Deconstructing Terrorism: Why Islam Was Made the Global Enemy I Prof. Irfan Ahmad

These are five nation states sogeographically apart from each other.But in all these nation estate there isone slogan which is so powerful namelyall Muslims are not terrorists but allterrorists are Muslims are Muslim.[music]>> And so then when you bring thatdifference between real and true whatdoes that mean? In the case of India,you have WW Hunter who wrote that bookcalled Indian Musalmans. Are they boundin conscience to rebel against thequeen?>> By the way, let me note here that after9/11, Ruba, which is a leading publisherin India, they published that book anddeleted the subtitle>> again because we are talking aboutterrorism and we're going to deconstructit. To begin with, what do you think isterrorism?>> Rather than asking the question, who isthe terrorist? What motivates them? Ipose a counter question that who needsthe label or the category of terrorist>> and in that sense why do you think thatespecially in context with terrorism asunderstanding why was Islam madeexceptional? So in the book I also talkabout uh the current prime minister ofuh of Israel. He edited a book and thewhole conclusion of of uh that book isthat Arabs are terrorist and Arabs aloneare terrorist.>> Uh especially when you mentioned theword huryat within your book itself youopen that gateway. Uh what is it thatdecoloniality brings and what is it thatthe limit of it? If you have educatedvery consciously through media uhthrough nonformal channels a wholegeneration in which the impression isthat jihad is a dirty word and it iscompletely against the self view ofMuslims. Two things I would want to talkabout law as a structure of the stateitself [music] and media as a form ofpotentiallyuh creating that structure throughconsent.>> Decolonial is a negative reference.Okay. So we need to decolonize ourself.Uh which I think is a worthy exercise.But can we also ask a questionand that is what is the positive agendathat we have?>> So when you say the phoneticis a radical partisan of freedom so tostate what do you mean by that? And I'mnot simply interested in reality interms of the fact that as they exist oras it happens or as it is operating. I'malso believing in a moral world whichdoesn't exist but which in my viewshould exist. Now see independent thinktank media platform minority or humanrights issues research or evidence-basedconversations amplifySo asalamikum Dr. Professor Irvan Ahmed.How are you? It's been a long trip. Werecorded a podcast with you on Hinduorientalism and the idea wherein youdeployed the frameworks of power,knowledge and uh he hgemony in thespecial context of the experience ofIndian Muslims and how power andknowledge is manufactured in the Indianstate context and similarly now you havecome up with a very uh exciting workbecause I went through it and it gave mereal in-depth perspectives uh of aboutthe idea of terrorism.which we take for granted even from theresponse side. Uh the idea thatterrorism is just you know a constructthat is made up in a certain in acertain way for the state to deployagainst a certain minority specificallyMuslims. But to be able to understand itfrom anthropological perspective, socialtheory perspective, even potentially themetaphysics of violence itself,particularly deployed in this day andage for a global enemy, uh especiallylocated in Islam and what you argue thatit was once located in the cold war erafor communism. So that transition andtranslation of a category of violenceinto a certain raified concept that isdeployed engaged to marginalize tosystematically uh counter uh the Muslimexperiences or the manifestation ofMuslim life into the public sphere. Somy question would be again because weare talking about terrorism and we'regoing to deconstruct it to begin withwhat do you think is terrorism in theway that it was defined and then in theway it was later evolved to encapsulateor inhabit a certain way in which thatcategory is understood incommon nomenclature right now.>> Yeah. So thank you. uh this is a very umeffective uh way of framinguh and I'm uh happy to be uh again onN's network. Now back to your uhquestion. So the question of um uhdefinition is of course important butthe point is um there is no agreed uhuniversal definition of terrorismand uh the document uh of uh UnitedNations in 2015it clearly admits that there is nouniversal definition of of uh terrorism.they also use the word terrorism andradicalization as substitute. So in thatdocumentuh and and that is the Oslo conferenceof which I do an ethnography.So I raised this question that if you donot have a definition how you will findways to counter it.>> Okay. So there is already acontradiction in that document. But alsonoteuh Alex Smith who who is a verywell-known uh uh expert of terrorism andin 1985 he gave uh almost 200 definitionof terrorism. Sorry, he didn't give hehe compiled>> compiled>> he he recorded all that definition>> uh and in 2005so this more than 200 definition was in1985 in 2005uh he again came back to this definitionquestion to say that the search for aconsensual definition continues. Now thethird point is if you just take theexample of uh one uh estate and here I'mtalking about America the US estatedepartmentokay and the US department of defenseand the CIAthese are three organs of the sameestate and they do not have one agreeddefinition. Each agency has a definitionuh of its own and partly it is alsoembedded into the institutional historyof the respective organization.So uh any scholar of uh uh terrorism ormore more broadly of of any phenomenonuh I do not to the extent that I'mknowledgeable I do not know of anyconcept in social science or humanitieswhich has a universally agreeddefinition. Okay. And um that is onereason in one of the chapters uh theopening short is uh coupletfrom an udu poet thatbecause definition is uh an act ofboundary making it is an act of uh in ardefinition is also known as bundi I'mI'm mixing um uh udu and ari so it is todemarcate it is to differentiate state.So this uh process is uh definitely uhat war in the question of uh terrorismas well. Okay. So anybody who exploresthis uh subject then he will be drivenuh he or she will be driven to ask thisquestionuh that okay if we cannot define it thenwhat is the other way in which we canapproach this uh question and for me inthis book but more broadly in my generalwork I thought that the question ofdefinition uh will not lead as anywherewhich is not to say that I'm I'm I'm notsaying that for a particular purpose youcan define but lay out the assumptionsokay and therefore rather than askingthe question who is the terrorist whatmotivates them uh what are theirideologies or what are their beliefs Ipose a counter question that who needsthe label or the category of terroristAnd this counter question to me itallows usuh to ask a different set of questions.Okay. Including the fundamental questionwhich is central to the thrivingindustry which terrorism study is>> namely who is a terrorist. So my pointis to summarize it by asking thequestion who needs the civ category ofterrorist we open up a new horizon ofthinking and um also action and in thatprocess we can also address the questionuh whichis the mainstream question namely who isthe terrorist.>> It's like uh it just uh clicked my mind.And it's like asking the question whatis a house and who needs a house. So ifyou ask that question what is a houseyou would uh give the answers a place tolive where there is furniture. When youask the question who needs a house thenthe whole uh anthropology of humansneeding that house in the first placearises and that genealogy uh thendemands to be constructed. So in thatcontext if you pose that question and ifyou pose that question in the context ofterrorism how did that word specificallyevolved to be identified as a questionwhich is fundamentally intertwined to acertain ideology or identity beingMuslim or being following Islam. How didthat happen? So uh that is why um as youwill noticeuh the book escope uh the scope of thebook is of course the general questionof terrorism but the focus is on post911 terrorism and one of the ways inwhich uh the post 911 terrorism has beendescribed or defined okay is this thethere there are two uh main uh componentof this definition Uh the first one isthat this is primarily a religiousphenomena>> and once it is defined as religious thenthe implication is that it is alsoIslamic. Now if it is a religious uh sopost 911 terrorism is defined asreligious then the point would be if itis religious terrorism then does itobtain only in Islam or do you also havein Hinduism do you have also in Buddhismdo you also have in Christianity do youalso have in Judaism do you also have inzorastrianism and so and so forth nobecause you do not hear a word calledJewish terrorism you do not hear a wordcalled Christian terrorism. You do nothear a term called Hindu terrorism.Right? So the uniqueness of this post911 terrorism is defined in terms ofreligious terrorism. Number one andnumber twoand this is a huge uh departure by theway. Okay. uh from the existing uhcorpus of uh scholarshipuh namely that terrorism throughout mostof the history has been defined as atactic.>> Okay. Uh it is a means through which aparticular group wants to achievecertain things. Okay. But in the name ofthe so-called new terrorism, this hasbeen transformed from a tactic toideologyand one which is religious. So these arethe two fundamental um dimension ofso-called new uh uh terrorism uh whichsome associate exactly with the 9/11,some take it further back and and so andso forth. The third component is also bythe way um worth mentioninguh which is to say that in modernhistory at least the terrorism uh hasbeen also or in a in many significantways it is also associated with thestate the state terrorism. So after theFrench revolution, this is the Jaccoinwho let loose a reign of terror. Uh thatis the French example back to thesubcontinent.Okay. After uh the failed rebellion of1857,uh historians have described the scenethat the British army they killed peoplein Delhi and their dead body was hung bythe tree. And this is from an uh uhBritish source. These dead bodies werehung by the tree to a strike terror inthe residents of Delhi. Okay. Now whatis the point uh emerging from this thatin post 911 terrorism people were simplytalking about terrorism from thenon-state actors.Okay.But the fact that historically terrorismhas been also associated with the stateokay that wasuh almost wiped out. So what the bookdoes [clears throat] it uh of course ittalks about uh pre uh 911 uh terrorismas well and uh the clearcut distinctionthat some scholars make. Okay. forexample uh that communism was the mainenemy of uh the westled uh uh worldsystem after world war II okay and inthe last phase of uh that uh uh cold warokay this is during the time of Reaganuh that terrorism was identified asenemy and then there is some transitionphase uh but then it was mostly Reagan'sabout the war on drug and war onterrorism. Okay. Uh but that is also thetime uh because uh you know um SovietUnion had invaded uh Afghanistan, right?Um and then uh America was alsosupporting the resistance uh posed uh byuh by the Afghan fighters. Okay. Andthen from the late 80s and then you haveyou know uh the inauguration[clears throat] of so-called new worldorder uh by uh George W. Bush senior andthat inauguration of the so-called newworld order uh takes place after thefall of USSR and after the fall ofBerlin wall. uh now um this is uh somekind of neat narrative uh which ispresented but I argue in the book thatuh it is not actually as neat as as itis made out to be because among othersBernard Lewis okay he had already saiduh I will have to check the exact yearbut probably late 50s and early 60s whencommunism was the main enemy of uh thewestern led world. He had made anargument that Islam is just likecommunism. So in other words uh if youmake an argument that okay um afterWorld War I uh the western le worldsystem had identified communism as theenemy and then it was replaced by Islam.Okay. Uh soon uh after 911 or justbefore 911 then it is not such a neat uhdivided uh uh phase wise story becauseduring the cold war itself uh BernardLewis had made a strong similaritybetween communism andIslam. So this in brief would be um ageneral picture of uh the place of theenemy after World War II first uh in thefigure of communism and then uh moreexplicitlyuh uh after 9/11 uh in the form of Islamor terrorism. So when we hear about uhthese debates and discussions oftenHuntington's thesis comes to uh theforefront about the clash ofcivilizations that would be the futureof the way civilizations rather thanstates would engage in warfare inwhatever means possible amongst eachother and in that sense why do you thinkthat especially in context withterrorism as understanding why was Islammade exceptionalafter communism, why does that categoryuh get embodied within an ideology andan identity that uh that becomes Islamas the universal other? So is therecertain uh no reading that you have inwhich this framework privileges Islam asthe uh embodied other when it comes tothis kind of violence?>> Yeah. So one uh quick response I I thinkum Huntington is is not an originalthinker on this point. the idea of clashof civilization actually it is alreadygiven by Bernard Lewis you know and inone account um uh now many people inIndia don't mention him uh but Giril Janwho was uh the editor of times of Indiafor quite some time you know uh who alsowrote a book which is uh I think calledthe Hindu phenomenon>> so in one account Giral Jan has alsomentioned uh uh about uh clash of uhcivilization.Okay, but that is just a minor point. Souh the reasons can be uh many but itseems to me uh that it can be analyzeduh at one level and that is what uh Ihave done which is to say that thesystem of the nation estate okay uhwhich has been built after World War IINow this was an experiment uh which wasquite a novel experiment in history.Okay. So before World War I the worldwas not known in terms of nation state.So once you create this idea of uhnation state and it is true by the wayuh that the this idea of the nationestate was novel to uh most uh religiousand cultural tradition. Okay. Um but Ithink uh theopposition to this ideauh or the fact that Muslims did not findit uh in line with their own culturaland religious traditions. So uh I wouldsay that one of the most important uhvoices of resistanceagainst this nation estate system hasbeen from the Muslims. Okay. And this isalso true by the way uh as you knowafter uh World War I in the wake of uhthe abolition of>> okayuh what was previously Ottoman Empire itwas divided into 32 nation state. Nowhere uh we have to pause and ask aquestion that did people of Iraq reallywanted a nation state.Okay. Did people of Syria really want anation state? So unlike for example inIndia where you had a colonialgovernment against which people foughtand then uh an idea of uh independenceand so and so forth were there. What youhave in the middle is that of course theFrench uh and the British they incitedthe local population to weaken the uhOttoman Empire and all these nationestate they were uh implanted. This wasnot because the people in the MiddleEast really wanted it. Okay, it wasgiven to them in spite of their wish. Itis not the case that they were theygained or they fought for it and thenthey achieved it. Now if u it looks uhuh uh not so convincing so let me giveyou an example when Iraq was announcedas the independent nation state. Okay.So unlike in India of course there hasbeen debate what what should be thenational song or national anthem. Iraqishad no national anthem. So in theceremony which announced the creation ofIraq as a separate estate, it is theBritish anthem which is played. Longlive the king of of of Britain. Nowhaving uh said this, let me also saythat of course these nation estates werecreated. Uh but uh people in the MiddleEast, which itself is a colonial term bythe way. Uh the the term Middle East wasuh uh invented by um Alfred Mahan whowas a navy a scholar of naval trade andand so and so forth. Okay. So people inthe Middle East of course they they theyacceptuh that nation state boundaries but thisis not something which has organicallyemerged since it has been artificiallyplanted. So they also identified withthe larger idea or the pre- nation statesense of community social communitypolitical community and culturalcommunity. So that is one uh reason andthe second one is of course I think inthe case of Middle East Israel has beenuh a key uh player and this discourse ofuh terrorism would not be on theinternational plane after 9/11uh withoutum Israel. So in the book I also talkabout uh the current prime minister ofuh of Israel. uh I think he was somekind of diplomatic officer uh in the 80sor something and then he wrote he editeda book with uh dozens of articles whichwas criticized by say and then this isuh the the USSR had not fallen but he inthat book he says that look the worldfaces threat uh and by world he meansthe western world in which he includeshis by right which itself is a veryproblematic thing that how come Israelis is a western state. So um by theworld he means the western world hemeans the western countries but Israelincluded and the whole conclusion of ofthat book is that Arabs are terroristand Arabs alone are terrorist. So muchof this thing is uh centered around thatmiddle east eastern uh context. Now inIndia when the first uh UAPA came muchlater initially it was uh POA rightprevention of terrorism act orsomething. Okay. So if you see uh thereum I think I'm forgetting the name uhthere was a subcommitteeuh which uh uh gave u a context to tothe uh legislative piece and it saysthat uh terrorism has emerged fromMiddle East. Uh I I stand corrected butI think it is Malmouth committee orsomething like that. In addition tothese factors then you have to also seethat um Muslims minority uh also in thewest um in in France in Britain thelargest number of Muslim minority inEuropean country is is in France. So italso became uh a pivot around whichthese nation statescould consolidate themsel and organizethemsel because uh what you have here isuh that the so-called the socialistum after the collapse of the USSR theygot weakenedand as a mobilizing toolokay uh in Indiauhuh of course it is connected to theinternational global politics but thereis a regional dimension because in Indiaif if if you have to talk about uhterrorism in France you don't need tomention Pakistan but in India you cannottalk about terrorism without mentioningPakistan and later on also Bangladeshright so the the the debate is localizedin the case of India but thislocalization is done in such a way thatIt also speaks to the largerinternational context.>> For example, Benjamin Netanyahu as youargued rightly that the way heconstructed the idea of Arab terroristalso inherited in within his frameworkIsrael being part of the westernparadigmatic framework and as a frontierstate defending the you know modernliberal values in terms of the new worldorder that you mentioned had beenconceived by west itself. So, Israelbecomes the bastion uh of the protectionof the liberal human rights on behalf ofthe western communities and societies.So, similarly, India can also deploythat in terms of the local uhgeopolitics of Southeast Asia if I'mrightly understanding what you'rearguing.>> True. and and uh also take uh note ofthe fact that when uh Israel talks aboutterrorism as a threat to its ownexistence and terrorism fromArabs/Muslims,>> it completely erases the fact that thebirth of Israel is possible throughterrorist activities. [clears throat]>> There are two organization called>> and I think the other one is called Levyor something. Mhm.>> But these were two terroristorganization and by the way note thefact that these terrorist organizationthey simply morphed into Israeli defenseforce>> later with the formation of Israel>> with the creation of Israel as a stateand uh before 1948 and uh the book alsogives a quotation you have many leadinguh Israeli politician, one of them whoalso became u prime minister later on uhgoes on to record uh to say that no uhreading of Jewish ethics okay uhprevents us from using terrorism. So inother words they think that uh at thatpoint of time that Judaism uh Judaism uhallows uh use of terrorism as a as a asa as a means. Even today if you see inGaza Gazan context the way uh it wasrecorded in 2018 somebody a journalistwent to u Israel and then they asked thequestions whether how shouldPalestinians be treated and the it wasnormal for them to answer that theyshould be carpet bombed they should bekilled they will they should beannihilated so that the idea of theactivity when it happens towards thembecause of a privileged uh god'sprivileged community. Uh it it it's anasymmetrical construct, violence intheir own might. But also uh becausewhen you talked about and when we when Iasked you about the exceptionalism ofIslam as an inherited category ofsomething that West after communismwanted to pedal as a violent ideology.So the idea that when you mention thatthe idea of nation states was imposed onWest Asia or Middle East or the Arabstates.So their identity had a surplus in asense that the national identity thatwas being constructed as you rightlyargued had a bigger vision or asocioultural ties or interactions. MaybeIndia had a different history or otherplaces have had a different history or adifferent genealogy.But that specificity of that surpluslocated in Islam intertwined with thegeopolitical necessities also combinedwith this idea of what you argued as thenew world order. So in that combinationyou also mentioned the malaise the theproblems that the new world ordercreated and how it uh portrayed thoseproblems on Islam. So my question wouldbe that this identity a Muslim whobecomes a terrorist but you also saythat in thedeployment of that terminology even thejustified justiceoriented demands ofthat identity gets clubbed into thisidea that has been constructed anddeployed. So when you say the phoneticis a radical partisan of freedoms so tostate, what do you mean by that? How doyou see this nation state, new worldorder, this surplus identity and its ownconstructs about freedom and equalityand being marginalized and portrayedinto this category that has beenconstructed?>> Right? So this is a very thoughtfulquestion. So uh you have to see it uh asfollows.uh the depiction of uh terroristuh/muslimsokay as the ultimate evil as theultimate uh barbarianokay so this is how the west uhportrayed it and fanaticism is one tropethrough which it has been done so in thebook as you will notice uh I uh if youwant to use that uh term I give uh abiograph graphy of the term fanaticismand it uh travels across continents.So in the case of India you have WWHunter who wrote that book called IndianMusman>> are they bound in conscience to rebelagainst the queen. This is the fulltitle. By the way, let me note here thatafter 911, Rupa, which is a leadingpublisher in India,>> they published that book and deleted thesubtitle. So, it is simply published asIndian Muslmans. So, anyway, uh now inHunter's book, uh fanaticism is is onetrope. Uh of course, the book talksabout uh primarily about Bengal. Um andthe book is published in uh 1871.Okay. Uh but then this word fanaticfanaticism I also trace it um in in thehistory of uh the US and how uh thepeople who were fighting against slaveryand those uh black population which wasasserting for equality.their uh demand was also or their modesof protestation was also defined asfanatic>> fanatic>> and and there is one guy who later onalso became uh I'm forgetting the nameof that person but later on he becamethe vice president of America he saidthat these fanatics will not simply stop>> at one particular demand later on theywill ask for complete equality so nowthe situation here is uh as follows. Umso on the one hand you have thedepiction by media industrial securitycomplex of terrorist uh/muslims asultimate evil barbarian uh anti-modernand against uh that depiction anylogical person and that is whereanthropology becomes important in apositive way because one of the main uhclaims of anthropology is uhanthropology makes that distinctionbetween emic view and etic view. So emicview is uh how you see yourself and eticview is how you are seen by others fromoutside. So this description ofterrorist as enemy of modernity,freedom, enlightenment, equality andwhatever you have or or or democracy uhthat is an atic view. But then thequestion is from an anthropological oreven from a any human framework thequestion is what is the amic view? Howdo these people look at themselves? Andthat is where I do an operation ofrehabilitation in terms ofrehabilitating the concept of fanaticismor one who is a fanatic>> uh in the sense of uh not as uh thedominant meaning of fanatic is issomebody who is not using reason uh whois so much uh in terms of psychicderailment. Okay, he cannot thinkproperly. But then there is anothermeaning uh of of fanaticism when thesepeople black people fighting forequality and against slavery which is tosay uh that the apologist of slaverydescribed them fanatics because theywere really asking for equality in itstrue sense. Right? So that is where I ifyou see in one of the chapters when Italk to uh quote unquote terrorists whohave been jailed in India and I want tolisten to them uh without beingjudgmental. I mean of course I have myown views but then uh the question isalso to look at them in emic term howthey see themselves right and and thatis where uh I present an alternativepicture uh unlike the western depictionof such notions as jihad uh because youknow jihadism jihadi terrorism you knowthis became uh a staple for uh printmedia and and television media here. Butthere I I go to uh a journey ofretrieving these meanings through thescholarship of Abu Kalamazaduh what it means uh to be um enactingjihad>> and you will see that I also published aa pamphlet which was from uh I thinkearly 90s from Aliger Muslim Universityum where uh the pamphlet is in Udu andit says that uh Uh this is a a group ofstudents okay uh who published apamphletum saying that we are doing a jihady ora jihad for democracy and freedom.>> Okay. So this is a counter reading. Soagainst this mediatized depiction of ofjihad as something which is uh which canonly be dark uh reactionary andregressive I give uh an understanding ofuh jihad uh through uh these so-calledterrorists who have been put in jail uhthrough these pamphlets and then goingback to uh Abu Kla Mazad and and and soon and so forth.So this is important because uh let'snote that I think um the question ofjustice and fairness uh is not simply aquestion uh in uh terms of sharing uhpolitical power or or in politics. Thequestion of justice and fairness is alsoin terms of what might be described asnarrative equalityor narrative oymmetry.So if the media, if the intelligencecomplex, if the security complex, if thepolice uh judiciary, you know, and as asI do uh in another chapter, all theseinstitutionsmore or less they present one picture,okay, which is the dominant one and thenthat picture is also reproducedpredominantly in a scholarship as well.So justice, fairness and equality in thepolitical realm cannot be even thinkableand possible unless we first achievenarrative symmetry or narrativeequality. And this is the exercise uhtaken in many chapters of that book. howto achieve demonstratewith evidence.Okay, this narrative uh symmetryor narrative equality. Interestingly uhfrom what I hear from you, the way I seeit that by uh portrayinguh certain demands or certain acts froma certain community in a certain lightand then making it synonyomoussynonymous uh with words like jihadwhich are the internal expressions ofjustice adul equality. What also ends uphappening is the externalizing anderasing of the possibility of the Muslimexperience as a positive force bycreating that boundary and by creatingthat construct that whenever thatvocabulary would be invoked immediatelythe response would be otherwise. And inthat context if you talk about thetheoretical rot I mean when you talkabout the new world order what is itthat in the new world order[clears throat]that if terrorists that it it portraysits own sickness and displaces it ontoits enemies specifically uh Islam asterrorism Islamic uh you knowexpressions as acts of terrorism. Howhow can these two things beseen in the same framework?>> Uh Ali, I I I think I I I would go alittle bit further and say um thatactually these wordsuh have not been misinterpreted. Theyhave been openly abused.>> Now just look at at this word. If if youdo not mind, I'll I'll I I'll I can gobriefly um biographical here. Uh in myPhD thesis, so this is my uh PhD thesiswhich was submitted at University ofAmsterdam in the acknowledgements. Okay.Uh because uh my um I I lost one year.So my my scholarship was there uh butthe Dutch uh government wanted me toproduce my birth certificate withoutbirth certificate I would not uh resumemy PhD>> okayuh but I don't know you may have yourbirth certificate because you are ayoung person but I didn't have one>> okay so I had to be really reborn so Iwent to the village where I were I wasborn and then I had to write aapplication and the village where I wasborn I think there were 10 uh signaturesrequired but we could find only one ortwo people who uh put who could sign it90% of thumb uh>> okay the the people not educated enoughto sign it yeah>> and then it is very funny it says thatthis is to certify that Ahmed son ofFazil Ahmed was born here and then withthat you go to um block officer and soand so forth. Anyway, so in this uhwhich is my PhD thing in theacknowledgements I say uh that Iundertook a legal jihad against uh thebureaucratic uh system of uh uh Hollandor or Europe. So for me uh this is Imean it didn't make any sense to mebecause my passport already has date ofbirth.>> Yes it does.>> Okay. My metriculation document has dateof birth but the Dutch government isinsisting on birth certificate. So to tome uh the the the demand did not lookvery reasonable. But anyway, so in myself-perception, this was a legal jihadthat I did because I lost one year and Ithere's no point in describingeverything, but I had to go uh from alocal office to uh main uh uh theheadquarters of Bihar government fromtheir uh to the Dutch embassy and and soand so forth. So what is happening? Somy view of jihad is that okay I in myview this is something which is not fairand I really fought for it and I call itas a legal jihad or legal bureaucraticwhatever you call it. Okay. Now incontemporary India the word has beencompletely abused and now you see anendless proliferationof words land jihad corona jihad marsjihad you name it. Okay, they keep doingadding. So the implication is that youhave educatedvery consciously through media uhthrough nonformal channels a wholegeneration in which the impression isthat jihad is a dirty word. It meansonly regression. It only means violenceand so and so forth. Right? And it iscompletely against the self view ofMuslims. M>> so you are using this word to describeMuslims as aggressor as violent assomebody who is not uh accommodative.Okay. Although the truth is quite the uhopposite. So now why this is happening?Okay. So this abuse is necessary both uhdomestically as well as internationally.Okay. And that is where uh my uhanalytical move is uh what might bedescribed as displacement. Now thatdisplacement uh is this that the worlduh order after uh World War II uh thenation estate okay it is fraught withlot of conceptualinconsistencies.M>> now after the fall of the USSR what manypeople also describe it as neoliberalismso until uh uh until uh USSR existed uhthe so-called welfare system in uhEuropean countries including our own uhcountry called India they had somethinglike planning commission and and so andso forth which was a five-year plan andso and so forth so there was this uhwelfare oriented uh politicsOkay. Now you have a lumpen uhcapitalistic growth.Okay. which is at the cost of the rightsand dignity of uh uh common people uh orwhat in the Marxist terms used to bedescribed as uh proletariatin Gshian term as subterr and and thiscrisis was in in in the case of Britainuh you know Margaret Thatcherinaugurated it. So this uh reorientationokayuh is one factor but also the crisis ofuh nationalismitself is never made as a point ofdiscussion. Now if you see um theIsraeli state terrorism,okay, uh which on you know because thisis the first uh uh televised or youcould say uh millions watch thatgenocide but nobody is making anyconnection that what is the connectionbetween this genocide and nationalismand to me it is very apparent that it isa nationalist uh onslaught because theidea is to create an Israeli estateof the Jews and these Palestinians are adisturbance in that in in that uh ideaof of a so-called Zionist homeland.Okay. So, so there are two elements. Oneis the territorial expansionist desire.Okay. And the other is that these arenot the Jewish people and they need tobe get rid of. But nobody is talkingabout the fact that this genocide has astrong I'm not saying that it isreducible to nationalism. What I'msaying is that for me this explanationwill not be possible or it will not be aholistic explanation unless we also takeinto account how nationalism has been>> a major driving force of this genocide>> and all of the violence of last 200years>> but but then you may have movements fornationalism but the nation estate as aunit of so-called international systemhas still not come into being. So thisis um conceptually speaking what happensall these uh ills which is there innationalism. Uh I mean I I don't thinkthere is any nation anywhere in theworld.>> Uh there is a nation estate. Okay.In fact it is more useful to talk abouta state nation rather than nation state.>> Please uh expand on it. How is thenation the state nation and nation statedifferent? because a state is is uh isis a reality. Uh and the state makes aclaim that we are a nation. But the ideathat um I mean here you we we we mighthave to uh qualify this uh by sayingthat of course on the face of it theidea of a um a communityuh which is rooted in uh one particularmemory, one language, one faithuh one sentiment.Okay. uh that is nowhere even I meanSwitzerland is is is a very smallcountry Holland is is a very smallcountry but even there you cannot speakabout one community in Holland uh thenon-dutch people think that everybodyspeaks uh Dutch uh but that is not trueuh the there there is a linguistic groupin in Switzerland which is uh very smalluh there are people who speak uh Germanthere are people who speakuh French and I think there is a smallcommunity of of Italians as well. So soin that sense nowhere actually there isuh there is a uh nation in terms of oneunifieduh community. Now of course uh in Indiaas well as uh outside people do talkabout university sorry unity anddiversity and they do uh take note ofthe fact that you know we have otherreligions and and we have other culturesbut then in that conception also thereis a sense of hierarchy>> the core culture the core religion>> okay and the rest has to subordinateitself which in history has has not beenthe case.>> Okay. So that is uh one reason uh I hadto take um an alternative explanationand to show two things that we cannottalk about terrorism withoutintrogatingthe idea of the nation state. And if youtake this argument a little further thenthe implication is this that actuallynationalism is the underbelly ofterrorism and that is where I uh do acase study uh of three nation statesuh Burma which is now called Myammar uhSri Lankaand then India. So whatever after 9/11uh the main so-called terroristorganization in India was Singh then itbecame Indian Mojahedin and then it kepton changing uh the name uh the the waywe know through media and of course inSri Lanka it is LTTE and then u theBuddhist uh um onslaught or Buddhistterrorism against>> Rohindians>> Rohingyas Right? But in all these threenation state, you cannot think aboutthese what is what media or politiciansdescribe as terrorism withoutunderstandingthe fundamental ideology of nationalism.Because in the case of uh LTT, this is aSinhala majority country and the SinhalaU speakers uh who are also Buddhist inmost cases. They were imposing theirversion of nation and community andexcluding the Tamils most of whom wereHindus but some were also Muslims andsome were also Christians you know buttheir language is is is Tamil. So theprotestagainst this sinhala majoritariannationalism began in in uh in incolleges. Uh now likewise in the case ofso so just to speak about LTT terrorismand so by the way in the case of LTterrorism you don't say that oh it is aHindu terrorism.>> Okay it is a Tamil terrorism. So thenthe identity is linguistic even thoughmajority of the people were Hindus.No not all of them but but if we setaside the religious level uh but thenthe question is we cannot simply keeptalking about LT LT terrorism and so on.No, the demands of um uh before LTT wasformed of course um Tamil people theywere saying that look how can youexclude us linguistically and thelinguistic because once you declare umSinhala as as as the official languagethat would also have an impact on yourjobs economy and so and so forth. Now inthe case of umMyamar or Burma, of course there is alsoa Buddhist dimension because theseRohhingasum in the area uh where they were in amajority uh the Buddhist uhmonks they said that well that place wasvisited by Buddha to what extent it istrue or not but then it becomes a sacredland and if it is a sacred land then itmeans that you know Muslims have toleave. So of course this is uh rooted ininto the idea of of uh of the nationstate and likewise with SIM I mean SIM'sradicalization it happens in the wake ofthe fervent and violent movement uh todestroy Babri Masid and of course BabriMasid is connected to chauvinist Hindusupermassist idea>> uh that India is of Hindus and thisunsubstantiateduh undocumenteduh uh ideauh that beneath the masid uh lies therubbles of a destroyed uh temple. So ofcourse it is connected to um to the ideaof the nation state and likewise you canextend to um the case of Israel becauseIsrael itself was born out of terrorismas a nation state and then the currentgenocidal violence against Palestiniansis basically to realize that goal whichwas um initiatedafter the Balfor declaration. So that isuh uh how I think that a true and agenuine and analytically fruitfuldiscussion about terrorism is possibleonly by bringing the question of nationstate and nationalism right at thecenter and that is what I saw that inthis UNP conference which I attended inOslo they were talking about all otherfactors except nation and nationalism.And then the question was would be whyis it the case? And there can be manyexplanation but in my understanding itis simply because the since the nationstate is the foundation upon which thewestern world created uh an order afterWorld War II. So that foundation itselfcannot be subjected to criticism orcannot be brought to examination becauseif you do that right um then you have tointerrogate your own fundamentalassumption and since you do not do itthen it has to be deflected. So it isdisplaced. Okay. includinguh for example if you see the blackcommunity in in America the kind of subuh the the kind of violence that they'resubjected to which was most u visible uhin the form of black life matters so theboot of the police at the neck of GeorgeFloyd>> and then the guy is saying that I cannotbreathe right that is terrorismthat is the example of a state terrorismAnd as you know uh the role of BarackObama was hugely disappointedbecause I think after that movement hemade a statement uh in which he saidvery little about the protesters and hestood on the side of the police. So whatI wanted to say that this nation estatesystem uh and it's uh in in the Americancase if you see the huge inequalityuh uh American system is alsoinfrastructurally very uh old uh butmind you I think uh I will not be ableto give you the exact data uh but it issomething like this if you take anannual um count so probably in one uh Ihave given the data I I'll have to looklook at the book. So in one yearprobably uh according to the uh media orthe government sources uh 800 peopledied because of terrorism but during thesame period 34,000 people in India haddied because ofuh potholes and beaches on the publicroad but nobody talks about that that uhdeath but the death uh or the loss oflife caused by terrorism uh is flashedum on the screen day in day out in Indiaand and you will see I think I've alsotalked about Ajay Devka who who wholooks very uh patrioticyou know he's the guy who also does theadvertisement of good okay and good>> is responsible for uh thousands of deathright uh so the point is why are you nottalking about these kind of death? Sothese are the ills because in in in inin the capitalist system this this is abrand uh you know capitalist need it uhthey make profit out of it. Uh so ratherthan looking at the main cause youdeflect it and then the fanatic theterrorist uh they are uh depicted as asas the enemy and uh as is the case uhmany people also begin to buy into thatnarrative. And it is precisely for thisreason that I speak about uh narrativeequality or narrative uh>> yeah which we'll come to later in the uhpodcast. So the way I see it, yourargument is structural and metaphysical.The primitive foundation on which theidea of the nation is construed andconstructed selectively in the uhexperience of the western civilizationand imposed on the world order as a wayof postc colonial hgemonization.That has created a framework for whichthe malice, the uh the subjugation, theine unequal uh treatment of the internalother in a way that has beenexternalized to a Muslim Islamicexternal other which also then becomespart of because the nation states arenot neatly divided. There are no needexhaustive mutually exclusiveterritorial regions wherein nationalismcan be philosophicallyuh non-conlictual.For example, uh a Buddhist and a Hinduhas different metaphysical demands onthe level of ontology, on the level ofbeing. And those mutual demands cannotcoexist completely coherently. And thenwhoever is a majority will end upconstraining these categories in theirown favor. But that also demands thatall of this happens withinthe frameworks through which society isstudied uh geopolitically,sociologically, anthropologically.So then [clears throat] when we talkabout your own area of expertise as asociologist, anthropologist,you talk about anthropology as a fieldwithin which this question is invoked,gauged, understood. So there are twoquestions that come to my mind. One isthe question that you address howanthropologists have themselves dealtwith the question even the good meaningones. But before that as a practitionerof a certain field why did you choose tostudy violence specifically certainkinds of violence in your ownbiographical account? What is it thatyou experienced in your ownunderstanding while growing seeing theway these categories were deployed andhow did you think you were locating themwithin your own framework and then yourcritique about the discipline itself?>> Ali as you know uh I'm I'm not a greatfan of this liberal uh choice theory. Soin some ways of course we uh decide wewe make decisions we choose. Okay. Uhbut in certain other ways uh uh you knowthings also come your way you know. uhso in the book I actually I I I say thatactually uh when uh after my masters umwhich was at JNU>> and then uh ML and then I moved toUniversity of Amsterdam uh so I had notthought uh about the fact that I will bewriting a book about terrorists uh butafter 911 uh so as you know uh my PhDwas about Jamaat IslamiAnd uh that was the reason I gotinterested in in see. So after 9/11these people and other Muslims theystraight away began to be depicted as asas uh terroristsand then as you know after 9/11 uh atleast in in Pentagon uh discourses theyused to make a distinction that okaythese are uh safi wahhabis are a threatbut brali and sufi Muslims are fine butthat kind of debate uh or that imagelasted only for a few years. Uh later onuh it came to encompass uh uh almost uhevery Muslim because you also had adiscourse which said that unless Muslimsreform their religion>> and some people were also raisingfundamental question about Quran itself.So unless you have that fundamentalchange which would border basically onthe question which will border on thepoint that okay you basically leave yourreligion or abandon it only then youwill be admitted to this so-calledenlightened modern world right>> uh and and and that is where I think youknow umy sense is uh that you know uh MahmudMandani has made uh uh a usefulcontribution in terms of good Muslim,bad Muslim. Uh but I think a moreaccurate and a more uhuh encompassingdescription is basically not thedistinction between good Muslim and badMuslim. I think uh we have reached apoint now where actually a good Muslimis basically an anti-Muslim. H.>> So this not to say that the distinctionbetween good and bad Muslim is is is isnot useful. But another way to look atit is that in contemporary times in thewestern in the Indian in the Zionistdiscourse a good Muslim is basically ananti-Muslim. the one who consciously andactively opposes it>> uh denigrates it uh makes fun of it. Uhso just think about the fact that youknow India has hosted people like theslim ministry in Tarak Fat right theseare basically not Indian citizens butthey have been hosted in the name ofso-called freedom of speech>> right and what is their job their job isto make fun of Islam and Muslims uh nowthis phenomenon is not limited to Indiayou could think about Ishad Mangji in uhin in Canada and Ian Herseliuh who was a Dutch member of parliamentand now she has moved to uh the US. Uhand you could also think about what wasthe name of that person from Lacnau whowas a Shia of Wasim Risby or somebody>> so he uh initially he began to make funof Islam. Okay. Uh and later on ofcourse he converted to to Hinduism.[clears throat]and Ian Hishali who is Muslim of Africanorigin now she has converted toChristian. So uh which is to say that uhin as much as the good uh uh versus badMuslim distinction uh is uh useful.Another way to look at this question isto see the way the world is movingtowards and the kind of dominantdiscourse which operates in contemporarytimes in India in Europe and elsewhere.in this discourse a good Muslim isbasically anti-Muslim.>> So this is one thing but your mainquestion was um>> how I got to college>> right and also how I got to the uh to toa study uh terrorism. So uh what Iwanted to say is that I was interestedin in in Jamaat is before 911. I wrotemy PhD and then um people similar tothem or see me they all began to bedescribed as terrorist and the larger uhMuslim community. And then I talkedabout how the initial um distinctionbetween you know Sufi Muslim or BraviMuslim being good and then the Wahhabiand the reformist being notgood. And from there we move to uh thisuh distinction uh that uh MuhammadMandani makes between good Muslim andbad Muslim. And then I made aqualificationuh or introduced a new way of describingit uh namely that a good Muslim in thewestern uh security discourse and thatdiscourse is also um adopted andembraced by people outside the west. inthat discourse a good Muslim isbasically an anti-Muslim. Now thequestion of uh of uh anthropologyuh so this is uh because you know uh I Iwas trained in Jam Islamia in sociologyuh and uh in India I mean in in thewestern world you make a hugedistinction between sociology andanthropology in India much less. So frommy bachelor's uh then uh to JNU uh whichwas in sociologyuh and then in in Amsterdam uh it was uhanthropology. So I have been trained uhin the history of the discipline uh Ilike it uh on many accounts but then Ithought that the question of terrorismthat I later became interested in uh towhat extent anthropology can help us.Okay. So I have already talked to youabout the AMIC and ETIC distinction uhwhich is an anthropology.>> Can you also define what is anthropologyso that the viewers can then locate thisdiscussion within the discipline itself.>> Yeah. The popular uh definition is uhthat sociology or historically sociologyemerged as a discipline which studiescontemporary modern European society andanthropology was a discipline whichemerged to develop the otheruh the primitive society societies. Sothere were many terms which were used asthe subject matter of anthropology. Uhthe primitive, the preliterate,pre-industrial,tribe, race and so and so forth. So thatwas in the initial moment.>> Okay. Uh so people uh uh so actuallyhere um you might find it useful thatorientalism uh as a discipline andanthropology as a discipline they sharea similarity because both were designedto study the other because sociologystudies the modern European society theus>> orientalism studies the otheranthropology also studies the other butthere is a difference betweenorientalism and anthropology orientalismstudies that other which has a literateculture. It is inferior. It is supposedto be inferior to the westerncivilization but they have a literateculture.>> But anthropology studies that part ofthe orient which doesn't have a literateculture. It it doesn't have a writtentradition. So the tribes and and and inin India uh if you uh the thedistinction is that you know sociologistuh they study villages and cast andanthropologist study the tribes.Okay. So people in the hills and and andand so and so forth. So this uh uh myown training in in anthropology. So insome ways uh it was very usefulespecially the emic and ethicdistinction but then it also alerted meum to the fact that when it comes to thequestion of terrorism and you remember Ithink it is there in the preface itselfwhere I take on two leadinganthropologistuh carve uh who is an Indian umanthropologist and she's also consideredas the first uh woman anthropologist ofIndia. uh she was a marachi uh woman andthen uh Levia Stros who is considered asthe father of a structuralism withinanthropology a French uh anthropologistuh so when um after 911 as you knowpeople were saying that well uhHuntington uh introduced the idea ofclash of civilization and I say that Noactually uh Huntington's uh clash ofcivilization article is probably dated88 89 right something like that you knowuh the book came much later but if youread Iraati carve she already talksabout clash of civilization and Islam asa destructive force and Islam as afanaticism as early as 1946 and 47 andlikewise Claude Levier in in in thatbook uh which English is translated asthe sad tropic. So he goes to India. Healso goes to Lahar. This is after uhpartition and independence of India. Andhe talks about Islam and Muslims and andhe sees nothing positive about uh Islamand Muslims uh and so and so forth. Somy point is that long before Huntingtoncame up with this clash of civilizationum uh uh idea you already hadanthropologists like Iraati carve andlevier straws who had been engaged instigmatizing Islam and Muslims.>> Okay. And therefore any anthropologicalexercise to study terrorism cannotremain loyal to these kind ofanthropological writings which exist.Not only this,>> a truly anthropological libertarianor emancipatory project has to go beyondquestion such anthropological writingsand come up with a trulyhurat oriented idea of what ananthropology is. So this is the mainpoint and the second mythological pointis that anthropology historically theyhave been uh concerned because uhethnography is an important part ofanthropology. So what ethnography meansis that rather than making a commentabout a particular communityuh just based on uh oral sources orwritten sources, you go there and youspend one calendar year, you learn theirlanguage, you live with them and you seewhat uh their life is. By the way, thisidea uh of ethnography is quite in linewith uh uh a prophetic uh hadith. Soprophet uh would say uh that you shouldnot be making a judgment about someoneunless you have done ma>> you have dealings. Uh have you also gonewith that person on a journey?>> Okay. So these are the ways throughwhich you can know the person intotality rather than just like whatsociologist or political scientists do.They simply go and interview the person.So so this is uh this is definitely um agood thing and and and in in my view uhuh it is it is close to this prophetichadith as well you know unless you havedone mahad and you have uh done um youhad been on on journey with that personyou know. So which is to say that ratherthan rushing to pass a judgment or forman opinion about a person or about aparticular community you should havesustained interaction with them to forma valid opinion or judgment about thatcommunity or that person. So in thatsense anthropology is very ethnographyis as a part of anthropology is verygood. But then the problem is that asubject like terrorism okay cannot beunderstood simply at the local level. Uhand if you remember I think in chaptertwo uh I give a chart. Okay. Uh and thechart is this that in America in Canadain Norway in Australia and in India. Sothese are five nation states.So uh geographically apart from eachother but in all these nation estatethere is one slogan which is so powerfulnamely all Muslims are not terroristsbut all terrorists are Muslims areMuslim.>> Nowso my uh point is how can we understandthis formulation which is visible>> and ruthlesslydepicted by media in America. M>> in uh Norway, in Australia and in India,you cannot simply do it. Uh I mean ofcourse if you are a very uh richanthropologist and you have like a teamof 50 ethnographers, you can send themuh to all these uh context and and thenthey can live there for uh a year andthen can do ethnography, right? But uhthat that uh doesn't seem like um an uhvery viable option at the moment. So thepoint is if this slogan or this uh viewis so pervasive in four differentlocations, four different nation state,four different continents, then uh theanthropologist's uh focussimply on the local okay or the localcommunity is not helpful to understand aphenomenon like terrorism and thereforeI make a methological shift.that we need uh a different kind of um ascale and I call it uh anthropology orethnography on an awkward scale.>> Okay, which is to say that we have tocreate an anthropology which issensitive. So the point is not toabandon the proximity that ethnographyallows you by you. Okay. If if as ajournalist you just go for one day uh ofcourse you you get to see uh somethingbut as a ethnographer if you know thelanguage you have lived there you knowtheir sensibility that is a great tooluh you know it really allows you adifferent perspective so that is finebut it cannot remain limited to that ithas to go beyond that specificity andtry to see the connection that existbeyond that locality at the nationallevel, at the regional level, at theinternational level. And finally,because my argument is about the newworld order uh which needs the categoryof the terrorist, you know, to sustainitself to to enchant itself because itlacks a positive identity of its own andtherefore the question of terrorism uhcannot be really understood simply atthe local level. We need a kind ofholism uh in which the local uh theregional uh the national theinternational or the global they allcome together to allow us to formulate aperspectiveuh in whichuh we can see things in in their truelight. Interestingly uh for for astatement like this which you mentionedall uh Muslims are not terrorists butall terrorists are Muslims thatstatement to be acceptable as trueglobally speaking what you're suggestingin a negative form has already beenperformed in the academia in thegeopolitics in the spheres ofunderstanding and influence that thatkind of understanding could be imposedand shaped but as You're arguing thatwithin the field of anthropology themethodology is isolationist that youisolate yourself to a small economy to asmall locality and then study it frominward without really understanding itas an embedded locality within a largerglobaluh you know sphere in different levelsof gradations like state, district,nation uh you uh continent and then theworld and all of these gradations havetheir own vocabularies, their ownembedded realities, interconnectednesswherein within which this experience andthis uh you know articulation ofterrorism and other such categorieslive. So it's a problem of that you areisolating yourself at a scale which isnot exhaustive and comprehensive enoughto really understand that issue and thatis I think structurally speaking it itis a larger argument not just locatedtowards terrorism but any category orany understanding to be madeanthropologically speaking requires whatyou call that scaling up if if I'munderstanding it right>> there is almost um uh correct in thesense that ethnographyuh allows youuh depth.>> So um there is a distinction which somepeople make between um worm view andboard view. You you see worm likeinsect, right? So if you just look atthe insect which is whatever if you areplowing or or things like that you knowworm and and insect. So we need to knowwarm and insect but birds because theylook at things from uh above>> right.>> So the question is not uh going uh orcelebrating just one of them.uh uh one has to synthesize and combine.So my point is that ethnography is isgood in terms of depth. Okay. But thisdepth can also be extendedrather than uh limiting it to onelocality. Can we extend it? So in otherwords um I think you use the word calledescape. Uh so should our plane ofexplanation or in other words whatshould be the explanatory escape uh willthe explanatory estate would be avillage a tribe a neighborhood of uh uhNew Delhi or a neighborhood of Istanbulor or or Koala Lumpur or should we sothe point is not to abandon that uh uhneighborhood or village or or or orlocality but to see it in a way that itcan also account for the regional thenational and in international and theglobal and and see them dialectically.So my point is so so the point is not tosay that okay a neighborhood in Delhi isaffected by the transnational or theglobal or in international forces. Theother way around is also true.>> Exactly. So it is a it is a dialecticalwholeness that we must strive toachieve.>> Also uh for example the way I'm seeingit even we've talked about the nationstate we've talked about the new worldorder. So because a lot of knowledgethat we see as standard today uh comesfrom these western nation states asgiven although that is now beingcontested historically speaking and evenyou know in the ways that knowledge isbeing formed in different localities interms of states themselves. But thatthat assumptionthat knowledge for the last fewcenturies in terms of its globaldominance has been produced in thewestern contextalso uh brings forth that orientalistview that that all of this what is beingread is operationally being read from acertain perspective. And so then whenyou bring that difference between realand true, what does that mean in thecontext of world views and in thecontext of those world views beingdeployed on experiences, knowledge andevidence itself? How do why do youchoose to differentiate between thosethese two ideas, the real and the true?For example, they they feel like they'rethe same. the re you know anal hakmayhei uh I am I am true I am real andin many ways realness and trness isfeels like that two expressions fromdifferent vantage points about somethingwhich is say to say both real and truthI mean I would let you explain on that>> yeah so what happens since we areoperating um in the English language umthe book as well as this conversationuh so uh in the English language uh uhbefore the reformation uh you do nothave a difference between reality andtruth>> but in the wake of reformation adistinction is made and that is afterthe rise of so-called balconian scienceand positivism and so and so forth sowhich is to say uh that science becomesthe arena uh which is uh openuh to sense experiences. Hawasa comesout the five senses.>> Uh now truth is something which ismetaphysical and so and so forth. So uhwith the passage of time uh it wasbelieved that truth is something whichis in the realm of mystics.>> Uh it it is uh it is the job of uhreligion whereas the scientific thingwould be concerned with reality. Nowreality which can be understood inscientific terms through these sensesand so on and so forth. So you do haveum people who still talk about truth uhin philosophy but uh not in the sense inwhich I'm using the truth. So evenpeople like Habmas or many otherphilosophers they talk about truth butfor them truth is mostly used in termsof propositional truth.But my point is not simply propositionaltruth but the idea that if uh becausebefore secularizationuh god is truth and once thisdistinction was uh made between realityand truth and truth was suspended eitherin the realm of uh uh uh simply mysticalphilosophy.Okay. uh now this will raise alinguistic question because thisdistinction between reality and truth uhas it operates in English uh then wewill have to go into the differentlanguages. So in Arabic uh parse and uduuh>> uh so reality and is of course derivedfrom h uh and then somewhere I have alsomade this argument that uhuh the root word of that is uh also h soin the Islamic tradition you do not seethe utter separationwhich uh postreformationuh scientific tradition generated byseparating reality from truth and thisis one of the good things uh aboutShahab Ahmed's book which I have uhthoroughly criticized elsewhereuh in my rapo lecture uh but throughoutthe book he translatesuh God okay both as real slashtruth So he doesn't uh make thedistinction between uh the real and thetrue.>> Now on the face of it uh reality issomething uh which is happy which isobvious to um uh our eyes, our uh ourears and so and so forth. But thenuh the the there there are so many otherthings which are real but I simply uhdon't believe in it uh uh in the sensethat I I have no sympathy for thosereality. Uh now let me explain this uhinjustice is a reality.>> Okay. Poverty is a reality. Uhprostitution is a is a reality. uh thebrutality by the police recently as youhave seen in uh the protest in Delhithat is a reality right because you cansee it your five senses you can listento it but then the question is not thereality of the phenomenon itself do Ialsoaccept it as something desirablesomething which is ethical so thereforeum the task of a genuine or in my view aTrue scholar is not simply to explainthe reality but to also arrive at thetrue or the truth as a moral uh force asa moral idea. Uh but this is somethingwhich uh uh social sciences havecompletely abandoned. If you see um uhpolitical science book, sociologist talkabout social reality. Uh politicalscience will talk about either politicaldevelopments, political facts, politicalreality. The question of of of uh truthdoesn't feature here. Now for my own uhwhatever little I have doneuh I do it because I have a sense ofethics.uh I believe in um the true and thetruth. So I write book or if I interveneuh in terms of writing an article orjust talking to you uh my inspiration ormy driving force is not just to as thenew liberal academia would say that if Iwrite a book I will probably getwhatever 12 points or 13 points or 14points. These are the numerical pointswhich the current academia uhunderstands right so there is somethingand and I'm not simply interested inreality in terms of the fact that asthey exist or as it happens or as it isoperating I'm also believing in a moralworld which doesn't exist but which inmy view should exist and thereforethroughout the book uh there is aquestion of the possib possible world,the true world which empiricallyspeaking doesn't exist and and that iswhere you know much of the socialscience is also empirical.>> So my point is uh that our intellectualscholarly pursuit should definitelyengage with empirical world empiricalreality but that is not the destinationor the end point. By engaging with theempirical world, we have to also beattentive constantly and perennially tothe moral vision, the idea of the good,the idea of the public good. Uh notsimply for this community or thatcommunity, but for the larger humanity.And without that moral vision we cannotbe thinking about uh the possible worldbecause the realistand by the way in internationalrelations theory there is a theory whichis called realism and that theory wassupposed to have developed againstanother current which was calledidealism>> and idealist were considered people whowho were sentimental or who had certainmoral position.Right. So>> and what is the difference between whatis and what ought to be>> right? But but as a realist I mean whatis I mean of course there are so manyobnoxious things which exist in theworld but that doesn't mean that I alsoendorse them or or I also>> um fight for their perpetuation or fortheir existence. On the contrary, theseobnoxious things I will fight for theirabolition and therefore the moral andthe possible world because without thisanchoring without this um striving for apossible world our scholarship actuallycannot be ethical. Just describing thereality as it existis not sufficient. The point is not todismiss the reality. So therefore myformulation is that okay it is one thingto begin with reality and it is quiteanother to end also with reality. No webegin with the reality we engage withthe reality and then by doing so we alsoconstantly bring the question of truththe truthful ethical the beautiful.Okay. Because without that idea uh Ithink uh to uh use uh uh uh this conceptin a very perverse way uh without thisethical uh and the aesthetic uh idea ofa possible world and alternative worldwe would be just bare life or nakedlife. So one of the things that thisdistinction then leads to between thereal and the true is the necessity offramework or a methodology that canengage with the possibility of thetruth. So in many ways uh within thewestern academia uh in the past fewdecades uh there has been a tradition ofresponding to the malice of modernityitself through frameworks likedeconstruction decolonialityand more often than more more often uh alot of nonwestern thinkers includingthis work for example the decolonizingof the anthropology of terrorism afterespecially Talal Assassad there has beenthe utilization of the decolonialframework as a framework in which youundowhat has been done in a way that createsthat reality is which is oppressive butin doing so one of my personalobservations in the past half decade ormore so when I was a student in Ju and Iwas observing and I was listening tothinkers like J Sai Deepak within the uhtradition of the Hinduunderstanding of their owncivilizational ethics.They have deployed the same grammar tosuggest a kind of decolonizationwhich is at odds with what we areproposing. And in that they locatethinkers like ShahulahAlle as somebodytowards whom all of these traditionswithin India including the Jamaat IslamiJama the Tabliki Jamaat the the you knowHadis when you construct an idea ofcoloniality in a way arguing that you'redecolonizing from the Arabic and theWestern influence uence then all ofthese conceptual frameworks in myunderstanding sometimes feel like theconcept of nation state or democracyitself when you me mentioned statenation so in that context whiledeploying these frameworks how do we seethat they're value neutral and a acertain kind of understanding can bedeployed to them so when we areutilizing decoloniality as a frameworkespecially you in this context ofstudying terrorism within a certainfield. How do you see that it is notdifferent from uh the way the nation theway you know other uh such concepts havebeen politicized? How do you see thatutilization of your own uh you know inyour own work decoloniality?uh I don't uh particularly see it assomething that can necessarily lead totruth. It is a necessary condition in asense but is it sufficient and for thatsufficiency to happen uh especially whenyou mentioned the word huryat withinyour book itself you open that gatewayuh what is it that decoloniality bringsand what is it that the limit of itremains within your own analysis. So thefirst point is I think um uh did youmention the name of Sai Deepak?>> Saiep J Sai Deepak.>> Yeah I think um in my view that will notqualify as um a strictly a scholarship.It is basically a pseudo scholarshipbecause uh I think he doesn't know whatactually colonialism is. So to describeIslam and Muslims as colonial uh force.Okay. And then uh think aboutdecolonization.Okay. This is what is also by the waythe current regime's idea ofdecolonization.Um the education minister has alsoreferred to um not not now but a fewyears ago. So that that that kind ofdecolonization in in another paper whichI wrote which is called recognizingHindu orientalism I clearly show thatsuch call for decolonizationsuch calls for decolonization arebasicallyneocolonization or recolonization.Okay. uh becauseuh in the first place they do not uhknow uh sufficiently or adequatelyenough what colonialism is. So um thethe point you are raising uh is isprobably it will require a longer uhtreatment. But let me limit myself tothe followinguh that once uh in contemporary timesyou know uh there are many people whoare using decolonization decolonialityand so and so forth. So it has become acatch call and many people are using it.Uh and I'm not sure uh if the goal andthe purpose of each uh person who isutilizing this concept is is is isthe same in the case of G Sepak and alsoI think I mention another scholar ofHinduism Arvin Sharma. Right? So it isvery clear that in their case uh thedecolonization functions as a tool toaid the project of Hindu supremacy in inin in the subcontinent. Now uh to yournext part of the question uh my sense isuh that uh decolonization and as I saidonce it has become a catch call term uhpeople are using in a wide variety ofways and not not all of them arenecessarily consistent.uh but the only point I want to make uhhere uh is this that decolonial is anegative reference.Okay. So we need to decolonize ourselfuh which I think is a worthy exercise.But can we also ask a questionand that is what is the positive agendathat we havewe decolonize okay in order to becomewhat and that is where I thinksufficient thinking has not been donenow this raises a larger question aboutwhich I don't think I alone have answersuh because that will require uh knowinguh the linguist uistic cultural andreligious tradition of the whole worldand unfortunately I know very little.Okay. So then the question would be uhhow people in Buddhist tradition andHindu uh tradition in Islamic traditionin Chinese tradition or the indigenoustradition of Latin America and so and soforth in Africa where in many parts ofAfrica as you as you know um it is theoral culture uh which is uh verypervasive and and dominant not thewritten one. So how all these culturesokay uh okay uh decolonize is one butalso let's ask what do we want to becomeand I think uh we do not have uh or atleast to my knowledge uh there is notmuch uh sufficient u thoroughly uhengaged uh research on on that idea. M>> uh that to me also appears because uhthat to me it also appears because uh itit is a much more challenging thingbecause uh uh it is it it is just likesaying that okay we are fighting Britishimperialism or British colonialism. Weare against British colonialism but whatare we standing for?>> What is it that we're going to createafter nation state after uh decolonizingfrom the west? What is it that as yourightly argued the positive side of theagenda of what uh the decolonial self isdemanding and an associated questionthat I always ask who is decoloniality?For example, when the bremans aretalking about decolonizing from theinfluence of the Muslim outsider and theDalith is asking for decolonizing fromthe breman and then we are talking aboutdecolonizing. So it's it it becomes atriangulated uh subjective claim uhwhich is readily deployable. So withoutthat positiveness what you're arguinghow do we uh keep on engaging with itpositively that is one of the most youknow difficult questions that we see.Yeah. And and and I would say that it isnot simply um decolonization in terms ofnation estate which is very importantbecause after all nation estate is apolitical being of modernity but alsowhat kind of self we want, what kind ofeducation we would like to give.>> Uh what what what do we want ourchildren to be in the next generationand and and and the uh generation uhafter. Okay. uh but alsouh sometimes it it may happen uh that inthe name of decolonization actually uhcoloniality might be reproduced uh butbut the point of this positive thing uhis something which has not beensufficiently discussed in the book. Ijust uh uh gave some signpost of it. Uhwhich is to say uh that and by the waythis positive agenda will um I can speakonly for a limited knowledge of of acertain tradition. So I do not know uhwhat what is uh there in the Buddhisttradition or in the Chinese tradition orin the Japanese tradition for example.So therefore based on my limitedknowledge I say that the task of ascholar in Islamic tradition uh we writeand that act is calleduh muar is somebody who who is a writerokayand uh is a piece of writing but is alsofreedom>> okay and therefore in in Egypt as youknow it was known as>> Equireuh in colonial India we hadorganizations established by Muslimswhich was called Majar.>> So that Aar is also from the same uhworld. Uh so if we think of um knowledgeand intellectual traditionin terms of andelsewhere I think this was a paper thatI wrote after uh the so-called Arab uhspringuh in which I also actually give aconcrete example u by focusing on two uhworks uh one by Bernard Lewis and theother by Faris Zakaria. Okay. And theseare the two scholars who have writtenabout the Middle East. And I say thatthe way I think of writing or the way Ithink of a scholar or alim and I'm usingalim or not in the sense of justso-called theologian or clerics which isa perverted uh uh translationbut alim as a scholarthen the writing of fared zakaria andbernard louisis it is not orientedtowards hurait is oriented towardsuh continuing and legitimizingdomination. Yeah. So uh this idea ofhura or writing or a scholarship and andand that is where a positive thing youknow so not simply decolonizing but uhbut when you bring this idea of hura orthen uh you can have probably moreconsensus about decolonizationokay uh but probably less about>> hurry>> okay and this this itself can be aninteresting question Why why this is thecase?>> So you know Ian Elich wrote a book whichis called deschooling society in in inLatin America. So okay DA schoolingsociety because it is a critique of ofthe contemporary schooling system or orthe philosophy it is based on. But thenthe question would be what kind of uh Imean are we completely abandoningum a schooling uh not simply as ainstitutional form but what would be thepositive way of a school right>> and that is where um given the worldthat we uh we uh inhabit uh withmultiple faith with multiple traditionwith multiple ideologies finding aground which is common to all uh is notimpossible. Uh it is quite challenging.Okay. Uh but in my view it is doable butthat requires lot of um harmonicalintellectual and scholarly uh work.>> We've talked about the context. We'vetalked about terrorism as a construct.We've talked about the anthropology andwhy in its current form it has uhstructurally failed to take up thatissue because of the way uh theknowledge system within it and itsmethodology is construed. Uh it ispossibly fatalist and deterministicallyincapable in the way that it is uh youknow engaged. But the question isbecause you've raised that question uhthere's a machine which is necessary todeploy certain ideas certain certaintraditions. One of course is the nationstate itself but within the nation statewhich is now a democracy in a certainway without uh as you in the earlierform also talked about the narrativesymmetries and the narrativeasymmetries. two things I would want totalk about law as a structure of thestate itself [music] and media as a formof potentiallyuh creating that structure throughconsent. How do you see that in in thecontext of the debate of terrorism? uhand possibly after that we can concludein>> I mean both globally um as well as inthe context of uh South Asia one may umhave many points of differences with uhLama Khal Mars but his formulation of uhwhat he uh talked about super structureuh so law is uh basically um a tool uhused by the powerful.Okay. Uh the there there is a Russianproverb which says something like thisthat law is like a a spider's net. Uhthe weak get trapped in it and thepowerful simply peck. Um now um what wesee in the case of uh terrorism for thisdiscourse to be uh to be operative.Okay. Uh it is not simply the case thatone branch of uh of the state machineryuh keeps it alive. Okay. There is asynergybetween the different institutionsuh media, the law, the judiciary andthen of course um there would be so manyother institutions as well includingsocial media and so forth. uh but insocial media you can say uh that thesocial media is based on this idea ofwhat is called UGC. Do you know thatterm UGC?>> User generated content.>> So the user itself is the contentcreator.>> Yeah. So in in newspaper and intelevision the traditional one there isnothing called UGC user generatedcontent. Uh you are simply a consumerright.uh uh but the social media allows thisuh you know but then the point is towhat extent that social media will be umuh effective how many people uh uh seeit but more importantly how many peopleare allowed to see because certain uhkind of uh social media profile which isbased on UGC might be deleted might bemade invisible and and and so and soforth. So what happensuh the law okay um and in the case of uhwe we see this is so visible in the caseof India that uh about the Babra Masithe discourse ofIndian nationalism in which IndianMuslims and Islam is outsider and thisis by the way shared not simply by BJPor RSS but it is also shared byCongress.>> Okay. So this idea has been there andthat led to uh the launching of themovement by Vishuvindu parisha in termsof destruction of Babu Masa. So you seeIndian nationalism as an ideologypropels this movement beyond the uhCongress uh uh BJP divide. Okay. uhmedia plays a role in consolidating it.Think about Amarujala, think about uh uhDanik Jagran and think about uh you knowTimes of India and so on and so forth.And then ultimately the judiciaryand even the Supreme Courtuh puts the seal of approval.So what you see here is that these allthese institutions judiciary,law, uh mediaand political uh party would be uh in ademocracy they are described as anorganization or institution of the civilsociety. Okay. So the civil society yousee a conjunction of all them comingtogether to uh to produce perpetuate andultimately make this particular ideologyuh a success and therefore the task ofthose who believe in alternative kind ofscholarship or alternative thinking uhbecomes much more challenging. Uh andthis is the question uh how tointervene, where to intervene, uh whatare the ways in which you can interveneand more importantly can you intervene>> because now we are in the realm ofcensorship. We are in the realm of uhimprisonment. As you know the book alsotalks about uh people like uh Shilam oruh uh what is the other guy>> Omar Khaled? Umar Khaled and Safura Zurgand and so all these kind of activistswho have been thinking uh against thegray you know>> and not um worshiping power uh uh theyhave been um uh crushed. Many of thesepeople have already spent uh years of uhlife in imprisonment. Right? So, sogiven this kind of uh uh condition uhthe task of thinking alternatively andand and in a way that it can uh fashiona fair um harmonious and just societybecomes all the more challenging. On anending note uh you've done that uh bynaming violence in 2020 when you wroteabout the two Delhi 2020 program andpeople were talking about it as criminalviolence riot uh and the terminologiesplay a role [music] in how the victim orwho is the victim and who's theperpetrator all of that is a game of unarrative asymmetry and power. Uh so onan ending note uh what is the uhpolitics of naming of categorization sayfor example terrorism terrorism itselfbut also more specifically also actsthat are much subtler in terms of thedaily way the daily violence thathappens and as Indian Muslims as anending note what are we supposed to donot just as academics but as activistsas journalists as entrepreneursuh how do we uh you know uh uh give acounter perspective?>> Yeah. So back to that um 2020 uh programwhich was uh organized in Delhi. So oneof the things which I said uh that thatkind of depiction of violence uh that isfrom both sides and I think I use theterm called ditto theory. uh but beforeit is understood um simply as somethingwhich is specific to the case of Indiauh no uh I think uh as a as a scholar uhI work through concepts and I do believethat ideas advanceokayum not by repeating and circulating andreproducing the exist existing conceptsbut by formulating new ones So the ideaof the ditto theory um it is not simplyabout uh bhagalpur violence or delhiviolence or other poemsuh you see anujithe so-called icon of uh uh democracy inBurma uh and the book describes uh hercase as well uh in whichshe uh I think it was with MichelleHussein uh who was at that time BBC uhjournalist interviewing her uh you willfind the um description there and shealso says that well the violence wasfrom both sides>> meaning Buddhist as well as as uh aswell as uh the Rohhinga. Uh but in thecase of Israel they always talk aboutyou know you you you cannot simply talkabout uh from those who are Zionistwithin um in Israel but also outside ofIsrael. uh they always bring thisargument that no we have to look at bothsides you know so this kind of did 22theory as a conceptual um interventionuh uh is not simply limited tounderstand the case of uh Bhagalpur oror uh Delhi uh but equally you know asas I gave you two examples in the caseof so-called Israel uh Palestinianconflict you know which which itself isa problematic formulation or in the caseof Rohingya you know the violence wasfrom both sides and this is said uh byno less a person than Ankangsuchi whohas been given Nobel prize for for peaceor or something now on on the point ofwhat what is to be done or as in far itis saidso uh that is a big question and I'm notsure uh if I have the answer but I wouldsay that uh people from different uhwalks of life.uh you work in media uh there would bepeople who are activists there arepeople who might be working uh in ITsector you know there are people whomight be working in the film uh thereare people who might be working in therealm of education and so and so forthright uh so I think people based ontheir own uh concrete experiencesokay if they read the book uh and if uhthey find something which is importantand it is quite possible that they mightfind something in the book which I as anauthor may not have even thought aboutit. So let's not uh uhuh assume uh that the author is all allsovereign you know uh in in in in manyways the author is not>> covered the black holes it was the uhyou know understanding of a latertheorist who understood his theory tolead to certain other concepts>> and therefore so people with differentum uh exper experiences. Um, and I wouldalso in in uh definitely I think genderexperience and and so a woman readerwould not necessarily find uh the samething as as as as a male. So I think uhfor different sets of leaders withdifferent uh trajectories and and um andtheir interest and the field in whichthey operate, I think uh they might finduh something which uh which isinteresting and probably um rather thanbeing um or assuming a priestly uh role,I would leave it to the people um andtheir own experiencesuh in terms of what they find beneficialand of course something which they findthey will definitely I'm not aware of itas of now because you know the book waspublished only a month ago but it isquite possible that you know they willfind some uh criticism and and and soand so forth. So in in both ways um tothe extent that it is useful and to theextent that they find it uh it is nothelpful um I would be more curious tolearn from them. Okay. Having said this,uh uh this much is uh very clear to meand this is also based on myown role um as somebody who thinks andand writes uh thatuh activism or action whatever field uhone might be thinking of uh will be moreuh fruitful and more effectiveonly when we gain a conceptual clarity.Without a conceptual clarity, uh wemight be doing tireless work, but it isnot necessary that tireless work in theabsence of a conceptual clarity and aconceptual consistency will really bearthe same fruit.So the bottom line would be that if uhmy intervention helps in some uh ways uhto clear the ground uh for uh analyticaluh clarity>> uh then I think that would be probablyuh an important step towards thinkingabout uh collective action uh whether itis in terms of activism, whether it isin terms of media intervention, whetherit is in terms of pedagogical practiceswhether it is in terms of uh launchingcertain kind of uh collectiveuh business uh or other kinds ofenterprise.>> Thank you uh Dr. Ahmed for doing thiswonderful work. Uh as I always u try tothink about scholars uh and put them incertain frameworks that I like to thinkuh how they think. I see you as a firstprincipal systems thinker who is asynthesis thinker in who's able tomassively deploy competing ideas intocoherent worldviews to be able tounderstand certain you know aspects andconcepts and in that context to be ableto understand terrorism comprehensivelynot just at a at a scale of local but ata scale of different nationalities as asat a scale of global realitiesspecifically with reference to itsuh raification uh to a specific identityand ideology. I think for viewers uhit's a very important work. One shouldread it. One should understand it andone should be able to learn from it howdeconstruction and reconstructionhappens. It's not just deploying certaincategories. It's about being able tointernalize them and to conquer them ina way that it becomes meaningful tostudy our own self experiences. So thankyou Dr. Fane. I hopefully you're workingon some other great work that would uhyou know meaningfully expand ourunderstanding and I would also requestthe viewers to go through your work onHindu orientalism. It's also thismassive uh framework of understandingthis experience within India as a stateand please continue doing this work.>> Thank you so much.