On Faith: Islamism vs Americanism
Minneapolis, MN (May 6, 2010) - As a regularly featured blogger on the Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith" blog, Dr. Aseem Shukla, member of HAF's Board of Directors, has the opportunity to provide a Hindu viewpoint on various issues. Below is Dr. Shukla's latest blog. Please post your comments directly on the "On Faith" site by clicking here.
Events unfolding in Times Square, in the animation studios of South Park and the Muslim enclaves of Brussels again force us to confront the utterly dichotomous conflict between Islamism and Americanism. How possibly can the dogmatically assertive force of extremist Islamist justice possibly square with the overt expressionism and ebullient spirit of an irreverent America? One is synonymous with irrational terror and the other with an irrational optimism.
Faisal Shahzad, whose fortuitous incompetence is paralleled by his cowardice as he ran from his would-be exploding car, drives home the futility of dialog with zealots fired by a version of Islam that will not rest until a fantastical vision of a deadly crescent reshaping the globe is realized. Forget the apologists that hold that "peace" in the Middle East will silence these insanely determined forces--the South Park cartoon or the Dutch cartoonists had no stake in Jerusalem. There is an entirely different force at work here.
As an American of South Asian extraction, I know I share more of my gene pool with the Shahzads--heck, even the Taliban itself--than, perhaps, my Scandinavian descendants next door in Minneapolis. And so I reexamine what makes those brethren so cravenly motivated to kill.
Of course, there are the drones, the errant American missiles and bombs with scores of innocents killed, foreign soldiers marching in their hallowed ground, the foolish stooges who would pull off an al-Gharib. I sympathize with the innate revulsion against being occupied and constrained in one's homeland. Pride, patriotism--the law of the tribe--cannot bear the brutish.
But dig deeper and more questions arise. Pakistan got itself into this mess, and its diaspora must come to grips with that country's sickness. The country that was founded on the basis of Islam when its neighbor India was born secular has never reconciled itself to ground realities. For the autocracy that never fostered real democracy but a false pretense of war against India and the West has suppressed the talent and innate human wealth of the country. When the exports of a nation are David Headleys (the Chicago-based Mumbai attack mastermind of Pakistani origin) and Faisal Shahzads rather than software and engineers, and is known as a hornet's nest of extremism and terror training camps rather than Nobel Prize winners and world-class universities, there is a real problem.
The United States and India have for too long allowed the government of Pakistan to play its duplicitous game of superficial cooperation every time there is an attack in New York or New Delhi only to fall back to its familiar path of regional instability and proxy wars in India and Afghanistan. Even today, Pakistan will likely "arrest" many of Shahzad's co-conspirators only to release them once our attention wanes. Lashkar-e-Toiba, Hizb-ul-Mujhahideen, Pakistan Taliban, you name it, the names may vary, but the personnel, the jihadi zeal, their murderous rage---they are all the same.
It is, in a sense, the same confrontationalism of self-styled Islamist censors that threaten the hilarious satirists at South Park. And what a pitiful capitulation for Comedy Central to cave in to the potential of threats!
Hindus have often bristled when depictions of Hindu divinity find themselves on everything from beer bottles to slippers. Lord Ganesha, the pachydermally countenanced, or Goddess Lakshmi, of manifold hands and heads, are too often insulted and abused in television shows and advertisements. Christian lore and Jewish symbols also come in for disparagement under the guise of popular culture.
Blasphemy or sacrilege--these are opportunities for education and advocacy. Celebrate your differences in worship and the faith that moves you. Threats of violence display a frightening immaturity--"do it my way or I'll break your arm." Sure, some Muslims got their way when South Park's episode did not air, but do any of us understand Islam any better? We will all remember the threat of violence and forced censorship.
Prove your point and errant corporations, artists and jouralists will respond and apologize as many Hindus have found--most recently when a Burger King advertisement depicted a Goddess sitting atop a burger. This is the American way. But civilized society must loudly condemn any violent threats--overt or implied. This is the rightful way of protest.
Views expressed here are the personal views of Dr. Aseem Shukla, and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Minnesota or Hindu American Foundation.