How do you Define a Citizen’s Identity?

the key aspect is the ability to build a common identity irrespective of individual identities. All the countries which you mention are trouble spots of this world. The ones which have successfully built this common identity have prospered - the US for one, the UK (up to a point), and India for another. That is why religion and parochialism is always an economic downer.

Anyway on a more serious note, BDG you need to invite Mantolives here. For he can give us some serious input on the pakistani example and why and how Pakistan strared from the framework set out by Jinnah and the results of this deviation. I beleive if he is here, the interact index will also increse many fold (which can only do good to you).

Dear Mr. Bhasker Dasgupta

Yes. Well done! I’ll try to be very brief while saying the following:

Citizenship is a human civilizational construct whereas identity is a psycho-biological issue as far I know. Identity is intertwined with and is yet distinct from citizenship.

Citizenship may not exist or may actually be meaningless without state. In your well quoted reference, Toynbee seems to be struggling to find meanings for individual while living in a state and Franklin D. Roosevelt appear to define state as a dynamic organic entity.

Anyways, egalitarianism within a state, as an ideal of the state, evolves over course of time as in the US e.g. abolition of slavery, at least theoretically. I do not mean to imply that slowness of the process of abolition of slavery was justified. I think economical realities played as big a part as idealism. Still, you see a step forward towards egalitarianism within a state, in this example

Contrarily, individual in spite of unquestioned citizenship can have confusion of identity. I think it will be unnecessary to go into psychological details, but I would certainly say that strong and singular identity can easily come in conflict with multidimensional reality of every day life and can lead to outbursts of behavior, which can be violent indeed. If strong singular identity is ‘diffused’ to conform to various facet of real life, it may be possible to see more stable and grounded individual. How to do that bears a question mark if it is against the grain of personality, particularly when such elements of human-thought are controlled by chemistry of brain that we understand only minimally (Is this idea the birth place of Eugenics?).

Nonetheless, all social philosophies agree on the idea of social justice while differing on ways and means to get there. Whether we like it or not, one of the biggest contributions to human thought came from Marx. He was able to bring the idea of social justice to this Earth from unforeseen kingdom of heavens. He made it possible to discuss egalitarianism at human level without invoking divine solutions.

Now, the quandary is how to keep majority’s or individual’s impulses from steering the state resources for self-centered gains/fantasies and ensuring that the instrument of state be used for welfare of society? And, on a bigger scale, how to reign in imperial-impulse that always appear to be born out of success of a state? I am not the first one to raise theses questions but all answers are welcome!

With best regards,

Tahir Qazi

ps: What is the reference for Toynbee? I wish to go to the original work for my own pleasure sake. Tx.

Re: # 4
Judaism does not proselytize. However you can convert to Judaism. You must fulfill the three requirements of Mitzvahs, Milah (if male) and Mikveh in front of a court ot three Jewish men.

``Just because you have become a Jew from a Christian Arab ``

As far as i know, u cannot become a jew.
youre either born as one, or can forever sulk at wanting to be one.

do correct me if you think i am wrong

Nationality, Citizenship based on geography.....Glorified prisons.
The intellectualism of the earthworms and maggots.

Let the secularoons, Liberaloons, and Munafiquoons perform their `maadernity` dance while Islam asserts everywhere.

The western thuggs do not acknowledge. recognise & appreciate unless they are brought down to their knees to be ``pragmatic``

They had to do so;... and so they did.

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FRANCE: PRESIDENT UNVEILS MONUMENT TO MUSLIM WAR DEAD


Verdun, 26 June (AKI) - France`s president Jacques Chirac, has unveiled a monument to the 28,000 Muslims who died fighting for France in the bloody World War I battle of Verdun. Marking the 90th anniversary of the battle, Chirac paid tribute to the troops that held back German forces in 10 months of fighting in which 300,000 soldiers died. ``All the religions of France are at Verdun,`` said Chirac at a ceremony on Sunday that was also attended by head of the French Muslim Council, Dalil Boubakeur.

``I hope (this provides) an impulse for the future for a closer integration of all of France’s Muslim communities which are also ... completely French communities, thanks in no small part to the blood they have shed,`` Boubaker said.

Until now Muslims only had a small plaque dedicated to them, although separate memorials had been erected for Christians and Jews who died at Verdun. A total 78,000 Muslims, many of whom were drafted from former French colonies such a Algeria and Tunisia, died during World War I out of a 1.2 French citizens who were killed.

Some of France’s former colonies have complained that France has not given its colonial troops due credit, arguing that without their efforts, the French capital, Paris would have fallen to the Germans.