One of the great ironies of the creation of Pakistan, a state whose very existence is defined by religion, Islam, is that the man considered the Father of the Nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was an atheist. Before being forced into his role as defender of Muslim interests in 1930s still British India, Jinnah was a British trained lawyer, given to wearing Savile Row double-breasted suits, and who loved his whiskey, and is even said to have eaten pork. At any rate, Jinnah favored a secular constitution as was evident from the very last major speech that he gave just before his death in 1948.

My father and his generation of Pakistanis were agnostics, or at least secular. The British political commentator, socialist, journalist and novelist of Pakistani origin, Tariq Ali, who was born in 1943, confirms my experience. Ali wrote, “I never believed in God, not even between the ages of six and ten, when I was an agnostic….My parents, too, were non-believers. So were most of their close friends. Religion played a tiny part in our Lahore household. In the second half of the last century, a large proportion of educated Muslims had embraced modernity.” The later turn to Islamic fundamentalism of Pakistan in the 1970s, inaugurated by dictator, Zia-ul Haq, was well-satirised by Hanif Kureishi in his marvellous screenplay for the Stephen Frears film, “My Beautiful Launderette”; two brothers of Pakistani origin in their fifties are talking about going back to the old country, but one brother stops short this wild train of thought by saying, “The old country [Pakistan] has been sodomized by religion”.

Yesterday, I read a story that cheered me up considerably. New Delhi Television on line published a story on September 5, 2010 about Pakistani youth giving up religion. A Facebook group has been created for Pakistan’s agnostics and atheists by former Pakistani Muslim, Hazrat NaKhuda [obviously a pseudonym- the adopted surname means “no God”.] There are now 100 members. Hazrat, a computer programmer from Lahore, writes, “I used to be a practicing Muslim. I used to live in Saudi Arabia. I have done two Hajs and countless Umrahs. Used to pray five times a day. When I turned 17-18, I realized that the only reason I was a Muslim was because my parents were Muslims”. Another member, Ahmad Zaidi, wrote,  “I’m an agnostic simply because I see little or no evidence for the existence of God. Some time ago I decided that I’d never believe anything unless it has a firm basis in reason and as far as I know (and I admit I know very little and that there’s much to be learnt), there’s little or no evidence for the existence of God.”

The members of the group are students, some studying abroad, but many are at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. One student, Nawab Zia, says we should ask not “how we became atheists” but “how we became believers”. He wrote, “I was a born atheist like every human being until my parents corrupted me with faith. Every child is born free and pure”. Ali Rana, who loved Islamic preacher Zakir Nair and hated author Salman Rushdie, has had a change of heart too. He now thinks Nair is an “idiot” and Rushdie a genius. Many members describe on the discussion boards how they “wasted” their years as theists.
What that famous ex-Communist, Arthur Koestler, said about communism applies also to ex-Muslims: “You hate our Cassandra cries and resent us as allies, but when all is said, we ex-Communists are the only people on your side who know what it’s all about”.

Perhaps readers of the CFI Free Thinking Blog can help me out. At the time of the South Park Affair, and even earlier going right back to The Rushdie Affair, I was a staunch supporter of Salman Rushdie and the cartoonists and their First Amendment Right to Freedom of Speech, and scoffed at the tender sensibilities of the Muslims. Now, with Imam Rauf’s intention to build an Islamic Center just 600 feet from Ground Zero in Manhattan, I began by arguing that the feelings of the families and colleagues of those who lost their lives on 11 September, 2001 should be respected, and that the Islamic Center should be opposed, and then I realised that perhaps I was being inconsistent. Are the two cases similar? Am I being inconsistent? I have, since that realisation, concentrated on gathering material against Imam Rauf, and have enough evidence- I had to wade through two of his books, one with 210 pages and the other with 314 page to gather it- to show that he is not a moderate at all. And still, moderate or not, Imam Rauf has the right to build his Islamic Center. For me far from being a symbol of tolerance, the Islamic center is a symbol of Islamic triumphalism. If Rauf truly wanted to build bridges, as he claimed, then he has failed in a spectacular way. If the Center is ever built, then I do not ever want to hear anyone talking about the hurt sensibilities of Muslims again.

ANTI-SEMITISM RIDES AGAIN.

Anti-semitism, often disguised as Palestinianism, is on the rise again in the West. In 2003, the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia [EUMC] commissioned a report on “Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the European Union”. The report was eventually prepared by the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism [CRA] in Berlin in cooperation with some Jewish groups. It was not released officially, because of, it was claimed,”the poor quality” of the research. But the real reason was that it clearly stated that Muslims were the main perpetrartors of the spate of anti-Jewish attacks in recent years.

In fact, the attacks by Muslim youths on synagogues and individual Jews numbered in the hundreds between 2002 and 2003 in France alone. In 2002 more than 3000 French Jews-about 0.5 percent of the Jewish population- moved to Israel. But it seems an even greater number have fled to Florida in the USA.  The story of Rod Kukurudz is typical of many French Jews: Kukurudz decided to flee fearing for the safety of his family to Surfside. Florida, when his then 16-year-old daughter, Audrey, came home one night in 2005, and told him: “Dad now even if it’s hot I have to wear a scarf to hide my Star of David,” while riding the Paris Metro. Hostility from Islamic militants has increased, and departures of Jews correspondingly especially after the horrible torture and murder of Ilan Halimi.   “ The atmosphere created by that episode, plus other incidents and the general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews, is what’s behind my decision to leave,” said Kukurudz, who now lives with his wife and their three daughters, including Audrey, in Surfside.

France’s Jewish population is between 500,000 and 700,000 and its Muslim population at five million to six million.     The Jewish community has been depleted by the departures: 14000 French Jews have left for Israel since 2001.  

According to the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), in 2000 the Islamic country Pakistan had the highest number of drug users- a large number of herion users among them-an estimated total of four million drug addicts. By 2005 it was Iran which was considered to harbor the greatest number of drug users: an estimated 11 million. According to their own figures, Iranian officials at the Iranian National Centre for Addiction Studies declared that more than 20 per cent of Iran’s adult population was “somehow involved in drug abuse”. In Iran, prostitution and drug addiction go hand in hand. As Nahid Persson revealed in her award-winning documentary,   Prostitution Behind the Veil, the number of female drug abusers is growing especially among the prostitutes, of which there are said to about 300 000. Many of these young girls are fleeing abusive families. The sexual abuse of children is also widespread in the Muslim world, where the fact girls as young as nine can be married off to middle aged men adds to the problem. The United Nations Children’s Fund painted a horrific picture of the plight of children in Pakistan in 2005: an estimated 3.6 million children under the age of 14 are working in exploitative and hazardous labour; children are sometimes detained in jail together with adults and are physically and sexually abused; violence against girls, boys and women, including murder, rape, honor killings, police torture, burning and corporal punishment are reported in local newspapers every day, and more than 17 000 cases of child abuse were reported in the media from 2000 to 2004.

What prompted my present blog was a story unearthed the other day by my friend Banafsheh. She got hold of a flyer that was being passed around at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashad, one of the holiest sites in Iran:

“ Bismellahal rahman a rahim [In the name of God the Merciful, Compassionate] Temporary Marriage (Marriage is among the traditions of the Prophet Mohammad)

In order to elevate the spiritual atmosphere, create proper psychological conditions and tranquility of mind, the Province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan has created centers for temporary marriage (just next door to the shrine) for those brothers who are on pilgrimage to the shrine of our eighth Imam, Imam Reza, and who are far away from their spouses.

To that end, we call on all our sisters who are virgins, who are between the ages of 12 and 35 to cooperate with us. Each of our sisters who signs up will be bound by a two year contract with the province of the Quds’eh-Razavi of Khorassan and will be required to spend at least 25 days of each month temporarily married to those brothers who are on pilgrimage. The period of the contract will be considered as a part of the employment experience of the applicant. The period of each temporary marriage can be anywhere between 5 hours to 10 days. The prices are as follows:

•   5 hour temporary marriage – 50,000 Tomans ($50 US)  

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    One day temporary marriage – 75,000 Tomans ($75 US)  

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    Two day temporary marriage – 100,000 Tomans ($100 US)  

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    Three day temporary marriage – 150,000 Tomans ($150 US)  

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    Between 4 and 10 day temporary marriage – 300,000 Tomans ($300 US)  

Our sisters who are virgins will receive a bonus of 100,000 Tomans ($100US) for the removal of their hymen.”

One young Iranian man explained that because of the lack of social freedom and “because of the lack of entertainment, whenever young people get together, the only thing they can think about is getting and using drugs…”.

Dinesh d’Souza blamed it all on the entertainer Britney Spears, but if the above young Iranian is correct, then the solution and not the problem is more Britney Spears.

On June 15, Thomas Friedman, writing in The New York Times (where else?) made the fatuous claim that the fact that the once-firmly secular Turkey was turning towards Iran and Radical Islam was all the fault of the European Union which was less than enthusiastic about Turkey with its population of nearly 74 million Muslims joining the Christian club. Having been shunned by Europe, Turkey reluctantly headed East, that is Friedman’s analysis. Anyone who has followed Turkish politics or the life and ideas of Recep Tayyip Erdogan , the present Prime Minister of Turkey who took office in March 2003, and who is the leader of the ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP], would know that Erdogan always had an Islamist agenda. In 1974, Erdogan, as a member of an Islamist youth group, wrote and performed in a vile anti-Semitic play-Mas-kom-ya, a compound acronym for “Masons-Communists-Yahudi [i.e. Jews] -which dwelt on the evil nature of all three groups. Recently, Erdogan praised another anti-Semitic work, the film Valley of the Wolves. Erdogan had grown up round Erbakan, the ousted former Prime Minister. In a chilling interview first published in English in 2007, Erbakan who is Erdogan’s mentor, and the inspiration of the entire AKP party said, “Our Prophet was sent with love and compassion, and our goal is the happiness of all six billion people in the world. We are Muslims, and our civilization has brought happiness to the entire world. This is the good, but there also is evil. Our religion says that the infidels are one nation [Millah]. That means evil is run by one control center.” Erbakan and following in his steps, Erdogan, have made no bones about eradicating Ataturk’s secularist order. Erdogan went about his task patiently. The West and useful idiots like Thomas Friedman viewed him as a moderate, even though Erdogan himself ridiculed the very idea of “moderate Islam”. Such a term, he said, is “very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion, There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it”. In the words of Andrew McCarthy, Erdogan’s AKP “criminalized adultery, condemned Christianity as a polytheistic religion, loosened restrictions against glorifying Islam in public schools and against freelance Koranic instruction”. Under Erdogan, Turkey has turned towards Iran, and has worked to undermine Western diplomacy designed to halt the Mullah’s nuclear program. Erdogan has turned against Israel, a former ally, using greater and greater Islamist vocabulary to denounce her. He has also invited Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah to come to Turkey for talks. So much for Ataturk’s secularist order.

I have often addressed Iranian audiences without fear in several countries- Stockholm, Sweden; Paris, France; London, U.K.; and in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles. The Iranians attending were either atheists, agnostics, secularists, and Zoroastrians. The first language my first book, Why I am not a Muslim, was translated into was Persian, or Farsi by an agnostic Iranian. On one occasion at a lecture that I gave to some Iranians, the Iranian organizer of the event wondered why it was that the first thing that newly arrived Pakistani students looked for was where they could procure halal/ kosher chicken and meat, whereas what the Iranian students celebrated was their newly found freedom.

Most Pakistanis are historically, ethnically, and in fact in many ways culturally, related to Indians. And yet, Pakistanis are taught more about the [mythical] history of Arabs than about the magnificent, and rich history of the Sub-continent of India. Many Pakistanis will even boast of their descent from the "Arabs" who periodically devastated India, and some even of their descent from the family of the Prophet, Muhammad. The Pakistanis are also schooled in contempt for all things Indian- an artificial, fanatical nationalism is whipped up by the politicians and turned against their neighbour, which has led to several wars-three major wars, one minor war, and countless armed skirmishes- since Independence. When will the Pakistanis learn to treat Indians as brothers and sisters? When will they learn that their future lies with a rapprochement with India, and not the Arabian peninsula?

Pakistan was created only sixty three years ago, and the raison d'etre was religion. If you take away religion, Islam, from them, Pakistanis are lost, and hence when they leave Pakistan they have to cling to this religious identity in an environment which they have been taught to despise. Iranians, on the other hand, can boast of one of the oldest civilizations in the World, pre-dating Islam, of course. They do not feel culturally lost without Islam, they even celebrate pre-Islamic Zoroastrian festivals such as Nowruz, the New Day. Iranians are secure in their identity, even without Islam. The greatest number of freethinkers are to be found in Iranian communities outside Iran, hence their frequent invitations to me.

I was born in India before the establishment of Pakistan, and then grew up in Karachi in the newly created country- a failure of the imagination, as Rushdie once described it. My father who was essentially a secularist, and perhaps even an atheist, saw no future in a country where religious fanaticism was never far from the surface, and there was no sign of political or economic stablity. Accordingly, he sent me to a boarding school in England when I was barely ten years old. I never went back (except as a breathless transit passenger on the way to ferrying French tourists to China, Thailand, and Singapore).

I think my father's pessimism was well justified considering the events of the last fifty years, and the actual situation, which is catastrophic. Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, with a population of nearly 177 million, and the national literacy rate which is somewhere between 49% and 56%; the literacy test is set very low indeed, and the real rate of literacy is much lower. Meanwhile sectarian violence continues unabated as the minority Shiites are attacked regularly: there were three attacks in three days in December, 2009 leaving more than forty dead.; two attacks in April 2010 left forty eight dead. Add the Taliban and al-Qaeda to the mix, and you have a very dangerous and unstable country that also posseses nuclear arms.

Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed has been looking at the economic situation as revealed by the Lahore-based Institute of Public Policy (IPP) in their report published today, June 1, 2010, which makes for grim reading. "Of prime concern is the near total breakdown in the delivery of basic public services like power, gas and water." Furthermore, as Ishtiaq Ahmed relates, "inflation has combined with rising levels of unemployment to produce stagflation. As a result, households are experiencing declining real incomes. One does not have to be an economist to deduce from such reasoning that the incidence and level of poverty is increasing in Pakistan. Now if we remember that jihadi terrorism strikes terror in the hearts of not only the real and imagined enemies of Islam and Pakistan but also all those who may want to invest their money in Pakistan to generate jobs and wealth, the connection between violence, terrorism and negative economic growth becomes quite clear."

One of the biggest problems is that the landowning class is not at present paying tax on the income it derives from the land. Why not? Because its political influence remains considerable. The military budget which has recently increased by 31% is also far too burdensome and is in need of review.

As I said in 1995, the greatest number of victims of Islamist violence are Muslims.

Non-experts depend on the experts but the problem, of course, is that they all differ in the details of their analysis. But I think experts seem to be in agreement that Iran is at present out-maneuvering the United States by building up support outside Europe-witness Iran's successful wooing of Brazil, Venezuela, Turkey, Syria. There is also enough evidence to show that Iran is cooperating with al-Qaida, and conducting a covert war against US interests in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some experts seem to interpret Iran's public boasting of having enriched a quantity of uranium to 20% radioactivity, approaching the 90% needed for warheads as a sign that Iran's nuclear program is not going well. Why? Well, it is argued, normally nations working on nuclear programs do not reveal anything let alone issue periodic progress reports until they are ready to detonate a finished bomb. The Regime is boasting to raise the temperature, and deliberately provoke an attack from Israel or the United States in order unite the country, shaken by the recent protests, against enemy aggression.

Again, experts seem divided as to if and when Israel or the United States or NATO will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. But our experts are agreed that a war with Iran would be a considerable undertaking simply from a military point of view. Even NATO's war against Serbia, a country incapable of retaliation, involved 38000 combat missions- admittedly NATO's aims were much wider than simply knocking out some facilities but Iran's capacity to retaliate are far greater, and would have to be taken into account, which, in turn, could escalate the war.

Surely, the West could devise some effective sanctions, targeting, for example, Iran's import of gasoline, as a better alternative to a disastrous war with heavy civilian casualties.

Some Americans have been aware of the fact, and its significance, that fifteen of the nineteen terrorists involved in the September 11, 2001 attack were Saudis. As a report by Laurent Murawiec presented to a powerful Pentagon advisory board in July 2002 stated, this was "not a coincidence". The report went on to claim that "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader....Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies". It went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has long had an ambition "to spread Islam to every corner of the earth", and it is a Islam founded on the teachings of Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab [1703-1787 C.E.]. To this end, Saudi Arabia has funded, for the last thirty years, the creations of schools, madrassas, and academies. A book published in 1995 by the Saudi Cultural Mission to the U.S. explains how students are taught early on that their prime allegiance is to Islam, and that they should denounce any system that conflicts with Islamic Law, the Sharia. The students also have a incumbent religious duty to spread Islam throughout the world, a fundamental pillar of the Saudi educational system, even if it means fighting "physically". According to 'Ayn-Al-Yaqeen, [March 1, 2002] a weekly news magazine published online by the Saudi royal family, "The cost of King Fahd's efforts in this field has been astronomical, amounting to many billions of Saudi riyals. In terms of Islamic institutions, the result is some 210 Islamic centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Asia..."

An Islamic Academy, now known as the Islamic Saudi Academy, was established in Washington D.C. in, significantly enough, 1984, and in 2002 was said to teach 1200 students, representing twenty-nine nationalities, about the virtues of Wahhabi Islam. As early as the 1990s, various analysts had pointed out the hatred present in Islamic textbooks used in these academies, textbooks that preach intolerance of Christians, Jews, and all non-Muslims, the necessity of killing homosexuals, the superiority of Islam, and the duty to spread Islam through Jihad in the military sense. The Islamic Saudi Academy is but one of twenty Saudi funded schools in the United States.

So why does Saudi Arabia get a free ride? Oil. But what does this reply mean? Even if a radical Islamist regime were to come to power in Saudi Arabia, it would still have to sell the oil. The West still buys oil from Iran. Would the price of oil go up? Perhaps at first, but would not market forces eventually restore some sort of equilibrium? In any case, what would be the difference as far as the ideology is concerned since present-day Saudi Arabia is already anti-West? Answer number two: Geo-strategic interests would be threatened. The greatest threat surely comes from Iran, in terms of regional stability. A Sunni Islamist regime in Saudi Arabia would be a greater threat to Iran than the West. So what's it all about?

Faisal Shahzad, an immigrant from Pakistan is the major suspect in the failed bomb attempt in Times Square.The main stream media [MSM] were puzzled by his motives. This attitude is in keeping with the Obama administration's determination to eliminate certain words and phrases from American policy documents and statements concerning Islam, so that analysts, experts and advisors cannot use expressions such as "radical Islam," "Islamic extremists," "Islamists," and "Islamic terrorists."  While it is true that such a policy of avoiding terms such as "Islamic terrorism" began under Bush, and in Britain under Tony Blair, they were confined to public statements. Now Obama's policy applies to internal government documents as well, which can only have disastrous consequences for our understanding of individual acts such as those of Faisal Shahzad, and political groups and events in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and South and South East Asia. As Barry Rubin said, "Suppose I'm an intelligence analyst in the State Department, Defense Department, armed forces, or CIA, and I'm writing about one of these groups or this ideology. How can one possibly analyze the power and appeal of this ideology, the way that ideas set its strategy and tactics, why it is such a huge menace if any reference to the Islamic religion and its texts or doctrines isn't permitted?"
Before any of us had any idea as to the identity of the perpetrator The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss ruled out a priori that the act could be of a jihadi from the Pakistan-based Taliban, "it seems far more likely to me [he] was either a lone nut job or a member of some squirrely branch of the Tea Party, anti-government far right." Yes, perhaps a follower of Sarah Palin!

Even though we now have far more information about the suspect, the MSM refused to speculate that Islam may have had something to do with it:
CBS News: "It isn't clear if more suspects are at large OR what the motive could be."
Associated Press headline: "NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery." (May 5, 2010)
Associated Press Story: "Federal officials aren't talking about a motive in the arrest of a naturalized U.S. citizen charged with attempting to set off a bomb in New York's Times Square." (May 5, 2010)
USA Today headline: "Motive of NYC car bomb suspect remains a mystery." (May 5, 2010)
The Guardian headline: "Times Square bomb: Pakistanis puzzled by bomber's motives." (May 5, 2010)

Is this refusal to implicate Islam commendable restraint, or willful blindness to the obvious?