A Timely Template for Reconciliation

A Timely Template for Reconciliation

As wild as Central Asia may be, the rule of law has deep roots. Just about everyone misses it. Beside Islamic law and western civil codes, are older unwritten traditions. These laws were, are, necessary if towns and cities are to ply the deserts, trading. The nomads control the hinterland, right up to the city wall. The great empires of the Persians, the Arabs, the Turks, the Mongols successfully integrated nomadic populations into a large scheme of food production - the temple, the state. In recent centuries the nomads have been crowded into settlement camps, driven off their lands, by 'modern states.'

Much of Central Asia is fit only for herds of sheep, cattle, horses, mules and donkeys. What else can one do with 'virgin lands'? Nomads can be found today in Turkey, Jordan, Israel, occupied Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia, Pakistan and India. These are the full or pure nomads, able to live outside strictures and structures. But even they had to trade with settled folk.

If you want to meet nomads just go to truck depots and hang out. It is expected that you know a common language. If so, then aim to travel with them. If not possible, then try to meet other older former nomads now living in the city or town.

The former Soviet republics, together with Mongolia, are undergoing great stresses. A lack of maintenance, a lack of engineers and funds, has led to intermittent clean water. That means schools cannot open. Thousands of acres of cotton fields receive water in preference to the poor human citizens. Since the Uzbek government(s) make so much off mono-cultivating cotton, there is little incentive to diversify.

All the former Soviet republics have made this decision: not to follow Russia, Islam or the West, but their own poets. We hope soon to have in place several poetry prizes. These contests have the potential of restoring to the Central Asian peoples, a classical tradition they all shared.

The world community can easily commission translations and reprints. The contests call for poems written in the classic style. What better way of fighting al Qaida propaganda?

This search for a means of reconciliation in Afghanistan goes back some 30 years. Exhaustion of all parties might impose a peace of its own. The recent lull of suicide bombs in Pakistan probably means the extremist commanders are now in Afghanistan.

We see nothing wrong about pretending to live in the 7th century. Most salafis are harmless. Certainly any attempt to command others, to boss them, bully them, puts them all at risk. Many in the Taliban are proud to be so poor, like the prophet, and there is nothing wrong in it. But once they join together to seize power or assassinate officials or critics, or explode bombs killing innocents, then they need be fought against.

The Tashkent film festival was a blow out, with over 20 bands playing...

A Shameful Anniversary: Iran 1953

Today, August 25, 2013, is the 60th anniversary of Operation Ajax, the CIA's coup d'etat in Iran. Just as the Iranians were healing the lesions in its body politic, Anglo-American intelligence pulled the rug out from under Iran's feet. The long ensuing reign of  Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi evolved one of the most corrupt societies on earth, from 1945 to 1979. This is not to say Iran did not make progress under the shah. Nonetheless, the opposition was able to use the 1953 coup to align and justify its radical policies. When the mullahs took over in 1979, the 1953 overthrow became one of the reasons why the shah was overthrown, why American diplomats were taken hostage, why Iran fought Iraq, and why Iran's leaders today ignore international prohibitions against making a nuclear weapon and launch vehicle.

Mr. Musaddiq was democratically elected prime minister. He had support from the key players on the largely underworld Iranian political scene: key clerics, merchants, intellectuals, and those of a leftist persuasion. Musaddiq's big crime was reaching an accomodation with the communists of the Tudeh party, drawing their support at the ballot box.

Of course Communism was the bugbear behind American post-war peacetime military deployments. Oil dictated that no region was more important than Iran: the Soviets occupied northern Iran during WWII but failed to withdraw in 1945, prompting the first Cold War stand-off. Mr. Musaddiq became doubly dangerous to the West when he threatened nationalization of the oil fields. Part of the deal with Shah Reza Pahlavi was that at least 40% of Iran's oil exports, go to Britain and the United States.

The individuals involved were all puppets trying to be puppetmasters. The cabal, the camarilla, included the Foster-Dulles brothers, and Kermit Roosevelt of the CIA. British MI5 was also involved. In fact, it was their idea. It originated with Anne Lampton. Ironically she wrote the best English textbook on the Persian language, still in print.

Much time has passed but still Irani 'leaders' use the 1953 coup as a symbol to calumniate the West. The CIA coup remains a reason, a justification, for Iranian terror and its projection. It became the poison pill. At the very least the USA and Britain should publicly apologize, explaining that they worried back in 1953, that Iran would fall to the communist Tudeh party. No one knows what would have happened if Operation Ajax never occurred.

Muslim Minorities in Southeast Asia and Africa

ASSESSING MUSLIM MINORITiES ALONG AFRICAN AND INDIAN OCEAN COASTS AND ISLANDS   May 2013

                                                                                By John Paul Maynard, Harvard University

There are times when Muslims need rally against outside foe, but this is not now, even when under attack. Better to lay low and not say much. Minority Muslim communities are widespread along the Africa coast, along the Indian coast, and throughout Southeast Asia, including China. There are also some 50-odd islands in the India Ocean each having a Muslim community. These include Madagascar, the Seychelles, Mauritius, Zanzibar, the Lakshadweep Islands, the Maldives and , usually, the Muslims are in the minority.

The Arakan coast, and inland, minority Muslim communities have been attacked. Bombs and assassinations continue is Southern Thailand. There are false dawns, in Thailand and in the Philippines.  Along the east coast of Africa, Muslim communities are also under pressure. The Wahhabi sect has used oil money to place narrow clerics in Mombasa, Nairobi, Dar as Salam, Beira, Maputo, even Durban. Out in the Indian ocean, on islands, there is also tension. But it would be incorrect to say all these and tensions and tragedies are the same in all cases.

For one thing, these mixed trading societies have been co-existing synergistically for over a thousand years.  Madagascar, for example, has seen some turmoil – a duopoly – but the Muslim minority in Toliara and Mahajanga has seen no deterioration of its status, as far we can tell. We know they are there but we never hear of them, so assume they can survive without desperation.

India is also doing well. Seven years ago, some 3,500 Muslims and Hindus were killed in Ahmedabad, in Gujjarat. The  Muslims, laying low, are pushing no irredentist claims to any part of India, including Kashmir. They can use Al Shar’ in the courts. They mix during the day, and as India becomes more prosperous, it will likely become more tolerant, more inclusive. But the rising tide of war in the Middle East and Central Asia, threatens to alter this peaceful synergy.

The Buddhist, like the Muslims, were, are, a trading civilization, quite unlike Byzantium and the West. They have experienced short periods of tensions before. Using Google Earth, the reader might explore the sections of coast running from Chittagong to Sitwe – the Arakan coast. In the villages and towns of Myanmar, one can see the mosques, as well as Buddhist pagodas, temples and stupas. If one follows the coast up into Bangladesh, one sees the Buddhist institutions sprinkled amongst the mosques. Buddhists can't drive out Muslims in Myanmar, because the Bangladesh's can easily drive out the Buddhists and Hindus in its eastern coastal region south of Chittagong.

One is shocked that the new Burmese authorities, led by Aung San Su Chih are not prosecuting the several Buddhist bigots who instigated a slaughter of Rakhingas – that is, former citizens of the very old Rakhine Sulktanate. Hinduism had earlier penetrated Southeast Asia, no doubt on the back of trade.  Hindu kingdoms of Chola and Vijranakar were counterweights to the Turkic period of North India: even before Mahmud of Ghazni, there were Turks and Persians coming down through the Frontier passes, debauching into Indus then the Gangetic Plains  Then there were the Ghorids (from Central Afghanistan) and the Lodi, then in the early 16^th C., Babur, the founder of the Mogul Dynasty, entered India, defeated its Turkic kings, and set up an enlightened national society. Akbar, Shah Jehan - at first the Moguls were very tolerant of other faiths, and cultures, but successive emperors became more and more aggressive, fostering an aggressive Islam bent on dominance. Such intolerance had Areabia (Wahhabi) roots back then as well as today. 

But as for the people, they co-existed in a synergistic way, just as Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jains, Buddhists do today. All the contact regions are different: there is no threat to Islam, as the mullahs keep preaching. And no Jihad in the Qur'an, that is to say, no theory of war in that book.

The Muslim minorities on the Indian and African coast, along rivers, on the islands of the India ocean, and in Southeast Asia, are too many to list. Often they are just single neighborhoods in larger towns. But business-wise, they are tied tightly, one group to the other. They are smart to lay low. Even if the communities experience prejudice, they then close in on themselves, to deal with each other for basic commodities. But that free trade, necessary for survival, can be clinched, by the government(s), and by extremist groups, like we saw in Mechtila and in the Arakan coast. And some of  these Muslim merchants do maintain long-distant trading relations.

Those trading links were once very long-distance: from Zanzibar to Ghuangzhou.  Muslims settled in all parts of China (the Hui or Hua),  and over in the Philippines, where some ten thousand have perished in inter-ethnic , inter-sectarian strife.

It may be totally incorrect to call the tragedies in Gujjarat, Thailand and the Philippines examples of Muslim-Hindu –Christian –Buddhist tensions.  But each case is different, and it hard to call murderers and robbers Hindus or Buddhists or Muslims or Christians.

Do not use my name to commit evil. If you do, I will punish you with especial severity..

Exodus 20:7.

Give to Afghans Their Own Literature

Our Parthian Shot – Give to Afghans Their Own Literature

-by John Paul Maynard, Harvard University

Fast-moving nomadic armies in the East specialized in the Parthian shot. The army pretends to retreat, the enemy gives chase, while the mounted bowmen turn completely around in their saddles, to deliver accurate fire while leading the foe into ambush.

It is the same tactic we entertain here: that the Americans quietly purchase and deliver, as our final act of war, a kit of books, famous Sufi poetry, beloved above all else, by the Persian, Pashto and Turkic-Mongol peoples of Afghanistan.

Afghanistan can claim several literary traditions of great attainment; but they have lost them. The country is so poor, books are very rare, and kept hidden. We have given the Afghans everything but the one thing they would most appreciate - a chance to read their own great poets.

True, most are illiterate, but every village has its readers, and if there were some books around, people might learn to read. And what better way is there to pull the rug out from under the Taliban, than provide Sufi poetry?

The poets I speak of are world-famous. The Mathnawi tradition began with Sana'i of Ghazna and runs via Fariddun 'Attar to Jalal ad Din Balkhi – the one called Rumi in the West. Other poets include Rabi'a of Balkh (a woman), Daqiqi, and Rudaki. Hafiz-e-shirazi should also be included.

Turkic-reading Afghans – Turcomen, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek (Chagatai)- deserve to read the classics of Turkic literature: Yunus Emre, Dedi Korkut, Manas and some eight or ten others. The Pashtuns have their own tradition, and the Pashto Sufi poets include Amir Kror Suri (through Shah Hussein Hotaki) Babu Jan, Khushal Khan Khattack, and others. Persian texts can be translated into Pashto (Pashto means Persian).

Most of the Persian texts are published in Iran - and here's where it gets interesting. How will the Iranians feel, respond, when the US government places an order for 100,000 copies of, say, Hafiz of Shirazi? Or 30,000 copies of Rumi's Mathnawi? Or 40,000 copies of Attar's Conference of the Birds (Mantiq ul Ta'ir)? How will they react?

Some Iranian leaders will respond, at first, cynically. “The Americans are leading us into a trap.” But how can they refuse the propagation of their own classical literature? The Sufis are tolerant intelligent folks, long suppressed by the Wahhabis and the Taleban and al Qaida.

Why not drop packages of books by colored parachute onto select remote villages in Afghanistan. As for urban neighborhoods, distribution of these venerable texts can be done by truck, or on foot.

This is the very best present we can give to the Afghan people. It will restore them to their own traditions, cultivate tolerance, undermine the authority and ethics of the Taliban, and help everyone learn to read. Afghans treasure books, even as they listens to others read.

A Persian/Arabic comparative grammar and dictionary might be included in each package, again mass-ordered from Tehran. We might even commission Iran to make special editions of their (shared) poets. And maybe perhaps, let us deliver, with them, these books to the Afghans. The Iranians hate Taliban ideology, lies, drug-dealing, and arrogance just like we do.

How do we wish to be remembered by the Afghans? How should we go out? What more can we give them? Let us give the Persians our own Parthian shot.

The author is the moderator/instructor for the online discussion group 'Islamic Civilization' hosted by the Graduate Alumni Office, Harvard University. His translations from the Persian are to be found at http//:www.hafizshirazi.blogspot.com.

Mission Statement

Central Asia has definite traits which distinguishes it from the societies in the Middle East and North Africa. Islam is accepted but exists alongside older cultural traits. Even Iran's government is much more 'practical' than Islamic. Other countries, like Tajikistan, struggle to teach their children about Islam, lest they be radicalized. There is an incredible - and tragic - lack of accurate texts examining the Islamic religion, with the result that extremists and tribal leaders and manipulating politicians all use Islam to perpetrate atrocities. There are genocidal projects underway in Central Asia, as in the Middle East. We will examine them. We will be assessing political, cultural, ecologic and economic elements and factors, but from a depth going back to the Ice Age.

 

'Tomb' of Turkic poet Yunus Emre (1240?-1321?)  in Uzbekistan. His body is not there but his spirit still pervades the greater Turkic world.