What is Hinduism? A Personal View

Re: # 269

I've seen it but I find it unconvincing and without merit. I still call Him Khuda and my salutations remain Khuda Hafiz etc.

#269, Kaal Bhayya,
In fact, another word we have used is Maalik, meaning Owner or Lord. This is also Arabic as in Maalik-e-Yom-Iddin or Owner of the Day of Judgment.

The distinction between Khuda and Allah did not materialize, at the expense of Khuda, during Zia'S reign in Pakistan, when he invented the non-existent "Allah Haafiz." This was done to please the Saudis who cannot stand anything Persian - thus the change from Persian Gulf to Arabian Gulf, even though there is already an Arabian Sea.

"Khuda Haafiz" was the actual Urdu for "Good bye." Nobody ever used "Allah Haafiz" before Zia's Nizam-e-Mustafa.

#266 Zeemax {"'Rabb ul Aalameen' is the attribute, not the name"}

Zee Bhai,
You are right about this distinction. Rabb, Maalek, Maula, Rahman, and Raheem are all attributes and not THE NAME.

But zee,

would you like to answer my question?

salim bhai, many of my Lucknowi Shia friends have refused to make the change. :)

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Urstruly, IMHO, since you have the correct understanding of Allah, those deviations are probably less important for you than they would be for an unsuspecting novice.

It's like sufism. It's for those who actually know and accept Islam, not for every charasi. :)

#205 hamidumdum2 {"astray from what ?! ..... the sirat-ul-mustaqeem established by an anbsolutist, hateful, arrogant and vengeful god who is so insecure and unsure of his godliness that he has to threaten people with fire and brimstone and castration if they don't 'believe' in him and pay homage to his mserable soul ! "]

Hamidumdum Sahib,
Sirat-ul-Mustaqeem is the straight path, but of course it requires a person who has the balance and sobriety to walk straight even under duress - say, for example, at the direction of the State Trooper to walk in a straight line while touching one's nose with the index finger of the right hand and counting backwards from 100 to 1, using only the odd numbers divisible by 7. :)

#269 Posted by Eklavya

how very common Khuda was and how deeply ingrained the word was in Muslim (and Hindu) minds, what has happened is not short of miraculous.

Interesting you should have noticed this. Yes, it is indeed miraculous. People latched on to it like fish to water. It is natural. Now you rarely find any people who say 'Khuda Hafiz' in Pakistan. The term is extinct. It is the appeal of just the term 'Allah'.

Remember once we had a conversation about how the words of Qura'an move people even though they don't know what it's saying in Arabic? Just the tones of it work miracles.

Salim is right. Zia introduced the change, but he certainly didn't have to work hard at it. People just made the change themselves, and never went back to 'Khuda Hafiz' even though everyone hates Zia.

#268 Posted by GT

This question?

I would like to get the opinions of others too. I like you, have come to believe that this is an important (if not fundamental) issue.

Looks like my friends would like to drag me into this subject, despite my kicking and screaming :)

Yes, it is fundamental. But people don't have to know how fundamental it is. They took it up anyway so that's fine.

Now please don't accuse me of being cryptic!

Zee, when things are done correctly, they happen. When they are done incorrectly, in total ignorance, one is constantly pushing a gigantic boulder uphill.

One should research how much opposition ZAB had when he pronounced Mirzais non-Muslims. I would suspect not much. Nor would you find a Niagara of scholarsly Islamic support in Pakistan or worldwide for declaring them Muslims today.

Now, liberals have their own problems which cannot be fixed easily.

Zee:

"But people don't have to know how fundamental it is."

No, they would be better off if they did. Unlike kaal, I am a liberal and I believe in compromise. But like kaal, I believe that people would be much better off if ALL knew what they and their "opponents" are compromising.

... the only person who has somewhat answered this question is echo. But he is no longer here, ...or is he?

"the only person who has somewhat answered this question is echo" .... I should add kaal too.

#282 Posted by GT,

And what did Echoboom say?

To our great misfortune echoboom is no longer on Chowk.

Zee:

"And what did Echoboom say?"

His take was as follows: (a) No laws should interfere with the laws of each and every community, i.e. community specific laws; (b) the role of the government was to see that no violence occured between the communities.

But the problem is that community laws are hardly community specific. They often regulate on how other communities should act. Herein, is the conflict. To understand this clearly, think of "elites/liberaloons" as a community and you will understand the problem immediately.

(Just so that you do not forget, I belong to the community of liberaloons).

Somewhere else, I had proposed a panchayat raj with a lot of power invested in panchayats, as a possible solution (in lines with echo's thoughts). But this, as pointed out by many, is not without problems.

#285/6 Posted by GT,

But community laws was not the discussion, was it? I thought it was the significance of the change from Khuda to Allah.

Zee:

My question preceeded the Khuda/Allah discussion. I reproduce my earler post once again:


Dear Dost, Urstruly, Eklavya etc.

While you have dealt with God/Spirituality etc. embodied in Hinduism and Islam, you haven't dealt much with the socio-political structures implied by these two religions.

Can devout Hindus and Muslims "choose" (when faced with no constraints on choice) to live under the same socio-political structure?