BOOK REVIEW
by Lata Jagtiani

THE CLASH OF INTOLERANCES
BY RAHIM JAHANBEGLOO
PUBLISHED BY HAR-ANAND PUBLICATIONS PVT LTD.
PRICE: RS 295


Once, in the early 1980s, as a lecturer at an Indian school in Dubai, I saw, within our school premises, a five-foot statue of Mahatma Gandhi installed in the playground. A few days later, however, the statue disappeared. I re-discovered it tucked away in a corner, hiding furtively in darkness in the school-library, heavily draped with sheets. Gandhiji was in a hijab because a government directive prohibited statues. So, one could not even have one within the Indian school premises? I suggested to the Principal that we put across our point to the authorities and convince them to allow us our Indian way of life within the school precincts. The response from him was a loud guffaw and a shake of the head. It isn’t possible, he seemed to say, to reason with the unreasonable. We felt the same unease when we celebrated Divali in Dubai, behind drawn curtains and closed windows. Divali celebrations, forget crackers, could attract the wrath of the shurtas ( cops). It seemed no better than racism and we felt its sting. I felt the sting again as I gobbled a sandwich in the office toilet during the fasting month of Ramadan. Since Muslims must fast in Ramadan, it is illegal to eat in their presence since that would tempt them to break their fast; jail and some generous and hard lashes are punishments for the “crime.” This is the same Dubai of posh high-rise buildings and beaches, expensive imported cars and sprawling malls. While modernity surrounds you, the minds of the authorities are still confined in a hijab. The pay is good, and for some time, at least, expatriates put up with intolerances by reminding themselves that things are worse in Saudi Arabia.

Jahanbegloo’s book is a plea for both Islamic and non-Islamic practitioners to abjure intolerances and violence and instead, replace them with constructive dialogue with one other. He wants the hostility to be replaced by “hospitality” on both sides. His analysis is, no doubt, provoked by Samuel Huntington’s book, “The Clash of Civilizations;” he declares that the today’s global divide is caused not by different cultures and civilizations being at loggerheads, but rather because of the tendency not to tolerate differences. While it is Bernard Lewis and not Huntington who first coined the term in his seminal essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage” (1990), he has received less attention by the media. Lewis debunks the theory that it is the West that is responsible for the growth of extremism in Islamic Middle East and instead holds that the condition is self-inflicted, caused by its culture and religion. This weakness was a byproduct of “cultural arrogance." Lewis opines that the root problem in dealing with hard Islam lies elsewhere: “More than ever before it is Western capitalism and democracy that provide an authentic and attractive alternative to traditional ways of thought and life. Fundamentalist leaders are not mistaken in seeing the Western civilization the greatest challenge to the way of life that they wish to retain and restore for their people.” He adds, “Ultimately the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies: secularism and modernism.”

Unwilling to address these issues at first, probably concerned with defusing the current climate of hostility that centres around Islam and radical and moderate Muslims all over the world, Jahanbegloo pleads for a rational attempt to listen to the “other” without resorting to violence. He says, in the Preface, “ International terrorism as much as war against terrorism strike at the universal values, including that of religious tolerance, on which the whole concept of human co-existence is founded.” One is hard pressed to understand how a well-meaning intellectual can put the two on a weighing scale and find them equally at fault. Is there, then, no lesser crime? Is there, then, no difference between the Pandavas and the Kauravas? Is Arjuna upholding the right and going to war, no different from Duryodana’s doing the same?

Towards the end of the book, he asserts, “ Violence begets violence. Peace is always denied to those who use violence. There is no such thing as a “good war” against “bad guys.”” While it might be fashionable to hold simplisitc beliefs such as these, these are dangerously complex times and heeding these words would be injurious to one’s health. Even our bodies, when invaded by a virus, label it as “bad” and attack it, thank God. Dinasaurs didn’t think so, sadly, and they aren’t, therefore, around to tell us their sad tales. Similarly, with a daughter held by a rapist, no parent is going to see his attempts to release the child as anything but “good”; it is certainly a “good war against a bad guy.” Extrapolated, if somebody invades my home/nation, my mind will not accept that I, too, am bad. No matter how you spin this, there is such a thing as virtue and there is something that is not. Even sages work towards destroying ignorance( bad) so that knowledge (good) can shine forth.

At another place, he declares, “ It is not right to respond to intolerance by being intolerant.” He is right in remarking that people begin by “decivilizing humanity” and “degrading” the other. It was certainly that same mindset which led the terrorists to blow up several busy, well-populated places in Mumbai in daylight hours not many years ago. So, how would one deal with an intolerant Dawood or Osama bin Laden who “decivilizes and degrades” others? The United Nations spoke in almost one voice when it came to dealing with the Taliban because of Osama in Afghanistan. Was the combined wisdom of the whole world missing the answer that Jahanbegloo now offers to a war-weary world? When all else fails, including dialogue, what answers does Jahanbegloo’s philosophy offer to the world? Unfortunately he refrains to provide us with adequate answers. What if the “other” believes, like Hitler, in violence as the quickest and only way of meeting his targets? Well-meaning and sweet that he surely is( if only there were more Jahanbegloos in the Muslim world) he is honestly unable to grapple with the task of dealing with the most pressing problem of the 21st century. He looks the other way and continues to ask honest questions which he forgets to answer. One would have wished a fitting answer to his own question, “What are the limits of tolerance and what should we do with the intolerant?” It would certainly have made his philosophy deeper and left the world with an answer out of the predicament. Intellectually, the study begins with proposing dialogue over violence, with hospitality over hostility, but attempts no progression of thought, and therefore remains a mere plea for dialogue, no more.
It is alluring to dwell in a luxury hotel amongst a roomful of philosophers to debate beliefs and issues; it is another matter to grapple with a man who speaks a different language with a hand-grenade in one hand and a holy book in another, ready to blow himself and the whole world up. One has no time for luxurious ruminations but for clear and decisive action. But while we, too, support Jahanbegloo in utilising dialogue when confronted with a dilemma, there are some situations that need an urgent and decisive response if humanity is not to perish. One discovers that he will not deal with the worst-case scenario, that he has no concrete answers for the increase in hardening stands, both for and against radical

A more objective approach to a pressing problem of crisis proportions was required but the author fought shy of it. Upholding Gandhi and being critical of the West in carefully diguised words may not be the way out. It is only in the end that five pages go in-depth into the task for Muslims, and it is here that the book throws up a few observations worthy of attention:
“It is not the “clash” of distance, but on the contrary the closeness which is at the origin of anxiety. Islam, especially that of the Middle East, by its closeness to and ties with Europe.. reveals most dramatically the fear of sameness. Islamism is the conflictual expression of this involuntary yet close encounter with modernity. In other words, contemporary Islamism is based on a double movement and tension: antagonistic posture with modernity and ideologization of religion… Islamic terrorism is meant to express a radical anti-modernity… Islamism has pushed Muslims to mourn their own modernity…. Muslims who argue for democracy and secularism seem to be yelled out of the arena on the charge that they are not “ Muslim enough.” Voices within the Muslim community, which insist that Islam should have nothing to do with hatred, terrorism and backward-looking, find themselves maginalized.” Perhaps, this is where the problem lies and carries within itself the seed of the solution to the dangerously growing global impasse.