The Psyche of Al-Qaeda

Posting on behalf of Masadi sahib who has been banned.

HP mian, when you copy verbatim from websites please put the words in quotation marks. In your Marx piece only the first two lines are yours, all the other comments that come with the quotations are borrowed from other websites. This comes out as a clear case of plagiarism. Please avoid that in the future.

"It is clear that a definite attitude to religion is present, both implicitly and explicitly, in the most fundamental ideas of Marxism. Marxism clearly demands a materialist explanation of religion. It is not enough to view either religion as a whole or any particular religion as simply a delusion or folly that happens to have gripped the minds of millions for centuries.

The attempt to reduce the Marxist theory of religion to a simple one-dimensional analysis such as, “Marx argues that religion is a tool of the ruling class� or “according to Marx religion functions to pacify the toiling masses�. Of course, Marx does say this kind of thing about religion but he says much else besides. To reduce his theory to just one of its strands is falsifying it.

"Marx’s insistence that religion is both an expression of suffering and a protest against it is the key point, giving the lie to any analysis which focuses only on religion’s narcotic effects."

All of these are borrowed 100% verbatim from this site http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=456&issue=119

Please refrain from plagiarism

Regards

PS: Kindly note that the charges of plagriarism against HP sain have been made by Masadi sahib, not me.

Posting on the behalf of Masadi sahib who has been banned.

HP writes :"What Marx said about religion and how it is implied are two different things. Marx never said it leads to amnesia in a capitalist or any other society."

HP sahib, how goes? Haal chaal? I know fully well regarding Marx's assertion about the material basis of religion, I mentioned that in my post regarding the superstructure. He considers it, in its use, is is quite evident from the writings you reproduced a form of false consciousness that keeps the people from noticing the real underlying conditions of their oppression, even though it is an expression of it. In this he is talking about particularly the capitalist mode of production, and he is not talking about imported religion either. Next, he got his entire dialectical system from Hegel whom he claimed to have turned on his head by "inventing" a material basis for ideas, however he ignores the wider material conditions of the universe that determine the ecology of the earth within which any manterial modes of production have to operate. That was my second point.

Regarding Kaal's invention of what my ideas are, he is quite ignorant of what I believe, Islam just like other religions has been used to facilitate false consciousness by the powers that be, and chalta and Kulharee together cannot come up with one paragraph to match mine where it concerns any of the classical theorists. What makes Kulharee's spelling of Weber so outrageous is that he is so well know that only someone with no knowledge of him will spell him with two b's.

One more thing I would like to add regarding Marx and religion: he did not deal with it in detail like other sociologists did, just a few paragraphs here and there, even though accurate in their assertion regarding the ideological use of religion, and it representing the underlying material structure does little justice and is overshadowed by the usual Marxian rhetorical extravagance to it and is definitely not the end word on it....the part leading to "amnesia" was an accurate comparison to the false consciousness that Marx is implying regarding religion in the paragraphs quoted...

Have a nice day and take it easy.

TNI Masadi

Regards

Add more to #143 Posted by pinku on

And for people who like ideas in the form of pomis, I wrote two pomi-ilogs sometime back to pretend that....

1. XXX philosophy: a pomi

2. Remember....true being is being "truth" and not "being", your being becomes when it lives truths..


the long "beingy" thing was to support pretense of truth and the "XXX" thing was to support pretense of "wish away" part...

So as often I am repeating myself..

I want to know what ya'll think of C. Wright Mills who according to some was considered a Marxist.. but he claimed to coin himself as a "Wobbly". Wobbly and flip-flopper have a lot in common..kinda like socialism and marxism do.
I also found out today from a certain website
ASSOCIATION FOR THE SOCIOECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF
DEVELOPMENT & INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT that the top 100 criminal corporations have all to do to with political campaign financing and I guess dumping fuel in the envoronment.... as if airplanes dont to that when landing.... but what was so profound was; that off the 100 "criminal corporations" none of them were muslim owned... so the the top terrorist financier organization is a ok in ASADI.org but not Daiwaoo Bus service from multan to gwalmandi.

#141 Posted by KaalChakra on

I am not dedicated to proving other's ideas wrong. Nor I am dedicated to proving muslim's ideas wrong. My intention is to keep putting efforts that muslims do not "wish away" truths or reason that easily, in their attempt to quickly satisfy their group ego.



My efforts in general are not to let truth be by-passed so easily, doesn't matter what scholar, politician or idea you refer to. Further, I do not take responsibility to state any idea with perfection and in great detail, I just try to force a direction as per my understanding of truth.

Now if I am giving wrong reason and people do not give arguments against them, then I will fail in my effort because I myself will bypass truth.

If I had known that you guys will gang up on Masadi Sahib about this, I would never have brought up Masadi Sahib’s interpretation of Marx’s functionalists views on religion. Me bad.

I meant, un-Islamic.

---------

Pinku, did I ever explain the basic difference between your an mine approaches?

My interests in all these things are purely functional. I am interested in understanding what big ideas are, and in how these big ideas separately shape behaviors of large groups of humans over long periods of time. Whether those ideas themselves are true or false doesn't interest me (on chowk at least). They would, if I was just talking to you, for instance.

You share a lot with Murad bhai. Murad bhai has dedicated his life to proving unIslamic things false and debunking unIslamic myths before non-Muslims. You spend a great deal of time trying to convince others (Muslims, mostly) why their ideas are 'wrong' and explaining to them what you think 'correct' ideas and interpretations are.

Does that seem reasonable? :)

Further, before we give some false arguments.

If a subset of Marxism matches a subset of Islam (most probably because of some arbitrary interpretation), then at best you can say that a subset matches. The rest can still be anything. Again it is trivial thing that doesn't need to be stated, but you don't have freedom of extrapolation here.

#138 Posted by KaalChakra on
Iqbal can say whatever he wants to say about Islam and Marx can say whatever he wants to say about religion. They had their rights and they used it. If they were alive then we could have asked them to explain what they mean, instead of assuming what they meant.

I gave one reason why Marx "against" can not be "against" (or else invalid, unless you take it in a soft sense). You can give your ideas if you disagree.

Iqbal's statement makes no sense doesn't matter how important it was for him or for his Islamic ideology.

You wrote:
[[

The 'state' and 'nationalism' would not be Islamic if these existed to serve the cause of Islam and Muslims above all else.
]]

Did you miss anything in the above statement? is it Islamic or Anti-Islamic?

Again, Iqbal was free to think what is Islamic or un-Islamic as per him, but by the time you come out to compare religion and state, you are not that free. Again with-in Islam you can think anything to be anything, but by the time you come in touch with things outside of Islam, your freedom is gone. So tell me what you have to say about it?

Masadi is free to think what Islam is as per him, whether it fits with ideology of Marx or somebody else. But his freedom of arbitrarily assuming what Islam is, what Marxism is and how then they become equal ends the moment you know any of his assumptions or definitions are arbitrary, if I feel either his definition of Marxism or Islam is not what I feel (or I can prove). I don't know much about Marxism, but I can use Islam and general concept of religion to show that a religious ideology that involves God is different than an ideology that doesn't involve God. Basically that is a hint of starting point. The primary problem with religions is God and then speaking God who have said something. Rest of your lose and arbitray interpretations can only satisfy your ego, not the equations that religions represents and survives on.


In short an option to start from arbitrary starting point and then discuss at length in circles is neither intelectual nor solves any purpose. So first check that starting points are good enough. You can not assume anything about anything arbitrarily.

Pinku, you ignoring and under-estimating the importance of Iqbal's Islamic creativity.

Within Islam, Muslim is the brother of Muslim. There is no provision for narrow nationalism that breaks world's Muslim family into narrow segments. And the goal of Islam is to take over the whole world, not to withdraw into this or that little corner of earth.

Since Iqbal saw himself as a theoretician of Islam as much as a poet, he came up with a pretty creative solution - The 'state' and 'nationalism' would not be Islamic if these existed to serve the cause of Islam and Muslims above all else.

This way of thinking had a signficant impact on real-life events.

And Masadi ji makes a similar point. Marx may have 'criticized' religion, but that criticism would not be valid if there was a religion that served exactly the goals that Marx set for mankind. And as Masadi ji sees it, Islam does (and more).

[[
Marx also wrote:
“Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.�
]]

The lines in bold are somewhat stupid in my not at all humble opinion. It shows the ability to conclude in haste. The struggle is never against religion, a religion if defined as per his earlier lines can not be static, it will keep on evolving as per his statement {"Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world."}. So if we believe what he is saying is religion than religion is whatever the "Collective world of Men is", so even if you change it, twist it and name-it, rename-it, doesn't matter what you do with it, you still end up with religion of another sort.

The struggle is against idiocy of religions, to let them evolve. To kill their ideas that have killed evolution of Man's ideas, so that refined ideas can evolve.

So he is almost right, except for using word "against". The struggle is not against anything, it is for something new, for something better, for something much refined. And this is our destiny. No matter what we do, this struggle for refinement will outlive us.

#134 Posted by KaalChakra on

[[
This is very similar to Iqbal's formulation of nationalism.

Nationalism is to be rejected because it leads to all manner of evil. But if one can assure that those evils would not exist - as in a nation of Muslims - then nationalism is to be promoted
]]

The problem with all such things is that people have gained much more respect by saying such things than either those sayings or those people themselves ever deserved.

And the second problem is that once they get respect they can write any number of books and in them any amount of garbage which later generations use to do their stupid PhDs and use that garbage to fool themselves and evolve into extra large nuts.

Such people who start ignoring reason and start going in to complex idiocies selecting whichever they like at will, should actually be called clerks. So you have philosophical clerks, sociological clerks and all kind of clerks. Clerks who play with ideas as if they are playing with numbers and not with reason.

These clerks build a verbose confusion, good for almost nothing. The proof of this nothingness lies in the fact that after German idealism Philosophy has produced many thousands of clerks but their actual product is a large ZERO with extra large garbage in it (which future clerks will consume). Not only this, most such clerks are very biased owing to their religious affinity, or their political affiliation and so on.

Once you find any field has started produing tons of clerks you should know that now any advancement will need some evolution of sorts.


===============

You don't need to read tons of things to understand what Nationalism is and how it can be affected or it can affect other things. The first and lowest denominator of ego is "I", this I has lots of needs, the second is "we" as a group, this we will have its own needs depending what those "I"s needed. The second part "we" is group ego, it can be small group ego of a family, a higher group ego of a village, much higher of region, still higher of nation and still higher of a religion.


The higher/larger the group ego and the more bad it represents the more dangerous it is.

If you can avoid evils, you can be Satan as well?? The question is how evils get generated and how you can avoid it. SO the above statement that Kalchakra posted seems quite absurd.

Nationalism is much better ego than religion, because it is by default more easy to change and refine. Nations of tomorrow do not need to do exactly what nations of yester-years used to do. Evolution or refinement of ego is most important. That filters out evils in long run.


All of this is repeat..

Re: # 120 Hello HP:
You said,"..I didn't expect a Doctor of Psychology to be a literal reader..."

FYI; Dr K Sohail is a Doctor of Medicine and a practicing psychiatrist ! I do not know if there is a degree called 'doctor of Psychology" !

K.Sohail can prescribe to his patients, medications like Haldol, prozac and Aspirin too! These shrinks are least admired or understood by machos in the society , including ignoramusses including fellow physicians at large. Their patients range from, depressed aggressive,..... sociopaths ,psychopaths to everything inder the sun. Morover, they earn less money than family physicians and even high priced plumbers.

So underestimate their worth. You might need them oneday. Wa Salaam.
Kamath

Let's be fair to Masadi. He is consistent because Masadi does not see any difference at all between Marxist view and true Islam. Religion, thus, has the narcotic effect (focusing only the part generally quoted, not religion's role as a mechanism of survial) only if religion does not agree with Marx (or differs from Islam).

This is very similar to Iqbal's formulation of nationalism.

Nationalism is to be rejected because it leads to all manner of evil. But if one can assure that those evils would not exist - as in a nation of Muslims - then nationalism is to be promoted.

HP sain,

Re: 132

I am glad you reproduced Marx's statement (the bolded part) in full, not in isolation.

Regards

#124 Posted by masadi
“I FULLY 100% subscribe to what Marx wrote about religion in a capitalist society it becomes a means to an end, an opiate of the masses, much like Rev Wright said, it leads to amnesia.�

What Marx said about religion and how it is implied are two different things. Marx never said it leads to amnesia in a capitalist or any other society.

"Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact hat mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc; that therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation on which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case." Engels, 1883.

It is clear that a definite attitude to religion is present, both implicitly and explicitly, in the most fundamental ideas of Marxism. Marxism clearly demands a materialist explanation of religion. It is not enough to view either religion as a whole or any particular religion as simply a delusion or folly that happens to have gripped the minds of millions for centuries.

Marx also wrote:
“Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realisation of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.�

The attempt to reduce the Marxist theory of religion to a simple one-dimensional analysis such as, “Marx argues that religion is a tool of the ruling class� or “according to Marx religion functions to pacify the toiling masses�. Of course, Marx does say this kind of thing about religion but he says much else besides. To reduce his theory to just one of its strands is falsifying it.

Marx's one more highly significant paragraph:

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances. It is the opium of the people.�

Marx’s insistence that religion is both an expression of suffering and a protest against it is the key point, giving the lie to any analysis which focuses only on religion’s narcotic effects.