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Friday, November 4, 2011
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
இலங்கை - அழியும் சைவம்... அடைக்கல திட்டம்!
நன்றி: ஜூனியர் விகடன்.
இன்னொரு இலங்கை சோகம்...
இன்னொரு இலங்கை சோகம்...
| அழியும் சைவம்... அடைக்கல திட்டம்! |
| இலங்கையில் போர் முடிந்தாலும், ஈழத் தமிழனின் சோகம் தீரவில்லை. தமிழர்களின் கோயில்கள் எல்லாம் தரை யோடு தரையாக சிதிலமாகிக் கிடக்கின்றன. இந்நிலையில், அவர்களைப் பலமுனைகளிலும் மதமாற்றம் செய்யும் முயற்சிகளும் அதிவேகம் பிடிக்க... 'அதைத் தடுத்து நிறுத்த, இலங்கையில் தமிழர்கள் வசிக்கும் பகுதிகளில் திருமுறை வேள்விகளை நடத்தத் திட்டமிட்டுள்ளனர் ஆன்மிகவாதிகள் சிலர்..!' என்றொரு செய்தி வந்தது. இது என்ன புது சோதனை என்று விசாரித்தோம். தமிழ்நாட்டின் காஞ்சி மடத்தோடு சேர்ந்து அகில இலங்கை இந்து மாமன்றம், இந்திய இலங்கை தமிழர் கூட்டமைப்பு ஆகியவைதான் இந்தப் பணியில் குதித்திருக்கின்றன. முதலில் அகில இலங்கை இந்து மாமன்ற உதவிச் செயலாளர் கார்த்திகேயனிடம் பேசினோம். ''உக்கிரமான போர் முடிந்து, மக்கள் மீள் குடியேறி வரும் சூழலிலும் ஏகக் குழப்பங்கள்! இங்குள்ள இந்துக்கள் பெரும்பாலும் சைவர்களே. அவர்களுக்கு நம்பிக்கை ஊட்ட இலங்கையில் எதுவுமே இல்லை. 'திக்கற்றவர்க்கு தெய்வமே துணை' என்பார்கள். ஆனால், எல்லா கோயில் களுமே இடிக்கப்பட்டு விட்டன. அதனால், சைவர்களான தமிழர்கள் எங்கு போவதென்று தெரியாமல் குழப்பமுற்று இருக்கின்றனர். அதனால் மாற்று மதத்தினர், எம் மக்களை மதம் மாற்றத் துடிக்கின்றனர். எம் மக்கள் அவர் களின் சூழ்ச்சிக்கு முழுதும் இரையாகிவிடுவார்களோ என்று அச்சமாயிருக்கிறது. அதற்காக என்ன செய்யலாம் என்று யோசித்தபோதுதான் 'திருமுறை வேள்விகள் செயல் திட்டம்' என்பதை வடிவமைத்தோம்!'' என்றார்.இந்திய-இலங்கை தமிழர் கூட்டமைப்பின் தலைவரும், 'காந் தளகம்' பதிப்பகத்தின் ஒருங்கிணைப்பாளருமான சச்சிதானந்தம் நம்மிடம், ''இலங்கைத் தமிழர் பூமியில் இப்போது, தமிழும் இல்லை; அவர்கள் மதமான சைவமும் இல்லை. எங்களுக்கு சமயம் என்றால் சைவம்தான், கோயில் என்றால் சிதம்பரம்தான். பல நூறு ஆண்டுகளாக ஈழமும், தமிழகமும்தான் தமிழ் வளர்த்த இடங்கள், சைவத்தைப் போற்றிய இடங்கள். அப்படிதொல்பெருமை கொண்ட எம் ஈழத்தில் இன்று சைவத்தை அழித்தொழிக்கும் வேலைகள் முழுமூச்சில் நடந்துவருகின்றன. மீள்குடியமரும் தமிழர் பகுதிகளில் நுழையும் என்.ஜி.ஓ-க்கள், மதமாற்ற வேலைகளில் மும்முரமாக இறங்கியுள்ளனர். 'உங்கள் மதம் உங்களைக் காப்பாற்றவில்லையே, உங்கள் தாய்நாடு உங்களைக் காப்பாற்றவில்லையே... இந்தோனேஷியாவில் கிழக்கு தீமோர் மக்கள் கிறிஸ்துவத்தை மேற்கொண்டதால்தான் அவர்களைப் பிரித்து, தனி நாடாக்க முடிந்தது. இப்பவும்கூட உங்கள் தாய்நாடு போராட்டத்தை கிறிஸ்துவ நாடுகள் மட்டும்தானே ஆதரித்தது?' என்றெல்லாம் சொல்லியே கிறிஸ்துவ மதத்தின்பால் ஈர்க்கிறார்கள். இஸ்லாமியர்களும் அவ்வாறே செய லாற்றுகிறார்கள். மட்டக்களப்பில் தமிழர் பெருவாரியாக வசித்த பகுதி ஒன்றின் பெயர், இப்போது 'சதாம் உசைன் நகர்.' இன்னொரு இடம், 'அயத்துல்லா நகர்.' வேறொரு இடத்தில் சவூதி மன்னர் பைசலின் பெயரில் நகர் உருவாகிவிட்டது. அங்கிருந்த கோயில்கள், பள்ளிவாசல்களாக மாறிக் கொண்டுள்ளன! புத்த மதத்தினரும் தங்கள் வேலையைக் காட்டு கிறார்கள். அங்கு பாதுகாப்புக்கு இருக்கும் படைவீரர்கள் தங்கள் வழிபாட்டுக்கு என்று சொல்லி, ஒரு புத்தர் சிலையை வைத்து, 'இது புத்தர் நடமாடிய நாடு, அவரது பொருள்கள் புழங்கிய இடம்' என்றெல்லாம் சொல்லி, மனதை மாற்றுகிறார்கள். அநாதைகளாக, ஆதரவற்று நிற்கும் எம் தமிழர்களை இப்படி மூன்று மதத்தினரும் முக்கோண நெருக்கடி கொடுத்து, முற்றிலுமாக இந்து மதத்தில் இருந்தும் சைவத்தில் இருந்தும் வெளியேற்றுகின்றனர். எங்களின் வறுமையைப் பயன்படுத்தி, நல்ல உணவும், கை நிறையப் பணமும் கொடுத்து முகம் நிறைய கள்ளச் சிரிப்புடன் வரும் மாற்று மதத்தினரிடம், எம் மக்கள் மந்தைகளாக சாய்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறார்கள்! இதை தடுக்கும் முதல் கடமையும் பொறுப்பும் அதே சைவமும் தமிழும் தழைத்தோங்கும் தமிழகத்துக்குத்தானே உண்டு?'' என்று ஆவேசமாகக் கேட்டார் சச்சிதானந்தம். அவர் இதுகுறித்து, இங்குள்ள ஆன்மிகப் பெரியவர்களிடம் பல நாட்கள் கலந்து பேசி, திட்ட மிட்டதில்... 'இலங்கையில் திருமுறை வேள்விகளும், சொற்பொழிவுகளும் நடத்தி, தமிழக சைவர்களும் தங்களோடு இருக்கிறார்கள் என்ற நம்பிக்கையை ஊட்டுவது..!' என்று முடிவெடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. இதைத் தொடர்ந்து, இலங்கையில் அறுவடைக்காலம் முடியும் சித்திரையில் வேள்விகள் நடக்குமாம். இதற்காக கோவையை சேர்ந்த திருமுறை ஓதுவாரான கங்காதர் ஓதுவார் தலைமையில் 15 பேர் கொண்ட குழு அமைக்கப்பட்டுள்ளது. அதில் துறவிகள், ஓதுவார்கள், தொண்டர்கள் ஆகியோர் தலா ஐந்து பேர்! இவர்கள் இலங்கைக்குச் சென்று தமிழர்கள் வசிக்கும் அம்பாறை, மட்டக்களப்பு, திருகோணமலை, வவுனியா, புத்தகளம், மன்னார், கிளிநொச்சி, முல்லைத்தீவு, யாழ்ப்பாணம், மாத்தளை, கேகாலை, கண்டி, நுவரெலியா, பதுளை ஆகிய பகுதிகள் உள்ளடங்கிய 14 மாவட்டங்களில் திருமுறை வேள்விகளை நடத்த உள்ளார்கள். மொத்தம் 150 இடங்களைத் தேர்ந்தெடுத்து, ஒவ்வொரு இடத்திலும் ஒருநாள் தங்கி, காலையில் திருமுறை வேள்வி களையும், மாலையில் சைவப் பெருமை சொல்லும் சொற் பொழிவுகளை நிகழ்த்தவும் திட்டமிட்டிருக்கிறார்கள். இதனை இலங்கையில் முன்னின்று வழிநடத்தப்போகும், உள்ளூர் அமைப்புகளை ஒருங் கிணைக்கும் பணியை அகில இலங்கை இந்து மாமன்றம் செய்து வருகிறது. தமிழகத்தில் வேள்விக் குழுவினரை தயார் செய்யவும், செலவுகளையும் காஞ்சி சங்கராச்சாரியார் ஏற்றுக் கொண்டுள்ளாராம். காஞ்சி மடத்தைதொடர்பு கொண்டபோது, மடத்துக்கு நெருக்கமானவரும் கும்ப கோணத்தை சேர்ந்தவருமான குருமூர்த்தி நம்மிடம், ''சைவத் தையும் தமிழையும் இணைத்து வளர்த்ததில் காஞ்சி மடம் உள்ளிட்ட ஆன்மிக மடாலயங்களின் பங்கு பெரிது. இப்போது இலங்கையில் நடக்கும் சமய அழித்தொழிப்பை தடுக்க... பெரியவர் உணர்ந்திருக்கிறார். இந்தத் திட்டம் உருவானதுமே ஆதரித்து, அதற்கான எல்லாவற்றையும் தாமே ஏற்றுக்கொள்வதாகச் சொன்னார். ஆதரவற்றோர்களாக அங்கே கலங்குகிறவர்களுக்கு, இந்த திருமுறை வேள்விகள் மிகப்பெரும் ஆதரவு காட்டும்! இந்தக் குழுவில் செல்லப்போகிறவர்களின் ஒப்புதல் பெறப்பட்டு, அவர்களுக்கான பாஸ்போர்ட், விசா ஏற்பாடுகள் நடைபெறுகிறது. இதற்கான எல்லா உதவிகளையும் மடம் செய்து கொடுக்கும்!'' என்றார் குருமூர்த்தி. தங்கள் கனவான 'ஈழம்' உருவாகத்தான்தாய்நாடான தமிழகம் உதவவில்லை. தங்களின் 'சமயம் அழிவதையாவது தடுக்கும் முயற்சியில் ஈடுபட முன்வந்துள்ளதே!' என்று மகிழ்வுடன் இதை வரவேற்கக் காத்திருக்கிறார்கள், ஈழத் தமிழர்கள்! | |
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Sunday, January 18, 2009
Pakistan's self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that, like Saudi Arabia's system, provides an ideological foundation for violence
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200901152074.htm
*News Update Service*
Thursday, January 15, 2009 : 2045 Hrs
*For Pakistan's kids, 'J' is for jehad, 'B' for 'bandook'*
Islamabad (PTI): Thousands of Pakistan's schoolgoing children are growing up
learning that the Urdu equivalent of the letter A stands for Allah, B for
'bandook' (gun) and J for 'jehad'.
Though not officially prescribed for pre-schoolers, books printed by Iqra
Publishers are being used in several regular schools and madrassas across
Pakistan.
The three examples of Allah, 'bandook' and jehad are not the only ones which
sound like a "blueprint for a religious fascist state".
The Urdu letter for the T sound stands for 'takrao' (collision), K for
'khunjar' (dagger), H for 'hijab' (veil) and Z for 'zunoob' (sins) – which
includes watching television, playing musical instruments and flying kites.
According to the National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Class 5
children are expected to "acknowledge and identify forces that may be
working against Pakistan","make speeches on jihad and shahadat", "understand
Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan", "India's evil
designs about Pakistan" and "demonstrate by actions a belief in the fear of
Allah", said a report in Newsline magazine.
In an article titled "The Saudi-isation of Pakistan", renowned physicist
Pervez Hoodbhoy argued that "a stern, unyielding version of Islam is
replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis of Pakistan".
"Pakistan's self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that,
like Saudi Arabia's system, provides an ideological foundation for violence
and future jihadists," he wrote.
*News Update Service*
Thursday, January 15, 2009 : 2045 Hrs
*For Pakistan's kids, 'J' is for jehad, 'B' for 'bandook'*
Islamabad (PTI): Thousands of Pakistan's schoolgoing children are growing up
learning that the Urdu equivalent of the letter A stands for Allah, B for
'bandook' (gun) and J for 'jehad'.
Though not officially prescribed for pre-schoolers, books printed by Iqra
Publishers are being used in several regular schools and madrassas across
Pakistan.
The three examples of Allah, 'bandook' and jehad are not the only ones which
sound like a "blueprint for a religious fascist state".
The Urdu letter for the T sound stands for 'takrao' (collision), K for
'khunjar' (dagger), H for 'hijab' (veil) and Z for 'zunoob' (sins) – which
includes watching television, playing musical instruments and flying kites.
According to the National Bureau of Curriculum and Textbooks, Class 5
children are expected to "acknowledge and identify forces that may be
working against Pakistan","make speeches on jihad and shahadat", "understand
Hindu-Muslim differences and the resultant need for Pakistan", "India's evil
designs about Pakistan" and "demonstrate by actions a belief in the fear of
Allah", said a report in Newsline magazine.
In an article titled "The Saudi-isation of Pakistan", renowned physicist
Pervez Hoodbhoy argued that "a stern, unyielding version of Islam is
replacing the kinder, gentler Islam of the Sufis of Pakistan".
"Pakistan's self-inflicted suffering comes from an education system that,
like Saudi Arabia's system, provides an ideological foundation for violence
and future jihadists," he wrote.
Studying Islam has made me an atheist
http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/features/3194231/studyi...
Studying Islam has made me an atheist
Douglas MurrayMonday, 29th December 2008
Douglas Murray says that he stopped being an Anglican after analysing
Muslim texts and deciding that no book — of any religion — could claim
infallibility
Just over a year ago I told a lie. In print. In this magazine. I was
one of those asked by The Spectator last Christmas whether I believed
in the virgin birth. Since it had always seemed to me that if you
believed in God a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the central tenets of the
faith was pointless, I said ‘yes’. But in fact I felt ‘no’. It wasn’t
that I had been wrestling over the doctrine of the incarnation, I
simply felt that if I didn’t believe in the virgin birth, I would not
believe in God. The truth is I didn’t and don’t. The guilt has been
lingering since. This is my atheist mea culpa.
Many people hold on to belief as an unquestioned part of their make-
up. They never have to confront the source of their belief, and as
long as nothing actively pushes them into addressing it, they keep it
as something which rarely does much harm and might actually do some
good. I have been an Anglican since birth — and not just a cultural
Anglican but at times (rarest of things) a real, worshipping,
believing Anglican. Like a lot of believers, I knew that there were
parts of my belief that wouldn’t stand up to analysis. But that was
fine. I didn’t need to analyse them. I only lost faith when I was
forced to.
Charles Darwin didn’t do for God. German biblical criticism did — the
scholarship on lost texts, discoveries of added-to texts and edited
texts. All pointed away from the initial starting-block of faith —
that the texts transmitted immutable truths. Realising that ‘holy’
texts are, like most other things in life, the result of an accretion
of human effort and human error is one of the most troubling
discoveries any believer can make. I remember trying to read some of
this scholarship when I was younger, and finding it so terrifying, so
ground-shaking, that I put it off for another day.
But it found me via another route. Some years ago I started studying
Islam. It didn’t take long to recognise the problems of that
religion’s texts — the repetitions, contradictions and absurdities.
Unlike Christianity, scholarship on these problems in Islam has barely
begun. But they are manifest for anyone to see. For a holy book which
in its opening lines boasts ‘that is the book, wherein is no doubt’,
plenty of doubt emerges. Not least in recognising demonstrable
plagiarisms from the Torah and the Christian Bible. If God spoke
through an archangel to one illiterate tradesman in 7th-century
Arabia, then — just for starters — why was he stealing material? Or
was he just repeating himself?
Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by
scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an
archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange
contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in
Christianity. I was trying to believe — though rarely arguing — ‘Well,
your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last,
shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end
Mohammed made me an atheist.
Though it was a supplementary realisation, the problems that these
texts have caused cannot be avoided either. Where else does your real
bona-fide bigot find his metier? Anyone can repress a woman, but you
need ‘dictated’ scriptures to feel you’re really right in repressing
her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel
you’ve got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious ‘Adam
and Eve not Adam and Steve’-style arguments instead of just
recognising that some people are different to you.
Anyone can be a bigot. But divine bigots must count as the most
intractable — the most infuriatingly impervious to reason. Besides —
to a bibliophile, indeed bibliomaniac — the idea that there is any
book ‘wherein is no doubt’ is insulting as well demonstrably untrue.
Even when I stopped believing I pretended I did, or said I did for a
bit, for fear of the break in the dike. Like many people, the first
thing that troubled me about leaving religion was fear of
meaninglessness. Where would ethics come from? If nothing was revealed
then surely everything would be relative — and that way lay nihilism.
As it happens, it becomes clearer the more I look at it that religious
texts are not only unnecessary to the ethical life. More often than
believers like to admit, they are directly contrary to it.
Then there is the loss of the guiding hand. It is the one utterly
irreplaceable aspect of belief. Without God, where is the enduring
melody — the cantus firmus — of life? Alexander Herzen asked, ‘Where
is the song before it is sung?’ It is impossible to replace the belief
in a deity’s plans for you. Though less comforting, it is simply
observably truer that there is no song before you sing it — no path
before you tread it. You make the song as you sing it. You make the
path as you tread it. It makes life more precarious, certainly — but
just as the risk of falling is greater, so, likewise, is the
possibility of soaring.
My final fear was one which I think a lot of Christians in this
country feel, particularly as they see Islam re-emerging and gaining
adherents in spite (or perhaps because) of its intransigence and
intractability. It is, I suppose, a sense of cultural abandonment. We
know how much of what we enjoy and relish comes through Christianity.
Can we really go on without it? Doesn’t it leave our building without
foundations? Slowly I discover that it doesn’t. I still can’t pass a
country church or cathedral without going in. The texts are still
essential to me. They are just (and ‘just’ hardly does the job here)
no more divine than Shakespeare.
The question of how, without believing it, we transmit the good of our
historical faith to another generation is certainly problematic.
Perhaps like many Jewish people who rejoice in their identity but
don’t believe in God we could be better — and franker — at being
cultural Christians. I tried it this year, at my first atheist
Christmas.
I went to church on Christmas morning, and went with my family to the
carol service a few nights before. The readings were comforting not
only because of their familiarity but because taken as great stories
they still transmit, like all great literature, truths which you can
live by. The momentousness and simplicity of Adam’s fall was as tragic
and resonant to this atheist heart as it once was to the believing
one.
Fundamentalist Islam challenges us politically. But tackling
literalism of one kind with literalism of another doesn’t work.
Complexity is harder to accept, but more evident to the eye. After
long struggle, I find reason enough.
My first non-believing Christmas was different, certainly. Different —
but, contrary to my fears, no shallower. Quite the opposite. Things
this year seemed both more open and more possible. More fragile and
more precious. It also struck me, in ways which are hard to explain —
and the religious language cannot be avoided — that it was all, if
anything, even more miraculous.
Studying Islam has made me an atheist
Douglas MurrayMonday, 29th December 2008
Douglas Murray says that he stopped being an Anglican after analysing
Muslim texts and deciding that no book — of any religion — could claim
infallibility
Just over a year ago I told a lie. In print. In this magazine. I was
one of those asked by The Spectator last Christmas whether I believed
in the virgin birth. Since it had always seemed to me that if you
believed in God a ‘pick and mix’ approach to the central tenets of the
faith was pointless, I said ‘yes’. But in fact I felt ‘no’. It wasn’t
that I had been wrestling over the doctrine of the incarnation, I
simply felt that if I didn’t believe in the virgin birth, I would not
believe in God. The truth is I didn’t and don’t. The guilt has been
lingering since. This is my atheist mea culpa.
Many people hold on to belief as an unquestioned part of their make-
up. They never have to confront the source of their belief, and as
long as nothing actively pushes them into addressing it, they keep it
as something which rarely does much harm and might actually do some
good. I have been an Anglican since birth — and not just a cultural
Anglican but at times (rarest of things) a real, worshipping,
believing Anglican. Like a lot of believers, I knew that there were
parts of my belief that wouldn’t stand up to analysis. But that was
fine. I didn’t need to analyse them. I only lost faith when I was
forced to.
Charles Darwin didn’t do for God. German biblical criticism did — the
scholarship on lost texts, discoveries of added-to texts and edited
texts. All pointed away from the initial starting-block of faith —
that the texts transmitted immutable truths. Realising that ‘holy’
texts are, like most other things in life, the result of an accretion
of human effort and human error is one of the most troubling
discoveries any believer can make. I remember trying to read some of
this scholarship when I was younger, and finding it so terrifying, so
ground-shaking, that I put it off for another day.
But it found me via another route. Some years ago I started studying
Islam. It didn’t take long to recognise the problems of that
religion’s texts — the repetitions, contradictions and absurdities.
Unlike Christianity, scholarship on these problems in Islam has barely
begun. But they are manifest for anyone to see. For a holy book which
in its opening lines boasts ‘that is the book, wherein is no doubt’,
plenty of doubt emerges. Not least in recognising demonstrable
plagiarisms from the Torah and the Christian Bible. If God spoke
through an archangel to one illiterate tradesman in 7th-century
Arabia, then — just for starters — why was he stealing material? Or
was he just repeating himself?
Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by
scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an
archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange
contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in
Christianity. I was trying to believe — though rarely arguing — ‘Well,
your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last,
shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end
Mohammed made me an atheist.
Though it was a supplementary realisation, the problems that these
texts have caused cannot be avoided either. Where else does your real
bona-fide bigot find his metier? Anyone can repress a woman, but you
need ‘dictated’ scriptures to feel you’re really right in repressing
her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel
you’ve got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious ‘Adam
and Eve not Adam and Steve’-style arguments instead of just
recognising that some people are different to you.
Anyone can be a bigot. But divine bigots must count as the most
intractable — the most infuriatingly impervious to reason. Besides —
to a bibliophile, indeed bibliomaniac — the idea that there is any
book ‘wherein is no doubt’ is insulting as well demonstrably untrue.
Even when I stopped believing I pretended I did, or said I did for a
bit, for fear of the break in the dike. Like many people, the first
thing that troubled me about leaving religion was fear of
meaninglessness. Where would ethics come from? If nothing was revealed
then surely everything would be relative — and that way lay nihilism.
As it happens, it becomes clearer the more I look at it that religious
texts are not only unnecessary to the ethical life. More often than
believers like to admit, they are directly contrary to it.
Then there is the loss of the guiding hand. It is the one utterly
irreplaceable aspect of belief. Without God, where is the enduring
melody — the cantus firmus — of life? Alexander Herzen asked, ‘Where
is the song before it is sung?’ It is impossible to replace the belief
in a deity’s plans for you. Though less comforting, it is simply
observably truer that there is no song before you sing it — no path
before you tread it. You make the song as you sing it. You make the
path as you tread it. It makes life more precarious, certainly — but
just as the risk of falling is greater, so, likewise, is the
possibility of soaring.
My final fear was one which I think a lot of Christians in this
country feel, particularly as they see Islam re-emerging and gaining
adherents in spite (or perhaps because) of its intransigence and
intractability. It is, I suppose, a sense of cultural abandonment. We
know how much of what we enjoy and relish comes through Christianity.
Can we really go on without it? Doesn’t it leave our building without
foundations? Slowly I discover that it doesn’t. I still can’t pass a
country church or cathedral without going in. The texts are still
essential to me. They are just (and ‘just’ hardly does the job here)
no more divine than Shakespeare.
The question of how, without believing it, we transmit the good of our
historical faith to another generation is certainly problematic.
Perhaps like many Jewish people who rejoice in their identity but
don’t believe in God we could be better — and franker — at being
cultural Christians. I tried it this year, at my first atheist
Christmas.
I went to church on Christmas morning, and went with my family to the
carol service a few nights before. The readings were comforting not
only because of their familiarity but because taken as great stories
they still transmit, like all great literature, truths which you can
live by. The momentousness and simplicity of Adam’s fall was as tragic
and resonant to this atheist heart as it once was to the believing
one.
Fundamentalist Islam challenges us politically. But tackling
literalism of one kind with literalism of another doesn’t work.
Complexity is harder to accept, but more evident to the eye. After
long struggle, I find reason enough.
My first non-believing Christmas was different, certainly. Different —
but, contrary to my fears, no shallower. Quite the opposite. Things
this year seemed both more open and more possible. More fragile and
more precious. It also struck me, in ways which are hard to explain —
and the religious language cannot be avoided — that it was all, if
anything, even more miraculous.
A strategy to deter terrorism By Subramanian Swamy
A strategy to deter terrorism
By Subramanian Swamy
Most prominent national security analysts have argued that in countering terrorist threats, deterrent strategies as formulated for conventional warfare have no significant role to play in combating terrorism. A 2002 Rand Corporation study asserts: “The concept of deterrence is both too limiting and too naive to be applicable to the war on terrorism.”
Within the coming four years, we have to prepare to pre-empt this holocaust by making meaningful allies and drawing up a strategy. This necessarily means an US, Israel, and India compact. The LeT has delivered in effect that message to the world by brutal murders on 26/11 and thus written the message for us in blood.
In the human body, when the cells start to grow independently of the brain, we say that the body has cancer. Pakistan as a nation thus is suffering from political cancer. After another few, may be four, years this cancer will become terminal.
In four years, I reckon that the Taliban, Mullah, ISI and Army government will unite to form a unified jehadi government. Zardari will then have to return to Dubai and the rest of the prominent members of Pakistani civil society will end up as kafirs in a morgue. Thereafter, India will have nothing left to piously debate about Pakistan on 24/7 TV channels because a jehadi nuclear war will be on the cards. Hence if we do not risk a war with Pakistan at a time of our choosing, we shall have a war anyway of the united jehadi government after four years at the time of their choosing.
Hence, within the coming four years, we have to prepare to pre-empt this holocaust by making meaningful allies and drawing up a strategy. This necessarily means a US, Israel and India compact. The LeT has delivered in effect that message to the world by brutal murders on 26/11 and thus written the message for us in blood.
I do however think our neighbour, and Pakistan’s unwavering benefactor, China, has to be kept in the loop, and won over. It can be done because China cannot survive as an economic power without the US. The recent financial crisis has proved that convincingly. Moreover, China has a Islamic fundamentalist problem brewing in Xinjiang, and would be interested in ending it, particularly the infiltration from Kazhakstan and Turkmenistan.
But the core countries of our strategic planning have to be those who have been long identified by Osama bin Laden as the enemies of Islam: US, Israel and India.
Today destiny has bound us together for a common purpose: the extermination of terrorism from the face of the earth by going to its festering source: Islamic fundamentalist theology embedded in the Koran, Sira and Hadith. The hardliners are in control, and their inspiration is Umar of the Caliphate.
All the humane sounding verses quoted by apologists from Koranic texts are really reserved for “believers” i.e., Muslims. For others especially non-kitabis, only brutality, murder and reducing to degrading dhimmi status are prescribed. Let us therefore not be under any illusions. There is therefore no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim. Either one is a Muslim or a renegade equivalent to a kafir. There is no room in Islamic theology for a third alternative believer.
A study by Peter Hammond concludes that where Muslim population in a country is less than 5 per cent, that population does not agitate for a separate law, the Sharia, in fact the community totally integrates itself with the majority in society. He cites the US and Australia as examples. Where the population of Muslims is between 5 per cent and 15 per cent they start agitating on religious grievances and separate identity. He gives India, France and UK as examples. When the population crosses 15 per cent and reaches 40 per cent, then an aggressive struggle by Muslims for autonomy starts. Thus India is at the threshold percentage today. Hammonds analysis corresponds to the classification of countries in Islamic theology: Darul Islam where Muslims rule, Darul Harab where Muslims are not in power but as a minority can agitate by fair or foul, hook or crook, to convert these countries to Darul Islam, and Darul Ahad (or Taqqiya) where a Muslim in minority risk the wrath of the majority, and hence Muslims must be compliant to the wishes of the majority for survival. Islamic theology does not, however as Hammond does, classify nations according to percentage of Muslim population but according to the nature of the majority—whether it is united and aggressive or divided and passive. India is in the latter category, and hence even where Muslims are less than five per cent as in Tamil Nadu, in pockets in the state where Muslims are in majority such as Thondi in Ramanathapuram district or Melvisharam in Vellore district, Muslims have established Darul Islam where Hindus are denied all civic amenities and live defacto as dhimmis. In Kashmir, where statewise they are in a narrow majority, they have engaged in religious cleansing to achieve Darul Islam by driving out half a million Hindus and Sikhs and made them refugees in a 83 per cent Hindu country. Only the Indian army is holding back the establishment of Darul Islam in Kashmir.
I do not blame Islam for this behaviour but find fault with the Hindus for not understanding the nature of Islamic theology even after a 1000 year experience of brutal Islamic rule, or by the betrayal by Ali brothers of Mahatma Gandhi following the foolish Khilafat movement, or the religious cleansing in Kashmir. Globally today, no Muslim nation permits any other religion to be practised even inside one’s home, nor permits gender equality as even a goal, or regards democracy as a human value.
No Muslim can be a “moderate” unless he risks becoming a kafir. The experience of Rushdie and Taslima should leave no one in doubt about this. That is why I insist that unless an Indian Muslim proudly acknowledges that his ancestors are Hindus, and hence Hindu civilisation is his or her legacy too, he or she cannot be treated as an equal citizen in India. We need this commitment from the Muslims of India to secure our nation and civilisation from jehadi terror from abroad. According to me, even if half the 83 per cent Hindus unite above caste and linguistic divisions, Muslims will accept this historical truth of being descendents of Hindus. India then can become through the democratic process a virat brihad Hindu nation, where Hindus and Muslims can live securely as blood brothers.
At the same time, let us be clear not to go overboard, as we are prone to do, in forging the US-Israel-India compact against Islamic terrorism. The US interest will always remain to make India into another Australia or Japan, a reliable, pliant, and neutered poodle. But Indian mindset must never waver on the basic goal of a virat brihad Hindutva, and to make India a power of global reach.
Every concession to the US therefore must be negotiated as a return for India’s emergence in the global power structure as a pole. India has one asset that the US or Israel does not have, but urgently needs—a huge labour surplus of gifted and intelligent individuals—our demographic dividend now available thanks to the resounding defeat of the Congress in 1977 by the Janata Party and thus putting an end to its horrid nasbandi campaign.
Hence, wherever there exists a “demographic hole” in these two societies, we must offer to fill it. That means readiness to make available our best brains for R&D, and to deploy our army, airforce, and navy in any theatre that they cannot adequately. In return, we must get them to build our infrastructure, modernising our armed forces, and develop our agro-industries with market access.
This bonding is sufficient to make the US-Israel-India compact durable and rewarding for us. Without India the other two cannot fight Islamic terrorism in the most important theatres of the world.
With this compact in place, our virat brihad Hindu identity or Hindutva clearly defined and assimiliated, India can formulate a strategy for deterrence against terrorism that nullifies the political objectives of the patrons of terrorists.
India is today infested with a host of terrorist insurgency. The JKLF, SIMI, ULFA, the PWG, the Maoists, the Tripura TNA, the Naxalites, the Naga terrorists, the Manipur terrorists, etc., etc. They can be crushed quickly except for one factor: The support given to them by Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan’s support is via the ISI, a wing of the army, which engages also in fake Indian currency to finance such activities. Pakistani involvement is not because its civil society wants it, but because of the Islamic fervour in the army that is not reconciled to the defeat of its forces in Bangladesh. The same Islamic fervour has turned the Bangladesh establishment against India, and hence with the help of the ISI, AI Qaeda has through it’s Indonesian wing established a base to help these terrorists and also to develop the HuJI which is emerging as the human infrastructure of the terrorists in India. Thus, Islam is the heart and Pakistan is the brain of terrorism devil in India. Challenging Islam in the realm of ideas, without diluting the debate with secular platitudes, jamming the brain of terror, and destructing its human infrastructure embedded in Indians the core of a strategy to deter terrorism. This means sanitising Pakistan and truncating Bangladesh is required.
Most prominent national security analysts have argued that in countering terrorist threats, deterrent strategies as formulated for conventional warfare have no significant role to play in combating terrorism. A 2002 Rand Corporation study asserts: “The concept of deterrence is both too limiting and too naive to be applicable to the war on terrorism.1' US President’s National Security Strategy document states: “Traditional’ concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy”.
Of course. I am not concerned here with “traditional concepts” but with new ideas to combat the new form of warfare—clandestine violence under the name of terrorism.
This overwhelming consensus against efficacy of deterrence has now been challenged by two US based scholars, Robert Trager and Desseslava Zagorcheva [in “Deterring Terrorism - It can be Done” International Security Journal (Harvard-MIT publication, Vol.30. No. 3, 2006)]
According to them the case against the use of deterrence strategies in counter-terrorist campaigns appears to rest on three pillars. First, terrorists are thought to be irrational, and therefore unresponsive to the cost-benefit calculation required in successful deterrence. Second, many terrorists are said to be so highly motivated that they are willing to die, and so not deterred by fear of punishment or of anything else. Third, even if terrorists were afraid of punishment, they cannot be deterred because they lack or have a shifting “return address”1 on which retaliation can be visited. Therefore if terrorists’ base cannot be found, the use of force against them is useless, eounterterrorist strategies that advocate addressing “root causes”, such as by “winning hearts and minds’’, economic packages and promoting human rights, are for the long run. The required cure is however for the short run.
Trager and Zagorcheva argue that neverthrelress even the most highly motivated terrorists can be deterred by holding at risk the political goals of their patrons and financier rather than by threatening the life or liberty of the terrorists themselves.
Thus from a policy perspective, my view is that the ability of a terrorist targeted nation to put political goals of the patrons of the terrorists and their benefactors at risk stands the best chance deterring terrorism, and hence is the most important objective of counter-terrorism policy.
The structure of a counter-terrorism policy and the selection of instruments for implementation of this policy has to be targeted nation-specific and terrorist organisation-centric. There cannot be a general global strategy of deterrence against terrorism.
Harvard scholar and Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling, in his Arms and Influence, (pp.70-71), contrasts deterrence (the threat to take hostile action unless the adversary acts).
Traditional view of deterrence in strategic studies literature implies the scope for a bargain: both sides agree to co-operate on a state of affairs that both prefer to alternatives they face. This is called cost-benefit analysis. Deterrence, therefore, is not just about making threats; it is also about making offers. Deterrence by punishment is about finding the right combination of threat and offer.
(To be continued)
(The writer is former Union Law Minister and can be contacted at swamy@post.harvard.edu)
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=271&page=8
By Subramanian Swamy
Most prominent national security analysts have argued that in countering terrorist threats, deterrent strategies as formulated for conventional warfare have no significant role to play in combating terrorism. A 2002 Rand Corporation study asserts: “The concept of deterrence is both too limiting and too naive to be applicable to the war on terrorism.”
Within the coming four years, we have to prepare to pre-empt this holocaust by making meaningful allies and drawing up a strategy. This necessarily means an US, Israel, and India compact. The LeT has delivered in effect that message to the world by brutal murders on 26/11 and thus written the message for us in blood.
In the human body, when the cells start to grow independently of the brain, we say that the body has cancer. Pakistan as a nation thus is suffering from political cancer. After another few, may be four, years this cancer will become terminal.
In four years, I reckon that the Taliban, Mullah, ISI and Army government will unite to form a unified jehadi government. Zardari will then have to return to Dubai and the rest of the prominent members of Pakistani civil society will end up as kafirs in a morgue. Thereafter, India will have nothing left to piously debate about Pakistan on 24/7 TV channels because a jehadi nuclear war will be on the cards. Hence if we do not risk a war with Pakistan at a time of our choosing, we shall have a war anyway of the united jehadi government after four years at the time of their choosing.
Hence, within the coming four years, we have to prepare to pre-empt this holocaust by making meaningful allies and drawing up a strategy. This necessarily means a US, Israel and India compact. The LeT has delivered in effect that message to the world by brutal murders on 26/11 and thus written the message for us in blood.
I do however think our neighbour, and Pakistan’s unwavering benefactor, China, has to be kept in the loop, and won over. It can be done because China cannot survive as an economic power without the US. The recent financial crisis has proved that convincingly. Moreover, China has a Islamic fundamentalist problem brewing in Xinjiang, and would be interested in ending it, particularly the infiltration from Kazhakstan and Turkmenistan.
But the core countries of our strategic planning have to be those who have been long identified by Osama bin Laden as the enemies of Islam: US, Israel and India.
Today destiny has bound us together for a common purpose: the extermination of terrorism from the face of the earth by going to its festering source: Islamic fundamentalist theology embedded in the Koran, Sira and Hadith. The hardliners are in control, and their inspiration is Umar of the Caliphate.
All the humane sounding verses quoted by apologists from Koranic texts are really reserved for “believers” i.e., Muslims. For others especially non-kitabis, only brutality, murder and reducing to degrading dhimmi status are prescribed. Let us therefore not be under any illusions. There is therefore no such thing as a “moderate” Muslim. Either one is a Muslim or a renegade equivalent to a kafir. There is no room in Islamic theology for a third alternative believer.
A study by Peter Hammond concludes that where Muslim population in a country is less than 5 per cent, that population does not agitate for a separate law, the Sharia, in fact the community totally integrates itself with the majority in society. He cites the US and Australia as examples. Where the population of Muslims is between 5 per cent and 15 per cent they start agitating on religious grievances and separate identity. He gives India, France and UK as examples. When the population crosses 15 per cent and reaches 40 per cent, then an aggressive struggle by Muslims for autonomy starts. Thus India is at the threshold percentage today. Hammonds analysis corresponds to the classification of countries in Islamic theology: Darul Islam where Muslims rule, Darul Harab where Muslims are not in power but as a minority can agitate by fair or foul, hook or crook, to convert these countries to Darul Islam, and Darul Ahad (or Taqqiya) where a Muslim in minority risk the wrath of the majority, and hence Muslims must be compliant to the wishes of the majority for survival. Islamic theology does not, however as Hammond does, classify nations according to percentage of Muslim population but according to the nature of the majority—whether it is united and aggressive or divided and passive. India is in the latter category, and hence even where Muslims are less than five per cent as in Tamil Nadu, in pockets in the state where Muslims are in majority such as Thondi in Ramanathapuram district or Melvisharam in Vellore district, Muslims have established Darul Islam where Hindus are denied all civic amenities and live defacto as dhimmis. In Kashmir, where statewise they are in a narrow majority, they have engaged in religious cleansing to achieve Darul Islam by driving out half a million Hindus and Sikhs and made them refugees in a 83 per cent Hindu country. Only the Indian army is holding back the establishment of Darul Islam in Kashmir.
I do not blame Islam for this behaviour but find fault with the Hindus for not understanding the nature of Islamic theology even after a 1000 year experience of brutal Islamic rule, or by the betrayal by Ali brothers of Mahatma Gandhi following the foolish Khilafat movement, or the religious cleansing in Kashmir. Globally today, no Muslim nation permits any other religion to be practised even inside one’s home, nor permits gender equality as even a goal, or regards democracy as a human value.
No Muslim can be a “moderate” unless he risks becoming a kafir. The experience of Rushdie and Taslima should leave no one in doubt about this. That is why I insist that unless an Indian Muslim proudly acknowledges that his ancestors are Hindus, and hence Hindu civilisation is his or her legacy too, he or she cannot be treated as an equal citizen in India. We need this commitment from the Muslims of India to secure our nation and civilisation from jehadi terror from abroad. According to me, even if half the 83 per cent Hindus unite above caste and linguistic divisions, Muslims will accept this historical truth of being descendents of Hindus. India then can become through the democratic process a virat brihad Hindu nation, where Hindus and Muslims can live securely as blood brothers.
At the same time, let us be clear not to go overboard, as we are prone to do, in forging the US-Israel-India compact against Islamic terrorism. The US interest will always remain to make India into another Australia or Japan, a reliable, pliant, and neutered poodle. But Indian mindset must never waver on the basic goal of a virat brihad Hindutva, and to make India a power of global reach.
Every concession to the US therefore must be negotiated as a return for India’s emergence in the global power structure as a pole. India has one asset that the US or Israel does not have, but urgently needs—a huge labour surplus of gifted and intelligent individuals—our demographic dividend now available thanks to the resounding defeat of the Congress in 1977 by the Janata Party and thus putting an end to its horrid nasbandi campaign.
Hence, wherever there exists a “demographic hole” in these two societies, we must offer to fill it. That means readiness to make available our best brains for R&D, and to deploy our army, airforce, and navy in any theatre that they cannot adequately. In return, we must get them to build our infrastructure, modernising our armed forces, and develop our agro-industries with market access.
This bonding is sufficient to make the US-Israel-India compact durable and rewarding for us. Without India the other two cannot fight Islamic terrorism in the most important theatres of the world.
With this compact in place, our virat brihad Hindu identity or Hindutva clearly defined and assimiliated, India can formulate a strategy for deterrence against terrorism that nullifies the political objectives of the patrons of terrorists.
India is today infested with a host of terrorist insurgency. The JKLF, SIMI, ULFA, the PWG, the Maoists, the Tripura TNA, the Naxalites, the Naga terrorists, the Manipur terrorists, etc., etc. They can be crushed quickly except for one factor: The support given to them by Pakistan and Bangladesh. Pakistan’s support is via the ISI, a wing of the army, which engages also in fake Indian currency to finance such activities. Pakistani involvement is not because its civil society wants it, but because of the Islamic fervour in the army that is not reconciled to the defeat of its forces in Bangladesh. The same Islamic fervour has turned the Bangladesh establishment against India, and hence with the help of the ISI, AI Qaeda has through it’s Indonesian wing established a base to help these terrorists and also to develop the HuJI which is emerging as the human infrastructure of the terrorists in India. Thus, Islam is the heart and Pakistan is the brain of terrorism devil in India. Challenging Islam in the realm of ideas, without diluting the debate with secular platitudes, jamming the brain of terror, and destructing its human infrastructure embedded in Indians the core of a strategy to deter terrorism. This means sanitising Pakistan and truncating Bangladesh is required.
Most prominent national security analysts have argued that in countering terrorist threats, deterrent strategies as formulated for conventional warfare have no significant role to play in combating terrorism. A 2002 Rand Corporation study asserts: “The concept of deterrence is both too limiting and too naive to be applicable to the war on terrorism.1' US President’s National Security Strategy document states: “Traditional’ concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy”.
Of course. I am not concerned here with “traditional concepts” but with new ideas to combat the new form of warfare—clandestine violence under the name of terrorism.
This overwhelming consensus against efficacy of deterrence has now been challenged by two US based scholars, Robert Trager and Desseslava Zagorcheva [in “Deterring Terrorism - It can be Done” International Security Journal (Harvard-MIT publication, Vol.30. No. 3, 2006)]
According to them the case against the use of deterrence strategies in counter-terrorist campaigns appears to rest on three pillars. First, terrorists are thought to be irrational, and therefore unresponsive to the cost-benefit calculation required in successful deterrence. Second, many terrorists are said to be so highly motivated that they are willing to die, and so not deterred by fear of punishment or of anything else. Third, even if terrorists were afraid of punishment, they cannot be deterred because they lack or have a shifting “return address”1 on which retaliation can be visited. Therefore if terrorists’ base cannot be found, the use of force against them is useless, eounterterrorist strategies that advocate addressing “root causes”, such as by “winning hearts and minds’’, economic packages and promoting human rights, are for the long run. The required cure is however for the short run.
Trager and Zagorcheva argue that neverthrelress even the most highly motivated terrorists can be deterred by holding at risk the political goals of their patrons and financier rather than by threatening the life or liberty of the terrorists themselves.
Thus from a policy perspective, my view is that the ability of a terrorist targeted nation to put political goals of the patrons of the terrorists and their benefactors at risk stands the best chance deterring terrorism, and hence is the most important objective of counter-terrorism policy.
The structure of a counter-terrorism policy and the selection of instruments for implementation of this policy has to be targeted nation-specific and terrorist organisation-centric. There cannot be a general global strategy of deterrence against terrorism.
Harvard scholar and Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling, in his Arms and Influence, (pp.70-71), contrasts deterrence (the threat to take hostile action unless the adversary acts).
Traditional view of deterrence in strategic studies literature implies the scope for a bargain: both sides agree to co-operate on a state of affairs that both prefer to alternatives they face. This is called cost-benefit analysis. Deterrence, therefore, is not just about making threats; it is also about making offers. Deterrence by punishment is about finding the right combination of threat and offer.
(To be continued)
(The writer is former Union Law Minister and can be contacted at swamy@post.harvard.edu)
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