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One day after the media blasted it all over the country, Sania Mirza denied that she had made any statement supporting actor Khushboo's controversial views on safe pre-marital sex. She claimed she was misquoted. Perhaps she was, but what's the big deal if she had indeed said that safety in sex is a virtue, or some such?

That's a point of view which has basis in common sense, not in scandal, as sundry fringe groups in Hyderabad have made it out to be. There are huge physical and emotional issues involved in the sexual habits of the young, as any social scientist or psychiatrist would testify. In a country where Aids, for instance, threatens millions, safe sex is an issue that needs to be propagated as aggressively as possible.

A 19-year-old girl, who spends at least half the year on international tennis circuit traveling all over the world and meeting all kinds of people, is likely to be better informed about these issues; and as a role model, is surely more likely to get people to listen to her. The point is that even assuming Sania had said what was attributed to her, she does not become any less a Muslim.

The problem begins when people see everything in the prism of dogma, not faith that adds value to everyday life. Promoting safe sex is far removed from advocating free sex. The blasphemy, as it were, is imagined, not real.

It is such one-dimensional thinking, these off-the-cuff fatwas, I'm afraid, which hardens the stereoptype of the Muslims as recalcitrant and fundamentalist; unhappy with the world and resentful of everything that does not conform to their view. This is not restricted to India alone, and that only accentuates the problem in a globalised world. Clearly, the stereotype is not the truth. But truth has become a casualty because the same issues and the same grievances have been constantly replayed.

Tunisian writer and poet Abdelwahab Meddeb in the opening chapter of his wonderful book, Islam and Its Discontents, locates the root of this problem in the demise of creativity in the Muslim world. "But the real origin of this development,'' he writes "which lies at the point where psychology and ethics intersect ethics intersect, is the end of creativity, the end of the contributions that made Islamic civilization. … For the past several centuries, Muslims have not been creative in the scientific domain, nor have they been masters of technical development…Apart from some individuals of Islamic origin working in Western research institutions, Muslim individuals, inside the horizon of their own symbolic and linguistic territoriality, remain excluded from the scientific spirit. They are not involved in the conception of the airplane, its invention or even its production, but they can pilot the flying machine very well, and go as far as to steer it to destruction.''

Obviously the issue of fundamentalism is not lop-sided. Meddeb provides a reminder of Catholic fanaticism through centuries, and Nazism in Germany (to name only two) to highlight that this problem is not defined by religious denomination alone. But that's an issue that demands polemics of a nature that are beyond the scope of this article, or its author.

I would even be happy if those who object to Sania Mirza wearing skirts while playing tennis can 'create' a dress that facilitate her to play as well, if not better.

Email: ayaz@dnaindia.net