On the day when Taslima Nasreen was attacked by the MLAs and activists of  Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), I was in Hyderabad. A friend of mine called to enquire whether I was in that meeting and was attacked too. Many mistook Innayya, who organised that book release and got hit by MIM members, for me. Till then I did not know that Taslima was in the city and was attacked.
If I were to be in that meeting and were to have been attacked by Muslim fundamentalists my Hindutva enemies would have celebrated such an event. Even if I were there I was sure the MIM forces would have attacked me too as they never read books so closely and would not have cared about my consistent fight against Hindutva philosophy. They would see every one who supports Taslima as their enemy as she was critiquing some of the practices of Islam. The Muslim civil society did not produce intellectuals who could negotiate between religious fundamentalism and religious rationalism from within Islam. Their political formations have no intellectual inputs that are needed for any party operating within the realm of democracy. There is a total tunnelled mindset among them, which is not allowing them to negotiate with reason while keeping their spiritual belief intact.
The whole tunnelled mindset of a section of the Muslims must be examined not only in the context of the attack on Taslima but in a much larger context of attacks on Salman Rushdie and the British socio-political system for giving him Knighthood a few months back. Why do Muslims as a people and even as nations get so angry and upset if somebody from among them criticises Islamic tenets and life and practices of Mohammed? Of the three prophet based religions—Buddhism, Christianity and Islam—Islam was the youngest religion.
Till the mid 20th century it was the fastest grown religion. That growth mostly took place in the Indian sub-continent, creating three Muslim nations within the Indian sub-continent – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Its growth was mainly because of the Indian irrational caste system. But that growth seems to have halted giving enormous scope to Christianity because on many fronts even the Indian Islam remains so anti-modern now the lower caste do not think of embracing that religion. Their choice is modernist Christianity. Why?
Islam as an institutionalised religion has not yet developed a multidimensional theological discourse where their concept of god and prophet can withstand all kinds of oppositions to that concept. No writer’s writings can shake the foundations of a religion if it has established structures that can negotiate with modern plural ideologies based on the principle of “spiritual equality” of all the members of that religion. Buddhism and Christianity have developed such internal structures. Of course Hinduism did not develop the basic qualities of a universally validated religion at all. Hence it is unable to abolish caste inequity within itself.
That is the reason why it yielded space to Islam losing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh within a short span of three to four hundred years. Now Islam seems to have reached its own internal crisis. Once a religion reaches a stage it cannot think of absorbing criticism it begins to stagnate.
No religion can be protected, expanded by the blind faith based on worshippers. Its protection and expansion is based on its internal critiques, who mediate between faith and reason and in turn that mediates between discipline and freedom. It is here that the notion of human right engenders even within religion. The forces in Islam think that they can protect their religion with mere discipline. That was what exactly Hinduism did by injecting caste into it. That very same caste is now becoming the source of its death.
One of the modern plural ideologies is related to the question of human rights of individuals in relation to every institutional structure that got established. Religion is one of the most settled institutions that all human beings are interacting with. Islam as of now has not developed an internal discourse of human rights. Because it has not developed a theology of its own, though it is based on a foundation of a very morally authentic prophet’s life and a book that he himself put in place.
If Salman Rushdie tried to critique Quran and Mohammed’s life and practice Taslima has critiqued its practice in Lajja in the context of Bangladesh and in her other writings she has been critiquing the position of women in Islamic civil society. Any serious reformer of any religion will have to critique the fundamentalist practices of that religion. Otherwise that religion will die.
If the late medieval Christianity was to behave like the present Islam it would have simply killed Martin Luther, who initiated an Islamic principle of the priest getting married and living a human life into Christianity. I am not trying to give the same import to writers like Salman Rushdie and Taslima. With that internal rebellion Christianity got strengthened but not weakened.
If Islam does not evolve its strong internal mechanisms of absorbing criticism the present practioners of Islam pose a threat to Mohammed and Quran than what they think that their literary critiques would do. The problem of Islam is not just MIM or a group of fundamentalists here and there. Its problem is its intellectual failure to negotiate between faith, reason and the scientific criticism.