Lal Masjid: Lessons Learnt

Ajeya, Mohar, Arjun

A bit longish post, because I wish to propose the possibility of a very optimistic and beneficial position right in the middle.

But first, let's get DrDr's unending, usual tripe out of the way. Western values are not just western values, but they are definitely NOT universal values. All of us know that. DrDr can spin things anyway he wants. He too knows he has no option but to keep spinning.

Now, consider the undeniable truths in your own statements.

1. Mohar: One has to be a winner. Culture will follow.

2. Arjun: Indian people know their mind. They know what level of "Westernization" is good for them. Their freedom should be respected.

3. Ajeya: Indian culture brings something unique and beautiful, and it finally needs its champions (in a situation where people sell religion as they would sell soap, and numbers are used to clear means of constant warfare).

All those things are simultaneously true. Ajeya has to have more confidence. Indian people need, above all, to succeed, and in order to succeed, they should have every reasonable freedom to be as creative and open as they can be. One can always go back to the original source: "Let good thoughts come to us from everyside."

Like Islam, Indian culture pulls people in, on its own. It just draws very different sort of people, and that raises important issues that we need to appreciate, and prepare for (so we can live in peace, given the inescapable contradictions, therein).

Arjun, I suspect, has his finger on something very very important. There is an astonishing amount of overlap between our culture (once we move beyond clothes as such) and the "Western" culture or the "American" culture. Yes, the Pat Robertsons of the world and the missionary menace is a major problem that holds us all back. But otherwise, there is little that cannot be reconciled between the two great cultures.

We can do with a little more individualism and rule of impersonal laws, and they can do with a lot of what India offers. And anyone who lives in the US knows, they (again, I don't mean the evagelists and Pat Robertsons) are falling over themselves to get it.

Ajeya brings a sensibility that has been, to our major detriment, totally missing among us: Making sure, in our dealings with others, that others don't get away with just empty talk. What we have never ever realized that the wide world out there is - whether we like it or not, - a competitive world, in which everyone looks out (after they have done with their nice talk) for their own culture and tradition alone. Given the peculiarities of our specific thought processes, we haven't taken care to make sure we don't hurt ourselves in one-sided, blind hospitablity, (always assuming, falsely, that it was better to be nice than to be truthful).

Ajeya's point seems to be that we must be more aware, even more demanding, if needed, now. We don't have to close the great gates. That's not us. We don't have to remove Individual freedoms. That's not us again. But we cannot forget that competitition and the urge to eliminate the other has not gone away (nor it ever will diminish among many) just because other people mix more freely now.

Confident, open-eyed yet fair, free, committed to learning, and driven to succeed: Could that be our "new" ideal?

Thanks for listening.

ajeya u r tilting @ the windmill & r exercised over trivial things - again, gender equality, equality of all humans b4 the law, equal rights r universal values - we in the west have discovered them a little ahead of traditional societies - that doesnt make them western values

#176 Posted by DrDr

[lemme offer an outsider's perspective - there r indeed universal values that we all r moving towards - the west got there 1st doesnt make them western values ]

Oh, and another thing. Explain to me EXACTLY HOW calling your mother and father "Mummy" and "Daddy" from "mataji" and "pitaji" or "ma" and "baba" is somehow "moving towards Universal Values"?

#173 Posted by HP

what is going on in Pakistan is a little more than just attempted removal of Musharaf. ... The King of Saudi Arabia has already said goodbye to Musharaf. The Saudis double crossed Musharaf and they did that to initiate a much bigger game in Pakistan ...

Can you expand a bit on this, particularly the Saudi angle and the much bigger game you have referred to?

HP writes "Removal of Musharaf is just a petty matter now."

A petty matter but a necessary petty matter for the game to proceed which makes it a non-petty matter...

#176 Posted by DrDr

[lemme offer an outsider's perspective - there r indeed universal values that we all r moving towards - the west got there 1st doesnt make them western values ]

Let me say this then. Unlike concepts in astrophysics and molecular biology, we humans have had the SAME emotions and feelings for centuries. And in my opinion, we have evolved a very healthy, humane and cultured set of values for our society (if you discount the social ills that are in every society). There is no need to ape the west and pretend that these are more "evolved" values.

We are a society that was writing philosophy when the people in the west were hunting wild pigs. You CAN be brown, and lead the way. There is no rule that you have to be less pigmented to show the way for others, or at least, set your own path.

#188 Posted by Salim_Chauhan

[You yourself are too smart to blindly swallow Wikipedia and other "reservoirs" of western morality blindly..]

Fair enough - IF you are able to produce any historical references for your assertions. I'll wait for you to post some.

#187 ajeya {"You are a smart person. But even smart people sometimes believe in irrational things for various reasons - sometimes emotional reasons.
Here's a quote from wikipedia"}

Ajeya Sahib,
You yourself are too smart to blindly swallow Wikipedia and other "reservoirs" of western morality blindly. Please read some of the great "truths" written about history by the 19th century white orientalists or accounts of the treatment of Indians by 19th and early 20th century writers. Christians, especially those of European origin, could do no wrong. The world was full of savages and heathens. The Crusades were a just war. The killing and wholesale slaughter of Jews and Muslims was justified. The "Sepoy Mutiny" by the swarthy and ungrateful Indian natives was bravely put down by the "courage and valor" of the white Europeans in the name of God, Queen, and country.

Now, if you believe all that, I have some jewelry I want to sell you ...:)

#186 Posted by Salim_Chauhan


[The Greeks and Bulgars would have converted to Islam three times a day if they had the chance. The Sultanate just wanted them to stay Orthodox to use them against the common enemy - the Roman Catholics. Please try to understand that Greeks welcomes Turkish conquest of the Balkans to save themselves from Latin Catholic dominance. There was no earnest attempt by the Turks from 1300s to 1800s to try to convert either the Greeks or the Bulgarians - not even the Serbs. ]

You are a smart person. But even smart people sometimes believe in irrational things for various reasons - sometimes emotional reasons.

Here's a quote from wikipedia

Religion< /b>

The Sultan regarded the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church as the leader of the Greeks within the empire. The Patriarch was accountable to the Sultan for the Greeks' good behavior, and in exchange he was given wide powers over the Greek community. The Patriarch controlled the courts and the schools, as well as the Church, throughout the Greek communities of the empire. This made Orthodox priests the effective rulers of Greek villages. Some Greek towns, such as Athens and Rhodes, retained municipal self-government, while others were put under Ottoman governors. Some areas, such as the Mani Peninsula in the Peloponnese, and parts of Crete (Sfakia) and Epirus, remained virtually independent. When the Ottomans fought the Venetians, the Greeks mostly sided with the Venetians. The Orthodox Church assisted in the preservation of the Greek heritage.

As a rule, the Ottomans did not require the Greeks to become Muslims, although many did so in order to avert the economic hardships of Ottoman rule. Many Greeks either became neo-martyrs such as Saint Efraim the Neo-Martyr or Saint Demetrios the Neo-martyr while others became Crypto-Christians (Greek Muslims who were secret practitioners of the Greek Orthodox faith) in order to avoid heavy taxes and at the same time express their identity by maintaining their secret ties to the Greek Orthodox Church. Crypto-Christians ran the risk of being killed if they were caught practicing a non-Muslim religion once they converted to Islam. Greeks who converted to Islam and were not Crypto-Christians were deemed Turks in the eyes of Orthodox Greeks.


The worst persecutions of Christians took place under the reign of Selim I, known as Selim the Grim, who attempted to stamp out Christianity from the Ottoman Empire. Selim ordered the confiscation of all Christian churches, and while this order was later rescinded, Christians were heavily persecuted during his era.[4]


Taxation and the "tribute of children"

"Young Greeks at the Mosque" (Jean Léon Gérôme, oil on canvas, 1865); this oil painting portrays Greek Muslims at prayer in a mosque)Greeks also paid a land tax and a tax on trade, but these were either collected irregularly by the inefficient Ottoman administration. Provided they paid their taxes and gave no trouble, they were left to themselves. Greeks, like other Christians, were also made to pay the jizya, or Islamic poll-tax which all non-Muslims in the empire were forced to pay in order to practice their religion. Non-Muslims did not serve in the Sultan's army, but young boys were forcibly converted to Islam and made to serve in the Ottoman military..

These practices are called the "tribute of children" (devshirmeh) (in Greek παιδομάζωμα paidomazoma, meaning "child gathering"), whereby every Christian community was required to give one son in five to be raised as a Muslim and enrolled in the corps of Janissaries (yenicheri or "new force"), elite units of the Ottoman army. This imposition, at first, aroused surprisingly little opposition[citation needed] as the Greeks were a conquered people and could not offer effective resistance. Still, there was much passive resistance, for example Greek folk lore tells of mothers crippling their sons to avoid their abduction. Nevertheless, entrance into the corps (accompanied by conversion to Islam) offered Greek boys the opportunity to advance as high as governor or even Grand Vizier.

Opposition of the Greek populace to taxing or paidomazoma resulted in grave consequences. For example, in 1705 an Ottoman official was sent from Naoussa in Macedonia to search and conscript new Janissaries and was killed by Greek rebels who resisted the burden of the devshirmeh. The rebels were subsequently beheaded and their severed heads were displayed in the city of Thessaloniki.[5] The "tribute of children" was greatly feared as Greek families would often have to relinquish their own sons who would return later as their oppressors. The Greek historian Papparigopoulos stated that approximately one million Greeks were conscripted into Janissaries during the Ottoman era.