Islams Challenge

Re: Islam`s Challenge by RonaldK. Rodebough.

I found you article very interesting and true to form.

I agree with you totally about how Islamic world lost its sence of direction and got lost in the history pages.

But I was quiet surprised at your conclusion about why you think Islamic world succumbed to the forces of fundamentalism is very shallow.You apprently ignored to consider the geoplitical forces at work agaisnt the Islamic world from 1000 AD to 1500 AD, and the impact it had not only on Islam but also Judiasm. Starting from the first crusade to the destruction of Bagdad by Mongols, to closing with the Inquisition, and subsequesnt colonialism. The focus of the Islamic world changed from Arts and Learning to to self defence and survival and into the arms of religious fanatics.

This is not an apology for the present day condition of Islam, nor am I pointing fingures, I think that the ``statute of limitations`` has expired and we should move forward. But remember you can only clap with both the hands, the West has to grow out of its ``colonial era`` mind frame of `us vs them` ie the occident vs the orient, and the concept of superiority and inferiority that it entails.

The stakes are being raised in this war, the West has to reevalaute its policies towards the ``Orient``, ie. Middle East. Otherwise we can expect more of the horrors of September 11, 2001 in New York.

Regards

Saif

Rsaxena,

I am not sure what you are talking about. For an Ivy League alumnus, you sure seem to lack critical reading skills... From what I understand every single one of the so called `Mullahs` has supported Mr Rodebaugh`s thesis.

Please dont make stupid comments without reading the article or the responses, though this has been your characteristic style here on Chowk!

-YLH

Re: Islam`s Challenge by RonaldK. Rodebough.

I found you article very interesting and true to form.

I agree with you totally about how Islamic world lost its sence of direction and got lost in the history pages.

But I was quiet surprised at your conclusion about why you think Islamic world succumbed to the forces of fundamentalism is very shallow.You apprently ignored to consider the geoplitical forces at work agaisnt the Islamic world from 1000 AD to 1500 AD, and the impact it had not only on Islam but also Judiasm. Starting from the first crusade to the destruction of Bagdad by Mongols, to the Recoquest during Inquisition, and subsequesnt colonialism. The focus of the Islamic world changed from Arts and Learning to to self defence and survival and into the arms of religious fanatics.

This is not an apology for the present day condition of Islam, nor am I pointing fingures, I think that the ``statute of limitations`` has expired and we should move forward. But remember you can only clap with both the hands, the West has to grow out of its ``colonial era`` mind frame of `us vs them` ie the occident vs the orient, and the concept of superiority and inferiority that it entails.

The stakes are being raised in this war, the West has to reevalaute its policies towards the ``Orient``, ie. Middle East. Otherwise we can expect more of the horrors of September 11, 2001 in New York.

Regards

Saif

Sahir #10:

[...YOU make a common mistake. IRA does not have the support of Christians the way WE support Osama...Why is EVERYONE suggesting that an attack on Afghanistan is an attack on Islam?.... WE ourselves have not made clear the distinction between terrorism and our religion. By blindly supporting Jehadis WE have lost our right to claim that they do not represent Islam. WE must put OUR house in order before asking others to distinguish between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim. I support the author....]

(CAPS are mine)

...you are taking too much for granted...no witnesses...rest my case!

macgupta #25

[...How many pro-Taliban marches have there been in Pakistan in the last five years ? How many anti-Taliban marches have there been in Pakistan in the last five years ? ...]

---I don’t know...but I understand your concern...taken with salt and caution...the silent majority does not speak up often enough or loud enough even here..or even in other bastions of free-speak...

[...You blame the West for propping up Israel and for propping up corrupt, dictatorial regimes in Muslim countries..]

---did I come across as blaming the West for that?...hardly...but I certainly do not condone the double standards in their policies...need not elaborate...you are familiar with them...

[...It is very unrealistic to expect the average Muslims to be able to control the fanatics. But the necessity to speak up has never been greater....]

---I agree...and I see folks are speaking up against the hijacking of their beliefs system by the extremists...

[...When Salman Rushdie offended Islam, there were protests in every country that has Muslims. Since Osama bin Laden issued his fatwa in 1998 calling for the killing of all Americans, military personnel and civilians, men, women and children alike, there has been mostly silence. If one was blaspheming, why not the other ? If one was declared apostate, why not the other ? You cannot blame the West, or a Jewish-Hindu nexus or anyone else for the failure to speak...]

---arun, khomeini was an ayatollah...(how he got that is another story)...but he was QUALIFIED to issue a fatwa...and another thing his fatwa was not binding on the sunnis...some 80-85 of the muslims...to equate osama’s ‘fatwa’ is not fair...osama is not a qualified ‘mufti’...heck his fatwa is about as good as mine against that double agent zafar (relax zafar, am enquiring from isi for your back pay as well as asking raw to increase your remunerations...you know the times!...both are citing economic woes..blahblah...but have faith brother...this business never dies!)...

rgds,

t

PS: CHOWK EDITORS

Yaaro bhagwah/khuda kay liyay kum az kum headings ka tou khaas khayal rakho ---what is islams challenge?

Sahir #10:

[...YOU make a common mistake. IRA does not have the support of Christians the way WE support Osama...Why is EVERYONE suggesting that an attack on Afghanistan is an attack on Islam?.... WE ourselves have not made clear the distinction between terrorism and our religion. By blindly supporting Jehadis WE have lost our right to claim that they do not represent Islam. WE must put OUR house in order before asking others to distinguish between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim. I support the author....]

(CAPS are mine)

...you are taking too much for granted...no witnesses...rest my case!

macgupta #25

[...How many pro-Taliban marches have there been in Pakistan in the last five years ? How many anti-Taliban marches have there been in Pakistan in the last five years ? ...]

---I don’t know...but I understand your concern...taken with salt and caution...the silent majority does not speak up often enough or loud enough even here..or even in other bastions of free-speak...

[...You blame the West for propping up Israel and for propping up corrupt, dictatorial regimes in Muslim countries..]

---did I come across as blaming the West for that?...hardly...but I certainly do not condone the double standards in their policies...need not elaborate...you are familiar with them...

[...It is very unrealistic to expect the average Muslims to be able to control the fanatics. But the necessity to speak up has never been greater....]

---I agree...and I see folks are speaking up against the hijacking of their beliefs system by the extremists...

[...When Salman Rushdie offended Islam, there were protests in every country that has Muslims. Since Osama bin Laden issued his fatwa in 1998 calling for the killing of all Americans, military personnel and civilians, men, women and children alike, there has been mostly silence. If one was blaspheming, why not the other ? If one was declared apostate, why not the other ? You cannot blame the West, or a Jewish-Hindu nexus or anyone else for the failure to speak...]

---arun, khomeini was an ayatollah...(how he got that is another story)...but he was QUALIFIED to issue a fatwa...and another thing his fatwa was not binding on the sunnis...some 80-85 of the muslims...to equate osama’s ‘fatwa’ is not fair...osama is not a qualified ‘mufti’...heck his fatwa is about as good as mine against that double agent zafar (relax zafar, am enquiring from isi for your back pay as well as asking raw to increase your remunerations...you know the times!...both are citing economic woes..blahblah...but have faith brother...this business never dies!)...

rgds,

t

PS: CHOWK EDITORS

Yaaro bhagwan/khuda kay liyay kum az kum headings ka tou khaas khayal rakho ---what is islams challenge?

Re: ylh

you still chasing my shadows from board-to-board, little boy? guess you`re too angry with the truth.

This might not be the most well written article ever, but it does raise some interesting points.

To tell the truth I have become more and more confused about Islam myself. How often do we have to exceptionalize such acts as those of a `few misguided souls`? There are tons of misguided people in the world, of course, of all religions and from all countries.

How is it, then, that my religion has the same kind of misguided souls regardless of the country they are from? Why do they indulge in such similarly barbaric acts, most of the time?

Yes, the Western media is biased. Yes, the entire Western world sows seeds of discontent. But the media do not manufacture news. They report it, biased though it may be. And even if the West is totally evil, why do we fall for it all the time? And why are we so unabashadly violent?

This is not meant to be an indictment on Islam (before the death threats begin :-). This is my own sense of frustration and confusion, every time something like this happens.

How do I continue to call myself a Muslim while reconciling these happenings? Or do I?

Re: Zafar Al Talib

``...(I can’t think of any “Muslim” country which doesn’t fall into the first group....``

Zafarji:

Why is that?

As regards your point about, `try and see what other factors define each group`, I completely agree. I do not, however, claim to know what the other factors could be. I thought of geography, climate, etc. (but dismissed them on the grounds that while these factors can certainly determine which society/civilization is placed at an advantageous position vis a vis competitors, today virtually all religions are present in virtually every geography/climate type). BTW, I recommend a great book called `Germs, Guns and Steel` by Jared Diamond which demolishes the racist notion that certain civilizations/societies lagged behind others due to any innate (ie `controllable`) factors. Rather, the book asserts, that geography, and climate are the two single most determinants as to why Europeans discovered Australia (and the aborigines(sp?)) first and not vice versa (amongst many other things).

You bring the example of Turkey -- and it is a very interesting case. Jared Diamond asserts that competition amongst European states (and the geography of the continent is such that no single power could assert hegemony over the entire continent) ensured that there was an intense rivalry for technological innovation to support warfare. This resulted in a need to develop `the scientific method` of inquiry (to support innovation), and the accompanying challenge to religious dogma. Thus, self-preservation required jettisoning the primacy of the clergy in affairs of the state. Turkey, since it competed directly with European powers, would have had to adopt similar methods. Could that explain Turkey`s situation today?

Going further, could it be that since similar conditions did not exist in the Middle East (I am not even sure about this), ie. of different countries/nation states sharing a common religion AND engaging in intense power rivalries, that Islamic societies never saw the need to develop what I am loosely referring to as the `scientific method`, around the time that the Rennaisance was flowering in Europe?

Also, you are right -- I did not define the word `progressive`, and rather than define it adequately, I would much rather drop it.

MaheshG #26 No, dont worry. I shall not respond with hammer and tongs to your post. My point is that by blaming religion for criminal actions, one reduces the responsibility that each one of us has towards society. This point has become very important nowadays when the ``battle lines`` are being drawn. These ``battle lines`` can be between civilized society vs. terrorism (as President Bush has correctly stated), or they can be along communal lines (as the religious extremists, the outright criminals, and the plain bloody minded are trying to make it). My problem with this article is that it draws the battle lines as the terrorists would like to see.

As for the question of whether Islam teaches hatreds, the writer is obviously no more knowledgeable about the Quran than Mullah Omar is about Italian opera. If you dont believe me, read some relevant books by established western scholars of comparitive religions (e.g. Karen Armstrong) and you will see what I mean.

This is my plea: Let us break this habit some people have of seeing ``us`` as Indians or Hindus and ``they`` as Pakistanis or Muslims (and vice versa). ``Us`` is those desiring to see civilized society and peace and prosperity in South Asia, and ``them`` is those finding one reason or another (Islam, Kashmir, Hindutva) to continue violence and strife in the land. These are the battle lines that we must fight across, whether on chowk or elsewhere.

Maheshg #26 One more thing to my previous post: You ask the right question ``Who were the people celebrating the WTC tragedy.`` and come up with the wrong answer by saying: ``It was invariably the Muslims.``

Do you recall seeing anyone - even the worst flag burning religious extremist in Pakistan - ``celebrating the WTC tragedy``? In fact, people in Pakistan have been as much shocked by these horrible events as anyone else. While there have been noisy protests in Pakistan, those protests have been against military action on taliban, and not in celebration of anything. And even those protests have been by a few, loud members of religious parties and do not represent the thinking of the vast majority of Pakistanis (as even CNN and other news agencies have acknowledged, and as I know from talking over the phone to my family members in Pakistan).

By portraying muslims in general as monsters celebrating the horrific events of september 11 when nothing like that is true, you are betraying the same mindset that I am pleading should be dropped in my post below.

re SameerJB #21:

Absolutely agree with you. The sign of a decadent civilization is when all its energies are spent in justifying its acts no matter how indecent. All this talk about when is jihad allowed or not skirts the basic issue-human decency. No matter how much of a nutcase a jewish or christian fundamentalist one may be, one can mostly expect a modicum of understanding that certain things are off limits(lets hear hobbyty with his litany of abortion clinic bombings and urstruly with his babblings about atrocities in Kashmir....). With most Muslims one can expect that but the number is less than EVERY other major religion.

It is a sad time indeed when the intellectual energies of the Muslim world are spent in justifying horrible acts by presenting examples of barabric acts committed by other nations/religions. The Muslim world may be destined to go the same way as communism or Nazism or the Mongols before them. They conquered everything in sight and yet left no lasting legacy in their wake. Eventually they ended up being folded into a more superior intellectual entity(Islam). Those days are long gone. The shoe is on the other foot now.

later

-sac

Harimau,

The list is indeed long... maybe hatemongers like you cant look beyond your Hindu noses.... One can name atleast 1000 famous names... I named the really famous ones... By the way, Dr Abdus Salaam said that his entire theory was totally inspired by his belief in the message of the Quran? Maybe we forget this dont we? I am not saying that the message of the Quran is scientific, I dont find it as such, but to quote Dr Abdussalam will be disastrous to your theories.

In any event, the list I know of, and perhaps cant fully appreciate is and I am by no means an expert of any of the following people:

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) Abu Raihan al-Biruni

Abu al-Hasan al-Mawardi

Abu Ali Hasan Ibn al-Haitham

Jabir Ibn Haiyan

Mohammad Bin Musa al-Khawarizmi

Yaqub Ibn Ishaq al-Kindi

Thabit Ibn Qurra

Ali Ibn Rabban al-Tabari

Abu Abdullah al-Battani

Al-Farghani

Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi

Abu al-Nasr al-Farabi

Abul Wafa Muhammad al-Buzjani

Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi

Abul Hasan Ali al-Masu`di

Omar al-Khayyam

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali

Abu Marwan Ibn Zuhr

Al-Idrisi

Ibn Rushd

Ibn al-Baitar

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi

Jalal al-Din Rumi

Ibn al-Nafis

Ibn Khaldun

Dr Abdussalam

The history of the Islamic civilization is indeed great... it is the perversion that we see in the form of the Taliban!

List:

Jabir Ibn Haiyan (Geber)Chemistry (Father of Chemistry) Died 803 C.E.



Al-Asmai Zoology, Botany, Animal Husbandry.

740 - 828

Al-Khwarizmi (Algorizm) Mathematics, Astronomy, Geography. (Algorithm,Algebra, calculus) 770 - 840



`Amr ibn Bahr Al-Jahiz Zoology, Arabic Grammar, Rhetoric, Lexicography 776 - 868



Ibn Ishaq Al-Kindi (Alkindus) Philosophy, Physics, Optics, Medicine, Mathematics, Metallurgy.

800 - 873

Thabit Ibn Qurrah (Thebit) Astronomy, Mechanics, Geometry, Anatomy. 836 - 901



`Abbas Ibn Firnas Mechanics of Flight, Planetarium, Artificial Crystals. Died 888



Ali Ibn Rabban Al-Tabari Medicine, Mathematics, Caligraphy, Literature. 838 - 870

Al-Battani (Albategnius) Astronomy, mathematics, Trigonometry.858 - 929



Al-Farghani (Al-Fraganus) Astronomy, Civil Engineering. C. 860



Al-Razi (Rhazes) Medicine, Ophthalmology, Smallpox, Chemistry,Astronomy.864 - 930



Al-Farabi (Al-Pharabius) Sociology, Logic, Philosophy, Political Science, Music.

870 - 950 Abul Hasan Ali Al-Masu`di Geography, History.Died 957



Al-Sufi (Azophi) Astronomy 903 - 986

Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahravi (Albucasis) Surgery, Medicine. (Father of Modern Surgery) 936 - 1013



Muhammad Al-Buzjani Mathematics, Astronomy, Geometry, Trigonometry. 940 - 997



Abu al-Qasim Maslimah al-Majriti Astronomy

Died 1007



Ibn Yunus Trigonometry, Astronomy Died 1009



Ibn Al-Haitham (Alhazen)Physics, Optics, Mathematics.965 - 1040



Al-Mawardi (Alboacen) Political Science, Sociology, Jurisprudence, Ethics.972 - 1058



Abu Raihan Al-BiruniAstronomy, Mathematics. (Determined Earth`s Circumference) 973-1048



Ibn Sina (Avicenna)Medicine, Philosophy, Mathematics, Astronomy. 981 - 1037



Al-Zarqali (Arzachel)Astronomy (Invented Astrolabe). 1028 - 1087



Omar Al-Khayyam Mathematics, Poetry. 1044 - 1123

I will continue the list at another time, but for now I have just this to say... an educational system created by communal fanatics and murderers can only produce people like Harimau.

He has once again shown us his biased uneducated illiterate view of History, that he has become legendary for on Chowk. Be it partition history, be it world history, be it Islamic history.... he comes in farting, and then disappears after thoroughly stinking up the place.

He has to understand, that Islamic civilization, unlike some other civilizations, were not preoccupied with Hanuman, the Monkey God!

-YLH

Tahmed #41,

I guess you misunderstood my post. I didn`t say all Muslims celebrated the WTC tragedy. I said people who celebrated were all Muslims. Big difference.

Regarding celebrations in Pakistan have you not Prof. Hoodbhoy`s article? If you want I can give you a link for a video footage of such celebrations in Pakistan.

Anyway, that doesn`t take away from my post that people who celebrated were Muslims. What made them do that? Is that they are misinterpreting something in Quran (BTW, I completely believe that Quran doesn`t say anything of the sort. You have misunderstood the thrust of my post)?

Isn`t it the responsibility of moderate Muslims like you to set these characters straight. If there is any ambiguity in Quran which leads to misinterpretation shouldn`t that ambiguity be rectified?

Unless moderate Muslims step up and take responsibility for what their extremist correligionists are doing in Islam`s name you can`t FAULT non-Muslims for pointing fingers at Islam.

Naqshbandi

You are a disgrace to Islam, and everything good about it... You and Harimau are like long lost brothers.... separated at birth, one a Hindu Fanatic, other an Ossama Bin Laden follower!