WhirledView

Where are the Steeples of Riyadh?

Patricia Lee Sharpe

The news story that voters, by a bare majority, have banned construction of new minarets  in Switzerland seems to have very strong legs.  Western liberals are appalled at the bigotry.  Muslims generally are taking offense. My first impulse, as one of those liberals, was to produce a satire, which I’ll stand by, but I’d like to pursue the matter more directly here.

Heated Rhetoric

Already the web abounds with vehement postings claiming that Christians are free to build houses of worship in various Muslim countries, with or without steeples, with or without permission to ring bells.  There are equally strident pieces to the contrary.  One thing should be clear. Bigotry in one country does not justify bigotry in return—and yet, religious sentiments and human emotions being what they are, tit-for-tat practices are bound to be advocated.

Most Muslim countries are not nearly so restrictive as Saudi Arabia which forbids the importation of a single  Bible for personal use.  But, in or out of the Muslim world, attitudes toward minorities’ religious rights vary so enormously, information touching on tolerance and intolerance is so anecdotal, practice so often departs from noble constitutional language and rhetoric serves mainly to lob verbal missiles across walls of willful misunderstanding and naked impermeable hostility. 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Sorting out this mishmash is well nigh impossible, so let’s start from scratch, again.  Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which came into effect on December 10, 1948, contains the following language:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

In many places today, constitutions written in consonance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights notwithstanding, there is in fact no freedom of religion or conscience.  In other places, law and practice hew fairly close to Article 18.  However, even in these very happy countries (from a liberal’s point of view), disputes arise over claims of unequal treatment.  Given the degree to which diverse people migrate from country to country and belief communities hive off into new neighborhoods, it might be wise to call an interfaith, interdenominational conference to define more specifically what those universal rights entail, not only on paper, but in practice.  As we all know, various sorts of red tape can and do frustrate many beautifully written, well meant laws.

First They Razed the Minarets—

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

 Can you believe it? A bunch of foreign fanatics wants to desecrate our traditional skyline with toothpick towers they call minarets from which they’ll yodel I don't know how many times a day, and we’re supposed to sit by, mum as mice, while Switzerland becomes Switzerlost.  Minarets!  Impaling clouds!  Making a Swiss cheese of the heavens.  No way! No new minarets! As for those built already, down with every one of them!   If these terrorists-in-the-making don’t like it, well! we’ll sic the Swiss Guard on them.  A good Swiss pike can repel any raghead—and aren’t those puffy pants cute?

Wouldn't you know it!  The United Nations is in a snit, as if we were discriminating, not merely asserting our right to be Swiss.  So we’ll have to level the playing ground, it seems.  All steeples and bell towers will also have to go, which may be just as well.  Their upkeep, so to speak, is murder.  What’s sauce for the Muslim goose is sauce for the Christian gander, it seems.  Of course, the carillons and bell ringing are done for, too, which may not be so bad.  We’ll be able to sleep in on Sundays.  Anyhow no one needs bells or calls to prayer, for that matter, in the modern world.  We have watches.  Swiss watches.

Speaking of watches, the clock towers are doomed.  The economic levelers say it’s not fair to put timepieces on a pedestal if you can’t erect Swiss Army knife towers and that won’t do, according to the environmentalists.  A tall, sleek, gleaming blade, evidently, would have a genocidal impact on migrating geese and ganders.  Ditto the scissors and the corkscrew.  I’m tempted to use the tweezers to tweak certain noses, but there we are.

Ah, skyscrapers!  With all other towers razed, they make a grand silhouette against the sky.  But the Jungians are whining about the baleful psychological impact of all those Freudian phallic symbols.  Either we en-womb Basel, Geneva, Zürich and every cow-ridden village geodesically or they’ll be googling explosive formulas from Islamist websites.  Once upon a time—sigh!—we’d have dome-sticated fast.  But the U.S. has declared war on tax evaders, kleptocracy is under attack and the banks can’t mint money in the good old Swiss way. So ker-boom!  It’s cheaper to destroy than to build.

Blind Buddhas and Incendiary Cartoons

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Santa Fe is full of Buddhists, but no one has erupted with religious rage since this image (a sculpture by David Kimble Anderson) was placed on display in the atrium of a building that housed an art gallery and other business enterprises.  As anyone with the least facility in reading symbols will immediately have grasped,  there are innumerable ways of interpreting this work of art.  Since many possible interpretations are decidedly negative, I found my recalling the violent  reactions to the now infamous Danish cartoons, which were condemned by many believers as an affront to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad.  The result?  Riots in several countries.  Some people unfortunately died.

Multiple Interpretations

Let’s consider some ways in which the Anderson piece might be understood.  The gold surface could be an indictment of materialism on the part of traditional Buddhist temple builders or on the part of current practitioners whose lives verge, hypocritically perhaps, on the sumptuous.  Of course, many traditional images of the Buddha are also flamboyantly gilt, to symbolize the transcendent value of the teachings and to honor the one who enunciated them.

In this case, however, the figure appears to be bandaged.  It is, evidently, blind and essentially quadriplegic.  Unable to see.  Unable to act.  Impotent.  Useless.  Is this a statement about the futility and irrelevance of Buddhism? On the other hand, meditative insights are available to those who sit without moving,  looking inward.  Sometimes these insights have effects that are far more powerful than actions that are not guided by wisdom. 

Which, one wonders, did the sculptor have in mind?

Mummies, Too

I simply don’t know.  When I first saw this image, I was and still am totally ignorant of the sculptor’s intention, as ignorant as many of those who rioted over the Danish cartoons surely were.  Nor would many of those angry Muslims have cared in the least whether the cartoonists’ intentions were pure or not.  The cartoons, taken at face value, appear to insult the prophet.  Enough.

This past weekend I had an opportunity to show a photo of the blind Buddha to a very knowledgeable Buddhist teacher/scholar.  “Give me your first reaction,” I asked.  “How do you feel?  What are your unconsidered thoughts?”  I should have known better.  I did not get any unconsidered thoughts. 

But I did get some interesting information.  This scholar said that the image reminds him of the mummy of Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Chinese Cha’an (or Zen) Buddhism, who was born in AD 638 and is known for enunciating the revered Diamond Jewel Platform Sutra.  Evidently it was the custom to mummify great teachers back then in China.  The proper term, I just learned courtesy of Google, is “whole body relics.”  Mummies!  This seemed strange to me.  Buddhism supposedly teaches impermanence, while mummies are intended to make the physical remains last forever or as long as possible.  My bewildered personal reaction to Buddhist mummies notwithstanding, could Anderson’s work be an homage to Hui Neng?

And so the inquiry widens, opening my horizons, giving me pause to think.

The Dangerous Business of Female Education

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

I mentioned the International Islamic University in Islamabad yesterday.  That’s where the latest suicide bombings in Pakistan took place.  Six not five persons were killed.  Three were girls and not by coincidence.  This was not one of those "senseless" incidents.  Here's an interesting Pakistani take on the bombings.

The best way to get an idea of the ambiance at the IIU is to take a look at the university’s website.  Women attend, but it's not really a co-educational institution.  It’s a highly segregated place.  Do a little browsing on the site, and soon you will realize that you are being bombarded with references to “the female wing”  of the IIU.  Naturally there are no references to the “male wing.”  If you find this as irritating as I do, think of similar practices in our own society. For instance, it is quite “normal” for  female high school athletes to be called by the hideous term of, say, the “Elkettes,” while the real teams, the male teams, are always the “Elks,” the nickname that would  apply to the school taken as a whole.

In pictures of classes and activities at IIU, you will note that most of the female students are very heavily veiled, even with no male present (unless the eye of the camera counts).  Only at the highest administrative level is an occasional female faculty member or dean represented with face fully revealed, often in the context of receiving foreign visitors, eg. pandering to the outside world.  

Otherwise the IIU world is male male male.  Male students.  Male teachers.  Male administrators.  Not so different from the way it used to be, not so many decades ago, in  many contexts in the West, for that matter.  Only recently have female faces turned up regularly in leadership roles or even as a good percentage of street crowds.  Re this, I’m going to see that both my sons get copies of the new book by Gail Collins: When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present.  Being a woman was pretty horrible when I was a kid—and lots of us vowed we’d change things or die trying.  Fortunately, the latter wasn’t needed in our case, but Pakistani girls who want an education and a professional life may be targeted by those who fear social change.    And their schools certainly aren't safe, not even the schools for primary students.

All the above notwithstanding, there is much to be said for the IIU as a way to provide a higher education for girls who would never otherwise be able to obtain a college degree.  As the website photos prove,  there's nothing like equality between the sexes here and the curriculum certainly does not offer anything close to a liberal education, but IIU does signify a step in the right direction.   Above all, the young women who graduate will be able to read the Koran for themselves and do some thinking of their own, which is unlikely to please the village mullahs who accustomed to quoting convenient

Meeting Gods and Godesses in Kolkata

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

For nearly two weeks, day and night, Bengalis have been paying homage to Durga their favorite goddess.  But now her effigies have been carried, carted or trucked from their places of honor to be tossed or toppled into the Houghly River.  Sic transit gloria.  All is transient.  Calcutta/Kolkata will return to hyper-crowded, high-energy normality, until the next puja, in honor of Kali or Manasa or Kartik or Saraswati or Ganesh or—the roster of honorees is practically countless.  Calcutta is almost always preparing for or recovering from one puja or another, as I discovered on Day One, for me, in the vibrant city that turned from Calcutta to Kolkata while I was living there.

Kartik

En route from the airport, I found myself being driven down a street along which everyone in sight seemed to have something to do with making effigies.  In open-front shop after shop, artisans were engaged in what turned out to be a four-part process.  (1) Make a humanoid armature of  bamboo strips.  (2) Flesh it out with straw.  (3) Cover it with papier mache.  (4) Paint it flamboyantly.

Kartik puja was days away, it seemed, and I had a decision to make.  Kartik, like the more widely known Ganesha, is a son of the Hindu god Shiva and his wife Parvati.  One of his modern duties is to serve as the god (eg patron saint) of mechanics and engineers.  I, as in-coming supervisor of team that included drivers, mechanics, audio-visual specialists and computer systems operators, had to say yea or nay to the business  of setting up an image of Kartik in our garage.  “Is it customary?” I asked.  The answer was  “Yes.”  So Kartik was duly installed, with a garland of marigolds around his neck.  Who wanted accidents or computer crashes over the next 12 months?  What’s more, if we could have Kartik in the garage, we could have a Christmas tree in the lobby when December rolled around.  Eid treats, in turn, would also be enjoyed by all, Muslim or not. Hurrah for festivals!

Durga

But Kartik puja had nothing, festival-wise, on Durga puja, when every intersection in the city was likely to offer a resplendent image of Durga off to the side, if not plumb in the center, traffic be damned.  In rich neighborhoods Durga images could soar to an awesome 20 feet.  Neighborhood associations collecting funds in less affluent areas would have to be content with a Durga closer to the measurements of an ordinary woman.  Always, however, she’d be lacquered in bright colors and dressed in gaudy glittery raiment.  That much was traditional.  Then came the strings of lights draped above and all around each and every one of her, and the huge loudspeakers with their gaping bells broadcasting Bollywood favorites and static incessantly. 

Our Real Problem in Pakistan: They Don’t Like Us

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The U.S. must develop a public diplomacy program to convince Pakistanis that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are Pakistan’s enemies as well as America’s, according to recent comments by Richard Holbrooke, U.S. special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Holbrooke actually said this after an eye-opening Pew poll revealed that support in Pakistan for Al Qaeda and the Taliban had dropped precipitously since 2002.  At the same time approval ratings for the U.S. had reached a new low.

A Strange Choice

Now, if you were designing a public diplomacy program in Pakistan, a country whose cooperation may determine the outcome of the American struggle in Afghanistan, where would your emphasis be? Would you insert yourself gratuitously into Muslim politics in order to smear a bunch of backward-looking violent Islamists who have discredited themselves by their vicious intolerant rule in the Swat valley and by their tendency to kill civilians with suicide bombs throughout Pakistan? 

English speakers have a few clichés for such efforts.  Like: hauling coals to New Castle.  Or: gilding the lily.  In short, the U.S. doesn’t need to do what’s been accomplished, gruesomely, by the Taliban themselves!  The Taliban are now regarded as pariahs, bin Laden’s no longer a true prophet and advancing Islam by killing civilians has lost its noble veneer.

Why, then, is a supposedly brilliant diplomatic mind ready to spend scarce diplomatic capital in a manner that’s sure to make Pakistanis dislike us even more by telling them how to react to already discredited renegade fellow Muslims?  Because, I suspect, the real problem is too painful for Washington or most Americans to contemplate. 

We Americans are congenitally unable to believe that we may be genuinely disliked.  It’s true of us as individuals and very much true of us as a nation.  How can anyone possibly doubt the purity of our motives, the intensity of our good will, the rightness of our collective conviction that America is the best country ever to arise in the history of the world, the sincerity of our generous faith that every other country can, with a little effort at transformation, be exactly like us?  

Minorities, Part 2: Home Sweet Home, If You're Han

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

There was Han-Uighur violence in Urumqi and other Xinjiang cities this past week.  It followed an incident involving Uighur migrant laborers and Han in Guangdong. Chinese officials in Beijing, even so, are insisting there’s nothing wrong with the government’s policies toward ethnic minorities.  The policies are perfectly “effective,” they say, which seems like a brilliantly ambiguous choice of words. Effective for what?  

The Chinese government is never to blame for violence in Tibet, either.  In short, the current rulers of the Chinese empire are never wrong. They are strong. And the ethnics, however numerous, are weak, which means that, even in the absence of "criminal violence," unhappy agitating protesting minorities are always wrong. 

Meanwhile, I’ve just seen a wonderful exhibit of traditional costumes—ceremonial or holiday clothing actually—worn by the men, women and children of ethnic minorities in the southwestern part of China, in this case, Yunan, Guizhuo, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hunan, Sichuan and Hainan Island.    The exhibit (including this Miao headdress and this Yi women's ensemble) came into being thanks to cooperation between the University of Hawai’i and the the Evergrand Art Museum of Taoyuan, Taiwan.  Taiwan, note.  Not the People’s Republic of China, where the heirs of those who once wore these outfits actually live.  Meanwhile, this exquisite collection is currently being exhibited at the International Museum of Folk Art in Santa Fe, where an excellent exhibit centered on wayang kulit, the shadow puppets of Indonesia, is also under way.  The IMOFA is one of the treasures of the museum world, another good reason to live in Santa Fe.

Back to the textile display.  The people who celebrated by wearing these beautifully executed costumes could hardly be called barbarians in need of absorbing and civilizing. But that’s what’s happened over time.  So says the curatorial note posted on the wall at the entrance to the exhibit.  The text, however, approaches the issue of political demographics in China via a language of masterful understatement:  “Although each group attempts to maintain their unique culture, assimilation and acculturation with the Han majority did occur....” 

A & A certainly did occur! An interesting study shows that small minority groups in China are very likely to intermarry with the Han majority, thus hastening their own dilution and disappearance.  Members of the more numerous groups tend to be largely endogamous, however.  Hence, the more tenacious clinging to culture among the Tibetans and the Uighurs, who claim they have not always belonged to  China and do not do so voluntarily now.  The triumph of the Red Army over the Nationalists, which created the “People’s” Republic of China, did not bring liberation to minorities:  “Attention to minority rights took place within the larger framework of strong central control. Minority nationalities, many with strong historical and recent separatist or anti-Han tendencies, were given no rights of self-determination.”   Perhaps mainland China does not dare to publicize the glories of its relatively powerless smaller ethnic groups,  like the Miao, like the Yi, lest they encourage members of the larger, better known minorities to insist ever more stubbornly on their own distinctiveness.

Here is how the assimilation process is supposed to work:

Approximately 93 percent [give or take a point or two] of China's population is considered Han. Sharp regional and cultural differences, including major variations in spoken Chinese, exist among the Han, who are a mingling of many peoples. All the Han nonetheless use a common written form of Chinese and share the social organization, values, and cultural characteristics universally recognized as Chinese.

Mandarin is taught in all Chinese schools as the national language. It’s said that over 70% of the population speak Mandarin as their first language.  There are six other major Chinese dialects including "Cantonese, Chu-Chow, Shanghainese, Fukenese, Taiwanese, and Hainese."    One complaint in Xinjiang is that “the government has severely curtailed the use of the Uighur language in classrooms.”   This is no accident.  When language dies, culture languishes.  When populations languish, as frequently with minorities, languages don’t usually survive.

India and China: Many Minorities, Two Paths

PART ONE

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Both China and India have faced challenges from restive minorities with real grievances.  Their default solutions have been vastly different. 

From the moment India emerged from the blood-soaked partition that created Pakistan, doomsyers have been predicting that the country would fall apart. The wonderful word for the threat was “fissiperous tendencies.”  Right after independence India had 14 constituent states and a federal constitution with some impressive central powers.  Today, thanks largely to successful minority agitation, India has 28 states.  Although there are still some tiny minorities, especially in the Eastern border areas, with “freedom fighters” who mask extortion operations in demands for statehood with a capital S,  I haven’t heard the F-word in a long time. The Maoist insurgency with its heart in the mountainous areas that parallel the Bay of Bengal is, however, a serious concern.  New state-creation is not going to solve this one.  Kashmir is sui generis.

China’s word for the fear of falling apart is “splitism,” evidently, which I must take on faith, since I don’t read or speak Chinese.  For the longest time the focus of Chinese separatist worries has been on Tibet.  Now we learn that Muslim Turkic Uigher ethnics in the vast northwestern Xinjiang area are equally unhappy.  What's more, ethnic minorities most of us have never heard of are causing law and order problems for authorities  in other parts of the country.   So China isn't quite the tidy entity it would like to be and be seen as.  China’s solution to ethnic aspirations tends to combine isolation with repression along with a policy of flooding a discordant area with Han Chinese, the goal being cultural homogeneity.  One country.  One ethnicity—except when folk dancers are needed for some festival.  The problem is that most minorities don’t seem to be grateful for the opportunity to become 100% Han-like, especially since it isn't exactly voluntary.