Shalimar's Got a Devil

Again, this book is clearly about the ideas that drive people, and how those ideas are played out and how they are described by humans to one another, and to the reader.

Shalimar, now that he's mad as hell and not going to take it any more, runs off to join the Kashmir liberation army (he's from Kashmir, and apparently the area is in dispute), only this is really a way for him to pass time until he can kill his former wife (she's dead legally but not dead physically). While up in the mountains there's a lot of words about him, his state, the state of his former wife, the state, and foreshadowing the fate of all of the above. One passage I liked, and want to quote is on page 265. This is the iron mullah, who once took up residence in the neighboring village of Shirmal, in Kashmir, and failed to bring things to a violent head there. This same mullah is now on the Paki side of the line, again inciting violence in a strong confident voice. Part of his teaching as follows:

Ideology was primary. The infidel, obsessed with possessions and wealth, did not grasp this, and believed that men were primarily notivated by social and material self-interest. This was the mistake of all infidels, and also their weakness, which made it possible for them to be defeated. The true warrior was not primarily motivaed by worldly desires, but by what he believed to be true. Economics was not primary. Ideology was primary.

I think it's easy to see the connection between this and almost every terrorist action, and in my mind I wonder how this idea can be exercised in a normal non-violent way against the oppression of the economy. Ok that doesn't make sense, I'm really just enjoying the exposure to ideas that this book has to offer. This book not only makes me impatient, but it makes me pensive.