For those who do not follow Cricket (99% of the people here, I guess) - there was a Twenty20 Cricket world cup that finished the other day in South Africa. Underdogs India beat underdogs Pakistan to win the world cup.
What caught my attention, though, was what the captain of Pakistan team said at the presentation ceremony.
I want to thank people back home and Muslims all over the world ....
As Times of India noted ...
There was, however, a tiny note that jarred the celebrations. It came when skipper Shoaib Malik thanked not only the people of Pakistan but "Muslims all over the world" for their support to his team. Well, hello? Did he notice a pair of brothers in the Indian side who happened to be Muslim but fought fiercely against his team to help India win the Cup? One of them even won the Man of the Match award.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...
More below the fold ....
Words of Shoaib brought swift reaction everywhere.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...
So when Pakistani cricket team’s skipper Shoaib Malik brought a communal hue to the gentleman’s game with a gratuitous thanks to Muslims all over the world, ostensibly for supporting Pakistan, the blowback on the blogosphere was swift.
The real question though is the reason for such a remark ... while a decade or two back Pakistani cricketers hardly ever mentioned religion - except for the obligatory thanks to Allah in the beginning - I see cricketers who wear their religion on the sleeve a lot now-a-days.
While the charitable explanation for Malik's remarks was that he was trying to pre-empt an Islamist backlash at home and did so with poor command of English, the general feeling was he unwittingly revealed the growing radicalisation of the Pakistani cricket team, consonant with Pakistan’s own slide into fundamentalism.
Nationalism and Religion individually are perhaps two of the most intoxicating emotions that can stir any person. Millions of people have died because of leaders taking advantage of these emotions.
Nationalism and Religion combined is a heady mix. It can result in the most absurd of positions and most brutal wars. We have already seen what happens when these are combined in places like US, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan and in near future Iran.
I've never really liked the idea of a nation with an "established religion". The reasons, I think, are clear even in this simplest of cases.
And as TOI put it - this also gives a clear differentiation in the basic guiding principles of India and Pakistan as nation states.
Actually, that passing remark summed up the real difference - not just a five-run victory margin -between India, a vibrant, pluralist, secular democracy, and Pakistan, which alas is not. The Indian team's members don't see a pious need to identify themselves as anything other than Indians. As a matter of fact, this team has a sprinkling of several religions in it. And that is India's brilliance as an idea. It's more than anything its outstanding young cricketers have achieved.
And, in the US, which way do we want to go ?