Month: February 2020

“Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here” by Karima Bennoune

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“The struggle waged in Muslim majority societies against extremism is one of the most important – and overlooked – human rights struggles in the world.” This book explores the nuances of Islamic extremism, and amplifies hitherto unheard voices from remote corners of the globe – men and women living under fundamentalist threats, victims of violence, martyrs and survivors. Bennoune managed to interview 286 Muslims across 26 countries.

“Muslims did not get hit on the head one day, then wake up and don niqabs, grow beards and become fundamentalists. A conscious political process fostered these developments…” Iran exported its brand of religious revolution ever since the mullahs came to power in 1979. Britain supported the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Saudi Arabia spends colossal amounts to propagate its ultra-conservative ideology – and its US ally shamelessly shields it. The US funded Pakistan’s dictatorship and the Afghan mujahideen in order to counter Russian communist influence. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a secular dictatorship, but US intervention turned it into a hotbed of Islamic terrorism.

In the author’s birthplace, Algeria, 200,000 innocents disappeared during the ‘dark decade’ of the 1990s. Tahar Djaout had uttered a dark prophesy before his assassination in 1993: “If you speak out, they will kill you. If you keep silent, they will kill you. So speak out, and die.”

The Quran states that the killing of an innocent person is killing the whole of humanity. Chechnya-born Moscow journalist, Said Bitsoev, avers, “Suicide is a very grave sin in Islam, but these radicals brought in the idea that you can blow yourself up to celebrate Islam.”

Speaking of the economic causes of the rise of fundamentalism in Niger, Aminatou Daouda Hainikoye says, “In the beginning they offer you money to adhere to their version of religion, to wear the burqa, the hijab, the niqab. They give out money, food, bags of rice, cooking oil. Even if you are not convinced in your heart, you accept so as not to die of hunger.” She adds, “They want to take Niger back to the days of the Prophet, PBUH.” Bennoune points out that even Fiji in the Pacific has seen a marked rise in number of veiled women.

Babur, the founder of the Mughal empire, during his Afghanistan sojourn, declared, “You only have to stretch your leg in Herat to kick a poet.” Five centuries later, in 2001, Taliban supremo Mullah Omar ordered all pre-Islamic art destroyed. The Talibs raided the National Museum and vandalized over 2750 statues.

In Pakistan in 2007, Zil-e Huma Usman, Punjab minister for Social Welfare, was shot dead, and the assassin said she was not properly covered in her salwar-kameez. In 2012 it was Malala Yousafzai for daring to advocate girls’ education. Asia Bibi was sentenced to death for ‘insulting the Prophet’. Punjab governor Salman Taseer was gunned down for tweeting his opposition to the blasphemy law. During Zia ul Haq’s regime, the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz was forced into exile. (Today in India his 1979 composition ‘hum dekhenge’ has become a rallying cry for people opposing the far right and the Citizenship Amendment Act.)

When the Prophet captured Mecca, there was much rejoicing, with men and women singing, dancing, clapping and playing the duff. Today the fundamentalists say music is haraam. In 2010, Al Shabaab forbade music broadcasts in Somalia. In March 2012 the northern part of Mali, roughly 60% of the territory, fell to an affiliate of Al Qaeda. The Ansar Dine banned music, sports, smoking and drinking. They desecrated the tombs of Sufi saints in Timbuktu, and torched the library, destroying at least 2000 ancient manuscripts.

Shirwa Ahmed became the first US citizen suicide bomber when he blew himself up in Somalia on 29th October, 2009, killing thirty innocents. Ahmed apparently had been radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota, where Al Shabaab had begun recruitment in 2006. By 2008, twenty Somali boys had disappeared.

In Kabul in 2011, fifty women took out a procession carrying banners with the words, “I have the right to walk freely in my city,” and “Street harassment is against Islam.” The Prophet Muhammad said nobody but those who are inferior in character will disrespect women. But the fundamentalists say women ought to be chaste, then they abduct and gang rape them.

Though Iran is a Shi’a country, it has contributed to the radicalization of Sunni religious authorities as well. In a 1963 fatwa Ayatollah Khomeini had declared that women’s political participation was tantamount to prostitution.

In the holy city of Mecca in 2002, when girl students tied to escape a burning school building the religious police blocked their exit saying they were not properly covered. Fifteen girls died in the blaze.

Asma Al Ghoul, a journalist from the Gaza border town of Rafah, stopped wearing the headscarf in 2006. In 2010 she cycled along the Gaza coastline to defy the Hamas ban on women riding bikes. In post-Saddam Iraq, Yanar Mohammed was photographed burning a hijab, for a magazine cover seen around the world. (Later, Yanar had to flee the country.)

“Subordinating women – in the family, in the street, in the bedroom – is central to most fundamentalist visions for society around the world.” Worldwide some 140 million women have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). Fundamentalists use the false alibi of religion to perpetuate such horrific pre-Islamic practices. The Quran does not say that women must be excised.

“The Left has often downplayed the threat of extremism,” Bennoune laments. She asks how the influential left-wing radio show Democracy Now could glorify Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood founder, who openly disapproves of homosexuality, feminism, and secular Muslims. The book argues that instead of fighting terrorism we need to fight fundamentalism, because as long as there are universities and communities where children are indoctrinated, terrorist groups will never lack fresh recruits.

Bennoune reminds us of the Quranic saying, “Unto you your religion and unto me mine.” She also quotes Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra’s statement, “What we have to prove to the world, we must prove with work, talent and ambition.”

I read the book with my heart in my mouth. Very often I googled the names of the people mentioned – just to make sure they are still alive.

Overall assessment: Must read.

Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here
Author: Karima Bennoune
Publisher: WW Norton & Company Inc.
Publication Date: December 2014

Contributor: Pushpa Kurup lives in Trivandrum, India and works in the IT sector.

“A Burnt-Out Case” by Graham Greene

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Of all the books I have read by Graham Greene – who was an amazingly prolific writer, often regarded as one of the leading English novelists of the 20th century — I have found A Burnt-Out Case the most poignant. It is about a world-famous architect, Querry, who is “burnt out” emotionally and ends up in a leper colony in Africa, in an attempt to get as far away from his life as he can. I first read this book when I was younger, and it greatly resonated with me at that time because I was also trained as an architect. I recently read it again and found that it is now relatable to any older person going through a mid-life crisis and questioning the worth of anything they have accomplished in their lives. Either way, it is an excellent book, amazingly well-written.

We don’t hear much of leprosy anymore, but at the time the book was written, the disease was much more common with millions of people infected, mostly in poor countries. This was also a time when Christian missionaries were very active, and one of their many charitable works was creating and running leper colonies, where lepers could be treated. Because of the social stigma associated with leprosy, these colonies were typically located in remote and isolated regions, far from cities and towns, and it is to one such colony in Africa that the disillusioned Querry arrives, trying to get as far away from his life in Europe as a plane and then a boat would take him. The term “burnt-out case” has a very specific meaning in leprosy – it refers to leprosy patients who have been cured but have suffered severe mutilations in the course of repeated infections, losing most of their extremities like fingers, toes, nose, etc., rendering them barely recognizable to themselves and to others. The doctor who runs the leprosy clinic diagnoses Querry as being a “burnt-out case” as well; only in Querry’s case the disease is in his mind rather than in his body. He simply can’t feel any emotion anymore, neither joy, nor sorrow, neither pleasure, nor pain.

A Burnt-Out Case is the story of Querry’s time in the leper colony and of his interactions with the people there. There is the doctor, who has his hands full with patients and works tirelessly from morning to night; also, he is a confirmed atheist and is there for no other reason than to use his skills to alleviate pain and suffering. There are the Catholic missionaries who have set up the colony, and who find themselves mostly concerned with the physical well-being of the patients rather than their spiritual upliftment; they have to make sure to keep the hospital facility running, which means they are preoccupied with thinking of things like generators, plumbing, roofing, and so on. And then there are the patients themselves, in particular, the boy assigned to be a helper to Querry, who happens to be an actual “burnt-out case” himself and is severely mutilated.

In the course of time, interacting with all these people and being away from the wealth, fame, and success that had destroyed his “soul,” Querry seems to achieve some measure of peace from the demons that plague him. He even eventually agrees to use his architectural stills to design a functional structure for an extension to the clinic and sets up a drawing board in his room. Sadly however, just when he is starting to heal, starting to feel some emotions, his past life and fame catch up with him. He had tried very hard to stay completely anonymous so he could be left alone, but he is discovered, and the consequences are disastrous.

In addition to being so well written, I found the book so detailed and so vivid that I felt I was actually there at the leper colony, seeing the story unfold before my eyes. Of course, this is in large measure due to the author’s extraordinary talent as a novelist, but I also found out that he had actually visited a number of leper colonies in the course of his extensive travels, which had inspired the book and made it so authentic. We are so fortunate to have authors like this who have traveled to different parts of the world, writing books that viscerally take us to places we would never have a chance to visit, at a different time, and have experiences we would never have in our own lives.

The only quibble I had with the story is that it builds up the myth of the architect as a “creative genius,” somewhat similar to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. While such books are very inspiring, almost heady, to young architects, they are sending the wrong message that architecture is a solitary vocation, when, in fact, it is much more of a collaborative effort than a writer or an artist. A real-life Querry would not be so “burnt-out” because he would be working with a team of people on his architectural designs rather than being completely on his own, and it is much harder to get disillusioned when you are working with others.

A Burnt-Out Case
Author: Graham Greene
Original Publisher and Date: Heinemann, 1950
Reprint Publisher and Date: Penguin Classics, April 1992

Contributor: Lachmi Khemlani runs a technology publication in the San Francisco Bay Area.