Introspecting Aloud

Too Sensitive to Disease Names?

The deputy Israeli Health minister wants to rename swine flu to Mexican flu as swine is too filthy for them to even mention in daily conversation. Ophelia's response made me burst out laughing:

Oh right, so they do! Therefore it's a hell of a good idea to name a scary lethal disease after a set of people instead of after an animal that one isn't allowed to eat by one's whimsical deity. Yes indeedy. Sure you don't want to name it Perez flu? Juan and Maria flu? Spic flu? Funny little brown people on the far side of the world flu? They don't wash their hands in Mexico flu? In deference to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities over pork and everything?

The irony in Pakistan's dilemma

I just read Sujai's post on the possibile turn that Pakistan might take due to the onslaught of the Talibans. None of the possibilities sound very encouraging for Pakistan. An amusing thought crossed my mind. It is kind of dark humour, really. Don't you find it amusing and ironical that a country like Pakistan (which means "The purest land" literally) which was formed on the premise of building the perfect Islamic state (it has that dream even today), is today facing the biggest threat to its survival (bigger than any of the wars since it's inception) not from a non-Muslim country like India, but from a muslim group which believes that the country is not pure enough? In fact, the message that Pakistanis are having to convince themselves is that they don't exactly want the state envisioned by the leader of the religion of the state. The arguments that are going on, are less of patriotism (as is the case of a threat to survival of a nation) and more theological. They are actually discussing how Islam should be interpreted into a modern country.

Of theocratic states,treason and capital punishments

There is a very interesting debate going on at talkislam.info after an Islamic Cleric in Harvard, no less, claimed how capital punishment is the right punishment for people deserting the Islamic faith. The common premise of those defending the cleric in the comments of that post, is that for a theocratic state apostasy is like treason. While I can't completely agree with that notion - it has to be an extremely insecure and intolerant theocracy to have such a position, I can't but help see the convenience of such a rule. Convenient for the masters of such a theocracy, that is. These masters are likely to be de-facto leaders of the state religion, and like any autocracy (I look at all theocracies as a form of autocracy) they would rather use any means necessary to hang on to their positions rather than be secure in a faith which survives by conviction alone. For faith and thought can seldom be peaceful co-dwellers. In fact, I couldn't help putting such a situation in India's scenario today. We now have a major political party, really close to gaining power in the country, which is philosophically almost completely in disagreement with the premise on this country was formed. One easy way to finding it out, is to go through their manifesto and see the number of times they talk about modifying the constitution (you know, repeal this, overturn that, enact this, etc.). The party is backed by a sinister pan-india organisation which has been at work to overturn the premise of this country from the day that we became independent. So what happens if this prominent political party eventually manages to convert this country to a theocratic state as has been their quite public fundamental aim all this while? Will we see people being executed for leaving their religion? Well, we already see a bit of their vision in what they are doing in Orissa. Will we stop debating religion as other Islamic theocracies have done? And by the way, unlike the Muslims, we Hindus do not have an equivalent of Qu'ran or Hadith or Sharia to run this country. Oh yes, I forgot, maybe the 2000+ years oldManusmriti - the document being quoted by this party to provide justification for all their social policies? Or maybe, the Gita, which regrettably far being a reference of wisdom is now quoted by people of this party as a justification for chopping off hands of people from other religions.