We, The Muslim Americans

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Literacy rates (1997-1998)by UNESCO

Pakistan 42.7 %

Bangladesh 55.9 %

India 57.7%

ref: http://www.accu.or.jp/litdbase/efa/

...for a country the size of india, that is a behemoth task...if it wasn`t for bihar and UP, we`d be even higher....

Another pakistani stereotype

Ms Anne

``I can’t think of another minority group as diverse in its views, attitudes, and extent of assimilation as American Muslims of Middle- and Southeast origin. I risk overgeneralization by lumping together a good number of countries with quite distinct cultures, but I do so in response to the hostile and provocative

atmosphere evoked by Muslim leaders like Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Zia-ul-Haq, and of course, Osama bin Laden.``

Another typical blinkered pakistani in the US where all that is new and open and even enlightening in the US has fallen off the proverbial ducks back of the pak mind set. Read the quote baove again, what an example of the diversity of muslim thinkig, Khomeni to Osama. here is an allegedly educated pakistani talking about diversity of pak views.

Even in their own country after all the searching and white washing all that they could come up with is one ehdhi runnung an ambulance service. It is time for the muslims to create some heros, at least one among the allegedly million should stand up and be counted. Of course in science muslims have made some contribution, especially in particle physics, one abdus salam...was he a muslim. Ms Anne, now that you are a US citizen, say out loud in pamikstan that abdus salam was a muslim and get arretsed for it.

It is people like you, finding diversity of islamic views between that of khomeni and osama that destroy a great religion.

Regards and best wishes for learning from your son

jay

What is in a name

:`` The center of the Muslim world needs to shift from the Arab world to the non-Arab world. There are around 220 million Arabs in the whole world. There are around 130 million Muslims in Pakistan alone. More than 4/5th of the Muslim world is non-Arab.``

Because of the 9/11, having lost my sit my sit at home work, I had to travel to some some bad places including australia to bury the parked aircraft following the collapse of Ansett airlines. Yes I was in saudi, and above quote from romair is well truly accepted by the saudi royals.

A town named jeddah has been renamed as Lyallpur. A lot of arabs are using names like ansari, quraishi etc reflecting the shift in muslim cetre of gravity to pakistan. Basant, they have changed to beshrant, but the point is it is celebrated. During ramzan arabs are eating mangos instead of dates.

Pakistanis have no limit to delusions, take it from me, it is one book, one place of worship and if you cannot be there at least face that direction and show your .... to all those in opposite direction.

On the lines of zen

Ms Anne, to understand the situation of pak muslims in US, you have explain the following fact from pakistan, why is it so?. From dawn of today.

Size of currency notes

The Pakistani currency notes come in denominations of 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, and 1,000. Recently, the government withdrew the notes of one and two rupees and introduced coins instead. Every currency note has a distinct colour and design representing our cultural heritage, and a size corresponding to its value. The size of our notes, too, is large compared to those of many other countries.

It is suggested that the size be reduced to standard size employed in most of the countries across the world. This way the cost of paper and printing would be reduced significantly. The space required to keep and carry money would also be reduced considerably.

When carrying in a wallet, the different sizes of currency notes don`t fit in properly, thus wearing out quickly.

Important currencies like dollar, pound, riyal and euro all come in one standard size, of course much smaller than ours. Why don`t we have the same?

BILAL ALI

Lahore

Re: Romair,

Romair, I believe hamidm when he says the average worthless ``shitpot`` general is worth around $2 to $3 million dollars plus the benefits of constantly adding insult to injury to the en masse, this whole sickening vicious triangular relationship between the gun toading idiotic Fauji, inept bureaucracy, and corrupt politicians has to go. I really don`t see why do we have to be the ``thaekaydaarz`` of Islam. No body gives a crap except for lottaz who have Islam as a source of income ( have you seen Fazlur rehman how fat is this pig ). This whole Muslim brotherhood and impotent league of Muslim countries ain`t worth squat. At least those s.o.bs have oil, what do we have to show for, around 50 million living below the poverty line and the remaining 100 million heading that way. If Mushy wants to do this screwed up country a favor he needs to really forget about the stupid referendum and ask the real question to the serfs and the unemployed and the uneducated and the hungry that in order for this country to move forward does he have their ``permission`` to snatch away all the bleeding Jagirs which these feudals inherited from god himself, break up the flour, candy, milk pack, sugar, cement, steel, banking monopolies, do some major land reform, clean up the civil services and the army. Forget about Kashmir, forget about Islam, forget about palestine, there is no need for us to be the experimental mess of a lab of Isalm or fortress of Islam (what are we defending? those nut job camel jockeys? ). No body died and appointed us the designated captain of this rudderless ship we don`t have to be the idiotic designated driver of Islam...and honestly we are not in any capacity to tout it either...I mean only crazy people think that Pakistan has the right resources and leverage to champion all these causes. More attention needs to be given to cleaning up the house, fixing it, putting it in order. We are a debt ridden pathetic little country and I am surprised that people on this forum convince me that our poverty fares better than Indians cuz they got more poor in the streets of Dehli, Calcutta, and Mumbai, I mean is this a statistic even worth mentioning. Who gives a crap what India does. We should stop comparing ourselves to India, If we need to really need to have a comparison so bad, then compare your state with G7 that should enligthen any reasonable person to use a pujabi phrase, ``Dunyaa CHUN touN ve aGgaye niK-al ga`eeaye tay asee ha`laay Jutti pay lub-nay aiN.`` And yes, BB and NS and Chaudris etc are worthless but don`t be fooled by the khakis. They have done us in over and over again. They are worthless as anyone else. They are only good for wearing starch uniforms and usurping the entire nations resources, 0.2% is the amount allocated to medicine, 1.7% to education...its a joke that they have been playing on us for 50 plus years...almost cynical ``yaye to wohi jagaa haye niklay thay hum jahan say``...:-), Yaye saalay saub aik hee mitti kay bannay who-ay hain, aour yaye mulk in ko muft mein milla haye...I hope this general president chief executive commando anitcipated ameer-ul-mominin proves me wrong...and does something different...at the least do a new con, cuz I am really bored by the same old rabbit & the hat trick.

Re ROMAIR:

i might not agree with the statistics but I do agree with the fact that democracy does not work in Pakistan. For all the people trying to defend democracy as the voice of people, I just have question: what voice is it that you are defending?

The voice that would follow anyone blindly who leads them to dreams of havean without any definite plans? The voice which is burning down churches in Pakistan at the moment because somehow that will help the country? The voice that is still slave to the master who rules them? The voice that is going to vote for the landlord who rules them irrespective of whether he kills them, rape their daughters because if they didn`t he would do it anyway and it would be worse.

It seems more like a dictatorship cloaked in democracy. If nothing else army rule has one thing straight its not a democracy and it doesn`t hold itself to be one! One truth is better than none, wouldn`t you agree?

sigalph #29: Unfortunately, you seem to grow itchy when someone says anything positive about Pakistan. I did not even mention Bangladesh in my previous reply, yet you have come out with all guns blazing against Pakistan, as usual. I sense you are a bit angry that I did not place Bangladesh on the list of sophisticated Muslim countries.

The points I made are accurate, in reference to Islamic nations. Which is what my reference was.

``Ah, that word `potentially`.``

There is a reason I used the word potentially. Pakistan does have the potential to be the most important non-Arab Muslim state. It implies that this position is open at the moment, and if Pakistan gets its act together, it could occupy it. Not every country has this potential. Why does that bother you?

``With an impressive military record I may add. Massacre of civillians in Jordan (1970), Bangladesh (1971), and Baluchistan (1976?).``

Your references make no sense. They are stuck in the past. Unfortunately, it is only powerful militaries that can carry out the most henious acts of civilian killings (i only consider you Bangladesh reference a massacre. you are over extending way too much, on the other ones. for example in Jordan, it was Pakistani military commanders that were on deputation serving in the Jordanian military; they were under Jordanian high command; and if the year is 1970, then there must have been East Paksitanis there as well. I know one East Pakistani pilot that was deputed to the Syrian Air Force; do you consider him responsible for any, ``massacres.`` or is he clean because he was an East Pakistani?): Russia in Afghanistan (over 1 million killed), India in Kashmir (70k killed), US in Iraq (hundreds of thousands killed), etc. The fact still remains that they are powerful militaries.

Let`s talk about the present, and more importantly lets talk about Muslim states. Could you tell me one Muslim state that has a more powerful military than Pakistan`s? After all this was the whole point I was discussing. The discussion wasn`t on the historical human rights of Muslim militaries. Pakistan is the only country in South Asia to which the Indians cannot dictate to. What would any other South Asian country do if India had 1 million troops parked on its border?

Once again, if you don`t agree with me, kindly point out a Muslim country with a stronger military.

``Pray hard that ISraelis don`t think too much of that. Remember Iraq?``

What is this supposed to mean? Are you suggesting that Israel would attack Pakistan`s nuclear program? They tried once, and didn`t succeed. If they could, they would have done so by now. Do you even have an iota of information on Pakistan`s security systems around Kahuta. If you did, you wouldn`t have gotten carried away, and made this comment.

I am doing research for such an attack for a story I am writing on this topic. And believe me, I had to create all kinds of scenarios to finally come up with a realistic game plan. And even that would only succeed if all the stars were pointed in the right direction. It is orders of magnitude more difficult, (due to geography, distance, defence systems etc. reasons) for Israel to attack Pakistan, in comparison with attacking Iraq. So I don`t understand your point.

If however, you still feel strongly about the fact that Isreal can and will attack Pakistan`s nuclear plant, then could you tell me exactly how it could do it? I would like to use your scenario in my story.

If you cannot tell me any scenario (which I doubt you can, since you have no knowledge about Pakistan defence systems), then could you tell me why you get such a high from criticising anything Pakistani, just for the heck of it, without any facts to back it up?

And are you suggesting that Pakistan is not the only Muslim country with nuclear weapons? To the best of my knowledge, it is the only one.

``That is considered a weakness, not a strength in the modern day world.``

This is not a weakness in the modern day world. It is only a weakness if one does not have a good economic system, to accomodate the population. Otherwise it is a strenght. That is why I stated that Pakistan needs to get a higher economic growth rate.

Infact the biggest expected problem the Western world is to face in the coming years is going to be their reducing population. They will have to import people in great amounts.

``Pakistan 42.7 %

Bangladesh 55.9 %``

I used the following website: http://www.engenderhealth.org/ia/cbc/bangladesh.html for Bangladesh, which lists

Literacy Rate (Male) 51.3

Literacy Rate (Female) 31.4

But I will give you this one.

``The point is, air marshal, that sometimes you do take optimistic liberties with hard facts and serious reservations. SPecially the military stuff.``

This is a ridiculous comment. Please see the facts I have provided above. The only one which is debatable is the literacy rate. Everything else is dead on target.

Kindly point out what liberty I have taken with the military stuff. All I stated was that Pakistan has the most powerful military in the Muslim world. In addition to this it has nukes, which make it even more powerful. It is standing up to the gigantic Indian military right now, and it stood up to the gigantic Soviet military in the 80s. Can you name any other Muslim country that has stood up to countries seven times its size? All other Muslim countries, including Bangladesh, wet their pants when India coughs, or when Israel yawns. West Pakistan is still the same size as it was in 1947, despite Soviet and Indian efforst to tear it apart militarily (the only people who can destroy Pakistan are the Pakistanis themselves. I doubt India will ever be able to get an inch of it). East Pakistan is gone, because the East Pakistanis did not want to live with West Pakistan. That was their choice and I respect it (although I do not agree with their post-71 Bangladeshi generation taking liberties and throwing punches at the post-71 generation of Pakistanis). As long as Bangleshis wanted to be part of West Pakistan, India wasn`t able to make much headway attacking there also.

``when colonels run WAPDA and generals run cricket boards,``

What difference does it make whether Colonels are running Wapda or not? That is a separate issue. This may make the military weaker. But despite this, Pakistan`s military is still the strongest in the Muslim world. Large militaries may have other after effects on politics, economies etc. But I am purely making a comment about the strength of the military, not on the social after effects of that strength.

P.S. I have been one of the strongest critics of Pakistan`s 1971 policies in East Pakistan. But you seem to be still stuck there. You tend to use that in every reply, in an attempt to take pot shots at present day Pakistan. I am not sure what you will gain from this. There is a new generation of people in Pakistan now. Most of whom weren`t even alive in 1971. Less than 1% of the current Pakistani military or political or beaurecratic leadership was even in the govt. in 1971.

You need to learn to adjust to present day times, and not attempt to go after the present Pakistani generation with every reply, starting from 1971. It is no diffent than Pakistanis going after present day Brits for what happened to their previous generation. It is a very counterproductive way to handle things. And the easiest possible way to turn Pakistani present generation critics of Pakistan pasts into supporters of that past.

My reply was not about 1971. It wasn`t even about Bangladesh. It was about 2001. Unfortunately, every single one of your replies starts from 1970 (as did this one) and remains stuck there, i.e Pakistan military did this and this in 71, so it is still the same. Doesn`t it seem logical that in 30 years things change, or may have changed.

I have a friend whose whole family was killed in front of him by the Mukti Bahni. Even he has made peace with Bangladesh. Whether you are willing to make peace, is up to you. But kindly do not use history to take pot shots at other people. Please stick to the facts. If you continue taking cheap shots unnecessarily (on replies that weren`t even remotely about 1971), then others will start doing the same towards Bangladesh; which will be quite unfortunate.

Re: Romair #12

I think you`ve been reading too much anti-Soviet propaganda put out by the US State Dept. There is enough evidence out there now to argue that the Soviets did NOT back the 1979 coup, argued against all of the Afghan communist reforms that precipitated the mass uprisings against the Afghan communists and only very reluctantly invaded Afghanistan when it became clear that Hafizullah Amin was going to switch sides attempt a repeal of the Brezhnev doctrine. The Soviets were trying desperately to pacify Afghanistan at the lowest possible cost (to themselves, who cared about the Afghans anyway? Not them, us or the Americans).

If you don`t think this is true, ask yourself how many times Peshawar, Islamabad or Lahore were attacked and compare this to the US treatment of N. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Re: Hamidm #13

All too true. However, much of what is ``wrong`` with Muslim societies can be changed as soon as we accept that the Koran is NOT the literal word of God but merely divinely inspired (i.e., make the same transition that Christianity has done with the Bible). Since it is divinely inspired but not the literal word of God, it can then be rearranged and reinterpreted to suit modern requirements rather than exist in a fossilized 7th century CE stage, aka Saudi Arabia. Alas, easier said than done. Any one have a spare Martin Luther lying around the place? And whatever happened to that Sorush chap in Iran anyway? Not that he really matter to us, since he is a stinking Shia anyway.

Regards.

RE: # 17 zeemax

[``What motivates a person to do that to himself? Food for serious thought.``]

http://www.indian-express.com/ie20020323/top1.html

this is the story of how he watched his mother and sister die.

zeemax, maybe this is how suicide bombers are made?

lilith #28,

..... ``hum log`` vs ``yeh log`` and the new niggers ....

.....if it is any consolation to you, the pakis in america are following in the footsteps of their brothers and sisters in birmingham and manchester in becoming the new underclass - affectionately known as (aka), the new niggers ..... dont axe me why and how , because it is not easy to work your way to the bottom in this land of opportunity unless you really work hard at it.....but i will tell you anyway ..........

......you see, it all starts with the definition of ``us`` and ``them`` – ``us`` being the people of the faith and ``them`` being the infidels, which includes the japanese because they eat raw fish an use bidets instead of lotas, and the eskimos because they eat blubber and allow bay-watch into their igloos ......it starts with parents telling their children that we, that is ``hum log``, don’t do this and that because we are muslims and they, that is ``yeh log``, do it because the pork makes them promiscuous and crazy about baseball .......it starts with sunday school and leads to a lifetime membership in the msa and a career as a jihadist with al-qaeda or a java programmer with ramachandran systems.......the jihadist ends up in a jail cell in Karachi, seething and simmering at his high school mates - bob jones, david levi and ravi krishnamuthy - who control the world from wall street and hollywood........the java programmer ends up in a cube in the silicon valley seething and simmering at real indians and imaginary jews who own the company and spend more time in the napa valley while he sweats out the java beans or xml or whatever they happen to be growing on the plantation ......

.......you may still axe, how did it happen ? .....it is all about choosing sunday school over baseball, qari sahib over the piano teacher, tafseer over broadway and java programming over investment banking .......if you can’t tell the difference between short stop and pit stop or a merlot and a bordeaux, you will end up in a jail cell in karachi or the plantation cube in palo alto ........this stubborn and misguided unwillingness to even make an attempt to assimilate has sealed our fate as the new underclass and also peed off pat buchanan who was always a little suspicious of zulus in manhattan ......

...... stop being angry at them - give them a chance and go to the block picinic on labor day, and let the kid next door mow your yard and don`t worry about your daughter running off with him on the toro ......tell your kids to stop spending too much time with the moon-faced nuns of the msa before they pick up the bad habit .......tell them to pick up a violin instead of of the tasbeeh and, yes, it is okay to listen to linken park – almost two decades ago kevin bacon proved that loud music does not corrupt, but the ummah seems to be the only group of people who haven’t been touched by kevin ..........and please, stop importing brides and daigchees from mirpur and grooms and jharoos from lalukhet .........

re romair

``Unfortunately, you seem to grow itchy when someone says anything positive about Pakistan.``

That is simply inaccurate, and several interactors here know it well. I am quite a well-wisher and admirer of Pakistan; I have plenty of family and other connections there; and I write regularly for major Pakistani periodicals. That admiration does not, however, extend always to the Pakistani military for too many reasons.

When Pakistan`s first military top brass was griping about the lack of stores and materiel handed over by India (India cheated big time), the Quaid-e-Azam rebuked them by mentioning that the core strength of an army is found not in its tanks and trucks but in the sterling quality of its officers and men. History has proven those thoughts of Mr Jinnah true many times before and after him. That quality of officers and men is, that sense of elan and self-sacrifice, is more important than all the numbers and hardware that you rest your argument on. And hence, colonels running WAPDA has EVERYTHING to do with it. Sorry sir, we cannot advance on the enemy today because colonel sahib is fixing water lines in Peshawar!

And who cares and what matters who the strongest military in the ISlamic world is? That line of comparison is becoming more and more irrelevant everyday.

Fuzair #44:The thrust of my reply was to point out that Zia is not hated in the USA, like the other person`s on the list presented by the author.

As for the Soviets and Americans fighting it out in the USSR. My own guess is that the Soviets wanted to get into the Arabian Sea. The issues of who supported whom in the various Afghan changes of power is debatable. But the end result is that the Soviets did invade and invaded ferociously. They killed women, children and anyone else, that came in their way. So much so, that the Afghans, who never unite with each other for anything, ended up united against the Soviets. According to many estimates, the Soviets killed between 1 to 1.5 million civilians in the USSR. One cannot call that an attempt to, ``pacify Afghanistan at the lowest possible cost,`` to themselves or to anyone else.

It is however possible, the Soviets would have accepted defeat earlier and agreed to a negotiated settlement, but the Americans wanted to do a Vietnam on them, and wouldn`t let them out of the war so easily. I have heard this, as well. But had the Soviets not been defeated, they would have kept marching onwards towards the Sind Club and Clifton.

One of the many reasons for the Soviet invasion are as follows:

``Complete a drive to the south through Central Asia by reaching the shores of the Arabian Sea. The next step: establish a Soviet Gibralter at Gawadar in Baluchistan, or outside Karachi, and link this new naval base complex to the Soviet rail system at Tashkent. Such a coup would allow the USSR to create the logistic base for a powerful Indian Ocean fleet.....(Margolis, Eric. P.42. War at the top of the World).

Eric Margolis was in the Afghan War. And is probably one of the biggest critics of US policies in the world. He is anything, but US propoganda.

``If you don`t think this is true, ask yourself how many times Peshawar, Islamabad or Lahore were attacked and compare this to the US treatment of N. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.``

I am quite surprised you would make this statement. I have a feeling, you are only looking at Army and Naval movements during those invasion days. If you had spent a day in Sargodha airbase, you would seen the intensity of the Soviet threat.

I was in Sargodha during those days. Pakistani F-16s were literally flying day and night, to engage Soviet aircraft intervening into Pakistan airspace. If I remember correctly there was an all out active CAP over Kahuta. Meaning two F-16s would go, and not come back from Kahuta until two more replaced them.

If I remember correctly, the number of Soviet air interventions into Pakistan ran into the hundreds. The Soviet aircraft would come in, check Pakistani defences, and then run away when they saw the F-16s coming. Pakistanis actually shot down a few while they were running away (the strict orders being that the planes had to be shot down in Pakistani territory).

The reason the Soviets did not attack Pindi, etc. is because they couldn`t. Plain and simple. They tried their very best. Lets look at the four ways, they could have attacked Pakistan:

1. Land: This was their main plan. The USSR is basically a land and nuclear military. Their air force equipment was not match to the F-16s. Their aircraft technology has only progressed recently (with Mig-29s and Su-30s) after they solved the mettalurgical problems they had with aircraft engine turbines.

The Soviet didn`t count on getting bogged down in Afghanistan. Their original plan was to cut through Afghanistan in months, if not weeks, and lauch a massive land invasion of Pakistan, along with air cover, at some stage (maybe immediately, maybe in 20 years, after destabilizing Pakistan).

The Afghans were still losing the war, until the Stinger missile arrived. After that, the Soviet could not provide air cover to their troops easily. Thus, the Afghans completely bogged down the Soviet lines of communications and logistics. From that point onwards, there was no way the Soviets could have taken on 450k Pakistani military with massively vulnerable logistics lines. To paraphrase someone, ``Naive Generals plan strategy, great Generals plan logistics.``

In addition to this, Soviets needed air cover (gunships and aircraft) for their ground forces. Pakistan has a very good air defence system. It is perhaps even better than Pakistan`s Air Force. Pakistanis would have neutralized the Soviet aircraft even more efficiently than Afghans did.

2. Naval: There was no chance of a naval invasion of Pakistan. Hence no activity there.

3. Air: Soviets tried day and night for years to test weaknesses in Pakistan`s air defence. Please read the F-16 remark above. But each and every time, they were detected and chased away. There pre-Mig 29 aircraft were no match for the Pakistani F-16s. One of the Soviet pilots shot down, and captured by Pakistanis, went on to become the Vice-President/Vice Prime Minister of one of the Soviet independent states. I suppose the Soviets could have just sent their whole Air Force towards Pakistan, but that would be pointless. It would result in a great no. of losses for the Soviet air force, with no gain militarily apart from the destruction of a Pakistani city.

4. Terrorism: During the Afghan war days, Pakistan had the highest no. of terrorist attacks in the world. I was also close to Peshawar during those days. Every day, something would get blown up. Movie theaters, etc.

So in a sense, the Soviets did attack Pakistan`s cities in the only way they could. Through covert ops. terrorism. But this wasn`t successful, because the average Pakistani wanted to remain with Pakistan. It only led to destruction and more hatred of the Soviets, but no Pukhtunistan or anything else.

So, in essence, the Soviets tried their best to attack or plan to attack Pakistan, but they couldn`t. There is a huge difference between Pakistani defences and Cambodian defences (I am sure you will agree with this). Specially when Pakistan had open and unlimited access to all the US high tech weapons, which were much superior to anything the Cambodians had access to (or even the Soviets themselves had access to). As well as open access to Saudi money, as well as strategic support from the Chinese. Also it was the ISI`s finest hour, and it clearly took it to the much bigger KGB, KHAD and whatever else.

The only support the Soviets had was from India. And India wasn`t going to attack Pakistan, until the Soviets made significant progress into Pakistan. So India kept waiting. And China may have attacked India, had India attacked Pakistan.

I am quite convinced that the Soviets wouldn`t risk and kill so much in Afghanistan (including their own soldiers), to just pacify a govt. And they wouldn`t intrude so regularly into Pakistani airspace and through terrorism, for no reason. They didn`t invade Pakistan, because they couldn`t even make in past Afghanistan. They may have wanted to end the war earlier and retreat. That is perhaps where the USA wanted to keep the war going. But the original Soviet intentions were to end up in Karachi.

This is a debt we owe to the Afghanis. Otherwise, somewhere along the line (through political destabilization, i.e. a new Pukhtunistan issue, independent Baluchistan, Indian help, etc.), the Soviets would have a made a thrust at the Arabian Sea. And within a few years, your name would have been Fuzairov and mine would have been Umairov (or Rajaov; i would have prefered Umairov). And Afghanistan and Pakistan would have been the newest, ``stans`` added to the long list of stans (countries, which like Pakistan, have nothing in common with Russia, but were annexed) already conquered by the Russian bear. Our next generation would have been gymnasts and ballet dancers instead of cricket and hockey players.

Would be interested in your comments.

````“”However, much of what is ``wrong`` with Muslim societies can be changed as soon as we accept that the Koran is NOT the literal word of God but merely divinely inspired (i.e., make the same transition that Christianity has done with the Bible).

Since it is divinely inspired but not the literal word of God, it can then be rearranged and reinterpreted to suit modern requirements rather than exist in a fossilized 7th century CE stage, aka Saudi Arabia.””(Fuzair)

Dear Fuz:

I hope you’re in the United States -- for good.

Waheed #42: ``I believe hamidm when he says the average worthless ``shitpot`` general is worth around $2 to $3 million dollars``

The only way a General can be worth 2 to 3 million is thru corruption, or thru a family business. He cannot make that much money thru his salary. If one gets into corruption, then that is a different debate. There are probably entry level people in Customs who are millionaires. I was only talking about an honest salaries. In any case, I understand the pluses and minuses of Generals quite well. Hence my first suggestion for reforming the military by cutting down the size of the Generals to 1/3rd the current size.

`` this whole sickening vicious triangular relationship between the gun toading idiotic Fauji, inept bureaucracy, and corrupt politicians has to go.``

This is ture. But who is going to bell the cat. That is what we need to think about. It isn`t going to go away just by saying it. And the common voting Pakistanis, like hamidm, are still crying tears to bring back BB and NS. I feel at least Musharraf is making some attempt to clean up this house. I doubt any of the politicians of the ARD are going to make such an attempt.

``If Mushy wants to do this screwed up country a favor he needs to really forget about the stupid referendum and ask the real question to the serfs and the unemployed and the uneducated and the hungry that in order for this country to move forward does he have their ``permission`` to snatch away all the bleeding Jagirs which these feudals inherited from god himself, break up the flour, candy, milk pack, sugar, cement, steel, banking monopolies, do some major land reform, clean up the civil services and the army.``

This is true, and the right way to go. I think within his limitations he has broken up the beaurecracy and the religious right and gone after the corrupt businessmen. Unfortunately, if he were to start going after the feudals in the manner you are suggesting (which is the correct manner in my opinion), the hamidms of the world will start jumping up and down, along with Nawabzada Nasrullah, pointing out that Pakistan`s grand democracy (where exactly is it) is being ruined and that the feudals jagirs should only be taken through a vote by their voting peasants (that will happen when pigs fly).

``And yes, BB and NS and Chaudris etc are worthless but don`t be fooled by the khakis. They have done us in over and over again.``

This is correct also. But someone has to run the country. I don`t think one can generalize. BB is bad, than doesn`t mean every Sindhi is bad, or every PPPliya is bad. NS is bad, but that doesn`t mean every Punjabi or PMLiya is bad. Similarly, Zia`s policies were domestically destructive, but that doesn`t mean every General is bad.

Under the current circumstances, I don`t see a better option than Musharraf. It doesn`t matter to me whether he is a General, a Lieutenant, a Dhobi, a Nai, a Christian, Muslim or Hindu. Or if he gets into power thru a referendum or through the barell of the gun. If he talks sense, he should be supported. If he talks nonsense, then he should not be supported. If anyone thinks the ARD leaders want democracy because they want to help Pakistan, then I have a some furniture in my attic I would like to sell them.

I think we need to right now just look at individuals, and then slowly move towards democracy. If a decent person is in power, for the time being, forget about where he came from, or how he got there

Romair:

``I believe hamidm when he says the average worthless ``shitpot`` general is worth around $2 to $3 million dollars``

Bhai, the Paki generals are lucky. I would be grateful if my ``worthless general`` father was worth even two-three hundred thousand dollars. If we convert to dollars from rupees, saala 50,000 bhee nahin pahunchta hoga. If someone has to be corrupt in India, why can`t it be the generals. At least the progeny of the generals know how to live well, and will spend well.