Some religious dictators says Muslims must maintain their separate and “universal” religious identity. My problem with this argument is: what exactly is religious identity? Religion is supposed to be a personal matter between an individual and God. In Islam (as in other religions), each one of us is individually responsible for our actions, and will be individually answerable for them eventually. When religion is such an individual matter, how can and why should a group of people have a common religious identity? When they do develop such an identity, they obviously do so by extending the demands of religion to practices that have little to do with it, the sole purpose of which is to “identify” them from others. Thus, beef eating and Arabic names become part and parcel of being a Muslim in India. And the stronger such a misplaced sense of identity becomes, the more extensive this approach turns into. Hence we see the growing Arabisation of Indian Islam, and the ascendance of the burqa and the beard among Muslims
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 10:18:10 +0000
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