Religion, society and politics
Monday, 20 October 2008
Maswood Alam Khan from Cockeysville, Maryland
The very utterance "Ban Islam as state religion" by C R Dutta only a few weeks before the national election must have already been used by protagonists of Islamic movement as a lucrative fodder to curry votes from nonpartisan devout Muslims, who constitute the vast majority of Bangladeshi voters, in favour of those candidates whose political and religious philosophy and ideology are opposed to C R Dutta's.
Many of us in line with scholars in political science firmly believe that 'religion should be a personal matter and a modern state should be fully secular'. But, the big mistake the secularists of our country commit is that they shout their belief in public only to help the believers to the contrary. The more you talk against a religion or a system based on a particular religion the more distance you are making between yourself and those who don't subscribe to your view, no matter your view is scientifically logical or not.
We should not forget that not all tenets of a modern democracy are replicable in Bangladesh. In America, nowhere I heard 'Azan' blurting from a minaret of a mosque.
Citing this example being followed in the USA should C R Dutta suggest the mosques in Bangladesh to refrain from heralding 'Azan' through loudspeakers perched atop the minarets on the ground that 'praying in a mosque is something personal for only Muslims to follow and should not cause any inconvenience in any way to others who don't have faith in Islam'? Should Americans suggest to their government that the phrase "In God We Trust" must not be printed on the US Dollar bills on the ground that 'believing in God or not is something personal and there are atheists too in America who don't believe in God'?
We have sacrificed to establish Bangla as our state language and our sacrifice for our mother tongue has helped people of the world open their eyes to and feel proud of their respective mother tongues. Our 'Language Martyr's Day', 21 February, is now the international day of mother language.
Bangla has been the only medium of communication in both academic and official domains in Bangladesh. By putting all the weight on Bangla as the only medium, some believe, we have ignored the importance of foreign languages, especially English and as a result our boys and girls are finding it more and more difficult to compete in getting admission in a reputed university or getting jobs in a reputed company both inside and outside of Bangladesh.
Now to correct the course if someone now proposes that 'all higher education and all official correspondences inside Bangladesh must be prosecuted only in English henceforth' a tumultuous hue and cry may be raised among the public.
The best way to bridge the gap caused by negligence of English, therefore, should be to immediately incorporate English in the curricula of primary and secondary schools, and especially in madrasas, as a compulsory -- not optional -- subject.
Similarly, many of us believe that it was an irreparable mistake a former head of state committed by declaring Friday as the official weekly holiday in Bangladesh to earn his political mileage at the cost of our international trade. But now any government which will revert the weekly holiday from Friday to Sunday is likely to incur huge political fallout in a country where 90 per cent people are Muslims, who have already accepted Friday as a holy day not to be blended with any other official activities.
The best way, however, to correct the mistake is to liberalize private companies to tailor their individual office days and hours according to their need-based convenience leaving only purely government organisations to follow Friday as their weekly holiday the way shops and malls are adjusting their 'open' and 'closed' hours.
We should always bear in mind that we humans love our life most and nobody is eager to die as immediately as possible. We wish we could live in this world for eternity.
But, die we must. The only gateway towards fulfilment of our wish for living in perpetuity is in our faith in afterlife. Religion is the provider of that gateway and the Providence, our creator, is the gatekeeper on our entry into our way to eternal peace and happiness.
So, religion is not simply one of those personal matters like 'whether we prefer wheat to rice'. Religion, to most of the believers in afterlife, is a matter of perpetual life in haven or in hell or life limited in breathing in and breathing out only on this planet.
There was a time when the Church was the only authority to govern a nation or a society and when religion and politics were closely intertwined. With the passage of time the governing authority was first handed to kings and queens and ultimately to the hands of the people. Now it is people who decide, through their popular votes, who should govern them.
Although dictums of Christianity, Judaism or Islam are no more allowed to interfere in day to day politics in most of the developed countries citizens are greatly influenced in their decision making by the faiths of their leaders to be elected, no matter their state policy is based on secularism, or socialism, or capitalism. In God most of the citizenry of the world trust unflinchingly! And in reaching God some have chosen the church, some the synagogue, and some the mosque.
Here in the United States of America, a modern state by any definition, religion though a personal matter plays a pivotal role in national election. More than 80 per cent of US citizens are Christians and 10 per cent don't have any preference for any religion and only 1 percent are atheists.
Americans can't think of a president who is not a Christian. In many ways, the political and social values of conservative Christians are carrying the day.
Americans are in the second term of the most faith-friendly, explicitly Christian presidency in many a decade. Hollywood is producing more Christian-friendly movies while Christian news media, Christian music, Christian novels and other forms of Christian pop culture continue making their strong marks on society.
The United States has a long tradition of separating church from state, yet religion has been woven more deeply into the fabric of American partisan politics than ever before. Throughout the American history, great political and social movements -- from abolition to women's suffrage to civil rights to today's struggles over abortion and gay marriage -- have drawn upon religious institutions for moral authority, inspirational leadership and organisational muscle. Here in America, candidates openly discuss their religious beliefs, churches are increasingly active in political mobilisation and voters, in some instances, are sorted not just by their policy preferences but also by the depth of their religious commitment.
In a country like Bangladesh, where an overwhelming majority practices Islam as their faith we should be cautious in making comments on anything related directly or indirectly to Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world. C R Dutta's demand for banning Islam as state religion may or may not be correct from the political science point of view and could be deliberated upon among members of a think-tank sitting inside a closed-door assembly hall, but not in public.
The way people are making comments on his comment, some favouring and some disfavouring, may, I am afraid, send a wrong signal to devout Muslims who are not as educated as a university professor teaching theology to dissect the bad impacts of religious bigotry or as secular as C R Dutta to whom 'Hinduism or Islam must not influence a voter to cast his/her vote'.
The best way to make Bangladesh truly a secular state like a modern democracy in the Occident or to decide whether like in America we should also stop heralding Azan through loudspeakers is to leave the issues with the people's representatives to decide inside the parliament---and after the next parliamentary election. Not now, if we don't want to hand some lucrative fodders to fundamentalists for their using against those who, according to their fabrications, are working against Islam.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and is now on a visit to the USA. He can be reached at e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com
The very utterance "Ban Islam as state religion" by C R Dutta only a few weeks before the national election must have already been used by protagonists of Islamic movement as a lucrative fodder to curry votes from nonpartisan devout Muslims, who constitute the vast majority of Bangladeshi voters, in favour of those candidates whose political and religious philosophy and ideology are opposed to C R Dutta's.
Many of us in line with scholars in political science firmly believe that 'religion should be a personal matter and a modern state should be fully secular'. But, the big mistake the secularists of our country commit is that they shout their belief in public only to help the believers to the contrary. The more you talk against a religion or a system based on a particular religion the more distance you are making between yourself and those who don't subscribe to your view, no matter your view is scientifically logical or not.
We should not forget that not all tenets of a modern democracy are replicable in Bangladesh. In America, nowhere I heard 'Azan' blurting from a minaret of a mosque.
Citing this example being followed in the USA should C R Dutta suggest the mosques in Bangladesh to refrain from heralding 'Azan' through loudspeakers perched atop the minarets on the ground that 'praying in a mosque is something personal for only Muslims to follow and should not cause any inconvenience in any way to others who don't have faith in Islam'? Should Americans suggest to their government that the phrase "In God We Trust" must not be printed on the US Dollar bills on the ground that 'believing in God or not is something personal and there are atheists too in America who don't believe in God'?
We have sacrificed to establish Bangla as our state language and our sacrifice for our mother tongue has helped people of the world open their eyes to and feel proud of their respective mother tongues. Our 'Language Martyr's Day', 21 February, is now the international day of mother language.
Bangla has been the only medium of communication in both academic and official domains in Bangladesh. By putting all the weight on Bangla as the only medium, some believe, we have ignored the importance of foreign languages, especially English and as a result our boys and girls are finding it more and more difficult to compete in getting admission in a reputed university or getting jobs in a reputed company both inside and outside of Bangladesh.
Now to correct the course if someone now proposes that 'all higher education and all official correspondences inside Bangladesh must be prosecuted only in English henceforth' a tumultuous hue and cry may be raised among the public.
The best way to bridge the gap caused by negligence of English, therefore, should be to immediately incorporate English in the curricula of primary and secondary schools, and especially in madrasas, as a compulsory -- not optional -- subject.
Similarly, many of us believe that it was an irreparable mistake a former head of state committed by declaring Friday as the official weekly holiday in Bangladesh to earn his political mileage at the cost of our international trade. But now any government which will revert the weekly holiday from Friday to Sunday is likely to incur huge political fallout in a country where 90 per cent people are Muslims, who have already accepted Friday as a holy day not to be blended with any other official activities.
The best way, however, to correct the mistake is to liberalize private companies to tailor their individual office days and hours according to their need-based convenience leaving only purely government organisations to follow Friday as their weekly holiday the way shops and malls are adjusting their 'open' and 'closed' hours.
We should always bear in mind that we humans love our life most and nobody is eager to die as immediately as possible. We wish we could live in this world for eternity.
But, die we must. The only gateway towards fulfilment of our wish for living in perpetuity is in our faith in afterlife. Religion is the provider of that gateway and the Providence, our creator, is the gatekeeper on our entry into our way to eternal peace and happiness.
So, religion is not simply one of those personal matters like 'whether we prefer wheat to rice'. Religion, to most of the believers in afterlife, is a matter of perpetual life in haven or in hell or life limited in breathing in and breathing out only on this planet.
There was a time when the Church was the only authority to govern a nation or a society and when religion and politics were closely intertwined. With the passage of time the governing authority was first handed to kings and queens and ultimately to the hands of the people. Now it is people who decide, through their popular votes, who should govern them.
Although dictums of Christianity, Judaism or Islam are no more allowed to interfere in day to day politics in most of the developed countries citizens are greatly influenced in their decision making by the faiths of their leaders to be elected, no matter their state policy is based on secularism, or socialism, or capitalism. In God most of the citizenry of the world trust unflinchingly! And in reaching God some have chosen the church, some the synagogue, and some the mosque.
Here in the United States of America, a modern state by any definition, religion though a personal matter plays a pivotal role in national election. More than 80 per cent of US citizens are Christians and 10 per cent don't have any preference for any religion and only 1 percent are atheists.
Americans can't think of a president who is not a Christian. In many ways, the political and social values of conservative Christians are carrying the day.
Americans are in the second term of the most faith-friendly, explicitly Christian presidency in many a decade. Hollywood is producing more Christian-friendly movies while Christian news media, Christian music, Christian novels and other forms of Christian pop culture continue making their strong marks on society.
The United States has a long tradition of separating church from state, yet religion has been woven more deeply into the fabric of American partisan politics than ever before. Throughout the American history, great political and social movements -- from abolition to women's suffrage to civil rights to today's struggles over abortion and gay marriage -- have drawn upon religious institutions for moral authority, inspirational leadership and organisational muscle. Here in America, candidates openly discuss their religious beliefs, churches are increasingly active in political mobilisation and voters, in some instances, are sorted not just by their policy preferences but also by the depth of their religious commitment.
In a country like Bangladesh, where an overwhelming majority practices Islam as their faith we should be cautious in making comments on anything related directly or indirectly to Islam, the fastest growing religion in the world. C R Dutta's demand for banning Islam as state religion may or may not be correct from the political science point of view and could be deliberated upon among members of a think-tank sitting inside a closed-door assembly hall, but not in public.
The way people are making comments on his comment, some favouring and some disfavouring, may, I am afraid, send a wrong signal to devout Muslims who are not as educated as a university professor teaching theology to dissect the bad impacts of religious bigotry or as secular as C R Dutta to whom 'Hinduism or Islam must not influence a voter to cast his/her vote'.
The best way to make Bangladesh truly a secular state like a modern democracy in the Occident or to decide whether like in America we should also stop heralding Azan through loudspeakers is to leave the issues with the people's representatives to decide inside the parliament---and after the next parliamentary election. Not now, if we don't want to hand some lucrative fodders to fundamentalists for their using against those who, according to their fabrications, are working against Islam.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank and is now on a visit to the USA. He can be reached at e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com