It has been an interesting exercise to watch the reaction of moderate Muslims in Karnataka to the violent incidents following the publication of a Taslima Nasreen piece in a Kannada newspaper a fortnight ago. Most of the reactions that I will report and comment upon below are, I emphasise, of moderates whose writing I have had a chance to follow for over a decade now. These writers are not self-assigned moderates or publicly-proclaimed ones, but have come to represent a mature Muslim voice in the state by consistently following a liberal trajectory in their writing.

…However, the reaction of these moderates to the Taslima incident has confounded me. One can understand their hesitation about turning polemicists on this subject, but one did not expect their disapproval of inflammatory politics and fundamentalist tendencies within the community to be so spiritless.

One did not expect their distress and anger to hide behind the flourish of literary prose. During the crisis, they came across as people walking the tightrope or as trapeze artists swinging and pouring into the opinion of two contradictory worlds — the world they believe in and the world they oppose. Even while they kept their freedom to disagree with the ‘shallow barbs’ of Taslima on the burqa, they could have perhaps been a little more direct and taken a larger view of the reaction-pattern within the community.

…There is one dominant strain in most of these reactions and that is Taslima indulges in a grand disfigurement of the Quran. ‘The Quran actually does not say so’ is the refrain. Let’s assume that Taslima distorts, even that she distorts deliberately, but the question is how does a moderate voice defend a genuine misreading of the Quran? What place does the irreverence of a non-believer have in a moderate’s mind? To what extent would such a mind confront the seclusion and immobility of meaning?

…Here again is another wonderment: Given the freedom and relative anonymity that the Internet as a medium offers, one wonders why the moderate Muslim dithers even here to speak his rational mind. What is this unnatural restraint all about?

…Consider now the response of Fakir Mohammed Katpadi, a well-known fiction writer in Kannada who belongs to the Byary community from the coastal district of Dakshina Kannada. He is not as vague as Rashid is, but his struggle to offend none is obvious. The opening sentences set the tone of the entire piece:

“Knowing pretty well that our people become enraged if their religious beliefs are questioned, I do not understand why our writers behave in this fashion.
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..At the end there is a piece of cautious advise to his fellow Muslims:

“Instead of giving a fitting reply to criticism, getting on the streets and protesting violently will only give a bad name to the community. We should remember that it will in no way help save the religion.”

What these fitting replies are is not spelled out by Katpadi.

…What is most apparent from this unfortunate incident is that the moderate Muslim intellectual seems to have conceded the role of engaging his community to the religious leader and the politician.

“And why on earth does God, the jagatkaraka (creator of the universe) need me to submit. He doesn’t need my constant praises or prayers. In fact He/She should not be bothered by the belief or non-belief of individuals.”

Exactly right! My sentiments to a T.

Cheers

I think the myth of the ONE True God has led to monocultures of the mind, where any other idea about god or reality causes so much discomfort that it leads to anger and madness. We see this every time groups act violently by destroying not only public property, but also human lives. For example the Danish cartoon incident where 50 people died. If this isn’t collective insanity, what is it.

And why on earth does God, the jagatkaraka (creator of the universe) need me to submit. He doesn’t need my constant praises or prayers. In fact He/She should not be bothered by the belief or non-belief of individuals.