Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife (A Critical Appraisal of Islamic faith, Indian polity), BS Murthy [microsoft ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Nehruvian socialistic pattern of society perpetuated the Islamic legacy of celebrating poverty, Mother India remained a pauper in the vice-like grip of the State, tightened further by his self-serving daughter Indira, till
PV Narasimha Rao unshackled it with the Manmohanamic wrenches!

Whatever, we may delve into the factors that kept Islam going strong in India, and that too with certain vigor; to start with, the mundane condition of the marginalized Hindus had admirably fitted into Muhammad’s Quranic glove that Islam is. Besides enhancing their self-worth, the cult of Muhammad promised them a certain heaven that Hinduism denied them anyway. While their social depravity was addressed by the equality before Allah Ta’ala, their economic poverty was solaced by the Islamic deprecation of life ‘here’ and its extolment of joys ‘there’. While in their Hindu state they were kept out of its social fold as untouchables or retained as retinues at the social fringes, their religious transformation as Musalmans would have enabled them to develop a sense of solidarity in their ranks, easing the burden of their former social exclusion. All this could have inculcated a ‘feel good’ in the converts about their newness ‘here’ all the while assured of the mouthwatering ‘Hereafter’, owing to the happy circumstance of their having become Musalmans.

How remarkable that the temporal condition of a set of people and the religious dogma of a faith that makes deprivation a virtue should serve the cause of both! Their new-found religious status could have enabled those converts to perceive themselves, no longer as Hindu outcasts but as Musalmans in a pan-Islamic world. Above all, the satisfaction of belonging to the religion of the ruling class, not only in India but also of the best part of the world then, would have countervailed the plaguing caste Hindu contempt for them. So, their religious conversion should’ve enabled them to gloss over the drudgery of ‘here’ aided by the hope the ‘Hereafter’, which in turn would have cemented their faith in their new faith.

Besides, the converts could have perceived every humiliation of the Hindus, at the hands of their coreligionists, alien though, as an Act of Allah dispensing His poetic justice for their unjust oppressions of the past. While Muhammad exploited the Arab psyche of deprivation to nurture Islam in Arabia, providence helped sync it with the hurt of the outcasts of Hindustan, which had afforded the Abrahamic creed an unabated growth in it. And it was not long before Muhammad’s irresistible socio-religious mix had spread far and wide in the land of the Hindus, to eventually transform it as the most populous Muslim part of the planet, albeit facilitated by the Brahman follies and abetted by the Rajput foibles. Thus, with no change in the ground realities, and in spite of the burden of an unyielding religious dogma coupled with its tedious practices that the faith imposed upon them, yet the converts remained enthusiastic about their lot, thereby illustrating the power of Islam over the minds of the poor, to be precise on the poor men.

Why not, on the personal front, Islam has a lot to offer to the men of its faith, and sadly for the outcaste woman, as is the case with all womanhood, it was her man who calls the conversion shots for her and her children as well. Surely, variety being the spice of life, the appetizing prospect of ‘four wives’ the alien cult grants its men, as opposed to the native norm of ‘monogamous monotony’, would have made many a male, not religiously attached with Hinduism, enamoured of it. As for divorce that is an anathema to the sanātana dharma, the alien faith provided the Indian convert a free passage to get rid of any or all his boring wives. With no questions asked that is, and naturally that would afford the economically poor Musalman a sway in his home with his wife or wives in thrall, which is bound to bloat his ego sag.

Thus, while Islam gives its poor males a sense of invincibility within their homes, in spite of their vulnerability outside of it, for its privileged men, it accords the ‘license of levity’ for an unabated indulgence in the ways of the flesh. Sadly though, Islam, save the ‘Hereafter’, has nothing on offer for its women, who in the confines of the burka take the whims of their man as the diktats of the God, and thus subject themselves to their inimical Islamic order in perpetuity, so it seems.

It would be interesting though to speculate about the course Islam would have taken in Hindustan had the Sultans, with religious zealousness, made sharia – civil as well as penal part of it - mandatory for all the converts. Surely the rigours of the Islamic penal code - chopping off the hands for theft, stoning to death for adultery, beheading of the apostates, lashing the backs for breaking the laws etc. - would have put off even the hapless outcasts to ever contemplate about touching it even with a barge pole. That being the case, would there have been even one willing convert to Islam by vouching that “There is no God but Allah ‘n Muhammad is His Messenger” to face the music of the sharia? Doubtful, isn’t it?

In proof of it, while being enamored with the civil sharia that affords them medieval conjugal privileges and affords them deliverance from a nuptial contract of diminishing returns through triple talaq, the Musalmans of the day wouldn’t lament for the shelving of the penal sharia in India and elsewhere as well. Isn’t it a blessing in disguise for the Indian Musalmans that the kafirs have left the penal sharia alone to let them save their errant limbs and remain the masters of their homes, of course, contrary to what Allah Ta’ala had willed for them? That is about the hypocrisy of the Musalmans regarding sharia’s immutable divinity that is touted as the unalienable essence of Islam!

 

Chapter 21

Paradise of Parasites 

 

The discovery, in 2,000 C.E., of a submerged city of 7,500 B.C.E. vintage, off the Gulf of Khambhat, would have made the 3,500 B.C.E’s Mohen jo daro ‘n Harappa seem modern in the ancient Arya Varta. As the North America and the Europe have proved in the modern times that economic well-being and social development are but the obverse and the reverse of the ‘national’ coin of healthy work ethics, it can be inferred that without a sound work culture, the Khambhats and the Harappas wouldn’t have happened in the Bharat Varsha in the antique era. But then, how come the Indians of the day bade goodbye to the moral values of yore and came to yearn for easy money in the corridors of corruption!

The Aryans, who emerged after Mohen jo daro, in spite of their emphasis on spirituality, didn’t seem to have hampered the work ethos of yore as would be evident from the ‘recorded’ prosperity of the populace in the bygone eras. Maybe the karma siďhanta that exemplified the Brahmanical concept of linking the fate of men to the deeds of their past births could have even encouraged the have-nots to strive for bettering their lot in the birth to follow that is through good deeds in the life on hand. By the same token, the kārmic theory guarded man from the debilitating effects of envying the better-off, and that helped one and all build a society of happy souls striving to better themselves in word and deed, never mind their economic lot, well, till the mid 20th Century or so, before the ‘why not me’ phenomenon began to boot out the age-old Hindu wisdom from its karma bhōmi. 

That being the case, we might search for the possible influence of the Islamic religious credo on the Indian work culture exposed as it were to it for a millennium. The Islamic way of life is best described by Freeland Abbot in his Islam and Pakistan of Cornell University Press, New York, as quoted by Mayram Jameelah in her book, Islam and Orientalism (Adam Publishers & Distributors, Delhi).

“The community held that the important thing in life was not to improve one’s well-being but to get to heaven when one’s earthly life was over. And the road to heaven was chartered as a clear path. That path, preserved and sharply defined by the traditionalists, included prayers and creed but it did not include so living as to avoid measles and small pox. The basic premise of Islam is that the faithful are the servants of Allah who are ordained to pray Him five times a day. This concept of faith presupposes that Allah is the provider to the faithful He being their Master. As though to make the prayer regimen a viable proposition the Hereafter was advocated as the be all and end all of life. As though to keep up the morale of the faithful to stick to prayer at the cost of the benefits of life that hard work entails, their eternal existence in the Hereafter is made peaceable and enjoyable.”

If anything, the Tablighi Jamātis’ total disregard for their, as well as the others’, lives at the outbreak of the ‘novel corona virus’ in the early 21st Century, would only prove that Musalmans’ stupidity of faith is an attendant feature of their life and times, in any age and time.

Be that as it may, in Martin Lings’ biography of Muhammad, the following account of his meeting with Moses, in the wake of his ascent, along with Archangel Gabriel, to The Lote Tree of the Uttermost End illustrates the stress on prayer in Islam.

“At the Lote Tree the Prophet received for his people the command of fifty prayers a day; and it was then that he received the Revelation which contains the creed of Islam: The messenger believeth, and the faithful believe, in what hath been revealed unto him from His Lord. Each one believeth in God and His angels and His books and His messengers; we made no distinction between any of His messengers. And they say; we hear and we obey; grant us, Thou our Lord, thy forgiveness; unto Thee is the ultimate becoming.

They made their descent through the seven Heavens even as they had ascended. The Prophet said:

“On my return, when I passed Moses – and what a good friend he was unto you! - he asked me: ‘How many prayers have been laid upon thee?’ I told him fifty prayers every day and he said: ‘The congregational prayer is a weighty thing, and thy people are weak. Return unto thy Lord, and ask Him to lighten the load for thee and thy people.’ So I returned and asked my Lord to make it lighter, and He took away ten. Then I passed Moses again, and he repeated what he had said before, so I returned again, and ten more prayers were taken from me.

But every time I returned unto Moses he sent me back until finally all the prayers had been taken from me except five for each day and night. Then I returned unto Moses, but still he said the same as before; and I said: ‘I have returned unto my Lord and asked Him until I am ashamed. I will not go again.’ And so it is that he who performeth the five in good faith and in trust of God’s bounty, unto him shall be given the meed of fifty prayers.”

What should make the Musalmans ponder over this extraordinary ‘divine encounter’ is that while Moses felt that even a five-prayer regimen is a weighty thing, their prophet, in the first place, didn’t even deem it fit to seek from his Lord any relief for them from the self-defeating, day in and day out burden of fifty prayers a day! Well, would fifty congregational prayers in a twenty-four hour cycle ‘here’ leave any time for them to sire their progeny to carry their faith forward? Even if they were to scrape through the procreative front with their libido, would there be any time