It’s open season now, innit? From the recent protests.
Previously on Yes! I, II, III, IV, V,VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI
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I have a piece up in Express Tribune, ‘If you have understanding, then why this hubhub?’, Sep 9th, 2010, in reference to, Punjab govt goes after Hindu mythology cartoons
The politicians are afraid, I assume, that watching the Amar Chitra Katha cartoons – which depict stories from the Mahabharata or Ramayana or Jataka or Panchatantra – will turn impressionable Punjabi Muslim children into Hindus. I would reassure the politicians – the Panchatantra tales were translated into Arabic and distributed in the late seventh century as Kalila wa Dimna, for the edification of courtly children, and failed to make the Umayyad or the ‘Abbasid or the Buyid sultans Hindu. Subsequent translations and re-imaginings of Ramayana, of Yogavashistha in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth century Mughal courts were also done without the fear that exposing innocent Muslim children to these narratives will make them “Hindu” – leaving aside the glaring logical fallacy that mere knowledge about the stories and rituals associated with a faith makes one a convert. That this statement is being made on Punjabi soil, however, is one of those ironies that make you cry.
Punjab, after all, is the land of Shah Hussain, Bulleh Shah and Waris Shah – mystics whose poetry, lives, ethos were drenched in divine, both lil-lah and Krishna. Their kafi and their qissa drew equally on Perso-Islamic and Sanskritic mythologies, stories, folk-tales to illuminate daily lives, teach love, moderation and acceptance. The love of Shah Hussain and Madho Lal is itself legend. Their words and verses are, undoubtedly, the very definition of “Punjabi”, and there they stand, historically “tainted” in the views of Punjab politicians with “Hindu” signs, symbols, stories and themes, corrupting Punjabi children for nearly 400 years.
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Robert of Ketton’s Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete(The Religion of Mahumet, the Pseudo Prophet) was the one of the earliest Latin translation of the Qur’an, done under the aegis of Peter the Venerable (d. 1156). It became the standard text, getting circulated and printed through the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Islam was long considered a Christian heresy but Ketton’s translation (the first complete one) cemented the fullest pictures of this “death-dealing” religion for all Christendom.
The flowering of the panic about Islam in Europe, however, arrived after Vienna was besieged by the Ottomans in 1529. The Turks, made known in widely circulated genre pamphlets called Türkenbüchlein were known to be kidnappers, rapists, murderers and determined to forcefully convert Christians to Islam. Though the Türkenbüchlein were in circulation long before the siege of Vienna, they reached their bestseller-hood only in 1529 when Martin Luther wrote two, Vom Kriege wider die Türken and Eine Heer predigt wider den Türken. In them the Turks, and Islam, were God’s punishment from without (as the Pope was the devil within) who were heralding the end of days. The Latin translations of the Koran played a central role in this genre of books, feeding tiny bits of de-contextualized, glossed verses to build the case against Islam (It was a religion of blood-thirsty invaders intent on taking over the known world). Ketton’s (and Mark of Toledo’s) translations of the Koran made brisk printing business throughout the 1530s and 40s – even though they skirted the law against publishing heretical materials. One such case, for printing banned material, was made against the printer Oporinus in 1541, and to whose defense Martin Luther wrote a letter:
It has struck me that one is able to do nothing more grievous to Mohammad or the Turks, nor more to bring them to harm (more than with all weaponry) that to bring their Koran to Christians in the light of day, that they may see therein, how entirely cursed, abominable, and desperate a book it is, full of lies, fables and all abominations that the Turks conceal and gloss over. They are reluctant to see the Koran translated into other languages, for they probably feel that it would bring about apostasy in all sensible hearts.1
Luther goes on to argue that despite the authorities concern about spreading heresy, the Christian cannot “take steps against its secret poison, preached on corners, and warn and protect the church”.
I know that in popular parlance it is the Muslim societies which are “stuck” in Medieval Times ® (see The Daily Show‘s hilarious segment on Iran from a day or so ago) but can you tell me what exactly is the difference between Martin Luther’s take on Islam versus what is coming out of Sarah Palin or Florida Pastor Dude’s mouth? I hate it when a “few bad apples” spoil modernity for the rest of us.
———- Harry Clark, “The Publication of the Koran in Latin a Reformation Dilemma”, The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 3-12 [↩]
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I have a new column at Bookslut. The title of my column comes to you courtesy of Sepoy. Here’s the link. The column is meant to introduce readers to South Asian literature beyond the Barnes and Noble display tables. The first installment is a review of India: A Traveler’s Literary Companion, edited by Chandrahas Choudhury. Suggestions for titles to review from you, gentle readers, are always welcome.
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I have a new piece, The cultural damage of the ‘war on terror’ up at the The Review, National UAE, September 2. 2010.
It was a difficult piece for me, mainly because I have perhaps too much to say on this, and I began to ramble and it was only the finest critical editing that the littoral Indian Ocean world has ever seen – by Jonathan Shainin – that it is this coherent. It all started with the thought of reviewing Amitava Kumar’s brilliant book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, and then, following his example, looking at the arts.
I find it intriguing that the most potent responses (for me) to the figure of the Terrorist, that I can point to are all from female artists – Lorraine Adams, Daisy Rockwell, Rajkamal Kahlon. Adam’s book, Harbor, was one of the only ones to actually grant some interiority and some ordinariness to its protagonists – who skirted at the edges of being and becoming terrorists. I highly recommend the book, especially for the ways in which it imagines the domestic lives of the newly immigrant in USA. I speak from experience. Kahlon’s work shifts the viewer’s relationship to the pre-understood, pre-categorized text – the autopsy reports in her Did You Kiss The Dead Body? or the colonial history in her Cassell’s. It is this capacity, to force a re-articulation of the already assumed, which stands in stark relief to most other American responses to 9/11. Sadly, I couldn’t include more discussion of all of these artists but that is why there is CM. Expect more on those fronts, here.
In any case, have a read, and come back to tell me what you think.
PS. Qalandar has some astute observations – seemingly, as much to my piece as to Daisy Rockwell’s essay which covers this same terrain.
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