Archive for May, 2010
Why is Christianity preparing the ground for Jihadi takeover
Significantly unnoticed events have taken place over the last last few months : at MIT a conference was organized by one Omar Khalidi, a staff member of MIT, who advocates separate laws for Muslims such as polygamy etc, different constituencies for Muslims to elect Muslim lawmakers, apparently has issues with Christian nature of USA and is known even by Muslim scholars as someone who selects his data to paint a picture that suits Islamic agenda. Some people are of opinion he is what one can call ‘soft’ jihadi.
The speaker list is a who’s who of academics known for their soft corner towards Islamism. The keynote speaker is Paul Brass. He has written several books on Hinduism whihc has been accepted as standard texts on Hinduism by many western universities. A close collaborator and fellow-traveller of the Thaparite school of Indian history (whose main thrust is to deny atrocity on non-Muslims by Muslim regimes and states in India )- is one of the leading academic activists to paint comparative pictures of Hindus vs Muslims antagonism and is supposed to be an authority on Hindu-Muslim violence. His books show an uncanny association of the word “Hindu/Hinduism” automatically with “right wing/extremists/nationalists” in close proximity or as qualifying adjectives. Read them and you will be inspired!
Read up on the other speakers and contributors mentioned and their sometimes not so much aired political positions and leanings : Angana Chatterji, Meenakshi Ganguly, Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi, Chinnaiah Jangam, Ratna Kapur, Omar Khalidi, Shafeeq R. Mahajir, Manoj Mitta, R.K. Raghavan, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Haimanti Roy, Srirupa Roy, Bish Sanyal, Ornit Shani, Mukul Sinha, Nirjhari Sinha, Arvind Verma.
They serve ironically as great catalysts for “Hindu consolidation” and acceleration towards “right”. Moorthy Muthuswamy has studied Khalidi for his apparent influence on political parties within India with an obvious agenda of creating a separate state for Muslims within India. This fits in with perhaps a perception among a section of Jihadis and their backers that for the next stage of Islamist expansion, resources needed can be gleaned from non-Muslims in India since the Pakistan experiment has failed to provide the resources on its own.
Now why this consistent pattern of western support for elements that bring on Islamic Jihad on non-Muslim civilizations? Maybe the key lies in a fundamental weakness of Christianity towards Islam -specifically to the Arabic Sunni sect of Islam. The problem in fact can be traced back to this weakness after we eliminate all other potential reasons.
It appears that both Islam and Christianity had been in competition over the Judaic legacy and therefore each in its own way saw Judaism proper or the community of Jews as an obstacle to this ideological supremacy. However, ideologically they cannot go too far away from each other in the fundamentals because of this root foundation in Judaism. The conflicts bewteen Christendom and Islam in the historical period basically starts over this claim of sole legacy and takes the form of imperialist conflict – because, both the proselytizing versions of Judaism emerged out of a practical imeprialist need for expansion.
The conflict therefore took the form of war for territory and control of productive economies and trade routes of others. To maintain the drive for this imperialist expansion, each side needed to identify the other side as “alien” and the “devil”. The peculiarity of common origins and memes however forced them to find racial divide as an identifier of alien-ness and the enemy.
To date there has been no solid, logical refutation of Islam by Christianity except the claim that Islamics do not recognize Jesus as the sole way to salvation. Even this is problematic because Islam places Jesus as one of the principal prophets and reserves a special role for Jesus in the “end-times”. So the Christian-Islam conflict has taken the loose and weaker basis of “race” rather than any concrete and profound difference in ideology.
It is this theoretical confusion that is clearly indicated in the responses that Christian dominated west gives to Islamic moves. Contrary to the propaganda that west’s reaction to Islamism is purely determined by economic motives, it is actually Christianity’s secret attraction for what it perhasp considers the “purity” of the Sunni Arabic extension of Judaism. For example the West has studiously cultivated the Arabs since using them as tools against the competitors of the British – the Ottomans. But there would be no reason to continue preferring them over and above the Iranians long after Ottomans have been finished, and both Arabia and Iran sit over oil wealth. Not that the west does not dip to deal with Iran when needed – as in the Contra-hostage deal.
Where does this put Christianity and Islam in the eyes of other non-revealed-tradition cultures?
In UK, judicial and executive systems enforce the law strictly when it comes to the case of say liquidation of the “holy cow” of a Hindu temple becuase, reasonably – the cow was diseased. However the same country and system finds desecration of its prized memorial by a Muslim as not being driven by religious hatred and has allowed a symbolic violent form of expression of hatred in Islam – the throwing of the shoe (typically symbolically used against the devil), as a legitimate form of public expression.
In the USA, the California text book controversy showed that the administration and system would be reluctant to withdraw protection to attempts to represent the non-Muslim past of India in a way that suits the Islamic agenda aginst Hindus. The same system finds a Chief Minister of an Indian state known for his strong Hindu affiliations persona non grata even though he has not yet been convicted on the charges of complicity in Hindu-Muslim violence – the main excuse given to refuse him visas. However the same administration has no problem with Omar Kahlidi’s claims which as Muthuswamy points out are based on dubious scholarship. So the “Hindu” fall foul of freedom of expression but Islamist views do not.
In India, the Christian proselytizers are not known to target the Indain Muslim communities for conversion, but Hindus. Indian Christians are also not seen as active protesters against Jihadi activities or statements by various sections of Islamists.
Alll this shows up as a secret attraction and weakness towards the Sunni-Wahabi form of Islam within Christianity of the west to the Hindus, among whom the mistrust of Christian missionaries and their motives have been increasing. Moreover the gradually increasing intervention of western states in favour of protecting the primary propaganda mechanisms of Islamists, and prevention of movements or expressions of ideological criticisms of Islam, is bound to alarm Hindus or Buddhists across South Asia.
If Christianity cannot resolve this fundamental dilemma, it will not be too distant a day, when the Azaan will be heard from Westminster Abbey, the British Monarch may well come out of his Zenana Harem to attend Friday Prayers where the Khutba will be read extolling a new Caliph in the middle East, and the USA rechristens itself the United American Emirates.
Yes, absurd perhaps – but just imagine it for a moment and decide!
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