This week, I journeyed through Islam, with the help of two books - Pakistani-origin author Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and British travel writer William Dalrymple's In Xanadu - A Quest (which I think is his best work till date).
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is essentially about two characters - one, a bearded Pakistani, Changez (Urdu for Ghenghis) and the other, an unnamed nervous American traveller - who meet in a Lahore cafe. Over tea and kebabs, Changez tells the traveller about his love affair with America that finally came to an end following 9/11.
On the other hand, Dalrymple travelled through much of the Islamic world, following Marco Polo's route from Jerusalem to Xanadu in China, in 1987. Polo, it seems, carried a vial of oil from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for Kubla Khan, the great Mongolian king, who - the Church thought - was planning to convert to Islam. Travelling via the ancient Silk Route, Polo penned down his experiences in The Travels.
Hamid's narrative once again reasons why Princeton-graduate Pakistanis with high-paying jobs in New York resented (or still resent) the American aggression in Afghanistan. Many of these youngsters had left their roots for good. Yet, they decided to come back after Muslims started getting singled out by fellow Americans. Many, like Changez, secretly admired the fact that someone from the Third World could bring America to its knees. They searched for their lost identity all over again. The book took me back to the Pakistani film, Khuda Ke Liye which I had reviewed last year. The movie had highlighted how we fail to distinguish culture from religion and try to enforce one on the other - by trying to become either Westernised Muslims or Islamic fanatics.
Dalrymple sees symbols of this clash as he travels through the deserts of Syria and Turkey, wastelands of Iran, fertile valleys of Pakistan, the mountains and deserts of China and the steppes of Mongolia. The religion is the same but the mosques are as different as the people and the language.
Dalrymple's journey starts with Jerusalem in Israel - the birthplace of three of the greatest religions man has known,(namely Christianity, Judaism and Islam) has brought out the worst from their followers in the form of aggression, conquests, sacrifices and massacres. If there's one place that has suffered the most in the world, it has to be Jerusalem.
He nervously journeys through the Ayatollah's Iran and finds more English-speaking and educated people in the entire Middle-East. In The Swat valley of Pakistan (now the scene of a brutal warfare between the Taliban regime and Pakistan military), he finds god-fearing Pathans who believe in witchcraft (a pagan ritual) and Gujar Muslims who still practice pagan dance forms (now forbidden by Islam). He talks of the Uigurs who've managed to retain their markets and rebuild their mosques in the remote north-west region of communist China.
Dalrymple goes back to the Crusades to find some of the roots of the present-day conflicts. The clash is between culture and religion, no matter what the two-word breaking news headlines on TV channels suggest.
What Dalrymple finds is that if Marco Polo would have been around today, he wouldn't have seen anything more different from what he had seen in the 13th century - aggression, wars, massacres, prosperity, business and politics. In eight centuries, the world may have technologically progressed, but our conflicts have remained unresolved.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist is essentially about two characters - one, a bearded Pakistani, Changez (Urdu for Ghenghis) and the other, an unnamed nervous American traveller - who meet in a Lahore cafe. Over tea and kebabs, Changez tells the traveller about his love affair with America that finally came to an end following 9/11.On the other hand, Dalrymple travelled through much of the Islamic world, following Marco Polo's route from Jerusalem to Xanadu in China, in 1987. Polo, it seems, carried a vial of oil from the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem for Kubla Khan, the great Mongolian king, who - the Church thought - was planning to convert to Islam. Travelling via the ancient Silk Route, Polo penned down his experiences in The Travels.
Hamid's narrative once again reasons why Princeton-graduate Pakistanis with high-paying jobs in New York resented (or still resent) the American aggression in Afghanistan. Many of these youngsters had left their roots for good. Yet, they decided to come back after Muslims started getting singled out by fellow Americans. Many, like Changez, secretly admired the fact that someone from the Third World could bring America to its knees. They searched for their lost identity all over again. The book took me back to the Pakistani film, Khuda Ke Liye which I had reviewed last year. The movie had highlighted how we fail to distinguish culture from religion and try to enforce one on the other - by trying to become either Westernised Muslims or Islamic fanatics.
Dalrymple sees symbols of this clash as he travels through the deserts of Syria and Turkey, wastelands of Iran, fertile valleys of Pakistan, the mountains and deserts of China and the steppes of Mongolia. The religion is the same but the mosques are as different as the people and the language.Dalrymple's journey starts with Jerusalem in Israel - the birthplace of three of the greatest religions man has known,(namely Christianity, Judaism and Islam) has brought out the worst from their followers in the form of aggression, conquests, sacrifices and massacres. If there's one place that has suffered the most in the world, it has to be Jerusalem.
He nervously journeys through the Ayatollah's Iran and finds more English-speaking and educated people in the entire Middle-East. In The Swat valley of Pakistan (now the scene of a brutal warfare between the Taliban regime and Pakistan military), he finds god-fearing Pathans who believe in witchcraft (a pagan ritual) and Gujar Muslims who still practice pagan dance forms (now forbidden by Islam). He talks of the Uigurs who've managed to retain their markets and rebuild their mosques in the remote north-west region of communist China.
Dalrymple goes back to the Crusades to find some of the roots of the present-day conflicts. The clash is between culture and religion, no matter what the two-word breaking news headlines on TV channels suggest.What Dalrymple finds is that if Marco Polo would have been around today, he wouldn't have seen anything more different from what he had seen in the 13th century - aggression, wars, massacres, prosperity, business and politics. In eight centuries, the world may have technologically progressed, but our conflicts have remained unresolved.
2 comments:
I had read the Reluctant Fundamentalist ages ago. It's a pretty good book, though I like Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke a lot better. It takes a look at how a guy from Lahore loses his job and in the process goes through a process of self-destruction with the Nuclear Tests of 1998
Yeah, I want to read Moth Smoke now. Sounds quite interesting.
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