Lahore massacre of Ahmadis: foretaste of theocracy
Posted on Friday 28 May, 2010
Filed Under International
IT IS particularly cowardly to enter a place of worship and gun down dozens of people peacefully practising their religion. But that is exactly what happened in two mosques in Lahore today, and such an unimaginably wicked crime underlines the toxicity that religious sectarianism alone can generate.
For the avoidance of doubt, this was not some distorted form of class struggle, refracted through a Muslim ideological prism. Nor was it a cynical Washington ploy to divide the ummah for the benefit of Tel Aviv.
There is no meaningful sense in which blame for the massacre can be laid at the door of the Pakistani bourgeoisie, which if anything would prefer internal stability as the most propitious framework for its increasingly precarious rule. Wage labour, after all, comes undifferentiated by sect.
The principle reason that at least 42 people have been slaughtered is that they adhered to a brand of Islam which adherents of another brand of Islam object to as heretical. They were, to paraphrase a standard British euphemism, the wrong type of Muslims. If I believed in Hell, my sincere hope would be that those responsible would rot there.
It was the misfortune of those that perished at prayer to subscribe to Ahmadiyya. The perpetrators were Sunni, and almost certainly Taliban operatives. That alone immediately points to the involvement of the Pakistani state, particularly the hardline Islamist faction dominant in the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.
The only tenable attitude for the left is one of abhorrance towards reactionary proto-theocratic factions of all stripes. We have just been accorded a small-scale preview of what will happen if such currents are ever allowed to prevail.
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“The only tenable attitude for the left is one of abhorrance towards reactionary proto-theocratic factions of all stripes. We have just been accorded a small-scale preview of what will happen if such currents are ever allowed to prevail.”
Well who could argue with that?
I think other than being overly simplistic this article connects massacres and Islam (aka theocracy) in a way that you would think they were the only ones going around killing people and that they were all doing it.
A more sober, honest and comprehensive evaluation would conclude that mass murder is not the preserve of religious extremists.
There is no meaningful sense in which blame for the massacre can be laid at the door of the Pakistani bourgeoisie, which if anything would prefer internal stability as the most propitious framework for it increasingly precarious rule.
If we only look at this superficially, yes. But if we consider how capitalism povides the incentive for divide-and-rule policies, and how the absence of class politics can make it seem rational for sectarian groups to pursue advantage at the expense of others, a more complex picture emerges.
Dean. Mass murder of people because they hold particular beliefs is the preserve of religious extremists.Get a grip.
Dave: “The only tenable attitude for the left is one of abhorrance towards reactionary proto-theocratic factions of all stripes. We have just been accorded a small-scale preview of what will happen if such currents are ever allowed to prevail.”
Dean: Well who could argue with that?
The SWP? I got told by a distract organiser I was being “insulting and offensive” after I called Hamas a “bunch of idiots” for targetting Palestinian workers and trade unionists for murder and torture. He went apeshit at the merest hint of criticism of that particular proto-theocratic faction of reactionaries.
The one thing Bush and Blair got right was confronting Islamic nutters. It was long overdue and was going to happen at some time. Bush and Blair are the modern Churchill. Well done to them.
James Glasgow:
“The one thing Bush and Blair got right was confronting Islamic nutters.”
When did they do that, then James? And their successes are…?
You’re just a wind-up merchant, aren’t you, James?
You only just realised that, Lobby Ludd? I’d just like to remark that pogroms fell out of fashion in Western Europe around the arrival of modernity in the 14th entury. They lingered on in Eastern Europea bit longer, until the 20th. I don’t think you could describe the Nazi deliberate murder of the Jews as a pogrom, it was not essentially religious, and neither were Jews the only people targetted. The resurgence of Islamism, funded by Saudi oil money, means some of the more dogmatic interpretations of Islam are gaining credence. I dare say that ordinary Muslims don’t particularly care for the strict interpretations, but from what I can see, the political mechanisms don’t exist intheir societies for them to diagree or organise against the terror groups. The plan is to rid the Middle East of all non-Muslim groups. I have just watched a programme on Channel 4 about the travails of Christians, Yazardis. As well as the in-fighting between Sunni and Shia, both types of Muslim combine to attack the other religions, many of which pre-date Islam by several hundred years of even thousands. Six Christians were gunned down comming out of Church on their Christmas Eve (Jan 5th) this year in Egypt, adn there are individuals cnstantly being murdered and churches being burnt down. Let’s not forget the failed attempt of te Unidibomber was scheduled for Christmas Eve, to show Muslim contempt for the West, for ‘Crusaders’ as they call us. So, no Dean, I don’t think all religions are equal on this question.
Dear Lobby and Sue. Nothing wrong with a wind up. It relieves the mind for a bit of time, gets some people angry. Bush and Blair were right to confront the nutters although both of them are a wee bit suspect when it comes to religion. So give me your expert strategy in dealing with the Islamic headbangers.
Just want to say that I’ve been reading the comments on the CNN website (I like to know what non-political Americans think)and there are quite a few Muslims posting there with the old chestnut that Christianity has just as bloody a history. Yeah, but, in general it go over it and sorted it. I mean, modernity, industrialization, nationstates, the Enlghtenment, the Renaissance and all the rest of it culminating in socialist ideology (as yet unrealised in the world) would never have happened if we hadn’t. I don’t suppos I’m telling anyone anything that they don’t know already when I say that as long as Islam persists in these slavish habits of thought there societies will remain mired in unpleasantness.
SueR. Unpleasantness is is a mild word to describe people being slaughtered in the name of Islamic man made nonsense.
If there’s one thing more difficult than being a non orthodox Muslim in Pakistan it might be being a socialist.
Socialist Resistance’s public meeting on Tuesday has Farooq Tariq of the Labour Party Pakistan and Lindsey German of the Stop the War Coalition.
It starts at 7.30pm in ULU, Malet street, WC1
Sue R. was probably thinking of the Dorothy L. Sayers novel ‘The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club’
I got into conversation with a Pakistani colleague in the place where I work and the talk turned to Oman, where we’d both worked in the past.
After mentioning the palace revolution in which the present Sutan of Oman overthrew his father in a bloodless coup quietly pre-approved by the British Foreign Office, we spoke of how the late Sultan Said bin Taimur ended his days in the Dorchester Hotel in London and ended up buried in Brookwood Cemetery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookwood_Cemetery
So then I was unwise enough to observe that Brookwood Cemetery has an Ahmadi section, whereupon my colleague frowned and observed coldly:
“They are not really Muslims, you know.”
This man is a teacher of mathematics and physics and by no means an ignorant idiot.
Yet Ismailis like the Aga Khan – and the greatly-esteemed Mrs Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – are tolerated without any difficulties so far as I’m aware.
The Aga Khan’s gang own the Serena Hotel in Kabul, which was attacked by the armed forces of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan not so long ago so word about ecumenical love and harmony has not reached everyone yet.
another crisp entry, dave
I left the Reformation off my list of the goodies of Western civilization, but I think it rates a mention. The Reformation started as a revolt against the material power of the Church, that is it’s incredible wealth while most people starved and nobles were not as wealthy as they would have liked to be, but the reforming zeal then spread into matters more spiritual and temporal. The Eastern saide of Christianity ie the Orthodox, did not go through a Reformation until very recently, Communisim must have played a part in that. However, I was thinking that one of the problems of Islam is that it does not have a central authority and therefore there is no clear temporal authority to rebel against; it just appears to be a collection of small sects, based on local conditions. This must make it very hard for it to change. No doubt its organisation reflects its formation ie accreditions of societies as they were conquered. Therefore, criticising a particular form of Islam or Islamic society makes it hard to generalize that criticism and to propose alternatives. They can always say, ‘But real, true Islam is x’ and point to some where in the world where this may be practiced or they can say, ‘everyone makes choices blah, blah’. You know the excuses.
abhorrance towards reactionary proto-theocratic factions of all stripes
Or you could just say that imposing your views through indiscriminate violence is wrong, whatever those views are. As a Conservative Muslim argues here, there’s a fundamental difference between the desire to overthrow governments by force and impose a particular vision of society and the desire from an Islamic perspective to peacefully remake Muslim communities from within by encouraging Muslims to be more devout and by encouraging non-Muslims to learn about Islam. Personally I’m against them both, but I only abhor the first one – the second one is a legitimate form of politics.
On Channel Four last night just after the News it was about how Islamists are ‘cleansing’ Iraq of Christians and Yazids.
Seems like the urge to exterminate non-Muslims is pretty widespread amongst, er, Muslims….
In Pakistan Muslim scholars are openly allowed to preach hatred in mosques and in madrassas; now they even preach hatred on mainstream tv channels e.g. Geo. What else can one expect from brainwashed pakistans’s?
Or you could just say that imposing your views through indiscriminate violence is wrong, whatever those views are.
I’m not surprised at this and other sectarian massacres in Pakistan. Pakistan was a basket-case from the start: two slithers of a much bigger country sliced off to form statelets whose entire rationale for existence was religion, and one religion at that. It’s not surprising that it fell in two 40 years back.
Pakistan has wobbled like a drunk navigating by lamp-posts from corrupt civil governments to corrupt military ones. Feudal landowners still exercise great power, corruption is endemic. It is chronically economically backward, with great poverty amongst the masses. And, of course, in a religiously-defined state, all too many people try to mobilise for power by pushing the religious line, and in such an auction the more devout one is, the better one’s jockeying position. It’s not surprising that sections of Pakistan’s intelligence service lined up with real frummers like the Taliban, competing with the (nominally) secular army for influence and power within the state machine.
And of course, this basket case of a country has nuclear weapons…
I don’t think that either Pakistan or Bangla Desh have any real future other than through a democratic reunification with India. That’s what the left in all three countries should call for. But do they?
This story is reported on the same page of today’s Guardian as the Ahmedi massacre story. Should we blame secularism rather than the particular secularists, let alone consider looking at the material causes of the ideology rather than seeing ideology as the prime cause?
Skidmarx: No.
What’s the difference between Facebook and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (The
terrorist group suspected of carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attacks)?
Facebook is banned in Pakistan.
Liam. Do not give us this crap about socialism and non orthodox muslims. Enjoy the meeting with your fellow travellers.
“This story is reported on the same page of today’s Guardian as the Ahmedi massacre story. Should we blame secularism rather than the particular secularists, let alone consider looking at the material causes of the ideology rather than seeing ideology as the prime cause?”
No because they’re not doing it because they are secularists.
When the religious kill (and declare it to be inspired by religion) they are being true to their word. Unless of course you wish to say that the religious, let alone the fanatically religious, don’t actually believe any of it deep down: are you really saying that?
I’m sure Liam is right about the difficulties of being a scialist ie a godless atheist in Pakistan or any of the resurgently Islamic countries. But cuddling up to those people who support your oppressors isn’t going to help them. Which war is Lyndsey German trying to stop by the way?
SueR. You know Bush and Blair were right to take on the nutters. You cannot bring yourself to admit it. This fight is not about capitalism or socialism. It is about the human race not going backwards to the dark ages of Islam. Socialism is hated by Islam.
Forget Pakistan for a moment. Why in Britain has the left failed to recruit young intelligent Muslims instead of watching them drift towards the more extreme religious teachers?
Les Abbey: the left has been straining to recruit young intelligent Muslims, has been bending over backwards to do so, but I hate to say it, that’s not where young intelligent Muslims are at. Could you define what you mean by Left as it is a very broad specturm. If you mean, self-seeking Parliamentariasm or hard left revolutionary socialism? Bit of a difference. I mean, there is a tradition of left-wing activity in Muslim countries but it always peters out or is corrupted due to lack of economic development and social stagnation.
For the avoidance of doubt, this was not some distorted form of class struggle, refracted `through a Muslim ideological prism.’
Aren’t you just generating your own kind of sectarian pogromistic outlook(similar to that which drove this massacre) with such an anti-materialist approach? Class analysis please or be prepared to be condemned for mischief making a la sectarians.
Sue R that’s not where young intelligent Muslims are at.
If it’s not because that’s where they are at, it’s because they are being recruited better by the religious extremists. I really don’t care if it’s the Labour Party the SWP or whoever that’s doing it, but it can be done. The problem is where you do your recruiting. You have to be there in the community not just hanging around the universities.
My own ideas would be too dated now, but back in the sixties the SLL and YS for all their faults were recruiting off the council estates and from the inner cities. They organised things like weekly discos. They took on gangs or even recruited them. The fact that it was all wasted is another story.
James Bloodworth – you say:
No because they’re not doing it because they are secularists.
When the religious kill (and declare it to be inspired by religion) they are being true to their word. Unless of course you wish to say that the religious, let alone the fanatically religious, don’t actually believe any of it deep down: are you really saying that?
On the first point, why should we not assume that when secularists kill (and declare it to be inspired by their secular ideology) they are not being true to their word?
On the second, no I’m not saying that. I’m saying that to look at any ideology, even a religiously based ideology, as a prime cause is to let off the hook those who control the power and wealth in society, which in the absence of class-based solutioins the revulsion against which gives rise to communal and sectarian outbursts, as it is seen that the promotion of traditional religio-ideological ties within communities and the weakening of the Other is a way of taking power back. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but that condemnation without understanding is to fall for the double standard of Orientalism.
“On the first point, why should we not assume that when secularists kill (and declare it to be inspired by their secular ideology) they are not being true to their word?”
Which secularists have declared that their killing has been done in the name of atheism? They may be atheists and secularists, but they are not following some set-in stone secular edict that defines their treatment of believers – as the religious often are towards people of other faiths or no faith. Hitler and Stalin are alleged to have been atheists; they also both had moustaches.
“I’m saying that to look at any ideology, even a religiously based ideology, as a prime cause is to let off the hook those who control the power and wealth in society, which in the absence of class-based solutioins the revulsion against which gives rise to communal and sectarian outbursts, as it is seen that the promotion of traditional religio-ideological ties within communities and the weakening of the Other is a way of taking power back. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but that condemnation without understanding is to fall for the double standard of Orientalism”
It is not “orientalist” to suspect that those killing in the name of religion are doing so because they actually believe their religion’s admonitions to do so. I’m listening to what they themselves are saying, – and to what the texts tell believers to do, which they actually, however surprisingly to non-believers, do believe to be the unalterable word of God – rather than making assumptions based on little more than speculation and an analysis that ignores that totalitarian ideology actually does matter in and of itself. To do otherwise is to completely ignore the many more trivial brutalities carried out daily through the following of religious texts – would you sit there and tell me that religion’s universal hatred of homosexuality is in reality merely a reflection of power and class interests? Why? It’s right there in the text to hate homosexuals.
Is Mars in the cusp of Saturn or something?
The ghastliness of the Lahore massacre of Ahmedis and now the total ineptitude of the Israelis in boarding a Turkish vessel and inflicting fatal casualties.
As a Haaretz-type pro-Israeli, I am utterly appalled.
I am so furious I can barely hit the keys in the right order …
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/gaza-flotilla-drives-israel-into-a-sea-of-stupidity-1.292959
… all this never-hear-the-bloody-end-of-it mess could have been avoided by using a few seagoing tugs and heavy-duty cables. Ask and mariner.
Easy enough.
What effing eejits in Israel authorised THIS utter idiocy?
“Ask any mariner” was what I meant to type.
Oh I can’t wait for Dave’s article in response to the mass terror by Israel.
How cowardly it is to enter an aid ship with fully armed commandos and start killing people.
How the only tenable attitude for the left is one of abhorrance towards reactionary colonial secular settler states backed by a racist ideology. We have just been accorded a small-scale preview of what will happen if such currents are ever allowed to prevail.
“Seems like the urge to exterminate non-Muslims is pretty widespread amongst, er, Muslims”
Maybe when the pro Zionists start apologising for this we will get Andrew Coates saying ultra racist things like the urge to exterminate all non Jews is pretty widespread amongst, er, Jews.
Cue SueR telling us how Jews are barbaric and if only they could behave like good Christians who have got over their barbarity. (as if the world wars didn’t happen, as if colonial crimes didn’t take place).
Cue James Bloodworth to put the violence in the Middle East all down to Islam and not economic factors, cue him to ignore the whole history of ‘nationalist’ violence by the ‘secular’ west.
Cue Les Abbey asking why young Jews have drifted towards extreme Zionism and haven’t been recruited by the British.
I.E. Let much of the racist filth above, which the tone of Osler’s article encouraged as I intimated right at the beginning of this thread, spew forth again.
You got me bang to rights, Dean. Everything that goes wrong in the world is the white mans fault. Time we laid down the white mans’ burden, don’t you know.
HAHAHAHAHA DEAN.
Dean. What mass terror are you referring to. Surely a small confrontation between the IDF and some islamic nutters resulting in the death of a few nutters does not amount to mass terror. Those people want to die martyrs. The IDF are doing them a favour.