Books On Islam In India.

Every once in awhile, people encounter works of art or new knowledge which makes them pause, think and admire. One of the symptoms of such an encounter is when a person can't stop talking about it or literally lecturing friends about the profound effect of new knowledge and the anticipation of all such effects it may have on man's life. My first such encounter without doubt was when I borrowed a copy of Atlas Shrugged from one of my seniors. I couldn't contain myself, let alone telling my friends of how great the experience was. I was thrilled, exalted and found tears running down my cheeks in the college library out of all the places in the world. I obviously wouldn't say that I understood the whole book the first time around but even the inkling that such knowledge existed gave me great joy. Ever since, there have always been such pauses; the difference has only been in the intensity or the measurement of such pauses – but the essential principle of furthering human life was always present.

I bring all of this up only because I've been encountering such a phase since last night. I can't stop recommending a couple of books to all and any Indian who wants to protect a semblance of a civilized society which is at great stake today – from Islamic totalitarianism. However, there are many Muslims and non- Muslims around us who would like to challenge the facts itself and proclaim that Islam is a peaceful religion and that Prophet Muhammed is a great man. If you've gotten into an argument with any Muslim about the nature of Islam, you would notice that he will inevitably allege that any verse in the Quran which propagates violence against non-believers is read "out of context" or is taken from some sort of Zionist sites. The argument in most cases gets personal and name-calling is often resorted to. John David Lewis has written an excellent piece on one such onslaught he encountered. While one is debating the need to attack Islamist Iran, the Muslim stops his opponent and tells him that he does not know the nature of Islam or Islamic theology. According to his version, Islam is a peaceful creed and Prophet Muhammed was a virtuous man. To any objection you raise you will be told that you are quoting the passage out of context and misrepresenting a peaceful religion. If you tell him about the slaughter of Bani Quraidha tribe where 900 Jews were killed in broad daylight, he will teIl you that the Prophet only did it because the tribe engaged in mutiny by negotiating with the enemies. If you cite a verse that says do not take non-beleivers as friends, he will say that the Prophet only meant "do not take them as allies" and not "do not take them as friends". If you tell him the doctrine of Taqqiya -- the order that one can lie to further Islam -- he will tell you that only the Shia's engage in Taqqiya and that Sunnis don't. I for one am not prepared for a strident defense of Islamic jihad and Sharia law. From the material I have read, I understand that the Prophet killed non-Muslims if they refused conversion. I see Muslim women everyday wearing burqas which cover their body from head to toe. But no matter what objection you raise, you are always quoting the passage "out of context" and sometimes the even worse "You are not a Muslim so you don't know".

I think the same trend occurs in the global warming propaganda. Mainstream media is full of the "science" behind the global warming theories and how certain it is that we are going to die if we continue to progress. Such claims give it the semblance of genuine facts.

Although it's impossible to become a philosopher, climatologist and a scholar in Islamic theology in a specialized society, I think one needs to spend at least sometime evaluating these claims for one selfish reason only: self-defense. Our culture is full of nonsensical ideas and weeding such ideas out requires that one seek out facts that one has to process to ascertain the truth of such claims. One can do as John David Lewis did. "In answer," to an angry questioner Mr. Lewis writes, "I re-read a series of quotes in which Islamic leaders—as well as a young girl on Lebanese television—call for jihad, war, and death; and I pointed out to the monologist that he must be quite angry at these Muslims for their incorrect view of jihad. But instead of being angry at those who give his presumably peaceful religion a bad name, he condemned me for reading their quotes. This is evasion par excellence—to condemn those who raise Islam's violent past and present rather than have to face the fact that the vision of idyllic peace that one associates with one's religion has no basis in reality." On the issue of global warming, Yaron Brook does a great job.

Of course, if one finds a field to be of particular interest, he can delve into the issue. I think the real challenge is to identify, narrow down one's interests and then really nail those issues down. As for me, I have lived in India and had many, many Muslim friends as a kid. This documentary opened my eyes to Islamic totalitarianism and was a rude shock – to say at best. Ever since, I have been following people like Robert Spencer and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I have been thinking about pursuing and investigating Islam and it has been quickly developing into a hobby of mine. I have decided that apart from studying Objectivism I would also like to study Islamic theology and history to the extent that I can.

Last night, after a few Google searches, I found this page which hosts free e-books on the nature of Islam. It piqued my attention because a few of the books which are offered are about the Jihad in India. Although our first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, was adamant that after the Muslim invasion, Hindus were treated properly and that the Mughal rulers were peaceful, there was a blood bath in India. Two of the authors I had wanted to read – K.S Lal and Seetha Ram Goel – were among the e-books. Here are a few I plan to read in the next couple of days:

• The Calcutta Quran Petition by Sita Ram Goel
  
• Indian Muslims – Who Are They by K.S. Lal
  
• The Legacy Of Muslim Rule in India by K.S Lal
  
• Muslim Slave System In Medieval India by K.S Lal
  

I think my real education in Islamic history will come from Scott Powell in his A First History For Adults which I plan to take in the next year. In the meantime, I am going to do what I can to further my values. I think these books should be compulsory reading to any Indian if he wishes to understand the Kashmir issue or the string of bombings in the name of Allah because such issues can be sanely understood only when one looks into the theory that's behind such atrocious acts: Islam.

I welcome any book or course suggestions for beginners in the study of Islam.

Loving Life: The Morality of Self-interest and the Facts that Support It

I have recently finished reading Craig Biddle's book, "Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It" and loved it. I think it should be compulsory reading for any just-discovering Objectivist who is looking to understand and integrate the philosophy of Ayn Rand into his life. I've read a lot of Biddle's articles from his quarterly journal,The Objectivist Standard and think of his work as completely awesome. He specializes in bringing complex abstract problems to the readers in extremely simple terms. This book was the first book of his I've ever read and really enjoyed it.

I had written sometime earlier that, "What we need today is not just a defense of the free market from economists; people like Henry Hazlitt and Von Mises did that decades ago but we still see socialism and fascism around us every day. It is the notion of altruism that we need to dismantle and bomb away. Until it is accepted that a person has a duty to live for somebody else, the growth of the mixed economy will not stop nor the growth of regulations until we get to a point of no return. To fix it, its not just free market economics we need but cultural change that will show that a person should be selfish and pursue his chosen values as he sees fit."

Craig Biddle does exactly that. He demonstrates that morality is not a matter of divine revelation, social convention or personal opinion-but, rather, is the factual requirements of human life and happiness. My favorite parts from his book are the early chapters where he is setting the context of the rest of the book. He starts off by explaining the false alternative of religion v. subjectivism and very plainly and clearly reasons that both – religion and subjectivism – uphold sacrifice as the moral virtue and selflessness as the moral ideal.

But what I take away from the book – the thing that made the cut – was his explanation of the is-ought problem and the nature of values. I had never been aware of the is-ought problem or David Hume's theory until now. The theory says that one can never go from the realm of facts to the realm of values – that there is nothing in the what is that tells us the what we ought to do. As Biddle puts it, "But reason allows us to identify facts and only facts, which alone does not seem to tell us about anything about what we morally ought to do. There simply is no fact labeled "ought" out there." If one witnesses a murder, then the relevant facts are that one man is stabbing the other while the other is trying to resist or run away. Hume asked, in essence, where is the notion or concept good in facts? How does one get from facts to values? By analyzing such a premise, Biddle sets a context to the discovery of Ayn Rand and why her discovery was so fundamental in nature. The answer to the is-ought problem lies in the nature of values.

Biddle notes that Ayn Rand did not start out by asking what are values but asked why does man need values in the first place? The need for values arises from the fact that life – any life is conditional. The notion of good stems from acknowledging this fact and doing everything that sustains and promotes life. The only morality that grasps the fact that genuine happiness comes from the achievement of one's values is Ayn Rand's theory of selfishness. The notion of value is not a primary; it presupposes the questions: value for what? and value to whom? Rocks, for example, don't value staying in one piece or not whereas I definitely do. I value food and shelter precisely because my life is ultimately at stake. It is precisely because one's ultimate value -- life -- is at stake – that at each moment one may or may not exist – one has to take life affirming actions if they seek the stuff of good living. The standard for which one judges a thing to be good or bad is: man's life. Thus, all that promotes man's life is good for man and everything hinders it is bad for man.

The other question a value presupposes is a value to whom? I was always unclear what value to whom precisely meant and Biddle gave me a lot to chew on and process. Biddle writes, the question value to whom, put another way is asking: Who should be the beneficiary of values? Should the beneficiary of values be the subject himself or some other person or entity? If we are to take actions that promote life we must grasp the fact that life is the attribute of an individual. To promote life, the beneficiary of a value should be the individual himself. The morality that holds that the individual himself is the beneficiary of values is the morality of rational egoism.

Resolving the is-ought gap, Ayn Rand wrote, "The fact that a living entity is, determines what it ought to do." In other words, she said that concept of values like all other concepts is the grasp of certain facts: it is the fact that life is conditional that make the transition from facts to values – possible and necessary – if one chooses to live.

If one chooses to remain in existence, then one must use the faculty of reason that arranges the data gathered from our senses in conceptual form, by the method of logic. Reason, like life, is the attribute of the individual since it is only the individual who can observe, think, make deductions and understand the world around us. If the individual chooses to sustain his life, then, in short, he must be productive. I really enjoyed Biddle's desert island examples to concretize higher abstractions. On the point of productivity, if one were on a desert island one would have to produce to live, the relationship with reality doesn't change even in a specialized society because one still has to produce to live. Other lively examples involving desert islands scenarios occur when he explains the nature of rights and the requirements of a civilized society. Desert island examples, I think, reduces the perceptual data one has to hold in their RAM thus making the reasoning easier to follow.

The chapter on Objective Moral Virtues is wonderfully written and is filled with examples underlying the principle that one can never fake reality and get away with it. The primary virtue is rationality. As Miss Rand puts it, "it is the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge, one's only judge of values and one's only guide to action." Since rationality as such does not offer specific guidance, it is narrowed down into other virtues like independence, productiveness, integrity, justice, honesty and pride Examples given range from the dishonest manager who occasionally promotes his employees on the basis of seniority or gender or race and to the "selfish" activity of cheating on a test. The book does a great job of analyzing higher level abstractions and concretizing them into great examples.

Loving Life engages and introduces complex principles for readers who have no prior knowledge of philosophy. If anybody is looking for a genuine book on self-improvement, this is it.

[Update: The first two chapters of the book are available for the subscribers of The Objectivist Standard here and here.]

The Sparrowhawk series – Book One: Jack Frake

I strongly recommend the book, "Book One: Jack Frake" by Edward Cline. The book is the first in the Sparrowhawk series which sets the scene and the context in which the American Revolution took place. In Book One, we are introduced to 18^th century England whose various trades are heavily regulated by the Crown by means of taxes and customs. Amidst all of this we meet Jack Frake who is a boy of ten. Jack is independent in thought, values privacy more than hunger, born in a lowly class and has a keen interest in studying. We also meet his rash father, Cephas, his mother Huldah Frake, his notorious uncle Isham Leith and his parish, Parson Parmley who also happens to be Jack's teacher. The parish quickly acknowledges the talent in Jack and requests his parents to send him to a good boarding school to which they flatly refuse on the account that there would be nobody to help with the household chores.

Later in the book, Jack ends up running away from home and through a series of events joins the smuggling gang of Augustus Skelly. The gang routinely smuggles various goods into the country which were otherwise taxable by the Revenue men appointed by the Crown. There are constant rumblings in the public of high taxes and they secretly welcome the smuggling gang from whom they can purchase materials at a much cheaper price. Jack also meets Redmagne, who is a member of the gang and an intellectual figure. Jack receives most of his education from him and is a big brother figure for Jack. In the book, we encounter Augustus Skelly, who as a leader of the gang sets the policies that the gang must follow. They are often referred to as thieves by the Revenue men but we soon learn that in fact, there is nobody they steal from. They enter into voluntary exchanges by men such as themselves and don't recognize the authority of the Crown on their lives and on their spirits. Skelly remarks in his first encounter with Jack Frake, "There is more freedom in these caves, Mr. Frake, than in our towns. And chains – these things – are a more honest form of slavery than the specious liberty enjoyed by most of our countrymen, who are chained to the laws….You will notice something about the men here, which is that the prospect of being swaddled in chains like these frightens them less than being swaddled in chains of laws, of which there are many more links. We will submit to chains, but we none of us will submit to their paper and ink parents!" Book One closes with Jack leaving England to serve an eight-year sentence in the colonies in the ship Sparrowhawk.

We also encounter the James Taggart-ish, Henoch Pannell, Commissioner Extraordinary of His Majesty's Revenue, and his likes to whom the Crown represents all the privileges they can curry favor with. To them, Augustus Skelly stands as the symbol they dread; a free England where they would have to earn a living.

The narrative of the book is the best I've read in recent times. I was even surprised to see a few tears run down my cheek in response to some of the lines in the book. A few of my favorite passages were one's that described egoism so passionately and the passages that described 18^th century London, Paris and Vienna in such awesome terms. The reader is also treated to a firsthand experience of "tragedy of the commons" and the "seen and unseen effects of taxes".

All in all, the book was a great read and I just can't wait to get my hands on Book Two. I can say without any reservation, "This, is great art".

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I have just bought a copy of the book, Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and can't wait to dig through it. Since I've been doing a lot of blogging on Islam (almost the last 9 posts consecutively), I've been wanting to take a peak into the Islamic world and what better way than to hear an account of it first hand.

I've done some preliminary research on the book, Infidel and found it on the recommendation list of Noodlefood (if you are not subscribing to NoodleFood already, you sure are missing out on a great deal) and wanted to give it a try. I also found a video of Ayaan Harsi Ali and a review by Gina on the book.

I can't wait to get my hands on it!


Update -- I've just watched the video I've linked above and I just had to state the obvious. The woman is so ready for Objectivism. Although she said the usual stuff about human rights and democracy like Robert Spencer, they sure do lean on the side of justice and the free-market in each of their arguments. In the video, when one of the audience member started off with the usual "what's so great about democracy and people are poor here too"(democracy implying a floating abstraction as the best social system ever discovered), she replied something to the effect of "I would rather be poor and free than be a slave" and also "If you ask any person in a third world country, where would you go given a plane, most people would opt for America". Lets hope she finds Ayn Rand.