Saddam Hussein Lives!

Though the statues of Saddam fell, there are still countless statues made of flesh and bone, thinking themselves high above all else, and for what reason but that their interpretation must be right.

Well said Mr. Moghul.

Agar che but hain jamat ki aasteenon main.....

Mr Haroon Moghul

You say:``Humans worship God because He is perfect and we are not: This is the essence of Islam, but it seems a lesson increasingly lost ... Though the statues of Saddam fell, there are still countless statues made of flesh and bone, thinking themselves high above all else ...``

What a delusioned baloney! A perfect god didn`t create imperfect humans, instead imperfect humans created a ``perfect`` god.
Monotheist want to and need to have an ``all powerful`` god to guide them. They want to delude themselves thinking if they hold hands with an all powerful god they shall emerge victorious. Islam simply has gone overboard with the monotheistic zeal. My god is stronger-bigger-etc-etc and hence I cannot fail.

To add to your folly, you insinuate that the defeat of Iraq (and hence muslims) was because they have ignored the non idol clause of god and have thought of themselves above the religion. Oh, we failed because we didn`t heed god`s message as spoken by his favorite messenger.

Want to win a 100 m race? Try practicing instead of only praying. As, they say god helps those who help themselves. Secondly, if you loose, please don`t say it was because we made `` ... countless statues made of flesh and bone, thinking themselves high above all else....``

Sorry but someone else practiced harder and was more talented.

Satire

Good article mate!
Saddam is/was bad! so is Bush! to me..
it seems the only one who looked willing to
fight was Saddams Statue in central Baghdad!
the damn thing came down after couple of hours...
the greatest threat to everyone are not religious fundos
but fundos in governmerts the one in US Govt., the one in
Isreali Govt., the one in Pakistani , Indians and every
Government.These are the legal terrorists! with high
contacts.The most rightist terrorism is State Terrorism..
it seems....i saw a vert intresting banner which was
as follows :
`how many lifes per gallon?`
love and peace ,
Ali Chishti

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........... if this was a tenth grade paper it would get a C minus .......... what the heck is mr moghul talking about ?......... as usual a confused islamist is trying to find excuses where none exist and desperately trying to find some goodness in an ideology that has few redeeming values ..............what i don`t understand is that if god is so dang perfect, why didn`t he create the perfect religion and document it so that no one could interpret it incorrectly ?......... or did mohammad and gabriel conspire to distort the message ?........ all this nonsense about a perfect god is pure kaka and, really, quite painful to read ..........

............. why are muslims so hung up on their religion? .......... other people have their silly superstitions too - but you don`t find the horrible hindoos dragging out their elephant nosed gods, or the christians trotting out the miracle baby, to explain their miserable condition ........... what makes the muslims so different?

Falling balls keeps on falling .untill it hits the ground...

So far the Muslim Ball is falling...and it will keep on falling ..untill it finds a grounds...then hits it..

Havn`t we Muslims started talking too much about Islam. And the endless debates on the intricacies of different interpretations. Maybe, the Pakistanis a bit more. Have the Mullas finally forced us on their turf? Our every discussion finally gravitates towards Islam.

You go to any other country, you never hear people discussing their religion - Christianity, Buddhism or even Hinduism. Religion is confined to the home or the worship place or to the self.

Haroon, it is not a reflection on your article. It was just a general observation. Chowk is an ideas place and it could be justified here.

The problem with countries who have a majority Muslim population (called them the Ummah, Islamic countries, or whatever else one may want to call them) is illiteracy. It`s not too much religion. Nor is it too little religion.

Muslims, as a whole, amongst major religions, are the most illiterate people in the world. I believe the literacy rate of Muslims is around 30%. While that of Hindus must be around 50%, Bhuddhists higher than that, Christians maybe even higher than the Bhuddhists, and Jews probably the highest.

Due to oil, the per capita income of Muslims does not map their illiteracy rate. They should be the economically poorest in the world. But as a whole, they are wealthier than Hindus, though not as wealthy as Christians, Buddhists and Jews.

Also, in term of geographical areas, nations etc., they have around 56 nations and thus own significantly more land than Hindus, Buddhists and Jews (this group due to various reasons, including racism against it, and its own historically short-sighted approach, hasn`t done too well in this dept).

In term of population, Muslims are way ahead of Buddhists and Jews (another dept. the Jews are struggling in big time). And are about in the same league, at 1.2 billion, as the Hindus and Christians.

Interestingly, in ratio to their population, literacy rate, geogrpahical area etc., Hindus enjoy the least influence and importance in the world, i.e. their influence is far less than their demographics would indicate. Perhaps because nearly all of them are concentrated in one country, i.e. India, and are thus limited by the low growth rates of that country. Jews, on the other hand, enjoy the by a huge margin, much larger influence than their geographical and populational size would indicate. Primarily because they are spread out all over the world and are successes in the areas to which they have spread, thereby having disproportionately high influences there.

Muslims, would come second from the bottom, on this list, above Hindus. Primarily due to oil. Otherwise, they would have been at the bottom.

So what is the solution: The solution is to first stop barking up the wrong tree. Religion is neither the solution nor the problem. Unfortunately, too many Muslims view it a solution and too many view it as a problem. It is not a coincidence that generally the poorer and/or the most illiterate Muslims cling to religion. The illiterate, because of their limited understanding of the world. And the poor, because they have to find justifications to the worldly hardships that have been forced upon them (everyone isn`t as financially or socially lucky as hamidm, and hence such people have no one else to turn to except God). Amongst the educated rich Muslims, there is only a tiny minority, that wears religion on its sleeve for reasons other than identity or politics.

The problem, as highlighted above is illiteracy. As these countries become more literate, their human resource base will grow, and they will become more sophisticated societies. And thus their populations will have more control over their own lives, thereby not needing to hand everything over to God.

However, the way to do so, is not by trying to forcefully remove religion from their personal and private lives. That should be left to the people themselves. The solution is to educate everyone. That is it. After that let the events take their course. Unfortunately, at least within Pakistan, which has historically been ruled by a secular minority feudal and Army class (Zia being the only exception), the, ``thinking minds`` of the westernized educated rich (evern those who don`t bother to live in Pakistan anymore), are too busy trying to formulate ways to shave the mullah`s beard. What they should understand is that if they weren`t rich or feudal or green card holders, they would themselves have grown beards, and would be using religion as a means to satisfy themselves and as a political path to take on the powerbrokers.

The historically secular and westernized rich ruling class of Pakistan (basically anyone with an Internet connection, including everyone on Chowk) needs to meet the poor bearded, peasant, and slowly-moving-more and more-towards-religion ruled class in the middle. Don`t try to take the Quran away from them. That is all they have, and that is all they can read, and they will fight you tooth and nail, if you try to do so. Get off your corrupt high-horse, and create a situation, where the poor are given other books, along with the Quran, so they can broaden their horizons and earn a decent living. After that, leave it to the poor to decide, how much reliigion they want or don`t want in their lives.

(Perhaps the hamidms and SameerJBs would use their energy more efficiently if, instead of trying to invent newer and improved razors for shaving the mullah`s beard, they went and opened a school in the mullah` neighborhood. Instead of making fun of the Quran and trying to rip it away from the hands of the little peasant kid, they gave him a whole set of other books, and then left it upto him to decide, which fascinated him more - but alas, I digress........for this is too much to ask........for, verbal rhetoric carries far more intenstity than practical actions)

I have lived in religious socieites, and secular societies. I consider myself quite religious, though I am a scientist and technologist by education and profession, respectively. I have never had any problem with my religion or my science. In fact I cannot imagine life without either.

Muslims need to sideline their extremist-maulvi leaders (the Ayatollahs) and their extremist-secular leaders (the Ata-turks). Both are unnecessarily obsessed with religion. They need to stop using secularism or Islamism as the main criteria for electing people and judging societies. Once that is done, only then can they concentrate on the real issues, like literacy, human rights, poverty etc.

As for me, I will vote for the person who can get Pakistan the quickest to a 6% economic growth rate, within a reasonable modicum of human rights. I could care less if that person was a maulvi, an ata-Turk or a General.

Haroon starts with:``In His Name.``
GNH:It is blasphemous to take His Name in vain. God could be male or female or neuter. Nobody knows. Haroon definitely does not have a scientific bend to discover for himself what God is like.

Seems that he is a student of History. 1967 war happened a long time ago. Half of the population of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan were not even born. That means 600 to 700 million people have no idea what Harroon is talking about. Let the liars, Historians and Politicinas eat from this ``DustBin of History``.

Haroon: ``But were the United States to leave today, Iraq would soon descend into a clash of clerics, Kurds and corporate interests, reducing a bruised country to a broken one.``

GNH:It is a great opportunity for INTELLIGENTIA of the Islamic world to get involved, make a democracy succeed where Shia, Sunni, Arabs and Kurds could live together in peace. This will encourage the rest of the Islamic World as a beacon.

Haroon: Traditional Islam and Wahhabism are both forms of frozen Islam.
Harroon: One of the things that most upsets me and worries me as a Muslim is that we have no – or very little -- great Islamic culture, unless one counts tiny efforts here and there.

GNH:There is nothing original in any culture. It is always a copy and modify operation. That is how in music we have Gharanas or traditions. No individual can start a culture. It is an organic process governing the needs of continuity of life at the root. All cultural roots satisfy two human needs - Hunger and Sex. To satisfy hunger we KILL other life forms. To get PLEASURE out of FOOD and SEX, we invented CULTURE. Culture whether it is Islamic, Hindu or Western all cater to human needs to apply hightening pleasure to our food and sex habits. That is why Saudi Princes and the other rich Arabs get away to the Night Clubs of Europe from the cesorship of the Mullahs.

Haroon: In other words, I am told that my capacity to differentiate between beautiful and ugly is deficient, if not entirely absent.

GNH:All Art, Literature, music are nothing but the learned habits of relishing Sexual enjoyments by humans. Cultural variations are made everyday, by combinations and permutations, just like the chef changes his spices to salivate us to new preparation of food. Hungry man does not care so much about spices. A rich man must tantalize before he enjoys his food and sex. That is all about culture - promoted by the Free Market Advertising geniuses in London, Paris and New York. Copy cats in Mumbai, Kolkata, Karachi feed on these variations. Culture could be similar to a computer program.

Harroon:Iran is the first Muslim clerical theocracy, the first instance in which the clergy have become a definite class with specific rights and privileges not accorded other, lesser mortals. All Muslims are equal, but some are more equal than others.

GNH:Corruption of the Clerics will create problems for the Iranis.

Harroon: But in their haste for purity, Wahhabis often abandon aesthetics, spirituality, culture and art, leaving a dry Islam that is often alienating, if not crushing and deadening. To this, traditional Islam could offer welcome balance, by emphasizing respect for the environment, spirituality, and the like, strengths of Islam marked by the civilization’s production of enduring artists such as Ghalib, Iqbal, Hafez and of course Rumi.

GNH:Poets have been paid/rewarded to create poetries towards POLITICAL AIMS, just as much Scientists have been paid/rewarded to produce ``Weapons of Mass Destruction``.

Harroon: The problem with Islam today is simple. Humans worship God because He is perfect and we are not: This is the essence of Islam, but it seems a lesson increasingly lost.

GNH: Not true. Everything is perfect per God`s plan for us and with utmost humility I say that my hunger for food and sex is just as perfect as:
The desire of a mullah trying to reach the vicinity of God or
A politician scheming to manipulate his friends and neighbors or
A businessman counting his profit or
A prostitute trying to satisfy her customer and earning a livelyhood.

Even my deadbody is perfect to get eventually mixed up with the soil and fertlize it to make the plants draw nourishment.

romair,

......... where the heck do you come up with these crazy theories !......... it is quite typical of simplistic semi-educated ex-faujis who were taught by the geniuses at kakul and risalpur to come up with stuff which has no foundation in fact or reason .............. air marshall sahib, for your information, education has very little to do with the state of the ummah, just as it had nothing to do with the miserable state of the soviet union .......

............ iran has over 94% literacy and is a brutal islamic theocracy .......... syria has over 94% literacy and is a brutal islamic dictatorship ...........and let`s not even talk of malayasia and indonesia where the muslims, inspite of having a privelaged status and a farily high literacy rate, lag far behind the chinese in economic development and civilized table manners .............. the fault, dear romair, is in islam itself - a retrograde, obscurantist and fundamentally flawed ideology that has doomed its ardent followers to a life of misery and incessant prayer......... of course, they will get their reward in heaven ..........

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I was thinking along the same lines like hamidm after reading the handful of pearls of wisdom from air marshall. He is good in reading data without analyzing the data. Why do Muslims have lower than average literacy levels when plotted against per capita income? Not only literacy level but the great disparity of literacy levels between both sexes is a direct result of Islamic culture. Even the tiny nursing profession in places like Pakistan is disproportionately non-Muslim. Most of the Muslims in Russia are literate but far behind their Russian, Jewish, Armenian and Georgian neighbors on social and economic ladders.

Everybody in world plays a role of his chosing or chance. Suggesting to anybody who speaks of reforms or disagrees with the existing norms to become a missionary for his/ her causes is oversimplisitic way to debate an issue. Anybody who opposes Islamic fundamentalism can not go back and actively participate in bringing about changes of his likings just as every Islamist or fundamentalist is not heading to Kashmir or Israel to blow himslef up to bring about change of his liking.

Similarly reading the total number of Buddhists from national almanac is one thing and knowing the number of Buddhists in the world is another. The number of Buddhists can never be determined with precision because it does not ask to be exclusive as well as many of the main concepts of Buddhism have been adopted by most Chinese and other east asians without necessarily calling themselves Buddhists. The number of people who partially follow Buddhism teachings outnumber Muslims actually.

Perhaps the story behind the story or rational/ scientific analysis of data is too much or too difficult for military genius of chowk. This reminds me of a post by Saminshah few days ago making a point of Michael Moore`s book, ``The Stupid White Man`` being on the New York Times bestseller list. The story behind the story or reason for this book as well as ``Savidge Nation`` and Queen Noor`s autobiography on the top of bestseller list is dumping them at 25 percent of the retail price to major departmental stores like Sam`s club and Wal-Mart Stores. Thes books are selling for 10-12 dollar a copy, a 40-50 percent off the suggested retail price and that is how more such books are sold and lead on the Ny bestseller books.

Same is the strategy behind Islamism, madrassah culture and other Islamic things. They are made cheap for people to take a bite thinking it a great deal. Before Islam, people in our part of the world were not sitting on a rudderless ship. If the dearest holding of the poor could be replaced once, it can be replaced twice, thrice,.................They are holding on to quran because the whole society is working to make them hold on to quran and forget about everything else.

Just reproducing data without understanding the detailed analysis is not difficult.

hamidm #5 [``...what i don`t understand is that if god is so dang perfect, why didn`t he ... document it so that no one could interpret it incorrectly ?......... or did mohammad and gabriel conspire to distort the message ?........``]

You are mistaken, as usual, because Allah did create a perfect document.

The trouble is that there is only one original manuscript that is error-free (Quran-e-Haquiqui) and that manuscript is preserved in heaven (on some robust media that does not deteriorate over the aeons).

The so-called copies of the Quran that have reached us are all flawed, thus the imperfections is not in the (original) Quran, but only in all its reproductions that we have here on earth. It is okay to refute the gibberish that has been inserted into the copies we have access to in this world, but you cannot deny the irrefutable and absolute truth of the Quran`s original manuscript that is preserved in heaven.

First, Gibrael had to memorize it and come down, traveling great inter-gallactic distances to narrate it to the prophet. Then the prophet repeated it to the followers who in turn memorized it. Then those followers, or the ones remaining, were all gathered together during the reign of Usman and their records were compiled in one consolidated volume. And since Usman was too old himself he gave this vital task to that wicked weisel, Mirwan. And Mirwan, of course, was upto no good so he let his goat loose on those portions of the scattered notes (written on leaves) that he did not like and thus ten of the forty siparahs were lost because the goat ate them. Only thirty survived. Go ask any Ayatullah in Qum and he will testify to the varacity of this tragedy. And there is no telling what else Mirwan added in there. The notes taken during the period when Ali was the prophet`s personal secretary and scribe were in serious jepordy, as Mirwan was Muawia`s cousin. On the other hand notes taken down during the period while Muawia was the personal secretary and scribe (after Ali was replaced post conquest of Mecca) may have been added to and embellished.

Allah`s unlimited warranty of preserving the Quran, unfortunately, applies only to the original manuscript, that`s the reason he would not let it out of heaven.

So don`t go making irresponsuble statements about Allah or the Prophet because we did not getting the authenticated copy of the perfect original maniuscript.

...SR

SR

.......... oh, my god !.............. you mean to say that if hadn`t been for a goat we wouldn`t have had to wait for newton and einstein to discover calculus and relativity ............ and if hadn`t been for that khabees, mirwan, the ummah would have been able to sove the problem of child-brides and riba-free banking years ago ..........i wish we had access to the real thing ........

.........but haquiqi or not, good muslims are still discovering the mysteries of the koran ...... the other day, a good friend of mine with a phd in physics from a prestigious east coast university, was going on and on about how, during tafseer class, he had discovered that the koran talked about the core of the earth being made of fire and molten iron ......... i suggested to him that some bedouin might have seen a vocanic eruption, but he was adamant that this proved that the koran held the secrets to all knowledge ........ then he went on to tell us about how in another tafseer class he had found out that man was afterall made out of a ``clot of blood`` - voila! ............ i looked at him in amazement - if it hadn`t been for the dang goat, this man could have saved himself the trouble of getting a phd .................

sr #13 you write ``The trouble is that there is only one original manuscript that is error-free (Quran-e-Haquiqui) and that manuscript is preserved in heaven (on some robust media that does not deteriorate over the aeons). ``
What were you smoking when you came up with this fantasy?

Or, more accurately, what was the man who first came up with this fantasy smoking when he came up with this. (You of course are merely parroting what you heard or read from some mullah, who in turn heard or read it from some other mullah).

You certainly did not get it from the Quran, which by definition is the only source of religious inspiration for a muslim.

SR:
What a tragedy! A god known for virgin birth, resurrection from death, parting red sea, killing the firstborns and turning rods into snakes could not control the mind of a goat from eating up his best words for mankind for millenia to come. What a limitation of powers in the absence of human mind? Obviously, if a goat can not be controlled, controlling weather, floods, earthquakes, and universe as a whole is baloney. The key to understanding the concept of allah is within quran as ``lam ya lid wa lum you lud`` meaning he is independent of creative process infering that he does not really exist for all practical purposes.

god = f(human mind)