Islam, Marathons and Choice

This the best essay ever written on the intrinsic worth of taking Quran and Hadith out of muslim female’s undergarments. The next, and I must add overly due gesture, is form Muslim men to take their head out of Allah’s ass and realize that it doesn’t have to be written or sanctioned by Quran for females to compete in a road race.

Bipolar factoid junkie, this is how Pakistanis support their minorities:

http://dawn.com/2006/01/29/nat25.htm

Protest against arrest of minority leader

By Our Correspondent

SUKKUR, Jan 28: A large number of people belonging to the Hindu community and PPP activists took out separate protest processions here on Saturday following the arrest of Hindu Panchayat president Eshwar Lal in a theft case.

They raised slogans against police and the government.

Speaking on the occasion, their leaders condemned the arrest of Mr Lal in what they called a false theft case and demanded action against people concerned.

They warned to observe a shutter-down strike throughout the province if Mr Lal was not released in 24 hours.

Earlier, PPP activists, led by MNA Ramesh Lal, MPA Dr Nasrullah Baloch and others, staged a sit-in outside the press club for one hour against implication of Mr Lal in the case.

Speaking on the occasion, MPA Baloch termed the arrest of Eshwar Lal political victimization.

He said the government was trying to harass opposition parties’ leaders and workers through such actions. However, he made it clear that PPP workers and leaders were not afraid of such tactics.

He said the matter would be taken up in the Sindh Assembly.

#9 by Mantolives on January 29, 2006 6:07am PT
Marathon this year was an even greater success than last year... and many great Pakistani women athletes took to the stage... and will improve hopefuly with time.

Pakistan Zindabad!




http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C01%5C29%5Cstory_29-1-2006_pg7_18

January 29 — A red letter day for Modern Pakistan

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Manto
Wonderful, your letter is master piece!!! Keep it up. We need writers like you.

Dear writer
F zamanov
Your article is an eye opener to all Mullahs. They are fanatics to the extreme, always suppressing Pakistani women for any healthy activity.

Let me introduce you to myself. I am a marathon runner myself. I used to be a sprinter, in school track team and i won so, many medals for being a very good athlete through out my school and college years. I ran so, many races. I am so, very proud runner.
Running gave me more self esteem, self confidence and of course improved my spiritual and physical health with more clear understanding of myself.

No matter what these fanatics say or do, all we have to do is, NOT to stop our women from taking part in any sports. Sports are not only healthy for our nation, but, they also show , how much we have talent to compete not only on national, but, on international level.

Don`t stop your daughter from palying cricket or running marathon.

Uh-oh, guess what the Binori guys want?

http://ww1.mid-day.com/news/world/2006/january/129619.htm

Female cricket fans to wear veils

Some top clerics of Pakistan are overjoyed to see the increasing numbers of veiled women spectators during the current Pakistan India cricket series and have called on all the female cricket fans to wear hijabs (veil covering the face except eyes) while watching next fixtures in the series.

“It shows our womenfolk are increasingly accepting the fundamental tenets of Islam, which is a positive development,” Mufti Mohammad Naeem, who runs one of some major Islamic seminaries, Jamia Binoria, in Karachi, told Sunday Mid Day.

+++

Now what about Bryan Adams?

#9 by Mantolives on January 29, 2006 6:07am PT

The 90s called..they want their bryan-adams-concert-novelty back..

manto # 12 ``the Al Huda fad, now receding mercifully after Farhat Hashmi’s allegedly forced departure to Canada, showed us how our understanding of Islam has completely gone haywire. ``


Dear Manto - Speaking of ``our understanding of Islam``, let me assert that your knowledge of Islam comprises of a collection of sound-bites and clever one-liners that have been fed to you by your ``father`s faith``. You bring up the basest of the basest interpretations of Islamic laws and the most spectacularly asinine incidents of your life in your discussions just so you can have a field day clubbing Islam till the cows come home. For example, in just your one article that you have posted in #9, you talk about religious people being ``against fashion shows``, your classmate converting his luxury car for jihad, newly religious females being ``nau so choohay kha kay billee...`` etc etc. Very simple, easily digestible matters that even a 5th grader will have an easy time parsing and debunking.

But when I challenged your hysterical belly laughter over your ``4 witness for adultery`` interpretations with a response that required some thinking (and knowledge) on your part, you ran away from the board like a fox from English hunters. Yet you have the audacity to come on FP and lecture us about ``how our understanding of Islam has completely gone haywire``!!

Please admit yourself ASAP in some Reasoning 101 followed by Tolerance 101 class. Perhaps you can have some qadiyanis join that Tolerance class with you as well. Islam and the people of Pakistan can wait. We will be right here waiting for our ``reformer`` to come liberate us, once he has liberated himself of the hatred fed to him all through his life.

Side note: I am all for women`s right to jog/exercise/walk/sit in the streets, just like men. It does not take a self styled ``reformer`` for people to know their rights.

yes Shandana -- Arjun is right...finally....:) -- Hamzad is on your side..

Dr Salam might have been given the choice of choosing between his faith and his country- but Dr Salam certainly did not allow others to dictate choices....

He continued to say he was a Pakistani very proudly till the very end.

arjun,

are you saying hamzaad was being sarcastic?!? i cant tell. his words sounded a lot like the offal spewed from the mouths of the mullahs holding forth on friday afternoons in my neighbourhood (i live between five mosques, and each one takes turns so the people around cant miss what they`re saying) and i know for a fact they aren`t being sarcastic. if he was, then countless apologies to him. and thank you for pointing it out, really, am very grateful, wouldn`t want to have false accusations or gross generalizations on my conscience.

``I would like to say a few things on the religious opposition to women`s participation in the Lahore marathon or any other healthy sporting activity. I lay no claim to liberal intellectualism or rigorous interpretation of the Quran and Sunnah. These words are just what I feel as a father who loves to play sports and would like his daughter to have the choice to do the same.``(Zamanov)

Zamanov the nice guy -- you are speaking too gently to the rabble rousing rouges like Fazoolurrahman (God`s reject) and to his his Fazool Followers doing their Fazooliats -- chasing marathon runner women of Pakistan like a bunch of yelping strays....

because ...these pathetic characters have nothing better to do.....

....the only running women they like are four of them running around their bearded beds....day and night

they don`t hear you......these schizophrenics only hear God whispering to them....in their rabbit ear antennas......go go -- go after the women -- sic`em in their heels.

and please don`t bring a marathon runner religion and its God as a referee into a mini marathon of Pakistani women in shalwars chased by hirsute canines in the streets of Islamabad...

...God is neither pro nor against the women cricket team either.....btw great gentle piece of column you wrote...

Marathon this year was an even greater success than last year... and many great Pakistani women athletes took to the stage... and will improve hopefuly with time.

Pakistan Zindabad!




http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C01%5C29%5Cstory_29-1-2006_pg7_18

January 29 — A red letter day for Modern Pakistan

By Yasser Latif Hamdani

Forgive me for being an eternal optimist, but I look forward to this Sunday as a Pakistani. Not only will Lahore once again organise a city marathon, which will hopefully show case Pakistan as a leading tourist and sporting destination, but Bryan Adams, the world-renowned rock star, will hold a mega concert in Karachi with our very own Shehzad Roy. For many countries in the world, these would not constitute major national events, but the story is different in Pakistan, or atleast the Pakistan that I grew up in after General Zia ul Haq’s military rule.

To be fair, they say that Pakistan was a different country before Zia, though very much Islamic, but being Islamic meant something entirely different from what it means now. Before General Zia-ul-Haq took over, to be Islamic meant to be just and fair, to believe in an egalitarian society, to live and let live and all that could be thought positive. It did not mean rituals, hijabs, beards, oppressive hudood laws and victimization of women and minorities. They say it was possible for good Muslims then to have a drink and show their moves on the dance floor without calling into question their loyalty to Islam.

All this changed with the coming of General Zia and the Afghan war. Islam since then has meant shia-sunni violence and jehad. The globalisation that took place in 1990s only fanned these feelings as now apart from the growing sectarian violence, Muslims also imagined themselves to be a global minority. With borders increasingly becoming meaningless, the security of a Muslim majority country was not enough. Thus loyalty to Pakistan was being eroded and replaced by a loyalty to a global jehad movement. And this seemed to affect all sections society and in fact the upper crust more than the rest. Back in high school in the mid 1990s, one of my classmates, a really rich spoilt brat, got a very expensive sports car as a present from his parents. He told me very seriously one day that he would modify it to go wage a jehad. I don’t know if it was a James Bond flick or real Islamist propaganda, but luckily he grew out of it and the car stayed as is.

Alongside the rise of this violent Islam, we have also seen increased conservatism in form of the Tablighi Jamaat- now officially an organisation with terror links on US-homeland security list. An aside: I shudder to think what would happen to our cricket team if the proposal to play India-Pakistan matches in the United States goes through. Interesting fellows these Tablighi jamaatwallahs are. One Ramzan afternoon, they came and bothered me about Islam. Their notions of Islam are very Post-Zia and certainly not what I believe Islam is. So naturally when I asked them what they had done as good Muslims for the material development of Pakistan and the Muslim world, they had no answers and these were LUMS students. One wonders why they feel so qualified to speak on Islam then?

For our ladies, of course, there was until recently Dr Farhat Hashmi and her Al Huda brigade. Many queens of the society pages suddenly went Hijabis come this millennium. It was almost as the saying goes ‘Nau sau chuhay khaa kay billi haj ko chali’ but jokes aside, the Al Huda fad, now receding mercifully after Farhat Hashmi’s allegedly forced departure to Canada, showed us how our understanding of Islam has completely gone haywire.

One must give credit where it’s due. Our Oligarch-in-chief President Musharraf, recently nominated the 17th worst dictator of 2005, has in some ways smashed Zia-ul-Haq’s legacy with his own social liberalism. The proliferation of private channels and state patronage of art and culture has made much of this irreversible. One remembers when Zafrullah Jamali tried to clamp down on fashion shows as “against Islam” our soldier statesman put him in his place. Last year’s marathon and now this year’s repeat- though one was apprehensive that this would be another one in Musharraf’s long list of one-time experiments such as the Daylight Saving Time- and also the return of international musicians of the stature of Bryan Adams to Pakistan is just one indication that maybe General Zia-ul-Haq’s 11 years are now finally behind us, even if our understanding of Islam has not reverted to pre-1977 or some would argue pre-1974 period.

This is not enough however. Musharraf must ensure that his is the last military intervention and from 2007 onwards Pakistan will become a constitutional democracy with stability and consistency and a smooth and regular transfer of power. He should ensure that the marginalised groups, the minorities and women are no longer marginalized but get a major chunk of the Pakistani political pie not just because it was one of the stated aims at the initiation of Pakistan and not just because the world now is increasingly intolerant of militarised theocracies and oligarchies, but because only a constitutional democratic path can ensure the continuity of a socially liberal welfare state which is truly, not ritually, Islamic and therefore just and egalitarian.

In the meantime, let us run the Lahore Marathon and listen to Bryan Adams for this is the red-letter day for a new, confident and modern Pakistan.

Look! Sania Mirza is a Muslim girl from India and a brilliant tennis player. People irrespective of their religious affiliation etc. go crazy watching her play. She looks pretty too in her pretty tennis shorts. So it is just an example how young people can succeed or do well in anything a man can do. So there is no need to to pray to Allah. If He had the power he would have prevented wars, famines , diseases, earth quakes and stupidity of humans.

So just encourage her to be outgoing and take interest in outdoor sports. It would give them self esteem and strength and everything.

The one of the problems is this stupid interpretation of religion.

Good to see you here.

``The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.`` : Psalm 14

I saw this advertised on a big board recently. This is the sort of misinformation EVERY religion pratices to brain wash minds. Could`nt young children become influenced by such loaded statements?

Why should`nt there be a `blasphemy` law for Atheists too?

I second your proposal.

Obscurantist ideas perpetuated by ancient patriachel socieities which have no bearing with religion are used to intimidate liberal minded ideas and the female population in general. May it be a simple marathon where women run wearing decent attire or play cricket, negative behaviour demonstrated by these telli-tubbies demonstrates their narrow minded, fetish vision of life. For them (Mullas) a five year old child begging in the streets is not considered to be ugly or repulsive, yet a healthy sport conjures evil ideas in their sick, demented minds.

Healthy societies require healthy minds, alas too much to eat can blur their vision, thus their opposition to any form of acitivity which leads to physical hardship.