A world without Islam—admittedly an almost inconceivable state of affairs

A world without Islam—admittedly an almost inconceivable state of affairs given its charged centrality in our daily news headlines. Islam seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos, and 9/11 itself. Why are these things taking place? “Islam” seems to offer an instant and uncomplicated analytical touchstone, enabling us to make sense of today’s convulsive world. Indeed, for some neoconservatives, “Islam fascism” is now our sworn foe in a looming “World War III.”But indulge me for a moment. What if there were no such thing as Islam? What if there had never been a Prophet Mohammed, no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa? Given our intense current focus on terrorism, war, and rampant anti-Americanism—some of the most emotional international issues of the day—it’s vital to understand the true sources of these crises. Is Islam, in fact, the source of the problem, or does it tend to lie with other less obvious and deeper factors? For the sake of argument, in an act of historical imagination, picture a Middle East in which Islam had never appeared. Would we then be spared many of the current challenges before us? Would the Middle East be more peaceful? How different might the character of East-West relations be? Without Islam, surely the international order would present a very different picture than it does today. Or would it? In any democracy, media is the most potent weapon of attack and shield of defence. In India, most of print and electronic media is controlled by anti-Hindu forces. Most of this media is denigrating Hinduism, spreading misinformation about Hindu scriptures, and hurting Hindu sentiments. Besides though Hinduism is based on Vedas which stipulate a casteless society, anti-Hindu media is dividing Hindu society on the basis of caste. Genocide and eviction of Hindus from Kashmir are no news whereas Gujarat riots which started after Hindu rail passengers were torched at Godhra are always in the news. Infiltration of crores of Pak-Bangla nationals threatening to create one more Islamic country on Indian soil finds no space in media. Similarly, conversion of poorer Hindus to Christianity by fraud, inducement and coercion creates no ripples in media. It is deplorable that though there are many country-wide newspapers and television channels promoting anti-Hinduism and fake secularism, there is no all-India pro-Hindu daily news paper, or television channel projecting Hindu concerns. Surprisingly, no Hindu organization has given this subject the importance it deserves. De-Hinduized by Macaulayan education and brain-washed by anti-Hindu media, most Hindus know nothing about Hindu religion, scriptures, heritage and history, and therefore, are passive to attacks on Hinduism. In this dismal situation, only pro-Hindu mass media can educate Hindus about Hindu religion, heritage and history; liberate them from conceptual confusion and fake secularism, and make them pro-active to save Hinduism from demolition. Since all the problems facing Hindu society can be solved with the help of pro-Hindu media, all organizations and individuals must help to create the all-India pro-Hindu daily news papers and television channels at the earliest. This is the only way to save Hinduism. Hindus have forgotten the message: "Dharmo Rakshiti Rakshitah" (One who protects Dharma is protected by Dharma). Though as per Hinduism, Dharma (righteousness), Artha (material possessions), Kama (worldly desires) and Moksha (liberation from re-birth) constitute four purusharthas (human pursuits), most Hindus have forgotten their Dharma, their foremost duty. Hindus must defend their Dharma; and live with dignity, and without being discriminated against. Hindus have a glorious heritage of thousands of years which they must cherish and preserve. Hindus have fought repeated onslaughts, and preserved Hinduism over the centuries whereas all other native religions and civilizations have been wiped off from the earth by expansionist religions. Every Hindu family must devote time and resources to protect Hinduism. Many Hindus feel that since Hinduism has survived for thousands of years, it will continue to flourish for ever. But they overlook the worst ever attacks threatening Hinduism now. They also ignore the fact that Hinduism has been banished from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh which also used to be Hindu lands. Hindus must remember that only a combination of wisdom and valour will ensure survival of Hinduism as Bhagvad Gita's last Shloka declares, "Yatra yogeshwarah Krishno yatra Paartho dhanurdharah, / tatra shreervijayo bhootirdhruvaa neetir matirmama" (Where Krishna, the Lord of yoga, and Arjuna, the wielder of bow are there; prosperity, victory, success, and glory will follow).
While Hindus from India in Germany have rarely attempted to open temples, Hindu Tamils who fled the conflict in Sri Lanka have been eager to establish their own places of worship, as have members of the smaller Hindu community from Afghanistan. Opening places of worship has gone along with the creation of institutional structures necessary for organizing and maintaining the temples. Hindu traditions are kept as much as possible, but it is usually not possible to hold the full daily schedule of religious services.
Out of two dozen Tamil temples in Germany (the first one established in 1988), only one is purpose built (in Hamm, opened in 2002), while another one is under construction in Berlin; all the others have been installed in converted factories or warehouses, in flats or in basements. Consequently, many of them are still seen as temporary places, to be enlarged or replaced by new temples in the future. The author expects that future temples will align more closely with the traditional south Indian models; for the time being, financial considerations or zoning regulations have been preeminent in decisions such as the orientation of the temples and the choice of locations. Hinduism has become increasingly established in the U.S. through a series of encounters over the past 150 years. These encounters are emblematic of Americans' increasing familiarity with Indian, and Asian, traditions; of contact between Americans and Indian immigrants, and of relationships among cultural traditions in a society that is self-consciously pluralistic. Two distinct forms of Hinduism have contributed to these encounters. In recent public lectures, Professor Vasudha Narayanan of the University of Florida has classified Hindu institutions in America today into two categories from Hindu tradition: 1. organizations that promote self-help practices (e.g. yoga, meditation), and 2. organizations that provide the means for formal ritual worship (e.g. temples). The engagement of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau with the famous Hindu text, the Bhagavad Gita (via Charles Wilkins' 1785 translation), represents a notable early American encounter with Hindu ideals. Both authors viewed the Gita as an important Asian contribution to the consideration of familiar philosophical issues, especially the nature of self-discipline. As members of the literati, Emerson and Thoreau approached the Gita through self-study and reflection: Emerson wrote of his reactions to the text in his letters and journals, and Thoreau brought the text on his pilgrimage along the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. In their writings, knowledge of Asian tradition is an intellectual and spiritual pilgrimage. Instruction in the nature of Hindu ideals by a Hindu representative came some 40 years later, in the very public forum of the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), a disciple of Ramakrishna, authoritatively presented the Hindu worldview to an appreciative crowd. Sincerely—and shrewdly—he emphasized the worldview according to Advaita Vedanta philosophy, which posits a non-duality between the divine and the essence of humanity. Thus, Vivekananda eschewed the "idolatry" of some forms of Hinduism as "the attempt of undeveloped minds to grasp higher spiritual truths," in favor of an image of Hinduism as a process of spiritual development: "The Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing; not in believing, but in being and becoming." The personal spiritual quest of Emerson and Thoreau was thus affirmed, yet Vivekananda placed this quest squarely within the context of the authority of Hindu tradition and the authority of a Hindu teacher. Further, Vivekananda appealed to this image of process in his assertion that all religions were one: "To the Hindu, then, the whole world of religions is only a traveling, a coming up, of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only an evolving of God out of the material man; and the same God is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the different circumstances of different natures. It is the same light coming through different colors." It was his assertion of the unity among religions that forged a rapprochement between speaker and audience, and Hinduism and Americans. Vivekananda also hoped that the Americans' encounter with Hinduism would lead to active engagement: One year after the World's Parliament, he established the Vedanta Society in New York, "the first Hindu organization designed to attract American adherents." Other teachers from India also sought to establish early institutions in America for the teaching of Hinduism. Baba Premanand Bharati was a Bengali disciple of Caitanya who lectured in the U.S. for five years and established the Krishna Samaj at the turn of the century. Swami Paramananda spent two years as an assistant at the New York Vedanta Society before establishing his own Vedanta societies in the Boston and Los Angeles areas; in 1923 he founded Ananda Ashrama, a mountain retreat in southern California. Swami Paramahansa Yogananda came to America in 1920 as a delegate to the International Congress of Religious Liberals held in Boston, then settled in America and founded the Yogoda-Satsang (Self-Realization Fellowship). His methodology involved the "science" of Kriya Yoga, which is the "union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite (kriya)." Although he published several books on his vision of spiritual path, including the enormously popular Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), Yogananda maintained that a direct relationship with a guru was the key: "Because of certain yogic injunctions, I cannot give a full explanation of Kriya Yoga in the pages of a book intended for the general public. The actual technique must be learned from a Kriyaban or Kriya Yogi; here a broad reference must suffice." The path of self-help, understood both traditionally and by these early Hindu teachers in America, is for a disciple to work toward spiritual liberation through a combination of practice on one's own and instruction from the guru.The Vedanta Society is credited with building the first Hindu temple in the U.S., in San Francisco in 1906; others followed, such as the Hollywood Temple in 1938, and the Santa Barbara Temple in 1956 In keeping with the image of Hinduism Vivekananda had presented to Americans, the focus in these temples tended to be on understanding scripture. The phenomenon of building temples with a focus on the ritual worship of images began in the 1970s and was directly related to the presence of Hindu Indian immigrants in America. In 1965 the Immigration Act liberated the long-frozen immigration of Asians to America by removing the national origins quota system. In addition, the Act's "family reunification" policy facilitated a second wave of Asian immigration. The Hindu temples built in the U.S. during the 1970s can be classified into two categories. One, as ISKCON temples: These temples were built for a specific devotional community, which included both Euro-Americans and Indian-Americans. Two, as Hindu immigrant temples built for the Hindu immigrant community, which tend to incorporate diverse ways of worship as they attempt to bring Hindus together as a cultural community. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896-1977), the founder of ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness), came to New York City in 1965. Within one year, Prabhupada had established a "storefront ashram" at 26 Second Avenue, where he would give lectures on the Gita every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. At those sessions, he would teach young American seekers about bhakti, based upon the teachings of a classical Hindu saint, Chaitanya (1486-1533). Bhakti, a Sanskrit word whose root meanings are sharing, participation, and devotion, is a religious path defined by three interrelated premises: That humankind shares in the nature of divinity; that humankind must participate in the worship of divinity through action--especially chanting God's name; and that humankind must be guided by devotion to God and to a spiritual guru. There is much that can, and has, been written about ISKCON. For the purposes of this essay, we will note that Prabhupada's vision included both the guru-disciple relationship and temple worship. Thus, it combined the personal spiritual quest, embodied by the guru, with traditions of ritual worship. ISKCON built temples in cities across America, with the most famous being the elaborate Palace of Gold in New Vrindaban, West Virginia In north-central New Jersey, there is an ISKCON temple at 100 Jacksonville Road in Towaco (near Parsippany). The temple is a large colonial-style house, set on a hill off a winding country road. The disciples there say that the house has belonged to ISKCON for twenty years. The house is surrounded by a beautiful garden which is tended by disciples. In total, the temple possesses some two and a half acres of land which, according to devotees, makes it liable for taxes, since it falls below the five acre minimum the town requires to bestow tax-free status on religious organizations. Several members live in the house; it is also a gathering place for ISKCON members in this and surrounding areas. There is a wide, open porch that greets one at the top of the stairs up the hill, and indeed the disciples are warm and friendly, in the context of encouraging others to take up the path of bhakti according to ISKCON.
Let us have an introspection upon the prevailing maladies and get the effective implementation of the better idea, the better measurements as to prevent them by the strong will power in order to protect the half of the human being which constituted the part of the women folk in the society. Yogesh Kumar Saxena, Advocate, High Court Allahabad (India) e mail Address yogrekha@yahoo.co.in or yogrekha@rediffmail.com Phone:- 91/ 0532/637720/2436451, Mobile:- 9415284843