September 7, 2018 – Brown Pundits

https://www.facebook.com/Upworthy/videos/302203880555931/

A classic example of liberal Muslims essentially spoiling the fun for everyone..

H/T Kabir Sahib; he sent me this link about how Atif Mian was removed from the Economic Advisory Council because he was Ahmadi.

In her facebook post; Vidhi used the term “Islamic chains”, which offended many of my liberal Islamic friends.

The point is that my friends weren’t necessarily upset by the governmental communique, which threatens to kill the Pakistani drama industry. They were a bit ambivalent about it; the way Pakistanis usually are when it comes to Aasia Bibi, Qandeel Baloch and all the other horrors in our society.

However if Islam or the Prophet (God forbid we don’t use Holy or PBUH) are somehow criticised then all hell breaks lose. A few observations about Muslim liberals:

Very few Muslims are genuinely liberal but rather their alliance with liberalism is the umbrella by which they can operate.
There are priorities of criticism and loss of life is not as important as loss of honour.
Constructive Criticism is mistaken for insults in most Muslim culture since the concept of izzat is so strong.
Muslim loyalty to the religion is a thing of wonder; it is a conditioning that somehow survives secularism. Even the atheist Persians will instinctively rally to Muslim causes and sometimes Kafir Baha’is will take to the blogosphere to defend Muslim High culture.
India is ready to lose her soul in order to be rich, Muslim cultures will hold onto their soul even at the cost of prosperity.
The Kafir complex is very embedded in the Pakistani Muslim psyche; the outrage over the Aasia Bibi case is fairly feeble.
Liberal Pakistanis are complicity in their explanations “But Pakistan is a Muslim Republic.” The justifications are just not good enough.
Even if India has acted as bossy big sister (Kashmir, unpaid monies at Independent, territorial adjustment, Bdesh); Pakistan simply has failed to manage the relationship.
If we had limited our demands to to restoring the primacy of Persian in the Muslim areas (especially Punjab, Delhi & the northwestern zone) and the hegemony of Urdu in the rest we would have ensured our High Cultural supremacy in South Asia, which is what matters. But Pakistanis & Muslims aren’t adroit negotiators so resorted to religious claptrap.

I have posted my thoughts as to why India, unlike Iran or Central Asia, resisted total Islamicization, before. It seems to be a phenomenon that demands an explanation.

And yet does it?

As I read F. W. Motte’s Imperial China 900-1800 I am struck by Han civilization’s resilience and absorptive capacity. What does that remind us of?

With some hindsight, perhaps I was asking the question because I constrained my dataset to West and South Asian societies, where India, in particular, seemed exceptional. But if you add China to the mix, then India’s robustness seems less incredible.

Timur died en route to China because he was keen on invading it. Many Muslims believe that Timur’s death prevented the Islamicization of the Han. After reading Imperial China I believe that this is false. Even if Timur conquered China, the Chinese would be resistant to Islam, and likely throw off the conqueror’s successors in short order.

Those conquest dynasties, such as the Manchus, who were successful in China underwent total assimilation. Those, such as the Mongols, who ultimately refused to kowtow to the verities of the Chinese, were expelled.

Taking this comparative perspective it is less surprising that so many South Asians became Muslim. Indians, “Hindus”, were ethnoculturally diverse and distinctive from each other in a way that Han Chinese never were. Muslim conversion of some elites and the targeting of oppressed castes was possible because Indian society was fractured in a way that the Han never were.

Of course, the Persians become Muslim in toto. But the Persians never had an identity to match the Han.

Day: September 7, 2018

“Islamic Chains”

Perhaps India is not special in resisting Islamicization