Where are the Questioning Minds?

An old man is crying in a rally protesting the insult of our Master Holy Prophet (pbuh) by the people of allegedly civilized countries. The allegedly civilized people claimed that they were only ``questioning`` and not insulting.

Urstruly,

You should be ashamed of yourself (if you were capable of feeling shame, that is). Either the standing of the Prophet is so great that it doesn`t matter what the Unenlightened and the Ungodly say, or his legacy after 1500 years is so shaky that even the mildest insult will cause it to topple.

So, what is it? Obviously you are deathly afraid that it is the latter and that if some people start poking fun at the Prophet, some others might realize that he was only a rather fallible man.

Re: # 66 Fuzair

You will not understand these things. The concept and value of ``human dignity`` or `ihtraam-e-Aadmiyat` as we call it in urdu is uniquely a religious concept. It is religion that separates man from a primate and teaches him the values that are called civility, manners, ettiquettes, laws and customs. These are the notions which have enabled man to evolve above all other organisms; while man is out to explore universe the primates are still hanging on the trees.

As I have said many times before, those people, who call themselves atheists, freethinkers, agnostics, doubters, apostates, and hypocrites cannot have values. The proof of it is evident in your post. It puts forth this idea in no uncertain terms that every man who is ever insulted is because he was morally week; any person who is ever humiliated is because his value system was questionable; it means any person who is ever slandered or libled is because his dignity is shakey. If we take this approach then we lose the concepts of respect and disrespect; insult and dignity; so we are back to square one, where human civilization started thousands of years ago. That is why I say that athesits and those who in their own self-agrandizement call themselves `humanists` cannot have values. THis is the very reason, Western atheists vent their prejudices and hatered in this manner from time to time. It is actually their frustration over what they have lost and what they will never have. In those societies 90% of the women have fallen victim to the carnal desires of men in the name of freedom. Just because a woman wishes to be an equal ``mean of production`` to man she has to sacrifice her dignity and become a mistress and a whore to the man. The proof of this is the 80-90% illigitimate citizens of western countries. (Probably only legitimate children in West are now those of immigrants). In western societies the woman has become that fly who falls into honey; she struggles but it is not only the viscosity of honey keeps her trapped but it is also the sweetness of honey too. So as long as the fly lives, her universe becomes what surrounds her. What do you expect to happen as outcome to this sugarcoated exploitation and indignity that women have to suffer. She will give birth to a man without dignity and self-worth. THat man will be devoid of the fine ettiquettes that make a man a human being. Today, all the shit that is flying around in this world, is caused by these men who are devoid of self-worth and dignity- now isn`t it.

#67 by Urstruly on February 4, 2006 2:24pm PT


The proof of this is the 80-90% illigitimate citizens of western countries.


you`ve finally gone off the edge..it`s going to be a freefall from now on..enjoy the ride..

That is the major difference between Eastern thought and Abrahamnic religions......One epouses HONOR, DIGNITY, CODE OF CONDUCT, ETHOS.......the later submission and blind faith,........


No sympathies for these muslims in the cartoon case.......karma has caught up with your kanjarpana of insulting and destroying others` holy symbols......and humanity.....

67 by Urstruly

`Human dignity`, `Ehtraam-e-Aadimiyat` in the paki-world? Ha ha hah!

You are provoking chowkies to say somthing for the sword of blasphemy law or lynching to come into action. For your informaion those who had felt most to blaspheme against the prophet during his life and to murder his progeny mercilessly afterwards in Karbala had done so avowedly in the name of religion. Yazid is on record having said, ``I will kill Hussain with the sword of his grandfather``. In fact all sectarian Mullah-ridden religions are essentially enemies of each other, bereft of all human feelings.

re: Manto`s various
Thanks for educating me about Seervai.
I have no doubt in my mind (after reading the articles that u posted) that he was perhaps a great legal mind. I can`t be blamed for not knowing him. I am not in the legal profession!
Still, does that make him an expert on partition of India? We are debating about the book he wrote that Farzana bibi calls `` a definitive book`` on partition and one article from that communist lynchpin The Hindu, says the same.
What makes that book an authority on parition?
Please educate us on the matter.
While at it, learn to be civil.
I am still of the opinion that u belong to a different category than the likes of Behram (i hope i am right). You only lose credibility when u use abusive language.
Sridhar

re: Islamic fundoos go beserk
http://www.sulekha.com/news/nhc.aspx?cid=443866
(Syrian protesters set Danish embassy ablaze over cartoon

By Rasha Elass Sat Feb 4, 11:56 AM ET

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Furious Syrians set fire to the Danish embassy on Saturday as protests over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad spread and oil giant
Iran said it was reviewing trade ties with countries that have published such caricatures.
ADVERTISEMENT

Chanting ``God is Great,`` thousands of protesters stormed the embassy, burned the Danish flag and replaced it with a flag reading ``No God but Allah, Mohammad is His Prophet.`` They set fires which badly damaged the building before being put out.

No one was hurt as the embassy was closed at the time.

Denmark is at the eye of the storm as the cartoons that Muslims demonstrators find offensive, one of the Prophet with a turban resembling a bomb, first appeared in a Danish daily.

In another twist, Iran said it had formed a committee to review trade ties with countries that published cartoons that are deemed to insult the Prophet.

``A committee has been formed to review trade ties,`` a spokesman for the presidential office said.

From Gaza to Lahore, demonstrators rallied on Saturday to condemn the cartoons in what has developed into a face-off between press freedom and religious respect.

For many Muslims depicting the Prophet Mohammad is forbidden and European leaders have called for calm, expressing deep concern about the furor that has erupted over the last days.

Newspapers have insisted on their right to print the cartoons, citing freedom of speech.

Indonesia and Malaysia were the latest nations to publicly voice anger at the cartoons, joining a dispute that has become a lightning rod for anti-European sentiment in the Islamic world.

A black wreath was laid at the Danish embassy in Ankara. About 1,500 people were outside the Danish embassy in London.

Around 500 students of Islamic seminaries or madrasas protested in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, chanting ``Down with Denmark`` and ``Hang the culprits.``

Dozens of Palestinian youths tried to storm the office of the
European Union in Gaza and pledged to give their ``blood to redeem the Prophet.``

PUBLICATION BARRED, EDITOR ARRESTED

In South Africa, a court granted a request by a Muslim group to bar publication of the cartoons.

Jordan`s state prosecutor arrested the editor of a tabloid weekly which had published the cartoons. He had already been sacked by publishers of his Shihan weekly for reprinting the turban-bomb cartoon as part of an article headlined ``an Islamic Intifada (Uprising) against the Danish insult to Islam.``

Two New Zealand newspapers on Saturday reprinted the cartoons, which have now appeared in newspapers in Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Hungary, saying their decision was based on press freedom.

Polish financial daily Rzeczpospolita also published the cartoons, drawing the ire of Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz who said: ``It is my conviction that the bounds of properly conceived freedom of expression have been overstepped.``

But in an interview with La Repubblica daily, European Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said it was not for the European Union to apologize.

``No, it`s not Europe`s duty, nor do I think it is the duty of (Danish) Prime Minister Rasmussen. We don`t have the power to apologize in the name of the press. That would be violating the basis of freedom of the press. If they feel it is right, it is up to the editors and the authors of the cartoons to apologize to those who feel offended,`` he said.

U.S. STEPS INTO ROW

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul of Muslim but secular Turkey, a European Union candidate country, called for calm and for mutual respect between Muslims and non-Muslims.

And a prominent British Muslim expressed outrage at placards held at a rally outside the Danish embassy on Friday -- ``Europe your 9/11 will come`` and ``Behead those who insult Islam.``

``I`ve been calling scores of Muslim groups around the country today to talk about this,`` Asghar Bukhari of Britain`s Muslim Public Affairs Committee said. ``Every single one of us is outraged by this bunch of thugs.``

The United States also stepped into the row.

``These cartoons are indeed offensive to the belief of Muslims,`` State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said. ``We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression, but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.``

The U.S. response contrasted with European governments, which have tended to acknowledge tension between free speech and respect for religion but have generally accepted papers` rights to print the cartoons.)
Sridhar

re: a timely article
This author argues why a nation like Iran should never be allowed to go nuclear and what ails the muslim world.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200602030807.asp
(February 03, 2006, 8:07 a.m.
Three Pillars of Wisdom
Finding our footing where lunacy looms large.

Public relations between the so-called West and the Islamic Middle East have reached a level of abject absurdity. Hamas, whose charter pledges the very destruction of Israel, comes to power only through American-inspired pressures to hold Western-style free elections on the West Bank. No one expected the elders of a New England township, but they were nevertheless somewhat amused that the result was right out of a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Almost immediately, Hamas`s newly elected, self-proclaimed officials issued a series of demands: Israel should change its flag; the Europeans and the Americans must continue to give its terrorists hundreds of millions of dollars in aid; there will be no retraction of its promises to destroy Israel.

Apparently, the West and Israel are not only to give to Hamas some breathing space (``a truce``), but also to subsidize it while it gets its second wind to renew the struggle to annihilate the Jewish state.

All this lunacy is understood only in a larger surreal landscape. Tibet is swallowed by China. Much of Greek Cyprus is gobbled up by Turkish forces. Germany is 10-percent smaller today than in 1945. Yet only in the Middle East is there even a term ``occupied land,`` one that derived from the military defeat of an aggressive power.

Over a half-million Jews were forcibly cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and other Arab cities after the 1967 war; but only on the West Bank are there still refugees who lost their homes. Over a million people were butchered in Rwanda; thousands die each month in Darfur. The world snoozes. Yet less than 60 are killed in a running battle in Jenin, and suddenly the 1.5 million lost in Stalingrad and Leningrad are evoked as the moral objects of comparison, as the globe is lectured about ``Jeningrad.``

Now the Islamic world is organizing boycotts of Denmark because one of its newspapers chose to run a cartoon supposedly lampooning the prophet Mohammed. We are supposed to forget that it is de rigueur in raucous Scandinavian popular culture to attack Christianity with impunity. Much less are we to remember that Hamas terrorists occupied and desecrated the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in a globally televised charade.

Instead, Danish officials are threatened, boycotts organized, ambassadors recalled — and, yes, Bill Clinton steps forward to offer another lip-biting apology while garnering lecture fees in the oil-rich Gulf, in the manner of his mea culpa last year to the Iranian mullacracy. There is now a pattern to Clintonian apologies — they almost always occur overseas and on someone else`s subsidy.

Ever since that seminal death sentence handed down to Salman Rushdie by the Iranian theocracy, the Western world has incrementally and insidiously accepted these laws of asymmetry. Perhaps due to what might legitimately be called the lunacy principle (``these people are capable of doing anything at anytime``), the Muslim Middle East can insist on one standard of behavior for itself and quite another for others. It asks nothing of its own people and everything of everyone else`s, while expecting no serious repercussions in the age of political correctness, in which affluent and leisured Westerners are frantic to avoid any disruption in their rather sheltered lives.

Then there is ``President`` Ahmadinejad of Iran, who, a mere 60 years after the Holocaust, trumps Mein Kampf by not only promising, like Hitler, to wipe out the Jews, but, unlike the ascendant Fuhrer, going about the business of quite publicly obtaining the means to do it. And the rest of the Islamic world, nursed on the daily ``apes and pigs`` slurs, can just scarcely conceal its envy that the Persian Shiite outsider will bell the cat before they do.

The architects of September 11, by general consent, hide somewhere on the Pakistani border. A recent American missile strike that killed a few of them was roundly condemned by the Pakistani government. Although a recipient of billions of dollars in American aid and debt relief, and admittedly harboring those responsible for 9/11, it castigates the U.S. for violating borders in pursuit of our deadly enemies who, while on Pakistani soil, boast of planning yet another mass murder of Americans.

Pakistan demands that America will cease such incursions — or else. The ``else`` apparently entails the threat either to give even greater latitude to terrorists, or to allow them to return to Afghanistan to destroy the nascent democracy in Kabul. American diplomats understandably would shudder at the thought of threatening nuclear Pakistan should there be another 9/11, this time organized by the very al Qaedists they now harbor.

The list of hypocrisies could be expanded. The locus classicus, of course, is bin Laden`s fanciful fatwas. Oil pumped for $5 a barrel and sold for $70 is called stealing resources. Tens of millions of Muslims emigrating to the United States and Europe, while very few Westerners reside in the Middle East, is deemed ``occupying our lands.`` Israel, the biblical home of the Jews, and subsequently claimed for centuries by Persians, Greeks, Macedonians, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Ottomans, and English is ``occupied by crusader infidels`` — as if the entire world is to accept that world history began only in the seventh century A.D.

The only mystery is not how bizarre the news will be from the Middle East, but why the autocratic Middle Easterners feel so confident that any would pay their lunacy such attention.

The answer? Oil and nukes — and sometimes the two in combination.

By any economic standard, most states in the Middle East — whether characterized by monarchy, Baathism, dictatorship, or theocracy — have floundered. There are no scientific discoveries emanating from a Cairo or Damascus. It is tragic and perhaps insensitive, but nevertheless honest, to confess that the contemporary Arab world has lately given the world only two new developments: the suicide-bomb belt and the improvised explosive device. Even here there is a twofold irony: The technology for both is imported from the West. And the very tactic arises out of a desperate admission that to fight a conventional battle against a Westernized military without the cover of civilian shields, whether in Israel or Baghdad, is tantamount to suicide.

Meanwhile, millions of Africans face famine and try to inaugurate democracies. Asia is in the midst of economic transformation. Latin America is undergoing fundamental political upheaval. Who cares? — our attention is glued instead on a few acres near Jericho, the mountains of the Hindu Kush, the succession patterns of Gulf Royals, and the latest ranting of an Iranian president who seems barely hinged, and without petroleum and a reactor would be accorded the global derision once reserved for Idi Amin.

So take the dependency on oil away from Europe and the United States, and the billions of petrodollars the world sends yearly to medieval regimes like Iran or Saudi Arabia, and the other five billion of us could, to be frank, fret little whether such self-pitying tribal and patriarchal societies wished to remain, well, tribal. There would be no money for Hezbollah, Wahhabi madrassas, Syrian assassination teams, or bought Western apologists.

The problem is not just a matter of the particular suppliers who happen to sell to the United States — after all, we get lots of our imported oil from Mexico, Canada, and Nigeria. Rather, we should worry about the insatiable American demand that results in tight global supply for everyone, leading to high prices and petrobillions in the hands of otherwise-failed societies who use this largess for nefarious activities from buying nukes to buying off deserved censure from the West, India, and China. If the Middle East gets a pass on its terrorist behavior from the rest of the world, ultimately that exemption can be traced back to the voracious American appetite for imported oil, and its effects on everything from global petroleum prices to the appeasement of Islamic fascism.

Without nuclear acquisition, a Pakistan or Iran would warrant little worry. It is no accident that top al Qaeda figures are either in Pakistan or Iran, assured that their immunity is won by reason that both of their hosts have vast oil reserves or nukes or both.

The lesson from all this is that in order to free the United States from such blackmail and dependency, we must at least try to achieve energy independence and drive down oil prices — and see that no Middle East autocracy gains nuclear weapons. Those principles, along with support for democratic reform, should be the three pillars of American foreign policy.

Encouraging democracy is still vital to offer a third choice other than dictatorship or theocracy — especially when we now recognize the general Middle East rule: The logical successor to a shah is a Khomeini; a Zarqawi wishes to follow a fallen Saddam; a propped-up Arafat ensures Hamas; and a subsidized Mubarak will lead to the Muslim Brotherhood. Puritanical zealotry always feeds off autocratic corruption — as if lopping hands and heads is the proper antidote to military courts and firing squads.

And we also know the political blame game at home: Past realist failures at propping up dictators are postfacto reinvented as sobriety, while the messy and belated democratic correction is derided as foolery. Even the election of Hamas and the honesty it brings are welcome news: Support the process, not always the result, while stopping the subsidy and dialogue if such terrorists come to power. Let them stew in their own juice, not ours.

In the meantime, until we arrive at liberal and consensual governments that prove stable, there will be no real peace. And if an Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Syria obtains nuclear weapons, there will be eventually war on an unimaginable scale, predicated on the principle that the West will tolerate almost any imaginable horror to ensure that one of its cities is not nuked or made uninhabitable.

Yet if billions of petrodollars continue to pour into such traditional societies, as a result they will never do the hard political and economic work of building real societies. Instead their elites will obtain real nuclear weapons to threaten neighbors for even more concessions, as they buy support at home with the national prestige of an ``Islamic bomb.`` Saddam almost grasped that: Had he delayed his invasion of Kuwait five years until he resurrected his damaged nuclear program, Kuwait would now be an Iraqi province, and perhaps Saudi Arabia as well.

In the long-term, democratization in the framework of constitutional government has the best chance of bringing relief. But for the foreseeable future the United States and its allies must also ensure that Iran, and states like it, are not nuclear, and that we wean ourselves off a petroleum dependency — to save both ourselves, the addicts, and even our enemies, the dealers of the Middle East.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.)
Sridhar

re: why so much anger against the cartoon?
If some muslims were pining for some ``introspection`` and ``questioning`` in the muslim world. they would be disappointed at the turn of events following the depiction of cartoons of Prophet Md in a Danish newspaper.
The following article asks the question: why this anger? and tries to find an answer:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=21156
(Muslims Against the Cartoon Jihad
By Kamal Nawash
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 3, 2006

Protests have spread across the Muslim world over the publication in European news papers of cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. Outrage over the cartoons has ignited demonstrations from Turkey to the Gaza Strip, and prompted a boycott of Danish products throughout the Middle East.

In Pakistan, hundreds demonstrated on Thursday, chanting ``Death to Denmark`` and burning Danish and French flags. In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak warned that the decision by some European papers to publish the cartoons could encourage terrorists. Consequently, government ministers from 17 Arab nations have asked the Danish government to punish the newspaper for what they called an ``offense to Islam`` and some countries have even pulled their ambassadors from Denmark.

The controversy intensified on Wednesday when a French news paper, printed a new drawing on its front page showing Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy figures sitting on a cloud, with the caption ``Don`t worry Muhammad, we`ve all been caricatured here``.

The response by Muslims to the cartoons is absolutely pathetic and depressing but revealing. The reason Muslims are responding with anger and threats of violence is because most Muslims live in countries where democracy and freedom of speech are alien concepts.

Moreover, the Muslim world suffers from a lack of visionary leadership. In this particular case, when Muslim leaders, including American Muslim leaders, realized that Muslims are furious they joined the chorus of fury rather than explain to their people that they must be reasonable and that freedom of speech is healthy even if it is insulting. What is even more disgusting is that most American Muslim organizations, who should know better, have joined the chorus of instigators rather than taking this opportunity to teach their members about the importance of freedom of speech and tolerance.

One would think that Muslims have learned a lesson from the mishaps of the radical Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Khomeini when in 1989, he called on Muslims to kill British author Salman Rushdie for alleged blasphemy in his book, The Satanic Verses. The childish and stupid reaction by Khomeini caused an otherwise poor book to become a number one seller. Similarly today, the stupid reaction by Muslims has caused many more news papers to publish insulting images of the Prophet Mohammed.

When will Muslims wake up and realize that their intolerance of opposing opinions is keeping them in the dark ages? When will Muslims realize that respect must be earned and not forced through violence and coercion? When will Muslims realize that individual liberty and freedom of expression are fundamental human rights? When will American Muslim organization provide solutions to Muslims rather than instigate problems? The Free Muslims Coalition hopes that the answer to all these questions is soon.

For more information visit: www.FreeMuslims.org)
Sridhar

Re: # 41

People shouldn`t go around blaming Pakistan for everything...LOL

Re: # 60
Unfortunate choice of source; The Hindu is only read in Chennai (and by old Madrasi mamas in other cities and online)!

And please don`t go by the name, it is not right-wing in its leanings...

Every society has its share of ultra-conservative nutters; the only question you need to ask are how seriously are they taken. Unfortunately, the Muslim world has more than their share of them, and they alway get their 15 minutes around some topic related to women`s rights, except those that are directed at authors and cartoonists.

I have no idea what the current mood is in Pakistan. Mushy seems a reasonably modern thinking fella and Yogi Sikand and all those Indians who crossed over for the cricket seem to think they`re mostly damn fine chaps, not that different from us. Big surprise but whatever.

My point is that if Maulana wotsisname is one of those who has to resort to such types of desperate gimmicks just so people will attend mass (or whatever it is you guys call your Friday meetings), then there`s no need for young Azra to panic and as YLH and family have promised, the dream of a secular democratic pakistan will be realised by 2016. Hey who in India will have a problem with that! But, and this is a big but, she **is** panicking, and that`s what`s worrying.

Reposting #77, since for some reason it got nested with YLH`s post about Seervai

#77 by burpinder on February 5, 2006 3:45am PT
Every society has its share of ultra-conservative nutters; the only question you need to ask are how seriously are they taken. Unfortunately, the Muslim world has more than their share of them, and they alway get their 15 minutes around some topic related to women`s rights, except those that are directed at authors and cartoonists.

I have no idea what the current mood is in Pakistan. Mushy seems a reasonably modern thinking fella and Yogi Sikand and all those Indians who crossed over for the cricket seem to think they`re mostly damn fine chaps, not that different from us. Big surprise but whatever.

My point is that if Maulana wotsisname is one of those who has to resort to such types of desperate gimmicks just so people will attend mass (or whatever it is you guys call your Friday meetings), then there`s no need for young Azra to panic and as YLH and family have promised, the dream of a secular democratic pakistan will be realised by 2016. Hey who in India will have a problem with that! But, and this is a big but, she **is** panicking, and that`s what`s worrying.

re: more protests, more anger!
The simple reason why muslims cant introspect is because they are sick. A sick mind cannot question, cannot introspect over the problems facing the ummah.
I do not understand these protests at all. Every point of view should have a counter POV that should be measured and deliberate. If some Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet that were undesirable, counterargument should have been not protests, threats etc but may be similar cartoons maligning the perpetrator`s religion or some strong editorials in the muslim world.
But this thing does not appear to fade away.
http://www.sulekha.com/news/nhc.aspx?cid=443870
http://www.sulekha.com/news/nhc.aspx?cid=443864
(``This is not a protest, this is a warning,`` said Khalid Kelly, 39, an Irish national who converted to Islam five years ago.

``Stop murdering our women and children. We gave the same message before 9/11. We are now saying to insult our Prophet means death. We are being attacked and an attack against our Prophet will mean death.``

Abu Jihad, 43, who was born in Pakistan, added that the cartoonist and the editors of the papers should be killed.

``It is very clear: Anyone who insults the Prophet must be beheaded. Remember van Gogh?`` he said, referring to the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh who was murdered in 2004 for his controversial film about Islam.

``Whoever did it, bless him. Islam is peace but you see there will only be peace when Islam is implemented across the world.In the Prophet`s time anyone who insulted the Prophet was beheaded. The same should happen now.``)
So, a muslim`s prescripton for peace is to implement Islam all over the world, by persuation or force.
Nothing much has changed in the mindset of the muslim ummah in the last 10 centuries, has it?
Sridhar

Why is that 20% of the world`s people are hogging up 80% of the world`s news - 99% of which is bad?