Bullhe Shah and His Veil of “Meem�

Very nice -- brings to mind these lines I composed some time ago:
"

AHAD

We need to talk about this on the notes of Sigel.

I cannot conceive of it.

Sure with a sure-willed sugar white wasked wasque. wother.

-------

A hell of many words. Suresinned white evvervesence flowing fountains
Of white painted statue water. What eyes. Whet the stone with eyesight. The blind

Seer can see here. white not. Blank eyes.. blanko. whitening.

White words. When whistled wake up with god & win. "

and it goes on from here...but what was interesting to me was how Ahmad/Ahad was explained. I have always liked that Hallaj tale.



In the nearest language, it always works.

dullabhatti#359:

Most of the hindus and sikhs living in those muslim majority areas were khatris who do not marry their cousins; indeed marry within the same subcaste of khatris was also forbidden, although I have recently seen somm bollywood marriages between Kapoors, this was a strict no-no in the old days.

Dr. Cheema sahib,

As Mohammad Hamid has tried to warn you umpteen times, you are casting pearl before swine, or as we'd say in South Asia, bhains kay aagay been bajana...

Some of us have enjoyed watching this debate (if you could even call it that) from the sidelines because most of these very same, well reasoned, arguments have already fallen upon these same (and similar) deaf ears, with equally crude and crass responses by the so-called guardians of piety. After a while one gets burnt out, as you surely will, in the fullness of time.

As the oldest alleged murtid on Chowk (dating back to October 1997) I've seen many a crop of these self-appointed champions of Islam.

Do not be too impressed. Some of these so-called Islamophiles are real Munafiqs. I happen to know for a fact that some of these arm-chair jihadis are just frustrated, burnt out, marginally functional pathetic drunkards with manifest signs of alcoholic dementia, who do not have a life otherwise. They are empty vessels that make a lot of noise. They deserve pitty, not revulsion, (though revultion is natural). They are ones who hang on to big titles that they keep by corruption and manipulation. They sell their souls to the devil, they use prostitution and bribery and other unsavory methods in their daily lives and then turn around and lecture the world on Islam while drowned in their drunken stupor. These are the pathological liars who out to impress an anonymous crowd to massage their fragile and bruised egos by making up fictious stories of glorious deeds and remarkable possessions they have.

Don't pay any attention to those kind, just ignore them.

...SR

SSA Paaji;

You are most probably right. It is fascinating to see Dullah Bhatti commemorated, despite being a muslim, in Lohri etc by non-muslims. There is a lot to be learnt from this alone, I reckon.

Cheemay bhai, you said cousin marriages are cultural in Punjab...but there is no evidence Hindus practised cousin marriage in pre-islamic Punjab...e.g. Jatts don't marry with in the same tribe something that is still practised by jatt muslims in Punjab as is by jatt sikhs and hindus. how did this practice then start? we know some sikhs and hindus who lived in muslim majority areas of Punjab, baclochistan or NWF also started practicing cousin marriages. so that might look like cultural practice now if everyone in the town is doing it but its origin is not cultural.

Re: # 356

By the way, I don't have any authority to give anyone advice on theology, matters related to social sciences or anything else. If I thought that (which I didn't) I was wrong. I also want to make it clear that I am not here to defend one culture over another. I am only defending reason and that is not the property of one culture or civilisation but of mankind (sexist word, don't you think) at large.

I thought I should make it clear.

By the way, how many people committing a crime actually even get to the point of being taken to court in the Islamic Republic? There seem to be people taking bribes, stealing public property, destroying what belongs to the nation as whole, even raping and killing (one of my uncle's is a small town arms dealer! he got woken up one evening to supply ammunition to two separate parties in the nearby "pind", shooting at one another; he was, of course, delighted at the prospects! I am sure the Americans feel the same) and not so much as a call to the local police station made. Then one would ask what the police would have done if they WERE involved!....this could go on for ever; I am sure you are intelligent enough.

Re: # 222

I believe yor query is about this entry of yours. If I am wrong please let me know. I have been operating all day so a little worn out; forgive me if what comes out is a bit sloppy.

I have already answered your first question related to prevelance of first cousin marriages being a cultural peculiarity of Punjabis. My answer contained statistics from australia, related to the Lebanese Muslim community here; where I work, we have a strong Lebanese presence (largest Sunni Lebanese presence outside Lebanon) in West Sydney and being a doctor, I see the results of such unions day in day out; similar, though not through personal experience, experiences have been related to me by colleagues working in London areas with strong Bangladeshi, Egyptian and Somali communities. The Pakistani experience is personal too as I have worked in those areas of Birmingham.

As far as Ghazzali is concerned, I am not familiar with what you wrote; but Ghazzali is not who invented Islam, or is he? His observation is exactly that; an observation and comment as yours or mine. An interpretation, for want of a better word. Same applies to your suggestion that somehow Mr Jaffir Sadiq and Shah Wali-ul-llah are somehow undisputed "interpreters" of religious text; Their interpretation is again, for the second time, exactly that; THEIR interpretation.

Evolution: First a few facts that it occurs and I see evidence of it day after day. We are talking about a timescale of at least 3000 million years; do you know how many years that is. We have already seen examples of "human selection" with breeds of domesticated animals. We have bacteria (some of the simplest life forms) that develop resistence to antibiotics that, in the initial phases, used to kill them. It can virtually develop even after one dose of an antibiotic. We have marsupials in Australia that, genetically speaking, have common gene pools (hence ancestery) with land animals elsewhere (the deer and the kangaroo for example); yet due to geografical variations, they have evolved very differently. In humans, how would you explain "Sickle Cell Trait" in people who come from parts of Africa and mediterranean. It confirs resistence to Falciform Malaria and it had evolved during the course of very recent human history.

On a lighter note, in socio-cultural terms, this very website, look around you. It probably started as a small blog, by a handful of people, now it has "evolved" into a place where so many people are interacting and exchaning information. Substitute this concept with any other example around you; we see "simple" things becoming "complex" during the course of time. Man wasn't always this smart you know. There are still tribes, not just in Africa - that would have been an easy example though - in parts of micronesia and south pacific, along the northern and north-west coast of Australia that live in jungles, still practice cannbilism and have very little contact with the outside world. One such tribe was only recently "discovered" by an Australian explorer; when someone dies at a younger than usual age, that is considered "magic" and the "person held responsible" is identified by the aggrieved family member, which in the case of this documentary was a 9 year old by, and eventually eaten; to counter this "bad magic".

Now your question as to who may be, if any behind all this; I don't know. "It ain't me bro!" (a little joke, sorry). Ithought that was the same question "Is there a God?" rephrased a different way, is it not? Mahfari sahib (or is it sahiba? sorry a sincere query), I can't prove the presence or absence of a Negative! No one can. Bertrand Russel had this analogy of an "outer celestial teapot" (a teapot in outer universe. If I were to say that such teapot exists, can you prove me wrong? Of course not; you can try all you like, there is no way in this world you can. Yet we both know it is an absurd idea; don't we?

Another little example (may be not as good); We often say that God created the universe etc., made Adam and Eve and all the rest...Amen..What was there before that? we don't know really do we? But in essence, there has to be a point "in time - however you define it", when nothing else existed but God. So are we saying that his property of being a creator hadn't been realised at this stage. So we are talking about God - the would-be creator; that can't be God because his faculties aren't fulfilled yet and the un-fulfilled can't be God? or can it? Lets move on a bit. Suppose the argument that God is infinite, and has always existed, transcends time etc. etc... Where does the universe fit into all this? Has IT always existed as well? Does that mean it is God's twin? Isn't that shirk? - the biggest "crime" in faith terms (Islamic monotheistic perspective). Problemis, either the universe exists or god; NOT BOTH.

As Ghalib would say:
"Jabke tujh bi kuchh naheen maujood;
phhir yeh hangama aye khuda keya hai"

This is just to answer your insistence. at the end of the day, the onus of proof lies not on me to "disprove a negative, but for you to "prove a positive"; can you?

As far as your queries about India and Laddu are concerned, please feel free to ask Laddu what he means. You may have to wait his return for a couple of months though.

Re: # 354 Violence by choice or violence for the sake of violenceis condemnable and it can never be justified by any divine or human reasoning.

And you did not comment on hte questions of your 49 interact's answers...please doanswer after reading my interacts.

As to verses you have mentioned, they are part and parcel of Quran and they are toexhort thehuman beings to face the inevitable reality of violence when someone is bent upon destroying your identity and mere existance,and in self defence raising arms is inhuman? It isthe most humane aspect of human natureand bravery is not facing the realities,bravery is to facing uptohterealities? In entire life of Holy Prophet peace be upon him ,there werenot more than 1000 persons died from both sides as a result of struggle .... which as per your favourite evolutionary ideas was survival of the fittest!.... Even in the most so called civilized societies the violence hasnotbeen finished and it is a painful relaity.

I consider imprisonment of human beings as the worst form of violence and I merequote that in UK alone over 82000 prisoners are in jailsand in PUnjab whose population is many times more than UK's there are 100000 ( about) compare the ratio with populkation then you willknow the levelof violence and intolerance in the society and this is agaisnt the backdrop that in Pakistan the sytems is far more corrupt and shoddy one.


To fight for one'srights and survivalis not exhorting toviolence and It willneevr be, fight of people in Kosov, Chechenya' Palestine

Re: # 331

Zeemax, I really did mean truce, so Paaji, Jaan deyo hun.

Also, since you have previously explained about "bachpan say shauq..", I can't by definition be a murtid as I never consciously accepted faith in the first place; may be that may make it easier for us to get along.

Thanks; and I do mean it sincerely.

Re: # 333

Thanks; I did fall asleep so apologies.

Any society in the world is suspiscious of the "alien" whoever that might be. I have lived in the "east" and "west":, sometimes simultaneously due to my father's job etc., and I must say, the amount of intolerence I see within our beloved Pakistan has no comparison elsewhere. I am the first person in my family, for generations, that has "married out" to a "non-jatt" woman; perhaps a hangover from our cultural past, I don't know.

How are minorities treated in Pakistan? I won't make any comments of my own here.

Generally, despite 9/11, Muslims have been treated much more fairly than what would have happenend if the shoe was on the other foot. People are intrigued and they have every right to ask questions about something that can be capable of this much "divinely sanctioned" hatred towards the rest of humanity. How else would you "interpret" the violent verses in the Koran; and please don't say the same thing as "the Bible" does too; that doesn't make it allright.

As for Salman Rushdie, Kauser Niazi might have been a factor in Pakistan. The main protests and violent outbreaks were in the UK where I was living at the time; it was all organised and conducted by homegrowns.

As far the question of anti-semitism is concerned, it simply means not to kill jews for being jews. No one has stopped anyone from speaking their mind about Judaism itself; it remains open to critique as any other philosophical tradition. Personally I think Judaism has a lot to answer for; for a start it is the PRIME patriarchal, misogynistic, racist and anti-human philosophy; then, it has given birth to two illegitimate offshoots, only making matters worse for the last two millenia. Now that is "anti-judaism", not "anti-semitic". I don't want to kill anyone, jewish, christian, muslim, buddhist, hindu etc.

The very fact that all of us, of reasonably equivalent intelligence as humans, have diffrent interpretations (or lack) of the "divine" is a testament that one cannot make a system of conduct for the society at large based on a supposed divine providence. I mean, even the "believer" on this very small cross section of society don't see eye to eye on the most simple of things.

Re: # 350 take care!

Re: # 348 Dear it has alsoincreased inequality,blood shed,environmental degradation,if a medicine kills 70 persons and cures 30 is it advisable to use for 100 people?

in #349 the phrase in the last sentence should be "..the dictator should be kicked out.."

mahfari bro: nice chatting with you. have to go.

#347 unfortunately, our nwfp brothers had to learn the hard way that mullahs have nothing to offer other than big talk. but better late than never - i loved the statement by ANP leader yesterday (maslihat chahihay, beghairai nahin) as he stood shoulder-by-shoulder with nawaz sharif and zardari (i think the remark bolstered sharif's demand that the dictator not be kicked out of his illegal office as soon as possible, without compromises).

#345 globalization is a huge and complex issue with both fantastic opportunities and enormous problems.

so, it is simplistic to say it is good only for those already in power - e.g. globalization has turned virtually all of Asia and Latin America into rapidly developing economies that have changed the lives of billions (not millions) of people. otoh, globalization is changing the face of the planet itself- and we forget that humans on earth are like the thin film of bacteria on teeth, leading a precarious existence.

Re: # 346 They always understood and its making wasnot by these Mullahs itwasby educatedsoulsliekIqbal, Jinnah and others , but they were notcalled secualrsand they arenot but yes they were alsonot called Muslimsby Mullahs!

Mullahs are forceof status quo,not of change and perhapsof retrogression in some cases.But MMA did one good thing in NWFP that after death of a person the land share willautomatically transfer to daughters/women instad of forcible delivery to her brothers and male relatives as perthe cases.But it is very rarethat gooddeedslike this weredone.

#342 notice the composition of processions in pakistan:

when it is bs issues (cartoons, rushdie, some slight of islam by someone in the west) it is the mullahs in the lead.

when it is some issue of substance (as in the current struggle against dictatorship) it is those normally derided by mullahs as "secular" (lawyers being among them, plus human rights activists who are a favorite mullah target) who provide the lead.

Thank God the Pakistani awam has shown they understand the difference between bs and substance.

Re: # 343 Agreed on first part, but dear Globalization is exacerbating teh differnces and accentuating the ghetto thinking ,it is a threat to peace adn good only for global giants of rich and powerful.

It is against the human freedoms and ideals and localculturaldiversity,it is a power wiothout any direction.

Re: # 341 Agreed there stress is on rituals and they have taken position of papacy in Islamwhich has noplace here!

#340 what you say is true - but tell that to the hundreds of millions of fools who elevate the prophet and his descendants and acquiantances to the level of gods. fortunately, i think the problem will solve itself as a result of globalisation and the spread of rational thinking (this will sound like an optimist talking - but i think it is quite realistic).

Re: # 339 If he did it washis personal issuebut other I think is proven by the carefulstudy ofthis issue in Pakistan and if you remember there was a huge procession which reached uptoAmerican Embassy and BB government ordered firing and more than two peoplewerekilled and scores injured , but the damage had been done before thsi Salman's bopok wasknown to only a smallaudience afterthis he got a status of celeberity in West and of a Satan in MUslim wolrd. things have very strange bases!

#338 agreed. that is why maulvis are part of the problem, not part of the solution. since they ignore poverty and lack of education while pushing their agenda - rituals. rituals are merely another form of superstition that detract from constructive aspects of religion.

Re: # 337Thereis noplace forgroupsadn church like organizations in Islam. After Holy Prophet peace be upon him there is only one institution to be protected that is of family and allother things comeafetrwards.. but here things are different.

#336 if you tell me kausar niazi was the source of the rushdie fuss, then i believe you. i see know reason for you to make it up. btw, i once heard niazi doing the love talk loudly to a female in UK over the phone from the US. no kidding.

Re: # 335 I think the greatest issues of Muslimsare poverty and ignorance...and now a days another scourgeextremism..May Allah save us from all these!

to add to #335: and people dont need organized religion like the christian church or the various lashkars and religious groups in islam. rogues and thugs (aka priests) do as a way to avoid making living by providing some real value to society.

Re: # 334 My research proves thsi ,ifthere is different perspective ,then let me know!

#333 muslims are more important than islam (God does not need religion, people do). just as pakistanis are more important than pakistan.

Once we get this right, all this whining about some stupid cartoons will give way to what is really important - jobs and education for muslims. As the pakistani awam have also demonstrated through elections.

#332 mahfari: i did not realize that maulana kausar niazi started the fuss over the rushdie book (which ironically made rushdie a rich man due to vastly increased sales on what is actually a stupid and boring book).

as for kausar niazi, it is not for nothing that he was known as "maulana whiskey" - thus shooting down hamidm's theory that a whiskey lover cant be a mullah at the same time.

Re: # 329 Perhaps you are not awareof this issue of complexity and multidimensioanl approach about Holy Prophet peace be upon him.it is not a HAdd and it si Tazier ,that Judge shoulddecideasper the situation and in West there is deleberate attempt to invoke negative feelings and passions about Holy Prophet peace eb upon him and to taunt Muslims ...I think it is excess from both sides in many matters.

But the societies haev right to decideabout theriown goods and bads and no one can decide from outside to determine that howshould localsocietioes develop and live... it is theei own choice.

Why anti-Semitism is a legal offence in West and Europe? If it can be applied on the bases of histroy m,then why other societies can not make theri own laws as to their own identity? In your words why this cherry picking? Is alldiscrimination for mUslims only? is,nt it racism? Is,nt it injustice? have courage and answer these questions aND also think over the answersto your questions and feelfree to ask more !

Re: # 329 You have certain very very deep inferiority complextversus the society where you live ,I mean in an alien culture and what is the purpose in celeberating the New YEar?ForChristians it is a pagan festivaladjusted with Christmas,and in China they ahev theier own NEw Year forMuslismthe most celeberated and happy events are Eids... Do you rememeber them or lost theri memories also?

As to question of Salamn Rushdie is concerned facst are different and perhapsmind boggling also,this issue was stirred by late Kauser Niazi in 1988-89 when PPP came to power afetr death of Zia and Benazir Bhutto many stalwarts of PPP out of power,Kauser Niazi hoped to grab some post in BB regime but tono avail,then he wrote an articlein daily Jang and he first time raised the isseu of Salman Rushdie and he quoted and translated some portions in the article and it was picked upby Mullahs fro personal agendas and also by Iranian clergy and then it was buzz word in Islamic world and further many persons came forward to offer moneyt for this Salman Rushdie .

It was motivated with personal agenda and personal greed and it was a politicalissue where religion was used forpersonal goals. Ever heard this perspective?

akcheema,

I think you're an idiot because you make the same arguments as the hindoo monkeys do. That's below even the 101 stage. Come up with something new if you really want to have an argument.

Re: # 328

I don't think I ever offered a peace-making deal between the two. I am pretty certain they are best of friends off-line; same as I have religious-minded friends from my past.

I really don't know why everyone on this site thinks I am that dumb!

I'll just go to bed I think

Re: # 327

Thanks for highlighting the incoherence of my answers. The entire edifice falls down when one doesn't believe in the super-natural.

Can I ask why Salman Rushdie had a fatwa against him? (I know you would suggest it was all down to the Iranian Shiite sect and nothing to do with Sunni "mainsteam" Islam; but just walk with me for a minute!please). Did it have something to do with "gustakhi-e-rasool"? Is that what you think? Absolutely not!

We have, between us, said all sorts of things about our beloved prophet(pbuh) and his camel!(sorry hamidm2) and no one has flinched so much! That had nothing to do with it.

The reason the whole of "Muslim Ummah" was enraged was that it struck at the "very foundation" of what this cult is based on! Without Mohammed, there is no cult, no allah and his mailman gabby (sorry hamidm2 again) and the rest. The same reaction against this, more recent, "Danish Cartoon Scandal" was for the same reason. Exactly the same after "Pope's repetition of the Byzantian Emperor Paliologos's statement" about the "prophet of Islam's achievements".

All of these strike at the heart of basic, fundamental muslim mythology and that is what is painful. People insult God all the time, be it in the non-muslim or the muslim world; covertly or openly; It is never the insult of god himself but that of Mohammed that the muslims are unhappy about! Can you answer why?

If Mohammed was that dear to God - his best pal - I am sure he can sort things out himself to redeem his mate's honour and all those innocent lives lost could be spared! Is that too much to ask in this era of Information Technology?! May be we can all club together and get god the latest in IT/Broadband, whatever he wants (afterall,there are more that 6 billion of us around the world!) and he can get the news of his beloved's dis-honour and sort it out(as we say in Aussie!); then he can, perhaps with a bit of luck, leave the rest of us alone. Is that too much to ask from "the Creator of the Universe"?!

What do the "Sunnis" do at the beginning of Muharram? Fireworks (Shab-e-barat), Kite flying(Basant); what celebratory means are deployed to welcome the New Year for the entire 1.2 billion members of the "great" Muslim Ummah around the world?

#326 Akcheema:

Hamidm has an open invitation to free drinks (booze, tap water or mecca-cola - whatever you prefer) to all (including zeemax) who enter the Great State of Michigan.

So, dont worry about hostilities betwen hamidm and zeemax. use your peace-making talents where it is needed in places like the middle east.

Re: # 298 That mourning is not accepted by majority of Muslims and it wasinitiated in presenmt form by fatmid s in 927 AD and it is not a fundamentalcreed.

As to my answerto interact 49 the questions are in built and they areanswer toyour doubts,if you can accept that these arfedoubts.

Your answers lack coherence and consistency I raised questions about destiny and ideasof Quran and they logically flow from your ideas...and questioning is basis of knowledge.If you can question then it si all right, if soem oneother does then it is not tothe point.Learn to discuss with ratioanland logic and stick tothe questiosn araised and take debate to new points instead of wayward answers please!

Re: # 325

I know Hamid sahib. I am not here to make enemies. I invite both yourself and Zeemax (whatever that is by the sound of things!) to be friends. And by the way, I don't know if I told you this secret; I don't think I am an idiot. But Zeemax does believe so. May be I can make him change his mind! just may be.....

Re: # 323

cheema sahib,

..... unlike others on this site - urstruly, et al - zeemax is an armchair jihadi who after eating nine hundred mice and sowing all his wild oats has found religion ..... he is a victim of this insidious islamic 'revival' that is spreading like chicken flu .... inshallah, he will recover from this condition before he develops cllouses on his ankles and the death mark appears on his forehead ......

Re: # 309

Hi there,

I don't have any hang ups like that any way. The snow may "piggle away" that is not what worries me; I am sure your "battle" is no different!

Haey mein mar jawan.. eh te bolda e naeen...sap teh naeen sung geya?......

Re: # 321

All this time! zee zee.., and I thought we had something special..... you braek my heart!... oh! the pain, the betrayal..... what could I do... this hamidm, what does he have that I don't?....common.... I bet the Aussies do it better.... try us out mate and you'd never go back to "the Great Satan"...common....give us a chance....that's not fair....and I thought....oh the pain...

akcheema,

My only Murtid friend is hamidm who is gladly producing kaneezes. I've even promised to eventually save him from the guillotines. You Sir, are lower down the rank even amongst murtids.

Re: # 319

Common Zeemax, are we mates yet? I know you want to..(By the way mate is Aussie means friend.... no hanky panky!...)

Re: # 317

And what the "eff" (is that the right way to spell it sir?) are you doing visiting "the Great Satan"; Atlanta, Georgia of all places. Allah Maafi!... Ki zamaana aa gayaa aye baee...

Re: # 317

I am deeply honoured Sir. The very fact that "usually" you don't waste your breath with "murtids", but would so graciously make an exception for "an idiot" like me, I don't know if I should lie down; the emotions are just so overwhelming..

#315 Posted by akcheema,

Yaar now stop talking like a sniveling moron. If you have any questions, ask them now and I'll answer them. Usually I don't waste my breath with murtids.

hamidm2,

LoL ... hamidm I'll be in Atlanta in a week or two. I'll buy you a drink if I stop in Detroit to meet some relatives!

Re: # 313

Sorry Sir, Mr Zeemax Sir, I forgot to put the question mark (?) at the end of the sentence. Am I forgiven? If so, can we get on with the question please? Its nearly 2 am where I live and sleep IS important to us mortals; contrary to your friend "THE ONE who neither nods nor sleeps"

Re: # 306

zeemax,

.... you fool! .... if i had a son (which luckily i don't, since he might have grown up to be like you) i would have had him circumcised even though i don't believe in it ..... why? ... because a) most boys in america are and i wouldn't want my son to be embarassed in the locker room with silly questions about his pee-pee and b) because it would have made my parents happy ...... when my kids were born i did not bother to bellow the azan into their ear and my parents knew it ... so when they went to pakistan for their first visit they made sure the girls heard the moon god's call to prayer and then promptly sacrificed a black bakra ...... i appreciated the festivities even though i felt sorry for the bakra ..... i am happy to report that the azan did not do any permanent damage .. alhamdolillah ......

#308 is a question?

Re: # 309

I'd be delighted mate. I don't have anything against the poor pig! He is "god's" creation afterall!

#309 Posted by hamidm2,

Great hamidm2. Teach this idiot to become a true and good cultural Muslim. Water carriers and flag bearers are always required ...

Re: # 307

By the way, I can recite Iqbal to you back to front matey! so don't even try. Answer the question put to you in 308

akcheema sahib,

..... as a 'cultural' muslim myself, let me assure you that it is very easy to do even though you loose some 'friends' along the way since they cannot come to your house because the palit pooch insists on jumping on their lap ... good riddance to bad rubbish, i say ......

.... being a cltural muslim is easy - eat biryani, talk in urdu, say 'alhamdolillah' when somebody sneezes or 'mashallah' when somebody farts, put on your pajamas twice a year and hand out money to kids ........ that's all it takes ..

.... but, your cultural affiliation will end with you ..... forget about your kids being cultural muslims - they will grow up to be like their heathen friends even though they like to eat biryani once in a while and sometimes say things like 'the snow is piggling outside' ......

Re: # 306

I only said they looked like your mate from the heavens. How did you know HE was circumcised!? Now now... I didn't think you were into that sort of thing Zeemax! Are we coming out of the closet here!

In any event, read the following and try to get what Allama Iqbal is saying.

This is the world view Muslims have. Everything else follows:

Bar tar az andesha-e-sood-O-ziyaan hay Zindagi
Hay kabhi Jaan aur kabhi tasleem-e-jaan hay Zindagi

Tu issay Paimaana-e-Imroz-O-fardaa say naa naap
Javedaan, Pehamm dawaan, Har damm jawaan hay Zindagi

Apni dunyaa aap peda kar agar zindoun main hay
Siir-e-Adam hay, zameer-e-kun fikaan hay Zindagi

Zindagaani ki haqeeqat Koh-kunn kay dil say pooch
Joo-e-sher-O-teesha-O-sang-e-giraan hay Zindagi

Bandagi main ghatt kay reh jaati hay ik joo-e-kamm aab
aur aazaadi main behr-e-bay karaan hay Zindagi

Aashkaaraa hay yeh apni quwwat-e-taskheer say
garchay ik mitti kay paikar main nihaan hay Zindagi

Qulzum-e-Hasti say Ubhraa hay tu maanind-e-Hubaab
Iss ziyaan khaanay main teraa imtehaan hay Zindagi

If you still have questions, put them in bullet points instead of long-winded rhetoric, and I'll answer them.

akcheema,

Hmm .. ok. So I have my answer. Since they are then they do have a religious identity and you're a liar and a hypocrite.

Listen. There're more senior apostates than you here who have proudly announced publicly on this site that there sons are NOT circumcised. Now that's courage of conviction which you never mustered.

Re: # 304

Come to think of it, their d...s look exactly the same as god's (take it HE is a HE); so must be....I remember a "first cousin" using the words "mirror image"...

#303 Posted by akcheema,

Answer the question. I repeat. Are your son/s circumcised?

Re: # 302

Whatever makes you happy my friend. The question, as I said, are unanswerable, not because they are clever but because of a lack of clear evidence of this god character you keep mentioning; or is he called allah now (may as well as the Pakistanis have gradually replaced Khuda Hafiz - centuries of persian connection with India, with Allah Hafiz - to appease their true masters I wonder?).

Why are you so intent on defending this god's honour? If he has any balls shouldn't he be fighting his own battles?

akcheema,

You said earlier " I have been a non-believer since I was 14/15 and never had time for the religious claptrap" ... so what answers do you want from me?

Aaap ka bachpan ka shauq hai ... ham kya kar saktey hain!

BTW nice to know you raise your children without any religious identity. Any sons? If yes, are they circumcised?

Re: # 300

Thanks; I really appreciate it. You are a decent human being Eklavya and a true student of knowledge, from what I have seen.

I am glad, and grateful, you didn't take that personally, but understood it as a purely 'general' argument.

You know, the HARDEST and by far the stupidest arguments to deal with are of the kind: "but me and my parents are not like that..."

So thanks for not taking that route. And so long as one is aware of the possibilities, one is obviously free to make any choices.

That is the best any of us can do, and sincere best wishes with your children, whatever you may want for them.

Re: # 297

Well said Eklavya, I am aware of this. I raise my children without any religious identity and if they choose to do stupid things on growing up, nothing I can do.

There is a slight distinction between culture and religion I think, you might disagree. That is why I mentioned "ethnic" for want of a better word really. Its obviously not an inherited trait as you know. I do talk to them about their thoughts on the subject, especially around Eid/Christmas etc; my 7 year old, presumably after hearing the story of "baby jesus" from a school pal came up to me and said that this whole story doesn't make any sense. I was intrigued so let her carry on. Then she asked me if there was a god to which my reply was that I didn't know. Then she said that if "someone" had made the universe, it would have been different to what it is now; in the sense that there shouldn't be any pain and suffering around. She even referred to parents loving their children, and if god was there and capable of doing something (which obviously he is meant to be), why would he not look after the poor, homeless, sick and needy. (These are the thoughts of a seven year old so guys please don't start writing in "refuting" anything; I, hereby, exempt Zeemax from this injunction!)

I try to let them develop their own thoughts rather than indoctrinating them into anything, including my own views. Its important to allow them to develop the "ability to think" without telling them "what to think".

I hope that addresses your concerns about my next generations turning out to be suicide bombers!

Re: # 295

Thanks Mafari, my reply was only after reading it. Rather than explaining anything, it sort of raised a lot of more questions. Anyway, enough said on the subject.

I knew someone would make exactly the sort of comment you made about the excerpt from "River out of Eden". I refer to No: 294.

Unfortunately the reality of the universe is such and undeniable. Since we are meant to be discussing things in a Sufi contest, I refer you to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Qawwali (written by my "garaeen" Mr Naaz Khailvi; actually Nusrat is Lyallpuri as well). I am sure you must have heard it "tum ek gorakh dhanda ho". Next time pay attention to the second last "band" that discusses "fitrat kay tazaadat", and see what you think. But what I am suggesting is exactly the opposite; I happen to be a very positive individual in general terms, I laugh, joke and have friends like everyone else. I love my family, respect my parents all that etc. My lack of belief in the supernatural has not had any influence on my thinking of how I approach things. I work hard, play hard, I am enthusiastic about learning and discovering new horizon etc. This life is what one makes of it essentially. At the end of the day we all die and I am not afraid of it; however I would prefer not to waste my life by being lynched by a mob of vigilantes.

And contrary to the impression I seem to have created, I don't want to force my views on anyone. This is an invitation to talk. People who have said that "no one has forced Islam on anyone"; Islam has spread solely by the sword, that history is so recent that it is hard to deny. No point pointing the finger and saying "they did it too"; this is about self-analysis as a group. I don't want to go on about it as it has mostly been said before.

On a lighter note, I am very positively surprised that there is a recognised distinction in Islamic culture between misery and joy! Given this is the only religio-cultural tradition I know whose New Year starts with 10 days of mourning (contrary to the celebratory nature of any other New Year I know; be it Jewish, Romano-christian, Chinese etc)!

Hey, not to imply that there are gun-carrying jihadis on chowk, but that if one is a 'liberal, cultural' Muslim then after a while, one would naturally detest evil non-Muslims.

Think of it as group karma. The conflict will catch up with you, sooner or later. And once that happens, your choices will become much clearer.

Unfortunately, it is not an individually fair world.

Cheema ji, 'cultural' memebership will not work the way one might expect.

There are unavoidable conflicts between two or more groups making radically different, fundamentally important, claims about logic and value, and seeking very different this worldly and next-worldly goals.

Those group-level conflicts will exist so long as contradictory claims about logic and value are publicly implied, made, and defended.

Try as we might, there is simply no way to 'individually' opt out of those conflicts as those conflicts become more and more recognized.

--------------------------

As a 'cultural member' you will get sqashed in the middle.

Ultimately, probably quite soon, you too will end up hating non-Muslims. And you, or your children, or grand-children will turn into genuine good Muslims.

LOL, I have visions of hamdim2's grand children running around in skull caps and burqas, and turning into actual gun-carrying jihadis against evil unbelievers :)

That is an unevitable, logical process. It happens exclusivly because of our various (group) affiliations, and it happens all the time, on chowk, and in real life.

Re: # 292 Please read my interact on answer to 49 this issue I specifically answered these questions!

Re: # 289 Yea when we live oin vaccum and are victim of less knoledge then this hopelessness and absurdity is our destiny... by our own choice!May Allah save us from despair!

Re: # 174

At the end of the day WE ARE ALL ATHEISTS!

Atheist was the term used by the Greeks/Romans for early Christians who were thought to be denying the existence of the gods of the ancients.

The difference between myself and some of the "believing" contributers here is actually very small. They deny the existence of, e.g., Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, Zeus, Apollo......I only believe in one less god than them.

And the reasons for not believing in him are exactly the same as their reasons for not believing in all the other gods.

Re: # 237

Zeemax: I still haven't seen any answers to my questions in No: 49. OK, I'll put you out of your misery, you can't. In fact no one can including me; I wrote down most of those when I was 12. So don't worry, you are off the hook.

Please feel free to invoke Advice No: 14 from my entry: 235; or one of the others of your chosing.

Re: # 272

Hi Eklavya,

I appreciate your comments and honesty; you could have fooled me! Unbeliever eh!

You are right in the sense that I AM part of a culture, hence an "ethnic Muslim". It is estimated that in Russia, almost 20% of the population belongs to this category. A prime example is Mr Marat Safin and his sister Dinara Safina(tennis). How else would you describe them? Both non-practicing and non-believing.

It is no different to having atheist-jews, atheist-hindus and so on. The very fact I show concern in these matters is a testament to that; so there, happy now!

As far as believing is concerned, it is a different matter altogether. I donot believe in a supernatural god as defined by traditional religions, be it Abrahamic or Hinduism or any other. Therefore, with this definition of god in mind I'd be very happy to say the following, despite your reluctance that "THERE IS NO GOD INCLUDING ALLAH" the moon-god; it does have a ring to it don't you think. As far as his self-proclaimed mate Mohammed and his son Jesus, they don't even come into it as the foundation for them simply doesn't exist.

I hope this clarification helps.

By the way, on "you don't even think like a muslim" remark; it is one of the nicest compliments I have had today; thank you!

Re 289:

sorry its Richard Dawkins

Re 281 (urstruly)

This is from a book by Richard, "River Out of Eden":

"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference".

BREAKING NEWS

This is to inform all the chowkis that 1008 Shri Shri Laddu Gopal Maharaj ji would not be available for the next two months on the Chowk.
In case Pakistani Momeens would like to celebrate his unforeseen voluntary abscense as victory and a retribution of the angry moon god by distributing sweets then they should do that by distribution of Boondi ke Laddu.

Allahu!!

Re: # 286 No one is superior toany one while discussing,you want to reproduce em the oldinteracts, but it si off the track discussion . I am waiitng when you will complete your repetitive stock of liesand I willanswer it,if you have finishged your virile attacks then can I answer them or you ahev more poision in your heart and soul?

mahfri ji,

Gol mol mat keejie. Dekhiyee, saaf saaf baat kariye.
Jhooti mooti mein apne ko hooshiyaar mat samajhiye!!
Boorbak!!

Re: # 264 Bitter laddu do you remember our interacts on Buddhism issues when I referred to this and you vanished like gedhy ky ser say seeng!

Naqshu,

Ther exist heart purifying non-muslim tariqahs which would help take you to even deeper levels of thought and the 9 levels of existence. Ego-lessness never takes one to satan. There is no measuring instrument that can tell whether the experience of bliss is Angelic or Satanic. As your prophet said that good dreams are from Angels and bad dreams are from Satan - in the same way blissful eperiences can only be from Allah.
Whether an experience is angelic or not can only be inferred from the results it produces on the person and becomes evident from the manner, demeanor and character of the person who has successfully dissolved his ego before the divine. If it reinforces the ego and makes a person feel 'superior' to other humans and makes him undertake loot, plunder and rape then that experience is nothing but satanic.

Re: # 280

This is no lying. This is Exactly, the reverse-taquiyya that muslims cannot notice when they read the veiled kufr of the Sufis - much like the veil of "meem"/Maya.

Re: # 278

"The true aim of Islam is to purify the human heart and soul by means of the Path [tariqat/sufism] using the methodology of Shariah to enable one to experience the Divine whilst still alive. That is the secret behind the (seemingly) difficult rules of Shariah--they are a means --THE means--of purification of the self."

The "Ashtanga-Marga" or Eight Fold Path of Yoga that is accepted in Samkhya-Yoga Marga along with Sanyaas-Dharma or accepting Order of Renunciation is the most prescribed way in the Hindu religion to "purify" the Jiva or Human being from ignorance of reality or "Haqiqath.

There is nothing in the Sunnat that can "purify" one's heart . Only the 40 day Ramadam fasting with the Dhikr of Allah is beneficial- but these practices were all part of pre-Islamic Jahaliyat that Mohammad adapted in his Islam.
Purification of heart is done in Buddhist meditational practices in such a fantastic and scientific manner that only those who have practiced can experience the divinity of it.
And Jainism provides the most sophisticated of path /Marga through its systems of Anu-Vrta (Micro-fastings) and Higher Vrtas which go upto 14 days without water fastings in seclusion.
You have NO idea of the beauty of other paths because you would remain fixated by the fear of mullah's blood thirsty Allah that one gets overwhelmed by once you accept Sunnat.

So, reject Sunnat and explore other paths if you want to achieve the path of purification of heart!!

Unfortunately, I have never understood the concept of spirituality. I think it is nothing more than a state of mind which is created by the process of auto-suggestion. I think that God is Absolutely indifferent and we are at His mercy absolutely. I think people get hurt just to become an example for others and people are rewarded or blessed for the same reason. We must pass the tests every step of of the way to save ourselves from fire. I don't think there is anything more to it - in bigger scheme of things. We are absolutely insignificant.

btw i wasn't playing with words, i was pointing out to others your deliberate misquoting of Ibn Arabi to make your point--i.e. your lying.

which makes the heart like a polished mirror which then reflects and becomes an abode of The Divine.

because only a spiritually purified heart and soul can experience the Divine truly and the greatest disease of the heart and soul is unbelief [kufr]. The true aim of Islam is to purify the human heart and soul by means of the Path [tariqat/sufism] using the methodology of Shariah to enable one to experience the Divine whilst still alive. That is the secret behind the (seemingly) difficult rules of Shariah--they are a means --THE means--of purification of the self.

laddu,
i mean exactly that the states of consciousness achieved by non muslim ascetics by means of hardships which kill their Ego (nafs) do not benefit them in the sense of bringing them closer to Allah rather it brings them closer to Satan who gives them 'experiences' which they BELIEVE to be from the Divine but are actually from Satan.

Because sainthood is the highest achievable spiritual state and the lowest is to have imaan so how can someone achieve the highest without even the lowest?!

Re: # 273

"Shaykh al Akbar Ibn Arabi actually said, "The walayah of a Prophet is greater than his Prophethood" and NOT that every wali is greater than a Prophet!"

Naqshu,

Why are you playing with words. You say "..you have to believe in Islam to be a saint and have divinely inspired spiritual states as opposed to satanically inspired ones.".

Do you that mean that the "elevated states of conscious" of non-muslim ascetics would become "divinely" inspired just because they utter that stupid kalima?

You mean utterance of Kalima transforms the state of bliss from being called Satanic to Angelic?? What mullah nonsense is this?

Utterance of Kalima or banging head 5 times a day or praising a paedophile makes NO difference to the nature of divine bliss. This bliss is a state of consciousness that can never be touched or defiled by such stupid mullah enforced actions. It would remain bliss and hence "divine" even without Mohammad and his sword enforced kalima.

Divinity would continue to exist untouched by fallen Satans.

The great Sufi
AbÅ« YazÄ«d (BÄ?yazÄ«d) al-BisÅ£Ä?mi raÄ‘iyAllÄ?hu ánhu says:

‘We went to meet a man, who had become famous as a Friend of AllÄ?h (waliy); and this person was very famous for his piety and reclusion. We tarried for a while; he came out of his house and went to the Mosque and [on the way] he spat towards the Qiblah.

I came back and I did not even bother to salute him. I said to myself: ‘This is a person who is not faithful to common decency and etiquette [adab] taught by RasÅ«lAllÄ?h ÅŸallAllÄ?hu álayhi wa sallam, how can he be safe in what he claims?’

RisÄ?lah al-Qushayriyyah, pg.396.

And non-Muslim asectics can do all their exercises and achieve elevated states of conscious--even perform wondrous feats--but all these are, in their cases, what the Christian church call 'diabolic' --i.e. from the Devil because you have to believe in Islam to be a saint and have divinely inspired spiritual states as opposed to satanically inspired ones. This, of course, does not apply to those people who came before the advent of Islam.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

laddu is just a lying devil, a idolator and kafir of the lowest order--who can be lower than one who consistently insults the Messenger of Allah? Not out of ignorance but deliberately. But we await that Day when all shall meet their Maker--when no one will be able to help EXCEPT Muhammadur Rasool Allah sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam for he has been given the maqaam of Shafa'at: intercession.

Just to mention ONE of his lies, Shaykh al Akbar Ibn Arabi actually said, "The walayah of a Prophet is greater than his Prophethood" and NOT that every wali is greater than a Prophet! Ibn Arabi was a Sunni and the aqida is that no non-prophet can be greater than a Prophet. As an expert on Law he would have known that--and he declares his orthodox aqidah in the beginning of his magnum opus al Futuhat al Makkiyah. For every Prophet is necessary a saint [wali] but not every wali is a Prophet.

infidels like laddu can fool the ignorant fools and murtads like hamidm--another hater of the Prophet whose mockery shall be thrown in his face on Judgement Day!--but they cannot weasel their way amongst those with even an iota of knowledge of Islam.

Even well-known Islam haters like Bernard Lewis and Martin Amis acknowledge the greatness of the Prophet and his unmatched spirituality.

In the name of Jesus/Ram/Hanuman and everyone else acceptable to you, please, now, laddu. Can we just let that be? :)

Thanks in advance.

Actually the real negation of the kalima is this -

I BELIEVE that "There is no God called Allah and Mohammad is not his Prophet"

Re: # 269

cheers!!!

lol, for my friend laddu. May he find peace! :)

""And I certainly do not BELIEVE if Muhammad is Allah's messanger."

Look, no taquiyya! No sufism. Hope THIS issue is finally settled.

Cheers.

hamidm:

"congratulations ! .... how come you two didn't invite me ?"

...because they were not serving any meat.

Re: # 263

"And I certainly do not know if Muhammad is his or her or their messanger or not."

Now this is a spin - because we are NOT talking about your "knowledge" of Mohammad but about your "Belief" in him.

Repeat this statement as under and oblige please-

""And I certainly do not BELIEVE if Muhammad is Allah's messanger."

thanks

Re: # 263

"How can I 'negate the kalima' when I never ever accepted it in the first place. "

To negate the kalima you do not have to accept it in the first place. I do not get your logic? It is like saying that to deny the existence of Buraq you have to believe in him!!

hamidm #250 Thanks for the tips. However, I dont recall ever having to "defend" Islam from normal people in real life. Only hindus on chowk who hate Islam, Muslims, and Pakistan with equal fervor; and yourself and few other Pakistanis who are only too happy to hand over Islam to be defined by hearded troglodytes, ignoring your own common sense.

And so far, I have not heard anything convincing from either you or the hindu fanatics on chowk who are as impervious to reason as maulvis.

Re: # 259

"..f Dr tara Chand.Itwas specific to LAddu.He will remember it that is the reason he did not answer!"

Where does Dr. Tara Chand enter in the discussion? And what is your point specific in the context of that charlatan, paedophile, murderer and rapist being superior to the rest of sufis??

laddu, why do you persist in misunderstanding/not believing me? I have NEVER tried the taquiyya stuff, or tried to come across as something I am not. I am an unbeliever, and an ex-Hindu as well, if Hinduism means all religions are the same, everyone's the same, the earth and the mars are the same, and totally goofy, utterly illogical stuff like that.

How can I 'negate the kalima' when I never ever accepted it in the first place. That is NOT my belief. Still, just to satisfy you, because there is really no need for anyone to misunderstand anyone or anything else: I do not know if there is God, one God, or twentyfive Gods. And I certainly do not know if Muhammad is his or her or their messanger or not. Isn't that what an unbeliever basically is? Hopefully, you will have resolution on this score now.

This is after all such a small thing once we decide to not focus on individuals and persons.

Re: # 49 I love to know that you have thirst to propbe the very foundationsof htis religion,Islam,the msot Modern religion of Wolrd .

As to your anguish regarding differnt understanding of the same concept,then diversity is in nature and every perwson has his or her own leevl of understanding . it is liek reading of same text bookand being taught by smae teacher and having differnent understanding and grades. Millions of apples and not asinglepairofequal taste and shape. The undesrtanding flows from inside and htese basic differnct understanding are perceptions and when they are ratioanlly discussedthey they becoem concepts and Islam conceptually is one and singleentity fromAdam to Muhamamd peace be upon him,but perceptions vary at lower and initial leevl and this shows lack of lessknowledge by the person not limit of idea.If we can not understand the ideait si our limitation not the limitation of idea!

As to contadictions in the quran, be specificand qquote any example ,then we can discuss it in that regard.

As to free will,it has its limits and frontiers,like it is beyond our free willtochoose gender,parents,place of birth,and death timing but we choose our ideas,careers and friends and eating habits etc.It isnot for eevry item undersun,it has itsown directions and stresses.

Free willis not preordained as iqbalsays Allah ahs created yourforehead free ,write ith with yourown action!Alldepends upon intent and actions and free willis fro actions ,there willnot be any question that where wereyou boirn or whowereyopur parents,the accountability is of freechoices we make throughout life!Lauh e Mahfouz doesnot makechocies for us ,it contains allthe posssiblechoices we can make ornot make.It is Creator'sgrasp of knowledge and allknowing !

The completion of Deen is to basic three fundamentals,Tauheed and other ideaswillkeepon studied and explored as the abilitiesadn potentials of individual.

The fianlaty is of divine Guidance and trust of Allh on the sensesof human beings to maketheirown decisions and it is the freedom which has evoved fromAdam toMuhamamd peace be upon him!It is evolved over thousands ofyears,and not a processof accident or blind evolution!

Re: # 248 It was in context,others ahev theriown point of view.Do not always search your own mnaings, try to live with differnce also.

Re: # 248 It was in context,others ahev theriown point of view.Do not always search your own mnaings, try to live with differnce also.

Re: # 245 Dear it wasrefercnetoolddiscussion and willyou describe for our refreshment the ideas of Dr tara Chand.Itwas specific to LAddu.He will remember it that is the reason he did not answer!

It wasnot reference to ongoing debatebut was wth a perspective!

Re: # 252 Dear point was thatclosedsocietiescan not depict the changing realities oflife.

Aretehnative youth s notlost?Do,nt they use drugs...as per studiesit si over 80% in US and UK schools at least Muslim youth is caught to plotting to killto bring about the change ..afalse idea and distroted facts... but the antive youth goeson killing spree without any meaning and purpose.

This sense oflossis universalnotrestricted to any creed or religion,htis is curseof globalization and absurdity of modernity which increases temporary pleasures and consumption but neevr builds a strong, durable and long lasting frame of mind.It is always changing wihtout any purpose and direction...one day research says coffee is abd ad afetr soem times it says no coffee is elixir! It is permanent figth of conflciting intersts and ideas without any purposeand stability and modern tiems call it 'invisiblehand of market'' the market rules supreme not values.

Take out Prophets, Sages and other moralteachers, what willremain in this world? How many known athesits have played theri rolein evolving and developing these human values of compassion,love sacrifice, resource saving,patience, chivalary and care for fellowbeings.

They propagate ruthless competition no tcooperation..lifesi not mereahggling for ego boost and consumption induced and consumption run morlaity... it is something more peace of mind and heart.WHich this modern society can not offer...it isnot our cry it si cry of allthe brilliant mindsofWest alsofrom Oswald Spengler to Toynbee.

We neeed love and tolerance ...not religion specific but covering allthe humanity.. and for me this ideal is visible and practicedby Prophets peace eb upon them fromAdamthe First Prophet peace be upon him to the last Prophet Muhamamd peace be upon him.Theri evolutionary thougts are the zenith of human development and highest ideals and if you have other evolutionary,consistent and appealing ideals ,then bring it out and share.Do not search refuge of personalfailures meaninglessness in Islambashing...it did not serve many before and willnot serve forfuture also!

hatred has neevr been a good guide and teacher,let us embrace love ,love of Rumi, Hafiz and Iqbal,let su creaet new worlds!

Re: # 256

"I too, unfortunately, lack faith in divine authority, and see the world in human terms."

Then how about negating the kalima for once on the board.

Please oblige us non believers to be sure that you are not BS us with this taquiyya.

khurram, as an unbeliever, I probably share a lot with akcheema ji, but to understand cheema ji's frustration, we have to see zee's theory of water carriers and flag bearers at work.

akcheema is an unbeliever. But according to WCFB theory, he can't under any circumstances leave the fold of Islam, and as a 'member' he will continue to be a resource for Islam as it actually is.

IMO, hamdim2 bhai has made peace with that role, and merely entertains himself on chowk. But akcheema ji is still struggling and has a few more years of struggle left in him.

Sorry cheema ji, nothing personal. As I said, you and I probably share a lot of beliefs. I too, unfortunately, lack faith in divine authority, and see the world in human terms.

akcheema,
What is all this shouting for? No one is forcing Islam on you. No one is asking you to change.
On the contrary, it is you who wants muslim to change.

if you are sincere about changing people, and are not just venting, may I suggest that your current attitude is going to be counter-productive. Taunting is not the way to go.

Re: # 251

"Some 3,000 villagers have attended an elaborate Hindu wedding ceremony in eastern India for two monkeys. "

Hamid mia,

Celebrating the union and sexuality of animals close to human beings makes for a far better social jumburee and event compared to the mass hysteria that is created by momens during muharram with chest beating, self torture of flesh and mourning for some family in-fighting that took a thousand of years ago in some remote land of Arabia.
It is so nice to see every one celebrating nature than mourning for a long forgone tale of hatred.

laddu, I have been looking for an opportunity to agree with you, and we may have it.

True, Muslims owe allegiance to arabian land, but many Muslims also owe allegiance to 'Pakistani' land (ironically, the same land that khera walas mope and moan about). These lands are not valued for themselves but for the ideas they represent.

--------

This is different from Hindu allegiance to land. After a while, a Hindu living in Australia owes allegiance to Australia, one living in the US begins to owe allegiance to the US, and so forth.

If you think about it, there is no fundamental reason why the latter should be the case. It's just emotional silliness.

--------

If you understand all this, I can't figure out why you would be so conned by yoginder shikhandi, ali ajagar, and jootonwala sort...

# 237

I have answered all of your questions; see my entries and you'd know. I have already said that I don't believe the character of Abraham even existed in the historical sense. But this fictional character is brandished about as some sort of role model; role model for what? That he abandons one of his son and wife in the arabian desert (the Zam-Zam myth); or the in-humane misguided act of his son's sacrifice. Issue is not that I believeit to be true,I have already said it isn't; issue is that YOU DO believe it to be true hence we see the ritualistic sacrifices every year. So you do clearly believe it to be examplary behaviour. That is the question.

Now where are the answers to all of my question, for the umpteenth time?

# 241

Science, education etc are not gods sir; far from it. It is an evolutionary process that develops with better understanding as the faculties of human mind open up,gradually; one idea built upon another and so on. Sometimes old ideas are rejected and replaced with new ones. If anyone shows me a better designed study that proves an opposite point to what I happen to believe to be true, I'd be the first to look in to it and accept it. How many of your religious scholars would do the same about their rigid ideas? That is the difference. One is a human idea, bettered all the time, rejected, debated, accepted, replaced and so on. When you bring "the divine" into it, its eternal. No one can change it as it is formulated in god's name and, since he is at least not seen to be having too much of an input in the matter, there is no one with the balls to critique or change it. I have explained the same concept time and again in previous entries, its frustrating when without reading the information all I get is the rant of "murtid" etc.

You are right, UK and Australia are not muslim majority lands. What is your point here? All I was saying is they are part of the western world, however that is defined, and it is places like these where I see these interactions take place. The muslim youth here is completely lost, in terms of their identity. Anyone else from another part of the world would come here and within one generation their kids would be proud to be Aussies, they would progress in life. On the contrary, muslim parents will indoctrinate their kids to the point that they have no idea where they belong. Culture is one thing; muslims are not the only ethnic community here, but they are the most lost. They get conflicting messages from their households vs the society at large, they don't know wether to introduce themselves as Aussies or Pakistanis or Muslims. I don't see that, to the same extent, with other minorities.

In the UK, school league table show that 12% of British University entrants are from Indian background, they only form 2% of the population (proportionately, this is better than the native population). Pakistani and Bangladeshi children are the lowest in their ranks, majority barely finishing school. There are a lot of social issues but they are not going to go away by burying one's head in the sand or attempts at scoring cheap shots. If children are being brought up so they can just about finish school (since it is compulsary), and then be married off to a first cousin in the fatherland, and that being the sole objective of life, what hope is there for the future.

By just blaming others for one's problems is not a good strategy. There is room for a lot of self-analysis and soul-searching here if someone could listen

I am not here to score cheap points. I hardly use the internet unless it is for my own professional searches, like Medline etc. I didn't know about Chowk or a lot of things mentioned previously by Zeemax. It has actually been tiring in a sense over the last few days. It was clearly an eye opener in more than one ways. I am grateful for the experience and I hope I didn't use the "shock" treatment too much. I just wanted to know if the old place had changed much; lets say I wasn't completely disappointed!

laddu and arjun mian,

congratulations ! .... how come you two didn't invite me ?

Some 3,000 villagers have attended an elaborate Hindu wedding ceremony in eastern India for two monkeys.
The "bride" was dressed in a five-metre long sari and decked in flowers. The ceremony took place last Thursday in Ghanteswara village in Orissa state.

The guests were served a feast of rice, lentils, vegetables, fish and sweets.

tahmed,

..... you might have missed cheema sahib's post..... he provides some really good pointers that you can use in your mission to reinvent islam .....it seems that zeemax has been using this aprroach with some success and is now at #14 with me ..........here they are .... use them in good health and may the moon god be with you :

1. A popular question is "why islam calls for death of Islamic critics and apostates". Insist that their info is false. Quote aya "to you your religion and to me my religion".

2. To answer "Islam spread with sword", say that it is a big lie spread by the jews and hindus and that quran clearly says " there is no compulsion in religion".

3. If some one quotes violent ayas from Koran, accuse him of quoting ayas in bits and pieces and cherry picking .

4. If he then quotes full ayas and ayas before and after, than insist that the translation is wrong.

5. If he brings ten different translations than say correct meanings can be understood only by reading Quran in Arabic.

6. If he happens to be well versed in Arabic language than insist that those ayas don't mean what they appear to mean as they have allegorical meanings.

7. If he is adamant, than say you cannot understand those ayas and it's context without reading hadith and sira.

8.. If he shows up with the hadiths and siras in hand and quotes the context of the violent ayas by referring to hadiths of prophet's rapes, robberies , assassinations and genocides then insist that "all hadiths and siras are heresay and are false, and only truth is in quran.

9. If he says Quran is a man made document and wants proof of it's divinity then refer to the sciences in Quran and the book written by Dr. Bucaile confirming the sciences in our holy book. You can also quote that Mahatama Gandhi read Quran daily and also spoke highly of it.

10. If he says that Bucaile was on Saudi payroll and that nor he nor Gandhi ever changed their religions and that Bucaile was challenged and proven wrong by many experts then challenge him to ask his experts to debate islamists like Zakir Naik..

11. If the pests still hangs around then change the topic and find faults in other religions and their books.

12. If he continues on then use personal attacks and insult him by calling him a jewish a- hole , a Chinese pig or a hindu dog .

13. If that does not frustrate him, then ask him how much he is being paid by jews to throw dirt on Al Islam.

14. If he still does not stop then run for his mother and sister and use very filthy language.

15. If he is very stubborn and wants to continue, then curse him like "Burn in hell, you will repent on last day, Allah will get you in your grave" etc

16. When all of the above has failed, threaten him with bodily harm and end the debate by drum beating and announcing that you won the debate hands down because Koran is the word of allah.

17. If possible anounce about this debate in an islamist website and that you had won it handily. Such announcements do wonders for the iman of muslim website readers and for dawah operations in prisons to convince low IQ prisoners of the truth of Al Islam.

Hey, muslims are all muddled up about "allegiance" business.

First, muslims have "allegiance" to a piece of land called Saudi Arabia-
Second, they bow down daily 5 times to that direction ,

Third, they try to act like shheikhs from Arabic land.

Fourth, they have life long desire to go to hajj to Mecca.

Talk about allegiance!!

#240 mahfari " allegiance of a Muslim is to ideas not to forefathers or to customs!"

True. But why only muslims? They say small minds discuss people, while big minds discuss ideas. Similarly, small minds stick like velcro to custom, big minds stick like velcro to well-grounded principles.

akcheema,

All religions ar a big BS.

The emrgence of nation states created a new breed of ideology i.e. political Islam/Hinsduism/Christianity etc.' I dont know how we can counter it. Even commoners take-up this thinking as something equal to upholding religion.

My new roommate - a Pakistani who doesnt take a point that sounds critical as normal. He threatens that I am lucky to be in a western country otherwise, 'Pakistan mein hum qatl karte hain...koi case nahin'.

There're no words like critique, criticism in their lexicon. There're only 2 things i.e qubool or khilaaf.

Religions are making animals outta humans.

#229 dost mittar: "OBL's interpretation of the Quranic message is as valid as that of the Mufti of Al Azhar or of Massadi or your own. "

True. You are free to believe what you like.

BUT..you are not free to break laws (e.g. commit terrorist acts like those of 9/11) because of your beliefs. Thus - Quran gives every individual the right to self-defense. And what are criminal laws if not collective self-defense exercised by society against criminals (including terrrorists).

mahfari, I did read tara chand's book but couldn't find anything reflecting your views in there.

--------------

laddu, are you a fan of asghar ali engineer, yoginder sikhandi, some guy with a name like jootonwaala, and such, gang?

Vefily, these sufis have messed you up big time.

mahfari ki jai ho. :)

Re: # 226 Dear Laddu you have very old problem of changing the every topicunder earth to Islam bashing and barking like a mad --- to fight with Muslims.Your Karma is in age of Kaljug, so you can not have peace of soul and also of heart it si curse4 of Bhagwan by your own choice!

As to saying about Hindus it mean staht first understand and then question. You are measuring eevry thing by Hindu standards and denying reason and always twsiting the facts.

Grow up and leave cut and paste , I have many tiems asked you to first read Dr Tara Chand's Influence of Islam on Hinduism and then talk, but alas except abuse you have notlearnt any thing in life!

First know your enemy and then differ and differ with dignity not with abuse, be on footstepsof Ram do,nt try to be Rawan!

Re: # 231 Three fundamental basics there is only one God, life after death and belief in fianlity of Prophet Muhamamd peace be upon him makes one Muslim.As to matetrsof heart Allah knows betterand it si not like Hinduism if you worship onebillion gods you are alsoHindu and even if you are atheist even then you are Hindu.

Re: # 230 Well done very nice response,you are a great social scientists that seeing a sub-culture and people living away from theri own societies trying to preserve theri own persoanl understanding of religion and ideas as a substitute to over 1.2 billion Muslims in world .

Very ncie observation!


Read the interact and asnwer the questions and Australia and UK are not land of majority Muslims.

grow up man!

Re: # 235
well said but you yourself also moving on the same path mere under the arrogance of being different and worshipping religion of science as a new God? Iws,nt it so?

Re: # 238 Dear allegiance of a Muslim is to ideas not to forefathers or to customs!

#236 Posted by dost_mittar,

Yeah he had said hindus were 'Dharti Dharmis'.

“Hindu is attached to the land while the Muslim is attached to his religion�

Muslim is attached to a “foreign religion�… that makes him less attached to the land, culture and customs….of his forefathers..

This dual allegiance .. make leaves a muslim little confused…

And when a murtid punk like akcheema is asked how come he's willing to believe Abraham sacrificed his sons because the scriptures say so, but at the same time not willing to believe he was 90+ because the same scriptures say so - then start googling for something to avoid having to answer or write some inane stuff about personal eating habits.

eklavya#186:

"This kind of irrational attachment to land is nothing but the product of a particular way of thinking"

Our friend echoboom once said that the Hindu is attached to the land while the Muslim is attached to his religion. I think that he was on to something.

I haven't read the interact on Bhera (it's too long) but can relate to the feelings expressed there. Many chowkies will recall my own series of my nostalgic visit to my place of birth.

Bhera, apparently, did not have a very good repuation in the surrounding districts on Punjab. My mother used to quote an old saying,

Pind bhera tay miyani, hatth laguni tay jaani
(you only know how dangerous bhera people are once you come in close contact with them)
But that did not prevent my mother from getting her daughters-in-law from a Bhera background; their womenfolk are feisty but also quite beautiful.

I FOUND THIS ON THE NET THAT APTLY AND SUCCINTLY ELABORATES ON WHAT SOME OF THE CONTRIBUTERS HAVE BASICALLY PROVEN TO ME TO BE TRUE!! Enjoy! I did!


Dear brothers and sisters in islam:

We live in kuffar country and daily we have to face the infidels who criticize islam and our prophet, and who want to debate us. In an Islamic country if some one did that all we have to do is to announce loudly what he said and the rest is taken care of by an angry mob. The critic is lynched in no time. End of the story. However here we don't have that luxury as yet. Inshallah in forseeble future after we grow by conversions of morons and criminals in prisons, legal and illegal immigration and procreation we will,inshallah, become a majority and will not have to face this problem on daily basis. However, for the time being following is an approach all muslim brothers and sisters can use when faced with such a pest. Jazakallah Khair. Inshallah the vermin will steer clear of you in future.


1. A popular question is "why islam calls for death of Islamic critics and apostates". Insist that their info is false. Quote aya "to you your religion and to me my religion".

2. To answer "Islam spread with sword", say that it is a big lie spread by the jews and hindus and that quran clearly says " there is no compulsion in religion".

3. If some one quotes violent ayas from Koran, accuse him of quoting ayas in bits and pieces and cherry picking .

4. If he then quotes full ayas and ayas before and after, than insist that the translation is wrong.

5. If he brings ten different translations than say correct meanings can be understood only by reading Quran in Arabic.

6. If he happens to be well versed in Arabic language than insist that those ayas don't mean what they appear to mean as they have allegorical meanings.

7. If he is adamant, than say you cannot understand those ayas and it's context without reading hadith and sira.

8.. If he shows up with the hadiths and siras in hand and quotes the context of the violent ayas by referring to hadiths of prophet's rapes, robberies , assassinations and genocides then insist that "all hadiths and siras are heresay and are false, and only truth is in quran.

9. If he says Quran is a man made document and wants proof of it's divinity then refer to the sciences in Quran and the book written by Dr. Bucaile confirming the sciences in our holy book. You can also quote that Mahatama Gandhi read Quran daily and also spoke highly of it.

10. If he says that Bucaile was on Saudi payroll and that nor he nor Gandhi ever changed their religions and that Bucaile was challenged and proven wrong by many experts then challenge him to ask his experts to debate islamists like Zakir Naik..

11. If the pests still hangs around then change the topic and find faults in other religions and their books.

12. If he continues on then use personal attacks and insult him by calling him a jewish a- hole , a Chinese pig or a hindu dog .

13. If that does not frustrate him, then ask him how much he is being paid by jews to throw dirt on Al Islam.

14. If he still does not stop then run for his mother and sister and use very filthy language.

15. If he is very stubborn and wants to continue, then curse him like "Burn in hell, you will repent on last day, Allah will get you in your grave" etc

16. When all of the above has failed, threaten him with bodily harm and end the debate by drum beating and announcing that you won the debate hands down because Koran is the word of allah.

17. If possible anounce about this debate in an islamist website and that you had won it handily. Such announcements do wonders for the iman of muslim website readers and for dawah operations in prisons to convince low IQ prisoners of the truth of Al Islam.

A better article by Asghar Ali Engineer- All Pakis must read this.

http://www.indianmuslims.info/articles/asghar_ali_engineer/articles/suf ism_its_origin_and_impact_on_indian_islam.html

#218 Posted by Eklavya,

You can be used happily, and become a Jihadi (most ignorant people, my chowk experience tells me, tend to be the biggest and 'blindest' jihadis, in their own silly, but very effective, ways :)).

Our good friend tahmed32 is the biggest and the most tirelessly committed Jihadi I've ever seen.

But he would never know how it's possible, nor can anyone explain the 'how' to him. (-;

Sufis are "better" muslims than the so called sarkari Ulemas.

Sufis' wali is superior to prophet anyway- not to speak about that pedophile charlatan claiming to be a prophet!!

Re: # 228

Hey mullahji,

Who decides who is a muslim or not? You mullahji??

Re: # 223

Really!! Is that all it said; wonderful!

Distort the truth and cherry pick all you like; it also says something about beating up wives if they are disobedient, it also allows polygamy (for men only though + whatever "one's right hand gets"), half of the inheritence and value on testimony for women, Jihad/Qitaal against the non-believers................................................................... ............................do you really want me to go on.

I have already said believe in fairies all you like; just keep that to yourself and don't expect someone else to just go along on YOUR hunch.

It is not I who needs to read it like a man not a parrot mate. The only reason more than 95% of any given religions' adherents think that is THE ONLY WAY is because it is what they learnt from their families/societies/parents/teachers. There is only a very small minority, in the greater scheme of things, that would convert, in one direction or another. People delude themselves in thinking that they have really given it a "free-thought", when they revert back to the faith of their immediate ancestors; in one shape or another.

The reason Sufism is becoming popular, especially amongst Muslims in the west, is that it is more palatable and keeps that continuity going.

Islam can only survive as "Deen-e-Ghalib"; that is exactly why we are discussing it now. That is how it has survived through the centuries. It was never a "personal" belief as we use that term these days. These are the dilemmas the Muslim diaspora, especially in the west, seems to be facing. Everyone one talks to would say,"this is not my Islam" or "my Islam doesn't teach this", or "I am a muslim but don't think like that". It goes on forever.

By the way, when I first wrote on this site, I did so with a series of questions. I don't remember any one addressing those. (#49)

Re # 222

First cousin marriages are practised by more than 80% of the Lebanese Muslim community residing in Australia. They are the largest Lebanes community outside the country. I have also been related similar statistics by Egyptians and Somalis living in the UK.

tahmed#217:

We have been around this mulberry bush before, haven't we? Urstruly, naqshbandi, sattar, massadi, zeemax, hamidm, you (and yours truly, although that may not count) have all read the quran and have come away with a different understanding of its core message. Now, that won't be a problem, if one were to accept an authoritative interpretation of the core message; but here we are up against a huge problem, as according to you, Islam does not allow any intermediaries and we cannot depend upon the interpretation of those claiming to be the ulema of Islam. Therefore, OBL's interpretation of the Quranic message is as valid as that of the Mufti of Al Azhar or of Massadi or your own.

"human experience the only source of morality etc...."

That clarifies the problem. You just don't, even remotely, think like a Muslim :(

Re: # 225

"Sufi is for self and Prophet peace be upon him and his true follower Ulema are for humanity. "

That is the biggest scandal of humanity- every religious person wants to save other souls - and never doubting if his own karmas would save him or not!!
Mohammad's karma would have got him any way - there is no doubt about the "narak" he is in even now..he is not in the jail as an under-trial waiting for Qayamat.....he is now suffering and he is making all other momeens suffer with him by influencing them to do all sorts of evil things in the name of Islam.

Re: # 222

"Furhter more why Indians are bent upon always to check things on the bases of theri own terms and consdier themselves the msot educated ones on the surface of earth from times immemorial?"

Mahfari Saheb ,

This steroetype is a prejudice you have been taught in you schools. This official 'untruth' makes to completely unperceptive to what I am talking about as an idolator.
I have said - I REPAEAT- the formless cannot be even talked about . but experienced (Prokshanubhuti) in silence.
I do not have claim to 'truth' because I cannot even speak about the 'truth'.

Let us hope you and other Pakistanis can understand this without filtering it through the Islamic blinkers and prejudices laid by the Pak Studies.

Re: # 200 Bitterladdu

Abdur Rashid Gangohi says

that on Mairaj Prophet peace be upon him went and came back
By GOd if i had gone would have not come back


Sufi is for self and Prophet peace be upon him and his true follower Ulema are for humanity.

Come out of mentality of frog of a well and learn to accept vastness of an ocean and if can not accept this at least grow up and respect others for your own respect. Your Karma may be bitter and frustrated , but it is not for others always!

Re: # 197 read my interact please.

#219 akcheema: sit down and catch your breath. close your eyes..think of a tropical beach, with palm trees gently waving in the wind...breathe in. hold..hold...breathe out..aaaaaahhhhhh!!

now where were we..oh yes. the core message. no i am not making it up - if the Quran says that "those who believe in God and the Judgement Day and do good they have nothing to fear" then I believe that.

And where does the Quran tell you to have a theocratic state? does the Quran talk about the protocol for prophetic succession? does it say anywhere that if black smoke comes out the mullahs are still figuring out the next prophet, and if white smoke comes out the mullahs have it figured out? so never let me see you rant again about this theocratic state or mullah rule!! go back and read the Quran like a man, not like a parrot. Then come talk to me!

Re: # 192ithas been very interesting debates except some below the belt attacks.

I have some different poitn of views,to share with you all, genetics is present and modern knowledge of twentieth century and it tells that gene pool is reduced when cousin marriages are celeberated. But i read an intersting thing in Al-Ghazzali's Tehzeeb Ahyaal Alum in Chapter on MArriage and conditions for marriage that avoid mariages between cousins and it is a hadith albeit zaeef( zaeef menas chain was missing and content needs to be checked on the bases of rationality)... so which scientific knowledeg developed this idea of not marrying cousins soem 1400 years ago? It deos not matter whther it was practiced 100 % or not but except Punjab it is practiced that Muslims avoid cousin marriages !

Furhter more why Indians are bent upon always to check things on the bases of theri own terms and consdier themselves the msot educated ones on the surface of earth from times immemorial?

As to use of technical terms by Laddu how will we adjsut the sayings of 14th century Saints of Spain and many saints of India that feeling lost in Ultimate reality is the first stage of the lowest level of spiritual journey and there are furhter many many stages of thsi journey?

As to circular thinking I rememebr saying of imam Jafer Sadiq Ra that Allah created reason first of all and shah Wali Alalh that without reason and Hikmat all laws on the name of religion are farce and islamic Shariah's basic thrust on rational and reason instead of blind following is stressed so much , but here it is treated as a blind belief?how to reconcilethis with historical facts and truths?

As to evolution's beauty , how can we determine that genetic mutation is by chance and it is not directed or determined by certain proportion of chemicals and eleemnts?

I wait answers of these points then we can move further. I hope to get answers not confusion and abuses!

I am repeating htis for you, I thought friends will be able to read this and connect with theri debate , but it has not happened so I am making it specically addressed now to writer of this interact.

Re: # 218

"Hopefully, I did not explain the basic parameters of Islamic 'freedom and the limit' too offensively. That was probably as gentle as one gets. :("
Hey, your Islamist veiled threats do not scare most of us. Try something like wearing a suicide belt........

Re: # 218

"..but in real life, your friends, your family, your acquaintances, or just the stranger on the street MUST be able to put a strict limit on your ability to condemn/Question the Quran/Prophet Muhammad."

Hey, I object to this fascist remark. As an idolator whose forefathers were murdered brutally by Mohammad and his followers since ages I STRONGLY object to some momeen like Kaale Khan trying to supress my voice and objection.
I have a perfectly valid reason to call for the trial of this rascal and his followers for brutal genocide of my idolator forefathers in Arabia as well as Indian subcontinent.

Re: # 217

If you are asking me to "accept" your version of the "core message", then the answer is a big NO!! That goes against the basic concept of freedom of speech. It may be all very well having anonymised philosophical discussions online, reality on the ground is very different!

Now, for the purpose of a constitutiona and legal code, I DONOT accept any other authority than the collective conscience of the human race. Of course there will be some geographical variations in this but the "core message" is a democratic, liberal and accommodating system that is based on the principles of social justice. You cannot find that when a bunch a theocrats are in charge; take the example of Iran; yeah yeah,.. they are shiites and the sunnis are much better!! or are they. Which Islam would you impose on the other and how would you define this "core"? By what standards would you cherry pick the Quranic Ayas that don't appeal to you but might to someone else?

If something is from god/allah etc., it has to be impeccable. There is no room for ambiguity here; it seems this book (Koran) does not meet these criteria. Now people are talking about "core messages: here. I repeat myself: Who would define this core? You, Zeemax, Eklavya?

This was about Sufism but seems to be turning into a discussion in theology. The BEAUTY of man-made laws is exactly that; they can be changed when the situation is right. Divine law is unchangeable, and as I gather from Eklavya's writings, un-challengeable as well.

By the way, in one's personal life, if one wants to believe in a sky fairy because it gives one some comfort, or present it with ritualistic animal sacrifices, I have already agreed with that in principle. Just don't expect people with abilities to analyse and think rationally to just swallow it on your hunch that it might be true!

Problem with Islam is it has always, either had a majority culture or it was the domineering force through history. With the colonial empires (which was no better or worse that what the muslims did before that), they were subjugated in abig way. There is a lot of inferiority complex which often expresses itself as delusions of grandeur. The reason people won't stop ranting about "Glorious Muslim Spain" is that it gives them an ego boost and a sense of self-worth; the world today has practically nothing useful with a muslim name attached to it; the only thing they can do is blow themselves up to "assert" domination. Its sour grapes!! nothing else.

I hope this answers your query.

Re # 218

I am not even sure what to make of this huge collection of words; what are you trying to say? Is it some sort of a code? Why don't we invite Mohammed Asad to de-code it! He apparently did a good job with the Koran!

Eklavya, I have never been rude/angry to you so I don't know how you got that impression. Where in my previous writings did I express the wish to be part of this cult?! You seem to have confused the concept of cultural solidarity with belief and I have already addressed that before.

Your definition of a muslim is very broad and has never been the "standard definition" in the muslim world throughout history. Are Ahmedis, Ismailis, Bahaais muslim as well?

zee, I refuse nothing from you except that which cannot be done for whatever reasons for a time being :)

---------

Wasn't sure if too many people were ready to grapple with the concept of Islam's water carriers and flag bearers. Just too many good people will refuse to listen :(

I will adopt a simpler tack, first. It doesn't do full justice, but might get the sense across.

---------------

akcheema ji, nothing is gained by getting upset. These are the issues over which reasonable people can easily approach some agreement, if they look at all facts.

The beauty and the power (should use quotes for those words because some people will not see the beauty or the power) of Islam lies in the enormous freedom it provides within.

ALL it asks is that

(1) you call yourself a Muslim (does not matter what sort), at least for 'public' purposes. You should add to the 'total numbers' - that is the most important, in fact the ONLY thing that counts, if you also

(2) do not (or are not allowed to) publicly condemn/abuse the Quran (Prophet Muhammad too, but for now, let's not get into that).

It may be 'tolerable' to hide behind the Internet but in real life, your friends, your family, your acquaintances, or just the stranger on the street MUST be able to put a strict limit on your ability to condemn/Question the Quran/Prophet Muhammad.

So long as you do that, Islam has NO problem with you. You can say or do anything you want (hopefully within legal limits if those legal limits do not contradict divine injunctions).

--------------

Now comes the most interesting part. You might THINK you got away with taquiyya giri by simply calling yourself a Muslim, and keeping quiet (even if that silence is forced upon you) about the Quran/Propeht Muhammad.

But no! Once you do those two things, Islam has totally got your number!! Over the long-term you and your taquiyya giri mean nothing, other than just a resource for Islam. :)

You can be used happily, and become a Jihadi (most ignorant people, my chowk experience tells me, tend to be the biggest and 'blindest' jihadis, in their own silly, but very effective, ways :)).

or you can be used kicking and crying about it. Islam will use you and will spit you out as worthless cud. :)

In every case, like it or not, so long as you have the name, you will carry the flag, and nothing else.

-------------

Hopefully, I did not explain the basic parameters of Islamic 'freedom and the limit' too offensively. That was probably as gentle as one gets. :(

#216 i am not sure what it is that one believes "allegorically". I did not write about any allegories - what i am stressing is to focus on the core message - e.g. hanging people for blasphemy is obviously wrong. so those who hang people for blasphemy, or support such a practice, are violating the Quran. its all quite simple. the bells and whistles are supersitions, not islam. the below-mentioned core message is islam.

Re: # 215

If you wnat to have this whole religious thing and believe/interpret allegorically, that is fine. That is exactly what I am talking about. All I am saying is that no one should be able to force this on others via legal codes etc. Problem with our society is that small minded individuals have been making laws, hanging people for blasphemy and related offences, subjugating women and the like..the list is endless.. This is what we are fighting not some 90 year old delinquent's personal affairs! that historically speaking, probably never existed in the first place.

Re # 214

I mentioned my eating habits because of your rant about me cooking animals in the pot for my dinner! I think I have answered your questions more than satisfactorily.

Just as I thought; Pride without substance! what a tragedy!

akcheema: I patiently await your thoughts on my response to the question you posed. Or are you looking only for straw men like ibrahim uncle to pick on?

Re: "The answer to your cooking animals in pots for my dinner; I am a committed vegetarian."

Who the eff is talking about your eating habits here? Not me.

If you can't defend your statements, go jump in a lake or whichever woodwork you crawled out from!

... that's exactly what I meant by seeking confirmation and nothing else. Thanks for proving me right!

#211 Posted by akcheema,

How do you know he was 90? Because the Bible said so!

So you're willing to believe Abraham sacrificed his sons because the scriptures say so, but not willing to believe he was 90+ because the same scriptures say so?

Now you're really cornered. Run for help from the head-murtid hamidm or your other admirer SR. You're too green my friend.

Re # 210

Blah...Blah...Blah..Blah

How do you know he was 90? Because the Bible said so! That is what I mean about your rhetoric mate!

The answer to your cooking animals in pots for my dinner; I am a committed vegetarian.

Re # 209

One is not a lowly anything Eklavya; I came across this from Dan Baker's book, "loosing faith in faith": Enjoy!

"You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil—you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself".
–Dan Barker, from his book, Losing Faith in Faith

akcheema,

People like you take your cue from the hindoo monkeys, get heartened by the western Islamophobes, and then set off happily in the direction of "How to become a Murtid-101" and "Islam Bashing for Dummies".

Get a life. What you're looking for is confirmation of your convictions courtesy Ali Sina, and not the essence of religion. That's all that your auqaat is.

Take your #192. You say " ... off he goes with his son to sacrifice him to his master ... "

Abey, why did you not contemplate on the part (as the Genesis story goes) in how he got those sons in the first place in his 90s? Did you miss that part? Was it really Abraham's son he was willing to sacrifice? Or was it a Gift from God which when asked to return, he was willing to do?

But you won't go that far because that's going beyond the Murtid-101 for dummies.

Next you say:

"... poor, unsuspecting animals are sacrificed each year on "Eid-ul-Adha" in commemoration of this deplorable fairytale."

Abey! You poor unsuspecting animal worshipper, if you're willing to sacrifice those poor unsuspecting creatures for your cooking pot everyday, what's your problem with others sacrificing them for commemoration of some event they hold sacred?

But I must give you credit for heartening and encouraging the other Murtids on this site, that their quest has not been in vain and they do get new recruits everyday!

But it is disappointing to note that Kaal Chakra has declined my request to explain to you who the water-carriers and the flag-bearers are, who will grudgingly trudge along battered and bruised and kicking and screaming, and be counted amongst the numbers, and provide essential services to the Vanguard, but will never leave the fold of Islam and join anything else.

Above, my dear, is the Caravan which is Islam. And above, is who you are.

nahi, akcheema bhai, just a lowly unbeliever, trying to understand faith exactly as it is, nothing added, nothing removed.

hamidm: the core message of islam puts everything else in perspective. last eid i said that the killing of a poor animals as a short-cut to getting brownie points plus a hearty dinner could hardly be called a "sacrifice". so of course this killing of animals as a sign of "piety" is exactly the way in which rituals are used to detract from the core message of the Quran.

Muslims take the easy way out with these rituals - the hardest thing to do is to do the right thing. Thus - it took a brave Chief Justice without any pretensions to piety to do the right thing and stand up to a dictator's lawless and oppressive behavior. It took Lawyers, Journalists and Human Rights Activists - all derided as "secular" by the mullah diesels - to do the right thing and serve as the thin red line in this struggle. Only then did the politicos of all shapes and form (religious, ex-mard-e-momin, or the merely ex-corrupt) join in.

Re: # 206

Not that it is any of my business, are you sure you are not a muslim? Come into the fold brother! Jazakallah! Alham-u-lillah! ...etc...etc..Naara-e-Takbeer!...

just for clarity/accuracy, one is asked to constantly question (it is not blind faith after all), but the questioning must only be to ultimately affirm, using whatever reasoning necessary.

laddu, please consider: both akcheema and I understand the concept of reverse taquiyya.

This is what akcheema wrote:

"Sufis were essentially atheists hiding behind the veil of pantheism!"

And the following were a few words I added:

"akcheema, you are right in that Sufism is only a means. But as a means it is put to many more uses than that.

Non-Muslims who are caught within Muslim lands or Muslim surroundings use Sufism to pass off as Muslims. Muslim lay people who for whatever reasons find themselves among non-Muslims and don't wish to seem like Muslims use sufism. Muslim scholars and committed people use sufism to ease non-Muslims' interface and interaction with Islam. Lazy people and people lacking discipline use it naturally as a means of escape."

---------

But you may be underestimating the power of Islam if you believe that Muslims are fooled/tricked like Hindus are. Hindus and Muslims approach sufis and sufism completely, radically differently. For any Muslim, the Quran and Muhammad come first. You question those, and sufism will become indistinguishable, for Islam and for any Muslim, from total goofism.

------------

akcheema, it's possible he was using reverse taquiyya on Muslims. :)

In which case, he will be, should be, abandoned by Muslims over time. But if he was smart, he would have left no trace of his apostasy.

Akcheema, my understanding is that a believer/Muslim can say ANYTHING, ANYTHING AT ALL he or she wants at any time, so long as he does not, at least publicly, denounce the Quran and Prophet Muhammad. One cannot QUESTION those basics, at least not the Quran, and be known as a Muslim.

That's like a person wanting to be alive without breathing.

Re: # 198

Hi Eklavya,

Since we are on Bulleh Shah, I won't go any further.

Have you read:

Ilmon bus kareen o yaar, Ikko alif teray darkar; and

Ik nuktay wich gal mukdi eh

Re: # 201

tahmed,

... would you mind explaining that again !? .... are yiou saying that we have been killing all these sheep and goats and camels for 'entertainment' ?........ i am confused - do you read the koran for its 'entertainment value'? ..... are you equating it to the national enquirer .....

....... tahmed, you are incorrigible! ... why do you have to look for excuses to explain the obviously absurd ?

BTW, Some Sufis believe that the Wali is better than the Prophet, as ibn 'Arabi has stated, "The grade of the prophet-hood is in a Barzakh (a border area), just above the Messenger and below the Wali."

akcheema #192 welcome to chowk and interesting points you make. I think it is great that you are using your own common sense in questioning religion rather than merely repeating some dogma. This approach causes you to rightly question the story of Abaraham. And instead of applauding it as an example of obedience to God (as millions of muslims do every week in mosques when the story is related, no doubt), you ask what kind of a nut would proceed to kill his son because he thought he heard God telling him to do so.

Here is my take on this: The Quran differs from the Bible in that it emphasises certain concepts, with references to stories of the prophets having secondary place as illustrations.

The concept it emphasizes is individual responsibility before God to distinguish between right and wrong and to do the right thing. End of story. Everything else is bells and whistles that you can read for entertainment value, but has very little actionable material in it.

And this concept is at the heart of character building in a totally secular sense too - i.e. individuals take responsibility for their actions, rather than whining and finding excuses (as muslims do in spades when listing grievances against muslims but conveniently forgetting mischief done by muslims on others!! and of course always looking for grievances, rather than for a better future for all!). In this sense, Islam becomes a simple, positive force for good and for character building.

Sufis indeed were correct in asserting their superiority to Mohammad -

Some Sufis claim that the Messenger neither reached their status, nor did he acquire the knowledge that the Sufis have acquired, as Al-Bustami has stated, "We went into a sea which the Prophets could only reach its shores!"

Mohammad only gained some powers out of sadhanas in hira cave - and recall these sadhanas were part of Jhaliya ritual called Tahannuth which is sadhana in which after praying in seclusion, the pagans used to would walk around the Ka’aba seven times.

Sufis practiced more advanced sadhanas including the whirling-sadhana that makes one ego less and lose sense of I-ness about which Mohammad probably had no idea since he got engrossed in collecting booties for himself after his flight from mecca.

Re: # 198

Sufis paid lip service to Mohammad and Quran to avoid getting lynched and stoned and practiced reverse-taquiyya. The 'mystical' poetry is precisely this confounding strategy. The veil of "meem" is a simple example of that kufr that actually aims at showing the way to Allah by taking the veil of "meem" from Mohammad.
See, this revrse-taquiyya does confound you but it make perfect sense to apostates, free-thinkers and idolators.

And let me quote another kufr from Sarmad -

" Sarmad ! speak not of the Kaaba and of the temple.
In the valley of doubt do not wander like the strayed wayfarer.
Go and learn from Satan(*6) how to worship.
Accept one qebla and do not bow before every stranger."

laddu, please do us a practical favor. See if you can find ONE Muslim "sufi" who is willing to abandon Mohammad and the Quran (or any part of it) and focus exclusively on Allah, as you suggest.
----------

What you are preaching is nothing but very old-fashioned Hindusim. It has not a breath of Islam in it. No reasonable Muslim - sufi or not - can accept anything you say.

Here is one excerpt from the British study on first cousin marriages.


Dr Peter Corry, Consultant Paediatrician at Bradford Royal Infirmary, says his hospital sees so many recessive genetic illnesses that it has become a centre of excellence for the treatment of some of them.



Dr Corry tells the programme they have identified about 140 different autosomal recessive disorders among local children. He estimates that a typical district would see 20 to 30.



Birmingham Primary Care Trust estimates that one in ten of all children born to first cousin marriages in Birmingham's large Pakistani community either dies in infancy or goes on to suffer serious disability as a result of recessive genetic disorders.



Recessive genetic illness is one of the main reasons for admission to the city's children's hospital.



But, because cousin marriage has such a long history, raising these risks is sometimes interpreted as a challenge to the community's culture.



The variant genes that cause recessive genetic illnesses tend to be very rare.



In the general population the likelihood of a couple having the same variant gene is a hundred to one.



In cousin marriages, if one partner has a variant gene the risk that the other has it too is far higher – more like one in eight.

Source: Professor Bernadette Modell, the chair of medical genetics at the Royal Free Hospital and UCL Medical School.


Mr Zeemax: I would still want you to reply to # 192 about morality and its origins where I have quoted Biblical and subsequently Islamic traditions. And this is all just "In the beginning...." as it said in "Genesis"; I haven't even touched your own version of this patriarchial Abrahamic morality.

Morality, wherever it comes from, IT DOES NOT COME FROM RELIGION.

Also, the entry # 152 went without a reply as well; just saying you have "refuted" something doesn'y get you out of it matey!! Can you please comment on "Einsteinian religion" (since you seem to understand his mind), in the light of the quotes I have included. I can provide you with detailed refrences as well if so so desire. Same goes for Karen Armstrong and Al-Razi.

Re: # 195

"It had to be a perfect human being whose life, actions, and words could be Allah's message instantiated."

Yes, indeed "perfect" bandit, "perfect" rapist , "perfect" thief, "perfect" plagiarist, "perfect" charlatan!! All that Mohammad was indeed "perfect". I tend to agree with you Kaale Khan Mian!

akcheema, it seems reasonable to say that finally and for the final time, through Mohammad, human beings came to know how Allah wanted human beings to live.

Mohammad's place is centrally important because for such an important task - defining eons -, Allah could not have picked any old man or woman. It had to be a perfect human being whose life, actions, and words could be Allah's message instantiated.

I think, that is the sense in which Naqsh means that without Mohammad no one would have known Allah. Without Mohammad, Allah would have had to find/create someone else just as perfect - essentially the same person, doing and saying the same things - so the name would have been irrelevant.

Re # 191; Naqshbandi

"If it were not for him, no one would ever have known Allah, Almighty and Exalted. Never would the fabric of the universe have been woven into existence as it has been woven. Therefore the pen cannot describe the most perfect of the Perfect human beings, the Master of Masters, the King of Kings, the Sultan of Sultans of the Divine Presence."

So it WAS Mohammed who "discovered Allah" otherwise "no one would ever have known Allah, Almighty and Exalted".

Thanks for clearing that up.

NEED I SAY MORE!!!!

I had never been on "chowk" before the last couple of days, in fact I didn't even know about it. What got me intrigued is a simple search. The reason for that search is this:

We see evidence of dissent and "free-thinking" in the western world day in day out. The first arguments Muslims have always used is "the golden age" of Spain etc. I thought I might look in and investigate this "glorious period of human history". I was surprised! There has been dissent in the Muslim world all along; it has been openly expressed by the likes of Ibn-e-Rawandi and Al-Razi etc (Ihave included quotes from Al-Razi in #152), and more covertly by ascetics and sufis in latter times; especially in the Indian sub-continent. The examples are too many to mention here. Majority of the people we are supposed to be proud of (as achievements of enlightened muslims), have had "fatwas" against them by the then authorities. Because majority of them also happenend to be good scientists/physicians etc., the "authorities" of the time were forced to put up with them as they served an important purpose. Bu Ali Sina was considered an apostate (he was Ismaili, by the way, is that still a sect of Islam or have we sorted it out like the Ahmadis!!) by the mullas of the times. I could go on...the list is endless.

Now if we were to take the above examples, including Bulleh Shah and the like, these "proud of my past" individuals are not going to have anything left to be proud off!

This article on Bulleh Shah intrigued me and here we are. The reason I am able to write detailed replies so quickly is that the so-called rebuttals are exactly the same as they have always been! The same unanswered question (by religion) that I had as a child, remain unanswered! Just repeating the same childish arguments (like a demented parrot - nodding one's head back and forth - what an image!!) about "some god must have done it" are the only explannation the virtuous "blind-faithers" can produce. Nothing original, nothing with substance; after all "pride without substance" is the hallmark of us Pakistanis (within and especially outside the Islamic Republic).

Re#173 and a few others

Zeemax

You haven't rebutted anything I said, nothing that I could read here anyway. You seem to be going around in circles with your rhetoric. If you had read my replies in 152/153, you would not have been so smug. I also laid down the limitations of current scientific knowledge, BUT I also stated that gaps in knowledge cannot be filled with fairytales.

If you are so proponent of the creation of Adam ex-nihilo, are you suggesting that Adam's earlier offsprings procreated with each other, to elaborate, brothers sleeping with sisters, "so you may understand"; its a false argument.

Coming to your logic, if it can be called that, how do you define religion? Before we were talking about Islam and Sufism etc. Why are you taking ownership for the term "religion". Which religion anyway? They are far from being unanimous in moral issues. According to the Old Testament, God's (or Yahweh or Allah - he can't stick with one name can he?!) so called chosen one Lot (i.e., "Hazrat Loot Alah-is-salam" to you) offers his daughters to a lynch mob so his "guests" (god's angels) could be spared the humiliation of being raped by the "frustrated sodomites". What kind of a sick man would do that. Earlier in the same myth he manages to impregnate his daughters as, being sexually frustrated for not having any men around, they decide to get him drunk and "lay with him" as the good book puts it. Parts of the stories of Lot and his odd tribe have permeated into Islamic folklore, obviously the details haven't all come from the Koran.

Abraham and his son Isaac (Ismail in Muslim mythology) had this "trusting" relationship with god that he appears in his dreams a couple of times and off he goes with his son to sacrifice him to his master and (?)friend. Now you tell me "wise guy"!, would you sacrifise your child, at the age of 8/9 in some god's name if he happens to appear repeatedly in your dreams. Its you, not I, who started this circular reasoning. I think the sensible course to take would be to seek professional help. Now you can't get out of this one as millions of poor, unsuspecting animals are sacrifised each year on "Eid-ul-Adha" in commemmoration of this deplorable fairytale. And exactly what moral lessons can one derive from it, please elaborate; I am waiting intently!

The Messenger of God,
Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah

"How can people in this world grasp his reality?
They, who are asleep and pleased by dreams from him.
How beautiful what has been said about his reality!
Your light is everything and everything else is particles.
O Prophet, your soldiers in every time are your Companions!"

Imam Busayri, al-Burda.



The Shaykhs of the Naqshbandi Order are known as the Golden Chain because of their connection to the highest, most perfect human being, Muhammad , the First to be created, the First to be mentioned, the First to be honored.

When Allah ordered the Pen to write, it asked, "What shall I write?" and Allah said, "Write 'La Ilaha Ill-Allah.'" The Pen wrote "La Ilaha Ill-Allah" for seventy-thousand of Allah's years and then it stopped. One of Allah's days is equal to one thousand of our years. Then Allah ordered it to write again, and the Pen asked, "What shall I write?" and Allah answered, "Write Muhammadun Rasul-Allah." And the Pen said, "O Allah, who is this Muhammad that You have put Your Name next to his name?" Allah said, "You must know that if it were not for Muhammad I would not have created anything in Creation." So the Pen wrote Muhammadun Rasul-Allah for another seventy-thousand years.

When did Allah order the Pen to Write? When did the Pen Write? When did that writing of "La ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasul-Allah" occur? No one knows. The mention of the name of the Prophet by Allah, Almighty and Exalted, is something which happened before the creation of anything, and its reality occurred in pre-Eternity. That is the reason the Prophet mentioned, "kuntu Nabiyyan wa adamu bayni-l-ma'i wa-t-tin" - "I was a Prophet when Adam was between water and clay."

He is the Perfect Human Being. He is the Seal of all prophets and messengers. What can a weak servant say in order to honor the Master of Messengers? If it were not for him, no one would ever have known Allah, Almighty and Exalted. Never would the fabric of the universe have been woven into existence as it has been woven. Therefore the pen cannot describe the most perfect of the Perfect human beings, the Master of Masters, the King of Kings, the Sultan of Sultans of the Divine Presence.

He is the Heart of the Divine Presence. He is the Heart of the Unique Essence. He is the Sign for Oneness and the Sign of Oneness. He is known as the Secret of All Secrets. He is the only one addressed by Allah Almighty and Exalted, because he is the only one considered Responsible in the Presence of Allah who said, "Were it not for him I would not have created any of My creation." All of the creation was given to the Prophet as a divine gesture of honor from Allah, Almighty and Exalted. Therefore the Prophet is responsible for that creation which is his honor and his Trust. For that reason he is the only one to be addressed in the Divine Presence.

The singular status of the Prophet is the heart and the Essence of the phrase of tawheed [La ilaha ill-Allah Muhammadun Rasul-Allah] and the foundation of Sufism. The Prophet is the "one soul" mentioned in the Qur'anic verse, "[O Mankind] Your creation and your resurrection is in no wise but as an individual soul" [31:28]. It is also the Prophet who is the "single life" represented in the verse, "If anyone slew a person... it would be as if he slew the whole people: And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people." [5:32]

The Prophet , moreover, referred to his responsibility in the hadith: a`malakum tu`radu `alayya kulla yawm, "All your actions are shown to me every day. If they are good, I pray for you; if they are bad, I ask Allah's forgiveness for you." That means that the Prophet is the one who is responsible towards God for his Community. That is why, as we said, he is "the only to be spoken to." It is the meaning of Intercession. Allah refers to this intercession in the verse, "If they had only, when they were unjust to themselves, come unto thee and asked Allah's forgiveness, and the Messenger had asked forgiveness for them, they would have found Allah indeed Oft-Returning, Most Merciful" [4:64].

His honorable biography and his blessed speeches and actions can never be encompassed in a book. But we can say that he is Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul Muttalib ibn Hashim and that his lineage goes back to Ibrahim . He was born in Makkah al-Mukarrama on a Monday, the 12th of Rabi`ul Awwal, 570 CE, in the Year of the Elephant. His mother, Sayyida Amina, when she gave birth to him, saw a light coming from her that turned all darkness into light as far as Persia. When he was born, the first thing he did after coming from his mother's womb was to fall into prostration. His father died before he was born. He was nursed by Thuayba and then by Halima as-Sa`diyya, with whom he stayed for four years.

While returning with him from a visit to his uncles in Madinat al-Munawwara (at that time Yathrib), his mother fell sick and died. He was six years old. His grandfather raised him for two years, until he also died. Orphaned three times, he went to live with his uncle, Abu Talib. Allah Almighty and Exalted ordered the Angel of the Trumpet, Israfil to accompany him at all times until the age of eleven years. Then Allah ordered Jibril to accompany him and to look after him and to keep him in his safekeeping, and to send to his heart heavenly and spiritual Powers.

He traveled with his uncle to Sham (Damascus). On their way they passed by Basra where a monk named Buhaira, living in a monastery nearby, told his uncle, "Take him back, it will be safer for him." At that time he was twelve years old. Years later he traveled again to Sham with Maysara, to trade on behalf of the Lady Khadija . They were very successful. Maysara told Khadija about his miraculous powers and his business acumen and she became interested in him. She proposed marriage and he accepted her offer. He married her when he was 25 years of age and she was forty.

He was known throughout his tribe as as-Sadiq al-Amin, the Truthful and Trustworthy One. When he was 35 years of age, the Quraish Tribe was renovating the House of Allah, the Ka'aba. They disputed among themselves as to who should put the sacred Black Stone (hajaru-l-aswad) in its place. They finally came to an agreement that the most trustworthy person should replace it, and that person was the Prophet .

At that time inspirations and revelations were coming to his heart. He was always in a state of spiritual vision and insight, but he was not authorized to speak about it. He preferred to be alone and used a cave in a mountain called al-Hira for contemplation and meditation. He sought seclusion as the means to reach the Divine Presence of Allah Almighty and Exalted.

He avoided all kinds of attachment, even with his family. He was always in meditation and contemplation, afloat on the Ocean of the Dhikr of the Heart. He disconnected himself completely from everything, until there appeared to him the light of Allah Almighty and Exalted, which graced him with the condition of complete intimacy and happiness. That intimacy allowed the mirror of revelation to increase in purity and brightness, until he attained to the highest state of perfection, where he observed the dawning of a new creation. The primordial signs of beauty shone forth to spread and decorate the universe. Trees, stones, earth, the stars, the sun, the moon, the clouds, wind, rain, and animals would greet him in perfect Arabic speech and say, "as-Salam 'alayka Ya Rasul-Allah" -- "Peace be upon You, O Prophet of God."

At forty years of age, when standing on the Mountain of Hira, there appeared on the horizon a figure he did not recognize, who said to him, "O Muhammad, I am Jibril and You are the Prophet of God whom He has sent to this nation." Then he handed him a piece of silk which was decorated with jewels. He put it in his hand and told him, "Read." He asked "What am I to read?" He hugged the Prophet and told him, "Read." He again said, "What shall I read?" He hugged him again and said,

"Read, in the name of Your Lord, who Created,
Created man out of a blood-clot,
Read, and thy Lord is Most bountiful
Who has taught with the Pen,
Taught man what he knew not!" [96:1-5]

Then he ordered him to climb down the mountain to the plains below; he placed him on a large white stone and gave him two green robes. Then Jibril hit the earth with his feet. Immediately a spring poured forth and the angel made ablutions in it and ordered him to do the same. Then Jibril took a handful of water and threw it on the face of the Prophet . Sufi saints say that the water he threw was a sign that the Prophet was granted authority to spread to human beings the Knowledge of the Secrets of Allah's Divine Presence, either by physical means or by spiritual means. Then he observed two cycles of prayer (rak'ats) and told the Prophet , "This is the way to worship," and he disappeared.

The Prophet returned to Makkah and told his wife all that had occurred. She believed him and she was the first Muslim. Then she went with the Prophet to Waraqah bin Nawfal, her cousin, who was considered a person knowledgeable in spirituality. The Prophet told him what happened. He believed him and he was the first man to believe in the Prophet . He said, "This is the Holy Spirit who descended on Moses ." He said, "Would that I be alive when your people expel you from Makkah!" The prophet asked, "Are my people going to put me out of Makkah?" He said, "Yes, that is what is written."

Then Abu Bakr became a believer and he was followed by Ali . In public the Prophet gave guidance needed for daily life, and in private he would give the special advice needed for attaining the state of Ihsan (perfect good character). That is why Abu Huraira said in an authentic hadith mentioned in Bukhari, "The Prophet has poured into my heart two kinds of knowledge: one I have spread to people and the other, if I were to share it, they would cut my throat."

The knowledge Abu Huraira referred to is the hidden, secret knowledge that the Prophet gave to his Companions. He did not authorize them to spread that knowledge because it is the secret knowledge of the heart. From these secrets all Masters of the Naqshbandi Golden Chain and all other Sufi Orders receive their knowledge. This knowledge was transmitted only from heart to heart, either through Abu Bakr as-Siddiq or through Ali .

For three years, as the Muslims increased in number, they used Dar al-Arqam as a mosque in which to teach, to worship and to hide. Then the Prophet was ordered to proclaim the religion openly. Allah sent a surah of the Qur'an challenging anyone to write anything like it. Poets, leaders and famous people tried until they openly accepted the self-evident fact that it was not possible. Still the unbelievers went to his uncle, complaining, saying, "Give us Muhammad so we may kill him." He said, "No one can touch him as long as I am living." The unbelievers tortured all those who did believe him. They kidnapped their wives, killed their children and raped their daughters. The new Muslims suffered all kinds of difficulties at the hands of the unbelievers.

For thirteen years the Prophet stayed in Makkah, calling the people to Allah's religion.

The unbelievers asked for a miracle or a sign in the heavens. The Holy Prophet divided the full moon in two in front of their eyes. Some of them believed and some of them did not. After this the persecution continued and some Muslims asked permission to emigrate. They emigrated to Ethiopia, where the King gave them refuge and, through their influence, became a believer in the Prophet . They stayed there for five years before some of them returned to Makkah. The Prophet's uncle and then his wife Khadija al-Kubra died. These were his staunchest supporters. It was the year of sadness.

A year and a half later, he was invited to the Presence of Allah, Almighty and Exalted. From Makkah to Jerusalem (Quds) he travelled accompanied by Archangel Gabriel (Jibril) . From Jerusalem he ascended to the heavens by means of Buraq, a heavenly mount who carried him up. All the prophets in the different levels of heaven came to greet him. He ascended higher and higher, until he heard the scratching of the Pen, writing out God's Decree. He approached the Divine Presence, closer and closer, until Jibril said to him, "Ya Rasul Allah (O Prophet of God), I cannot continue further, or I will be extinguished." The Prophet said, "O Jibril, accompany me!" He said, "I cannot, or I will be burned in Allah's Light." So Muhammad , the most Perfect of the Perfect, continued alone. Driven by his love for Allah's Divine Presence he approached closer and closer, achieving the State of Complete Annihilation in five different stages.

From one stage to another the Prophet moved into Allah's Divine Secrets. Between each stage was five hundred thousand years. He passed through these vast Divine Oceans of Knowledge, which Allah Almighty and Exalted has created, until he was completely dissolved in Allah's Existence, seeing nothing except Him. Then Allah called him to return to existence after he had reached the State of Annihilation. He returned and Allah told him, "O Muhammad, Approach closer." From this it is understood that the Prophet , having reached the State of Complete Annihilation, was called by Allah by his name, indicating that he was appearing anew with Allah's Appearance. He reached so near to the Divine Light, that he was "two bow-lengths or nearer" [53:9]. Allah asked him, "Who are you, O Muhammad?" At that time the Prophet was not conscious of himself and he replied: "You, O my Lord." This is the perfection of the state of not associating anyone with Allah. It is the perfect sign of Tawhid (Oneness), when nothing exists except His Glory, His Essence, Himself.

Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani has related, from the hidden knowledge of the Sufi saints, some of the events that occurred on that incredible journey of the Prophet. This is knowledge from the Prophet which Abu Huraira referred to in his hadith, knowledge passed down from the heart of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. The Prophet said, "Whatever Allah poured into my heart I poured into the heart of as-Siddiq." This knowledge was then passed to the Naqshbandi Sufi saints and constitutes their spiritual inheritance.

Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani said, "Allah Almighty and Exalted said to the Prophet on the Night of Ascension, O Muhammad, I have created all of creation for your sake, and I am giving it all to you. At that moment Allah granted the Prophet power to see all that He had created, with all of their lights and all of the favors that Allah had granted His creatures by decorating them with his Attributes and with His Divine Love and Beauty.

"Muhammad was enthralled and enraptured because Allah had given him the gift of such a creation. Allah said to him, 'Ya Muhammad, are you happy with this creation?' He said, 'Yes, My Lord.' He said, 'I am giving them to you in Trust to keep, to be responsible for, and to return to Me just as I gave them to you.' Muhammad was looking at them in delight because they were illuminated with beautiful lights, and he said, 'O My Lord, I accept.' Allah said, 'Are you accepting?' He replied, 'I accept, I accept.' As he finished replying the third time, Allah granted him a vision of the sins and the many forms of misery, darkness, and ignorance into which they were going to fall.

"When Muhammad saw this he was dismayed, wondering how he would be able to return them to His Lord as clean as in their original state. He said, 'O My Lord, what is this?' Allah replied, 'O My beloved, this is your responsibility. You have to return them to Me as clean as I gave them to You.' Then Muhammad said, 'O my Lord, give me helpers to help me clean them, to sanctify their spirits, and to take them from darkness and ignorance to the state of knowledge, of piety, of peace and love.'

"Then Allah, Almighty and Exalted, granted him a vision in which he informed him that out of this creation He had chosen for him 7,007 Naqshbandi Saints. He told him, 'O My beloved, O Muhammad, these saints are from the most Distinguished Saints that I created to help you in keeping this creation clean. Out of them are 313 who are in the highest, most perfect state in the Divine Presence. They are the inheritors of the secrets of 313 Messengers. Then I am giving you forty, who are carrying the most distinguished powers, and they are considered the Pillars of all saints. They are going to be the Masters of their times and they are going to be the Inheritors of the Secrets of Reality.'

"'At the hands of these saints everyone will be healed from his wounds, both externally and internally. These saints will be able to carry the whole Nation and the whole of Creation without any sign of tiring. Every one of them will be the Ghawth (Arch-Intercessor) in his time, under whom will be the five Qutub (Spiritual Poles).'

"The Prophet was happy and he said, 'O my Lord, give me more!' Then Allah showed him 124,000 saints, and He said, 'These saints are the inheritors of the 124,000 prophets. Each one is an inheritor from one prophet. They also will be there to help you clean this Nation.'

"While the Prophet was ascending to the Divine Presence, Allah caused him to hear a human voice. The voice was that of his friend and closest Companion, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq . The Prophet was told by Allah Almighty to order Abu Bakr as-Siddiq to call all the Naqshbandi saints: the 40, the 313, and the 7,007, and all their followers, in their spiritual forms, into the Divine Presence. All were to receive those distinguished Lights and Blessings.

"Then Allah ordered the Prophet , who ordered Abu Bakr , to call the 124,000 saints of the other 40 Tariqats and their followers to be given that Light in the Divine Presence. All of the Shaykhs began to appear in that gathering with all of their followers. Allah then asked the Prophet to look at them with his Prophetic power and light, and to lift them all to the station of Siddiqin, the Trustworthy and the Truthful. Then Allah Almighty and Exalted said to the Prophet , and the Prophet said to the saints, 'All of you and all of your followers are going to be stars shining among human beings, to spread that light which I gave you in pre-Eternity to all human beings on earth.'"

Mawlana Shaykh Nazim says, "That is only one of the secrets that has been revealed about the Night of Ascension to the hearts of the saints through the transmission of the Golden Chain of the Naqshbandi Order." Many more visions were given to the Prophet , but there is no permission to unveil them.

That Night, the Prophet was ordered by Allah to perform 50 prayers a day. He shortened it to five prayers a day on the advice of the Prophet Moses (Musa) . He returned from that Night Journey, and the first one to believe him was Abu Bakr as-Siddiq . The unbelievers, hoping to ridicule him, asked him to describe Jerusalem. He described it in all its details, and the unbelievers were humiliated.

Persecution against the Prophet and his Companions escalated. Then Allah sent him the Ansar (Helpers) from Madinah. Islam had begun to spread among the tribes of this small oasis not far from Makkah. Allah gave the believers permission to migrate to Madinah, the home of the Ansar. Abu Bakr wanted to migrate, but Muhammad told him, "Don't leave yet, wait, and maybe you will travel with me. There is a very important event which must happen."

The Prophet fled at night with Abu Bakr and left behind him Ali to impersonate him in his bed. On the way he stopped to hide in the Cave of Thawr. Abu Bakr said, "O Prophet, don't enter, I will enter first." In his heart he thought that there might be something harmful inside and he chose to encounter it first. He found a hole in the cave. He called the Prophet to come in and he put his foot over the hole. The Prophet came in and lay down with his head on Abu Bakr's thigh. A snake inside the hole began to bite the foot of Abu Bakr. He tried not to move although he was in great pain. Tears flowed down his cheeks. One warm tear dropped on the blessed face of the Prophet . At this, as was mentioned in the Qur'an: "He said to his friend, Grieve not for verily Allah is with us." [9: 40] and he also said, "What do you think of two when God is their Third?" [57: 5]. Abu Bakr said to the Prophet, "O Prophet of God, I am not sad, but I am in pain. A snake is biting my foot and I am worried that it might bite you. I am crying because my heart is burning for you and for your safety." The Prophet was so pleased with the reply of his beloved Companion that he hugged Abu Bakr as-Siddiq , put his hand on his heart and poured the knowledge that Allah had given him into the heart of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. That is why he said in a hadith, "Whatever Allah poured into my heart, I poured into the heart of Abu Bakr ."

Our Grandshaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani says, "Following this the Prophet put his other hand on the foot of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq and read, Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, and the foot was immediately healed. Then he ordered the snake to come out and the snake came out, coiling itself in front of the Prophet . Then the Prophet said to the snake, 'Do you not know that the flesh of a Siddiq is forbidden to you? Why are eating the flesh of my Companion?' He replied to the Prophet in a perfect and pure Arabic, 'O Prophet of Allah, were not all things created for your sake and for your love? O Prophet, I too love You. When I heard that Allah Almighty and Exalted said that the best nation is your nation, I asked Him to prolong my life and grant me the honor of being among your nation and looking at your face. And Allah granted me that wish and that honor. When Abu Bakr put his foot in that hole, it blocked my sight. I wanted him to move his foot to enable me to see you.' The Prophet said, 'Look at me now and fulfill your wish.' The snake looked and looked; after a while, it died. The Prophet ordered the Jinn to carry the snake away and bury it."

Mawlana Shaykh Nazim says, "These are secrets that have been given to the hearts of the Naqshbandi Saints." He continues the story thus: "Then the Prophet said to Abu Bakr, 'There was no need to stop in this cave, except that a significant event will happen here. The Light of the root of the spiritual Tree which is going to spread over all humanity, the Light coming directly from the Divine Presence, will appear here. Allah has ordered me to transmit it to you and to all the Naqshbandi Sufi followers.'

"This lineage was not called the Naqshbandi at that time, but was known as the Children of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, and he was known to saints as the 'Father' of this line.

"Then Allah asked the Prophet to order Abu Bakr as-Siddiq to call all the Masters of the Golden Chain who are the inheritors of Abu Bakr. The latter called the Grandshaykhs of this Golden Chain, all of them, from his time down to the time of the Mahdi . All of them were called through their spirits from the World of Souls. Then he was ordered to call the 7,007 Naqshbandi Saints. Then the Prophet called the 124,000 prophets.

"Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, by order of the Prophet , ordered every grandshaykh to summon all his followers to appear spiritually. Then Abu Bakr as-Siddiq ordered all the Shaykhs to take the hands of their followers to receive initiation. He put his hand above them all, and then Muhammad put his hand above all of them, and then Allah put His Hand, the Hand of Power (Qudrat), over them all. Allah by Himself, put on the tongue of everyone present His recitation (talqeen az-Zikr), and He told the Prophet to order Abu Bakr as-Siddiq to order all the saints present with their followers to recite what they were hearing from the Voice of Power:

ALLAHU ALLAHU ALLAHU HAQQ

ALLAHU ALLAHU ALLAHU HAQQ

ALLAHU ALLAHU ALLAHU HAQQ (real audio v3)

"All of those present followed their Shaykhs and the Shaykhs followed what they heard the Prophet reciting. Then Allah Almighty and Exalted taught the secret of the Dhikr, known as Khatm-il-Khwajagan, to Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujduwani, who led the first dhikr among the saints of this Order. The Prophet announced to Abu Bakr, who announced to all saints, that Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujdawani is the leader of the Khatm-i-Khwajagan. Everyone was honored to receive that secret and light from Khwaja Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujdawani, in the presence of all saints, in the presence of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq, in the presence of The Prophet , in the Presence of Allah."

Mawlana Shaykh Nazim said, "Anyone who accepts initiation from us or attends our Dhikr must know that he was in the cave at that blessed time, in the Presence of the Prophet , and that he received all of these secrets then. These secrets have been transmitted to us from the masters of the Golden Chain, through Abu Bakr as-Siddiq."

Abu Bakr as-Siddiq was overjoyed and astounded with what took place in that cave, and he understood why the Prophet had chosen him to be the companion of his migration. The Naqshbandi Shaykhs consider the events in the cave as the foundation of the Tariqat. Not only is it the source of the daily wird (devotion) but the souls of all members of the Order were present together at that time.

After the events in the cave, they continued on to Madinat al-Munawwarah. When they reached Quba, a village near Madinah, on a Monday in Rabi'ul Awwal, they stopped for several days. There the Prophet built the first mosque. They continued on their way on a Friday, after praying the Friday Prayer at Quba. It was the first Jum'a that he prayed. He entered Madinah with his friend, amid shouts of takbir (ALLAHU AKBAR) and tahmid (AL-HAMDU LILLAH) and the excited, joyful happiness of everyone. He moved to the place his camel stopped, and it is there that he built his mosque and his home. He stayed as a guest in the home of Abu Ayyub al-Ansari until his mosque was built.

When the Prophet came to Madinah, it was full of diseases. As soon as he arrived, the diseases disappeared. Following is a brief list of the main events of the next ten years.

Year One - The Prophet was inspired to call the people to prayer by means of the human voice (Adhan).

Year Two - He was ordered to institute the monthly fast of Ramadan, and he was directed to face the Ka'aba in Makkah during prayers, instead of towards Jerusalem as they had done previously. It was the year that he fought the unbelievers in the decisive Battle of Badr.

Year Three - The Prophet fought the unbelievers at Uhud.

Year Four - The battle of Bani Nadeer took place, and permission was given for shortening the prayer during traveling and fighting. Alcohol was forbidden. Tayammum, or ritual purification with sand when water is not available, was allowed and the "prayer in fear" was authorized.

Year Five - The battle of Khandaq took place and the defection of Banu Quraizah and Mustaliq occurred.

Year Six - The Treaty of Hudaibiyya took place as did the Pledge of Loyalty -- the model of Sufi initiation -- under the Tree. The fifth pillar of the religion, the obligation of Hajj, also came in this year.

Year Seven - The battle of Khaibar took place.

Year Eight - The events of Mu'ta, the peaceful conquest of Makkah and the battle of Hunayn occurred.

Year Nine - The battle of Tabuk occurred and the Pilgrimage of as-Siddiq. It was called the Year of Wufud.

Year Ten - The Prophet made what is known as the Farewell Pilgrimage.

Year Eleven -The Prophet passed on to the other life.



Description of the Holy Prophet's Features

Allah Almighty and Exalted adorned the Prophet with His Divine Lights and Manners, and then He added more by saying to him: "Truly you are of a magnificient nature" [68:4].

The Prophet was neither tall nor short, but he was of middle height. He had broad shoulders. His color was light, neither dark nor white. He had a broad forehead, with heavy eyebrows, not connected but with a blaze shining like silver in the middle of them. His eyes were large. His teeth were very white, like pearls. His hair was not curly nor was it straight, but in between. His neck was long. His chest was broad, without much flesh. The color of his chest was light, and between his sternum and his navel was a line of hair. He had no hair on his chest other than that line. His shoulders were wide and had hair on them. On his shoulders were two seals of Prophecy. All his Companions used to look at them. The right shoulder had a black beauty mark, and around it were some small hairs, like the hairs of a horse. His forearms were large. His wrists were long. His fingers were also long. His palm was smoother than silk. Whenever he put his hand on the head of a child or a man, the beautiful scent of musk came from it. Wherever he moved, a cloud moved with him that shaded him from the heat of the sun. His sweat was like white pearls, and its smell was like amber and musk. The Companions said they had never seen anything like it before.

The Holy Prophet used to look down more than he raised his head. Whoever saw him from afar was amazed by him and whoever knew him intimately loved him. He was most handsome both in his external appearance and his internal appearance.

Amr ibn al-`As said, "No one was dearer to me than the Holy Prophet nor was anyone more glorious than him in my eyes. So bright was his glory that I could not look at his face for any length of time, so that if I were asked to describe him I would not be able to as I had not looked at him long enough."

The Prophet was the bravest among people, the most just and the most generous. He used to walk alone among his enemies at night without a guard. He was never afraid of anything in this world. He was the most modest of his person, the most sincere, and the most pious. He never spoke just to spend time. He preferred silence to speech and never showed pride, although he was the most eloquent speaker.

Allah gave the Prophet mastery in politics and mastery in private conduct. Although he didn't write or read, Allah raised him from the land of ignorance, taught him the best of manners and the best of ethics.

He was the gentlest of men, the most tolerant, the most merciful, as Allah Himself called him "Kindest and Most Merciful" [9:128]. He smiled at everyone and joked with everyone in a decent way. Alone he was always crying and entreating Allah for forgiveness for his Ummah. He was always contemplating and meditating. He always used to sit to remember Allah by reciting Dhikr.

He used to walk with the widow and orphan. He showed humbleness to unbelievers, wishing them to become believers. Someone asked him "pray for Allah to curse the unbelievers." He said, "I was not sent to curse but as a Mercy. I will ask for them to be guided because they don't know."

He called everyone to Allah. He never humiliated the poor. He was never afraid of a king. He always chose the easy way, according to Allah's wish [2:185, 20:2]. He laughed without making a sound, not out loud. He always said, "serve your people." He used to milk his goats, serve his family, patch clothes, walk sometimes barefooted, visit the sick, even if they were unbelievers or hypocrites, visiting the graves of believers and greeting them, training with the sword, learning the bow and arrow, riding the horse, riding the camel, riding the donkey. He used to eat with the poor and wretched. He always accepted a gift graciously, even if it was a spoonful of yogurt, and he used to reward it. He never ate from sadaqa (charity), but immediately passed it on to the poor. He never kept one dinar or one dirham in his house except he gave it to the poor. He never came home until he spent all that Allah had given him.

He was very good to his family and to his friends. He urged his friends to walk in front of him and walked behind them. He said, "leave my back for angels." His companionship was the companionship of patience and shyness. Whoever argued with him saw patience from him, and he did not reply to those who insulted him. He never came against anyone in anger nor ever used bad language. He was never angry for himself and was only angry for his Lord's sake. He used to eat with his servants. He never slapped anyone with his hand. He never punished for a mistake, but always forgave. His servant Anas () said, "In all my life, he never asked me once: why did you do this, or why didn't you do that?"


The Clothes of the Holy Prophet

He used to wear whatever he found, cotton or wool, but mostly he used to wear cotton. He liked green clothes. Abu Huraira says, "He wore the long, loose shirts, the burda and the habra and the jubba, and he wore the turban with a face-veil and loose-ended, the izar and the rida'." Jabir ibn Samurah () says, "I saw the Prophet on a moonlit night. He had a red cloak over his body, and I looked attentively in turn towards him and the moon. Certainly, he appeared to me more beautiful than the moon itself." He used to wear the white turban and the black turban and sometimes the red turban. He used to leave a tail at the back of his turban. Imam Tabari said "he used to have a turban of seven arms' length." He had a turban by the name of Sihab (the Clouds) which he gave to Ali (). He used to wear a silver ring on his right hand, engraved with the words "Muhammadun Rasul-Allah." He used to wear khuffs (leather socks) on his feet. He liked perfumes and fragrant scents.

He never saw ease and would not possess even a bed, as he wished to make his abode in the next world. His mattress was made from tree-leaves. He had a big cloak which he used to put on the floor and sit on. Sometimes he use to sleep on a reed mat or directly on the floor.


The Miracles of the Holy Prophet

He was a healer for himself and for others. He used to heal by reciting Qur'an on the sick person. He warned people to avoid too much eating. He performed countless miracles. He prayed that Ali not feel the hot and cold weather, and he never felt them. He prayed for Ibn `Abbas to be a genius in religion, jurisprudence, and explanation of Qur'an, which came to pass. When Qutada's eye fell out of its socket, he put it back, and Qutada was able to see with it better than he ever had before. He rubbed the foot of Ibn Abi `Atiq when it was broken and it healed immediately. The moon split on his order as a sign to the unbelievers. Water sprang forth from his fingers from which a whole army drank and made ablution. From a small cup of water, water was pouring, making the desert like an oasis. The branch of a tree under which he sat, bowed in a gesture of love as he stood up to leave. The minbar (pulpit) at which he used to preach, used to give a moaning sound, as if crying for him. The stones praised Allah in his hand, so that everyone heard them. The animals complained to him. The deer and the wolf testified to his prophethood. He predicted that his daughter Fatima would be the first to follow him in death. He foretold Uthman Dhu-n-Nurayn, his third caliph and son-in-law, would be assassinated. He announced the murder of al-Aswad bin Annasi on the night of his death in Sana'a in far off Yaman. He mentioned the death of the King of Persia to his Companions on the exact moment that it happened. He ate meat full of poison, but nothing happened to him though the one who ate with him died immediately. Countless other miracles could be mentioned.


The Sayings of the Holy Prophet

No one can make a complete account of his sayings. Even if the seas of this world were ink and the trees were pens no one could write all the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad . Thousands and hundreds of thousands of his ahadith (narrated sayings) have been written from what he was saying and it was known as the `Ilm al-Hadith or Science of Prophetic Narration.

He said:

"Allah rewards people according to what they achieve."

"Allah said, whoever comes against one of My saints, I will declare war against him."

"Allah's saints are under his domes. No one knows them except Him."

"Be near the poor [meaning the spiritual poor] because they have a government of their own."

"Be in this world as a stranger and a guest, and make the mosques your homes, and teach your heart leniency, and make much remembrance and cry much."

"How many people welcome a day whose end they will not live to see, and expect a tomorrow which they do not reach?"

"Say the truth, even if to your detriment."

"Make everything easy and don't make it difficult. Give good tidings and don't cause people to run away."

"Allah said, 'O Son of Adam, you will get what you have intended, and you will be with the one whom you love more.'"

"Keep Allah and He will keep you. Keep Allah before you. If you need help, ask His Help."

"Be austere in this lower world and Allah will love you. Be austere with what is in the hands of people and the people will love you."

"The one who has the most perfect mind is the one who is most fearful of Allah.

"Beware of the lower world because it is a black magic."

"Refrain except from good speech."

"Give back the Trust and don't betray it."

"When Allah loves someone, He will put him in difficulties."

"When Allah wants good for His servant, He will guide him to someone that shows him the way."

"Forgive, and Allah will forgive you."

"Be merciful, Allah will be merciful with you."

"The one under the heaviest punishment on the Day of Judgment is a fierce scholar."

"The one under the heaviest punishment on the Day of Judgement is a scholar whose knowledge did not benefit him."

"Ask Allah forgiveness and health."

"Keep what you are doing secret."

"The most sinful person is the one whose tongue is always lying."

"All Creation is a servant of Allah. The most beloved to Him among them is the one that helped his brothers."

"The best deed is when people will be safe from your tongue and your hand."

"As long as you say 'La ilaha ill-Allah' (No god but God) it will lift Allah's punishment from you and change you for the good."

"O People, are you not ashamed that you collect more than you eat, and you build houses more than you need to live in?"

The Passing of the Holy Prophet

When Allah Almighty and Exalted perfected his Nation and completed His favor on His Prophet , He transferred him to a house better than his house, and to a Friend better than his friends. Allah Called his soul in his last days. As a result, his final sickness began in the last ten days of the month of Safar, in the house of his wife Maimuna (). When his sickness intensified, he transferred to the house of `Ayesha (). He was sick for twelve days. He used to send Abu Bakr as-Siddiq to lead the prayers as a sign to the Sahaba that he had chosen him as his successor.

He passed away on a Monday, the 12th of Rabi`ul Awwal. Wrapped in his nightgown, he was washed by Sayyidinas `Ali, `Abbas ibn `Abd al-Muttalib and his two sons, Qutham and Fadl. `Usama bin Zaid and Shakran were pouring the water which Awwas Khazraji was bringing from the well. As they performed their washing, the body exuded beautiful scents, so that `Ali () said continually: "By God, what would I give for you! How sweet you are and how wholesome you are, both alive and dead!" His Companions entered his house one by one to pray on him, then ladies prayed on him, then children prayed on him. He was buried in the same place he passed away, in the house of `Ayesha . Abu Talhah Zayd ibn Sahl dug his grave and those who washed him lowered his blessed body into it. Then it was covered and leveled and they threw water on it.

People were bereaved, tongues were silent. The world seemed darkened. No one knew what to say. The Holy Spirit -- the angel Jibril -- was no longer to come bringing revelation. The Prophet's death was the greatest disaster for every Companion. Many people were crying and shouting. But Allah sent supporters for His religion, because that was the Seal of Prophets. He sent a Renewer (mujaddid) of this religion century after century. Saint after saint, we find that every grandshaykh of the Most Distinguished Naqshbandi Order was like a shadow of the Prophet , reviving the deen (religion) and training the seekers to find their Lord as the Companions had been trained.

The secret of God's strong support and pure guidance passed from Muhammad to his beloved friend, Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. What the Prophet poured into the heart of Abu Bakr () no one knows. May Allah send upon our Prophet more and more of His Light! He was sent as a Mercy for human beings and his secret passed from one saint to another to support this religion and to bring his secret to the hearts of human beings.
-Shaykh Hisham Kabbani Naqshbandi. A traditional view of the Prophet.

a short but beautiful clip on the spirituality of the Prophet by Shaykh Dr. Tahir ul Qadri (Language: Urdu)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB3D9SDAs3I

ithas been very interesting debates except some below the belt attacks.

I have some different poitn of views,to share with you all, genetics is present and modern knowledge of twentieth century and it tells that gene pool is reduced when cousin marriages are celeberated. But i read an intersting thing in Al-Ghazzali's Tehzeeb Ahyaal Alum in Chapter on MArriage and conditions for marriage that avoid mariages between cousins and it is a hadith albeit zaeef( zaeef menas chain was missing and content needs to be checked on the bases of rationality)... so which scientific knowledeg developed this idea of not marrying cousins soem 1400 years ago? It deos not matter whther it was practiced 100 % or not but except Punjab it is practiced that Muslims avoid cousin marriages !

Furhter more why Indians are bent upon always to check things on the bases of theri own terms and consdier themselves the msot educated ones on the surface of earth from times immemorial?

As to use of technical terms by Laddu how will we adjsut the sayings of 14th century Saints of Spain and many saints of India that feeling lost in Ultimate reality is the first stage of the lowest level of spiritual journey and there are furhter many many stages of thsi journey?

As to circular thinking I rememebr saying of imam Jafer Sadiq Ra that Allah created reason first of all and shah Wali Alalh that without reason and Hikmat all laws on the name of religion are farce and islamic Shariah's basic thrust on rational and reason instead of blind following is stressed so much , but here it is treated as a blind belief?how to reconcilethis with historical facts and truths?

As to evolution's beauty , how can we determine that genetic mutation is by chance and it is not directed or determined by certain proportion of chemicals and eleemnts?

I wait answers of these points then we can move further. I hope to get answers not confusion and abuses!

Rabb ikk gunjjaldaar bujhaarat
Rabb ikk gorakh dhanda
paich eissday kholan lagga
kafir ho jaye banda.

Laddu Sahib,
Peace. For the first time I can remember on Chowk you are actually interacting in a sensible manner. Since you seem genuinely sincere in your beliefs I am hoping that you will be open minded enough to read the biography of the Prophet written by Martin Lings. It is entitled, Muhammad: His Life based on the Earliest Sources.

And a question:
What is your view on Khwaja Gharib Nawaz of Ajmer Sharif?

# 185 what nonsense!

This kind of irrational attachment to land is nothing but the product of a particular way of thinking.

Hubb-ul-watani and Hum-watani indeed!

(Having said, one can understand/sympathize with this Hindu man's sense of loss and the fact that he can't get his bhera out of his system, and will keep looking for his Hum-watanis no matter how many times he is kicked.)

Remembering the Beloved Town of Bhera:

Reminiscences of a displaced Hindu



Gian Sarup



Bhera is a town that is cherished even by those who had to flee it en masse and for ever in very dire circumstances. The town continues to evoke a sense of a paradise lost for our generation of men and women who had to leave Bhera in 1947. We have very warm memories of our childhood in our ancestral town, our place of birth, and our watan.



I am a 73-years old Hindu from Bhera. In 1947, I was a 13-years old kid who had moved to the 9th class in the Kirpa Ram Anglo-Sanskrit High School, popularly known as the Arya High School. I still remember the poem, “Hubb-ul-watani,� (love for one’s native land) in our Urdu textbook for the Seventh Class. The poem started with the lines, “Dilli mein ek sitar niwazi ki jaan thaa, aur jaan se aziz tha Dilli ko jaananta.� This sitar player accepted an offer of “khilat-o-zar� from the Royal Court of Hyderabad, and one day he set out on his journey to Deccan in a carriage sent to fetch him. When his carriage reached near the famous Jama Masjid, the sitar player looked at the grand sight and asked the gadibaan (the driver) whether Hyderabad would have a mosque like Jama Masjid. The driver replied that there were several beautiful mosques in Hyderabad but there was none like the Jama Masjid of Delhi. By the time a few more of the city’s landmarks, each judged as unmatched by the gadibaan, went by, the carriage had reached the banks of river Jamuna. The sitar player could not help asking once again if they had a river like Jamuna in the environs of Hyderabad. The driver told him that there was a river there, but it was no match to the enchanting Jamuna of Delhi. The sitar player could not take it any more, and told the driver to turn back to Delhi where he would make do with much less but would be at home in his watan!



Patriotism once used to be basically local, centered on hometowns. Your town was the axis of your attachments and pride. We used to be nourished on local hubb-ul-watani. Our emotional ties were centered on all manner of things associated with the town. Bhera’s heroes and characters, its boli and humor, its history and folklore, its festivals and celebrations, its food and confections, its bazaars and mohallas, and its places of worship and even orchards became the facets of our local pride. The very name of the town became a core component of our being.



When the Hindu and Sikh families left Bhera and other places in West Punjab for India at the time of country’s partition, a large number of them found their way to Delhi. After this huge influx of Punjabi refugees, Delhi became largely a Punjabi city. There are scores of localities in Delhi that are predominantly populated by the now grown up children of these refugees from Pakistani Punjab, yet there are only four localities in Greater Delhi that were named after the towns in West Punjab: Gujranwala Town, Multan Colony, Bhera Enclave, and Miyanwali Nagar. Bhera Enclave is located in the northwest sector of Delhi. Bherochis started building their houses there toward the end of 1970’s, as much as three decades after they had arrived in India. Their hubb-ul-watani beckoned them to resurrect for their future generations a sliver of Bhera, nearly four hundred miles southeast of their ancestral hometown on the banks of river Jehlum. In the office of the Enclave’s Community Center, the lead plaque tells the visitors, “The residents of Bhera Enclave fondly remember BHERA – the city of their ancestors.�



A poignant example of the hubb-ul-watani of a Bherochi Hindu is the content of the last rites (antim-sanskaar) of his death in Delhi. Joginder Nath Kapur was the son of a prominent Kapur family of Bhera. His father owned the largest iron shop in the town’s main bazaar. Kapur Sahib, as we used to address Joginder ji, matriculated from the Arya School and got his B.Sc from a college in Lahore. He taught Science and English in his alma mater in Bhera and also coached its hockey team for a while. In Delhi, he started a large private coaching college (Delhi Public College) that catered to thousands of refugee students like me who worked fulltime in offices and attended its classes in the evenings to appear as private candidates for university exams. For a science teacher, Kapur Sahib was highly proficient in Persian. Whenever the regular tutor for our Intermediate Persian class went on leave, Kapur Sahib would step in and teach us Persian poetry by translating and explicating Rumi, Saadi, and Firdosi! Once in a while, on public demand in the college functions, he would recite in his inimitable style the sorrowful poem, Ek saarson ka kafila, shauq-e-watan dil mein liye, aazad sab afkaar se, athkelian karta hua, wapis tha ghar ko jaa raha� by Vakil Abdul Hamid Sahib. When this noble son of Bhera died in 1987 in Delhi, the last rites at his Kirya-Karam ceremony included a discourse, “The Historical Importance of Bhera: A respectful tribute to the memory of Swargya (Late) Joginder Nath Kapur,� in Hindi. I cannot think of a more touching gesture of a people’s regard for their place of origin. The lecture was delivered by Dr. Birbal Gandhi of Bhera Enclave. It is a four-page long document in chaste Hindi. I can translate here only the last line of this address: “The efforts of the Bhera Welfare Society succeeded in securing [enough] land in the West Delhi area for the construction of houses by displaced Bherochis so that the name of Bhera lasts for long (ta ke Bhera ka naam qaaim rahe).



The generation of our children knows the names of the towns their parents and grandparents had come from, but generally have little, if any, interest in the history or the character of these places. Newer generations generally do not speak Punjabi at home, though they understand it. They can neither read nor write Urdu. Their grandparents are not there any more; their parents, uncles, and aunts do not reminisce about Bhera that often in their presence. Born and raised in India and some foreign countries, not many among them are looking forward to visiting their ancestral hometowns in Pakistan. Professor Kalpana Sahni, the daughter of the late Prof. Bhisham Sahni, has been one heartening and notable exception. On a visit to Lahore, she undertook a trip to Bhera where she tried to locate the home of her ancestors in the Sahniyan da Mohalla. She wrote a very evocative piece, “The persistence of memory: Another country, an ancestral village, and remembrances that spill across time and borders.� It originally appeared in Outlook (October 30, 2000), an Indian weekly newsmagazine, and can now be found on several web sites on Bhera, such as www.merabhera.com or www.geocities.com/hbugvi . Prof. Sahni’s desire to visit her father’s ancestral town and home must have been kindled over many years of listening to her family’s remembrances of the old times, accounts of her forefathers’ move from Bhera to Rawalpindi, mention of sundry characters from Bhera, and conversations in what she calls the give-away Punjabi of Bhera (see Note 1). Her father’s writings inspired her as well. Bhisham Sahni’s last novel, Mayyadas ki Marhi, was set in Bhera. The original novel written in Hindi came out in 1988. Its English version, The Mansion (also translated in English by her father), was published by Harper-Collins in 1995. She apparently has had a very Bhera-nurturing family environment.



Our generation’s emotional bond with Bhera might have faded quite a bit, (dil bhi kam dukhta hai, woh yaad bhi kam aatai hein), but it never withered. In India or outside of it, when we come across someone from Bhera or a nearby town, we greet them heartily as our watanis. In the spring of 1982, I had taken some of my relatives from India to show them around Chicago (about sixty miles east of the town where I have lived since 1972). Not far from the Shedd Aquarium, I spotted a gentleman who looked like an Indian or a Pakistani taking pictures of the scenery. He must have noticed me, too. At one point he approached me and asked if I could take a few pictures of him with Lake Michigan for the background. I readily took the shots he wanted, and we started chatting when I discovered that he was from Mandi Phularwan, a town hardly 12 miles away from Bhera. He was Dr. Aijaz Sarvar Gilani., vacationing by himself in the United States. We immediately felt connected like watanis, exchanged our addresses, and wondered aloud how we two strangers, born and raised in two towns so close to each other, were destined to run into each other in Chicago of all the places! Just before we took leave of each other, he asked if I knew how well Hindus from Phularwan were faring in India. I was moved by his concern to know how well the folk, who were once a part of his hometown community, were doing in exile. I was sad to disappoint him, for I did not know of anyone from Phularwan. We shook hands, said goodbye, and he left in his tourist bus.



Hindus and Sikhs visiting their hometowns in Pakistan are overwhelmed by the warmth (bahut piyar mohabbat naal milde ne) with which the people greet them there. In 1978, my younger brother, then a British citizen, took a short trip to Bhera via Lahore from Delhi. On his return to England, he wrote me a series of letters about his visit to Bhera. He writes in one of his letters:



“I talked to a few Muslims, but those who came to know that I am a Hindu who is here on a visit, were overjoyed and started talking about the good old days when Hindus and Muslims lived together as brothers. I will never forget the Muslim co-passenger who did not let me buy my bus ticket from Bhalwal to Sargodha [he paid for my ticket]. Another passenger offered me tea en route. One of the Muslim servants of Mr. Telreja (a Sindhi Hindu in Lahore) pressed me to go and see a Punjabi movie on his expense.



Our hubb-ul-watani warms our hearts to learn how prosperous once Bhera was. The entry on Bhera in the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908) reads: “ . . .the town was the largest and most prosperous commercial town in this part of the Province, having a direct export trade to Kabul, the Derajat, and Sukkur, and importing European goods from Karachi and Amritsar (1908, Volume VIII: Behrampur to Bombay, p.100). Around 1975, my younger brother made a special trip from Harrow to the India House Library in London to get a photo-copy of the page from which the above quote is reproduced.



The same sentiment of love for Bhera hurt us when we came across dispatches on the town’s decline. In the 1950’and 1960’s sixties, visitors reported a depressing picture of Bhera as a declining town. I have not read Balraj Sahani’s book in which he talks about his visit to Bhera. The impression I got from a conversation with his brother Bhisham Sahni, a senior colleague of mine at Delhi College, was that Balraj ji had found large parts of the town in a state of utter desolation and ruins. It depressed us to learn that the town had fallen into such a sorry state.



Sometimes I buy travel guides on Pakistan, especially if they have something to say about Bhera. One of these books, published in 1990, reports:



Old towns were washed away by the rivers and replaced by new towns on safer ground. Some have just died; Bhera, near Sargodha, for example, used to be a flourishing place. It was an ancient town where Sher Shah [Suri] built a beautiful mosque. There were shrines which attracted pilgrims. Bhera was a center of Moghul local government. It was plundered by the Durrani, repopulated by the Sikhs and prospered under the British when it became the most important city for miles around. Then as the canal colonies flourished, other towns grew and Bhera waned. Local government was moved [in fact the local administration was downgraded from a tehsil to a sub-tehsil status, though the court was not removed]. Having sustained a lot of damage in 1947, it is now a ghost town. (Insight Guides: Pakistan. APA Publications: HK,1990, p.180).



My heart kind of sank when I read the last characterization, and wondered why the rundown condition of Bhera had not gotten any better during the thirty years between Balraj Sahni’s impression and the summation in this travel book (it had many superb pictures but none of Bhera; a sinking ship?).



For the last few years, we have been getting some reassuring news. We hear of a resurgent spirit of Bhera, though some parts of the old town remain in a moribund condition. It may no longer be news for the residents of Bhera, but we learned only recently that the town had been getting Sui gas for quite some time and has a public water supply system. The town now has an Intermediate College, something it did not have in the pre-Partition days. The access afforded to Bhera by the Lahore-Islamabad motorway has been another happy tiding. The town now has a population of 33,600 (2001), compared to the rough estimate of 28,000 we used to hear before the partition. Several new colonies have sprung up around the old town. However, information on the condition of the satellite villages of Bhera is hard to come by.



One wonders what happened to the two hamlets of Khan Mohammad Da and Haathiwind on the bus route from Bhera to Bhalwal. Folks in one of these villages used to “harvest� shora left as residue by evaporating shallow pools of water in embanked plots of arid land. No commercially available map of Pakistan shows these old villages and others like Bathuni. I did succeed in finding the neighboring village of Hazurpur in my Lonely Planet Travel Atlas for India and Bangladesh (1995, p.12 and 16). This atlas is my proud possession, because it maps also show Haranpur, my father’s place of birth, and also Jalalpur (Sharif), my mother’s place of birth (my Nannaka shehar). The three towns of Bhera, Haranpur, and Jalalpur -- all three situated on the banks of Jehlum -- have been variously linked to Alexander’s battle with King Porus in 326 B.C. In terms of geographic origins then, our ancestry is indeed a tapestry of ancient strands. Our family could not bring much personal stuff with us when we left Bhera, but the most treasured things my mother made a point of carrying on her were two Phulkaaris and one Baagh. She gave one precious heirloom piece to each one of her three daughters-in-law when they came as brides to our house in Delhi. One of these pieces was stitched by our paternal grandmother in Haranpur, the other by our maternal grandmother in Jalalpur, and the last of the three by our mother in Bhera!



Bhera continues to inspire love and pride for the town among the new and old generations of its current residents. Their hubb-ul-watani is reflected in their dedicated efforts to put Bhera on the internet map. They have invested huge personal resources to set up several websites on Bhera. Besides the Wikipedia’s site on Bhera, there are web sites that have been set up by individual Pakistani Bherochis. The website by H. A. Bugavi is perhaps the oldest site, distinguished for its genuine concern for the historical assets of Bhera. The other by Ali Javeed appears more systematic and open to contributions from Bherochis who had to leave the town in 1947. These gentlemen are inspired by their sheer love for their town. Their websites cover the town’s history, architecture, mosques, abandoned temples and the Sikh gurdawara, and the illustrious lives of its distinguished sons. Visiting these sites comes close to a sort of pilgrimage for those of us who have been away for so long and have felt banished and cut off.



Now that Pakistani visas have become relatively easy to obtain, it has encouraged the Hindu and Sikh expatriates to visit the town. If one can, someone of our generation (born and raised in Bhera) should spend a few days to study the changes the town has gone through. My brother got less than four hours to spend in Bhera. He and his host, the late Mrs. Kamala Sahni of Salam, took the circular drive around the town, went to the Railway Station from where they followed the road to Ganjwala Darwaaza and on to the Chowk, and parked the car in Gopal Bahri’s katra. From there, they took a walking trip to the DhoanaN wala Mohalla where we were born and raised, visited the Jhugi wala Mandir (adjacent to the ChhaintaaN wali Masjid), looked at what was once our father’s shop (still vacant and locked up), found in total ruin the facing shop of Hafiz Lilari (Rangraze) who dyed the chunnis of Hindu girls in the local spectrum of colors, took a stroll in the Guru Bazaar, walked to the Jeetu da Maidaan to meet Dr. Fazal Qadir Shah at his clinic, and to a few other places. Besides the overall impressions of the town, my brother also shared with me some precious bits of information that were closer to our hearts.



Massi Durgan’s house, adjacent to ours, was a tibba, the upper story of our house was not there, but other houses in the mohalla looked reasonably intact and were occupied by refugees from the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana,. As I and my escort (Dr. Fazal Qadir Shah’s son) entered the mohalla, I saw a lady washing clothes inside the deori, at the very place in our house where our Mataji (Mother) used to wash our clothes. I am sure the hand-pump is still there. It was day time and no man [being present] at home, it was not appropriate to speak to the orthodox lady who was inside our house…I was inside the mohalla for about ten minutes…�



Now nearly thirty years later (since his 1978 visit), we find ourselves old and frail to travel and visit the town we left behind. People of our generation (my elder brother is 78, and younger brother 68) make do with our very precious remembrances of Bhera and visits to its web sites. When we manage to get together, we hardly tire of talking about Bhera, much to the apparent boredom of our wives whose parents were from three different towns in Pakistan: Pind Daaddan Khan, Sialkot, and Jampur near D.G.Khan. One day we brothers sat down and prepared a schematic map of our DhoanaN wala Mohalla (named after the Hindu caste of Dhawans) as it existed in the pre-Partition days. We numbered all the houses inside the mohalla and in the alley leading to it from 1 to 30, and prepared a companion list of the names of the families that lived in these houses until 1947. Unlike most Hindu neighborhoods like SahniyaN da Mohalla, our mohalla and a few others were gated neighborhoods with their circumscribed boundaries. The Hindu mohallas were generally named after single Hindu castes, but their resident families often belonged to other castes as well. In our Mohalla, for instance, we had only one Dhawan family, but also one Bahri, one Khanna, two Kapur, four Malhotra families, and a few other castes.



People of our parents’ generation are gone from this world, and ours is the last generation that has personal memories of the good old Bhera of our childhood and also of our trail of woe and survival to the Wagah border. We know first hand the price our parents’ generation and ours paid in the grand drama of the birth of two nations as it was enacted in Bhera. Pakistanis who are our contemporaries from Bhera witnessed these events from the other side. They are the audiences who may have some resonance for our roodad (narrative). It will be nice to hear from them on how the things and events I talk about here looked to them from the other side.



When most people got caught up in the vortex of the religious strife and brutal reprisals of 1947, some righteous, God-fearing persons held their heads well above the swirling waters of hatred and revenge. The Hindus and Sikhs of Bhera, who were able to escape to India after 15th August 1947, owe their lives to two such men, both of them true Muslims and great men. One of them was the native son of Bhera, Sheikh Fazal Haq Piracha. He was the one who single-handedly dissuaded the Muslim mobs of tenant farmers and villagers from acting on their plans to kill and plunder the town’s Hindus and Sikhs. The Muslim mobs had gathered one morning near one of the city’s gates to launch their attack. Their drums had kept their sinister beat all through the previous night to rally the believers. Mobilized by the countryside Mullahs to avenge the killings of Muslims in the Hindu and Sikh majority areas of India, the mob was all worked up to start a bloody reprisal against the kafirs. We learned that Sheikh Fazal Haq Piracha confronted the brigands early that morning. At one point, he took off his turban and put it at the feet of the mob leader(s) and begged them to turn back to their homes and leave the Hindus and Sikhs of Bhera alone. He told them that Hindus and Sikhs had lived in Bhera for centuries in peace with Muslims and they owed them at least a safe passage for the sake of Bhera’s past and fair name. His prominent stature in the community (see Note 2) and his heart-felt appeal persuaded the mobs to disperse. His hubb-ul-watani for the hometown and his faith combined to save the day for the town’s Hindus and Sikhs. Our present and coming generations should be indebted to this very righteous person.



Someone looking through the archival papers of the late Sheikh Fazal Haq Piracha would find many a letter written from India by Bhera’s Hindus and Sikhs who had individually conveyed their gratitude to him for saving the lives of their families and community in 1947. Our father, Hori Lall, also wrote to Sheikh Sahib in the mid-1950s, thanking him deeply for his intervention that saved our lives. In 1978, my brother made it a point to visit Sheikh Sahib’s house in Bhera to pay his respects to the memory of our singular savior. He wrote about it, “On our circular tour of the town, we stopped at the residence of the late Sheikh F. H. Piracha as I wanted to pay my respects. Unfortunately, his son [very likely, Ehsan-ul-Haq, who later became a junior minister in Bhuto’s government], was not at home.� The web site by the Prince Brothers (http://bhera.sitesled.com/piracha.html) has an excellent article in Urdu on this pre-eminent khaandaan of the Pirachas. It recounts the illustrious careers and contributions of its members to their nation and the town of Bhera. I wish its authors would consider it fit to include this act of profound humanity by Sheikh Fazal Haq Piracha in their biographical essay on him and also arrange to include a picture of him.



The other savior of Bhera’s Hindus and Sikhs was a tall, handsome Muslim Captain attached to the army contingent that was sent to Bhera for safely escorting our evacuation-train to the Mandi Bahauddin refugee camp. A few miles from Bhera near Hazurpur, the train was stopped by a large mob of marauders drawn from the neighboring villages. They were waiting there to ambush the train. The Captain ordered his men to open fire in order to deter the mob. He succeeded in scaring them to disperse, thus stopping the attack and saving the lives of Bhera’s Hindu/Sikh men, women, and children. Some of the attackers must have been injured and a few perhaps even got killed. His Muslim and Sikh soldiers removed the tree trunk from the railway tracks that the attackers had placed there to halt the train, and the train resumed its journey to Malakwal and onto Mandi Bahauddin. At Mandi Bahauddin Railway Station, I saw quite a few Hindu elders (one from our mohalla) take off their turbans and lay them at the Captain’s feet as a gesture of their deep gratitude for saving them, their womenfolk and children. He was uneasy at this gesture and just stepped back from the turbans, telling the Hindus that what he did to save them and their families was a matter of duty for him. He surely was a true Muslim, a gentleman officer, and a karmayogi for whom a duty performed was its own reward. We do not know this officer’s name or the place he was from, but his face will ever remain hallowed in our memories. He was a stranger, but a great benefactor. May God bless his soul.



How do you judge a community? One way is to look at the great men and women it has produced from its ranks (the elitist measure). The other way to evaluate a community is to look at its average member (the common-man measure). Judged by the first (the best person) standard, Bhera wins hands down. The exemplary stand of Sheikh Fazal ul Haq in saving his town’s Hindus and Sikhs from a sure massacre brings credit not only to his person and his family, but also to the entire community of Bhera’s Muslims. S. Radhakrishanan, a philosopher and a former President of India, portrayed the “best man� view of a society in these words: “When the wick is ablaze at its tip, the whole lamp is said to be burning bright.� It surely applies to Bhera, and its people can rightfully take pride in the radiant nobility of Sheikh Fazal ul Haq.



Judged by the other, “common man� standard, Bhera’s Muslims acquitted themselves quite well. We, the departed Hindus and Sikhs, have to recognize the essential decency of the Muslim folks of Bhera. If men like Sheikh Fazal-ul-Haq and the Muslim Captain saved our lives, then the Muslim commoners of Bhera can be said to have spared our lives. The local Muslim community did not seek to harm, much less to annihilate, the town’s Hindus and Sikhs. We are grateful to all those who by their decency and restraint made it possible for us to leave the town in relative peace and safety. Except for one case of fatal stabbing of a Hindu boy, Bayya (son of Ram Lal Mandharia) and one case of arson (Lall Kuppi’s kiryaana shop in Guru Bazaar was set on fire), we were let go unharmed from Bhera. Few towns in West as well as East Punjab could match Bhera’s record of good sense in those trying times of collective insanity when the sanctity of human life and the honor of women did not seem to matter any more.



Before our special train left Bhera’s railway station one day in September, 1947, a batch of Muslim National Guards (the Muslim counterpart of those days to the Hindu RSS) showed up in their green uniforms and lined up on the platform in a “Guard-of-Honor� formation to bid us farewell. We watched them from the windows of our railway compartment, not knowing what to make of this entirely unexpected move. We were at that time more concerned about the oppressive heat in our railway compartments. We were packed like herrings in the train; several families stuffed in each small compartment, and as many as 7,000 Hindus and Sikhs (along with the baggage they could carry on their person from their homes to the railway station) squeezed in eight or nine railway bogies. The crowding made the inside of the train feel like an oven, even when all the windows were kept wide open. At one point, one Muslim national guard, Baalu (for Iqbal), who used to work as a sweeper for a Kapur family in our mohalla, approached the head of this family and advised that we better close the windows. It did not make any sense; he did not tell us why the windows need be closed. He kept pleading though. Before he went back to be with his fellow-guards, he made sure that we were going to shut all the windows. The gentleman returned after a while to ask why we had kept one window open. We told him that it would not shut. He suggested we better place a trunk (suit case) or even a rolled-bedding against the window to cover it. We sensed something was remiss, something ominous to befall us. It was only when the train suddenly stopped just a few miles from the station and we heard rapid firing by the escort soldiers that the full scope of the peril we were in dawned on us. It became clear why this caring person was so much concerned about the open windows. He knew of the planned attack, but could not divulge it.



Naturally, it is hard for us to forgive the out-of-towners from the surrounding villages (including a few from the town itself), who could hardly wait to kill the Hindu and Sikh men, and carry away their women and cash and jewelry as maal-e-ghanimat. Once turned back from the gates of Bhera by the pleas of Sheikh Fazal Haq Piracha, most of them showed up again a few weeks later to waylay the special train for the evacuation of the town’s Hindus and Sikhs. Before our train was stopped a few miles away from Bhera, we could see from the window chinks a few of these folks running by the side of our train. They had axes and spears in their hands, and those who did not have a donkey or a camel were carrying cots on their heads to bring back the booty. These laggards were trying hard to reach the site of planned ambush in time so as not to miss on their share of the spoils. When the train stopped at the barricade that had been set up for the purpose, the main body of raiders came rushing from behind the embankments of a canal to attack the train. The Captain promptly ordered his armed men to open fire, making the mobs retreat and find shelter behind the embankments. But for the effective protection provided by the armed escort, Bhera’s Hindus and Sikhs would have been a captive target for butchery in the stalled train





As we moved farther from the blessed land of Bhera, our troubles started multiplying and getting real bad. The long stay in the Mandi Bahauddin camp was marked by unnerving uncertainties, hardships, and a cholera epidemic in the camp. On the reassuring side was the presence of a battalion of Baloch regiment posted at the camp to guard it. After several weeks of stay in the camp, the Bhera’s Hindus and Sikhs boarded another refugee train that would take them from Mandi Bahauddin to the Indian border. The 44-hour long journey from Mandi Bahauddin to the Wagha border via Lala Musa (this journey in normal times took no more than three to four hours) was a frightening passage. But we were fortunate to make it safely to India. We got down from the train at Attari railway station and kissed the soil of India.



To be uprooted from your native lands, family homes and means of livelihood and to have your “dukh-sukh di saanjhi� community scattered across a thousand towns were an enormous dislocation for our parents’ generation. What they ended up facing was contrary to the history as they had known it. They had believed that kingdoms and governments could change, but the people (raiyyat) stayed put in their towns and were left largely untouched. The events as they transpired left them heart-broken. They had to leave for an unknown place in India and start a new life in a new setting. Any hope of returning one day with their ousted communities to their hometowns had disappeared fast. They realized that they and their children have been banished for ever and the keys to their houses they carried on them were no more than mementos. It took them decades of struggle and untold hardships to resettle. Most made it eventually in the new country, while countless others languished on the way to an ever elusive recovery. Yes, the anguish of our irreversible displacement has been hard to overcome.



Just as erstwhile rivals, who once pursued the same prize in town, become mellow over time, the sole inheritors of Bhera have started to empathize with the town’s disinherited people of 1947. The dispossessed have for long been resigned to whatever hand the fate had played for them and the inheritors of Bhera did not show any visible triumph in seeing us leave the land of our forefathers. The wounds of our loss have crusted, if not disappeared. The two sides now get together, talk, and write without serious recriminations and hurts. They see each other from the distance of time and space, and no party appears diabolic to the other any longer. There is a noticeable nostalgia for the times when we lived like neighbors without any running battles. A couplet form Momin says it all:



Kabhi ham mein tum mein bhi chah thi, kabhi ham mein tum mein bhi rah thi,

Kabhi ham bhi tum bhi thai aashnaa, tumhen yaad ho ke na yaad ho.



Once we and you had good will between us,

Once we and you had a way between us;

Once we and you were also friends,

Now you may remember it or you may not.



The overall amity among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in Bhera of the pre-Partition days was based on the concept of shared “ann-jal-hawah,� common life experiences, and a joyful pride in everything Bherochi from its phenian to mehndi (henna). Our pride in Bhera served to bind us, making us all feel that we were better than the people of neighboring towns! We were immensely proud of the town’s long history and the great persons the town had produced in different fields. When it comes to the mystic bond of shared ann-jal-hawah, the town’s Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs savored roties made from the locally grown wheat, drank the “salubrious� water from its Jehlum-fed aquifers, breathed the refreshing (“khush-gawaar�) air of Bhera, and basked in its “balmy� sunshine. With apologies to Faiz, we may slightly reword one of his couplets (see Note 3) from “Raqeeb se.�





[Hum] pe bhi [bikhra] hai uss [ufaq] se [khursheed] ka noor,

Jis mein beeti hui [subhoan] ki [jhalak] baaqi hai



The Sun spread its rays from the same horizon on us as well

The glimpses of those luminous mornings are still with us.



In the realm of common experiences, we all learned to take our first steps and to walk on Bhera’s terra firma, picked up its boli for our mother tongue, and partook of its romantic legends of Heer-Ranjha and Sohni-Mahiwal. When we went to school, we started learning Urdu from Class I, English from Class V, Hindi in VI, and Persian or Sanskrit in Class VII onwards. Exposure to a steady set of common influences had created a sort of common cultural ethos for the town.



Not too distant in the future, our generation who along with our parents had witnessed the finale of the centuries-old sojourn of Hindus and Sikhs in Bhera will not be around to tell about it. The ranks of our generation are dwindling steadily. So let us remember Bhera and celebrate our sad and happy memories of this town while we can! No one could have said it any better than Ghalib:



Naghama-hai gham ko bhi eh dil ghanimat janeai

Be-sadaa ho jaaey ga yeh saaz-e-hasti ek din!



O’ heart, consider even your sad songs to be a blessing,

One of these days, this instrument of our being will go silent.



NOTES



Note 1: Besides expressions like “aasaan-jasaan,� some words were pronounced so distinctively in Bhera that a Bherochi was instantly identified. Here is an anecdote we used to hear. Someone was once asked the name of the town he was from, and he repeated the question to get it right, “Maira shehar?� The person who had asked the question immediately responded, “Stop, stop. You do not have to tell me what town you are from. I know it, you must be from Bhera!� Around 1950, my younger brother and I were going from Karol Bagh to Pahar Ganj by a tonga in Delhi, and were chatting. All of a sudden, an older passenger on the front seat, asked us, “O mundeo, tussi pichhon Bherai de ho?� (Boys, are you originally from Bhera?) Astonished, we asked him how he figured out where we were from. He told us that it was our maira, maira (instead of mera) that gave away our origin! As the lady in the Sahniyan da Mohalla house in Bhera told Kalpana Sahni, “We have only to open our mouths to give ourselves away!�



Note 2: Sheikh Fazal Haq Piracha served as a member of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi from 1934 to 1946. He was also the Chairman of Bhera’s Municipal Committee from 1924 to 1958.



Note 3: The original couplet as Faiz wrote it is as follows:



Tujh pe bhi barsaa hai uss baam se mehtab ka noor

Jis mein beeti hui raaton ki kassak baqi hai.



From the same balcony, Diana shed her luminous rays on you as well.

The sweet pain of those nights past, still lingers in our hearts!

hamidm: be warned..i just directed masadi to this board from the ANP board..that is what i do when someone gives me too much trouble - let the dogs loose. or masadi in this case.

should their behavior=so their behavior

family stem=family system

(Chowk beti does mysterious things to posts!)

#180 Posted by hamidm2,

Now you say:

a quirk of nature because heterosexual behavior is necessary for the survival of the species ........ i believe that people do not choose to be homosexuals

So homos are an accident of nature but contrary to survival of species, and should their behavior is understandable. Am I with you?

What else is necessary for the survival of the species? Do you think a family system is necessary for survival because a human baby is the most helpless and more dependant upon its parents when born - amongst all species? Do you think the 'programming' against incest would be for that reason?

But then again, a family stem is tribal and contrary to liberal values. Why get married in the first place? Why not just fcuk like rabbits and procreate so the 'species' can survive?

It goes on and on. You can't defend your position. If you defend one position, the other will crumble.

And no, religion is not all about sex. The condom drawer in your kitchen is - where a ready stock is kept to be shared by whomever in the family needs one at an awkward moment. After all they're all consenting adults, right?

(P.S. By 'you', I don't mean you. I mean everyone who shares your muddled views)

akcheema sahib:
zeemax is a piece of Allah Mian's brilliant work. According to his religion a marriage of 6 year old with a 53 year old man is a-okay and first cousin marriages are fine as long as it's coming from Allah's surrogates. I would suggest don't waste your time with this troll. He'd had this argument before over here. http://www.chowk.com/interacts/11810/1/0/144

The trick here is that axioms on which any moral/ethical framework is devised has to come from a religious source/scripture otherwise axioms can't be acknowledged as such (according to zeemax) and the person putting forth a moral framework is a hypocrite. I'm sure it gets zeemax some thrills. (By the way, this guy is a Munafique-in-denial, the kind who literally believes in their own BS.)

Re: # 179

zeemax,

.... as far as i know, animals too indulge in homosexual behavior ... although, i do agree that it seems to be a quirk of nature because heterosexual behavior is necessary for the survival of the species ........ i believe that people do not choose to be homosexuals, just as people do not choose to be fat or short or tall, and therefore it is not right to discriminate against them ......

.... but like i said before, as far as you and others of your ilk are concerned, religion seems to be all about sex? .... i have a theory about why that is the case, but i won't share it because i don't want to offend you ........

#177 Posted by hamidm2,

Okay, you're going around in circles. So effectively you're saying that homosexuality is okay because it is consenting adults but incest is not okay because it's contrary to the evolved human values. Correct?

Now explain how animals accept incest but reject homosexuality (except hindoos).

Pls see my previous post for further clarity i.e. Is man less evolved than animals? Or animals are less evolved because they reject homosexuality while it's a sign of evolution that more evolved humans (like your ilk) do?

I hope the question is clear. Gimme the answer.

Re: # 174

tahmed,

.... is that a rumsfeld quote ?

Re: # 173

zeemax,

.... to be honest, i used to be against homosexuality before i was for it .....it is all part of growing up and finding out that sometimes your preconcieved notions can be wrong ...... sex is a private matter and what consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom is their business ... i am sure you will bring up the silly argument of 'what about consenting children' even when you know the answer to that .....

.... if you want to find an excuse for your faith, try something else other than the 'morality' issue ..... in my personal experience i have found most rabudly religious people - regardless of the religion - to be judgmental, cruel, immoral, corrupt and untrusworty ..... it seems to me that people who have made their peace with their god in heaven think it is okay to fu*k over people on earth ..... there are exceptions, but morality - at least, the stuff that i value - seems to be inversely proportional to religiosity ........

#175 Posted by tahmed32,

Man does not steal what is not his? You gotta be kidding.

Anyway, I'm waiting for hamidm's reply!

zeemax: do the stars care if a man steals what is not his? or that mush talks from both sides of his mouth?

only man cares. morality is rooted in millions of years of evolution, and drvien by man's own security needs. or as kant put it more impressively in the Categorical Imperitive.

hamidm: how do you know that the unknown does not exist?

#169 Posted by hamidm2,

No you're just repeating that 'programmed' argument which I refuted. When was it programmed? Before the Romans and Egyptian Pharaohs or afterwards?

While you're at it, also answer re:

"there are certain standards of morality that are universal ".

Is homosexuality an accepted Universal value but not incest? Why?

I mean, even animals do not indulge in homosexuality (except hindoos I guess). Is man less evolved than animals? Or animals are less evolved because they reject homosexuality while it's a sign of evolution that more evolved humans (like your ilk) do?

Now do answer point by point. No need to be evasive by acting funny.

Re: # 171

tahmed,

.... as an up and coming prophet, you should know that i was being rhetorical ..... if, as i belive, god does not exist how can he invent anything - good or bad? ..... in order to clear your confusion i should have said that idiot savants and apoplectic prophets who claimed to talk to 'god' invented all these bed things for their own nefarious purposes ....... is that better?

..... i hope you won't add to this long list of immoralities when you float your religion .... i trust you

hamidm: The first half of your post (where you point to the biological programming of certain human behaviors) points one way, while the second half of your post (where you point to God for certain other human behaviors) points the opposite way.

I am getting worried about you..

PS: sorry for typo in #170, which i have corrected above

hamidm: The first half of your post (where you point to the biological programming of certain human behaviors) points one way, while the second half of your post (where you point to God for certain other human behaviors).

I am getting worried about you..

Re: # 166

zeemax mian,

.... i think cheema sahib has explained it - humans are programmed to avoid sex with close female relatives .... the reason is evident on this forum where, i am sure, many are the product of first-cousin marriages .....

.... having said that, there are certain standards of morality that are universal and predate any idiot savant or apoplectic prophet with a message from god to stop stealing our neighbors cow or coveting his wife ..... i am sure that contrary to popular myth, luke did not invent the concept of "do unto others as you would have them do to you" ...... before the son of god showed up in his custom made sandals people did not go around stealing from their neighbors or murdering them in their sleep ........ it is a nonsensical argument! ..... morality was not invented by god ... as a matter of fact i would argue that god invented immoralities like jihad (violence), cruelty to animals (sacrifical killings), polygamy (legalized prostitution) and pederasty (gilmans) .......

.... i hope i have answered your question - now you are free to abuse my daughters and long-dead grandmother .........

Re: #various by akcheema,
Cheema sahib,
You seem to be referring to some kind of moral system based on evolution. Can you elaborate on that a bit?
How do you determine something is right or wrong?
Do you look for survival benefit for the species?

Re: # 163
Profess your faith first, what are you exactly?

Like you, I asked a zillion questions; the only problem was that I spoke without having read anything. But that was long ago.

Erase the lies of the godless from your mind and study what was Iblees's problem, which is THE problem with many Muslim turncoat Chowkies.

Too bad the influence did not rub off on you; you must have been very young when you met Dr. Asad.

Everybody is a convert in a way. From darkness to light is a journey; take the first step if you're unafraid.

Re: # 164
Nope, this is not M.Asadi.

Fondest regards.

#165 Posted by hamidm2,

Hamidm, it's a fair question relating to 'scientific enquiry' and 'logic'. Nothing to do with dragging in female family members.

C'mon now tell me, why don't you? What's your reason? I mean ... you don't HAVE to have babies. Right? You support homosexuality, even same-sex marriage. That's just great and right in line with 'consenting adults' and 'humanism'. Totally liberal and free-thinking. Why shirk when it's your siblings or daughters/sons?

Don't run away. Stand and gimme your logic how it is not pure hypocrisy!

akcheema sahib,

... don't tell me i didn't warn you!

...... around here any discussion on religion always ends with the same argument: "why don't you sleep with your sister?" ...... if you keep on persisting the women of your household - your mother, grandmother, sisters and daughters - will be dragged into it ..... if you have the stomach for it, carry on; if not, i would advise you to stop right now .......

.... the only argument the religious nutcases on this forum have is that without religion we would all be running around butt naked fornicating with our relatives! ..... in the end, religion seems to be all about sex

Tahir sahib,

(Muhammad Asad's THE MESSAGE OF THE QURAN )

Is this our own beloved chowkie Masadi sahib?

Regards

Re: # 161

Really! So who is supposed to have created Iblees; and what do you mean by "within"; or is he a "figment" as well?

As for your reference to Pauline Christianity before, they are an even more confused lot! And what exactly is your point here?

I refer you to answers in 152/153.

My initial entries have already dealt with Asad; Not only that I knew him (via his writings), I met the guy long ago with my father when he was really old and frail (he died in his nineties). A Jewish convert (from what is now part of Ukraine) who translated the Koran and was being brandished around by "Ikhwan-ul-muslimoon - aka Muslim Brotherhood" in the arab world and by "Jamaat-e-Islami" in Pakistan along with the likes of Maryam Jameelah!

I have already made this point before; "now are we to believe that the Koran has been de-coded in the twentieth century by an orientalist convert"; what about all the things that happened before in the name of the Koran? I suppose all those lives lost were futile since "the good/holy book" has only just been de-coded!

Just brandishing about converts is not good enough; Richard Gere is a devout Buddhist; shall we all pledge allegiance to the Dallai Lama for crying out loud!

I have presented logic but clearly this "virus of the mind" is virulent and sometimes contagious. Mr DM you are right, logic can't compete with "faith" since it is not based on any logic/scietific evidence but happens to be "blind".

To be candid, I have never done a serious reading of Koran. Can 'Thirukkural' be considered a book with similar ideas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirukkural

Thirukkural was part of my curriculum. The Tamil society attaches lots of importance to the teachings.

Re: # 148
"If Mohammed didn't exist, Khuda (or is it allah these days in the Islamic Republic!) wouldn't exist either; "a figment" of a very vivid imagination!"

Such thoughts come from the Iblees within. Allah does not NEED anyone to justify His existence etc. The Sufis played with words and messed up minds...

#157
"Notice how nobody speaks of the Bible or Paulian Christianity! You may want to check Ahmed Deedat for that!"

All abrahamaic religions are the same....

Why are we even talking about this?

In ten years of chowk, has anyone of us "freethinkers" been able to shake the faith of any believer? Or, has any of them been able to shake our disbelief? If the answer is no, it would seem that matters of faith cannot be tackled with logic.

But my friend kaal/eklaviya is right that once you accept faith on faith, Islam does make a whole lot of sense.

Re: # 140

Truly, THIS shock-treatment works! Wonder what the good doctor has to say on this...

Re: # 134
The key is Muhammad Asad's THE MESSAGE OF THE QURAN (Rs. 600 here, U$40 abroad). Sorry, I don't market it; God does.

Insha Allah 'aap ko bohat aaraam aye ga', AND you'll be able to stand up to the prejudiced onslaught!

I totally disagree that one cannot find things in Pakistan. Don't listen to TV avengelists, fantasy-khutbas and the rest it. IQRA (read with understanding) my friend.

The attackers get the pet questions from certain sites; there are sites that answer these allegations too! Notice how nobody speaks of the Bible or Paulian Christianity! You may want to check Ahmed Deedat for that!

Read the BOOK I recommend twice, then compare, and you'll see the differences. I'm done with it; took time you know!

What does "they shall have no fear, and neither shall they grieve" mean? What kind of men achive this? The path is yours to tread upon.

Live in peace; salaam....

Re: # 131

At last a respectful reply Mr. Laddu. In this lifetime you will attain good English manners. :)

If you wish to live with Prophet Muhammad's image as painted in the West, and as distorted by my own brethren, it is fine. But do that privately, please. If one is well-endowed, one ought not to frequently raise the 'dhoti' in public for appreciation; it is a repulsive act. Right? :)

Now get that visa, and cross over!

Re: # 129

Thanks for replying Mr.Rabbani.

As a Muslim who follows the first command (read with understanding: Iqra), you ought not to blame me.

If Nostradamus speaks (from his grave) in riddles, it is okay, if the Scriptures sometimes do that, it is indeed okay, if I do that sometimes unintentionally, it must be okay too.

Between the crudely bold and the artifcially beautiful live the vague, without make-up.

Not having a dirty surname does help (naam ka asar hota hai) as one could start resembling the quality or quantity it represents.

Celebrate NOW!

:) (double that on the rocks)

Hinduism being a “evolved� religion as opposed to the “created� nature of the abrahamic religions, . It will be the turn of these Abrahamic religions to face free flow of information now. Abrahamic religions being dogmatic , will find it tough to stand the test of time.

Re: # 149

And by the way, since we are on this "sufi" theme, listen to none other than "tum ek gorakh dhanda ho" (written by Naaz Khailvi and sung by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan). These pantheists have been crying out for centuries, just no one has been paying attention!

You obviously didn't read the reply carefully enough. So it is OK to marry your first cousin with whom you share a strong genetic bond via the grandparents. Or is it? In many cultures that is a similar taboo.

The whole idea has been about "keeping it all in the family" in feudalistic cultures, wherever they are. Advantages of first cousin marriages, lets see, very little or no dowry, "zameen/Jaidad" stays together, common heritage so perhaps something to talk about when the kids are gone.....

Rhetoric doesn't get us anywhere. I took the liberty of looking up your profile; you seem to have quoted Einstein! how interesting. My friend, a lot of learned people use religious metaphor, especially in terms of a God; this has been part of human culture. Here is also some of the things Einstein said; you might want to include them on your introduction as well:


I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
-- Albert Einstein

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
-- Albert Einstein

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
-- Albert Einstein

I also include quotation from Karen Armstrong (she has been quoted here once or twice) and none other than "OUR OWN" Mohammed Bin Zakaraya Al-Razi:

On what ground do you deem it necessary that God should single out certain individuals [by giving them prophecy], that he should set them up above other people, that he should appoint them to be the people's guides, and make people dependent upon them?
-- AbuBakr Al-Razi

You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: "Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one." Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. ... By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: "Produce something like it"?!
--AbuBakr Al-Razi

A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, "he" becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all-knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.
-- Karen Armstrong

The writing for "Religious thinking" is on the wall; by just repeating "My Allah said so via his beloved prophet" doesn't wash anymore mate! bring something intelligent and we are in business.

Also, we are still learning about the intrecacies of a lot of things that ask for our attention and demand exploration. Just because science doesn't have a full explanation YET, what makes you think religion does? You can't fill in gaps in scientific knowledge with fairytales! Uptil recently most people believed earthquakes and other natural disasters were "god's punishment" or "allah's wrath"; now we understand them better. It is funny that the same level/intensity of natural disasters, spread across countries, tend to do significantly less damage in the technologically advanced countries! don't you reckon.

May be "un ki rassi badhi daraaz hai..etc..etc.."

Re:akcheema

Cheema sahib, there is one and only one real reason for the existence of religion. It is the fear of the unknown after death. Man just cannot accept that this life is all there is to consciousness - once you die your neurons stop firing and thats the end of everything, just as no part of you existed before your birth, no part of you exists after death. This is a frightening and very scary conclusion to virtually every human being.

Hence the need to invent God, heaven, hell and all the nine yards associated with religion. It is very comforting to think that there is a grand plan and that you are part of that plan. Muslims often say that this life is a preparation for the next. It is essentially the lust for eternal existence which is at the core of all religions. Think of a case where a kid dies of cancer or some innocent people lose their lives in an accident. This appears so meaningless and life itself appears to be completely absurd. With a religious explanation, one can accept such events and carry on since one imagines that these deceased people are now in a better place.

This primordial need to be part of a grand plan fuels the urge towards spirituality and religion. That becomes a perfect foundation for a moral/ethical code as well since if you do not do the right things, you do not get that eternal life, while you get rewarded for doing the right thing. Thus religion also becomes a very powerful tool to control society and maintain order. Most legal systems, including the western legal system is based on religious Judeo Christian ethics.

So all in all, religion is critical for man because man is too weak and powerless in this universe.

akcheema#148:

The theme occurs in quite a few sufi songs; there is this famous song whose first line I forget but the second line gives the reason why the sufi revers Allah is "kyunkay tu muhammad ka khuda hai".

Blind faith in Mohammad is not only critical for Muslims; it is, indeed, the only condition. Once you accept Mohammad as a prophet, everything else follows, without him, there is nothing. The same could be said of most other religions; jesus for christians, moses for jews, buddha for buddhists, even sai baba for his followers.

#144 Posted by akcheema

You say "evolution and genetics","programmed"! TaureanKhan says "instinctively programmed"! "free thinking"! etc etc. of-course forgetting the Romans and the Pharaohs who weren't so programmed in those early days.

So where did the "programming" come from? Laddu's monkey ancstors? Or was it religion which took hold after the Romans and the Pharaohs?

If it was Laddu's monkey ancestors, then you're absolutely on the right track. I congratulate you.

However if it was religion, then you freethinkers can all safely marry your sisters and mothers (if you like them i.e.), and not have babies at all so as not to produce retards, but have them with surrogate mothers or second wives or some stuff like that. Nothing wrong with consenting adults (convenience not even counting) or is there? Anything wrong with free will? Humanism?

Google for the German bro/sis marriage case (who don't want to have off-spring) and see the arguments presented and tell me why the hell the State refuses to allow it.

"Jay Oh (He) nah hun’dan, nah Rabb und’an, Lolak Khuda farmaya ay
Eh (this) gull (saying) yaar khata bhee naee’n, jay Khuda Oh (Muhammad) naee’n, tay judaa bhee naee’n"

If Mohammed didn't exist, Khuda (or is it allah these days in the Islamic Republic!) wouldn't exist either; "a figment" of a very vivid imagination!

A comment on Ref # 138:
“The veiling of "meem" with respect to Mohammad is that piece of subtle kufr regarding Mohammad that sufis indulged in - almost a reverse taquiyya.�

With due respect I just want to say Sir subtle Kufr could never be ‘Taquiyya’ neither reverse nor straight according to Quran. Moreover you seem to understand spirituality well enough but your understanding of Islam seems to me is limited. And I say so because if you really have read ‘Quran’ you would understand why our very humane Prophet Mohammad PBUH chose to leave ‘Sadhna’ and became politicaly active. What I understood is that Prophet Mohammed PBUH had complete ‘Unveiling of Truth’(when he attained ‘Mairaj) and He knew that the complete salvation, a ‘Nirvana’ is achieved or a real ‘Khuda ka banda’ (God’s Man) is the one who work for the betterment of God’s creation, who save miserable souls from sufferings, from oppression and from tyrant discriminative systems( Jbar kee quwatoan ke khilaf). As Allah said in Quran, “who amal jo banee noae insaan kee falah mein na kiya jae who raigaan gaya� which mean “those actions/deeds which are not benefical to mankind are wasted�. Prophet Mohammad PBUH, Prohet Moses, Christ, Abraham or any other holy Prophet were all reformers, the revolutionist of their times. They all worked against the unjust systems of their eras.

“It was this apostatic kufr poetry that also aimed at diluting the agenda of political Islam and take Islam towards spirituality. Pakistanis are now re-looking into sufi version of Islam to reclaim their "Islamic" identity.�

Sufism is not what Islam preaches and hense not an Islamic identity. For us Muslims Islam is not just politics, science, jurisprudence or spiritual rituals but encompasses all in moderation. Islam put balance emphasis on practices and divine laws which would not just nourish, purify, and grow an individual soul but enables to create a harmonised peaceful just communities. This is the preaching of Islam though that ideal state is still far fetched but the goal for us to attain that kind of state is set. It was this vision behind the creation of Pakistan to present to the world the true model Islamic state. But unfortunately we had made mockery of our selves. How ironical is that people who never read the holy book Quran (born muslims and others) easily criticise and comments on it. I wonder how could anybody just make comment on any book without reading and understanding the text?

“ But for that they would have to accept the fact that sufis were superior to Mohammad and the path to Allah can only be achieved by jettisoning Mohammad and his political path.�
You might rate Sufis better than Mohammad (astaghfaarullah) but just ponder a little before making this sweeping judgement. I give an example from common day.If your house is on fire or under tornado or threatened by any disaster and one of your family member is busy in collecting his own private belongings, making plans doing things to secure himself and there is another member who leave all his wealth aside and tries to rescue other family members, who would you rate superior than?

I think sufism is all words and no action for mankind. Allama Iqbal said,
“ Khuda ke bande bane hazaroan, banoon mein phirte hain maare maare,
Mein us ka banda banoo ga jis ko Khuda ke bandoan se piyaar ho ga�
Abu Bin Adham (Rehmatullah elaih) a great sufi was also reported to have similar philosphy.

Nikhat Riaz

Wow Gill Sahib, I was thrilled to find out that you also read Pervaiz sahib's book on "Tasawuuf". I read it too and many more of his great works like 'Iblees aur Adam','Insaan ne kiya soacha',' Allah ne kiya kaha', on 'Taqdeer' and many others. You probably know that he quoted Allama Iqbal (who once was ardent lover of Hafiz and Roomi great Sufi poets and in his later life deviated from Sufism once he understood 'Quran' clearly) that "Tassawuuf Islam kee serzameen pe ajanbi poada hai".
The history of "Tassawuuf" in that book told us how ancient, deep and universal are the roots of this 'ism'.
After I read that book I understood clearly the theory of 'wahdat-el-wajood'. Though its very idealistic and humanitarian at one level but the ground reality is that it limits a man to private rituals of reaching 'nirvana' excludes him from actual participation in society. This dangerous path encourages a man to leave practical real world, be a cripple worthless member instead of active, beneficial, contributing member of community.
I believe today’s world need a fine balance of compassionate heart of 'Sufi', their humanitarian poetry and peace messages along with strong 'Khudee and shaheen philosophy of Iqbal to make it a better place. Balance is key word which our Prophet Mohammed PBUP has always preached. What do you say?

Nikhat Riaz

Re: # 143

read "contrived all of the "Mecca verses" ..." as "contrived all of the "medina verses".."

Re No: 140

The reason is in evolution and genetics. Look around you matey! I take it you are from Pakistan; so am I. I am sure either you yourself or someone close to you is married and has had kids with a first cousin! How much of a difference is there exactly? Studies from Birmingham, England have indicated a 12 times rise of ceratin genetic disorders amongst people from Pakistani heritage; the reason is "commonality" of genetic pool with the same variations and mutations propagated through generations. By the way, more than 90% of the population in question practices con-sanguinity; for you that means first cousin marriages.

The reason these things are not obvious in Pakistan is that such offsprings either die at birth or, through "natural selection" get taken care of during early childhood. How many times do we see people, including young/newborn children and stillbirths etc that get put down to "allah di marzi" and swept under the carpet!

This is the reason we are "programmed" not to commit incest. Clear enough!

By the way, I also don't rape, kill, mame, steal, commit fraud and intentionally hurt someone else's feelings. This is what my conscience tells me; the same conscience that has developed and perfected over millions of years of evolution through natural selection. In olden, tribalistic, early human living (probably even in the times of Austrelopithicus), if you were to do something injurious to someone else, surely the repurcussions were severe. So the early humans learnt very quickly what was "right" and "wrong". This is where the "Golden Rule" comes from: "DONOT DO TO SOMEONE YOU WOULDN'T WANT DONE TO YOURSELF".

Surprisingly, this lynch mob mentality has had a resurgence within the Islamic world - right from the early days I might add!

Now if you have something productive to contribute, I'd be happy to listen. I don't like wasting my time otherwise.

Re: # 142

MECCA Versus MEDINA Verses- How Mohammad fell from the PAth

"He was drowned in the Ocean of Divine Oneness."

For an enlightened one drowned in the ocean of divine oneness - hatred towards idolators,kafirs or any one not agreeing with you would automatically disappear and "samata" or "oneness of thought" would automatically set in.

Mohammad's "Bhrasta Sadhana" (falleness from the path) is clearly evident from his actions when he migrated from medina because nobody was ready to accept his "superiority" as a prophet.
That ego defining moment of Mohammad led him to his falleness from the path. Now , no revelations were coming because his ego had made him think that he is the chosen one and the prophet and all human beings must follow him.

His ego turned him into a narcissist and there when no revelations came to him he became angry - HE CONTRIVED ALL OF THE "MECCA VERSES" IN ORDER TO JUSTIFY HIS EGO MANIACAL SATANIC VIOLENT ACTIONS OF RAPE, LOOT, BANDITRY AND MURDER.
That is the truth about that fallen man. He was just a man who for a brief moment connected to the devine only to re-ify his ego as the divine later when he strayed from the path.

That is why sufis say - take away the "Meem"/maya from mohammad - i.e. take away the later verses- and you get the path to Allah.

laddu,
i'm afraid your postfactum analyses are completely wrong!
The Messenger IS the fount of spirituality from which the Sufis derive their own elevated states. He was drowned in the Ocean of Divine Oneness. All other Messengers and Saints recieve their portions of spirituality from Sayyidina Muhammad who alone is the one who is totally Fana Fillah: Anniihilated in Allah. His position in the spiritual heirarchy is unique, only below Allah Himself.

That is why he said: "He who has seen me has seen al-Haqq".
sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam!

Re: # 140

Zeemax

.....Listen wise guy, the only reason why you can't sleep with your sister or mother is because religion says so. No other reason. Got it?.....

-----------------------------------------
I admire your "shock treatment" to all at Chowk!!

Now that adds a good kick (literally!!) to the arguments on religion..

How about pondering over the possibility that we are "instinctively programmed" not to indulge in incest?? what would you say to that?.... I have not come across any news or research pointing to the rise of incest in communist countries, especially Russia. Have you?

Now please dont think that i am an apostate... not yet..... but I am doing some "free thinking" and reading..... putting to test the things which were hitherto "given" and taken for granted...

#133 Posted by akcheema,

Abey tu phir aa gaya?

Listen wise guy, the only reason why you can't sleep with your sister or mother is because religion says so. No other reason. Got it?

If you want to argue about this, ask the chief-apostate of Chowk named Dr. Sohail who's ass is still smarting from the thrashing he got.

Now if you really want to prove your credentials, do either (or both) of the above and let us know the logic derived from the experience(s). If you don't, you're just a hypocrite upstart like dozens on these pages.

Re: # 133

akcheema mian,

.... you are a darn good writer, you have clarity of thought and purpose, you obviously have a meaningful and well paying job (and probably use utensils to eat your dinner)and you seem to be a decent person .... so what the heck are you doing here wasting your time with ne'erdowells like us ? ...... you are welcome to stay, but i suggest you move on before we drag you down to our level ......

Re: # 133

"Laddu, I agree with your concept of asceticism in the sense that it is something achievable, BUT, it has been biologically shown that a person, through meditation/concentration etc., can release , subconsciously of course, chemicals in one's brain that allows one to have "out-of-the-world" experiences."

Yes, there is a physical and verifiable aspect to it. Mohammad did sadhana that altered his physical self - his sweat became sweet smelling and his face had a glow - these are all normal consequences of sadhana done by ascetics which he gained in his 40 days sadhana - but he immediately fell down from the path of annihilation. In fact sufis reached that path of fanaa /annihilation that Mohammad could not reach.

That is why sufis are spiritually superior in every aspect. The sufi's mullah-arse-licking was basically to avoid getting lynched publically and avoid getting into un-necessary conflict with the powerful ulemas who define political Islam. The non-darbari Sufis avoided political Islam and merely paid lip service to Sunnat and all that is there in political Islam and wrote subtly veiled verses that actually belittled Mohammad but praised Allah.

The veiling of "meem" with respect to Mohammad is that piece of subtle kufr regarding Mohammad that sufis indulged in - almost a reverse taquiyya. It was this apostatic kufr poetry that also aimed at diluting the agenda of political Islam and take Islam towards spirituality. Pakistanis are now re-looking into sufi version of Islam to reclaim their "Islamic" identity. But for that they would have to accept the fact that sufis were superior to Mohammad and the path to Allah can only be achieved by jettisoning Mohammad and his political path.

Re: # 132

yes, I am indeed indebted to have you as a friend.

hmmm....this seems to have become a society of self congratulators.

It seems the debate is between "islam sucks" and "islam and sufism suck" and "sufism sucks".

Fantastic.

Why don't you all give each other a hand ;)

#134 TK: Here is how you look at it. Everything is relative. The Quranic message is relative to 7th century AD. So relative to things in the 7th century AD where does the Quran stand?

1. on women rights - pushes for their property rights. rights not received by women in the west until the 19th century (per Karen Armstrong). Conclusion: muslims should follow the Quran and push for equal rights for women, not just better rights than 7th century.

2. on individual rights - the Quran makes the individual personally responsible to God on matters of religion. Not to other individuals. Thus, it rejected priesthoods of the 7th century. Conclusion - if individuals were not considered to need priests for er.."guidance"..in the 7th century, they certainly dont need them today!!

and so on.

Re: # 111

tahir,

I am not just chasing aussie dollar but also have time to look at my religion more closely and critically...something not allowed or cannot be afforded in pakiland.... how would you justify the verses that call for "beating" wives if they do not obey... and why is the Quran so misogynist... with the visualisation of heaven more as an Arab fantasy with "flowing rivers of honey" and houris.!!! now this is something i did not realise earlier.... some non muslim friends pointed these things out and frankly i am not satisfied with the replies to these issues given by muslim ulema.....

I left because I have work related committments; also, there seems to be a lot of "circular reasoning" going on. This way the ideas can't progress but remain static with the illusion of progression; that has been the hallmark of muslim culture throughout history, even during the so-called "golden age". There was clear camps of those trying to justify ancient Greek philosophies and amalgamating it with Quranic thought (Ghazzali vs Ibn-e-Rush - Incoherence of philosophers vs incoherence of incoherence, respectively - is only one prominent example).

The expanse and rapidity of expansion of an empire does not imply any truth, if there happens to be a message behind it. The Roman Empire was pretty huge but I don't condone some of the barbarity associated with it. However, there has been a lot of good that came out of it as well. Same goes for the rapidity of expansion of the British Empire; it covered a major part of the planet at one point and the areas it didn't directly control, it had a great influence on indirectly. The "imperialistic" ambitions have changed in recent times and the current "Americanism" is no different, but in this empire the influences are exerted indirectly via proxies. What does it actually mean; should we all succumb that an "empire/message" is so rapidly expanding so it must be true; doesn't mean a thing! We can dissect out individual elements of this "early muslim empire" region by region, but I am sure you have an analytical enough mind to read independently.

I have tried to stay out of personal attacks as it generates a reaction and distorts the individual's response somewhat; you can say it has the capacity to radicalise views at times. Eklavya, surely Laddu wasn't there with Mohammed so he can't be "absolutely certain" what was going through his mind with regards to his "ascetic" experiences; with all due respect, nor were you, so why are you so confident about its verasity. Just based on what Mohammed and his immediate followers wrote? How does that make it reliable? We are back to "circular reasoning" again!

Laddu, I agree with your concept of asceticism in the sense that it is something achievable, BUT, it has been biologically shown that a person, through meditation/concentration etc., can release , subconsciously of course, chemicals in one's brain that allows one to have "out-of-the-world" experiences. However, these are generated by the organism itself and are not, I repeat not, an indication of an outer "persona", be it god/allah/brahma etc. The very essence of true Sufis was this "clarity"; god lives in the heart is exactly that, I am sorry to disappoint anyone! It is nothing but a "figment" of one's own mind. I am also impressed with your knowledge base on these matters, especially the distinction between the "darbari" sufis and "true" ascetics. The very fact that these experiences have been across the board, well represented amongst people from Hindu (Sadhu), Muslim (Sufi-the"true variety"!), Christian (Eastern Mysticism), Jews (Kabbala), Buddhists (Gautam himself - who was an atheist by definition!) and many others, is a testament to their universality; and that is where we sould leave it.

As far as contradictions are concerned, there are plenty in Koranic/Hadith literature, otherwise there won't be all these "interpretaions" and "sects" etc; like I said in my very first entry (#49), they can't all be true! Question is, is any one of them true!? There is an ingrown, through millions of years of evolution, sense of right and wrong in all of us. This existed before Mohammed (just to quote an example, feel free to substitute Buddha, Jesus or someone else), and it has existed since. When early muslims came across the thoughts of ancient Greeks, they were as perplexed as everyone now seems to be. There were debates, writings, philosophical discussions, incorporations of it into Islam or outright rejections. This is what made this "golden age" possible. It was about nurturing the "anlytical" faculties of the human mind - it wasn't all plain sailing for the scholars of the time, as sometimes is implied by a lot of Muslims! It had nothing to do with the "expanse of the empire"; however, having the upper hand provided some security for this as "new (?) ideas" often don't just occur if one is starving bloody hungry!!

Coming back to contradictions; contradictions are there in every single human mind that exists and functions at an average human level. It is a fact of life! It is what distinguishes humans from other great apes, and the rest of the animal kingdom at large. Otherwise, why would one think about anything?! We would just nurture our basic "animal" needs and muddle through life like any other organism. As for the "originality" of any thought, thoughts "evolve" are don't just "occur" on the spot! To quote an example, when we have the next generation of computers, the next generation is built upon the blueprint of the former; they don't start from scratch everytime.

I know I have gone on for a bit but before anyone writes impulsive responses, just read it all first; nothing worse than repetition I am afraid. I would like to, intermittently, participate if I can. I tend to be very busy at work, like I mentioned before, so please pardon my periodic absences, especially if there happens to be a question addressed directly towards what I said.

laddu,

..... you can be my friend ..... i am not very picky

Re: # 127

tahir ji,

"Are these your original thoughts? "

These are thoughts based upon my person experiences and sadhanas. I have met so many ascetics, sadhus, scholars of religious texts (shastras) that I know for sure when I see a "path bhrasht" sadhaka.
What Mohammad experienced in his sadhana days is nothing new but can be experienced by sadhakas even today.
I know may sadhakas who turned opposite of what they were practicing- their sadhana was annihilating their ego gradually and that is actually the scariest of all the prospects in sadhana.
When Mohammad just reached the stage of complete annihilation he abandoned his sadhana.
He became path-brahsht and became veiled by the "meem" - one of the stages of veiling in Jain thought is called "tirthankar-gotra-bandh" - the desire to be a prophet. And he fell down the path and became the monster that he became later.
Mohammad was the fallen sadhaka- there is no doubt about it!!

Tahir, the tendency, the urge to abuse, curse, dismiss, put down, defame individuals - those who disagree with us - is a major hurdle to understanding things/ideas as they really are. Unfortunately, we fall into that error so often :(

-----------
Contradictory ideas cannot 'respect' each other. And those contradictions must be highlighted. Yet, as much as possible, it seems better to leave the conflict of ideas within the realm of ideas.

I myself find it hard to follow that advice. Personalizing issues is often too powerful, seductively powerful an alternative - quick and easy.

Re: # 114 tahir wrote:

["... 1) SUPPORTING CHEEMA?!?!?!

... 2) How men seldom live up to the qualities of their names ..."]

Tahir ji, what can I say? You read more into the words then you should.

1) I do not support Cheema. I do not know him from Adam. For all I know he could be a real Prince or he could be an asshole. But that does not matter. I was simply supporting the idea he was projecting. That had a ring of truth for me.

2) What's in a name? Suppose my parents had named me "Prince".. What would that have mattered? I'd still be the ordinary paupper that I am. Or if they'd named me "Asshole"... what would that have mattered?

You speak in riddles. What did you really want to say?

...SR

Re: # 126
Mr. Eklavya at last!

I'm sure you read me as closely as you read Mr. Laddu. Just because one's country is five times the size of another hated one does not entitle the former to bad-mouth the later.

Trying to understand faith and spirtuality while mud-slinging is bound to bring the excretion back on the slinger's face--provided one has a real face, a real name to begin with.

Laddu says: I would like to make some good Pakistani friends.

If I were to curse and abuse good Hindus who practise 'dharam' the way it is prescribed in genuine texts, would I make friends?

To live a life full of contraditions is worse than 'narkh'.

Aap hi iss 'moorakh' ko samjhaiay.

Shanti.

Re: # 121
"Mohammad could never accept the fact that path to god is annihilation of ego - scared at the prospect of his ego dissolution he remained covered in the veil of "meem" and acted violently that re-affirmed his ego as a "prophet" that is superior to other humans."

Are these your original thoughts? Read the Quran for the dire warnings to the Prophet regarding apprehensions (satanic whispers), incomplete delivery of the message, and paying greater heed to rich pagans in the hope that their conversion might bring about a faster change!

His job was to deliver the message, AND show how it is to be done through persistence, patience, sacrifice, words and good deeds.

The Islam-haters have these pet insults which knowledgeable Muslims are familair with; tell me something new now...

Shanti.

Tahir, actually, laddu is a very good Hindu, except that he speaks out. He is the closest to a Hindu friend of Islam.

Secular Hindus are much worse, and they are the true enemies. Laddu at least makes an effort to understand, and is naturally shocked, just as any good Muslim would be shocked were he or she try to really understand Hinduism.

(A 'good' Muslim would want Hinduism to be an extension of Islam, and laddu, a 'good' Hindu wants Islam to be an extension of Hinduism.)

Secular Hindus don't even make an effort, and dismiss it all as off-hand. According to secular Hindus, Muslims do what they do only because they are absolutely crazy, illiterate, brainwashed etc etc.... :(

Re: # 113

A CD titled ALIM 6 is available which has 4 translations side by side along with the Hadith books. It has ASAD too!

Asad is the best kept secret in Pakistan. Now find out why the so-called heavyweights of Islam won't allow his translations to be read by the masses. What is accepted is all bubblegum and lollipops!

The local print of his translation should not cost more than $10 in India. The latest foreign edition is just awesome! They created a special Arabic font for its fine print. It has Arabic original text, English translation AND transliteration, a great index and what not. Costs around $40.

Here's an excerpt from his 'The Road to Mecca': (Rs.200/-)

After traveling much of Central Asia, he was now in Afghanistan. He was once traveling from Kabul to Herat on horseback through the snow-covered valleys of Hindu-Kush when his horse lost an iron shoe. So he had to stop the trip for a few days and go to a village to have the shoe repaired. A hakim (district governor) in Afghanistan came to know about a "foreigner" visiting his area. He invited Weiss to spend an evening and a night with him. Weiss, who spoke Persian fluently by that time, accepted the invitation. After the dinner, a villager entertained them with a song and his three-stringed lute. The room was carpeted and warm and it was snowing outside, which could be glimpsed through the window. The song was about David’s fight with Goliath ...

When it ended, the hakim remarked: “David was small, but his faith was great.�

I could not prevent myself from adding: “And you are many, but your faith is small.�

My host looked at me with astonishment, and, embarrassed by what I had almost involuntarily said, I rapidly began to exam myself. My explanation took the shape of a torrent of questions:

“How has it come about that you Muslims have lost your self-confidence — that self-confidence which once enabled you to spread your faith, in less than a hundred years, from Arabia westward as far as the Atlantic and eastward deep into China —and now surrender yourselves so easily, so weakly, to the thoughts and customs of the West? Why can’t you, whose forefathers illumined the world with science and art at a time when Europe lay in deep barbarism and ignorance, summon forth the courage to go back to your own progressive, radiant faith? How is it that Ataturk, that petty masquerader who denies all value to Islam, has become to you Muslims a symbol of ‘Muslim re¬vival’?�
The hakim remained speechless. It was now snowing again outside, and Weiss continued –

“Tell me — how has it come about that the faith of your Pro¬phet and all its clearness and simplicity has been buried beneath a rubble of sterile speculation and the hair-splitting of your scholastics? How has it happened that your princes and great land-owners revel in wealth and luxury while so many of their Muslim brethren subsist in unspeakable poverty and squalour — although your Prophet taught that No one may call himself a Faithful who eats his fill while his neighbour remains hungry? ... How has it come about that so many of you Muslims are ignorant and so few can even read and write — although your Prophet declared that Striving after knowledge is a most sacred duty for every Muslim man and woman and that the superiority of the learned man over the mere pious is like the superiority of the moon when it is full over all other stars"?

The hakim was startled. But at the end, he said,

“But – you are a Muslim ...�

I laughed, and replied: “No, I am not a Muslim, but I have come to see so much beauty in Islam that it makes me sometimes angry to watch you people waste it ... Forgive me if I have spoken harshly ...�

But my host shook his head. “No, it is as I have said: you are a Muslim, only you don’t know it yourself ...�

Now get down on it Laddu brother....
PS: Cross the border and I'll gift the book to you!

laddu, how do you know that Mohammad connected with the divine, got frightened, and ran away, and became ego affirming, etc.?

That's not a cheap shot. So I won't ask you: "Were you there?" or, "Can you offer historical references? (because no one can expect many anti-Islamic references to surive in Islamic lands).

Can you explain to me, logically, in a way that would make sense to a Muslim? Thanks.

Re: # 120

No he's the wrong face. Hindu scriptures are not what he utters. Pray for him to become mentally 'pawittar'.

There are quite a few men alive today who love insulting the deceased prophets.

Re: # 119

Leaving us so soon? Dinner was just about ready!

"I for one don't doubt, at least in the initial phases of its development, the sincerity of Jesus or Mohammed for that matter in trying to define a "meaning" in this life."

Mohammad did connect with divine in his 40 days of seclusion - infact a lot of sufis and sadhus who indertake such sadhanas do connect.
but some of them get frightened by the gradual annihilation of the ego that they run away from that and become fallen from sadhana.
Such people more often turn into ego re-affirming actions like senseless violence, rape and banditry in affirming their connection to divine.
These are the fallen sadhakas and turn into bhrasht Rakshasas - that is exactly what happened to Mohammad later.

Mohammad could never accept the fact that path to god is annihilation of ego - scared at the prospect of his ego dissolution he remained covered in the veil of "meem" and acted violently that re-affirmed his ego as a "prophet" that is superior to other humans.

laddu is the true face of hinduism---never ever come across anyone with as much hatred of the prophet as him.

The case for or against the existence of a "Supreme Prime Mover" has nothing to do with dogmatic religion. Like a lot of other unnecessary "necessities" in life, religion has become one; the only litmus test is to look at people not raised in the religious framework and study the impact; there is not the slightest suggestion that they turn out to be evil. In fact quite the opposite. It is very much, in evolutionary terms, an acquired taste! In the olden days, it gave people a sense of community and perhaps same is true now.

Besides, if a child feels consoled by the imaginary presence of some false fairytale character, a figment of its vivid imagination, that alone doesn't make the presence of such character true. I think it is much better to get paid professional help if one is feeling down; it keeps it much safer for the rest of us!

I for one don't doubt, at least in the initial phases of its development, the sincerity of Jesus or Mohammed for that matter in trying to define a "meaning" in this life. However, I fail to recognise their individual authority on the subject and certainly doubt that the later events were necessarily pre-envisaged by either one of them. I certainly have no problems critiquing either one (or others for that matter). However, I think much has been made out of nothing in regards to all this rubbish about interpretations, hidden meanings, infallibility of scripture and similar concepts. Just take them at face value and above all, if you believe in a certain fairytale to be true, use it for your personal consolence, if it helps, but don't expect the rest of us to just swallow it based on YOUR convictions. Certainly not in the shape of, for example, legal codes for countries affecting the lives (usually adversely) of millions and turning them in to "submissive" to the WILL of something supernatural, which as would appear from the discussions in the last day or so, remains very poorly defined!

Many thanks for your company guys; for now I shall take your leave as "Kaar-e-jahan daraaz hai...". I enjoyed it immensely and certainly appreciate your input.

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Re: # 116

Hmm....

You have a greater understanding my friend than these Arabic wannabes indeed.

I have said already - reject Mohammad - accept Allah. That is the way to divine connection- Mohammad although talks about way to Allah - he just takes every one away from Allah in reality!!

Its not I with the baggage my friend! "Faith" by definition is blind but looks like this "blindness" is more of the mind of the beholder; i.e., one's thinking faculties; they get overridden by the control by some sky fairy in case of the evil of mono-theism. It appears some of the guys haven't read earlier discussions on this and seem to confuse the concept of cultural solidarity with "a desire to re-visit" some contract with "the divine". I never signed any contracts with any unseen, unheard, unproven and logically impossible sky fairies and sure have nothing to re-visit!

I thought it important to get this out of the way.

Regarding Mohammed Asad and his translation; are we saying that after centuries of confusion, warfare and human sacrifices on all sides, suddenly in twentieth century an orientalist convert translates ancient myths into english and this is the moment we were waiting for! Now suddenly we are to be "liberated" because the "code has finally been decoded". Doesn't appear logical at all.

As far as sky fairies and mind control, if someone claims that today independent of being part of a "faith-group", we all know we would have serious concerns about their mental health. However, if people in droves do the same, we have historically considered it a virtue and respect it as "their faith". It seems there is sanity in numbers!

Since you so eulogize this Arab wannabe guy Asad- give me a link to a tranlation of his bookk "Road to Mecca" plz.

Re: # 106

Supporting CHEEMA?!?!?

Rabbani, Rabbani...what does the name Rabb-ani mean? How men seldom live up to the qualities of their names...

Peace

Re: # 109

Tahir ji,

I know my Quran well enough - and I know my shahi Hadiths as well.
You mean there is something new in Asad's translation of Al Anfal?? How is Asad's tafsir giving different interpretation of what to do with modern day idolators??

"...AL-ANFAL

SURAH

hearts of those who are bent on denying the truth; strike, then, their necks, [O believers,] and strike off every one of their finger-tips!"''s

(13) This, because they have cut themselves off from '6 God and His Apostle: and as for him who cuts himself off from God and His Apostle - verily, God is severe in retribution. (14) This [for you, O enemies of God]! Taste it, then, [and know] that suffering through fire awaits those who deny the truth!

(15) O YOU who have attained to faith! When you meet in battle those who are bent on denying the truth, advancing in great force, do not turn your backs on them:" (16) for, whoever on that day turns his back on them-unless it be in a battle manoeuvre or in an endeavour to join another troop [of the believers] - shall indeed have earned the burden of God's condemnation, and his goal shall be hell: and how vile a journey's end!

(17) And yet, [O believers,] it was not you who slew the enemy,'$ but it was God who slew them; and it was not thou who cast [terror into them, O Prophet], when thou didst cast it, but it was God who cast it:'9 and [He did all this] in order that He might test the believers by a goodly test of His Own or..."

what is new in this translation?? How is it different?

Re: # 99

Manson! That explains away YOU my friend!

Start counting the 99 attributes of Manson now: I mean NOW!

Peace (in your little cubicle)

Re: # 87
An Aussie from NWFP. Vow!

The initial Quranic lessons strengthen faith in ONE God (concept of tauheed). The later half gets you into specifics and details like conduct during active struggle, what to uphold, what to resist, family law ammendments etc.

If you're struggling with the bascis at age... (whatever the age!); please stop chasing after Australian currency and get down to reading The Book.

Peace.

Re: # 83
I can't wait for a distorted Tafseer from you! Please consult with your near US-authorised eye-surgeon.
Peace.

Re: # 80
Read Muhammad Asad's translation; you will feel liberated. You're carrying a lot of excess baggage my friend!
Peace.

Re: # 74
"Not even if the charlatan claiming divinity is a paedophile , rapist and a Bandit?"

A good description of yourself, finally...

Shanti

Re: # 65
Lady Laddu, you've ben watching the wrong 911 film! Watch Loose Change, Fahrenheit, read a few other things; rest assured, you WILL GROW up.

"you damned Paki Islamists - you are like kutte ki dum- nothing can change your character."

From which bitch's behind have Hindu extremists emerged?

Which king Cobra bit to leave you with so much venom inside? Your handlers will ruin you...

Shanti!

Re: # 80 Cheema wrote: ["... If I see injustices in the name of Islam, with clear Quranic verses in its support, I am not going to stand by and just accept it! But I still wouldn't mind sharing "sawayyan" on Eid day cooked by my mother! But I am not just going to see millions of animals being slaughtered on Eid-ul-Adha as comemmoration of Abraham's alleged attempted sacrifice of his son and not comment on the sheer brutality of it all! ..."]

Very well said. I wish there were more of "your kind" who had the courage to stand up and say so openly.

...SR

dost_mittar,

Since you were interested in knowing, Javed Hashmi has confirmed PML(N) decision in an interview with Asma Shirazi yesterday that (1) they will provide numerical support to PPP to form government in the center but will not participate in the cabinet because of differences upon immediate restoration of judges and; (2) even though they have sufficient numbers in Punjab, they will share power with PPP in the province to express goodwill.

http://pkpolitics.com/2008/02/23/parliament-gallery-23-february-08/

Re: # 103

DM ji,

This guy is an Islamists who is following the latest Dawah technique that one should not offend the kafirs and always "show" them the choclate coated "un-truths" of Islam.
This guy has refused to negate the kalima which only an Islamist would do. He knows more about Islam than hinduism- and knows more about Pakistan than any ordinary Indian hindu.
I am surprised that despite his dhimmi talk with eulogies of Quran and Sunnat you could be fooled by him into thinking that he is probably a hindu.

laddu:

How do I know? Only through chowk, eklavya has a history at chowk and was once subject of all our prayers. [sorry, eklavya, for saying this].

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laddu#98:

ladduji, let me let you in on a secret; eklavya is Hindu brahmin (can you even think of a muslim adopting the nick of eklavya?)

I have not read the interacts, so some of what I say might have been said before.

Gill saheb, you have brought out an interesting aspect of sufism. What is the difference between love and worship? Does love become worship only when one prostates or does a sajda? Is one worshipping one's parents or elders when one touches their feet to seek their blessings?

I love sufi music and I am transported to another world when I listen to someone like Sabri Brothers or Abida Parveen. During last month, I have attended three sufi mehfils and will go to a few more, insha-allah, before I return to Canada.

To me, there are two key aspects to sufi devotion - niyet and ishq, i.e. intent and passionate love: If one's intention is noble, it does not matter what one is actually saying or doing and if one is passionately in love with something, even a human being, it can translate into the love for the divine.

To give an example of the first, let me borrow an example from Hindu mythology; it is said that a notorious dacoit came under the influence of a sage who asked him to recite the mantra of 'ram' to seek salvation. The dacoit memorised the mantra incorrectly and instead remembered 'mara'; so he started saying mara, mara, mara, which after the first 'm' sounded exactly like m- rama, rama, rama.

For an example of the second, it is said that a Mulla asked Majnu that instead of saying laila, laila all the time, he should be saying allah, allah, to which Majnu replied that if the Mulla listened carefully, there is no difference between Laila and La-Ila.

In addition to the love of the prophet, the sufis also expressed a deep reverence for their teacher or murshid. In this, they were borrowing from the local culture which gives to the guru the status of the highest god. Even today, a student of classical music or dance, whether hindu or muslim, will start with guru-vandana, which is:
guru brahma
guru vishnu
guru maheshwara
[the guru is like the three manifestations of god]

But there should not be any doubt about the sufis' commitment to their faith; indeed one could say that they were islamists in their own right. As has been pointed out several times on this websites, sufis were responsible for the bulk of conversions to islam on the subcontinent. Many of them (not bulley shah), especially during the pre-mughal period, considered prosleytising as a key mission. They brilliantly tailored their 'product' to suit the tastes of their hindu clientele. At that time, the hindu bhakti movement was sweeping all over India and they delivered their message in such a way that it became indistinguishable from that of hindu bhaktas. Even today, when a hindu listens to "jhannan jhannan teri naubat baaje, naal vaje kharhtall", he can imagine himself sitting in a temple, or when she listens to "chhaap tilak sab chheeni ray, tosay naina milaaye-kay", she thinks of expressing love for her idol Krishna. The transition was made quite seamless for the convertee.

Re: # 94

eklavya,

"Now, it may seem that, as raw argued, a Muslim may want to go back and 're-write' that contract, but other Muslims, who have their own individual 'contracts' with the same God are likely to feel contract-bound to not let that happen"

......... sounds like the damn mafia to me!.... once you sign a contract with the godfather you cannot leave without him putting out a contract for you ....... maybe that is why they call him god-father ........ what utter nonsense! ..... i can't believe people say all this with a straight face ........ what sickos !

"you know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. nowadays everybody's crazy" ........... you know who said that ? ... charles manson - i think he was talking about you religious nuitcases ......

Re: # 95

"Some 'Muslims' may (unjustifiably) feel a bit shortchanged because their God and their contract with their God does not allow revisions."

what BS. The so called "contract" is FORCED upon muslims men in their childhood.
Hope you remember the painful visit by your kasai for the khatna or 'signing' that god's contract??

"is it true that the verses which came after the attainment of power by the prophet are harsher and more violent as compared to the time when muslims were persecuted?"

As an idolator I need not think about "keeping the fsith anchor safe" or avoid "criticism of devine" that troll Islamist Kaale Khan aka Eklavya, this is called Quranic warfare - when momeen are supposed to feel good about their power their "Jazba-e-Jehad" is supposed to increase. Quran just reflects that because "Allh is merciful" but momeens are supposed to act like terrorists and only giving them booties and jizya would please Allh to be merciful towards idolators.

Eklavya,

The water carriers and the flag bearers like the new entrant akcheema will rant and rave and rack their minds with all sorts of queries, arguments, justifications, logic, criticisms, research - and what not - but they'll never leave the Caravan. The system which Islam is makes bloody sure of that!

Now do attempt to explain to cheema what the 'Caravan' and its 'self-maintaining/self-adjusting/self-generating' juggernaut Islam is!

(P.S. Just to annoy the people wondering whether the recent votes were for 'less Islam', Nawaz Sharif has said in a rally yesterday at Mansehra "Pakistan will be governed by the principles established by Allah and His Rasool". Haha ... sorry Laddu!)

I may add one more thing. Some 'Muslims' may (unjustifiably) feel a bit shortchanged because their God and their contract with their God does not allow revisions. But that would ignore enormous benefits that come with signing that contract.

Wish I could quote from a beautiful post that salim wrote about the benefits that accrue when one signs up. One suddenly gets about a billion human beings - men and women - who become more willing to help. That is an indescribably gain and assurance. This does not even include the psychic benefits of knowing that one is correctly leading life as desired by the true God in His final message.

Now, of course, in order to fully receive those benefits one has to do one's part fully as well. And these benefits beyond description cannot come without any costs, which might have to be paid in other ways.

Muslims, or those who wish to be Muslims, are generally willing to pay those costs. Look at Ahmedis, for instance!!

anil ji, only in jest....but hamidm2 sees prophethood for tahmed ji and wali status for naqsh bhai. :)

----------------

hamidm2

"why we can't crtiticize the 'divine'?"

I guess, I will offer the same arguments as in # 79.

A Muslim can't criticize/blame/question the divine owing to the nature of his/her 'contract' with 'God' (and the nature of Muslims' God).

Now, it may seem that, as raw argued, a Muslim may want to go back and 're-write' that contract, but other Muslims, who have their own individual 'contracts' with the same God are likely to feel contract-bound to not let that happen.
--------

It's a very specific thing. One can easily imagine other kinds of contracts with other kinds of Gods, where the latter are not so protected.

If raw reads this, I would love to know if any of this seems logical to him.

Re: # 90

Hamidm Sahib:

"..i will join your order ........ "

Have you not promised the same to tahmed sahib too?

What is going on, all these changes?

Re: # 89

Hamidm Sahib:

"...this great spirit in the sky who rules our imagination .... "

Is God the best imagination of man, or man is the best creation of God?

Does the above mean you too have this question in your belief system?

Re: # 66

"I hope they become more popular within their native lands so the process is not just confined to the diaspora communities but where it really matters!"


hahhaha!! are you kidding.... you will get a fatwa against you or legal proceedings under blasphemy laws!!!... or find yourself linched by a screaming mob chanting "kafir, kafir"...

Re: # 84

naqshbandi,

.... i apologize for lumping you with wild-eyed wahabis like urstruly and zeemax - you are a good man and if i ever decide to revert to the insanity of my former faith i will join your order ........ i have always wanted to put on a skirt and whirl around until i puke .......

Re: # 82

eklavya,

.......please explain why we can't crtiticize the 'divine'? what puts it above everything else ?.... if we can abuse sheikh rashid, president bush and brittany spears, why can't we curse this great spirit in the sky who rules our imagination .... what makes him divine and poor iblees profane, when he created the poor bastar&d in the first place - it is sick to chew out the creation for the poor mistakes of the creator ...... divine! ... my ass !

Regarding the need for religion:

Life is strange! on the one hand we need faith of some kind.. it has beneficial outcomes (proven by science in terms of the calming effect on humans).... but faith also creates "inertia" a al akcheema.... and creates dogma ...and stops critical thinking etc....... so "how much" faith is good????? is that of the sufi kind? certainly not the Wahabi literalist one which might focus on Quranic injunctions of "beating up of wives" if they err, killing of unbelievers etc...

is it true that the verses which came after the attainment of power by the prophet are harsher and more violent as compared to the time when muslims were persecuted?

Regarding the need for religion:

Life is strange! on the one hand we need faith of some kind.. it has beneficial outcomes (proven by science in terms of the calming effect on humans).... but faith also creates "inertia" a al akcheema.... and creates dogma ...and stops critical thinking etc....... so "how much" faith is good????? is that of the sufi kind? certainly not the Wahabi literalist one which might focus on Quranic injunctions of "beating up of wives" if they err, killing of unbelievers etc...

is it true that the verses which came after the attainment of power by the prophet are harsher and more violent as compared to the time when muslims were persecuted?

http://strayreflections.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/hz-bulle-shah-ra/

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/B/BullehShah/index.htm

hamidm mian and other islamophobes --witty like hamidm or just ignorant and hateful like laddu--

this article could have generated lots of discussion--intelligent discussion!--but i am reminded of the
saying of that other great Messenger of Allah, the Son of Mary, upon them both be peace, who said: "O' my disciples do not cast pearl before swine..."

I feel that is appropriate here methinks.
ps. hamidm i am saddened to be lumped in with rabid wahabis like zeemax, urstruly and necharis like tahmed...

The very fact that a book would need tafsir after tafsir to attempt to explain its "hidden" meanings (and them being different from one another in many ways - my very first post to this site) speaks volumes about its inadequacies. The mind of a "believer" is like pupil of the eye; the more light you shine upon it, the more it constricts!

If hamidm2 will excuse me, one last comment for akcheema ji for now :)

You are at complete liberty to criticize anything human or any human practise at any time at any place. In fact, you have a duty to oppose human injustice where you see it (there comes the public element of faith).

You just have to base your criticism on divine authority, and make sure to criticize the human element, not the divine element.

That's the easiest thing to do in every case.

Essentially, the whole thing has to do with maintaining the faith anchor completely safe.

Re: # 60

akcheema mian,

"I feel that some serious attempts at liberating a few minds may go a long way in the future of the progression of rational thought in the "muslim" world. " ......

.... i think it is a brilliant idea - there are quite a few 'minds' on this forum that need to be liberated .... gill sahib and i have been trying to do it for many many years, but these people just won't listen to reason ..... i have even written a line by line tafseer of the koran to show them the folly of their ways, but these people have been obdurate and pigheaded ..... verily, they are doomed

.... now it up to you to liberate these pitiful creatures ... they include: urstruly, zeemax, naqshbandi and tahmed ...actually tahmed considers himself to be some sort of a reformer so i would start with him first ....... but you have to be careful - these people are very tricky and it is quite possible that they might convert and pervert you ..... these insidious folks have managed to convert perfectly nice horrible hindoos like eklavya with threats of hellfire and brimstone, and promises of virgins and pretty boys ........... beware

Look, please don't argue and agree to disagree here. My intention was not to start off a fight here. Let me explain myself with one or two examples:

Albert Einstein was, despite what people might have you believe, openly atheistic but still very proud of his Jewish roots. As a matter of fact, most liberal western Jews have very similar views and tend to retain communal bonds despite not even at times having a belief in god. People would have you believe this is all to do with ancestery; not so I am afraid. There is a communal element to our social structure as humans.

More than 45% of the British population claims not to belong a religion or have beliefs in the super-natural. They don't at once stop celebrating Christmas and Easter etc. They still retain and celebrate virtually all important landmarks of their history without getting ridiculous about it.

Why is it so hard for me to retain some ritualistic elements for the purpose of cultural solidarity and celebrate them as part of my heritage! Why can't I spend Eid day with my family, same as someone with christian heritage on christmas day, and not get all silly about the "faith" element of it. Their is a difference here and I don't think it is that hard to comprehend.

I have "Hindu" friends who are radical atheists; doesn't stop them from celebrating Diwali though! We all enjoy the tales of the Greek and Roman gods; they are all celebrated as an integral part of western civilisation; by the believers and non-believers alike! It doesn't turn people in to pagans, or does it?

If I see injustices in the name of Islam, with clear Quranic verses in its support, I am not going to stand by and just accept it! But I still wouldn't mind sharing "sawayyan" on Eid day cooked by my mother! But I am not just going to see millions of animals being slaughtered on Eid-ul-Adha as comemmoration of Abraham's alleged attempted sacrifice of his son and not comment on the sheer brutality of it all!

I hope people can see this distinction.

raw_ :)

Yes, if defining that 'understanding' is done PRIOR to calling oneself Muslim, and latter association is made explicitly contingent upon that understanding.

Otherwise, temporal and social/public issues arise (choice made at one time constrain choices later, and choice set of x becomes constrained by choice set of y).

Partly, consider the context of BDSM, or the slave-master context of sufism. The slave has a theoretical RIGHT to make his/her relationship contingent upon specific conditions being met, but that has to be done very clearly PRIOR TO entering into that relationship.

Secondly, when there already exist, lots and lots of other slaves, it is a slave's duty to educate himself or herself fully on what kind of understanding these other slaves have with the master, and among themselves.

Because, unless the Master can be repeatedly reached for involvement and saving one's behind, there is no way of knowing or controlling, or even logically opposing, how OTHER slaves will behave, nor can one expect to enforce some standard slave behavior.

Now, one can argue that the decision is not always consciously made as a matter of choice or in full knowledge/acceptance of its implications, and those things do complicate matters....

---------

Sorry, obviously, that is not at all a reasonable analogy (except in the sufi context). Nor was that meant to offend anyone. But at least similar issues arise, IMO.

-------------------

I used to have a cd of the great master nusrat fateh ali in which he sung beautifully of his 'slavery' to medina and mohammad. So again, these words are used with caution and with due respect to normal people who have strong faith.

Eklavya:
The assertion you make, if I phrase it correctly:

Calling oneself a muslim and retaining the right to directly criticize the articles of faith(see below) are not possible simultaneously.

Articles of Faith:

Allah Mian,
His Oneness,
His Fallibility,
Mohammad's as the Sacred Person.


But there is a self-referentiality involved in this because of "Calling oneself a Muslim". Therefore, the argument short-circuits itself because the guy who retains the right to define himself a Muslim hence putting his understanding of the faith can also in the same breath limit the definition of his faith in such a way that it makes it possible for him to brand Mohammad in the vilest of terms (for example) and still see this as not infrgining on his faith.

I think we go over this before, so now that guy in question ad you have to bring an external source to arbitrate on the articles of Faith which means Eklavya has to put the guy in corner and have a debate on scriptures.

But akcheema sahib might not be interested in this. All he (as i figure) might be interested in is only the social aspect of having the space to get the critique going and mullah vigilantism and Allah Mian ki Lathi be eliminated for some reasons dear to him.

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Kaale Kahn Saheb,

Yeh gol mol baat mat karo. Be specific about issues and what you think. What is it that Madarasa teaches without bothering about your opinion??
Please be specific than try to confuse others with your dhimmi talk.

laddu bhai, both in Madrasas and paathshalas/shishu mandirs people teach what is important to them, without bothering about our opinions. Now, you and I might want to force our own views on them politically, but that is a different matter, simply fascism.

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In semitic traditions (you can reject those traditions if you can't stand them), the divine, or close to divine, is totally privileged. You are most welcome to criticize people's *UNDERSTANDING* of the divine. Islam in particular gives you the right to argue that nobody ultimately understands the DIVINE. But you cannot directly criticize the DIVINE (specifically, Allah, His Prophet, and His Message) nor blame those for your own or the society's problems.

That restriction is not as pressing as one might assume. On chowk EVERY POSSIBLE position is passionately taken and doggedly defended all in the name of the same Message, and the same Prophet.

--------

Now, if you are the kind of person who simply cannot accept privileged positions, you should simply consider quitting that religio-political framework, without forcing those who have no such issues having to abandon their faith for your convenience.

Re: # 68

"Islam in most perfect manner, do provide alternative, comprehensive moral/ethical frameworks, of which sexuality is just one aspect."

What morality are you talking about Mr. Kaale Khan. Go and live in Taliban Land!! If you are in India then you need to be kicked out of here.

Looks like you got it all wrong; I get on fine with everyone; perhaps that is the self-contradictory social setup we have in the sub-continent. I respect "their right" to believe in whatever they want, including growing beards etc. However, no ideology has a right to be immune to criticism. I have always welcomed criticism of my own ideas because I find it stimulating; its not reciprocated to the same extent though! My previous encounters used to be more using euphemisms; you can't be explicitly critical of the foundation of the faith, and its founder for example, as that is the boundary!

I don't accept the previlaged position that religious ideology seems to have that gives it immunity to critique. That is where the conflict begins.

Respecting someone's right to do something is not the same as actually having respect for what they do!!

laddu, there is nothing wrong with "mushrooming" of madrasas in Pakistan, just as there can be nothing wrong with the mushrooming of paathshalas and shishu mandirs in India. Why do we wish to raise nations of robots with no knolwedge of their own selves?

akcheema, before developing a better appreciation of semitic religious frameworks (Judeo-Christio-Islamic), I used to jokingly describe those as "religions of the groin". It seemed to me that that was where all their morality and thinking developed out of, and remained focused on.

But IMHO, I was completely wrong. These religions, Islam in most perfect manner, do provide alternative, comprehensive moral/ethical frameworks, of which sexuality is just one aspect.
--------------------

Thankfully, you yourself acknowledge that so long as you did not cross certain boundaries nobody came in the way of your scientific studies or pursuing whatever research you chose to pursue. Wouldn't it better if you gave the same respect to those who grow beards and not dismiss doing so as a sign of backwardness. Could it be that intolerance lies more within you than within the hearts of your cousins? That is a question, not an accusation.
---------------

True, there need not be, or perhaps there cannot be, much understanding (let alone respect or tolerance) across religious frameworks, but if you as a Muslim need understanding (and respect) from other Muslims, then you probably will have to start by giving other Muslims, inlcluding the bearded ones, the madrassa going ones, that understanding and respect.

"However, in the last 10 years alone, the atmosphere, at least I felt, got a lot more Islamised. Many of my cousins now support beards and my ususal taunts, that used to either go unnoticed or be dealt with a smile, were treated with suspicion. Perhaps times have changed a bit! And it is these times that call for a different approach to the problem."

Just check how many madarassas have mushroomed in last 10 years.........yuo get the answer about the impending Talibanization of Pakistan....

Thanks. I have read most of those and I tend to agree with most of the points raised, especially the decline of science in the muslim world. I disagree with the concept of moral frameworks suggested by Eklavya as I always found religious (especially Judeo-Christio-Islamic) concept of morality ro revolve around matters of sexual nature rather than what is really good and evil as far as humanity is concerned. To me, take away the sexualisation of the west, most muslims will not have any problems "assimmilating"; the sexual liberation, especially of women, is the main barrier preventing social integration! I suppose they never gave any thoughts to how all of them managed to grace this planet in the first place!!

I didn't think discussions on religious matters were a distraction at all. I am a surgeon with qualifications and fellowships from the UK and Australia. I have travelled extensively and religion was never something I paid any attention to despite coming from a conservative sunni family (of punjabi jatt background). I told my parents, despite living in Pakistan at the time, that I was an atheist when I was 15 and I didn't have any major social setbacks. I used to have friendly discussions with my parents, siblings, cousins etc (most have a background in science) and nobody minded provided you "knew the boundaries". Since that age, I never even bothered to attend the yearly Eid prayers, let alone any other rituals. I guess, from that point of view, the experience was overall positive.

However, in the last 10 years alone, the atmosphere, at least I felt, got a lot more Islamised. Many of my cousins now support beards and my ususal taunts, that used to either go unnoticed or be dealt with a smile, were treated with suspicion. Perhaps times have changed a bit! And it is these times that call for a different approach to the problem.

I also get the impression that majority of people on these blogs happen to be Pakistanis/Indians living overseas; I hope they become more popular within their native lands so the process is not just confined to the diaspora communities but where it really matters!

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laddu, didn't know of actual Hindu/non-Muslim ascetics using sufism to pretend being Muslims. But that would be consistent with expectation, Sufism being purely a means to other politico-religious ends.

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akcheema, welcome. I can give you the perspective of an outsider.

Faith, so long as it is not focused totally on annhilating of the self, as sufism obviously is, need not be destructive.

Real religion can have very positive impact. Islam itself certainly doesn't stop scientific inquiry by or progress for those who agree to abide by its clear guidance. But it does provide a unique and comprehensive moral/ethical framework (for scientific inquiry, as for all other aspects of life) that demands adherence. It doesnt seem to be very kind to those hyper-smart people who instead of following it (or rejecting it by becoming non-Muslims), seek to insult it by putting their own desires into it.

akcheema: #60

You are doing quite well. At age 36, you are critically probing the issues which majority of the Muslims are afraid even to think about.

Let me see what I was doing at age 36. I was more than half way through with my Ph.D. work, I had published my first research paper in the Proceedings of American Society of Civil Engineering,and was thinking of other problems in my line of research. I had critically thought on religion (like you) but had shelved it so that I could focus on my research interests without any distraction. I hadn't written anything about religion at that time and wouldn't do it for another 25 years or so.

I have written several articles on Science and the Muslim world at Chowk. One of these is:

Decline of Science in the Muslim World
Mohammad Gill September 1, 2005

You might be interested to read it.

I wish you well.

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 53

"Sufis were essentially atheists hiding behind the veil of pantheism! All this non-sense of god living in all of us or living in the human heart, or god being the universe and vice versa (wahdat-ul-wujud etc) were just ploys to try to explain it all."

As I said there are two types of Sufis - those who accpet the Shariah and Sunnat in toto an the other who do not.
The statement you make above is with reference to the hindu/non-muslim ascetics pretending to be muslims when surrounding by Islamic gulangs.
The first types are Naqshabandis - who infact ran away from Akbar's darbar to Afghanistan and started bad mouthing him when he started his own din-e-Aql. Naqshabandi accept Sunnat in toto and are actually darbari sufis!!

I must confess, at 36 years of age, this is the very first time I am participating in any web debate. I apologise if my inexperience shows.

Here are just some of the reasons the evil of "faith" has to be tackled head on:

In my part of the world (Pakistan), faith leads to inertia. The process of scientific thinking and progress has come to a complete standstill. There is no new independent thinking, something taken for granted in the west, and the same old "circular reasoning" continues since time immemorial.

There are real people that suffer, especially women. They live restricted and pathetic lives for the most part, and that is not all. The religious brainwashing is so complete that being submissive in that role is actually regarded a virtue by many and a passive acceptance of "fate" is universal.

I love my country! I feel that some serious attempts at liberating a few minds may go a long way in the future of the progression of rational thought in the "muslim" world.

The more people are exposed to genuine critique of Islam, the less they feel themselves to get involved in this discussion. When they see that all hell hasn't broken loose if I criticised Mohammed or his divine pal, it generates a kind of self-confidence in others.

hamidm2, yes.

Re: # 56

eklavya,

.... so sufism is a "means"? .... a means to what? ... a means to finding 'god'? ....and why do we need to do that? if he wants to find us, i am sure he has our address ....... it seems that you are suggesting that sufism is like a drug - a hallucinogen ..... if that is the case i am okay with it since i support the legalization of all drugs .......

Re: # 53

akcheema,

.... i feel your pain, but there is nothing you or i can do about this 'claptrap' ..... religion, like prostitution is a big industry and as long as there is a demand for it we will have to put up with it ...... although, unlike prostitution which provides an essential service, i don't see any real value in religion ...... so we will have to live with it - it is like living with hemmaroids; once in a while they flare up but most of the time they are just a pain in the rear .......

........ but i wouldn't throw out santa claus and the tooth fairy with the aab-i-zamzam ...... they can be fun - egg nog for the adults, and shiny dollars for the kids .......

tahir #51, laddu bhai addressed that specific remark to me. He is sure I am a Muslim, and as a Muslim, like you, I don't understand Sufism as perfectly, as he, as a good Hindu, does.
--------------------------

"Sufis were essentially atheists hiding behind the veil of pantheism!"

akcheema, you are right in that Sufism is only a means. But as a means it is put to many more uses than that.

Non-Muslims who are caught within Muslim lands or Muslim surroundings use Sufism to pass off as Muslims. Muslim lay people who for whatever reasons find themselves among non-Muslims and don't wish to seem like Muslims use sufism. Muslim scholars and committed people use sufism to ease non-Muslims' interface and interaction with Islam. Lazy people and people lacking discipline use it naturally as a means of escape.

Multiple uses. What's common is that nobody other than good Hindus and some totally deluded western liberals considers sufism as the ultimate goal, or anything more than a means to other more important goals.

Naqshbandi is a good Muslim who would find it hard, if not impossible, to be a good Muslim without sufism and its love. (Naqsh, that is an assumption. If you disagree, please let us know.)

Re: # 44
Untrue! Want to know how old she really was?

Re: # 30
al-Ghazzali and Ibn Arabi and your own profile makes sense now!

Those who place themselves above the prophets, claim to know the secrets or possess powers, only mislead mankind. Their cases are well-documented, thank you.

Burn that wooly garb now.

Re: # 50

Thanks for the insight! I know who I am; I have been a non-believer since I was 14/15 and never had time for the religious claptrap. This aversion, however, extends to most things super-natural and Islam is by no means singled out in my mind as I tried to explain in my earlier comment. I feel this pretentious Religion of Sufism is just as dangerous as it allows for a continuum of the super-natural theme and is in sharp contrast with rationalism.

This "M" crap is even more annoying; just what the hell does it mean? Just because one can put forward some reasonably coherent and grammatically correct sentence, it doesn't make it a valid argument for anything for crying out loud!

I feel the dogma of "faith" should be completely demolished for good, but with reasoning not rhetoric. I live an intellectually fulfilled life which is morally sound, but that morality comes from within; its part of being human. It has nothing whatsoever to do with trying to suck up to some higher being, but comes from simply treating others like one wishes to be treated oneself.

Sufis were essentially atheists hiding behind the veil of pantheism! All this non-sense of god living in all of us or living in the human heart, or god being the universe and vice versa (wahdat-ul-wujud etc) were just ploys to try to explain it all. With advances in scientific knowledge, it is now possible to be intellectually fulfilled without this rubbish. And for those who say that science doesn't have answers for everything, well if science can't explain something then what makes you think that you can! The substitute for rational thinking CANNOT BE fairytales and ancient mythology!

For those who confuse all this and start harping on about "the golden age of islam"; what the hell has that golden age to do with Islam? Its like trying to give the credit for current science to Judeo-Christian mythology! The two could not be at more opposite ends of the spectrum!

Re: # 20
"It is actually based upon a hadith qudsi (these are extra-koranic revelations from Allah directly to his Beloved Prophet Muhammad"

Extra-Quranic revelations? What extra, if not the Sufi Cola, are you referring to Mr.Naqshbandi? Surely, you don't believe that the Quran is incomplete?

The first step is to label men's conflicting utterings as 'sahih', then wear wooly clothes, and finally mislead simple folks by mystic esoteric meanings! What a death-trap? Go to the SOURCE please; you won't regret it.

Haqq yes, 'an al-haqq' no!

Re: # 13
Dear Laddu,

Still bitter? If reading all about deviant saints amounts to 'not having any idea', then I'm guilty of only one thing: not joining the ranks of their admirers!

Quick, now show me how to whirl.

Shanti.

Re: # 49

akcheema,

you are a murtid and therefore wajib-ul-qatl

......... i thought i would remind you of that before you get yourself into trouble with the rabid followers of the moon god and his bedouin beloved ......

..... having said that, let me try and answer your blasphemous questions with an excerpt of an actual conversation between the moon god, al-lah, and his mailman, gabby ......


why do you love him more than you love me

as usual, al-lah mian and his favourite angel, gabby, are sitting on fluffy cushions of clouds in courtyard of the seventh heaven, drinking meccan date wine and munching on peyote pakoras

al-lah: gabby, you have to get me some decent wine from california next time you go down .... i am sick and tired of drinking this crap ... tastes like camel piss ..

gabby (preening his wings with his beak): al-lah mian, but you are the one who refuses to let me go back since you fell in love with that boy from meccca .... i still don't understand what you see in that bedouin ... look at the mess he and his foolwers have made on earth - it is worse than plant u-3450 in galaxy m-32 which is full of nasty jinns and the vicious hajooj and the mahjooj ......... how do you manage to make such a mess of things when you are the almighty, the all-knowing, the all-everything ?

al-lah (ruffling the feathers on gabby's head): come here, my little angel - are you jealous?

gabby: you aree damn right, i am! .... i have spent eons worshipping you and running errands for you and taking the wax out of your ears and you love him more than you love me !

al-lah (looking a little sad, his single eye drooping in the middle of his vast forehead) gabby, you know i work in mysterios and wonderous ways .... there is always a good reaosn why i do things even if sometimes, i foreget it myself ..... i know there is a good reason why i chose muhammad as my beloved and last prophet ......

gabby (jumping up): last prophet! ... are you sure about that?... if he is the last prophet then why did you make me go and talk to mirza ghulam ahmed and joseph smith and that naked guy who sits under the pipal tree in pindora throwing feces at people walking by ? ... why?

al-lah ( smiling ): did i do that?

gabby (exasperated): don't give me that!... i know you are a gazillion eons old, but you don't forget anything .... remember you are god, you created yourself out of nothing

al-lah: nothing? ... what is that?

gabby: now don't try to skirt the subject - why do you love mo of mecca more than you love me? .... i am here all the time, taking care of your needs, running errands, washing your feet ... gabby do this-gabby do that, while he is there behind that door cavorting with seventy virgins and you know how many pretty boys ! ....... and if that is okay, then why did you destroy sodom and gamorrah ...

al-lah (looking a little worried): gabby, are you okay? ... i have never seen you like this ..... you know that i know everything and that there is a good reason i do what i do ... no? ... i have been a father to you .. when you asked me to throw out iblees and put you in charge of the mail, didn't i do it? when you asked me to destroy the klingons and dismatle the united federation of planets, didn't i do it? ...... tell me, what do you want?

gabby: i want you get rid of masadi and love me more than you love mo ... that's all i want, and that last peyote pakora .....

al-lah mian (picking up the pakora with his sole finger and popping it into gabby's beak): there! ... you know i love you more than anyone .... i was just messing with the humans when i told them that he was my beloved - you know that kind of thing doesn't float my boat ... if it wasn't for the wine i would have destroyed san francisco a long time ago .........

gabby (happily muching on the pakora): oh al-lah mian, i love you so ..... i am sorry for doubting your infinte wisdom ...

al-lah: now, who is this masadi guy ?

Has any one ever wondered about the following:

If a book (the Qur’an in this situation) is meant to be from God/Allah, why do two individuals of equivalent intelligence always come up with different interpretations of the text?

There are many contradictions in the Quran; the only people unable to see them are those completely brainwashed and have lost the ability to think rationally. They come up with all sorts of historical/non-historical justifications for these such as the arabic language/literary peculiarities etc. nothing substantial or scientific; perhaps they are not aware of this concept.

There are literally billions and billions of galaxies and star systems in our “known� universe; supposedly we are talking about a creator that is well beyond the confines of any material boundaries; why would such a “person� even care about what goes on in individual hearts and minds on a teeny weeny planet! Why would he be upset about, for example, a woman showing off a bit of skin or someone not observing some ritual exactly how it was prescribed (when there are literally hundreds of such, very contradictory, rituals in Islam amongst the sects; not to quote countless other similar examples.

If the “Loh-e-Mahfouz� was the first thing created with the deeds of all living things and their fate already prescribed, what the hell is the meaning of “the free will�?!

If a ruler of my country wanted me to abide by ceratin rules, I would expect them to be laid down explicitly and clearly for all to understand. Otherwise, I would think they were unjust in prosecuting me for misgivings; why are there so many ambiguities as to what the “true Islam� is; that definition is certainly not unanimous by anyone’s standards as we ll know; the interpretations are so varied and far apart at times that it is mind boggling!

According to the Quran, Allah gave his blessings to the Bani Israel but they betrayed his trust many a times, so he went off them completely and chose a different people for revival of his “Only and True Message�! Are we thinking that an omniscient and omnipotent God, with the inherent knowledge of everything, transcendent through the confines of time, made a mistake!! Then he tried to correct it by chosing arabia for his chosen messanger! How odd!!

Prayer is such a contradictory term, don’t you think. If all is already decided, does God change his mind if we were to grovel before him and grants us our desires as a reward; very confusing!!

The only answers I ever got for these as a child, and many other similar questions, was that we CANNOT work out God’s will and he is the only one who does; what the hell are we doing with our assess up in the air five times a day then!!

All of the above seem to be the desires of the needy and not fullfilled “persona� (to quote Al-Razi); Is it that we have created this “persona� is OUR OWN IMAGE rather than the other way around?

Is our “conflict� with the rest of the world sheer paranoia “they are out to get us�!! and the only reason we cannot accept this is our inherent “sense of pride� so deeply indoctrinated that we cannot listen to reason.

The reason I am talking about the Islamic context here is because that is my background and I wish to discuss the very foundations of this faith. It is all very well to hide behind the “good aspects� of Islamic history and ignore the other “less desirable� aspects, but the question is what it is all based on; without foundation, there is nothing left. I criticise any dogma based on “faith� and th other so-called faiths are no exception to this; however, I prefer people from those cultures to comment on their own cultural heritages.

Problem with being “moderate� is that moderation, whatever it might mean, harbours and nurtures extremist elemnts. Extremists to me mean people who are trying to follow their “faiths� down to the last letter. This Sufism etc have nothing to do with what Islam actually is; it is a digression from the mainstream. Sufis were always at the fringes of mainstream society and their ideas of “Sulha-e-kul� etc have nothing to do with the message of Islam; though I do admit it can make Islam a bit more palatable!

If we had all the “knowledge/Ilm� in the Quran, why would we strive for more; the whole idea of “the completeness� of “Deen/way of life� is not compatible with modernity of any kind, however that is defined. Of course we can cherry pick and find quotes to justify absolutely anything that WE WANT TO; that itself is the biggest weakness of religious dogma; interpretable with vast differences of opinions between individuals of equivalent intelligence!

Surely, they can't ALL be true!!!

Re: # 47

Come on Mard-e-Momeen , help this guy redeem his faith!!

#46 Posted by TaureanKhanm

Why don't you search chowk archives? Use keywords. I don't think anyone will be interested to help you here, except the hindoo monkeys or a few Pakistani murtids.

dear friends,

i am looking at religions in general and islam in particular and doing comparative studies especially focusing on the proponents and opponents of islam and carefuly weighing the