This Beloved Arab Colony

Fairly good article, though phrases such as `islamic ideology` and the like such as `islamic state`, etc. are problematic. Romantics (e.g. taleban, MMA, etc) reject the reality of the past. Modern muslim western elite reject the relevance of the past. Both are rejectionists and thus both indict the past.

In the west, secular humanism has done well to replace religion in propagating wholesome moral human values, which is why one can see people who are not religious engaged in social justice and human rights issues. However, in the muslim world (perhaps even in the third world) there is no other human cultural artifact to replace religion that propagates morality like in the west. One can see this in the graduates of elite insitutions in pakistan (e.g. in karachi the KGS, etc.) that there is no culture within to advocate for issues dealing in morality. Admittedly there are some, however, the cultural infrastructure needed with regards to intellectual humanism and the will and receptivity by the elite to engage in such change is largely absent. Family relationships even among the elite kills the idealism of the youth to to attain and imbibe wholesome values.

Thus either a reclamation of religion is the answer, or the imposing western cultural paradigms and intellectualism is the answer.

re: Minhaj #130:
I agree with your comments. Any religion is deined as what is being practiced at that place and in that time. It is 100 percent subject to time and place. So sunni, shia, ahmedi, hindu, christians etc etc are religions in practice. I don`t buy too much into ``what it should have been`` based on ``what it was meant to be``. Anytime history is used to justify future ignoring present, the factor of less than perfect is applicable due to the subjective nature of historical events. No history knowledge would ever be completely objective and never provide finer details of day to day life and conditions to the level of present, which is observable by each individual on daily basis. Basically there is not much different between stating that ``Pakistan belongs in the past`` and ``what religion A was meant to be - in essence``, with almost overt desire to ``give me that old time religion``. Both are looking at highly subjective Islamic history coming in shards as substitute to the visible one-piece starting point of present. Knowing detailed history from diverse sources is good but not the best thing for the future of any religion or Pakistan.

Most people love, read and respect quran because it is the words of god and not for any other reason. People wouldn`t have any interest in reading it in Arabic, hymning, reading over and over and any interest in the stories of zulekha and yusuf and ababeels throwing pebbles from sky, if not for belief in god`s words. The Arabian story telling thousand and one night style is not the most attractive form of moral teachings, except for kids. It is religion with absolute supreme god on top that makes all the difference.

honorable_syed:
I know the hisotry of the area I came from much more than learning history through murdering history. Most sufis, particlularly of suharwardiya silsila and involved in converting heathen Indians were agents/ front men of the Delhi darbar. The difference between sufi and mullah was that mullah were direct employess of the court whereas sufis were consultants with fees called nazrana.

Not only suharwardiya like Baha Uddin Zakriyya, Shah Rukn-e-Alam and Makhdoom Shah JahaniaN lived levish lifestyle without owning any property or doing any work to earn their living, but others lived better than average person too. Baba Farid was married to the daughter of Balban, ruller of Delhi Darbar. Balban would not have given away his daughter to some half naked fakir.
Pir of Hala, Pir Pagara, pirs of Bahu Sharif, Pir of Manki Sharif, descendants of Baba Farid all are feudal and filthy rich. How did they make so much without accepting any donation. They never worked for living. All of their forefather Sufis were idle moral consultants and got land donated to them. Check the land holdings and properties of Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat and Syeda Abida Hussein in Jhang, both descendants of a Sufi, Shah Jeewna. Now don`t bring poetry to change the story. Many of them did good poetry in local languages, indeed.

re:#115 by jay
``In india one can write Indian Admin Service exam in urdu. I read some where that for similar exam in pakistan, urdu is not allowed, it has to be in english or arabic.``
Isn`t that amazing?
Sridhar

re: honorable_syed # 124
[Since you seem to be an expert of demographics what should the population of syeds be in the world. ]

First of all, I am not an expert on demographies or statistical analysis, though some experience in the latter. If you followed the whole debate carefully, you wouldn`t have asked this silly question. Reason is that no equation exists that can safely predict the number of descendants of a person after 1400 years. It is somewhat similar to fluid dynamics or chaotic behavior. It requires dealing with the issue using several techniques, drop the most and least numbers and take the average of converging numbers within the limits of deviations.

I suggested before two techniques, one doing parallel studies of many people in similar ebvironment with equal probability of environment, migratin patterns, racial and cultural similarities etc and the other was sampling. A DNA analysis of big enough sample would also give a good estimate. However, the starting point would be to take the current population of the world, divide it by the extimated population of the world 1400 years ago and multiply that factor by two to compensate for the lineage dependance on males, socially. if the world population has gone up 50 times, the number of descendants would be 100. This sounds awfully low, and thus rejected just as series expansion, expasnsion according to your formula and SR`s reverse expansion would be rejected for exaggeratingly large numbers.

That is why I raised the issue of Alvis versus Syeds. There is no reason to challenge any superior reproduction through Zain Ul AbidaiN than the remaining children of Ali. They were equally susceptable to migration, famine, hunger, financial security, poverty, riches, culture, religion, race, language, you name it. Same would be true of children of Abu Bakr, Usman, Imar, Muawya, Salman Farsi and any known figure of that time who did not get exterminated for any reason early on. One can not say that Umar descendants were prone to migration and Ali`s were not or vice versa. Even assuming a very low current number of Syeds worldwide, 1 million, only 1000 individuals would be necessary to father the entire Muslim population. Therefore, it would be appropriate to study the collective expansion of Arabs or Gernmanic people or Scythians or Huns instead of Atilla the Hun and Muhammad.
For a single person 70 generations back, the numbers from various parallel sampling techniques would converge to a very low than modern day numbers of Syeds and that would be unacceptable to you. How about 4-5 thousands?

The premium for insuring geneology is very high. One heart attack and whole family tree turns to weed or herb. With the level of uncertainty, it is better to ignore insuring lineage tree unless all the cooking up of the past is allowed without question, sometime in one hot Saturday afternoon, anywhere in subcontinent or central Asia, any time between 1200 - 1800 CE.

Romair #127 You make a lot of sound observations, and some that one may question. So it is difficult to respond to the entire post. So, I shall respond to some parts that you wrote that stick in my mind.

I agree with you on the point that Islam was very progressive at the time of the prophet - and that of course was a long time ago. And I agree on your point that the Quran is the essence of Islam, and hadith is in fact a tool on the part of the professional priesthood to carve out a role for itself in muslim societies. I also agree that as a result of the efforts of the professional priesthood, a parallel ``Islam`` has arisen, one that is regressive and in contradiction to the spirit of the original Islam.

Your post does not go far enough, I believe, in recognizing today`s realities. Thus, on the question of slavery - Muslim societies have a long history of slavery, with slaves being routinely brought from africa and from eastern europe largely, but also from as far away as southern england and wales and even iceland (where the last slaver raid took place as late as 1627, according to Edward Said) over centuries. It was brought largely to an end in the 19th century by western, and in particular British efforts. Thus: while slavery in the US came to end as a result of enlightenment within that society, among muslims it came to an end through force. Slavery continues to this day in east africa by muslims, and you wont hear a peep about it from any mullah. This one example illustrates my point: If you seek moral enlightenment, dont look 1400 years into the past. Look at the west today for this purpose. Slavery is just one example. In other aspects - respect for human life, social consciousness, and so forth - the west is miles ahead of the muslim world. So, while the Quran certainly encourages us to move in this direction, the west provides a practical example of an enlightened society.

The trouble is that the message of the Quran was hijacked long ago by the professional priests using hadith and sharia as weapons, and the Islamic societies consequently re-routed on a path of irrationality and oppression. The day we muslims get off our high horse and accept the fact that we have much to learn (and virtually nothing left to teach at this point) from the west, that day we will start to take back control of our fate. Till then, it is in the hands of musharaff and the maulvis, I am sorry to say.

Minhaj #130: ``How foolish of you to say that it does not matter if these ideas come from god or not!. There are one billion people shaping their lives on this very principal that Mohommad was speaking for God! And here you are saying that it really doesnt matter!``

Anyone who follows the Quran, just because it came, ``from God,`` has lost the battle before it has been fought. I don`t think religions can survive the test of time, if they are only followed blindly. They can only survive if they are based on common sense. This is why, Islam, (or at least the Quran) has survived, without being changed. Not because, it came, ``from God,`` but because it makes a lot of sense, and because it is abstract enough to allow different interpretations, for changing times.

I certainly don`t follow the Quran, just because I think it came from God. Quite the contrary. I think it came from God because it makes so much sense, and has quite a few scientific facts in it.

If one wants Islam to appeal to everyone in the world, one has to take into account, that 4/5th of the world isn`t born Muslim. They don`t think Quran came from God. They will only accept it, if it makes sense. To say that Muhammad was a great man, just because he was Prophet, may appeal to Muslims, but not to non-Muslims. But if you tell people to forget whether he was a Prophet or not, and just point out his qualities of leadership, justice, vision etc., he still remains a great man. His qualities will appeal to Muslims as well as to athiests. Hence one needs to give people the option to look at Quran`s teaching either way, i.e. created by man or created by God. Either way, it points in the right direction.

And one needs to present arguments in the language people understand. People will only believe in Islam, or any religion, if they are impressed by the individual making the argument, and if the argument makes common sense.


``Once every one is told to believe that Islam is from God and is perfect what room for change is left? How are we to ammend a constitution authored by the creator of the Universe? We can not! The honest man is left with only 2 choices. One to surrender his common sense in favor of blind obedience to Islam. Or to reject completely the religion.``

It is quite unfortunate you cannot think beyond this. This is the type of religious and secular extremism I was mentioning my previous reply. I think if a person is going to follow a religion, they should only do so if it appeals to them logically. Not because they were born into it.

If Islam doesn`t appeal to someone, they should switch religions or become athiests. Yet one sees very few habitual critics of Islam, who have the courage to do so. They will continue to remain Muslims and will continue to badmouth it, or make statements like you have made. I fail to see the point of that. If someone thinks it is a ridiculous religion, why not leave it and other Muslims alone, and switch to something else?

It is the professional Islamic priests and the secular fanatics, who have done more to distort Islam and misportray it, than anyone else. The first group wants to take all logic out of it. The second wants to reject it all together, while remaining a Muslim. The former turns it into something which others make fun of, without understanding it. The later makes fun of it, without understanding it. Neither is willing to reform it from the inside, nor is either willing to debate it logically.

I am a sceintist by education and a businessman by profession, yet I am extremely comfortable with Islam in my day to day life. Infact, I cannot imagine my life without my science and my religion. I spend a good portion of my days studying both. I am neither a religionist, nor am I a secularist. I think both those ideas are propogated by self-interested individuals, who think they have all the answers, and who give religion too much importance in their arguments, from opposing sides. I am a humanist, and am equally willing to follow religious or secular folks, provided their ideas, and they themselves, are humane and appeal to me. So there is, at least, one person who does not belong to your two extreme categories, i.e. me.

There is a reason the Quran has survived so many centuries. After all, Muslim societies have gone thru many ups and downs. Muslims weren`t always backwards and uneducated and unenlightened like they are now. They were world leaders, at one time, defining the destiny of the world (much like the Americans are doing now). During all these ups and downs, enlightened and unenlightened times, they were following the same Quran. One would think, somewhere along the line, Muslims would have rejected the Quran, if what you say is correct. But they didn`t. They have been successful with the same Quran one day, and unsuccessful with it the next.

The reason is that the Quran is a very abstract book. It is supposed to cover a way of life, yet it is only 30 chapters. A tiny book like that can only point people in a direction, it cannot describe the details. Thus, it leaves the interpretation to the times. There is no way, any book, of such small size, can lock socieities into detailed rules that you seem to be pointing to. It is logically impossible. These, ``unchangeable`` rules have come after the fact, through the professional priests.

Unfortunately, instead of countering the professional priests, with arguments from within the boundaries of religion, many people have chosen to give up on Islam, all together, and have resorted to confronting the professional Islamic clergy by attacking and ridiculing them. Neither of these tactics works.

This has left the field of religious interpretation wide open for the professional Islamic clergy. And they have stepped in, and taken over this area.

In resp to sameer:
``The Sufis of Uch GilaniaN, Bulley Shah, Baba Farid, Ghulam Farid, Data Ganj Bakhsh, Nizan Uddin Auliya, Moeen Uddin Chishti did not have to sweat for making a living. Hands and feet were useless limbs for chilla, meditation, maarfat, zikr, imam masjid type Syed and eking out a better living from dole outs and donations.``
Sameer you have shown your ignorance. You are disgracing the great work these people of God did in the subcontinent. How ridiculous the claim that ``imam masjid type Syed eking out a better living from dole outs and donations.`` Do you know that this money is haraam to the syeds, and it`s an insult to the progeny of rasool e kareem Muhammad saws. Even at this day and age Syeds do not take money from charity, hence the incentive to claim Syed for monetary purposes doesn`t make sense.
Furthermore, if you have studied the life of these great Islamic scholars and thinkers, they did not live the lavish life you claim was their incentive in claiming lineage to the rasool. So once again your arguments fall flat.

romair#108
``There are certain religions that originated for the lower groups of the society, i.e. for the common man. These include Buddhism, Islam (and some more). Let`s assume that all these were man-made religions, i.e. Guatama Buddha, Muhammad, and others thought they were meditating and speaking to a higher entity, but actually they were just coming up with their own ideas.``
Are you sure? My understanding is that Gautam Buddha did not claim to speak to a higher authoriy; he didn`t even say that there Was any higher authority. And did Buddha actually speak up against the caste system. From what I have read, his teachings were caste-neutral and hence can be interpreted as against the caste system, but I would appreciate any quotes where he spoke up against the priests or the caste system per se.
Nor did most of his converts come from the lower castes. Buddha did not lead a social revolution; his teachings had more to do with the philosophy of life. The method of conversion in India of Buddha`s time was very different from that prevalent in the Middle East which you seem to accept as the benchmark. In the Middle East, someone would claim to be a prophet and people had no choice but to accept it or reject it, even when someone made a contradictory statement, such as that God treats all his children equally but he chose ME to be a messenger (it`s like a corrupt man preaching honesty to others!). They wouldn`t even question that when someone says that God allowed him to have as many wives as he wants but restricted everyone else to four. In summary the message was: follow me, don`t challenge me.

The rules of the game were different for Buddha, Mahavir and his contemporaries in India. They had to follow the practice called ``shastrarth``. This means that the leader of a sect would engage the leader of another in a debate and whoever was defeated became the follower of the winner alongwith his disciples. This was the method through which Buddha converted others to his way of thinking, and his converts initially were men of higher castes. BTW, Shankracharya used the same method several centuries later to bring back many Buddhists back to the Hindu fold.

``Buddha completely disenfranchised the powerful priest, by forcing him to have almost no wordly possessions, thereby forcing him to concentrate on just his religious tasks, i.e if someone wants to be a religous person, they cannot use their status as a priest to gain worldly power or influence.``
This shows your incomplete understanding of the caste system. The priests under the system were undoubtedly very powerful and enjoyed the highest status in the society. But even under the hindu caste system, they were supposed to shun material possession. They were rather like ths school teachers (who in many cases were indeed brahmins during the British rule) who enjoyed a lot of respect and prestige in the society but were not at the top of the ladder in terms of material gains.
P.S. I am not a brahmin!

re: SR #117
That was very interesting post depicting the absurdity of simplification for very complex phenomenon. I did not think of it besides I concentrated on responding to one simple form of series expansion presented by Urstruly by doing reverse contraction on it. I also tried to look at the whole issue from many different angles and tried to converge the results from these angles to increase the confidence level of the final guestimate.

My point was the impossibility of one person anywhere in the world having higher reproduction odds by a very large factor over the rest for extended period of 70 generations is rubbish and illogical. At micro level, only few data points in 2-3 generations do not guarantee anything in long run. The Ibn Saud with 60 or so brothers does show a better than average reproduction but Ibn Saud lineage after 70 generations is unpredictable. In isolated environment and with plenty of tropical vegetation and fishing, the commander of S. S. Bounty on Pitcairn Island in south pacific has 71 descendants, the total population of the island. Since Australian aboriginies did not improve the food production techniques such as farming in arid environment, their population remained much lower despite tens of thousands of years.

The problem with Syed lineage is that they came to India through a strange route spread over more than 7 centuries, first going north to central Asia and then entering India on the heels of invaders. The chance of cheating or cooking up geneology go up many times for people on the move. A Muslim population looking respectfully to a lineage attracts many wannabes. Doing it was not easy in Mecca or Arabia because people knew each other too well but in far off places, a newcomer from Arabia could fool people much easily. Nobody in India would have had any interest in researching the lineage of any claimant. If Data Ganj Baksh said it and Mahmud Ghaznavi had no objection to it, why should people of Lahore sent a comittee to Afghanistan, central Asia, Iraq and Arabia to prove if Data Ganj Bakhsh was right. Had he been in Mecca, Meccans would have already known of his lineage and no need to do much sweating in researching.

Once local converts had seen the benefit of Syed surname, it is beyond doubt that many would have adopted it too and in due time, possibly outnumbered the claimants of Iranian or central Asian origins. Who wouldn`t have wanted to set up a shop somewhere with few colored flag and started living on the dole outs when life for an average was a hell, working hard, sweating in fields to eke out a living. The Sufis of Uch GilaniaN, Bulley Shah, Baba Farid, Ghulam Farid, Data Ganj Bakhsh, Nizan Uddin Auliya, Moeen Uddin Chishti did not have to sweat for making a living. Hands and feet were useless limbs for chilla, meditation, maarfat, zikr, imam masjid type Syed and eking out a better living from dole outs and donations. Hell, I would have become Syed too, instead of working 12 hours a day, seven days a week to put one meal per day (not guaranteed) on the table while Sufis could feed whole group of friends and chelas while staying inside doing allah hoo, and not in the hot sun where rest were trying to make a living.

Just add the advantages of being a Syed and the benefit of cooking up any lineage once moving to a new place and whole Syed thing becomes clear. The shameful and logical fact is that people on the lowest end, the musallis, mirasis, ranGaRs, nomads, chamars, untoushables lineages are much more pure than Syeds, Brahmins, Rajputs etc because of no advantages of faking those identities in the history of subcontinent. Who is more fukked up?

romair,

........it is disingenuous to suggest that muhammad did away with heriditary leadership by ........ the only reason abu bakr became caliph was because the prophet did not have any sons, and abu bakr was his favourite father-in-law and ayesha had a lot more clout than ali and his wife .......... the next three were also close relatives who fought tooth and nail for the crown ............ and remember, three of your four favourite calips were brutally murdered ..........so the battle did not start with the demise of ali - it started right after the prophet`s funeral and the tradition has continued to this day ............

``Take Muhammad as a Prophet, as I do, or take him as a normal leader, as athiests would, it doesn`t make much difference. Whether his ideas came from him, or from God, they were revolutionary just the same.``

How foolish of you to say that it does not matter if these ideas come from god or not!. There are one billion people shaping their lives on this very principal that Mohommad was speaking for God! And here you are saying that it really doesnt matter!

And this Harroon Moghul guy from which planet is he from? he is saying that Islam is Vibrant! What a crock of shit. Once every one is told to believe that Islam is from God and is perfect what room for change is left? How are we to ammend a constitution authored by the creator of the Universe? We can not! The honest man is left with only 2 choices. One to surrender his common sense in favor of blind obedience to Islam. Or to reject completely the religion. But what is this double game going on here of trying to describe Islam as a secular ideology!

``Pakistan will find her future in her past, as will the rest of the Islamic world. ``
This is the kind of rubbish that people talk when they have nothing solid to say.

``The directly quoted Quranic concepts of slavery, presented in 7th century Arabia, may seem backwards in 21st century USA, but they were way ahead of 18th century USA.``(romair)

an astute observation, romair.

Romair # 127

That was a very enlightenening and an educative post.

You took pains to put it down in such great detail. Thanks.

Just when I thought of writing an appropriate response to the sophomoric ``mathematical`` argument of Urstruly, I find that SR has already done the needful. Good post once again SR.

re: hamidm

{but you are right - the hindoo civilization might be eons behind the chinese,}

...at one point, the US was considered far behind another communist competitor called the soviet union...

...the eye opening reasons are detailed quite nicely by paul krugman at princeton...read up on it sometime...