This Beloved Arab Colony

Al-Qaeda’s latest hitman a Kashmiri


Took orders from top leadership, plotted to destroy Brooklyn Bridge


Susan Schmidt




Washington, June 20: A Kashmir-born truckdriver who met with Osama bin Laden and other top Al-Qaeda leaders plotted to bring down New York’s Brooklyn Bridge and launch a simultaneous unspecified attack in Washington as recently as a few months ago, according to officials and court papers unsealed yesterday.

Iyman Faris (34), a naturalised American citizen now in custody, pleaded guilty on May 1 to providing material support to a terrorist organisation in a case filed in a federal court in Virginia. None of the attacks he planned with top Al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed were carried out.

In resp to sameer:
``Lastly honorable-Syed has been repeating services of Syeds to Indian Muslims or Indians. Garbage! Again go to the places with highest concentration of Syed and they are no better off. The place in Panjab with highest concentration of Syeds historically is a dusty little town in Bahawalpur known as Uch GailaniaN. Many of the great Syed Sufis were from this place and learned their knowledge there. There is nothing worth noting there as services to people``
I have never offered any services to anyone, nor have i ever claimed to be one who offers services to indian muslims or indians. I have never asked for superior status, i have always said that spiritual status is not dependent on your lineage. But what i have experienced is that some people get offended by my chowk id. Now you could have any id, and as long as it doesn`t offend my religion, i could care less, and i believe my id shouldn`t offend anyone or anyones religion, hence all attacks on my lineage are unwarranted.
It seems like many have an inferiority complex, and construe my id as degrading to others, where that is not my intention at all.
Since you seem to be an expert of demographics what should the population of syeds be in the world.

Jay # 114,115 & 116

I agree with you. We are unable to justify the different prevailing logics of the religion and unable to prevent it from interfering in our lives. It is a creeping engulfment of an intolerant environment.

Obsession with religion also takes away one`s senses of logic and rational behaviour.

Lack of courage from our leaders who always want to sound ``politically correct`` has only added to the confusion and chaos.

In my personal view, partition was not a good idea. That is one of its causes.

I hope that India does not let the ``safforonization`` process go on. That will be a tragedy for the South Asia. India`s democracy has the ability to eventually filter it out.

An unfettered democracy in Pakistan can also filter it out - only if we have a spell of unfettered democratic rule.

Jay # 114,115 & 116

I agree with you. We are unable to justify the different prevailing logics of the religion and unable to prevent it from interfering in our lives. It is a creeping engulfment of an intolerant environment.

Obsession with religion also takes away one`s senses of logic and rational behaviour.

Lack of courage from our leaders who always want to sound ``politically correct`` has only added to the confusion and chaos.

In my personal view, partition was not a good idea. That is one of its causes.

I hope that India does not let the ``safforonization`` process go on. That will be a tragedy for the South Asia. India`s democracy has the ability to eventually filter it out.

An unfettered democracy in Pakistan can also filter it out - only if we have a spell of unfettered democratic rule.

tahmad #112: The turning point of the battle between the professional priest and the Islamic concept of, ``no-priest`` occured long before the Pakistan Army and Pakistan. It occured around the end of the fourth Caliphate.

Society, at the time of Muhammad, in Arabia and in the world, was based on two centers of power: heridatory kings and religious beaurecracies (much like the present-day Arab world). Within a twenty year period, Muhammad turned all these concepts on their heads. The king and the slave were equal, and the the professional priest was not required.

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. The rest of the world has only now, in the last decades of the 20th century, caught up with those ideas - and that too only the educated West.

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. The directly quoted Quranic rights of women rights may seem backwards, in some areas, in 21st century Belgium. But they were way ahead of 19th century Belgium.

Imagine how revolutionary, these concepts must have been to the 7th century illiterate Arab societies. These concepts were more than a thousand year ahead of their time. Even now, most of the world hasn`t been able to implement them. And if we look at their direction, and not their exact text (which was written for their exact time), then they are even more revolutionary.

However, the inertia of kingdoms and religous beaurecracies (two ideas which Islam removed) was very strong. Eventually, the old cultural norms of the Arab society (and the world) made their way back. Infact, it didn`t even take a century for this to occur. Within the first few Caliphates, heridatory rule returned, and family dynasties were in fashion again in the Islamic world. Similarly, within the first few generations, religious beaurecracy was back in, also. However, a system was needed by this religious beaurecracy to give itself status and power. The Quran provided no such system. In fact, it removed such systems.

Probably, a concept of gaining status due to lineage (another thing that Islam removed) was brought back. If you can trace your relations to a particular person, you become superior, was the theme. However, some sort of text was needed to justify all of this, since the Quran is repeatedly egalitarian. This created the whole business of, ``religious scholars`` claiming a status higher than other Muslims, and monopolising the right of defining the religion - not only for themselves, but for everyone. Thus dirtying the religion, which in its essence, allows an individual direct access to God.

So within a few decades of the death of the Prophet, the old customs of Arabia, i.e. kings and religious beaurecracy, overtook the revolutionary changes he had implemented. However, he had been able to put enough of these changes in place, that the Islamic society continued to prosper, for a few more centuries, due to momentum, and then eventually declined.

The total essence of Islam is the Quran. That is it. Simple. Such a small book can only be extremely abstract, if it is going to describe a complete way of life. It is the abstraction of this book, that still continues to fascinate Muslims of all types. You will rarely find a Muslim, even the most non-practicing one, who completely denounces his/her religion. Even the few individuals who do so, do it due to bad experiences with other Muslims (teachers, parents, maulvis, political parties etc.) , which they incorrectly blame on Islam. The remaining Muslims will all complain about the Quran being misinterpreted (either too liberally or too conservatively), but they will read it and try to understand it, and keep faith in it.

This is phenomenal, for a book, that came into existence more than a thousand years ago, and still has the exact same wordings. It occurs, because the essence of the Quran appeals to sensible people, and because it is an abstract book, which can be interpreted for any time, without the need of a religious beaurecracy. It is so simple.

Unfortunately, there is now a parallel Islam in existence. It is based on literature that has been written by professional priests. It starts from the time when the first Hadith book, written by a normal and probably very well-intentioned human being, was given a status close to that of the Quran, i.e. Sahih Bukhari etc. became a part of Islamic jurisprudence, etc. From that time onwards, Islam was once again fully taken over by the professional priest. Anything that could not be justified through the Quran, could be justified through hadiths, fatwas etc.

Studying Islam is thus, no longer, the simple task of studying one abstract book, i.e. the Quran, and spending the rest of the time studying the world to see how the book can be applied to it. Studying Islam now is a full-time job, requiring a detailed study of thousands and thousands of pages of work, which originate not from the Quran, but from other human-created and human-aggregated sources. Their only criteria for, ``religious correctness`` being that they do not directly contradict anything in the Quran. Since the Quran is too small to cover every single aspect of life directly and in detail, this literature has completely taken over Islam. Any area the Quran does not directly address in its text, is now fair game for the most illogical rules and fatwas. Hadith, due to their human aggregation, should be accepted and disregarded, based on common sense. However, the word of Mr. Bukhari is considered final in detailed areas where the Quran offers only abstract guidance. The professional priests refuse to consider the argument that it is impossible for any human being, for all his good intentions, to correctly aggregate exact information about the Prophet, through interpretations and word of mouth, passed on over generations.

The return of the professional priest has completely restricted the boudaries within which an abstract book like the Quran can be interpreted, thereby frustrating the Muslim, who wants to rely on common sense, and not necessarily on professional priests, when interpreting the Quran for his/her century.

This has created two forms of extremists in our societies, i.e. the religious extremist who is a professional priest or follows one, and the secular extremist who instead of studying Islam, considers it the cause of all social problems since he is unable to look beyond the professional priest as a representative of Islam. This is why overly secular and religious people are always obsessed with religion. They rarely argue over anything else.

True Islam, at least after the studying I have done, supports neither the professional priest, nor his secular equivalent. In Islam, church and state are the same. However, the church does not rule the state. The state rules the church, since the church is supposed to be nothing more than a book with 30 chapters. There is, infact, very little church in Islam, since there are no priests. A mosque is supposed to be a commuinty center and not just a place of worship. And anyone, out of a crowd, can lead the prayers.

The Prophet was not a professional priest. He was a salesman, in an import-export company, run by his future wife. Later on, he became a politician, a general and a statesman. None of the first four Caliphs were professional priests either. In today`s world, they would be software salesmen in a multinational company, stock brokers, soldiers, political party leaders, CEOs, etc. - but not professional maulvis.

At the same time, these leaders led the prayers also. In essence, Islam is based on CEOs leading the friday prayers, and Prime Ministers leading the daily prayers - like Muhammad did. It is not based on individuals who lead the Friday prayers automatically becoming CEOs and Prime Ministers, just because of their religious significance.

The appearance of this parallel Islam (and the re-emergence of kings), led by a religious beaurecracy, which has given itself the right to interpret Islam for everyone, is what has limited the growth of Islamic societies. Had this beaurecracy not emerged, Islam would have been nothing more than a very abstract set of rules, which tell you to do good, to respect your parents, to have a progressive and liberal and egalitarian attitude towards women, poor, the elderly, etc, mixed in with a few details on how to wash up for prayers, etc., all packaged in an very appealing book.

who says pakis lack resolve required to turn visions into reality? by giving ill-bred hindus freedom of chowk, creators of this site have brilliantly succeeded in the challenging task of creating the cyberspace equivalent of that graffiti filled war in gurumandir. only thing missing is ads touting ilag for mardana kamzoori. too bad cause we would all be grateful if some of the hindus here could see those ads and then perform their manly duties rather than spending all their time on this site. actually, there is another group of hindus that could also benefit from these ads. their brethren taking on jehadis in Kashmir would find these ads useful as well.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/05/wpen05.xml

Indian army finds inflatable answer to low morale
By Mark Chipperfield in New Delhi
(Filed: 05/05/2002)

THE Indian Army is fitting some of its toughest frontline troops with inflatable penile implants in a bid to boost army morale.

Impotency is becoming a serious concern for the country`s élite soldiers stationed in the disputed mountain territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Many of India`s special forces are reporting ``marriage problems`` when they return from their tours of duty.

Doctors at the army`s Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi say that the combination of high altitude living and constant stress and exposure to trauma is sapping the sex drive of the soldiers.

Mathematical Induction and the fallacy of numbers … Sameer # 107 and Urstruly # 84

After Chowk Staff pulled this article back to the top of the list I got curious and went back to see what was going on since the thesis of the article itself was not something I wanted to even touch with a ten foot pole. The sting that caught my eye was this number series debate between you two about the number of Syeds etc.

Such extrapolations about population figures can be very erroneous and the assumptions we make may seem logical but turn out to have hidden flaws in them. Urstruly is making an assumption that each person in the said line had three sons. And then he goes on to declare: [“… A 12-grader can easily setup a formula by analyzing the above series. … My mathematics is very rusty … but with a little hard work one can easily find the 70th number in this series; and believe me it is a very large number. Now assume that at a particular point in time three generations co-exist, which is a reasonable assumption, the number reaches in millions. …”]

Brother your math is truly very rusty. That number will not be in the millions. If you take three per generation and keep going for 70 generations that number will be in the Billions and billions of Trillions. More on this below.

Then Sameer rebuts, [“…Much better techniques for such estimates is termed as comparative studies and sampling. The way to do that is take three four or more groups and match them against each other and then use standard deviations to come with a ball park figure. Jews are supposed to start with 12 sons of Issac. The descendants of one of them are called Levi. Given the total jewish population of 17 million worldwide and rejecting any conversion from Khazars to become Ashkenazi jews, the Levi are 1/12 th of 17 million or 1.4 million souls in 3000 years. …”]

This is indeed a better way to guestimate those numbers but still imperfect. (As an aside, Sameer, the Khazars should NOT be disallowed because they are allegedly the “true” thirteenth tribe…but that can wait for another day. Re: “The Thirteenth Tribe” by Arthur Koestler.)

In all these methods of calculating the offsprings we cannot know what fertility rate were, what unusual mortality rates were and so on.

Let’s do a thought experiment in which we don’t have to make too many arbitrary assumptions. Let us go backwards in time instead of forward. Take my son, for instance. He has two parents, me and my wife. Both of us have two parents each, so my son has four grand parents. Each of the four grand parents, of course, had two parents each, so my son has a total of eight great-grand parents. Likewise we can keep going back and at each generation above the next the number of ancestors will be doubled. Now lets take Urstruly’s assumption that there are five generations in each century, or 20 years per generation.

When we go back to the time of the Declaration of Independence there are 1024 people who were my son’s direct ancestors.

If we do the math going back generation after generation doubling the number of ancestors we quickly realize that something very bizarre happens to these numbers.

By the time Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodhi at Paniput the number was already up to 8,388,608, and when Columbus landed in the New World that number goes to 16,777,216. That is over sixteen million ancestors. This number reaches over one billion when Timur began his 35 successful campaigns to Persia, Georgia, Russia, Egypt etc, and William of Wykeham founded New College at Oxford. And when Jews were banished from France and Saint Francis of Assisi was born this number had exceeded one TRILLION. This number exceeds Nine Million Trillion or to be exact 9,223,372,063,854,780,000 when Mohammed bin Qasim comes to India. And so far we’ve only gone 64 generations and we are only multiplying by two, not by three for 70 generations as Urstruly suggested.

But let us not give up just yet. If we go back to the time of “Civis Romanus sum,” that is when Roman citizenship was granted to every freeborn in the Empire and when Diophantus of Alexanderia published his first book on Algebra, 89 generations had passed and the number of ancestors we calculate was so large that if we assume each person to be 50 Kg, the total mass of those individuals would be greater than the mass of planet earth. And we haven’t even reached the time of Jesus still.

The point of this exercise was simply to demonstrate that linear mathematical extrapolations in demography can become very absurd, very quickly.

…SR

In response to sameer:
``At the time of Muhammad, Mecca population is estimated to be 125,000 and Medina around 50,000. Out of 175,000 total, the male population should be 1/2, equal to 87,000 souls. If one of them ends up producing more than 3 million Syeds despite earlier odds against this family during Umayyid period, the descendants of remaining 86,999 should make up around 25 billion souls. What happened? ``
Well sameer i am not an expert on population growth, but if things were perfect and population grew at the maximum rate then that is known as biotic potential, but this is not possible. The biotic potential is used as a standard for growth rate to see how far the population is from this potential. A population in most cases grows at this potential and then stagnates, in addition there are limiting factors. Many of these factors are strictly dependent on population density, i.e. the availability of food, water, shelter, space, diseases, parasitism, etc.. Then there are also abiotic factors, such as floods, weather, earthquakes and so forth. When studying population, demographists have come up with an S shaped model of population growth, and this model stabilizes after reaching a certain level, this level is dependent on several factors. Some of these factors i have explained above, and there are other factors as well, some examples are Age structure dependencies, competetition, marriage habits etc. Hence the Jewish and the Aboriginal population growth analogy is incorrect, as each community can reach this level of stability at an earlier stage or at a much later stage.
Furthermore immigration and emmigration also play an important role in population growth, as they result in a change of environment and a change in the limiting factors.
There is another important phenomenon known as multiple stable values, which means that when the rate of growth reaches a certain value, population growth becomes chaotic, hence you can have a dramatic increase in population growth or a dramatic decrease.
In conclusion, you can not conclusively prove that the population of the syeds is incorrect.
The equation used to calculate the general population growth rate is:
Pn=P0(1+F/2)^n
lets say P0 (initial population) is 1
F(growth rate) is 1
n(number of years) 1400
You get a number 3.37 e +246
this is a ridiculously high number, and the reasons why the population of the syeds is not this number are due to the factors i mentioned above, now i am not a demographist, but i can pretty much guarantee you that any demographist would give you the same reasons as i gave you.

#108 ROMAIR,
you are absolutely right``hadith books had done more damage``` quran is the only source of knowledge.though we don``t know arbic,but translation can help a lot.there is clearly mention for eglatarian society.we badly lack it.we all have to go inthe same grave and same ciffan.why people are roaming with a stiff neck.message was just to run the society smoothly.

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MUST READ FOR INDIANS,

Poat 60 is a must read for indians, it is an article by a parsi in pakistan, exposing the structure of k for kafir education. If any one has wondered about the homogeniety of pak views ranging from urstruly to tahmed tonasqbandi, can be traced to the ducation. It is the hatred for the other, that derived from the creation of pakistan, that manifets as the universal support for jihadits.
For the madrassa graduates jihad is a way to heaven, for the romairs it is ahuman rights pay back, for the fezoks it is a greta military strategy, but under lying all of this is kill the kafirs.
Here in is the greatness of the founder of pakistan, he moulded the idea of jihad into a political weapon, called TNT. Now what ones sees in pakistan with the mergence of MMA is the final political convergence of religion and politics in the killing field os jihad.

URDU and pakistan,

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.

Pak culture.

There is growing evidence that pakistan is developing a culture distinct from the indian, and this letter in dawn gives clues to the evolving trend.



Pakistan`s wrong priorities



When India was building Silicon City, we were building Surrey Mansion and Raiwind Palace. When India was bringing its prime minister, Narasimha Rao, to the Supreme Court for trial, we were attacking our Supreme Court with the blessing of our prime minister.

When India was increasing its foreign exchange reserves through increased export, we were clamping our export by freezing all foreign currency accounts/reserves.

When India was privatizing and purchasing satellite TV channels for making inroad in the international media, we were eulogizing our prime ministers on our TV channels for their ``wonderful deeds``.

When India was building hydel-dams for cheap electricity for its people, we were selling our people to the IPPs for the most expensive electricity and consequent destruction of our industry.

And most recently, now that India is refurbishing its military arsenals with surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles, we are refurbishing our fleet of luxury cars for our prime minister secretariat.

I. A. RASOOL

Islamabad

ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTIONS OF PAKISTAN.

In all of the talks about pakistan what is often forgotten is the contribution of pakistan to the global economic growth.
If it were not for the pak created taliban, the 9/11 would not have happened. This has created the legal requirement to install hardened doors on aircraft along with surveilannce equipement. Nex year it is likely to become a global requirement, mandated by ICAO. Nearly 30 million dollars woth of doors is no small fry. The people for surveilance at the airports have gone, a lot more scanning equipmnets have been installed, in many countries where baggage scanning is not common for domeestic passengers have introduced. Employements in airports have gone up along with better background checks for employees. In uSA alone the contributioj of 9/11 to economic growth is wstimated at 20 billion dollars. Follow on effects around the globe is yet to be estimated.

I am waiting for romair to take credit for this in the name of the military general, who els, Zia.

hamidm2 #99 and i am a dead syed. i speak from beyond the grave. a dead syed being superior to a living one, i provide better quality prayers and therefore charge double...10 dollars per prayer...And dont listen to that fake Honorable Syed...his prayers are not worth anything...

naqshbandi #101 I appreciate your taking the time to explain what you mean. Seriously. But then, ``respect`` is a very broad term. There are different kinds of respect, for example:
Respect for teachers: No question.

Respect for thinkers, scientists, workers: Again, no question.

Respect for joe schmoe: I assume a well educated, middle class person surely deserves respect as well. If mister or miss schmoe is a man or woman of sound principles and strong character, that makes it all the more easy to respect him or her.

Respect for allah ditta chaprasi: Surely there is no individual who is too poor or too illiterate, or too powerless to be beneath respect. Allah Ditta chaprasi is also Allah Ditta the father, the husband, the son. Allah Ditta may be uneducated, but his brain is designed no differently than that of the brain of nobel prize winners.

Respect for all life: Surely even for the ``lowly`` mouse or dog or the chimp or even a virus are all marvellous creations of God, possessing incredible complexity in their make up. Surely, it is living things that make our planet worth living.

Respect for creation: One need not be a scientist to be in awe of the incredible vastness of the universe, the incredible strangeness of quarks and bosons and other denizens of the subatomic world. And this is just in our dimensions, where scientists are beginning to posit the first few moments after the creation of this universe as having as many as 9 dimensions.

Where exactly does your concept of ``respect`` fit within this ``respect framework``?