Sex and the Single Indian

September 7, 2012 By
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The BBC’s inability to comprehend religion is not a new story at GetReligion. Often as not the corporation appears oblivious to the faith dimension of a story. I should say the BBC’s religion reporters are a professional lot and there are a number of fine specialty programs that treat faith issues well and when it focuses on religion it does a good job. It is outside the religion ghetto that the BBC fails to “get religion.”

This item, “Virginity cream sparks Indian sex debate”, is an example of the BBC’s failure to comprehend the faith element of a story.

It begins:

An Indian company has launched what it claims is the country’s first vagina tightening cream, saying it will make women feel “like a virgin” again. The company says it is about empowering women, but critics say it is doing the opposite. The BBC’s Rajini Vaidyanathan in Mumbai reports.

It is certainly a bold claim. As the music starts playing on the advertisement for the 18 Again cream, a sari-clad woman is singing and dancing. It is an unusual take on Bollywood. “I feel like a virgin,” she croons, although the advert makes it clear she is not. Her shocked in-laws look on, before her husband joins her for some salsa-style dancing. “Feels like the very first time,” she continues, as she is twirled around. Cut away to her mother-in-law who begins by responding with a disgusted look on her face, but by the end of the advert even she has been won over, and is seen buying the product online.

This video is designed to market a vaginal “rejuvenation and tightening” product, which was launched this month in India. The makers of 18 Again, the Mumbai-based pharmaceutical company Ultratech, say it is the first of its kind in India (similar creams are already available in other parts of the world such as the USA), and fills a gap in the market.

The article starts off with a few facts about the product but then turns into a discussion of the importance of virginity for women. It states:

… the company’s advertising strategy has attracted criticism from some doctors, women’s groups and social media users, who say the product reinforces the widely held view in India that pre-marital sex is something to be frowned upon, a taboo which is even seen as sinful by some.

The clause that ends this paragraph frames the rest of the story: “which is even seen as sinful by some.”

The BBC then lines up critics of 18 Again: doctors, activists and bloggers whose objections are that the add campaign reinforces a taboo on pre-marital sex.

Objection one comes from Annie Raja of the National Federation of Indian Women who says “this kind of cream is utter nonsense, and could give some women an inferiority complex,” as it reaffirms

a patriarchal view that is held by many here – the notion that men want all women to be virgins until their wedding night. “Why should women remain a virgin until marriage? It is a woman’s right to have sexual relations with a man, but society here still says they should not until they are brides.”

Second comes the doctor with the sex-advice column in the newspapers.

“Being a virgin is still prized, and I don’t think attitudes will change in this century,” says Dr Mahinda Watsa, a gynaecologist who writes a popular sexual advice column in the Mumbai Mirror and Bangalore Mirror newspaper. … Men still hope they’re marrying a virgin, but more girls in India, at least in the towns and cities, are having sex before.”

And then we move to the internet. Man (woman) in the street comments followed by Dr Nisreen Nakhoda, “a GP who advises on sexual health for the medical website MDhil” who questions the science behind the product, and observes:

The young generation wants to be hip and cool and try out sex before marriage, but they’re still brought up in the traditional set up where it’s taboo to have sex before marriage. This leads to a lot of confusion in many teenagers. On one hand you’re supposed to be the traditional demure Indian bride, but on the other hand, you don’t want to have to wait for sex because people are marrying later. Temptations are coming their way and people are no longer resisting,” says Dr Nakhoda.

Any comment representing a voice in support of the traditional view? No, but the BBC does provides a sidebar which begins with this questionable statement:

Ancient India has always been celebrated for its openness and lack of hypocrisy, for its modernity and inclusive attitude; but in one aspect, it has remained rigid: the need for women to be virgins.

But closes with the admission that virginity is a religious issue and is:

Considered to be a spiritual obligation, Hindu wedding ceremonies even today centre round the Kanyadaan, which literally translates as the gift of a virgin.

From the start the BBC has framed this story in a faith-free atmosphere.  We see this in the line about some “even” seeing pre-marital sex as being sinful. Who might these people be? Answer: India’s Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains and Parsis to name but a few.

Were India a fiercely secular society, such an omission might be justified. But it is not — nor are the rates of pre-marital sex comparable to the West. A study by the International Institute for Population Studies estimated that 3 per cent of women had engaged in pre-marital sex.

Why? Perhaps it is because sexuality for a woman in the Vedic tradition of Hindu culture is controlled by her age and marital status. It frames virginity, chastity and celibacy as being appropriate for distinct periods of life. Virginity is expected of a woman before marriage and chastity is expected within marriage. Celibacy, as signaled by an ascetic withdrawal from the obligations of marriage and family life, takes place at the end of life with abstinence being a liberation of the self from worldly attachments. While Tantric cults exalted women in worship, their sexual mores did not extend to a modern notion of female sexual autonomy. While the ideal seldom governs the real, it must be stated that pre-marital sex simply does not work within the Hindu worldview.

From what I have read, discussions of sexuality in India often turn to a mythologized past where it is claimed “openness and a lack of hypocrisy” ruled. This is the Kama Sutra narrative, but it is not history. It is more a product of the nationalist aspirations of the rising middle classes of the Twentieth century, mixed with anti-colonialism, coupled with a dash of “Orientalism” — a belief in repressed Westerners and liberated Orientals. However the Kama Sutra narrative of Indian sexuality is largely irrelevant to an understanding of its modern manifestations and as sociologist Sanjay Srivastava of the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi writes:

is best confined to expensive coffee table books of our ‘glorious’ past that was supposedly destroyed by foreign invaders.

Does the BBC truly believe that it is not necessary to note the objections that might come from religious scruples? I do not believe I am being too harsh. Though an off color topic, the story was not treated in a light tone. It was given the full BBC treatment — 1400 words including an analysis side bar. Yet the final result was one-sided and woefully incomplete.

Bottom line — a poor outing once again for the BBC.

Filed Under: Business & Economy, Sex, Social Issues, World, World Religions

Destroyer of worlds — an Indian iconoclasm

November 8, 2011 By

Located just below the logo at the top of this page is the quote “the press …  just doesn’t get religion.” This is the mantra of GetReligion, a website dedicated to critiquing religion reporting in the secular media.  (Independent and denominational religion publications such as my own Church of England Newspaper fall outside our remit.)

The articles on this website examine religion “ghosts” in stories — when questions of faith, belief or religious identity animate an issue but are neglected in the article. Other GetReligion stories laud reporters or newspapers for providing context, insight or understanding of the faith issues at play. We also point out errors, false assumptions and omissions found in the in coverage of the familiar as well as the exotic.

Many answer the question “why” these mistakes are made by reference to the banishment of religion from education and the public square. But a lack of understanding of the faith is not solely a function of secularization. One need only turn to the India — a country steeped in religion — to see this.

Asian News International (ANI) — an Indian wire service — ran a story last week with the somewhat bald headline “Man attacks church in Mangalore.” It reported:

In a freak incident, a man broke into the St. Alphonsa Church in Mangalore and damaged an idol of Jesus Christ on Thursday. The man has been identified as Shiva, a resident of Jalligudde. It was learnt that he went into the priest’s private chambers, removed his clothes and tried to wear the holy vestments, before he was discovered by a couple of students staying at a hostel attached to the church. He damaged the main idol of Christ and the Holy Cross placed inside the church. He also broke both the arms of the idol.

The lede in DNA — an English-language daily broadsheet published in Bombay — opened with the damage also. “Drunk youngster damages church in Bangalore”  (Some problem here with the headline. Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka and 250 km northwest of Mangalore, Karnataka’s main seaport).

Church attack returned to haunt Mangalore on Thursday night when an unemployed man, in an inebriated state, vandalised St Alphonsa Church near Kankanady Market in the south Karnataka city. In the third such incident in a fortnight, Shiva Bajal, 24, damaged the grottoes of Jesus and Mary. He also damaged the furniture in the main hall of the church and tried desecrating the altar. Further damage to the church was prevented when a group of people from the parish apprehended Bajal. The inebriated man continued his rampage and also tried to assault Shibbi, a priest.

The Daijiworld television network broadcast a report on the attack showing the wrecked church. (The report starts about 40 seconds after the video begins — following the commercial). The Hindu — one of India’s oldest (1878) and largest circulation (1.5 million) English-language newspapers — also highlighted the damage:

Between 8.30 p.m. and 9 p.m., a man entered the church, attacked the statue of Jesus with a candle stand, and went to the sacristy where he inflicted more damage. The man, since identified as Shiva, broke an idol of Jesus and threw a copy of the Bible on the floor. He threw the monstrance (a golden-coloured article about a foot in height which is used for the Adoration), and a stole that is used in a number of sacraments, Assistant Parish Priest Shibbi Puthiyara said.

But unlike the other reports, it gave some context to the attack for the non-Christian reader. It interviewed one of the parishioners who witnessed the attack, and quoted her as saying:

“The monstrance is so sacred that it is held only with the stole.” … “The man damaged the statue of Jesus, the monstrance, and the stole. All three are considered sacred,” she said.

All of these reports highlight the religious issues involved and treat seriously the concerns and anger of the congregation. However, the language used in the ANI article, for example, is incorrect. While I know a few hard-shell Protestants who would argue the Roman Catholic Church’s use of statues in their churches is “idolatry”, the statue of Jesus is not an “idol” in the sense that an Indian reader would understand the word.

Nor is the priority given by the Indian reports to the damaged statue or liturgical vestments over the destroyed monstrance correct. This can best be illustrated by comparing the press statement put out by the local Catholic bishop and the newspaper reports. On 5 Nov 2011 Bishop Aloysius Paul D’Souza of Mangalore wrote:

The Catholic Church dedicated to St Alphonsa in Kankanady was attacked by a miscreant on Thursday November 3 night. The holy monstrance was desecrated and statues of Jesus were damaged.

The monstrance was “desecrated” and the statues “damaged,” the bishop reported. Why the difference? Two words: Real Presence.

For the Roman Catholic the Eucharistic elements, or gifts, are transformed at the moment of consecration into the Body and Blood of Christ — not only spiritually transformed but substantially transformed, retaining only the the appearance or accidents of bread and wine. They are the Body and Blood of Christ. The elements in the monstrance were damaged and thereby desecrated or profaned. This doctrinal detail is missing from the Indian accounts save for The Hindu.

Turning the glass the other way round, while a Western reader might bristle at the idol reference would he catch the symbolism of the name of the attacker: Shiva?  In the Hindu pantheon Shiva is the destroyer.

Some may recognize this through a quotation from the Bhagavad Gita made famous by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Upon witnessing the world’s first nuclear explosion in 1945, Oppenheimer — the director of the Manhattan Project — said the experience brought the epic Hindu poem to mind.

“Now I am become Death [Shiva], the destroyer of worlds,” Oppenheimer said citing Chapter 11 verse 32 of the Bhagavad Gita when seeing the destructive power of an atomic blast.

For an Indian audience, the irony of a man names Shiva destroying things would be obvious. For a Western audience calling a statue of Jesus an idol is thoughtless or a deliberately provocative statement — both have meanings bellow the surface.

A good reporter is one who informs his readers without being didactic and who is able to catch the nuances in a story to give it shape and context. I wish there were more of them.

 Image of the monstrance and of Shiva via Shutterstock.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, World, World Religions

Life and death (and faith) in India

May 26, 2010 By

About a year ago, during a book tour to promote “Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion,” I had a chance to take part in a forum for young journalists at a media institute in Bangalore, India. As you would expect, the topic for the day was improving mainstream media coverage of religion.

Obviously, the media scene in India is different than in the United States. For one thing, growing literacy rates are increasing the power of print-on-paper news sources, in a culture in which televisions and newspapers are available in far more settings than high-speed Internet access.

However, I was struck by one consistent response from the audience, which I would estimate was about 50 percent Hindu, 25 percent Muslim and 25 percent Christian. When asked what was the greatest obstacle to accurate, mainstream coverage of events and trends in religion, the response of one young Muslim male was blunt. When our media cover religion news, he said, more people end up dead. Other students repeated this theme during our meetings.

In other words, when journalists cover religion stories, this only makes the conflicts worse. It is better to either ignore them or to downplay them, masking the nature of the conflicts behind phrases such as “community conflicts” or saying that the events are cased by disputes about “culture” or “Indian values.”

I flashed back to that forum a time or two while reading a Washington Post news feature that ran with the headline, “5 sentenced to death in honor killing of Indian couple from same clan.” Here is the opening of the story:

KARODA, INDIA – No one in this village visits Chanderpati Banwala’s home, which stands at the end of a lane full of sleeping buffaloes and overturned wooden carts. The boycott began three years ago when her son eloped with his sweetheart, a neighbor from his clan.

But the marriage was short-lived. Village elders declared the relationship incestuous, a violation of ancient Hindu rules of marriage because the two were descendants of a common ancestor who lived thousands of years ago. As the couple tried to flee town, the young woman’s family chased them down and dragged them out of a bus on a busy highway. The groom, Manoj, was strangled, and his bride, Babli, was forced to drink pesticide. Their bodies were dumped in a canal.

“My son did the honorable thing by marrying the girl he loved. But the village council said the boy and girl belong to the same clan and are siblings. They said the couple had brought dishonor,” said Banwala, sitting on her porch kneading dough. “It has been three years, nobody invites us to marriages or funerals, and no shop sells us groceries.”

The grieving mother did a rare and dangerous thing — she took the case to court. This meant that an event that ordinarily would have been ignored or downplayed went public, with mainstream coverage. As the headline noted, five defendants were eventually sentenced to death, which the Post notes is the “first time in India that capital punishment has been ordered in an honor killing.”

This is a major story about hellish events that are far from uncommon, even in modern, rapidly urbanizing India. In this story, we are shown a clash between traditional taboos and the rising tide of modernization and, to some degree, globalization. However, many in India are fighting back to defend the “complicated system of marriage restrictions” that remain in place. The power of the “clan councils” and the caste system keeps coming up.

Does religion have anything to do with this, even with the “Hindu rules of marriage”?

Apparently not. If you are looking for information about the roles that faith and religious tradition play in this complex and highly emotional story, you’ll need to look somewhere else. The team at the Post seems to have decided that it is too dangerous or too complicated to cover the religious content of this story — in one of America’s most important newspapers.

Is this story still relevant? Later in the story we read:

Last year, officials in Haryana recorded about 100 honor killings of young people caught in the war between clan, caste, culture and cupid. Banwala’s case is the first honor-killing trial to secure a verdict, although a similar trial is underway. In that case, four people are accused of beating and hacking a young man to death with sticks, sickles and scythes last year after he married a woman from a neighboring village, a relationship villagers also regarded as incest.

In 2008, a judge in Haryana and Punjab, Kanwaljit Singh Ahluwalia, said the number of “couples hiding themselves in the corridors of court” had risen in recent years. In response, the government set up hotlines and opened shelters for the runaway couples.

Mewa Singh Mor, the president of all clan councils in Haryana, said the councils do not order killings but often ostracize and boycott the defiant couples and their families.

“It is a shame that so many girls and boys are eloping nowadays, under the influence of TV and movies. Our constitution tells our youth what their rights are but says nothing about their social duties,” he said. “These couples are like an epidemic. They are destroying our social fabric.”

Once again, we have the safe phrases that I heard the young journalists using in Bangalore — phrases such as “social fabric” and “social duties.” I asked the students if this was code language for religion. Of course, they said. In India it is almost impossible to separate religion and culture. Religion is everywhere. It is a subject that is too big and too powerful for the mainstream media to cover.

That sounded familiar.

At the very end of the story, religious language did make a brief and haunting comeback.

… (The) court has posted two security guards outside Chanderpati Banwala’s home. She has a fresh battle ahead when a higher court hears the defendants’ appeal. “I will not give up. I want to teach them a lesson, so that innocent young couples are not killed again in the name of tradition,” she said. “Now I trust only the court and God.”

It might have been appropriate to ask about this conflict between “God” and “tradition” in the life of this Indian woman. However, I understand that doing so would have been dangerous.

Photo: Manoj and Babli Banwala on their wedding day.

Filed Under: Marriage & family, People, Religion, World, World Religions

Got news? Religious freedom and India

July 3, 2009 By

indian20churches_p923123As you would imagine, I have — since my return from Bangalore and New Delhi — been especially sensitive to news reports with India datelines. At the same time, I am always interested in coverage of human rights issues, especially those linked to religious freedom and the rights of minority groups. Call me an old-fashioned liberal.

Thus, this news report caught my eye. We’ll discuss the source in a moment. For now, just read the exerpt:

India has rebuffed a U.S. government watchdog group tasked with monitoring religious liberty abroad by denying entry visas for the group’s planned visit.

A delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom intended to discuss conditions with officials in India, which has seen recent outbreaks of violence against religious minorities, especially Christians. The Indian embassy in Washington did not deliver the visas necessary for the delegation’s June 12 departure, however, and has not offered any official explanation for the decision. …

India is the only democracy to have blocked a visit by USCIRF, which had been requesting entry since 2001. More than 20 other countries, including Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia, have allowed the commission to enter.

Now, this is amazing, even stunning news. It is, of course, linked the controversial 2007 riots in the state of Orissa. Click here for some GetReligion material on that, including a New York Times report that drew protests from Hindu groups.

So why were the visas denied?

The Times of India reported June 17 that prominent Hindu leader Shankaracharya Jayendra Sarawati had demanded that USCIRF not be allowed into the country, labeling the organization an “intrusive mechanism of a foreign government which is interfering with the internal affairs of India.”

The American branch of the Hindu World Council also had bristled at the idea of a USCIRF visit to India, calling it “incomprehensible” and accusing the United States of lumping India, whose constitution guarantees freedom of religion, with countries such as Pakistan, Iran and Cuba.

Now, if you search Google news for the terms “religious,” “freedom,” “India” and “visas” you will find quite a bit of coverage of this. After all, there is all kinds of on-the-record material available about this shocking turn of events, both here in the United States and, obviously, in mainstream news in India.

But when you get your Google results, you will notice that all of the coverage is on the other side of the world, when it comes to mainstream media. And here in America, this seems to be another one of those strange cases where human-rights issues linked to religion somehow fall into that strange nowhere land called “conservative news.”

The report quoted above, after all, is of a major U.S. government agency. But the report comes from Baptist Press.

Did I miss mainstream coverage elsewhere?

Just asking.

Filed Under: Catholicism, Evangelicals, Politics, Religion, World, World Religions

Mumbai remains a haunted story

June 23, 2009 By

MumbaiSecurityPhotoA week ago, I returned from a long, fast trip that ended up in Bangalore and New Delhi, where I had the sobering opportunity to discuss religion writing in the context of modern India with several audiences of journalists, old and young, and a collection of academics and politicos.

I say the experience was sobering for a simple reason. I learned that it is much, much harder to “get religion” in one of the world’s most complex religious cultures, in a “secular” nation that is also built atop fault religious fault lines that crack and shift on a regular basis.

To cut to the chase: Many journalists in India believe that it is impossible to openly discuss religious issues in the mainstream press there — especially covering what is consistently called “communal violence” — because doing so will only create more violence. You get the story wrong and people could die. You get certain stories right and even more people could die. It’s hard for American journalists to understand when professionals make a case for incomplete and inaccurate journalism on religious issues, but I could hear their point — loud and clear.

As part of my lectures there, I kept digging into U.S. coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and the difficulty that American journalists had admitting that the Islamists clearly set out to kill Jews, Americans, Brits and Hindus, roughly in that order. Click here for a flashback on that subject.

What I heard from many Indian journalists was fascinating. The Mumbai case was so drenched in religion that even the Indian press had to admit it and cover that angle. In particular, it was crucial for journalists to explore the complex reactions of Muslims in India to this massacre — especially the reactions of the millions of Muslims who were just as appalled as everyone else by what happened. In effect, the Mumbai massacre required journalists to openly admit that the terrorists were Muslims and then to say that they were only one kind of Muslim, thus allowing for the exploration of the views and beliefs of other Muslims in India.

Now, I bring this up for a simple reason. Yesterday, I read a Washington Post account of the trial of Pakistani-born Ajmal Amir Kasab, an alleged Mumbai gunman whose image was recorded by a surveillance camera (see the image with this post). Having just returned from India, I plunged into the story.

So I read and I read and I read. I know that this is simply a trial story. I also know that the big idea of this story is how emotional this trial is and how important it is to modern Indians.

But, folks, there has to be more to the religion side of this event and its aftermath than THIS:

Pakistani-born Ajmal Amir Kasab, 21, is accused of being one of the two assailants caught on film at the train station, where 48 people died. He is also the only alleged gunman captured alive during the terrifying three days beginning Nov. 26, when 10 men arrived in Mumbai by boat and attacked 10 sites, including two five-star hotels and a Jewish outreach center, killing more than 170 people. His trial, on charges of terrorism, criminal conspiracy and waging war against the state, began two months ago, and the stakes could not be higher for India.

For years, the government in New Delhi has accused Pakistan-based Islamist militant groups of fomenting terrorist attacks in India. But this is the first time a Pakistani national has been arrested and brought to justice after police said he was caught on camera engaging in terrorist activities.

That’s it. This is simply a matter of India and Pakistan? Is that how people discuss this case in one of the most complex and fervent religious cultures in the world?

Frankly I was amazed. Is it now easier to talk about the religion ghosts in this story in India than it is in America? Just asking.

Filed Under: Islam, Journalism, Judaism, Religion, World, World Religions

Red Pakistan, blue Pakistan

June 17, 2009 By

timecover1I don’t know about you, but I really miss reading a good, newsy, weekly magazine. Thus, while I was on the road (that long trek, literally, around the world last week to speak in Manila, Bangalore and New Delhi) I really enjoyed getting to dig into a small stack of international editions of Time.

In particular, I had missed reading the late May cover story that ran with the headline, “How Pakistan Let Itself Down.” That was sobering reading, on an airplane flying to India.

(Speaking of nice headlines in that issue, faithful readers may also want to check out this one, “Getting Religion: Inside the Global Halal Economy.” Nice, catchy choice of words.)

Once again, the key to the cover story is how it digs into the tensions inside Islam, inside Pakistan. And once again, we see a mainstream newsroom struggling to define the doctrinal content of “moderate” Islam. What we are given is a stress on the lifestyles of Pakistan’s educated, urban elites — symbolized by a female airline pilot and her friends, popping corks and sipping drinks in a Himalayan hideaway while worrying about the future of their nation.

Hostess Rafi Haye states the central issue in an interesting way:

She wears jeans. Her hair is streaked with blond, and a diamond nose stud glints in the sun, as does the jeweled Allah pendant around her neck. She is frustrated with the image the world has of Pakistan, that of a failing state overrun by Muslim fanatics. Pointing first to herself, then at her guests, she says, “This is Pakistan.” Then she waves her hand over the valley beyond the deck of her summer cabin. “But that is also Pakistan.”

By that she means all those Pakistanis who do not belong to her class and who have as much to do with the Taliban as she does, which is to say nothing at all.

The obvious question: Then who backs the Taliban, if anyone?

Here’s another look at the central issue, this time expressed as a question about history:

Founded as a Muslim nation carved from British-ruled India in 1947, Pakistan has long struggled to unite a population divided by language, culture and ethnicity. It is quite true that Pakistan may never have resolved what Sabahat Ashraf, a Pakistani blogger now living in California, calls its “existential dilemma: Are we an Islamic state, or are we a state of Muslims?”

By definition, this means that conflict inside Pakistan is conflict within Islam, which means that it is impossible to cover events inside the borders of this troubled nation without drawing some doctrinal and cultural lines between Muslims. Yet that is precise what the mainstream press seems hesitant to do. If the conflict is merely political, then why are the big, painful questions rotted in religion? Yes, I am well aware that in most expressions of Islam there is no separation between mosque and state. That’s part of the equation.

This is where things get complicated. The battles in the Swat Valley are often expressed as fights over the use of Sharia law. What reporters need to emphasize is that the battles actually center on what form of Sharia law will be used, since Pakistan already has Islamic law from border to border. Ask anyone who attempts to convert to another faith.

But it is also unclear — here’s that theme again, as in Iran — whether the “moderate” Muslims are as powerful as the press seems to think they are. Do the “moderates” have any sense of unity when it comes to faith and practice? Can they express themselves?

That brings us to what I think is the most interesting section in this important story:

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-i-Azam University, pulls up on his laptop the pages of a first-grade primer distributed in private religious schools. “A is for Allah,” he reads. “B is for bandook, or gun.” T, for thakrau, collision, is illustrated with a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames, while Z, for zenoub, the plural of sin, is depicted with alcohol bottles, kites, guitars, drums, a television and a chess set. Any attempt to change the religious curriculum is met with fierce resistance. “Many fear that to be seen protesting against the extremists who are pushing Shari’a [Islamic law] would be seen as protesting against Islam itself,” says Hoodbhoy.

The paradox here is that historically, Pakistanis have practiced a syncretic version of Islam that venerates saints and emphasizes a personal relationship with God. But the influx of Arab preachers during the war against the Soviets brought a more austere form of the religion. Shayan Afzal Khan, an Islamic scholar who writes about women and Islam, thinks Pakistanis lack the confidence to defend their moderate beliefs. “People are afraid to take on the mullahs because we can’t quote the Koran the way they do,” Khan says. “We have to take our religion back,” but fear gets in the way. She has decided not to publish her most recent book, about early Muslim women, in Pakistan “because the situation these days is too unstable.”

Now that’s chilling.

Don’t you want to know more?

Filed Under: Godbeat, Islam, Journalism, Middle East, People, Politics