Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Aatish Taseer has a mixed family background, his mother (Tavleen Singh) being a Sikh Indian, and his father (Salmaan Taseer) being a Muslim Pakistani. This offers him a unique position to observe and understand the changes taking place in Islamic countries.

This first book, is part a travelogue through Muslim lands, and part a journey of self-discovery, as he struggles to understand his own roots, and his relationship with his estranged father. the journey begins as an argument with his father over the 'Pakistan ethos', and takes him through Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and finally Pakistan.

He devotes considerable time and effort to Pakistan, and offers some fresh insights into Pakistani 'ethos', and its troubles. The most valuable, to me personally, was the one related to the loss of the middle class at the time of Partition. This may have have resulted in Pakistan's elitist governance structure, and lack of modernisation of the economy. The people he meets are mostly non-intellectuals, and this may explain why many of them come across as rather simple, groping for outward symbols of his Islamicness. Their fascination with the string and steel bangle on Mr. Taseer's wrist is remarkable - I have also experienced this kind of curiosity from my Pakistani friends. It is particularly remarkable because no one talks to you about your religious beliefs in India.

He intersperses old and fresh history with his own personal story, which makes an interesting combination. The content has the studied neutrality of Mr. V.S. Naipaul and the socio-historical touch of Mr. Amitav Ghosh. Yet it is also quite different from either of these authors, particularly because this book is very personal as well.

Mr. Taseer writes well, having worked for a long time with Time magazine. This is a good, insightful book, and is full of nuggets that I have missed out, such as the siege of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. He also seems to mix up some facts, such as the reference to 1992 Hindu-Muslim riots in Delhi. I was very much there, and I don't remember any rioters running around checking whether a person had been circumcised or not. At another place, while talking about the Danish Cartoon controversy, he lauds the West for being a place 'that considered it an achievement for religion to be able to take a joke'. He fails to consider the blasphemy laws in several Western countries, including Denmark. He also ignores the existence of laws in West which punish people for denying the Holocaust, which to my mind, is another form of politico-religious censorship.

Nevertheless, Mr. Taseer is an intelligent writer and I have enjoyed this book immensely. The hard-bound edition that I am reading was published by Picador India, and cost Rs.495 ($10). The paper and the printing is quite good, with decent typeface. The paper absorbs ink, however.

Highly recommended for people who are worried about the problems that Pakistan is facing presently.

Aatish Taseer was conceived during an extramarital affair between the now late Pakistani businessman and politician Salmaan Taseer and Indian journalist Tavleen Singh. By coincidence I started reading the book on Jan. 3rd, the day before Salmaan Taseer, then governor of the Pakistani province of Punjab, was assassinated. I didn't make the connection until about 2/3 of the way through the book - Taseer's father turns out to be quite prominent in Benazair Bhutto's PPP (Pakistan People's Party); his grandfather a close friend of the poet Mohammed Iqbal, widely regarded because of his association with Muhammad Ali Jinnah as one of the founders of Pakistan (in spite of his death in 1933).

The book bounces jarringly between the profound and the mundane as it traces Aatish's journey to discover the estranged world of his father. Born in India as the only child to a Sikh mother (she never married) and a Muslim dad who lived on the other side of the border, Aatish embarks on a journey through Muslim lands in the hope of learning to understand how to approach his dad. This journey takes us first to Turkey. then Syria, Saudi Arabia where out of curiousity, not faith, he performs the Hajj, Iran, and then finally Pakistan itself. The author mentions that he also visited Oman and Yemen, but for reasons not specified he was unable to write about his experiences there.

Along the way we meet Islamic fundamentalists, tragic circumstances and political realists. Aatish was in Syria during the cartoon controversy and the burning of the Danish embassy. In Iran he falls into the underground party scene and runs into a group of closeted Hari Krishnas in Tehran. Then he's denied an extension to his visa and is unable to travel to the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad. In a chilling scene he's interrogated by Iranian security who demand names of his contacts and details of his activities. Paradoxically, aside from the Ayatollahs, politicians and the Basiji's, religion is on the decline - he finds the mosques are largely empty. Everyone thinks that they were much better off under the Shah and that where he went wrong was listening to Carter in the President's urging of faster reforms. They hope the regime will collapse on its own, perhaps in one or two years (we're still waiting) fearing that overt actions will cause Iranians to band together and keep the police state alive.

Twice he quotes the remarks of Abdullah, whom he met at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Istanbul: "Muslims have to be at the top so that we can realise what has been ordered by Allah, to make it real in this world by our own hand. We believe that that is the right thing to be done in the world".

The last third of the book covers Pakistan. What especially struck me was the desolation of Sind and description of the collapsed Indus river system. Answers are suggested - the formation of Pakistan resulting in the expulsion of the Hindu middle class resulting in a retreat to feudalism between landowner and peasant. They were replaced with the mujarrif, Muslim refugees from India, who introduced more fundamentalist Muslim leanings. Pakistan, founded as a secular state for Muslims began to devolve into a Sharia State for Muslims only. Often in he feels uncomfortable at remarks made about non-Muslims. Karachi and Lahore he finds that the word "devious" always appears before "Hindu". Also interesting was the persistence of seemingly out of place Hindu caste prejudices among the Muslim elites that he met, as well as a cultural bias against Israel, America and the West, all of which acted as talismans for the proclamation of Muslim identity.

The last two chapters pack a double extra punch:

In "Articles of Faith" Aatish confronts members of his family when his half sister (a doctor based in New York) said about Ahmadinijihad's denial of the Holocaust "There'd better have been a Holocaust because the only people who paid for it for the last fifty years have been Muslims", followed by his father's attempt to minimize the numbers. To which he responded "You don't have to deny a Holocaust you didn't commit just because you hate Israel".

And in "Distrust" he visits his father one last time on the day of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. They watch the news coverage together, mostly in silence.

I was drawn to the book by the recommendation by V.S. Naipal on the cover and my interest in the events leading to Partition and the aftermath. Taseer succeeded in adding to my understanding.

Recommended.

This is a very well written and easily readable book. This is author's riveting view on Islam and his efforts to come to terms with his personal story. He looks in a very unbiased view at the Islamic fringe also explains very well why muslims are drawn to fundamentalism. How rationality is subjugated to the word of God. How difficult it is going to be to win the war against fundamentalists who speak a different language and have a different frame of reality. This view is intermingled with his coming to terms with his estranged father. All in all - a very racily written book providing practical insight into Islam and thankfully bereft of any armchair speculation.