Among Disbelievers
You can take "Beyond Belief" to mean: i can't imagine these people can be so ignorant and stupid. or, "Beyond Belief", let's talk about matters which go beyond belief and faith.
More than a decade and half after Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey, V.S. Nai-paul was on the prowl again in Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia. The result is Beyond Belief, which can be taken to mean-"Beyond Belief"-'I can't imagine how these people can be so ignorant and stupid.' Or, "Beyond Belief"-'let us talk about matters which go beyond belief and faith-transcend faith.' Take it as you will, how Naipaul takes it is very predictable.
Naipaul has an almost pathological hatred for Muslims which, even marriage to a Muslim, Nadira Khannum Alvi, to whom this book is dedicated, has not been able to lessen and try as he might to hide it or fight it, it comes out in statements like the one which says Muslims reduced the cultural life of India into the "Light of A Dead Star"
In his foreword, Naipaul warns us that in 1979 when he wrote Among the Believers, he knew almost nothing about Islam and that that is the best way to start on a venture. I hate to tell him this, but regardless of what he might think, he still doesn't know much. The only difference is that the caustic humour with which the earlier book was laced is now gone
In Among the Believers, he talks about Jamaat-e-Islami leader Maulana Maudoodi's death while undergoing heart by-pass operation at Houston in Texas: "On his way to meet his maker, he went at least a part of the way, on a modern device." And writing about President Zia's whipping boys who went from jail to jail whipping recalcitrant dissidents into submission, he calls it, "Islam on wheels". Naipaul is altogether much too serious now. The 'malaise' of Islam has spread far too deeply to take lightly or make jokes about.
"This book is less of a travel book," Naipaul tells us, "The writer is less present, less of an enquirer. He is the background, trusting to his instincts, a discoverer of people, a finder-out of stories. The reader should not look for conclusions." This is a very dishonest statement to make. Firstly, let us be clear that it is quite legitimate for a writer to appear in his book, especially in a travel book. After all he is the host, he is the one taking us around and introducing us to the characters that people his book. We expect him to tell us about them and give us his opinions. But while Naipaul disowns any attempt to do so, he does it again and again. Naipaul is indeed a clever writer and there is no denying his craft, but the subtlety with which he tries to influence our thinking, after lulling us to put our guard down, is patently dishonest.
Here is Naipaul's basic thesis: The Arabs are the original Muslims as Islam started there, and therefore, all other Muslims who are not Arabs are converts. What an original discovery! We are all converts. You think, Mr Naipaul, that your beloved English are not converts? But for you, it is only the Muslims who wipe out their past completely after conversion and accept the Arab past as their own.
Since all Muslims are converts, we find that all their holy places are in Arabia, and they develop fantasies about who or what they are. I suppose what Naipaul wants to say here is that all Muslims are "scheduled caste" converts but are now behaving like upstarts and pretending to be Arabs by denying local origins. Converts have to turn away from everything that is theirs. They have to shun their past. If such was the case, why did the Muslim police trainee refuse to pick up his officers' dirty dishes saying he is a "Rajput". Islam does not recognise differences of race and if he had completely shunned his past, he would not have taken such pride in his Rajput ancestry.
Perhaps Naipaul should have met Mr Faruqi of Laherpur in Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh. When Partition came, he migrated to Pakistan. But the memories of childhood were so strong that even after so many years in Pakistan, he had this wish to be buried in his ancestral graveyard in Laherpur. But to his horror, he found that it was not possible for a Pakistani body to be sent to India. So Mr Faruqui took British nationality and instructed his sons to take his body to Laherpur, where he now sleeps peacefully alongside his ancestors. So much for Naipaul's theory that only the deserts of Arabia are sacred to Muslims. If somebody dies and is buried away from his homeland, there is a saying in Urdu: Kahan ki mitti, Kahan dafan (The earth that belonged here is buried far from home).
"Islam in its origins is an Arab Religion," says Naipaul. So are Christianity and Judaism. What can the poor Muslim do about that? Are we to understand that a religion should stay confined to its country of origin? Islam, like Christianity, is a "world religion" in its outlook.
"His sacred language is Arabic." Indeed, the language of his sacred book is Arabic and it is true that Islam has gone farther than other Semitic religions in discouraging the use of translations of the Qur'an in an attempt to prevent distortion, but in which Muslim country out of the four Naipaul visited were the people speaking to each other or to him in Arabic?
Like others, Muslims too have great pride in their mother tongues. Is it possible that the erudite writer does not know that one of the reasons for the breakup of Pakistan was due to the West Pakistani insistence on thrusting Urdu down the throats of Bengali-speaking East Pakistan? And in present-day Pakistan one of the great sources of friction is the Urdu of the Mohajir against the Sindhi of the local inhabitants. The plethora of languages that exist in Pakistan-Sindhi, Urdu, Pashto, Baluchi, Saraiki, Hindi, Punjabi-would have surprised Naipaul, if he had only moved out of his 5-star hotel room and mixed with the people other than his English-speaking admirers.
"The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved, the turning away has to be done again and again." Frankly, it is difficult to know what the author is talking about here. To me, Muslims seem quite comfortable with their past, even those who have lost their faith and are Muslims only culturally. Presumably, what Naipaul means here is that the convert has rejected the holy books of his ancestors, because, more or less, this is what history meant in ancient times.
"There is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can easily be set on the boil." True, sadly, but this is in all of us in South Asia for example, Hindu and Muslim alike. Naipaul probably got the theory that Islam is nothing but a manifestation of Arab imperialism from a Brahmin convert to Islam, Anwar Sheikh, who is now settled in Glasgow. Imperialism in any form is bad, and the British variety, which was based on the inherent inferiority of the conquered people, was of the worst kind. Arab imperialism, if it was such, was the imperialism of ideas. They were so fired up with the truth as they saw it that they spread it like wildfire till their energy petered out.
And if Naipaul had delved a little deeper, he would have realised that Islam does not recognise the nation state, being a pan-regional religion. The original conquests, at least in theory, were for spreading the faith, not for looting and territory. Maulana Maudoodi and his Jamaat-e-Islami did not want Pakistan, they hoped to proselytise the whole of India, and then, the world.
What Naipaul wants to repeat here, but is not brave enough to, is the favourite Western shibboleth that Islam was spread by the sword and all conversions to Islam were an alternative to death. Quite unlike the British Empire, which was spread by love and affection, and by following the 'Golden Rule' of doing unto others as they would do unto you. Only doing it first
"The sacred places of the Muslim faith were connected with the Prophet or his immediate successors." I say to Naipaul, venture out of your hotel and mix with the hoi polloi. You will find Ajmer Sharif, the tomb of Baba Farid Gunjeshaker, Haji Waris Shah, Makdhoom Main of Khairabad and others' too numerous to mention, and at their tombs he would find qawalis and naaths being sung in praise of the prophet and Ali, and of the holy man buried there, all in the local language, none in Arabic. He could have swayed to the earthy rhythms of Saraiki if only he would go and listen.
In these four countries, Naipaul meets many people and out of them he chooses the meatiest who will make good copy and reinforce the pre-conceived theme of his book. They are good stories as stories go, but in the end you are left with a feeling of exhaustion. You have a feeling of having listened to too many of them.
In an interview with the BBC's Nisha Pillai in the "Hard Talk" series, Naipaul said that he had been scrupulously honest. That, certainly, is untrue. Firstly, the very act of choosing Muslims as a group to write about influences the readers' feelings against them in general, and these four countries in particular. Secondly, too clever to put words into people's mouths, which would have led to angry denials, Naipaul has put his own thoughts in "asides" which makes a mockery of his claim to have kept himself out of the book altogether.
Take the example of Fazl-ur-Rehman, member of the National Academy of Pakistan, and now professor of Islamic studies in the University of Chicago. Naipaul calls him the "Pakistani, fundamentalist fanatic, enjoying, bizarrely, academic freedom at the Univ. of Chicago and sleeping safe and sound protected by laws." Strong words and every one of them loaded. If Naipaul had bothered to find out, he would have discovered that Fazl-ur-Rehman had once cast the slightest of doubts on the divine origins of the Qur'an, which had led to the fundamentalists' baying for his blood. It was only his friendship with those in high places that saved him and he managed to escape to the US.
Naipaul's play of words is nothing short of brilliant. On the way to Ayatollah Khalkhalli's house, Naipaul sees "an open fronted book stall or shop. Persian books in a glass case, two very young students in turbans and tunics and gowns, excitedly buying what appeared to be a concise textbook from the stall keeper, and looking like people who had found treasure. Perhaps the little book was a simple question and answer book. The scene was like a stage set, with props, a shop of such books that had ceased to be props and with costumed actors, bookseller, students, who had become their roles. It would have been nice to stop and look and to play with some of the fantasies the scene suggested, but we were late…" He creates a mood and makes us feel pity and contempt for the children for buying religious books. Somehow you feel that these students are going to waste their lives. What we are seeing is the childhood of a fundamentalist. I suppose a similar scene elsewhere would be teenagers buying Playboy or Penthouse from a kiosk.
It is for Pakistan that Naipaul reserves his greatest ire. His analysis of the creation of Pakistan is fairly correct in that the main reason was Muslim insecurity. But to take his argument to its logical conclusion, wasn't it the duty of the majority community, the Hindus, to allay those fears and provide safeguards? He feels that since 1947 Pakistan has only regressed, while India has grown by leaps and bounds and built a sizeable intelligentsia and that it is this difference, rather than religion, which separates the two countries now. He calls Pakistan a "criminal enterprise…No real thought had ever been taken for the running of the country. Everything was supposed to flow from the triumph of the faith. The Muslim invaders, and especially the Arabs would become the heroes of the Pakistan story. Too much has to be ignored or angled, there is too much fantasy. This fantasy isn't in the books alone it effects people lives."
The tragedy is that this book only pretends to be a detached work, and with the wide readership that Naipaul commands, will only help strengthen the prejudices of those non-Muslims the world over who are only too willing to believe the worst about Muslims.