10. Islamic demeanour

Look at current-day understanding of Islam in native-English nations. It is seen as a terrible religion, judging from the behaviour of the Muslims. Many years ago, when I received a rare opportunity to read about Prophet Muhammad, I was impressed by the fact that he did not seem to be like the Muslims as seen all around me, at all. In fact, a very curious thought came into my mind that he had the attributes of a native-Englishman.

I do not want to go into what this attribute of his was that made him seem like an Englishman. However, whatever it was, it was an attribute that none of the Muslims in India or Pakistan or any other feudal language nations did seem to have. From this perspective, none of the so-called Muslims who speak and think in feudal languages are actually Islam.

But then, when Islam spread among the feudal language speaking populations, it did do a lot of good among them. For, basically feudal language speaking populations are carnivorous kind of populations. Islam did bring in a particular kind of brotherhood among the people in the barbarian and semi-barbarian social systems. However, the brotherhood was created among these mutually back-stabbing populations. So whatever unity that Islam brought in was a unity among feudal language speaking populations. It is this unity and capacity for united action among feudal language speaking populations that has made Islam a very dangerous entity. Not Islam the religion, per se.

At the same time, the non-Islam feudal language speaking populations are also quite dangerous for native-English social systems. But then, they cannot present the same kind of unity and a common front that their Islamic counterparts can.

These are all quite complicated themes, about which most academic studies have not much information on.

However, when I first noticed the above-mentioned attribute about Prophet Muhammad, I was a bit perplexed and mystified. It was that there was no tangible supporting evidence that I could find on what I seemed to have noticed. However, around 15 years later when I was doing a study on a very big book titled Malabar Manual, written by William Logan, I came upon a very curious statement inside it.

This book is an official manual of the erstwhile Malabar District of the erstwhile Madras Presidency of the English rule period in South Asia. As to William Logan, he was a British citizen and the district administrator of Malabar district. There is a very specific reason why I mentioned the words ‘British citizen’. He was of Scottish ethnicity. So, though a Briton, he was not a native-Englishman.

However see what he has written:

QUOTE: Genuine Arabs, of whom many families of pure blood are settled on the coast, .............. have a great regard for the truth, and in their finer feelings they approach nearer to the standard of English gentlemen than any other class of persons in Malabar. END OF QUOTE

There is actually more than one quite remarkable item in the above quote. One is that William Logan, a Scottish individual is acknowledging the presence of some kind of higher refinement in the native-English. Second, he perceives the same of kind of higher refinement in the Genuine Arabs who are Muslims as well as settlers from Arabia on the Malabar coast. He mentions the similarity.

At this point, I did have to check up on Arabic. On enquiry, I received the information that pristine Arabic is not feudal in its verbal coding. However, there can be complicated issues inside the social system, which has been in existence in very close proximity with the feudal language populations for many centuries. Naturally verbal codes and very many social moods and emotions develop to contain many kinds of unsavoury social equations which this close association can bring in. I cannot say much more about Arabic or the Arabians. However, I have been informed that the Arab higher classes in the Middle East do keep a very non-tangible detachment from the feudal language speaking Muslim populations, who enter their nations as workers.

In fact, I do know that when the Arabian Muslims came in close social proximity with the social systems in Malabar, they did insist that their own side should be protected from the assaults that common words in the Malabari and Malayalam languages could heap upon them. These are minute bits of information, about which the native-English side would not know anything.

I remember another curious bit of information about South Asia, found in the Native Life of Travancore, written by The REV. SAMUEL MATEER, F.L.S.: QUOTE: that “where the severe Mussulman Government most prevailed, the condition of the slave was the easiest; while his condition is the most abject in those countries where the ancient institutions of the Hindus have been least disturbed, END of QUOTE