Sharjeel Imam's fractal Islamophobia

Sharjeel Imam, a bright guy whose brains were destroyed by the pursuit of a History PhD, seemed on a leftward trajectory. He'd given up a lucrative career in I.T, because of the pervasive culture of Islamophobia he found there, to join the far left Marxist Leninist Communist Party and stand for elections at JNU- which is the only place those nutters can get elected. Then, dramatically, he broke with the Party because of its Islamophobia. He helped launch Shaheen Bagh but broke with the Liberals over their Islamophobia and called off the protest though nobody listened. He then made some reckless remarks about how the Assamese should be cut off from India- presumably so they can kill off Muslims in peace and quiet- before being thrown in jail. I think he will soon break with his comrades in jail because of their Islamophobia. He may then ask to do a deal with the Government perhaps to go to Saudi Arabia where he can break with the regime over its Islamophobia. He will go to Pakistan and find only Islamophobia. Finally, if God is good to him, he will do what Nature intended and battle Islamophobia as a tenured Professor at Columbia in Jew York.

His younger brother, a journalist writes of him,

Ali Sardar Jafri, the prominent progressive Urdu poet from India,

Jafri was a Communist. But he didn't roam around seeing Islamophobia all over the place. Atal Bihari Vajpayee made much of him and he died honoured by the BJP administration.

wrote a poem addressing another progressive poet and a leader of the communist movement, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, when the latter was imprisoned in Pakistan.

In the poem Jafari asks Faiz:

Aaj magar tu qaid hai sathi
Kaisi hai ye qaid ki duniya?

(‘But, comrade you are imprisoned today
How is this world of prisons?’)

The Communists had supported the creation of Pakistan which, however, decided to jail them. India, too, initially jailed Commies but only if they wagged their tail. Thus Jafri wasn't really taunting Faiz. He was just expressing a fraternal imbecility. Of course, it should be pointed out, both were as Islamophobic as fuck. Sooner or later, Sharjeel is going to break with this Islamophobic brother of his who insensitively quotes Commie poets even though they are just as Islamophobic as the Liberals and the Saudis and everybody else.

Whenever I read this poem, I try to feel the helplessness Jafari

who was not in jail and therefore who wasn't helpless at all

would have felt as a friend and comrade, for not being able to talk to Faiz.

Which he couldn't do anyway coz Faiz was in a different country. Of course, he could have written him a letter. Maybe he was too stupid to do so and felt helpless. Or maybe the idiot brother of the cretin Sharjeel is too helpless to understand that there is no point of commonality between the cretin Faiz, who had been stupid enough to get involved in a coup attempt by a General who thought Pakistan hadn't done enough to conquer Kashmir, and Jafri, whose Commie buddies had stopped wagging their tail, and who would soon be collaborating with the Liberals to fuck up India economically.

Now, I can feel that pain and helplessness myself as my own brother, Sharjeel Imam, languishes behind bars,

you say Jafri felt helpless because he couldn't talk to Faiz. Yet you can and have talked to your brother. Why do you feel an equal helplessness? Is it coz u r as stupid as shit?

and when I met him recently at Guwahati Jail, my question to him was pretty much similar.

Yo, bro, what's jail like? A natural enough question. But why drag Jafri and Faiz into it? Is it because you are a Communist and believe there must be more partitions of India? Your brother was saying Assam should cut itself off- in which case there will be a hundred Nellie massacres. Muslims will be ethnically cleansed. This prospect delights Sharjeel because he thinks Bengali Hindus too will suffer. But, they won't. They will join in the killing of Muslims and quietly switch to talking in Assamese. Arnab Goswami has shown them the way forward. Thus Sharjeel will at last have some substantial evidence of Islamophobia to gloat over. Then he can complete his hegira to Columbia or wherever else Islamophobia is best denounced.

Interestingly, Sharjeel faces the same charges of sedition and waging war against the state which Faiz was facing when that poem was written.

Indeed. The difference is only Commies, not Muslims, faced the chop if Pakistan was created whereas only Muslims face the chop if Assam cuts itself off.

Here, my motive for writing is similar to that of Ali Sardar Jafari.

Jafari was saying that Communism is Internationalist. Come the Revolution, borders would cease to matter. It wasn't the case that the Commies had fucked over the Muslims of the sub-continent but good. Perhaps, at that time, this seemed reasonable.

Why does Sharjeel compare himself to Jafri? Is he saying 'my brother will come back to Communism?' Or is he saying 'I too denounce the Islamophobia or the Communists and Liberals and Nationalists and everybody else who has not dedicated her life to denouncing the Islamophobia of the Universe. I stand in solidarity with you, brother. Let us make the hegira to Jew York together to spend the rest of our days denouncing Islamophobia on someone else's dime.' 

As he further says in the same poem:

Ye meri awaz hai lekin
Sirf meri awaz nahi hai

(‘Though it is my voice
The voice doesn’t belong exclusively to me’)

This was true enough back then. This voice of stupidity could be heard around the globe. There were plenty of Lenin prizes to go around for Commie poets.  Those were halcyon days.

My brother, Sharjeel Imam, had been instrumental in starting the now famous Shaheen Bagh protest and was later falsely branded as ‘anti-national’ by the police.

Because he isn't just against the Indian nation. He objects to the Islamophobic nature of the Universe.

In the past few weeks, there have been TV debates, articles and statements from politicians where he was portrayed as Islamist, anti-secular and anti-national.

But also as a nutjob, which was more essentially true.

There are people who have accused him of being an agent of the ruling dispensation

Because the BJP has to pay for Islamic nutters. Everyone else is provided with a superabundance of them for free.

while those people affiliated with the ruling party have called him an Islamic fanatic who wants to turn India into some kind of Islamic state. Whenever I heard either narrative I could not help laughing.

 You also could not help coming up with a more ridiculous narrative.

Though I wanted to reply on behalf of my elder brother a long while back, I wanted to meet him first and discuss again his ideas about the National Register of Citizens, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Population Register. On March 9, I met Sharjeel at Guwahati Jail and asked him to elaborate on his now controversial ideas. Whatever time he had he used to explain his understanding of the problem in the NRC and CAA.

Though this was unnecessary. What he needed to explain is why he was crazy enough to call on Assam to 'cut itself off' even though this would mean the immediate slaughter and ethnic cleansing of Muslims. Actually, he has given a simple explanation. He was talking stupid, hot-headed, shit because he is a stupid, hot-headed, shithead. What do expect from a guy who gave up an IT job to become a JNU jhollawallah?

Sharjeel told me that he believed India is secular and that its secularism should not be tampered with.

But its territorial integrity should be tampered with. Assam should 'cut itself off' though this will mean ethnic cleansing of Muslims.

People living in this region of the world had always respected the religious beliefs and cultures of each other.

Pakistan and Bangladesh are shining examples of this.

What the CAA intends to do, in his understanding, is to tamper with this very feature of Indian society.

His understanding is shit. CAA expedites citizenship for the sort of refugees for whom this facility existed since Partition. Muslims were excluded. Those who had fled were not allowed to return.

In practical terms, CAA permitted the consolidation of the Hindu vote- which is increasingly an anti-Muslim vote thanks to the antics of the likes of Sharjeel. No wonder some accuse the cretin of being an agent of the BJP!

The Act presumes India is a natural home to all religious groups but Muslims, and interestingly atheists too.

No. It confirms that Partition was carried out by Muslims who ethnically cleansed non-Muslims. India rid itself of some Muslims and could do so of more thus making room for non-Muslim refugees. The Custodian of Enemy Property would harass Muslims and get them to surrender property to non-Muslim refugees. Many Muslims, thus harassed, cut their losses and went to Pakistan. It is true that some Commies, i.e. Atheist, too got settlement rights. But India is not in that game anymore. Why? Indian Muslims put a bounty on the head of Dr. Taslima Nasrin. So she had to run away. By contrast, even if Muslims object strenuously to non-Muslims escaping Islamic persecution, they will be beaten and killed if they try to beat and kill policemen and non-Muslims in furtherance of their demands.

The CAA welcomes persecuted religious minorities only from Muslim majority countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan while leaving out the countries where Muslims live in a minority like Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

India had separate agreements with Sri Lanka and Myanmar to take back Indian origin populations. It may be mentioned that India also provided refuge for Tibetan Buddhists. Muslims who fled the country were not taken back. Their citizenship had been lost. Why? To make room for non-Muslim refugees flooding over the borders.

For a secular country like India, the very belief that Muslims are oppressors in all the Muslim majority countries and thus cannot themselves be oppressed is dangerously problematic.

No it isn't. India is very poor. It is preoccupied by its own problems. True, some Afghan Muslim refugees get citizenship but only because they have set up thriving businesses. They, in turn, only accepted Indian citizenship because it makes overseas travel easier. Otherwise refugees are better off on the asylum queue to somewhere nice like Canada.

It rests on historical as well as sociological fallacies. India officially took a stand in support of Bengali Muslims when they were being oppressed by the Pakistan Army.

But Bengali Hindus were being slaughtered by Bengali Muslim fanatics as well as the Pakistani Army. Indira, it is true, gave the vote to Bangladeshi Muslims in Assam but that sparked the Nellie massacre. The Central Govt. then agreed to compile a Nationality Register and to send back illegal migrants. But successive Governments dragged their feet till the Courts took suo moto action. It was the Supreme Court which completed the Nationality exercise and thus dropped a bomb in Amit Shah's lap. So far, he has been clever in his handling of the problem. The CAA reassured non-Muslims while stupid people like Sharjeel ensured that Muslims would be blamed for everything. It remains to be seen whether this impacts the Bengal Assembly elections. If the BJP can't project a good C.M candidate, Mamta will win. But Mamta is unpredictable. She may crack down on the Muslims harder than the BJP if she thinks they are drifting off towards Owaisi or they are creating a party of their own.

At that time, the oppressor as well as the oppressed both belonged to the Muslim community in a Muslim majority country.

These guys don't know about the massacres of Hindus which obliged Indira, Goddess Durga as Atal called her, to act.

In present times, the ‘slow genocide’ of Shias in Pakistan is no secret.

In which case, Shia Iran is the country of choice for refugees.

The persecution of the Hazara community in Afghanistan is before us.

In which case Uzebekistan is the place of refuge, though Shia Iran would be even better.

So, the very idea that in these countries only non-Muslims can be persecuted is a false one and reeks of a political agenda – to damage the secular fabric of this country.

Indian Muslims opposing citizenships for non-Muslim victims of Muslim persecution damage the standing of Indian Muslims. The non-Muslims see them as evil fanatics who delight in the suffering of non-Muslims.

Sharjeel further pointed out that while talking about the persecution of minorities, India, as a responsible country should be talking about minorities other than religious.

India as an overpopulated and very poor country should be talking about only one thing- poverty. It must also protect non-Muslims from Muslims otherwise non-Muslims will take the law into their own hands and retaliate against violence by thoroughgoing ethnic cleansing.

As we all know, the creation of Bangladesh was a fallout of a linguistic, not a religious, movement.

No. It was the result of democratic elections. Sheikh Mujib won because Bengalis were the majority. Bhutto wouldn't let him be Prime Minister so there was a genocide and then a war and then the two wings parted ways so Bhutto could become Prime Minister of the West wing. Faiz, of course, was Bhutto's chamcha. His response to the Bangladesh war was shameful.

He said he had pointed out in his own research how Muslims from Bihar, who migrated to East Bengal during the 1946 riots, had to bear the burnt again in 1947,

East Bengal expelled Hindus, not Muslims. What this cretin means is that during the '71 War, Biharis backed the Pak Army and killed Hindus, as they have always done, but also Bengali Muslims. They paid a high price for this. Pakistan refused to take them and the Bengali Muslims regarded them with hatred.

as they were Urdu speaking Muslims. This idea can be furthered to ethnic and gender minorities as well. As a responsible country India should do justice to all those facing persecution in its neighbourhood.

No it shouldn't. It must concentrate on doing stuff its voters actually want.

Imam further added that by specifically identifying the religious identities as either oppressed or oppressor, we are giving in to the narratives which divided our society along the religious lines.

These guys live in a fantasy world where 'narratives' are all that matters. But how many millions of Muslims can make a living writing illiterate articles for the Wire magazine? Furthermore, unless they back the Commies and the Liberals and, as Sharjeel complained, shave their beards and get rid of their burqas and use less Muslim sounding names, even the Commies and the Liberals won't give them a little money to complain about Islamophobic narratives. Columbia might. Jew York might. Let that be the goal of your hegira.

What we need is to secularise the writing of history rather than reinforcing religious communalism in our understanding of history.

Out of a population of over 1.3 billion, only 15 million pay Income tax. Out of that 15 million only a few thousand give a toss about how history is written. But even they don't want their taxes to go to JNU and Jamia and other such jhollawallah shitholes. Why? Because the students who come out of there help the BJP. They harm the Liberals and the Left. At a time when Amartya Sen and his ilk was fussing over Kanhaiya Kumar, Sharjeel was saying 'don't vote for him. Vote for the Muslim'.

It is our duty that we stop looking at nations and societies through the prism of religion only.

The correct prism is Islamophobia. And the right place to peer at the world through that prism is the Columbia campus in Jew York.

About the idea of ‘cut off’, Imam specifically said that what he meant was to use, through peaceful means, the economic importance of Assam as a lever to get the government to roll back the all-India NRC exercise and scrap the CAA – which is also a demand of the Assamese people and society, who feel, quite rightly, that they should not be held accountable for the refugee problem which arose in 1971.

But Hindu Bengalis settled there can just change their language a little. The Muslims have to go or at least accept gerrymandered constituency boundaries in a manner which denies them political and administrative power.

It is a political and administrative problem which should be solved by India and Bangladesh in such a way that no section of the people in Assam or elsewhere in India should be burdened or targeted.

This is what will happen. Bangladesh may continue to prosper by getting girls out of villages into factory dormitories. Large parts of India may refuse to do anything similar and remain trapped in Malthusian involution supplemented by remittances and transfers.

In a civilised world there should be no place for detention centres.

In India, these were created at the direction of the Guwahati High Court. Sharjeel may also feel there should be no Courts and Prisons in a civilized- i.e. genuinely un-Islamophobic- world.

The plan to hold the NRC exercise elsewhere in India is aimed at causing anxieties as there is no refugee or. migrant crisis in other parts of the country.

West Bengal does not have illegal migrants? Really?

As an Indian we should resist any official exercise which may fan communal passions in the country and damage the secular fabric of our society.

The vast majority of Indians feel India should resist Muslim fanaticism and violence. The 'secular fabric' requires seditionists and terrorists to be locked up.

As his younger brother, I wanted to bring to a wider audience the ideas of Sharjeel Imam, which have been misinterpreted by different people as they wished. What I know about him is that he is a serious scholar who wants this world to be a better place. As Ali Sardar Jafari writes:

Teri bulandi-e-fikr-o-nazar ka kya kehna
Wo dekh past hui jaa rahi hain diwaare.n

(Praise be upon your ideas and perspective
Look these walls are crumbling down)

Twenty two years ago- when Atal thought he could do a deal with Nawaz Sharif- Jafari had salience. But history went in a different direction. A Wall did fall- it was the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Wall Street has just finished celebrating the longest bull run in history.

Sharjeel has no 'fikr-o-nazar'. Jafari did. True Jafari was wrong but so were many others at that time. The fact is taking land away from landlords and giving it to peasants was something peasants actually wanted. Talk about 'narratives' and 'secular fabric' has no similar appeal. There can only be 'Islam is in danger' or 'Improve Governance.' We know which these two cretins will choose. But they will find it unsafe to do so even in Saudi Arabia. Thus they should set their sights on Columbia or some similar place in, if not Jew York, then wherever Liberal Jews are plentiful enough to patronize and provide for these earnest warriors against Islamophobia who Indian Muslims will increasingly regard with fear and loathing.