Sex Education For the Next Generation

hamidm#302:

"naqshbandi,

.... you are my favourite muslim on this site! .."

Mine too! To me, he represents pure, unshakable faith and that, to me, is religion at its best. He is very intelligent and is also willing to learn, as is evident from the significant change in his attitude towards political islam.

Now, only if he could follow the Chishtis of Ganga-Jamuna and the Shahs of Jhelum-Chenab and spare some of his sufi love for the poor hindus also, that would be wonderful.

Mr. Ahmed,

I am not commenting on ur post (311) but I have disagreemnt with ur phrase 'western sciences'.

(Interlude: It's like somebody saying Hindu/Muslim liberals. No such thing is real. One is a liberal or not.)

Science is universal. Hope u undrstand my disagreement with ur 'western sciences'.

316, 317 were direct answers to your questions.
now answer my q: are you a quraniyoon?

naqshbandi: I asked you some simple questions in #311 that have nothing to do with you personally or me personally. You did not have an answer for them, and instead wrote 3-4 posts berating me personally. So, I can only conclude that you dont have an answer to those questions, and are determined to stay in the narrow-rut you are stuck in. Carry on.... :-)

even more specifically--and i should write an article on this--the none sufi muslims of india i.e. the ahle hadis and deobandis were vehemently opposed to the creation of pakistan and called the qaid kafir e azam. it was only through the support which the sufi pirs of panjab and throughout united india gave to the qaid that the muslim masses voted for pakistan. especially important was the role of pir sayyid jamaat ali shah.this is now well documented. becoz 90% of muslims at that time were sufi-orientatated barelvis and because the barelvi pirs overwhelmingly were in favour of pakistan you got your pakistan.

don;t believe me read arthur beuhler's work on the rise of the mediating sufi shaykh and the pakistan movement and also the work of usha sanyaal.

what have the sufis done for pakistan? if it wasn't for the sufis you and i most probably 95% of the muslims in indo-pak wouldn't have become muslims in the first place and therefore there would never have been a pakistan.

btw all of the literature of panjab which is worth reading was written by sufis. that is something for a start. they gave you your religion.

otherwise you'd still be tota raam and not tahmad...

serious question to tahmed: are you a qur'aniyoon? i.e. those people who only accept the quran and deny the validity of hadith in toto.

a simple yes or no will do.

you know tahmed, people would take you more seriously if you actually came across as knowing something about that which you profess.
you are arrogant enough to believe that you have discovered the real meaning of the koran which somehow has eluded the great muslims of the past--quranic scholars, ulama, jurists, sufis--and only you have 'got' it. in short, like sir 'syed' ahmad khan you are in thrall to all things western and try to see in the koran affirmation of whatever is en vogue in the west. in other words, you're clueless.

yes, the west has made great contributions to human learning and noone can deny that--noone has!--but your attitude is unique only to you on chowk--with no authority to back it at all--even your knowledge of the quran is laughable--and yet like a broken drum you've been parroting the same thing on chowk for as long as i can remember.

look, i am not buying it okay so give it a rest.

a lot of these achievements were discovered independently by muslim thinkers...

reading ghazali will make you understand your deen properly, take out of the quagmire of heresy in which you are currently mired and make you more intelligent since he tackled problems in human philosophy and tautology centuries before people like kant and others. above all, he discovered the only way to certainty.

hamidm #309 My respect for the Quran has the same basis as my respect for western thinkers as discussed in #311 e.g. There is nothing silly about a book that, regardless of what you attribute its inspiration to be, that has had so much influence in human history.

Naqshbandi: Glad you understand my first point.

On the question of western sciences, thanks for pointing out that you are well versed in them. You must then understand the significance of these today.

To take one example: it is western thinkers and doers who laid the foundations for democratic institutions like parliaments, separation of powers of the judiciary, legislature, executive. Western thinkers and doers who implemented the concept of basic rights and human dignity as it is practiced today - starting with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (which introduced the Bill of Rights in UK) and continuing with the American Revolution (which introduced the Bill of Rights in the US), and which provided the basis on which the fight for dignity of the Pakistani people is being fought today (i.e. the Chief Justice position as co-equal with the Chief Executive constitutionally, and his challenge to "disappearances" is based on the western notion of "habeas corpus").

What have the sufis done to contribute anything of similar relevance to Pakistan today? Why should I as a Pakistani not spend my time reading, e.g. de Tocqueville's admirable book on "Democracy in America" that provides insights into why the American Revolution succeeded and the French Revolution failed in introducing a democratic society, instead of al-Ghazali? What has al-Ghazali to say that will help me become a more insightful or knowledgeable person in the way de Tocqueville has?

a parable:
one day christ the son of mary alayhisalam was walking when he came across a young man tending a beautiful garden and dressed in beautiful garms. When the young man saw Sayyidina Isa alayhisalam he asked Jesus to pray that God grant him His love. You will not be able to handle it said Jesus. The boy insisted so Christ prayed. Some time later Jesus walked by the same garden and saw it was in a mess, weeds growing everywhere. THe young man was in a terrible state, clothes torn, dirty, unwashed, completely oblivious to the world. "See', said the Messiah, "I told you you will not be able to handle the love of God. And this was only an atom's worth!"

Not every vessel has the capacity to hold the love of Allah! It is the highest calling of mankind and thus the Sufis are the Elite of the Elite!
I would recommend all to read two books: Tadhkirat al Awliya by Attar and Data Ganj Bakhshi Ali Hijwiri's Kashf al Mahjub.

Re: # 306

tahmed,

..... oh puleeese ! .... get off your high camel ......... as far as i can tell, your islam and urstruly's islam are two sides of the same wahabi coin - your silly koran on one side and his silly hadiths on the other ........

....... leave poor naqshbandi alone - he is a breath of fresh air and, as i said before, if more muslims were like him we wouldn't be in the mess we find ourselves and would be giving the hare krishnas and dancing bears a run for their money .....

...... and don't underestimate our 'khawateen' - it just shows your ignorance of women .........

Re: # 305

hamidm,

no, none of the great authentic sufis ever used drugs or said it was okay to do so! why? because intoxicants are haram in islam. period. the reality is that they had access to a much more potent 'drug' than anything we can imagine: real and total ishq of Allah. spiritual intoxication is far more potent than any physical intoxicant. how 'high' does one feel in the first throes of sensual love of a female? well imagine that multiplied by an infinite factor and you might get an inkling of the state of bliss the gnostics of Allah are in.

I am a sinful and spiritually sick person who is a disgrace to sufism but i was occassionally been blessed with one or two spiritual experiences. i can honestly say with hand on heart that that experience was much much more intensely pleasurable than even the best orgasm.

tahmed mian,
you are right at one level that i shouldn't speak like that i.e. that frankly with anyone. point taken and noted. but aren't you assuming that i HAVEN'T read as widely on western sciences, history of civilisation, other cultures, natural sciences, philosophy etc. You obviously do not know me if that is what you think. Remember, professionally I am a scientist and, without boasting, educated in one of the best education systems and institutes in the western world. my friend, in short, i am far more widely read than you imagine.

naqshbandi #302 Thanks for explaining where you were coming from when you wrote that to the female poster, i.e. as you say, but if a woman asked me about it like mrs scout did so blatantly--then why should i be coy? I had anticipated this response, and that is why I wrote: "Laanat ho in "ulema" per jin ki perwarish main yeh bhai naqshbandki kisi behanay bhi aik khaatoon ko yeh sab kooch likh sakta hai!! " That is, there is no excuse for addressing a female poster in this manner, including the one you provide. Period.

On the other issue, granted you have read up a lot more on sufism, and your knowledge there (like all knowledge) is worthy of respect. I have read Rumi and enjoyed his beautiful poetry, and look up bulleh shah sometimes who is also a wonderful writer. I prefer, however, to spend my reading time with broader set of books - books that increase my understanding of where we are all coming from (i.e. history of the universe, of earth, of mankind), of creation (i.e. the various natural sciences). That is my reason for not persuing the links you provided - actually, I didnt even notice them till you mentioned them now, given that I normally avoid following links and prefer to focus on what a poster himself/herself has to say.

My recommendation for broadening your area of study is simple - you will get a much better appreciation of where sufis and "islamic aalims" stand with respect to the much broader story of human development.

Indeed, if you are to study muslim scholars - I would suggest you should focus on those that contributed to the greatness of muslim civilization, and with all due respect sufis and others concerned with the spiritual realm are only a subset of these scholars. Look at muslim scholars who who themselves did exactly what I recommend above - respected the contributions of other cultures and learnt from them, whether ancient Greek, or Indian, or Chinese. And then you will understand why individuals represented by echoboom on chowk are so totally wrong when they discourage respect for Western culture and paint it in negative colors while ignoring the positive. These are the real enemies of the muslim people, the ones responsible for keeping them backwards by berating those who appreciate western education (like Sir Syed Ahmed Khan).