Future strategic scenario for the Indian Subcontinent

[gandharva]

About cruelty of Muslims, specially in case of the subcontinent, it probably has to do with the harsh battlefield tactics of the Central Asia Steppe nomads, first from the Turkics and then of course the Mongols or to be more correct Turko-Mongol Mughals. In the steppe, it was common practice to decimate entire tribes or peoples who resisted, so this must have carried over in the subcontinent as well to some extent. I am not trying to defend Islam as an ideology, but just making a point for greater understanding, because these atrocities were committed by a specific group of people who have not so long ago converted to Islam and were using Islam as an imperial ideology of conquest. They were not much removed from pre Islamic Turkic and Mongol warriors. The pre-Islamic Turkic and Mongol warriors did not whip up a Jihad, but they were probably as, if not more, vicious in their battle field practices.

ISLAM WAS THE CULPRIT

http://voiceofdharma.org/books/siii/ch5.htm

My first question is: How is it that what the Prophet of Islam did in Arabia and the Arab armies in Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Sicily, Spain and Sindh, bears such close resemblance to what the Turks did in India?

My second question is: How come that the Pathans, who hated the Turks and fought them tooth and nail throughout the medieval period, followed the Turks so faithfully in their treatment of the Hindus?

My third question is: How do we explain the behaviour of marauders who were not Turks but Hindus converted to Islam, and who behaved no better, if not worse, than the much-maligned Turks?

My fourth question is: Were the Turks really such black barbarians as they have been painted by the Aligarh apologists? How then do we explain the glaring contradiction in the behaviour of many Turkish kings who were such fearsome fiends when dealing with Hindus, but who became benevolent monarchs when dealing with Muslims?

So my fifth and final question is: Why did these medieval Muslim historians credit their patrons with crimes which the latter had not committed, or exaggerate the scale of some minor misdemeanours?



The much-maligned Turk did have another face which was far from being that of a barbarian. It is quite another matter that the benevolent face of the Turk was always and exclusively turned towards his Muslim Ummah, and never towards the “accursed” Hindus. What is relevant here is that crimes committed by the Turks in India cannot be explained away in terms of a barbarism inherent in his race. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who also blames the crimes of Islam on the barbarism of the Turks says in the same breath that the Turks were Buddhists before they got converted to Islam. Was it Buddhism that had brutalised the Turks? Or had Buddhism failed to humanise them?

[AKalam]

About cruelty of Muslims, specially in case of the subcontinent, it probably has to do with the harsh battlefield tactics of the Central Asia Steppe nomads, first from the Turkics and then of course the Mongols or to be more correct Turko-Mongol Mughals. In the steppe, it was common practice to decimate entire tribes or peoples who resisted, so this must have carried over in the subcontinent as well to some extent. I am not trying to defend Islam as an ideology, but just making a point for greater understanding, because these atrocities were committed by a specific group of people who have not so long ago converted to Islam and were using Islam as an imperial ideology of conquest. They were not much removed from pre Islamic Turkic and Mongol warriors. The pre-Islamic Turkic and Mongol warriors did not whip up a Jihad, but they were probably as, if not more, vicious in their battle field practices.

ISLAM WAS THE CULPRIT

http://voiceofdharma.org/books/siii/ch5.htm

My first question is: How is it that what the Prophet of Islam did in Arabia and the Arab armies in Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Africa, Sicily, Spain and Sindh, bears such close resemblance to what the Turks did in India?

My second question is: How come that the Pathans, who hated the Turks and fought them tooth and nail throughout the medieval period, followed the Turks so faithfully in their treatment of the Hindus?

My third question is: How do we explain the behaviour of marauders who were not Turks but Hindus converted to Islam, and who behaved no better, if not worse, than the much-maligned Turks?

My fourth question is: Were the Turks really such black barbarians as they have been painted by the Aligarh apologists? How then do we explain the glaring contradiction in the behaviour of many Turkish kings who were such fearsome fiends when dealing with Hindus, but who became benevolent monarchs when dealing with Muslims?

So my fifth and final question is: Why did these medieval Muslim historians credit their patrons with crimes which the latter had not committed, or exaggerate the scale of some minor misdemeanours?



The much-maligned Turk did have another face which was far from being that of a barbarian. It is quite another matter that the benevolent face of the Turk was always and exclusively turned towards his Muslim Ummah, and never towards the “accursed” Hindus. What is relevant here is that crimes committed by the Turks in India cannot be explained away in terms of a barbarism inherent in his race. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who also blames the crimes of Islam on the barbarism of the Turks says in the same breath that the Turks were Buddhists before they got converted to Islam. Was it Buddhism that had brutalised the Turks? Or had Buddhism failed to humanise them?

Dear Sir, lets say for arguments sake that Islam was the culprit, guilty as charged, then where do we go from this point?

I have no good answer to the first 4 questions, and I am not sure if these assertions made in the questions are true.

If the medieval historians recorded some crimes, they could very well be true.

About Turkic's being Buddhist, this is true of Eastern Turkic people in present day Xinjiang, who are known today as Uyghurs and they are mostly settled farmers. The Nomadic Turkic people in Central Asia, Turkmen, Kyrgyz and Kazakh, were mostly Shamanist or Nestorian Christian, as far as I know, before converting to Islam. Most of the Turkics and Turko-Mongols that came to the subcontinent were from Central Asia.

It is a well known fact that Huns, Turkics and Mongols, all nomads on horse back, arising out of same Trans Altaic and Baikal origin, were a menace through out history for nearby settled civilizations, and the Chinese bore the brunt, as is evident with their effort to build the Great Wall to keep them out. (Please note that the term Turk has become reserved for citizens of the Republic of Turkey)

[gandharva]

then where do we go from this point?

Instead of being the proponents of Islamism, the Muslims of India are its victims whom it is trying to use as vehicles of its poisonous virulence. The Muslims of India, therefore, have to be freed from rather than accused of Islamism. What I mean by Islamism is a self-righteous psychology and a closed cultural attitude which make it impossible for its converts to coexist peacefully and with dignity with other people. There are many Hindus who share several tenets of Islamism. On the other hand, there are many Muslims who are frightened by Islamism and who would gladly join the mainstream of Indian nationalism if they are freed from the whiphand which a minority of theologians, politicians and hooligans has come to wield in their community.

You can make hundred strategies But it will fail unless you fix the problem of Islamism first.

[gandharva]

About Turkic's being Buddhist, this is true of Eastern Turkic people in present day Xinjiang, who are known today as Uyghurs and they are mostly settled farmers. The Nomadic Turkic people in Central Asia, Turkmen, Kyrgyz and Kazakh, were mostly Shamanist or Nestorian Christian, as far as I know, before converting to Islam. Most of the Turkics and Turko-Mongols that came to the subcontinent were from Central Asia.

It is a well known fact that Huns, Turkics and Mongols, all nomads on horse back, arising out of same Trans Altaic and Baikal origin, were a menace through out history for nearby settled civilizations, and the Chinese bore the brunt, as is evident with their effort to build the Great Wall to keep them out. (Please note that the term Turk has become reserved for citizens of the Republic of Turkey)

Let us not divert from the main topic of the thread. You can find suitable thread to discuss the spread of Budhism in central Asia.

[brihaspati]

I think poster AKalam is a valuable addition to our forum, and we should encourage him to contribute. He shows quite a grasp of Asian history, and I would definitely like to discuss issues about perceptions of Islam in the subcontinent - but there is a more appropriate thread for this the "Indic perception of Islam..." thread. May I request him to contribute to that thread? I think everyone here realizes, out of personal conviction or from experience of interaction with the non-Muslim communities at large - that for most non-Muslims, Islam remains an outside/foreign/hostile religion and culture, in spite of various syncretic tendencies and attempts. Explicit attempts by the theologians of Islam, who take pride in and try to distinguish themselves by claiming descent from the "pure", the Ashrafis - descended from the "core" of Islam - Arabia, Iraq, Iran - have had a very negative impact, by deliberately isnisting on cultural practices that maintains segregation. To be an acceptable religion compatible with the broader civilizational structure on the subcontinent that we are trying to build, Islam has to formally disassociate from outside the subcontinent "centres". This will probably amount to an independent body based within the subcontinent that explicitly declares certain item in the cores texts, as illegal, anti-Islam, and punishable with the highest penalties under Islam. This will mean

(1) declaring military Jihad as anti-Islam
(2) enslavement of non-Muslims under any circumstances anti-islam
(3) slaughtering, raping, abducting for sex, turning into "right hand possessions" and automatic annulment of marriages of captive women from non-Muslims, anti-Islam
(4) all provisions of the Hudud anti-Islam
(5) declaring that Arabian and Israeli holy centres of Islam are one of the many holy centres of Islam, and that Islam has no particular global centre. If Islam fails to do this, and insists on retaining a concept of a global centre in Arabia/middle east outside the subcontinent, then there will be no way to prevent declaring the subcontinent to be the centre of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikh Panth and Buddhism. This has implications in the core's policy towards regions where people could be under repression simply because they are perceived to be belonging to these faiths.
(6) formal declaration and commitment that any clash with the first principles and rights (equality before the law, gender equality, compulsory general education, etc.) will lead to the principles and rights to prevail and not any Islamic claims to the contrary
(7) formal acceptance that conversion out of Islam is allowed without any penalties whatsoever, and that conversion to Islam cannot be made a precondition to marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims.
(8) formal acceptance of state supervision of finance and educational activity

This is an important issue to be sorted out. This is one of the items, in sorting out the thorny state-religion interrelationship question. Please note, admin and posters - this is not a discussion of religion per se, but certain items of agreement we need to establish between faiths and the "core". Similar agreements need to be established with other faiths too.

[JwalaMukhi]

What a transformation from this author. Tube bombings did it and woke her up.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story_prin ... yid=406326

The idea of India did not exist until the British created it is the contention of India’s self-loathing ‘liberals’. In the words of a historian of recent celebrity, India is an ‘unnatural nation as well as an unlikely democracy’. He does not bother to explain what he means by ‘unnatural nation’ since the nation state itself did not exist till not very long ago. Long, long before that there was a country called Bharat whose borders were clearly defined and whose certainty continues to be perfectly understood by ordinary Indians across India.

When a pilgrim from Tamil Nadu or Karnataka sets off to attend the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, he does not think that he is travelling to a foreign country. When a family from Bengal travels to Banaras or Mathura to drop off some inconvenient widow in one of the ashrams, there they do not think they are travelling abroad either. The only people who have a problem defining India are liberal, English-speaking ‘secular intellectuals’ who usually don’t speak even a single Indian language. They understand no more about the idea of India than those intellectual refugees from the West who make India their home and become ‘experts’ on all things Indian. They belong to the same club because they all make a living out of writing books, histories and articles about this India that is so unnatural a nation, so accidental a country.

The second myth perpetrated by the self-loathers is that there is no such thing as Hindu India. There is a ‘composite’ culture that is Hindu and Muslim and that is that. Anyone who dares suggest that for many centuries before Islam came to our shores India was a Hindu country is instantly reviled as a rank ‘communalist’ of the Hindutva kind. It is important to note here that the self-loathing liberals have no problem describing a period of Indian history as Mughul and another period as British. The problem is ‘Hindu’ India because the premise that there was a country called Bharat that was entirely Hindu in ancient times is somehow offensive.

Modern India has given birth to modern myths.
You would not think that there could be an alliance between religious fanatics and those who believe they are intellectuals of liberal, left persuasion but in India there is. This bizarre alliance is so strong that Indian leftists have become the most ardent spokesmen (and women) of the Islamists. They find themselves in this extraordinary role because nothing motivates them more than their passionate loathing of India. May I suggest a cure. It is time for them to spend an extended holiday in Pakistan or Bangladesh to discover what countries in which history is myth are really like.

[enqyoob]

My first question is: How is it that what the Prophet of Islam did ..

My second question is: How come that the Pathans,... followed the Turks so faithfully in their treatment of the Hindus?

My third question is: How do we explain the behaviour of marauders who were ....
My fourth question is: Were the Turks really such black barbarians ...

So my fifth and final question is: Why did these medieval Muslim historians ...

So Brihaspatiji, I read your endorsement of these discussions, but my concern remains: does the FUTURE scenario require going back to the same old yadayadayada islam this that - wasting all kinds of time of kind adminullahs?

Is there no FUTURE where we can break free of this medieval garbage? Isn't this depressing? Even the Pakistanis (oooh! check out the ultramodern-but-proper Hon. and Dig. Marvi Memon )seem to have started to come around to realizing that there may be some merit to coming all the way forward into the 18th century - then why must we keep going back to the 7th?

[brihaspati]

Narayanan wrote
So Brihaspatiji, I read your endorsement of these discussions, but my concern remains: does the FUTURE scenario require going back to the same old yadayadayada islam this that - wasting all kinds of time of kind adminullahs?

Is there no FUTURE where we can break free of this medieval garbage? Isn't this depressing? Even the Pakistanis (oooh! check out the ultramodern-but-proper Hon. and Dig. Marvi Memon )seem to have started to come around to realizing that there may be some merit to coming all the way forward into the 18th century - then why must we keep going back to the 7th?

I am not endorsing continued historical discussions of any of these questions, in fact I have personally not contributed except in replying to certain items. What I do accept is that we cannot avoid the question of relationship of religions to the state in the future, and the place of religions in general with respect to the core - and my personal opinion is that "religions have to fall in line". A certain core set of values, rights, and principles supercede religious claims, and in any such conflict with the state it is the state principles and values that will prevail. What the individual faiths need to do to "fall in line" is something that can be indicated but not really discussed here. These are more suggestions for reforms along broad generalities and certain intense particular issues of conflict rather than detailed justifications and sourcings from texts/schools of thought etc.

I would request all posters to desist from dicussing historical elements in faiths in their historical/philosophical contexts - but rather as what should or should not be part of the future. Better still let us try to have a convergence of opinion towards the basic set of rights and principles to which all religions who do not want to be banned altogether have to fall in line with. Hope this clarification suffices!

[JwalaMukhi]

There are couple of things that India should be conducting. One is the usual standard practice of doing everything by the text book style. The second is non text book style and is also very effective and IMVHO is cost effective. The first style requires border fencing, taking strong anti-illegal immigration measures and punitively punishing the citizens of India to cultivate discipline and carry "dog-tags" (whose administration and misuse cannot be avoided).

The second style requires fighting the scourge at its epicenter; meaning quintessentially in the periphery. BD is a loose periphery and should be coopted to conduct its affairs in India's interest. As pointed out, BD is artificial construct and should quickly be disabused of dreaming a destiny that is inimical to India's interest. BD should be made aware (gently at first) that it was created with an expiry date. The mistake the Indian planners are doing is assuming that BD is there to stay and let it have its own foreign and defence policies (that are not aligned to Indian interest specifically and subcontinent interest in general). The price for sleeping at the wheel, will be for India to fight another possible "new-clear" frankestien on the eastern front.
The very fact that BD can have independent foreign and defence policies has already crossed the red line for Indian interests.
The sooner Indians bring this vagrant region inline with Indian interests, the better. Doesn't mean that they become part of India and bhai-chara flows. It is not about shared destiny; it is about BD not having any destiny that does not support and actively promote India's interest.

Once the eastern and southern fronts are made India friendly, then the subcontinent will have better prospect.

[brihaspati]

The Sri-Lankan army is probably pressing and isolating PVK further now. From the core periphery viewpoint, loss of Jaffna to SL army can mean the LTTE problem expanding into India. At this time, BD will be reluctant to help PVK out. PVK will need to be close to SL within opertaional range. The Maldives/Lakshadweep belt is a possibility, mainland TN is a possibility. PVK's use of TN as a base to launch offensives against SL brings a new dimension into the core-periphery dynamics. He can network with the other terror networks in India, be provided sympathetic cover from within groups in the South, and in general create lots of new and uncomfortable questions that the current Indian state cannot answer - because its attitudes towards movements such as the LTTE has not been clearcut. This can prove to be a situation as nasty as in TSP, becuase once again the core lacks clarity of vision.

[brihaspati]

TSP and BD have similarities but also some fundamental differences. The same attitudes should not be applied to both. These are two different types of periphery.

[SBajwa]

AKalam sahib,

In my humble opinion.

Only way to assuage the grief of non-muslims people vis-a-vis islamic terrorism is for muslims to start leaving the islam out and be vocal that because of Islamic terrorism where these muslims are murdering innocent children, women and men at shopping malls, night clubs, trains, railway stations and airports, we are leaving this religion all together.

That way these "Wahabis" will be totally gunning after "former muslims" and we non-muslims can live in peace. You should fight for what is right thing and not what you "perceive" the right thing because some book in some language of the world tells you.

Dharma means "righteous thing" irrespective of any code (religion).

If you believe that killing of innocent women, children and men is a "righteous thing" then at least be open and truthful and vocal to come out and say that "We think that these muslim guys are right in murdering innocents as it is required to be a muslim"., if not then leave islam.

Indians believe in Truth. all of our religious icons and book relish "Absolute Truth".

If majority of muslims are truthful about their support to terrorism, then at least our politicians won't come out and tell the normal folks that "Islam and muslims are just like buddhists and jains"

In my opinion Only way forward is to leave the medieval islam out and be cosmpolitan in the real sense where Quran can be translated into any language (including Bangla) and be critiqued., also Saudi Mullahs prosecuted for their Fatwa's in the international criminal courts (threat charges) to be setup under UNO.

[gandharva]

Is there no FUTURE where we can break free of this medieval garbage? Isn't this depressing? Even the Pakistanis (oooh! check out the ultramodern-but-proper Hon. and Dig. Marvi Memon )seem to have started to come around to realizing that there may be some merit to coming all the way forward into the 18th century - then why must we keep going back to the 7th?

Probably we can analyze future Swedish invasion of India and Golden age which is going to come under Rahul Baba.

[Keshav]

Come on guys, lets keep this discussion serious.

I think the people of India need to adopt a new definition of secularism.

The Hindu version of secularism that "all religions deserve equal representation" is a farce in a country which has every major religion in it. It's a joke, legally speaking. Once upon a time, we were able to have that mentality because 99% of the people were "Hindu" and belonged to a dharmic school of thought, but that is simply not the case anymore.

India needs to adopt the American version of secularism - "separation of church and state" and completely remove matters of religion from governmental hands.

1. Create a universal legal system (remove Hindu, Muslim, Christian laws and what not ie. Make all marriages civil)
2. Remove governmental funding for pilgrimages and houses of worship.
3. Remove governmental control on houses of worship (as they are private)

[SaiK]

1. Create a universal legal system (remove Hindu, Muslim, Christian laws and what not ie. Make all marriages civil)
2. Remove governmental funding for pilgrimages and houses of worship.
3. Remove governmental control on houses of worship (as they are private)

if 3 happens without 1, then we can call ourselves "United Arabs of India [UAI]".

article 370 is first.. destroy pakistan, and then rebuild pakistan.. perhaps with new state full actors (may want to think about demigration by choice).

vallabhai patel ki jai!

[brihaspati]

I request again that we focus on key issues for the future :

(1) for an effective core that can ensure certain basic rights, and corresponding duties for all members of the core - we have to empower the "core". This means individual differences and claims of religion, creed, sects, ethnicities have to take a subsidiary place in the hierarchy if they clash with the commonly agreed principles of the core. And the reasons, in spite of Narayananji's misgivings and utter frustration, are simply because some religions or certain aspects of some religions are yet to show the flexibility or any indication whatsoever that they will accept such a subsidiary role. Every now and then, we have incidents coming out that shows that certain religions are insisting on maintaining their supremacy where control over their followers lives are concerned. We cannot have multiple arbitrary centres of authority over a member of the core. We cannot also allow the core to be hijacked by any ideology that claims suprahuman, beyond human criticism or negotiation, immunity and authority. This sort of authority claim has to go.

(2) if religions continue to show their refusal to conform to the supremacy of whatever we finally agree as the core principles, then we have to deal with it - if the past insists on nosing its way and trying to dominate our lives adversely, then we have to discuss, expose, and destroy the authority of such religions. Yes this can be distasteful, and "yadayada", but needs to be done anyway. You have to clear the rubble of old buildings that are crumbling down and creating obstacles for the road or are in the way of new construction.

(3) the least disruption would of course result from starting out with a modernization and filtering of principles common among the majority of populations within the current broad geographical extent of the core - India.

(4) the same rule extends to claims of ethnic special treatment - once we all agree to the core principles, they should take precedence over subgroup claims of immunity.

I am trying to point out that the basic idea in empowering the core and putting it on a solid foundation is to get a core set of principles and rights which take precedence over subgroup claims. For example, you cannot justify selling of women and children (dont jump, humans in general) under any pretext, poverty, religion, culture, giving it a different colour or name under religious practice - whatever. You cannot practice polygamy - under any pretext, religious, cultural, etc. You cannot insist on particular religion as precondition for marriage. You cannot claim to kill someone because of his/her marital/sexual choice under the pretext that it is your culture, tradition, religion. You cannot prevent the girl child from getting educated up to the highest possible level because it is not supported by your culture or religion. If cultures and religions come in with such claims because it is written down in some historical text which cannot be questioned as it is a revelation of a suprahuman unchallengeable authority - that is no longer "yaddayadda" - it is a mtter of utmost significance for our project, for the future.

In arguing against such retrogressive demands we may use deconstructions of religious texts, we may destroy their authority in the ideological arena, but that is a detail not for this thread.

We are yet to take up "separatism"!

[SBajwa]

It cannot get any simpler than

Under UNO's directive heads of all religions (pope, mufti, shankaracharaya, rabbi's, jathedar's) coming together and creating a common international protocol for people which gets all of them onto the same page.

modifying the quotes of brihaspati below
1. you cannot justify selling of women and children (dont jump, humans in general) under any pretext, poverty, religion, culture, giving it a different colour or name under religious practice - whatever.

2. You cannot practice polygamy - under any pretext, religious, cultural, etc. You cannot insist on particular religion as precondition for marriage.

3. You cannot claim to kill someone because of his/her mariotal/sexual choice under the pretext that it is your culture, tradition, religion.

4. You cannot prevent the girl child from getting educated up to the highest possible level because it is not supported by your culture or religion.

5. You cannot threat anybody if it is perceived offensive only file a complaint with UNO.

So... when Hindus, Christians, jains, buddhists, communists, atheists, scientologists, Jews, Sikhs, etc come together and ratify the document describing above.. muslims will have to reform.

[brihaspati]

This is a tentative idea for the interim/short term - not for the longer term. This is a compromise formula until the majority acceptance of complete supremacy of the core's principles over and above that of subgroups.

(1) Bring in a complete civil law that is not binding initially on all citizens, but which can be adopted formally by an oath and declaration voluntarily by any adult Indian citizen. This should include a complete marital, family, and inheritance law guided by modern humanitarian principles. At the moment Indians do not have any choice in their religious denomination and they are considered to belong to the religion they are born into or “adopted”. This can be a good way out for those who want to come out of Islam but do not want to face “charges” of apostasy.

(2) give a very clear warning against Islamic countries that are carrying out forced conversions of Hindus, that Islam stands to lose a much larger chunk if Indians decide to get serious about “persuading” Indian Muslims to convert out of Islam. Ensure that surviving Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs in Pakistan, or non-Muslims of Indic origin faiths, in Malaysia or Indonesia are protected, either by exchange of populations or establishing direct diplomatic centres.

(3) enforcing all religious institutions to register, and have a separate unit set up, possibly under the Ministry of Culture, that will formally not only audit but have representatives on the board of trustees or management. All religious institutions will have to make transactions through bank accounts, and will not be allowed to receive foreign funding, and accounts will be regularly audited. All citizens will have to be registered in one of the religions recognized or declare themselves to be under the civil law who will not be then considered legally as belonging to any religion. Also legal steps can be taken if someone who has declared in favour of the civil law, continues to participate in activities under a specific religious institution.

(4) religions which prescribe a fixed rate of contribution from their followers, will be guaranteed the required proportion deducted in addition to regular income tax from the source of income of the religion’s followers. This money will then be forwarded to one or more religious institutions of choice as indicated by the donee. Islam prescribes Jakaat and fitra, which should then be deducted from the income of Muslims at source and handed over to Islamic institutions. All religious institutions will have to function within this source of revenue, as transparently audited and supervised by the Government, and no external source of funding will be allowed. Any breaking of this stipulation will lead to criminal proceedings against the religious institution. Those who adopt civil law will not have to pay this “religious contribution”.

(5) educational activity carried out by religious organizations will have to conform to a National Education policy, and have to cover the basic elements including all modern science subjects required in a national syllabus. Material declared objectionable and not in consistency with the Constitution, or the legal system will have to be removed, and if retained will lead to closing down of the educational setup.

(6) Conversions have to be applied for to the government, together with documentary evidence of sanction by a recognized religious body, and subject to a waiting period, during which people or bodies that have objections can raise it with the appellate body. The convertee can be subjected to repeated interviews by independent experts, and have also to agree to audit of personal accounts, sources of income expenditure and wealth, for an unspecified period of time before and after the recognition of conversion. Specifically conversions into the religion of the spouse will not be allowed for a specified long period before and after the date of marriage. This process will not have to be gone through in case of adopting the civil law.

[AKalam]

I think poster AKalam is a valuable addition to our forum, and we should encourage him to contribute. He shows quite a grasp of Asian history, and I would definitely like to discuss issues about perceptions of Islam in the subcontinent - but there is a more appropriate thread for this the "Indic perception of Islam..." thread. May I request him to contribute to that thread? I think everyone here realizes, out of personal conviction or from experience of interaction with the non-Muslim communities at large - that for most non-Muslims, Islam remains an outside/foreign/hostile religion and culture, in spite of various syncretic tendencies and attempts. Explicit attempts by the theologians of Islam, who take pride in and try to distinguish themselves by claiming descent from the "pure", the Ashrafis - descended from the "core" of Islam - Arabia, Iraq, Iran - have had a very negative impact, by deliberately isnisting on cultural practices that maintains segregation. To be an acceptable religion compatible with the broader civilizational structure on the subcontinent that we are trying to build, Islam has to formally disassociate from outside the subcontinent "centres". This will probably amount to an independent body based within the subcontinent that explicitly declares certain item in the cores texts, as illegal, anti-Islam, and punishable with the highest penalties under Islam. This will mean

(1) declaring military Jihad as anti-Islam
(2) enslavement of non-Muslims under any circumstances anti-islam
(3) slaughtering, raping, abducting for sex, turning into "right hand possessions" and automatic annulment of marriages of captive women from non-Muslims, anti-Islam
(4) all provisions of the Hudud anti-Islam
(5) declaring that Arabian and Israeli holy centres of Islam are one of the many holy centres of Islam, and that Islam has no particular global centre. If Islam fails to do this, and insists on retaining a concept of a global centre in Arabia/middle east outside the subcontinent, then there will be no way to prevent declaring the subcontinent to be the centre of Hinduism, Jainism, Sikh Panth and Buddhism. This has implications in the core's policy towards regions where people could be under repression simply because they are perceived to be belonging to these faiths.
(6) formal declaration and commitment that any clash with the first principles and rights (equality before the law, gender equality, compulsory general education, etc.) will lead to the principles and rights to prevail and not any Islamic claims to the contrary
(7) formal acceptance that conversion out of Islam is allowed without any penalties whatsoever, and that conversion to Islam cannot be made a precondition to marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims.
(8) formal acceptance of state supervision of finance and educational activity

This is an important issue to be sorted out. This is one of the items, in sorting out the thorny state-religion interrelationship question. Please note, admin and posters - this is not a discussion of religion per se, but certain items of agreement we need to establish between faiths and the "core". Similar agreements need to be established with other faiths too.

Brihaspatiji, thanks for your encouragements and kind compliments. I am sorry if I have derailed the thread with my long post, I just wanted to clarify and present my own views on some of the issues you had raised in your post. I will try to contribute to Indic perception of Islam when possible.

About Islam's conforming to a state constitution, such as that of India, please note that there are Muslims living in Europe, Oceania and North America and I believe if you offer a visa to any Muslim to any of these places, unless they are already one of the wealthy elite, they would gladly move to these places from any other country, because they can live as a law abiding productive citizen and have freedom of religion. I think Indian constitution and the state already provide sufficient freedom to Muslims and they should be quite happy that they are not living in Xinjiang, China, where keeping a beard and going to a Mosque becomes a problem for the authorities. The problem with Indian Muslim community, if my impression is correct is lack of proper leadership and lack of economic opportunity, and with time hopefully it will change. But then the same could be said for BD and Pakistan, both of which are borderline failed states.

Many of the points you mentioned are already acceptable to Islam I believe and Muslims are supposed to be law abiding citizens of the state, although I am not an expert on this field, I can say however that to change holy centers such as Mecca, will be a difficult issue, to say the least, as all devout Muslims pray pointing towards Mecca five times a day. One of the effect of globalization and increased travel, migration and communication technology has been that religions such as Sunni or Shia Islam, are getting more standardized, whereas historically there were regional differences because of syncretism.

One of the side effects of the partition has been that in both Pakistan and to a lesser extent in BD we have lost familiarity with the Hindu viewpoint and in India most people have become relatively unfamiliar with the Muslim view point, this I believe has been the biggest tragedy, because it was not like this before 1947. Like myself all of us here grew up and were probably born within last 20-40 years and have no conceivable idea of what it was like before the partition. Before 1947, whatever fight we had, we were living in the same house and at the end of the day, we would have to sit down and come to terms with each other, but since 1947, we have become alienated and estranged and the process continues. And thats one of the reasons why I am here, to learn and also to present another view point. I am just one man, I may not represent all of BD, or all of subcontinental Muslims, but at least it wil be another view point.

This brings up another issue, how is it that we don't see any Indian Muslims or Pakistanis participating, what is happening in the subcontinent is our common problem, and all of us need to talk more to the other side. I think with time things are improving in the subcontinent, but it seems that there are also forces at work to derail the process.

As for myself personally, my roommate in college was a Hindu from Bangladesh, I had many Indian friends in college and also at work I have many colleagues who are from India, but all of this happened in the US. My best friend is a certain Naturopathic doctor from Banglore, he went back recently to practice Naturopathy and found quite a following in Pune. One of my beautiful niece who lives in Australia, is getting married to a Tamil guy. So I think desi people get along quite well, once they are outside the subcontinent, as clearly all of us standout as desi's, whether we are from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, despite regional differences. So I would encourage everyone to talk and spend time, if you find a Pakistani or Bangladeshi or an Indian Muslim, if you already don't know one. I try to spend time with my Indian friends whenever possible. In fact I should go to my Gujrati friend Sunil's cubicle now to say hi and see how he is doing.

[brihaspati]

AKalam,
as per usual BD practice do you have a pure "Bengali" third name? if so and you have no objections, we can use it as I am not sure if I can add -ji to your name without giving offence!
My list of items to be declared "anti-Islam" is more for reassuring the non-Muslims to get a formal commitment from the Muslim community that the real fears of eventual imposition of the Sharia, the Hidaya or the Hudud are at least going to be partially weakened. These are exactly those elements in orthodox Islamic theology that is part of the core (Sahidullah's comments come to the mind - "for the Muslims, religion is culture, for the Hindus, culture is religion" - one off remark, Narayananji ). My objctive is to commit subcontinental Muslims to a position that disrupts the middle eastern bond, and in orthodox eyes makes Indian Muslims as bad as "hypocrites" or "unbelievers" or worse like "people of the book"- fair game for Jihad. This can only and finally convince non-Muslims that Indian Muslims share a common fate, even against the originators of their faith. Potentially also such a redefinition of the faith from one of the largest such bodies can change the dynamics of world Islam altogether - for example for the future, why should not Indian Muslims who agree to my list of characteristics not be the dominant strand within world Islam - by sheer numbers? -and their version known established as the "real one"?

From our core's viewpoint that is definitely desirable.

[AKalam]

AKalam,
as per usual BD practice do you have a pure "Bengali" third name? if so and you have no objections, we can use it as I am not sure if I can add -ji to your name without giving offence!
My list of items to be declared "anti-Islam" is more for reassuring the non-Muslims to get a formal commitment from the Muslim community that the real fears of eventual imposition of the Sharia, the Hidaya or the Hudud are at least going to be partially weakened. These are exactly those elements in orthodox Islamic theology that is part of the core (Sahidullah's comments come to the mind - "for the Muslims, religion is culture, for the Hindus, culture is religion" - one off remark, Narayananji ). My objctive is to commit subcontinental Muslims to a position that disrupts the middle eastern bond, and in orthodox eyes makes Indian Muslims as bad as "hypocrites" or "unbelievers" or worse like "people of the book"- fair game for Jihad. This can only and finally convince non-Muslims that Indian Muslims share a common fate, even against the originators of their faith. Potentially also such a redefinition of the faith from one of the largest such bodies can change the dynamics of world Islam altogether - for example for the future, why should not Indian Muslims who agree to my list of characteristics not be the dominant strand within world Islam - by sheer numbers? -and their version known established as the "real one"?

From our core's viewpoint that is definitely desirable.

Brihaspatiji,
You can add -ji to my name, I do not mind. My third name is Tushar, yes most Bangladeshi Bengali's have a Bengali nickname .

As for creating new laws, I think you will hit stiff opposition from your own law makers.

When I look at the very big picture and the very long term, Hindus and Muslims are stuck with each other. I will tell you why, if it is not obvious to everyone. From Tripura to Kandahar, all these many nationalities from Manipuri to Pashtuns are considered South Asian, subcontinental or Indian (from Hind in historical terms or Bharatiya), not because what they think of themselves, but what others think, such as what Uyghurs or Tajiks/Persians think of Pashtuns or Kashmiris or what Burmese think of Bengalis, also probably because these are the only groups in the world that eat food with spicy mosala . And between these lands are 450-500 million Muslims (according to different estimates). This is one third of the Muslim population in the entire world and they have Indian Hindu or Buddhist forefathers. So for Hindus to think that Muslims or Islam is the enemy or Muslims to think that the Hindu is an enemy is thinking that your blood brother is your enemy. What happened in history, no matter how bad it was, it is way back in the past and we cannot change the past, rather all of us should work for the future. There are many bad elements among the Muslims, as there are some I am sure among Hindus as well. But recent problems in the sub continent comes from the following:

- Muslim mistrust that they will be oppressed under a majority Hindu rule (which resulted in partition)
- more recently Muslim anguish that the Hindu have joined hands with the great and little Satan, I am sure you know who I am referring to
- problems with Muslim minorities, specifically about Kashmir
- and finally complaints of Pakistan and BD about big brotherly attitude although I am sure both Pak and BD are doing sufficient mischiefs of their own

These are the central points I think, hope I didn't put a flame bait here .

[brihaspati]

Just before it really becomes a flame-war, a request to everyone not to go down further along the "Hindu-Muslim" kinship. Please put all such outpourings into the Indic perception thread. I would also request Mr. "ice" to post such items on that thread.

Future strategy is concerned about

(1) consolidation and empowerment of a core - this means clarifying the ideological basis adopted by the core. Only in that context - should religion, ethnicity, culture etc be discussed here

(2) expansion of the core to include the periphery - ideological, economic and yes in some cases military. Historical conflicts between cultures should only be cited if there are sufficient obvious justifications relevant for the future.

(3) attitude towards, such as intervention while the current periphery exists and is not yet part of the core - issues like separatism, intervention on behalf of overlapping communities or structures, etc comes in here.

Please restrict yourselves to this.

[SaiK]

talking satan and evil is absolute bullshit for any religion in modern era!.. /sorry. we need to put the right perspective here., be it hindu, muslim or christian or any religion. lets keep it stratight.. theology can't drive culture any more in modern societies.

[AKalam]

talking satan and evil is absolute bullshit for any religion in modern era!.. /sorry. we need to put the right perspective here., be it hindu, muslim or christian or any religion. lets keep it stratight.. theology can't drive culture any more in modern societies.

Actually SaiK Sir, that was my attempt at a little humor, I happen to be a tax paying loyal citizen of the great Satan.

Brihaspatiji, sorry about off-topic discussions, I will try to post that kind of stuff in the Indic thread.

[samuel]

Part 1: Core and periphery, with external influences as I see it today. SGreen good, red bad, thickness is closeness. iR = Iran, H= Bhutan, you know the rest, size of blob = size of influence tool. Maldives not included.

[samuel]

Here's where we'll endup if we go the way we are and the string of pearls becomes the trojan for our "expanding core"

[samuel]

Here is where we should end-up in the next decade, give or take, with a lot of work. Our discussion should be about how this happens. Remember the power law, the core must always be greater than equal to the sum of its margins. Howzzat for strategizing while we wait for the next xerox copy of the evidence to fly out of Delhi

[shiv]

Part 1: Core and periphery, with external influences as I see it today. SGreen good, red bad, thickness is closeness. iR = Iran, H= Bhutan, you know the rest, size of blob = size of influence tool. Maldives not included.

Samuel - that is a very interesting picture. You think graphically - like I sometimes do.

Note the absence of thick green lines from India. The same thought came to my mind in the last few days - though not in this graphic format, and I wondered why India has not developed thick green lines.

There are two possibilities IMO

The first is that Indians have a congenital inability to ally with anyone and will sink for this reason
The second is that India will doggedly chart its own route and expect others to gradually draw the thick green lines.

[samuel]

I am not sure what is contributing to the rather damning trend of weak thin lines, and thinning further, turning red. Is it something we do to them? I just don't know, and there is plenty of discussion about what everyone is doing to us, but not enough about how we manage our relationships, in our own neighborhood. Is it something about the Hindu psyche as some would charge. I doubt it, but what is?

The idea that we are charting our own course and the rest shoulder the responsibility of linking up is certainly a possibility, but I am not sure our history bears such evidence. Could it be that we are viewed as a defeated weak nation that doesn't deserve much respect because it really hasn't earned much on its own and neither does it stand on its own two feet, bar an exception here or there? I am going way out on the limb here, but until everyone around sees us as the core of their civilization today and in the future (not in the past in a geographic sense), all our work will not count for much.

[lakshmikanth]

Samuel Garu,

Excellent depiction of the problem at hand... however I think our babooze and leeders and leeches do NOT see the I in the picture. They see $$$$ and the way to get it is regionalism and casteism. So technically that the I in the picture should be split into many smaller regions... which inshallah is the standard Porki/Al-amriki/al-UK wet dream

[kasthuri]

Samuel:

A very nice illustration. It will be great to enhance the picture with some metric which measures the closeness by counting the number of decisions that went for and against a country by another. A near-balanced media (in appropriate countries) could be chosen for such analysis.

[samuel]

Hi Kasthuri,

Thanks.

Actually, these results are a graphical depiction of the calculation of a flow on a graph, under two strategies, "things remain the same," and "things are improved marginally per iteration" and looking for convergence of a doubly stochastic renormalization.

We can easily create a matrix where the distance between country i and j can be an affinity measure calculated by ratings different people give about the perception of closeness and polarity of the relationship. But such affinity can also be calculated objectively as a summary mutual information measure on the joint distribution of the variables of interest, which will allow us to compare many factors such as defense relationships, balance of payments, co-occuring decisions and so on. In the end, they will reflect our intuition, I feel, but it may be useful to see this graphically more than as a matrix of numbers. By doing a graphical analysis over the last decade or so, we may come up with a climatological estimate of similarity between nations.

What would be even interesting is to define a picture that is an outcome we would all like to be in and search for least cost paths to get there from where we are. Then reinterpret that in normal language as to possible strategies and discuss that. That would be a great paper, don't know where it would be worth sending it, but we could all do that here while waiting for the next xerox copy of proof to fly out of Delhi to another country.

S

[brihaspati]

Samuelji,
excellent graph.
Questions:
(1) using a network flow? how do you decide on the weights? (empirical?) also will it be stationary?
(2) you have mentioned stochastic networks, a good idea - again initial loading problem, reasonable estimates of transition matrices
(3) what if the developing network itself changes the weights?
(4) I sniff hypergraphs here

I will suggest a smaller calibration experiment : test the model on BD +IN. So far all our thoughts have gone similarly for BD and TSP, I bet most BRfites expected the right-centre-AL to be defeated by the right-right-wing 4-party. AL is definitely known to be/suspected to be/represented as "weak-rowards-IN" and hence should have been defeated. Can you try out given very similar past observations how BD gave an unexpected result? Loading factors should be available.

There is a lot that depends on "human will" - a very elusive factor to quantify. I would be most interested to see the outcome.

[shiv]

The idea that we are charting our own course and the rest shoulder the responsibility of linking up is certainly a possibility, but I am not sure our history bears such evidence. Could it be that we are viewed as a defeated weak nation that doesn't deserve much respect because it really hasn't earned much on its own and neither does it stand on its own two feet, bar an exception here or there? I am going way out on the limb here, but until everyone around sees us as the core of their civilization today and in the future (not in the past in a geographic sense), all our work will not count for much.

Well the thought struck me that China is pretty much charting it own course too - except that the Chinese started off with a strong security relationship with the Soviet Union and then broke off once its security and military strength were assured.

This is one thing that India has not figured out - and I am talking about what makes thick green lines thick.

I believe there are very simple evolutionary lines at work here. Humans survive in nations only when there is enough food. No food and all humans start vanishing. So most surviving nations have enough food for a basic minimum number of humans. However green lines do not get thick on food aid.

The next biggest "fear" and requirement for humans is security and the ability to defend oneself against someone, or attack someone and get his goodies. This is where green lines can get really thick. If you look at the thickest green lines of the world, they are security and arms based. Even India's thick green lines with the UK and later the Soviet Union/Russia was mainly arms/security based.

The nature of security relationships is very much "With me or against me". The closest cooperation develops between the "with me's" India has always hedged its bets here, using dharmic rules of engagement hat no other country used - save some really small pipsqueak (and now dead) nations like Yugoslavia.

India has always hedged its bets with security relationships - keeping all its green lines relatively thin. It has exported nothing, joined no wars on behalf of anyone else and has tried not to depend on any one source - ensuring that every source can blackmail us and keep our green lines thin.

India is following a dangerous course. If it succeeds it can become one of the most powerful and indpendent nation on earth. If it fails, we have a Yugoslavia

[samuel]

India is following a dangerous course. If it succeeds it can become one of the most powerful and indpendent nation on earth. If it fails, we have a Yugoslavia

What you write makes sense to me, because I don't think there is a grand strategy but complex interactions of simple moves. Despite complicated maneuverings and machinations, things do, in an evolutionary sense, endup with simple actions, up or down. It is a very efficient metric for natural selection.


To answer Brihaspati...(may be this is way OT), the following may make sense (I am not sure I've edited it well):

My first take was to take Fiedler cuts on a graph with weights I concocted by hand, indicating what I felt were the affinities. I wanted to see if there was some natural cut, but this was unstable. This would correspond to the traditional approach.

Instead, I renormalize the graph by first treating it as a joint density between nations (simply exponentiate it with some kernel). When the graph is square as is the case here, (and this is a beautiful result) alternating row-col renormalization is guaranteed to to converge to a doubly stochastic matrix via Sinkhorn's theorem. You must know what that means of course, in terms of flow. But this approach is so trivial to implement (as opposed to boring old algorithms) that you can write 10 lines of matlab code and do it. It has proven to be very useful in spectral graph theory and is probably one of the most significant results in my view. We do it routinely in all sorts of prediction problems.

Right, so the point is, you give me an affinity matrix, I will return the converged doubly stochastic matrix. You can then use that to put up the picture I did. If the affinity matrix (which is equivalent to weights) starts out at some random configuration and we just renormalize to convergence, that is the equivalent of removing transients to convergence to a stationary process.

If, however, you have increments to the weights and ensure that renormalization is carried out within the null space (i.e. as lagrange multiplier) or an inner loop, while the outer loop adjusts weight according to some policy, then you can see eventually after k-adjustment iterations where we end up. Such a system may not find a stationary solution, but that is ok.

(Flows on hypergraphs are also coming some time, as you guessed. But, I'll leave that out for now.)

But, possibly a detour is useful here. Instead of thinking of metrics, such as some distance function or correlation function, we should probably use an information theoretic formulation, which will allow us to compare just about any kind of variable (continuous or categorical) with any other.

That is,
M(India, BD) = sum Ii=(defence, trade,....n variables for india)
sum BDj=(defence, trade, n variables for bd) P(Ii,BDj) log P(Ii,BDj)

We can normalize that but that is not important. In this way construct a matrix

XX[m,n] = M(m,n).
Since these are bonafide "probability measures", we use sinkhorn to get the doubly stochastic matrix.
We can construct the laplacian graph too, and look at fiedler cuts to find natural clusters, or we can treat it as a markov random field etc. But the simplest analysis is to simply paint that converged matrix.

Now, we can start with XX_initial, an initial condition, as I outlined to Kasthuri, by doing some sort of analysis. This will actually take a lot of research. We have to define variables and calculate M between countries. But, it should be possible.

Then, we take a leap of faith. We plot the graph as I have done and mess with it, till we produce one that we think we want. Let us call that the desired state XX_desired. Our objective will be to go from XX_initial to XX_desired with a) minimum energy or b) minimum time or some other optimization objective. We may suppose that the dynamics are:
XX_t = F(XX_t-1)+ U_t + n_t
n being some noise we concoct. F is the inner-loop renormalization I discussed earlier. We also assume that we have some constraints on U_t, it should be smooth, it must have low norm etc. and then we have a classical two point boundary value problem given XX_initial and XX_desired.

We then take the U_t and map them as incremental responses India can generate. This is the ideal case.

Then, we'll convert this into a game, where we will write it as
XX_t = F(XX_t-1)+ U_t + G_t + n_t
where G_t is what the opponent produces in accordance with their on version, XX_desired_opponent.

We can play that game here on BRF.

So, there it is.

S

[samuel]

I will suggest a smaller calibration experiment : test the model on BD +IN. So far all our thoughts have gone similarly for BD and TSP, I bet most BRfites expected the right-centre-AL to be defeated by the right-right-wing 4-party. AL is definitely known to be/suspected to be/represented as "weak-rowards-IN" and hence should have been defeated. Can you try out given very similar past observations how BD gave an unexpected result? Loading factors should be available.

There is a lot that depends on "human will" - a very elusive factor to quantify. I would be most interested to see the outcome.

Happy to hash this out. Can folks here create variables, oh I don't know, like defence expenditure, trade with a common third country etc. that we can use to relate two countries? We'll then need to find a way to populate those variables from reports and data.

Then, we need to come up with an Association Index for nation-states that measures the mutual information between them using the variables. We'll then construct the association matrix from that between IN/BD in our periphery and go from there.

S

[AKalam]

AKalam,
as per usual BD practice do you have a pure "Bengali" third name? if so and you have no objections, we can use it as I am not sure if I can add -ji to your name without giving offence!
My list of items to be declared "anti-Islam" is more for reassuring the non-Muslims to get a formal commitment from the Muslim community that the real fears of eventual imposition of the Sharia, the Hidaya or the Hudud are at least going to be partially weakened. These are exactly those elements in orthodox Islamic theology that is part of the core (Sahidullah's comments come to the mind - "for the Muslims, religion is culture, for the Hindus, culture is religion" - one off remark, Narayananji ). My objctive is to commit subcontinental Muslims to a position that disrupts the middle eastern bond, and in orthodox eyes makes Indian Muslims as bad as "hypocrites" or "unbelievers" or worse like "people of the book"- fair game for Jihad. This can only and finally convince non-Muslims that Indian Muslims share a common fate, even against the originators of their faith. Potentially also such a redefinition of the faith from one of the largest such bodies can change the dynamics of world Islam altogether - for example for the future, why should not Indian Muslims who agree to my list of characteristics not be the dominant strand within world Islam - by sheer numbers? -and their version known established as the "real one"?

From our core's viewpoint that is definitely desirable.

Brihaspatiji,
I thought about your question about Islamic jurisprudence. It is unlikely because of the following reasons:

- BD, Pak and Indian Muslims are economically backward and lack funds, resources and influence, whereas a reverse influence is happening because of Wahabi oil money
- because of economic backwardness, people do not have free time to pursue such matters or pursue these issues with some clarity and real ingenuity
- Islamic Jurisprudence is not a subject of study that attracts genuine talents, because job prospects are not good, anywhere

The version of Islam setup by Turkics and Mughals in India was Sunni Hanafi, a tolerant version by Arab standard, to accommodate Hindu "idol worshipers" as people of the book and as proper "dhimmi". Even then, it was difficult to make Islam totally friendly towards statues and idols, because this prejudice goes back to the origin of Islam.

The initial version was quite syncretic, as is always the case, started by Sufi's to spread islam in new areas, later as people continue to travel to Mecca for Haj and trade, Islam transforms and becomes more closer to the Arabian version.

There are provisions for debate and new interpretation in Islamic Jurisprudence, its called Ijtihad. It was quite common in early Islamic empires like Abbasids, but after the Mongol invasion, doors to Ijtihad was pretty much closed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijtihad

In the past few decades, OIC has formed and there is some work going on in this area, but its all controlled by Saudis, I think, and the result is predictable.

But I can tell you this that Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India (to a large extent), Pak (around 50%), Central Asia (former soviet republics), China, Turkey, Balkans, Russia, Non Arabic speaking African countries and communities - this group, which is the majority, are quite open to new ideas and are a world away from Arabic speaking Muslims of Arabia and North Africa. So the majority of Muslims would support more up to date interpretation of jurisprudence done by a proper recognized body of authority from OIC for example. It has to come from a collective effort and not just from subcontinental Muslim body, because even if we are great in numbers, we are still 30-35%.

In other words, it has to be a genuine effort of reform from within the Muslim community and with time, I am sure it will happen, the question is when and who will initiate such things and get some positive results that will make a difference, certainly not the Saudi's, whose idiocy and obstinacy have contributed so much to the mess we are in now.

I appreciate your thought, it is really one of the central problems for Muslims, because any Tom, Dick and Harry can claim themselves to be expert and provide interpretations, as they did in case of Ibn Taimiya, Wahab, Banna, Qutb, Nabhani, Maududi, Zwahiri et al., all of whom are outside the mainstream "imperial or historic Islam". Imperial ideology is geared not towards petty crime or violence, but towards sound administration, discipline and justice.

About subcontinental Muslims taking an initiative and breaking the bond with Arabs, there is not much of a bond to begin with, they consider us as Miskins (beggars) as we flock to Mid-east to sweep their streets and clean their bath rooms. Even then, subcontinental Muslims are quite conscious and aware and will not do a thing like this by themselves, but if all non-Arab Muslims get on one side, a very much likely scenario, then its a different story and Arabs may yield to some compromise, without having to break any perceived bond.

In short, Islam needs management from within, but its not happening at the moment.

Great graphs and equations by the way, its scary to see BD ending up in equations .

[kasthuri]

Samuel:

Cool...I really like your idea of doing simulation using stochastic graphs. However, I was thinking more along data mining/statistical approach for analysis. Your figure looks like cluster analysis with bubble chart that I did some time back.

[RayC]

AKalam,
as per usual BD practice do you have a pure "Bengali" third name? if so and you have no objections, we can use it as I am not sure if I can add -ji to your name without giving offence!
My list of items to be declared "anti-Islam" is more for reassuring the non-Muslims to get a formal commitment from the Muslim community that the real fears of eventual imposition of the Sharia, the Hidaya or the Hudud are at least going to be partially weakened. These are exactly those elements in orthodox Islamic theology that is part of the core (Sahidullah's comments come to the mind - "for the Muslims, religion is culture, for the Hindus, culture is religion" - one off remark, Narayananji ). My objctive is to commit subcontinental Muslims to a position that disrupts the middle eastern bond, and in orthodox eyes makes Indian Muslims as bad as "hypocrites" or "unbelievers" or worse like "people of the book"- fair game for Jihad. This can only and finally convince non-Muslims that Indian Muslims share a common fate, even against the originators of their faith. Potentially also such a redefinition of the faith from one of the largest such bodies can change the dynamics of world Islam altogether - for example for the future, why should not Indian Muslims who agree to my list of characteristics not be the dominant strand within world Islam - by sheer numbers? -and their version known established as the "real one"?

From our core's viewpoint that is definitely desirable.

Brihaspatiji,
I thought about your question about Islamic jurisprudence. It is unlikely because of the following reasons:

- BD, Pak and Indian Muslims are economically backward and lack funds, resources and influence, whereas a reverse influence is happening because of Wahabi oil money
- because of economic backwardness, people do not have free time to pursue such matters or pursue these issues with some clarity and real ingenuity
- Islamic Jurisprudence is not a subject of study that attracts genuine talents, because job prospects are not good, anywhere

The version of Islam setup by Turkics and Mughals in India was Sunni Hanafi, a tolerant version by Arab standard, to accommodate Hindu "idol worshipers" as people of the book and as proper "dhimmi". Even then, it was difficult to make Islam totally friendly towards statues and idols, because this prejudice goes back to the origin of Islam.

The initial version was quite syncretic, as is always the case, started by Sufi's to spread islam in new areas, later as people continue to travel to Mecca for Haj and trade, Islam transforms and becomes more closer to the Arabian version.

There are provisions for debate and new interpretation in Islamic Jurisprudence, its called Ijtihad. It was quite common in early Islamic empires like Abbasids, but after the Mongol invasion, doors to Ijtihad was pretty much closed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijtihad

In the past few decades, OIC has formed and there is some work going on in this area, but its all controlled by Saudis, I think, and the result is predictable.

But I can tell you this that Muslims in Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India (to a large extent), Pak (around 50%), Central Asia (former soviet republics), China, Turkey, Balkans, Russia, Non Arabic speaking African countries and communities - this group, which is the majority, are quite open to new ideas and are a world away from Arabic speaking Muslims of Arabia and North Africa. So the majority of Muslims would support more up to date interpretation of jurisprudence done by a proper recognized body of authority from OIC for example. It has to come from a collective effort and not just from subcontinental Muslim body, because even if we are great in numbers, we are still 30-35%.

In other words, it has to be a genuine effort of reform from within the Muslim community and with time, I am sure it will happen, the question is when and who will initiate such things and get some positive results that will make a difference, certainly not the Saudi's, whose idiocy and obstinacy have contributed so much to the mess we are in now.

I appreciate your thought, it is really one of the central problems for Muslims, because any Tom, Dick and Harry can claim themselves to be expert and provide interpretations, as they did in case of Ibn Taimiya, Wahab, Banna, Qutb, Nabhani, Maududi, Zwahiri et al., all of whom are outside the mainstream "imperial or historic Islam". Imperial ideology is geared not towards petty crime or violence, but towards sound administration, discipline and justice.

About subcontinental Muslims taking an initiative and breaking the bond with Arabs, there is not much of a bond to begin with, they consider us as Miskins (beggars) as we flock to Mid-east to sweep their streets and clean their bath rooms. Even then, subcontinental Muslims are quite conscious and aware and will not do a thing like this by themselves, but if all non-Arab Muslims get on one side, a very much likely scenario, then its a different story and Arabs may yield to some compromise, without having to break any perceived bond.

In short, Islam needs management from within, but its not happening at the moment.

Great graphs and equations by the way, its scary to see BD ending up in equations .

Kalam Janab,

I commend you for your joining the BR Forum. It is good to have a different view to life and also different opinion.

I somehow cannot agree that it is the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian Muslims who are economically deprived and lack resources and funds.

With Zakat and with the Arab money flowing quite freely for ‘social’ enhancement, there should be no dearth of opportunities to lift one’s economic status.

The unfortunate part is that these funds are more used for religious enhancement than social enhancement. Religion, sadly does not equip one to feed the family, even if it makes one pious! Piety is not a commodity unfortunately that yield resources to economic well being. Let us take a leaf from the Christian community and the worldwide Christian charities. They not only ensure that the religious needs are met and enhanced, they also invest heavily in high class education and medical care, apart from social upliftment, for not only Christians, but for all. If one observes, they serve the Faith well since they ‘disarm’ non Christians and these non Christians do not look as Christianity as a ‘threat’! This was at least the case when the British ruled and a few years thereafter. When the Indian Christians took over the reins, quite a few looked at their own personal enhancement (including personal finance) and they made Christianity a commercial endeavour so that they could get more funds from foreign lands with the increase of the flock. They tarnished the goodness of Christ’s teachings and hence we have all these problems today, be it in India or in Afghanistan, where the Korean Christians, in the guise of humanitarian assistance were giving conversion the priority if assistance was to be given. When politics is mixed with religion, it ruins religion!

If economics and lack of jobs were the only reason as to why there is backwardness in the subcontinent, can you explain as to how Prof. Muhammad Yunus & Grameen Bank was awarded The Nobel Peace Prize for 2006? The reason is not hard to find. We subcontinentals are too laid back and more importantly, lazy! How come that even mediocres amongst the subcontinentals do well in Western countries?

As far as statues and idols (and I not a Hindu or anything else), unless you have an icon to focus your meditation, you cannot do it. The Kabaa itself is an icon. Why do on a Haj and perambulate around it or stone the Devil (jamarat ) or why face towards it to pray and so is the Cross of the Christian as is the red stone for the Hindus on the roadside! Though it may upset, but that is the reality! So, the concept of non idolatry is patently misplaced.

On the issue of “Islam transforms and becomes closer to the Arabian version” that is the does not allow the people to realise their origin and culture. One cannot be an Arab or think like an Arab if one is not an Arab! Jesus is a Middle East person, but does the Christians think or feels that they are of Palestine? They maintain their nationality and yet are proud to be Christians and thus have no schizophrenia and confusion as to what they are and what they are to be!

Islam is a very scientific religion and, apart from the silly jihadis of today, have great lessons for mankind. I am enamoured by the lessons on personal hygiene and I follow those, even though I am not a Muslim but then, what I feel sad, is that ijtihad is no longer in vogue. Ijtihad is the call of the hour since things have changed from the time of Mohammed. Islam has to modernise and what is said cannot be the last word. Man has always evolved and evolution cannot be turned a blind eye, as it time has stood still! While there are a lot of non Arab Muslims, I don’t agree that they are ready for Ijtihad. Ijtihad is banned, so to say. The Koran and the Hadith continues to be the last word!

Can the Old or New Testaments be the sole guide or the Hindu scriptures? They have to be interpreted in the modern context.

Religion is a powerful agent to clean the soul, but then the mind cannot be shut down solely to it! If it were so the case, evolution would end.

[brihaspati]

Just a gentle reminder again, no discussion please on philosophical issues about any religion unless they have a direct bearing on future strategic scenario for the subcontinent. This is for both AKalamji and RayCji -