HVK Archives: Another Salman Rushdie in the making?
Another Salman Rushdie in the making? - The Free Press Journal
Virendra Kapoor
()
2 September 1996
Title : Another Salman Rushdie in the making?
Author : Virendra Kapoor
Publication : The Free Press Journal
Date : September 2, 1996
What is it with Islam that its followers cannot bear the
mere thought of someone examining it critically? Even if
the one dissecting its precepts and practices is self-
avowedly a good Muslim. Anwar Sheikh, a British citizen
of Pakistani origin, has earned enough notoriety among
the fundamentalist Muslims as to be dubbed "more evil the
Salman Rushdie and Tasleema put together."
The Urdu newspaper - Jang of Landon finds him `many times
more dangerous to Islam than Rushdie.' What, if any, is
Sheikh's crime to have earned the opprobrium of the
Islamic zealots in Britain and Pakistan?
The spark of hatred was lit by Sheikh's recent book:
Islam: Arab National Movement. The book was borne out of
the experiences and exposure of the author to the
mutually exclusive milieus of Pakistan and Britain. This
civilisational chasm between the country of his birth,
where he spent nearly all his youth, and the country of
his adoption, set Sheikh on the path of introspection and
analysis. The result is a book which takes rather harsh
look at Islam and its practice.
In an interview recently to a Chandigarh - based paper,
the controversial author set out the central theme of his
book. He does not see himself as another Rushdie. No, far
from it. He is a good Muslim who has written about his
religion with "a philosophical bent of mind to spotlight
its inherent failings and flawed practices." The rituals
in Islam, one is told, can be as ludicrous as in any
other religion.
It is Sheikh's belief that Islam and its followers are
congenitally inimical to all other religions and their
followers. They believe in the `one nation of Islam.'
"That is why most Indian Muslims do not treat India as
their motherland. They see it as a battlefield (Darul-
herb). Islam `beckons to all its faithful to turn Darul-
herb into Darul-Islam (the land of Islam)...."
Further, India had been harmed no end by Islam, argues
the author. And so long as `Islam continues to be a tool
of Arab imperialism', it will have an uneasy relationship
with India and Indians. He vehemently disputes the claim
of Muslim fundamentalists about Islam being a nation by
itself. True, this pernicious thinking may have resulted
in Indian Muslims disowning their motherland, but prey,
how was it that it was not able to prevent the
disintegration of united Pakistan into `Pakistan and
Bangladesh'. "If all Muslims constitute but one nation,
then how come Pakistan refuses to allow, admittance to
those Bihari Muslims in Bangladesh who had sided with her
during the latter's war of independence?"
Sheikh is equally harsh on the daily nitty-gritty
required to be gone through to prove one's bonafides as a
good Muslim. And questions the basis for some of the
precepts which tend to make Islam as Arab-centric faith.
"Any religion which reserves heaven exclusively for its
followers and hell for all others is clearly woefully
lacking in the most precious human values of peaceful co-
existence and tolerance".
The wrath of Islamic fundamentalists does not deter him
from asserting that "there is not a word which is untrue
in my book. And not a word I written which is borne out
of malice towards anyone or out of disrespect to my
religion. It is a serious work which reveals shortcomings
in Islam and what it has been made of since by its
followers. Only those who exploit Islam for personal
profit or political gain would call my book anti-Islam,"
asserts the author.
"My motive in writing the book is not to challenge Islam
but to inspire an internal debate among its followers so
that it can shed its angularities and extremities."
Sheikh has said.
And my purpose in taking note of Sheikh's interview,
which I came across quite by chance in a new Hindi daily,
is to give an early warning to the readers about the new
target of ire of the world's Muslims.
Now that much Islamic money and emotion has been spent on
the hounding of Rushdie and Tasleema, it is time the
mosques and mullahs moved on and waxed eloquent about the
perfidy of Abbas Sheikh. And while they pronounce death
on the `kafir' from a million pulpits, and thus make his
book a best-seller, will it be too much to expect that
someone will send a copy of it to me as well. I can do
with some scurrilous reading, can't I?
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