Reinterpretation of Islam in Turkey

I am simply amazed by your shortsightedness. I guess people like you, who have just read a few Hadith 'off and on', not only make a fool of themselves but also baffle many along with them. True that Islam provides guidance to humans beings but it came to free humans(especially Arabs) who were terribly entrapped by many irrelevant conventions and traditions. It is not rooted in old customs and traditions__ it free us from them (no dowry, no slavery, no burying alive of baby girls, no cruel tradition etc etc). If you have time then just read a bit of history before Islam and then a about how Islam enlightened them to better understanding of the world.
No offense, but in this article of yours is a superb example of poor argumentation. Since you have built your points on absurd interpretations of Hadith it has become real hard for you to 'draw a line'.As far you or I will try to draw lines we will only end up with a greater mess. Islam is not about drawing lines but multiplying knowledge and to maintain a balance in Life. Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) made it clear that only he who is pious is nearer to Allah and 'Who is Pious?' we do not know as Allah knows only the real intention of our hearts; and Religion primarily is an affair between God and Man. Therefore whenever people try to draw lines they mess all somewhat similar to the one you have made as you have ventured to draw a line between 'relevant' and 'irrelevant' things in Islam. I hope you can see how naive your comments sound:

“The Muslim world seems to be intellectually frozen in the seventh century A.D. while rest of the world has completely changed in every respect. Our means of transportation, for example, are now mechanical in contrast to those of the early Islam (animal transportation).�
“No body could ever think of a digital computer in the seventh century. It is an essential part of human life now.�

How ridiculous!!!! Where in world Muslims are still riding camels just because in early days Arabs used to do so? Or Hello!!! there are a hell lots of things people never thought of then and yes still many things to come that even you might not have thought about or imagined about! But Where does it proves that Muslim world is frozen in 7th century?just look around you and count how many Muslims are still living is a style of 7 century? I can't believe you can write such a poor piece when you have wrote some other remarkable articles...but this is simply pathetic.

Now let me help you see that Irrelevant is not the Hadith you have quoted in a so-called brilliant manner but instead its your 'perspective' which is irrelevant. For instance Hadith you have quoted (604, (Medicine) Sahih Bukhari , regarding lice and its treatment ,no where suggests that no other solution should ever be accepted or tried to get rid of lice. Moreover head shave ,an effective way as it is, was suggested in first place. Yes , we might think what relevance does the other part of the suggestion had? Well we never know and surely we can not compete with the prudence and knowledge Allah Almighty had bestowed our Prophet (PBUH) with. For instance It is said that Aqeeqa , slaughtering of animal, actually prevents the newborn from many troubles. We sure live in a world where metaphysical elements prevail and for which we have many reference in Quran too. However, my point is that who knows what impact the other part of the suggestion might as well have but thing is Islam is a religion of common- sense and one that frees people to seek knowledge and learn better ways to adopt wisdom where ever one founds. Let me just quote a well known saying as a reminder “Wisdom is lost property of Momin, one should own it where ever one founds it'.Unfortunately you have not come across any of such quotes in Hadith and Islam and I must say your obsession that Islam is rooted in past and the idea that 'we can not go in past'(very true though) has blinded you to the reality of not only Islam but of the obvious too.
Similarly the second Hadith quoted by you merely highlights the importance of honey which was one way of cure (Shifa) in days when no painkillers were available. The statement that his stomach lies can also refer to a psychological fact where at times anxiety causes butterflies in ones' stomach .Ever seen children complaining stomach ache when going to school? If so then you might understand what I am saying.
Once again about the third hadith you have quoted regarding fever tells about curing fever by water and this is also an effective way of relieving up to this day. Islam is a religion that encompasses all aspects physical and spiritual and many Muslims also know the effectiveness of 'Sorhe Fatiha' in this regard. However, all Muslims are well aware of the fact when they have to do and use medicines ,see doctors and try what suits them best because Islam asks its believers to think and act accordingly..
You are very right that, “the task of reinterpreting and modernizing Islam is quite difficult� but you are not all right when you complete the sentence with,“because it is deeply rooted in the past.� Islam itself doesn't confine men to a frozen period of time. Its a religion that began with the word 'Iqra' and goes beyond the material reality to provide wisdom and knowledge for all walks of life. However, there are certain rigid Islamists /Mullahs who do not welcome change: No TV, No Music, No women driving cars, No ...no...no...� Ironically you might see they do not practice what they preach for example they might appear on TV to say 'no TV', and might not even bother about the movie cameras as long its picturing them, and might object at girls studying in Medical colleges with boys but want a lady doctor to show their ladies to, so on and so forth. Simple common sense tells us that they are not be followed and that this is not Islam! In Islam there is a concept of 'Ijtihad' according to which people are required to adopt ways with the changing times as long they don't fall in the category of 'Shirk'. Muslims in early days who stuck to the healthy pragmatic teachings of Islam made great contributions in field of education,medical,architecture and other branches. They led the world! I think what we actually need to get rid of, in order to create a congenial society, are two extremists: 'rigid-mullahs' and 'ridiculous-interpretors' , whose common -sense has frozen somewhere in times of 7th century__ both types who believe they know the 'Real Islam' which for them is nothing more than a mosaic of 7th century. How Absurd!

Re: # 296
Can I say you're Pakistani?"

Ans: Why people will associate with a lesser, inferior identity?
Pakistan was created with bloodshed and the concept is not very encouraging. Civilization unites in diversity. Europe, whith various language and culture have started realising it now. India has done the experiment long back. On the contrary, barbarism do the reverse; creates animosity amongst people of similar origin. Ethnically, most if the people in India( When british left) are similar. Some people follow mediaval middle east barbarism and are like half-arab. And if people have to shed his 4000 year old civilisational identity with a 50 year old Arab imitator,violent identity, people will naturally choose the first one.

Tahmed, I applaud ur enthusiasm or shall I say wishful thinking but nothing as changed. Islamists sat this election out, musharraf is still incharge, the feudlas ran the tables. This was no grass roots upswell of liberty and democracy.....this was the game of musical chairs wth the feudals back to get more.

saharanpuri#209:

My contact is nandtandan@yahoo.com

anil sahib#267 you should know that democracy that you cant rush things in a democracy - der aaye, durust ayay.

and things are proceeding very well indeed so far - the secular, democratic parties have won, the king's parties have lost. and religious parties have virtually anihilated, losing their government in NWFP and barely present in the NA (3 seats.). and despite tremendous efforts by the king's parties to break the PML-PPP partnership, those two parties have held together. Musharraf's machinations (i.e. claiming that the only alternative to him is terrorists while at the same time attacking the mainstream parties while promoting religious parties and keeping the flame of terrorism burning) have been totally exposed. and even the military is no longer willing to put up with Musharraf's games anymore, and is well aware of how they have lowered their esteem in the eyes of the public with 7 years of military rule.

and meanwhile, civil society is very much in a commanding position and keeping the politicians in the winning party honest - and this civil society - lawyers in particular- are by now folk heroes made all the more so by their refusal to bow to musharraf's attempts at bullying them.

So - der aye, durust aye.

Re: # 301
tahmed: I dont have hatred for islam. I have concern for the intellectual development of its followers like yourself.

Dharma: calling me names for not joining others in ridiculing Islam merely exposes the hatred that hindus like you have for Islam (a minority religion in India).

Thanks again to Jinnah for Pakistan! :-)

#296 Saharanpuri Sahib,
Thank you for sharing this depressingly morbid article. Sometimes, reality is much more painful even in hindsight. :(

TehsinA: I agree that islam in the hand of a jehadi becomes a tool for oppression. But - a crook can make a tool out of anything. just ask musharraf and he can show you how you can use the Supreme National Interest to destroy the very pillars of a nation - the Constitution, an independant Judiciary, Basic Right..

#297 i had chopped of a part accidentally. here is the corrected post:

akcheema #267

I agree with you that "you don't need the sky fairy to tell you what's right or wrong!", nor does the definition of Islam I provided say or imply this either. And find the real life example you provide quite interesting and relevant. Let me try to explain where I am coming from on these issues of religion: I see the term "religion" (or "islam" or any other religion) as being a composite term for certain independent concepts - namely, the concept of belief, of God, of morality, of supersition. Unless we are clear on these concepts, we will end up spending the rest of our lives "searching for the truth" (i.e. spinning wheels).

God and Belief: A belief is not a fact, or even a provable theory. And God is by definition beyond the limits of human understanding. As the Taoists say, the Tao (God) that can be named is not the true Tao. So, unless you think the earth is flat and beyond that "there be dragons", the concept of God is not as absurd as the concept of the tooth fairy or any other representation of the unknowable. So - Islam's forbidding of images is totally in line with this perfectly sensible concept.

Morality - this is simply another name of social consciousness plus doing unto others as you have them do unto you. Morality is driven by "enightened self-interest", not by carrots and sticks. While carrots and sticks (heaven and hell) may have been a great idea for the 7th century arabia for whom it was meant (as the Quran itself says), and for people living in the 7th century still, but it is not necessary for people who are smart enough to understand that "honesty is the best policy" e.g.
I find Islam perfectly relevant here too - because the core message calls for "individual responsibility to distinguish between right and wrong and to do the right thing".

So - while being a muslim is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a moral person, as a muslim I certainly find this core message reassuring since it reconciles what makes sense to me with the core message.

Finally superstition: This is not part of the core message by any means. Indeed this is where all the mess lies. Thus "short-cut" muslims have the convenient superstition that they can do the hajj and wash away their sins (no basis in the Quran, btw), or do some taawiz or what-not: this "supersitions-posing-as-Islam" in fact promote immorality - and thus hajj has become a multi-billion tourist industry. Same for other rituals.

Hope this explains where I am coming from. Cheers.

akcheema #267 I agree with you that "you don't need the sky fairy to tell you what's right or wrong!", nor does the definition of Islam I provided say or imply this either. And find the real life example you provide quite interesting and relevant. Let me try to explain where I am coming from on these issues of religion: I see the term "religion" (or "islam" or any other religion) as being a composite term for certain independent concepts - namely, the concept of belief, of God, of morality, of supersition. Unless we are clear on these concepts, we will end up spending the rest of our lives "searching for the truth" (i.e. spinning wheels).

Belief in Godmorality - this is simply another name of social consciousness plus doing unto others as you have them do unto you. Morality is driven by "enightened self-interest", not by carrots and sticks. While carrots and sticks (heaven and hell) may have been a great idea for the 7th century arabia for whom it was meant (as the Quran itself says), and for people living in the 7th century still, but it is not necessary for people who are smart enough to understand that "honesty is the best policy" e.g.
I find Islam perfectly relevant here too - because the core message calls for "individual responsibility to distinguish between right and wrong and to do the right thing".

So - while being a muslim is neither necessary nor sufficient to be a moral person, as a muslim I certainly find this core message reassuring since it reconciles what makes sense to me with the core message.

Finally, superstition This is not part of the core message by any means. Indeed this is where all the mess lies. Thus "short-cut" muslims have the convenient superstition that they can do the hajj and wash away their sins (no basis in the Quran, btw), or do some taawiz or what-not: this "supersitions-posing-as-Islam" in fact promote immorality - and thus hajj has become a multi-billion tourist industry. Same for other rituals.

Hope this explains where I am coming from. Cheers.

The Price of Freedom

After an inspiring struggle for independence, the subcontinent was freed--and then split. Fifty years later, the scars of division remain

BY ANTHONY SPAETH/NEW DELHI

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The Indian subcontinent was created in geophysical violence. A mass of floating land collided with Asia; in the process the Himalayan mountain chain was wrenched from the earth. So tremendous was the collision that the Himalayas are still rising 50 million years later.
The subcontinent we know today was born in a moment similarly awesome, historically portentous and destructive--a moment that continues to send powerful vibrations 50 years later. On Aug. 14-15, 1947, the nearly 400 million people of the subcontinent broke the shackles of eight centuries of rule by foreign sultans, emperors and, for 200 years, British colonialists. Following India's lead, the entire globe was propelled into an era of post-colonial freedom. It was a victory for mankind all the more remarkable for its improbability: India, fractious and humblingly poor, united to evict its sophisticated conquerers--and did so without war, under the banner of Mohandas K. Gandhi's ahimsa, or nonviolence.

But then something awful happened. Unity and transcendence turned to division and blood hunger. The subcontinent itself was torn into three separate chunks. Its people, formerly nonviolent fighters for freedom, became neighborly mass murderers. Hindus and Sikhs on one side, Muslims on the other, the only thing that joined them now was hatred and a fury still difficult to explain--and not, by a far measure, universally repented. "Our chaps would kill with really good spirit," reminisces Dilawar Butt, 73, a former member of the National Guard, who admits he helped torch a market in the city of Lahore in the summer of 1947, killing several hundred Hindus. "We didn't feel anything." Such behavior was not the monopoly of any single faction.

It's now 50 years on, and the subcontinent is on the brink of a revolution. India, the region's doddering giant for decades, is shedding its seemingly pathological inferiority complex, reaching out to a modern world it maintained at a disdainful remove. An economic miracle is possible if more than a billion people get better grindstones. That would be genuine cause for a proud 50th bash.

Unhappily, the fact of partition ensures that no celebration will escape a circumscription of mourning and loss. Even at the moment of freedom, the festivities were tainted. Shortly before midnight, Aug. 14, 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, who would become India's Prime Minister a few minutes later, orated eloquently on his people's successful "tryst with destiny," a reference to the glorious freedom struggle. But by the time Nehru spoke, 20,000 people had already died in violence prompted by the mere prospect of partition. In the three months after Muslim Pakistan was rent from Hindu India, forcing parallel migrations of some 12 million people, hundreds of thousands more perished--perhaps a million. (An exact count has never been possible.) There are still thousands officially missing from population rolls: occupants of unmarked graves in fertile Punjab or Bengal, cremated ashes at the bottom of rivers, or skeletons in drinking wells, into which countless raped or terrified farm wives jumped to end their lives.

Partition: an arid term for an event so drenched in blood, madness and mass tragedy. On the subcontinent, it is commonly described as a shadow from the past, some kind of ephemeral projection of grief. It is far more: a division that changed the destinies of one of the most populated parts of the earth, and that continues to do so. Partition created a country, Pakistan, with such a tenuous hold on unity that it split in half 24 years later and still can't unite its warring, armed-to-the-mustache ethnic groups. Its eastern wing became Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest, most crowded countries, its 120 million people earning an average of $247 a year. Partition and its slaughters made enemies of India and Pakistan. They have fought three fratricidal wars and continue to spend obscene sums on their militaries. Both have nuclear weapons programs (although India officially reveres the nonviolent philosophies of Mahatma Gandhi). Indians and Pakistanis share a cuisine and enjoy the same films, but there is barely any trade allowed between the two lands, and cross-border visits are as few as the authorities can manage. The alienation seems eternal: reunification is never discussed on the subcontinent. Offshore, on the tiny island of Sri Lanka, partition had little impact in 1947. (Britain governed the colony, then known as Ceylon, separately from India and didn't grant independence until 1948.) But partition's perilous political and social lessons were rapidly absorbed. A British-style parliamentary system went rotten when politicians from the majority Sinhalese community fanned animosities against minority Tamils to get votes. A Tamil insurgency has raged for 14 years, claiming at least 60,000 lives. Its demand: a partition of Sri Lanka. Within India, an assortment of disgruntled minorities--Nagas, Kashmiris, Assamese--make the same demand today, with bus bombs and ambushes, 50 years after the original partition. Which may explain why a half-century of freedom is being observed mutedly throughout the subcontinent, with soul-searching supplements in newspapers rather than fireworks and festivals.

It's impossible to overstate the impact of the nearly 50-year agitation for freedom on the subcontinent's consciousness. The movement forged a nation called India from an enormous mob of linguistic groups, ethnic identities and rival castes. Schoolbooks, grandparents' tales and popular culture have planted the story deep into the imagination of the young. Shashi Tharoor's The Great Indian Novel, published in 1989, was a recasting of the Mahabharata, India's sublime epic, with Gandhi, Nehru and other freedom-movement figures in the mythic roles. Looking Through Glass, a 1996 novel by Mukul Kesavan, is the story of an aimless modern Indian magically transported back to the more meaningful days of the freedom struggle. For many young Indians, the movement was a Golden Age they missed.

Partition has a far smaller claim on the popular imagination, having been almost psychologically detached from the uplifting events that preceded it. Partition fiction is mostly published in vernacular languages, which restricts readership, and films attempting to portray the event in all its epic tragedy have appeared on television in recent years but hardly ever on the big screen. There is a mass of historical literature on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, of course, predominantly obsessed with one question: what caused partition and the slaughters surrounding it?

There's plenty of blame to go around. When Britain decided after World War II to grant independence to the subcontinent, the population of nearly 400 million was 66% Hindu and 24% Muslim. (The latter group had been converted over centuries virtually since the advent of Islam.) It was a serious social divide. The purity requirements of Hinduism prevented intimate interaction, including marriage and even meal-sharing, and Muslims were generally poorer than their Hindu counterparts. The British encouraged separation of the groups to avoid joint rebellion, the so-called divide-and-rule policy. A highly durable theory in India, taught in textbooks, is that pernicious British fostering of Hindu-Muslim enmity led directly to partition and mass slaughter. Divide-and-rule preordained a fractured subcontinent.

But that theory ignores many significant milestones and misjudgments along the road. From 1920, Hindu India was rallied by the Indian National Congress under Gandhi, the barrister-turned-nonviolent agitator. Gandhi wanted the Muslim community in his movement--they were fiercely anti-British, though hardly committed to nonviolence--and to achieve that, he embraced the cause of the Ottoman Empire, whose Caliph was the protector of all Islamic holy sites. That tactic worked, but when the Caliphate itself was abolished in 1924, Muslims on the subcontinent lost their link to a pan-Islamic kingdom and grew acutely insecure about their place in predominantly Hindu India. In 1930, poet-philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal called for a Muslim state on the subcontinent. In 1933, a group of students at Cambridge University invented the name Pakistan, an acronym including initials from Punjab, Afghania (the current Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan), Kashmir, Sind and the last three letters of Baluchistan.

The 1930s and '40s saw some of the best moments of the freedom movement--such as Gandhi's famed Salt March, a 388 km protest walk against British taxes--along with setbacks and eternal negotiations with Britain over self-rule. In 1946, the British proposed an ambitious and intricate federation to which all parties agreed, including Mohammed Ali Jinnah, leader of the powerful Muslim League. But Nehru, newly elected head of the Congress party, made an unfortunate remark at a press conference, saying the plans were subject to change by the Congress. Jinnah was enraged and Nehru, too proud to back down, let the statement stand. That was India's last chance at an undivided future. On Aug. 16, 1946, tens of thousands of Muslims gathered at pro-Pakistan rallies in Calcutta. Rioting led to mass murder and Hindu reprisals, and local blacksmiths worked around the clock producing weapons. Five thousand were dead in 72 hours; the gutters of Calcutta were clogged with corpses. It was mayhem unlike any India had experienced before. "The slaughter definitely made the partition inevitable," says Waheedul Haque, now an editorial writer in Dhaka. "It was the point of no return." The riots spread, and over the next year 20,000 people died as Muslims demanded Pakistan and Hindus promised a different fate: "graveyard-stan."

In March 1947, Lord Louis Mountbatten, great-grandson of Queen Victoria, became the final Viceroy of India, charged with negotiating independence with Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah. The job was hurried because India seemed on the brink of civil war. On June 3, partition was formally confirmed, although the boundaries were not announced until after independence. Freedom came 30 minutes apart for the two countries on Aug. 14-15: to distinguish itself from India, Pakistan turned its clock back 30 minutes. Nehru told his people that their tryst with destiny had been achieved. It was, in fact, an assignation that was just building steam.

The refugees were on the move: poor people with humble possessions, staggering in the summer heat, in groups as large as half a million stretching 80 km. They passed each other as they made their way to new homes in Hindu India or Muslim Pakistan--or attempted to. Wajahat Husain was a 21-year-old army officer on the new border bisecting Punjab in 1947. Near the town of Jullundur, 103 km from the border, a trainload of would-be Muslim refugees had been attacked by resident Sikhs. When he reached the scene, Husain found corpses jumbled on the ground with bloodied swords and tied-up bedding. The landscape was still with death, except for one sound: in the midst of the carnage was an elderly woman, still alive and crying for her relatives; her arms and legs had been amputated. Then Husain stumbled on a mass of abandoned women's shoes. He made his way through some bushes and found naked women of all ages, dismembered and eviscerated, surrounded by crying, crawling babies.

The transfer of peoples was supposed to be as nonviolent as the freedom struggle. Gandhi, fearing trouble in hot-headed Calcutta, made a peace mission that miraculously calmed the air. Where he was absent, however, so were his principles. There were explanations later, though none sufficed on its own. Hindus were angry at Muslims for the splitting of the country. Sikhs were enraged over the loss of their lands to Pakistan. Some killings were retaliatory: a trainload of murdered Muslim refugees coming from India provoked a "ghost train" of dead Hindus going the other way. Much of the carnage was driven by rumors of atrocities that hadn't really occurred or attacks that weren't forthcoming. And, of course, everyone was doing it, including the British-trained police. "People on both sides had gone mad," says Abdullah Malik, then a 27-year-old journalist in Lahore. "Any sane person can't explain it. The entire people were caught in a frenzy."

Muhammed Ashiq was a 12-year-old boy in the city of Wazirabad in 1947. He accompanied a gang of youths determined to attack a trainload of refugees headed for India and witnessed, though didn't participate in, the brutality. The vehicle stopped at an arranged place; the passengers were told to lie down in the train. Then the boys beat and stabbed them to death. A Hindu boy was left alive, and he begged his attackers: 'Kill me too.' They obliged. "At the time it seemed OK and justified," Ashiq says, "because we were doing it in reaction to what happened in India. Now it appears wrong." Singhara Singh, 83, a farmer in Sultanwind, Punjab admits to killing at least 40 Muslims with his sword and machete in 1947. "I feel no remorse," he insists. "The Muslims were responsible for the division of the country. We needed to teach them a lesson."

Indian writer Nirad C. Chaudhuri, who turns 100 this year, blames Gandhi and his freedom struggle. He argues that the Mahatma needed a mass campaign to drive the British out, but the movement was overly narrow in scope and its foundation was the hatred shared by Hindus and Muslims for the British. He says the sophisticated, foreign-educated leaders of the freedom struggle didn't know the average Indian and ignored the masses' tendency to violence. "Mahatma Gandhi thought that his admonitions about non-violence would be listened to," Chaudhuri wrote in his 1987 memoir Thy Hand, Great Anarch! "Of course they were not and could not be." The late Dorab Patel, a former justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, reached a similar conclusion. "They had to launch mass movements," he said in an interview shortly before he died last March, "and you can't launch mass movements by talking of Charles James Fox and John Bright and William Gladstone." Patel's conclusion: "I feel that the partition was a price of the independence of India."

The mass slaughtering ended in November, abruptly and inexplicably--the partition's final mystery. And then it was time for millions to settle in their new homes. Ishrat Jahan was 11 when her family was forced to flee the foothills of the Himalayas in November 1947. "Our house was surrounded by militants carrying swords and enormous torches," she recalls. "If the Hindus attack," my father told us, "I will kill you all and then myself." Miraculously, they were spared. Their train to Pakistan was sprayed by bullets, killing most of the passengers riding on the roof, and when they finally arrived at their new home in Rawalpindi, their odyssey had a bloody coda. "Near our house there was a harsh smell," Jahan recalls. She and her sisters were sent to explore. A short distance away, they discovered a Hindu temple and a drinking well--both stuffed with corpses.

There is an argument that partition saved India as a united nation. It will always have its ethnic and caste fissiparousness, but the added strain of Pakistan and Bangladesh's hundreds of millions might have tipped the ever-delicate balance. There's a contrary argument, of course, that the subcontinent would have had a far superior 50 years by remaining a single country, a federation, or by acting like friendly neighbors. "I should imagine you would have a very powerful South Asia if they had managed to live together," says Barun Dey, director of the Maulana Azad Institute of Asia Studies, a Calcutta think tank.

Bangladesh and India today enjoy an improving equation. The partition slaughters in Bengal were lesser in scope than in Punjab, and India's military might helped secure Bangladesh's own freedom from Pakistan in 1971. Travel agents, in fact, see a booming business in people revisiting their original homes on either side of the border. Sri Lanka remains the region's odd man out, preoccupied with its own ethnic woes and of little interest to the rest of the subcontinent, especially to India, which intervened militarily in the late 1980s with catastrophic results.

Between India and Pakistan, however, the past 50 years have been long, warlike and demonstrably unhealing. "Pakistan was born with a hole in its heart," says I.A. Rehman, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. "Afraid, afraid, afraid--the hole is fear." The country's most popular slogan once was Pakistan Zindabad, or Long Live Pakistan. Today, a more common usage is Pakistan Forever--a discernible taunt to India. On its side, India continues its provocations, large and small. It is building missiles capable of delivering atomic weapons--while Pakistan reportedly buys its from China--and still forbids direct flights from New Delhi to Islamabad to deny respect to the Pakistani capital. The Muslims that stayed behind in India, a populous 120 million, are less secure today than at any time since partition. Says Mahbub ul Haq, a former Pakistan finance minister: "The drama of partition cast a dark shadow on the evolution of these countries. They have never been able to outgrow the bitter legacy of the past."

Estrangement exists in the halls of power and on the streets, engulfing old and young. F.S. Aijazuddin, an investment banker in Lahore, recalls being on a bus in Paris when he was hailed by another subcontinental passenger. "Are you Indian?" asked the stranger. Aijazuddin, 55, said he was from Pakistan. "Oh, India-Pakistan, one and the same," replied his new friend blithely. "Then," said the banker, "can I say you're Pakistani?" The Indian man's smile faded and he turned away. The subcontinent gained freedom 50 years ago, along with borders, unimaginable bloodshed and a whole new enemy within.

Mohar #293 {"Shouldn't you muslims do a jihad on spain?... and rescue your "Great Mosque"?... "}

Mohar Bhayya,
Please don't give Mrs. Salim any ideas. :)

Hamidumdum Sahib,
Speaking purely as a barefoot historian, I must concur that the ban on alcohol has caused some significant losses for Islam. The Bulgars definitely, and the Vikings probably, would have become Muslims were it not for this intolerable prohibition. :)

As for Erdogan, even if I disagree with his party's ultimate goals, his administration and competence are something that Mushy could have successfully copied, but ...
How are things on Telegraph Road and the neighborhoods in Livonia and Plymouth? Hopefully, spring is around the corner and you can go over to Windsor to balance your Strohs with Molsons.

Re: # 291
[...frickin Catholics turned the Great Mosque of Cordoba into a Cathedral...]

Shouldn't you muslims do a jihad on spain?... and rescue your "Great Mosque"?...

Re: # 291

salim mian,

.... have you noticed how the economist always calls it the "moderately" or "miuldly" islamist government of tayyep erdogan ? ...... it is almost as if everyone is waiting for him to show his true colors and turn turkey into saudi arabia ..... even i think it is a matter of time before the turkish mutawa are out in force beating up inappropriately dressed women and shutting down bars ..... if it weren't for the army, i think it would happen sooner than later ......... islam is not like alcohol which can be good in moderation - it is intrinsically rotten ....... sorry