic influence, and that a cultural and political consolidation of the “Hindu” is taking place. The political forces  that have been infiltrated by Islam are an “aging” generation, and an “aging” ideology which tries to relive an earlier era following the various compromises and sheer greed for personal power that accompanied the formal but not actual removal of India from the British empire – and is still following the realpolitik of the Cold War, not realizing that even the West has had to reverse its earlier overwhelming Islamophilia in favour of a more practical policy as consistent with their dependence on “Islamic” oil and markets.

It is important for non-Hindu non-Muslim proselytizing groups to realize, that any attempt to replace the culture of the Hindus from among its populations through the after-effects of “conversions” will only make these converts more vulnerable to the onslaught of Islam – as monotheism of the revealed traditions represents a simplification of the complexity and diversity of the world view of the classical Hindu philosophies, and it becomes infinitely easier to convert from one form of the revealed traditions to another – as is seen by the increasing conversion rates of Christians into Islam in Europe and America. Leaving the Hindus as they are, is the best possible antidote to Islam on the Indian subcontinent at present – even though the “Hindus” of India may appear to be rich picking in terms of showing “scalp counts” at religious conventions to compete for funding. Money can be raised in various other ways, but fall of India to Islam will be accelerated if  Christianity spreads in India, which will ultimately unhinge the entire US strategy in Asia to prevent the formation of a continuous Islamic “Caliphate” running from North and East Africa, Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar,Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines.

Related post on conversions