Hands Across The Border

My sincere apologies to all the other hindus on this forum (other than RSaxena); I just reacted to his insulting remarks about Islam. I take what i said back--brother Urstruly is right: such behavioour is not becoming of a Muslim. Though I consider Islam to be the Absolute Truth I do respect other religions even though i believe them to be incorrect. (I`ve read the Mahabharata (interesting!) and i v. much enjoy the bhajans of Mirabai.)

Again, sorry for any offense caused...

Re: Krashid

Your transmissions from the park bench are a little fuzzy. Please re-secrete.

Krashid # 228

Really? Even when he is Syed?

And now, my most humble request to you is not to provoke me to quote instances as well as sayings. You see, it is very unpleasant to do it.

Cheraym # 230

Who are Kauravas? I thought that is obvious.

tahmad 238

I have no doubt what so ever about the experience of the sikh friend. On a one to one basis people tend to be decent , polite and friendly. Even a mullah omar will not execute a shia man, but he will have no hesitation in spreading that message. Another imporatant aspect is that the people we meet are a determined by the socio economic station of ones life, educated middle class mores are not very different accross cultures. Hence the situation in pakistan or for that matter that in india should not be guaged based on ones interactions at the personal level, especially in an open forum like chowk. It should be based on the collective, as reflected in the institutions.

I am certain that in a decade, pakistan will be ruled by the mullahs, but i hope that your view of a moderate pakistan comes true.

I was in india in january, attended a republic day function at bangalore at the military parade grounds, the place was filled with police, tyhere was not even a single police man with a weapon, and they all were busy watching the parade. Contrast this to the basant festival in pakistan where apparently AK47 are fired by the people instead of crackers. Watching the republic day parade, with all the info I gleaned about pakistan, the thought did flash, an average run of the mill pak jihadist could have made a dogs breakfast out of the indian security apparatus.

Indians at individual levels are no match for the attack from a society that is steeped in violence, and the response need to be at the institutional level, like what the israelis are doing.

In conclusion, I do hope that you are correct in your assessment of pakistan, but I can assure you that at the collective level you are running out of any evidence to support an evolution of moderate pakistan.

regards

jay

RSaxena the monape#

These things are beyond your comprehension.

Abe Chipku Tujh Se Kon Mukhatib Hai.

Jub Tujh Se Baat Hi Nahin Kar Rahe To Khumamkhawa Lace Ho Raha Hai.

Ja Apna Kam Kur. Shabash.

Waise Bhi Yeh Tera sh-it-movie Ka Time Hai Tu Ghalti Se Idhar Aa Gia.

Asif Naqsbandi #244

Being a Muslim with difference of opinion from you. I would expect at least some manners in the tradition of talk to them nicely or leave them on their own.

Everybody acts on his belief and convictions, thinking that his is the right path. So instead of acting like jahil meaning RSaxena be a little bit more courteous.

RSaxena is a pathetic case and is in the process of evolution from monkey to ape. Preach to human species called homo sapiens and don`t react to monapes (intermediate stage between monkey and apes)

Kemalist Perspective : My perspective

``...since race has no relationship to social traits, neither can it have any with nationality, which is the sum total of social characteristics ...social solidarity rests on cultural unity, which is transmitted by means of education and therefore has no relationship with consanguinity...a nation is not a racial or ethnic or geographic or political or volitional group but one composed of individuals who share a common language, religion, morality or aesthetics, that is to say, who have received the same education.``

Quoted from Ziya Gokalp: Principles of Turkism

Let us now try to understand the two different secular models ... ie Kemalist Model vs Multicultural Model...

Kemalist Model is what we have in Turkey and what Pakistan was envisaged to become by the proponents of two nation theory...

Multicultural Model is what India is trying and should strive to become!

Asif # 244

I think you should have refrained from insulting hindu worshiping practices. It is below us. The insult is due only when other Hindus applaud people like Rsaxena, Sadna, MacGupta and Jay. Only then vengeance is all yours. Why do all the decent folks have to suffer just because there are some morons among them. Its not their fault.

In India and Africa, Women`s Low Status Worsens Their Risk of AIDS


(Part II/II)

Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of Unifem, argues that to combat AIDS, governments and international agencies will have to focus on the particular needs of women, who are often denied medicines.

``We`ve talked for so long about the need to really look at gender in all aspects of development work,`` Ms. Urdang said. ``With H.I.V.-AIDS, it is so much clearer because it is an issue of life and death.``

``When you look at why this is happening,`` she added, ``it`s so much the cultural practices and values and beliefs that underlie our societies that discriminate against women.``

Ms. Germain, who formerly directed programs in Bangladesh for the Ford Foundation, said women`s groups there and in India and Nepal were raising similar warnings about the folly of ignoring social attitudes. She said that in South Asia, the disease was spread in somewhat different ways.

In India, for example, ``there is quite a bit of unrecognized homosexuality, especially early among men, who then marry later, with their wives not having any idea that they had earlier relationships`` that might have involved risky sex.

She added that women in India are often totally uninformed about sex when they are married, that the marriages are often to older men and arranged by their families. Women are then under great pressure to produce sons, and the use of contraceptives, specifically condoms, is out of the question.

And across Asia, Ms. Germain continued, ``you have intravenous drug use, which in itself is a very important part of the picture, but can also lead into sexual prostitution and trafficking.`` Migrant labor, long- haul trucking, rail networks and the military all move infections around India, she said.

In most of South Asia, illiteracy among women is the highest anywhere, and there are few health centers attentive to the needs of women in rural areas.

The American Foundation for AIDS Research (Amfar) reported recently that as many as 30 million Indians could be infected by 2010.

Prostitutes in Asia, some of them now organized in self-help organizations, have long complained that their customers refuse to use condoms, which in any case are not always available. This month the government of Vietnam said it had found that 20 percent of prostitutes it had studied were H.I.V.-positive.

``In India,`` Ms. Germain said, ``the low status of women, the economic dependence, the marriage patterns, all of these factors are going to mean that women are much less likely than even women in Africa to be able to negotiate condom use or to have any say at all about when sex occurs. Much more needs to be understood about the relationship between women`s status and the epidemic.``

Family-planning programs in India have played down the use of condoms, though a new government program for fighting AIDS is now trying to make them more accessible, Ms. Germain said. ``We need to work with young people and get to both girls and boys early,`` she said, ``and not in just the conventional sex education mode.``

She recommended more education in sexual behavior that ``emphasizes gender equality and power relations and sexuality more broadly, not just biologically.``

``But there are a lot of taboos against doing that,`` she said. ``The need to get information to young people is critical. But the political will doesn`t yet exist.``

Very Sad!


February 26, 2001 Single-Page Format
In India and Africa, Women`s Low Status Worsens Their Risk of AIDS
By BARBARA CROSSETTE



UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 23 — The poverty and powerlessness of women in Africa and Asia are combining to make them increasingly vulnerable to AIDS, which some research groups are now calling a women`s disease.

Despite years of international conferences and declarations about women`s rights, in many cultures and in the most disadvantaged societies girls and women do not have the power to reject unwanted or unsafe sex.

A lack of individual power, or even basic human rights, has already condemned many women to death in Africa, where more than half the people affected by AIDS are women, according to United Nations reports.

As the epidemic grows in Asia — particularly in South Asia, where by virtually every international measure women have the lowest status in the world — the results are expected to be catastrophic.

A report last week from Secretary General Kofi Annan concluded, ``The gender dynamics of the epidemic are far-reaching due to women`s weaker ability to negotiate safe sex, and their generally lower social and economic status.``

The report will be taken up on Monday at a meeting to prepare for a special General Assembly session in June devoted to AIDS. As that session approaches, women`s groups are increasing their efforts to get attention for women`s vulnerability, which occupies only one paragraph in the secretary general`s 29-page report.

The issue rekindles debates about women`s rights in personal relationships, including whether they are able to insist on the use of condoms, an issue that dominated the 1994 United Nations population conference in Cairo and the international conference on women the following year in Beijing.

``We are working extremely hard to save five years of gains,`` said Adrienne Germain, president of the International Women`s Health Coalition in New York, which assists groups in the developing world.

At Unifem, the United Nations development program for women, Stephanie Urdang, the adviser on sex and the virus that causes AIDS, said the voices of women in the third world are clear on this issue: women there cite property laws and cultural practices among the obstacles to protecting themselves against the disease, which is particularly ravaging sub-Saharan Africa.

``For example,`` Ms. Urdang said, ``there is the belief in Africa and Asia that if a man sleeps with a virgin, he`ll be cured.``

She also noted the practice in which a widow is married off to her deceased husband`s brother. ``Of course,`` she said, ``in many cases the husband will have died of H.I.V.- AIDS, and she might be infected and will infect his brother.``

Ms. Urdang continued: ``Another practice that is very, very devastating is that women do not have land rights and property rights in most of sub-Saharan Africa, which means they are allocated a plot of land to work on in order to produce food for the family.

``But if the husband dies, they have no right to that land anymore, or even the house that the husband would have built for them. It`s taken over by the husband`s family, which is within customary law, and then they are left destitute.

``And if he`s died of AIDS, what regularly happens is that the first person to be diagnosed in the family is the pregnant wife, because she`ll go to a clinic and will be tested. Then she`ll be looked at as the cause of the disease.``

RSaxena,

we kill Kafirs, you become slaves to them; we marry four women, you burn them in your coconut oil, we line behind somebody`s behind 5 times a day, your pathetic kind kisses their behind AT LEAST 5 times a day.

Re: Sadhna

``Frankly, I donot care what Pakistanis think of Indian secularism or multiculturalism. ``

Pakistanis are in denial and have the worst inferiority complex I have ever seen.

Dionysus # 239

Thank you very much for posting link to the pictures of Gurdwaras in Pakistan. Really appreciate it.

Best regards.

RSaxena wrote,

``There are only concepts of kill-the-kafirs, marry 4 women, and line-up with some guy`s behind in your face 5 times a day.``

yeh yeh....then why are there still 800 million of you. We ruled you for the best part of a millenium--if we really believed in kill the kaafir we could have wiped you guys out a long time ago...Remember Timur? Babar? Aurangzeb? Nadir Shah? Abdali? Muhammad ibn Qasim? thank your gods that our religion is NOT like that...[you guys have only ruled for 50 odd years and look how you have treated your minorities compared to how the muslims treated you when we ruled...]

How about unlimited polygamy (only for high castes of course), five guys marrying the same girl, worshipping a phallus, drinking piss, getting polluted in case a shadow of a ``dalit`` falls on your brahmin behinds & a let`s burn our brides party...

(Sorry to all the other indians out there but this guys post was out of order.)

shammi #236
You say wrt India `` Will the religious faithful surrender, and cease testing the limits of constitutional authority? No, never. But as long as the secular constitution remains a guide, things will likely not get out of hand.``

This highlights also the as-yet-unresolved dichotomy next door: the acceptance of the primacy of constitutional authority legitimised by people`s will over religious authority legitimised by religious authority.

When any religious party or parties rattle the gates and demand total `Islamization`(whatever that implies), why cannot the generals just say ``we need to get the consent of the entire populace before we make such a significant change and now is not a good time to ask. Please engage in your activism peacefully and secure people`s consent in future polls, then we will see.``

For this argument to be accepted, people`s consent needs to be accepted as primary. And maybe why the dichotomy looms large in the public eye is because only organizations pressing religious issues are allowed to be active in public.

Frankly, I donot care what Pakistanis think of Indian secularism or multiculturalism. But I donot see why the preservation of the multireligious fabric of Indian Kashmir should be similarly glossed over as unimportant or status of minorities in Indian Kashmir be jeopardized by the policies of the Pakistani government which claims to be a champion of Kashmiri rights but supports Islamists and their Islamist agendas? And why should the above dichotomy be allowed to spill over into Indian Kashmir?

Sadhana

Shammi

On the contrary I am very interested in diffusing the tension but I feel that your method will only reawaken the suspicions of people, besides it is unnecessary to share sovereignty.

The Mahatma and Pandit rule was said in response to Macgupta`s claim that ``Secular Pakistan`` was an oxymoron. The truth is that both Pakistan and India are neither theocratic nor secular.... though one claims to be constitutionally Islamic and the other claims to be constitutionally secular.

I am well aware of Mahatma and Pandit jee`s life and times, and their attributes are not lost upon me.

Sincerely

Yasser Hamdani