Does Islam, in fact, Encourage Paedophilia? What next nasah?
“A more intellectual Title should have been: Does Islam Encourage Child Marriage? The answer is yes�. I am aghast at the answer! The answer is definitely NO.
I am no apologist for Muslims, but I know the difference between Muslim(peoples’) practices and the code called Islam in the one Book and not the nine volumes of Bukhari et al, where a girl’s ‘period’—puberty-- is considered as the stage of her total maturity; and that is why Muhammad’s marriage to Ayisha at the age seven/nine is sectioned as justifications for pedophilia.
In the Book all the Messengers were given the responsibility of making mankind aware of sound knowledge—balaga! Not to induce puberty.
The Book, at 4-6 makes it amply clear –“… if you find sound judgment in them, release their property to them�. What next Nasah?
It takes much more than puberty to understand the intricacies of managing a property.
Rashid

Allama Iqbal- Is he still relevant? Only a well read Lawyer can do justice to what may appear to many as conflicting thoughts and argue in favour of his client who was by all accounts a complex personality.
Anybody, let alone a poet-philosopher like Iqbal who had the courage to extricate humanity from the clutches of ritual worship-- Tu faqat allaahu allaahu allaahu!
and prick the ribs of the Church, is a hero of mine:-
Thanks Yasser.
Rashid

Daughters of Hajar Naqshbandi Sahib. #286
Interesting observation Sir,
The address to MEN is with reference to ‘ATTENDING PRAYERS’ (4-43) and menstruation is with reference to ‘SEXUAL APPROACH’ (2-222).
One may then ask:
a) Why is there no plate on the men’s gate? Should not there be a man with breathalyser standing at the gate checking those who enter the hall?
b) What has a prayer hall got to do with sexual approach? (the mind boggles at the thought and I will refrain from elaborating!). The Quran has no reference to PRAYERS in this regard.
c) Should not a BALIGH (enlightened mature) person, man and woman who goes to house of worship know such simple etiquettes?
I am sure these edicts can be JUSTIFIED by the priestly apocrypha—notorious and spurious writings-- for which Akbar has said:
“kon paasaktaa hai makruhaat-e- dunya sey najaat??”.
To comply with the context I would change ‘dunya’ to ‘mullah’ .
Rashid

Daughters of Hajar Just to throw a different slant on gender issues in the religious brigade of Muslims; how would DOH and Asra react if they visited a mosque in Perth- Australia and saw the plate on the ladies side door saying “It s recommended that menstruating women should not enter the hall” ?
I for one was horrified and yet I am a male Muslim (of a sort!).
Rashid

Burqa Vaganza – A Satirical Backlash
“Burqa should be a personal choice”- an easy way out.
If the argument is to be taken to its Nth degree then we all, male and females should be walking blind fold in public, to display our piety and religiosity.
Why should only females cover their face and cast aspersions on men that all males are Brutes and high on Viagra.
If equality and fairness is a virtue then in Muslim majority countries at least, all should be wearing Burqa.
In ancient films of my time, the thief of Baghdad (always a male), wore some thing similar!
In some M.E. countries, prostitutes wear a distinctive style of Burqa too.

Ghalib was a scholar and understood the instructions of the BOOK fully, hence:
Hain kitnay be-hijab keh yuu’n hain hijab mein

Ghalib believed in “nazr ki sharm”, and I endorse it too.
Rashid

Globalization and Human Relationship “The challenges of today should be turned into opportunities of tomorrow. Only then can we proudly welcome expanding globalization in this interconnected world”.

CHALLENGES MUST BE TAKEN ON LEVEL PLAYING FIELD.
Globalisation today in general is equated to Americanisation or The G8 monopoly. How many Coffee factories does Kenya, the best coffee-bean producing country, or Ghana the Cocoa producing country own in the West?
Why is the southren hemisphere stempeding to migrate to the northern half if globalisation was such a good thing under its present form?
Rashid

Fight Hudood, Protect Women #59 etc
One is amazed that fourteen centuries after Hijra, there are Muslims in the world and more so in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan who believe that SHARIA as practiced by them is Quranic, that is Islamic!
Either they are utterly ignorant or the `mutrifeen`-- their Church operatives called Mullahs(priests)--are extremely clever to have brain wahsed the ``believers`` in to believing so.
These Judeo-Christians customs, even the Jews to a large extent and the Christians to totaly have discarded but the Muslim church insists on reviving.
Some times one wonders if the word SUNNI means those who ` sun sun kay Musulman huwe hain`--believe in hearsay!
Rashid

Last Gasp of the Imperial Misadventure #17 by parthaab
You are a real political analyst with clear vision, Parthaab.
Bush junior was not wrong atall when he declared that his mission was accomplished. Even a blind Freddy could have seen that it is exactly what would happen with the action that the so called coalition of the willing had taken.
The mission is well and truly accomplished in them engineering the civil quagmire that exists there now. You don’t hire the best brains in the White house for advisors not to have seen it coming. Unless we want to judge them of those who only have half of the brain!
The Coalition of the willing are playing the fiddle and shedding crocodile tears while Iraq burns and the Shias, Sunnis, the Kurds, the region and some part of the world is singing:
Jo lagaaye bhi lagey or bujaahye nah bujhey! (With apologies to Ghalib).
Rashid

Making a Martyr of Saddam ``But this sordid episode adds yet another feather of ignominy and shame in the cap of the Muslim world``.
I post a similar reaction from a humanbeing:
daunting voice --of Bob Ellis, Australian, ABC Breakfast Radio National programme of 3rd January at 7-30 am--Rashid:-

``Breakfast`s guest this morning is the author of 17 books. He`s a journalist, speech writer and endearing rogue who has been described as a ``wise romatic fool`` - Who else could it be but Bob Ellis who is appalled by the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
***
`With its usual stunning incompetence, the Bush administration has made of Saddam`s hanging a secular Golgotha for Arab children to revere down the centuries.
The hero behaves impeccably, and as the rope tightens, his captors in black hoods jeer and curse him, shouting the name of his enemy Moqtada, and interrupt his final prayer of surrender to God, by dropping him prematurely from the scaffold and filming his swinging corpse and open eyes.
They then in a US helicopter take his coffin, demanding it be interred by night lest a great crowd gather, to a graveyard containing his two sons and grandson Mustafa, hereinafter a tribal shrine.
By this they hoped to draw a line beneath his ugly era. They have instead opened up a fissure in the Arab world, and a stink in the nostrils of Christendom, which can only grow.
On a holy day, on a Head of State, on a Biblical scaffold like a Rembrandt painting, after a dodgy trial in which three of his lawyers were shot, and after the pornographic filming of a death that no reporter, unprecedentedly, was allowed to see, Maliki and Bush have shown themselves to be diplomatic farceurs, who have made an Abu Ghraib of what could have been a national cleansing.` ``

Saddam - The Sacrificial Lion I thought, in order to get away from narrow focus of the subcontinent, the following may widen the horizon a bit- Rashid:

ABC Breakfast`s guest this morning(3rd Jan.) is the author of 17 books. He`s a journalist, speech writer and endearing rogue who has been described as a ``wise romatic fool`` - Who else could it be but Bob Ellis who is appalled by the hanging of Saddam Hussein.
***
`With its usual stunning incompetence, the Bush administration has made of Saddam`s hanging a secular Golgotha for Arab children to revere down the centuries.
The hero behaves impeccably, and as the rope tightens, his captors in black hoods jeer and curse him, shouting the name of his enemy Moqtada, and interrupt his final prayer of surrender to God, by dropping him prematurely from the scaffold and filming his swinging corpse and open eyes.
They then in a US helicopter take his coffin, demanding it be interred by night lest a great crowd gather, to a graveyard containing his two sons and grandson Mustafa, hereinafter a tribal shrine.
By this they hoped to draw a line beneath his ugly era. They have instead opened up a fissure in the Arab world, and a stink in the nostrils of Christendom, which can only grow.
On a holy day, on a Head of State, on a Biblical scaffold like a Rembrandt painting, after a dodgy trial in which three of his lawyers were shot, and after the pornographic filming of a death that no reporter, unprecedentedly, was allowed to see, Maliki and Bush have shown themselves to be diplomatic farceurs, who have made an Abu Ghraib of what could have been a national cleansing.`

The Spirit of Pakistan is Failing #21
``young libral``?--Thanks!
``I do not understand what so big about children working in rug industry. You have any other good jobs lined for them``. YES!
Children are considered as a Nations potential wealth. As such they should be in schools and playing sports as normal children MUST do as their job That is their natural RIGHT. That any STATE and its CITISENS must, as their RESPONSIBILITY provide them-Sir.
If we were to accept - shamefuly-that Pakistan is so poor that its children have to work in RUG industry, even then a nation built on the premise of KHUDI and justice must see that the labour is rewarded in the most equitable manner. These carpets are sold in hunreds and thousands of dollars, overseas. Who pockets the millions?
By performing umra and hajj by the laakhs, the ilgotten wealth can not be laundered with the blood of, even if one pays coror rupees for a prised bull!
The doco showed children in chains and shakled to the woodden benches.
DON`T SHOOT THE MESSENGER- do the right thing to correct the situation to gain human respect for your women and children. If one does not UNDERSTAND this than indeed the Nations spirit is lost!
Rashid

The Spirit of Pakistan is Failing # 17
``If you look around globe and ask question which nation has no problems which are no prblem countries answer is all have problems``.
The citzens of any nation that use the above excuse to stifle its constructive cricism is indeed a Nation whos spirit is not only failing, but may have already failed.
Couple of years ago BBC showed a doco on Pakistan`s Carpet Industry, thriving on the labour of enslaved children. Most horrible scenes of child abuse ever. My Pakistani friends retorted that it is even worse in India!
Although it turned out that it is as bad in India, one can not but feel sorry for both.
Rashid

Which Islam? Gill Sahib
Islam is a Quranic name given in Arabic because Muhammad was an Arab and Arabic was his mother tongue. God must know all the languages as HE had sent The Message/The Word to many Messengers before Muhammad, some named and many not as said in the Book, and must be in various languages. Arabic therefore is not HOLY and I do not venerate it.

There is no adjective attached to the word Islam, hence there is no such thing, at least according to me, as Shia-Islam or Sunni-Islam etc. Hence neither are Momin as far as I am concerned. Theirs, as with others, religion is an exclusive dogma. Never the less I accept them in my fellow human brotherhood- sisters included in the hood, what ever their “Religion”, so the book teaches me.

“We should keep our religion at a personal level and not try to make it universal. Because, such an effort is fruitless and futile”. -You say and I agree. But I have no religion so I can’t make it universal. I have an Universal Faith eg. ‘Honour your parents’ but I don’t have to wage a CRUSADE to propagate it!
This to me simply is the crux of the argument .
Rashid

The Modern Bogeyman Our beggars are not what they seem.
Many many years ago when I first visited Karachi, my nephew instructed me in no uncertain terms to just keep on walking with him quietly to the car. The swarm of beggars was overwhelming, in particular one middle aged lady. She was carrying a ten twelve year old healthy girl on the waist such as the girl`s legs were touching the ground.
I could not control myself as the lady pushed her heavy-gold-bracelet laden hand through the car window—“Behen, merey paas Pakistani Rupiye nahin hain, muaaf karo” I said politely.
“Rupiye kis ko chahiye…tumharaa Phaarun eskjen dey do” she said in the most humiliating way to this ignorant traveller.
Rashid

Religious Conservatism and Science Thank you Gill Sahib- An excellent treatise.
It is not the ``man playing God `` that worries me but as every thing else that mankind does, has the potential of ` gross abuse`. Church and its priests is one example.
Can science, if left to its own, not turn into a Church of Science and Scientists as its priests too?
If mankind were to have reached the maturity to always act within the ambit of `goodness `, we would only have nuclear energy for electricity and medicinal use as goodness and not bombs, as the second example.
There was time when death was supposed to be when the heart stopped beating, but today it is the function of brain impulses I understand. When is afetus a person then?Considering the number of miscarriages that occur world wide and particularly in the poor-world, it seems to me that God as presented to me by the Church is very callous with life!
Yet the same God has given his creation the freedom to think and act!
Rashid

Marriage in Hiding Kulharee @4
``There is no such thing as an ‘illegitimate’ child,..`` you said.
You have made a profound statement of truth in above.
Our religious bigotry and punishment is visited on the child that is borne according to the fixed laws of nature and not on the couple that is alleged to have broken the societal/ religious laws of the community they are part of.
We must change this cultural cringe and remove the false stigma on the child for it to integrate in its society. It would be a paradigm shift. Well done.
Rashid