Democracy, not terror, is the engine of political Islam

bubba: if only we muslims could be saints like hindus. :-(

Re: # 159

Ranjit,

I do not think it is that simple, however longer
one lives and however prosperous one is, this instint
to lord over or dominate or dicatate or to show the
way is there, there will be strife.

I would like chowk to explain why this William Dalrymple guy, who does not even bother to show up on his own boards, is being published left, right, and in between whereas chowk's very own Masadi sahib - who has so selflessly been giving us all pieces of his mind on all kinds of boards and eagerly waiting outside the gates, is being so callously ignored - so much so that it would melt the hearts of all decent chowkies faster than butter melts on hot kaDahi?!

Tell me. Why, O why?!!

Re:bubba
"Is that what bothers you the most? The absoluteness of the theology of Islam, or the killings that is permeated in its name?"

Bubba, the absoluteness of Islam is the root cause behind the killings and violence in its name. Once you believe with absolute certainty that you know the truth and that your eternal bliss is guaranteed based on doing A, B and C, any threat or challenge to your belief is an existential threat. Its a threat against your guarantee of eternal bliss. No wonder you are willing to kill or die for it, since you will get eternal bliss, guaranteed.

Secondly, this absoluteness drives muslims to completely negate other faiths as falsehoods. There are exceptions like the sufis. However, the wahabis tend to take this absoluteness to the extreme, where they believe they are doing God's service by violently eliminating other religions which are falsehoods. Most mainstream muslims will not go to that extreme, but they are certainly intolerant of other faiths. Their intolerance comes not from any personal hatred but from the absoluteness of their belief that theologically they are right.

Consider shia-sunni violence for instance. You see muslim arab sunnis killing muslim arab shias. In other words, just having finer differences in theology is enough to motivate one group to kill the other. Can you imagine shaivites and vaishnavites committing suicide bombings in each other's temples?

So why do sunnis and shias hate each other with such virulence? Its because each group thinks that they have the absolute 100% pure message of Islam as compared to the other. Since their beliefs have differences, obviously both cannot be right simultaneously. Hence in order to validate their absolute belief they need to wage war on the opposing group. While pagans or non-muslims are not viewed as a competition and are simply viewed as possible targets for conversion, an opposing sect of Islam is viewed as an existential threat - a threat to the existence of your absolute ideology, the one on which you are counting on for your eternal bliss.

My friend Kaalchakra, although he is brahmin, is fascinated by that absoluteness in Islam. Once can say that absoluteness is the USP of Islam. The root cause of that blind belief in absoluteness is the basic human insecurity about what will happen after death. You take that out of the equation and most muslims will have no reason to retain their faith, other than simply having an ethical society. However, it is naive and ridiculous to think that Islam's USP is having an ethical society. Its all about the afterlife in Islam.

159:

The whole point of existence in this life is that it is a test to see who will have faith in Allah and who not. If God forced everyone to become a Muslim what would be the point? There would be no test of faith then. God has given MaNKIND and jinns the freedom to belief or not. He has sent His Messengers --culminating with The Prophet--to guide people to Him. If people refuse to believe that is their choice. We makes our choices we gets our rewards/punishment.

On Judgement Day no one can then say-God, you never sent anyone to guide us...

Re:Naqsh
"The whole point of existence in this life is that it is a test to see who will have faith in Allah and who not. If God forced everyone to become a Muslim what would be the point? There would be no test of faith then. God has given MaNKIND and jinns the freedom to belief or not. He has sent His Messengers --culminating with The Prophet--to guide people to Him. If people refuse to believe that is their choice. We makes our choices we gets our rewards/punishment.

On Judgement Day no one can then say-God, you never sent anyone to guide us..."

Naqsh, your posting perfectly highlights my response to Kaal. I respect your right to believe whatever you wish to believe. However, you ought to acknowledge that this is your faith and not a provable certainty. There may be no Allah, no Judgement Day, no rewards, no punishment. In other words, you may be right in all that you believe or you may die and thats the end of everything.

The difference between you and me is that I am open minded about what may happen after death, but you are not. Maybe I will see a God, maybe I will see nothing. Maybe the God turns out to be some dude called Allah who will then punish me for being a hindu, maybe it will be some old guy who is Jesus's dad or maybe it turns out to be one of our 36000 hindu gods. Who knows? Therefore, I do not make any theological sermon as the basis for my identity or let it govern all my actions. Basically I take faith with a grain of salt, while you do not. This is why I will never harm you simply because you believe something else. Your belief in something else has no impact on any afterlife plans that I may or may not have.

My friend Kaal thinks highly about your certainty regarding your afterlife. I dont consider it as a big deal and actually think that it makes you inflexible in dealing with people who think differently from you.

Re: # 125

"hey laddu or paddu or tota raam, whatever your name is, i mistakenly took your queries as those of a former muslim who wished genuinely to know about the islamic legal view on apostates. i now realise from your despicable comments that you are a hater of islam and are a hindu idol-worshipper, polytheist, but-parast, call it whatever you will.

As a but-parast you'd have to pay the jizya--if you were lucky."

There your sufism gets exposed!!! It is evident that your veil of a man in peace with himself is all BS because it has not cleansed your soul of the hatred of original Islam of Mohammad. The fact remains that Sufism has nothing to do with Islam of Mohammad and it is all an artificial marriage of convenience that pagan Gnostics of Arabia and India had adapted in order to flee prosecution from the original Islam of Mohammad. Monotheism and Absolute Monism exists in all religions from Greek paganistic to Hindoo idolator's spiritual practices.
Sufism does not represent original Islam - muslims now use it is at best a taquiyya to fool modern liberal into believing that any spirituality exists in Islam. Ask Echo or Zee if sufism has anything to do with Islam?
You cannot fool idolators into believing that your heart is full of peace when the reality is that you are also itching to slay every idolator who professes his faith and challenges the hatred of Islam against him that is causing war and terrorism in the modern world.
And a man claiming to be a peaceful sufi asks me to pay jizya or Gunda Tax??
Scratch them hard.......and they are all the same!!!

Re: # 165

This is BS - God is not an ETERNAL EXAMINER who is trying to torture it's creation in order to make them chant Allahu all the time in eternal sycophancy .

This expression is coming from men who live in eternal FEAR, and not from a man who is at peace with himself and knowns his bearings.

I am completely sure now that your sufism is just a sham to hide the original hate of Islam.

Re: # 127

"but your obssession with islam tells me that you secretly know it is the truth but you cannot bring yourself to accept it. don't worry, millions of your compatriots already have broken the shackles of butparasti and entered the manly world of butshikani. why don't you too join them?"

I care as much for Islam as I do for that dog on the street.
I am only concerned that the dog on the street should not bite me- I do not mind if it howls all the time some thing for his imaginary dog/god . But I do mind if he is thinking all the time of how to infect me with his dastardly rabies.

#159 Ranjit
"Lets do a thought experiment. Assume that medical science makes advances so that our lifespans are extended to several centuries and we remain healthy throughout. Also assume that there is a good economy and everyone has a good standard of living. How many people would still believe in Islam or any other religion with as much fervor as they do today? When you dont need a daddy to look after you, do you care about his "message" any longer?".

Allow me to respond with something which is not a hypothetical thought experiment. Through some books about Hinduism that I happened to read, I became aware of Hindu sages who have been alive for hundreds of years. The wife of a Romanian friend of mine, devoted to eastern philosophies though not formally a Hindu herself, once vehemently argued with me about a divine who has been living for 500 years, and his disciple keep begging him to "please not die".

For argument's sake, I am not going to dispute such ludicrous claims. I do, however, have a question of you.

If Hindu sages actually living for 500 years hasn't put any damper whatsoever on the faith of the adherents of Hinduism, why do you believe that, in your hypothetical experiment, belief of muslims in Islam will get weakened due to similar longevity?

Dear pagan friends,

you've been overlooking the foundation of the thought of the religions of Abrahamic traditions in particular Christianity and Islam. You're more used to frolicking gods exploring goddesses but these monotheistic religions've a more serious image of God. Certainly no one has seen God and to believe in this message one is required to have faith thereby including God-given rationality and not excluding it. The exclusion of rationality in the search of God may mislead the searcher to the awkward pagan beliefs where man prefers to fall down before handmade idols -- no matter whether taken as a symbol of some wrathful, benign, or mighty god or demigod -- and beseech.

These religions think if there were many Gods, they'd collide as we see this view testified in the pagan epics!

Being on the right side of the dividing line does give the believer a sense of strength and conviction. The false beliefs look like weed and Satan's work and hence need to be taken care of. It explains the innate urge and call in these religions to spread and struggle to subdue the false systems representing Satan-incited waywardness.

This innate urge to subdue, however, is not to be confused with an innate urge to exterminate as has been mistakenly suggested here by some of you. That'd be overstepping and transgression on part of man, since God could've done that Himself and doesn't require our help in this regard.

Re: # 164 Posted by Ranjit on September 23, 2007 8:59:34 pm

[the absoluteness of Islam is the root cause behind the killings and violence in its name.]

Granted for a moment that this theory is correct. Actually, Islam was promoted through the most violent regimes of its time, just like the Romans. Can you find any Jew who knows his/her history talking highly of the Romans.

So if violence is taken away from today's muslims, then theologically, in your opinion, Islam has nothing to stand on?

#169 Posted by laddu,

Abey Laddu key bachhey! Why would a dog bite a cockroach ???

Re:viqarm
"If Hindu sages actually living for 500 years hasn't put any damper whatsoever on the faith of the adherents of Hinduism, why do you believe that, in your hypothetical experiment, belief of muslims in Islam will get weakened due to similar longevity?"

I do not believe in such nonsense. No hindu has lived beyond normal life spans. Anyone who says otherwise is a charlatan. If this genuinely happens due to advances in medical science and on a mass scale, it will completely change the role of religion in humanity. Recent articles have suggested that medical science is moving towards accomplishing this feat.

Religion is all about freedom from fear of death. After all why is Islam so potent? Because it guarantees a blissful afterlife if you do A, B and C. Thats why kids are willing to strap on bombs and blow themselves up, since they are convinced that they are quickly achieving that objective. Now imagine if you could get rid of your fear of death right on this planet and in this life. Suddenly you have that same freedom without the need to blow yourself up or blow up other people.

#174 once medical breakthroughs make it possible to live indefinitely, all those for whom religion is merely a "preparation for the next life" will drop their rituals, since these would no longer be needed to negate their "gunna". However, those for whom religion is what it was meant to be - a code of conduct, individual responsibility, realization of the awesome reality of "existence" in a vast universe - will become even more religious.

Re:zahid
"Being on the right side of the dividing line does give the believer a sense of strength and conviction. The false beliefs look like weed and Satan's work and hence need to be taken care of. It explains the innate urge and call in these religions to spread and struggle to subdue the false systems representing Satan-incited waywardness."

Again this is the absoluteness in your faith that is speaking. You are so convinced that your religion and ideology is the absolute truth, that you are not willing to concede even for a moment that perhaps afterlife might be completely different from what you imagine it is. Perhaps it may not even exist.

This is why muslims are having such a hard time all over the world. Their absoluteness, almost a deterministic mindset is clashing with that of other people who have a stochastic view of the afterlife. This used to be the strength of muslims in the medieval times when things were settled with swords and spears. In the modern world with nation states and nukes, its a massive weakness. In today's world, it is ideas and thoughts that dominate. That requires people to be sceptical and open minded about everything. Its not because people hate muslims - you are free to believe whatever you wish. Its because people no longer blindly submit to any boolean ideology of true/false statements just because someone said so centuries back. The modern world is all about reasoning.