Muslim narcissism feeding terrorism

[DaRk WaVe]

Book launching: Muslim narcissism feeding terrorism – The Express Tribune

ISLAMABAD: The narcissism of the Muslim civilization is the central theme of Dr Mubarak Haider’s book Tehzibi Nargisyat which was launched here at the SAFMA Media Centre on Monday evening amidst heated discussion by a very involved audience.

The author said that the Muslim people have generally been hesitant in self criticism and have not subjected the history of their civilization to critical observation and a sickening self love and self aggrandizement have been their driving passion which is behind the tendency to look down upon all cultures and civilizations which
they aim ultimately at destroying in order to establish the supremacy of the Islamic way of life.

He said the desire to achieve dominance for their faith over the world was behind the present extremist movements and terrorism which the general lot of the Muslim people led by religious parties and groups was not ready to reject wholeheartedly.

As a result other civilizations and cultures were feeling threatened by what they call the ‘Muslim menace’. This has isolated the Muslim community in alien societies.

Unless the Muslim people adopted an accommodative attitude towards other cultures and eschewed their dream of imposing their way of life on others from their psyche, it would not be possible for them to make any progress or live in peace in the present day world which was very different from the old world in which they had achieved political and cultural dominance.

His ideas generated a lively debate among the audience.

Dr Aslam Syed who is here on a visit from Germany contested Dr Mubarak’s contention about the Muslim people’s narcissism and said that all civilizations have had this tendency at one time or the other. Moreover the Muslims have been quite objective in the assessment of their civilization and mentioned the work of Muslim scholar Shehrstani and other thinkers like Abu Bakr Razi who had subjected Muslim history to deep analysis and critical review.

Participants who joined the discussion were Kishwar Naheed, Dr Ayesha Siddiqa, Iqbal Jafar, Hameed Alvi, among others in the audience.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21st, 2010.

 

[Dance]

The author said that the Muslim people have generally been hesitant in self criticism and have not subjected the history of their civilization to critical observation and a sickening self love and self aggrandizement have been their driving passion which is behind the tendency to look down upon all cultures and civilizations which
they aim ultimately at destroying in order to establish the supremacy of the Islamic way of life.

Very well put.

When you become too over emotional or violent over opinions or ideas, that just shows you are insecure.

 

[DaRk WaVe]

here's the book

Tehzibi Nergisiat-

 

[kobiraaz]

He said the desire to achieve dominance for their faith over the world was behind the present extremist movements and terrorism which the general lot of the Muslim people led by religious parties and groups was not ready to reject wholeheartedly.

do not agree. . desire to achieve dominance for their faith over the world is not true. They became extremist because they felt their religion and their community is threatened. When a boy is killed in palestine it motivates a young boy from egypt to Join extremism for vengeance.

 

[Leader]

Very well put.

When you become too over emotional or violent over opinions or ideas, that just shows you are insecure.

he requires some basic concept of sociology too !!

 

[President Camacho]

Great example of how sins of a few can burden an entire nation!

I know it will offend many in here, but the keyword is neither 'Islam', nor 'imposition'. Not even 'extremism'.

It is Pakistan.

Er... one more thing, the writer is mistaken.

 

[muse]

Unless the Muslim people adopted an accommodative attitude towards other cultures and eschewed their dream of imposing their way of life on others from their psyche, it would not be possible for them to make any progress or live in peace in the present day world which was very different from the old world in which they had achieved political and cultural dominance.

Well, the radicals do not even adopt a accommodating attitude towards Muslims, let alone other cultures -- What is it in the radical ideology that ensures that the radical is at war with all and in particular with the Muslims??

The radicals despise Pluralism in Islam - Pluralism in Islam confuses them, because it is a challenge to their "truth" -- and acceptance of pluralism is the foundation of tolerance.

 

[apophenia]

I wonder why aren’t people perplexed because I am when on this issue. I don't think there is more bias against any religion than Islam among secular intellectuals. The world just automatically assumes that Islam breeds everything no matter what.

Pointing out history without acknowledging that the sword was the only way also because the west, by its nature, was/is hostile to Islam. Muslims have been fighting Christians and Jews since the 10th century and this is just clash of civilizations putting it all on Islam is not justifiable. And the truth of the matter is as long as people are narcissistically injured, envious , and rageful - terrorism is here to stay.

 

[muse]

You may have read the lead article but I don't think you understood it because you've just done what the Author contends Muslims have become adept at, being uncritical of themselves and always, always, placing the blame for their ills on others -- in your case it's Christians and Jews -- and that's rather curious because as a Pakistani you have not been fighting Christians and Jews, but then again, wanna be Arabs, have to also internalize the so called struggles of the arbi super Muslims, who are Arbi first and then Muslim.

 

[apophenia]

I wasn’t blaming anyone was just starting a historical fact. It was never my intention to provide a cover to our problems. I just strongly opposed to remote diagnosis and think it’s bad habit exercised by dilettantes.

 

[muse]

Understanding radicalism
Gul Bukhari



A vast majority of people in Pakistan have finally come to understand that militants and militancy, especially religiously motivated violent movements, are a cancer and a threat to their country. However, this realisation came very late in the day. I can remember how only two to three years ago, a majority of society was calling the militants “our brethren” and questioning whether a war ought to even be declared on them or not. Carefully cultivated anti-Americanism was, for years, skilfully equated by the establishment and its accomplice, some sections of the media, with pro Islamic militant movements in the average Pakistani mind.

Now one finds the majority of citizenry crying over spilt milk. But they have still not tried to critically examine how we got to where we are today. The military is freely blamed for its role in giving birth to and promoting Islamist militancy. But where the ordinary person remains blind is his own complicity in allowing a mindset that feeds into extremist thought process and behaviour, allowing them to take hold.

I can see the contention before I finish my argument: that the Islamic militant thought process, of say the Taliban or al Qaeda, is very different from the mindset of the ordinary conservative Muslim Pakistani, that militants subscribe to certain ideologies ingrained into them via systematic, organised indoctrination. I would agree with this contention insofar as the fact that most militants did undergo indoctrination and training. But, apart from the children of certain madrassas, who perhaps had no choice in the matter or were too young to decide for themselves, which other kinds of people have succumbed to the charms of jihad?

Here is the shocker: ordinary Pakistanis. This is what Pakistani society is not willing to accept. These leftover jihadis do not come just from the dispossessed and destitute sections of society. They are the ones to fear because they are us and we are them. They are the ones who represent the radicalisation of a society from within — without the help of training camps or madrassas.

Faisal Shahzad of Times Square, New York bombing fame was from a wealthy Pakistani family. He obtained his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the US and owned his own house. In one of his last e-mails before the event, he wrote, “Allah commands fighting for Islam”, and urged his friends to “find a proper sheikh to understand the Quran”.

Then there was Mumtaz Qadri of late Governor Salmaan Taseer’s murder fame. From an ordinary lower, middle-class background, he was a high school graduate and had trained as an elite police commando. More religious than the rest of his family, and influenced in recent years by Dawat-e-Islami (a religious organisation not associated with militancy), Qadri is said to have made up his mind to kill “someone” five days prior to committing the murder after having heard an inflammatory speech by a cleric in Rawalpindi.

How about the 200 odd lawyers who garlanded Qadri and feted him upon his sublime feat of shooting an unarmed man in the back? One does not know their individual backgrounds but obviously they were not destitute, nor did they come from militant camps — ordinary Pakistanis. Obviously, they too were making a hero out of Qadri for religious reasons. Please note: I refuse to say ‘misplaced’ religious reasons. An explanation will come later for this refusal to do so.

There are numerous examples of Pakistani men in uniform who have acquired a jihadist mindset: the attack on the GHQ in October 2009, PNS Mehran in May 2011, attempts on the life of retired General Pervez Musharraf, the plot to attack Shamsi Airbase and numerous other incidents were inside jobs by educated, earning, ordinary men in uniform.

The attack on the Christian community of Gojra in August 2009 may have been planned or instigated by a religious militant organisation but ordinary, emotionally and religiously inflamed people partook in the orgy.

The examples are many, but the few above should suffice for argument’s sake. Is there a pattern? “No”, many will say. They will say the killings were carried out for different reasons and by people with very different backgrounds. I suggest otherwise: the pattern is religion.

It is no longer enough to say, “misinterpretation of religion”. Who are the guardians, the true interpreters of religion? All sects claim authenticity over others. Every sect, or even person, I would say, is authentic in his or her interpretation because, at the end of the day, religion is belief. Belief is so unsubstantial by definition, that another variation of unsubstantiated theory cannot hope to counter, leave alone vanquish it.

If you start with belief, or supposition, how can you possibly then identify the correct or incorrect intention, interpretation, objective, practice or purpose of a belief system, a system unfounded on proof, logic or reason? All the millions of people, or hundreds of sects, who believe they can convince the other, are living in a fool’s paradise and condemned to eternal conflict. One ‘belief’ cannot win over another belief — unless by the sword.

Religion has been allowed to run amok in this country, to freely arouse emotions — and abandon reason and humanity — and is treated as if it were the ultimate, incontrovertible, disprovable, scientific, supreme truth. Not only that, it has, horrifically, been allowed to become the basis of the legal framework of this country. How in the world is mere belief accorded more deference than reason, dialogue and consensus reached judgment?

Is it out of cowardice? Or out of real and eminent danger from a loony, a “young and impressionable mind” that may feel duty bound “to kill me”, in the words of Usama Hasan who has led Friday prayers at Leyton mosque for 20 years in East London. His crime: ascribing to Darwin’s theory of evolution. He was forced to publicly revoke his stance on evolution after thinly veiled suggestions that his ‘apostasy’ might sanction his execution.

Connect this to the recent dismissal of a petition by the chief justice of the Lahore High Court to indict PML-N’s law minister in Punjab for issuing a fatwa against the former Federal Law Minister Babar Awan as being “wajib-ul-qatal” (liable to be killed) for being corrupt. Connect it to the murder of ex-Governor Salmaan Taseer by Mumtaz Qadri after listening to an inflammatory religious speech. Make the connections.

And figure out before it is too late that ‘religion’ needs to be reigned in. People will always be free to believe in what they will but they cannot be allowed to execute their ‘beliefs’ with impunity, with no concept of a state, law by consensus and without punishment because they are accorded, for some unfathomable reason, the pedestal of all moral high ground owing to emotions emanating from a set of beliefs.

If institutions of the government are not willing to act of their own volition, then society has to force government to clamp down on those catapulting religion from the sphere of personal spirituality into public and political spheres with disastrous consequences for the entire polity.

Society has to force, for example, the courts of law in this country into taking notice of religiously motivated hate speech that inspires young impressionable minds into killing sprees. If society does not recognise its own pernicious radicalisation in the garb of religion, piety and goodness and take steps to correct it, it will be doomed to implode, with no one else to blame.

The writer is a journalist and can be reached at gulnbukhari@gmail.com

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

the Jews are succesful because they pool their resources, set aside sect or ethnicity -- and they unite (more so due to 'necessity' given their relatively small numbers)

they are a small, efficient, fordmidable "force"


Muslims, given their large size and vast range of ethnicities -- are disunited and at times are sending spies to eachothers countries, jealous of eachother and allowing themselves to be divided by outsiders

If Muslims supposedly are "narcissistic" (i personally dont subscribe to that) -- then they should do it in the "right" way then.......and in doing so, be more willing to accept the fact that there is a need to promote adaptation (if not "re-interpretation") of certain aspects which keep some of the followers from integrating with the rest of the world. And no, that doesnt mean wearing ripped jeans, getting drunk and listening to Lady Gaga (perish the thought!)


i hope that makes some sense......

 

[muse]

AZ

If you are genuinely interested in the phenomenon, please pick up a copy of " The Logic of Collective Action" by Mancur Olson -- I guarantee you will be richly rewarded, to begin with you will have a deeper understanding of why minorities succeed where majorities will always fail

Anyway, what do you make of Ms. Bukhari's piece above

 

[desioptimist]

Even in India, muslims blame jews for their ills, they have never seen a jew nor met him. May be due to the friday prayer meetings.
Most hindus wont even know what a jew is, ask any hindu he will give a blank face.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

Even in India, muslims blame jews for their ills, they have never seen a jew nor met him. May be due to the friday prayer meetings.
Most hindus wont even know what a jew is, ask any hindu he will give a blank face.

Hi, are you generalizing?


Generalizing's a big NO-NO!