Stereotyping Islamist extremism, are we? Author Tabish Khair at the Times Lit Fest

It was an unusually warm November Sunday but the audience assembled at the Silver Oak lawn in India Habitat Centre were not uneasy. They were listening, and in rapt attention, to author and critic

Tabish Khair

talk about stereotypes created by Islamist extremism in the

Times Lit Fest

. Moderated by TOI’s Aarti Tikoo Singh, Khair dabbled in rights amounts of humour and frankness as he discussed how radicalism, especially when it comes to Islam, and terror needed to be understood first in order to fight it.

“One need not take serious matter seriously all the time. And that includes prejudices too,” said Khair, sending the audience laughing.

Quipping about the title of his book ‘How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position’, the author reminisced how his friend had once toyed with the phrase ‘missionary position’ while discussing the book. He soon added, “Muslim extremism is given an Islamist interpretation both from outside and inside their worlds.”

When asked what he thought about humour, tolerance and the right to free speech, Khair quickly retorted, “People like to laugh but not to be laughed at.” The questioned became more pertinent with the recent controversy surrounding the upcoming movie Padmavati.

“The problem is not in taking offence at distortion or humour. But getting violent for it. One should be able to criticize what they feel needs criticism. But not tie up others in the process,” said the author. To substantiate his point further, he quoted Jewish philosopher

Emmanuel Levinas

.

“In order to say what you think, you should be able to give the other person the right to speak up as well this, in the truest sense, is what is called human rights,” he added.

Economic deprivation and some political communities who claim to practice Islam have in many ways spread extremism, he said.

“I met an Afghan man recently who told me: The only livelihood that young people have in

Afghanistan

is the gun,” said Khair.

Giving another example, Khair said how a friend from the Arab world had once told him that “oil was a problem”.

Khair then talked about his book Jihadi Jane which plucked the headlines because of its title. The book details the lives of two ordinary girls from Yorkshire who move to

Syria

, deeply committed to the cause of Daesh. “It attempted to narrate the thought processes, motivations and most importantly the restrictions that come with a woman joining the jihad. There has always been an attempt to reduce women’s decision to join the jihad. It’s a taken that they do not think for themselves,” he explained.

The discussions following the session were equally riveting, with a young girl saying she found many of Khair’s lines “hard hitting”. When asked why he wanted to be a writer, the author said, “I wanted to understand the world to the best of my abilities.”

Khair rounded up his session by saying, “Muslims are not at war with the world but with themselves.”
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