The Idiocy of Dogmatists - DD_120922
Channel: owais sarvasukhsevaka
Date: 22/09/2012

The Idiocy of Dogmatists

This was my reaction on reading a Dawn article "Pakistan minister announces $100,000 bounty on anti-Islam film maker".  http://dawn.com/2012/09/22/pakistan-minister-announces-100000-bounty-on-anti-islam-film-maker/

In the short span of less than a human lifetime, the twins born on the 15th of August, 1947, have gone on substantially divergent paths.  Even though Delhi 1984 and Gujarat 2002 saw the ugly sectarian face of the Indian State; a vocal majority of Indians have not pardoned the insult to Mother India, meted out by the errant State actors.  

Contrast this with the complete State and societal abandonment of Salman Taseer, in the aftermath of his assassination, across the border.  And, now this!  Is this some inherent problem with Islam?  Perhaps, it is.  What, then, is the basic problem with all these crazy fundamentalists within the folds of Islam?  Perhaps, Islamic fundamentals constitute Islamic fundamentalists' fundamental problem.  (Apologies, Sam Harris).  Or, perhaps, it is the arrogation of the brand, 'real Islam', by the petro-dollar funded Salafism, hardening all varieties of Islam into poorer copies of itself.  

However, there is one more possibility: a State (as also an individual) run by any dogma will eventually regress to unfathomable depths.  Why?  Because it ceases to gauge itself on the basis of Evidence: the only arbiter of reality.  Adherence to dogma becomes the only goal.  Reality be damned.  Truth be damned.  Life be damned.  Long live the dogma.  Witness the Nazi dogma resulting in the holocaust.  Witness the Stalinist, Maoist, Khmer Rouge genocides which resulted from the cultish power that communist dogma invests its supreme leader with.  Witness the apartheid South Africa.  Witness the Zionist Israel.  Witness the Capitalist-Imperialist excesses of the votaries of the Free Market god; USA, the chief villain amongst them.  And Islam...

Islam is only beginning its new innings.  We will again see plunder, mayhem, genocide in the name of Islam.    *** SOME TEXT MISSING ***

Various Islamic revivalist movements, including Hizb ut-Tahrir are working towards an Islamic Empire, which they call Khilafah.  If, ever, such an empire were to come into existence, the World will likely turn into a living hell.  What we are seeing, perhaps, in Pakistan, and elsewhere in the Islamic world are the birth pangs of just such a Unitary Islamic State.  To begin with, it may be diffuse and in pockets.  But eventually, there is a possibility that if one of the revivalist ideologies triumphs, the extra-territorial loyalties of the adherents to that sect will bring these states together.  We will have an Islamic Union on the lines of the European Union, but which will be a much greater danger to the planet Earth.  

What is the way to counter it?  Contrary to the temptation: NOT forming other dogmatic states.  An alliance cobbled together between Christian-ideological West (itself divided into Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant ideologies), Hindu-ideological India, Jewish-ideological Israel, Communist-ideological China will be no match, long term, against the Islamic-ideological Caliphate.  For the Caliphate will keep valuing Eternal Life (read: death) over Earthly Life: the only life as we know it, the only life for which we have evidence.  

Islam's new rise will be the result of its newfound adherence to its pristine dogma; and its fall will be the result of its continued adherence to that dogma.  Initially, the fearlessness Islamic ideology gives its adherents, will give it a great advantage over the other ideologies.  Eventually, however, it will have to pay the price of veering away from Evidence, Reality.  But that can happen only if the countervailing forces decide that the best strategy to fight dogma is with Evidence; not with another dogma.  For no dogma can match Islam in its sheer ability to let blood.  Or, reality.

It is perhaps up to the non-Islamic twin born on 15th of August, 1947, to realize that its, and the rest of the World's survival rests in its adopting Evidence, shrugging aside the strong reactionary pressure to lose itself into its own dogma.  Towards that, we can proceed only if the Evidentialists of all hues come together - including those born in Islamic, Muslim, as well as Hindutva families; along with the atheists, Hindus and other religious adherents.

If, as Indians we do not do that, if we do not care to distinguish between Islamic and Muslim; between Hindutva and Hinduism; between merely being atheist and positively being Evidentialist, we might as well get ready to falling into the same gutter as our Western neighbour, only, with some time lag, and in some other variety of dreary desert sand of dead dogma.  (Apologies, Gurudev).