Hmmm so i have a deal for you. You pay me $100 today, which i will ‘invest’ in india and, i will pay you back $30 five years from now. Good Enough

I admire the Gulf workers, try to coax airlines into serving them better. (The Philippines receive their cooks/nannies with govt organized parties, recognizing their forex contribution.) Also admire E Africa Indians(I was an expat for a decade) who pulled themselves up inspite of harsh circumstances, and the IndoCaribbeans who suffered tremendous, hideous slavery.

Re returning something to India, yes a trickle has started, like AIF, Pratham. It will increase only when Indians feel something for their country. The Jews chose to invest in their so called homeland and not because they lacked options. Same re Chinese, Irish or any others.

Also Pankaj, India certainly has been secular and democratic. With flaws? Certainly. I am a minority and never ever forget that it is the majority Hindu community which votes in a govt that for the most protects me. Yes Gujarat happened as did govt initiated pogroms during colonial times. And the Muslims should be compensated in every possible way. But this pogrom is NOT the norm and the Vajpayee govt, in spite of a good economic record, lost the elections. Also the Christian inquisition in Goa killed, tortured lakhs of Hindus. The Vatican books detail the horrors (children skinned in front of parents) but the Indian Christian community says the Pope must not be asked to apologize. After the terrible Staines event, public mourning was declared and Mrs Staines recd an official apology and much sympathy fromamhny many Hindus and Muslims. And yes, I do believe Indian Muslims, especially the women have benefited by being Indian.

I am grateful that I come from a country whose constitution was written by a man from the lowest class. Also the only country in the world where Jewish communities have been safe for thousands of years. Anyway the fact remains that far too much remains to be done today.

to be precise, i mean the attitudes of the public. see here. obviously america does not share the turkish elite’s laicism….

well, jewish policitians clearly do! but, in the american context, william howard taft was a unitarian (early 20th century), so he rejected the trinity, which is the common assumption of the vast majority of christians. to be honest about it, it seems to be me that american politicians became very religious right when universal sufferage became common (andrew jackson’s presidency). before that most american presidents would be defined as non-christian!

but i am skeptical that either bush or clinton are not sincere christians. but, in other christian nations non-christianity is acceptable, america is the exception. australia had an agnostic prime minister. chile has had an agnostic prime minister. so has brazil. france has had many atheist prime ministers and presidents (mitterand and jospin the most recent). the leader of the labor party in england in the 1980s was an atheist. the president of poland is an atheist. america is the exception. you can google my site and you will see that the nation america resembles in its attitudes toward religion is turkey (they even have about the same number of creationists!). i think that tells you something about the ‘christian’ vs. ‘muslim’ world in their distributions.

“even ataturk was not particularly vocal about his fundamental disagreemants with the axioms of islam”

This is true about Bush or even Clinton – when was the last time a major politician disgareed specifically with the axioms of christianity? people don’ normally do that – but they show in multitude of ways how they differ from certain ideals by actions. You are right about the muslim dictators – but those are dicatorships, that is not what the people wanted – if people could have their way, some kind of representative government will come up. For a bunch of monarchies who are oppressing muslims as well as non-muslims, finding cause within their religion is futile, in my opinion.

there is much here that literature, film, and art can express

if had numbers i would offer them, but unfortunately i do not but yes, i don’t think the majority of muslims in india are deobandi, deobandis reject hanafism theoretically (though i think to some extent they are an outgrowth of hanafism just as wahabbism is an outgrowth of hanbalism). though most south asian muslims are of various hanafi traditions, deobandis are particularly energetic, but i don’t think they are a majority. there is a big difference between north and south india in this in that i gather that mopillas of kerala are not hanafi, but shafi. this is reflective of that fact that north indian islam has a strong turco-afghan tincture, while south indian islam is more diverse, with a great deal of maratime arab influence.

and najeeb, i assume you read my weblog since you linked to it, so you know i am not talking about platonic ideas of ‘islam’ or ‘christianity,’ i’m talking about distributions. christianity is pretty much gelded. islam is not. at least to the first approximation. i think the attitude toward open apostates and atheists in muslim nations is a useful indicator in commparison to christian cultures (i glean that there are many atheists and agnostics amongst the elites of muslim cultures, especially those who espouse a leftist-marxist influenced ideology, but they are not explicit and open about their private views, either due to prudence [they would be killed or attacked] or strassian assumptions that ‘religion is good for the masses’). by the 19th century western societies had accepted the rights of atheists to publically criticize their gods, though not without discomfort. very few islamic societies have reached this state, even ataturk was not particularly vocal about his fundamental disagreemants with the axioms of islam as opposed to attacks on particular modes of expression.