Muslim Extremism

Sri Lankan Muslims at the crossroads 15

By Izeth Hussain-September 5, 2014
I come now to the
charge that looms large, very large, in Sri Lankan Buddhist consciousness
that the Muslims destroyed Buddhism in several countries which
consequently became redominantly Muslim! It is assumed that this was
the consequence o" Islamic conversion by the sword! I ointed out in my
last article that there was no recedent Muslim conquest in several
countries which were converted to Islam, such as the Maldives, Malaysia,
Indonesia, and several Black #"rican countries! I did some reading to try to
establish the "acts about Muslim conquests o" Buddhist kingdoms in
$orthern India as art o" the rocess o" sreading Islam! I became
somewhat con"used because there aeared to be none! %he truth aears
to be that Buddhist ower was negligible or non-e&istent by the time
Mahmud o" 'hazni in the ((th century and his redecessors got going with
their anti-Buddhist iconoclastic e&cesses! %he truth seems to be that the
con"licts o" those Muslim conquerors were with decaying )a*ut ower, not
with Buddhist kingdoms! #nd the reason "or that was that Buddhism in
$orth India had by that time been mostly or entirely absorbed into
Hinduism!
#s I am no historian I will quote one on that rocess o" absortion! %he
quotation is "rom the )ise o" the +est by +!H! Mc$eill, a book that was
raised in suerlative terms by Hugh %revor )oer and highly raised by
%oynbee and others! %his is the quotation, -%he net result o" the
develoment o" %antrism and o" Hindu hilosohy was to undermine the
searate e&istence o" Buddhism in India! %he "act that %antrism "lourished
within both Buddhism and Hinduism tended to blur the distinction between
them! In addition, the monastic li"e lost much o" its meaning in a society
where %antric shortcuts to the suernatural had won general accetance,
and where the venerated "igure o" Buddha had long since been admitted to
the Hindu antheon as the incarnation o" .ishnu! Buddhism there"ore
gradually merged back into the wider "ield o" Indian religiosity "rom which
it had srung and survived as a distinct organization and doctrine only on
the "ringes o" the Indian world, in /eylon, Burma, and %ibet! But in India
itsel", Buddhism had become an emty shell by the end o" the tenth
century, and when Moslem conquerors lundered the surviving
monasteries, no one cared to rebuild them! %he Moslems thus de"initively
eradicated Buddhism "rom the land o" its birth!-
I don0t know whether there were any Muslim conquests o" Buddhist
territories in India as art o" the rocess o" sreading Islam! Mahmud o"
'hazni and others o" his ilk seemed in reality "ar more interested in loot
than in sreading Islam! I" there had been such Muslim conquests, they
were clearly o" a marginal order because the ma*or rocess whereby
Buddhism disaeared in India was absortion into Hinduism! %hat could
be art o" the reason why Buddhists in contemorary India, quite unlike
Buddhist e&tremists in Sri Lanka, seem to take a ositive view o" Muslims!
%here is relevant material in that connection in 1dward Luce0s In Site o"
the 'ods 234((5 which has been highly raised by +illiam 6alrymle and
others!
In #mbedkar0s hometown #urangabad, Luce met Mahar 2outcaste5
Buddhists, one o" whom told him, -+e get along much better with the
Muslims than with the caste Hindus because we look out "or each other!
Be"ore we converted to Buddhism we used to eat bee" with the Muslims-! I
quote "urther "rom Luce, -%hey talked to us about why Buddhism had
virtually disaeared "rom India, the land o" its birth, while it had thrived
in so many other arts o" #sia! %hey said the great Indian Buddhist centers
o" %a&ila and $alanda 2in modern-day 7akistan and Bihar resectively5 had
been lundered by Brahmins, who "eared that Buddha0s egalitarian
message would undermine their stranglehold on society! 8%hey destroyed
Buddhism because it had no caste,0 said one militant young novice!- It
aears that those Indian Buddhists 9 the olar oosites it would seem o"
Sri Lanka0s Buddhist e&tremists 9 were so well-disosed towards the
Muslims that they were reared to overlook the "act that the Muslim
conquerors had also articiated in the lunder o" the great Buddhist
centers!
I will rovide a "urther quotation "rom Luce0s book, -%he B:70s te&tbooks
also ut a new slant on more recent eriods o" Indian history! ;or e&amle,
they showed Islam as having come to India at the oint o" the sword
during India0s medieval eriod without re"erence to its eace"ul sread
through trading links in South India much earlier! Be"ore the arrival o"
Muslims, Hindu society had been contented and eace"ul! %here was no
mention o" what haened to Buddhism in India-! %he last sentence clearly
means that the Hindus were resonsible "or the virtual destruction o"
Buddhism in India!
But what really interests me in that quotation is the detail about Islam0s
-eace"ul sread through trading links in South India much earlier- 9 that
is to say, much antedating the Muslim conquests in the $orth! It leads to
an imortant question! Let us assume that the Muslims a"ter conquering
arts o" India, en"orced conversions by the sword and in the rocess
destroyed Buddhism! Should the Sri Lankan Muslims be regarded as
culable over that< %he SL Muslims are an entirely di""erent eole "rom
the central #sian marauders who conquered $orth India! It would certainly
be absurd to regard SL Buddhists as culable over the massacre o"
)ohingya Muslims by Burmese Buddhists! It would be not *ust absurd but
ractically insane to regard SL Muslims as culable over what was done in
$orth India by central #sian marauders over a thousand years ago! +hat I
have been arguing in this article oints ineluctably to two conclusions! =ne
is that anti-Muslim Buddhist e&tremists should sto *abbering about
Buddhist countries having become Muslim through en"orced conversions!
%he second is that the government should declare all such *abber as hate
seech, which is unishable under the law!
Be"ore I conclude this article I will try to situate Muslim e&tremism in its
wider Islamic ersective! %his, a comle& sub*ect, can be dealt with in
this article only in brie" outline! =n the "actual level Muslim e&tremism has
clearly to be regarded as an aberration as its occurrence is not normal in
the history o" the Islamic world! I share the view o" 1mmanuel %odd that
Muslim e&tremism results "rom the ressures brought about by the
transition to modernity, a roblem "acing the rest o" the third world as
well! Be"ore roceeding "urther I must establish 1%0s credentials as
someone whose views have to be taken seriously! %rained as a
demograher, he became well known as a ;rench olitical scientist and
shot to "ame "or his accurate rediction, based on demograhy, about the
imending demise o" the Soviet ->nion!
In his book #"ter 1mire 2344?5, 1% wrote that there is no linear
rogression, a smooth and uninterruted transition, to modernity as had
been imagined by the thinkers o" the eighteenth century 1nlightenment!
=n the contrary, the tearing u o" roots involved in the breakaway "rom
traditional ways o" li"e, the destruction o" the equilibrium o" re-literate
societies, the increase o" literacy and the lowering o" the rate o" oulation
growth, leads at the "irst stage, quite arado&ically, to as much
disorientation and su""ering as a sense o" liberation and enrichment! .ery
o"ten, erhas in the ma*ority o" cases, the mental and cultural change
involved amounts to a crisis o" transition! %he accession to modernity is
very o"ten accomanied by e&losions o" violence that are backed by
ideology!
%his is why there is so much violence in so many third world countries that
are making the transition to modernity! %he +est, in deloring that
violence, has "orgotten its own violent transitions, the British /ivil +ar o"
the (@?4s, the ;rench )evolution, the #merican /ivil war, the )ussian
)evolution, all o" which involved ideological change! 1% states that only a
"ew countries escaed violent transitions, such as the Scandinavian
countries e&cet "or ;inland! #"ter re"erring to the ideologues behind
/romwell0s )evolution, he writes, -%he :ihad in the name o" #llah o" recent
years is not o" an altogether di""erent nature! I" it is "ar "rom being always
liberal0 it nevertheless reresents, "undamentally, not a regression but a
crisis o" transition! %he violence and the religious "renzy are only
temorary-!
I come now to traditional Islam which holds sway in the greater art o" the
Islamic world while the Islamic State and Boko Haram are eretrating
their horrors! I hold that the liberal version o" traditional Islam is
"lourishing and reresents the Islamic wave o" the "uture, and "urther that
it is "ar "rom being antiathetic to change and modernity! %hat view will be
hotly contested by those who are re*udiced against Islam and by
Islamohobes, one o" whom 'eert +ilders the 6utch 7arliamentarian, or
one o" his "ollowers, has sent me in rely to my last article the te&t o" a
seech he made some years ago! I will not re"ute that article in detail,
instead o" which I will adot a ragmatic aroach and ose the question,
I" such negative views o" Islam and its 7rohet are valid, how is it that
Islam insired one o" the great seminal civilizations o" the world<
Bertrand )ussell wrote that during the 6ark #ges o" 1uroe, -;rom India to
Sain the brilliant civilization o" Islam "lourished!- ;urthermore, that
civilization contributed to the develoment o" +estern civilization in a way
that cannot be ignored in any roer account o" the latter! /hristoher
6awson0s %he Making o" Modern 1uroe, written o" by %revor )oer as a
highly regarded te&t-book, has a whole section on Islamic civilization! In
"act today no book on +estern hilosohy can omit a section on Islamic
hilosohy, and it has come to be recognized that the Muslims did more
than merely convey 'reek learning to the +est which would otherwise
have been lost "orever! Ibn al-;arabi is now being recognized as an original
thinker! #s "or Islam0s comatibility with modernity 1rnst 'ellner, who had
a background o" anthroological "ield work in the Islamic world, wrote this,
-By various criteria 9 universalism, scrituralism, siritual egalitarianism,
the e&tension o" "ull articiation in the sacred community not to one, or
some, but to all, and the rational systematization o" social li"e 9 Islam is,
o" the three great +estern monotheisms, the one closest to modernity-!
I believe that these articles su""ice to establish that alleged 8Muslim
e&tremism0 oses no e&istential threat, or any kind o" threat, either
internally or e&ternally, to Sri Lanka! %here has been talk o" :ihadists in Sri
Lanka getting together with the vestigial L%%1! %hat kind o" threat can be
easily contained, "or which international co-oeration will be readily
"orthcoming! %he situation can however change radically i" a (ABC is
eretrated against the Muslims, and they are sub*ected to eriodic bouts
o" violence as art o" an anti-Muslim ro*ect! In that case there could be
Muslim counter-action and some kind o" threat could conceivably ensue!
But that would be the consequence o" what the Sinhalese, not what the
Muslims, do!
izethhussainDgmail!com
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