Yo readers.

Forget about the earlier post. I think I know someone who might be addressing the issue so Ill hold on about that for a while. Let's talk about a more hot issue: The Mohammad Cartoons. Though it is tough to go into a proper discussion about that (dont have a lawyer I can talk to), we have realted issues. About MF (not MOFO) Hussein painting lewd paintings with regards to Indian Deities, Madame Tussaud's Museum having Bush, Blair, P. Phillip, Beckham, Posh and Kylie Minogue in a nativity scene and about the desecration of the Qur'an at Guatanamo Bay. Since these are related issues, I will present them together. The pakistani author appears to be supporting each of the individuals/organizations "in the wrong". Is such balance possible? Could there be other reasons? Think!

She doesnt seem to get her facts right all the time but it is interesting to look at her opinions.

Part I:

Hey JC, won’t you smile for me?
Farzana Versey
December 20, 2004

Come on, we don’t choose our parents. I am sure Jesus would not have minded all that much if David Beckham and Posh Spice delineated the roles of Joseph and Mary in mute wax works nor would the good lord have objected to Kylie Minogue fluttering around as the angel, though why anyone would have Bush, Blair and Prince Philip (the fools on the hill) as the three Wise Men beats me.

But Madame Tussaud’s got into trouble for this nativity scene, the tableau was destroyed and the Church leaders got very upset, mainly because they felt that celebrities were detrimental to the depiction of the “coming of god”. As one of them said, “It seems to me to be not just disrespectful to Christians, it is also disrespectful to the heritage of Britain and also does damage to the culture of this country.”

I find this strange. Films and theatrical productions have been staged with famous people portraying religious characters, Italian masters gained a great deal of celebrity for artistically interpreting Christian iconography. In India, we have had TV stars who have played Rama, Sita, Draupadi, Krishna, and it was a known fact that since this was their temporary moment of glory, they made a killing of it by charging exorbitant sums of money to inaugurate shops. This seems to be okay for our culture, but for a society that markets its gods as ‘human’, they create a hue and cry when they are flashed on certain commodities. Remember the time someone in the US had manufactured toilet seats with such images and people in Mumbai were burning image-less WCs in the street to express their anger?

Not particularly enamoured by the idea of such consumer baiting to begin with, for different reasons, I had written then, “Not only do I consider it in bad taste, I would think it an insult to the user’s intelligence. Can you imagine any true-blue defecator in search of gut-nirvana being able to relieve themselves in peace with someone breathing down their...well, whatever?

The American manufacturers are bad marketing people, for sure. Who did they have in mind as target consumers for their ‘Sacred Throne’ series? Certainly not the Hindus, who would naturally feel offended, not the Muslims, who would have nothing to do with idols, not even the Christians, who have their own take on such things. So who would buy stuff like that? The punks, kinky folk who have done the rounds of ‘Eendia’ and discovered the virtues of smoking marijuana in the midst of cow dung, and just ornery people who think that adding colour to their loos will make bowel evacuation an easy job…it is like reading comics while you are at it.

Frankly, this group is hardly likely to buy those precious commodes to offend anyone. They are a harmless bunch of people with nothing better to do in life, but indulge in such paltry measures of entertainment.”

I had reacted in the same manner when the Muslim world made a noise about model Claudia Schiffer walking down the ramp with some calligraphy embroidered on her blouse. How does this demean Islam in any way? Most Muslim households have some Quranic verses scrawled somewhere. Are the people in those homes living up to whatever it is that it written there? Are they above-board individuals?

Again, when former cricketer Mohammed Azharuddin, who endorsed Nike, was asked to sign a pair of shoes as part of the marketing strategy, there were objections. Because he shares the name with the prophet. There may be thousands of Mohammeds who are indulging in immoral activities. When parents choose the name of their child from the holy book, I do not think they are even for a moment assuming that their offspring will turn out to be paragons of virtue. They want the child to do well in life and make money. Which is what Azhar was doing.

To return to the current controversy, if the people featured in the tableau are suspect because of what they stand for, then is there a way to vouch for the integrity of the ordinary people who enact the Crucifixion during Easter in many parts of the world?

What is it about religious icons that makes us want to relate to them as real people even as we set out to deify them? How does that then make us different from a pop version of Herod who baits Christ to “walk across my swimming pool”? Would a human ‘divinity’ by its very accessibility cease to rise above our pettiness?

What about the Mary Magdalenes waiting in the wings, the Judases who, despite their treachery or perhaps because of it, become heroic enough for taking on the messiahs, or even the Christ who cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

This brings me to the person of Christ and the questions it raises.

In a brilliant book ‘Jesus The Man’ by Barbara Thiering, a theologian and biblical scholar, one gets to discover that “the divinity (of Jesus may have) to be sacrificed to the humanity”. But it is also reiterated that it does not mean that “because an illusory ideal of a perfect human life fails, the Church has no more resources for moral teaching”.

Are we ready for radical thought? Are we ready to believe that Jesus was the leader of a faction of Essence priests, that he was not of virgin birth, that he did not die on the Cross? This may seem blasphemous but Thiering manages to make Christianity come so very alive. Christ could have been a Sufi, rising above his fallibilities, and as the New Testament has said about him, “For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.”

And Mary Magdalene was not the culprit. History has sidelined her for obvious reasons, but to see her in an almost feministic light is an enlightenment. According to the Gospel of Philip, “And the companion of the (Saviour was) Mary Magdalene. He loved her more than all the disciples ... The rest of the disciples (were offended and) said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’ The Saviour answered and said to them, ‘Why do I not love you like her? When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light and he who is blind will remain in darkness’.”

Mary - or Miriam - was not a name but a title, which meant that the woman was given a form of Ministry, that of prophetess. This is no trifling matter. She may have been referred to as one “from whom seven demons had gone out”, but certain researchers are convinced that Jesus held her in such high esteem that after a three year trial marriage as per the prevalent custom, he did wed Mary Magdalene when Jonathan was pope. It is said that he was “affirming his right to continue the dynasty”. A daughter and two sons are said to have been born.

Although a ‘fallen woman’ theory has been perpetuated for long, certain facts can be seen in a different light, because they give a refreshing view about the character of Jesus. If we go by the premises set forth by Thiering, he comes across as a radical, liberal person. Mary Magdalene who was not terribly young at 27 when she was with Jesus could have had an earlier marriage.

She also had definite political views. “Mary was a zealot with opposite views of those of Jesus”, she belonged to an Ecstatic order, the eastern nationalist party, whose believers were called “seekers-after-smooth-things”. Such was her commitment to her cause that she chose to separate from Jesus. This might come as a surprise if not outright travesty but even if no divorce was permitted between a Christian husband and wife, if one partner was a nonbeliever - as Mary was - the matter was deemed personal. In fact, it is implied that there was a second marriage too, so to Lydia “the Lord opened the heart”.

All this may sound controversial and the author knows it. “If the reading of it is a serious difficulty now, it is because the person of Jesus has been allowed to lose all humanity, contrary to the Church’s own desire to teach full humanity with divinity. It has rarely achieved such a balance for the natural reason that it is almost impossible to hold both concepts together.”

This probably explains why even Judas went against him. Judas has got the great lines, he is the brash upstart trying to show the Lord’s feet of clay. Besides the theological reason that he was “bitterly antagonistic to Jesus for his claim to the high priesthood and his opposition to ritual law”, there are psychological aspects too. He was jealous of the fame of a man who appeared so deceptively simple. He was possessive and could not accept Mary Magdalene’s role. His obsession was dangerous because it bordered on the manic (as opposed to Christ’s depressive). He did not drink, was not known to womanise; for him Jesus was a friend and hero and, as often happens in such situations, he wanted to be kingmaker and yet his self-esteem wanted him to rebel. The “thirty pieces of silver” were not to betray, but to seek out his own identity. That is why I find his crucifixion even more tragic. Because he was his own victim.

Jesus was far more polished and in some ways sharper. When he realised that there was a horde opposing him, he himself started making preparations for the last supper. It has even been implied that while initially he refused poison on the Cross to lessen his pain, later Christian sources claim that he relented and took the ‘vinegar’ - wine spoiled by poison. And it was then that he “gave up the spirit”.

The person of Christ has always been complicated by various streams of thought. Some say he was Black, others persist with the fair, blonde Scandinavian image. These only serve to make him more fascinating. As has been pointed out, “Jesus, and those close to him, were frail human beings, as we all are, caught in personal dilemmas which could be solved only in terms of the particular situation, not by conformity to ideal rules.”

That is how messiahs start out. Unfortunately, with time a halo appears to distance them. As we cannot accept what is ‘normal’, we need to sustain it by the ethereal. True sublimity lies in being true to oneself as a human being.

Which is perhaps what Jesus Christ was. As a healer, he must have tapped the wellsprings of his humanity; as a miracle-maker he would have trained in exercises of self-control; and as a prophet he probably was a lesson in humility.

As a woman, I find the idea of a male prophet who is vulnerable quite tantalising. Therefore, a Jesus who looks tired, frustrated and even angry becomes even more divine. He is my kind of man. Note, I haven’t said saint. Simply because I have touched him - a swarthy man robed in white, making me want to call out to him, “Hey JC, won’t you smile for me?”

Part II:

Husain, Hinduism, Hindustan: Testing Tolerance
Farzana Versey
February 16, 2006

European Hindus have joined their American counterparts to fight the whiskey wars against an American manufacturer’s controversial attempt to advertise its tipple through images of Goddess Durga astride a tiger, cradling numerous bottles of booze in her many hands.

A Bharatiya Janata Party general secretary has moved the Bombay high court seeking criminal action against noted painter M F Husain for his controversial and allegedly obscene painting depicting mother earth.
- - -
Go right ahead and arrest the artist for showing disdain for art (effacing his paintings), for the art community (pre-selling his works to a man who knows nothing about the subject). But please spare us this baloney about Husain attacking Hinduism or Husain being a representative of secularism. Both are caricatures of a caricature.

To come to the immediate provocation against him, he has painted a nude woman`s outline resembling the map of India. Those gunning for him are Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Since when has India got completely enmeshed with Hinduism? I have spoken to artists and they see the female body in sand dunes, so why not the map of India? If you call the nation Bharat ‘Mata’, then she is female. And a female will have a certain kind of body, and that body will not always be clothed. If you look at the map you often see mountain peaks, gorges, valleys, lush foliage, undulating oceans.

These people who talk about their great respect for ‘mother earth’ abuse her all the time. Each time they excavate and demolish historic sites, they are committing rape; when they carry their tridents and guns, they are on the prowl. These people have no right to complain. It is better if the Hindutva parties stopped pretending about respect. They are the worst plunderers.

So leave India alone and stop riding on her back to get at the real gripes:

-Husain’s earlier paintings have depicted Hindu deities such as Hanuman, Saraswati in compromising poses.
-He has portrayed goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati and Durga, as well as Sita and Draupadi, in the nude.
-In his Ramayana series, he showed Sita clinging to Hanuman’s tail, alleging a sexual connotation in the painting.

The obvious response is that gods and goddesses are shown in far more compromising positions in temple sculptures. There is nudity, there is copulation and there is a lot of experimentation going on there. The fact is that people worship at those temples; no one wants them razed because of these depictions; no one has defaced them for this reason.

* * *
Let us digress for a bit to the other related issue: The whiskey ad that shows images of Goddess Durga astride a tiger, cradling numerous bottles of booze in her many hands.

The Hindus are angry. If these people ought to take issue, it is with the manufacturers for getting the animal wrong. Durga is always atop a lion. To get a few more facts right, it is suggested in the ‘Devi-mahatmyam’ (Hymn on the Greatness of the Goddess) that devotees of the goddess may offer her wine and then drink it as an offering. Furthermore, she is often shown holding weapons. Whatever happened to our little non-violent minds?

The Southern Comfort guys surely knew their hands and the imagery they wished to convey was power.

Apparently, the National Council of Hindu Temples (NCHT), that claims to represent 75% of Britain’s Hindus, said it was time for Hindus around the world and the Indian government to stand up and be counted.

Why get the Indian government of a secular nation involved in this? And where are these people to stand up and be counted when it matters? Where are these Hindus when they must protest against racial discrimination in their countries of adoption? Where are they when in their home countries the name of their religion is besmirched? They are funding the Hindu jihad boxes. They are sponsoring opulent temples.

I had once walked into a store in Las Vegas and found souvenir slot machines with the face of Kali, tongue hanging out. Obviously, someone thought it looked exotic, whereas it should have been Lakshmi, if at all. There, an Indian bought that piece, fascinated by it, or merely thrilled over the fact that he could find his goddess in the US or A.

Why is it that where money, gambling and even harmful fireworks are concerned no one gets offended, but alcohol gets people frothing? What is sacred about the former, and reprehensible about the latter?

It isn’t that Hindus do not have a right and duty to protest. But there is a little problem here. When the images of gods on toilet seat covers marketed in Seattle had sparked off a fury, I saw photographs of some people burning toilet seats in the streets of India to express their anger. I must confess I found it ironical, for most of them are good old ‘squatters’ exposing their butts on railway tracks.

Besides, these are the same people who pee in the open, sometimes against temple walls, who display calendars and pictures of the deities in shops selling everything conceivable and concealable. Why, even the so-called middle-class and intelligentsia get excited over Raja Ravi Verma’s buxom ‘devis’ and stud-like ‘devtas’. It is garish and gauche, but it is considered art.

Then you have that prize catch of Khajuraho and the Kama Sutra. We even make them into our tourist attractions. We berate the ‘regressive Victorianism’ that the British introduced in our wonderfully open society.

If you have no problem flaunting what you’ve got, then you have to understand that the others will want to join the bandwagon.

You want to promote yourselves as liberal creatures and then you get into a tizzy over trifles, when it is trifles you are happy advertising. A levitating Maharishi becomes worthy enough because The Beatles gave him some kick-ass devotion; a Swami Ramdev, who has been exposed recently for keeping bones and skulls in his ayurveda unit, has become a hip, much-in-demand- by-celebs godman. On a TV programme where he was ‘pitted’ against an audience, he ended up with applause and the wily anchor added to the fan following. The message being given out is that you criticise anything Hindu and you are anti-national. This man has the audacity of talking about representing Indian values.

Recently at Shravanbelgola, where a huge statue of Lord Mahavira in the buff is displayed, there were thousands of worshippers and the event was inaugurated by the President of India.

* * *
Is there a connection with what Husain does? Art gallery owner, Dadiba Pundole, reacting to the controversy, said in an interview, “Mr Husain is intelligent enough to know what is artistic and what is not. He doesn`t do anything to upset anybody or to court attention. He paints what he likes, just as a poet writes what he feels. He doesn`t need to justify himself to anybody. The so-called protests are born of ignorance and the urge to comment without understanding.”

I do not think that is the issue at all. This is the Hinduisation of India. And M. F. Husain is very much a part of this charade. He is using his canvas/temple to pay obeisance. His dancing in the aisles in tune with the jhatkas of a film star in a rotten Hindi film finds realisation in at least one goddess image of Shakuntala in the visually and metaphorically brilliant Gaja Gamini.

He paints elephants to worship Lord Ganesha. For all this, he is put on a ‘dharmic’ pedestal by the liberals as a paragon of secular virtue.

Why is this necessary? Why does he have to be validated by some members of the majority community? Why do the very same people who talk about artistic licence feel the need to corroborate it? Where are they when a cross-cultural marriage in a village results in death? Where are they when child marriages take place? Where are they when devdasis are sold in the prostitution racket? Where are they when widows go through hell in the holy Varanasi? Where are they when hundreds of middle-class Muslims study, work, socialise with non-Muslims? Do they talk about the secularism of these ordinary folk?

By making an icon of one who is at best lampooning a cuckold role to the hilt, they are paying lip service to their liberalism and giving a back-handed compliment to the tolerance of the ‘majority of Hindus’.

Bringing such discussions about the charitable majority into the open only connects the Bharatmata and goddesses issue. They are not the same.

* * *
Husain is only a modern-day Gandhi. He has used the prototype of the naked fakir and transformed it into Sufi charlatan. He makes a mockery of poverty by going around unshod when he has shoes that cost Rs. 5 lakh. He too is experimenting with the truth; if Gandhi tested his powers of abstinence by sleeping with virgins, Husain by painting nude goddesses is testing his ability not to be titillated (ironically, both end up playing to the gallery and titillating others). He, like Gandhi, wants to hold on to his religious identity and yet pander to the baser instincts of an audience that will react – either sharply or slavishly. He has merely contorted his old poster-art model to make the goddesses articulate outside of the framework, so to speak. This is deviously whetting the appetite. He is marketing religiosity even as he twists it.

He even went ahead and depicted Mother Teresa in a Paithani sari. Unfortunately, the criticism was that such a raiment denoted wealth, something the Mother was not associated with. That was not Husain’s intention. He wanted to convert her into an indigenous goddess untainted by Vatican canonisation.

M. F. Husain will never get arrested. His masters will bail him out because they have already bought him. They are tolerant as long as he paints in the hues they approve of.

They are all paeans to religion. Therefore, he has no business to be called secular. I don`t think this form of national integration is a good idea, anyway. Keep your gods to yourself. The moment you start slobbering over mythology you cut yourself from reality.

Part III:

The Book is also Just a Book
Farzana Versey
May 23, 2005

Why the Quran cannot be desecrated

Forget about killing myself. I felt no anger, no hurt, and no disgust when I read about the furore over the Newsweek report regarding the ‘desecration’ of the ‘holy Quran’.

The single quotes I have used underscore a couple of points: You can desecrate only what you believe in and feel for. And the holy Quran is tautology, unless someone knows of an unholy one. Semantics aside, I tried to gauge the rage among the people supposedly most affected. During the controversial time, I was in an Islamic country – the United Arab Emirates. And there were no protests. Nothing.

Arab families on a Friday afternoon, presumably after the jumma prayers, were heading towards the KFC, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks sections in shopping malls. Where was their hatred for America? Chances are that if you told a wealthy Arab about Guantanamo Bay, he might look skyward and say, “Inshallah, next month I will take my family there for a holiday.”

Those 17 people who killed themselves in Afghanistan probably just wanted to die – they were not sympathising with the prisoners, they did not kill themselves for their fellow human beings and perhaps fellow sufferers. The flushing of the holy book down the toilet was an excuse.

Let us examine why it is no big deal.

* Does anyone imagine that some of the eminent Western analysts of the Quran were lighting agarbattis and shaking their heads up and down while translating/interpreting the text? They were in all probability sitting in their charming study with a single malt for company.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* There is a strange notion that prisoners who have committed the most heinous crimes want to read religious books. The fact that most of them are buggering one another seems to have escaped us. They would be happier with pornography. But, no. We believe reform is possible only with religion. If religion is such a powerful force, then why are there crimes committed at all?

Now you have a situation where die-hard mass murderers, paedophiles, abusers of all kinds, are given the Quran – people who have gone against every tenet of the Book.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* A man and his wife have a quarrel. She accuses him of cheating on her. He says he is innocent. “If I am guilty, then I will die this minute. I will turn blind,” he says dramatically. The woman does not want to become a widow nor does she have any use for a man who will not be able to appreciate her visible charms, so she feigns dissatisfaction with the response: “Nahiiiiinn! You must swear on the Quran if you are speaking the truth.”

The book is brought out of its green cloth with an unbecoming ferocity; the man places his hand over it and says, “Kasam se, I am not cheating on you, I care about you.” The wife smiles victoriously. Next day, he goes and places a chaadar on the tombstone of some pir to atone for having half-lied. Or better still, he makes plans for the Haj to throw stones at the devil. Both, husband and wife, have misused the holy book.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* Sunnis and Shias routinely violate each other’s existence and they follow the same Book.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* * *
It is ridiculous to imagine that people who have been imprisoned for allegedly terrorist activities or intentions, having used the Quran as their inspiration – however lopsided their perception of it may be – could be forced to confess to their involvement by annoying them with the tearing of the Book.

It makes no sense. Religion for the Islamists is a political entity; the Quran is incidental to it. Quranic injunctions are fabulist in their probity; it is the Sharia that lays down the rules of law. Daniel Pipes made a pertinent observation, “Fundamentalists read the Quran and the Hadith reports in novel ways and found political instruction where none was originally understood. The Quran exhorts Muslims to ‘conduct their affairs by mutual consultation’; fundamentalists interpreted this as a command to practice democracy; the Quranic call for Muslims to ‘give their due to relatives, the poor and the wayfarers’ they understood as a call for socialism.”

He quotes the secularist Duran Khalid who wrote, “…a large part of the Islamic world never knew the Shari’a and despite this developed a rich religious life and identified itself with the transnational community of believers; thus the assertion of the jurists (Ulema), that without the Shari’a Islam does not exist, is not tenable.”

Col. Muammar Qaddafi did his own little thing with ‘The Green Book’ by claiming, “In the Third Theory, we present the applications of Islam from which all mankind may benefit”. According to Pipes, “it diverged widely from the Quran and owed more to Jean-Jacques Rousseau than to any Muslim thinker”.

These examples emphasise the point that the Quran is at various levels merely a symbol, and an individual one at that. Each Muslim uses it in his/her own way. It truly is a personalised copy and pretty much in the private domain of worship.

This is the reason that there are fewer people agitating than there were against ‘The Satanic Verses’. Salman Rushdie did not tear the Book or tear it apart; he violated a belief system, somewhat like abusing your favourite fairytale. Like portraying Santa Claus as Count Dracula. Most Muslims have a more fable-like relationship with the Quran – there are passages they like and repeat. It is that simple.

* * *

The ones complicating matters are really not fit enough to comment.

It started with Imran Khan who flaunted the copy of the magazine. As a born-again Muslim, he needs to prove he is on the right side of the ‘right’.

Then there was Pakistan’s foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri who called the act “debased, inhuman and depraved”. Besides being a good thumbing through the thesaurus, I would be curious to know what he has to say about those who burned a wooden cross in the streets of London.

A hundred demonstrators, who should have been at the pub or sipping a cuppa, were screaming, “USA watch your back, Osama is coming back”, “Kill, kill USA, kill, kill George Bush” and “Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow”. This is so utterly sophomoric, more Hyde Park than evangelist. And among this group was the spokesman of the ‘Supporters of Sharia’, Abu Musa. He said the retraction, “makes no difference, we have first-hand testimony…America is quite happy to desecrate the Holy Quran all over the world.”

So why did they keep quiet all along?

Another puff-pudding, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the mufti of Egypt said, “The Muslims will not remain silent in the face of an aggression on their sacred values.”

Sacred values? Values are what people practise, what they believe in. Values do not come packaged in books or Books to lie dormant and vanish the minute a few copies are torn. The problem is that we do not as yet have the capacity to make that fine distinction between decency and morality. Everything decent is moral. All that is moral is not necessarily decent.

How many Islamic nations put their wealth and manpower to fight the Western forces against their aggression towards their own? Where is the Islamic revivalism one hears about? With the exception of token gestures -- people fighting for the right to wear the hijaab or say their prayers in public places, or a 15th century Egyptian Quran being sold for $140,000 at an auction in London, or an Italian publisher making copies of a limited edition Quran from the Ottoman period for $3000 a piece – where is the unified, self-respecting, self-sufficient Islam?

This is not about piety, but about superficial assertion and wealth. The West has created the bugbear about, and thrown the bait of, pan-Islamism. The Islamic world spotting this mirage in the desert goes for it. They call out the name not of Allah, but Osama. What has Bin Laden got to do with the Quran? They have been trapped, and they did not even realise it! The strategy has worked beautifully – get the Muslim world to talk about Islam and Osama in one breath and then declare a general war on terror. And these naïve Muslims want the US to conduct an enquiry into the behaviour of the soldiers to prove the West’s intentions towards Islam and Muslims. Really!

Soldiers go to war. They kill people they do not know and fight a cause they do not care much about. But they listen to rap music, get a rise and jerk off some bullets. This happens everywhere in the world. The idea of following dictums of human rights violations is a bit silly. How can you draw the line when you are walking the razor’s edge?

If Islamic societies want to worry about desecration, they should start looking at how they treat their own people. Then they should, if they must, consolidate into a progressive conglomerate with diverse schools of thought adding dimensions to their ideology. It is time to give up the pretence that there is one Islamic whole. Amazingly, this imaginary bloc has resulted in the West trying to ape it. The West uses religion during elections today; it uses morality; it uses terrorist tactics to purify society. It is an interesting turn of mores, but not desirable.

The Muslim world could with its wealth and heritage easily take on the West in one fell swoop – reject it. Why can’t those Arabs learn landscaping, oil drilling? A friend who teaches at the American University in UAE told me that his task is tough. Most of the men are sons of sheikhs and aware that they will not have to work, so they take absolutely no interest in the classes. Whereas some of the women may wear traditional dress, but are extremely enthusiastic and talented. They could contribute a great deal to society.

And if Muslims cannot outright reject the West, then they ought to treat it as the pariah it is in their part of the world. A barking dog will bite only if you let it come too close.

Desecration is when you allow yourself the torpor for your core to be tarnished. And if you are a true believer, then the Quran – or any ideology that enlightens you -- ought to have seeped into your soul. Save that.

On the Chowk forums, these articles have raised alot of eyebrows. What I am trying to say is to free your mind. Balance!

See Ya.

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