To Kill the Mockingbird
Zafar Anjum August 5, 2003
#128 Posted by MantoLives on February 6, 2006 8:36:55 am
For an Indian with little or no sense of American history and cultural heritage, it is often very easy to confuse the Ivy League as a formal sports conference with its history and indeed the original sports league - the first college football game was between Princeton and Rutgers (Ivy till formal organization of the sports body in 1954) ...
In any event those who wish to read more about the originb
http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0101_Christians_Started_I.html
How Christians Started the Ivy League
..Columbia, William and Mary, Rutgers, Brown & UPenn
The first president of New York`s Columbia University, first known as ``King`s College,`` at one time served as a missionary to America under the English-based ``Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.`` The Church of England established the College of William and Mary, near today`s colonial Williamsburg. Dutch Reformed revivalists founded Queen`s College (later Rutgers University) in New Jersey. Brown University originated with the Baptist churches scattered on the Atlantic seaboard. With the exception of the University of Pennsylvania, every collegiate institution founded in the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War was established by some branch of the Christian Church.
Even at UPenn, however, an evangelist played a prominent part. When Philadelphia churches denied revivalist George Whitefield access to their pulpits, forcing him to preach in the open, some of Whitefield`s admirers, among them Benjamin Franklin, decided to erect a building to accommodate the great crowds that wanted to hear him. The structure they built became the first building of what is now the University of Pennsylvania, and a statue of Whitefield stands prominently on that campus today.
Though the Ivy League schools eventually turned secular, they fed into the mainstream of society in those earlier days a great army of graduates who could claim Jesus Christ as personal Savior and Lord, and who left a strong impact on our nation. Their presidents and their faculties helped to set a high spiritual tone, and at times their campuses in turn felt the impact of revival. The educators of early America understood that the moral climate of its schools, colleges and universities would shape its future generations, and could ultimately decide the course of the nation.
Reprinted from The Rebirth of America, published by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation.
..
From wikipedia...
The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Boat clubs from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, in 1852. As an informal football league, the Ivy League dates from 1900 when Yale took the conference championship with a 5-0 record. For many years Army (the United States Military Academy), Navy (the United States Naval Academy), and to a lesser extent Rutgers were considered members, but dropped out shortly before formal organization. For instance, Army traditionally had a rivalry with Yale, which some assert is set to resume in the next few years, and Rutgers had rivalries with Princeton and Columbia, which continue today in sports other than football
In any event those who wish to read more about the originb
http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0101_Christians_Started_I.html
How Christians Started the Ivy League
..Columbia, William and Mary, Rutgers, Brown & UPenn
The first president of New York`s Columbia University, first known as ``King`s College,`` at one time served as a missionary to America under the English-based ``Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.`` The Church of England established the College of William and Mary, near today`s colonial Williamsburg. Dutch Reformed revivalists founded Queen`s College (later Rutgers University) in New Jersey. Brown University originated with the Baptist churches scattered on the Atlantic seaboard. With the exception of the University of Pennsylvania, every collegiate institution founded in the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War was established by some branch of the Christian Church.
Even at UPenn, however, an evangelist played a prominent part. When Philadelphia churches denied revivalist George Whitefield access to their pulpits, forcing him to preach in the open, some of Whitefield`s admirers, among them Benjamin Franklin, decided to erect a building to accommodate the great crowds that wanted to hear him. The structure they built became the first building of what is now the University of Pennsylvania, and a statue of Whitefield stands prominently on that campus today.
Though the Ivy League schools eventually turned secular, they fed into the mainstream of society in those earlier days a great army of graduates who could claim Jesus Christ as personal Savior and Lord, and who left a strong impact on our nation. Their presidents and their faculties helped to set a high spiritual tone, and at times their campuses in turn felt the impact of revival. The educators of early America understood that the moral climate of its schools, colleges and universities would shape its future generations, and could ultimately decide the course of the nation.
Reprinted from The Rebirth of America, published by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation.
..
From wikipedia...
The Ivies have been competing in sports as long as intercollegiate sports have existed in the United States. Boat clubs from Harvard and Yale met in the first sporting event held between students of two U.S. colleges on Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, in 1852. As an informal football league, the Ivy League dates from 1900 when Yale took the conference championship with a 5-0 record. For many years Army (the United States Military Academy), Navy (the United States Naval Academy), and to a lesser extent Rutgers were considered members, but dropped out shortly before formal organization. For instance, Army traditionally had a rivalry with Yale, which some assert is set to resume in the next few years, and Rutgers had rivalries with Princeton and Columbia, which continue today in sports other than football
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#127 Posted by rsridhar on August 9, 2003 9:16:20 pm
re:#126 by Maharana
An interesting post. The definition that Faruk gave of Hinduism can be applied to Spirituality itself.
As you rightly said, Hinduism is a broad spectrum from Tribal religion (with assorted Gods, animal sacrifices etc) to the highest form espoused in Advaita.
Advaita, as taught by Adi Sankara (and brought to light in this century by Ramana Maharishi) i believe is the pinnacle of Hindu spiritual thought. Advaita basically says that we are inseperable from God. It does not view God as seperate from humans. The jivatman (or soul inside human body) is thought of as an extension of the Paramatman. So, really speaking, we are all divine beings but are not aware because of our Ego, and the fact that we have lost touch with out inner divinity. This is symbolically described in Bible as Fall of Man (a Symbolism lost on the Christian world that has taken it to mean literally).
All the yogic sadhanas that we hear about (the Japas, various kinds of meditations etc) are attempts to establish contact with our ``inner divinity``.
Guatama became a ``buddha`` (or enlightened) when he established that contact. He was trying to wean the population of the time away from tiresome Vedic Rituals and practice of extreme self-deprivation that had come to take hold during that time. He taught a middle path. He did not speak about God directly. This fact has given rise to a lot of confusion. In a famous dialogue with one of his disciples, who asked him if God existed, he says ``Did i say that?``. The disciple, excitedly asks him ``you mean God does not exist?``, Buddha replies ``Did i say that ?``. This is a famous dialogue that has been interpreted in many ways by Buddhists and others. Buddhism became a Atheistic religion but Buddha never denied God! The reality was that, by establishing that contact with his Inner Self, he became one with God. He could say he was God himself but how was he to explain this to the novices who were just at the beginning of spiritual journey. Jesus Christ, because he was one with God, could claim he was Son of God and at other times, God himself, just like a wave in an ocean can say it is seperate from Ocean as well as a part of it.
In Advaita, i see Hinduism getting away from ritualistic process that has come to dominate it and go to the very essence of divinity. Advaita is not Hindu religion. It is the Truth.
Sridhar
An interesting post. The definition that Faruk gave of Hinduism can be applied to Spirituality itself.
As you rightly said, Hinduism is a broad spectrum from Tribal religion (with assorted Gods, animal sacrifices etc) to the highest form espoused in Advaita.
Advaita, as taught by Adi Sankara (and brought to light in this century by Ramana Maharishi) i believe is the pinnacle of Hindu spiritual thought. Advaita basically says that we are inseperable from God. It does not view God as seperate from humans. The jivatman (or soul inside human body) is thought of as an extension of the Paramatman. So, really speaking, we are all divine beings but are not aware because of our Ego, and the fact that we have lost touch with out inner divinity. This is symbolically described in Bible as Fall of Man (a Symbolism lost on the Christian world that has taken it to mean literally).
All the yogic sadhanas that we hear about (the Japas, various kinds of meditations etc) are attempts to establish contact with our ``inner divinity``.
Guatama became a ``buddha`` (or enlightened) when he established that contact. He was trying to wean the population of the time away from tiresome Vedic Rituals and practice of extreme self-deprivation that had come to take hold during that time. He taught a middle path. He did not speak about God directly. This fact has given rise to a lot of confusion. In a famous dialogue with one of his disciples, who asked him if God existed, he says ``Did i say that?``. The disciple, excitedly asks him ``you mean God does not exist?``, Buddha replies ``Did i say that ?``. This is a famous dialogue that has been interpreted in many ways by Buddhists and others. Buddhism became a Atheistic religion but Buddha never denied God! The reality was that, by establishing that contact with his Inner Self, he became one with God. He could say he was God himself but how was he to explain this to the novices who were just at the beginning of spiritual journey. Jesus Christ, because he was one with God, could claim he was Son of God and at other times, God himself, just like a wave in an ocean can say it is seperate from Ocean as well as a part of it.
In Advaita, i see Hinduism getting away from ritualistic process that has come to dominate it and go to the very essence of divinity. Advaita is not Hindu religion. It is the Truth.
Sridhar
#126 Posted by Maharana on August 9, 2003 1:46:51 pm
Faruk # 125,
It would be difficult for anyone to pinpoint any specifics about the objective of Hinduism. You can merely consider it as intellectual, moral and spiritual freedom to profess one`s desire for union with truth at best. At worst, you can consider it a collection of common people`s way of worshipping the divine in any way they want to. These may include animal sacricfice at one end of the spectrum to appease god, and a strict enquiry into self knowledge by intellectual means at the other extreme.
My ``best`` and ``worst`` are themselves subjective and you`ll find no labelling of any method being good or bad espoused anywhere in this culture. From what little i know, i may dare to summarize it as ``an enquiry of truth``. If it leads you to believe in the non-existence of god, so be it. The vice versa is true as well.
As an extension to this culture you`ll find buddhism going a step further and declaring the uselessness of finding God. Gautam Buddha was more interested in finding a way to end all human miseries in a permanent way. Hence his eightfold path to nirvana ( or freedom from earthly bondage). You`ll find the same concept in Upanishads and Bhagvad geeta, though worded differently. Instead of Nirvana you have ``Mukti``.
In the olden times at least ,our culture can be considered to be devoid of religion. Mind you, the translation of the word ``Religion`` to ``Dharma`` is a modern one. Dharma only meant social duties in earlier days. However, constant inter-mingling with the victorious muslim invaders put them in a defensive position. The muslims and christians found no sign of a god sent message of common code/ laws existing in the sub-continent. It must have been a strange situation for all communities. One falling under the camp of ``everything is known and revealed to us``, the other being `` to know it, you must seek it yourself``. IMO this intermingling of faiths produced a long and arduous journey of the locals to define themselves as well with a ``religion``. Unfortuantely, as i see it, organizing spiritual quest leads to RSS, VHP and related fools. As you yourslef well know even a fool can tell you there is nothing spiritual about them. Merely an attempt to form a cohesive and exclusionary religion.
I`ve rambled on enough. So, i`ll sign off now...
Adios
It would be difficult for anyone to pinpoint any specifics about the objective of Hinduism. You can merely consider it as intellectual, moral and spiritual freedom to profess one`s desire for union with truth at best. At worst, you can consider it a collection of common people`s way of worshipping the divine in any way they want to. These may include animal sacricfice at one end of the spectrum to appease god, and a strict enquiry into self knowledge by intellectual means at the other extreme.
My ``best`` and ``worst`` are themselves subjective and you`ll find no labelling of any method being good or bad espoused anywhere in this culture. From what little i know, i may dare to summarize it as ``an enquiry of truth``. If it leads you to believe in the non-existence of god, so be it. The vice versa is true as well.
As an extension to this culture you`ll find buddhism going a step further and declaring the uselessness of finding God. Gautam Buddha was more interested in finding a way to end all human miseries in a permanent way. Hence his eightfold path to nirvana ( or freedom from earthly bondage). You`ll find the same concept in Upanishads and Bhagvad geeta, though worded differently. Instead of Nirvana you have ``Mukti``.
In the olden times at least ,our culture can be considered to be devoid of religion. Mind you, the translation of the word ``Religion`` to ``Dharma`` is a modern one. Dharma only meant social duties in earlier days. However, constant inter-mingling with the victorious muslim invaders put them in a defensive position. The muslims and christians found no sign of a god sent message of common code/ laws existing in the sub-continent. It must have been a strange situation for all communities. One falling under the camp of ``everything is known and revealed to us``, the other being `` to know it, you must seek it yourself``. IMO this intermingling of faiths produced a long and arduous journey of the locals to define themselves as well with a ``religion``. Unfortuantely, as i see it, organizing spiritual quest leads to RSS, VHP and related fools. As you yourslef well know even a fool can tell you there is nothing spiritual about them. Merely an attempt to form a cohesive and exclusionary religion.
I`ve rambled on enough. So, i`ll sign off now...
Adios
#125 Posted by Faruk on August 8, 2003 7:10:42 am
Re : Ferozk #120
Here is a description of Hinduism that I heard from Nafisa Ali some 9 years ago and it has stayed with me. “Hinduism is the search of your god. You are free to define your god and your search. “ She elaborated that you could you could find god in nature, a sprit, a divine being, a force or something else that appeals to you or you might just find the search more spiritually satisfying.
Ajeet, Maharana any comments ?
Regards,
Faruk
Here is a description of Hinduism that I heard from Nafisa Ali some 9 years ago and it has stayed with me. “Hinduism is the search of your god. You are free to define your god and your search. “ She elaborated that you could you could find god in nature, a sprit, a divine being, a force or something else that appeals to you or you might just find the search more spiritually satisfying.
Ajeet, Maharana any comments ?
Regards,
Faruk
#124 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 6, 2003 5:37:30 pm
Jay117
A praise for India should not be construed as an automatic indicment of Pakistan. Your greatness lies in your pathological concern for the well-being of Pakistan. My only worry is that you may not lose your health over it. Life is sacred--even yours.
Kerala is great. All of south India is great. Historians have written extensively of its virtues.
Contrasting it with Pakistan only ruins your case.
My knowledge is pathetic on many other subjects too--e.g; your pathological condition.
A praise for India should not be construed as an automatic indicment of Pakistan. Your greatness lies in your pathological concern for the well-being of Pakistan. My only worry is that you may not lose your health over it. Life is sacred--even yours.
Kerala is great. All of south India is great. Historians have written extensively of its virtues.
Contrasting it with Pakistan only ruins your case.
My knowledge is pathetic on many other subjects too--e.g; your pathological condition.
#123 Posted by Ajeet on August 6, 2003 5:37:29 pm
Ferozk, # 120
`Hinduism considers itself to be a monothestic religion because it believes in the oneness of the universe and considers all its gods to be the creation of the same universe. `
The quote that you have cited has a problem. The writer in effort to compare the world religions, has tried to compartmentalise Hinduism. You can`t compare Hinduism with any other religion, because it does not have any standard religious dogma. It is a amalgamation of hundreds of different religious philosophies often contradictory to each other. So one can read what ever one wants in this religion. Whether you are an arya smaji or jain or sanatni or many other things you are still a hindu. It would have amalgamated Islam too if Islam did not have the exclusive clauze.
So yes Hinduism can be a monothestic religion while being serving 33,00,00,000 different Gods.
`Hinduism considers itself to be a monothestic religion because it believes in the oneness of the universe and considers all its gods to be the creation of the same universe. `
The quote that you have cited has a problem. The writer in effort to compare the world religions, has tried to compartmentalise Hinduism. You can`t compare Hinduism with any other religion, because it does not have any standard religious dogma. It is a amalgamation of hundreds of different religious philosophies often contradictory to each other. So one can read what ever one wants in this religion. Whether you are an arya smaji or jain or sanatni or many other things you are still a hindu. It would have amalgamated Islam too if Islam did not have the exclusive clauze.
So yes Hinduism can be a monothestic religion while being serving 33,00,00,000 different Gods.
#122 Posted by pmishra2 on August 6, 2003 3:05:14 pm
Ferozk #120
[quote]
I came across this while reading about Hinduism, as a comparative religion, and would like any comments/feedback, which might explain this more. I am asking this, because it is a part of the history text, which I teach my students. The text book, which is an American text book for grade nine world history did not fully explain this statement. I am hoping that some can shed some more light on it, so I can explain this to my students.
[end-quote]
Feroz,
asian (e.g., taoism) and indic traditions are foundationally different from the abrahamanic religions. This is the first thing to understand. Terms like Monotheism and Polytheism arise primarily from the Abrahamanic tradition. If you look at hinduism, buddhism, jainism. sikhism etc. these terms are really not sensible. It is like trying to find where the lungs of a fish lie. These are completely different approaches to faith; indeed, I would prefer to call them faith traditions rather than religions.
Regrettably all of this has been muddled by contemporary usage. The other day I read some ignoramus refer to the Sikh ``prophets`` (i.e. Gurus). There is no such thing as a prophet in any indic tradition.
I realize this doesn`t help you much in a practical way. There are several good introductory texts now available that explain indic ways of seeing things. Diance Eck`s books on Religion are a good start (e.g. Darshan). There is also an australian hindu who has written good introductory texts that are sensitive to the native vocabulary of indic traditions. Regrettably his name escapes me at this time.
[quote]
I came across this while reading about Hinduism, as a comparative religion, and would like any comments/feedback, which might explain this more. I am asking this, because it is a part of the history text, which I teach my students. The text book, which is an American text book for grade nine world history did not fully explain this statement. I am hoping that some can shed some more light on it, so I can explain this to my students.
[end-quote]
Feroz,
asian (e.g., taoism) and indic traditions are foundationally different from the abrahamanic religions. This is the first thing to understand. Terms like Monotheism and Polytheism arise primarily from the Abrahamanic tradition. If you look at hinduism, buddhism, jainism. sikhism etc. these terms are really not sensible. It is like trying to find where the lungs of a fish lie. These are completely different approaches to faith; indeed, I would prefer to call them faith traditions rather than religions.
Regrettably all of this has been muddled by contemporary usage. The other day I read some ignoramus refer to the Sikh ``prophets`` (i.e. Gurus). There is no such thing as a prophet in any indic tradition.
I realize this doesn`t help you much in a practical way. There are several good introductory texts now available that explain indic ways of seeing things. Diance Eck`s books on Religion are a good start (e.g. Darshan). There is also an australian hindu who has written good introductory texts that are sensitive to the native vocabulary of indic traditions. Regrettably his name escapes me at this time.
#121 Posted by Maharana on August 6, 2003 1:10:03 pm
Ferozek # 120,
Reading a typical orthodox historian`s views we all might be tempted to believe that Abraham was the first monotheist in the world. Actually several cultures before that specially in India and china believed in a single divine being, be it Tao, Brahman, Purusha, Parmatman, Ishwara etc.
If I may provide a gist of some scriptures in this regard, it could be following.
Gods are not the ultimate truth in themselves, but mere symbols to aid a yogi reach the fountainhead. And further, a translation from a famous vedic saying `` Truth/God is one, yet the wise know it by many names``.
The plethora of gods is a human creation according to Sanatan dharma or bhagvada dharma (derogately called hinduism by outsiders). Actually the flavor of Hinduism is part Agnostic too. The highest human ideal as is claimed by many such sects is to seek the truth.
Which ofcourse brings to fore that, truth cannot and is not contained in merely any temple, book, etc.
So the staement that Hinduism considers itself to be a monotheistic religion is wrong. As the fact is that it is a monotheistic culture allowing people to worship the one in any form they like. Heck !! It could even be a tree.
Hope that partly satisfies your question (?) perhaps.
Adios
Reading a typical orthodox historian`s views we all might be tempted to believe that Abraham was the first monotheist in the world. Actually several cultures before that specially in India and china believed in a single divine being, be it Tao, Brahman, Purusha, Parmatman, Ishwara etc.
If I may provide a gist of some scriptures in this regard, it could be following.
Gods are not the ultimate truth in themselves, but mere symbols to aid a yogi reach the fountainhead. And further, a translation from a famous vedic saying `` Truth/God is one, yet the wise know it by many names``.
The plethora of gods is a human creation according to Sanatan dharma or bhagvada dharma (derogately called hinduism by outsiders). Actually the flavor of Hinduism is part Agnostic too. The highest human ideal as is claimed by many such sects is to seek the truth.
Which ofcourse brings to fore that, truth cannot and is not contained in merely any temple, book, etc.
So the staement that Hinduism considers itself to be a monotheistic religion is wrong. As the fact is that it is a monotheistic culture allowing people to worship the one in any form they like. Heck !! It could even be a tree.
Hope that partly satisfies your question (?) perhaps.
Adios
#120 Posted by ferozk on August 6, 2003 10:48:45 am
re: Indians
Leaving Kashmir aside for a while, I have a question and would appreciate an answer if possible.
Hinduism considers itself to be a monothestic religion because it believes in the oneness of the universe and considers all its gods to be the creation of the same universe.
I came across this while reading about Hinduism, as a comparative religion, and would like any comments/feedback, which might explain this more. I am asking this, because it is a part of the history text, which I teach my students. The text book, which is an American text book for grade nine world history did not fully explain this statement. I am hoping that some can shed some more light on it, so I can explain this to my students.
Thanks!
Ciao
Leaving Kashmir aside for a while, I have a question and would appreciate an answer if possible.
Hinduism considers itself to be a monothestic religion because it believes in the oneness of the universe and considers all its gods to be the creation of the same universe.
I came across this while reading about Hinduism, as a comparative religion, and would like any comments/feedback, which might explain this more. I am asking this, because it is a part of the history text, which I teach my students. The text book, which is an American text book for grade nine world history did not fully explain this statement. I am hoping that some can shed some more light on it, so I can explain this to my students.
Thanks!
Ciao
#119 Posted by veeresh on August 6, 2003 7:56:31 am
Your nukes, our nukes, both blow high,
At the most, 15 million die?
Together we can crank back people in that number,
With a bit of effort in a year or under.
What matters, in my opinion,
Is that, you can`t eat religion.
(Concept inspired by Ahmed Madani)
At the most, 15 million die?
Together we can crank back people in that number,
With a bit of effort in a year or under.
What matters, in my opinion,
Is that, you can`t eat religion.
(Concept inspired by Ahmed Madani)
#118 Posted by yantric on August 6, 2003 6:39:18 am
Mantolives 103
Wow !!!
I thought I had brilliant idea of where part of Indian nukes should be stored. The best place for them I joked would be in Kashmir. Because in order to take out Indian nukes you pakistanis would have to destroy the Kashmir Valley. The ``core`` problem!!!
However your contention that ISI wants to concentrate the Indian Army to nuke them is so ridiculous. Why would ISI want to concentrate the Indian Army in kashmir and then nuke them. I guess this shows how much you guys like Kashmir. If you can`t have it then nuke it.
Wow !!!
I thought I had brilliant idea of where part of Indian nukes should be stored. The best place for them I joked would be in Kashmir. Because in order to take out Indian nukes you pakistanis would have to destroy the Kashmir Valley. The ``core`` problem!!!
However your contention that ISI wants to concentrate the Indian Army to nuke them is so ridiculous. Why would ISI want to concentrate the Indian Army in kashmir and then nuke them. I guess this shows how much you guys like Kashmir. If you can`t have it then nuke it.
#117 Posted by jay on August 6, 2003 6:39:04 am
echoo # 107
Meriting Attention
Maharashtra`s Muslim Schools are claiming top scores in public exams
M. H. Lakdawala
Mumbai: Just a couple of years ago, one had to search for even one Muslim name on the merit lists. Since 1998, Muslim students are appearing regularly on the merit list in Maharashtra. They have topped in BA., Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) and secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations. ``
You the pathetic has no idea about the indian education system. All muslim schools are not madrassas. They admit people of all religion. Near my place in kerala, the top most school is a muslim school, they admit students based on entrance test, only 10 percent seats are alocated based on islam. They have learned long ago that the nemae of the school depends on its productas, and all lousy students, but all muslims will do harm to the school. Almost all of the teachers are hindus, the school charges high fees which in any case most muslims cannot afford. In fact my cousins studied in that school, and the facilities are outstanding.
Meriting Attention
Maharashtra`s Muslim Schools are claiming top scores in public exams
M. H. Lakdawala
Mumbai: Just a couple of years ago, one had to search for even one Muslim name on the merit lists. Since 1998, Muslim students are appearing regularly on the merit list in Maharashtra. They have topped in BA., Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) and secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations. ``
You the pathetic has no idea about the indian education system. All muslim schools are not madrassas. They admit people of all religion. Near my place in kerala, the top most school is a muslim school, they admit students based on entrance test, only 10 percent seats are alocated based on islam. They have learned long ago that the nemae of the school depends on its productas, and all lousy students, but all muslims will do harm to the school. Almost all of the teachers are hindus, the school charges high fees which in any case most muslims cannot afford. In fact my cousins studied in that school, and the facilities are outstanding.
#116 Posted by rsaxena on August 6, 2003 6:39:03 am
{Maharashtra`s Muslim Schools are claiming top scores in public exams }
...so things aren`t so bad for muslims in india after all...
...so things aren`t so bad for muslims in india after all...
#115 Posted by nazarhayatkhan on August 6, 2003 6:39:03 am
Ironman # 114
Thank you for your comment. Let us agree to disagree on this issue.
I think everyone must have a choice as to his belief. Majority of the mankind has come to this conclusion after centuries of bitter experience of exploitation of common man in the name of God or faith.
#114 Posted by ironman on August 5, 2003 10:48:04 pm
nazarhayatkhan,
``Every one has the right to have his own faith and belief``
Is that the best you can do? A giant leap of thought.
I hate to ask, but would you like to do a simple experiment. Make a list of 10 father-child pairs you know. Ask each person what their favorite color is. Count how many father-child pairs like the SAME color.
Now do the same test about their religions...and let us know what you find.
(Off course, you say, you knew this all along.)
There is NO `choice` or `right` in the matter of religion/faith/belief, my friend.
Why isn`t this obvious to you? Deep waters here?
``Every one has the right to have his own faith and belief``
Is that the best you can do? A giant leap of thought.
I hate to ask, but would you like to do a simple experiment. Make a list of 10 father-child pairs you know. Ask each person what their favorite color is. Count how many father-child pairs like the SAME color.
Now do the same test about their religions...and let us know what you find.
(Off course, you say, you knew this all along.)
There is NO `choice` or `right` in the matter of religion/faith/belief, my friend.
Why isn`t this obvious to you? Deep waters here?
#113 Posted by rsridhar on August 5, 2003 9:16:28 pm
re:#84 by soysauce
You say madrassas only fill a vaccum. That is absurd as far as madrassas in Pak are concerned. They are regularly churning out hatred filled, highly indoctrinated specimens who are taught not just Qoran but also that 72 virgins are there for their taking if they participate in Jehad. Need i post a number of articles that have been regularly appearing in International newspapers?
Sridhar
You say madrassas only fill a vaccum. That is absurd as far as madrassas in Pak are concerned. They are regularly churning out hatred filled, highly indoctrinated specimens who are taught not just Qoran but also that 72 virgins are there for their taking if they participate in Jehad. Need i post a number of articles that have been regularly appearing in International newspapers?
Sridhar
#112 Posted by nazarhayatkhan on August 5, 2003 7:35:55 pm
People can learn about the religion till cows come back as long as they keep the views to themselves:
And not try to impose them on the society.
Every one has the right to have his own faith and belief.
#111 Posted by arjun_m on August 5, 2003 4:52:31 pm
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#110 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 5, 2003 4:26:02 pm
Maybe this helps in Reality-Check
From madressah, to Aligarh, to ShantiNikaten, to Harvard............
Dr. Abdul Huq- New President of Jamaat- e- Islami
New Delhi: Dr. Mohammad Abdul Huq has been elected the new Ameer (President) of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. He was elected by the 119-member Council of Representatives (Majlis-e-Numaindagan) of the Jammat at its headquarters in Markaz here on April 5. Dr Huq is more a religious scholar than an activist. He has taught religion and philosophy at universities of Viswa Bharti at Santiniketan in West Bengal, Umme Durman University in Khartoum, University of Petroleum in Dhahran and Imam Muhammad bin Saudi University in Riyadh. At the age of 72, Dr. Huq is an author of nearly a dozen books on religion, ethics, philosophy etc. Born in 1931 in Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh, Dr. Huq was educated at Jamaat’s Darsgah-e-Saanvia at Rampur, Aligarh Muslim University and Harvard University from where he received a TMS degree. Dr. Huq succeeds Maulana Sirajul Hassan who held the post for 13 years. Hassan had refused to be considered for the position for another tenure. Dr. Huq will hold the position for the next four years. Mohammad Jaafar has been retained as the general secretary (Qayyim) of the Jamaat by the new President. The Council also elected an 18-member Majlis-e-Shoora.
From madressah, to Aligarh, to ShantiNikaten, to Harvard............
Dr. Abdul Huq- New President of Jamaat- e- Islami
New Delhi: Dr. Mohammad Abdul Huq has been elected the new Ameer (President) of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. He was elected by the 119-member Council of Representatives (Majlis-e-Numaindagan) of the Jammat at its headquarters in Markaz here on April 5. Dr Huq is more a religious scholar than an activist. He has taught religion and philosophy at universities of Viswa Bharti at Santiniketan in West Bengal, Umme Durman University in Khartoum, University of Petroleum in Dhahran and Imam Muhammad bin Saudi University in Riyadh. At the age of 72, Dr. Huq is an author of nearly a dozen books on religion, ethics, philosophy etc. Born in 1931 in Deoria district of Uttar Pradesh, Dr. Huq was educated at Jamaat’s Darsgah-e-Saanvia at Rampur, Aligarh Muslim University and Harvard University from where he received a TMS degree. Dr. Huq succeeds Maulana Sirajul Hassan who held the post for 13 years. Hassan had refused to be considered for the position for another tenure. Dr. Huq will hold the position for the next four years. Mohammad Jaafar has been retained as the general secretary (Qayyim) of the Jamaat by the new President. The Council also elected an 18-member Majlis-e-Shoora.
#109 Posted by soysauce on August 5, 2003 3:32:40 pm
#105
Haha, weak come back.
When are you going to get yourself a life?
Haha, weak come back.
When are you going to get yourself a life?
#108 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 5, 2003 2:55:29 pm
Back to the subject:
Further Reality-Check
In the prevailing circumstances, the presence of bin Laden in any Pakistani
madrassa is impossible,`` commented Javed Iqbal Cheema, chief of the crisis
management cell of the Interior Ministry, in response to reports that bin
Laden had taken refuge in a madrassa in Karachi. ``All Madrassas are under
the strict vigilance of not only Pakistan, but of the United States,`` he
added.
Records show that madrassa students are not widely a part of the jihad in
Kashmir. To name a few, Ghulam Abbas, Arif Hussain, Usman Atique, Mudassir
Rashid, Mehmood Riaz, Abul Asim, Mohammad Sabir Shahid Mehmood Shafqat,
Abdul Sattar, Faisal Mahmood, Sadaqat, Naweed and Niaz all died in
Indian-administered Kashmir in different skirmishes with Indian security
forces, and they were all from the regular Pakistani education system,
mostly Christian missionary schools, such as Saint Patrick`s Karachi, La
Salle Multan, Atchison Lahore, Cathedral Lahore and Saint Patrick`s Quetta,
or government high schools and colleges.
content@a... for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Further Reality-Check
In the prevailing circumstances, the presence of bin Laden in any Pakistani
madrassa is impossible,`` commented Javed Iqbal Cheema, chief of the crisis
management cell of the Interior Ministry, in response to reports that bin
Laden had taken refuge in a madrassa in Karachi. ``All Madrassas are under
the strict vigilance of not only Pakistan, but of the United States,`` he
added.
Records show that madrassa students are not widely a part of the jihad in
Kashmir. To name a few, Ghulam Abbas, Arif Hussain, Usman Atique, Mudassir
Rashid, Mehmood Riaz, Abul Asim, Mohammad Sabir Shahid Mehmood Shafqat,
Abdul Sattar, Faisal Mahmood, Sadaqat, Naweed and Niaz all died in
Indian-administered Kashmir in different skirmishes with Indian security
forces, and they were all from the regular Pakistani education system,
mostly Christian missionary schools, such as Saint Patrick`s Karachi, La
Salle Multan, Atchison Lahore, Cathedral Lahore and Saint Patrick`s Quetta,
or government high schools and colleges.
content@a... for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
#107 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 5, 2003 2:55:28 pm
Further in the series of Reality-Check
Meriting Attention
Maharashtra`s Muslim Schools are claiming top scores in public exams
M. H. Lakdawala
Mumbai: Just a couple of years ago, one had to search for even one Muslim name on the merit lists. Since 1998, Muslim students are appearing regularly on the merit list in Maharashtra. They have topped in BA., Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSC) and secondary School Certificate (SSC) examinations.
This year SSC results also has a number of Muslims particularly Urdu medium students in the merit list. Out of 100 students in the general category of Mumbai division, three are Muslims. Kausar Qazi Hadiya from Farooq High School, Jogeshwari, stood fifth in the general category and first in the girls’ category. S.A. Ansari of Anjuman Khairul Islam girls High School stood ninth in the general category and fourth in the girls’ category with 92 per cent marks.
#106 Posted by MantoLives on August 5, 2003 1:34:54 pm
Arjun,
Which part of ``Did I ever say I agree with or condone that strategy? I have always been critical of ISI`s stupid games, that it plays in the name of national security. Perhaps now for once you will explain to me what the point is behind repeating that statement so selectively?`` did you not understand? This is what I mean when I say poor English Comprehension skills.
`As to your plans to bleed India`
Hold on buddy ... I am not the one bleeding India, I am not the one who is sending jehadis into India. As a patriot of Pakistan and a human being, I distance myself from the actions of ISI... I think the whole idea is idiotic. I still don`t understand why you are attacking me. I find it not the bit surprising that of all the people you could have chosen, you chose me to vent out your frustration. Perhaps it is because as your own compatriot, Stuka, says in Post #73 that I am living rebuttal of the myopic views put out there by the anti-Pakistan brigade.
-Manto
Which part of ``Did I ever say I agree with or condone that strategy? I have always been critical of ISI`s stupid games, that it plays in the name of national security. Perhaps now for once you will explain to me what the point is behind repeating that statement so selectively?`` did you not understand? This is what I mean when I say poor English Comprehension skills.
`As to your plans to bleed India`
Hold on buddy ... I am not the one bleeding India, I am not the one who is sending jehadis into India. As a patriot of Pakistan and a human being, I distance myself from the actions of ISI... I think the whole idea is idiotic. I still don`t understand why you are attacking me. I find it not the bit surprising that of all the people you could have chosen, you chose me to vent out your frustration. Perhaps it is because as your own compatriot, Stuka, says in Post #73 that I am living rebuttal of the myopic views put out there by the anti-Pakistan brigade.
-Manto
#105 Posted by harimau on August 5, 2003 11:47:58 am
Ref soysauce #102
[Unkalji, judging by your constant presence here, you must be on vacation, huh?]
Better to be on a physical vacation than a mental vacation like you have been all your life.
[Unkalji, judging by your constant presence here, you must be on vacation, huh?]
Better to be on a physical vacation than a mental vacation like you have been all your life.
#104 Posted by arjun_m on August 5, 2003 11:20:46 am
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#103 Posted by MantoLives on August 5, 2003 10:38:20 am
Arjunm,
I see that you are still repeating the same old same old. I suppose by repeating the same old lies about me, you do get some satisfaction ... chalo be happy about that. Waisay does an Ivy League graduate lack English comprehension skills as well?
By the way I still maintain the ISI is not working to free Kashmir. Its strategy is to keep the Indian troops concentrated in one region where a nuclear strike would take them out all at once. Did I ever say I agree with or condone that strategy? I have always been critical of ISI`s stupid games, that it plays in the name of national security. Perhaps now for once you will explain to me what the point is behind repeating that statement so selectively? Are you trying to prove that I stand for nuking a whole region in the name of national security? Ofcourse you will not answer me, and repeat the same old a few months from now.
However I will call your bluff now that Chowk has provided us with the tools: Since you have hinted to a false accusation against my incarnation ... here is a complete record of all the Posts YLH ever made on chowk:
http://www.chowk.com/show_user_replies.cgi?membername=ylh&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1
Show me the exact post where YLH claimed that his university was Ivy league. (Don`t say you don`t have time... You`ve dug out many of his posts before when such facility wasn`t even available). The poor guy did once mention the harmless fact that Rutgers College was part of the Ivy League (a sports League) till 1954 which was made in context of the History of American College Football ... historically the very first College Football game was played between Rutgers College and Princeton in the 19th century. But I guess lying, twisting words, and making up stories seems to be the favorite past time of the anti-Pakistan brigade on these boards... especially if one can`t say anything which has an academic value... I guess these are typical Ivy League tactics eh? If you can`t beat them legit. get personal and lie about them.
No wonder the best of the chowkies are from state schools and not the Ivy League...
-Manto
I see that you are still repeating the same old same old. I suppose by repeating the same old lies about me, you do get some satisfaction ... chalo be happy about that. Waisay does an Ivy League graduate lack English comprehension skills as well?
By the way I still maintain the ISI is not working to free Kashmir. Its strategy is to keep the Indian troops concentrated in one region where a nuclear strike would take them out all at once. Did I ever say I agree with or condone that strategy? I have always been critical of ISI`s stupid games, that it plays in the name of national security. Perhaps now for once you will explain to me what the point is behind repeating that statement so selectively? Are you trying to prove that I stand for nuking a whole region in the name of national security? Ofcourse you will not answer me, and repeat the same old a few months from now.
However I will call your bluff now that Chowk has provided us with the tools: Since you have hinted to a false accusation against my incarnation ... here is a complete record of all the Posts YLH ever made on chowk:
http://www.chowk.com/show_user_replies.cgi?membername=ylh&start=0&end=9&page=1&chapter=1
Show me the exact post where YLH claimed that his university was Ivy league. (Don`t say you don`t have time... You`ve dug out many of his posts before when such facility wasn`t even available). The poor guy did once mention the harmless fact that Rutgers College was part of the Ivy League (a sports League) till 1954 which was made in context of the History of American College Football ... historically the very first College Football game was played between Rutgers College and Princeton in the 19th century. But I guess lying, twisting words, and making up stories seems to be the favorite past time of the anti-Pakistan brigade on these boards... especially if one can`t say anything which has an academic value... I guess these are typical Ivy League tactics eh? If you can`t beat them legit. get personal and lie about them.
No wonder the best of the chowkies are from state schools and not the Ivy League...
-Manto
#102 Posted by soysauce on August 5, 2003 9:49:01 am
Harimau Iyer,
Unkalji, judging by your constant presence here, you must be on vacation, huh?
Unkalji, judging by your constant presence here, you must be on vacation, huh?
#101 Posted by harimau on August 5, 2003 9:08:24 am
Dear Naqshbandi Saheb,
You know we have had our differences but I would like you to consider this proposition and answer me.
Would it be a sacrifice acceptable to Allah for the next couple of generations of Muslims to spend their efforts not in learning the Quran but in learning the necessary science and technology that would put the Muslim nations at a par with Western nations so that they could deal with the West from a position of strength? Would not Allah recognize that these people have made a conscious and willing sacrifice of even their afterlife for the benefit of the Ummah? And then would not Allah in His infinite mercy and compassion reward these people for their sacrifice on Judgment Day?
I am speaking this as a Hindu whose religious instruction (as opposed to his religious obligations) has been minimal and who has seen the abandonment of the Hindu way of life in the last 50 years. While it may not be a direct correlation, I have also seen the improvement in the standard of living in India. Thai is what prompts my question.
You know we have had our differences but I would like you to consider this proposition and answer me.
Would it be a sacrifice acceptable to Allah for the next couple of generations of Muslims to spend their efforts not in learning the Quran but in learning the necessary science and technology that would put the Muslim nations at a par with Western nations so that they could deal with the West from a position of strength? Would not Allah recognize that these people have made a conscious and willing sacrifice of even their afterlife for the benefit of the Ummah? And then would not Allah in His infinite mercy and compassion reward these people for their sacrifice on Judgment Day?
I am speaking this as a Hindu whose religious instruction (as opposed to his religious obligations) has been minimal and who has seen the abandonment of the Hindu way of life in the last 50 years. While it may not be a direct correlation, I have also seen the improvement in the standard of living in India. Thai is what prompts my question.
#100 Posted by pmishra2 on August 5, 2003 8:41:39 am
#90 Mantolives
I do hate to bring up inconvenient matters like facts. Could you please explain to me where my posting makes reference to any India-Pak issue?
I do hate to bring up inconvenient matters like facts. Could you please explain to me where my posting makes reference to any India-Pak issue?
#99 Posted by ferozk on August 5, 2003 8:40:31 am
re: Dost-Mittar # 93
Hear! Hear! I second your motion!
Ciao
Hear! Hear! I second your motion!
Ciao
#98 Posted by harimau on August 5, 2003 7:20:38 am
Ref Mantolives #90
[... My concern is the belated arrival of the tormentors of my previous incarnation. I am sorry but I consider Arjun-m and P-Mishra the card carrying members of this brigade... ]
Out of sight, out of mind...... Sigh.......!
Harimaulives
[... My concern is the belated arrival of the tormentors of my previous incarnation. I am sorry but I consider Arjun-m and P-Mishra the card carrying members of this brigade... ]
Out of sight, out of mind...... Sigh.......!
Harimaulives
#97 Posted by harimau on August 5, 2003 7:11:43 am
Ref Maasanamuthu aka Kulamutrathuthunjiya Killivalavan #84
[Speaking for myself, most of my classmates were there because of the free meal.]
That is because for centuries your family has stolen the food from their mouths.
[You didn`t necessarily learn anything by going to school. There were exceptions of course but the quality of education that the vast majority of students get is probably no better than what madrassah students get.]
Yet you are in the US of A making big bucks. I agree with you: if they could let you in, why can`t they let madrassah-graduates in?
[Perhaps you all just want to exchage indoctrination by state with indoctrination by non-state actors.]
Hasn`t that already happened in Tamil Nadu? How many doctoral dissertations are written on the social effects of the ``literature`` of the Great Intellectual and Doctor Artist Leader? Would those be much different than a doctorate-equivalent from Al Azhar University?
[If madrassahs bother you, then you should work to have more schools with curricula that lead to productive employment.]
Do you mean you would be willing to give up your quota-based medical seat to a Muslim? That IS rich, coming from you!
[Speaking for myself, most of my classmates were there because of the free meal.]
That is because for centuries your family has stolen the food from their mouths.
[You didn`t necessarily learn anything by going to school. There were exceptions of course but the quality of education that the vast majority of students get is probably no better than what madrassah students get.]
Yet you are in the US of A making big bucks. I agree with you: if they could let you in, why can`t they let madrassah-graduates in?
[Perhaps you all just want to exchage indoctrination by state with indoctrination by non-state actors.]
Hasn`t that already happened in Tamil Nadu? How many doctoral dissertations are written on the social effects of the ``literature`` of the Great Intellectual and Doctor Artist Leader? Would those be much different than a doctorate-equivalent from Al Azhar University?
[If madrassahs bother you, then you should work to have more schools with curricula that lead to productive employment.]
Do you mean you would be willing to give up your quota-based medical seat to a Muslim? That IS rich, coming from you!
#96 Posted by ironman on August 5, 2003 7:08:51 am
#83
Naqshbandi,
You almost seem like 2 differnt people. Obviously at your current young age you don`t feel any great need for internal integration. Pursueing a career in science and mouthing medieval beliefs can co-exist without any problem within you.
Personally I think you are an intelligent person. However given that you are not anonymous (using your real name), perhaps you want to preserve your good name within your sect to persons who might be reading you at chowk. Or perhaps its simply the weight of tradition that you aren`t able to overthrow. Thats what I think of you.
As you grow older perhaps you`ll feel the need for integration.
- - - -
I don`t know if you`ve noticed, most `learned` persons of every religion seem like grumpy old men. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc.
They might have a smile pasted on...but you can tell they`re all angry/depressed about something.
thx,
Naqshbandi,
You almost seem like 2 differnt people. Obviously at your current young age you don`t feel any great need for internal integration. Pursueing a career in science and mouthing medieval beliefs can co-exist without any problem within you.
Personally I think you are an intelligent person. However given that you are not anonymous (using your real name), perhaps you want to preserve your good name within your sect to persons who might be reading you at chowk. Or perhaps its simply the weight of tradition that you aren`t able to overthrow. Thats what I think of you.
As you grow older perhaps you`ll feel the need for integration.
- - - -
I don`t know if you`ve noticed, most `learned` persons of every religion seem like grumpy old men. Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, etc.
They might have a smile pasted on...but you can tell they`re all angry/depressed about something.
thx,
#95 Posted by arjun_m on August 5, 2003 7:08:51 am
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#94 Posted by harimau on August 5, 2003 7:08:49 am
Ref dost-mittar #86
[soysauce#84
I am surprised that an intelligent poster like you would make such a statement supporting Madrassahs.]
It seems to be an infectious disease on Chowk, a new WMD, that makes one mistake a$$-kissing with intelligence.
Sudalikkannu has gone through a school and curriculum not far different from a madrassah in its imparting of hatred.
[soysauce#84
I am surprised that an intelligent poster like you would make such a statement supporting Madrassahs.]
It seems to be an infectious disease on Chowk, a new WMD, that makes one mistake a$$-kissing with intelligence.
Sudalikkannu has gone through a school and curriculum not far different from a madrassah in its imparting of hatred.
#93 Posted by dost_mittar on August 5, 2003 1:59:05 am
Mantolives:
``Another meaningful debate will now be replaced with an equally pointless debate about partition.``
....only if you accept their bait!
``Another meaningful debate will now be replaced with an equally pointless debate about partition.``
....only if you accept their bait!
#92 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 4, 2003 11:42:27 pm
This is a special for Mr. Naqshbandi
Others may peruse it as well but please understand that reading this might effect a major paradigm shift in their thought process.
For a complete introduction to Harun Yahya--a major voice today please access www.harunyahya.com
This is from one of his 192 publications. Born 1956., ankara turkey. A madressah product.
The Information Beyond Matter
& Lawh-i Mahfuz
HARUN YAHYA
Information… This concept today means a lot more than it did even a half century ago. Scientists are developing theories to define information. Social scientists speak of ``the information age.`` Information is becoming a very important concept for humanity.
The discovery of information in the origin of both the universe and life itself is what makes this concept so important in the modern world. Scientists today are realizing that the universe is formed by ``matter, energy and information,`` and this is replacing the materialistic philosophy of the nineteenth century that defined the universe as being made up entirely of ``matter and energy.``
So, what does this all mean?
Let`s explain through an example, that of DNA. All living cells function according to the genetic information in the double helix structure of DNA. Our bodies are also formed by trillions of cells each with its own DNA, and all the functions of our bodies are registered in this giant molecule. Our cells use protein codes inscribed in the DNA to produce new proteins. The information that our DNA possesses is so large that if you wanted to write it down, it would fill up 900 volumes of encyclopedias, cover-to-cover!
So what is DNA made up of? Fifty years ago, scientists would have replied that DNA is formed by nucleic acids called nucleotides and the chemical bonds holding these nucleotides together. In other words, they used to list only the material elements of the DNA. But today, scientists have a different answer: DNA is composed of atoms, molecules, chemical bonds and, most importantly, information.
It`s just like a book. We would be quite mistaken to say that a book is only made up of paper, ink and binding for, alongside these materials, it is the information that truly makes it a book. It is information which separates a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica from a ``book`` formed by randomly arranged letters like ABICLDIXXGGSDLL. Both have paper, ink and binding, but one has information while the other does not. The source of information is the author of that book, a mind with consciousness. Therefore we can`t deny that the information in DNA was placed there by an intelligent being.
The Information Dead End of Evolutionary Theory and Materialism
The discovery of this fact has sent materialist philosophy and Darwinism, its application to the natural sciences, into a dead end, because materialist philosophy claims that all living things are formed by matter alone and that genetic information appeared somehow by ``chance.`` This is like saying that a book could be formed from a random assemblage of paper and ink.
Materialism subscribes to the theory of ``reductionism,`` which claims that information can ultimately be reduced to matter. For this reason, materialists say that there`s no need to look for any source of information besides matter. But this assertion has been proven to be in error, and even materialists have started to owe up to this truth.
One of the leading defenders of the theory of evolution, George C. Williams, pointed in a 1995 essay to the mistake of materialism (reductionism), that is, assuming everything to consist of materials:
Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter… These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term ``reductionism.`` …The gene is a package of information, not an object... In biology, when you`re talking about things like genes and genotypes and gene pools, you`re talking about information, not physical objective reality... This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms. 1
Stephen C. Meyer, a philosopher of science from the Cambridge University and who is critical of the theory of evolution as well as materialism, says in an interview:
One thing I do in classes to get this idea across the students is that I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, the other one is blank. And I ask, ``What is the difference in mass between these two computer disks as a result of the difference in the information content that they possess``? And of course the answer is zero, none, there is no difference as a result of the information. That is because information is a massless quantity. Information is not a material entity.
Then how can any materialistic explanation explain its origin? How can any material cause explain its origin?... This creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic evolutionary scenarios.
In the 19th century, we thought that there were two fundamental entities of science: Matter and energy. At the beginning of the 21st century, we now recognize that there is a third fundamental entity, and it is information. It is not reducible to matter; it is not reducible to energy. 2
All theories put forward in the twentieth century to reduce information to matter-like the random origin of life, self-organization of matter, the biological theory of evolution that has tried to explain species` genetic information through the mechanism of mutation and natural selection-have failed. Professor Phillip Johnson, a leading critic of Darwinism, wrote:
The real duality at every level of biology is the duality of matter and information. The philosophers of mind-science fail to understand the true nature of information because they assume that it is produced by a material (i.e. Darwinian) process and hence is not something fundamentally different from matter. But this is merely a prejudice that would be swept away by unbiased thinking. 3
As Johnson states, ``information is not matter, although it is imprinted on matter. It comes from elsewhere, from an intelligence....`` Dr. Werner Gitt, a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, expressed much the same thought:
A coding system always entails a nonmaterial intellectual process. A physical matter cannot produce an information code. All experiences show that every piece of creative information represents some mental effort and can be traced to a personal idea-giver who exercised his own free will, and who is endowed with an intelligent mind.... There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter... 4
As we discussed above, a book is formed by paper, ink and the information it includes. The source of this information is the mind of the author.
And there is one more important point: This mind comes prior to the material elements and it decides how to use them. A book first appears in the mind of the person who will write that book. The author makes logical connections and comes up with sentences. Later, in the second stage, he gives these ideas a material form. By using a typewriter or computer, he turns the information contained within his mind into letters. Later these letters go to a printing house and they make up a book.
So here, we can reach the following conclusion: ``If matter includes information, then that material has been pre-organized by a mind possessing that information. First there was a mind, and then the owner of that mind turned that information into matter and thus created a design.``
The Mind That Existed Before Matter
Therefore, the source of the information in nature cannot be the matter itself, as the materialists claim. The source of information is not matter, but rather a supra-material Mind. This Mind existed before matter. The Mind created, shaped and organized the whole material universe.
Biology isn`t the only branch of science leading us to this conclusion. Twentieth century astronomy and physics also demonstrated the existence of an astonishing harmony and design, pointing to the existence of a Mind that existed before the universe and created it.
Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder who studied physics and biology in universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the author of the book The Science of God, makes some important remarks on this subject. In his new book entitled The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, he explains the conclusion reached by molecular biology and quantum physics as follows:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom. 5
According to Schroeder, the scientific results of our age lead science and theology to meet at a common truth. This is the truth of Creation. Science is now re-discovering this truth that divine religions have actually taught to humanity for millennia.
The Lawh-i Mahfuz (The Preserved Tablet)
So far, we have looked at science`s conclusions about the universe and the origin of living things. The conclusion is that the entire universe and life itself were created using a blueprint of magnificent information that existed before.
This conclusion reached by modern science is strikingly in agreement with a secret that was laid out in the Qur`an some 14 centuries ago. In the Qur`an, a book sent to people as a guide, God announced that the Lawh-i Mahfuz (the Preserved Tablet) existed before the creation of the universe and that it furthermore explained all creation and events in the universe.
The Lawh-i Mahfuz was ``guarded`` (mahfuz) so the things written there were not changed or spoiled. In the Qur`an, this is called ``Ommu al-Kitabi`` (The Mother of the Book), ``Kitabun Hafeethun`` (All-Preserving Book), ``Kitabin Maknoonin`` (Well-Protected Book) or just the book. It is also called Kitabin min Qabli (The Book of Decrees) since it also tells of the events that humanity will face.
In many verses, God tells about the characteristics of the Lawh-i Mahfuz. First of all, there is nothing missing from this book:
The keys of the Unseen are in His possession. No one knows them but Him. He knows everything in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowing it. There is no seed in the darkness of the earth, and nothing moist or dry which is not in a Clear Book. (Qur`an, 6: 59)
One verse says that all life in the world is recorded in the Lawh-i Mahfuz:
There is no creature crawling on the earth or flying creature, flying on its wings, who are not communities just like yourselves —We have not omitted anything from the Book— then they will be gathered to their Lord. (Qur`an, 6: 38)
In another verse, it is stated that ``on earth and in the heavens,`` in the entire universe, all creatures and things, including the smallest speck, are known by God and recorded in the Lawh-i Mahfuz:
You do not engage in any matter or recite any of the Qur`an or do any action without Our witnessing you while you are occupied with it. Not even the smallest speck eludes your Lord, either on earth or in heaven. Nor is there anything smaller than that, or larger, which is not in a Clear Book. (Qur`an, 10: 61)
All information concerning humanity is in the Lawh-i Mahfuz, and this includes the genetic code of all people and their destinies:
Nonetheless they are amazed that a warner should have come to them from among themselves and those who disbelieve say, ``What an extraordinary thing! When we are dead and turned to dust? That would be a most unlikely return!`` We know exactly how the earth eats them away. We possess an all-preserving Book. (Qur`an, 50: 2-4)
The following verse states that God`s words in the Lawh-i Mahfuz are endless, and this is explained through an example:
If all the trees on earth were pens and all the sea, with seven more seas besides, was ink God`s words still would not run dry. God is Almighty, All-Wise. (Qur`an, 31: 27)
Conclusion
The facts that we explored in this article prove yet again that the findings of modern science confirm what religion teaches to people. The materialist dogmatism that has been imposed on science is in fact rejected by science itself.
The conclusions of modern science about information serve to objectively demonstrate who is right in a dispute that has been raging for thousands of years. This dispute has been waged between materialist thought and religion. Materialist thought claims that matter is without beginning and that nothing existed before matter. Religion, on the other hand, states that God existed before matter, and that matter is created and ruled by God`s endless knowledge.
The fact that this truth, which has been taught by divine religions - like Judaism, Christianity and Islam - since the dawn of history, has been proved by the findings of science, is an indication of the impending post-atheist age. Humanity is getting closer to realizing that God truly exists and He is the ``All-Knowing.`` Just as reminded to people in the following verse of the Holy Qur`an:
Do you not know that God knows everything in heaven and earth? That is in a Book. That is easy for God. (Qur`an, 22: 70)
Others may peruse it as well but please understand that reading this might effect a major paradigm shift in their thought process.
For a complete introduction to Harun Yahya--a major voice today please access www.harunyahya.com
This is from one of his 192 publications. Born 1956., ankara turkey. A madressah product.
The Information Beyond Matter
& Lawh-i Mahfuz
HARUN YAHYA
Information… This concept today means a lot more than it did even a half century ago. Scientists are developing theories to define information. Social scientists speak of ``the information age.`` Information is becoming a very important concept for humanity.
The discovery of information in the origin of both the universe and life itself is what makes this concept so important in the modern world. Scientists today are realizing that the universe is formed by ``matter, energy and information,`` and this is replacing the materialistic philosophy of the nineteenth century that defined the universe as being made up entirely of ``matter and energy.``
So, what does this all mean?
Let`s explain through an example, that of DNA. All living cells function according to the genetic information in the double helix structure of DNA. Our bodies are also formed by trillions of cells each with its own DNA, and all the functions of our bodies are registered in this giant molecule. Our cells use protein codes inscribed in the DNA to produce new proteins. The information that our DNA possesses is so large that if you wanted to write it down, it would fill up 900 volumes of encyclopedias, cover-to-cover!
So what is DNA made up of? Fifty years ago, scientists would have replied that DNA is formed by nucleic acids called nucleotides and the chemical bonds holding these nucleotides together. In other words, they used to list only the material elements of the DNA. But today, scientists have a different answer: DNA is composed of atoms, molecules, chemical bonds and, most importantly, information.
It`s just like a book. We would be quite mistaken to say that a book is only made up of paper, ink and binding for, alongside these materials, it is the information that truly makes it a book. It is information which separates a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica from a ``book`` formed by randomly arranged letters like ABICLDIXXGGSDLL. Both have paper, ink and binding, but one has information while the other does not. The source of information is the author of that book, a mind with consciousness. Therefore we can`t deny that the information in DNA was placed there by an intelligent being.
The Information Dead End of Evolutionary Theory and Materialism
The discovery of this fact has sent materialist philosophy and Darwinism, its application to the natural sciences, into a dead end, because materialist philosophy claims that all living things are formed by matter alone and that genetic information appeared somehow by ``chance.`` This is like saying that a book could be formed from a random assemblage of paper and ink.
Materialism subscribes to the theory of ``reductionism,`` which claims that information can ultimately be reduced to matter. For this reason, materialists say that there`s no need to look for any source of information besides matter. But this assertion has been proven to be in error, and even materialists have started to owe up to this truth.
One of the leading defenders of the theory of evolution, George C. Williams, pointed in a 1995 essay to the mistake of materialism (reductionism), that is, assuming everything to consist of materials:
Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter… These two domains will never be brought together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term ``reductionism.`` …The gene is a package of information, not an object... In biology, when you`re talking about things like genes and genotypes and gene pools, you`re talking about information, not physical objective reality... This dearth of shared descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms. 1
Stephen C. Meyer, a philosopher of science from the Cambridge University and who is critical of the theory of evolution as well as materialism, says in an interview:
One thing I do in classes to get this idea across the students is that I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, the other one is blank. And I ask, ``What is the difference in mass between these two computer disks as a result of the difference in the information content that they possess``? And of course the answer is zero, none, there is no difference as a result of the information. That is because information is a massless quantity. Information is not a material entity.
Then how can any materialistic explanation explain its origin? How can any material cause explain its origin?... This creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic evolutionary scenarios.
In the 19th century, we thought that there were two fundamental entities of science: Matter and energy. At the beginning of the 21st century, we now recognize that there is a third fundamental entity, and it is information. It is not reducible to matter; it is not reducible to energy. 2
All theories put forward in the twentieth century to reduce information to matter-like the random origin of life, self-organization of matter, the biological theory of evolution that has tried to explain species` genetic information through the mechanism of mutation and natural selection-have failed. Professor Phillip Johnson, a leading critic of Darwinism, wrote:
The real duality at every level of biology is the duality of matter and information. The philosophers of mind-science fail to understand the true nature of information because they assume that it is produced by a material (i.e. Darwinian) process and hence is not something fundamentally different from matter. But this is merely a prejudice that would be swept away by unbiased thinking. 3
As Johnson states, ``information is not matter, although it is imprinted on matter. It comes from elsewhere, from an intelligence....`` Dr. Werner Gitt, a director and professor at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, expressed much the same thought:
A coding system always entails a nonmaterial intellectual process. A physical matter cannot produce an information code. All experiences show that every piece of creative information represents some mental effort and can be traced to a personal idea-giver who exercised his own free will, and who is endowed with an intelligent mind.... There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter... 4
As we discussed above, a book is formed by paper, ink and the information it includes. The source of this information is the mind of the author.
And there is one more important point: This mind comes prior to the material elements and it decides how to use them. A book first appears in the mind of the person who will write that book. The author makes logical connections and comes up with sentences. Later, in the second stage, he gives these ideas a material form. By using a typewriter or computer, he turns the information contained within his mind into letters. Later these letters go to a printing house and they make up a book.
So here, we can reach the following conclusion: ``If matter includes information, then that material has been pre-organized by a mind possessing that information. First there was a mind, and then the owner of that mind turned that information into matter and thus created a design.``
The Mind That Existed Before Matter
Therefore, the source of the information in nature cannot be the matter itself, as the materialists claim. The source of information is not matter, but rather a supra-material Mind. This Mind existed before matter. The Mind created, shaped and organized the whole material universe.
Biology isn`t the only branch of science leading us to this conclusion. Twentieth century astronomy and physics also demonstrated the existence of an astonishing harmony and design, pointing to the existence of a Mind that existed before the universe and created it.
Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder who studied physics and biology in universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the author of the book The Science of God, makes some important remarks on this subject. In his new book entitled The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, he explains the conclusion reached by molecular biology and quantum physics as follows:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom. 5
According to Schroeder, the scientific results of our age lead science and theology to meet at a common truth. This is the truth of Creation. Science is now re-discovering this truth that divine religions have actually taught to humanity for millennia.
The Lawh-i Mahfuz (The Preserved Tablet)
So far, we have looked at science`s conclusions about the universe and the origin of living things. The conclusion is that the entire universe and life itself were created using a blueprint of magnificent information that existed before.
This conclusion reached by modern science is strikingly in agreement with a secret that was laid out in the Qur`an some 14 centuries ago. In the Qur`an, a book sent to people as a guide, God announced that the Lawh-i Mahfuz (the Preserved Tablet) existed before the creation of the universe and that it furthermore explained all creation and events in the universe.
The Lawh-i Mahfuz was ``guarded`` (mahfuz) so the things written there were not changed or spoiled. In the Qur`an, this is called ``Ommu al-Kitabi`` (The Mother of the Book), ``Kitabun Hafeethun`` (All-Preserving Book), ``Kitabin Maknoonin`` (Well-Protected Book) or just the book. It is also called Kitabin min Qabli (The Book of Decrees) since it also tells of the events that humanity will face.
In many verses, God tells about the characteristics of the Lawh-i Mahfuz. First of all, there is nothing missing from this book:
The keys of the Unseen are in His possession. No one knows them but Him. He knows everything in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowing it. There is no seed in the darkness of the earth, and nothing moist or dry which is not in a Clear Book. (Qur`an, 6: 59)
One verse says that all life in the world is recorded in the Lawh-i Mahfuz:
There is no creature crawling on the earth or flying creature, flying on its wings, who are not communities just like yourselves —We have not omitted anything from the Book— then they will be gathered to their Lord. (Qur`an, 6: 38)
In another verse, it is stated that ``on earth and in the heavens,`` in the entire universe, all creatures and things, including the smallest speck, are known by God and recorded in the Lawh-i Mahfuz:
You do not engage in any matter or recite any of the Qur`an or do any action without Our witnessing you while you are occupied with it. Not even the smallest speck eludes your Lord, either on earth or in heaven. Nor is there anything smaller than that, or larger, which is not in a Clear Book. (Qur`an, 10: 61)
All information concerning humanity is in the Lawh-i Mahfuz, and this includes the genetic code of all people and their destinies:
Nonetheless they are amazed that a warner should have come to them from among themselves and those who disbelieve say, ``What an extraordinary thing! When we are dead and turned to dust? That would be a most unlikely return!`` We know exactly how the earth eats them away. We possess an all-preserving Book. (Qur`an, 50: 2-4)
The following verse states that God`s words in the Lawh-i Mahfuz are endless, and this is explained through an example:
If all the trees on earth were pens and all the sea, with seven more seas besides, was ink God`s words still would not run dry. God is Almighty, All-Wise. (Qur`an, 31: 27)
Conclusion
The facts that we explored in this article prove yet again that the findings of modern science confirm what religion teaches to people. The materialist dogmatism that has been imposed on science is in fact rejected by science itself.
The conclusions of modern science about information serve to objectively demonstrate who is right in a dispute that has been raging for thousands of years. This dispute has been waged between materialist thought and religion. Materialist thought claims that matter is without beginning and that nothing existed before matter. Religion, on the other hand, states that God existed before matter, and that matter is created and ruled by God`s endless knowledge.
The fact that this truth, which has been taught by divine religions - like Judaism, Christianity and Islam - since the dawn of history, has been proved by the findings of science, is an indication of the impending post-atheist age. Humanity is getting closer to realizing that God truly exists and He is the ``All-Knowing.`` Just as reminded to people in the following verse of the Holy Qur`an:
Do you not know that God knows everything in heaven and earth? That is in a Book. That is easy for God. (Qur`an, 22: 70)
#91 Posted by stuka on August 4, 2003 6:16:51 pm
Manto:
``My concern is the belated arrival of the tormentors of my previous incarnation. I am sorry but I consider Arjun-m and P-Mishra the card carrying members of this brigade... it is only a matter of time before they indulge in their favorite past time. ``
I was talking about the same thing. My point is that I don`t think they have posted any such remark and more importantly this debate is not about India-Pakistan. For a change, this debate is about an issue that affects both countries. Therefore I don`t expect it to become a slanging match.
Well, at least I hope not...
``My concern is the belated arrival of the tormentors of my previous incarnation. I am sorry but I consider Arjun-m and P-Mishra the card carrying members of this brigade... it is only a matter of time before they indulge in their favorite past time. ``
I was talking about the same thing. My point is that I don`t think they have posted any such remark and more importantly this debate is not about India-Pakistan. For a change, this debate is about an issue that affects both countries. Therefore I don`t expect it to become a slanging match.
Well, at least I hope not...
#90 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 2:48:38 pm
Stuka,
I am not sure I get your post. Infact I am in total agreement as you know with the anti-Madrassah stance... I am not talking about that... My concern is the belated arrival of the tormentors of my previous incarnation. I am sorry but I consider Arjun-m and P-Mishra the card carrying members of this brigade... it is only a matter of time before they indulge in their favorite past time.
Another meaningful debate will now be replaced with an equally pointless debate about partition.
-Manto
I am not sure I get your post. Infact I am in total agreement as you know with the anti-Madrassah stance... I am not talking about that... My concern is the belated arrival of the tormentors of my previous incarnation. I am sorry but I consider Arjun-m and P-Mishra the card carrying members of this brigade... it is only a matter of time before they indulge in their favorite past time.
Another meaningful debate will now be replaced with an equally pointless debate about partition.
-Manto
#89 Posted by stuka on August 4, 2003 2:28:57 pm
Manto:
Now that the `I hate Pakistan brigade` is fully operational, We can expect this board to deteriorate in a personal mudslinging match. My solace is the vindication by Stuka in post #73
Why do you say ``hate pakistan``? Most of the posts are with regards to internal problems of Iindia ie pro versus anti Madarsa which coincidentally are also relevant to Pakistan as well.
Now that the `I hate Pakistan brigade` is fully operational, We can expect this board to deteriorate in a personal mudslinging match. My solace is the vindication by Stuka in post #73
Why do you say ``hate pakistan``? Most of the posts are with regards to internal problems of Iindia ie pro versus anti Madarsa which coincidentally are also relevant to Pakistan as well.
#88 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 1:54:47 pm
Arjun-M,
Clearly you haven`t been reading my posts then. Waisay aj I admit, Stuka took the lead in quoting the Jinnah speech I wanted to quote.
Naqshbandi,
``all those modernists you mentioned were and are considered heretics/apostates``
I am sorry to hear your views on the great muslims I mentioned... I might point out that you are right... the traditional ulema did consider all of them heretics, including Iqbal and Jinnah (who in the last years of his life got the great distinction of being `Kafir-e-Azam` or the Great Kafir according to traditional Ulema`)... given your standards i am a little disappointed that you seem to think that in his last days Jinnah gave up his heresy.
Who gave the traditional ulema the right to `takfir` anyway? Isn`t that God`s domain?
-Manto
PS: Now that the `I hate Pakistan brigade` is fully operational, We can expect this board to deteriorate in a personal mudslinging match. My solace is the vindication by Stuka in post #73
Clearly you haven`t been reading my posts then. Waisay aj I admit, Stuka took the lead in quoting the Jinnah speech I wanted to quote.
Naqshbandi,
``all those modernists you mentioned were and are considered heretics/apostates``
I am sorry to hear your views on the great muslims I mentioned... I might point out that you are right... the traditional ulema did consider all of them heretics, including Iqbal and Jinnah (who in the last years of his life got the great distinction of being `Kafir-e-Azam` or the Great Kafir according to traditional Ulema`)... given your standards i am a little disappointed that you seem to think that in his last days Jinnah gave up his heresy.
Who gave the traditional ulema the right to `takfir` anyway? Isn`t that God`s domain?
-Manto
PS: Now that the `I hate Pakistan brigade` is fully operational, We can expect this board to deteriorate in a personal mudslinging match. My solace is the vindication by Stuka in post #73
#87 Posted by stuka on August 4, 2003 1:54:46 pm
Dost Mittar: Are you sure they are two different people? Hmm. Okay, I assumed they were the same person. Even the ex-IFS chap is a Bihari.
Anyways, I was talking about the ex-IFS chap who made the call of boycott of Republic Day.
Soyasauce: Yes, it is only my personal opinion.
Keep in mind though, I am the sort of person who will oppose Madarsas in a knee jerk manner. Okay? Now, my point to Zafar was that if you want to make a good case, you have to go to those who will oppose you, not those who already support you. Therefore, if he was making the case to the Hindu middle class (which may not have much voting power but seems to be the political barometer) then bringing forth Shahbuddin`s name is not helpful. Hhe is closely identified with Shah Bano case at least in North India.
Anyways, I was talking about the ex-IFS chap who made the call of boycott of Republic Day.
Soyasauce: Yes, it is only my personal opinion.
Keep in mind though, I am the sort of person who will oppose Madarsas in a knee jerk manner. Okay? Now, my point to Zafar was that if you want to make a good case, you have to go to those who will oppose you, not those who already support you. Therefore, if he was making the case to the Hindu middle class (which may not have much voting power but seems to be the political barometer) then bringing forth Shahbuddin`s name is not helpful. Hhe is closely identified with Shah Bano case at least in North India.
#86 Posted by dost_mittar on August 4, 2003 10:55:10 am
stuka:
There are two Shahabbudins. There is Syed Shahabuddin, a former IFS officer, who runs the organ Muslim India, is involved with Muslim Law Board and is a forceful spokespersons for Muslim causes, such as Madrassa, Persona Law and Babri Masjid.
The other is a scoundrel politician of Bihar. An MP from Siwan and a close ally of Laloo and part of the Muslim-Yadav alliance, he is involved in several high profile murders and crimes and is supposed to have an army of outlaws under him. He is the one that is the subject of unbailable warrant by the Bihar police.
It is easy to mix the two.
soysauce#84
I am surprised that an intelligent poster like you would make such a statement supporting Madrassahs. As I said earlier (#57) while the govt. cannot close down Madrassahs until it provides access to quality education for everyone, it can and it must regulate and monitor what`s going on there.
There are two Shahabbudins. There is Syed Shahabuddin, a former IFS officer, who runs the organ Muslim India, is involved with Muslim Law Board and is a forceful spokespersons for Muslim causes, such as Madrassa, Persona Law and Babri Masjid.
The other is a scoundrel politician of Bihar. An MP from Siwan and a close ally of Laloo and part of the Muslim-Yadav alliance, he is involved in several high profile murders and crimes and is supposed to have an army of outlaws under him. He is the one that is the subject of unbailable warrant by the Bihar police.
It is easy to mix the two.
soysauce#84
I am surprised that an intelligent poster like you would make such a statement supporting Madrassahs. As I said earlier (#57) while the govt. cannot close down Madrassahs until it provides access to quality education for everyone, it can and it must regulate and monitor what`s going on there.
#85 Posted by soysauce on August 4, 2003 10:38:45 am
#19 Stuka
So it`s only your opinion. All right. (I don`t know punjabi, btw).
Those who are righteously condemning the proliferation of madrassahs have probably never been to a village or a village school where rote learning and memorization are what education has become. There are few facilities and, in many cases, a functioning building itself is a luxury. Speaking for myself, most of my classmates were there because of the free meal. You didn`t necessarily learn anything by going to school. There were exceptions of course but the quality of education that the vast majority of students get is probably no better than what madrassah students get.
Perhaps you all just want to exchage indoctrination by state with indoctrination by non-state actors. If madrassahs bother you, then you should work to have more schools with curricula that lead to productive employment. Madrassahs mostly fill a vacuum.
So it`s only your opinion. All right. (I don`t know punjabi, btw).
Those who are righteously condemning the proliferation of madrassahs have probably never been to a village or a village school where rote learning and memorization are what education has become. There are few facilities and, in many cases, a functioning building itself is a luxury. Speaking for myself, most of my classmates were there because of the free meal. You didn`t necessarily learn anything by going to school. There were exceptions of course but the quality of education that the vast majority of students get is probably no better than what madrassah students get.
Perhaps you all just want to exchage indoctrination by state with indoctrination by non-state actors. If madrassahs bother you, then you should work to have more schools with curricula that lead to productive employment. Madrassahs mostly fill a vacuum.
#84 Posted by arjun_m on August 4, 2003 10:38:45 am
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#83 Posted by Naqshbandi on August 4, 2003 10:03:43 am
ironman==i answered that question in detail by sameer in one of my earlier posts==please see that. also there is no traditional muslim who says that muslims can`t get a modern education either. just as not everyone in a society can be a doctor for it to function likewise not everyone can be an alim. BUT alims are necessary and the madrassahs are there to produce them. the lack of great alims is what has necessitated the creation of institutes like the Zaytuna Institute so this shortfall can be reversed. if i could be 16 again i would not go into science as a career. when i was 15/16 that is what i wanted to be. when i learned more about islam for myself via ulama and mashaikh etc. my interest in it got more and more. now i wish i had become an alim. as for my kids i will definitely encourage at least one of them to be an alim and all of them to be a huffaaz and if they all wanted to i would be happy too. i dont have any yet though...
***
manto/ylh...
in all honesty with the exception of Iqbal and JInnah at the end of his life all those modernists you mentioned were and are considered heretics/apostates by the traditional ulama of the Ahlus Sunnah. We do not need such modernists. indeed they are the problem!
Shaykh Hamza is a traditional, moderate, Sunni =Sufi scholar. (He has been initiated into the Sufi order of the great, late, Yemeni Sufi Shaykh Hadrat Sayyid Habib Ahmad Mashur al Haddad--may Allah perfume his resting place.)
There is no confrontation between learning traditional islam and learning modern scientific knowledge. For exampe another American Muslim scholar--the lebanese Shaykh HIsham Kabbani Naqshbandi is a Sufi shaykh and an great alim but he also holds a medical degree from a European University! There is no contradiction. So Muslims going to madrassahs doesn`t mean we cant have modern knowledge too but if our generation and the next generations are to maintain their traditional islamic values and aqaid then these madrassahs are vital to impart this knowledge.
***
manto/ylh...
in all honesty with the exception of Iqbal and JInnah at the end of his life all those modernists you mentioned were and are considered heretics/apostates by the traditional ulama of the Ahlus Sunnah. We do not need such modernists. indeed they are the problem!
Shaykh Hamza is a traditional, moderate, Sunni =Sufi scholar. (He has been initiated into the Sufi order of the great, late, Yemeni Sufi Shaykh Hadrat Sayyid Habib Ahmad Mashur al Haddad--may Allah perfume his resting place.)
There is no confrontation between learning traditional islam and learning modern scientific knowledge. For exampe another American Muslim scholar--the lebanese Shaykh HIsham Kabbani Naqshbandi is a Sufi shaykh and an great alim but he also holds a medical degree from a European University! There is no contradiction. So Muslims going to madrassahs doesn`t mean we cant have modern knowledge too but if our generation and the next generations are to maintain their traditional islamic values and aqaid then these madrassahs are vital to impart this knowledge.
#82 Posted by pmishra2 on August 4, 2003 9:53:26 am
Summary of Article: certain Muslim groups have a right in India to be as obscurantist as possible. They should have the right to run schools based on a curriculum which was obsolete in the 19th century. After all, a 100 years ago the schools had a positive impact on indians (for example, Rajendra Prasad). Why change a ``good`` thing? There is no need to move along and change. Also, they need to control their vote banks and what better thing to do then to isolated students starting from school. Keep in mind that in school impressionable minds might be given a broader orientation.
[begin-sarcasm]
The output of these schools will not be able to get any job in the economy. But that is their democratic right! If a few of the outputs become jihadi islamists, what can you expect? Did the society help these people by giving them jobs? See, this is all sarkari discrimination.
[end-sarcasm]
The giveway in this article is the repeated reference to the opinions of the great Syed Shahabuddin. It is rare to find a person (maybe Modi and Lallo are worse) who personifies the ugliest form of vote bank politics than this buffoon. This is a person who himself is finely educated but believes that all muslims (at least ! maybe he believes that everyone should) be kept in the 1400 century.
Here are a few of his gems from the past 20 years:
``Syed Shahabuddin and his pet theme: Islam Khatre mein Hain``
http://www.media-watch.org/articles/0299/517.html
But while it has become politically incorrect to acknowledge this, secularists
must also admit that part of the problem was the attitude of the
fundamentalists within the Muslim community. The Muslim leadership never
bothered to explain to Hindus why it regarded the right to refuse to pay
maintenance to ex-wives as being so important. Nor did it explain its
opposition to a common civil code in terms that most Hindus found reasonable.
However, no issue contributed to the Hindu backlash quite as much as the
uproar over The Satanic Verses. This was a book that the overwhelming majority
of Indian Muslims would never have read. Even those who called for a ban on
The Satanic Verses — such as Syed Shahabuddin — cheerfully admitted that not
only had they not read the book but that they had no intention of doing so.
Despite this, the government of Rajiv Gandhi, out of some misplaced sense of
secularism, immediately acceded to the demand for a ban. But even this did not
satisfy sections of the Muslim leadership. Rent-a-crowd demonstrators were
made to storm the British Deputy High Commission in Bombay, apparently on the
ground that the book had been published in England. Rallies condemning Rushdie
were held all over the country. The level of the opposition was laid bare by
the Shahi Imam’s famous sermon against ‘this perfidious Salman’, in the course
of which it became clear that he thought that Salman Rushdie and Salman
Khurshid were the same person.
+++++++++++++++++++
Here is another comment by M. J. Akbar on the AIMPLB (All India Muslim Personal Law Board) whose agenda is preservation of Sharia and otherwise death to all indians, muslim or not. Shri Shahabuddin is a guiding light of the AIMPLB. You can find this article at Asian Age (http://www.asianage.com), which for some reason has one of these eccentric URL schemes that are private to the site.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In 1972, the late Qari Mohammed Tayyab suggested the formation of a lobby group at a meeting in the seminary of Deoband. A convention was held in Mumbai on 27-28 December 1972 to establish the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), with Tayyab as the first president. It had an uncomplicated agenda: to thwart any effort to interfere, by either the government or the courts, with its interpretation of the Islamic law (or Sharia). In effect it meant that this body of clergy and like-minded politicians and activists would oppose any change, even if that change was beneficial to the community. It gave to itself veto rights on Islamic law; its continual slogan was ``Islam is in danger!``; and its mission was to herd an insecure community into a vote bank that it would deliver to those who were ready to recognise its sole spokesman role for the Indian Muslim community.
So far it has held ten all-India sessions. Its 41 executive members are not elected by Muslims, but inducted in the manner of a private club. It would be unfair to suggest that everything it has done is necessarily regressive, but it would be fair to say that this has been its broad thrust, as can only be expected of a body so heavily weighted by the influence of the clergy. Its attitude towards social reform is best summed by the position it took on family planning. It is interesting that political parties ideologically close to the Board, like the Muslim League, supported the imposition of the Emergency by Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1975. But what might be called the ``Muslim Parivar`` changed tack when Mrs Gandhi used the Emergency to push some overdue social programmes like family planning. At an extraordinary meeting held on 17-18 April 1976 the Board declared that sterilisation (nasbandi) was haram or prohibited.
In all matters of family law the Board has taken a male-oriented view. Its most dramatic success was the blackmail of an inexperienced Rajiv Gandhi over the Supreme Court decision in the Shah Bano case. The Board mobilised Muslims and forced Rajiv Gandhi to deny a poor, ageing divorcee minimal maintenance from her estranged husband. I daresay that if among Muslims only women for some reason were thieves, the Board would have demanded that their hands be cut off. However, the Board has not suggested that Muslim thieves should be awarded the Quranic punishment irrespective of how Indian law treats non-Muslim thieves. It accepts reform for thieves, but not for divorcees. I find it appalling.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So we should understand the basic thrust of this article as reflective of the AIMPLB mindset. I completely accept that forces like VHP/RSS are unfairly targetting the muslim community.
BUT WHAT SHOULD THE RESPONSE BE? More segregration? Refusal to acknowledge that ALL indians should have some similar curriculum? That an educational system that does not teach basic job skills is outmoded and ultimately harmful to its own students?
One respondent raised the question of schools run by RSS or Christian groups being fundamentalist in orientation. You should be aware that ALL such schools emphasize performance in board exams (what does that mean about their curriculum, dunderhead??).
Recently, Somini Sengupta of the NYTimes visited one such RSS school. She found it narrow minded and somewhat backward. However, EVERY student in the school took the central board exams after standard 10. She interviewed a ``hindu fundamentalist`` student who was not very informed about muslims and other indian cultures. This student was planning to go to Law School so that he could fight for ``hindu rights``!! I will not comment any further on the difference between this fundamentalist and others. You can come to your own conclusion about an aspiration that seeks to use the tools of modern society (law!) and the organs of the state, and decide whether it is true ``fundamentalism``.
#81 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 9:53:26 am
Yantric has made some valid points... however I would also say that a large portion of the Islamic mysticism was based on the idea that God is infinite. Hence our Monotheism might well be polytheism, for if God is infinite, God is everything.... right?
Please excuse my poor command over poetry but here is a couplet from Iqbal I think:
Mujhe daboya honay nay
Agar na hota to Khuda hota
-Manto
#80 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 9:53:25 am
Infact recall the Muslim objection to the use of the word infinite by the Bush Administration... in October 2001
#79 Posted by stuka on August 4, 2003 9:53:25 am
Soyasauce:
In reference to Shahabuddin:
Shahabuddin may flee to Pak: DGP
PRANAV K CHAUDHARY
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, AUGUST 04, 2003 07:30:38 PM ]
PATNA: Further tightening screws on absconding RJD MP from Bihar, Mohd Shahabuddin, the Bihar police on Monday evening sent an SOS to the police commissioners of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata to prevent the MP`s escape to a foreign country.
The Siwan MP is on the run after state police chief ordered his arrest in a kidnapping case a few days ago.
While apprehending that the MP might be planning to leave the country to evade arrest, Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) D P Ojha in a fax message to the police commissioners has alerted them to the MP`s plan and urged them to prevent it.
A letter has also been sent to the director general of the Central Industrial Security Force, which looks after the security at various airports, requesting him to arrest the MP if he is spotted.
The state police are in receipt of intelligence reports that the MP was on way to Pakistan via Dubai, police sources said.
In reference to Shahabuddin:
Shahabuddin may flee to Pak: DGP
PRANAV K CHAUDHARY
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, AUGUST 04, 2003 07:30:38 PM ]
PATNA: Further tightening screws on absconding RJD MP from Bihar, Mohd Shahabuddin, the Bihar police on Monday evening sent an SOS to the police commissioners of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata to prevent the MP`s escape to a foreign country.
The Siwan MP is on the run after state police chief ordered his arrest in a kidnapping case a few days ago.
While apprehending that the MP might be planning to leave the country to evade arrest, Bihar Director General of Police (DGP) D P Ojha in a fax message to the police commissioners has alerted them to the MP`s plan and urged them to prevent it.
A letter has also been sent to the director general of the Central Industrial Security Force, which looks after the security at various airports, requesting him to arrest the MP if he is spotted.
The state police are in receipt of intelligence reports that the MP was on way to Pakistan via Dubai, police sources said.
#78 Posted by Maharana on August 4, 2003 9:53:25 am
Zafar,
Quite a lengthy article.
Why defend a medieval method of imparting education in the modern world? Don`t you think the same charities can work towards secular schools too?
Imagine a large number of people sending their kids to ashram style education and teaching them ancient books. What good would it do these kids. Their education and modernity would be anachronistic.
Adios
Quite a lengthy article.
Why defend a medieval method of imparting education in the modern world? Don`t you think the same charities can work towards secular schools too?
Imagine a large number of people sending their kids to ashram style education and teaching them ancient books. What good would it do these kids. Their education and modernity would be anachronistic.
Adios
#77 Posted by ferozk on August 4, 2003 9:22:48 am
re: Mantolives # 74
That was very well said and we have to keep this in mind all the time. Islam is a not a monolithic entity and we should resist attempts to make it one.
Ciao
That was very well said and we have to keep this in mind all the time. Islam is a not a monolithic entity and we should resist attempts to make it one.
Ciao
#76 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 8:28:46 am
Stuka 73
That is the nicest thing anyone has said about me on chowk.
-Manto
That is the nicest thing anyone has said about me on chowk.
-Manto
#75 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 7:23:07 am
Naqshbandi,
Where I agree with Rsaxena`s estimate of you, I don`t agree with his statement about you hastening your departure. I think you are man of conviction, and you shouldn`t be harrassed because of your conviction.
I wish though that you would read Sameerjb`s post once again, and I hope one day you will realize that the people that you admire like Sheikh Hamza Yusuf can hardly be termed as the friends of Muslims and Islam. With their retrogressive ideologies, they seek to undo all that the Modernist movement in Islam, speerheaded by men like Sir Syed, Iqbal, Ameer Ali, Jinnah, Namik Kemal and Mustapha Kemal, has achieved in the last 200 years.
Islam is not a stagnant faith. Why do you wish for it to become that?
-Manto
Where I agree with Rsaxena`s estimate of you, I don`t agree with his statement about you hastening your departure. I think you are man of conviction, and you shouldn`t be harrassed because of your conviction.
I wish though that you would read Sameerjb`s post once again, and I hope one day you will realize that the people that you admire like Sheikh Hamza Yusuf can hardly be termed as the friends of Muslims and Islam. With their retrogressive ideologies, they seek to undo all that the Modernist movement in Islam, speerheaded by men like Sir Syed, Iqbal, Ameer Ali, Jinnah, Namik Kemal and Mustapha Kemal, has achieved in the last 200 years.
Islam is not a stagnant faith. Why do you wish for it to become that?
-Manto
#74 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 4, 2003 7:23:07 am
Yantra:68
Honourable Sir!
The slurs you hurl have lost their edge because of overuse. Please invent some fresh invective or revitalise the vitroil.
Destiny or Fate has never been an issue .The real worry should be to find the right astrologer. They never lie-- if you feed them the truth and pay their bill.
Honourable Sir!
The slurs you hurl have lost their edge because of overuse. Please invent some fresh invective or revitalise the vitroil.
Destiny or Fate has never been an issue .The real worry should be to find the right astrologer. They never lie-- if you feed them the truth and pay their bill.
#73 Posted by stuka on August 4, 2003 7:23:06 am
Yantric:
``Good idea of muslim mindset. ``
I find that phrase highly offensive. It is no different than equally ignorant phrases like ``cunning baniya`` or ``Hindu mentality``. How the hell do you expect 1.6 billion afherents to have one mindset? And Ii am a Hindu btw.
``Good idea of muslim mindset. ``
I find that phrase highly offensive. It is no different than equally ignorant phrases like ``cunning baniya`` or ``Hindu mentality``. How the hell do you expect 1.6 billion afherents to have one mindset? And Ii am a Hindu btw.
#72 Posted by stuka on August 4, 2003 7:23:06 am
Manto:
Thanks for some very enlightening posts. I think you are a living rebuttal to what Jay keeps spouting about Pakistan. In fact, you do not have to prove him wrong by arguing with him because your existence is enough.
Thanks for some very enlightening posts. I think you are a living rebuttal to what Jay keeps spouting about Pakistan. In fact, you do not have to prove him wrong by arguing with him because your existence is enough.
#71 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 1:28:55 am
PS: Another sad fact is that the frontier Gandhi`s successors have always allied themselves with the religious parties against mainstream national parties like the Muslim League or the Pakistan Peoples Party....
1) In 1947 the Khudai Khidmatgars were found guilty of colluding with the Fakir of Ipi.
2) In 1970, Wali Khan formed the coalition government with Maulana Fazlu`s dad, Mufti Mahmood....
3) 1977, Wali Khan and his socialist secular party was part of the PNA whose catch slogan was `Nifaz-e-Nizam-e-Mustafa`, or the creation of a truly Islamic state.
4) Right now while they sit in the opposition in the NWFP assembly ... they voted with the government on the issue of sharia.
Another twist in the history of the politics of Pakistan.
1) In 1947 the Khudai Khidmatgars were found guilty of colluding with the Fakir of Ipi.
2) In 1970, Wali Khan formed the coalition government with Maulana Fazlu`s dad, Mufti Mahmood....
3) 1977, Wali Khan and his socialist secular party was part of the PNA whose catch slogan was `Nifaz-e-Nizam-e-Mustafa`, or the creation of a truly Islamic state.
4) Right now while they sit in the opposition in the NWFP assembly ... they voted with the government on the issue of sharia.
Another twist in the history of the politics of Pakistan.
#70 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 1:28:55 am
Ooops point 2 should read in 1973 ... Wali Khan formed a coalition government with Mufti Mahmood in NWFP....
#69 Posted by yantric on August 4, 2003 12:34:40 am
Echoboom
``Unless one is afraid of such zeal and determination there is no need to worry about their `welfare`. The criteria are different. ``
Good idea of muslim mindset. What is the zeal and determination for ........ To convert rest of the world to a bedoin relgion propogated by a paedophile. And if one can`t convert then kill. If can`t kill then die in a fidayeen attack.
Yes some of us pray to many godesses.......... it is because for us God is infinity and not one. Moreover we are not intimidated by women like you guys. I guess for you they are only sex objects. For God can come in form of a woman too.
``Unless one is afraid of such zeal and determination there is no need to worry about their `welfare`. The criteria are different. ``
Good idea of muslim mindset. What is the zeal and determination for ........ To convert rest of the world to a bedoin relgion propogated by a paedophile. And if one can`t convert then kill. If can`t kill then die in a fidayeen attack.
Yes some of us pray to many godesses.......... it is because for us God is infinity and not one. Moreover we are not intimidated by women like you guys. I guess for you they are only sex objects. For God can come in form of a woman too.
#68 Posted by MantoLives on August 4, 2003 12:34:40 am
Dear Stuka,
Sorry, I misjudged your question. My bad. :) Please ignore those two statements...
Anyway, you have pretty much the basic idea. Nationstates are evolutionary... You`ve already quoted the famous Jinnah speech on this, and I quote Faiz Ahmed Faiz.. who said in 1970s that `The Pakistani nation is not the same as the Muslim nation that fought for Pakistan` suggesting basically that Pakistan is determined by the Pakistanis and not by the past. In this respect 14th August 1947 suggested a break from the past, for Muslim minority nationalism was only valid in the broader all India context (and from the looks of it exists in India today eg ‘Qaum’ ), and Pakistan was and will always be a different and completely new identity. Hence the Jinnah speech you quoted.
If only the Pakistanis could read more.
Frontier Gandhi’s loss of popularity was due to the earlier perception of being anti-Pakistan. However as soon as his successors reconciled themselves with the idea of Pakistan , they reclaimed their traditional vote bank. Maudoodi on the other hand never got any popular electoral support… infact in 1970 his party got annihilated at the polls in his life time. MMA which is an alliance of 6 religious parties, 5 of which didn’t like Maudoodi very much in the past, has only won popular support because of its anti-American stance … which explains the defeats of the Bacha Khan and his followers in NWFP.
Religious extremists like Maudoodi will always have a nuisance value. Yet god knows for what reason, the Modernist Pakistanis are scared shi-tless of them… they try and appease them… by using words like Quran and Sunnah, and no legislation repugnant to Islam, but this is only giving them the foot in the door. Had the Pakistani Constituent Assembly in 1949 paid any heed to the brilliant advice of the Hindu members from East Pakistan, and stayed the course with keeping even the hint of religion out of the constitution, Maudoodi and his followers could never have become the nuisance they became later. As in the words of one Hindu MP from East Pakistan ‘Our Posterity will condemn us for this Objectives resolution’. I am the POSTERITY. I condemn the Objectives Resolution.
-Manto
Sorry, I misjudged your question. My bad. :) Please ignore those two statements...
Anyway, you have pretty much the basic idea. Nationstates are evolutionary... You`ve already quoted the famous Jinnah speech on this, and I quote Faiz Ahmed Faiz.. who said in 1970s that `The Pakistani nation is not the same as the Muslim nation that fought for Pakistan` suggesting basically that Pakistan is determined by the Pakistanis and not by the past. In this respect 14th August 1947 suggested a break from the past, for Muslim minority nationalism was only valid in the broader all India context (and from the looks of it exists in India today eg ‘Qaum’ ), and Pakistan was and will always be a different and completely new identity. Hence the Jinnah speech you quoted.
If only the Pakistanis could read more.
Frontier Gandhi’s loss of popularity was due to the earlier perception of being anti-Pakistan. However as soon as his successors reconciled themselves with the idea of Pakistan , they reclaimed their traditional vote bank. Maudoodi on the other hand never got any popular electoral support… infact in 1970 his party got annihilated at the polls in his life time. MMA which is an alliance of 6 religious parties, 5 of which didn’t like Maudoodi very much in the past, has only won popular support because of its anti-American stance … which explains the defeats of the Bacha Khan and his followers in NWFP.
Religious extremists like Maudoodi will always have a nuisance value. Yet god knows for what reason, the Modernist Pakistanis are scared shi-tless of them… they try and appease them… by using words like Quran and Sunnah, and no legislation repugnant to Islam, but this is only giving them the foot in the door. Had the Pakistani Constituent Assembly in 1949 paid any heed to the brilliant advice of the Hindu members from East Pakistan, and stayed the course with keeping even the hint of religion out of the constitution, Maudoodi and his followers could never have become the nuisance they became later. As in the words of one Hindu MP from East Pakistan ‘Our Posterity will condemn us for this Objectives resolution’. I am the POSTERITY. I condemn the Objectives Resolution.
-Manto
#67 Posted by ferozk on August 3, 2003 11:36:32 pm
re: Stuka # 64
Concerning your question, Maudoodi`s political fortunes were given a boost by Khawja Nazimuddin, who was the Governor-General after Jinnah`s death. Nazimuddin was a religious person and he gave heed to Maudoodi`s ideas and thus, cementing his influence.
Hope this helps!
Ciao
Concerning your question, Maudoodi`s political fortunes were given a boost by Khawja Nazimuddin, who was the Governor-General after Jinnah`s death. Nazimuddin was a religious person and he gave heed to Maudoodi`s ideas and thus, cementing his influence.
Hope this helps!
Ciao
#66 Posted by stuka on August 3, 2003 9:42:38 pm
Manto:
Thanks for an informative post.
``Maudoodi by contrast doesn`t find any mention in Pakistani ideology or Pakistani History books, perhaps due to his opposition to partition which I am sure you know all about. ``
I am quite familiar with Maudoodi`s reference to the yet to be formed Pakistan as Napakistan. I am also aware of the dissonance of the Indian congress movement which was supposedly secular but chose to ally itself with the fundamentalist bloack. Gandhis mistake was his over-reliance on the Ali brothers and a backward looking Khilafat movement.
What I am unable to understand is that is Frontier Gandhi`s political standing collapsed even though he had ethnic roots in NWFP, how the hell was Maudoodi able to resurrect his political career in Pakistan. I mean, this guy did not even have a political base in the territory that went on to become Pakistan. Yet, he managed to raise his profile enough where he was a significant nuisance value to the establishment.
Thanks for an informative post.
``Maudoodi by contrast doesn`t find any mention in Pakistani ideology or Pakistani History books, perhaps due to his opposition to partition which I am sure you know all about. ``
I am quite familiar with Maudoodi`s reference to the yet to be formed Pakistan as Napakistan. I am also aware of the dissonance of the Indian congress movement which was supposedly secular but chose to ally itself with the fundamentalist bloack. Gandhis mistake was his over-reliance on the Ali brothers and a backward looking Khilafat movement.
What I am unable to understand is that is Frontier Gandhi`s political standing collapsed even though he had ethnic roots in NWFP, how the hell was Maudoodi able to resurrect his political career in Pakistan. I mean, this guy did not even have a political base in the territory that went on to become Pakistan. Yet, he managed to raise his profile enough where he was a significant nuisance value to the establishment.
#65 Posted by stuka on August 3, 2003 9:42:38 pm
Manto:
``Your question made me think that you have an exaggerated idea about the Pakistani ideology whatever that is.``
I used the phrase only to clarify that I was interested in the ``official`` rather than your personal perspective of the situation. I know you are phenomenally well read so I do believe that your personal perspective may actually be more factual than a politically expedient ``official`` view.
``Your question made me think that you have an exaggerated idea about the Pakistani ideology whatever that is.``
I used the phrase only to clarify that I was interested in the ``official`` rather than your personal perspective of the situation. I know you are phenomenally well read so I do believe that your personal perspective may actually be more factual than a politically expedient ``official`` view.
#64 Posted by stuka on August 3, 2003 9:42:38 pm
Manto:
``Hence I am a little disappointed by the question because it exhibits a certain fallacious estimate of Pakistan and its people. ``
I am sorry. Can you elucidate on this sentence. I have not understood the reference to ``fallacious estimate.``
``The problem with the official Pakistani ideology is not that it is backward or the mistress of the sharia-honking mullahs, but that it still caught up in the Muslim nationalism of the 30s and the 40s. Infact my own issue is the attempt to balance an inherent modernity with an emotional attachment to Islam which is what the Pakistani ideology is all about... not that it isn`t a noble idea, but that it has failed over and over again. The islamic portions of this ideology thus have been abused by rigid elements. Hence we should abandon it for secularism.
Hope that makes you understand my position better vis a vis the official Pakistani ideology.``
I think so though I am not sure. I think what you are saying that because Pakistan is a reality it does not need the Muslim nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s. It can carry on being a republic and ``Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims`` as a consequence. If I have understood you correctly, I agree. If not maybe you can help bridge the gap.
``Hence I am a little disappointed by the question because it exhibits a certain fallacious estimate of Pakistan and its people. ``
I am sorry. Can you elucidate on this sentence. I have not understood the reference to ``fallacious estimate.``
``The problem with the official Pakistani ideology is not that it is backward or the mistress of the sharia-honking mullahs, but that it still caught up in the Muslim nationalism of the 30s and the 40s. Infact my own issue is the attempt to balance an inherent modernity with an emotional attachment to Islam which is what the Pakistani ideology is all about... not that it isn`t a noble idea, but that it has failed over and over again. The islamic portions of this ideology thus have been abused by rigid elements. Hence we should abandon it for secularism.
Hope that makes you understand my position better vis a vis the official Pakistani ideology.``
I think so though I am not sure. I think what you are saying that because Pakistan is a reality it does not need the Muslim nationalism of the 1930s and 1940s. It can carry on being a republic and ``Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims`` as a consequence. If I have understood you correctly, I agree. If not maybe you can help bridge the gap.
#63 Posted by ironman on August 3, 2003 9:08:00 pm
Naqshbandi,
You haven`t answered Sameer`s main question:
How come YOU opted for an education in modern medical science and not a madarsah education? Will you send your children to the Madarsah?
Many chowkies think you are a hypocrite #1. Please answer these questions and prove them wrong.
You haven`t answered Sameer`s main question:
How come YOU opted for an education in modern medical science and not a madarsah education? Will you send your children to the Madarsah?
Many chowkies think you are a hypocrite #1. Please answer these questions and prove them wrong.
#62 Posted by shankar on August 3, 2003 8:11:15 pm
Nasbandhi,
{{Islam sees this world as a testbed for the Next World which is the real, infinite, life; in comparison this worldly life is just a dream.}}
Yes yes huzoor....I`ve heard that from you; ad nauseum.
A yr or so ago, you announced (with GREAT flourish...I might add..)
that you are concentrating your full life henceforth, to prepare for the Next World & had to wistfully bid a fond farewell to Chowk.
Well that fond farewell lasted exactly a few months...
Then you came back to Chowk with increasing vigor as the self appointed REAL muslim of Chowk (ofcourse you dont actually claim it...you just imply it, very humbly, in your sweet, informative, Islamic scholarly posts)...
I sincerely believe Almighty is so impressed by your piety that He gave you an advance visa to jannat. In fact, Allah`s miracles never cease to amaze me. I wouldnt be surprised if Allah send a pure Syed in your life`s path, who blessed you with a well placed kick in the skull. . May He continue to shower His divine benevolence on you, your future 4 loving, virtuous wives & 15 children.
Pakistan is lucky that real muslims like you are going back & reproducing at a very impressive rate (Allah`s blessings; ofcourse). Pakistan, no doubt is becoming the world magnet for real muslims (of course--some are more real muslims than others, in your egalitarian Islamic Republic...but then-- nobody`s perfect)... May Pakistan rise like a phoenix with a 150 million hafizs...that, in itself, will be more powerful than India`s dastardly nuclear bombs!
And; after all of you have made Pakistan the shining beacon of the world...you will be awarded 72 virgins in Jannat...
Man! I was THIS close to signing up; & then that outcast 12 head (may Allah bless all 12 of them) revealed that those virgins should be treated like your SISTERS!
ThankYou Allah, for not making me muslim...I could behave myself with 72 nubile ``sisters`` for maybe about 100 yrs....but for an ETERNITY!!
Wow! learning the Quran must give you guys incredible self-discipline!...
...either that or jannat has plenty of cold showers & all-you-can-eat Valium!
Thank You Allah for coming to me in 33 million shapes & forms (including the shape of a penis for Chris-sake!) ThankYou Allah for telling me that as a Hindu god; You can be mischievious & have a wicked sense of humor. ThankYou for not coming to me as an angry, shapeless, punitive though merciful parent. ThankYou for allowing me to question your word , from time to time-eventhough, I admit, I can be very wrong.
Lastly, ThanYou Allah for sparing me the fate of jannat...
I mean... I GUESS I can learn to accept celibacy & tolerate 72 nubile virgins...
but to pitch a tent next to qumquats like Nasbandhi, OBL & the Ayatollah Khoemeni..for an ETERNITY...nope...I`ll pass...NOT my idea of Heaven!
{{Islam sees this world as a testbed for the Next World which is the real, infinite, life; in comparison this worldly life is just a dream.}}
Yes yes huzoor....I`ve heard that from you; ad nauseum.
A yr or so ago, you announced (with GREAT flourish...I might add..)
that you are concentrating your full life henceforth, to prepare for the Next World & had to wistfully bid a fond farewell to Chowk.
Well that fond farewell lasted exactly a few months...
Then you came back to Chowk with increasing vigor as the self appointed REAL muslim of Chowk (ofcourse you dont actually claim it...you just imply it, very humbly, in your sweet, informative, Islamic scholarly posts)...
I sincerely believe Almighty is so impressed by your piety that He gave you an advance visa to jannat. In fact, Allah`s miracles never cease to amaze me. I wouldnt be surprised if Allah send a pure Syed in your life`s path, who blessed you with a well placed kick in the skull. . May He continue to shower His divine benevolence on you, your future 4 loving, virtuous wives & 15 children.
Pakistan is lucky that real muslims like you are going back & reproducing at a very impressive rate (Allah`s blessings; ofcourse). Pakistan, no doubt is becoming the world magnet for real muslims (of course--some are more real muslims than others, in your egalitarian Islamic Republic...but then-- nobody`s perfect)... May Pakistan rise like a phoenix with a 150 million hafizs...that, in itself, will be more powerful than India`s dastardly nuclear bombs!
And; after all of you have made Pakistan the shining beacon of the world...you will be awarded 72 virgins in Jannat...
Man! I was THIS close to signing up; & then that outcast 12 head (may Allah bless all 12 of them) revealed that those virgins should be treated like your SISTERS!
ThankYou Allah, for not making me muslim...I could behave myself with 72 nubile ``sisters`` for maybe about 100 yrs....but for an ETERNITY!!
Wow! learning the Quran must give you guys incredible self-discipline!...
...either that or jannat has plenty of cold showers & all-you-can-eat Valium!
Thank You Allah for coming to me in 33 million shapes & forms (including the shape of a penis for Chris-sake!) ThankYou Allah for telling me that as a Hindu god; You can be mischievious & have a wicked sense of humor. ThankYou for not coming to me as an angry, shapeless, punitive though merciful parent. ThankYou for allowing me to question your word , from time to time-eventhough, I admit, I can be very wrong.
Lastly, ThanYou Allah for sparing me the fate of jannat...
I mean... I GUESS I can learn to accept celibacy & tolerate 72 nubile virgins...
but to pitch a tent next to qumquats like Nasbandhi, OBL & the Ayatollah Khoemeni..for an ETERNITY...nope...I`ll pass...NOT my idea of Heaven!
#61 Posted by rsaxena on August 3, 2003 7:37:15 pm
re: naqshabandi
{Islam sees this world as a testbed for the Next World which is the real, infinite, life; in comparison this worldly life is just a dream. }
...why don`t you hasten your departure into the real, infinite life and leave this ``worldly dream``...
{Islam sees this world as a testbed for the Next World which is the real, infinite, life; in comparison this worldly life is just a dream. }
...why don`t you hasten your departure into the real, infinite life and leave this ``worldly dream``...
#60 Posted by Naqshbandi on August 3, 2003 4:28:50 pm
Sameer, you asked me to tell you the benefits of being a Hafiz?
The benefits are the innumerable blessings of Allah in this world and the next; in this world you will be rewarded for protecting [hafiz] the Word of Allah from any alterations: as Sayyid Hashmi Mian said that the existence of millions of Muslims in the world at any one time who know the whole Quran by heart letter by letter is protection of it (in case some people try to alter parts of it they do not like--which has been attempted)--and it is a part of the Qur`an`s miraculous nature that it is the only Holy Book which can be memorised totally even by kids; no hafiz of other Holy Books exist who can recite the whole Bible, for example, by heart without a single mistake.
Apart from improving one`s discipline, memory and sharpening one`s intellect, the major rewards will be in the Next World; although even in this world people pay hafiz of the Qur`an great respect throughout the Muslim world. For Muslims the expectation of the unimaginable rewards to come from Allah in the Next World are what really matter. On that Day Huffaaz will be the winners.
In short the primary reasons Muslims do something should be for the pleasure of Allah and this leads to promised rewards in the Next World and as the blessing of such activities Allah blesses us with rewards in this world too if He wills but the main focus is for Next World.
Islam sees this world as a testbed for the Next World which is the real, infinite, life; in comparison this worldly life is just a dream.
The benefits are the innumerable blessings of Allah in this world and the next; in this world you will be rewarded for protecting [hafiz] the Word of Allah from any alterations: as Sayyid Hashmi Mian said that the existence of millions of Muslims in the world at any one time who know the whole Quran by heart letter by letter is protection of it (in case some people try to alter parts of it they do not like--which has been attempted)--and it is a part of the Qur`an`s miraculous nature that it is the only Holy Book which can be memorised totally even by kids; no hafiz of other Holy Books exist who can recite the whole Bible, for example, by heart without a single mistake.
Apart from improving one`s discipline, memory and sharpening one`s intellect, the major rewards will be in the Next World; although even in this world people pay hafiz of the Qur`an great respect throughout the Muslim world. For Muslims the expectation of the unimaginable rewards to come from Allah in the Next World are what really matter. On that Day Huffaaz will be the winners.
In short the primary reasons Muslims do something should be for the pleasure of Allah and this leads to promised rewards in the Next World and as the blessing of such activities Allah blesses us with rewards in this world too if He wills but the main focus is for Next World.
Islam sees this world as a testbed for the Next World which is the real, infinite, life; in comparison this worldly life is just a dream.
#59 Posted by tenaliramanna on August 3, 2003 12:18:28 pm
Muslim employment and representation or massacres of Muslims......
Wonder what they say about conversions and massacre of Kafirs ?
but by no stretch of imagination are they pro-Pakistan or anti-India
Clever twist of words eh ? Are they ``pro-ummah`` or ``pro-shariat``(Vs the Indian consitution) or ``anti-kafir`` ?? Wouldn`t this put them into a ``anti-india`` bucket - atleast to some extent ?
There might be a few small Madarsahs along the India-Nepal border, which, unknown to them, have been used by Pakistani agencies for their own purposes, but if this is at all the case these must be very small in number.
Holy Cow/Pig.......so they are extremely innocent and if the fault is to put on anyobody`s door step, it`s the ISI or the Indian Govt !!!
as there is no evidence of Indian Madarsahs having anything to do with their counterparts across the border, or for that sake, even their counterparts within the country.
So Madrasahs are water tight compartments.....and they have nothing to do with each other - fine. Do they have something to do with the Masjids at all ? And the Masjids of the world have Rabid imams (UK, Indonesia, Pak, India etc etc and etc) and sure they leave Madrasahs alone. Since you said it and since nothing is to be questioned we take it that Madrasahs are the best places to send one`s kid to.
“The railway ministry has withdrawn concessions to our students`` says the maulana.
Sorry, but even this has not made them join a Govt school. No school in your area ? Well how about a Shah bano type agitation to get some schools in Muslim colonies that teach primary education @ a nominal fees or without it ? Religion can be taught an hour after school or on the weekends. Nah, Islam/Qaum Khatrein mein hain. And that stupid Syed Shahbuddin will see this as a ploy to breaks Indian Muslim`s backbone. Zafar & Co will write a Phd Thesis proving him. Sucks big time............
We assure Maulana Zubair and come out of the seminary. He escorts us till we finally depart from the place. We have the feeling that we have come out of an orphanage. We wonder: If these people had a little more money, they would eat better food and perhaps buy some more books, and surely some notebooks too. If you don’t believe this, go see for yourself.
Would you please compare a ``Hindu Orphanage`` Or ``any Orphanage`` with a ``Muslim Orphanage`` and write an article on what`s different ? How much time is spent on ``Islamisation`` Vs ``Skills to earn a livelihood`` in these orgns ?
(We visited the Jamia Arabia Shamsul Uloom on Sunday, April 6, 2003)
A visit to one = Character profile of ALL Madrasahs ????? Yes Sir, what next ?
and the increased mistrust [3] against the curricula of government schools, Madarsahs are often the only available educational option for children from poor Muslim families,
Mistrust against curricula ???? et tu Zafar ??? This is pathetic to say the least.
Why do we need Madrasahs at all ? Those who wd like to join the Imam-hood can take regular classes...the rest should join a Govt school ......or the same money that the current Madrasahs are getting should be utilised in brining in modern edn.
#58 Posted by veeresh on August 3, 2003 10:59:51 am
Dost Mittar ji, #57, and others, my optimism is based on a variety of observations, not the least of which are:-
a) Supplementing of retrospective religion attributes with consumerism as the major behaviour pattern.
b) Elimination of frugality as a virtue from the Indian psyche across religious and social mass barriers.
c) The visible emergence of women especially in the smaller cities / semi urban / semi rural areas all over the country and in rural areas in the South & West of India.
d) An increasing acceptance of realities (behind closed doors) by the most virulent of fundoos, of whom I assure you I know more than my fair share.
What I want to bring out on chowk is simply that the ``Qaum Khatre Mein Hai`` garden variety petro dollar sponsored Muslim ``leader`` in India never was and increasingly is not representative of anything except their own narrow interests.
After all, what and who is a Muslim leader in India? Is it the President of India? Is it the richest man in India? Is it the winner of Wimbledon? Is it Ismail Langda?
And likewise, what and who is a Hindu, Christian or Sikh leader in India?
For sure, the religious heads of these religions in India are not their real mass leaders, so why should we assume that the religious heads of the Muslims are their real leaders?
My reaction to Zafar`s presentation is that some sort of an objection to Madarsas can under no circumstances be projected as any sort of discrimination against a complete community or religion.
To take this further, I would say that Zafar and his ilk have a hidden agenda in trying to portray this as some sort of attack on the complete Muslim presence in India, and that is more dangerous than anything the Government or Hindutva can ever manage.
In brief, if there has to be a single one-liner to Zafar and his sort from other Indians, then it is this : Let my People Go.
Please note, as you land at a vast variety of Indian airports, that the predominant colour of plastic roof coverings in shanty towns/slums is no longer saffron/yellow or green, to signify dominant communities. It is now a fairly universal deep blue, and if anybody thinks they understand Indian political-religious issues, then let me know here what they think this may indicate?
Please also note, co-operative banks (operating no doubt under religious and community lines), now bye-pass the old order, and provide loans for small businesses at interest rates almost one third of the traditional 3 percent a month that used to be charged by religious trusts. Likewise MNC foreign banks, reaching out to the small retail customer. In my humble opinion, this is the main problem we are facing in India, that the religious linkage with commerce is now running out of steam.
How many of us know this simple little fact? That micro-finance, which used to be the mainstay of existence for religious activities, is now moving out of their control? Along with communications and information?
Do I see that in Zafar`s article? No, according to him, religion is a stand-alone? And Islam especially is a stand-alone? In INDIA?? How much more removed from reality can Zafar be?
a) Supplementing of retrospective religion attributes with consumerism as the major behaviour pattern.
b) Elimination of frugality as a virtue from the Indian psyche across religious and social mass barriers.
c) The visible emergence of women especially in the smaller cities / semi urban / semi rural areas all over the country and in rural areas in the South & West of India.
d) An increasing acceptance of realities (behind closed doors) by the most virulent of fundoos, of whom I assure you I know more than my fair share.
What I want to bring out on chowk is simply that the ``Qaum Khatre Mein Hai`` garden variety petro dollar sponsored Muslim ``leader`` in India never was and increasingly is not representative of anything except their own narrow interests.
After all, what and who is a Muslim leader in India? Is it the President of India? Is it the richest man in India? Is it the winner of Wimbledon? Is it Ismail Langda?
And likewise, what and who is a Hindu, Christian or Sikh leader in India?
For sure, the religious heads of these religions in India are not their real mass leaders, so why should we assume that the religious heads of the Muslims are their real leaders?
My reaction to Zafar`s presentation is that some sort of an objection to Madarsas can under no circumstances be projected as any sort of discrimination against a complete community or religion.
To take this further, I would say that Zafar and his ilk have a hidden agenda in trying to portray this as some sort of attack on the complete Muslim presence in India, and that is more dangerous than anything the Government or Hindutva can ever manage.
In brief, if there has to be a single one-liner to Zafar and his sort from other Indians, then it is this : Let my People Go.
Please note, as you land at a vast variety of Indian airports, that the predominant colour of plastic roof coverings in shanty towns/slums is no longer saffron/yellow or green, to signify dominant communities. It is now a fairly universal deep blue, and if anybody thinks they understand Indian political-religious issues, then let me know here what they think this may indicate?
Please also note, co-operative banks (operating no doubt under religious and community lines), now bye-pass the old order, and provide loans for small businesses at interest rates almost one third of the traditional 3 percent a month that used to be charged by religious trusts. Likewise MNC foreign banks, reaching out to the small retail customer. In my humble opinion, this is the main problem we are facing in India, that the religious linkage with commerce is now running out of steam.
How many of us know this simple little fact? That micro-finance, which used to be the mainstay of existence for religious activities, is now moving out of their control? Along with communications and information?
Do I see that in Zafar`s article? No, according to him, religion is a stand-alone? And Islam especially is a stand-alone? In INDIA?? How much more removed from reality can Zafar be?
#57 Posted by dost_mittar on August 3, 2003 9:55:44 am
We should be thankful to the authors for writing on a very important subject. Their detailed article provides ammunition for both sides of the divide, those who are for or against Madrrasa, although it is quite clear where the authors’ sympathies lie.
Madrassas have historically fulfilled an important function of providing literacy to thousands of villages and communities, in addition to producing many Alam-Fazils from those institutions. But they have not been able to keep up with the times and it is in the nature of the institution that the room for change is limited. The formula has gone well beyond its expiry date. Now, the state is obligated to assume the educational function that had earlier befallen to the Madrassas by default.
I am against children starting their learning process with the instructions that “Nothing in this Book is to questioned.” Or that the Book and the hadith provide a complete guide to all aspects of a person’s life, spiritual and temporal. Such teachings should remain within the four walls of household and religious congregations or some version of Sunday schools.
I think that Indians have been spending too much time on the issue of Uniform Civil Code. They should be focussing more on a Uniform Educational Code. Although I would prefer to have a UCC, the issue is of importance primarily to Muslims. Non-Muslims should adopt a passive attitude towards it until the victims of the Muslim Personal Law, Muslim women, start protesting against it. A uniform education code is needed, however, to ensure that every child of India has an equal opportunity to access all opportunities available to Indian citizens and also to contribute equally to their nation, regardless of whether she/he goes to a an institution run by a Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh or a secular institution – public or private.
The state in India has been derelict in its responsibility to provide quality education to all Indians. In the case of Muslims, in particular, it has failed to provide access to them education in Urdu, their mother-tongue. Until it does so, it has no right to close down the Madrassas. But it has every right to regulate their teachings. You quote Shahabudin’s objection that:
“(the state motivation) It is to penetrate the Madarsah system, to monitor what goes on there, what is taught, whether the students are motivated to become militants and trained in the use of fire arms, whether the Madarsahs serve as shelters for the ISI!”
I don’t see any reason to object monitoring even if it is true. The State has every right to monitor all educational institutions, especially Madrassas, because of the nature of the potentially subversive ideology that can be taught in them. Why subversive? Because the Book (1) uses the harshest language for those who do not believe in God or do not believe in the Prophet (2) tells them that they are living in a world of confrontation/discord/enemies (dar-ul-harb); (2) jihad is the noblest of endeavours and the Prophet had the strongest words of condemnation for those who did not participate in his jihad (we are not talking about the so-called jihad-ul-akbar, folks!) (3) teaches concepts like blasphemy, apostacy and associated punishments (4) that it was alright to demolish other people’s places of worship, derisivelycalled but-khanas, just like the Prophet did, (5) teaches them that the laws of their country are contrary to the laws prescribed by their religious book and sharia and (6) teaches them that their loyalty to a supra-national Umma exceeds their loyalty to every other institution. It is a wonder, indeed, how most of the graduates of these institutions turn out to be law-abiding citizens.
As a digression, I would go even further. I would suggest that all countries, especially those where Muslims are a minority, should follow the recent Egyptian ruling that all mosques in the country use the same khutbas in their Friday prayers.
Veeresh:
Good post. Hope your optimism is well-founded.
Madrassas have historically fulfilled an important function of providing literacy to thousands of villages and communities, in addition to producing many Alam-Fazils from those institutions. But they have not been able to keep up with the times and it is in the nature of the institution that the room for change is limited. The formula has gone well beyond its expiry date. Now, the state is obligated to assume the educational function that had earlier befallen to the Madrassas by default.
I am against children starting their learning process with the instructions that “Nothing in this Book is to questioned.” Or that the Book and the hadith provide a complete guide to all aspects of a person’s life, spiritual and temporal. Such teachings should remain within the four walls of household and religious congregations or some version of Sunday schools.
I think that Indians have been spending too much time on the issue of Uniform Civil Code. They should be focussing more on a Uniform Educational Code. Although I would prefer to have a UCC, the issue is of importance primarily to Muslims. Non-Muslims should adopt a passive attitude towards it until the victims of the Muslim Personal Law, Muslim women, start protesting against it. A uniform education code is needed, however, to ensure that every child of India has an equal opportunity to access all opportunities available to Indian citizens and also to contribute equally to their nation, regardless of whether she/he goes to a an institution run by a Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh or a secular institution – public or private.
The state in India has been derelict in its responsibility to provide quality education to all Indians. In the case of Muslims, in particular, it has failed to provide access to them education in Urdu, their mother-tongue. Until it does so, it has no right to close down the Madrassas. But it has every right to regulate their teachings. You quote Shahabudin’s objection that:
“(the state motivation) It is to penetrate the Madarsah system, to monitor what goes on there, what is taught, whether the students are motivated to become militants and trained in the use of fire arms, whether the Madarsahs serve as shelters for the ISI!”
I don’t see any reason to object monitoring even if it is true. The State has every right to monitor all educational institutions, especially Madrassas, because of the nature of the potentially subversive ideology that can be taught in them. Why subversive? Because the Book (1) uses the harshest language for those who do not believe in God or do not believe in the Prophet (2) tells them that they are living in a world of confrontation/discord/enemies (dar-ul-harb); (2) jihad is the noblest of endeavours and the Prophet had the strongest words of condemnation for those who did not participate in his jihad (we are not talking about the so-called jihad-ul-akbar, folks!) (3) teaches concepts like blasphemy, apostacy and associated punishments (4) that it was alright to demolish other people’s places of worship, derisivelycalled but-khanas, just like the Prophet did, (5) teaches them that the laws of their country are contrary to the laws prescribed by their religious book and sharia and (6) teaches them that their loyalty to a supra-national Umma exceeds their loyalty to every other institution. It is a wonder, indeed, how most of the graduates of these institutions turn out to be law-abiding citizens.
As a digression, I would go even further. I would suggest that all countries, especially those where Muslims are a minority, should follow the recent Egyptian ruling that all mosques in the country use the same khutbas in their Friday prayers.
Veeresh:
Good post. Hope your optimism is well-founded.
#56 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 3, 2003 9:48:35 am
Yantric says @ 24
``.................The students that are indoctrinated in these schools will find it harder to assimilate and become part of the American society. This will lead to further alienation of muslims and the main stream. Moreover, the kids coming out of these schools will have much harder time dealing with people of other faiths when these kids go to the .............``
Sometimes it is very difficult for those who worship money-godess, and are indoctrinated to cooperate with paymasters, to comprehend this.
Unless one is afraid of such zeal and determination there is no need to worry about their `welfare`. The criteria are different.
``.................The students that are indoctrinated in these schools will find it harder to assimilate and become part of the American society. This will lead to further alienation of muslims and the main stream. Moreover, the kids coming out of these schools will have much harder time dealing with people of other faiths when these kids go to the .............``
Sometimes it is very difficult for those who worship money-godess, and are indoctrinated to cooperate with paymasters, to comprehend this.
Unless one is afraid of such zeal and determination there is no need to worry about their `welfare`. The criteria are different.
#55 Posted by temporal on August 3, 2003 9:21:05 am
sameerJB
Could you please tell us one simple advantage of becoming hafiz-e-Quran...
...this was directed at asif...and he may answer you if he so choses...
...there is one immediate advantage that i have seen replicated with great success later in their (huffaz`s) lives is the development of photographic memory...
...let me elaborate...i know several professional muslims who are hafiz and have excelled at non-madressah secular education...(they hail from different classes...some of them realised this and most did not)...but a great deal of their success in later educational endeavours was the development of this photographic ability...
...t
Could you please tell us one simple advantage of becoming hafiz-e-Quran...
...this was directed at asif...and he may answer you if he so choses...
...there is one immediate advantage that i have seen replicated with great success later in their (huffaz`s) lives is the development of photographic memory...
...let me elaborate...i know several professional muslims who are hafiz and have excelled at non-madressah secular education...(they hail from different classes...some of them realised this and most did not)...but a great deal of their success in later educational endeavours was the development of this photographic ability...
...t
#54 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 3, 2003 9:13:25 am
One does not have to abandon religious zest to excel in the scientific pursuit; One need not abandon science to be counted among the ones who necessarily listened to God.
Balance is the key and compliments to those who consider the pursuit of both as complementing or rather reinforcing each other.
It is sometimes not easy for either the dyed-in-wool (suf) or dyed-in-the polyester to comprehend this. Both serve mankind well!
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Scientists Hold International Summit to Call for Peaceful Dialogue
Story Filed: Monday, August 12, 2002 10:46 PM EST
GRANADA, Spain, Aug 11, 2002 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) -- Ten days from today, leading scientists from the Middle East, Europe, and North America will gather to call for peaceful dialogue among Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The unprecedented summit meeting in Granada, Spain is a response to religiously motivated conflicts around the world, including the September 11 attacks in the United States and the global rise in terrorism. The scientists will meet with over one hundred scholars and religious leaders to face two major geopolitical threats: erupting cultural conflicts among the three monotheisms, and rising tensions between modern technological society and religious fundamentalism. The Science and the Spiritual Quest Spain Symposium will provide a public forum for debate Friday evening, August 23 - Sunday evening, August 25, 2002 at the historic Alhambra Palace Hotel. For more information and registration, visit www.ssq.net or call +1-510-848-2355.
On the eve of the summit, some of the scientists were already speaking out. ``Our era cries out for a new political vision that can take care of the spiritual and environmental crises of our time-specifically moral void, injustice, violence, and war,`` asserted Iranian physicist and Muslim scholar Mehdi Golshani. Meanwhile Tsevi Mazeh, an Israeli astrophysicist and longtime Orthodox Jewish peace activist, expressed hope and caution: ``Objectivity and rationalism, two of the pillars of modern science, can be used to balance the strong trends of particularity within the three major monotheistic faiths. . . but the main source of openness and respect for the `other` should be found within the core of each tradition.``
British astrophysicist S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, renowned for co-discovering pulsars, recalled that Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and other famous scientists assembled to respond publicly to the Cold War peril of thermonuclear warfare. Herself a national leader in the Quaker tradition, Bell Burnell raised a challenge for the summit in Spain: ``Do we need something similar for today`s `hot` wars? Are we the people to do it?``
Observers note the uniqueness of a meeting that features devout Jews, Muslims, and Christians who are also scientists at the cutting edge of their research disciplines. Jim Schaal, Program Director of the symposium`s sponsoring organization Science and the Spiritual Quest, commented: ``In more settled times, the academic discussion of science and religion could afford to dwell primarily on theoretical questions of theology and philosophy. Now scientific developments in fields like genomics and neuroscience join longstanding concerns, such as environmental degradation and weapons of mass destruction, to bring urgent and practical issues of ethics and politics to the forefront of debate. We believe that religiously committed scientists must be heard-not only in academic discourse, but also in the public and policymaking arenas.``
Although Christianity and Judaism have long struggled to come to terms with the modern sciences to which they played midwife, Islam has until recently been less engaged in the Western scholarly dialogue with science-despite the legacy of high scientific accomplishments in the Muslim world during the medieval era. This, too, is changing as both Muslims and non-Muslims recognize science and its technological offspring as central players in widespread religious conflicts.
The shift in emphasis was compelling at the SSQ Boston Conference at Harvard in October 2001, when eminent French astrophysicist and Sufi Muslim scholar Bruno Abd-al-Haqq Guiderdoni delivered an impassioned plea for ethical reflection and cultural reconciliation in the wake of September 11. In a nationwide telecast, he said: ``I am a scientist and I am a believer. . . (and) I feel deeply concerned by our twenty-first century. The terrible events of September 11 cast a dark shadow on it. . . Do we have reasons to hope again?`` An attainable vision of peace with justice, Guiderdoni argued, demands shared understandings of the human condition informed by open-minded, humble approaches to both scientific and religious truth. To rousing applause, he concluded: ``The fundamental issue we have to address is clear: do we believe in the human as much as God believes in the human?``
Guiderdoni will be a keynote speaker in the opening session of the public SSQ symposium in Granada. The closing session, entitled ``Modern Science, Contemporary Politics, and Living Religions: Is There Hope for Peace?,`` will directly confront the political realities besetting the world today.
The three ``Abrahamic`` monotheisms will be broadly and fairly represented in Spain, with one speaker from each tradition featured in most sessions. Joining Guiderdoni and Mehdi to speak from a Muslim perspective at the Spain Symposium are Ayub Ommaya, a well-known Pakistani-American neuroscientist, and Munawar Anees, a Pakistani biologist and social critic hailed for his outspoken resistance while imprisoned by Malaysian authorities. Also featured is a speaker from the Baha`i Faith, a tradition rooted in Islam and dedicated to world peace: the Iranian-British scientist Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, noted for her research on cognitive and behavioral neuropathology in children.
Along with Mazeh, Jewish speakers include distinguished eminent Harvard neuroscientist and vision expert Stephen Kosslyn; Carl Feit, a respected cancer researcher and Talmudic Jewish scholar; Israeli historian of science and religion Noah Efron; American philosopher Norbert Samuelson; and Andrew Newberg, a noted American researcher in brain function and mystical experience.
Joining Bell Burnell from a Christian viewpoint are Cambridge mathematical physicist and Anglican priest and theologian John Polkinghorne, who recently won the coveted Templeton Prize; William Hurlbut, a Stanford physician and biomedical ethicist recently appointed to the Presidential Council on Bioethics; Ted Peters, a noted theologian and consultant on issues in genetics; and eminent South African cosmologist and Quaker scholar George F. R. Ellis.
Balance is the key and compliments to those who consider the pursuit of both as complementing or rather reinforcing each other.
It is sometimes not easy for either the dyed-in-wool (suf) or dyed-in-the polyester to comprehend this. Both serve mankind well!
Muslim, Jewish, and Christian Scientists Hold International Summit to Call for Peaceful Dialogue
Story Filed: Monday, August 12, 2002 10:46 PM EST
GRANADA, Spain, Aug 11, 2002 (ASCRIBE NEWS via COMTEX) -- Ten days from today, leading scientists from the Middle East, Europe, and North America will gather to call for peaceful dialogue among Muslims, Jews, and Christians. The unprecedented summit meeting in Granada, Spain is a response to religiously motivated conflicts around the world, including the September 11 attacks in the United States and the global rise in terrorism. The scientists will meet with over one hundred scholars and religious leaders to face two major geopolitical threats: erupting cultural conflicts among the three monotheisms, and rising tensions between modern technological society and religious fundamentalism. The Science and the Spiritual Quest Spain Symposium will provide a public forum for debate Friday evening, August 23 - Sunday evening, August 25, 2002 at the historic Alhambra Palace Hotel. For more information and registration, visit www.ssq.net or call +1-510-848-2355.
On the eve of the summit, some of the scientists were already speaking out. ``Our era cries out for a new political vision that can take care of the spiritual and environmental crises of our time-specifically moral void, injustice, violence, and war,`` asserted Iranian physicist and Muslim scholar Mehdi Golshani. Meanwhile Tsevi Mazeh, an Israeli astrophysicist and longtime Orthodox Jewish peace activist, expressed hope and caution: ``Objectivity and rationalism, two of the pillars of modern science, can be used to balance the strong trends of particularity within the three major monotheistic faiths. . . but the main source of openness and respect for the `other` should be found within the core of each tradition.``
British astrophysicist S. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, renowned for co-discovering pulsars, recalled that Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and other famous scientists assembled to respond publicly to the Cold War peril of thermonuclear warfare. Herself a national leader in the Quaker tradition, Bell Burnell raised a challenge for the summit in Spain: ``Do we need something similar for today`s `hot` wars? Are we the people to do it?``
Observers note the uniqueness of a meeting that features devout Jews, Muslims, and Christians who are also scientists at the cutting edge of their research disciplines. Jim Schaal, Program Director of the symposium`s sponsoring organization Science and the Spiritual Quest, commented: ``In more settled times, the academic discussion of science and religion could afford to dwell primarily on theoretical questions of theology and philosophy. Now scientific developments in fields like genomics and neuroscience join longstanding concerns, such as environmental degradation and weapons of mass destruction, to bring urgent and practical issues of ethics and politics to the forefront of debate. We believe that religiously committed scientists must be heard-not only in academic discourse, but also in the public and policymaking arenas.``
Although Christianity and Judaism have long struggled to come to terms with the modern sciences to which they played midwife, Islam has until recently been less engaged in the Western scholarly dialogue with science-despite the legacy of high scientific accomplishments in the Muslim world during the medieval era. This, too, is changing as both Muslims and non-Muslims recognize science and its technological offspring as central players in widespread religious conflicts.
The shift in emphasis was compelling at the SSQ Boston Conference at Harvard in October 2001, when eminent French astrophysicist and Sufi Muslim scholar Bruno Abd-al-Haqq Guiderdoni delivered an impassioned plea for ethical reflection and cultural reconciliation in the wake of September 11. In a nationwide telecast, he said: ``I am a scientist and I am a believer. . . (and) I feel deeply concerned by our twenty-first century. The terrible events of September 11 cast a dark shadow on it. . . Do we have reasons to hope again?`` An attainable vision of peace with justice, Guiderdoni argued, demands shared understandings of the human condition informed by open-minded, humble approaches to both scientific and religious truth. To rousing applause, he concluded: ``The fundamental issue we have to address is clear: do we believe in the human as much as God believes in the human?``
Guiderdoni will be a keynote speaker in the opening session of the public SSQ symposium in Granada. The closing session, entitled ``Modern Science, Contemporary Politics, and Living Religions: Is There Hope for Peace?,`` will directly confront the political realities besetting the world today.
The three ``Abrahamic`` monotheisms will be broadly and fairly represented in Spain, with one speaker from each tradition featured in most sessions. Joining Guiderdoni and Mehdi to speak from a Muslim perspective at the Spain Symposium are Ayub Ommaya, a well-known Pakistani-American neuroscientist, and Munawar Anees, a Pakistani biologist and social critic hailed for his outspoken resistance while imprisoned by Malaysian authorities. Also featured is a speaker from the Baha`i Faith, a tradition rooted in Islam and dedicated to world peace: the Iranian-British scientist Faraneh Vargha-Khadem, noted for her research on cognitive and behavioral neuropathology in children.
Along with Mazeh, Jewish speakers include distinguished eminent Harvard neuroscientist and vision expert Stephen Kosslyn; Carl Feit, a respected cancer researcher and Talmudic Jewish scholar; Israeli historian of science and religion Noah Efron; American philosopher Norbert Samuelson; and Andrew Newberg, a noted American researcher in brain function and mystical experience.
Joining Bell Burnell from a Christian viewpoint are Cambridge mathematical physicist and Anglican priest and theologian John Polkinghorne, who recently won the coveted Templeton Prize; William Hurlbut, a Stanford physician and biomedical ethicist recently appointed to the Presidential Council on Bioethics; Ted Peters, a noted theologian and consultant on issues in genetics; and eminent South African cosmologist and Quaker scholar George F. R. Ellis.
#53 Posted by harimau on August 3, 2003 7:48:13 am
Ref stuka #33
[Harimau: Are you talking about that haraami from DMK? He openly sided with the LTTE when the IPKF was in Sri Lanka. It is only after Rajeev Gandhi`s assasination that he quickly and hypocritically changed his views in public about the LTTE.]
Yes, I am. No, he hasn`t changed his views on the LTTE; he is just keeping quiet because Jayalalitha has thrown the MDMK leader Vaiko and a couple of others into jail under POTA for supporting the LTTE and those guys are not getting bail either. Vajpayee & Co are totally powerless to get him released (it might have happened in the last few months when I have been away from India) since Jayalalitha is able to point out that LTTE IS a terrorist organization for assassinating Rajiv Gandhi if not anything else.
[Harimau: Are you talking about that haraami from DMK? He openly sided with the LTTE when the IPKF was in Sri Lanka. It is only after Rajeev Gandhi`s assasination that he quickly and hypocritically changed his views in public about the LTTE.]
Yes, I am. No, he hasn`t changed his views on the LTTE; he is just keeping quiet because Jayalalitha has thrown the MDMK leader Vaiko and a couple of others into jail under POTA for supporting the LTTE and those guys are not getting bail either. Vajpayee & Co are totally powerless to get him released (it might have happened in the last few months when I have been away from India) since Jayalalitha is able to point out that LTTE IS a terrorist organization for assassinating Rajiv Gandhi if not anything else.
#52 Posted by nazarhayatkhan on August 3, 2003 7:48:13 am
It is great reief to see that so many people share the thought that Madressa be confined to some basic part time religious education - and no more.
Surprisingly, a completely illeterate is not confused on the issue. It is only semi-educated man who is gets confused - and tries to find knowledge i.e. physics, chemistry, maths, socialogy etc through this education. He is more dangerous since he professes to be educated.
my two pence:
Real Education instills an urge for inquiry.
This urge for inquiry results in creativity and adds to the knowledge base.
Religious education dampens the sense of inquiry ; and all gospals ae to be accepted without any reservations.
Education, creativity and inquiry can function fully only in a secular environment. (I hope it makes some sense!)
So the madressa issue in Pakistan is serious and needs to be dealt with the seriousness it deserves lest our future generations are hurled back into the dark ages.
#51 Posted by rsaxena on August 3, 2003 7:48:13 am
re: jay
{ May be this should point to the situation in pakistan, other than the recent ones returned with chain and balls, how many pakistanis have come back from abroad.}
....of the thousands of indian IIT grads educated with indian taxpayer subsidies, a majority leave the country but only a tiny fraction return...they start salivating the moment they step into IIT to somehow get to the US...
...let us not point fingers at pakis on this point...
{ May be this should point to the situation in pakistan, other than the recent ones returned with chain and balls, how many pakistanis have come back from abroad.}
....of the thousands of indian IIT grads educated with indian taxpayer subsidies, a majority leave the country but only a tiny fraction return...they start salivating the moment they step into IIT to somehow get to the US...
...let us not point fingers at pakis on this point...
#50 Posted by rsaxena on August 3, 2003 7:48:13 am
..is this naqshabandi dude for real?...i find it hard to believe that this is not a joke...
#49 Posted by MantoLives on August 3, 2003 1:24:29 am
Chowkstaff,
Thankyou for replacing the repeated post with my original Sir Syed post.#42
-Manto
Thankyou for replacing the repeated post with my original Sir Syed post.#42
-Manto
#48 Posted by MantoLives on August 3, 2003 12:56:55 am
My reference was to the Jamiat-e-ulema-Hind... not Hindu...
sorry if I caused any offence to any hindu friends.
sorry if I caused any offence to any hindu friends.
#47 Posted by MantoLives on August 3, 2003 12:56:55 am
How is Jay`s post relevant, I will never know, but as far as I know every tom dick and harry these days in Pakistan has a foreign degree (meaning that they went abroad and returned)... Infact in the parliament of 1993-1996 it was rumored that there were more oxbridge people than in the British Parliament... at a recent Oxbridge reunion thrown by the British High commissioner around a 1000 of the most successful Pakistanis, including Najam Sethi, Jugnu Mohsin, Aitzaz Ahsan, etc
Comparisons like the kind Jay makes are pointless. Why aren`t posts like these by people motivated by an express desire to start an India-Pakistan match rejected outright?
Comparisons like the kind Jay makes are pointless. Why aren`t posts like these by people motivated by an express desire to start an India-Pakistan match rejected outright?
#46 Posted by MantoLives on August 3, 2003 12:29:39 am
Ok where is my post on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan? I am shocked that it got lost... I spent a lot of time on that... I don`t believe this..
Stuka,
Let me try and do this again...
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is one of the most celebrated figures in the Pakistani History books. He forms a major portion of the Pakistan studies curriculum, infact more than Jinnah whose life Pakistani historians wish to obscure. I am sure you are aware of his role as the original idealogue of the two Nation theory. His attempts at modernizing muslim education are stressed even overemphasized by our history books. Infact my own estimate of the man is less admirable than the Pakistani official ideology makes him out to be.
After all it was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his Muslim Educational Conference which got transformed into the All India Muslim League. At partition, most of those who could be considered successors to that modernist Muslim movement sided with the league, whereas the Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hindu and Deobandis (who hated Sir Syed Ahmed Khan) opposed the creation of Pakistan bitterly. Like I said before, mere alliance with Congress should not be reason enough to think someone to be progressive. Infact most Aligarh educated Muslim modernists formed the vanguard of the Pakistan Movement, and most religious conservative Muslims were opposed to partition, reasons for which have been elaborated before. The history of the subcontinent can`t be compartmentalized as some wish to in both Pakistan and India.
Maudoodi by contrast doesn`t find any mention in Pakistani ideology or Pakistani History books, perhaps due to his opposition to partition which I am sure you know all about.
The problem with official Pakistani ideology isn`t what you make it out to be. Jamaat e Islami and its ideology are not the idealogues and the ideology of Pakistan... despite their best attempts. The problem with the Pakistani ideology as officially espoused is that while it makes all the right noises about freedom etc, it seeks to balance out modern concepts with an emotive adherence to Islam. It is that last part that gets abused by the Islamists. It is here, that I suggest an abandonment of this official ideology in favor of secularism.
-Manto
Stuka,
Let me try and do this again...
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is one of the most celebrated figures in the Pakistani History books. He forms a major portion of the Pakistan studies curriculum, infact more than Jinnah whose life Pakistani historians wish to obscure. I am sure you are aware of his role as the original idealogue of the two Nation theory. His attempts at modernizing muslim education are stressed even overemphasized by our history books. Infact my own estimate of the man is less admirable than the Pakistani official ideology makes him out to be.
After all it was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his Muslim Educational Conference which got transformed into the All India Muslim League. At partition, most of those who could be considered successors to that modernist Muslim movement sided with the league, whereas the Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hindu and Deobandis (who hated Sir Syed Ahmed Khan) opposed the creation of Pakistan bitterly. Like I said before, mere alliance with Congress should not be reason enough to think someone to be progressive. Infact most Aligarh educated Muslim modernists formed the vanguard of the Pakistan Movement, and most religious conservative Muslims were opposed to partition, reasons for which have been elaborated before. The history of the subcontinent can`t be compartmentalized as some wish to in both Pakistan and India.
Maudoodi by contrast doesn`t find any mention in Pakistani ideology or Pakistani History books, perhaps due to his opposition to partition which I am sure you know all about.
The problem with official Pakistani ideology isn`t what you make it out to be. Jamaat e Islami and its ideology are not the idealogues and the ideology of Pakistan... despite their best attempts. The problem with the Pakistani ideology as officially espoused is that while it makes all the right noises about freedom etc, it seeks to balance out modern concepts with an emotive adherence to Islam. It is that last part that gets abused by the Islamists. It is here, that I suggest an abandonment of this official ideology in favor of secularism.
-Manto
#45 Posted by jay on August 3, 2003 12:08:07 am
Stanford alumni meet on Aug. 6
By Our Special Correspondent
Bangalore Aug. 2 . Azim Premji, Mukesh Ambani, Naushad Forves, Jyotiraditya Scindia, and Nadir Godrej do not need an introduction.
Other than being successful in their respective domains, they are among the more than one thousand strong Stanford alumni in India.
//////
May be this should point to the situation in pakistan, other than the recent ones returned with chain and balls, how many pakistanis have come back from abroad.
By Our Special Correspondent
Bangalore Aug. 2 . Azim Premji, Mukesh Ambani, Naushad Forves, Jyotiraditya Scindia, and Nadir Godrej do not need an introduction.
Other than being successful in their respective domains, they are among the more than one thousand strong Stanford alumni in India.
//////
May be this should point to the situation in pakistan, other than the recent ones returned with chain and balls, how many pakistanis have come back from abroad.
#44 Posted by MantoLives on August 2, 2003 11:42:23 pm
Stuka,
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is perhaps the most celebrated Muslim figure in Pakistani History along with Jinnah and Iqbal. Every History book in Pakistan dedicates a whole first part and section to him. He forms the core of the Pakistan Studies curriculum, infact there is more material on him than say Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose life the Pakistani history books want to obscure. Sir Syed`s contributions to the modernization of Muslim thought are stressed, even overemphasized. Surely you must know that as the original idealogue of the Two Nation theory, which he certainly was, his importance in the `Pakistani ideology` is towering to those who wish to stress that part of his life. Maudoodi, given his inherent opposition to Jinnah and the League and partition, on the other hand finds no mention in Pakistani history books, despite attempts by the Jamaat to rewrite the History.
Your question made me think that you have an exaggerated idea about the Pakistani ideology whatever that is. Infact my own estimate of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is less admirable than given in the Pakistani history books. However It is amazing when Pakistan studies teachers and experts go blank, when one shows them the inherent contradiction between the laudatory chapters on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and then the portions re written by Zia time historians.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his muslim education conference and movement came under sharp crticism from the deobandi ulema. Sir Syed`s Muslim conference was what transformed itself into the `Muslim League` in 1906. In 1940s, it was the same Muslim league which drew most support from the Muslim modernists of the sir syed camp and indeed the Ali garh university, while we know that the anti-Partition muslims were basically the successors of the deobandi ulema who hated Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. That is why in an earlier post, I pointed out that not everyone who allied themselves with the Congress should automatically be considered progressive...
Hence I am a little disappointed by the question because it exhibits a certain fallacious estimate of Pakistan and its people. The problem with the official Pakistani ideology is not that it is backward or the mistress of the sharia-honking mullahs, but that it still caught up in the Muslim nationalism of the 30s and the 40s. Infact my own issue is the attempt to balance an inherent modernity with an emotional attachment to Islam which is what the Pakistani ideology is all about... not that it isn`t a noble idea, but that it has failed over and over again. The islamic portions of this ideology thus have been abused by rigid elements. Hence we should abandon it for secularism.
Hope that makes you understand my position better vis a vis the official Pakistani ideology.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is perhaps the most celebrated Muslim figure in Pakistani History along with Jinnah and Iqbal. Every History book in Pakistan dedicates a whole first part and section to him. He forms the core of the Pakistan Studies curriculum, infact there is more material on him than say Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose life the Pakistani history books want to obscure. Sir Syed`s contributions to the modernization of Muslim thought are stressed, even overemphasized. Surely you must know that as the original idealogue of the Two Nation theory, which he certainly was, his importance in the `Pakistani ideology` is towering to those who wish to stress that part of his life. Maudoodi, given his inherent opposition to Jinnah and the League and partition, on the other hand finds no mention in Pakistani history books, despite attempts by the Jamaat to rewrite the History.
Your question made me think that you have an exaggerated idea about the Pakistani ideology whatever that is. Infact my own estimate of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan is less admirable than given in the Pakistani history books. However It is amazing when Pakistan studies teachers and experts go blank, when one shows them the inherent contradiction between the laudatory chapters on Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and then the portions re written by Zia time historians.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his muslim education conference and movement came under sharp crticism from the deobandi ulema. Sir Syed`s Muslim conference was what transformed itself into the `Muslim League` in 1906. In 1940s, it was the same Muslim league which drew most support from the Muslim modernists of the sir syed camp and indeed the Ali garh university, while we know that the anti-Partition muslims were basically the successors of the deobandi ulema who hated Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. That is why in an earlier post, I pointed out that not everyone who allied themselves with the Congress should automatically be considered progressive...
Hence I am a little disappointed by the question because it exhibits a certain fallacious estimate of Pakistan and its people. The problem with the official Pakistani ideology is not that it is backward or the mistress of the sharia-honking mullahs, but that it still caught up in the Muslim nationalism of the 30s and the 40s. Infact my own issue is the attempt to balance an inherent modernity with an emotional attachment to Islam which is what the Pakistani ideology is all about... not that it isn`t a noble idea, but that it has failed over and over again. The islamic portions of this ideology thus have been abused by rigid elements. Hence we should abandon it for secularism.
Hope that makes you understand my position better vis a vis the official Pakistani ideology.
#43 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 2, 2003 11:42:23 pm
Authors:
Please give a brief account of Hindu Sikh and Christain religious schools in India as well. Are they also turning out bright learned people like the Jamia Millias do? Please understand that by learned it is not meant here the moneyed, powered , the corporate or IT kind or even the `scientist` who is servile to technology & Industry. By learned here is being refered to as the one excelling in pure basic ab-initio research & discovery in any endeavour be it Theology, philosophy or the sciences,--like the world renowned scientists of India who all were, invariably, from hindu/muslim/christain fundamentalist- religious schools.
Please elaborate and enlighten.
Please give a brief account of Hindu Sikh and Christain religious schools in India as well. Are they also turning out bright learned people like the Jamia Millias do? Please understand that by learned it is not meant here the moneyed, powered , the corporate or IT kind or even the `scientist` who is servile to technology & Industry. By learned here is being refered to as the one excelling in pure basic ab-initio research & discovery in any endeavour be it Theology, philosophy or the sciences,--like the world renowned scientists of India who all were, invariably, from hindu/muslim/christain fundamentalist- religious schools.
Please elaborate and enlighten.
#42 Posted by MantoLives on August 2, 2003 11:42:23 pm
Naqshbandi,
I am sure you find Hamza Yusuf and his attempts to keep the Muslim Youth away from modern knowledge as very noble, but I think it is plain sick and disgusting ...
-Manto
#41 Posted by ironman on August 2, 2003 9:47:29 pm
sameerJB, #16,
You say to Naqshbandi: ``You have chosen worldly education in natural sciences for yourself in a non-Muslim environment. How can you suggest parents to send their children with potential to be doctors/ engineers to a madrasssah in Lahore or Karachi?``
I take exception and umbrage at this attack on Naqshbandi.
Has he not made it amply clear that he keeps his `personal and religious lives separate`??
:-)
You say to Naqshbandi: ``You have chosen worldly education in natural sciences for yourself in a non-Muslim environment. How can you suggest parents to send their children with potential to be doctors/ engineers to a madrasssah in Lahore or Karachi?``
I take exception and umbrage at this attack on Naqshbandi.
Has he not made it amply clear that he keeps his `personal and religious lives separate`??
:-)
#40 Posted by ahmedmadani on August 2, 2003 8:37:28 pm
This is good article to know the education of muslims in india of religious oriented schools.
As I said earlier there is unsaid , unorganised undirected emergence of Hindu Ummah. It has not relationship between BJP, congress or any other party as neither controls them. It is not a organised but under current is there just as Indian Muslim Unity or muslim Ummah.
It appears following challenges will have to be faced by both Ummahs of India
1. Uniform civil code.
I like above scholors to address what is there feeling about uniform codes. As uniform code will steamrolled many muslim different coustoms.
If they are opposed what is time frame? When they feel it cabn become acceptable and will hindu ummah has right to bring UCC.
2. Temple question.
It appears Ram Mandir/ Babri Mashid business will be tied in courts for even one more century.
I am thinking of mashi and Mathura temple question. There is no certainty about existance of ram temple.
The other two were officially destroyed and Mashids built upon them.
What and Muslim Ummah of India will protect them. I am aware as per govt of India Rules no change is permitted in existing things.
With rise of subtle hindu ummah it will demanding restoration of temples. How Muslim Ummah of India will counter act these things.
Can hindus go to court and ask for official demolishment of of above structures as they were accepted under duress.
I will appreciate if any legal person from india explain what is accepted norms?
What is position of Indian Muslim Ummah to counter act above mentioned duisputes?
Will it lead to civil war in india or is it ploy to force Muslims of India to force UCC.
These questions came to my mind after reading article and present happenings in India.
Also people from our country should express what we feel. Should pakistan get involved?
We are involved emotionally with Arab- Isrel conflit can Pakistan govt be silent observer?
Thanks.
As I said earlier there is unsaid , unorganised undirected emergence of Hindu Ummah. It has not relationship between BJP, congress or any other party as neither controls them. It is not a organised but under current is there just as Indian Muslim Unity or muslim Ummah.
It appears following challenges will have to be faced by both Ummahs of India
1. Uniform civil code.
I like above scholors to address what is there feeling about uniform codes. As uniform code will steamrolled many muslim different coustoms.
If they are opposed what is time frame? When they feel it cabn become acceptable and will hindu ummah has right to bring UCC.
2. Temple question.
It appears Ram Mandir/ Babri Mashid business will be tied in courts for even one more century.
I am thinking of mashi and Mathura temple question. There is no certainty about existance of ram temple.
The other two were officially destroyed and Mashids built upon them.
What and Muslim Ummah of India will protect them. I am aware as per govt of India Rules no change is permitted in existing things.
With rise of subtle hindu ummah it will demanding restoration of temples. How Muslim Ummah of India will counter act these things.
Can hindus go to court and ask for official demolishment of of above structures as they were accepted under duress.
I will appreciate if any legal person from india explain what is accepted norms?
What is position of Indian Muslim Ummah to counter act above mentioned duisputes?
Will it lead to civil war in india or is it ploy to force Muslims of India to force UCC.
These questions came to my mind after reading article and present happenings in India.
Also people from our country should express what we feel. Should pakistan get involved?
We are involved emotionally with Arab- Isrel conflit can Pakistan govt be silent observer?
Thanks.
#39 Posted by SameerJB on August 2, 2003 8:24:22 pm
Naqshbandi #35:
Thanks for an honest reply although many people will jump on you for this post. Apparently you have not lost your imaan despite western and scientific education and most of the Muslim interactors have never accepted the charge of losing imaan. I can point ot many many at chowk whose imaan is not lost. Losing one SameerJB once in a while among hundreds of thousands is not a bad price for western, liberal and scientific education. I am sure Muslims can throw away one bad apple from every 10 thousands or more. With so much non-Madrassah schooling and liberal education, number of blasphemy cases in Pakistani courts are less than 100. With so many newspapers coming out daily, only once a newspaper mistakenly published a letter from a foreigner and was burned down. Believe me Islam is not in any danger from few SameerJBs, it is in danger for just the oppisite reasons of too much of it, penetrating most of the private and public spheres of Muslims.
I might have been wrong in thinking that imaan meant to excel in education too, in all disciplines. It meant to prosper and succeed here and now too. It meant to have peaceful living and stable economy too.
You have gone many steps ahead of the intentions of the authors of this article. Many options have been ignored, e.g., part time madrassah which is lot more common with Muslim kids. Many parents send their children to Masjid school in the basements every Sunday for basic Islamic teachings and reading Quran.
Could you please tell us one simple advantage of becoming hafiz-e-Quran in this age of free excess of reading material vs. amount of time it takes for one to become hafiz-e-Quran. Except for Taraveeh, I don`t know of any major use of it and even now taraveehs can be conducted by imam from using computer monitors or Quran`s audio recordings. Please give serious consideration to it for the sake of your future generation.
Thanks for an honest reply although many people will jump on you for this post. Apparently you have not lost your imaan despite western and scientific education and most of the Muslim interactors have never accepted the charge of losing imaan. I can point ot many many at chowk whose imaan is not lost. Losing one SameerJB once in a while among hundreds of thousands is not a bad price for western, liberal and scientific education. I am sure Muslims can throw away one bad apple from every 10 thousands or more. With so much non-Madrassah schooling and liberal education, number of blasphemy cases in Pakistani courts are less than 100. With so many newspapers coming out daily, only once a newspaper mistakenly published a letter from a foreigner and was burned down. Believe me Islam is not in any danger from few SameerJBs, it is in danger for just the oppisite reasons of too much of it, penetrating most of the private and public spheres of Muslims.
I might have been wrong in thinking that imaan meant to excel in education too, in all disciplines. It meant to prosper and succeed here and now too. It meant to have peaceful living and stable economy too.
You have gone many steps ahead of the intentions of the authors of this article. Many options have been ignored, e.g., part time madrassah which is lot more common with Muslim kids. Many parents send their children to Masjid school in the basements every Sunday for basic Islamic teachings and reading Quran.
Could you please tell us one simple advantage of becoming hafiz-e-Quran in this age of free excess of reading material vs. amount of time it takes for one to become hafiz-e-Quran. Except for Taraveeh, I don`t know of any major use of it and even now taraveehs can be conducted by imam from using computer monitors or Quran`s audio recordings. Please give serious consideration to it for the sake of your future generation.
#38 Posted by HisExcellency on August 2, 2003 5:47:57 pm
I also read SATribune occasionally but this article (and quite a few others) confirm my impression that Chowk interActors and contributors are much more thorough in the quality of their comments and articles.
This was a fine article and the ensuing debate has also been quite interesting. Keep it up Mr.Zafar Anjum!
This was a fine article and the ensuing debate has also been quite interesting. Keep it up Mr.Zafar Anjum!
#37 Posted by Naqshbandi on August 2, 2003 5:05:36 pm
correction: the last reply #36:
btw these madrassahs which i am talking of and which Imam Hamza Yusuf has opened in ZAytuna are precisely teaching the same tolerant/sufi Islam which is popular in Pakistan (aka Ahle Sunnat).
btw these madrassahs which i am talking of and which Imam Hamza Yusuf has opened in ZAytuna are precisely teaching the same tolerant/sufi Islam which is popular in Pakistan (aka Ahle Sunnat).
#36 Posted by stuka on August 2, 2003 4:53:54 pm
Veeresh: An excellent post and optimistic as well. If only the Muslim politicians were far sighted enough to trade in their Personal Law and Haj to reservations for government jobs, their socio-economic improvement would be a reality.
Also, I did not realize, but agree that the bulk of the ``Qaum Khatrey Mein`` are Urdu speakers, same who provided fodder to Muslim League.
Also, I did not realize, but agree that the bulk of the ``Qaum Khatrey Mein`` are Urdu speakers, same who provided fodder to Muslim League.
#35 Posted by Naqshbandi on August 2, 2003 4:53:54 pm
sameerjb: the honest answer to your question is that my parents always wanted me to go into science/medicine like most of their generation; if i could be 16 again though i would go to a madrassah without question. When I have my own children insha Allah I will make sure that at least 1 of them goes to a madrassah first before doing a wordly degree of his/her choice (if s/he wants) and i will want all of them to be hafiz of the qur`an.
why should everything be measured in terms of economic benefit? the ulama ensure that we do not lose the most precious thing of all: imaan.
my parents gen. had very strong imaan and so wanted their kids to do well in the society they came to but they did not realise that exposure to the same society would weaken the imaan of their children; the way to get it back is via these madrassahs. also i have many friends who are at such madrassahs in the UK and they go do well for themselves. many of them do another degree --eg teaching--from a western uni. after completing their madrassah educations.
i have yet to see a poor alim. people are generous to those with the knowledge of Islam and it will always be thus: i would be willing to pay someone handsomely to make my kids huffaaz eg. Allah provides for those who teach his Deen!
****
Manto:
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is doing a great service to the Muslims of the world in general and of th USA in particular--may Allah reward him in both the worlds! You see, according to the MUslim understanding, the reason we as a Ummah are so backwards is because we have lost the knowledge of our deen and gone away from the teachings of Allah and His Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam. When we become better Muslims again Allah`s Help will surely come. Gaining traditional knowledge of the Deen via places like the Zaytuna Institute is a vital first step.
Also the noble Imam never stops people who want to from becoming doctors either etc. He himself is also a qualified nurse as well as being a top notch Islamic scholar. Out of the millions of Muslims in the USA only a tiny percentage will go on to become scholars of Islam in places like the Zaytuna Institute so your argument is not a good one. Yet these same blessed individuals will then take the light of traditional Sunni Islam/Sufism to their communities--transforming them into beacons of light for the rest of the nation. Also such moderate, traditional ulama who all have links with Sufi tariqahs (as Sufism is a core part of any traditional madrassah education) and thus help to prevent young Muslims from being lured into the extremist arms of the Wahabis.
May Allah bless Imam Hamza and all his teachers who are spreading the light of true Sunni Islam and turning people from sinners and druggies and pimps into pious and practising Muslims.
www.zaytuna.org
why should everything be measured in terms of economic benefit? the ulama ensure that we do not lose the most precious thing of all: imaan.
my parents gen. had very strong imaan and so wanted their kids to do well in the society they came to but they did not realise that exposure to the same society would weaken the imaan of their children; the way to get it back is via these madrassahs. also i have many friends who are at such madrassahs in the UK and they go do well for themselves. many of them do another degree --eg teaching--from a western uni. after completing their madrassah educations.
i have yet to see a poor alim. people are generous to those with the knowledge of Islam and it will always be thus: i would be willing to pay someone handsomely to make my kids huffaaz eg. Allah provides for those who teach his Deen!
****
Manto:
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is doing a great service to the Muslims of the world in general and of th USA in particular--may Allah reward him in both the worlds! You see, according to the MUslim understanding, the reason we as a Ummah are so backwards is because we have lost the knowledge of our deen and gone away from the teachings of Allah and His Messenger sal Allahu alayhi wa sallam. When we become better Muslims again Allah`s Help will surely come. Gaining traditional knowledge of the Deen via places like the Zaytuna Institute is a vital first step.
Also the noble Imam never stops people who want to from becoming doctors either etc. He himself is also a qualified nurse as well as being a top notch Islamic scholar. Out of the millions of Muslims in the USA only a tiny percentage will go on to become scholars of Islam in places like the Zaytuna Institute so your argument is not a good one. Yet these same blessed individuals will then take the light of traditional Sunni Islam/Sufism to their communities--transforming them into beacons of light for the rest of the nation. Also such moderate, traditional ulama who all have links with Sufi tariqahs (as Sufism is a core part of any traditional madrassah education) and thus help to prevent young Muslims from being lured into the extremist arms of the Wahabis.
May Allah bless Imam Hamza and all his teachers who are spreading the light of true Sunni Islam and turning people from sinners and druggies and pimps into pious and practising Muslims.
www.zaytuna.org
#34 Posted by Naqshbandi on August 2, 2003 4:53:54 pm
btw these madrassahs which i am talking of and which Imam Hamza Yusuf has opened in ZAytuna are precisely teaching the same tolerant/sufi Islam which is popular in Islam.
#33 Posted by stuka on August 2, 2003 4:45:52 pm
Manto:
How is Sir Syed looked upon in today`s Pakistani official history? How does he stand (not in your personal view but in the Pakistan Ideology view)as compared to Maudoodi.
How is Sir Syed looked upon in today`s Pakistani official history? How does he stand (not in your personal view but in the Pakistan Ideology view)as compared to Maudoodi.
#32 Posted by stuka on August 2, 2003 4:45:52 pm
Harimau: Are you talking about that haraami from DMK? He openly sided with the LTTE when the IPKF was in Sri Lanka. It is only after Rajeev Gandhi`s assasination that he quickly and hypocritically changed his views in public about the LTTE.
#31 Posted by yantric on August 2, 2003 12:46:15 pm
I believe the real mission of Madrassas is to interepret Quran. However the real need is to question the Quran. Untile muslims do that they will keep going in circles witout making any progress.
#30 Posted by stuka on August 2, 2003 10:21:14 am
FYI, some interesting related stuff :
http://www.harappa.com/engr/delhicon.html
http://www.harappa.com/engr/mughal.html
http://www.harappa.com/engr/delhicon.html
http://www.harappa.com/engr/mughal.html
#29 Posted by arjun_m on August 2, 2003 9:30:14 am
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#28 Posted by ferozk on August 2, 2003 8:52:06 am
The basic problem with the madrassas are they do not equip their graduates, with qualifications that make them productive members of the society. The fact that these institutions need to revamp and enter the contempory mainstream of education, economic and political realities, has been stated enough times and need not be stressed again.
Madrassa education creates a case of ``seperate but equal`` distinctions and that in the long terms generally creates problems due to a lack of uniformity. Madrassa education is also facing the problem of balancing the ideals of theocracy within the limits of state interests. In any case, the raison d`etat demands that its interests will primus inter pares nationally and hence, the state`s attempts to reformulate the interests of the madrassa educational system.
SameerJB, just to being this to your information, the elites of Pakistan have been consuming for the last 56 years, without contributing an iota and Pakistani society continues to malfunction, but it does exist. The majority of Pakistanis are non productive citizens and are only eager to act as parasites, and despite their best efforts, Pakistan lingers on.
Madrassa education is, in reality, about the myopia of a very narrow interpretation of what consitutes the reality. I have nothing against the institution of madrassa per se, but I have many qualms of what is being teached in the madrassas. One of these concerns is that they are above the pale of accountibility and such, tend to ferment an idea of themselves as a viable alternative to the nation-state. The Talibanization of Afghanistan was based on a similar logic. Madrassas seek to create the impossible and like I wrote in my ilog, ``those who wish to bring heaven down to earth, only end up creating hell``.
Ciao
Madrassa education creates a case of ``seperate but equal`` distinctions and that in the long terms generally creates problems due to a lack of uniformity. Madrassa education is also facing the problem of balancing the ideals of theocracy within the limits of state interests. In any case, the raison d`etat demands that its interests will primus inter pares nationally and hence, the state`s attempts to reformulate the interests of the madrassa educational system.
SameerJB, just to being this to your information, the elites of Pakistan have been consuming for the last 56 years, without contributing an iota and Pakistani society continues to malfunction, but it does exist. The majority of Pakistanis are non productive citizens and are only eager to act as parasites, and despite their best efforts, Pakistan lingers on.
Madrassa education is, in reality, about the myopia of a very narrow interpretation of what consitutes the reality. I have nothing against the institution of madrassa per se, but I have many qualms of what is being teached in the madrassas. One of these concerns is that they are above the pale of accountibility and such, tend to ferment an idea of themselves as a viable alternative to the nation-state. The Talibanization of Afghanistan was based on a similar logic. Madrassas seek to create the impossible and like I wrote in my ilog, ``those who wish to bring heaven down to earth, only end up creating hell``.
Ciao
#27 Posted by temporal on August 2, 2003 8:07:42 am
echoooobooom
...welcome back in yet another reincarnation:)
Amir Ullah Khan, Mohammad Saqib and Zafar H. Anjum
...please forgive me for saying this:
the futility of this exercise is only exceeded by its irrelevance
...t
...welcome back in yet another reincarnation:)
Amir Ullah Khan, Mohammad Saqib and Zafar H. Anjum
...please forgive me for saying this:
the futility of this exercise is only exceeded by its irrelevance
...t
#26 Posted by jay on August 2, 2003 7:59:20 am
``According to Asghar Ali Engineer, a noted expert on Islam, more than 95% of the Indian Madarsahs have absolutely nothing to do with the ISI.``
Zafar, you have shot yourself in the head, with the above statistics. 5 percent of the madrassas are under ISI influence, that should be in their thousands, i didnt bother to add up the numbers you have given, but the fact is that may be 10,000 producta of the indian madrassas are ISI biased.
Zafar, how many more jihadist you want in india per year. May be , just may be, at least by your numbers, the hindutwa people have a point. We are not talking about zero ISI influence, the question is howmany does it take to kill say 10 hindus in marad beach in kerala, well they used daggers and it took 20 at the last count.
Zafar, you have shot yourself in the head, with the above statistics. 5 percent of the madrassas are under ISI influence, that should be in their thousands, i didnt bother to add up the numbers you have given, but the fact is that may be 10,000 producta of the indian madrassas are ISI biased.
Zafar, how many more jihadist you want in india per year. May be , just may be, at least by your numbers, the hindutwa people have a point. We are not talking about zero ISI influence, the question is howmany does it take to kill say 10 hindus in marad beach in kerala, well they used daggers and it took 20 at the last count.
#25 Posted by Ahmadzai on August 2, 2003 7:59:20 am
I whole heartedly agree with the views expressed by Sameer at 16 and Babu at 5.
Babu`s view are totally in line with the ultimate objective of getting what Naqshbandi at # 8 referred to.
Sameer`s views bring into light economic advantages/disadvantages of Madrissa education. I am sure economic disadvantages far outweigh any economic benefits that we gain from Madrissa education.
Babu`s view are totally in line with the ultimate objective of getting what Naqshbandi at # 8 referred to.
Sameer`s views bring into light economic advantages/disadvantages of Madrissa education. I am sure economic disadvantages far outweigh any economic benefits that we gain from Madrissa education.
#24 Posted by yantric on August 2, 2003 7:58:53 am
# 15 echooobooom
I am sure that a lot of muslims feel very proud about the schools that are run for the islamic students. I however, believe that these schools are a symptom of the prejudice and backward thinking of the muslims. The students that are indoctrinated in these schools will find it harder to assimilate and become part of the American society. This will lead to further alienation of muslims and the main stream. Moreover, the kids coming out of these schools will have much harder time dealing with people of other faiths when these kids go to the universities or the work force. I think the distrust that has been created between the muslims and the rest of Americans will further increase. I think the muslim parents who send their kids to such schools are doing them the greatest disservice. It is important for one to learn about ones culture and religion but being isolated from the main stream is so stupid. If this was done by outward forces it would be called ......... ghettoization.
I am sure that a lot of muslims feel very proud about the schools that are run for the islamic students. I however, believe that these schools are a symptom of the prejudice and backward thinking of the muslims. The students that are indoctrinated in these schools will find it harder to assimilate and become part of the American society. This will lead to further alienation of muslims and the main stream. Moreover, the kids coming out of these schools will have much harder time dealing with people of other faiths when these kids go to the universities or the work force. I think the distrust that has been created between the muslims and the rest of Americans will further increase. I think the muslim parents who send their kids to such schools are doing them the greatest disservice. It is important for one to learn about ones culture and religion but being isolated from the main stream is so stupid. If this was done by outward forces it would be called ......... ghettoization.
#23 Posted by rsaxena on August 2, 2003 7:57:47 am
....for a second there i was worried that this was written by zafar talib...then i realized i had the wrong zafar...phew, i know he wouldn`t write something like this....
#22 Posted by nazarhayatkhan on August 2, 2003 7:56:58 am
Reforms & Madressas is a catch-22 sitiation.
If Madressas are confined only to religion, they produce tunnel-vision religious zealots.
If contemporary education is added into them, the education lacks creativity and an open mind. The education begins from religious beliefs which are taken as facts. Example: The students will never debate whether witness of two women equal to one man is wrong. The research will be to prove why Islam says so.
The way forward is leave madressas for religious guidance and introduction only and their studies should have no weightage as education at all. (No recognition of any kind of degree)
Lets us not ruin the normal education by mixing it with religion or dogmas in religious institutions.
This applies to all religions.
#21 Posted by harimau on August 2, 2003 7:56:43 am
Ref Maasanamuthu #10
[Stuka,
Shahabuddin, a separatist?]
Of course not. Just as Doctor Artist Leader -- who had taken his oath of office as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1969 later burnt the Constitution of India in 1986 (you will be telling me that that was an expression of free speech guaranteed by the very Constitution he was burning) and who had no problem swearing he would uphold the Constitution when he took power as Chief Minister again in the 1990`s -- is an outstanding citizen of India.
Anencephalic cretin!
[Stuka,
Shahabuddin, a separatist?]
Of course not. Just as Doctor Artist Leader -- who had taken his oath of office as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu in 1969 later burnt the Constitution of India in 1986 (you will be telling me that that was an expression of free speech guaranteed by the very Constitution he was burning) and who had no problem swearing he would uphold the Constitution when he took power as Chief Minister again in the 1990`s -- is an outstanding citizen of India.
Anencephalic cretin!
#20 Posted by harimau on August 2, 2003 7:56:31 am
Ref veeresh #13
[In fact, if you ask the old-timers, Muslims in some parts of the country are doing, with dint of sheer labour and hard work, what Sikhs did about 50-75 years ago. It is my take that the ``past & present`` variety of madarsas in India feel threatened by this evolution.
Water finds its own level, Zafar. While the ``Muslim leaders`` bemoan their fate, their flock is oving ahead.....
+++
Just one anecdote:-when my regular taxi driver who is otherwise as illiterate as they come and fundoo to boot tells me that his daughter has stood third in the all-India selection for Nursing Staff for a particular uniformed service in India, and that she is going to proceed for training to another State 2 days train ride away, and if my equally religious M-I-L could be her LG in that faraway city, then I no longer have to feel surprised whether she was wearing a burqa, ghunghat or covering her head at home.
That is India, my India today, and there are plenty of Muslims present in it. And increasingly, there is nothing but contempt for those who choose to be left behind and resistance if they try to drag others back with them.
There will be bumps, there will be problems.]
Well said, Veeresh Saheb!
All it takes is a couple of hundred thousand people to move a community economy-wise forward. How many Tamilians are working in the IT field? How many Telugus or Kannadigas? A couple of hundred thousand each, at the most. Their states are considered the model for India today. The multiplier effect of the money they spend brings prosperity to many more people.
Every right-thinking Indian should ask himself this question: would the $150 million spent on Haj subsidy each year be better spent if instead it were allocated to improving schools for Muslim children?
[In fact, if you ask the old-timers, Muslims in some parts of the country are doing, with dint of sheer labour and hard work, what Sikhs did about 50-75 years ago. It is my take that the ``past & present`` variety of madarsas in India feel threatened by this evolution.
Water finds its own level, Zafar. While the ``Muslim leaders`` bemoan their fate, their flock is oving ahead.....
+++
Just one anecdote:-when my regular taxi driver who is otherwise as illiterate as they come and fundoo to boot tells me that his daughter has stood third in the all-India selection for Nursing Staff for a particular uniformed service in India, and that she is going to proceed for training to another State 2 days train ride away, and if my equally religious M-I-L could be her LG in that faraway city, then I no longer have to feel surprised whether she was wearing a burqa, ghunghat or covering her head at home.
That is India, my India today, and there are plenty of Muslims present in it. And increasingly, there is nothing but contempt for those who choose to be left behind and resistance if they try to drag others back with them.
There will be bumps, there will be problems.]
Well said, Veeresh Saheb!
All it takes is a couple of hundred thousand people to move a community economy-wise forward. How many Tamilians are working in the IT field? How many Telugus or Kannadigas? A couple of hundred thousand each, at the most. Their states are considered the model for India today. The multiplier effect of the money they spend brings prosperity to many more people.
Every right-thinking Indian should ask himself this question: would the $150 million spent on Haj subsidy each year be better spent if instead it were allocated to improving schools for Muslim children?
#19 Posted by MantoLives on August 1, 2003 11:35:22 pm
I think this `madrassah modernization` scheme in Pakistan atleast is going to be more detrimental to Pakistan. Let us consider how... Most problematic madrassahs in Pakistan are Saudi funded and teach the extremist wahabi (with roots in Saudi Arabia) and deobandi (with roots in Deoband India) versions of Islam.. previously they have posed law and order problems, now armed with education in computers and other modern sciences, these brainwashed kids would come into the workforce and get a chance to spread their wahabi-deobandi ideology to normal moderate Pakistani Muslims who believe in the popular low church and sufi Islam more than this straitjacket Arabicized or Deobandi ideological Islam. I shudder to think what will happen to Pakistan then.
I agree with Rsaxena... these kids don`t need this education. For a Modern Pakistan they need science math, and secular schooling. I think the case that is being made here is for backwardness and not a forwardlooking Islam. The solution is strict government check on the madrassahs, and provision of alternative secular state schools.. I speak here with regard to Pakistan ... I am not going to dwell on what is right or wrong in India.
-Manto
#18 Posted by MantoLives on August 1, 2003 11:35:22 pm
Naqshbandi says:
`Since colonisation and especially the last 100 years this has changed with creeping secularisation and irreligiousness of Muslims so that now most people will send their STUPIDEST sons to the madrssahs and encourage their brightest children to become doctors and engineers`
Shukar Al Hamdulillah, kay kuch to musalmanan ko aql ayee!
Allah Ka lakh lakh shukar hai...
`Shaykh Hamza Yusuf who has almost single-handedly been responsible for making english speaking Muslims of the diaspora interested in being ulama again instead of doctors and engineers.`
Yes people, I will testify to this... Shaikh Hamza Yusuf opened his `Zaytuna` institute in Santa Clara in the heart of the Silicon Valley ... now he proudly stops young muslims from acquiring a Modern education and knowledge about the cutting edge of technology. He stops them from being doctors, engineers etc. Instead he is churning out religious scholars by the hundreds... bright muslim minds who could have gone astray and become neurosurgeons or top computer software designers, are now becoming imams and holymen. Meanwhile the Hindus and the Jews, these Muslims seem to hate so much, are progressing by leaps and bounds in these fields. Should the Muslims really complain when these two genius communities, the Hindus and the Jews, dominate Corporate America, and the capitol hill ? We have chosen the likes of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf by shunning modernist and moderate Muslims. The ignorance Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was supposed to have wiped out is alive and well in the Zaytuna Institute in Santa Clara.
-Manto
#17 Posted by stuka on August 1, 2003 11:35:22 pm
Soyasauce: My memory is not that dim. I clearly remember Shahabuddin`s call for a boycott of the Republican Day by the Muslim community, saying ``unka din hai`` as in Hindus. Yes, I would say Shahabuddin is a seperatist.
#16 Posted by SameerJB on August 1, 2003 10:11:58 pm
Naqshnandi:
Think about it! You have chosen worldly education in natural sciences for yourself in a non-Muslim environment. How can you suggest parents to send their children with potential to be doctors/ engineers to a madrasssah in Lahore or Karachi? How would they earn living? What kind of product these madrassah educated folks will churn out to make money? As CEO of bioengineering comapny, would you preferentially hire Jamia Ajmalia graduate for research, development, sale, marketing, accounting, computer tech or administrative jobs?
About 7 percent of workforce in Pakistan is in military, 20 percent in government jobs and remaining in private jobs. Please name some institutions where these graduates can make enough money to put two meals per day on the table for their families. Does thriving on donations provide honest living, retirement benefits, health benefits and reasonable job security. What if people stop putting money in tinp cans placed by every shop in Islamabad by one or another religious group? Saudi money is not guaranteed for ever for deobandis and wahabis. Besides Saudis might be the next in line after Iraq, after congressional inquiry into 9/11 is pointing finger directly on Saudis.
Education for the sake of good reading of Koran, fiqah, sharia and ethics might have benefit for self improvement and decent behavior in a society but it is not sufficient in terms of skills or crafts to earn living. Nonody wants to spent 8 or 16 years in schooling only to be placing tin cans by the shops and emptying them once a week.
The governments run on revenue collection. How much revenue madrassah graduates have generated in Pakistan since 1947. Honest answer please and no fudging the issue. The rights of people in a nation depend upon contributions to run the affairs of the people. As they say here in USA, where is the beef? Did you know the source of revenue of Afghanistan Taliban government. Not a single Taliban, from Mullah Omar down to a volunteer ever paid anything to the government. How can the affairs of a nation be run with a group of people made up of consumption-only class. Smaller this group, better the country and society.
Think about it! You have chosen worldly education in natural sciences for yourself in a non-Muslim environment. How can you suggest parents to send their children with potential to be doctors/ engineers to a madrasssah in Lahore or Karachi? How would they earn living? What kind of product these madrassah educated folks will churn out to make money? As CEO of bioengineering comapny, would you preferentially hire Jamia Ajmalia graduate for research, development, sale, marketing, accounting, computer tech or administrative jobs?
About 7 percent of workforce in Pakistan is in military, 20 percent in government jobs and remaining in private jobs. Please name some institutions where these graduates can make enough money to put two meals per day on the table for their families. Does thriving on donations provide honest living, retirement benefits, health benefits and reasonable job security. What if people stop putting money in tinp cans placed by every shop in Islamabad by one or another religious group? Saudi money is not guaranteed for ever for deobandis and wahabis. Besides Saudis might be the next in line after Iraq, after congressional inquiry into 9/11 is pointing finger directly on Saudis.
Education for the sake of good reading of Koran, fiqah, sharia and ethics might have benefit for self improvement and decent behavior in a society but it is not sufficient in terms of skills or crafts to earn living. Nonody wants to spent 8 or 16 years in schooling only to be placing tin cans by the shops and emptying them once a week.
The governments run on revenue collection. How much revenue madrassah graduates have generated in Pakistan since 1947. Honest answer please and no fudging the issue. The rights of people in a nation depend upon contributions to run the affairs of the people. As they say here in USA, where is the beef? Did you know the source of revenue of Afghanistan Taliban government. Not a single Taliban, from Mullah Omar down to a volunteer ever paid anything to the government. How can the affairs of a nation be run with a group of people made up of consumption-only class. Smaller this group, better the country and society.
#15 Posted by umbertoeco on August 1, 2003 9:39:31 pm
Dear All,
Thanks for your comments on the article. All the issues, including the question of women`s education, have been duly dealth with. Since this article is only an abridged version of the original one (40 pages), I request you to read the full text of the original piece available in pdf form at www.bazaarchintan.net. (the url is http://www.bazaarchintan.net/pdfs/madarsas.pdf).
Regards,
Zafar, Amir, and Saqib
Thanks for your comments on the article. All the issues, including the question of women`s education, have been duly dealth with. Since this article is only an abridged version of the original one (40 pages), I request you to read the full text of the original piece available in pdf form at www.bazaarchintan.net. (the url is http://www.bazaarchintan.net/pdfs/madarsas.pdf).
Regards,
Zafar, Amir, and Saqib
#14 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 1, 2003 9:39:31 pm
Zafar Anjum,
A quick search revealed this as part of my continuing reality-check.
Thanks again.
Muslim Schools in U.S. a Voice for Identity
By SUSAN SACHS
The school year is already in full swing and still the parents come, crowding into the principal`s office at Al Noor School in Brooklyn, painstakingly filling in forms, proffering checks and pleading in Arabic and English for a chance to enroll their children in the New York area`s biggest Islamic private school.
``We turned down 400 kids because we don`t have space,`` said Nidal Abuasi, the principal, whose resources are already stretched to accommodate Al Noor`s 600 students. ``We have people who come hoping we have space even if their child has to be demoted to a lower grade. There is a huge demand.``
Across the country, Islamic schools like Al Noor that offer religion and Arabic classes along with a standard academic curriculum are expanding and flourishing, with many becoming oversubscribed so quickly that principals are scrambling for money to build more.
The reasons for the surge are as diverse as the American Muslim population itself, which embraces American-born converts and a swelling immigrant population from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.
But the educational structure these schools have forged -- prayer, discipline and American-style teaching -- has an appeal that cuts across lines of national origin and background.
The playground at Al Noor School in Brooklyn. The principal said 400 students were turned away for lack of space at the 600-student school.
At Al Iman elementary and high school in Queens, as at the 23 other Islamic schools in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey, the day begins with prayer: rows of children, separated by sex, reciting in Arabic the ancient words of submission to Allah.
Posters of Islam`s most famous mosques and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed hang in every classroom. Children must wear uniforms: long shapeless robes and head scarves for the older girls and neat blue sweaters and gray trousers for the boys. Besides their regular studies, students take two classes a week in Islamic studies and three a week in Arabic, the language of the Koran.
A glance at Al Iman`s handbook for students and parents further underlines the differences from public schools. The rules are strict: three demerits for taking toys, comics, cosmetics, jewelry or other unauthorized materials to school, one for wearing nail polish, five for disrespectful behavior to teachers or for ``pursuing acts of romanticism`` like flirting with a schoolmate. The punishment for five demerits is detention during lunch for three days. After 30 demerits, a child is suspended for a week, and after 40, expelled.
For students who transfer from public school, the transition can be difficult.
``My parents insisted I come here and I didn`t really argue with them,`` said Amel Ahmed, 17, whose parents emigrated from Yemen in 1980. She admitted she had picked up some bad habits in public school, but said the individual attention and strictly enforced regulations at Al Iman had set her straight.
``I wasn`t on the right track there, maybe because you get influenced by your friends,`` Amel said. ``Here they don`t only teach you. They guide you.``
Until recently, a full-time academic course load combined with Islamic teaching was available mainly through the national network of Sister Clara Muhammad schools, named for the wife of the Nation of Islam`s founder, Elijah Muhammad, mainly serving African-American students. Two in New York City have been operating since the early 1970`s, although they are no longer associated with the Nation of Islam. Now a new type of school serving a broader group of Muslims has emerged. In a sudden growth spurt, the number of Islamic schools nationwide has jumped to at least 200, according to the Council of Islamic Schools in North America, an informal body that sponsors workshops for Muslim educators. But neither the council nor any other group keeps official track of school openings, and American Muslims say they believe that the national figures are even higher.
Al Noor School in Brooklyn and other Islamic schools offer religion and Arabic classes with a standard academic curriculum and use a formula of piety and penalties.
As recently as three years ago, fewer than 200 children in New York City and Long Island attended private Islamic schools. Today, with two full-time high schools in Queens and plans to build three more in Brooklyn and Manhattan, total enrollment is 2,400 spread among 13 schools, with the majority of students from immigrant families. In New Jersey there are now at least 10 private Islamic schools, not only in big cities, with their notoriously troubled public schools, but also in small towns with respected school districts.
Private school enrollment is up in general, and many of the attractions are the same for all parents, Muslim or not, who view public schools as too permissive, rowdy and crowded.
But a more subtle dynamic is at work in the national surge in Islamic private schools. It represents a coming of age, in the view of many Muslim leaders, for a community striving to define itself as a cohesive religious minority in the secular American society.
Long a community of distinct and often introverted parts, Muslims have begun a process familiar to many immigrant and ethnic groups. They are trying to reach beyond their internal demarcations of national origin and find a unified voice to defend and promote their interests in a multicultural society.
Convinced that many Americans have a distorted view of Muslims and their Islamic religion, compounded by images in the movies and the media, they have created national organizations, lobbying groups, voter-registration campaigns and outreach programs to explain Islam to their neighbors.
Those who help to create a school system see themselves as an integral part of this communal effort to define, for themselves and for others, what it means to be a Muslim in the United States.
``My father`s family survived in Bosnian society as a minority for centuries,`` said Saffiya Turan, a founder of Noor al Iman School in South Brunswick, N.J., whose father emigrated more than 30 years ago from Yugoslavia. ``To survive, you have to know who you are.``
The challenge for Islamic educators is to create a spiritual educational experience for young Muslims that is also relevant to their lives in a secular society. It has been a process of trial and error, ad-libbing and self-discovery.
Many schools cobble together teaching materials from other countries. Abuasi, who is Palestinian-American, said he experimented with books from Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere before settling on Arabic texts from Jordan to teach the Koran, which Muslims believe is God`s word as transmitted to the prophet Mohammed.
At Noor ul Iman School in South Brunswick, one teacher, Abir Catovic, decided it made more sense for American schools to write their own texts.
``Overseas, you aren`t taught to ask why,`` said Mrs. Catovic, 31, who grew up in New Jersey after her family emigrated from Egypt. ``Here you`ve got students who ask why, and you`d better be prepared to answer more than just, `Because it says so.` ``
Religious schools for American Muslims also have to contend with a widely diverse student body. At Al Iman in Queens, for example, any one class might have children from Egyptian, Yemeni, Pakistani, Indian and African-American backgrounds. For Souhair Ayach, who teaches Islamic studies, having that mix of cultures requires her constantly to stress the difference between old country traditions and religion.
One recent day, Ms. Ayach`s class strayed from a discussion of the divine source of human genius to a more worldly topic that was on the minds of her 11th- and 12th-grade students: arranged marriages.
``Is there something in Islam that, like, says a girl should get married at a young age, or is it just tradition?`` asked a teen-age girl who gave her name only as Sabih, whose parents came from Pakistan but whose accent announced her New York City upbringing.
Ms. Ayach, herself a recent immigrant from Lebanon, steered a cautious course. ``In the past, people had everything they needed to live,`` she said. ``They were shepherds. They were merchants. They had castles. They didn`t have all these expenses of life.
``Here,`` she continued, ``you have to have education because you need a good job, a respectable job, to make your living. So it`s better if you marry early, but under some circumstances it`s better to develop your life first.``
Private schooling still touches only a small portion of American Muslims, whose numbers are growing. There are no official national figures, but a 1992 study commissioned by the American Muslim Council, a lobbying group in Washington, estimated the Muslim population in New York State at 800,000 and in New Jersey at 200,000. A more recent study by demographers at the State University of New York at Cortlandt concluded that 450,000 Muslims live in the New York metropolitan area alone.
Islamic schools are still small players in the private-education business. In New York State, 480,000 students, 1 in 5 of school age children, attend one of 2,400 registered nonpublic schools, most of them Roman Catholic schools or Jewish day schools and yeshivas.
But Muslim educators say the numbers of full-time Muslim students do not tell the complete story. Many of their schools have only now reached a point of critical mass at which they can attract more students because they offer advanced grade levels and have a demonstrable academic track record.
Still, it is difficult to gauge the real demand for Islamic schools, most of which charge up to $3,000 a year in tuition. But school administrators say that in an area that already supports 450 mosques in New York City and Long Island, there is a vast untapped pool of families willing to pay for an alternative to the secular public schools.
``This year we added 140 students from the public schools, all coming with the behavioral and academic problems they inherited: name calling, taunting with labels and names, casual profanity,`` said Abuasi at Al Noor. ``Here they have to watch the way they walk, watch the way they talk and watch what comes out of their mouths.``
The formula of piety and penalties at schools like Al Noor seems to have whetted the appetite of Muslim parents. Al Noor opened only three years ago, with an initial enrollment of 350 students in six grades. It now has 600 children from prekindergarten through ninth grade and is raising money from Arabic and Muslim businesses in the area to build a $4 million addition to the school.
To meet expected demand in Manhattan, the Kuwaiti-financed Islamic Cultural Center of New York is building a $10 million, five-story school for 1,000 students, next to its complex at Third Avenue and 96th Street.
Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn, one of the busiest in the city, is soliciting donations to convert its top four floors into an Islamic junior high and high school for girls.
Abdulhakim Ali Mohamed, the imam at the mosque, said the need for a girls` school is particularly acute in his neighborhood of immigrants. Families from conservative Arab countries abhor the mixing of boys and girls in public schools, he said, and panic when their daughters become teen-agers.
``Many are thinking of sending them back home,`` Mohamed said. ``We tell them that`s not a solution. If you take them back, you have to go back with them.``
Like new immigrants, more established Muslim families worry that their children may lose their religious identity or do poorly in public schools where their dress, holidays and religious taboos can make them curiosities.
Dawn El Mezyen, a convert to Islam, tried to help her son fit in at a conventional kindergarten, at one point acceding to his pleas to join in exchanging Valentine`s Day cards with his schoolmates. It took hours, she said, to sort through piles of store-bought cards and toss those with romantic messages she believed were inappropriate for a Muslim boy to give.
Then she transferred him to the Noor ul Iman School in South Brunswick, N.J. ``I needed him to be around other Muslim kids,`` Mrs. El Mezyen said. ``I wanted it to be a day to day thing. I didn`t want him to be the sore thumb that sticks out. Here we all celebrate a holiday together.``
At Al Iman School in Queens, robes are required and cosmetics, jewelry and flirting are forbidden
A quick search revealed this as part of my continuing reality-check.
Thanks again.
Muslim Schools in U.S. a Voice for Identity
By SUSAN SACHS
The school year is already in full swing and still the parents come, crowding into the principal`s office at Al Noor School in Brooklyn, painstakingly filling in forms, proffering checks and pleading in Arabic and English for a chance to enroll their children in the New York area`s biggest Islamic private school.
``We turned down 400 kids because we don`t have space,`` said Nidal Abuasi, the principal, whose resources are already stretched to accommodate Al Noor`s 600 students. ``We have people who come hoping we have space even if their child has to be demoted to a lower grade. There is a huge demand.``
Across the country, Islamic schools like Al Noor that offer religion and Arabic classes along with a standard academic curriculum are expanding and flourishing, with many becoming oversubscribed so quickly that principals are scrambling for money to build more.
The reasons for the surge are as diverse as the American Muslim population itself, which embraces American-born converts and a swelling immigrant population from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.
But the educational structure these schools have forged -- prayer, discipline and American-style teaching -- has an appeal that cuts across lines of national origin and background.
The playground at Al Noor School in Brooklyn. The principal said 400 students were turned away for lack of space at the 600-student school.
At Al Iman elementary and high school in Queens, as at the 23 other Islamic schools in New York City, Long Island and New Jersey, the day begins with prayer: rows of children, separated by sex, reciting in Arabic the ancient words of submission to Allah.
Posters of Islam`s most famous mosques and the sayings of the prophet Mohammed hang in every classroom. Children must wear uniforms: long shapeless robes and head scarves for the older girls and neat blue sweaters and gray trousers for the boys. Besides their regular studies, students take two classes a week in Islamic studies and three a week in Arabic, the language of the Koran.
A glance at Al Iman`s handbook for students and parents further underlines the differences from public schools. The rules are strict: three demerits for taking toys, comics, cosmetics, jewelry or other unauthorized materials to school, one for wearing nail polish, five for disrespectful behavior to teachers or for ``pursuing acts of romanticism`` like flirting with a schoolmate. The punishment for five demerits is detention during lunch for three days. After 30 demerits, a child is suspended for a week, and after 40, expelled.
For students who transfer from public school, the transition can be difficult.
``My parents insisted I come here and I didn`t really argue with them,`` said Amel Ahmed, 17, whose parents emigrated from Yemen in 1980. She admitted she had picked up some bad habits in public school, but said the individual attention and strictly enforced regulations at Al Iman had set her straight.
``I wasn`t on the right track there, maybe because you get influenced by your friends,`` Amel said. ``Here they don`t only teach you. They guide you.``
Until recently, a full-time academic course load combined with Islamic teaching was available mainly through the national network of Sister Clara Muhammad schools, named for the wife of the Nation of Islam`s founder, Elijah Muhammad, mainly serving African-American students. Two in New York City have been operating since the early 1970`s, although they are no longer associated with the Nation of Islam. Now a new type of school serving a broader group of Muslims has emerged. In a sudden growth spurt, the number of Islamic schools nationwide has jumped to at least 200, according to the Council of Islamic Schools in North America, an informal body that sponsors workshops for Muslim educators. But neither the council nor any other group keeps official track of school openings, and American Muslims say they believe that the national figures are even higher.
Al Noor School in Brooklyn and other Islamic schools offer religion and Arabic classes with a standard academic curriculum and use a formula of piety and penalties.
As recently as three years ago, fewer than 200 children in New York City and Long Island attended private Islamic schools. Today, with two full-time high schools in Queens and plans to build three more in Brooklyn and Manhattan, total enrollment is 2,400 spread among 13 schools, with the majority of students from immigrant families. In New Jersey there are now at least 10 private Islamic schools, not only in big cities, with their notoriously troubled public schools, but also in small towns with respected school districts.
Private school enrollment is up in general, and many of the attractions are the same for all parents, Muslim or not, who view public schools as too permissive, rowdy and crowded.
But a more subtle dynamic is at work in the national surge in Islamic private schools. It represents a coming of age, in the view of many Muslim leaders, for a community striving to define itself as a cohesive religious minority in the secular American society.
Long a community of distinct and often introverted parts, Muslims have begun a process familiar to many immigrant and ethnic groups. They are trying to reach beyond their internal demarcations of national origin and find a unified voice to defend and promote their interests in a multicultural society.
Convinced that many Americans have a distorted view of Muslims and their Islamic religion, compounded by images in the movies and the media, they have created national organizations, lobbying groups, voter-registration campaigns and outreach programs to explain Islam to their neighbors.
Those who help to create a school system see themselves as an integral part of this communal effort to define, for themselves and for others, what it means to be a Muslim in the United States.
``My father`s family survived in Bosnian society as a minority for centuries,`` said Saffiya Turan, a founder of Noor al Iman School in South Brunswick, N.J., whose father emigrated more than 30 years ago from Yugoslavia. ``To survive, you have to know who you are.``
The challenge for Islamic educators is to create a spiritual educational experience for young Muslims that is also relevant to their lives in a secular society. It has been a process of trial and error, ad-libbing and self-discovery.
Many schools cobble together teaching materials from other countries. Abuasi, who is Palestinian-American, said he experimented with books from Egypt, Yemen and elsewhere before settling on Arabic texts from Jordan to teach the Koran, which Muslims believe is God`s word as transmitted to the prophet Mohammed.
At Noor ul Iman School in South Brunswick, one teacher, Abir Catovic, decided it made more sense for American schools to write their own texts.
``Overseas, you aren`t taught to ask why,`` said Mrs. Catovic, 31, who grew up in New Jersey after her family emigrated from Egypt. ``Here you`ve got students who ask why, and you`d better be prepared to answer more than just, `Because it says so.` ``
Religious schools for American Muslims also have to contend with a widely diverse student body. At Al Iman in Queens, for example, any one class might have children from Egyptian, Yemeni, Pakistani, Indian and African-American backgrounds. For Souhair Ayach, who teaches Islamic studies, having that mix of cultures requires her constantly to stress the difference between old country traditions and religion.
One recent day, Ms. Ayach`s class strayed from a discussion of the divine source of human genius to a more worldly topic that was on the minds of her 11th- and 12th-grade students: arranged marriages.
``Is there something in Islam that, like, says a girl should get married at a young age, or is it just tradition?`` asked a teen-age girl who gave her name only as Sabih, whose parents came from Pakistan but whose accent announced her New York City upbringing.
Ms. Ayach, herself a recent immigrant from Lebanon, steered a cautious course. ``In the past, people had everything they needed to live,`` she said. ``They were shepherds. They were merchants. They had castles. They didn`t have all these expenses of life.
``Here,`` she continued, ``you have to have education because you need a good job, a respectable job, to make your living. So it`s better if you marry early, but under some circumstances it`s better to develop your life first.``
Private schooling still touches only a small portion of American Muslims, whose numbers are growing. There are no official national figures, but a 1992 study commissioned by the American Muslim Council, a lobbying group in Washington, estimated the Muslim population in New York State at 800,000 and in New Jersey at 200,000. A more recent study by demographers at the State University of New York at Cortlandt concluded that 450,000 Muslims live in the New York metropolitan area alone.
Islamic schools are still small players in the private-education business. In New York State, 480,000 students, 1 in 5 of school age children, attend one of 2,400 registered nonpublic schools, most of them Roman Catholic schools or Jewish day schools and yeshivas.
But Muslim educators say the numbers of full-time Muslim students do not tell the complete story. Many of their schools have only now reached a point of critical mass at which they can attract more students because they offer advanced grade levels and have a demonstrable academic track record.
Still, it is difficult to gauge the real demand for Islamic schools, most of which charge up to $3,000 a year in tuition. But school administrators say that in an area that already supports 450 mosques in New York City and Long Island, there is a vast untapped pool of families willing to pay for an alternative to the secular public schools.
``This year we added 140 students from the public schools, all coming with the behavioral and academic problems they inherited: name calling, taunting with labels and names, casual profanity,`` said Abuasi at Al Noor. ``Here they have to watch the way they walk, watch the way they talk and watch what comes out of their mouths.``
The formula of piety and penalties at schools like Al Noor seems to have whetted the appetite of Muslim parents. Al Noor opened only three years ago, with an initial enrollment of 350 students in six grades. It now has 600 children from prekindergarten through ninth grade and is raising money from Arabic and Muslim businesses in the area to build a $4 million addition to the school.
To meet expected demand in Manhattan, the Kuwaiti-financed Islamic Cultural Center of New York is building a $10 million, five-story school for 1,000 students, next to its complex at Third Avenue and 96th Street.
Al Farooq mosque in Brooklyn, one of the busiest in the city, is soliciting donations to convert its top four floors into an Islamic junior high and high school for girls.
Abdulhakim Ali Mohamed, the imam at the mosque, said the need for a girls` school is particularly acute in his neighborhood of immigrants. Families from conservative Arab countries abhor the mixing of boys and girls in public schools, he said, and panic when their daughters become teen-agers.
``Many are thinking of sending them back home,`` Mohamed said. ``We tell them that`s not a solution. If you take them back, you have to go back with them.``
Like new immigrants, more established Muslim families worry that their children may lose their religious identity or do poorly in public schools where their dress, holidays and religious taboos can make them curiosities.
Dawn El Mezyen, a convert to Islam, tried to help her son fit in at a conventional kindergarten, at one point acceding to his pleas to join in exchanging Valentine`s Day cards with his schoolmates. It took hours, she said, to sort through piles of store-bought cards and toss those with romantic messages she believed were inappropriate for a Muslim boy to give.
Then she transferred him to the Noor ul Iman School in South Brunswick, N.J. ``I needed him to be around other Muslim kids,`` Mrs. El Mezyen said. ``I wanted it to be a day to day thing. I didn`t want him to be the sore thumb that sticks out. Here we all celebrate a holiday together.``
At Al Iman School in Queens, robes are required and cosmetics, jewelry and flirting are forbidden
#13 Posted by veeresh on August 1, 2003 8:37:55 pm
Same old wine, water, new bottle. Actally, not just a bottle, but a huge Syntex water storage tank. Take water out, use for bath, sanitation, kitchen, garden, refill.
+++
What is new in your lengthy collection, Zafar Anjum?
You say ``past - present - future``. Where is your presentation on the future in this article, Sir? Where is the role of women, 50% of all Muslims, in your article? Who are the human beings who form the mass that are impacted by this alleged misunderstanding?
Read TKTM again. Please. The misunderstanding of the ``other`` was by white people to the complete ``other`` class, coloured people. Is that so in India, are all Muslims ``misunderstood``?
If you used the TKTM example, then please try to use it also, within the Muslim society in India, and see the results? Who is responsible for projecting small fundamentalist sects of Muslims as ``represenative`` of all Muslims? All whites were not the US, fundoos are not all Muslims in India.
One of the seldom spoken about roles of (oil money sponsored?) madarsas in India, and I have first hand knowledge of this, was to be the commercial routing for human movement towards Saudia. Whether for religious purposes, or as labour/menials, or simply to provide cannon fodder for assorted ``jihads`` worldwide. That is now drying up. As a result, we have the amazing sight of madarsas in non-Hindi/Urdu areas ``importing`` young Muslims from the Hindi/Urdu areas to swell the ranks. Did you observe that? Oh no, your madarsas beging and end within a few hundred miles radius of Delhi? Well, I am an Indian, and mine didn`t. I drive all over the country, and while others flock to bars, I do a quick round of the religious places in town.
And all over India, a pitiably small section of Urdu speaking Muslims in India with backward vision cannot be projected as the sole example of whatever it is that you are trying to put forth.
``Qaum khatre mein hai`` intones the typical beleagured ``Muslim leader`` in India. Yes, from within.
+++
The real role, and may I say victory. in changing society, of Islamic institutions of learning in India is being carried out elsewhere. Early days yet, but get a grip on how the healthcare support industry is changing demographics with an increasingly larger number of trained Muslim girls moving out of their homes in burqas to work in hospitals wearing whites. Not just Christians from kerala anymore. Absorb how the perception industry (media, entertainment, info-tainment, news) is finding new talent from the mean backstreets of the old cities, people who have diction and accent that can be understood, and where those young people are studying. Most of all, get to understand how Muslims returning from tenures in other parts of the country, serving time in uniformed forces or as labour in fields afar, seem to bring new ideas on best practices for rural economies without the barrier of caste that prevents Hindus from moving up. Whether it is in dairy farming, bottom end mechanical repair work, proper de-silting and crop rotations, there is a revolution going on in India which most static media do not have the least bit of idea about.
In fact, if you ask the old-timers, Muslims in some parts of the country are doing, with dint of sheer labour and hard work, what Sikhs did about 50-75 years ago. It is my take that the ``past & present`` variety of madarsas in India feel threatened by this evolution.
Water finds its own level, Zafar. While the ``Muslim leaders`` bemoan their fate, their flock is oving ahead. Let the past and the present look at the future, instead of bemoaning lost oil money which will not come back.
+++
Just one anecdote:-when my regular taxi driver who is otherwise as illiterate as they come and fundoo to boot tells me that his daughter has stood third in the all-India selection for Nursing Staff for a particular uniformed service in India, and that she is going to proceed for training to another State 2 days train ride away, and if my equally religious M-I-L could be her LG in that faraway city, then I no longer have to feel surprised whether she was wearing a burqa, ghunghat or covering her head at home.
That is India, my India today, and there are plenty of Muslims present in it. And increasingly, there is nothing but contempt for those who choose to be left behind and resistance if they try to drag others back with them.
There will be bumps, there will be problems.
++
#12 Posted by Naqshbandi on August 1, 2003 7:50:34 pm
An excellent article. Well done! The Madrassah is essential to the well being of any Islamic society; people forget that every single one of the famous and great Muslim scholars of the past from Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, the 4 Imams of Fiqh, Imam Ghazzali and all of the great Sufis were products of the madrassah system. Indeed every single scholar of any school has been a product of the madrassah system. Highly educated and pious ulama are vital to the transmission of this Deen from one generation of Muslims to the next. This transmission of knowledge (sanad) is the secret of this Deen to quote Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson.
The problem is the general fall of standards in the students attending the madrassah system
(and hence in the teachers too). Even in the beginning of the 20th century, this madrassah system was producing geniuses and outstanding scholars such as Ala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Riza Khan Barelvi , Ashraf Ali Thanavi Deobandi, Haji Imdad Ullah Muhajjir Makki, Sayyid Naeemuddin Muradabadi, Sayyid Ashraf Jahangir Simnani Kachchochavi etc. In previous centuries great Muslims of the calibre of Shah Wali Allah, the Muhaddith of Delhi, his son Shah Abdul Aziz, Imam e Rabbani Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, Hazrat Fazl e Haqq Khairabadi etc. were all products of the same madrassah system etc.
So what has happened? Why this change (massive drop) in standards? It is simple: previously a family would send their BRIGHTEST children to the madrassah to learn about the Deen and become alims (religious scholars) as traditionally in Islamic society the ulama and the Sufis occupied the highest respect in Islamic societies. Since colonisation and especially the last 100 years this has changed with creeping secularisation and irreligiousness of Muslims so that now most people will send their STUPIDEST sons to the madrssahs and encourage their brightest children to become doctors and engineers. The result of this is that these people make mediocre ulama and thus the respect for them in society goes ever lower; thus is is a vicious circle. Of course brilliant individuals still surface from the many mediocrities but no alim will disagree that the overall standard of the ulama has dropped (in Barelvi, Deobandi, Ahle Hadith and Shia madrassahs) considerably since the time of the likes of Ala Hazrat and Ashraf Ali Thanawi.
One reason for this has also been the gradual dumbing down of the traditional syllabus where a 16 year course is now pared down to 8 years in even the best madrassahs and in some even less! THat is one reason why if you compare a young alim in his 30s today to an alim in his 70s who have both down the complete Dars e Nizami course, the young alim knows a tenth of his elder counterpart in the same subjects! This is a generalisation of course.
Amazingly though, thanks to the general rise of what is known as the awareness of Islam amongst the younger generations of Muslims throughout the world, since the late 70s at least, and especially in Muslim diasporas and specially amongst Muslim converts in the West, there is now a growing trend amongst Muslims who are non-Wahabi and traditional Sunnis to go to those places in the Muslim world which have been unaffected by modernisation to a large extent, such as the deserts of Mauritania and the Hadramawt valley in Yemen, and seek out traditional Islamic knowledge in these madrassahs. (WAhabism has ample graduates pouring out of Saudi and Saudi funded madrassahs everywhere). These people spend up to a decade or more in these old style traditional madrassahs where they learn the traditional Nizami syllabus and then return to teach traditional islam to their own communities. Since most second generation MUslims who are either converts in the West, or from Indo Pak backgrounds, tend to be highly intelligent university graduates of western universities (or with at least A levels) the quality of ulama being produced by this group is noticably higher. This has encouraged more youngsters to go to these madrassahs (and also some in Indo Pak, eg Dar ul Ulum Deoband, Jamia Ashrafiyya in Faizabad, Mubarakpur, UP, Jamia Nizamiyya Lahore, Jamia Amjadiyya Karachi, etc etc) to learn traditional Islam and so it is likely that as this trend continues the quality of madrassah students and ulama will begin to rise again. For western Muslims a person who deserves special mention for creating this awareness of the vital role of the traditional madrassahs in Islamic education is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf who has almost single-handedly been responsible for making english speaking Muslims of the diaspora interested in being ulama again instead of doctors and engineers. He also is the Islamic adviser to President Bush.
Also first generation Muslim ulama who went to the West have also started to set up these traditional stlye madrassahs which teach the Dars Nizami along with English, science and other subjects. This is because a revival of the standards of education in madrassahs is vital for the revival of traditional islam.
The problem is the general fall of standards in the students attending the madrassah system
(and hence in the teachers too). Even in the beginning of the 20th century, this madrassah system was producing geniuses and outstanding scholars such as Ala Hazrat Imam Ahmad Riza Khan Barelvi , Ashraf Ali Thanavi Deobandi, Haji Imdad Ullah Muhajjir Makki, Sayyid Naeemuddin Muradabadi, Sayyid Ashraf Jahangir Simnani Kachchochavi etc. In previous centuries great Muslims of the calibre of Shah Wali Allah, the Muhaddith of Delhi, his son Shah Abdul Aziz, Imam e Rabbani Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, Hazrat Fazl e Haqq Khairabadi etc. were all products of the same madrassah system etc.
So what has happened? Why this change (massive drop) in standards? It is simple: previously a family would send their BRIGHTEST children to the madrassah to learn about the Deen and become alims (religious scholars) as traditionally in Islamic society the ulama and the Sufis occupied the highest respect in Islamic societies. Since colonisation and especially the last 100 years this has changed with creeping secularisation and irreligiousness of Muslims so that now most people will send their STUPIDEST sons to the madrssahs and encourage their brightest children to become doctors and engineers. The result of this is that these people make mediocre ulama and thus the respect for them in society goes ever lower; thus is is a vicious circle. Of course brilliant individuals still surface from the many mediocrities but no alim will disagree that the overall standard of the ulama has dropped (in Barelvi, Deobandi, Ahle Hadith and Shia madrassahs) considerably since the time of the likes of Ala Hazrat and Ashraf Ali Thanawi.
One reason for this has also been the gradual dumbing down of the traditional syllabus where a 16 year course is now pared down to 8 years in even the best madrassahs and in some even less! THat is one reason why if you compare a young alim in his 30s today to an alim in his 70s who have both down the complete Dars e Nizami course, the young alim knows a tenth of his elder counterpart in the same subjects! This is a generalisation of course.
Amazingly though, thanks to the general rise of what is known as the awareness of Islam amongst the younger generations of Muslims throughout the world, since the late 70s at least, and especially in Muslim diasporas and specially amongst Muslim converts in the West, there is now a growing trend amongst Muslims who are non-Wahabi and traditional Sunnis to go to those places in the Muslim world which have been unaffected by modernisation to a large extent, such as the deserts of Mauritania and the Hadramawt valley in Yemen, and seek out traditional Islamic knowledge in these madrassahs. (WAhabism has ample graduates pouring out of Saudi and Saudi funded madrassahs everywhere). These people spend up to a decade or more in these old style traditional madrassahs where they learn the traditional Nizami syllabus and then return to teach traditional islam to their own communities. Since most second generation MUslims who are either converts in the West, or from Indo Pak backgrounds, tend to be highly intelligent university graduates of western universities (or with at least A levels) the quality of ulama being produced by this group is noticably higher. This has encouraged more youngsters to go to these madrassahs (and also some in Indo Pak, eg Dar ul Ulum Deoband, Jamia Ashrafiyya in Faizabad, Mubarakpur, UP, Jamia Nizamiyya Lahore, Jamia Amjadiyya Karachi, etc etc) to learn traditional Islam and so it is likely that as this trend continues the quality of madrassah students and ulama will begin to rise again. For western Muslims a person who deserves special mention for creating this awareness of the vital role of the traditional madrassahs in Islamic education is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf who has almost single-handedly been responsible for making english speaking Muslims of the diaspora interested in being ulama again instead of doctors and engineers. He also is the Islamic adviser to President Bush.
Also first generation Muslim ulama who went to the West have also started to set up these traditional stlye madrassahs which teach the Dars Nizami along with English, science and other subjects. This is because a revival of the standards of education in madrassahs is vital for the revival of traditional islam.
#11 Posted by roohi on August 1, 2003 7:50:34 pm
Education in Pre-British India
by Pankaj Goyal
Posted 7/9/03
Dharampal, the well known Gandhian and historian of Indian Science, has given a detailed accounts of the extensive indigenous system of education that was thriving in India before the British came in his famous book, The Beautiful Tree. We give below a brief summary of his report. Dharampal`s account is based on the British Collector`s reports when the came to India and were asked to report on sate of the indigenous education.
Indian historical knowledge has been derived from the writings and some other valuable accounts left by the foreigners. For example, the universities of Nalanda and Taxila have been better known as some Greek or Chinese travellers had written about them centuries ago, which had survived in the form of some journals. Thus these journals provide us very useful information about indigenous education.
The information about indigenous education, which is available today, whether published, or still in manuscript form in the government records, largely belongs to the 1820`s and 1830`s period. It is significant to emphasize that indigenous education was carried out through pathshalas, madrassahs and gurukulas. These three institutions were the source of traditional knowledge systems in India and played a very significant role in the Indian education. These institutions were in fact the watering holes of the culture of traditional communities. Therefore the term school is a weak translation of the roles these institutions really played in Indian society.
The most well-known and decisive point, which emerged from the educational surveys, lies in an examination made by William Adam. He, in his observations found that there existed about 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar around the 1830s. Men like Thomas Munro, had observed that `every village had a school`. Observations made by Dr. G.W.Leitner in 1882 show that the spread of education in the Punjab around 1850 was of a similar extent. At about the same time, England had very few schools for the children of ordinary people till about 1800, and many of the older grammar school were in poor shape. According to A.E. Dobbs, the University of Oxford might be described as the chief Charity School of the poor as well as the chief Grammar School in England. It was also one of the greatest places of the education for students of theology, law and medicine.
The men who wrote about India belonged to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century of Great Britain. These surveys, based on hard data reveal a great deal about the nature of Indian education and detailed information on the background of those benefiting from these institutions.
According to this hard data, in terms of the content, the proportion of those attending institutional school education in India in 1800 is certainly not inferior to what obtained in England then; and in many respects Indian schooling seems to have been much more extensive. The content of studies was better in India than in England. The method of school teaching was superior in India at that time. The school attendance, especially in the district of Madras Presidency, even in the decayed state of the period 1822-25, was proportionately far higher than the numbers in all variety of schools in England in 1800. The only aspect in which India was behind was the education of girls. Girl schooling may have been proportionately more extensive in England in 1800.
However, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data presents a kind of revelation. According to this data, the education of any sort in India, till very recant decades, was mostly limited to the twice born amongst the Hindus, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite.
Two of the collectors sent detailed information pertain-ing to those who were being educated at home, or in some other private manner. The collector of Malabar sent details of 1,594 scholars who were receiving education in Theology, Law, Astrono-my, Metaphysics, Ethics and Medical Science in his district from private tutors. The collector of Madras, on the other hand, report-ed in his letter of February 1826 that 26,963 school-level schol-ars were then receiving tuition at their homes in the area under his jurisdiction.
The government of Madras presidency completed a survey of Indian educational institutions in 1823-24. After that it came to be known that despite the poverty and disturbance, there were about 13,000 schools and 740 colleges under the presidency. According to this survey the original number of students in school and colleges were 1,88,650 out of which 42,502 were Brahmans and 85,400 were from the castes known as Shudras. The remaining were Vaishya, Mohammedan and from other Hindu castes. The numbers of girls were only 4540, but according to the report this lesser number of girls as alleged was mainly due to the prevalence of home education of girls. But the number of Mohammedan girl students in Malabar district was very large. The number of girl students there was 1,122 and for boy students 3196. How these institutions of education were destroyed is known to some extent by what Gandhiji said.
The Government of the Presidency of Madras on 10 March 1826 ultimately reviewed the reports of the collectors. The Governor, Sir Thomas Munro, was of the view that while the institutional education of females seemed negligible, that of the boys between the ages of 5 to 10 years appeared to be a `little more than one-fourth` of the boys of that age in the Presidency as a whole. Taking into consideration those who were estimated as being taught at home, he was inclined `to estimate the por-tion of the male population who receive school education to be nearer to one-third than one-fourth of the whole.
The caste-wise division of students provides the more interesting and historically more relevant information. This is true not only as regards boys, but also with respect to the rather small number of girls who, according to the survey, were receiving education in schools. Furthermore, the information be-comes all the more curious and pertinent when the data is grouped into the five main language areas -- Oriya, Telugu, Kannada. Malayalam and Tamil. These constituted the Presidency of Madras at this period, and throughout the nineteenth century.
In the Tamil speaking areas where the twice-born ranged between 13% in the south Arcot to some 23% in Madras, the Muslims were less than 3% in South Arcot and Chingleput to 10% in Salem, while the Soodras and the other castes ranged from about 70% in Salem and Tinnevelly, to over 84% in South Arcot.
In Malayalam-speaking Malabar, the proportion of the twice born was still below 20% of the total. Because of a larger Muslim population, however, the number of Muslim school stu-dents went up to nearly 27%, while the Soodras and the other castes accounted for some 54% of the school going students.
In the largely Kannada-speaking Bellary, the proportion of the twice-born (the Brahmins and the Vysees) went up to 33%, while the Soodras, and the other castes still accounted for some 63%.
The position in the Oriya-speaking Ganjam was similar: the twice-born accounting for some 35.6%, and the Soodras and other castes being around 63.5%.
It is only in the Telugu-speaking districts that the twice born formed the major proportion of the school going students. Here, the proportion of Brahmin boys varied from 24% in Cuddapah to 46% in Vizagapatam; of the Vysees from 10.5% in Vizagapatam to 29% in Cuddapah; of the Muslims from 1 % in Vizagapatam to 8% in Nellore; and of the Soodras and other castes from 35% in Guntoor to over 41% in Cuddapah and Vizagapatam.
The main subjects, which were reported to be taught in the schools of Bellary and also in Rajahmundry, were reading, writing and arithmetic. Ramayanum, Maha Bharata, Bhagvata, were some other books which were reported to be taught in these schools.
While several of the collectors observed that no institutions of higher learning were then known to exist in their districts, the rest reported a total of 1,094 such places. These were enumer-ated under the term `colleges` (as mentioned in the prescribed form). The largest number of these, 279, were in the district of Rajahmundry with a total of 1.454 scholars; Coimbatore came next with 173 such places (724 scholars); Guntoor had 171 (with 939 scholars); Tanjore 109 (with 769 scholars); Nellore 107; North Arcot 69 (with 418 scholars); Salem 53 (with 324 scholars); Chingleput 51 (with 398 scholars); Masulipatarn 49 (with 199 scholers); Bellary 23; Trichnopoly (with 131 scholars) and Malabar with one old institution with 75 scholars.
The books used in these institutions probably were the Vedas, the various Sastras, the Purans, the more well known books on Ganeeta, and Jyotish-sastras and epic literature.
Several collectors, especially the collector of Canara, who did not send any statistical returns at all, mentioned the fact that many of the boys and especially the girls received education at home from their parents, or relatives, or from privately engaged tutors. The data from Madras regarding the number of boys and girls receiving tuition at their home is equally pertinent. In comparison to those being educated in schools in Madras, this number is 4.7 times.
The number of girls attending the school was very small. Leaving aside the districts of Malabar and the Jeypoor divison of Vizagapatam district, the girls from Brahmin, Chettri, and Vysee castes were practically non-existent in schools. However, there were some Muslim girls receiving school educations: 56 in Trichnopoly, and 27 in Salem.
Thirteen years later, a more limited semi-official survey of indigenous education was taken up in the Presidency of Bengal, which is known as the Adam`s Reports. In spite of the controversies, Adam`s Reports have mentioned that there were perhaps 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar in some form till the 1830.
Adam divided the period spent in elementary schools into 4 stages, which were: The first stage was a period of about ten days, during which the young scholar was taught to form the letters of the alphabet; the second stage, extending two and a half to 4 years, was distinguished by the use of palm leaf as the material on which writing was performed and the scholar was taught to read and write and also learn the Cowrie table, the Numeration table, the katha table and the Ser table; the third stage extended from 2 to 3 years, which were employed in writing on the plantain leaf and addition, subtraction and other arithmetical operations were taught during this period; and finally in the fourth stage, which extended up to 2 years, the writing was done on the paper and the scholar was expected to read the Ramayana, Manas mangal etc.
About 45 years after Adam, Dr. G. W. Leitner prepared an even more voluminous survey of indigenous education. This survey was more direct and much less complementary to British rule. Leitner`s researches showed that at the time of the annexation of the Punjab, the lowest computation gave 3,30,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with reading, writing and some methods of computation.
There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. This is the major common impression, which emerges from the (1822-25) Madras Presidency data, the report of W. Adam on Bengal and Bihar (1835-38), and the Punjab survey by G.W. Leitner.
Gandhiji was very disappointed at the condition of Indian education during the British period. Gandhiji observed two main points in Indian education: (1) Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or hundred years ago; and (2) the British administrators instead of looking after education and other matters which had existed, began to root them out.
Source:
Dharampal, 2000. Introduction in The Beautiful Tree, Volume III. Pp. 07-86. Mapusa: Other India Press.
Note: The archaic spellings have not been changed.
by Pankaj Goyal
Posted 7/9/03
Dharampal, the well known Gandhian and historian of Indian Science, has given a detailed accounts of the extensive indigenous system of education that was thriving in India before the British came in his famous book, The Beautiful Tree. We give below a brief summary of his report. Dharampal`s account is based on the British Collector`s reports when the came to India and were asked to report on sate of the indigenous education.
Indian historical knowledge has been derived from the writings and some other valuable accounts left by the foreigners. For example, the universities of Nalanda and Taxila have been better known as some Greek or Chinese travellers had written about them centuries ago, which had survived in the form of some journals. Thus these journals provide us very useful information about indigenous education.
The information about indigenous education, which is available today, whether published, or still in manuscript form in the government records, largely belongs to the 1820`s and 1830`s period. It is significant to emphasize that indigenous education was carried out through pathshalas, madrassahs and gurukulas. These three institutions were the source of traditional knowledge systems in India and played a very significant role in the Indian education. These institutions were in fact the watering holes of the culture of traditional communities. Therefore the term school is a weak translation of the roles these institutions really played in Indian society.
The most well-known and decisive point, which emerged from the educational surveys, lies in an examination made by William Adam. He, in his observations found that there existed about 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar around the 1830s. Men like Thomas Munro, had observed that `every village had a school`. Observations made by Dr. G.W.Leitner in 1882 show that the spread of education in the Punjab around 1850 was of a similar extent. At about the same time, England had very few schools for the children of ordinary people till about 1800, and many of the older grammar school were in poor shape. According to A.E. Dobbs, the University of Oxford might be described as the chief Charity School of the poor as well as the chief Grammar School in England. It was also one of the greatest places of the education for students of theology, law and medicine.
The men who wrote about India belonged to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century of Great Britain. These surveys, based on hard data reveal a great deal about the nature of Indian education and detailed information on the background of those benefiting from these institutions.
According to this hard data, in terms of the content, the proportion of those attending institutional school education in India in 1800 is certainly not inferior to what obtained in England then; and in many respects Indian schooling seems to have been much more extensive. The content of studies was better in India than in England. The method of school teaching was superior in India at that time. The school attendance, especially in the district of Madras Presidency, even in the decayed state of the period 1822-25, was proportionately far higher than the numbers in all variety of schools in England in 1800. The only aspect in which India was behind was the education of girls. Girl schooling may have been proportionately more extensive in England in 1800.
However, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data presents a kind of revelation. According to this data, the education of any sort in India, till very recant decades, was mostly limited to the twice born amongst the Hindus, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite.
Two of the collectors sent detailed information pertain-ing to those who were being educated at home, or in some other private manner. The collector of Malabar sent details of 1,594 scholars who were receiving education in Theology, Law, Astrono-my, Metaphysics, Ethics and Medical Science in his district from private tutors. The collector of Madras, on the other hand, report-ed in his letter of February 1826 that 26,963 school-level schol-ars were then receiving tuition at their homes in the area under his jurisdiction.
The government of Madras presidency completed a survey of Indian educational institutions in 1823-24. After that it came to be known that despite the poverty and disturbance, there were about 13,000 schools and 740 colleges under the presidency. According to this survey the original number of students in school and colleges were 1,88,650 out of which 42,502 were Brahmans and 85,400 were from the castes known as Shudras. The remaining were Vaishya, Mohammedan and from other Hindu castes. The numbers of girls were only 4540, but according to the report this lesser number of girls as alleged was mainly due to the prevalence of home education of girls. But the number of Mohammedan girl students in Malabar district was very large. The number of girl students there was 1,122 and for boy students 3196. How these institutions of education were destroyed is known to some extent by what Gandhiji said.
The Government of the Presidency of Madras on 10 March 1826 ultimately reviewed the reports of the collectors. The Governor, Sir Thomas Munro, was of the view that while the institutional education of females seemed negligible, that of the boys between the ages of 5 to 10 years appeared to be a `little more than one-fourth` of the boys of that age in the Presidency as a whole. Taking into consideration those who were estimated as being taught at home, he was inclined `to estimate the por-tion of the male population who receive school education to be nearer to one-third than one-fourth of the whole.
The caste-wise division of students provides the more interesting and historically more relevant information. This is true not only as regards boys, but also with respect to the rather small number of girls who, according to the survey, were receiving education in schools. Furthermore, the information be-comes all the more curious and pertinent when the data is grouped into the five main language areas -- Oriya, Telugu, Kannada. Malayalam and Tamil. These constituted the Presidency of Madras at this period, and throughout the nineteenth century.
In the Tamil speaking areas where the twice-born ranged between 13% in the south Arcot to some 23% in Madras, the Muslims were less than 3% in South Arcot and Chingleput to 10% in Salem, while the Soodras and the other castes ranged from about 70% in Salem and Tinnevelly, to over 84% in South Arcot.
In Malayalam-speaking Malabar, the proportion of the twice born was still below 20% of the total. Because of a larger Muslim population, however, the number of Muslim school stu-dents went up to nearly 27%, while the Soodras and the other castes accounted for some 54% of the school going students.
In the largely Kannada-speaking Bellary, the proportion of the twice-born (the Brahmins and the Vysees) went up to 33%, while the Soodras, and the other castes still accounted for some 63%.
The position in the Oriya-speaking Ganjam was similar: the twice-born accounting for some 35.6%, and the Soodras and other castes being around 63.5%.
It is only in the Telugu-speaking districts that the twice born formed the major proportion of the school going students. Here, the proportion of Brahmin boys varied from 24% in Cuddapah to 46% in Vizagapatam; of the Vysees from 10.5% in Vizagapatam to 29% in Cuddapah; of the Muslims from 1 % in Vizagapatam to 8% in Nellore; and of the Soodras and other castes from 35% in Guntoor to over 41% in Cuddapah and Vizagapatam.
The main subjects, which were reported to be taught in the schools of Bellary and also in Rajahmundry, were reading, writing and arithmetic. Ramayanum, Maha Bharata, Bhagvata, were some other books which were reported to be taught in these schools.
While several of the collectors observed that no institutions of higher learning were then known to exist in their districts, the rest reported a total of 1,094 such places. These were enumer-ated under the term `colleges` (as mentioned in the prescribed form). The largest number of these, 279, were in the district of Rajahmundry with a total of 1.454 scholars; Coimbatore came next with 173 such places (724 scholars); Guntoor had 171 (with 939 scholars); Tanjore 109 (with 769 scholars); Nellore 107; North Arcot 69 (with 418 scholars); Salem 53 (with 324 scholars); Chingleput 51 (with 398 scholars); Masulipatarn 49 (with 199 scholers); Bellary 23; Trichnopoly (with 131 scholars) and Malabar with one old institution with 75 scholars.
The books used in these institutions probably were the Vedas, the various Sastras, the Purans, the more well known books on Ganeeta, and Jyotish-sastras and epic literature.
Several collectors, especially the collector of Canara, who did not send any statistical returns at all, mentioned the fact that many of the boys and especially the girls received education at home from their parents, or relatives, or from privately engaged tutors. The data from Madras regarding the number of boys and girls receiving tuition at their home is equally pertinent. In comparison to those being educated in schools in Madras, this number is 4.7 times.
The number of girls attending the school was very small. Leaving aside the districts of Malabar and the Jeypoor divison of Vizagapatam district, the girls from Brahmin, Chettri, and Vysee castes were practically non-existent in schools. However, there were some Muslim girls receiving school educations: 56 in Trichnopoly, and 27 in Salem.
Thirteen years later, a more limited semi-official survey of indigenous education was taken up in the Presidency of Bengal, which is known as the Adam`s Reports. In spite of the controversies, Adam`s Reports have mentioned that there were perhaps 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar in some form till the 1830.
Adam divided the period spent in elementary schools into 4 stages, which were: The first stage was a period of about ten days, during which the young scholar was taught to form the letters of the alphabet; the second stage, extending two and a half to 4 years, was distinguished by the use of palm leaf as the material on which writing was performed and the scholar was taught to read and write and also learn the Cowrie table, the Numeration table, the katha table and the Ser table; the third stage extended from 2 to 3 years, which were employed in writing on the plantain leaf and addition, subtraction and other arithmetical operations were taught during this period; and finally in the fourth stage, which extended up to 2 years, the writing was done on the paper and the scholar was expected to read the Ramayana, Manas mangal etc.
About 45 years after Adam, Dr. G. W. Leitner prepared an even more voluminous survey of indigenous education. This survey was more direct and much less complementary to British rule. Leitner`s researches showed that at the time of the annexation of the Punjab, the lowest computation gave 3,30,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with reading, writing and some methods of computation.
There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. This is the major common impression, which emerges from the (1822-25) Madras Presidency data, the report of W. Adam on Bengal and Bihar (1835-38), and the Punjab survey by G.W. Leitner.
Gandhiji was very disappointed at the condition of Indian education during the British period. Gandhiji observed two main points in Indian education: (1) Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or hundred years ago; and (2) the British administrators instead of looking after education and other matters which had existed, began to root them out.
Source:
Dharampal, 2000. Introduction in The Beautiful Tree, Volume III. Pp. 07-86. Mapusa: Other India Press.
Note: The archaic spellings have not been changed.
#10 Posted by soysauce on August 1, 2003 7:50:34 pm
Stuka,
Shahabuddin, a separatist?
bbabu
Let them eat cake?
Shahabuddin, a separatist?
bbabu
Let them eat cake?
#9 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 1, 2003 7:50:34 pm
This is real jihad. Please drum this and other such articles into the drums of ataturk-wannabees.
The deviants are already on the slippery slope. They will always be a miniscule minority and the reality-check tells us that like the US they just cannot venture outside the Kabuls of their culture or Baghdads of their beliefs. Death, their own shadow, lurks even where they think they have occupied the innocents` land or beseiged them by their borrowed-brains.
Some seige, some occupation.
The deviants are already on the slippery slope. They will always be a miniscule minority and the reality-check tells us that like the US they just cannot venture outside the Kabuls of their culture or Baghdads of their beliefs. Death, their own shadow, lurks even where they think they have occupied the innocents` land or beseiged them by their borrowed-brains.
Some seige, some occupation.
#8 Posted by yagacho on August 1, 2003 7:50:34 pm
The authors have put in good effort to prepare the article. It is informative and well balanced. It is such objective information that can clear hype from reality. One favourite tool of anti-muslim forces is degrade everything related to islam. All that hype needs to be countered with factual information, like this article.
It should also be realised that some people are so extremely anti-muslim that no rational arguments will make any sense to them. Hatred towards muslims is almost a religion for such folks so it should not be expected that any of their biased opinions will change with objective information.
It should also be realised that some people are so extremely anti-muslim that no rational arguments will make any sense to them. Hatred towards muslims is almost a religion for such folks so it should not be expected that any of their biased opinions will change with objective information.
#7 Posted by Faruk on August 1, 2003 4:20:21 pm
Re : Article
Nice Article Zafar. I really liked the “The Madarsah Modernization Scheme” and the “The way ahead” portion.
Faruk
Nice Article Zafar. I really liked the “The Madarsah Modernization Scheme” and the “The way ahead” portion.
Faruk
#6 Posted by bbabu on August 1, 2003 4:20:20 pm
Sorry. I will be blunt. There is no need for a large number of madrassas in India and for that matter in any Islamic country. I have no objection in training limited number of religious leaders in madrassas. Even then it is confined to the education of young men in the 15-25 year group as religious leaders. Also madrassas should broaden their education to include diverse fields like sociology, pyschology, other religions, western philosophy and anthropology.
#5 Posted by SameerJB on August 1, 2003 4:20:20 pm
Madrassahs have been aroud for centuries, yet they have not helped Muslim literacy level through ages. The Muslim literacy level was close to 10 percent in Pakistan (west Pakistan then) at the time of partition. The rise of literacy level since then is attributed 100 percent to non-Madrassah schooling for both men and women....
If it hadn`t make any positive contrinution for more than 500 years, it is unlikely to do it now in a more hostile environment with more options available...
Look at the names of these institutions given in this article. They are totally misfit with local cultures. Do such practices not contribute towards creating a mutually exclusive sub-subgroup within a subgroup?
If it hadn`t make any positive contrinution for more than 500 years, it is unlikely to do it now in a more hostile environment with more options available...
Look at the names of these institutions given in this article. They are totally misfit with local cultures. Do such practices not contribute towards creating a mutually exclusive sub-subgroup within a subgroup?
#4 Posted by stuka on August 1, 2003 2:27:25 pm
Zafar Anjum:
I assume this article will not be limited to Chowk and you will publish this elsewhere. As a fellow Indian, let me say that your quoting a seperatist like Shahabuddin makes the entire article suspect.
In any case, all you provide in defense of Madarsas is your word. We have the example of Pakistan in front of us. In no circumstance can a Madarsa education be helpful to assimilation of Muslims in the Indian mainstream.
I assume this article will not be limited to Chowk and you will publish this elsewhere. As a fellow Indian, let me say that your quoting a seperatist like Shahabuddin makes the entire article suspect.
In any case, all you provide in defense of Madarsas is your word. We have the example of Pakistan in front of us. In no circumstance can a Madarsa education be helpful to assimilation of Muslims in the Indian mainstream.
#3 Posted by ECHOOOOBOOOM on August 1, 2003 1:49:55 pm
Very thorough, detailed and, great research.
Congratulations.
This article has certainly helped me, and I hope it will help others too, to remove the ignorance prevalent among the non-reality-check types like myself.
WOW!
Ram Mohan Roy from a madressah? And Hindus attending madressas in India? Hindus donating money to madressas?
How come these facts are not highlighted and emblazoned in the Pakistani press. What else can be a better sell to remove the taint of terrorism from both the BJP and the MMA?
Well done boys, well done indeed!
Write more and often.
Congratulations.
This article has certainly helped me, and I hope it will help others too, to remove the ignorance prevalent among the non-reality-check types like myself.
WOW!
Ram Mohan Roy from a madressah? And Hindus attending madressas in India? Hindus donating money to madressas?
How come these facts are not highlighted and emblazoned in the Pakistani press. What else can be a better sell to remove the taint of terrorism from both the BJP and the MMA?
Well done boys, well done indeed!
Write more and often.
#2 Posted by nazarhayatkhan on August 1, 2003 12:27:17 pm
An overdose of religion.
In good old days, Madressas were not so bad. They confined themselves to teaching Quran and how to say say prayers.
Not any more, at least not in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Sudan, Somalia etc.
They now discuss geopolitics & the conspiracies by the Christians, Jews, Hindues etc against Islam; and breed young green-eyes monstors.
To monitor and to keep them under a check is now not only desirable but an essential requirement to keep the world safe.
#1 Posted by rsaxena on August 1, 2003 12:27:17 pm
...even if there is no terrorism being taught in the these places, these kids do not need islamic education...they need to learn science, math, and writing if they are going to succeed in modern india...otherwise they will forever be an unintegrated underclass....
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