The Evolution of The Burqa youall plz leeeve chowk staf alone, ok? their niyat is good, the yare trying to helping only. Ifw weacan`ty cure bug problems of workd, we should try to solve small ones, naheeN?

Nasbandi Saheb, please defenidng burqah to these jahils, ok? I was give sypathy, but now I am not sure they are deserving same, onlyt.

RSaxena, than kyou for fashiona dvice. Where I can buying these items? What price? KaheeN sasta milaygah? I am awaitng your answer eager. I do not car about bag brandnames guccishucci isseemiyakee, etc., Bangkok imitation is okj, ok?

Peace! all. Tata.

Riots Reply Drumz

Riots Reply RSaxena and Sadna

Why yo uall are bothring Nasbandi Saheb, haiN?

He isj oking, only, ok? Why he woulds eriouslyz say that MadTughlak time is comingba ck?

I amsu re he is humour, ok? So do n otagry, he is fried. Y oushsoudl give sypathy, ok?

Tata

Riots Reply Kafirbhaiyya # 431

“Bhainji, mujhe sharam ati hai. I will come on a white horse with `Achkan`, punjabi jooti, rose garland, attar ki shishi and my sword. I will bring basket of Mangoes as Nazarana. I was, indeed, hopeless in maths but did alright to go to prestigiuos college.”

I am like mango very muchh. Good. Good.

“Bhainji, come on, you can not be BA fail. Everyone gets a BA from Bihar for two hundred rupees.”

No, I onlywas havbing rupees one hundreed at time, tho aisay hee huwah. Naseeb is naseeb.

“ Rate for M.A. is seven hundred and a Ph.D. thesis for fifteen hundred rupees. No wonder all rickshaw pullers in Delhi are post graduates from Bihar. They come to Delhi to become leaders. They dream of bunglows on Talkatora Gardens. RSaxena is one of them. I am not sure of AVR.”

Iw ill keep in mind. If Rsux Sena has got, t hen I also must nhave, no? Kaaping up with Saxenas.

“Please keep in touch.”

Ab say aap kabhee mohabbat kay bhookay naheen baythayngay.

Riots Reply Kafirbhai # 290

“LAJWANTI reply 223, Tahmed321 #235 Kafir # 213

I sympathise with you. I will never discriminate and have not done that. Not yet but can not promise because the way things are going on. I can not give you the list of beauty or fat people since I have not met them. I wish Chowk one day will allow Porno picture so I can see what AVR looks like. I am happy to compile list of other people category.”

I also amwushing for pronopicture (in COLOUR and with AIRBRUSH). MaiN tau hibajk pahain kay pose karoongee. Aap?

“The MOST NICE 5 are;

1. Dost-Mitter

2. Tahmed321

3. Sadna

The MOST rude 5 are:

1. Pyar Kiye Jaa

2. Chunkey Pandey

3. Rsaxena

The most boring 5 are

1. Yahuda Goldsteen

2. J Bodenheimer

3. Dukhi Ram

And the best person is me.”

II am agreeing with every yhou say. (Aap hisaab pass kar na payay? Neverm ind, I also am BA (Fail). See we have manythung in comon.)

Your fried

Lajwanti

Riots Reply Hobbytyjee 286

Mar-14-02 12:11:34 EST Reply #: 286

hobbyty

Lajwanti

You will note the assertion that even if parties remain ``unconscious`` of the contract, it still exists - in fact, in general, it is this ``unconsciousness`` or as Al-Ghazzali calls it, ``Ghalafat/obliviousness`` that enable s the contract to function.”

Yes yesm notingshoting, but don ot agree. Justb ecause you QUATE somethingd oesno t make it SO. Plz notethis fuct.

“ This is the basis of the ``invisible hand`` in Adam Smith`s work.”

Bukwaaas!! AdamSmith’s invisibl hand is resutl of many conscious contract at working. Peoplebuying and salling for AGREED PRICE. If nobody buy/sell then noin visible hand, OK? NOBOD IZ UNCONSCIOUS OFPA YING FOR SUBZEE IN MUNDEE. OrTO mundee.

“Can the word ``sinner`` be meaningful without the existence and relationship with ``saint`` ?”

A) Word SINNER cannotbe meaningful without existence of word SIN.

B) SAINT als ocanot be meaning without exist SIN.

C) SINNER and SAINT exprass difrant extreme of spectram, but one exist not meaning other exist. Aap ki logic explain kareeyay, kar sakaiN tau, and quoteing shoting without, ok? Doi not angry, I am frien.

“Consider: One has gotten less than a good deal when purchasing an item - now is it fair to say that a salesperson crooked the buyer? Afterall, the buyer could have simply walked away from the sale.”

Woman was raped by criminal.c ould she have walking away withot being raped? Whati f she poor andowrking in field, hasto evry day to feedher childs? She CANNOT walk away form danger, ok – in theroy yes, but in practiss your statement ridiculos. Unfeeling. Kya fayedah?

“You picked up on the idea of the slaver and the slave and have suggested that perhaps the contract was to free the slave (if I have understood you correctly) - yet a slaver by definition does not function to free slaves.”

I saying in slaver mind social contract oinclude slave.ry.

Maybe in person taken prison (slave) mind, contract not including slavry, ok?

Why slaver mind social contract BETTER? Onlyslaver is m ore strong. Not more RIGHT. Ifyou say difrant this is Jhail. Slaven ot ASSENTING tos lavery, so NO CONTRACT. Canslave walk away?

“The more interesting point is the ``inevitablity`` of an eventuality. If you and I were to put lots of currency in our pockets and advertise the fact that we were carrying a lot of money - and then venture into a very poor and lawless part of town - and if then we were to be robbed - would we be justified in saying that we had no part to play in our being robbed? Recall the story of the scholar whom Mahmud entrusted with his treasury while he campaigned. At the same time this unfortunate scholar`s wife fell ill and he did not have the resources to allow for her treatment. Desperate and tempted, he withdrew funds from the Amanat trusted to him. Upon his return Mahmud felt betrayed and punished the scholar severely. One day a friend asked the scholar why he did not realize that his actions were a betray of trust - the scholar replied that indeed he did - but, that Mahmud was responsible and his feeling of betrayal not justified -for, by leaving his treaury with the scholar, he tested and tempted the scholar. Of course we are all aware of the home truth: ``Don`t make your neighbor a thief, be sure to lock the door to your house`` - Like Mahmud, if we act or think in a manner that leads to an ``inevitable`` consequence - the assigning of blame to another becomes meaningless. it was this vein that I have tried to explain the notion of ``contract`` and ``responsibility``.

“The point I was trying to make was that we must accept our responsibility (to the degree that we have such a responsibility) for what we experience. If we should blame another for our bad experience, we shall be denying that we too, share responsibility for our bad experience.”

Whaty ou are say? Mahmud was responsible for man thiefing? Mayben ot wise, but defno t resp!

“I grant you that I cannot argue that this applies for everything and in all situations - that would be absurd to attempt but it may help us to be conscious that we are not passive actors being acted upon, that we play an active role, in our experience. “

What this has to do w ith saint/nsinner, haiN? Agan, chakkar kaat rahay haiN aap. Use smal word and santance, and make sens, people will beh appy. I promise.

Salaam!

Your friend

Lajwanti

Riots Reply Hobbyty # 231

“I invite you to consider: The rightly guided exist in contract, even if unconscious of the contract, with the transgressors.”

Hobyty, bhaisaab. Ar e you say that EVERY INTERACTION IS CONTRACT? Contact is implying consent – qubool hay – but many interaction aren ot mutually agreed upon.

“If today non-Western peoples have a complaint aginst Western peoples, if the slave against the slaver, the aggressed against the aggressor, it is because in each case this was the inevitable consequence of the ``unconscious``, ``invisible`` contract between the two, as forces of history. If you agree this this was an inevitable consequence, what is the merit of placing blame?”

Perhaps slaver et al BROKE SOCIAL CONTRACT by taking slave. From slave’s pov, the SOCIAL CONTRACT thgey were involve din meant they free people. Hgow can there becontract between difrant world view,m haiN?

“If one does wish to be a victim, one behaves in a manner that makes such an eventuality impossible, is this not so? “

What this has tod o with anything? You are using big quote to change subject.

OK. Critic you approach in Vedantic manner:

You say : Murderer and Victim have “contract”

What about: This kills not, neither is this killed.

How you are liking them apple? OK?

Whose Iqbal — Ours or Theirs? Reply Rage # 20

“And we all know haow the majority in your land of haldi rule over the minorities, as exemplified by the recent events, for example.”

Haldi kahaN say yahaN aa murree? HEENG, ok, HEEEEEEEEENG!!!! (Aks aisha Fayyzi Sararwi iof you cannot get right..)

Riots Reply ylh # 200

“I have drawn up of 50 people I have come to admire in the History of the World:”

not one female? Even. Saxist. Margaret Thatcher was very strong.

Riots Reply hobbyty # 199

“Interesting Post. In What ways do you think, are Anglo Americans (please, I beg of you, let us not use colors to define or designate or categorize persons) miles ahead of other peoples and what is it about them or their culture that puts them so far ahead of others?”

peeseesheeseee. I am still blam whiteman.

Riots Reply kafirbhai # 213

“Five most horrible people on Chowk”

yesyesyes, but who is five most BORING? Most beauty? Most stupid? Most rudean d bad broughtup? Most fat? Most tal? Most dishonesty?

Iam compete for all THESE, why nobody is asking, haiN?

U r discriminbating me. Ok.

Riots Reply ylh # 121

Ia m BAGGING you yasiur, see, on my bandedb hgand and knee, ok?

Rediff hgas articl on internet site where Iondan Paksitanis talking, ok. Here is rafernce:

http://www.rediff.com/search/2002/mar/12border.htm

And hereis quot:

“The creme de la creme of such sites is Chowk.com.”

Now after reading soooo many outside people will come ands ee, and what will they red? Brilliant thinks? Clever writing?

NO. Just yapyapyapyapyap about….oh, let me guyess, Angela Davis? No….

……Ivanna Tramp? Again, no banan…

…..Atle ast about clinton/bush/flanaflana war against drug/terorsm/bad hair?

NO AGAIN!

What abot Arfaatr? Putin? World Leader? Iranian carpetmakking techiniq?

Recip for pistabadam icecream?

Home remedy for headach, backpan, incontinentalism?

An ytehin usefull? anyt hing at ALL?

Nahin.

Again, theyw ill be HIT ON HEAD by sixtyfive quote about your fave man (AND MINE, do not misunderstanding, ok, I am fried, I am sypathy with you, ok? Itis others who quastion him, not me, I amon ur side.,)

Buty ou anderstand, please, no, talk abot somethang else. Hing is good subject. Your friend do no t mind, but mehmaan kay samnay…you are undersanding my fear? I want pople to only think good thabng about you,

Ok, tata,

Your sypathetic fried

Lajwanti.

(accept no substitute. I thik youa re ok, ok?)

The Panel of Vendettas at UC Berkley This board i s like Lou Reed song, Iam thinking.

OK, tata everybody!

Taking wal k on wildsi de.

(do do do dododo do do do dodododo dooooooooo!)

Tattoo diary: Queens, New York Reply rehanhasanansari # 8

“Sarwari: Rehan Ansari needs a life!”

Rehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!! I have already telling y ou to put in glossry and loveintrest and picturexs – naheeN to log na smajh kay khafa hee hoNgay. Aap Hello Magazine koh model jaysah rakhiyay…(maiN nay aap koh kub say bataya kay yey chowk hay, mensa vensa jaisee jagah nahiN, so thinking please of densa whgn you are wrting, ok…) do not angry, I am fiend. Bestwu shes to you and also to Ayeshah. Y ou are hawing my sypathy.

(Ayeshah, let me advice yu: ask specfic question about word yo do don’t undersand. Tha tis ok.)

Jinnah’s Ustaadi Reply Rehanhasanansari # 33

“…I always find something strangely missing form what you write…”

I am talling you a nd talling you to put in glossry because many people are not understanding aap kay big big word and lumbay chauday sentebnce….do not angry, I am o nly advising as friend, ok?

(Aap love interest aur pictures bhee include kartay to fayedah hee fayedah…)

Best wushes. (1st Ipo sted by mstake on wrong bored. sory.)

The Place of Debate Reply Afqqi # 80

You are doing hooshtee nooshtee on chowkwhyen people are writing aginst Islam in UK. Isee this in Spactatre. What you are doing about this, haiN?



Debate?what debate?---First determine the grand achievements of a paragon of secularism(``In God we trust``) & ``All power rests with the Almighty``(preamble).

One should always remember that life under feudallords & mafiosis is great for those who continue to bolster the fiefdom.The families of the Godfathers,Landfeudals,Bankfeudals,UniformedFeudals,& BureauFeudals are very happy to see the loyal-servant bringing home the haraam earnings.

Most of those who have become ``different`` than workers & toilers happen to write on CHOWK(myself included)...are a product of such cultural aparthie-ism.(With profuse apologies to the odd halaalee here).

Trite & Cliched as it might sound but it never loses the punch whenver uttered because it shakes the foundation below the ground of his/her feet.

``I`ve met the enemy and it is me(us)``.

Your Problems Solved

COVER STORY

Creatures of the cultural cringe

Theodore Dalrymple says the Tipton terrorists were encouraged in their hatred for Britain by the contempt for Western civilisation that is now almost mandatory among many white intellectuals What should they know of Western civilisation who only Tipton know? Tipton is the town in which two of the young Britons of Pakistani descent, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, who are held in Guantanamo as suspected members of al-Qa’eda, grew up. By common consent, it is the grimmest municipality in the whole of the Black Country, which is itself no aesthete’s paradise, to put it very mildly. In surveys to discover the worst area in Britain to live, Tipton always comes near the top, despite much stiff competition from other places. It is the kind of place that resists all attempts at improvement; indeed, efforts at beautification, such as the placement of large, abstract steel sculptures on the islands of roundabouts, only serve to emphasise the futility of anything but personal escape.

However, we must remember that al-Qa’eda bombed Manhattan, not Tipton. The question remains how two young men from the latter learned to hate not Tipton alone, which would be understandable, but the whole of Western civilisation. What were they avenging, what hoping to bring about?

Let us try to imagine growing up in Tipton — or a thousand other places like it in Britain. What vision would it give us of the world in general, and of Western civilisation in particular?

Tipton is a pimple on the backside of modern British consumer society. By the standards of world history, of course, the people of Tipton are not poor, even if nearly a fifth of them are unemployed. They don’t starve, and their life-expectancy is half as long again as that of the British royal family at the apogee of British power. But the two young men in question would be unlikely to know this; and they would only have seen a society in which the summum bonum was consumerism, but whose members, through lack of money or lack of discrimination, were not even very good at that. They would have seen a white society in which people did not know how to dress with dignity or self-respect, to eat well, or even to enjoy themselves in a sociable fashion without an undercurrent of violence. The whites around them would have been uncouth and uncultured, living in the eternal present moment of popular culture, wearing the new deracinated uniform of the British slums: shell suit, trainers and baseball cap (on a recent visit there, I observed that all the young white men wore baseball caps, as middle-class women in the 1950s wore gloves to go shopping). The days of Francis Brett Young, the Black Country doctor and novelist, in whose works the people of the Black Country, despite their extreme hardships, possessed a sturdy individuality and independence of spirit, are well and truly gone. A way of life has emerged that is utterly charmless and that no sensible person would wish to emulate.

Even the prospect of personal material improvement in Tipton is not all that inviting. Substantial numbers of new houses have been built there, no doubt each conforming to the Parker-Morris standards of physical space per inhabitant and so forth, but utterly without character and incapable of ever developing any. Fitted kitchen cupboards are all very well in their way, but they are no substitute for the social amenities of a proper city. Tipton at its best is a poor suburb without a city.

No doubt Asif and Shafiq would have heard many passionate disquisitions from their fathers and uncles about the degeneracy of the white culture around them, of the disastrous anarchy of family relationships among the whites, and about how superior to all this moral squalor their own traditions were. When they received the racist taunts of their white contemporaries, they would have harboured a sense of their own superiority at the same time.

And yet they could not simply reproduce their fathers’ mental world. They were part modern British too, with many of the same debased tastes as their white contemporaries. They would listen to the same music, eat the same fast food, play the same games. (One sign of the acculturation of Asian youth is the adoption of body-piercing and tattooing, the latter despite the natural unsuitability of Asian skin for it.) They would be attracted by the same baubles, such as mobile phones and designer trainers; but they would feel guilty about their lack of cultural purity. From guilty desire and surreptitious identification it is but a short step to insensate hatred and rage; and perhaps it is not entirely coincidental that the three most rabidly anti-Yankee Latin American countries — Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — are those in which the most baseball is played.

Moreover, the mixture of material inferiority — such as is experienced by many young men of Pakistani origin — and a feeling of spiritual or cultural superiority is a highly combustible one. The Russian Slavophiles felt this paradoxical superiority in the presence of material backwardness with regard to the Western Europeans; the Japanese for a time to the Europeans and Americans, with horrible consequences; the Latin Americans to the North Americans. The Muslim world is acutely aware of its own technical weakness and impotence: to catch up economically with the West it must adopt the West’s methods, and a large part of its culture. Even armed resistance to the encroachment of Western culture has to be carried out with Western weapons — scimitars won’t do. It is a humiliating thought for members of a proud culture that if that culture had ceased to exist three centuries ago, the world would not have had to go without any of the inventions that have shaped modern life.

No attempt is ever made to explain the West’s overwhelming superiority (such that even life in Tipton seems materially abundant by comparison with that in the vast majority of the Muslim world), except by reference to injustice, exploitation and colonial depredation. That the phenomenal and unique inventiveness of the West might be connected in some way with its long philosophical and cultural development, going back to Ancient Greece, is a thought that is never for a moment entertained. In the mental world from which Asif and Shafiq emerged, the difference in the wealth of nations is the result of plunder, not invention and innovation, to be redressed by more effective plunder in the opposite direction. It goes without saying that very few if any attempts would have been made during Asif’s and Shafiq’s schooling to induct them into the glorious tradition of Western civilisation, for fear of offending their parents’ cultural sensibilities; though in all probability no more efforts in that direction would have been made on behalf of the white youth of Tipton, either. From the point of view of Western civilisation, they would be hardly any better informed than their Asian contemporaries. Both whites and Asians, therefore, enjoy the fruit without ever knowing the tree. They are like the East End boys of old, who thought that milk came in bottles because they had never seen or heard of cows.

So all Asif and Shafiq ever knew of Western civilisation was Tipton and its discontents. And they were deliberately kept from any deeper knowledge of our civilisation by the kind of ideological self-hatred that has been so strong a current of British (and Western) intellectual life for the last three or more decades, that precludes any pedagogic affirmation of the Western tradition. This self-hatred explains in part the kind of hatred (and contempt) that the Asifs and Shafiqs of Britain, of whom I suspect there are uncomfortably many, must feel. Not only does the ideological self-hatred of Western intellectuals prevent the likes of Asif and Shafiq from learning anything of the Western tradition, other than Radio One and McDonald’s, but it actually supplies them with the tropes with which to justify their pre-existing anger and violence.

Needless to say, the self-hatred of Western intellectuals is not genuine or sincere: they do not really want to beat our supermarkets into souks, as swords into ploughshares (though I must say that, from the human point of view, I personally do prefer souks to supermarkets). Rather, the intellectual’s expression of self-hatred is directed at other Western intellectuals, to prove the self-hater’s broadness of mind, moral superiority and lack of prejudice, and thus earn the approval of his peers. It isn’t only rebellious youth who experience peer pressure; and anyone who pointed out, for example, that for a very long time now the Western medical tradition has been incomparably superior to all other medical traditions in the world combined and multiplied a thousandfold, would forfeit approval, even though what he said was true, and obviously so.

Unfortunately, insincere ideas can become official orthodoxies, with very real consequences. The Muslims of this country are hardly to blame if they do not realise that the posturings of our intellectuals are just that, posturings, not intended to be taken literally. When the intellectuals of this country express no admiration for or appreciation of the cultural achievements of their civilisation’s past, when only denigration and iconoclasm appear to advance an intellectual’s career, when moral stature is measured by the vehemence of denunciation of past or present abuses, real or imagined, it is hardly surprising that Muslims conclude that the West is eminently hateful; it must be, because it hates itself. They haven’t heard of Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess.