Mukul Kesavan recently wrote that ‘a Muslim citizen’s default state is a state of culpability’. He could not be more right than that. What has transpired in recent past, and continues to simmer, in the Indian social and public space, is the hate against its Muslim citizens. The propaganda is not merely limited to speeches, it has led to actions; and not merely for specific situations, but as part of the everyday life of its citizenry.

A cursory glance around, and one can see that almost every facet of a Muslim citizen’s social life has been securitised – food, clothing, family, social interactions, political participation in public spaces; and, now even the individual – the Muslim woman. What could be worse than the pursuit of muscular right-wing liberalism in a secular constitutional democracy like India?

We often construe “faith” and “belief” as synonymous terms. They are indeed synonymous when found coinciding in the psyche of a person. However, there are also chances of a disjunct where they tend to imply things differently.

What is happening in India is a deliberate attempt to create this disjunct between the Muslim belief and the Muslim faith at the behest of the state. The constant attacks on the participation of the Muslim citizenry in the public space is not an attack on the fundamentals of Islam. It cannot be. It is rather an attack on how Islam is understood and practiced by its followers in their lives as citizens of India. This is nothing short of an attempt to keep faith away from its foundational belief – to say that you may believe whatever you want to, but still you have to put your faith in what we ask you to say or do.

The right-wing attack operates at two levels. It prevents the manifestation of the Muslim religious identity in public space. Alongside, it also attempts to co-opt and transform this religious identity into the form of a neo-cultural identity, dictated by its Hindutva ideals.

As part of this plan, the purported social manifestation of the Muslim belief is intended to be replaced by now more robust, Hindutva faith, projecting all the Muslims as forced converts from their imaginary Hindu past. The intended effect is to emphasise that no Muslim can derive confidence to participate in public spaces merely on account of her personal and community level attachment, especially with Allah, the Supreme Being (Allahu Akbar being a controversial slogan). She should instead feel proud about her alleged Hindu past, modelled along the Hindutva lines.

The interpretation given here to the Muslim faith, its belief-system and the practice of its followers, is a deeply flawed one. It is as flawed as the strict liberal understanding of the religion – rooted in individual interpretations of the belief system, and sans the requirements of any collective ideals and/or identity. 

Islam is a religion of praxis. The theory is as important as its practice. It is difficult either to dissociate the Muslim belief from its social context – the Muslim faith, or else to resituate its praxis exclusively in some other collective like nationality, or even the cultural rootedness of any other historical identity.

A Muslim individual must carry the Muslim identity in addition to what other identity she might choose to adopt – an Indian who is a Muslim, a doctor or a teacher who is a Muslim; and, then a female student who is also a Muslim.

The hijab controversy in India truly demonstrates this aspect of the identity debate. When Muslim girls come to college in hijab, they do so believing that they can be all – an Indian, a Muslim and a student – at the same time. However, when certain groups challenge these young women, they do so with the intent to dissociate the Muslim faith from the Muslim belief, and then to replace it with an identity which is completely alien to these women.

While the identity of a secular Indian is acceptable to these Muslim ladies, we have seen that at Shaheen Bagh, the identity of a muscular right-wing liberalism, is not acceptable at all. That’s a lesson we must all take home.

More power to you, sisters.

*Views expressed are the author’s own. He teaches at Crescent School of Law, Chennai. He is also part of Aligarh Muslim University Teachers and Students Collective.

Related:

Hijab controversy: All schools and colleges to remain be shut for the next three days

No Hijab in class: Will Puducherry be able to nip the controversy in the bud?

Karnataka govt’s ominous silence at the communal mobilisation of students

To wear or not to wear the Hijab is not the point!

The post Opinion: A salute to Muslim sisters from Karnataka appeared first on SabrangIndia.

As I write this piece, the public discourse is filled with noise – both in support of and against the decry by Emmanuel Macron, the French President, that “Islam is in crisis”. In his latest interview with Al Jazeera, Macron underlines his intention to protect the “freedom of thought, speech, and drawing” without “taking sides”.

The reality stands, however, different from what he mentions – more than sixty mosques and religious centres have been closed, multiple arrests made and the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons projected on important public buildings.

The facts preceding these events provide the context – speeches by the French President which many say singled out Islam; the brutal murder of a school teacher, Samuel Paty, by a Muslim immigrant; multiple killings at a cathedral at Nice, again by a Muslim; multiple stabbing of Muslim women at Eiffel Tower in Paris, which largely went unnoticed from the media glare; large scale protests by Muslim throughout the world leading to economic boycott of French products; and Turkey and Pakistan publicly denouncing Macron’s statements.

These are indeed troubled times!

In the midst of all this I am reminded of a conversation with a friend many years ago. Upon finding me religiously inclined, he had asked, “Why are the Muslims so violent world-over?” He was an agnostic borne out of an inter-religious marriage between a Muslim and a Hindu. I asked if he had any Muslim friends and how many of them he had found violent. Having been friends with numerous Muslims since his childhood he remained silent to my question. His second query was even more interesting – “Why do Muslims not condemn the violence in the name of Islam?” I remember, I had replied, “For any condemnation to gain acceptance, the Muslim citizenry must be seen as the first victim of such radical discourse?”

The French situation is similar in many respects. Almost everyone is asking questions that are fundamental to the Muslim identity – why does Islam seem so inherently violent? Why are Muslims so sensitive about their faith? Why Muslims, in minority, cannot accommodate the cultural values of the majority? Is Islam actually in crisis? Do we need a state-regulated definition of Islam? Could there be a French Islam or a European version of Islam? The queries seem endless.

Can we navigate through this complex maze of questions? Can we find suitable answers? Yes, we can. But that would require us to – first, identify the Muslim citizenry as the victim of such discourse, much like the others; and second, to give Muslims the required spaces to forge dialogues, and help shape the public political discourse on these issues. In nutshell, these questions cannot be addressed by anyone else on behalf of the Muslim citizenry.

The discourse on political Islam is being forged in the name of Islam and in a manner which endangers the socio-political existence of the Muslim citizenry. It is our duty to not let this happen. The state must step in to enable capacities within the Muslim civic life that have the potential to foster such public engagements. In the end, the culture of dialogue and reconciliation towards finding solutions to the questions cannot but emanate from within the Muslim public psyche, and for that the Muslim psyche must be allowed to disown such rancour.

The Muslim public psyche is, however, in crisis today. The crisis is not because of any lack of capacity to forge public opinion, but due to the lack of proper representation to foster any public discourse.

Macron is not right when he says, “secularism never killed anyone”. The French secularism has constantly stabbed the Muslim public psyche in its heart while pushing the citizenry further away from any meaningful public engagement. 

Reviving Charlie Hebdo, and aligning it with French Laicite, is the latest example of such an onslaught. It has not merely normalized the radical Islam discourse in the public dialogue but also ended up classifying the entire Muslim population as potential suspect.

The road to exit seems a long drive from here.

The author is Senior Research Fellow at Jindal Global Law School, OP Jindal Global University. 

The post The Secular onslaught on the Muslim public psyche appeared first on SabrangIndia.