Why are you being such a jerk? Stop with the rag on clerical fascism. I did not invent the term.
As for this post, once again the answer is clearly in the text. VS Naipaul is a bigot toward Islam. He is not "getting at 'clerical fascism' here. " It is just bigotry.
> Ahmed Versi, editor of the Muslim News, said Naipaul's outburst showed just
> how deep his ignorance of Islam was.
>
> "What he says may shock many people here, but it comes as no surprise to
> those of us who have read his books. He is basically a Hindu nationalist,
> who has a deep dislike of Muslims, and that is where he is coming from."
Please stop this nasty and pointless waste of bandwidth.
-Chip Berlet
----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Jannuzi" <jannuzi at edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>; <lbo-talk-digest at lists.panix.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 9:45 PM Subject: Re: Clerical Fascism & Totalitarianism
> And there is this from our recent Nobel laureate in literature (I much
> prefer his literary journalism to his fiction, except the early and most
> recent fiction). Is VSN, who is so humane in his carefully crafted, edited
> books but rather outspoken in public statements, getting at 'clerical
> fascism' here? For one thing, this statement follows up on his fairly recent
> book about Islam in the non-Arab countries ('Beyond Belief', 1998, lots of
> good material on Iran and Pakistan here). Perhaps what he is really getting
> at is the mortmain of religious Arab colonialism that goes back to the
> middle ages but finds continuity with Saudi involvement in Pakistan and
> Afghanistan.
>
> Charles Jannuzi
>
> Guardian article with outbursts from VS Naipaul follows:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4269970,00.html
>
> VS Naipaul launches attack on Islam
> Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent
> Guardian
>
> Thursday October 4, 2001
>
>
> The novelist VS Naipaul has caused an outcry by comparing the "calamitous
> effect" of Islam on the world with colonialism.
>
> Sir Vidia, born in Trinidad of Indian parentage, who travelled extensively
> in the Muslim world for his books Among the Believers and Beyond Belief,
> launched his attack after a reading of his new book, Half a Life, at the
> Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
>
> Islam, he claimed, had both enslaved and attempted to wipe out other
> cultures."It has had a calamitous effect on converted peoples. To be
> converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to
> stamp on it, you have to say 'my ancestral culture does not exist, it
> doesn't matter'."
>
> Sir Vidia claimed what he called "this abolition of the self demanded by
> Muslims was worse than the similar colonial abolition of identity. It is
> much, much worse in fact... You cannot just say you came out of nothing."
>
> He argued that Pakistan was the living proof of the damage Islam could
> wreak.
>
> "The story of Pakistan is a terror story actually. It started with a poet
> who thought that Muslims were so highly evolved that they should have a
> special place in India for themselves.
>
> "This wish to sift countries of unnecessary and irrelevant populations is
> terrible and this is exactly what happened in Pakistan."
>
> Ahmed Versi, editor of the Muslim News, said Naipaul's outburst showed just
> how deep his ignorance of Islam was.
>
> "What he says may shock many people here, but it comes as no surprise to
> those of us who have read his books. He is basically a Hindu nationalist,
> who has a deep dislike of Muslims, and that is where he is coming from."
>
> Guardian Unlimited c Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
>
>