Shariah at the Kumback Café By ROGER COHEN - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/opinion/07iht-edcohen.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

Op-Ed Columnist

Shariah at the Kumback Café

By ROGER COHEN

Published: December 6, 2010

• comments (247)

PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

Roger Cohen

Go to Columnist Page »

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (247) »

So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.


Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”

I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.”

You might not expect Shariah, a broad term encompassing Islamic religious precepts, to be a priority topic at the Kumback given that there’s not a Muslim in Perry and perhaps 30,000, or less than one percent of the population, in all Oklahoma. And you’d be wrong.
Shariah is the new hot-button wedge issue, as radicalizing as abortion or gay marriage, seized on by Republicans to mobilize conservative Americans against the supposed “stealth jihad” of Muslims in the United States and against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat. Not since 9/11 has Islamophobia been at such a pitch in the United States.

The neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington recently described Shariah as “the pre-eminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Many Republicans, with Newt Gingrich leading, have signed up. Their strategy is clear: Conflate Obama with creeping Shariah and achieve the political double-whammy of feeding rampant rumors that he’s a closet Muslim and fanning the fears that propel a conservative lurch.

It’s not pretty, in fact it’s pretty odious, but to judge by the Republican surge last month, it’s effective in an anxiety-filled America.

Galvanized by State Question 755, barring “courts from considering or using Shariah Law,” Republicans swept to the Oklahoma governorship and veto-proof majorities in the Legislature for the first time.

Question 755 was “a pre-emptive strike,” in the words of its most active proponent, Republican State Representative Rex Duncan, whose portrait hangs in the Kumback. The question arises, given the quiet on the prairies, against whom? A prominent Oklahoma pastor, Paul Blair, told me it was aimed at those “whose plan is not to coexist but bring the whole world under Islam.”

A preliminary federal injunction, granted after a prominent local Muslim, Muneer Awad, challenged the constitutionality of the amendment in the nation where “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has blocked its certification for now. The very curious case of Shariah and Oklahoma may be headed to the Supreme Court.

Marilee Macias, the bubbly owner of the Kumback, swung by. “Duncan’s ahead of the game,” she said. “He’s a military guy, been around the world. I don’t know what these Muslims are preparing but I know that stoning women, we don’t want that here.”

Bud Johnson, 84, who worked in Washington and is gently mocked at the Kumback for his East Coast liberalism, shook his head. “It’s going to cost the state a lot of money to try to defend a stupid law,” he said. “There should be a reason for a law, not just hatred and emotions. But my view went down here like the Titanic. The fear element has got us.”

To understand U.S. politics today, try “It’s the fear element, stupid.”

I asked Frank Lawson, 83, about Obama. “I think the young man’s a Muslim,” he said. Case closed. He continued: “I got on the computer, punched in Koran, and there it is in black and white: They are out to rule the world and if you don’t convert, they kill you.” Cherry-picked inflammatory phrases, attributed to the Koran but more often lifted from interpretations of it, course through Oklahoman churches and spread via Internet chatter.
Sherman asked me what “that huge Muslim movement that took over Europe,” was called. I couldn’t help. “Begins with ‘O”’ he said. “The Ottoman Empire?” I ventured. Yep. Case closed again.

Things were quiet on Perry’s main square. So quiet the “Muslim threat” was hard to imagine. It was even harder to imagine that, right here, Timothy McVeigh, the homegrown terrorist who killed 168 people in a 1995 Oklahoma attack, was held after being stopped by a state trooper outside Perry for having no license plate.

Nobody initially suspected McVeigh. Suspicion fell on men “of Middle Eastern.

Call for ‘ethical orientation' to planning process - Special Correspondent -THE HINDU

http://hindu.com/2010/12/07/stories/2010120753390500.htm



Call for ‘ethical orientation' to planning process Special Correspondent


JAIPUR: Noted economist and Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council member V. S. Vyas on Monday called for giving an “ethical orientation” to the planning process by adopting moral principles common to all religions to ensure equitable growth and address distortions of the modern economic system.

Addressing a dialogue on “Ethical issues in planning and development” at Yojana Bhavan here, Prof. Vyas said Islamic economic principles could provide answers to some of the serious challenges of modern economy advocating limitless production and consumption which “invariably leads to poverty, deprivation and exploitation”.

“Among all religions, Islam has the most egalitarian system of equitable distribution of wealth to benefit the poor and the needy through Zakat and Sadaqat,” said Prof. Vyas, adding that this financial arrangement needed to be further explored to find out the scope for its adoption in the mainstream economy.

Prof. Vyas' remarks came as a pleasant surprise to the advocates of Islamic economy and banking who have been requesting the Union Government for a long time to introduce the system on an experimental basis for those unwilling to subscribe to the interest-based economy which is perceived as promoting usury and exploitation.

Zakat, which is one of the five pillars of Islam, comprises alms giving of 2.5 per cent of one's possession every year as a welfare contribution to poor and deprived Muslims. Its payment is mandatory on four categories of items – farm produce, livestock, trade and commerce merchandise, and gold and silver. Sadaqat are voluntary charities over and above Zakat.

Prof. Vyas, who is also Deputy Chairperson of the Rajasthan Planning Board, said the ethics should be implemented at the macro level, going beyond individuals, to help the development paradigm include all marginalised groups of society: “We need to ensure that the [growth in] gross domestic product is actually reflected in the country's development.”

Alternative model

Policy planners, academicians, economists and experts attending the dialogue also examined the feasibility of “relative economics” propounded by the late Jain Terapanth scholar Acharya Mahapragya as an alternative model for providing a humane face to development. The model envisages sustainable development through equitable distribution of resources.

Jain Vishwa Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Samani Charitra Prajna said the “greed in various forms” was the main cause for deviation from ethical norms and the humanity could not progress without morality and moderation. These values should be taught to youngsters as early as possible in their lives for changing their hearts and minds, she added.

The Planning Board's head for the working group on education, Ashok Bapna, said the practices of non-possession and limited possession laid down in Jainism could help define the level of consumption rampant in the modern society and control the culture of wantonness. He said the social fabric could be remodelled by bringing in ethics as an essential component of development.

Anuvibha president S. L. Gandhi said the incorporation of righteousness in economic system would equip it to address the challenges of widening gap between the rich and the poor, absence of social security for the underprivileged sections, environmental degradation and depletion of life-sustaining resources in the world.
While economic analyst L. N. Nathuramka affirmed that ethical values around the world were shrinking because of corruption and terrorism, social economist R. L. Bajpai said the policy planners should first deal with regional disparities in the country while translating ethical concepts into practice.

Among others, Planning Board member Raj Singh Nirvan, Pratham Rajasthan chief trustee Kulbhushan Kothari, educationist Ved Prakash and senior civil servant Rajendra Bhanawat also took part in the dialogue. It was pointed out that various institutions attached to Acharya Mahapragya's Anuvrat Movement had been organising a series of events on relative economics during the past five years.

The International Centre for Economics, Non-Violence and Sustainability and Jaipur-based IILM Academy of Higher Learning extended support to the Planning Board in organising the half-day event.

AIPAC Ordered Bush To Attack Iran - By Gordan Duff

http://islaminrussiaandabroad.blogspot.com/2010/12/aipac-ordered-bush-to-attack-iran.html

Sunday, December 5, 2010

AIPAC Ordered Bush To Attack Iran

By Gordon Duff
 

In a unique interview with an official at the highest policy levels of the Pentagon, White House and, eventually, CIA, we are offered a unique "behind the curtains" look at areas of policy making during the period between 1999 and 2007. Extensive notes have been taken of meetings with President Bush and all his top policy advisors. This is only a teaser.

A highly placed source within the White House and CIA confirmed, in an interview, that the invasion of Iran was scheduled for 2006 but planned in 1999. We have heard some of this before but not with so many pieces and, I am told, more to come. In an interview with a Bush administration policy official:

Q. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of your work at the White House? You have read my articles, what do you think of my take on things?

A. You are closer than anyone else in understanding how things worked, the only person willing to simply put it out there. You also come at things like the Pentagon people I have worked with, the ones who stood against Bush, Cheney and the AIPAC gang at the NSC (National Security Council.) I can also see that you don't have background material that you need. Some of it you have wrong, particularly the motives for Iraq. It was always Iran, Iraq was simply a door.

"The Iraq invasion was a 'done deal' in 1999, but not as you thought to steal oil and bilk billions, that was all gravy. Iraq, the entire Bush presidency, had one purpose, to remove Iran from the picture."

Q. You talk about journalists. What has your experience been?

A. I have good friends at the New York Times, Time Magazine, the Washington Post and others. They know all of this. They aren't fooled. They could write anything but it would never hit print.

Q. Back to the 2000 election. The first impediment was, I am told, removing John McCain from the picture. Was this the case?

A. "He was enemy # 1, stubborn, unpredictable and already tarnished by the Keating 5 scandal, with all his faults, he didn't have the serous skeletons in his closet that would fit the bill. McCain couldn't be blackmailed like Bush, thus McCain is a risk. Unless you can be controlled, blackmailed or bought or both, you will go nowhere in Washington.

McCain is a womanizer, the real thing. For a war hero, with McCain's charm that's nothing, he would never fall into the kind of trap Clinton did. Rove was assigned the job of getting rid of McCain. We all saw what was done in South Carolina. It was a masterful job."

Q. When you talk about McCain not being vulnerable, he certainly was in South Carolina, a few rumors and smears and he was gone. You say Bush is more vulnerable?

A. "A window into a lot of this can be found in the Rosen-AIPAC lawsuit. Bush has serious issues, let's just leave it at that.

As for Rosen, he just wasn't an AIPAC lobbyist, he sat inside the National Security Council until 2005 as the Rand Corporation's Director of Foreign Policy. When the press talks about an AIPAC employee and spying, he didn't join AIPAC until later, after his arrest.

The FBI investigation and his indictment for spying covered a time when he was at the center of the Bush administration, a key policy formulator at the highest levels of government. Rosen, indicted in 2004 for spying for Israel, was responsible for formulating American policy in the Middle East and largely responsible for the fate of the Palestinian people, a bit of a conflict of interest for an Israeli lobbyist and accused spy."

Q. Rosen has made some accusations, says AIPAC spies all the time and that they do nothing but watch pornography there. You worked with this guy, what do you know?

A. "Rosen has dirt on absolutely everyone. His divorce depositions are fascinating reading. They are sealed now but there are copies out there. I know that reporters at Time Magazine have them, others too. The FBI has tons, they were after Rosen for years. As for AIPAC, Rosen told me of their spy operations many times, but nobody needed telling, they were more than obvious to all of us.

Q. You talk about Rosen and his "black book," that he has dirt on "everyone." The news stories mentioned only porn. That doesn't sound so serious. Dirt, not just porn, what kind of dirt?

A. "Mostly sex stuff, gay bondage, clubs, expense money being spent on sex, liasons in public restrooms, that kind of thing. Many of the key people around the president are involved and there is FBI surveillance, massive amounts of it, photographs, videos, and one or more undercover informants recorded conversations with top National Security Council members. Spying, nuclear secrets passed to Israel, this was common place.

I witnessed, with two others, the top Bush counter-terrorism official, actually primary advisor to Bush on counter-terrorism, who had served Clinton and others, pass nuclear weapons plans to an Israeli agent, like it was nothing."

Q. Did the FBI know about this?

A. "For years, FBI agents, I have a list of names, worked to stop this. Then I learned that the Department of Justice killed the prosecution, Rosen's lasted into the Obama administration before it was dropped. Witnesses were threatened with prosecution and the guilty, the spies, were allowed to keep doing what they are doing. This is what Rosen knows and what he is talking about when he says AIPAC was involved in spying. It isn't just that AIPAC is said to receive information it is that it came from top administration officials."

Q. Let's get back to the sex thing. How high up does it go?

A. "One famous joke around the NSC, there was a photo of someone kissing Laura Bush on the cheek and shaking hands with President Bush. The same person had, not that long before, using those same lips and hands in a men's restroom."

Q. What do you know about 9/11?

A. "9/11 was planned as early as 1999 or before, to be executed as soon as the Bush team was in place. One meeting in April 2001, a meeting outlining the invasion of Iraq, may have been the green light.' Chalibi was in place early on, from day number one. I remember telling them he was a known crook, totally disreputable and that things in Iraq would fall apart immediately. Nobody in the National Security Council ever spoke about what they would do once Saddam was overthrown. Nobody really seemed to care.

Of course, none of those people have real experience with military issues or, in fact, much of anything else."

Q. How was the Iran invasion supposed to work?

A. "This is where so many have it wrong. In fact, there was never serous discussion about terrorism or Al Qaeda or bin Laden. These things weren't even a sideshow. The only talk about any of it was how it could be used to justify going into Iraq and then attacking Iran.

Q. The intel on Iraq, we all know it was wrong. When was that learned?

A. "The administration didn't believe false intelligence, it created it, order it in place before the election to be ready for, well I guess, 9/11. Silencing Plame and Joe Wilson, those were the same people who planned the creation of the phony intelligence. There was never a discussion of a serious terrorist threat against the United States. These guys would have fallen off their chairs laughing themselves to death. It was all a joke to them, 9/11, the Iraq invasion, all of it."

Q. Back to Iran, how was the invasion to start?

A. "Everything was going to happen in Bahrain. Plans were to attack Americans, blow up clubs, restaurants. There were plans to stage a "Tonkin Gulf' type attack and blame it on Iranian torpedo boats. Guys in the military were aware of this and there was strong opposition. Marine Colonel Joe Molofsky was the real hero here. He did more to scramble administration plans than anyone else, Molofky and General Mattis. These were really straight shooters, how I learned to trust the Marine Corps.

The government there, their security services, I believe they were deeply involved. It would have been good to see something about this in Wikileaks."

Q. You said that war had to start by 2006. Was there a timetable?

A. "Absolutely. General Petraeus was sent to Iraq to quiet things down, not to win a war or create a lasting peace, nothing like that. His job was to shut things down so an operation against Iran could be staged from Iraq."

Q. But that never got off the ground…

A. "No kidding, and Bush was enranged. It was the only reason he was put in office in the first place, as long as Iran survived, he was a failure, no matter what happened to the US."

Q. Didn't they know that war with Iran would have driven oil to $300 a barrel and collapsed the American economy?

A. "There were never briefings on that like there were never briefings on stabilizing Iraq. Nobody cared, nobody noticed and it was never discussed. It was really all about Iran and orders came in and people did what they were told like good little soldiers."

Q. Orders? From where?

A. "All of it, all foreign policy issues, were out of AIPAC, they ran everything in the Bush adminsitration. That was the whole point of it. We never were told why we had to destroy Iran only that it had to be done. Nobody ever asked why. Nobody ever believed Iran had a credible nuclear program and, eventually, we were all very certain they never would. There was never an issue about Iran being a threat or not. There was never an issue of motive of any kind. These were orders, plain and simple, the administration that will come into office in 2001 will be tasked with destroying Iran, tasked by AIPAC who will control all key position in the administration."

Q. Was there talk about Lebanon and the threat of Hizbollah?

A. "There really weren't talks at all, only planning on how to follow policy, never on what policy should be or what was right or wrong. There was never a discussion about the United States, what was good for America or bad for America. People were generally oblivious to there being an America."
 

http://sabbah.biz/

Posted by Ra'd Jundallah at 10:41 PM

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/12/hamas-hezbollah-islam-sharia-public-opinion-muslim-countries.html

 

 

MUSLIM WORLD: Poll shows majority want Islam in politics; feelings mixed on Hamas, Hezbollah

December 5, 2010 | 11:53 am

A majority of Muslims around the world welcome a significant role for Islam in their countries' political life, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, but have mixed feelings toward militant religious groups such as  Hamas and Hezbollah.

According to the survey, majorities in Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Nigeria would favor changing the current laws to allow stoning as a punishment for adultery, hand amputation for theft and death for those who convert from Islam to another religion. About 85% of Pakistani Muslims said they would support a law segregating men and women in the workplace.

Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria and Jordan were among the most enthusiastic, with more than three-quarters of Muslims polled in those countries reporting positive views of Islam's influence in politics: either that Islam had a large role in politics, and that was a good thing, or that it played a small role, and that was bad.

Turkish Muslims were the most conflicted, with just more than half reporting positive views of Islam's influence in politics. Turkey has struggled in recent years to balance a secular political system with an increasingly fervent Muslim population.

Many Muslims described an ongoing struggle in their country between fundamentalists and modernizers, especially those who may have felt threatened by the rising tides of conservatism. Among those respondents who identified a struggle, most tended to side with the modernizers. This was especially true in Lebanon and Turkey, where 84% and 74%, respectively, identified themselves as modernizers as opposed to fundamentalists.

In Egypt and Nigeria, however, most people were pulling in the other direction. According to the poll, 59% in Egypt and 58% in Nigeria who said there was a struggle identified with the fundamentalists.

Despite an overall positive view of Islam's growing role in politics, militant religious organizations such as  Hamas and Hezbollah spurred mixed reactions. Both groups enjoyed fairly strong support in Jordan, home to many Palestinians, and Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based. Muslim countries that do not share strong cultural, historical and political ties to the Palestinian cause, such as Pakistan and Turkey, tended to view Hezbollah and Hamas negatively.

Al Qaeda was starkly rejected by majorities in every Muslim country except Nigeria, which gave the group a 49% approval rating.

 -- Meris Lutz in Beirut

Photo: Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam's holiest site in Saudi Arabia. Credit: Caren Firouz / Reuters 

Twitter: @latimesworld

Facebook: latimesworld

 

More in: Al Qaeda, Egypt, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islam, Jordan, Lebanon, Meris Lutz, Middle East, Religion, Turkey

America's 3 addictions: Oil, Chinese Credit and War - Ghulam Muhammed | The Big American Leak By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - The New York Times

Sunday, December 05, 2010

America's 3 addictions: Oil, Chinese Credit and War

America cannot overcome its addiction to either Middle East oil or Chinese credit.

Thomas Friedman in his NYT article: The Big American Leak, missed naming the THIRD addiction: WAR.

That too seems to reach a dead end.

Just to survive, US will have to downsize at all levels and make ready to survive in this cur-throat world as a third rate power in days to come.

American Jewish gnomes are poised to move to fresher pastures. India, a tempting target, should raise its walls against the new invasion of conspirators and exploiters.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

http://ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com

------------------------
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html?_r=1

Op-Ed Columnist

The Big American Leak

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: December 4, 2010

O.K. I admit it. I enjoy reading other people’s mail as much as the next guy, so going through the WikiLeaks cables has made for some fascinating reading. What’s between the lines in those cables, though, is another matter. It is a rather sobering message. America is leaking power.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

Let’s start, though, with what’s in the cables. I think I’ve figured it out: Saudi Arabia and its Arab neighbors want the U.S. to decapitate the Iranian regime and destroy its nuclear facilities so they can celebrate in private this triumph over the hated Persians, while publicly joining with their people in the streets in burning Uncle Sam in effigy, after we carry out such an attack on Iran — which will make the Arab people furious at us. The reason the Arab people will be furious at us, even though many of them don’t like the Persians either, is because they dislike their own unelected leaders even more and protesting against the Americans, who help to keep their leaders in power, is a way of sticking it to both of us.
Are you with me?
While the Saudis are urging us to take out Iran’s nuclear capability, we learn from the cables that private Saudi donors today still constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide — not to mention the fundamentalist mosques, charities and schools that spawn the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So basically our oil payments are cycled through Saudi Arabia and end up funding the very militants whom our soldiers are fighting. But don’t think we don’t have allies. ... The cables tell us about Ahmed Zia Massoud, an Afghan vice president from 2004 to 2009, who now owns a palatial home in Dubai, where, according to one cable, he was caught by customs officials carrying $52 million in unexplained cash. It seems from these cables that the U.S. often has to pay leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan to be two-faced — otherwise they would just be one-faced and against the U.S. in both public and private.
Are you still with me?
Yes, these are our allies — people whose values we do not and never will share. “O.K.,” our Saudi, Gulf, Afghan and Pakistani allies tell us, “we may not be perfect, but the guys who would replace us would be much worse. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are one-faced. They say what they mean in public and private: They hate America.”
That’s true, but if we are stuck supporting bad regimes because only worse would follow, why can’t we do anything to make them reform? That brings us to the sobering message in so many of these cables: America lacks leverage. America lacks leverage in the Middle East because we are addicted to oil. We are the addicts and they are the pushers, and addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.
When we import $28 billion a month in oil, we can’t say to the Saudis: “We know the guys who would come after you would be much worse, but why do we have to choose between your misrule and corruption and their brutality and intolerance?” We’re just stuck supporting a regime that, sure, fights Al Qaeda at home, but uses our money to fund a religious ideology, schools, mosques and books that ensure that Al Qaeda will always have a rich pool of recruits in Saudi Arabia and abroad. We also lack leverage with the Chinese on North Korea, or with regard to the value of China’s currency, because we’re addicted to their credit.
Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home. But our politics never connects the two.
Think how different our conversations with Saudi Arabia would be if we were in the process of converting to electric cars powered by nuclear, wind, domestic natural gas and solar power? We could tell them that if we detect one more dollar of Saudi money going to the Taliban then they can protect themselves from Iran.
Think how different our conversations with China would be if we had had a different savings rate the past 30 years and China was not holding $900 billion in U.S. Treasury securities — but was still dependent on the U.S. economy and technology. We would not be begging them to revalue their currency, and maybe our request that China prevent North Korea from shipping ballistic missile parts to Iran via Beijing airport (also in the cables) wouldn’t be rebuffed so brusquely.
And think how much more leverage our sanctions would have on Iran if oil were $20 a barrel and not $80 — and Iran’s mullah-dictators were bankrupt?
Fifty years ago, the world was shaped in a certain way, to promote certain values, because America had the leverage to shape it that way. We have been steadily losing that leverage because of our twin addictions to Middle East oil and Chinese credit — and the WikiLeaks show just what crow we have to eat because of that. I know, some problems — like how we deal with a failing state like Pakistan that also has nukes — are innately hard, and ending our oil and credit addictions alone will not solve them. But it sure would give us more leverage to do so — and more insulation from the sheer madness of the Middle East if we can’t.

Demolition of Babri Masjid is demolition of Indian history - Ghulam Muhammed | Accidental Historian - Richard Eaton - Paramita Ghose - Hindustan Times

Demolition of Babri Masjid is demolition of Indian History. Hindutva extremists cannot fool the world with their skewed version of 'faith-based' mythologizing of Indian history and Brahmin Aryan's vain attempts to treat Muslim Rule as alien while trying to settle in as the very original inhabitants of India divinely chosen to rule the lesser children of God. The Aryan Brahmins cannot digest what they have chewed. Bigger fish always swallow small fish.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai


"Unlike the Sangh Parivar's fanciful claims that 60,000 temples were demolished in the medieval period, Eaton showed through scientific data and intensive research into primary sources that the number was actually 80 over the entire spread of Muslim rule in India from 1190 to 1760. He also investigated why, when and where the temples were destroyed and the wide range of motives that led to their destruction". --- Paramita Ghosh


http://www.hindustantimes.com/The-accidental-historian/Article1-634479.aspx


Mon,06 Dec 2010

The accidental historian

Paramita Ghosh, Hindustan Times
Email Author
December 05, 2010

Grand historical narratives have almost always had humble beginnings in the exacting labour of microscopic research. French Annales historians such as Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel showed how to mingle the modesty of a local schoolteacher's profession with the ambitious scope of a historian's vocation. Richard M Eaton, liberal India's favourite western scholar, has followed in their footsteps.


In town for the Medieval History Journal's annual lecture, Eaton turned into a historian from two encounters. He met India via Iran and he travelled through an American county looking for a teaching job. On any subject. It turned out that they wanted a history teacher.
In the Sixties, this gameyness turned the 21-year-old college graduate with a degree in philosophy towards history with a small detour through soil chemistry.

"I was posted in Tabriz as a Peace Corps volunteer…. Before the (Islamic) Revolution, the government of Iran thought Americans could teach anything, so I was asked to teach soil chemistry in an agricultural school," says Eaton with a laugh, sitting on one of the ramparts of the Lodhi tomb, remembering a journey to Delhi in the mid-sixties by train from Iran across the Baluchistan desert.

Eaton's book, Essays on Islam and Indian History (2000) has been the backbone of most arguments for denying the Hindu right's charge of Islam as the sole guiding principle for the destruction of temples by the Mughal rulers of India, and makes it essential reading, especially in our post-Ayodhya times.

Historian Harbans Mukhia says Eaton shifted the terms of debate in medieval history.
"Unlike the Sangh Parivar's fanciful claims that 60,000 temples were demolished in the medieval period, Eaton showed through scientific data and intensive research into primary sources that the number was actually 80 over the entire spread of Muslim rule in India from 1190 to 1760. He also investigated why, when and where the temples were destroyed and the wide range of motives that led to their destruction".

For example, according to Eaton's book, in 1679, temples patronised by Rajput chieftain, Rana Raj Singh, were destroyed by Aurangzeb for having backed his brother and rival, Dara Shikoh.

According to Eaton, the recent Ayodhya judgment - which some have interpreted as 'legitimising' the Babri demolition - is a "panchayat decision" and is symptomatic of the success with which Hindu fundamentalists have been able to project the concept of a 'Hindu nation' versus a 'Muslim nation' onto the 16th century.

"The idea of India as a nation or even two nations is a modern construct. And there was no sustained pattern of a Hindu resistance to Muslim rule unlike Chinese history which was marked by unstable dynasties and their violent overthrow," he says.

Unlike many western scholars whose need to 'understand' Islam is as recent as the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, if not 9/11, Eaton's interest stems from evidences of Islam's pluralism. That this is not a popular idea, even among Muslims themselves, owes a lot, he says, to the technology of communication.

"Earlier, you had local, village Islams... Then came the steamship. Muslims from different parts of the country started going for the Haj together. Travelling on the ship, they began to see themselves as a single community," he says.

"The TV, radio, ship, broke down differences between here and there. It made it all one."
Why is history writing in India skewed? National movements, says Eaton, made it necessary for historians to justify India, and Pakistan, in bipolar terms.

"Historians became servants of politics," he says.

"Post-Independence, the use of Persian declined and historians did not look up sources in the original. To discover new information, you have to go to the mofussil record rooms and not just sit in Calcutta and expect them to come to you."

Or, think that if the information was not in Delhi or Kolkata, it was in London.

If history doesn't stand still, should historians? Eaton, who witnessed the birth of the Subaltern Studies school in the '80s, says its latter-day tendency to do historiography "by keeping the British Raj in the centre" defeated its initial work of writing history from below.
Eaton says his work has Marxist 'influences'.

"Marx," he says, "taught that history is not just pushed along by great men."


As for Partha Chatterjee, the leading light of the Subaltern school, he is, says Eaton, "an old monument".

2 Jews > than 257-300 and 700 Indians dead and injured in 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack - By Ghulam Muhammed

Friday, November 26, 2010

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

2 Jews > than 257-300 and 700 Indians dead and injured in 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attack

In the wake of the anniversary of 26/11, India’s English ‘paid media’ gives more front page and column space to the 2 Jews rather than to the 257-300 dead and 700 injured in 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, as if the Indian and other foreigner dead have not of equal status to the 2 Jewish dead, whose relations are now moving heaven and earth back in the Jewish city of New York and creating more international media drumbeats than Indian Government could, over the entire period the tragedy has been hanging on India’s security concerns.

While the grandfather of the saved child harangues from TV screens that we will fight the terror with goodness and peace, his clenched fist that attacks the air again and again gives lies to his any announced peace moves.

The tradition of Jewish victim-hood to thrive on claimed reparations and compensation over tragedies visiting the community through ages, has come out in the open when even though the grandfather categorically states that he is not after the money, his moves are all paved with dreams of compensation and donation money that is to make mockery of the poor dead and injured Indians that have suffered the same or even worst fate as they are yet to be either compensated and/or rehabilitated.

It is a shame that media that is the pulse of the people in any nation, in India should be do sold out to Mammon, that it has completely lost touch with the feelings and sentiments of the fellow citizens and is more concerned with foreigners, whose presence on their sacred soil is still to be explained if it was not being used for improper information gathering and anti-Indian activities. Chabad House has yet to be cleared for its real antecedents. Let Indian authorities be aware of the consequences of any moves in haste to become unintended victims of international terrorism by joining the fight with those that have their own agenda, not necessarily in the best interest of the people of India.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

<http://www.ghulammuhammed.blogspot.com>