{"id":18536,"date":"2013-01-12T22:56:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T22:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=18536"},"modified":"2013-01-12T22:56:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T22:56:41","slug":"they-are-being-sincere-even-if-they-are-not-being-accurate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=18536","title":{"rendered":"They are being sincere, even if they are not being accurate"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — disentangling religion \/ politics braids in Pakistan and elsewhere ]
\n.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

image credit: Pakistani cartoonist and artist Sabir Nazar<\/p><\/div>.<\/p>\n

Blog-friend Omar Ali<\/strong> writes: <\/p>\n

The state will make a genuine effort to stop this madness. Shias are still not seen as outsiders by most educated Pakistani Sunnis. When middle class Pakistanis say \u201cthis cannot be the work of a Muslim\u201d they are being sincere, even if they are not being accurate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The “madness” he’s discussing is the extensive killing of Shia Muslims by Sunni Muslims in Pakistan, and I’d recommend both his own article<\/A> on 3 Quarks Daily<\/a> and Bahukutumbi Raman<\/strong>‘s<\/a> on Raman’s strategic analysis<\/a> as offering detailed background for a topic I addressed from a different angle in Ashura: the Passion of Husayn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

It’s Dr. Ali’s final sentence in the quote above that interests me, though, as you’ve probably deduced already from the title of this post: <\/p>\n

When middle class Pakistanis say \u201cthis cannot be the work of a Muslim\u201d they are being sincere, even if they are not being accurate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I haven’t quite known how to say this succinctly before, but I think Dr Ali hits a whole array of nails on the head.<\/p>\n

Religions are mostly preached to whoever listens — and those who listen can be a pretty diverse lot, particularly across continents and centuries. The upshot is that religions generally wind up being interpreted in a variety of ways to suit the wide variety of human temperaments and situations.<\/p>\n

Et voil\u00e0!<\/strong> Members of a religion who see it as a force for peace will tend to say of those who dismay them by using it as a cover for violence, “this cannot be the work of a member of my faith” — and they are being sincere, their understanding of their own religion is as peaceable as they say it is.<\/p>\n

They are being sincere — even if they are not being accurate, and their religion as a “big tent” across cultures, classes, continents and centuries, also includes sincere people whose views are radically and violently opposed to theirs.<\/p>\n

**<\/p>\n

If Walt Whitman<\/strong> can say it, you’d better believe it can be said of religions with a billion or more adherents:<\/p>\n

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — disentangling religion \/ politics braids in Pakistan and elsewhere ] . . Blog-friend Omar Ali writes: The state will make a genuine effort to stop this madness. Shias are still not seen as outsiders by most educated Pakistani Sunnis. When middle class Pakistanis say \u201cthis cannot be the work of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[662,526,502,741,187,533,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-friends","category-charles-cameron","category-pakistan","category-poetry","category-politics","category-religion","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18536"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18536\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18587,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18536\/revisions\/18587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}