Nehru's Secularism Was An Aberration; Modi's Islamophobia is the Norm For India

As India and Pakistan turn 75, there are many secular intellectuals on both sides of the border who question the wisdom of "the Partition" in 1947. They dismiss what is happening in India today under Hindu Nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership as a temporary aberration, not the norm. They long for a return to "Indian liberalism" which according to anthropologist Sanjay Srivastava "did not exist". 

India Pakistan Border Ceremony at Wagah-Attari Crossing

American historian Audrey Truschke who studies India traces the early origins of Hindu Nationalism to the British colonial project to "divide and rule" the South Asian subcontinent. She says colonial-era British historians deliberately distorted the history of Indian Muslim rule to vilify Muslim rulers as part of the British policy to divide and conquer India. These misrepresentations of Muslim rule made during the British Raj appear to have been accepted as fact not just by Islamophobic Hindu Nationalists but also by at least some of the secular Hindus in India and Muslim intellectuals in present day Pakistan, says the author of "Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India's Most Controversial King".  Aurangzeb was neither a saint nor a villain; he was a man of his time who should be judged by the norms of his times and compared with his contemporaries, the author adds.

After nearly a century of direct rule, the British largely succeeded in dividing South Asians along religious and sectarian lines. The majoritarian tyranny of the "secular"  Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress after 1937 elections in India became very apparent to  Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of All India Muslim League. Speaking in Lucknow in October 1937,  he said the following: 

"The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last ten years, has been responsible for alienating the Musalmans of lndia more and more, by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu; and since they have formed the Governments in six provinces where they are in a majority they have by their words, deeds, and programme shown more and more that the Musalmans cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands. Whenever they are in majority and wherever it suited them, they refused to co-operate with the Muslim League Parties and demanded unconditional surrender and signing of their pledges."

Fast forward to 2021, a Pew survey in India found that 64% of Hindus see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined. Most Hindus (59%) also link Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi language. The survey was conducted over two years in 2019 and 2020 by Pew Research Center. It included 29,000 Indians.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu Nationalist BJP party's appeal is the greatest among Hindus who closely associate their religious identity and the Hindi language with being “truly Indian.” The Pew survey found that less than half of Indians (46%) favored democracy as best suited to solve the country’s problems. Two percent more (48%) preferred a strong leader. 

Indian anthropologist Sanjay Srivastava sums up the current situation as follows: 

"Our parents practiced bigotry of a quiet sort, one that did not require the loud proclamations that are the norm now. Muslims and the lower castes knew their place and the structures of social and economic authority were not under threat. This does not necessarily translate into a tolerant generation. Rather, it was a generation whose attitudes towards religion and caste was never really tested. The loud bigotry of our times is no great break from the past in terms of a dramatic change in attitudes – is it really possible that such changes can take place in such few years? Rather, it is the crumbling of the veneer of tolerance against those who once knew their place but no longer wish to accept that position. The great problem with all this is that we continue to believe that what is happening today is simply an aberration and that we will, when the nightmare is over, return to the Utopia that was once ours. However, it isn’t possible to return to the past that was never there. It will only lead to an even darker future. And, filial affection is no antidote for it".

Acknowledgement: Charts and data in this blog post are sourced from 75 Years Economic Journey of Pakistan published by Pakistan's Ministry of Finance. 

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

South Asia Investor Review

Muslims Worse Off Than Dalits in India

Disintegration of India

Dalit Death Shines Light on India's Caste Apartheid

Caste Discrimination Rampant Among Silicon Valley Indians

Rape: A Political Weapon in Modi's India

Hindutva: The Legacy of the British Rulers "Divide and Rule" Project

Will Modi's Hindutva Lead to Multiple Partitions of India?

Riaz Haq Youtube Channel

PakAlumni: Pakistani Social Network

India and Pakistan at 70; Nawaz Sharif Rallies; Korea Crisis

How are India and Pakistan doing 70 years after independence? What are their successes and failures? What challenges do they face? What does future hold for them? Can Pakistani democracy evolve and grow to serve all of its people? How will Hindu Nationalist Modi's rise impact South Asia? Is India's secular democracy under threat? Could it lead to war? Is there a way to manage tensions between the two rivals? Will there ever be durable peace in South Asia?

Has deposed PM Nawaz Sharif really accepted the Supreme Court verdict disqualifying him? Should he really accept the verdict as Al Gore accepted Bush v Gore verdict after 2000 US presidential elections and go home quietly? What does Nawaz Sharif hope to achieve by his daily political rallies as he makes his way from Islamabad to Lahore in a long convoy of vehicles? Will his continuing public attacks on the judiciary undermine democracy in Pakistan?

What is at the root of the Korea crisis? Is it Kim Jong Un's fear of regime change if he agrees to denuclearize? What lessons have Kim and others learned from the way US first denuclearized Saddam and Gaddafi and then removed them that led to their deaths? Is President Donald Trump's fiery rhetoric making the crisis worse? Should Trump listen to the advice of US allies to cool it?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

https://youtu.be/ffADNF3hgck





Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Pakistan Day: Freeing the Colonized Minds of the Elite

Pankaj Mishra's NY Times Op Ed on India at 70

Lynchistan: India is the Lynching Capital of the World

Nawaz Sharif Disqualified by Pakistan Supreme Court

North Korea Nukes and ICBM

Trump's White House

Talk4Pak Youtube Channel

Talk4Pak Vimeo Channel

Debating Reasoning and Rationality

Are reasoning and rationality promoted by the modern secular western liberal elite overrated? Is secular liberalism (aka humanism) just another form of orthodoxy similar to the religious conservative orthodoxy? Isn't the popular belief in the US that Saddam plotted 911 on par with the various 911 conspiracy theories finding resonance in the Islamic world? Are these liberal and conservative arguments less about seeking truth than about overcoming opposing views?

It seems so, if you believe recent research findings.

Here's a recent Newsweek column by Sharon Begley on "The Limits of Reason":

Women are bad drivers, Saddam plotted 9/11, Obama was not born in America, and Iraq had weapons of mass destruction: to believe any of these requires suspending some of our critical--thinking faculties and succumbing instead to the kind of irrationality that drives the logically minded crazy. It helps, for instance, to use confirmation bias (seeing and recalling only evidence that supports your beliefs, so you can recount examples of women driving 40mph in the fast lane). It also helps not to test your beliefs against empirical data (where, exactly, are the WMD, after seven years of U.S. forces crawling all over Iraq?); not to subject beliefs to the plausibility test (faking Obama’s birth certificate would require how widespread a conspiracy?); and to be guided by emotion (the loss of thousands of American lives in Iraq feels more justified if we are avenging 9/11).

The fact that humans are subject to all these failures of rational thought seems to make no sense. Reason is supposed to be the highest achievement of the human mind, and the route to knowledge and wise decisions. But as psychologists have been documenting since the 1960s, humans are really, really bad at reasoning. It’s not just that we follow our emotions so often, in contexts from voting to ethics. No, even when we intend to deploy the full force of our rational faculties, we are often as ineffectual as eunuchs at an orgy.

An idea sweeping through the ranks of philosophers and cognitive scientists suggests why this is so. The reason we succumb to confirmation bias, why we are blind to counterexamples, and why we fall short of Cartesian logic in so many other ways is that these lapses have a purpose: they help us “devise and evaluate arguments that are intended to persuade other people,” says psychologist Hugo Mercier of the University of Pennsylvania. Failures of logic, he and cognitive scientist Dan Sperber of the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris propose, are in fact effective ploys to win arguments.

That puts poor reasoning in a completely different light. Arguing, after all, is less about seeking truth than about overcoming opposing views. So while confirmation bias, for instance, may mislead us about what’s true and real, by letting examples that support our view monopolize our memory and perception, it maximizes the artillery we wield when trying to convince someone that, say, he really is “late all the time.” Confirmation bias “has a straightforward explanation,” argues Mercier. “It contributes to effective argumentation.”

Another form of flawed reasoning shows up in logic puzzles. Consider the syllogism “No C are B; all B are A; therefore some A are not C.” Is it true? Fewer than 10 percent of us figure out that it is, says Mercier. One reason is that to evaluate its validity requires constructing counterexamples (finding an A that is a C, for instance). But finding counterexamples can, in general, weaken our confidence in our own arguments. Forms of reasoning that are good for solving logic puzzles but bad for winning arguments lost out, over the course of evolution, to those that help us be persuasive but cause us to struggle with abstract syllogisms. Interestingly, syllogisms are easier to evaluate in the form “No flying things are penguins; all penguins are birds; so some birds are not fliers.” That’s because we are more likely to argue about animals than A, B, and C.

The sort of faulty thinking called motivated reasoning also impedes our search for truth but advances arguments. For instance, we tend to look harder for flaws in a study when we don’t agree with its conclusions and are more critical of evidence that undermines our point of view. So birthers dismiss evidence offered by Hawaiian officials that Obama’s birth certificate is real, and death-penalty foes are adept at finding flaws in studies that conclude capital punishment deters crime. While motivated reasoning may cloud our view of reality and keep us from objectively assessing evidence, Mercier says, by attuning us to flaws (real or not) in that evidence it prepares us to mount a scorched-earth strategy in arguments.

Even the sunk-cost fallacy, which has tripped up everyone from supporters of a losing war (“We’ve already lost so many lives, it would be a betrayal to withdraw”) to a losing stock (“I’ve held onto it this long”), reflects reasoning that turns its back on logic but wins arguments because the emotions it appeals to are universal. If Mercier and Sperber are right, the sunk-cost fallacy, confirmation bias, and the other forms of irrationality will be with us as long as humans like to argue. That is, forever.


Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Teaching Facts versus Reasoning

Infections Cause Low IQ in South Asia, Africa?

Daydreaming and Eureka Moments

Can Secular Laws Promote Tolerance in Pakistan?

Guest Post by Vanguard

The Model Town incident in Lahore started the exercise in same old introspection. Most of the essays start with Quaid-e-Azam did not want an Islamic state just a Muslim state, others blame the original sin of carving out Pakistan, some point fingers at Objective Resolution and last but not the least policies of Mard-e-momin Mard-e-haq Zia ul Haq.

What we seem to forget in these exercises is that the people carrying out the rampage have no religious preference per se. They did not selected their targets because the constitution describes them as non Muslim. Today they have murdered Ahmedis, but a few days ago they were murdering general population (religion/sect no bar) in moon market blasts, prior to that firing incident in a Friday prayers in Islamabad Mosque, Sri Lankan cricket team, police academy outside Lahore, GHQ attack, shia procession, pathan roti walas and thailay walas and prior to all this killing of shia professionals in Karachi.

What all this shows is total breakdown of law and order in the country. There are some people hell bent on killing (they might kill a one group more than the others) and the state is incapable of doing anything against them.

I respect Quaid-e-Azam and what I am today is because of Pakistan and hence my gratitude for him. However, Quaid was not a prophet nor an angel. He was a mere mortal and mortals can make mistakes and not everything they do and say is 100% correct. This is not to say that he said anything wrong.

He may have wanted a secular constitution but he believed in democratic principles and left it up to the people through their representatives on how they want to be ruled. If the constituent assembly or the future assemblies decide (rightly or wrongly) that Islam is to be state religion, then democratic principles imply that it should be.

Islam gives equal rights to people from other religions to practice. However, if the Muslim population does not allow the minorities equal rights, its not Islam's fault, rather it is the fault of Muslims and Islam being the state religion not has nothing to do with it.

When minorities are attacked, its not because we are not secular. Take the case honor killings that take place in Sind and Balochistan (most secular of all the ethnicities in Pakistan). It does not have any implicit protection or even a nod in the constitution. How many persons have been tried for honor killings?

Akbar Bugti (though murdered extra judicially) himself claimed to have murdered his subjects in his youth just because he could. There is a minister in Balochistan government who admitted to be on panchayat that agreed to burying women alive. Except for little hue and cry when he made the statement, nothing else has happened against them. Now that we don't have Hudood Ordinance, still such crimes continue and go unpunished.

Despite how it appears to be, I am not recommending here that constitution and law should not be improved. What I am implying here is that even if we changed the law, things will not improve because all this happens in spite of the law, not because of it.

With the exception of Zia and Nawaz Sharif, the country has been ruled by what you call in Pakistan secular or liberals. We lost half of the country under the stewardship of liberals i.e., Islam had nothing to do with it other than probably delaying the secession. Seculars were ruling the country under a secular constitution. Compared to the murder and rape that took place in Bangladesh, the current crimes pale in comparison against them.

Some people claim that it was bound to happen since there was a thousand mile hostile country in between. One of the most stupidest arguments ever. The world had seen large empires with the seat of empire sometimes at a distance of a month's journey from the frontier even before airplanes were invented and such empires existed for centuries.

Coming back to secularism, we have many commentators exploiting the Lahore tragedy to spew vitriol against Islam nowadays. Will they be happy if so called Islamic injunctions are taken out of the constitution of Pakistan? I don't think so because a few weeks ago some of them were spewing in a similar vein against Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in favor of Hazara region. And this is when Khyber is ruled by a secular party.

In Karachi, which is ruled between PPP, ANP and MQM, all three are secular parties, is a boiling pot of ethnic tensions with 16 people killed in single day a few weeks ago with NO hue and cry anywhere.

You can make the constitution as secular as you wish, but the fact is that secularization of laws will not make your problems go away.

Related Links:

Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah's Vision For Pakistan

Pakistan, Turkey and Secularism

Pakistan Must Defeat Agents of Intolerance

Daily Carnage in Pakistan

Religious Leaders Respond to Domestic Violence

Fighting Agents of Intolerance

A Woman Speaker: Another Token or Real Change

A Tale of Tribal Terror

Turkey, Pakistan and Secularism

As the Turkish Supreme Court prepares to decide on a petition to ban AKP, the ruling party in Turkey, is it reasonable to compare the secular zeal in Turkey with the religious zeal in Pakistan? It probably is. However, the situation in Pakistan is the mirror image of that in Turkey. Just as the religious orthodoxy in Pakistan is strong but limited to a small but vocal, radical minority of Pakistanis, it seems that the secular orthodoxy in Turkey is just as powerful but shared by a small, radical and vociferous minority of Turks.

While Turkish military and the Ataturk Thought Association act as zealous guardians of the secular creed that guides Turkey, the majority of the Turks have long been voting for AKP party, and its predecessors, with "Islamist" leanings. I am using the word "Islamist" rather loosely here, because AKP would be considered a very moderate middle-of-the-road party, like the Muslim League, in a country like Pakistan.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Ataturk's Thought Association's chairman, a retired four-star general, is now in jail. Its offices -- plastered with portraits of modern Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk -- have been raided by police. Several of its computer hard drives have been seized by investigators. They're hunting for evidence of plots by hard-line secularists to topple Turkey's mildly Islamic government, according to the Journal.

The hard core secularists in Turkey have been concerned about the demise of Ataturk's legacy almost since he died 70 years ago. A relentless modernizer, big drinker and fan of the fox trot, Mustapha Kemal Pasha, the father of the Turkish Republic had issues with Islam. He closed Islamic schools, banned Islamic dress and opened a German brewery in his new capital, Ankara. It was obviously not the path of least resistance in a country that is 99% Muslim, once ruled Mecca and was for centuries home to the Islamic Caliphate. Yet Ataturk's legacy prevailed for decades.

Pakistan's founder, Quaid-e-Azam Mohamed Ali Jinnah, was also of secular persuasion. However, he was not hostile to religion. His idea of secularism was very different from that of the Ataturk.

While Ataturk subordinated Islam under the state, Quaid-e-Azam believed in separation of state and religion. Here is an excerpt from Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's most important speech laying out his vision for Pakistan: "You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State." Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah in address to first constituent assembly, Aug 11, 1947

The Quaid-e-Azam was not just secular, he was a secular democrat who believed in freedom of religion and personal choice. For example, he never advocated either requiring or banning the wearing of the headscarf by women, which seems to be where the battle lines are drawn today between Islamists and Secularists in Turkey.

Unlike the Ataturk Thought Association and the Turkish military who are strong defenders of Ataturk's legacy in Turkey, however inflexible and flawed it may be, there has not been a similar effort in Pakistan to defend the legacy of the Quaid-e-Azam. Not only has Quaid-e-Azam's idea of separation of mosque and state been set aside, there have been active attempts by the religeous parties to hijack the national agenda and the country's constitution in favor of a theocratic state based on their extreme interpretation of the Shariah laws. The efforts of the religious parties, a minority in parliament, began with forcing the adoption of the 22-point objectives resolution just a few years after the death of Quaid-e-Azam. The religious elements completely whitewashed the vision of the father of the nation and declared Islam as the ideology of Pakistan. Fortunately, though, the recent Pakistani elections have shown that the vast majority of Pakistanis reject the extreme agenda of the religious parties in Pakistan.

For the Ataturk Thought Association, a bastion of Turkey's secularism, the key Ataturk speech is a 230-word address to Turkish youth. It warns against "malevolent people at home and abroad," and urges ceaseless struggle against any "traitors" who worm themselves into power. According to the secularists, that dark fear has taken shape in the form of the AK Party.

Ataturk's secularism is not a simple formula. Unlike America's founding fathers, who separated church and state, Ataturk did not so much separate Islam from the state as make it subservient to the state. He abolished the position of the Caliph and put all mosques and imams under a government ministry. At the same time, he purged religious influences from other state agencies.

If, as expected, the anti-Islamist Turkish constitutional court rules to ban AKP, it will not mean the end of its government. The AKP legislators will most likely reconstitute themselves into a new party by a different name that would easily win the vote of confidence in Turkish parliament. Turkey will continue to move in the direction of a moderate Muslim state with modern ideas of democracy and personal freedoms that it shares with its European neighbors. Based on the results of recent elections in Turkey, the vast majority of Turks clearly endorses this direction and rejects the Ataturk version of secularism which is incompatible with democracy.

Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah's Vision for Pakistan

With the passage of 60 years since Pakistan's independence, a lot of myths have grown around Pakistan's founding father and his vision and intentions for Pakistan. This blog post is an attempt to explain who the Quaid-e-Azam was and what he wanted Pakistan to become as a nation.

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), the father of Pakistani nation, was a brilliant Muslim lawyer and political leader who lived a life that could be described as essentially westernized and secular. He was born in an Ismaili Shia Muslim family, raised in Karachi, receiving his early schooling at Karachi's Sindh Madressah and then received his law education in the U.K. He returned to the Sub-continent in 1896, married a Parsi woman Ruttie Petit, and practiced law in Bombay while waging a struggle for the independence of India from the British. He dressed mostly in the latest English-style suits of his time and spoke mostly in English with occasional Gujarati and Urdu. He did not have religious education and most ulema of his time agreed that his life did not conform to what most ulema considered "Islamic principles". In fact, the ulema on both sides of the partition debate, including Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani and Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, questioned Jinnah's credentials as a "good, practicing Muslim". He fought for India's freedom, first as the President of Indian National Congress, and then as the head of the Muslim League.

Having worked hard but unsuccessfully for Hindu-Muslim cooperation and unity, the Quaid--i-Azam was disillusioned with the Indian National Congress. He decided to join the Muslim League in 1935. After joining the Muslim League, his goal was to create a separate, independent homeland for Muslims of the Indian Sub-continent, where they could flourish freely without interference from or competition with the politically, educationally and economically dominant Hindu majority in South Asia. But he clearly opposed a "theocratic state" ruled by the religious elite (something like Iran's Guardian Council) with the ultimate veto power over the will of the people and the democratic processes and institutions. In fact, he believed in the separation of church and state, just as much as he favored the superiority of political leadership over the military officer corps in running the nation's affairs.

Here are three excepts from Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's most important speeches laying out his vision for Pakistan:

"You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State." Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah in address to first constituent assembly, Aug 11, 1947

"In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsis -- but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any
other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan." Quaid-i-Azam, Feb. 1948

“Never forget that you are the servants of the state. You do not make policy. It is we, the people’s representatives, who decide how the country is to be run. Your job is to only obey the decisions of your civilian masters.” Quaid-i-Azam's Address to Military Staff College, June 14, 1948.

In the current circumstances when Pakistan is threatened from the forces of darkness and dictatorships disguised as saviors of the nation, it is important that we understand clearly what the founding father intended for Pakistan. With the above speech quotes from the Quaid-i-Azam, I will let the reader be the judge of his intentions.

As you read and ponder, let me leave you with a relevant quote from popular columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee: "Fortunately for him, Jinnah did not live long enough to see his dream betrayed by men unworthy even to utter his name. He died before total disillusionment could set in (though he had his suspicions that it was on its way) and broke his heart. From what we know of him, he was that rare being, an incorruptible man in all the many varied meanings of the word corruption, purchasable by no other, swayed by no other, perverted by no other; a man of honor, integrity and high ideals. That the majority of his countrymen have been found wanting in these qualities is this country's tragedy."

In conclusion, I take the liberty of paraphrasing Iqbal's admonition to his fellow Indians in his time, as follows:

Na samjho gay to mit jao gay ay Pakistan walo
Thumhari dastan tak bhi no hogi dastanon main

Which loosely translates as:

Listen up, pay attention, and mend your ways, o Pakistanis
Or else thou shall perish and be consigned to the dustbin of history

Bush's Lessons In Secularism, Human Rights, Free Media

As George W. Bush makes his faith-based appointments, buys news media, blocks anti-torture legislation at home and spies on telephone conversations, the US continues the policy of supporting secularism, democracy, human rights and media freedom in the Islamic world. The following is an interesting story, a little dated but still very relevant in 2008:

Column By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 19, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Iraq News Agency) - A delegation of Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S. today, cutting short its visit to study the workings of American democracy. A delegation spokesman said the Iraqis were "bewildered" by some of the behavior of the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit their exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when Iraq is taking its first baby steps toward democracy.

The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad Mithaqi, a noted secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that he was stunned when he heard President Bush telling Republicans that one reason they should support Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because of "her religion." She is described as a devout evangelical Christian.

Mithaqi said that after two years of being lectured to by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to separate "mosque from state" in the new Iraq, he was also floored to read that the former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law school dean, said on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson that Miers deserved support because she was "a very, very strong Christian [who] should be a source of great comfort and assistance to people in the households of faith around the country."

"Now let me get this straight," Judge Mithaqi said. "You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of politics, and then your own president and conservative legal scholars go and tell your public to endorse Miers as a Supreme Court justice because she is an evangelical Christian.

"How would you feel if you picked up your newspapers next week and read that the president of Iraq justified the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court justice by telling Iraqis: 'Don't pay attention to his lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to the fact that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosque.' Is that the Iraq you sent your sons to build and to die for? I don't think so. We can't have our people exposed to such talk."

A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab al-Unfi, a Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result of torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to spend another day in Washington after listening to the Bush team defend its right to use torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of military prisoners. But he said he was depressed by reports that the White House might veto the bill because of that amendment, which would ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of P.O.W.'s.

"I survived eight years of torture under Saddam," Unfi said. "Virtually every extended family in Iraq has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now because I don't want our delegation corrupted by all this American right-to-torture talk."

Finally, the delegation member Sahaf al-Sahafi, editor of one of Iraq's new newspapers, said he wanted to go home after watching a televised videoconference last Thursday between soldiers in Iraq and President Bush. The soldiers, 10 Americans and an Iraqi, were coached by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush.

"I had nightmares watching this," Sahafi said. "It was right from the Saddam playbook. I was particularly upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: 'Thank you very much for everything. I like you.' It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his troops."

Sahafi said he was also floored to see the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, declare that a Bush administration contract that paid Armstrong Williams, a supposedly independent commentator, to promote Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal propaganda - an attempt by the government to buy good press.

"Saddam bought and paid journalists all over the Arab world," Sahafi said. "It makes me sick to see even a drop of that in America."

By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates departed Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned from the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving America's image among Muslims by giving them a more accurate view of America and President Bush. She said, "The more they know about us, the more they will like us."

(Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish that it weren't so true.)