Thought Overflow

A lot of bloggers generally post links to good articles and interesting websites that they find online. I generally tend to avoid doing that, because it’s just not the reason why I blog. My blog is more about my own opinions, thoughts and general observations that I want to share. Even when I do come across an interesting article or two, I tend to post my own thoughts about the article in more detail than the article itself.

Having said that, I’m going to break tradition today by directing you to an interesting article I read today. I haven’t really been able to analyse it or give a lot of my own thought or opinion to the issue, but there are quite a few points made in the article that made sense to me.

Here’s the link: “The Trouble with Dr. Zakir Naik“ by Sadanand Dhume, Wall Street Journal (Asia Edition).

In case you do not want to read the whole thing, I am quoting below a couple of paragraphs that made me think about things:

In general, India accords extra deference to allegedly holy men of all stripes unlike, say, France, which strives to keep religion out of the public square. Taxpayers subsidize the Haj pilgrimage for pious Muslims and a similar, albeit much less expensive, journey for Hindus to a sacred lake in Tibet. This reflexive deference effectively grants the likes of Dr. Naik—along with all manner of Hindu and Christian charlatans—protection against the kind of robust scrutiny he would face in most other democracies.

Finally, unlike Hindu bigots, such as the World Hindu Council’s Praveen Togadia, whose fiercest critics tend to be fellow Hindus, radical Muslims go largely unchallenged. The vast majority of Indian Muslims remain moderate, but their leaders are often fundamentalists and the community has done a poor job of policing its own ranks. Moreover, most of India’s purportedly secular intelligentsia remains loath to criticize Islam, even in its most radical form, lest this be interpreted as sympathy for Hindu nationalism.

Unless this changes, unless Indians find the ability to criticize a radical Islamic preacher such as Dr. Naik as robustly as they would his Hindu equivalent, the idea of Indian secularism will remain deeply flawed.

Disclaimer: This post is not meant to offend anyone’s religious views. Please note that the views expressed in the article, despite being quoted verbatim on my blog, are the views of the author alone and not necessarily mine. I have only highlighted certain points that I thought deserved to be highlighted.