Regarding the Stupid White Men

hobbyty #163 On Islam and secularism: I dont think you are quite right when you say that ``Since in Islam the relationship between God and human beings is that of Master and slave`` and that therefore Islam calls for belief in predestination. I say this for the following reasons:

a. If everything was predestined, the Day of Judgement would be unnecessary. Since God would already have decided who goes where. And the Quran says that on the Day of Judgement your hands and feet will bear witness before God to your deeds while you lived. Thus, clearly our hands and feet (i.e. our actions) are considered to be within our control and not predestined or pre-preogrammed.

b. A slave is someone that carries out the master`s bidding - the Quran says that God already had angels to do that, and that man is a different kind of being than an angel. The Quran says that God created man for a different reason: to learn about God`s Creation. While agreed that as muslims we believe that God is the Master of the Universe, it is also true that man is not a slave (i.e. an angel).

So, while God obviously COULD predestine everything if He wanted, as muslims we are expected to (a) consider us responsible before God for our actions; and (b) to focus attention OUTWARDS towards God`s Creation (meaning seeking learning) rather than inwards in fighting among ourselves (ourselves being not just muslims, but all mankind).

I should note in the end that whether or not Islam calls for a ``Master-Slave`` relation between God and man, that does not bear any direct relevence to the issue concerning whether Islam is secular or not. I will try to present my personal views (and that is all these are) in my response to hamidm next since the questions he raises are more pointed towards this issue.

PS: I see from the other board that you have some very annoyed posters (including dost-mittar, who I have found to be among the most balanced posters on chowk). I have not been following that discussion, but if someone started comparing me to Jay with respect to appreciation (or lack thereof) of other religions and cultures, I would consider it time for some reflection on my views.

This one is from TIME.

``Out of the travail of 400 million in the Indian subcontinent,`` TIME wrote in September 1948, ``have come two symbols---a man of love and a man of hate. Last winter the man of nonviolence, Gandhi, died violently at the hands of an assassin. Last week, the man of hate, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, at 71, died a natural death in Karachi, capital of state he had founded.``

REf.# 175

Dost mitter... Please note I am Amina Shah and not Samina Shah. I am a Sindhi graduate student in usa , and studying in usa for last one year.

I am sindhi nationalist and think last 50 years of ruling of Sindh is most sad part of sindh history. In this period sindhi cultue , language destruction is carried out by your countries Indian muslims called Mohajirs. As Mr. Ahmed Madani said ( I do not agree with him, he is mad hard nut case full of recist views) it is displacement of Sindhis (like Palestanians) by Hindustani Muslims ( like israelies)with help of Punjabis (like usa and western countries)and sindhid are displaced and discarded as refugees.Today Just like Isralies have occupied Jeruslem ,Karachi and Hyderbad are taken over and occupied and sukkar is next target. It makes all sindhis angree to see by our eyes. All over that it is open secret that MQM is bringing Beharis from Bangladesh and they will support army general so they can bring all behari (so called abandoned Pakistanis) to Sindh to totally dominate Sindh. I hope so called liberals will give support to aspirations of sindhi nation. Can anybody specially Punjabis and MQM be honest. MQM altaf is Gangster and supporter of army. He has no princiles or idea of justice. HIs cry for Sindh is as hollow as crocodile tears. I hope nightmare of sindh and sindhis will end in next 25 years.

#179 Urstruly

``sodomizing dissidents with dogs?`` Just typing that one phrase gave me carpel-tunnel!

Universities: I myself go to a third rate university as do most the people i roll with. Those who run around like robots chasin the dollar will never be content. As for ``education`` I am damn sure that most of the people i know could absolutely embarrass any uppity azz, ivy league white boy.

PS: The average grade handed out at Harvard is an ``A Minus.`` No amount of money will turn a river into an ocean.

Temporal: Is that not the pot (no pun intended) callin the kettle black? Hypocrasy at its finest...

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re: shrinker

...stop dropping my good name in all your posts before i make the imprint of my shoe on your behind even bigger....

cemendtaur #168:

…thanks for providing this info…would you know of similar activities in southern Ontario?


DRUMZ #166:

[…teMporal: iM sure this is gonna Make ur day. How would u like to share a blunt with yours truly (not that other guy, iM talking about the Man who`s cooler then a dead penguin)? Get back at Me. Regards! (Hundred points if u get the subliMinal hint)...]


(make that double if u get this;)


like we are told
exhaling is bad
as is inhaling
veddy veddy bad
ere to fore
mentioned
and oft repeated
like …er hammered
or being blunt(ed) is
no good
excuse.

rgds.

t

THE CONSPIRACY OF LITTLE MEN & BIG SATANS

temporal # 161

``The enigma of India`s coercive diplomacy

Could it be that the Indian troops are on the borders to mainly ensure there is no rebellion against General Musharraf?``

I have a half-written article (for Chowk) sitting in my C drive since last month where I have tried to explore the reasons for this ridiculous amassing of Indian troops at the borders. Damn my Carpul Tunnel, I can`t sit on my computer for long; so I left it in the middle. According to my info, Musharaf is purging middle level leadership from Army which has normally a leaning towards Islamism etc. At some sectors the troops are facing enemy without a commanding officer. On the home front this amassing of troops pacifies internal political resistence. It takes no genius to understand that this was the logical next step of America`s so-called ``war on terrorism``. It doesn`t take a genius either to see that in near future we should expect Egyptian style persecution of ``opponents of civilization``, where dissent is crushed by sodomizing dissidents with dogs. The new so-called ``police reforms`` (effective May 1) are nothing but a Paki version of POTA.

By the way the title I chose for my article was ``THE CONSPIRACY OF LITTLE MEN & BIG SATANS``; now I see that I wasn`t alone in my thinking. Once this refrendum nonsense is done and this little man gets a ``legal status``, the ordinary Pakistanis should brace themselves, get ready, and oil themselves up, cuz the dogs are coming.

Shireen Mazari exposes the hindu/secular thuggery_______________________________________________

Rising extremism in the non-Muslim world

The writer is Director General of the

Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad

smnews80@hotmail.com

What an irony! Even as the tirade against ``Islamic extremism`` continues from different parts of the world, those very spots are seeing the rise of extremist politics. The latest victim is France, under threat from the fascism of Jean-Marie Le Pen. He has called into question the hypocrisy of the French electorate who it is clear pay lip service to the form of ostensible liberalism but in reality are becoming increasingly right-wing and extreme in their politics. For some of us this has been clear for a while now - what with the intolerance shown to Muslim girls covering their heads to school as against Christian girls wearing the crucifix in their necks in school, and the general anti-Islamic sentiment that found an easy outlet post-September-11. Yet the facade of a liberal, ``secular`` France continued till the Le Pen success in the first round of the French elections. Amongst other things, Le Pen is known for his anti-Semitic remarks including declaring the Nazi gas chambers as a mere ``detail of history``! He is also strongly anti-immigrant and a committed racist. Imagine the global hysteria if in a similar election Maulana Fazlur Rehman had achieved the same sort of success! We would have been branded all manner of obnoxious labels and sanctions of multiple kinds would have been threatened!

Nor is this the first instance of extremism succeeding at the polls in Europe. There is Mr Joerg Haider in Austria and in Denmark the extreme right-wing People`s Party is part of the ruling coalition. In Norway also, the extremist Progress Party is the second largest party in the country. So, Le Pen is only the latest addition to this rise of political extremism in the non-Muslim world.

There is the long-standing figure of Mr Vajpayee - reflecting the rise of militant Hindu extremism which has been showing its true colours, since his rise to power in India, by killing minorities (Christians and Muslims) and burning their places of worship. The massacre of Muslims in the state of Gujarat was the natural progression of this extremism as it continued to be tolerated both by the Indian leadership and the international community. And now Mr Vajpayee himself has lost the image of being the acceptable face of the Hindutva creed, not only by his continued acceptance of the Modi government in Gujarat despite the clearly established complicity of Mr Modi with the Hindu murderers, but also by his tirade against Islam in Goa on 13th April. It was in Goa that he declared: ``Hindus stay in millions but never hurt other`s religious feelings. But wherever Muslims are they do not want to stay peacefully... . It is happening in Indonesia, Malaysia, everywhere. They (Muslims) stay by threatening and frightening others.``

Of course, had Mr Vajpayee not used the word Muslim, his description fits the Israelis to the tee! For this is precisely what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians since they terrorised them out of their land - aided and abetted by the West. And now under the ultra-Zionist, Mr Sharon, Israeli extremism is at its peak. But the history of this extremism goes back to the origins of the Israeli state. The first Israeli Prime Minister, Ben Gurion stated in 1948: ``We must do everything to insure they (Palestinians) never do return`` and he assured his followers that the Palestinians will never come back to their homes. ``The old will die and the young will forget.`` But just in case the young did not forget, Zionists like Sharon felt it necessary to kill them all. As Sharon stated, in an interview with General Ouze Merham, in 1956: ``...I vow that I`ll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child`s existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger. ... With one hit I`ve killed 750 Palestinians (in Rafah in 1956). I wanted to encourage my soldiers by raping Arabic girls as the Palestinian woman is a slave for Jews, and we do whatever we want to her and nobody tells us what we shall do but we tell others what they shall do.``

True to his word, Sharon has continued this policy whenever he has had the chance. And he has the US to shelter him from international censure. After all, as Sharon told Peres on October 3, 2001 - according to a report on Kol Yisrael radio - ``Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that ... I want to tell you something very clear: Don`t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America and the Americans know it.`` While many may debate this assertion in the US, the fact is that presently, in the face of the massacre at Jenin, two US senators have ironically introduced a bill to declare the PLO as terrorist and have their funds frozen in the US!

Nor is it just the rise of extremists in the non-Muslim world that is extremely worrying. There is also a pervasive extremism prevalent at the level of state and society in these countries and most of it is directed against the Muslims. In fact, official acceptance of violence against Muslims has allowed the extremists to act with impunity. The carnage in Gujarat is only one such example and Jenin is simply another addition in what has become common place after 9/11. While the world supposedly watches intently the trial of Pearl`s killers in Karachi, has anyone followed what happened to the British soldiers who shot dead a pregnant Afghan woman in a cab in Kabul? Well, nothing except their transfer back to Britain. And soldiers represent the state so obviously the message from the British state was - and probably still is - that it was okay to kill Muslim civilians in Afghanistan. After all, the US forces had done the same with no expression of regret. As for the massacre of POWs at Qila-i-Jhangi, the irony is that Amnesty International - that proclaimer of the high moral ground - had managed to get in and produce a report which showed that it was clearly a massacre with the dead prisoners still having their hands tied behind their backs but the bosses of this NGO will not allow the report to be published. They are still ``going through the process`` as one Amnesty person explained to a group in Peshawar! Ultimately, these reports will come out but the delay is damaging.

In the US itself, there is a systematic targeted harassment and often killing of Muslims - including children - with little being done against the perpetrators. The present US Attorney General, John Ashcroft, is himself a Christian fundamentalist who referred to the US Supreme Court as a ``robed elite`` that ``have taken the wall of separation built to protect the church and made it a wall of religious oppression.`` In the course of his political career - he lost the senatorial race in Missouri - he has attacked Black Americans and other segments of American civil society.

As non-Muslim extremism rises, the most shameful aspect is those in the Muslim world who have been either willy-nilly or deliberately co-opted to keep quiet on the issue of the basic rights of the Muslims. For instance, the HRCP, like the Government of Pakistan, has an obligation to ensure that the Pakistani prisoners in Kabul and in Guantanamo Bay are given due legal process - in the case of the latter, the example of Nuremburg and The Hague should be cited - yet so far they have not so much as whimpered on this subject. Why? Because they find the creed of these prisoners unacceptable, or because of the pressures of donor funding, or perhaps a combination of both?

The silence and self-imposed helplessness of the Muslim world has led the Muslims to become attractive targets of the growing extremism in the non-Muslim world - both at the level of the state and civil society. The greatest irony is that the only place where extremism is not flourishing in any form is in the Muslim states where obscurantism is a minority creed. Fifty-seven years after countless Muslims died to defeat the rise of fascism in Europe and Japan in World War II, Muslims are now confronting new forces of fascism that are on the ascendancy in the non-Muslim world from Europe to Asia.

re: TAHmed

{{check out some of the Pakistani heads of corporations in the US and you wont find any ivy leagues among them}}

...you assume that the best jobs are in large 9-5 corporations...that`s usually not true...also, just b.c. the CEOs of these places made it without pedigree, doesn`t mean that pedigree doesn`t make a difference...

tahmed

..... i really don`t understand how islam, or any other religion, can be secular .... some muslims could be secular in that they don`t let god interfere with their political life or sex habits ..... if islam is secular why was it necessary to destroy the idols in the kaaba and turn it into a mosque? ... i am sure the kafirs did not see that as a secular act .....

....and what is this about ``First rate universities often produce third rate individuals and vice versa``...... for your kid`s sake, i hope you don`t really believe this .....i have been involved in recruiting for the last ten years - the top consulting companies and investments banks will only hire from the top-10 business school and if you check the executive ranks of fortune-500 companies you will find that a vast majority of them have ivy league credentials ...... and regardless of whether it is fair or not, a fresh stanford or mit grad still commands a thirty to fifty percent premium in starting salary .......that is why i keep on telling my kids that unless you are black one-legged lesbian you have to go to a top-20 school to really make it in the corporate world........but if you are a black one-legged lesbian you can get away with a degree in communications from howard or tuskegee .........

re: spout

{gay but it works for me}

...way too much information...

Sadna,

You think the following was the result of the deployment of your terrorist Army on our borders?

How naive can you be... It is this kind of an arrogant and bigoted statement which drives people like me to take a more militant course against your country... You people don`t seem human when you make such tall order claims.

``1. Musharraf`s Jan 12 speech``

He didn`t say anything new in that speech for your information. Please compare to his speeches pre-9/11. Progressive democratic Pakistan has been expressed as a goal by many leaders, and indeed that is what our final objective is? You are a liar if you believe that to be the case.



``2. No major terrorist attacks in India``

So you think it is your bullying that is behind that.. Why don`t you try saying out in the open and maybe you will see the results...



``3. There is almost no talk of UN resolutions

or `disputed` territory by foreign commentators and media, now the talk is of reduction of tensions ``

So what you are saying by bullying people around.. you have managed to suppress a right given to the Kashmiri People.. what wonderful sense of fairness you Indian bigots have... UN RESOLUTIONS STAND.. and they will CONTINUE to stand... Not even a severe incident like the creation of Bangladesh could dampen our resolve to see the justice and fairplay being done in Kashmir!

This statement alone captures the fundamentally bigoted and stupid mentality of the Indian people... because bigots like you are actually supposed to be moderates... You are extending us a challenge.. we will heed that challenge .. this war will go on...

``4. If dialogue or UN resolutions are mentioned, the list of 20 is also mentioned.``

You know quite well where you can shove that list of 20? don`t you... how about handing over the terrorist interior minister to us first who is wanted for attempted murder of Pakistan`s first Governor General.



``5. Meanwhile jihad is no longer as low cost an option as before because the counterdeployment of Pakistani troops costs money``

The counter deployment of Pakistani troops might cost money.. as for Jihad... jihad against bigotry fanaticism, oppression be it the Mullah version , or the Gandhian Hinduvtist version of oppression .. it will continue...

Ladies and gentlemen with her post Sadna has shown the ugly face of India and its policies yet again... this is the face of Gandhiism.. lies, more lies, more propaganda, even more lies, even more propaganda.. bullying around with an army... and suppressing the rights of a nation... Shame on the Hindu Fundamentalist Theocracy beyond our East Border.

-YLH