The Alternative Muslim Identity

#130

I meant cease, not sieze.

t bhai:

I think that there is a difference in your and my `manzil`. If I understand your post correctly - and I may not - you seem to consider insaaniyat as a pit-stop on way to becoming a Muslim. For me, the manzil will arrive when I seize being a Sikh or a Hindu and become an Insaan.

aquaris

That is peanuts. The kind of stuff we have to put up with is mindboggling, although lapped up by eager millions :)

The only reason Muktaran Mai issue is blossoming



Started by iron_mask on June 21, 2005 10:24am PT

(alright blossoming is a tad bit unsavory here but hang in there) is because RAPE has hit the middle classes like it has never before. The Dr who got raped in Sui was the final icing on the cake for the rapists, and the straw that broke the camels back for the middle classes. Rape was no longer something done to their servants, the bhangis, the haris the unedcated, unwashed. But rape became a reality when the good lady doctor was raped.

So suddenly all the crocodile tears are pouring forth. However, the saving grace is that this ELITE has not made the Dr from SUI the poster woman, but Muktaran Mai.

In addition this is going to become the cause celebre for hit Musharruf with on the head, and bring him to heel.

Dont get me wrong. Its about time that the civil society posted some true boundaries for civil liberties, but the smell of hypocricy is there...

...


http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaabaa.htm

With No comments from My side....

Dr Zakir Naik is the Other Muslim counter part........trying the same.....but from the Other end......ie Islam as in Hindusim.......the above piece takes the view.... Hindusim as in Islam......

Wallah- Alam.....

mk

``should religious identity be a political phenomenon or just a personal one?``

That`s what it comes down to. Religion becomes a major pain in the b* only because it has a political component. And as political ideology religion is an extremely powerful distributor of huge privileges and tremendous deprivations among the lucky and unlucky.

A humanist ought to work to weaken this discriminatory power of religion. The most unfortunate stand a humanist can take is to DENY the discriminatory nature and power of religion, instead of weakening religious discrimination by confronting it.

For all practical purposes, humanists-in-denial end up on the side of the very anti-humanists they would like to oppose, and end up opposing the very people whose humanism they share.

samajh ke bina insaaniyat insaaniyat nahi hai. bachpanaa hai.

Re: # 95


...


http://www.hinduism.co.za/kaabaa.htm

With No comments from My side....

Dr Zakir Naik is the Other Muslim counter part........trying the same.....but from the Other end......ie Islam as in Hindusim.......the above piece takes the view.... Hindusim as in Islam......

Wallah- Alam.....

This just in:-

The 11-Year-Old Wife

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: June 21, 2005
When Pakistan`s prime minister visits next month, President Bush will presumably use the occasion to repeat his praise for President Pervez Musharraf as a bold leader ``dedicated in the protection of his own people.`` Then they will sit down and discuss Mr. Bush`s plan to sell Pakistan F-16 fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

But here`s a suggestion: How about the White House dropping word that before the prime minister arrives, he first return the passport of Mukhtaran Bibi, the rape victim turned human-rights campaigner, so that she can visit the United States?

Despite Mr. Bush`s praise, General Musharraf shows more commitment to his F-16`s than to his people. Now he`s paying the price. Visiting New Zealand the last few days, he was battered by questions about why he persecuted a rape victim, forcing him to cancel interviews.

Pakistani newspapers savaged him for harming Pakistan`s image. And the blogosphere has taken up Ms. Mukhtaran`s case, with more than 100 blogs stirring netizens to send blizzards of e-mails to Pakistani consulates or to join protests planned for Wednesday and Thursday at Pakistani offices in New York and Washington.

Yet it`s crucial to remember that Ms. Mukhtaran is only a window into a much larger problem - the neglect by General Musharraf`s government of the plight of women and girls.

Early this year, for example, a doctor named Shazia Khalid reported that she had been gang-raped in a government-owned natural-gas plant. Instead of treating her medically, officials drugged her into unconsciousness for three days to keep her quiet and then shipped her to a psychiatric hospital.

When she persisted in trying to report the rape, she was held under house arrest in Karachi. The police suggested that since she had cash, she must have been working as a prostitute. Dr. Shazia`s husband has stood by her, but his grandfather was quoted as suggesting that Dr. Shazia had disgraced the family and should be killed.

On average, a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan, and two women a day die in honor killings.

While Ms. Mukhtaran and Dr. Shazia have attracted international support, most victims in Pakistan are on their own. Earlier this year, for example, police reported that a village council had punished a man for having an affair by ordering his 2-year-old niece to be given in marriage to a 40-year-old man.

In another case this year, an 11-year-girl named Nazan was rescued from her husband`s family, which beat her, broke her arm and strung her from the ceiling because she didn`t work hard enough.

Then there are Pakistan`s hudood laws, which have been used to imprison thousands of women who report rapes. If rape victims cannot provide four male witnesses to the crime, they risk being whipped for adultery, since they acknowledge illicit sex and cannot prove rape.

When a group of middle-class Pakistani women demonstrated last month for equal rights in Lahore, police clubbed them and dragged them to police stations. They particularly targeted Asma Jahangir, a U.N. special rapporteur who is also the head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Ms. Jahangir says the directions to the police about her, coming from an intelligence official close to General Musharraf, were: ``Teach the [expletive] a lesson. Strip her in public.`` Sure enough, the police ripped her shirt off and tried to pull her trousers off. If that`s how General Musharraf`s government treats one of the country`s most distinguished lawyers, imagine what happens to a peasant challenging injustice.

I`ve heard from Pakistanis who, while horrified by honor killings and rapes, are embarrassed that it is the barbarism in Pakistan that gets headlines abroad. A word to those people: I understand your defensiveness, for we Americans feel the same about Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. But rooting out brutality is a better strategy than covering it up, and any nation should be proud to produce someone like Ms. Mukhtaran.

So while meeting the Pakistani prime minister, Mr. Bush could discuss not only F-16`s, but also repeal of the hudood laws. And Mr. Bush could invite Ms. Mukhtaran to the Oval Office as well, both to hail a genuine Pakistani hero and to spotlight the goals of ordinary Pakistanis - not fighter aircraft but simple justice.

ss:

good effort!...(sigh).... am waiting for the feedback from the sounding board before i complete it and put it up on the i-log...

mirium:

munir niazi ka aik sh`er hay...jo yaad nahin....mafhoom yeh thaa key baRi kaavish o mehnat say zindagi ka aik darya ooboor kya to aagay aik aur darya nazar aaya...(after a great deal of struggle when i succeeded in crossing one river i faced yet another river on the other side)

tO bibi, baat kuch aisi hee hay...yeh uphill struggle aur ooski chohti chohti victories kay baad aaakhir maiN kya hay pata hay humaiN;)...aik bay naam o nishaan qab`r...a speck of dust on the vast shoreline!...here today, gone tomorrow...kahani khat`m...all whims, hopes, delusions to make a difference gone with the dreamer...perhaps...who knows...the dreams may survive if caught by another person...enough!

lve

t

Kaalchakra ji

no personal insaaniyat isn’t the same as social religion (unfortunately in my opinion). but in searching for one’s identity as a “muslim”, “jew”, “christian”, “hindu” etc. it should definitely be a lengthy pit stop. i think it’s difficult to search for a religious identity outside of oneself. i notice as i write this that tahmed32 sums it up quite nicely in his post #121.

you asked some important questions on naeem’s board. answering these questions and many others I’m sure is integral to the establishment of identities. I mean should religious identity be a political phenomenon or just a personal one? the answers have far reaching implications as witnessed by the divisiveness in our world today.

Zehra: In seeking your identity as a muslim you seek the wrong thing. You should instead be seeking your identify as an ``insaan``. That is:

Being muslim is not so important - after all a muslim is merely one who acknowledges an Almighty and who accepts Muhammed to be his prophet. Being a believer is important - a believer in the sense it is used in the Quran, i.e., in the distinction between right and wrong, and in individual responsibility (regardless of religion) to act accordingly. This is the same thing as being a good ``insaan``.

This emphasis on a ``muslim identity`` is mere chauvinism (which in turn is the result of personal egotism), whereby people try to show how their religion or ethnic or national group is better than others. And it is promoted by maulvis since that is their source of livelhihood. Nothing to do with the message of Islam, which is one of insaanyat.

mk

temporal is too modest. He is ahead of many of us (certainly ahead of me) in winning the battle of insaaniyat.

But personal insaaniyat is not the same as social religion. And that`s where we have differed - in understanding the practical nature and role of religion.

Re: # 118
Thank you Dear Miriam
God bless, sweetie.
Muah

ShoreSahib:

I have enjoyed reading your posts as always.

Temp:
#100

“….am engaged in an uphill and seemingly unending strive to become an insaan…”

hain ji? Another uphill battle? Sigh…aap kiyon humay confuse karna chahtay hain? I have a cartload of uphill battles collecting dust somewhere ;).

Temporal Bhai,
I have attempted the nazm you posted for me. Please tell me what you think.

Be it an icon, Be it a god
Be it Truth, Be it falsehood
A state of chaos and nervousness
is monarch
in every direction today
An idol is but an idol
What kind of tradition has taken root
that every human
acts as if a God
Lets discard the self-fashioned godhead
We have had our fill of these gods
fashioned from our own desires
Their Rule manifest in every direction ..............

HP:
``Koorh`` is jhoot in Panjabi, too!

In Guru Granth Sahib, Guru Nanak describes his times as ``koorh raja, koorh parja, koorh sab sansaar``.
I am beginning to think that the differences in Panjabi and Sindhi are not that great.