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sigalph

that was why i used three asterisks instead of saying the four letter word as i *try* not to swear but sometimes i fail. thanks for pointing my mistke out.
actually hazrat sultan abdul hamid ii rahmatullah alayhi gave the famous reply to the brits when they wanted him to cede palestine that the land does not belong to me rather it is a waqf!

i am happy with my tariqa thanks.
:-)

re Naqshbandi

``**sigalph--who the f*** gave the bloody british (and french) to carve up the land of palestine and give it to the jews in the first place? ``

Glad you asked that. It was your favorite Ottoman Caliphate, the Osmaniya Khilafat, the last true Muslim sultanate(as you say). Happy?


On a more serious note, I see that in the last couple of years your language has not quite improved. Perhaps time to look for a different tariqa, hazrat.

hindu india and israel are united by their hatred for islam so this alliance is no surprise at all. Allah tells us in the Qur`an:

Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters. (Quran, 5:82)

hamid--i am not a ``jihadi`` but a Sunni Muslim; however that doesn`t mean that I condone what is blatantly wrong (the existence of israel). how would you like it if someone (say the USA) kicked all panjabis out of panjab and called it hellas and filled it with all the macedonians because the macedonians believed it rightfully belonged to them? that is what happened with israel and the palestinians.

Hazrat Umar conquered Jerusalem and the Jews were treated with dignity and respect and Hazrat Umar declared that the whole of the land would be a waqf for all time and belong to the Muslims. That is our claim on Israel.
The Jews can live their but it must belong to us. (the muslims).

SR #3: Interesting point. I never thought of this one.

There is a (racist) saying about Jews. 1) Any country that welcomes Jews, prospers 2) Jews always overstay their welcome and get kicked out of every country that welcomes them.

Along with the banks you mentioned, Jews in the world are supremely successful in everything they are currently doing. It is almost mind bogling. In IT, names like Ellison, Dell, Grove etc. In politics names like Lieberman etc. In entertainment names like Spielberg and Sienfeld.

Allan Dershowiz, the Harvard lawyer, in his book The Vanishing American Jew, mentions some amazing statistics about American Jews. I don`t remember them exactly, but something like 40% of the American noble prize winners etc. Even though I don`t believe in racial superiorities, one almost has to use it to define the success of Jews. In 1999, India had three companies on the Nasdaq, tiny Israel had 98.

Historically, they dominated a central portion of the world at one point.

Yet the total number of Jews in the world is about the same as the total no. of people in Karachi. If evolution is the key to success, then I am afraid somewhere along the line, despite their success individually, the Jewish community missed out on some major piece of survival strategy. 1.2 million Muslims, 1.2 billion Hindus and only 15 million Jews. And on top of that, Dershowitz says even they are disappearing from the USA, due to intermarraiges with Christians and due to having few children. I think Dershowitz mentioend that there will be only 10,000 or so Jews in USA in seventy five years (can`t remember the exact no., but it was phenomenally low).

So the Jewish community is doing something wrong, somewhere along the line. Because, not only are the in a microscopic number, they only have a tiny country, and their numbers are reducing, making them more and more vulnerable.

What exaclty are the doing wrong? Well we all have our faults. First of all, their conversation laws are too strict. They are way too exclusive. And they don`t know when to stop, when they have power.

Israel is, right now, in comparison to its neighbors as powerful as it is ever going to get. There are 22 Arab countries, with 220 million people. And Israel is kicking the crap out of the them. However, the demographics of the Muslims are changing vis-a-vis the Middle East. Sooner or later, some Muslim country will get its act together, and move out of the third world. Then others will have a role model and follow it. The no. of Muslims in Europe outnumbers the Jews, and countries like France are already being forced to change their policies due to this. The same will happen in the USA within a generation or two, though not with the same intensity.

At that time, Israel will end up in a much weaker state vis-a-vis Arabs, than it is now. It will still have at its extremely sophisticated nukes to protect it. But it will not have the nearly the same negotiating leverage.

Based on this, my advice to Israelis would be, to make peace now, when you are in the driver`s seat, and can get the best deal. Otherwise, once the Arabs get their act together (whch they have done historically - they ruled the world, which us South Asians never did), then the odds will be too much against the Israelis.

Maybe this is the major mistake Jewish communities have been making throughout history. They are very successful individually, but they don`t seem to know when to stop and not push it too much. Christians, outside USA, racistly don`t like Jews. After all, it was not Hitler alone who was responsible for the Holocaust. The European population was involved also. Muslims, on the whole, had gotten along well with Jews. However, now they have been turned into enemies. Not very good long term strategy from the Jewish side, if you ask me.

RSaxena:

#39

Exactly right. This is not about religion. It is about self interest.

...i hope ariel sharon gets a warm welcome to india, just like iran`s president mohammad khatami did (chief guest at the republic day parade)...there is no reason we cannot befriend them both and watch musharraf $hit bricks in the process...

Who gave the right to the jews to Israel? Who gave the right to the Sauds to Saudi Arabia? Who created Syria and Iraq and Jordan?

Why are you silent about all these other countries, Farzana? Why is it only Israel that occupies your full attention? Have you demonstrated outside the Saudi embassy calling for an end to the fascist islamocracy that rules there? Have you called for a referendum in Syria? Speak up, I cannot hear your reply !

Israel is a democracy. Its arab citizens have reasonable rights and outside times of crisis live in peace. It is in the indian national interest to reach out to Israel and build excellent defence, civilian and economic relations. Do you support the indian national interest? Please answer yes or no.

Two of my grandparents were born in what is today Pakistan (Lahore, Sialkot). The third was born in Srinagar. Since the partition none of my family lives in pakistan and since the 80s none of them live in the kashmir valley. What should we do Farzana? SHould we sit around and plot suicide attacks? Should we drink ``bitter tea`` and cultivate grievances?

The palestinians have literally been given 100s of millions of dollars by the US and EU. SOmehow, all that happens is that they keep thinking of their old homes. Meanwhile refugees with much, much less (vietnamese, tibetans, indians) move forward improving their lives and setting new and higher goals. Is there some very special reasons the palestinains cannot do that? And why must they be admired for their insistence on living in the past?

naqshbandi,

.............and here i was thinking that unlike flaming jihadis like tahmed you were a laughable but benign hare krishna type of muslim ........how do you expect the israelis to react when you say frightening things like, ``the WHOLE of ``israel`` is actually palestine and it is all the property of the muslims``???? ...........

..............i was wrong - i guess there is no such thing as a moderate muslim........

Why this is an interesting case is that it points to how a formerly victimized peoples continue the same cycles of repression and denial- against another peoples who are considered opportune to support but the most marginalized of the Arab world. Actually, Ian Buruma wrote an interesting article in the NYTimes Mag about global attitudes towards current Zionist policy, quite recently.

MNIPhirsay:

One more thing I would like to reply to:

``You seem to harbor an animus against them``

I don`t have an any animus against them per se. I do have an animus against their ``special victim`` status they get. How much coverage does the Palestenian cause get compared to the misfortunes of others? The number of Palestenians who die is negligible in a South Asian context. And yet South Asians are crying about Palestenians? In 1984, more Sikhs were massacred in 2 weeks then Palestenians have been killed in past two years. When was the last time these Leftist Indian mothafukkers campaigned about justice denied? What makes the victimhood of Palestenians special to us desis?

MNIPhirsay:

``Ahhh...so it IS about Muslims. ``

No Sir, it is not. That was me throwing your cheap shot at religion right back at you. To me, religion and race does not matter, neither in individual interactions, nor in national policies. Attitudes do. I have the same amount of impatience with anyone else who may profess a victim mentality, regardless of race and religion. I do know that if I was to display that impatience, you would again call me a bigot. If I was to criticize my own people, you would probably call me an Uncle Tom. So you, there is no winning because regardless, I will be labelled. Which is why I don`t give a shit.

The rest of your post is written in a good spirit and was worth reading.

There was a time in history when most of my relatives were people who had been driven out from their lands. I don`t see any of them holding any sort of rancour.

I live in Defence Colony, opposite Lajpat Nagar, in Delhi, surrounded by what were, 50 odd years ago, other ``refugee colonies``. I see prosperity way beyond other non-refugee areas. (Civic failures too, but that is different and endemic!!)

I never saw any Palestinians or for that matter other Arabs even mildly protest about 1971 pogroms, while I remember Israelies even way back in 1970 being part of raising funds for those refugees. Check out Bangladesh`s relationships with Israel today.

We all move with time, as we learn from nature. Religion doesn`t feed. Guns do help. What we learnt from the Israelis in agriculture and environment protection, for example, would be worth much more than a gross of temples, churches, mosques and gurudwaras each. Yet we don`t hear about them going about weeping about the reducing number of Jews in India?

As a people, we have welcomed all over the centuries. We are not about to stop now.

temporal:
``...the plight of partition refugees cannot be fairly compared to the ongoing holocaust of the palestinians...in no small measure compounded by their dumb leadership...but then both of us are digressing;)``
...the basic difference is that the partition refugees have abandoned their right to go back to their homes. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are stubbornly unwilling to compromise on that issue even after three generations and have preferred the instability of camp shelters to a settled life. You can admire their courage or call it their foolishness, but this stubbornness is costing them dearly - the more stubborn they become, the more land they are losing to the Jewish settlements.

what happened to the jews all over europe during the insanity of Hitler, is known as sho`ah and holocaust. i cannot recall exactly what sho`ah means at this time, but holocaust, from what i understand in the biblical sense, the old testament sense, means sacrifice (i think the meaning goes deeper than that even, but that is what holocaust refers to in the old testament).

i apologize for the digression from this article, but i remember bapsi sidhwa in an article referring to the partition violence as a holocaust. i mentioned this to a professor friend, who himself is armenian, and whose father lost many in the armenian genocide, and he seemed hesitant to name partition violence as holocaust. i think of what happened during that time as fratricide myself, personally, but that`s just one way of looking at it. murder is murder, be it called holocaust, genocide or fratricide. that is not to minimize any of those terms. they all involve murder. perhaps holocaust involves something even deeper though, i don`t know.

and temporal, having read most of these latest posts, i think i will leave what i wrote in my ilog just where it is.

rsridhar,

How long have you been on chowk? How did that joke go: About asking who was sita to ram...after watching ramayana!

Lemme lay it out fo ya kid. The author of this article and chowk`s resident poet-warrior are a mutual admiration society. Drawn to each other. Peas in a pod. Thick as fleas. Savvy?!!

Offend her...and the poet`s pen turns to sword! swiiisshhhh!