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| Vulgar noble savages
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Farrukh Khan Pitafi
The sad death of my loved grandmother and her funeral on the sacred day of Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi would have stopped me from contributing this column this week had a distasteful incident not taken place. After the funeral I was listening to BBC Urdu Service as usual.
Somehow it had chosen this sacred day to comment on Irshad Manji's ludicrous book 'The Trouble with Islam'. Frankly the book, which has failed to attract any substantial readership in the west, has been glorified by the service in such a way that I could not help smell a tinge of malice in it.
After all the conscientious team that worked selflessly to help us find the truth has already been expelled courtesy Lord Hutton's sycophantic report.. And worst still the same footage in which Manji was recommending somehow lecherous 'Operation Ijtihad' the BBC team broadcasted immediately after her interview a debate between Syed Munawar Hasan of Jamaat-e-Islami and Maulana Waheed-ud-din on Ijtihad without mentioning the actual context.
Result: they started quarreling among themselves. Mind it, to Manji Ijtihad means not only interpreting Quran but also rewriting it. She believes, and I shall give the reasons for that later in the article, that the text of Quran is full of 'contradictions.
In the past only well-read authors endowed with considerable writing skills like Rushdie were used to malign Islam. For sometime now commenting on Islam has become a cottage industry.
And to our great misfortune any Tom, Dick or Harry with most compromised expression can get away with writing obnoxious stuff on Islam now. Manji's book, Tariq Ali's 'The Clash of Fundamentalisms', Ibn Warraq's 'Why I am not a Muslim' and the website of Faith Freedom International, all are ideal examples of this sad development. And what saddens me most is that if you read the said material in detail you realize that the text is hardly anything more than an expression of biases devoid of facts. Tariq Ali's book for one is full of factually incorrect and contradictory information on Islam. Manji's book, for two, is only full of conjectures and personal experiences, which can hardly ever be generalized. All this has only compelled me to work on an alternative book called 'Why I am a Muslim'. If your prayers stay with me I may complete it within no time.
Manji's book deserves slightly closer look. I managed to get its copy from a friend who recently came from the west. The first thing that struck me was the depth of knowledge contained in the book. According to the author, "In Pakistan, an average of two women die everyday die from 'honor killing', often with Allah's name on the lips of the murderers".
Now I swear had the number been that horrible in Pakistan Asma Jahangir should have succeeded in staging a feminist coup in Pakistan. The author also criticizes Edward Said for writing his book called 'Orientalism'. She notes that he is an Arab American ignoring the fact that he was a Christian and not a Muslim. I wish she had read Orientalism herself. She then glorifies Akbar S. Ahmed for 'filming an epic biography of Jinnah', which according to her was a bid 'to depict Jinnah's tolerant Islam'. She tells us that his 'epic movie' failed because of narrow-minded Pakistanis. I wish Ms. Manji had seen the movie herself, more so its master print, then perhaps she should have realized how naive fraud the movie actually was. Or should simply have taken an auditor with her to audit the accounts of the movie which was mostly funded by ex-pat Pakistanis or accounts of the Pakistani High Commission during his stay in office there.
But there is no point in reasoning with such people who write without knowing anything about the subject that they are writing on. There is a long list of recommended books at the end. I wish the author had read all the books before writing. And she refers to Karen Armstrong. Ah, I wish had only read her books to know how polite she is in expressing her views.
E-mail queries and comments to: fkp@nation.com.pk
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