Islam and the Age of Globalization

Re: # 87

> Jinnah – the FIRST Islamic terrorist of the subcontinent in the twentieth century!

We need to have a drivel filter installed on chowk.

Do u even know what u r barking harping bout ? Were it not for jinnah
(pbuh) we wud hv been subjected to prolonged social / economical / cultural torture.
He is the best thing that happened to us ... (humans/non-muslims)
With just 14% population - these ppl are a handful for us - they are `gud` only till such time
as they are 1% or 2% of a population ...

do u know what the hindu population in bangladesh was at the time of independence ? Do u know what it is now ? Do u know .....

neways, I cud go on & on ...

Would request you to think before casting aspersions on someone of Jinnah`s stature.

#82 by Raw_Dust

[….Jinnah was a fool who perverted the course of subcontinent`s history due to his foul ignorance.. he was a - … a moron.]

Dusty, don’t insult morons!

Morons mostly don’t know what they are doing. Their crimes take place under circumstances that can be extenuating. They mostly hurt themselves and not hurt others – they may even produce a good effect by providing the world a source of laughter!

Jinnah was no moron. He was a smart lawyer. He knew what he was doing. And he knew exactly how to WIN his case!

Jinnah – the FIRST Islamic terrorist of the subcontinent in the twentieth century! He knew exactly which fault lines to hit upon to get that healing crack wide open and shatter the harmony like glass! He knew what he needed to say to HIS masses so they will follow him like the Pied Piper! He got his caravan rolling on that road to perdition – and unfortunately the Almighty bailed him out – I wish he were alive today to enjoy every little poison fruit he sowed the seed of!

He was a traitor – a haramee – yes, a haramee to the land that gave him birth. He can never be absolved of his crime of vivisection of a people. I wish somebody had held him upside down so he could taste – yes, lick like a dog – the blood of the countless that were butchered through his folly! I wish somebody would have grabbed the entrails of little children that were butchered due to his callousness and stuffed those entrails down his lawyerly mouth till they made him bloat and till they started coming out of all his bodily pores!!!

He was not a moron. He did not make any one laugh - HE was the one who laughed while his country cried. He was not a moron at all – he was pure devil in disguise!

The ole Prof. whitewashes the wolf and venerates him – hoping that he and others like him can in the process dig some gold for themselves or at least grab some glitter! That makes him a dishonest intellectual – there is no worse kind!

It`s a good article in months, well written and relevant.

It comes back at me. Why people in Pakistan use the words Muslims ans Islam interchangeably? Religion is different and people who incidentally follow the religion are different. Aren`t they? Convoluted minds? It looks like. The sentence like ``Who speaks for Islam?`` summarises the confusion. Why a commoner should speak for Islam? May be that also summarises the state of the mind of some nation states (that treats the question of religion and the civil society as one and the same) & it abridges the world on the format of what Jews used to say - Jews and Gentiles & what Muslims are now saying i.e Muslims and non-Muslims.

Though a small effort by Prof Ahmed, it`s not going to take away the basic confusion of the peoples of Pakistan. All societies in the world went in such stages where religion was ultimately relegared to the domain of individuals with freedom of choices given, with no compulsions enforced vagaira vagaira. Catholic religion was bottled in Vatican. Protestantism was bottled in Canterbury (not in Vatican sense).

What Prof. Ahmed and others think is that all whites and westerners are Christians. WRONG.

(I think this Prof is the same guy who wrote a book on Jinnah (published by Routledge)? It was one of the nausuating books on Indian History, not just his prose and approach. His photo was published in one of the pages with the descendents of Mountbatten. Prof Ahmed was seen leening line Pisa Tower, height reduced (while standing) when the ladies sat like indifferent mistresses. Servility was written all over the face of Prof. Ahmed and incidentally he tears apart Moutbatten in his book). Ahem.. lets go back to the subject.

Many people believe that there`s no monoloth called Muslim world nor Christain world nor Hindu World......

As for the youth of western world understaning Islam (or the people and culture of Muslims, both are different), it`s a good step.

re bharath #77:

I think many here on chowk would agree with you, though not all would come forward and say so.

Urstruly,
I hope you understood the irony in my initial remarks on your contentions viz. globalization and liassez faire economics. I am on the same page as you on this matter.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with globalization or with the free market economy per se. It`s, as you point out, the devil in the detail that causes the problems.

I don`t share your lack of respect for Adam Smith though, who i think has been terribly misinterpreted and misunderstood. Smith was a deeper thinker than you and I put together, and did NOT take human nature to be ideal, and was careful to spell out the necessary pre-conditions for the viability of the free market, domestically as well as globally. Allow me to enumerate these requirements:

1) Buyers and sellers must be too small to influence the market price.
2) Complete inforamtion must be available to all participants and there can be no trade secrets.
3) Sellers must bear the full price of the products they sell and pass then on in the sale price.
4) Investment capital must remain within national borders and trade between countries must be balanced.
5) Saving must be invested in the creation of productive capital.

This is a far cry from the protectionist, run-to-daddy-when-in-trouble, anti-antitrust practices of what regularly, shockingly, passes off as Adam Smith`s Economic Model. The man must be turning in his grave, seeing his name invoked in defence of this model.

So, be nice when referring to Hazrat Smith in future or I will declare a fatwa on your head, okay!!

Salim_chauhan bhai,
First, it`s PMay, or PM beh, or at the most, PM bhai... no sahib shahib plisss...

Just wanted to say it is really refreshing reading your perspective and views.

hamidm retains the old-school paki snobbery versus indians.. it is prevalent in the uncle generation. old habits die hard.

and no hamidm, jinnah was a fool who perverted the course of subcontinent`s history due to his foul ignorance.. he was a - for the lack of a better word - a moron.

masadi:
I don`t quite understand how you get from ``Most notably, the 44-nation survey found strong democratic aspirations in most of the Muslim publics surveyed. The postwar update confirms that these aspirations remain intact despite the war and its attendant controversies`` [survey report]
to:
``while due to cultural hegemony, most among the Muslims still have admiration (wrongly placed I would say) for the US`` [your #61]

The democratic ideal and even a free market economy are not essentially American values, and to admire the existence of them in a polity requires no cultural hegemony, I think. Neither does admiration of these values equate to an admiration of the people, and still less to an admiration of the stereotype. While most of my upwardly mobile Muslim friends here in Pakistan endorse -- unquestioningly -- the economic model of the U.S. (this is, after all, a good time to be educated and upper midle class in Pak), they nevertheless spare no opportunity to disparage the social system there, where, they all know, every woman is easy, every kid a spoiled brat, most blacks criminal and most Whites racist.

Of course, these flaws in collective character in no way discourage them from wanting to send their kids abroad. Mammon, after all, is really more powerul than Allah when all`s said and done, and with a good bit of insulation training, it`s easy to keep the kids from being corrupted. Or so goes the thinking anyway....

In summary, I think you have yet to establish your contention that America, per se, is admired for anything more than
(a) its economic model (btw grossly misunderstood, imho -- I`ll bet very few of such admirers are aware that 30million Americans live below the poverty line, or that 1 in 8 kids in the US goes to bed hungry) and
(b) its get-rich potential for the educated and/or moneyed types from overseas.

Its is proving the larger cultural admiration that would help you make your point.