This Beloved Arab Colony

``The myth of our military establishment in the 1990s was that Afghanistan provided ``strategic depth`` for the ultimate defence of Pakistan. The enactment of the myth led to our coopting the Taliban as our closest allies: a bunch of illiterate fanatics without any scruples. The ``strategic depth`` theory implied that if India were to overrun Pakistan, the Pakistan armed forces would retreat to the rugged hills and warrens of Afghanistan to fight a rearguard action to reclaim the motherland. It was never clear to anyone how the Pakistan armed forces, sans the navy for obvious reasons, could save Pakistan from remote Afghanistan if it could not save it from its own soil.

But such is the power of the myth that ``strategic depth`` theory was at one time part of our military doctrine. Contemporaneous to this was another shallow notion, which probably still claims adherents today. That a low-level, cost-effective Jihadi infiltration would ``bleed`` India by pinning down a huge Indian force in Kashmir. The number of Jihadis - both Kashmiri and Pakistani - has never been more than a few thousands. To combat them India was required to keep an army in Kashmir of over half a million men. But the hard facts are that between 1990 and 2000 it was not India that bled but Pakistan that haemorrhaged. See the chart below (Source: World Bank). No further comment is necessary:-``

Above is from dawn of today, an article by a hindu in pakistan. I look forward to the day when a muslim can write that on chowk, let alone dawn.

I would love to have Pakis comment on this (erm Pakis who talk of Amnesty International and its reports on Kashmir)

Amnesty slams Pak claim of curbing militancy

June 22, 2003 18:26 IST


Raising a serious question mark on Islamabad`s claim of having curbed militancy, Amnesty International has ridiculed the Pakistani crackdown on militant outfits.

In its report for 2003, the London-based Human Rights group, commented: ``In January, four religious groups were banned and thousands of Islamists were arrested and held under administrative detention. They were released within days or weeks.``

As compared to this, the Amnesty said, several people had been detained and handed over to the United States without proper verification.

The human rights group also flayed the running of affairs in North West Frontier Province by the Muthahida Majlis-e-Amal saying its decision to end coeducation was seen as a setback by several women groups.

Seeking reactions from various people to the report, Pakistani weekly The Friday Times quoted an anonymous Pakistani official as saying, ``We have an inherent habit of rejecting everything that we don`t agree with.``

Commenting on the report, chairman of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan Afrasiab Khattak said, ``Every government in Pakistan regularly contradicts Amnesty`s finding whenever it releases its report. The HRCP also receives the same treatment. The government has no patience to listen to the truth.``

Re: Jay, #145

Jay, when was the last time you read an article in a prestigious Indian newspaper where a Muslim lashes out at Indian policy towards Pakistan as you did in Dawn? The fact that your quote came from Dawn, what does that tell you about Pakistan?

Re: SR, Sameer, & Urstruly

Setting your mathematical prowess aside, why is it important to figure out how many ``Syeds`` are there? Other than the King of Jordan, no one, including Arabs let alone South Asians, can prove if he`s a Syed. And isn`t labelling ``Syed`` a form of caste system? I was told I`m a ``Syed`` from both sides of my family. I never believed it, and in protest dropped it ``officially`` from my name when I became American citizen. Needless to say, my father did not talk to me for months he was so angry.

jay#145
You made the mistake almost every Pakistani makes. Despite his hindu-sounding name, Bhandara is no Hindu. Of all the people, you ought to know that no Hindu would have the guts to offer such heresies in Pakistan. Bhandara, the owner of the famous Murree breweries, is a Parsee. Under the Pakistani separate electoral system, he represented Buddhist-Sikh-Parsi community in the parliament (as he once humourously remarked, he represents buddhists although he does not know of any buddhist in Pakistan!). I believe he is also the brother of the famous Pakistani writer, Bapsi Sidhwa.
While I have never seen a Pakistani Hindu writer in Dawn, from his writing, I think that there was an occasional columnist in Dawn who was perhaps a Hindu. If so, he never had the guts to write under his own name and simply used the name MAW for his column.

Yesudas bags Shashwatheekananda Award 2:15 pm IST
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Singer Yesudas bagged the first Swami Shashwatheekananda Award instituted by the Sree Narayana Dharma Sanghom Trust. The award comprises a cash prize of Rs 50,0000 and a citation. The award would be presented to him by the trust president Swaroopananda at a function in Sivagiri. Yesudas was chosen for the award taking into consideration his role in propagating communal harmony in the state.


A hindu religious award goes to a christian in kerala. Has any pakistani heard of one Abdus Salam.

SameerJB your post #141 was excellent. Mr Romair I have news for you. You are not a Muslim. You are suggesting that Muslims should win favor with the world by selling Mohommad as just a regular fellow with bright ideas! Forget about Science. Tell me do you know the first Kalimah? & please lets cut the crap about how you balance science and Islam in your life! I can bet every penny that your life revolves around western institutions. Your education, your world view, your clothes, your reasoning I can bet are gifts of the West. Having a Milad and eating halva does not make you a Muslim. Instead of coming clean and admiting that you have left Islam, you and the likes of Haroon Moghul want to play games in the form of long essays that dont mean shit.

re: minhaj #150

...old romair`s obfuscation is nothing new...

Every muslim and non-Muslim should read a book ``Why I am not a Muslim`` by Ibn Warriq.

I am also a Syed

godot:
You are a rebel like myself. Good that you did what you thought was right thing to do. Having said that, I am really not a person having surname Syed. Afterall name is given by the parent and not selected by the newborn. Thing that bothers me is playing it to advantage for scientifcally bogus and socially cheap reasons. People to this day in Sindh and southern Panjab bow go to sajda or touch feet of Syeds in market places, railway stations, dargahs, mosques for no reason except the surname. Not only Syeds but the largest single tribal group of Pakistan, Jats, are also starting to create a distinct lineage of a scythian migrants and golden history, though more so among Sikh Jats. Rajputs already have one similar thing going for quite sometime although not much publicity in movies and songs as the case is for Jats.

Urstruly:
You are way underestimating the number of Syeds in Pakistan and India. Pakistan is 15-20 percent shia and among them Syeds are lot more. Surnames like Abidi, Rizvi, Kazmi, Naqvi, Zaidi are all Syeds through one of the 12 shia imams called asna ashra. Similarly Shah are also syeds though many do not use word Syed as first name. In Pakistan national assemblies of last few elections, Syed group is always as strong as Jat group because Syeds come from Sindh and NWFP too while Jats comes mostly from central Panjab. Take a look at any roater and count Shah last names. My estimate is at least 5 times yours, i.e., 5 millions, with possibly one million among Urdu speaking population of 15-20 millions. Outside subcontinent, their numbers are much smaller than your estimate. That is one of the interesting aspect of Syed demography. What they found in India? Then you look at the Agha Khan family. They are probably the true Syeds too, descending from on if the Shia Imam`s about 10th generation down from Muhammad) eldest son who was denied imamat by his father. So Agha Khan family is roughly 60th pure generation with a very small number of people related to Prince Karim Agha Khan directly. Same is the story about Druze of Lebanon who also descended from a son of a Shia imam who felt unfairly denied imamat. It is a very tiny sect localized in Bekka valley with not everybody related. Somehow most sunnis and 12 imami shia Syed found India very good and splinter groups didn`t although Agha Khanis were the earliest missioneries to come to most of the area of Pakistan except parts of Sindh. Every leaf you turn and it looks more absurd to reproduce millions from one known person in 70 generations, though possibility backed to 100,000 years is lot more because of very small population.

[20 million Jews were exterminated in the last century alone] is news to me?

Minhaj:
Perhaps you are not a long time or avid follower of this type of discussion. Otherwise, you would have been used to it by now about individual level twists to read holy scriptures whatever your heart desires at any given moment and place, at chowk, basically suggesting that more than a billion of them are misreading it. Like it or not, Taliban model was as close to Islamic as possible based on sharia, hadith and fiqah together with quran. Anytime you notice disproportionately large number of terms like, in essence, actually, truly, meant to be, originally, etc ........know what to do. Regards,

=== Interact Filtered ===
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Sameer:
Look there is no doubt that there are quite a few syeds sho are fake, but it`s a logical fallacy to claim that if few are fake then by default all are fake.
Your argument that the other Syeds found in other parts of the Muslim world are much fewer than in Indo-Pak, can also be rationally explained. If you study population growth, then you will realize that change of geagraphy plays an extremely important part in population growth due to the different limiting factors. Hence it would be incorrect to compare the situation of Syeds in other parts of the world with the Syeds of South Asia.
The situation with the agakhanis and the druze is very different and an incorrect analogy, because agakhanis and druze were isolated from the mainstream Muslims due to their beliefs, hence they could only marry amongst themselves, and were not allowed into most Muslim countries. This makes a big difference, because Syeds in South Asia had better resources and readily intermarried (ofcourse with the upper caste converts or the foreign origin Muslims). Even in the arab world Syeds were not allowed to marry outside, for example until 1940`s in Egypt it was lawfully illegal for a Syed to marry outside, this holds true in most other Arab countries too.

Msouza:
You are a kafir, and please don`t disrespect the progeny of our rasool e kareem Muhammad saws.

Minhaj #150: ``Mr Romair I have news for you. You are not a Muslim. You are suggesting that Muslims should win favor with the world by selling Mohommad as just a regular fellow with bright ideas! Forget about Science. Tell me do you know the first Kalimah?``

This is quite amazing.

As I pointed out earlier, there are two groups that will always reject any sensible discussion on Islam. These are the two groups at the extremes, i.e. the religious extreme and the secular extreme. The Fazl-ur-Rahmans and the Salman Rushdie`s of the world, if you may. One can see them on this site also. They will themselves always discuss religion, one claiming ownership of it, and the other ridiculing it. Both have a vested interest in Islam, since it gives them power. One gets power by enforcing it, they other gets power by denouncing it as an, ``insider.`` I doubt Fazl or Salman would be as powerful and as financially well-off had it not been for Islam. Both are heroes of their own respective groups.

Interestingly, both these groups are obsessed with Islam. Even on this site, post after post, will be on Islam, trying to tear each other down, and making fun of each other. Anyone initiating a rational discussion on religion, will be declared non-Muslim by one group and incoherent by the other. Yet, my experience has been that when one gets into a logical debate about Islam with these two groups, they have very little to support their stances.

Unfortunately, the debate on Islam has been hijacked by these two groups. Neither realizing that as a whole, the Muslim world (at least the world I know of in Pakistan) has rejected both of them. The Fazls have made a comeback now, but that is due more to the US military actions in other countries.

The moment I make any comment on Islam, the representatives of these groups come out of the woodworks, simultaneously, trying to denounce it. They will not debate it. They will just denounce it. Interestingly, both these group hate each other. Yet they are equally critical of anyone who agrees with neither one of them.

So I would like to advise you that instead of declaring people, ``non-Muslims,`` you indulge in a factual debate with them.

As for, ``selling`` Muhammad as anything, I don`t think that is necessary. He is not for sale, as far as I know. All I stated was that if you want to explain the teachings of Islam, the actions taken by the Prophet, and his successess and failiures to a person who is a non-Muslim or an athiest, repeatedly, stating that Muhammad was successfull because he was a Prophet of God, isn`t going to be very appealing.

Infact, the above is one of the biggest tragedies of Muslims who study the Prophet and his companions, in my opinion. They have turned him and his colleagues into some sort of mythical fairy tale figures, with supernatural powers. This leads to a point of view, that states as long as one reads the Quran and prays, all social problems will somehow or the other be solved. Because, that is how the successes were achieved by the Prophet and his companions. When, in actuality, the emergence of Islam itself, was to practically, not through supernatural powers, solve social problems.

To analyze the above, one has to view Muhammad as a normal human being (which he himself claimed to be). After that, one can, like us Muslims, believe he received his instructions straight from God. Or one can as many secularists do, state that he was an extremely sensitive and intelligent man, who felt the extreme pain of others. And came up with his direcition on his own. What difference does it make, how one views it? I as a Muslim believe he received them from God. An athiest would think he came up with them himself. The end result should be to follow the teachings, if they appeal to you.

Unfortunately, Islam will remain caught in the hands of those who want to force their own ideas down everyone`s throat, and those who want everyone to think, ``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.``

To narrow down something like the Quran to mere ababeels is quite unfair and very shortsighted. Anyone with any basic knowledge of Islam knows there is a lot more to the Quran than that. It is like a person who does not like the USA, stating, most people live in the USA because they like MTV. One can disagree with the Quran, but one cannot generalize its followers, just because one does not like Islam one`s self. I have never been able to figure out this train of thought. Just like the maulvi brigade goes out of its way to force everyone to love their verison of Islam. Similarly there is another brigade which wants to encourage others to reject Islam all together, just because they don`t like it.

There are a lot of people who have other reasons of reading the Quran. Who want to analyze it logically, and who only follow Islam, because it makes sense to them. One can call such people, non-Muslims as you have done, or one can just state that they do not exist or that the Quran itself has nothing to offer other than ababeels. However, that to me is a defeatist approach made by those who are completely convinced only they know the truth. Such people, in my book, are fanatics, and can never be convinced of anything except their own ideas. And it is always fanatics, both religious and secular ones, who make the most money of religion and are thus afraid of anyone presenting any third idea.

OK I think I got it figured.

Syeds to Muslims are like Brahmins to Hindus?

Romair

Generally, a good commentary, however your comment ``Unfortunately, there is now a parallel Islam in existence. It is based on literature that has been written by professional priests. and what follows it is grossly unjust and dishonest.

None of the four jurists of Sunni Fiqah i.e. Imam Malik, Hanifa, Shaf`i, and Hanbali and Imam Jafar Sadiq of Shia fiqah were professional priests. They were teachers. All of them suffered horrible fates at the hands of the Caliphs of their times because they plainly refused to compromise on juristic issues with the establishment and Caliphs. Imam abu Hanifa was flogged in public several times so viciously that his flesh would fall off his body. He raised his voice against Hajaj-the legendary cruelest person in Muslim history-right in his court. He probably died while incarcerated. All other Imams were also flogged and incarcerated but never compromised. The fiqah (law & jurisprudence) that these Imams have given us is the greatest gift and Muslims will always be indebted to them for etrenity. Please read a good book on the life and achievement of these jurists and then judge them.

SameerJB # 154

Okay, I admit that I dont get it. In the previous posts as a rebutal to my post On Syeds you and SR were arguing that there cannot be as many Syeds as they seem to be and now you are arguing vhemently that there are more Syeds than I estimate. Yaar siddha bande dey putar haar admit kar lay kay you hate Syeds; as a matter of fact you hate everything that is even remotely related to Muslims - aina yehn khaana paan di ki loR ay. You try to base your contentions on reason and logic and yet fail to - such is the power of prejudice.