Decline of Science in the Muslim World

Jai Shri Hamidm2,

Shri 108 is Maharaj or Emperor, Shri 1008 is Bhagwan or Ishwar or Paramatma or Wahe Guru we can make you Shri 08 Hamidm2 and reccomend u for Shri Bharat Ratna.

Jai Shri Ram
Sanatani

There is an interesting saying that humans cannot help worshipping something, be it God, gods, nature, pop idols, celebrities, an ideology, one`s own self, almost anything, and at least something. We cannot not have an idol to prostrate before it.

Gill, I liked your `religious` homage to the new `scientific` deity, if you know what I mean.

#177 teshah

Dear Mr. Shah,

Kindly accept my sincerest apologies for any inadvertent wrong implications that I may have wrongly communicated that the circle of time holds a monopoly on butter. I firmly believe that it is a sub continental trait – and people from Lahore are by no means to be considered novices at this fine art – for all I know, they might even be considered connoisseurs – some of whom may even have reached considerable heights of accomplishment due to experience over a longer kaal-frame than the (comparatively speaking) young bucks.

Wishing you well,

Sincerely,
Beej.

Re: # 176

kaalchakra

Thank you dear kaal for the defence which was, however, hardly of any avail against a man like BJ. Ther was no question of malice or lack of taste for BJ type of humour. It was merely a question of lack of `aql`. Just see his use of the word `butter` about you as well. I may tell you that I am a Lahori and has ample sense of humour which unfortunately
also lends me often in trouble. So `mitti paao`.

BJ

Again I recite a famous couplet from Faiz Ahmad Faiz which he had said in repentence some time after the birth of Pakistan:

Yih daagh daagh ujaala yih shab gazida sahar
Tha jis ka intizaar yih woh sahar to nahein

#175 Kaal

Kaal, clearly you are another one of those experts on butter!

Fear not, it worked. You are off the hook on this one. So is Mr. Shah!

If at all it is necessary, there was no personal malice against Mr. Shah – my comments were mostly an expression of outrage at the folly that many from his generation committed – and have yet to acknowledge. Somebody needs to tell these people like it is – or they will not get it and others won’t either!

I am aware that the follies of young age are not to be held against the more seasoned of the present, but until such people acknowledge their foolishness – and as long as they keep defending it by referring to some pipe dreams they were sold – there is always the chance that others like them will follow them!

LOL

BeeJay, your sense of humor, your way with words, your thinking are all unique. I just love, and marvel at, how you cut and thrust with words and snippets of ideas. :)

But some others, including teshah, may not have the same taste.

Nobody here needs anybody else`s defense, but you may want to consider what kind of a man, after all, would acknowledge and write the following -


``We forget that the pre-Islamic Arab society was an extremely religion-ridden one. It had also `Blasphemy Laws` which had made the prophet of Islam run for his life. But it had also great men like Abdulmutallib and Abutaalib who believed truth and ethics above faith (Aqeeda, to be exact). They shine out even in the Islamic literature which otherwise paints the pre-Islamic society all blackish. It was in fact religion against religion and not religion against secularism or irreligiocity (disbelieve or kufr). All we know today about the conflict between the Islamic and the pre-Islamic religion is the islamic version of it alone. Nothing from an independent source.

In fact, the people in power with fascist tedencies can use any religion to terrorize its opponents with its sword of blasphemy. But truth is truth. No sword can obliterate it.``

Best regards.

And while certain loose ends are being tied up here…

In #166, the terms which actually are meant to refer to testicular fortitude (or its absence) should not be misconstrued as referring to the gender!

I believe the recipient had already figured it out – and demonstrated “her” level of the same, by not responding!

#172 Kaal

O great circle of time (unless you are just a-round time), how DARE you classify yourself as anything BUT “better than us”?!

There is absolutely no misunderstanding on my part! I decided to give the great Shah a little break and stop at “beginning to like” him! My capabilities are far too inadequate at doing the level of service that would be needed to do even a modicum of justice to those in throes – who are known to have been in the noon of “janoon” – whether or not considered worth a dime in their prime by the circle of time!

As you may have realized (or not) I place “like” only a notch below “love” – that term of adulation I reserve for the select few – “S3” for example!

I certainly hope you are not feeling “left out” – a situation which can be addressed in a jiffy!!

(I did not think so!!!)

teshah and BeeJay

It`s reassuring for us lesser creatures to see the best and the brightest of Chowk lock horns. We like to know that even people better than us are given to misunderstanding each other :)

Re: # 170

Oh dear BJ who are you and what are you? Zara saamne to aa o chhalie, chhup chhup chharkane mein kia baat he. Being perhaps a half aql middle-sex creature you are presumptuously attacking windmills like Don Juon. A man with reason and intellect but no aql is like a poisonous snake a very dangerous creature indeed.

Excuse me, Chowk is not a place to be personal unless one is introduced.

So sorry and bye bye!

#169 by TEShah

Dear Mr. Shah,

Hai Allah! Lagta hai kee aap hum-se rooth gaye hain!

Aaap khamkhwah gussa ho rahe hain! Theek hai – maan liya hum-nein ke aap Hindustani naheen hain! (Psst: Main bhee nahin hoon!)

Maamla aisa hai ki:

(1) You (and a few others (YLH comes to mind)) are totally convinced that I belong to a “Hindu of extreme type”, whereas there are others (“S3”, for example) who just want me to move to Pakistan! And of course, we also have Ms. Hindvi, who simply wants me to move to wherever canines move to. I sometimes feel like singing – “…jayen to kidhar jayen…”. There was a certain amount of rhetoric in my questions to you. If it “bit” you a bit – feel free to join the ranks of “Bit-by-Beej Anonymous” – you will have a lot of company! Having said that, I think the fact that you had a “.in” domain would indicate to most reasonable people that you are from India – and the rest follows!

(2) The reason I make no apology to you for (1) is because I want to remain honest! I have a special reserved type of “love” for people who displayed the “junoon” which you are so proud of – those smart-asses who divided a living country, one which perhaps could by now have turned into one of the greatest countries in the world, if only by just adding up the statistics – the smart-asses who let their prejudices ride rough-shod all over any long-term vision – the smart-asses who could not learn to live with each other, who set a precedent that if people are not similar – no big deal, just break-up! – and did not have the brains to see what the logical extension of that thinking would be – even if the results hit you on the head – you have no clue, sir! I feel NO sympathy for your types – I certainly do so for those who are carrying the burdens of the sins of YOUR kind – whether it be the following generations of Pakistani lads who get stigmatized throughout the world today, or those Indians and Pakistanis who lost ancestral homes and were kicked out bags and baggage and lost it all, many times their lives – or the Indian Muslims who keep paying the interest payment for YOUR sins to this day! Plain and simple! Therefore, if you are looking for someone to feel sorry for you, please go find a mirror!

[…a lot of ‘reason’, ‘intellect’, etc., of meanish dalit type (I was tempted to use a more explicit Punjabi word for it), …]
I have no clue what you would you consider as “dalit type”? If the reference is to the person using that nick on this site – I have nothing against that person, but I like to be in “a type of my own” (as in – all by myself)!

[…unlike Goras whom I hold in great esteem especially the English-speaking ones of U.K. ]
Your words speak for themselves. What can one say – “keep licking those boots, but don’t complain if someday they crush you”?! The bottom-line is – it is dumb to make statements about a whole class of people – but those who do it here (YOU in this case), seem to have a LOT of company.

And there is a reason I speak these long paragraphs on the board of this article – a very simple reason – individuals like you are active namoonas of non-original thinking – those Iqbal-wallahs – the “follow the crowds” junoon-ites – and as long as this type keeps replenishing itself, there is little possibility of ANY original thinking from the land – scientific thinking to gayee bhaar mein!

Beginning to like you,
BeeJay.

#97 by BeeJay

Thank you dear BeeJay for taking so much interest in my post so as to go to my profile and make some sarcastic remarks about my person. My God, you were so flared up by mention of my ‘janoon’ for Pakistan during my boyhood that you could not conceal your extreme hatred for my person on that account. This made me also to look into your profile but could not find much except an inkling that you might be a Hindu of extremist type who compelled even a man like Jinnah to strive for the partition of India. We as young boys in Muslim majority areas who were inspired by the ideal of Pakistan as envisioned by Jinnah never thought it to be an anti-national or anti-Hindu communal movement but took it only as a separation of two sons of mother India like two brothers. We had no taste of extremism either of Hindu or Muslim type which is now showing up on both sides despite the show of friendship at the government level.

“Out of curiosity, after Pakistan did get created, (and since you still seem to have an e-mail address from India) what was it that held you back in India so you were unable to “follow your passion?”

I wonder how you presumed from my email address that I ‘held back in India’. I may inform you that I have so far never been able to set foot on that part of India which came to be called Bharat, however I wished to do so. As far my email address from India I may tell you that it was not intentional and I got it only because I being a novice at computering did not know what it implied. My son once pointed it out but I did not consider it necessary to change it. Now I have changed it when you pointed it out just to please you. It is now ‘talawat_bokhari@yahoo.com’. I hope you will have no objection to it now.

As for the meaning of the Arabic word ‘aql’, to explain it I would say that you are devoid of ‘Aql’ though you have a lot of ‘reason’, ‘intellect’, etc., of meanish dalit type (I was tempted to use a more explicit Punjabi word for it), unlike Goras whom I hold in great esteem especially the English-speaking ones of U.K.

So far as the word ‘Janoon’ is concerned I did not mean it as suspension of ‘aql’ but only ‘passion’ as Faiz Ahmad Faiz had said:

Janoon mein jo bhi guzri bakaar guzri he
Agarchih dil pih kharabi hazaar guzri he

kamath:

Thanks for your perceptive feedback. There is very little self-scrutiny and constructive self-criticism in the Muslim world. I appreciate that you elucidated the raison d`etre of my essays and articles. I wish you well,

Mohammad Gill

Mohammad:

I like your intellectual honesty and your writing which is free of bitterness , anger , sarcasm, rabid nationalism and religious bigotry ,blaming others etc. Of course I may not agree with everything you express!

Recently Dr. Abou Al-Fadl , a leading Muslim intellectual in N.America said in a radio interview in Canada, that These are the darkest period of Islamic history. I agree with him.
Muslim inteleectuals have immense responsibility to engage in a frank , critical rexamination, introspection , - good, bad, beautiful and also the ugly in Islam. It is happening and it is good for Islam. Otherwise world of Islam will never come out of its slumber, sloth and mideval mindset and will be in perpetual confrontation with ideas modernity, humanism and universalism of human thoughts etc.

You may be under attack by your friends and community at large, but I strongly believe you are on the right side of history and will give great courage to other thinking Musalmans.
Peace
Kamath

Re#161 Hindvi

Dear Ma’m:

I just got back from my janitorial duties and was extremely concerned to see your interact#161 – which has something to do with the affliction entitled “Rabies”. I absolutely assure you can relax – not only I promise not to give you that disease, I promise to absolutely guard you against all enemies – real, imaginary, potential and virtual – if at all any – who may be lurking somewhere in this shady neighborhood with vials of that blasted germ – with the sole intention of springing upon you when you are least prepared (perhaps at “that time” of the month (assuming you fit the age profile for “that time”)) and against your sternest objections – penetrate your being with those vile microbes. Ya Allah – kaise, kaise loag yahan aate rehtein hain!

I have absolutely nothing but the absolutest of absolute respect for ladies like you. Absolutely! (Plus, I would like to stay in the good books of T-bhai (no relation) who REALLY cares for respect to ladies!)

At this time, I would like to turn the attention back to the article at hand a bit. I believe when you vigorously attack a perfectly well-intentioned article – and attack it in a sneaky way – by pointing out inane trivialities which are not germane to the thrust of the article – even a lowly janitor like I pauses in wonder and exclaims – “I wonder why she did that!” and try as I might, the only conclusion this trivial being can form is that you just wish to bust this article without having to actually face up to the very real problem of “religious blasphemy laws” which hang around the necks of many a well-meaning but scared Muslims of the subcontinent – a real serious problem that you are determined to look AWAY from – now THAT gets the janitorial dander up! Therefore, when you have the time, kindly lift those slits of your burqa just a teensy, weensy bit – and try to look at things from the other side, too!

Thanks ma’m for you kind attention.

Sincerely,
BeeJay.

re: Hindvi # 158

That`s a pretty good understanding of the cultural and historical evolution of Hinduism.

Despite the 1947 local uprising in/pushing of Pakistani irregulars into Kashmir, relations between India and Pakistan continued to be cordial upto 1965. Travel was easy. Of course, all this is relative to the situation today.

But as Nur Khan`s memoirs suggest, this relative cordiality was based on totally false assumptions. Just as Vajpayee`s visit to Pakistan, in which he too was welcomed by Pakistani prime minister, was based on false assumptions.

Should Nehru have compromised? Depends on whether one sees the mutual relationship as one of compromise or of repeated attempts at blackmail.