A New Role

Thank for this nice article. Your third choice we are following in Boston area and With the help of God we are doing very well.

Keep it up. The world need the peace and we need to be leader in this process.

Thank You.

MLakhnavi

RE: Reply #: 26 Zehra wrote:

``this article made me sick.
how can you so despotically declare that the clear choice is option number three (educating americans about islam and muslims)?``

I would not go that far Zehra. Wisdom does come with age, and this is the most reasonable path availble.

You added later:

``anyway, it seems really superficial and fake to be all smiling and model minority when some white guy is yelling at you in new jersey for no reason other than the fact that you look a certain way, and you are expected to smile when you would rather tell him where to stick his big fat ugly head.``

Very genuine feeling that we I hope will see in article form on CHOWK soon. We need honest reaction to the events AFTER 9/11 here.

Ras

Zehra-26

Aap phir naazil ho gayeen?Kuch tau sharam karo.

this article made me sick.
how can you so despotically declare that the clear choice is option number three (educating americans about islam and muslims)?

along with handing out candies on eid, little kids should get together and sing to George W at their local mosque, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. lovely gesture of friendship, honesty and good will.

twenty years ago little desi kids would go to school on eid with mehndi on their hands and tell their classmates what it was all about. been there, done that, why not we move on?

i hate that everytime something `bad` happens muslims around the world think, OK, let`s we be good like the prophet that when people throw garbage on us, we smile and hand out candies. fat lot of good this tactic has done, eh, that nothing has really changed in the last 1500 years.

anyway, it seems really superficial and fake to be all smiling and model minority when some white guy is yelling at you in new jersey for no reason other than the fact that you look a certain way, and you are expected to smile when you would rather tell him where to stick his big fat ugly head.

scout, great reply.
mehdavi, you are scarier than azmat tanauli.

z. rizvi.

Ref ali1 #: 3

[The articles at chowk give one an impression that Diwali is the most important thing happening these days.]

Yes. A billion persons (give or take some of the $200 million Muslims, Christians, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, Jews, Sikhs, buffalo-worshippers as opposed to cow-worshippers, Taoists, animists, and anybody else you can think of) in India are celebrating it with a big bang, so you might as well come to terms with it.

[Third is the so called mainstream media which lacks the time and inclination to go indepth to the complex issues. The glorification of Northern Allaince is a recent example.]

The fact is, anybody including the Northern Alliance is better than the Taliban. You might as well wake up and smell the coffee instead of smoking the hash that Pak establishment has been feeding you.

[My personal guess is that most muslims will leave or will be forced to leave the country at some point during this long war against terrorism.]

You mean, if we follow what the US is doing, you guys will leave Kashmir?

[Of course this question can be put to the Zionist/Orthodox Jews too who are living in the US, but then some religions are more equal than others and they haven`t blown up any buildings recently.]

Marine Corps barracks, Labanon.

Al-Khobar complex, Saudi Arabia.

World Trade Center, New York.

Buddha statues, Bamiyan, Afghanistan.

These are the spectacular ones. You guys have daily occurrences of similar events in Israel and Kashmir.

Well, at least you can see that blowing up buildings with people inside them is not going to endear you to any civilized human beings. That is a first step.

re: arjun_m # 22

By claiming that you can`t say anything about those Americans who went Afghanistan to kill Americans, you are overlooking a basic problem with the argument.

State and religion are two separate corporate bodies. The state has absolutely no obligation to support any other corporate entity that threatens the existence of the state. Ideally, the state should exist in peaceful coexistence with other relevant coporate bodies - an ideal reached best in democratic setups. That peaceful coexistence is possible if and only if both the state and other corporate bodies clearly and unambiguously eschew all attempts at undermining one another - again, a requirement that can only be met in a democratic setup.

Regards.

Azmat,

per the following report, pakistanis are being arrested for just being pakis, sort of understandable which gives yet another opportunity to educate the others. The arrested pakistanis can behave in a mild manner, not like the pakis in mizar e sherif and got butchered. That could be a good beginning.

Harassment of Pakistanis

One consequence of the September 11 incidents is that Pakistani citizens legally visiting other countries are being harassed to the extreme. And our government, true to its salt, does nothing about it.

In Mali, all the 29 Pakistanis staying there, were arrested simply because they were Pakistanis. Nigeria, too, is rounding up Pakistanis, just because they are Pakistanis (Dawn, Nov 18).

The least that our government could do is to call the representatives of these governments in Islamabad, and tell them that if such uncalled for actions are not stopped immediately, this country would also take similar action against their countrymen in Pakistan.

A.S. NIZAMANI

Kuala Lumpur

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Did some one say ,New Role as educater ?Thats what we havebeen saying ,but PPl. only LISTEN,when they are awakened by ``shocking events`` as 9-11 tragedy.However NOW is a good time than ever was so please pass it on

Islam Misunderstood

Khalid Khan



If language is a mode to express things and communicate with fellow human beings, then perhaps linguistics and lexicons know better how difficult and inadequate they find themselves when they have to translate and understand the meaning of a word from the text to the context, from one language to another, or elicit the implicit meaning from within a word itself into an explicit, distinct, appropriate unambiguous form. The task remains challenging yet never achievable, not because we lack the means and method to do it, but because of the very nature of its usage. Its growth in a given culture and society in which it is used keeps the perennial challenge alive as to how to interpret it in the light of changing circumstances and with the growth and development of society. This very difficulty of interpretation of language, more particularly religious texts, has been the root of all misunderstanding. Not only have the subjective elements of individuals or groups colored their own interests while throwing light on the meaning of the text, but this was and is still being surreptitiously distorted, misinterpreted by the `other` in their race for dominance and superiority and for serving their own interests. It is due to the limitation of human language that, more often than not, the meaning of the religious text has got lost in the encyclopedia of its own school of interpretation. Realizing this paradoxical dilemma of not having a consensus on the meaning of its own text, radical elements within and outside the Semitic religions had zealously and relentlessly tarnished and damaged its counterparts for its own sustenance and existence. It has become the maxim of Semitic religions that “misunderstandings to be followed as a rule with others.” Very often we have seen through history that the basic, inherent tendency of Semitic religions like Islam, Christianity and Judaism is to exclude the `other` from itself and by implication it means to attract within its fold as many people as it is possible to maintain its superiority over the others. And to be superior in the material world is to be in control of at least the resources, economy, technology, trade and all other things attached to it that would give to its followers dignity, better living standards and a superior value system. Since there was no uniformity in the process of bringing within its fold new groups of believers, they had to face each other within the same ethnic cultural groups of people like the Arab Muslims and the Arab Christians. Because of the change in their belief systems and religion, they started having more in common and felt alike with those who shared their beliefs and their new religion than with those with whom they had shared ethnically the same world view earlier. This paved the way for more complicated reorganization of people in terms of their religious world views within the Semitic religions, and as such an urgency for adjustment of each other`s interest arose wherever confrontation had to be avoided. This situation arose within the same ethnic groups, where Semitic religion came to take its root together and also where different ethnic groups who were completely under the fold of one Semitic religion had to encounter the other Semitic or non-Semitic religion. So long as there was some internal understanding and balance of interest within the Semitic religion for protecting their own interest either through debate, dialogue or conciliation, we witnessed periods of peace in history. But the day disgruntled elements decided to subvert the balance and attempted to annihilate the `other` or retard the growth of the other, we have umpteen examples in our pages of world history that speak volumes about the destruction and tragedy that both sides had to suffer. So what is happening in the world today is nothing new; it should neither shock nor surprise us. It is the logical extension of the same attitude that has ramified into our political and social ideology. However, only the backdrop has changed. The attitude is colored now with the complicated network of science, technology, economic development, world security, human rights, terrorism, free state, etc., which in its intrinsic sense has nothing to do with religion or religious beliefs, but has its own inherent values and forces that it generates by itself. The western world in general, and America in particular, though finding itself still deep-rooted in its religion and its belief systems, was farsighted and more practical in its approach when it realized that it was impossible to resolve multiple religious aspirations in the light of its own emerging social realities, created by a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic set up, and complicated further by the advancement in science and technology. They relegated religion into the personal sphere of life realizing the practical existential difficulties they would have to resolve if this was not done. But applying religious meaning would be suicidal to these new realities. This is not because the values adhered to within religions cannot explain the modern phenomena, but because of the diverse opinions within itself about -- what is religion? What is the value attached to it? Whether religion should regulate our total life? Do all religions have something universal, etc. These are so vexatious and complicated that anybody and everybody could use God or Allah as a pretext for justification of his personal or collective deeds or misdeeds. We are all civilized and cultured during times of peace when we are in total control of our interest and when there is no immediate threat to the same, but in a crisis, our rationality takes a back seat. Instinctively human beings try to incite a sense of arousal in their surroundings to generate a mass support, identifying their personal problems with the sympathy of the overwhelming collective. Rationalizing, justifying cannot arouse this common excitement. Even if it does, we have seen that the impact is miniscule because of the difference of opinion that it always creates in the process of arriving at any understanding. And the limitation of people or groups that would react would always depend on the level of education and the political or social ideology they subscribe to. As such human emotion becomes the most potential victim of vested interest groups and radical elements in Semitic religions. And if the subject matter to which emotions would be directed is divinity, then history is a witness as to how “rationality” has been time and again imprisoned or brutally murdered for revealing the misdeeds of rulers, administrators, powerful nations who had taken religion for a terrible ride, when their economic crises had to be averted, political justifications were to be given and when lust for power and dominance were driving them to hell. Why equate Islam with terrorism then? It is a fact that Islam has been misused by elements within itself for furthering their own interests. But this is also true with the vested interests in all the religions. The danger in equating Islam with terrorism would amount to committing a serious mistake. This is because Islam is geographically and politically distributed throughout the globe and amounts to one third of the global population and the aggrieved elements happen to be within the Islamic countries. These aggrieved elements are reacting to the incapability and complacency of their own respective governments to protest against the Western military and economic dominance over their land and oil. It is this peculiar situation that all Islamic countries are unable to face. The growing dissenting voices within these countries actually fuel small connected groups of people who find it easy to identify with each other in religious terms to fight against the western dominance. The fact that even Islamic countries have joined the world forces against these isolated groups proves that even they want world peace. The real issue involved here is the vast disparity between the techno-haves and the have-nots, between monopolization and self-assertions, between nuclear powers and non nuclear powers, between extra-territorial domination and no territory and between the exploiter and the exploited. How do we manage our natural resources that are unequally distributed in diverse geographical locations? How do we reach the benefit of scientific knowledge to the remotest parts of our society? How do we bridge our ideological differences and economic inequalities? There is no denying the fact that our social scientists, environmentalists, economists, NGOs and other social bodies are working extremely hard in understanding and giving practical shape and direction to resolve this. If left unaddressed and unresolved, this will sooner or later destroy our social and economic structure and chaos would be imminent. No religion, ethics, morality or values can save us then. We will have to be doomed to live in a perennial state of insecurity, dread, poverty exploitation, terrorism and deprivation. Terrorism in any form is bad. The pulse of terrorism lies deep rooted in our society. It is created out of inequality and deprivation. The motivating force of terrorism is mutually generated by the perpetrator and the victim. This drives the aggrieved sections of the society to resort to all possible means to fight against the powerful aggressor by any means. But, the moment we start justifying any act of violence, we know it opens up a plethora of questions along with it. Why is there terrorism? Who should define terrorism? What type of terrorism we talking about? Is the society itself responsible for creating it? What is the remedy? There are diverse opinions among intellectuals and they are yet to arrive on any common understanding about it. But they do agree that the issue is about people, technology, agencies, radical elements and vested groups who have capabilities to generate terror cutting across all man-made boundaries. The medium to transmit this terror can be religion, culture, technology, and ideology. As such it is a human problem, an issue of our society which involves the security of our nation. And we all know that human beings are as diverse as the universe itself. The society in which we are living and the world that is emerging is made up of a cross section of people, culture and values. And our nation itself is a fragile man-made entity, where its general health depends upon how every section contributes to adjusting and balancing its respective interests, irrespective of its own religious, cultural and ethnic background. So it would be suicidal on the part of any aware individuals or groups who know that they are living in the multi cultural, religious and multi ethnic society, where progressive mindsets and radical elements play hide and seek every now and then, to generalize any act of violence in terms of religion, ethnicity and culture on any particular group of people. Scientific attitude towards life itself has brought out a class of people in every society. These people, irrespective of their religious or cultural background, participate and identify themselves with each other more zealously than with their own ethnic or religious counterparts. As such this progressive group of people will have to play a vital role in reforming their own society. Our society has made great sacrifices in reaching a state where it maintains a delicate balance between the progressive mindset and the radical elements. No irrational mind should be allowed to disturb this balance. This again is because we don`t have a choice. If we want to live peacefully and if we aspire for progress and development then balancing the needs and aspirations of our society is a necessity and not something which we can luxuriously afford to discuss and desire. It is this balancing of interests that is relevant in maintaining global peace in terms of resources, technology and information. The accountability question lies more on the western world and America in particular because they are at the vanguard of all the scientific, technological advancement in the world today. Have they been maintaining the balance of interest in the world today? Certainly not! Do they have the moral strength and character to admit to the duality of their foreign policy? And have we ever objected to that? No, we were complacent! Will they be civilized enough to admit that they had their share in the creation of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban to neutralize the Russian factor during the Cold War. Certainly they must be regretting it now. Should the price for being opportunist, indifferent and complacent to rights, justice, deprivation and forced occupation be so colossal that thousands of lives of innocent civilians had to be taken in the most horrifying manner to wake up the conscience of humanity that under the garb of Globalization and Free World something wrong was being seriously committed? Certainly not!

atanauli,

I do agree with you that the good deeds of the muslims are not being reported in the us. It is all the talk about a few bad ones who flew a plane into a building, the millions who did not fly the plane are forgotten, and the muslims have to correct this. See thw basic problem is no one knows who is a muslim. The public intutives assume that good ones are no-muslims. All the muslims of the US should grow long beards.

The same with women, they should be in the burqas. This will solve the identification problem.

Those with greying beard can pass of as year round santas, that would take the pi//ss out of the christians, who have santas only once a year. Others not gifted with grey beards can sit in the malls, hide candies in beards and ask the children to find it. That could be great fun.

May be the women can dress up, as madonna, benazir, cindy cawfod, nicole kidman etc, then put on the burqas and the children can guess who is inside. These are just a few ideas to put your original brain waves into more practical terms.

May be even the chowk can have a contest to find ideas to present the true nature of islam to the americans.

regards and best wishes for more of these ideas.

jay

An Eclectic, Artistic and Uniquely South Asian Community

http://www.masalamag.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=showArticleNew&article_id=4192&ss=mmn

sameerjb

``Muslims have a choice to become radical activists, ready to sacrifice everything for religion or keeping religion to individual level without trying ghettoized mentality of exclusiveness.``

....... the problem, sameer mian, is that you are fighting a lost battle - it is impossible to compete with an ideology which is unrepentant in its claim that it is a complete way of life encomapssing everything from personal hygiene to economic theory ......unlike das kapital, god himself has ensured the authenticity of das book .........

Azmat,

I agree completely with you. It is time for the muslims to come out and show that they are muslims. They should keep long beards and then hand over candies during eid. This will confuse the hell out of children, osama s handing out candies, and that would be funny.

It would be doulble funn if the women come out in burqas and had out candies, it would be `guess who is inside`` game, again it could be man or woman inside. All these funny aspects of islam has to be popularised in the US.

Azmat, you are a genious to have thought of this, as though what the folowers of asama have done is not public and popular enough.

regards and best wishes for more no brain ideas.

jay

Tanauli Sahib: America is a free society where any person or group of people can sell, educate or preach with the help of propaganda and marketing. Here people will sell sodium carbonate as oxy-clean, educate about UFO`s and preach about Jehovah`s Witness to lord-knows-what. A sincerely best of luck with your project through ING, ISNA, MSA or whatever.

As an American, myself or another person might ask few questions, though. Assuming, you believe that Islam is actually a good religion, if not the best: what can it do for Americans? How are Americans (or the West) left out of its goodness that people from Morroco to Indonesia are blessed with? Anything besides less fatalities due to drunk driving?

West is all about materialism. Islam is almost all about taking care of afterlife. If Islam had anything better to offer in terms of materialism, West would have adopted those practices without ING or ISNA long ago. If riba-free banking or sharia or fiqah or praying five times a day or fasting had any material benefits; they would have adopted it with or without giving credit to Islam. They adopted Averroes, Aveccina or al-Razi because it benefited them. Sure if you teach Islam according to Al-Kindi or Al-Rawandi, even atheist might be attracted - but will you? If you educate Americans about interest-free banking, some knowledgeable American might ask about the importance of banking during Islamic Empires? Bait-ul-Maal concept is different than banking. Sole purpose of Islamic Central Bank (bait-ul-maal) was to collect zakat and other taxes and spent it according to the will of the rulers. They were not in the business of lending money to make money. Islamic bank played insignificant role in the lives of people and Western Banks are powerhouses touching the life of eacha nd every one directly or indirectly.

So what has Islam to offer to the West? Oil, sure. It was a useless black goo until West found ways to utilize it, mostly for producing energy. What role did Islam or Muslims play to make black goo to black gold?

So what kind of education about Islam you have in mind that is attractive or acceptable to Americans? A more respectable role of women in the society? Can you prove it? All Muslim countries have more children per women than their neighboring countries. All Muslim countries have lower literacy level for women than men and lower than their neighbors. All Muslim countries have lower ratio of women in work force than their neighboring non-Muslim countries even with similar GNP.

I guess there is no point to discuss treatment of non-Muslims in Muslim countries because some Americans might accept it and use it against American Muslims. I disagree with your three options about American Muslims. As I said early on, West loves innovation, materialism, cheap labor and cheap raw material. Those Muslims who contribute to the society should not have to fear anything. The brain drain from Muslim as well as non-Muslims will continue, just like cheap Chinese labor, Arabian oil and African minerals. Those who do not fit well, will be marginalized without US government taking any step. Muslims have a choice to become radical activists, ready to sacrifice everything for religion or keeping religion to individual level without trying ghettoized mentality of exclusiveness.