The Angry Young Secularist

If one is researching the emergence of critical thought and reasoning in Muslim culture in the subcontinent of India, one is bound to come across the work of Hamid Dalwai but only after meticulous digging and networking. It didn't surprise me that he was not well-known because anything that is critical of regressive practices in Islam is very hard to find or has been lost in obscurity.

Skeptics in Islam are not new but they are not exactly well-known too It is only now that due to the advent of technology, one is able to piece together the zanadiqa (heretic) traditions in Islam and discover strains of reasoning (Mutazalite) and 'ridda' (doubt). Though it is a matter of geopolitics that Western researchers and scholars are discovering them in multitudes, what is fascinating is that the Eastern writers compiling data on them are no less in number.

My journey into this quest for critical thought starts with Anouar Majid's A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America which brought me to Skeptics of Islam: Revisionist Religion, Agnosticism and Disbelief in the Modern Arab World edited by Ralph M. Coury. As I started marking the countries wherein the dissenters and heretics mentioned in both books originated from, I was astounded to learn Egypt leads the rest while Saudi Arabia made it to the list too with its one dissenter.

What disappointed me was the lone mention of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan from India as one of the pioneers of critical thought. My mind went, "No way!" and I was drawn to Hamid Dalwai's seminal work 'Muslim Politics in India' in which he has trashed Sir Syed as the man who actually broke up India and not Mohammed Ali Jinnah as is the popular conception. This is what Hamid Dalwai had to say about him in his chapter on the historical background of Muslim Politics in India:

"Muslims remained backwards because they were religion-bound revivalists who refused to modernize themselves. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in this light appears as a great visionary who heralded the Indian Muslim Renaissance. It was due to his great efforts that the rigidly religious mind of Indian Muslims began to show the first signs of a thaw. Educated Muslims began to redefine life in terms of the modern age. They gave up the grand dream of converting India to Islam. This was the beginning of a great upheaval among educated Indian Muslims. A process of transformation had begun. It was this process that should have brought Muslims close to Hindus and broadened their view of man and society. The trend of this process was toward a view according to which Hindus and Muslims would have been looked upon as equals.

This process was, however, ironically reversed because modern Indian Muslims proved unequal to the task. Their modernity proved limited and they lacked the broad vision that could have ensured the complete success of the Aligarh renaissance. Ironically, this very process separated the Muslims from the Hindus instead of bringing them closer together. The old Muslim habit of blaming the Hindus for their problems reappeared and was set more firmly than ever. Although Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was free from the vice of religious fanaticism, he lacked the virtue of being free from the atavistic vanity of the inheritor of the Moghul past. In this very period, when it was possible for a national consciousness to emerge, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan himself succumbed to the egoistic conception that Muslims were the conquerors of India. It was he who was the father of separatist Muslim nationalism, and not Jinnah as it is so erroneously supposed. Jinnah is only a later version of Sir Syed, revised and enlarged. Thus the aberrant modern Muslim himself was responsible first for a  separatist Muslim nationalism and later for the creation of Pakistan. The foundation of Muslim nationalism is the postulate that Hindu and Muslim societies are autonomous and parallel social structures.

It is no fault of the Hindus that the Indian Muslims embraced this theory of a separate Muslim nationalism. Nor is it the fault of the Hindus that Indian Muslims regarded Hindus in Pakistan as hostages ensuring their own (Indian Muslims') security in India. It is only once in a while that an individual or society gets an opportunity to make or mar its own future. The Muslims lost their rare chance of embracing modernity simultaneously with the Hindus when they yielded to the pressure exerted on them by the ulema of Deoband and rejected English education. History gave them another chance a little later - the opportunity to strengthen Indian nationalism by joining forces with the Hindus but they let go even this opportunity by succumbing to the erroneous notion that Hindu and Muslim societies were autonomous and parallel social structures. They paid scant heed even to geographical realities and refused to consider where they lived and would live in the future. The problems faced by the Indian Muslims today can be traced back to these two lost opportunities. If a chance that comes only once in a century is wasted, it takes another century to make up for the loss."

It is evident from the above why Hamid Dalwai is not known beyond the members of the Indian Secular Society he co-founded with A B Shah and a few secular Maharashtrians (a state in India in the Konkan region where Hamid hailed from) committed to democracy, pluralism, liberalism, and critical reasoning. There seems to have been a deliberate suppressing of his view by the state and some establishments especially given India's Left-leaning tilt towards Postmodernism, the Palestinian Movement and the non-Aligned Movement throughout the Cold War all through the 50s, 60 and 70s.

In these politically correct times, it is no surprise that Hamid Dalwai is not known much in India especially his own home state. Born on September 29 in 1932 in Mirjoli village of Ratnagiri district in Konkan, Maharashtra, he is most famous for the March he organised without any political backing for the rights of Muslim women, in 1966 on April 18 against the triple talaq, (oral pronunciation of divorce in Muslim Personal Laws banned in most Muslim majority countries except India till a recent Supreme Court ruling).

He was only able to gather seven Muslim women including his wife Mehrunissa Dalwai, a revolutionary lady in her own way, for the March which is now an iconic photograph showing Hamid holding a placard. But he had pioneered the Muslim Reform Movement by criticising the regressive practices in Islam on the subcontinent and demanded the scrapping of triple talaq, polygamy and the regressive practice of halala. He was of the opinion marriage should be based on the laws of the Constitution and tirelessly campaigned for a common civil code. Decades later, the youth of India would rush to archives in their respective libraries to see what experts had to say about the Supreme Court hearings on triple talaq and out tumbled Hamid Dalwai's personality, his novel 'Indhan' (Fuel) and his views as told to his close friends especially Dilip Chitre who recorded them verbatim and published them in English, Marathi being the vernacular Hamid preferred.

'Angry Young Secularist' - Hamid earned the nickname twice over with his continuous clash with the Deoband brand of Islam taught by mullahs as well as the extremist and increasingly fascist far-right Hindutva groups of India. Fearless, rational, atheist, secular, patriotic and reasonably nationalistic, Hamid Dalwai is the kind of leader that the youth of India especially those of Muslim heritage are discovering. Influenced by Ram Manohar Lohia, Jai Prakash Narayan and Mahatma Gandhi (freedom fighters and builders of the Indian Republic), Hamid also established the Muslim  Satyashodak (truth-seeking) Mandal.

Mehrunissa Dalwai and Hamid were physically attacked and socially ostracised and boycotted for organizing protests against polygamy and triple talaq, and were even dubbed "enemies of religion". Hamid never conformed or con promised and remained firmly committed to the Constitution of India and secularism.

A documentary based on his life by Jyoti Subhash starring Naseeruddin Shah, documents his struggle with what he called the denial of Muslims in India about their pre-Partition actions and post-Partition and the copycat actions of Hindutva far-right groups in establishing a Hindu Rashtra, along the lines of an Islamic Caliphate of their doppelgangers. As translations of his Marathi speeches and articles in the papers he used to contribute to are underway, his unsung story is going to be told in all corners of the country and hopefully globally.

Unfortunately, Hamid died too young at the age of 44 on 3 May 1977 of a kidney ailment. Though his legacy lives on gaining momentum, "Hamidness" is something every secularist and liberal have missed out on if he or she hasn't heard of him or read him once. Being Hamid means no quarters given to nonsense, superstition and dogma, something I personally have been instinctively aspiring to since I realised the hypocrisy of my community in the 1990s and beyond.

War’s Unexpected Positivity

Kashmir Valley -Image Courtesy (Wikipedia) 

Mark Manson in his book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, talks about his month-long stay in Russia, where his Anglo-Western values where pulverised from all sides. The frank and honest expressions of the Russians were new to his polite, proper and well-mannered education and upbringing. But he was quick to realise that these honest expressions were based on values different from his own with a history of war and famine and a lot of Holodomor experience. He grew comfortable with it and also asked his Russian teacher about it. These were the Russian teacher’s words:

“Having lived under communism for so many generations, with little to no economic opportunity and caged by a culture of fear, Russian society found the most valuable currency to be trust. And to build trust you have to be honest. That means when things suck, you say so openly and without apology. People’s displays of unpleasant honesty were rewarded for the simple fact that they were necessary for survival — you had to know whom you could rely on and whom you couldn’t, and you needed to know quickly. But, in the “free” West, there existed an abundance of economic opportunity that it became far more valuable to present yourself in a certain way, even if it was false than to actually be that way. Trust lost its value. Appearances and salesmanship became more advantageous forms of expression. Knowing a lot of people superficially was more beneficial than knowing a few people closely.

That is why it became the norm in Western cultures to smile and say polite things even when you don’t feel like it, to tell little white lies and agree with someone whom you don’t actually agree with. This is why people learn to pretend to be friends with people they don’t actually like, to buy things they don’t actually want. The economic system promotes such deception.

The downside of this is that you never know, in the West, if you can completely trust the person you’re talking to. Sometimes this is the case even among good friends or family members. There is such pressure in the West to be likeable that people often reconfigure their entire personality depending on the person they’re dealing with.”

I connected another of Mark Manson’s anecdotes with the above.

He writes: In the 1950s, a Polish psychologist named Kazimierz Dabrowski studied World War II survivors and how they'd coped with traumatic experiences int he war. This was Poland, so things had been pretty gruesome. These people had experienced or witnessed mass starvation, bombings that turned cities to rubble, the Holocaust, the torture of prisoners of war, and the rape and/or murder of family members, if not by the Nazis, then a few years later by the Soviets.

As Dabrowski studied the survivors, he noticed something both surprising and amazing. A sizeable percentage of them believed that the wartime experiences they’d suffered, although painful and indeed traumatic, had actually caused them to become better, more responsible, and yes, even happier people. Many described their lives before the war as if they’d been different people then: ungrateful for and unappreciative of their loved ones, lazy and consumed by petty problems, entitled to all they’d been given. After the war, they felt more confident, more sure of themselves, more grateful, and unfazed by life’s trivialities and petty annoyances.

Obviously, their experiences had been horrific, and these survivors weren’t happy about having had to experience them. Many of them still suffered from the emotional scars the lashings of war had left on them. But some of them had managed to leverage those scars to transform themselves in positive and powerful ways.

I couldn’t help thinking about my home state of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh, in North India. The legacy of the inhuman and brutal Partition of 1947 with the creation of Pakistan (the first Islamic State) and the subsequent wars of ’65, ’71 and ’98, the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Soviet-Afghan War, three decades of conflict, a proxy war, and armed insurrection of the 90s and the new millennium not to mention centuries of invasion, pillage and internal strife were bound to create generations of trauma in the people. Could I apply Dabrowski’s observations to my people? Should I?

Will they in the next few decades also become ‘better, more responsible, and happier people’? Will they recognise and self-reflect the harm they have been doing to their own? Will there be a course correction? Will there be atonement for the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits, the agnostics, the seculars who had to resort to exile in order to survive? Many didn’t even see their homeland before death and had to be buried or burnt on the pyres far away from home and hearth. Can there be forgiveness for this? Can any form of Islamic supremacist ideology ever replace what was once a very peaceful knowledgeable and vibrant kingdom?

These are questions that haunt me like the ghosts I walk with….

https://medium.com/@arshiaunis/wars-unexpected-positivity-e20e63e252ec

Of Mothers-daughters and fathers-sons

A son can bond naturally with either parent. But depending on the culture in Muslim societies there are not many mother-of-pearl bonding activities as there are with the father.

The same can be said for a father-daughter relationship; because of the restrictions that Muslim mentality places on pubescent girls, any natural bonding raises barriers between a father and daughter. Of course, the love isn't lessened but considering most male Muslims are brought up on a misogynistic diet of patriarchy, regressive practices and outdated notions of womanhood, it shouldn't be difficult to conclude that the father-daughter relationship in most cases doesn't live up to its full potential.

I recall my mother talking about how her own father had over-ridden her dreams, her wishes and her desires by arranging for a marriage with my father. There is a customary practice when the father asks the daughter if she is happy with the match; it is not a choice really since the culture of honor, the "lehaaz" tehzeeb and other social mores do not let the daughter express her desire. Rarely is it encouraged when she confides in a brother or sister or mother and the wish is put forward to the father. In Mama's case, she was bale to confide to her own daughter when everything was falling apart and I demanded she tell me why there was so much resentment in the marriage - 20 years too late.

The alliance arranged was a watered-down version of the ancient tribal societies trade craft when cattle and other stuff used to be exchanged to ensure debts are paid and property is insured. Mama lover her father (Abbaji) till his end, never questioning his decision, even after she walked out of her marriage, with two daughters and the clothes on their backs, school textbooks in tow. I recall seeing him break down and ask for her forgiveness for having overridden my grandmother's (Ammaji) misgivings of a match with he Butt family, as month after month passed into years and a decade with no resolution of the marital conflict.

She dismissed his sorrow with a palm banging the head as 'kismet' (destiny) and absolved here entire family of the guilt they felt at having "arranged" her kismet. Witnessing this over the years made me etch micro-resolutions of how to and how not to bring up a daughter in a Muslim culture on my mind and being. Life/nature gave me a son, which halved my misgivings and problems of bringing up a child in a regressive, conflict-ridden, backward region, with a superstitious society and culture.

As Life expands to my son growing out of his teens into his twenties, I am musing over the kind of activities that I am allowed to do with him, and keeping his laundry washed and the home spice and span (all traditional nurturing roles). It must definitely help him to have a tomboy is mother who can put up a shelf with a drill machine, paint walls and repair electrical appliances, generally doing much of the housework. A metropolitan city provides the space, culture, anonymity and safety of going to the cinemas, restaurants, walk on the roads but I doubt there are many mothers in my family who are able to do this.

I have been privileged to teach him how to cycle alongwith Arshid, throw a few balls, and wrestle in a soccer-tussle, in the process teaching his father to fly a kite also. These days I am hell bent on urging him to climb a tree, and make provisions for him to learn how to make a campfire, whittle a stick, tie sailor's knots and all the Scouts traditional outdoor activities every teenager should do.

The Facebook generation is already restricted in its outdoor life but it is double the limitation when one has been brought up in a Muslim society and the son starts putting up rules for situations where he can't be embarrassed in front of his friends. I am privileged not to have been subjected to such rules ever, but I know there are Muslim mothers who feel tied by the norms and mores of their respective regions especially the Kashmiri culture of my home state.

If one were to stretch one's logic, then maybe that could be the factors that the traditional roles of the mothers are not helping them stop the boys/young men from joining armed groups in suicidal missions upholding a theocratic ideology. The fathers have more of a role to play as the cases of Burman Wani, Mandan, the University scholar and now Bilal, the latest recruit shows. Even though, the fathers of the latter two appealed on social media to give up arms, I can't help wondering if the mothers had been educated, scientifically-inclined or working, the sons recruiting themselves into terror groups would have been largely lessened.

As an aside, assuming all three mothers were educated and working, it does not necessarily mean they would have influenced their sons to not stray towards the ideological and identity politics path. Only a scientifically inclined upbringing, culture, education and work environment can make it possible, with least interference from the religious beliefs of the fathers.

So coming back to the activities that can bond mothers and sons, the subcontinent has to go a long way in that. I wish to see a time in life when subcontinental mothers won't just worry and fret over a son to get married and " settle" down so that a "maid" of a daughter-in-law is brought into the house in a social contract of marriage with the addition of dowry not dowager. And fathers will give daughters the choice to marry or not, to life partners whom they have chosen and not the family.

It is a challenge but it is a worthy challenge starting from home.

The Reverse Racism of the Indian Left-Liberal

'Cruelty perpetuated by someone with a "good conscience or a "strong moral compass" can often be the most unrelenting, uncritical and self-righteously determined cruelty imaginable', writes Maajid Nawaz in his 2015, October article - 'Not Muslim Enough? The Malcolm X Zombie Rises Again'.  Maajid Usman Nawaz is a British activist, author, columnist, radio host and politician  and author of Radical: My Journey out of Islamist Extremism, which makes him an authority on Islam, Muslim culture, its regressiveness and progressive trends, and the dangers of speaking out, against the values of a religiously society with tribal loyalties. 

In the context of the Indian subcontinent - a powder keg of religious tensions - speaking out against the regressive practices in one's communities whether Hindu or Muslim, can have life-altering repercussions. Hence the Great Indian Liberal goes out of his/her way to diffuse any attempts at inflammatory speeches or disinformation. But in doing so, as pointed out by Maajid above, their good conscience ends up delivering the vilest, cruelest blow to critics/dissenters and reformers. Their labels for Muslim cultural critics as 'house niggers', 'capo', 'Useful Jews', 'Trojan Horse', 'Uncle Tom', 'shills', 'Islamophobes' and the takfiri reaction - 'Not Muslim Enough' are entering the public discourse in a huge way.

I had earlier outlined the burden of reform and why we do it. It is dangerous and full of risks for our family members too, but we do it because of unspeakable violations, intolerable injustice and the unflinching motive of making the future safe for our children. Of course, there is going to be resistance from our own. Whether they are practicing Muslims, cultural Muslims, agnostic or atheist Muslims, regressive believers, or progressive liberal Muslims, and everyone in between - each and every group is going to find some fault or the other in the approach or stance of Muslim critics/reformers. So it is expected to have the slanderous 'House Nigger', 'Capo', or 'Uncle Toms' thrown around by the group most resistant to change / reform. 

What is incomprehensible, reprehensible, and completely uncalled for is the 'Great Indian Liberal', joining the fray. This "racism of the anti-racists", the 'New Orientalism', in Maajid's words, is the new and deeply sinister form of bigotry because its racism, misogyny, and cultural bigotry thrive under our very noses undetected. Maajid used these words in the context of Roger Alpher's Haaretz opinion article describing Lucy Aharish as 'the Arab Woman' who 'had been neutralized' because she had 'committed the grave crime of forming an opinion', instead of 'mimicking the views' of her fellow Arabs. 

This 'reverse racism' is familiar to us Kashmiris of the Indian subcontinent who believe Kashmir's future lies with its continued accession to India while condemning the high-handedness of the Indian political-bureaucratic-military nexus dealing with armed jihad in the conflict-torn Valley. We get a lot more than 'sell-outs', 'traitors', 'native informants' - the male dissenters having to put up with Facebook spats, phone calls to family members, ostracism at the mosque and gatherings, while the female dissenters have to deal with the additional nuisance of rape threats and character assassinations. 

This 'reverse racism' or 'cultural bigotry' is not visible or obvious enough because, again in Maajid's words, it emanates from those who shout the loudest that they are on "our" side, that they speak for "us". This is why C. S. Lewis's observations in his provocative collection of essays, God in the Dock, has been quoted by Maajid -  "good men consistently may act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants... in some respects act even worse..". 

Now the question, the dilemma, the worrying factor is - if the Left, so historically having been the champion of the victims of racism, bigotry, and exploitation, turn out to be the biggest bullies of all, who will call them out? Who gets to invite the hordes of trolls (yes, they have picked up the traits of the right wingers and supremacists) and their penchant for ridicule, contempt, character assassinations, even threats, buoyed by extremists in the Islamist camps, delighted with the Left -Liberals speaking up for them?

Ex-Muslims, apostates, cultural Muslims and even pious, practicing believers do not tire of saying - "Ideas have no colour and truth belongs to no culture, but should be the pursuit of all"- (Maajid in his Daily Beast article) It is a bloodied war among Muslims that is being fought and may have a bitter end - the war against "practices in our culture that hinder our social mobility in a civilization". The "mainstream allies" like the Left, the Liberals, especially the "Great Indian" ones may inadvertently be contributing to the covert shutting up of dissenters and to the murdered bloggers.  

Those fond of the Malcolm X coined 'house Negro', forget one crucial detail - the house negros working in the mansions with their masters often influenced them to be less brutal to a fellow negro or save the life of a slave. Capos (Jewish, SS appointed heads of labor squads in concentration camps) often worked against the SS at great risks to keep inmates alive and get their plight out to the Allies. In horrendous times, the lot that fell on individuals whether they working in mansions as compared to field  slaves, the Jewish capos who had the misfortune of being selected as capos of the terrified labour squads, did what any normal person faced with certain death would choose to do - survive by any means possible and in the event probably save a life or two, instead of the brashness of being a martyr to the cause. 

The "Great Indian Liberal" who terms Muslims cultural critics and dissenters as 'capo' or 'house Negro is actually making their work much more difficult - the work of lifting their communities out of doldrums, ignorance and willful denial. In addition to their own families, friends and the community which ostracizes and resists them, they now have the to deal with the 'reverse racism' of the Left and Liberal, who act as if they are doing a favor to minorities. 

History teaches us, change in communities has always been difficult with the bitter truth often forced down people's throats in order to rip off the rose-tinted glasses from their eyes. Only Muslim dissenters from within can do it, with no small measure of help from non-Muslims. They are aware that every regressive practice they criticize and choose to overturn through legal recourse may be used by the right wing to bash up the minorities. In this dangerous obstacle course of reform, the Great Indian Liberal does a disservice to the brave women and men, in erecting hazardous barriers of libel, defamation and trolling. 

It takes years to convince generations of traditionalists that what has been going on is not right - be it the instantaneous triple talaq; religion-sanctioned polygamy; hijab or burqa compulsory diktats; FGM among the Bohra community; dowry demands; domestic violence attributed to verse 4.34 in the holy text; and the general second class citizenship allotted to women in lieu of the 4:2 half-testimony of  assault victims, blasphemy laws, etc. It takes just a few minutes on social media to besmirch a person with a photoshopped meme and throw him/her to the trolls.  

Of course, that doesn't deter ground workers who take risks to speak out, but the Great Indian Liberal had better get his/her act right if it really wants a lasting peace in the subcontinent. Still reeling from the effects of the communal Partition. This hijacking of Malcolm X's legacy and appropriating the Jewish experience to silence Muslim dissenters is going to backfire in a bad way like it did for Malcolm X when he was killed by his own and before his death apologized for his race-baiting, racially-divisive language in his past. 

The Zindiq Posts: The Atheist Muslim

The first thing that greets you as you pick up Ali A. Rizvi's The Atheist Muslim: A Journey from Religion to Reason, is the quote by famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins of The God Delusion  -  "A beautifully written page-turner... One man's epic struggle to climb out of the pit of dogmatic religion into the sunshine of enlightenment. And because the religion concerned was Islam, his success story is the more important for ou troubled times." 

I can relate to this "epic struggle", which I saw in my late husband Arshid Malik's life when I met him, fell in love with him, married him despite opposition from our families and with whom I had a stormy marriage of 15 years; before he succumbed to his depression and bipolar disorder (a consequence of untreated trauma of years of incest by a cousin). The combination of destructive internal factors of self-medication, nicotine and liquor and the external factors of mental and physical repression of living in a conflict zone where Islamist forces are hell bent on imposing sharia law while in a proxy war with a secular country took their toll on Arshid. A struggle it definitely was with his identity - politically, religiously, socially and ideological wise, when I met him and was impressed by his open display of it. But then he kept vacillating between belief (to my utmost disbelief to see him reading the Quran and offering prayers) to agnosticism as he started getting introduced to my friend circle on social media and back to atheism again when he realised there was a whole new world out there in the last years of his life. 

I recall showing him Ali A. Rizvi's posts and discussing Alishba with him and urging him to add them as friends. He was as fascinated as I had been and would often marvel at Ali's patience with trolls and his epic discussions with Kashif Choudhary MD, a regular debater who often challenged Ali. I learnt a lot from those debates, and how one had to keep one's cool, grow a thick skin, and basically keep sticking to the post and not allow anyone to digress from the main issue being discussed that time. Slowly, I realised my own confidence was growing and the silence which had enveloped me all those decades ago ever since the mind realised the childhood bigotry and later recognised the communal forces that upset the secular lives we had and tried to impose a radical Islam. 

It gives me immense pride to start off the blog with Ali A. Rizvi's book. Arshid would have approved. The author's biography reads as follows: 

Ali A. Rizvi spent the first twenty-four years of his life as a Pakistani youth growing up in Libya, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and the next fifteen years as an adult living in Canada and the United States. Rizvi is one of only a handful of nonbelievers from Islamic backgrounds that have openly voiced their views and told their stories without significant risks to their livelihoods. He has been writing extensively about the subject for several years, contributing to The Huffington Post and other major media outlets like CNN.com. In addition to being a writer, Rizvi is a medical communications professional and a trained physician with residency and fellowship training in oncological surgical pathology. 

The Zindiq Posts: Let's Make Heresy Great Again!

Inspired by Robert Bruce's 101.books Blog in which he read, reviewed and ranked 101 Modern Books in Western Literature in a space of four years, I figured it would be a way to put other unorthodox views in and about Islam out there. Considering there are very important voices of ex-Muslim, cultural Muslims, and secular Muslims trying to combat extremism in our religion, it would help to keep a comprehensive list of their books in one place. 

It also takes inspiration from:

Zindiq is a medieval Islamic term applied by Muslim theologians to "the criminal dissenters" - the professing Muslims who hold beliefs or follow practices contrary to the central dogmas of Islam and are therefore to be regarded as apostates and infidels. I first came across this term "zanadiqa" in Anouar Majid's ''A Call for Heresy: Why Dissent is Vital to Islam and America'', as I was building my sanctuary away from bigotry in 2014, after having survived a flash flood in my hometown and lost my collection of books on this subject. I get a lot of communication from people wanting to know more about dissent, about apostasy, and a general collective frustration about the chokehold that radical Islam and extremists have both on believers and non-believers, Muslims as well as non-Muslims. This is my personal quest about an ideology because of which I have suffered, been judged by and governed for my whole life and continue to face the consequences of having been born into its social matrix. 

I start with Ali A. Rizvi's book - The Atheist Muslim, the newest book coming out in the growing "zindiq literature" from Muslims. I will not restrict myself to only Muslims or ex-Muslims, but there are well-researched books by non-Muslims as well that have contributed to this global dialogue about the "clash of civilisations". I pick up Ali A. Rizvi because he was one of the first people I came across as I entered social media, who fascinated me with their views and even the truth of existing in the first place. Coming from a conservative and insulated, bigoted society, it was a thrill to see him articulate secularism, humanism, rationality, and logic and speak as a matter of fact about regressive practices in my religion. 

Gradually I became acquainted with Alishba Zarmeen, his very talented and straight-up wife who kept nothing back when calling out hypocrisy and obfuscation among Muslims. I watched as she grappled with trolls and gave them a mouthful with clarity and discovered that there could be women who could stand up to the mullah brigade who relished in putting down women if they had an opinion. Ali's posts brought up Faisal Said Al-Muttar and his views coming from a Middle-Eastern background, yet holding secular, humanistic views were a whole new window into an expanding world of dissent. I have come to know Faisal's book is upcoming and hopefully, I will be able to put it up on the blog soon. 

I have no idea how many posts I will dedicate to one book. It will depend on what each author has to say and how relevant it is in today's context. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Asra Nomani's books are not readily available and I will have to wait until I can order them online. Some like Ibn Khuldun's Muqadimma are easily available but require tough reading and will be put off for some vacation time or a long weekend, as I have a day job to concentrate on too and I am the primary care-giver to a teenager. But I am looking forward to a personal Enlightenment as I peruse these books and make my own list of 101 books in Zindiq Literature. 

The books are not going to be strictly non-fiction, though that is the best genre for Zindiq Literature, sometimes fiction is able to communicate universal truths in a far more articulate and forceful way than non-fiction - a case in question To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, or Roots by Alex Haley, two of the most influential books in American Literature.  

Recommendations are welcome. 

Aging Bones

I wake up these mornings thinking of ways to make my apartment more welcoming for my mother, Mama as I have always called her. Ours has been a roller coaster ride, kind of converging now after a tragedy. I lost Arshid at age 42 and I guess it is something she can't accept even for a wayward daughter, even though she has practically cursed me to hell scores of times. Today she gaslights and denies all of that verbal abuse and I have reached a stage where having made peace with myself, I have compassion for both my parents, realising they could be the caretakers of my child if anything happens to me. 

I have always given voice to the voiceless. Now that I have a say in all things of my life, it makes sense to write for the ones who were never able to develop any control over their lives. Mama like the autumn leaves in the wind just drifted wherever Life took her and affected our lives in very drastic ways, something which my sister's isolationist behaviour is a visible evidence of. 

I woke up with the image and sense of Mama bent on her prayer rug at dawn, beseeching her Allah for my long life till my son is settled and well cared for. She cries a lot for me these days, worried for my ageing bones and various ailments that come along with age. Her jealousy of my having had a son long dissolved in the years that she got to care initially for her first grandson (mine) and then for years for her second one (my sister's). I am always aware of the abuse she took for not having produced a son and us sisters in tacit agreement let her dote over ours until they were actually in the danger of developing that 'Nawabzaada' (superior) attitude that many Muslim men display and which permeates their lives and their circle of influence. 

Mama is finally getting what was due to her all those decades ago, a secure home with her daughters settled and grandkids around her. She shuttles between Abu Dhabi, Srinagar and Delhi and is just about discovering what empowerment an "English education" brings to Muslim women especially if they are determined to live their lives on their own terms. I admit seeing my sister drive a car, deal with patients, and bring up her son in a very progressive way is far better than to see me do the same minus the driving and plus the speaking out against regressiveness in Islam. This is the only bone of contention between us and until Arshid was alive brought on sulkiness and temper tantrums from her. 

But now that she has lost her "son", she is careful to just appeal to me through teary eyes not to endanger her grandson with what I speak out against. I listen and understand and nod, but she knows as much as I in my being - I am never going to be silenced. Life was never able to silence me. Life has never been able to silence me. 

So I am jolted awake with the pressing worries of installing a geyser and English commode for her and make the apartment more friendly, sensitising my son on TV timings to reschedule according to Mama's favourite TV serials; and arranging of furniture - the sit-down carpet style of Muslim families really painful for my bones. I look forward to massaging her back, knowing it hasn't been soaped for a long time because she can't reach it and other intimate things that only daughters can do for their mothers. And I frame approaches and imaginary conversations in my mind about how to get her to tell about her childhood and teen years and youth, most of it having already heard but needed for polishing the chapters of my book. 

For in telling her story, I not only will be able to bring closure to a tumultuous relationship I have had with her but also explore if Islam, as we know it, were brought up in it, and are affected by it through our men, has any chance of a reform or not. A Native American writer friend once told me - Listen to Your Elders - a common ritual in the traditions of the tribes, to gather around a fire and listen to the Ancients. As I start my chores, I imagine the campfire in my apartment in the coming winter months, when, to escape the severe Kashmir winter I am determined that she while it away with us in a milder region. Her asthma will not be able to take another severe one. 

For the time being, we are happy to let her explore her new home which Baba finally built and decorate it, plan for it, care for it to her heart's content like a delighted little girl - an image I have firmly fixed in my mind from her countless descriptions. A reproduction of what she would have looked like taken from the net to inspire me  - a common tool for writers.

She playing "sazlong" (hopscotch) with one of my Uncles balanced on her hip, one of her 6 siblings that daughters often ended up caring for in bog Muslim households. A once strong body doing endless chores for a huge household from age 6 right up till she walked out of her marriage with two daughters in tow. Her painful knees bent in the 'sazda' are what concern me, her swollen ankles a very familiar sight for me, having the same affliction. Despite repeated advice that there is a provision in Islam for offering prayers seated on the chair, she insists on the hard way. I figure it also some sort of penance, pilgrimage, that every believer exhibits in order to earn 'sawab' (brownie points in English) or as the illiterate pirate in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies retorts in a comic scene while turning the pages of the Bible, "You get credit for trying".  



Image Courtesy: The Net