Are the Converted Tribals Really Hindu?

Re #441 Posted by akcheema on October 25, 2008 2:09:59 am

[[
If I accept this argument then I have little reason to believe that the 'alien' culture was 'forced' upon the natives ... otherwise there shouldn't be so many of these 'natives' left behind with their culture so 'intact'.
]]

Is it understood that there is no argument here?? Or do you mean to suggest that if a region has large population then you can not force something on small portion of it??? What is that argument? Islam was not ruling all of India all the time.... on the contrary the remaining 2/3rd show that there was no large scale appreciation of Islam even when rulers were muslims.... if Islam was considered superior in any way, majority would have converted to Islam and not minority... though, this is also not a very god argument, because the first situation depends on type of force and to what extent (% of population) it can be aplied, the second depends upon whether Hindus were able to prevent conversions even when muslims were rulers (the answer is no, but till you state it... you can not conclude anything).

Re: # 446

Quite so nb.

There is no universally accepted measure of what it takes to be a Hindu. But I stick to MY yardstick of treating the difference between faith and religion by the absence or presence of professional priests. So my position is that there are a number of vibrant tribal faiths all over the world without priests of any religious order. I believe that Hinduism has incorporated a number of tribal faiths and customs and become a religion with priests who are almost exclusively Brahmin. And being Brahmin they regard the Vedas as their core scripture along with many other srutis and sashtras and their prayers and rituals are all Brahminical.

I therefore believe that there are many tribal faiths that have not been absorbed into Hinduism and that they should be called by their own names and not Hindu.

Where is a Hindu defined, though, as one who needs a Brahmin priest? There are many examples of non-Brahmins who have negotiated with God on their own.


I think in Murad Baig's book. Hindu is a term given by outsiders and then it got stuck.

When I used to goto my grandma's village for the relatives' kid's first head shaving ritual we used to butcher goats in the temple and also offer alcohol as part of the offering to the deity there. Brahmins were no where to be found.

If people who don't invite Brahmin priests are not Hindus then around 80% of who are called Hindus now are not actually "Hindus" by that definition. Maybe that's the plan, to define who is a Hindu and claim the rest are not Hindus.

#442:
It's just beyond hilarious that Spengler, the self-appointed defender of western civilization should be blaming pedarasty on Sufism. Is he seriously not aware that this was widely practiced throughout the ancient world? If you read Herodotus, he talks about the ancient persians as well as the greeks both going on and on about how great it is to sleep with young boys.

Quite so, MuragBaig, one of my friends is from Kodava, and she used to hate being called Coorgi, and I did pause to think about that; however, now she seems to be ok with it, probably because they have all got used to it. I think I may have heard of your ex-wife in those circles actually :)because there couldn't have been a lot who were married to Muslims. She married outside the community, and there was much drama.
Where is a Hindu defined, though, as one who needs a Brahmin priest? There are many examples of non-Brahmins who have negotiated with God on their own.
There is also a tradition among Hindus of praying to the sea god or the forest god when you are in the forest or on the seas. How would you differentiate this from tribal forest or sea gods? The difference between tribal gods and what you believe are "mainstream Hindu" gods isn't more than the differences between the deities worshipped by different groups of "mainstream Hindus".

Re: # 437

As my ex wife was Coorg (and not Coorgi)I know something about this subject. They have many unique customs and religious traditions and no Brahmin priests and rituals and consider themselves as a very special people. But most of them will not answer the question of whether they are Hindu or not.

Re: # 434

I agree. Most tribal groups had no professional priests to unite them in a common identity so they usually drifted towards stronger communities or ideologies.

Re: # 442; harimau

you can't have it both ways! either there WAS an influence or there WASN'T ... (I am not going into the details of the 'type' of influence here) ... if 35% (as you say) were 'lost' ... 65% weren't ... I want to know why not? ... given a systematic religious cleansing in Spain meant that NONE of the existing muslims or jews remained an entity and all but disappeared down the decades (not even centuries!). Whereas you guys are claiming that apart from some superficialities, Islam never did take root (except for a few conversions here and there) ... tell me something, children born of the same parents ... do lay claim to the inheritence, don't they? by that same token why is muslims claiming separate homeland(s) so much of a problem for hindus? ... given it is as much THEIR land as the hindus' ... simple 'dividing up of assets by children of the same parents' to an outsider!

Second part to your post Re: Rumi ... I didn't read all of it; far too long!
[[Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.]]

I have explained this before ... Rumi (and others of the same ilk) are/were closet atheists! ... 'God living in the heart' means exactly that ... a 'figment' of one's imagination!

Ref akcheema #441

{Re: # 435; nb [[I don't believe Muslim culture was superior to what it hit in India, and I also don't believe it was really adopted by Hindus.]]

If I accept this argument then I have little reason to believe that the 'alien' culture was 'forced' upon the natives ... otherwise there shouldn't be so many of these 'natives' left behind with their culture so 'intact'.}

If you take Undivided India, it was close to 35% who had embraced The True Faith. What was left "intact" (in more sense than one, if you know what I mean and I think you do!) was only two-thirds of the original Hindu population.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JH12Ak03.html

Sufism, sodomy and Satan
By Spengler

Sigmund Freud thought that everything was about sex, and he was half right. Rarely is love so spiritual that it does not also stir the loins, for human beings are creatures not only of soul but of body. Although it is thought rude to say so nowadays, different kinds of love belong to different kinds of sex. Not even Hell can resist divine love, J W Goethe showed in the funniest vignette in all literature: his devil, Mephistopheles, is disabled by an obsessive lust for the cherubs sent to claim the soul of Faust in the drama’s penultimate scene. Heavenly beauty, that is, reduces the crafty demon to a pathetic old pervert, in a tableau not fit for a family newspaper.[1]

Goethe’s creepily convincing portrait of a pederastic devil in Faust (1832) drew on the poet’s earlier study of Persian love poetry of the High Middle Ages,[2] where “as a rule, the beloved is not a woman, but a young man�, according to the leading Persian historian Ehsan Yar-Shater. Islamic mysticism (Sufism) of the High Middle Ages is the only case in which a mainstream current of a major world religion preached pederasty as a path to spiritual enlightenment. A vast literature documents this, and a great deal of it is available online.

Sufi adoration of pre-pubescent boys “persisted in many Islamic countries until very recent times,� according to the Orientalist Helmut Ritter.[3] The Afghan penchant for dancing boys in female costume, shown in the 2007 film The Kite Runner, is the last vestige of a Sufi practice that has been long suppressed by both the Sunni and Shi’ite branches of Islam. Sufism has a reputation in Western pop culture as a kinder and gentler branch of Islam. It is not a different kind of Islam, but rather Islam’s mystical practice, to which the adage applies, “by their fruits shall ye know them.�

Controversy persists over what is “authentic Sufism�. The Turkish organization of Fethallah Gulen claims millions of members and doubtless is the largest self-styled Sufi organization in the world. The American Sufi convert Stephen Schwartz has dismissed it as a “cult�,[4] while Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute warns that Gulen may become the Turkish Khomeini. Given Turkey’s turn towards political Islam (Turkey in the throes of Islamic revolution?, Jul 22, 2008), the world is likely to find out a great deal more about Sufism in the near future, and well may be dismayed by what it learns.

In contrast to the Judeo-Christian West, where marriage has been a metaphor for God’s love since the Biblical Song of Songs, homosexual pederasty was normative for the Sufi philosopher-poets of Islam’s golden age in Central Asia. For Christians, the earthly adumbration of God’s love was nuptial, but pederastic in Muslim Persia. The classic Persian poets, including Hafez[5] and Rumi,[6] pined for beardless boys while their European contemporaries wrote sonnets to women. Some apologists claim that the Sufi practice of “contemplation of the beardless� was a chaste spiritual exercise, but an Egyptian proverb warns: “In his father's home a boy's chastity is safe, but let him become a dervish [Sufi adept] and the buggers will queue up behind him.�[7]

Sufi pedophilia cannot be dismissed as a remnant of the old tribal practices that Islam often incorporated, for example, female genital mutilation. Genital mutilation is a pre-Islamic practice unknown in the ancient and modern West. Even though some Muslim authorities defend it on the basis of Hadith, no one has ever claimed that it offered a path to enlightenment. Sadly, pedophiles are found almost everywhere. In its ascendancy, Sufism made a definitive spiritual experience out of a practice considered criminally aberrant in the West. But pederasty as a spiritual exercise is not essentially different in character from the furtive practices of Western perverts. As the psychiatrists explain, pederasty is an expression of narcissism, the love of an idealized youthful self-image.

Sufism seeks one-ness with the universe through spiritual exercises that lead individual consciousness to dissolve into the cosmos. But nothing is more narcissistic than the contemplation of the cosmos, for if we become one with the cosmos, what we love in the cosmos is simply an idealized image of ourselves. An idealized self-image is also what attracts the aging lecher to the adolescent boy. That is the secret of Sufi as well as other pederasty, for pederasty is an extreme expression of self-love. That is the conventional psychiatric view; Freud for example wrote of the “basic narcissism of the vast majority of pederasts … proceeding as from narcissism, they seek their own image in young people.�

Sufism enjoys a faddish ripple of interest in America, where self-admiration is the national pastime. As opposed to the Biblical God, the cosmos is an unthreatening thing to worship. The universe, after all, is no one in particular, and those who seek to merge their consciousness with no one in particular at the end are left alone with themselves. Worship the cosmos, and you worship yours truly; worship yourself, and it is not unusual to adore your own idealized image.

I do not mean to suggest that Sufis today are more likely to be pederasts than members of any other religious denomination. Sadly, there is brisk competition in that field. Karen Armstrong, the popular writer on religion, claims to be a Sufi, and I have it on good authority that she is not a pederast. Non-Muslims who embrace Sufism view it as a generic form of “spirituality�, like Madonna’s dabbling in what she thinks is Kabbalah. That recalls the joke about the Chinese waiter in a kosher restaurant who speaks perfect Yiddish, of whom the owner says, “He thinks he’s learning English.� No one should blame Hafez or Rumi for the casual interest of American spiritual tourists.

Nonetheless, it is not entirely by accident that Sufism holds a fascination for self-absorbed young Americans who dislike the demands placed upon them by revealed faith. Mysticism of this genre provides a pretext to worship one’s self in the masquerade of the universe. As Rumi (1207-1273), the most revered of the Sufi philosopher-poets, said of his own spiritual master,

Why should I seek? I am the same as
He. His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself!

I do not speak Persian and cannot comment on the aesthetic quality of Rumi’s verse, which connoisseurs hold to be elegant. Its content, though, reduces to the same God-is-everywhere-and-all-I-have-to-do-is-look-inside-myself sort of platitudes of pop spirituality, for example,

I searched for God among the Christians and on the Cross and therein I found Him not.
I went into the ancient temples of idolatry; no trace of Him was there.
…
Then I directed my search to the Kaaba, the resort of old and young; God was not there even.
Turning to philosophy I inquired about him from ibn Sina but found Him not within his range.
I fared then to the scene of the Prophet's experience of a great divine manifestation only a 'two bow-lengths' distance from him' but God was not there even in that exalted court.
Finally, I looked into my own heart and there I saw Him; He was nowhere else.

If the point of love is to dissolve one's self into the All, then there is no difference between the self and the All; the self and the All are the same, and one loves one's self. There is no Other in Sufism, only your own ego grinning back from the universe. To embrace the cosmos implies the destruction of individuality. In Goethe’s drama, Faust conjures up the personification of the cosmos, the Earth Spirit, and cannot bear to look upon it; the Earth Spirit dismisses him with the epigram, “You are like the spirit whom you comprehend - not me!� Woe betide the adept who succeeds in merging his mind with the universe: he would become a monster, like Mephistopheles, the consummate nihilist.

Love of the cosmos reduces to idolatrous love of self. It is a radically different sort of love than the love of YHWH or Jesus, who are distinct beings with a personality, even if incomprehensible in their totality. The Judeo-Christian God is known to humankind by revelation, and specifically self-revelation through love. The revealed God seeks the love of humankind as an Other. Revelation does not reassure us that the Divine was in our hearts all along. It is not always a pleasant experience. It burns our lips like the kiss of a seraph, and casts our heart into the refiner’s fire. It shatters, burns, overwhelms and transforms us - but it does not dissolve us into a cosmic soup. On the contrary: it enhances our individual personality. Precisely because it reinforces our individuality, love in the Judeo-Christian world can be a very painful experience.

To Christians and Jews, God reveals himself as a personality, and through acts of love - the Exodus and the Resurrection. There is no such event in Islam. Allah does not reveals himself, that is, descend to earth; instead, he sends down from heaven his instruction manual, namely the Koran. Allah remains unknown, and ultimately indistinguishable from the nature in which he is embedded. Confronted by this absolutely transcendental entity the individual human personality shrivels into insignificance.

Mystical communion with an unrevealed and unknowable God demands the sort of star- and navel-gazing that brings the communicant right back to good old number one. Just as Rumi said, it’s all inside you, like the self-help books say. And that brings us back to the matter of pederasty.

Men and women are so different that the experience of heterosexual love is analogous to the spiritual encounter with the divine Other. Love is as strong as death, says the Song of Songs:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.

It is not only the passion of love that challenges death, but the fruit of love, the birth of children, that keeps death at bay. Nature appears to have arranged matters so that these two presentiments of immortality occur together. The Judeo-Christian God becomes the partner of human lovers: “Lovers could not love if they did not have an ally against death, if the only certainty were the grave and silence,� writes Michael Wyschogrod. Anyone who has been in love with someone of the opposite sex knows precisely what I am talking about. Those who have not may consult the Song of Songs, for example:

The love of bride and bridegroom is not quite the same thing as the love of God and his congregation, but the passion as strong as death that unites men and women is analogous to the encounter with the Other in the person of God.

On the extreme opposite of the spiritual spectrum, we encounter pederasty as the foundational experience of Sufism. According to Wikipedia,

As a Sufi practice of spiritual realization and union with the godhead, the meditation known in Arabic as Nazar ila'l-murd, "contemplation of the beardless," or Shahed-bazi, "witness play" in Persian has been practiced from the earliest years of Islam. It is seen as an act of worship intended to help one ascend to the absolute beauty that is God through the relative beauty that is a boy.

The medieval Persians were not the first to practice the higher sodomy. The Greeks of the 6th century BC preferred young boys, procreating out of patriotic habit while their women closed their eyes and thought of Athens. Adoration of youth is a very different way to capture from love a sense of immortality. In Greek legend the gods turned Narcissus into a flower to punish his pride in refusing male suitors. Pederasty thus was present at the origin of the concept of narcissism.

The medieval Persians surpassed the Greeks in enthusiasm. Hafez, widely considered the greatest Persian poet, wrote such verses as
My sweetheart is a beauty and a child, and I fear that in play one day

He will kill me miserably and he will not be accountable according to the holy law.
I have a fourteen year old idol, sweet and nimble
For whom the full moon is a willing slave.
His sweet lips have (still) the scent of milk
Even though the demeanor of his dark eyes drips blood. (Divan, no 284)

And about the Magian baccha:

If the wine-serving magian boy would shine in this way
I will make a broom of my eyelashes to sweep the entrance of the tavern. (Divan, no 9)

Hafez is typical of the Muslim philosopher-poets of the epoch. Ehsan Yar-Shater wrote:

As a rule, the beloved [in medieval Persian poetry] is not a woman, but a young man. In the early centuries of Islam, the raids into Central Asia produced many young slaves. Slaves were also bought or received as gifts. They were made to serve as pages at court or in the households of the affluent, or as soldiers and body-guards. Young men, slaves or not, also, served wine at banquets and receptions, and the more gifted among them could play music and maintain a cultivated conversation. It was love toward young pages, soldiers, or novices in trades and professions which was the subject of lyrical introductions to panegyrics from the beginning of Persian poetry, and of the ghazal.[8]

As noted, it is tempting to dismiss the pederasty of the Sufi philosopher-poets as a cultural artifact of traditional society, along with the mystical practice of “contemplation of the beardless�. This would obscure rather than shed light, however, for three reasons.

The first is that traditional society is precisely what revelation seeks to temper. The Hebrew Bible abjures pagan practices, just as Mohammed inveighs against the pagans. Yet we do not find a single instance of a Hebrew poet celebrating homosexuality until, of course, late 20th-century Tel Aviv. Classic Persian and Arab literature ooze with it. Islam could not extirpate a pederastic culture including virtually all the leading poets of the high Middle Ages except by suppressing the Sufi cults. There were a number of reasons that both the Sunni and Shia mainstream persecuted Sufism, but a prominent one was the cited practice called “contemplation of the beardless� in which the dervish sought communion with the eternal by immersing himself in the beauty of adolescent boys.

Second, the same sort of people who reject the demands of “organized religion� in favor of “free spirituality� have made the defense of homosexuality the Shibboleth of their generation. Speak out against gay marriage in the United States, and you have made yourself a pariah in any of the strongholds of liberalism, especially university campuses. I do not believe in criminalizing adult homosexuality, any more than I believe that a heterosexual chosen at random is necessarily a better person than a homosexual chosen at random. But the experience of divine love reflected in the love of men and women and their children is the foundation of society, and gay marriage would have dreadful consequences.

Third, pederasty has become a plague in parts of the West, and widespread abuse of children has occasioned a crisis in the Catholic Church. It is hard to avoid the impression that sexual misbehavior is associated with a retreat from faith in a personal God, namely the Jesus who lived on earth and was crucified and was resurrected, in favor of a mushy and unspecific spirituality - something like Sufism, in fact. Perhaps the same link between spiritual and sexual narcissism is at work in the West.

Notes
1. Mephistopheles addresses the boy angels (in Tony Kline’s translation online):

What wretched luck, and dire!
Is this Love’s own element?
My whole body’s bathed in fire,
I scarcely feel, my head’s so burnt. –
You float to and fro, sink down a while,
Move your sweet limbs with earthly guile:
True, a grave expression suits you well,
But I’d still like to see you smile a little!
That would be an eternal delight to me.
Like the lovers’ mutual glance, you see:
A simper round the mouth, is how it’s done,
You, the tall lad, you could make me love you,
The priest’s pose doesn’t really suit you,
So show a little lust, and look hereon!
You could be more modestly naked too,
That robe’s long hem, so demure in its rising –
They turn away – and seen from the rear view –
Those rascals now are really appetising!

See http://www.tonykline.co.uk/klineasfaust.htm

2. The West-Ostlicher Divan of 1814

3. See The Ocean of the Soul: Man, the World, and God in the Stories of Farid Al-Din Attar, by Hellmut Ritter, John O'Kane, Bernd Radtke (Brill: New York 2003), p 516 et seq. Ritter quotes a 1936 travelogue from Albania: “Still another oddity: among the Albanians there is 'love of beauty'. Fifty to sixty people are united through love for a beautiful youth. Quite frequently they ask the father’s permission in the morning, take the boy with them and have him sit on a table. Everyone sits in front of him and gazes at him admiringly for hours. These youths are called dilber. They’re dressed up like a girl, ie, with finger rings, a pleated silk shirt ... silk sash and a small hat tilted to one side …� Comments Ritter, “Since Albania from far back in time has been a home for Sufi orders, it is not far-fetched to assume that the described practice is also of Sufi origin.�

4. http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10273

5. Khwaja Samsu d-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Sirazi, flourished 14th century

6. Mawlana Jalal-ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi, 1207-1273

7. Wikipedia entry, “Pederasty in the Islamic World.�

8. Yar-Shater, Ehsan. 1986. Persian Poetry in the Timurid and Safavid Periods, in Cambridge History of Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986, pp 973-974.

Re: # 435; nb [[I don't believe Muslim culture was superior to what it hit in India, and I also don't believe it was really adopted by Hindus.]]

If I accept this argument then I have little reason to believe that the 'alien' culture was 'forced' upon the natives ... otherwise there shouldn't be so many of these 'natives' left behind with their culture so 'intact'.

Khuda hafiz for now

Re: # 439; nb

I am simply doing what I said I'd do when I joined chowk ... I criticised the muslim mythology (aka Islam) no end and advised the hindus to stay out of it ... for me it was a PERSONAL matter ... to no avail ... I see all these half-literates with the same rhetoric, from both sides swarming in every article, regardless of the content, and berating Islam ... there is a time and place for everything! ... I also said there was a lot I could say about hinduism but in my opinion (at the time) it should be the hindus highlighting their own shortcomings ... fell on deaf ears

... it all seems fair game now

Akcheema, I pointed out that it may have nothing to do with my religion at all. I do not agree with the VHP that all Indians are naturally Hindus even if they are Christians or Muslims.

Re: # 435; nb

now you are regurgitating what the bjp/rss/hindutva clan have been preaching all along .... like YOU said before, nothing is ever Black OR White

... read widely ... especially what the 'westeners' have written ... more likely to be objective

BTW, Mr Baig, what do you think about Coorgis? They identify as Hindu now, but they do not have Brahmin priests or Brahmin rituals, and the same goes with another South Indian group of people whose name I cannot recall, perhaps you do.

Re: # 435; nb

I never claimed ANY culture to be superior to that of native Indians .... it is what was APPARENTLY superior at the time ... from the native perspective that is

same as the so-called 'western' culture APPEARS to be superior to many

Thanks for your reply, Mr Baig. I understand that a lot of people feel uncomfortable unless things are tightly circumscribed. It's not how I personally think, and I will not ascribe it to or entirely to religion.
Akcheema, I don't believe Muslim culture was superior to what it hit in India, and I also don't believe it was really adopted by Hindus. Many people turned Muslim, but of those who remained Hindu, Muslim culture did not influence them very much at all. About the influence it did have, Murad Baig probably won't like this, but there is little evidence purdah/covering the head was ever practised in most of India before Islam (though it was practised in Rome, for one); and young female children began to get married even younger than before, perhaps so that they would be another man's property if they were "defiled" by rape...and then there would be honour killings anyway.

Re: # 433; murad sahib

the conclusions I draw from the swarming interacts posted by a certain group in response to every single article by you are as follows:

1 - there is no such defined group called 'hindus' ... if there ever were, they were always defined as such by 'others'

2 - they lack a 'national' identity unlike other 'groups', hence feel very undermined when someone tries to 'define' them and their 'confines' ... to them, there are no 'confines'.

3 - essentially all 'natives' that over the centuries of recent history decided not to 'join' another faith/cultural tradition ... they tend to label as 'hindu' ... hence the assertions by some that Hindu=Indian!

4 - they lack self-esteem, same way as an increasingly large part of the Islamic world do at present ... it is chasing the 'glories of the past' ... especially when the gobbledigook itself doesn't have a future

5 - thankfully for 'hindus', however defined, it seems easy enough to cast aside the gobbledigook elements (though the initial takers are 'reverting' to their roots en masse) ...hence their relatively easy adoption of 'other' cultures, APPARENTLY superior to their own ... examples (chronological) .. Muslim, Christian, English and now globalisation (western expansionism)

Re: # 84

Dear nb

I think a few definitions are very necessary.

The tribals in India with a well established culture and religious tradition were around long before Christianity and Islam. Also long before Hinduism evolved into its present form (you might find my Chowk article on the evolution of Hinduism dated September 7, 2006 of interest).

If tribals do not follow the Vedas, do not worship Vishnu, Shiv or other Hindu gods and do not have Brahmin priests with Brahmin rituals and prayers, how can they be called Hindu??

Re: # 385

Just back from the wilds. I entirely agree.

How have the interacts, interesting as they may be, drifted away from the subject of the article.

We need to just discuss whether the tribal people of our subcontinent who worship animist deities and no Hindu deity and do not follow brahminical rituals should be considered Hindu or not.

their eminent doom

tahmed writes "o Barak is going to bring barkat with him.
Barak is going to broker all kinds of peace deals around the world."

Little wonder that Pakistan is where it is at with an educated class that has the thinking skills that tahmed possesses. Barack is the ultimate manipulation to rescue the global capitalist system from collapse, the good news is, he will only buy them some more time, there eminent doom leads them to undertake such conspiracies and manipulations which only buys them time and little else

Have a nice day and take it easy

TNI Masadi

Ref dost_mittar #428

[I need that plant and will start looking for it in my backyard.:) ]

I threw my back out lifting something heavy two days back. I need it as much as, if not more than, you!

If I were still in the US, I would have gone up to New York City! I had to return to India after my visit and it had to happen while I am in India! :-(

harimau:

I need that plant and will start looking for it in my backyard.:)

tahmed#32:

tahmed saheb:
By now, it must be evident that, even on this board, my "jaundiced" view of Islam is the mainstream view held about Islam by both Muslims and Non-Muslims, except for you and bulleya; in case of bulleya, I suspect that he really has not read that much about Islam or Islamic history; but in your case, it's more a matter of conviction, which is fine and you have been quite consistent about your beliefs.

With respect to casteism, I am afraid that it was embedded too strongly in the Indian DNA to be cured by Islam or even Sikhism; a Muslim convert not only took his caste with him to the new religion but also created new castes, such as Syeds and Ashrafs; and poor achhoots converting to Sikh religion found that they had to build their own Mazhabi gurudwaras, just as they had to build their own Valmiki mandirs before conversion. If the rigidities of caste have become somewhat less opressive, it is mostly due to the more recent reformers, such as Gandhi, Ambedkar and Nehru, who, unlike you, chose to confront what they did not like in their religion instead of shouting that there it all the fault of the pandits and pujaris and not of their religion.
And in case you haven't noticed, Hindus outside Punjab also do not take bath any more after seeing what you call achoot (in India, you would be lucky to have your bones in tact if you call someone that today!); indeed, while Mazhabis and dalits in Punjab still lack political power, a dalit is ruling in UP and is making Brahmins take off their shoes before they enter her office to prostate before her.

On a different board, some 4 years ago I posted a news item.

It talks about the treatment meted out to proselytizers in an Islamic country.

This refresher on what happened ought to shut up Mullah32 once and for all about how Islam is a religion of peace. But that would require Mullah32 to actually face up to and admit the truth,

#391 Posted by harimau on July 3, 2004 8:32:27 am

I suppose Nader Thiasi wouldn`t like to see this in India. After all, if one calls oneself an Islamic nation, then you can do anything!

`We slit his throat for propagating Christianity`

Reuters
Posted online: Friday, July 02, 2004 at 1338 hours IST

Kabul, July 2: Afghanistan`s Taliban guerrillas say they cut the throat of a Muslim cleric after they discovered him propagating Christianity and warned foreign aid workers they would face similar treatment if they did the same.

Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi telephoned Reuters on Thursday to say that the guerrillas killed Maulawi Assadullah in the remote Awdand district of Ghazni province the previous day.

``A group of Taliban dragged out Maulawi Assadullah and slit his throat with a knife because he was propagating Christianity,`` he said.

``We have enough evidence and local accounts to prove that he was involved in the conversion of Muslims to Christianity.``

Provincial officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Hakimi charged that a number of foreign aid agencies were also involved in spreading Christianity in Afghanistan, where the adherents to the religion are in a tiny minority.

``We warn them that they face the same destiny as Assadullah if they continue to seduce people,`` he said.

The fundamentalist Taliban, which was overthrown by US-led forces in late 2001, has declared a holy war against the continuing foreign troop presence in the country and views aid workers as legitimate targets in this battle.

The Taliban has killed at least 33 foreign aid workers since the start of last year, including Frenchwoman Bettina Goislard of the UN refugee agency, who was gunned down in the town of Ghazni, the provincial capital, in November.

Re: # 377
Hari...

"Anyway, how come no Quranists have answered my repeated requests for the meanings of certain verses? ..."
The answer is through the actions of moslems - islamic barbarism accross the world....

Tahmed sahib:

"Why Masadi..."

He is a regressive force and will inhibit evolution of knoweldge, Islamic thoughts and knowledge. He is willing to take these thoughts and knowledge back to almost infinite time in the past, but leaves no room for evolution to toward infinite time in the future.

Open human mind is capable of comprehending far more knowledge, only if we allow it to. Humpty and Dumpty have routinely fallen all the time, especially when King's horses (knowledge in this case) moves on.

He resorts to Mills & Co. to find the most obvious answers that even a person inspecting the sewage pipes in the Wall Street can tell you. He is not the first one to confine or write off freedom of expression in the name of one thing or the another.

Mr. Masadi: The name Barak has the same root as the urdu word "barkat" and the english word "broker", this root being the arabic word "al buruk", which means gift.

So Barak is going to bring barkat with him.
Barak is going to broker all kinds of peace deals around the world.

So please no negative campaigning against Barak, President of the USA.

Ahmad sahib, you should have learned how to read in first grade, but alas the American system has kept you functionally illiterate.

I have added a part 3 of the Barack Conspiracy, to the ilogs, check it out and contact Anil for reading lessons if you want to learn how to read Hindlish, HBS style

Have a nice day,

TNI Masadi

#420 mr. cheema: thanks for writing. have a great day!
:-)

Re: # 382; St. Tahmed ... various

now sir ... where were we? ... ah .. yes, I remember! I'll make the following points to your interacts, which incidently are large collections of words without much substance ... but I won't want you to have the 1:0 satisfaction!

1 - there are many fine people who openly accept Islam for what it is ... and then "pick and chose" elements that suit their conscience ... they never make big claims of following the Quran or Sunnah or anything in particular ... in fact most people in most religions happen to fall into this category ... the thing is they never 'claim' that their Islam is THE Islam ... they are generally humble about it and get on with life

2 - then there is people like your self .... who claim openly that their Islam is THE Islam .... that is akin to starting a new sect within Islam (hence the St. Tahmed ... if you carry on, you'd be a prophet one day soon) ... these people are smug, arrogant, elitist and consider THEIR interpretation to be the most valid one (ever heard of sectarianism!!) ... the only reason they are not sectarian in the sense that word is understood is that they lack the guts to take on the "establishment" and coccoon themselves to the confort of THEIR Islam ... they are NO LESS self-righteous then the people they supposedly oppose

3 - they also have a strange sense of "right and wrong" that is very different from what has been practiced in the name of Islam for the last 1400 years ... but they still insult their God and Prophet for being completely impotent in preventing any 'distortions' to the very 'original' faith

4 - People like Urstruly sahib are clear on their take on Islam ... which incidently happens to be the same by the "mainstream" over the last 1400 years ... and he has my respect for that

5 - people like hamidm sahib, similarly, don't deny what Islam actually is, they choose to 'pick and choose' knowing well it matters nought one bit if they did or didn't; however they are merely respecting their 'cultural heritage' and do what they do in the interest of "cultural solidarity" .... I personally would describe my self closer to this group ... without the baggage of "faith" of course

6 - I had some respect for your point of view until you started this 'sectarianism' and a sense of self-righteousness .... to me you are no different from the "mullahs" you so despise ... only you don't have the courage to state your inner thoughts in full public view for all to see but hide behind your self-righteousness nevertheless

7 - now please stop sulking like a two year old; I won't apologise to you since I donot believe I said anything disrespectful to you personally ... your 'ideas and faith' are fair game since that is how you present yourself here ... and if I can't disagree with anyone here and put forward my side of the argument, why discuss anything in the first place?

mr. masadi #411 Alas, if only I could understand what you are saying.. :-(

mr. anil: i hope you are doing well. why is mr. masadi sitting on a wall? why doesnt chowk staff offer him a chair?

pinku jee #410 if one goes by the ethnic grocery stores, the persians stores i have seen are way ahead of both indian and pakistani stores in terms of cleanliness of stores and the grooming of the shop staff. but thanks anyway for the education on the origins of the word achoot.

Masadi sahib:

Masadi sahib's nonsense is "hideen knowledge" only to him. He, like humpty dumpty, is sitting on a wall, waiting for a great fall. He lacks the logic to understand if knowledge can be so pre-historic, and it cannot stop at 7th century. Please keep on waiting for your great fall.

re #414: Anil sahib apparently Harvard business school, entrepreneurial knowledge does not recognize the logical distinctions between something being secret knowledge (as in the case of the Bible by fact of the Church restricting access to it up until Martin Luther 'privatized' it and nothing being taken as canon or written during the life of Jesus or recommended by him) and that which is publicly owned in its use from the very start of a buildup of a community, properly shaped and distinct from other discourse, as is the case of the Quran.

Now have a nice day and go climb a wall if you feel frustrated at the inadequacy of your bigotry,

TNI Masadi

Re: # 411

"...The Quran was from the beginning with the people, the Bible on the other hand was the property of the church. That is the BIG difference...."

I can bet that Masadi Sahib is incapable of seeing the contradiction in his above statement. He says "the Quran" was from the beginning with the people, but has no explation why it stopped in 7th Century. Obviously, neither time nor history stopped.

Ref Hamidm various posts and dost_mittar #405

[.... and you would still be worshipping the elephant-nosed god or whoever your ancestors were worshipping before their conversion.]

Hey, be respectful to Lord Ganesha!

Check out the URL below for photos.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/10/21/2008-10-21_elep hantshaped_ganesh_growth_cured_my_il.html

Elephant-shaped Ganesh growth cured my ills, Queens man says
BY NICHOLAS HIRSHON
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Wednesday, October 22nd 2008, 3:52 PM



Sam Lal, in his Jamaica, Queens yard with unusual amaranth plant that resembles Hindu god Ganesh. Lal says arrival of the plant that's not native to area has cured his back ailments.

To most people, the purple flower that sprouted between two concrete slabs in a Queens backyard would be just a hardy vestige of summer.

Sam Lal sees something more.

The Jamaica man is convinced the mysterious blossom is an incarnation of the elephant-headed Hindu god Ganesh - and neighbors and friends are flocking to see it.

The nearly 4-foot-tall flower grew in June and began to resemble an elephant's head and trunk in August. Lal said that the ailments that had plagued him for months disappeared.

"This formation came to heal my illness," the 60-year-old Hindu man said of his relief from pain due to a bone spur near his spine and bulging discs in his neck.

"They say God comes in many forms. I figure this has taken the form of a plant to come into my yard to bless me," said Lal, who immigrated from Guyana three decades ago.

Experts at the Queens Botanical Garden identified the plant as a member of the amaranth family, which is native to Africa, India and southern Central America but not the U.S. Horticulturalists at the garden have never seen an amaranth take an elephant-like shape, garden spokesman Tim Heimerle said.

"For it to have that long trunk like this is not a natural thing," he said.

Lal believes the flower's position - growing through concrete, facing a garage he converted to a prayer space - is evidence of a connection to Ganesh, revered as the Remover of Obstacles.

A manager at a Manhattan uniform company, Lal hurt his back lifting a box and was in pain for 3-1/2 months - but no more.

"I felt that healing power that came with it," he said. "I've lived a religious life all my life. I feel my prayers have been answered through the deities."

Friends and neighbors have already streamed to his 90th Ave. home to see the flower, and Lal said he'd welcome pilgrimages by Hindu faithful.

He knows some people will be skeptical and insisted he did nothing to sculpt the flower.

Heimerle said that wouldn't be possible anyway, because the plant is too fragile.

"Nature is a strange thing, and it's possible it may have just done that spontaneously, but who's to say," Heimerle said.

With the fall chill in the air, Lal fears the flower may die like other amaranths, which are usually killed by winter frost.

"It's a little upsetting," said Lal, who covers the flower with plastic at night to protect it from cold. "It hurts me to know I'll lose it."

DM’s and akcheema’s comments represent valid inquiries. That the message and the messenger are one and the same, is a valid argument, esp. given Quran’s heavy emphasis on Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his office.

+++

tahmed, your smug responses are ill-thought out; also, they raise more questions than they answer. There’s a lot in Quran that you are in denial of. For starters, your claim that Quran treats the Prophet just like any other believer, is flatly negated by Quran itself. One cannot deny the special status assigned to the Prophet (pbuh) in Quran … when it comes to marriage, his wives, intercession, and more. Merely insisting would not make these facts disappear. DM is onto something here ...

+++

Bulleya (#279): Allah “perfecting religion� and “completing favors� does not necessarily invalidate ahadith. Perfection and completion here may apply to Divine Law, which achieved completion through Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

Quran invokes laws of nature, mentions some facts, and leaves it up to believers to pursue knowledge. Similarly, Quran praises Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), covers some aspects of his life, and arguably leaves it to believers to learn more about him through various means available.

Role of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is not limited to that of only a messenger. Quran declared him only a messenger in the context of non-believers (that is, if people continue to be rebellious, you, Muhammad, are only a messenger). This is perhaps to emphasize that even the Prophet (pbuh) is not allowed to force Islam on others.

However, in the context of believers, his role is expanded beyond that of a simple messenger: He is a messenger who recites to believers Allah’s signs, purifies them, and teaches them the Book and Wisdom. Check 62:2 … and note that this message is repeated in several places in Quran. Also, note that in 9:24, Quran declares that Prophet (pbuh) should be dearer to believers than their family, livelihood, etc. There’s much more … but you get the point.

And I don’t think all of Quran is easy to understand. Start with “Alif, Lam, Meem� to appreciate this. Furthermore, Quran has stories and allegories that make one scratch his head. This does not necessarily validate the role of ullema … but it does give credence to those who can delve into deeper meaning of the content of Quran. Admittedly, the issue of who to believe, and to what extent, remains a tricky matter.

All this, however, does not put a blanket seal of approval on all collections of ahadith. Arguably ahadith have their place … but they need to pass the test of Quran. If a hadith negates message of Qruan, it becomes erroneous by default. Note that Quran declares itself The Furqan (The Discriminator, the Criterion to judge).

+++

Urstruly, this also addresses the hollow “Mirzaee� issue you keep raising. By now you should know Ahmadi-Muslim position. You display willful ignorance and intellectual stubbornness. Mirzaees are not that bad ... you only need to lighten up a bit.

+++

Hamidm, good catch. As far as I know, Quran does not outline the method of prayers … or circumcision. I think sunnah and/or ahadith are the source of these practices (masadi, is that correct?)

tahmed writes "different versions of the Quran were written. this is not surprising - even the Bible had to be standardized "

The Bible has a completely different history to the history of the Quran. What is understandable is that in order to worship the white man you will equate the babble with the Quran. The Quran was from the beginning with the people, the Bible on the other hand was the property of the church. That is the BIG difference.

You can find almost anything you want to in the so-called "history", whereas the mullah will pick on certain parts, the so called secularists with an axe to grind will pick on others, little wonder that sources removed hundreds of years from the events and surviving in writings of others, multiplied secondary sources are used to grind axes all efforts thus lead to futility. The fact is that both these secularists and the mullahs cannot deal with the Quran as "evidence" both historical in that it predates all of those conjectures and in the form of its content that can be analyzed using modern knowledge. Writing a "book" as our friend HP suggests about his brother, based on the writings of Muslim historians, who base their work on their ideology as well as corrupted sources is no big achievement.

Have a nice day and take it easy and read the article on the Barack conspiracy in my ilog...

TNI Masadi

#409 Posted by tahmed32 on

:-), you think that most hindus do it that way or that they have a Kuran which says so???

Original term was malechch, which is a sanskrit word meaning "one who wishes filth", this word was used for Persians or Arabs (Muslims), because of their lack of cleanliness (no water there, so no need to take bath). And most probably this word was invented by Brahmin forefathers of Sindhi or Kashmiri people.

dm #405: that explanation is certainly consistent with your jaundiced view of islam. look at it this way - if there was no islam, there would have been no sikhism, and you would still be bathing every time an achoot walked past you.

[[
Islamic School Online
Can't Drive Kids to the Mosque? Islamic School with Quran tutoring.
]]

This is the add i see on interact page???

HP#406:

If the Quran was not complete, then Sunna becomes all the more important because they knew what the Prophet would have wanted them to do even if the Quran was not complete.

"I find Urstruly's version more compelling is that this is what inspired Abu Bakr, Omar and others who followed them to spread Islam"

Not fact based. The Quran was not complete when they converted.

It was all about challenging the establishment. Abu Bakr and Umar were known rebels and they joined Mohammed.

tahmed32#401:

Saheb, I have no idea what Rev. Pat Robertson says and have no need to find out, there are far more profound scholars of Islam at this website itself.

The reason that I find Urstruly's version more compelling is that this is what inspired Abu Bakr, Omar and others who followed them to spread Islam far and wide; if it were left to your version of Islam, it would have remained limited to the few sahaba in Medina and you would still be worshipping the elephant-nosed god or whoever your ancestors were worshipping before their conversion.

Btw, Before Mohammed married Khadija, he tried to merry abu talib's daughter or Ali's sister but was refused because he was poor and abu Talib raised him. So he was not really equal in status. Her name was Umme Hani.
These Muslim historians have written this but you will hardly see this info now!

ibne ishaq Sirat Rasul Allah. waqadi...and tabari.

#395 Posted by Maharana

Well My brother is writing a book in Pakistan and he has done research on the subject.(Obviously he will get some fatwa on his head too) Actually, Many Muslim historians have researched this and the info is from their research. It is just that mullah tries to hide the info.

Here is the correct info about the Birds attack on Mecca which akcheema mentioned in one of his post below.

"In 570 AD a Yemeni army of few thousands came to attack Makkah, since the residents of Makkah had no strength to fight, they left their homes and took refuge with their families and clans in nearby hillocks. That raid however could not take place as a disease was brought through the birds, and then the weather became so intolerable that Abraha army of Yemen had to withdraw the siege and go back."

Though most of the Makkans were idolaters but for the most part it was the matter of personal faith, they were quite liberal in their own faith, but for the sake of having leadership-religious as well as economic, they had to strengthen the order established by them after long efforts.

They were hardly bothered when a few among Quraish claimed monotheism, and rejected polytheism. Four such examples in late 6th and early 7th century were of Warqa bin Naufal, Ubaidullah bin Jahash, Usman bin Hawarith, and Zaid bin Amr who abhored polytheism, they wanted to revert to Deen-e- Hanifia which they believed was the original monotheist religion of Abraham and Ishmael. However these people remained week and solitary voices, some of them later converted to Christianity and a few left their family and land of their forefathers and turned ascetic in their search for true religion.

HP #390 well said. it is a well recognized fact that with the rapid spread of early islam in its early days, different versions of the Quran were written. this is not surprising - even the Bible had to be standardized (King James version); and a few years ago pre-standard version of the Quran were found in yemen, and per last reports (on NYT) were in the custody of scholars in Germany. This in no way detracts from the core message of the Quran - which is quite simple and commonsensical.

dm #398 Lets be clear: "islam" is not a person or a state or a bunch of bullies that can "allow" or "disallow" anything.

It is you, my friend, along with the reverend pat robertson, who has taken upon himself to pick and chose the most absurd and regressive definition of islam. Fortunately, most muslims dont look towards you or ben laden or pat robertson to define islam for them.

Re: # 387

Hamidm sahib:

"..... do you really think that you will be able to convince people like captain clueless and tahmed that the koran might be a work of fiction edited by a committee of four men and a goat ? ............."

To a non-muslim like me, the above statement makes me ask a question: "Why is it important to convice other believers in Islam?

Dost sahib, and Kaal may present their views on work, philosophy and ritualism in Hinduism and get over it.

Why in Islam this obsession to convince the others is important? Isn't there a contradiction?

On one hand the believers tell that in Islam there is no middle man to interpret and that there is a direct relationship (whatever that means) with God. Then on the other hand believers take it to themselves to tell others why they are right and the other is not (e.g. recent Hamidm Sahib vs Tahmed Sahib debate here, just to mention).

Can you not see Gangaram's confusion? I really wonderr about the state of mind of your grandfather Gopinath.

dost writes "Thanks. I had thought that Ar-Rahman was just an attribute of Allah."

Yes it is an attribute of Allah, the Quran says 17:110:

"Call upon Allah, or call upon Ar-Rahman: by whatever name ye call upon Him, (it is well): for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. .."

Conjecturing from this that just because an attribute was an alternative name, it was a discrepancy in what God was called is dimwitted. Thank you kindly....


Maharana I knew you would like what HP wrote, it fits in with your Hindu biases. Those sources 'post date' the Quran for one and for two, they are not consistent across the board and for three, the 'shia' quran had nothing to do with that "committee" or with Uthman but is still the same even according to the sources...

Have a nice day and take it easy,

TNI Masadi

tahmed#91:

I do not dislike Islam and do admire parts of it. If Islam allowed picking and choosing and one could choose what you choose to choose, I for one would be completely okay.

HP:

"Before Allah Muslim God was Ar-Rahman"

Thanks. I had thought that Ar-Rahman was just an attribute of Allah.

Re: # 394

BTW the Quran says that it contains nothing new


so do u

no wonder why would not one ban spamn???

u must be the lonliest creature LOL

HP #390,

That was impressive. I did not know all the things you mentioned in your post. Why no muslim has ever written about this on chowk, I don't know. I remember reading that Muhammad wanted to unite all the warring tribes in arabia and hence islam (as one of the reasons) came about by weaving various tribal cultures and beliefs.
I guess if more muslims knew this, it would be better for them and the mankind.

Adios

Have a nice day and take it easy and read the article chowk staff censored,

The Barack Conspiracy

http://chowk.com/ilogs/69522/40823

BTW the Quran says that it contains nothing new, so this searching for similarities and terming them sources is Prima facie an exercise in futility. The real exercise would be to disprove it by using scientific criteria and that does not mean scanning through hadith books and their tales to come up with a list of committee members who compiled it.

HP writes "There is no harm in saying that the Quran has many sources..."

The Quran has many facts, if you term them sources (which at best is guess work with no scientific backing) so be it. Just because something is known before (and the Quran doesn't claim otherwise) does not mean it was manufactured from the various sources that had bits and parts of it. Content analysis of the Quran reveals that no "committee" was involved in its compilation with their own understanding or differences of style, discrepancy in the order (which is internally verifiable btw) would have emerged. There is no faith involved in undertaking a scientific content analysis of the book. Regarding the "name" and the "crescent", there is no such symbolism mentioned, even those who use it do not link it to Allah in any way, this moon god business is conjecture, backed by no historical account is BS of the first caliber. The Quran was no secret like the Talmud, it was with the people, it was recited and memorized, it was used in daily prayers. Its manufacture after the event unlike the books of the Bible with no such checks and balances would have been quite impossible...

Have a nice day and take it easy and do not take the easy way out of explaining a fantastic book by using third rate inventions.

TNI Masadi

#389 hamidm: " big bad bullies like urstruly are just going to kick over their table and beat the koran out of them .."

big bad bully urstruly challenged me (#350). I provided a "fitting response" (#365). Urstruly has been unable to respond.

tahmed 1, urstruly 0

from the sidelines, cheema sahib (who makes no bones about his dislike for islam) rose to urstruly's defense (after all, islam-haters love the urstruly's of the muslim world) and i gave him a fitting response. so the reverend Dost Mitter (who also makes no bones about his dislike for islam) stepped in to try and help, by anointing urstruly as the true spokesman for islam.

What does that tell you?

#386 DM

“As for the hearsay part, wasn't the Quran itself compiled by Usman decades after the death of the Prophet? And didn't he also use the same technique? I believe that he appointed a committee to come up with the correct version since there were conflicting versions. Come to think of it, the Quran does sometimes appear to be the work of an inter-departmental committee trying to accomodate conflicting viewpoints.�

Partially true! The Quran was written during Mohammed’s time. The compilation was simply because Mohammed supposedly dictated the Quran to many people and everyone tried to hang on to their own copies.

The true part: It was written by a committee. There is no reason to believe it was dictated by God. But that is the belief and there is no reason also to go into this ridiculous debate.

There is no harm in saying that the Quran has many sources. The Talmud, after all is an attempt by the Sages to graft Greek methodology to Judaism.

Before Allah Muslim God was Ar-Rahman, which was also another name for Jewish Talmud God Rahmana. (Similar to Ramayana or Rama’s journey of Hindus?) Allah was the moon god in Kaaba and that is the origin of Crescent as Muslims symbol.

Islam is based on many religions most important being the Sabean of Yemen, the Prophet visited Yemen before he started preaching Islam. The rituals of 5 prayers and the 30 days fasting were actually adapted from the Sabeans. (You can search sabean on Wiki…which has pretty good info.The quran also mentions the Sabean religion) Hanafism was a popular religion in Mecca around that time and Islam’s monotheism comes from that too. Monotheism being a Greek construct. Moses (if there was someone by this name) also preached Monotheism.

The committee members who wrote the Quran.
• Imrul Qays—an ancient poet of Arabia who died a few decades before Muhammad’s birth
• Zayd b. Amr b. Naufal—an ‘apostate’ of his time who preached and propagated Hanifism
• Labid—another poet
• Hasan b. Thabit—the official poet of Muhammad(He also was one of the persons who took dictation of the Quran from Mohammed)
• Salman, the Persian—Muhammad’s confidante’ and an advisor
• Bahira—a Nestoraian Christian monk of the Syrian church
• Jabr—a Christian neighbour of Muhammad
• Ibn Qumta—a Christian slave
• Khadijah—Muhammad’s first wife
• Waraqa—Khadijah’s cousin brother
• Ubay b. Ka’b—Muhammad’s secretary and a Qur’an scribe
• Muhammad himself

There were other parties involved too. They were:
The Sabeans
Aisha—Muhammad’s wife
Abdallah b. Salam b. al-Harith—a Jewish convert to Islam
Mukhyariq—a Rabbi and another Jewish convert to Islam

Re: # 388

dost-mittar ji,

.... let's be fair ..... most people have a smorgass-board approach to religion - we pick what we want and leave the rest for idiots, savants, mullahs, sadhus and other riff raff ....... the problem with islam is that the smorgass-board has fallen under the control of the wahabis who don't want to give you too many choices ..... tahmed and captain clueless are trying to set up their own little table with cupcakes and tea, but i am afraid that big bad bullies like urstruly are just going to kick over their table and beat the koran out of them ......

hamidm2#387:

I was presenting the views of a non-believer and not of a believer to whom the Quran is divine. My point simply is that one cannot reject the hadith on the basis that they are based on what some people narrated while accept the Quran which was validated using a similar technique.

dost-mittar ji,

..... do you really think that you will be able to convince people like captain clueless and tahmed that the koran might be a work of fiction edited by a committee of four men and a goat ? ............. good luck!

..... in any case, it doesn't really matter because regardless of what the koranists say, islam is what the vast majority understand it to be - and that includes bukhari's hadith and maudoodi's tafseer ...... it is silly to insist that abdul, who doesn't know his elbow from a hole in the ground, can actually make any sense out of a book of rhetoric .........

bulleya#373:

I had referred to the Last Sermon because your quote did not come from The Quran; if you give the appropriate quote from the Quran, then that could be discussed, if not by me, then by some real experts on the Quran and Arabic.

As for the hearsay part, wasn't the Quran itself compiled by Usman decades after the death of the Prophet? And didn't he also use the same technique? I believe that he appointed a committee to come up with the correct version since there were conflicting versions. Come to think of it, the Quran does sometimes appear to be the work of an inter-departmental committee trying to accomodate conflicting viewpoints.

And oral traditions are quite acceptable in religion, The Hindus hold their vedas as sacred and they were passed down over centuries from fathers to sons in an oral tradition; still they are considered valid because a brahmin from Kashmir recites the same mantras as the one from Kerala.

To a non-muslim, ahadith are more authentic than the quran for which one has to accept sometimes seemingly self-serving revelations by one person.

I accepted your accusation of prejudice against me but I should add that, if I am prejudiced, so are Urstruly and akcheema: they differ profoundly in their acceptance of their faith but seem to display a lot greater detailed and in-depth knowledge of their religion than do either you or tahmed saheb.

How did we come to shia sunni Deoband Wahabi Bokhari ?

The article and heading is






Are the Converted Tribals Really Hindu?

Answer that .

why Cheema Hamidm ...Are NOT muslim?

Its Yes to both question Sorry Murad .You have the opposite view

Re: # 380

who flagged my post and why ? ..... for god's sake, "cow dung" is not a bad word !

Re: # 370

#370 Posted by majumdar on October 23, 2008 3:27:45 am
Cheema sahib,

For a murtid, you do know a lot about the Faith.

Regards

Infact defenition of MURTID is historians expert on Islam ...lol

Bernerd Pipes Lewis
Arun Francis koenrad Shourie
Hamidm Aga Khan Mohommed progeny military brat

Cheema the local hala meat butcher turned moshe Kahane ..

Hamidm #380 I was telling mr cheema that, not you. While you and I disagree at times, given your basic urbane and friendly manner, it is always a pleasure to chat (including taking differing views) with you.

And your warning about the tweety bird is quite valid - it is too easy to turn religion into a fetish. I am too old for that, and my views on religion have been consistent and steady through the years on chowk - i.e. keep it simple. dont make a meal out of it (leave that to the unemployable men who need a beard and who need to do magical tricks - aka rituals to assuage their insecurities (or more, advance their economic prospects). But I have seen too many people sink into this "nice and cosy" bs that they sincerely think is Islam to disagree with you on this point.

Re: # 373
Salman Historian Cheema

Its ammended correctly

Al maja was not god neither he produced Koran

There is history of Islam fron 7th cemtury till date

There are better HISTORIANS than u & salman If we want REAL history instead of Fiction Booker Salman .in case u dont know booker is for fictions not history .....who am i talking to wall ..


Prince phillip
while his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, was the eldest child of Prince Louis of Battenberg, (german)and

sister to Earl Mountbatten of Burma

tahmed mian,

..... i, for one, am not 'freaked out' that you are 'comfortable' in your faith ...... actually i am happy for you and wish you a wonderful hereafter with virgins of your choice ....... but i would still like to remind you of the little tweety bird that fell into a pile of fresh cow dung and decided to stay in it because it was nice and cosy and warm .....

Re: # 364 Cheema

Some of your assertions made in your post are based on the common misconception that the Islamic law and Jurisprudence is based on the Ahadith compiled and "verified" by Bokhari et al, but truth, in fact, is opposite to that. The Islamic law and jurisprudence, as we know it today, came into existence first, and ahadith were compiled later.

The fact of the matter is that Imam Bukhari is not the first or the only person who compiled ahadith about 200 years later; but the fact remains that the great work of establishing Islamic laws which is based essentially on Qura'n and Hadith had already been completed 100 years before Bokhari was born (810 AC).

For example, the great Muslim Jurist Imam Abu-Hanifa (699-767) was born only 60 years after the departure of Holy Prophet (pbuh); Imam Malik was born (715-796); Imam Shafi (767-820); and Imam Hanbal (780-855). The Islamic law as we know it today is based on the legalise established by these jurists.So now when Imam Bokhari was born, great work on ahadith and turning them into law had already been completed and was already in practice. Interestingly enough Imam Malik's book of Law Al-Mowatta which still exists today and is available on-line is nothing but collection of hadith. He also uses the method of chain of narration which is attributed to Imam Bokhari.

#367: and as for the substance of what you write, you ask "now you show me where in the Surah above you get the 'legend' in detail?". Let me ask you this: where in my response did I need to know the legend in detail??

And let me then ask you this: Talking of gobbledygook, you are confusing hadith with historical background. Get this straight in your head then come talk to me about religion. (Except, per my post below, I am not interested in further exchanges with you anyway).

And spare me your pompous offers to translate from the Arabic - are you seriously unaware that the Quran is readily available with translations!!

Ref akcheema #373

[Ibn-e-maja has relayed one such hadith where the goat ate some verses related to 'grown women suckling grown men'!! ... which could have brought our "tradition" on par with the Kamasutra!! (alas)]

Is it possible that the goat could actually read Arabic (hey, miracles ARE known to occur and are documented in every type of religious writing) and selectively ate these verses out of resentment that it was violated by a member of a different species?

And in retaliation, fatwa-online has sanctioned the killing and consumption of a goat a pious Muslim had sex with?

Anyway, how come no Quranists have answered my repeated requests for the meanings of certain verses?

Unbeliveable but true! The same caste of characters insulting the Qur'an by blowing their own poor souls into smithereens!

The spiritual health of this 'sponsored' site and its interacters remains a big fat NOTHING.

cheema sahib #367: I realize that you are more freaked out by someone like me who does not fit your caricature of a muslim who is comfortable with his faith, than by someone like urstruly who does. So give me a break - urstruly challenged me and I responded.

What I wrote is clear enough, and you are merely trying to paint it as confusing "gobbledygook".

I ignored the rest of your post after the chowk-style insulting manner in the opening sentence. This is the third time I have had to point to your insulting manner, you apologized the first two times, no need to apologize the third time. I like to waste time on chowk with individuals who can write like civilized people. Cheers.

Re: # 373

CORRECTION:

no "the" before allah ... he is unique enough as it is and

...amended (NOT amanded)

apologies

Re: # 372; hamidm sahib

LOL!! ... I take it the question is purely rhetorical? .. we are talking about a goat 'inspired' by the holy spirit here!

Ibn-e-maja has relayed one such hadith where the goat ate some verses related to 'grown women suckling grown men'!! ... which could have brought our "tradition" on par with the Kamasutra!! (alas)

we all know about the "Satanic Verses" ... even mentioned by Tabri ... where the daughters of the allah were denied their legitimate status (no goats were harmed in this one!)

the other one (10 'siparas') is of course related to Ali's 'buzurgi' amongst the 'Salaaf' ....

I'll tell you a little story here .... when Prince Phillip married Elizabeth, the constitution was amanded to grant British citizenship to the prince ... (Greek by birth) ... this amendment has a name but the general public knows it as "shagging the queen"!!

Khuda hafiz

Re: # 366

chhema sahib,

.... we all know that zaid bin thabit and the three knaves are the real authors/editors of the book, but what about the goat ? ....... according to my people, the goat played a major role in preventing ali from ascending the throne after mo's death .... since you seem to be an expert on the twisted history of the koran, can you confirm the goat's role in its publishing ......

......also, did anyone vaidate the origin of any of the verses recited by a winged creature or do we have to take mo's word for it?...... did anyone question ali and khadija ?......... how do we know that mo didn't make up all that stuff ....... using the logic that the koran has been memorized by a lot of people and therfore must be true, can we assume that jack and jill really went up the hill ?

Re: # 370; majumdar

to reject something one needs to know what one is rejecting ... it is only fair

Cheema sahib,

For a murtid, you do know a lot about the Faith.

Regards

Ref Bull-Yeah #360

[......the aim is not to astonish you or anyone else........the aim is to figure out the philosophical basis of islam.......this basis may seem ridiculous to many people......but if one is going to debate something, one has to, first figure out what it is......]

So, instead of astonishing me, can you figure out for me the following, taken straight from the Quran?


“Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.� Koran 2:191

“Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.� Koran 9:123

“When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.� Koran 9:5

“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.� Koran 3:85

“The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.� Koran 9:30

“Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam� Koran 5:33

“The infidels are unclean; do not let them into a mosque.� Koran 9:28

“Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies.� Koran 22:19

“Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them.� Koran 47:4

“The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.� Koran 8:65

“Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.� Koran 3:28

“Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.� Koran 8:12

“Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.� Koran 8:60

Re: # 367

... go on, since you happen to be an 'angrezi daan', here it is in English:

[In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

HAST thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with the army of the ELEPHANT?

Did he not cause their stratagem to miscarry?

And he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils),

Claystones did they hurl down upon them,

And he made them like stubble eaten down!]

Re: # 365; st. tahmed

that wasn't the question Urstruly sahib asked .... you are so fond of distracting from issues and coming up with gobbldegook pseudo-explanations, it is not funny!

what he asked is where do we get the context of 'Surah Al-Fil'? .... the story is hardly explained in detail in that short Surah ... unless I read it wrong? where do we get to know about "Abraha" and his army ... there attack on the Kaaba ... and the "Ababeel" sent down from the skies with nothing but small rocks to throw on the advancing army ... and how the whole 'lashker' was completely destroyed!

[Bismillah-ir-rahman-ir-rahim

1. ''Alam tara kayfa fa'ala rabbuka bi-as-habil-fil


2. ''Alam yaj'al kaydahum fi tadlil


3. Wa-''arsala 'alayhim tayran ababil


4. Tarmihim bihijaratinm min sijjil


5. Faja'alahum ka'asfinm ma" kul]

now you show me where in the Surah above you get the 'legend' in detail? if it is difficult for you to understand arabic, I am happy to provide with a translation ... I just want to see what you make of it first!

Re: # 364

... and as for the 'un-altered' status of the Quran, the following Hadith gives us some historical perspective:

[Bokhari: vol. 6, hadith 510, pp. 478-479; book 61
Narrated Anas bin Malik:

Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of Sham and the people of Iraq were Waging war to conquer Arminya and Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq) differences in the recitation of the Qur'an, so he said to 'Uthman, "O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Book (Quran) ..." So 'Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, "Send us the manuscripts of the Qur'an so that we may compile the Qur'anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you." Hafsa sent it to 'Uthman. 'Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, 'Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and 'AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. 'Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, "In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur'an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur'an was revealed in their tongue." They did so, and when they had written many copies, 'Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt. ..." ]

... all Bokhari did was to simply "compile" the existing Ahadith in a book form ... like I said, he did it with utmost sincerity and even included 'Istikhara' as a discriminator! ... those 'traditions' DID exist all through muslim history .. same as the Quran DID exist before being compiled into a book form by Uthman (as we know it) ...

... surely you are not suggesting there was NO Quran in the years of AbuBakr and Umer when it wasn't available in its current book version that we know today?

urstruly #350 Here is my response to your challenge: The Quran makes a fundamental point, which basically is that each human being is responsible for using his God-given faculties to distinguish between right and wrong, and for doing the right thing, and for having faith in God in doing so. The rest of the Quran basically provides examples to illustrate this basic message.

Seen in the above context, Surah Al Fil is easily understood as being an illustration of faith in power of God - i.e., even the best armed army can be reduced to nothing by an Act of God. A perfectly reasonable illustration of a perfectly reasonable message.

End of business as far as a muslim is concerned.

Now you tell me what I missed because I did not have the benefit of hadith? btw, in your response, dont tell me that I missed the point about this army was destroyed because it had evil intent of some kind - the Quran makes it clear elsewhere that man cannot understand the ways of God, and so sometimes bad things can happen to good people too.

Re: # 360; bulleya

it is often said that Christ's message was 'hijacked' by Paul and the Christianity that evolved was more a 'Pauline' tradition then had anything to do with Jesus himself ... therefore the muslim stand on this is that the whole 'tradition' ... despite having similarities with Islam, is null and void since the "last and FINAL" message is here

you are making the same assertions regarding Islam ... Mohammed's 'true' message, as stated in the Quran, distorted by the likes of Bokhari ... hence giving rise to a "tradition" which had distorted the 'original' message .... do we then conclude this message has lost its credibility along the same lines as Pauline Christianity? (despite having superficial similarities with the 'original' message via the Quran)

as far your statement re: the 200 years gap... in the days of the "Salaaf" and subsequently, all these "traditions" were incorporated into muslim life/juriprudence etc ... in fact people used to go as far as doing "Istikharas" to 'validate' the 'true' message! Sahaba used to have meetings to 'speculate' what "the messanger of God" would have done under similar circumstances .... apparently every single Hadith in "Sahih" Bokhari was included only after a positive 'Istikhara' by the man .... those heresay 'traditions DID exist and got passed down the generations ...

.... don't make up/distort history to "delude" yourself and create a make/believe reality that only convnices one person ... because you don't have the courage to call a spade a spade

the next exit is the smoky forest exit, famous for ultra clear self imposed illusions..

[[
sunnah is, of course, taken as a part of islam......but only that which is described in the quran, as quoted by the verse, which declares islam to be finished and defined......it does not say quran is finished.....it says islam as a religion is totally defined.......
]]

which verse is it guys? Let me know I will check it to see if Kuran should have continued after this verse or not? This is an interesting question?

Also, what are we doing about the fact that Kuran itself was written much after the death of Muhammad, do we know if those Qurras or reciters were lying or not, did somebody do a quality check on those qurras???

... ok leave it, let's consider only Quran exists and no hadiths and let's even forget who Muhammad is, so what is the philosophy of Kuran??

Re: # 351

"...were not claimed by any Hindu, Jain or Buddhist authority but were the exaggerations of court flatterers in the exaggerated persian style praising the muslim piety and iconaclasm of Ghazni, Aurangzeb and others...."

Unfortunately, we Hindus did not take to celebrating the martyrdoms that are aimed at keeping alive the hatred against the enemies for generations by turning such events of massacre into evens like Muharrams .........

It is good that the sikhs took leaf and started celbrating Ghallu-garas and martyrdoms .....

It is really sad that we hindus did not celebrate these events of masscares and genocide because we are supposed to live a life of Kshama, Daya and Ahimsa....

Atleast celebrations like Moharrum would have kept that hatred against muslims alive for generations.....

In modern days , perhaps we should start keeping fasts and remember the day Ghouri massacred 10,000 hindus in one day.........at least then Hindus would never forget the fate that Islam has reserved for Hindu idolators like me........

akcheema #: " there are no examples throughout muslim history where Quran was taken as a guideline in its own right without the Sunnah .... "

this is not correct.......the first book of hadith came out around 200 years after the quran.....there was no authored book of hadith during those 200 years......

there is a difference between sunnah and hadith.....sunnah is what the prophet actually did.....hadith is what a person, 200 years after the prophet, thought that he did......

the fact that hadith have been followed, primarily through a clergy, for centuries, does not make them valid.......validity has to be established, via facts and logic......

sunnah is, of course, taken as a part of islam......but only that which is described in the quran, as quoted by the verse, which declares islam to be finished and defined......it does not say quran is finished.....it says islam as a religion is totally defined.......

anything that comes after that, can be thrown out, or adapted....but cannot be declared undisputable......

"the whole argument is astounding!!"

....you are missing the point......the aim is not to astonish you or anyone else........the aim is to figure out the philosophical basis of islam.......this basis may seem ridiculous to many people......but if one is going to debate something, one has to, first figure out what it is......

george bush may seem ridiculous to me.......but if i am in a discussion on him, i should at least establish what and whom he happens to be......

urstruly #: "by the Holy Prophet (pbuh) the need for Hadith (explanation of Qura'n) becomes inevitable. Holy Prophet (pbuh), himself instructed and allowed to document Hadith, and while doing that he clarified to the scribes as to what constituted as his words (hadith) and what was the Divine verses."

........i will ask you the same question......can you take any hadith, written by bukhari in any of his volumes....and validate its genuniness......take any single one.....

can you tell me exactly where these documneted hadith are present that the holy prophet, "allowed"......where are they.......

the basic tracibility of the hadith is as follows: so and so told so and so who told so and so, over two hundred years........there is no way to prove whether any one of these links actually distorted the words or actually uttered them, since most of the people in the chain were dead by the time bukhari authored the hadith.......

#356 Posted by akcheema on
[[
I thought this article is about the gobbldegook called hindooism; no?? so how come it is Islam that is always 'discussed'?
]]

good question:-) That is the most amazing part, we start with hinduism and always end up at Islam and you will see that the battle is always fought in defense of Islam:-) Only one sided small fights are there in case of hanoodism... the reason is simple, the ideologically weak fort, with lot of insecurities is Islam (irrespective of how strong it was or is with swords or beheadings).... so after some initial movements the armies are always fighting under the fort of Islam:-).... This is the fort of group ego of Islam that knows very well what Islam is but has to defend it, in any case...


-pinku, saheb aur bivi dono ka gulaam

******************
heresay cannot even lead to a prosecution in a court of law, in the same timeframe and in the same neighborhood.....how in the world can heresay be used to validate oral traditions, over centuries and different countries.......to the point that the exact wordings of heresay are considered 100% exact and can be used for jurisprudence......

it is logically impossible......and the statistical possiblity of such accuracy would be microscopic.......
******************

I'm amused by the dragging of logic, statistics, and accuracy into discussions like this. :-)

So you want validation that whether some Bukhari dude accurately documented the life of Mr.Muhammad.

Do you ever think along the same lines of asking for validation whether Muhammad dude accurately reflected what Mr.Allah said ?. Instead of Mr.Allah it could it be Mr.Devil ?. How do you validate one way or the other?.

Re: # 355; pinku mian (or bibi ... as the case may be)

[[discussing Islam???]]

I thought this article is about the gobbldegook called hindooism; no?? so how come it is Islam that is always 'discussed'?

hmmmmm so discussing Islam is like ignore the straight forward reason, blurr the discussion using blurred islamic text and then take the very first exit into the thick forest filled with smoke.... and show your clear vision there.... in that thick smoke and zero visibility everything is ultra clear..

Re: # 345; hamidm sahib

as far as my reading of the Good Book (the Quran) goes, there is absolutely no mention of the "sunnat-e-Ibrahimi" in that ..... I'd be more than happy to stand corrected by the Ulema-e Karaam here .... including those almost canonised souls such as St. Tahmed (may Allah's peace and blessing be upon him)

dost-mittar #: "You have mentioned the last sermon of the Prophet to show that the religion was complete at that time; the sermon itself is not part of the Quran...."

...i have quoted the line which says that religion is complete......this is straight out of the quran......

"And the quran itself tells people to obey Mohammad, so Sunna is implicit in it."

...yes, sunnah is implicit in it.....it is implicit, to the extend described in the quran.....not by bukhari.......this is my whole point.....

" would also say that Islamic scholars have gone through a lot of pain to validate ahadith....considered fully valid that were substantiated by several narrators."

can you explain what they have done......i have asked this to many people who make the argument that you make.....please detail it out.....take any single hadith out of the thousands and detail out exactly the process used to validate that hadith......take your pick of any.....

heresay cannot even lead to a prosecution in a court of law, in the same timeframe and in the same neighborhood.....how in the world can heresay be used to validate oral traditions, over centuries and different countries.......to the point that the exact wordings of heresay are considered 100% exact and can be used for jurisprudence......

it is logically impossible......and the statistical possiblity of such accuracy would be microscopic.......

in any case do highlight how any single hadith can be traced back to validate its originality......100%.....and i will consider your argument to be accurate........and mine to be inaccurate.......keep in mind there are thousands of hadith which need to be validated in this manner.....

Murad babu,

......Most of the atrocities ..... were the exaggerations of court flatterers in the exaggerated persian style praising the muslim piety and iconaclasm of Ghazni, Aurangzeb and others.....

Are you implying that "Muslim piety" consists of committing atrocities on non-Muslims?

Regards

Im in a camp in the wilds of Punjab so ive not been able to read all the resonses. No one will defend the violence of any invading or resident ruler but remember that the records are highly biased. Most of the atrocities including the sacking of Somnath were not claimed by any Hindu, Jain or Buddhist authority but were the exaggerations of court flatterers in the exaggerated persian style praising the muslim piety and iconaclasm of Ghazni, Aurangzeb and others.

Ghazni reportedly killed as many Shias in Persia as Hindus at Somnath. He had a Brahmin general called Tilak. Timur Lang slaughtereded both Hindu and Muslim residents of Delhi who challenged the looting of his troops. He killed 80,000 Muslims in Baghdad so religion had less to do with it than political expediency in brutal times. We should not read too much religious significance into the excesses of despots.

Re: # 348 tahmad

Here is my challenge to you too, which I have posed to every Mirzai masquerading as a Quranite before and the self-proclaimed 20th century moderns; please explain to me the Chapter titled "The Elephant (105)" without using any of the Hadiths. It has only 5 verses; shouldn't be that hard.

Re: # 346

"There is no other book that has been memorized word to word by 100s of millions of people around the globe. That is why when Qura'n boasts that it is the miracle in itself, the proof validates its claim at the same time."

That is a BS claim........

Millions of people know Jana Gana Mana by heart ... or some other pop hit ....that does not turn the composer or he song into a "miracle"!!

Islamists are real dumb people who would go to any illogical extent in order to defend Mohammad!

urstruly: the need for hadith is "inevitable" only for those for whom the need to disregard the Quran is inevitable...

hamidm #344 you are sounding more and more like McCain...with mr cheema playing sarah palin...and dost mittar playing the reverend pat robertson..

very nice indeed!

Re: # 331 Dost

I think you have summed up the relationship between Qura'n and Sunnah quite accurately. I must also add that Qura'n itself is in fact the biography of Prophet Mohammad (pbuh) (in Quranic words itself); but since the verses in Qura'n are not arranged in the chronological order as they were revealed but were arranged as instructed by the Holy Prophet (pbuh) the need for Hadith (explanation of Qura'n) becomes inevitable. Holy Prophet (pbuh), himself instructed and allowed to document Hadith, and while doing that he clarified to the scribes as to what constituted as his words (hadith) and what was the Divine verses.

The difference between Qura'n and other sacred text is that, that Qura'n is only the word of Allah; whereas the Bible and the Torah are a mix of both the Divine word and the Hadith of many Prophets of Israel. For example, there are many many verses in Bible that go something like "And then He (Jesus pbuh) said that....", which leave no doubt in anyone's mind that such sentences were later added as biographical notes into the Bible. The same thing goes with the Torah, which includes the descriptions of verious Prophets and Kings that came after Moses (pbuh). So logically any such description cannot be the original Torah.

The Holy Qra'n is the only book in the history of mankind that has remained unalterable and will remain so until the end of Time. There is no other book that has been memorized word to word by 100s of millions of people around the globe. That is why when Qura'n boasts that it is the miracle in itself, the proof validates its claim at the same time.

cheema sahib,

... talking about sunnah, is circumscion a sunnah ? .... they day call it sunnat (or sutaan) in punjabi ..... if that is so, then surely tahmed and captain cluless have been cheated and conned into mutilation ....... that would be ironic !

Re: # 341

cheema sahib,

.... it is amazing to what depth people will sink to convince themselves that their fears and superstitions are justified ...... tahnks for reminding the flaming koranists like tahmed jr. that the prophet (pbuh and his camel) himself said that we have to believe in his sunnah (whatever the heck that might be and whoever the heck the author might have been ......)

captain clueless,

"my argument is that it is the quran....for the simple reason that the quran, itself, says so.....religion is completed (rightly or wrongly) in the quran"

.... that sounds so stupid! ..... even a four year old does not buy the argument "because i say so" and that is why most parents simply say "because!" ........

Haramimau #338


Let me remind you of your own words in an earlier post...

QUOTE Harimau skewers the lower castes like you guys might skewer meat for sheesh-kebabs.
Harimau walks tall, knowing full well that just by birth alone he is superior to 95% of Indians and 100% of non-Indians. That kind of self-confidence is not easy to come by.

Harimau pities mlecchas like you who have the misfortune to be born into a strange cult and who can have no exit strategy short of death. In fact, he pities mlecchas more than he pities the lower castes who at least have reservations going for them.

When I go to a roadside temple near my home for a special puja, I deliberately wear a dhoti but no upper garments. You should see what happens: the sight of the sacred thread around my torso parts the crowd who stand a respectful foot away from me so that I won`t be defiled by their touch. This in the city of Chennai after 75 years of anti-Brahmin propaganda. Hey, I like that.

The Communist minister Chakraborty in West Bengal, defending his attendance at a religious ceremony, said that he is seen as a brahmin first, a Bengali next and a Communist last.

Nope, we don`t squirm. We walk with our heads held high. Squirming is for low-lifes, such as worms on a hook. UNQUOTE

Little wonder the "worms" want to quit Hinduism and convert to any available religion.


So dear Haramimau, you stand exposed for what you actually are.... a hypocrite... and you have no business casting stones..... actually you have no business even existing..... the world would be better off without you.....


Is there no end to the duplicity of some Hindus ???

Re: # 340

PS ... from Prophet Mohammed's last sermon too:
"“O People! No Prophet or Apostle Will Come after Me and No New Faith Will Be Born. Reason well, therefore, O People! and understand words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the QUR’AN and my SUNNAH (i.e., sayings, deeds, and approvals) and if you follow these you will never go astray. "

very clear to me that it is QURAN AND SUNNAH and neither on its own ....

... I don't have an issue with people following any religion but when they try to distort its meaning to cater for their own individual sensitivities, they are being dishonest .. with everyone, including themselves

like hamidm sahib says be a cultural muslim... with no refernce to "faith" ... I don't have an issue with that whatsoever ... it is part of one's heritage

but these apologists are trying to adhere to a modified 'faith' which is different .... I wouldn't be surprised (as hamidms's ealier assertions) that some of them are mirzais! ... in my limited experience mirzais do emphasis the QURAN more than anything else .. including Prof Abdus Salam (who I have a great deal of respect for) who use to quote the book left, right and centre

Re: # 331; dost sahib

you are absolutely right .... there are no examples throughout muslim history where Quran was taken as a guideline in its own right without the Sunnah .... this "Quranism" is a recent phenomenon and would only last as long as it takes for some strong minded to present its flaws in similar details as the apparent embarrasing nature of the Hadith literature

the whole argument is astounding!! first we have a God who sends out 'messages' through jewish prophets ... these messages get tampered with (against the WILL of God!!) and he ends up chosing an arab to relay the 'same' message (also the 'final' edition .. apparently!!) ... initially it was "un-alterable" ... then some geezer called Bokhari comiples a whole bunch of embarrassing stuff and uses some Sahaba and Ummahaat-ul-momineen (most prominent being Ayesha) to justify his 'statements' .... the whole Ummah follows them until in the 20th/21st century a few 'westernised' muslims com up with "Quranism" .... apparently history got it wrong again! ... God's message (even the perfect and final one) got tempered with yet again!!

Is there no end to the impotence of this God????

My request for explanations of certain verses in #338 is in no way confined or limited to Romair.

All Mozzies who trot out the statement "Islam is a peaceful Religion" such as Mullah32 are welcome to try!

Ref Bull-Yeah #329

[......the philosophical (and of every other kind) basis of islam is the quran....or is it the quran plus the hadith plus the millions of other layers of literature written on top of the hadith.......

my argument is that it is the quran....for the simple reason that the quran, itself, says so.....religion is completed (rightly or wrongly) in the quran.....what islam were people following, between the 200 years of the quran and the writing of the first books on hadith..

if we take hadith to be a pillar of islam, then it gains far more importance than the quran.....as their is far more text in the hadith than in the quran.....and, thus, in this case, islam becomes incomplete, if we don't take into account the life of bukhari......

infact bukhari then becomes more important than muhammad in islam.....because the life of muhammad is studied not based on the limited vague set of instructions given to him in the quran by God, but by the way bukhari describes muhammad in his book of hadith........considring that all of hadith (every single one, as far as i know) is heresay over hundreds of years, all of them could be incorrect.....]

But then the Quran itself was not written down for some time... some say it was not written down till after Mohammad's death. Of course, Mohammad himself did not write it down since he did not know how to read or write.

So why should the Quran be more accurate than the Sunna?

Hamidm mentioned somewhere that a goat ate part of the Quran so for all you know you don't have the COMPLETE set of instructions for life.

Let us get back to the Quran anyway, assuming it to be complete and inerrant. Can you explain the following to us? We are prepared to wait until Allah the All-Powerful causes Hell to freeze over.

“Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.� Koran 2:191

“Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.� Koran 9:123

“When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you catch them.� Koran 9:5

“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.� Koran 3:85

“The Jews and the Christians are perverts; fight them.� Koran 9:30

“Maim and crucify the infidels if they criticize Islam� Koran 5:33

“The infidels are unclean; do not let them into a mosque.� Koran 9:28

“Punish the unbelievers with garments of fire, hooked iron rods, boiling water; melt their skin and bellies.� Koran 22:19

“Do not hanker for peace with the infidels; behead them when you catch them.� Koran 47:4

“The unbelievers are stupid; urge the Muslims to fight them.� Koran 8:65

“Muslims must not take the infidels as friends.� Koran 3:28

“Terrorize and behead those who believe in scriptures other than the Qur’an.� Koran 8:12

“Muslims must muster all weapons to terrorize the infidels.� Koran 8:60

India. An urban civilization with a so-far-undeciphered writing system stretched across the Indus Valley and along the Arabian Sea c. 3000-1500 bc. Major sites are Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan, well-planned geometric cities with underground sewers and vast granaries. The entire region may have been ruled as a single state. Bronze was used, and arts and crafts were well developed. Religious life apparently took the form of fertility cults. Indus civilization was probably in decline when it was destroyed by Aryans who arrived from the NW, speaking an Indo-European language. Led by a warrior aristocracy whose legendary deeds are in the Rig Veda, the Aryans spread E and S, bringing their sky gods, priestly (Brahman) ritual, and the beginnings of the caste system; local customs and beliefs were assimilated by the conquerors

correction..

use that to ignore everything that has been said by Muhammad.

by shuold be about, or, in other words, if you ignore all of hadiths or sunnah, just because you don't find it good today..

#331 Posted by dost_mittar on

DM,
I normally use different syntax to say similar thing....

here it is...

It is wrong to say that people who were staunch followers of Islam and Prophet Muhammad would have deliberately said (made up) anything negative about him in hadhiths or Sunna, instead they might have removed a few things that might not have been so good about Muhammad. It becomes deceitful if you use that to ignore everything that has been said by Muhammad.

In no way Muhammad is a better person then what muslim history shows him, he can be worse than that.

Further, Kuran itself was written hundreds of years later, so somebody can claim that Quran is not what Muhammad preached. But it is again a deception, because those who wrote Kuran or those who wrote about Muhammad (hadiths) are men of Muhammad, pure muslims. Much purer than those who try to defend ISlam using such absurd reasoning.

Re: # 331

D.M. sb all these criticism of Islam hatred /agenda demonisation whatever

you didnt have to read so much

http://www.metacafe.com/channels/vterroe/

All those lies are nicely graphcally made tried to convince iliterates about islam .

Some of your ponits are resounding identical to those

dost mittar #332 but more seriously, you are of course entitled to your interpretation of islam and the Quran. Just realize that some of us non-mullah, non-hamidm muslim "dummies" beg to differ with it.

dost mittar #331 "You say that I am prejudiced and I have not cared to learn about Islam. You are probably right in your first observation.."

So, romair, myself and you are in agreement for once. :-)

bulleya#328:

You say that I am prejudiced and I have not cared to learn about Islam. You are probably right in your first observation but not so about the other: in fact, I have read more about Islam than have most Musims. Islam is a combination of the Quran and Sunna, one is incomplete without the other. You have mentioned the last sermon of the Prophet to show that the religion was complete at that time; the sermon itself is not part of the Quran. And the quran itself tells people to obey Mohammad, so Sunna is implicit in it. The Quran does not even tell the exact postures in which to pray and yet Muslims everywhere pray in the same manner which can only happen if the hadis are accepted as legitimate.

I have read the Quran and it's not a Book for the Dummies. One needs someone to explain the suras with reference to the context, which can only be done through hadith. Quite often, it is not obvious in the Quran even whether a particular hadith is being addressed to Mohammad, to his followers or to all men (as far as I remember, none of the verses is addressed to women).

I would also say that Islamic scholars have gone through a lot of pain to validate ahadith, so all of them are not accorded the same credence: indeed, they have used a technique often used in social sciences to validate a finding, namely the technique of mulriple evidence, in other words, only those ahadith were considered fully valid that were substantiated by several narrators.

And if you believe in the Last Sermon, then you should also believe in the concept of Ummahood because in it, the Prophet exhorts his followers: "People, just as you regard this month, this day, this city as Sacred, so regard the life and property of every Muslim as a sacred trust."

I am sure that you know all this already. I am merely writing this to say that I have read the quran, ahadith and other Islamic literature; the latest being our compatriot Tariq Fatah's book which I have reviewed and you can see the review on the book section of the Unplugged. In any case, how can even a complete dummy not become a semi-scholar of Islam after being on chowk for a whole decade?

#329 Posted by bulleya on

So bulleya, what is the philosophy of Islam and we are talking not in "muslim" or "non-muslim" sense, but what you have to say as an intelligent person. Truths are not divided between muslims and non-muslims but they are simply truths for everybody, else our understanding needs correction.

What is it that Kuran forces God to say?? How intelligent is it? How good it is for time to come? And what could have been the long term effect of God of Kuran with the kind of tribal (as per you social) laws it gave and with large armies suporting this "word of God"??


How do you change or evolve a God who has said his final words in his infancy?? When he hardly understood himself??

kaalchakra #: "In other words, hadiths may be unreliable, but doing away with them will lead to total free-for-all to everyone to claim/put forth as Quranic their own ratioality, in advancement of their own values and interests."

...the point being discussed is not how to reform or change islam.....the point being discussed (or, at least, should be discussed) is what is islam......how does islam define itself......how did God intend islam to be (if one is a muslim).....or how did muhammad intend islam to be (if one is a non-muslim and does not consider islam to be a divine religion).......

....so what is the answer to this question...regardless of how the chips may fall, one needs to study it.....

......the philosophical (and of every other kind) basis of islam is the quran....or is it the quran plus the hadith plus the millions of other layers of literature written on top of the hadith.......

my argument is that it is the quran....for the simple reason that the quran, itself, says so.....religion is completed (rightly or wrongly) in the quran.....what islam were people following, between the 200 years of the quran and the writing of the first books on hadith..

if we take hadith to be a pillar of islam, then it gains far more importance than the quran.....as their is far more text in the hadith than in the quran.....and, thus, in this case, islam becomes incomplete, if we don't take into account the life of bukhari......

infact bukhari then becomes more important than muhammad in islam.....because the life of muhammad is studied not based on the limited vague set of instructions given to him in the quran by God, but by the way bukhari describes muhammad in his book of hadith........considring that all of hadith (every single one, as far as i know) is heresay over hundreds of years, all of them could be incorrect.....

the quran does contain items about the life of muhammad, in the sense that it contains instructions given to him to convey to others......it asks him to address muslims on certain occassions and to address mankind on others.....

so, yes, if hadith are out, the whole current structure of islam will come crashing down.......clergy will disappear...who needs a clergy, when the only thing describing religion is simple book called quran......

islam will become far more flexible......which is the only way any code of life can be successful through all times.......it will provide a direction, under which human beings will make their own rules........rather than strict rules than all human beings need to follow......

...the removal of hadith as a form of the basis of exact islamic jurisprudence will not remove muhammad from the picture of islam.......it will remove bukhari and the clergy.....

muhammad was a revolutionary man by any int'l standards.....he carried out a massive social revolution, based on ideas which the progressive world has only recognized 1400 years later...his ideas of removal of clergy from society has only been adapted by the educated progressive west in the past few centuries.....his ideas of egalitarianism made a black slave (bilal) the president of syria, within the same generation, when the west is only now ready to put a black man as president (half black and not a slave).......

so muhammad survives with or without islam.....however, as per islam muhammad was only a messenger.....a vehicle through which God's instructions were to be transmitted....

had it been islam's philosophical intention to make his every move the basis of islam, then there would have been no need for the quran....someone would have, simply, walked around, following him and writing down what he did and getting his seal on it........(his seal, by the way sits in topkapi palace in turkey).......that would have been the quran......

the quran doesn't even tell muslims how to say their prayers.......yet their is, now, a very strict action-by-action method of saying prayers in islam.....all of which has been detailed out from what bukhari et al wrote.....

so the islam that muslims are following today, philosophically, is not the islam of muhammad (or God, through muhammad)......it is, primarily, the islam of bukhari, muslim etc.....

i am sure the intentions of imam bukhari, muslim etc. were good.......but in the long run, they may have done far more damage than good......their works re-ignited the role of the clergy, in a religion that forbids it by design........and they removed the flexibility of the religion, in a religion, which by philosophical design is very flexible........

dost-mittar #: "It was the Islam practised by the likes of Ghori, Ghazni and others who.....I have not read any succinct description of the philosophy of Islam..."

your knowledge of the subject is extremely limited.....as i keep suggesting to you, you will end up with very bigoted views, if you don't first understand what you are discussing....

......ghauri and ghazn(avi) etc. are not even recognized as islamic scholars......they were, more than likely following the examples of ashoka and other local kings than anything else......

....i think your views on islam (and perhaps religion, as a whole), are quite prejudiced......perhaps due to your early childhood experiences......however, your personal decency does not allow you to openly display that prejudice.....

....there is nothing wrong with prejudiced views, if one can prove them with facts......you are thus, neither willing to study the subject to substantiate your prejudices, nor are you willing to openly display your prejudiced views......

.......in that sense, you are the opposite of hamidm mian.....he, inside, is a a solid muslim.....he attends more islamic functions in one year than i do in ten......he has raised his kids as muslims.....his wife is a practicing muslim........

however, his personal indecency is so strong, that he wants to portray himself as prejudiced against something (in this case religion), even though he is in support of it....

not sure, which is worse......a prejudiced decent person.....or a non-prejudiced indecent person.....

what i do know is that it is impossible to argue against fact......so you need to first learn up on the subject.......

#325 contd...

Gandhi had forgot this lesson from Vedanta....
http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=W3_LEYwGHqo&feature=related

Re: # 315
hari... bull...

[...quran is a very compact and simple book for any tom, dick and harry to read and interpret....this is how it does away with the clergy......]


and you guys ( house moslems) complain of mis-interpretation. From Baboor, Ghajn....to current day jihadis from Philipines to Americas....everybody mis-interpreted....

Re: # 323
Murad Beg....
Jihad, as fought by Mo himself was not soft jihad. 13 wars, endless sex and violence is not soft jihad....

What BD have done in Gujrat is very reasonable(2002)? Treat animal based on the merit....

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Re: # 15

Quite right

Token rituals mean nothing except temporary expediency for temporary gain. The only conversions are the conversions of the heart. And people should be free to follow their hearts and minds.

The tragedy of the Hindutva bigots like the Bajrang Dal and VHP is that they are trying to imitate the Muslim Jihadis who hijacked Islam making the gentle Jihad of the Quran into the virulent and violent Jihad of the Taliban.

Like the Taliban (that is supposed to mean nothing but scholars)are they trying to make a Taliram out of the gentle Ram?

Re: # 264
beduinoid32...

masadi almost retired after trying hopelessly defending 7th century arab beduinism...only you are left....some element of fun should be left in the forum...

Re: # 2

Im not a semetist but a deist who believes in a great cosmic spirit and one who hates the religions created by bigoted priests.

Sorry I was in the mountains so I could not reply earlier.

I absolutely agree with Mohar11 that the original faiths are one thing but that all compulsions in religion are deplorable.

No Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Nanak or other spiritual leader ever had any religion. Religions developed many centuries later when apostles and scholars wrote the scriptures attributed to them that the armies of professional priests concretised into dogma. They then made the masses superstitious by making them believe that any `deviation from their path' would result in pain or suffering.

All the founders loved all humanity while the professional priests spread fear and hatred to those of other persuasions. Religion has seperated Man from God

Re: # 318

"...But only Islam is ascribed to be responsible for ghazni ghoure aurangzeb .."

Miyah, kaunsi duniya mein rehte ho??

All these considered violent Jehad against hindu idolators as their national duty and kept on commiting genocides against my fore fathers in the name of Islam.

They were BAD because Islam allows them to be BAD!!

The problem here is NOT muslims - but ISLAM.

Muslims are just victims of Islam- they are poor brainwashed and terrorized victims of that book of threats that does not let them sleep peacefully in their life time.

Re: # 313

D.M. sb

Exactly the point .The political islam is substituted for half baked knowledge of islam preached by mohommed .If for instence i say if in danger of your life 'kill the opponent ' its one thing but if u just pick the phrase 'kil them; you label barabarian war mongerer .

There lot of wars invasion fought won lost by all. But only Islam is ascribed to be responsible for ghazni ghoure aurangzeb even if they thaught of them as muslims doe not necessarily make them muslim for god alone knows.Why isnt christ cayse of Crusade or spanish inquisition or Hinduism for Kalinga or Israelis occupation aas judeaism which ppl seprate it by interposing zionism .is this suave p.c. semantic like 'premptive attack 'colateral damage 'civilian combantant' .you see its only demonising 'words entymology 'against than anything else

Re: # 315

Harsmi

O.K. o.k.

what do u say to this while talking to u r daughter ....



Addressing Shakuntala, Dushmanta said:
"Women generally speak untruth" The Mahabharata Adi Parva, Section LXXIV

rabiawasti #312 I hope #311 just providing a link is not an answer to anything. if you have a view on anything, just spell it out.

Ref bull #279

[...quran is a very compact and simple book for any tom, dick and harry to read and interpret....this is how it does away with the clergy......]

Ok, ok, ok!

We got your point.

Now interpret "Kill the kaffirs" from the Quran for us.

Three simple words. Tell us the meaning.

As you yourself had said, the Quran by itself is complete.

So, no need to consider context, historical or otherwise.

Do you think it means "Have a nice day"?

Ref shameless-mullah32 #276

[But rest assured, i leave shameless lying to my betters on chowk.]

Saudi Arabia searches the luggage of incoming travelers and confiscates all Bibles and pictures of Hindu gods.

In Pakistan, a climate has been created whereby all it takes is for a streetside vendor to wrap some peanuts in a Urdu newspaper but for the customer to claim that the vendor was insulting the Quran by using it to wrap up the peanuts and the vendor gets thrown in jail for blasphemy.

And a person who said that Prophet Mohammed did not shave his armpits was found guilty of blasphemy and sentenced to death. If newspaper reports are to be believed, he was shot dead inside the prison where he was held by a fellow prisoner using a gun smuggled into the prison.

He wants us to believe that the RETALIATORY killing of Christians for the murder of a Hindu holy man in Orissa is proof of India's lower tolerance for diversity compared to Pakistan's.

Wait till he trots out the RETALIATORY Gujarat riots that started AFTER the Mozzies torched a train carrying Hindu pilgrims.

Of course he claims that he does not lie.

Bull-Yeah!

Senna:

"Then why the crusade.. why spanish inquisition why some yahod/christian oppose muslims if same same ?"

These were battles between political Islam and political Christianity; now you also have fights involving political hindutva.

tahmed32: I wasn't trying to say that you have an islamist agenda. I was just replying to your post #239.

rabia: i read that link, which i see was simply to the section on shariah courts. you dont need to go through all this trouble to make me confess that there are indeed shariah courts in pakistan - since contrary to hamidm's fears, i dont have a hidden agenda of turning the world into an islamic state with myself as the caliph duly assisted by a vast harem of concubines.

While no doubt we have this mischief of sharia courts introduced by zia - but my earlier point remains valid, these are an appendage, not the main body, of the judicial system in Pakistan. That system, thanks to brave judges and lawyers, remains free from mullahism and where these jurists dont harp on religious differences (and so we had a christian as a highly respected chief justice, and a hindu as acting chief justice).

hamidm #292 so you think i am deliberately trying to obfuscate. while i realize the future of islam hangs on balance depending on where you park your retirement funds, i can only repeat what i said earlier about not giving a crap about where you wish to invest.

but dont let this stop you from rattling on as if i have a need to mislead you on anything.

#290 Kaalchakra

[That tendency has been kept in check somewhat because one could always go back to the Prophet Muhammad as the gold standard.]

"gold standard"!! Ha ha ha ha ha....This nearly killed me.

Talk about the Islamist's dilemma!!! Ha ha ha....

Re: # 306
But you dont get it

Some are saying 'go ahead'if thats what u want

Re: # 306
But you dont get it

Some are saying 'go ahead'if thats what u want

Essentially, these Abrahmic cults are protesting hindus coming out in support of poor forest ganas by saying-

"..mind your own business these forest ganas are not related to you in any way...."

It is like some one saying -

" why are you protesting the rape of this woman when she is not EVEN you family member"

Bloody Rascals!!!

Murad also has been trying to assert the same......using the same old evangelist propaganda that hindu forest dwellers are NOT hindus but something different so that the poor hindu forest ganas are left at the mercy of these soul harvestor Abrahmic cults.

Actually that is what a mullah/ayotollaah sympathesizer would like to assert as well!

It was also hilarious to find mullah Urstruly ruing the fact that their Abrahmic cult Christian bros piped them in "harvesting" poor hindu pagan souls!!

Sorry Murad, your dawah propaganda does not work here and we idolator hindus would continue to raise our voice against your Abrahmic cult of ONE DOG and would continue to support our forest pagan brothers.

And you can keep on posting your nonsense on Pakistani web sites.......

Murad, this is for you-


Tribal Jagannath as a Hindu deity
Tuesday, 14 October 2008

source: Daily Pioneer, October 14, 2008

Sandhya Jain

A 24-feet-tall Hanuman statue, installed at Sunset Point, Kanyakumari, on September 21, 2008, was surreptitiously removed by the Tamil Nadu administration in the wee hours of September 30 after alleged complaints from local fishermen.


The task was directed by Kanyakumari district collector Jyothi Nirmala, who claimed, “The trust which installed the statue had only obtained the permission of the panchayat and this was insufficient.� The panchayat had permitted Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Nama Bhiksha Kendra to create a ‘Hanuman Park,’ but, said vice-president S Pushparaj, “My wife Felicity, elected head of the panchayat, did not understand the difference between a simple park and the installation of a large statue in a public place, and allowed the installation. She wrote to the collector and withdrew her permission.�

There cannot be a greater example of religious intolerance than this peremptory removal of an image of India’s most popular deity. The incident is also indicative of the extent to which the country’s sensitive coastline has been turned anti-Hindu through evangelisation. This raises the question: Why are monotheistic traditions unable to live in peace in pluralist societies?

It is precisely this kind of de-nationalisation that tribals are doggedly contesting in the remote jungles of Orissa, where Christian missionaries are trying to tell them that they (tribals) are not Hindus! Orissa is a State whose spiritual-cultural landscape explicitly reveals the deep symbiotic relationship between tribals and non-tribals from ancient times. Tribal gods have always dominated the Hindu pantheon and in Orissa this has coalesced into a regional tradition centred around Jagannath, one of the foremost deities of the all-India Hindu pantheon.

Jagannath was first worshipped by the Sabara (Savara, Saora) tribe, and ‘miraculously’ appeared in Puri much later. Till today, Daita (Daitya) priests, descendants of the original tribal worshippers, alone have the right to dress the god, move him, and regularly renovate his wooden image. Similarly at the Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar, tribal Badu priests alone are allowed to bathe and adorn the deity.

Orissa is equally famous for the legend of Narasimha, the Vishnu avatar who burst out of a pillar to kill the asur Hiranyakasipu. The pillar is a uniconical image worshipped in tribal areas and to this day Orissa abounds with Narasimha images on wooden pillars symbolising Khambheshvari (Goddess of the Pillar). Narasimha is believed to derive his power from the shakti residing in the pillar. The pillar motif became so popular in Hindu tradition that Shiv as Bhairav was said to have emerged from a pillar.

The girija or hill-born aspect of Narasimha reinforces the tribal roots of Hindu dharma. An aboriginal god in the form of the head of a lion or tiger was worshipped in the caves and mountains of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Orissa has instances of Narasimha being worshipped as a saligram stone.

Jagannath, Vishnu as ‘Lord of the World’, shows the metamorphosis of a tribal god into a pre-eminent deity of the classical Hindu pantheon. The god’s icon is even today carved out of wood (not stone or metal), and the tribes whose rituals and traditions were woven into his worship are still living as tribal and semi-tribal communities in the region. This tribal god took a fairly circuitous route to his present pinnacle, via absorption of local shakti traditions and merger with the growing popularity of the Narasimha and Purushottam forms of Vishnu in the region in the medieval era.

Queen Vasata in the eighth century built the famous Lakshman temple in brick at Sripur. The temple plaque opens with a salutation to Purushottam, also titled Narasimha, suggesting a trend in Vaishnav tradition to stress the ugra aspect of Vishnu. This culminates in Puri where Jagannath, widely revered as Purushottam until the end of the 13th century, had close connections with Narasimha who became popular in Orissa in the post-Gupta period.

But who exactly was this wooden god? After the death of Anantavarman Chodagangadev, who reputedly commissioned the Puri temple, his chief queen, Kasturikamodini, built a temple in his homeland in Tekkali (present Andhra Pradesh), east of his first capital Kalinganagar, in 1150 AD. The temple was dedicated to the god Dadhivaman, and the inscription reveals that the image installed was of the ‘Wooden God’, and not the famous Puri Trinity of Jagannath-Balabhadra-Subhadra. Scholars say this means that Chodagangadev was a devotee of this god, and as the god’s name is preserved in Tekkali in this early period, it seems likely that Dadhivaman (or the tribal form of this Sanskritised name) was the original name of the ‘Wooden God’.

As the original ‘Wooden God’ was a unitary figure, temples for the single deity continued to be built even after a Trinitarian image emerged at Puri. Even today there are 344 Dadhivaman temples in Orissa, which perpetuate the original state of the god. The Kondh continue to practice a ritual renewal of wooden posts.

There is also something striking about the figures comprising the Jagannath triad. Subhadra’s image consists of only a trunk and a head, but Jagannath and Balabhadra are larger, with a trunk, over-dimensional head, and arm stumps. But while the heads of Subhadra and Balabhadra are oval with almond-shaped eyes, Jagannath’s head is curiously flat on top and is dominated by enormous round eyes.

Scholars explain this in terms of Narasimha’s association with wooden posts representing tribal deities. In the Andhra village Jambulapadu (Anantapur), Narasimhasvami is worshipped as a pillar to which a sheet shaped in the form of a lion’s head is attached. This lion-head explains Jagannath’s large round eyes, typical of Narasimha on account of his fury (krodh). The head of the Jagannath image makes sense when perceived as a lion’s head, where the emphasis is on the jaws, rather than as a human head.

If, as missionaries allege, classical Hindu tradition was different from the tribal, why would tribal deities rise to become the dominant figures in the Hindu pantheon? As this has been a regular pan-India phenomenon, it seems reasonable to deduce that tribals were never culturally subordinate in their interaction with non-tribal (caste Hindu) communities, but were rather the fountainhead of the Hindu cultural evolution.

#295 Posted by dost_mittar on
:-) Everybody knows how much philosophy is there in Islam, it is an open secret:-)

[[
As for me, apart from political Islam, the main philosophy is that Mohammad was the last prophet; concepts like Monotheism and most of the stories like the Genesis and the concepts of Hell and Heaven are straight from the Judeo-Christian traditions.
]]

Right, but those traditions themselves failed to comprehend the details of all kind of theism available in Hinduism. Much before Christianiy, Hinduism and Buddhism have said all you can say about God, and in a fairly intellectual way. Somehow despite those persian/arab/greek traders Christianity was not able to copy so many good things from Indic religions and then Islam tried to correct imaginary problems in Christianity with its ultra imaginary solutions through arabic speaking God. This is an amazing thing, SIlamic scholars try to say two things, first Muhammad didn't know anything about Christianity, second their religion is trying to clear the ideas of all prophets.

So basically all blame goes to imaginary Allaha:-)

That was how philosophy started in Islam.

Laddu ji,
Thank you for the explanations. I learned a new word today:Nirguna

GT
I am not TS. I borrowed those words from a chowk interact, and that's why I placed them in quotations.

And no, no worries, Islam is not khatre mein. Though some Muslims maybe so!

yaar GT, what do you think about this?

I floated the idea of creating a Distressed Economies Equity fund the other day to Dashy. I think for pakistan an equity investment would do the trick. wipe out the debt, bring in capital to develop insitutions per conditions of the agreement.

1) redristribute land and all gov't controlled assets to pvt owenership
2) limit the army to a standing force of 100K
3) Abolish all madrassahs
4) Change the contitution to remove all aspects of religion
5) Bring in crack turnaround specialists from Lazard, Alvarez Marsal and Goldman (give them warrants and euqity in pakistan based on milestones hit)
5) give up dreams of kashmir
6) Go public on the BSE

"..Is your God(gods) for all of mankind or just for Hindus? ."

Indeed , there are heirarchy of spiritual beings and all have emerged from the Brahman that is the one eternal "sat-chid-anand" reality.

But , that does not turn spiritual beings like Devatas as "FALSE" . All these spiritual beings can be worshipped.

Brahman as a Saguna-Ishwara can be worshipped as the eternal reality with positive attributes.

But Brahman in its nirguna (Formless) form CANNOT BE WORSHIPPED.

Nirguna Brahman CANNOT even be thought about. It can ONLY be REALIZED in Samadhi or deepest trance-like meditation.

I hope it clarifies ....

Hamid,

Don't worry about swaps etc. .... the worst is yet to come. The recession is yet to sink in and the credit card crisis is yet to be publicly proclaimed. If you do not want to be called an idiot by the Mrs., transfer whatever you have of your saving to tahmed's Islamic Bank. Alternately, I can tell you how to make some money in these troubled times for a small fee.

Re: # 295

d.M.sb

'concepts like Monotheism and most of the stories like the Genesis and the concepts of Hell and Heaven are straight from the Judeo-Christian traditions.'


Then why the crusade.. why spanish inquisition why some yahod/christian oppose muslims if same same ?

ts,

"Since our 'lotus like' Hindu/Indian friends of Pakistan are not only trying to reform Pakistan, but Islam itself, I thought it was about time that a Pakistani returned the favor."

Arre bhai, kaal is simply responding to the 'gentle'-man who has defined Hinduism for kaal. Don't be upset, go back to your yoga. Islam is not in danger.

Re: # 294

"Can you condemn, without hesitation, the crimes that took place on innocent Christians in Orissa?"

Certainly, I CONDEMN ALL CRIMINAL ACTIONS AGAINST INNOCENT CHRISTIAN CONVERTS.

I hope that clears the matter!

buleya#262:

"what was islam, before these places came into existence?"

It was the Islam practised by the likes of Ghori, Ghazni and others who, in turn, were following the examples set by Abu Bakr, Omar, going all the way to Prohpet Mohammad's dealing with Banu Quraiza and the jews of Medina.

"now, if you can prove that what you say is a part of islam philosophically, then your views become factual....."

I have not read any succinct description of the philosophy of Islam but Mr. Pinku seems to know about it and wants to discuss it with you.

As for me, apart from political Islam, the main philosophy is that Mohammad was the last prophet; concepts like Monotheism and most of the stories like the Genesis and the concepts of Hell and Heaven are straight from the Judeo-Christian traditions.

re 291, 292
Laddu ji,
You forgot to respond to the fact that the people terrorized in Orissa were ordinary persons. Not only you don't condemn that, you came up with excuses which makes you sound just like those who support jihadi-terror.

Can you condemn, without hesitation, the crimes that took place on innocent Christians in Orissa?
If not, how are you different from supporters of Taliban?

As far as your post on Hinduism is concerened, I did not understand most of the sanskrit words.

I do, however, know that for you guys, your land and your religion are indistinguishable.
That creates feelings of not-belonging to those Indians who are not Hindus.
If you cannot elevate God to supra-universal, can you at least elevate God to the universal level?
Is your God(gods) for all of mankind or just for Hindus?

#290 KaalChakra

:))

At this point I'm expecting deafening silence from the Islamists. The slow-witted knuckleheads are baffled. They're probably looking at this post with a mixture of suspicion and bewilderment. They know - just know there is something bad here, but cannot lay their fat fingers on the exact spot.

Ha ha ha...

Re: # 286

safe,

you do NOT need a justification for jehad against idolators like me - it is already there in your book. It is ordered by Mohammad and his alter ego Allah.

There is no need to talk about some 1947 or 1971 or Gujrat - you just need to read Hadiths , some tafsirs and atend to your Jumma sermons and get ready for jihad against us!

do not fool yourself!!

Re: # 285

1safe ji,



2. Non-hindus (read Islamic followers ) have problem because of the Islamic thought itself which does not allow any allegience to the kafir land except that of Arabian lands.

Here is what I propose for reforming Hinduism.

1. "Ishwar must be liberated from Indian nationalism. That which is supra-universal cannot be brought down to universal level, let alone, national level...."

Ishwara has nothing to do with Hindu nationalism- who told you that it is like Islamic TNT? You have a poor underrstanding of hindutva.

And who gave you the right to impose dhimmi notions of "supra-universal" that does NOT admit of local deities like Sthana-devata , Grama-devata??

We Hindu idolators would continue to admit of million of god of small things and bow down even to the smallest of atomic entity and stones on this earth. You are no one to tell us NOT to worship gods of small things including the Gods of various forests (Vana-devatas) and villages (Grama-devatas) of Hind!!


"2. Indian nationalism must be released from the clutches of Hindu theology.
This will make it easier for non-Hindu Indians to identify with their country without feeling that are getting away from 'their understanding' of God."

It is ever more stupid to talk about hindutva as if it is a counter part of Abrahmic "nation-hood".
Indian nationalism if hindutva type has nothing to do with 'hindu-theology' or their understanding of some Abrahmic DOG.

"3. Since so many educated Indians are declaring themselves as atheists, because they cannot reconcile with flying monkey brigades, Hindu theology must be distinguished from Hindu mythology."

What is "hindu theology" can you please enlighten since you speak from your Abrahmic perspective??

"4. ....Therefore, it is imperative that the cast system be abolished entirely. Because this cast system causes nothing but misery and humiliation on people based on factors they themselves have no control over."

Sure, caste system has no recognition as a legitimate legal entity- except for the purposes of reverse discrimination.

You are living in your own make believe Paki undestanding of India.

"5. Laxmi puja must be turned into Laxmi light puja. While it is necessary to acknowledge the necessity of wealth, it should not be taken to extremes. One should not burn a bride because she brought insufficient dowry: one should not kill females before they are born, just because they may become a 'financial burden' later on."

What the heck is Laxmi-light-puja?? Do you even know what is puja?? How is it linked to bride burning which happened because of the distortions that thousand years of muslim subjugation has distorted the family relations within a dhimmized hindu society and depressed the status of dhimmi woman.

re: Khurram # 271

Huh. I thought that point was too unsettling to make here. I was going to privately discuss that with a friend. But since it is already out in the open, let me state the fear.

In crudest form, it may be that getting rid of Prophet Muhammad and his life as the basis for interpreting the Quran is actually the same thing as getting rid of the Quran itself, and making it say whatever one oneself wants.

In other words, hadiths may be unreliable, but doing away with them will lead to total free-for-all to everyone to claim/put forth as Quranic their own ratioality, in advancement of their own values and interests.

That's always the biggest danger of interpretationism. That tendency has been kept in check somewhat because one could always go back to the Prophet Muhammad as the gold standard.

That's something Quranists may want to keep in mind. Otherwise, this approach will lead to endless quarrels, name-calling of one another, and argumentation by way of each person trying to impose his or her 'interpretation' on others, by any means possible.

Just a thought. Ultimately, the philosophical basis of Islam concerns only the Muslims, while non-Muslims must deal with only the religion that gets practised and translated in human actions and social structures (which is precisely what's true for Hinduism and all other religions).

Re: # 276

tahmed,

.... you are still trying to obfuscate .... we were talking about 2008 YTD returns and amana is right down there with all other funds of its type ... it says so right at the top of its web page ...... here it is for your convenience:

As of 10/17/2008 Symbol Price Change YTD
Amana Income AMANX $23.50 $-0.03 -23.92%
Amana Growth AMAGX $16.56 $ 0.00 -28.00%


..... stop clutching at straws to prove your point (whatever that might be) ............ by the way did you do any research on CII and the Federal Sharia Court ?

1Safe #285, those are all excellent ideas. As some Hindus begin to think about their religion, instead of just taking it for granted, it will be great to have those points in mind.

-------------

Romair, I meant novel in an applied, realistic sense, as practised by significant numbers of people so as to make a difference in the lives of others.

#282 Posted by bulleya on

Bulleya, I am ready to discuss philosophy of Islam? What is it? Where it is written? And what it says. And how do you know what is part of Islam and what not?

But if you rely on Kuran to be sole basis of Islam I am ok with that, if it is as short as you say, we can discuss each verse of it here?

People who were killed, burned, and driven out of their homes in Orissa were not padres but average persons who happend to be Christians.
Talk about offering justifications for jihad against infidels.

Since our 'lotus like' Hindu/Indian friends of Pakistan are not only trying to reform Pakistan, but Islam itself, I thought it was about time that a Pakistani returned the favor.

Here is what I propose for reforming Hinduism.

1. Ishwar must be liberated from Indian nationalism. That which is supra-universal cannot be brought down to universal level, let alone, national level.

2. Indian nationalism must be released from the clutches of Hindu theology.
This will make it easier for non-Hindu Indians to identify with their country without feeling that are getting away from 'their understanding' of God.

3. Since so many educated Indians are declaring themselves as atheists, because they cannot reconcile with flying monkey brigades, Hindu theology must be distinguished from Hindu mythology.

4. Human beings maybe born 'pretty' or 'ugly', 'smart' and 'not so smart'. What humans are not born as are 'good' and 'bad', ‘high’ and ‘low’. Therefore, no such essential qualities can be attributed to persons. People are 'good' or 'bad' because they are a collection of impressions life and circumstances have made on them. Proof of this is in studies done on twins separated at birth. Therefore, it is imperative that the cast system be abolished entirely. Because this cast system causes nothing but misery and humiliation on people based on factors they themselves have no control over.

5. Laxmi puja must be turned into Laxmi light puja. While it is necessary to acknowledge the necessity of wealth, it should not be taken to extremes. One should not burn a bride because she brought insufficient dowry: one should not kill females before they are born, just because they may become a 'financial burden' later on.

Re: # 283 I reject those assumptions regarding the Quran.

Your rejection makes a blind bit of difference to it all....

Khurram writes "Something to think about for Quran-only advocates,.."

Total strawmen arguments, full of assumptions of the hadith mongers regarding the Quran. I reject those assumptions regarding the Quran.

For the hadith mongers read this http://hadith.rationalreality.com

Have a nice day and take it easy

TNI Masadi

dost-mittar #: "I believe that Islam is what is taught at Deoband, Al Azhar and Qoom and not by some soft-sellers at chowk...."

what was islam, before these places came into existence?....

...this is where you go wrong, and why your comments have no philosophical basis of discussion......you say you are discussing a religion or a philosophy (take your pick) called islam, yet you are discussing deoband, al-azhar, qom (though i seriously doubt, whether you know, even, what is studied and discussed there)......

what you are doing is trying to discuss a social issue (current opinions/practices of muslims in this day's time) and equating it with a philosophical concept called islam.....these two could be identical or they could be, totally, contradictory......or both.......

it is like discussing the policies of vladimir putin and stating that you are discussing philosophies of karl marx....

you are, automatically, equating the two to be the same, without willing to get into a debate on whether they are the same or not....

it is an indication of your lack of knowledge of the subject......yet you have very solid views on it......

lack of knowledge of something + lack of willingness to debate it + very solid views on the subject = bigotry.....(or at least leads to it)......

which is, probably, why some people have refered to your views as such........now, if you can prove that what you say is a part of islam philosophically, then your views become factual........but you have, yourself, stated you are not doing that, nor interested in doing that.......

Romair #279
Very good explanation of why Hadith is relevant but not completely and totally reliable as a source for law and government.

Hamidumdum Sahib,
I am in the difficult position of having to vouch for Tahmed Sahib's veracity. Yes, because of the shariah-compliance stipulation, the Amana Fund that avoids financial stocks, pork production, gambling, and prostitution stocks, has actually posted a hefty gain. Of course, not all of the Amana Funds are shariah-compliant and therefore most did post losses in the 30%-40% range.

The good by-product of the shariah compliance was that the fund avoided financial stocks and that in itself helped it achieve success - talk about good luck.
Salim

kaalchakra #: "Quran as the sole philosophical basis of Islam, with no reference to Prophet Muhammad, is a breathtakingly novel idea"

...its neither novel nor breathtaking.....it is stated in the quran, itself in a chapter titled, "The Feast".......

"This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion." (The Feast, Quran 5:3)

...this was revealed to muhammad (if you are a muslim)/stated by him (if you are a non-muslim) after his last sermon.....shortly after which he died......

...it clearly states that the religion was completed, at this time, as per the philosophy of islam.....there is no mention of need of individuals coming hundreds of years, afterwards, writing books on hadith (which are, themselves, more voluminous than the quran), in this verse......it clearly and categorically states, that islam is complete, on this day......

hence the quran describes, as much of the life of muhammad, as needed, in the quran.....if more was needed, one has to believe, more would have been described......it would not have been left to individuals coming 200 years later to describe.....

...quran is a very compact and simple book for any tom, dick and harry to read and interpret....this is how it does away with the clergy......however, the books of hadith are larger.....and then the layers of literature referencing them is gigantic......which requires a clergy.......

in addition, quran's vagueness allows it to be flexible and be interpreted in many ways.....this, totally, undermines the authoritarian guidelines, which a clergy requires to establish itself......the hadith provide that.....

hence, you will, rarely, if ever, see islamic clergy, willing to discuss anything solely on the basis of the quran.......they will, always, move towards hadith and what other individuals have written on top of hadith......

quran points people in certain directions, and allows their common sense to fill in the gaps.....this common sense is to come from the combined intellect of the society, at any time........hadith give exact rulings on, even, miniscule affairs, which takes away the common sense aspect of the society......

hadith can only be used as a possible basis of history......they cannot be used for jurisprudence, law, etc. in any islamic society.....simply because they are the words of various individuals - bukhari etc. who wrote what they thought muhammad may have done.......while, religiously and philosophically speaking, in islam, quran is the word of God.......

there is no way bukhari etc. could know whether muhammad said that or not.....each hadith has a verbal trail of individuals, vouching that muhammad said that......this trail expands over multiple countries and generations and hundreds of years, for each hadith....it is all heresay........

there are thousands of hadith........which means a permutation of tens of thousands of individual lines of reporting, which should have existed accurately.........and not a single word should have changed during the passage of those oral text!......

if you say something today.......what are the odds that someone can prove, much less quote exactly what you said 250 years from now, in another continent?.......unless u wrote it down, and it could be traced back to you.......

so, even if we assume the books of hadith actually fill a gap in the quran, even then, their accuracy cannot be proven....

take any hadith from a hadith book.......it will have trial of names, over 200 years of how it was passed onto bukhari......ask any muslim if they have any proof whether the names in that trail existed.....and whether their is any written documentation on whether they actually passed on this hadith.......

the only explanations i have seen stat that such and such scholar thinks bukhari's book on hadith is accurate and genuine.......however, even if this is taken to be true, they were not needed to complete islam, as per the quranic verse i quoted above....

thanks rabia. i shall check it out later (have to do some real work now).

ps: i could not find the article itself - either because i didnt spend enough time looking, or because WP website does not display articles in this sub-section (Personal Finance of the Business Section).

hamidm: OK, i found it in the paper copy of the Washington Post, Business Section page F3 in article titled "Islamic Principles Pave Way to Top for Amana Funds" by Christopher Condon, and I quote:

"Amana Income gained an annual average of 9.7% through Thursday, best among funds that focus on large companies considered undervalued based on earning or other financial measures, according to Morningstar."

You can read the full article by going to a library (if such a thing exists in Michigan), or by going to an appropriate website including Amana itself.

I'll grant you that I had not focussed on the time frame (which is a 5 year period, while it has indeed dropped over the past year), so you are right in that. But rest assured, i leave shameless lying to my betters on chowk.

Re: # 272

tahmed,

.... you can check amana funds like any other fund and their website shows a ytd return drop of 28% .......let's stop making up stuff

#261
tahmed32: please read this at your earliest convenience!
http://www.pakistani.org/pakistan/constitution/part7.ch3a.html

hamidm: and btw, i have never been a proponent of islamic banking (and never put a dime in any sharia account), but unlike you i am not stuck in a rut and remain open to new facts and to being corrected. and that is the reason i pointed to these articles. not because i give a crap about where you put your 401k, now 101k.

hamidm #268 i can understand your being mad at me for rejecting your joining dost mittar in his gratuitious berating islam (how stupid does one have to be to assume that the only spokesman for islam are those who make a living out of it!!), and will assume that is the reason for the strong language ("shameless liar").

Read this part on how islamic banking in general has escaped the financial crisis - http://www.dawn.net/wps/wcm/connect/Dawn%20Content%20Library/dawn/news/business/ islamic-banking-escapes-global-financial-crunch--ha

As for Amana funds, that was an article in the business section of the Washington Post I had read over the weekend. I couldnt locate it on the internet, but will dig it out of the recycle bin.

Something to think about for Quran-only advocates,

http://www.city-net.com/~alimhaq/text/only.htm

A couple of excerpts,

"if we reject the sunnah we end up with a meaningless Qur'an. Or rather, the Qur'an then becomes a hermeneutic blank upon which we can, and will, project our own desires, propensities, prejudices, speculations, etc. The Qur'an will cease to tell us about Allah in the Highest and, like a Rorshach ink blot, tell us only about our self"

"By means of the sunnah that which is transcendent-- revelation from Deity-- is made practical and immanent and concrete. It is the sunnah-- however we may actually understand it-- that grounds our interpretations and keeps them from floating off into overly-imaginative flights of fantasy. Reject the very idea of the sunnah and the gates of interpretation are wide open, shapeless, overly subjective, speculative, thus approaching meaninglessness."

hamidm#230:

I saw some very articulate person explain cds on PBS but I am still clueless about it. Apparently, it is some kind of an insurance for debt instruments, such as bonds. Apparently, AIG was big on it; as debts turned sour, the insurers were in big trouble, kind of like Lloyds was in big trouble some time back.

BTW, I hear that a house and a car costs the same in Michigan these days. Is this true?

Re: # 267

dost mittar ji,

"I have said this before but let me repeat. I believe that Islam is what is taught at Deoband, Al Azhar and Qoom and not by some soft-sellers at chowk"

....i agree, but these people are not harmless soft-sellers .... they are very dangerous

Re: # 266

tahmed,

you are a shameless liar who will say anything to defend your religious prejudice ...... the amana funds which i know very well are down 23% (income) and 28% (growth) which is about the same as my 401K and brokerage accounts ...... islamic banking is just another pig with lipstick .........

bulleya#205:

I have said this before but let me repeat. I believe that Islam is what is taught at Deoband, Al Azhar and Qoom and not by some soft-sellers at chowk.

I also think that many, perhaps a majority, of Muslims are Munafiqoon who will ultimately go to the same place as Kafirs like me[I am happy "khoob guzray-gi jab mil ke baithange...";)].

As for Pakistan, I have never read any criticism of Islam (there is ample criticism of Mullas, etc.)in the media or of anyone having changed his religion even though I find Pakistani media quite vigorous in criticising all other policies of the state. This must be out of fear as there is no dearth of Muslims who criticise Islam in a forum such as chowk.

and btw, hamidm: seems like Islamic Banking had the last laugh - by staying away from equity participation in investments involving significant debt, they have avoided the Aids epidemic sweeping the rest of the financial world. Some have earned record returns to their depositers, e.g. Amana Funds at 9.7% return!

So much for your anti-Islam idiotology!

Hamidumdum Sahib,
As a longtime fan of your unique style of expression, I must say that I was disappointed by your need to insult my religion. Atheists can be quite effective, and even acceptable, without having to resort to spitting on a God whose existence they don't even acknowledge.

sriramapathypuranipuramshivarampavanjeevaram nkg: thanks for spending your precious time writing unsolicited posts to me.

hamidm: you obviously are not aware, or perhaps choose feign ignorance, of the nature of the Pakistan judicial system. not being my brother's keeper, i shall not try to alleviate your ignorance (real or feigned), bro.

Obama Zindabad!!

Re: # 251
Majumder....
Jinnah fecilitated concentrating of beduinoids...what outcome do you expect from such activity? a civilised society with good value system!!!!!!! Hah....

tahmed,

..... so, you are still denying that laws in pakistan are based principles of islamic jurisprudence? ......... are you suggesting that the council for islamic ideology and the federal sharia court are a figment of my imagination?

Re: # 258
beduinoid32...
every indian was/is/will be with Gandhi about the way he lead peaceful movement...he is very affable to everybody for this reason...
but he created too much space for your ancestors and which caused so much trouble to indians and still creating allhoo akbooms and all sorts of problems...if he would have followed vedantic philosphy (treat every substance judging the merit) it would have been better for every civilised people (including indians)...

peon sahib #252 Is Mad-Sad the new term for Manic Depressive, sahib?

Majumdar bhai #251: The man who never made any mistake never achieved anything either. So, I agree that Gandhi made the mistake of thinking it was the retrogressive mullahs, rather than the progressive Jinnah, whose message resonanted with the muslims of India. But I hope you and YLH will also agree that, despite his mistakes, Gandhi's message of peace and non-violence resonated not just with people in India but also with the Brits, who thus departed India without the bloodshed that, e.g., the Dutch or the French forced their colonies to go through for freedom. And not just that, the message resonates with people around the world long after Gandhi is gone. Which is more than can be said for the pea-brains of BJP, e.g.

Re: # 251 dada

you still don't get it, do you?... Had MKG gone along with "secular" Jinnah, then partition would never have happened... and now you would have had 40% pure bedouins like Mullah32 infesting the land... sooner or later you would have had a nigeria at hand... and you would have to call YLH as a compatriot - yuck...

So by "embracing" mullahs, MKG precipiated the division right at the outset... clean-cut surgery, cut the islamic aholes out from Mother India... actually not that clean-cut, but pretty close...

Thank allah for MAJ pubh - for taking the bait hook, line and sinker...

MKG zindabad... :)))

ramair, Quran as the sole philosophical basis of Islam, with no reference to Prophet Muhammad, is a breathtakingly novel idea (if it is adopted by large numbers of Muslims, and not just as the view of a few 'eccentric' people.)

It can potentially remake all of Islam. But you will have to be patient with non-Muslims. They can't take this view seriously unless they see this it finding any real hold in the Muslim world.

Ref bulleya #205

[...but, most of all, it is never clear, whether you want to debate the philosophical basis of islam, i.e. quran, or whether you want to debate the customs, currently, in practice......]

OK, let us debate this quote from the Quran: "Kill the kaffirs".

That is straight from the Quran and not just Islamic practice.

Let us see you weasel out of that one!

Another one of those Nothing-wrong-with-Islam-Everything-wrong-with-Mozzies excuses will be trotted out when this story hits the fan:

http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/religious-outcry-sparks-littlebigrec all/1257227

Religious outcry sparks LittleBigRecall
New PlayStation game soundtrack unpopular with some Islamic groups
By Mike Smith

LittleBigPlanet, one of this year's most-anticipated PlayStation 3 releases, won't be arriving in stores next week as expected.

The "social platforming" game is already gathering rave reviews, but it hasn't proven popular with one Muslim group, which issued a complaint to the game's publisher Sony concerning one background music track. Performed by award-winning Malian musician Toumani Diabate, the song quotes two verses from the Qur'an. Many Muslims consider the mixing of music and scripture to be deeply offensive.

Although the game is already pressed, packaged, and reportedly sitting in the back rooms of many worldwide retailers awaiting its original Oct. 21 debut, gamers eager to get hold of it will have to wait at least another week while the offending content is expunged. Updated versions of the game are expected to be shipped to stores during the week of October 27.

"Sorry for the delay, and rest assured, we are doing everything we can to get LittleBigPlanet to you as soon as possible," commented Patrick Seybold, Sony's US director of Corporate Communications, in a statement on the company's PlayStation blog.

Re: # 192
Kal...
yeah man...without being bigot!!!!
proud citizen of a country, where parliament enacts laws like hudood law, blashphemy law.......and the beduinoid claims some "handful of nuts" (whose hand is so big?), mis-interpreting (oh really!!!) islam....


most of our liberals adopt (not arundhati roy type- who possess very limited knowledge about india) quite reasonable stand...at least BD and VHP carries out some activities, which resemble more like mediaval middle east culture than indian one....when BD/VHP goons punished jihadis in Gujrat, everybody appreciated...but now, the same force is trying to create parallel censor board for movies, art etc...Gujrat was very liberal society. It is getting effected severly...even modi is not able to control it....

Re: # 229

O baigharat madsadi saab I live in gadhi shahu Lahore saab and never been out of Pakistan saab.

and you are an idiot saab who doesn not know anything but to blame some body else saab. look at your own kartoot saab before blaming others saab. It is because of hothead people like you we are suffering saab. People who have everything,don't have to work because they are well to do but use people like peon to make their points on here saab.

lanat ho tum par madsadi. you are really a mad and sad man saab

Tahmed sahib,

while it may have been emotionally satisfying for gandhi to represent as "islam" the rubbish promoted maulvis, by embracing mullahs, and ignoring the enlightened views of jinnah, gandhi made the biggest blunder of turning jinnah into from a friend to an opponent.

I am glad that long efforts made by secular folks like YLH and me have converted you to our viewpoint on the negative rule the G-man. I am sure soon you will accept the rest of our views on the G-man pretty soon.

Regards

hamidm #248 guess what - your next president is going to be Hossein!! now you're in deep trouble. maybe you should run to Montana and join the aryan brotherhood, where they will of course accept that gora certificate the traffic cop gave you.

Re: # 188
mr. beduinoid...
the ground reality is, a parliament of a country passed laws like blashphemy law, huddood law...what more you want?

Indians definitely not like to compare with mediaval beduinism. It is bellow our dignity. You stay with 7th century beduine cock and bull stories and associated barbarism. Civilised space may not be for you guys...


DM...
Yes, the Christian preists argue that, if West allows organisations like ISKCON, why not Indians? And, as, I have said earlier, trying to prevent somebody to convert is something very ugly and unpardonable....Look at the BD goons. They are not opposing to any conversion in the upper caste segment. Only when, these people fool/dupe/cheat lower caste people with money etc. that becomes bone of contention. Specialy for tribals, GoI should do something. If they loose their culture, we will loose India. Already 15% people in India are beduinoid barbarians and the way they are breeding, the percentage is soaring like anything....

Re: # 239

tahmed,

.... the answer is 'yes' - the judicial system in ALL muslim countries (with the exception of turkey) is run by the acolytes of the hanafi, maliki, shafi'i, hanbali or the jafri schools of thought ..... ia ma sure you have heard of the council of council of islamic ideology and the federal sharia court ?...... the cj is a member of the eight person bench which includes ulema from the major schools of jurisprudence - your droopy eyed cj was on this bench ....... if you watch paki tv you will see them arguing over what to do with your miserable soul on shows like alim, alif, aghaz and ghamdi ....... and i must admit that these people might be nuts, but they are extremely eloquent .......

.... if you want to live in denial that is your business ..... i suppose you also pee in your pants to get that nice warm feeling .......

#245 kaalchakra: i dont think there is going to be an overnight change in egypt or anywhere else whereby everyone start thinking rationally. even in the US, "chip-on-the-shoulder-religion" is big business - pat robertson has a viewership of over a million people i think. The republican vice-presidential candidate thinks God created the world on a nice autumn day in the year 6342 BC or something like that.

those who think religion - and not human weaknesses - is the cause of violence, intolerance etc. are merely confusing cause and affect. imho.

Re: # 244

I do not mind if these PAdarees, mullahs, evangelists and other sympathesizers (like Murad) who abuse , deride and denigrade idolators, pagans and animist Hindus get the boot.....

these soul harvesters and soul taking Abrahmic cultist organizations must be banned...

If conversions are illegalized then these mullahs, padarees lose their existence and financial powers.....

Wow. This is very very impressive, very very ambitious. Although as a cynic I genuinely have some doubts, one can only wish this group of people much success.

---------

Once I formulate a few clearer ideas about this movement, I would like to share them with you, if you don't mind.

laddu: have you bought your train tickets to orrissa junction yet? will you be serving laddus to those who killed those bad "converts" to christianity?

kaalchakra bhai #241 seriously, if one is to consider the message of islam or the legal system in Pakistan, i agree that one should simply focus on the Quran, and not pile on it stuff men came up with over centuries of history. otherwise it becomes as absurd as including witchcraft or archaic laws as being considered a crime in the US (the examples i was giving to hamidm).

"..It essentially does what, most surprisingly, laddu has been shouting here about on Chowk - get rid of Prophet Muhammad, except in a nominal sense!....."

Hmm...Kaale Khna ji that was a very intelligent understanding of what I have been doing on the chowk......

Indeed, muslims need to get rid of Mohammad and come closer to Allah.

Islam is all about submission to Allah..........unfortunately ,Muslims ONLY submit to Mohammad (and his Sunnat) instead......

My message is simple-

"Reject Mohammad and Accept Allah"

that is true "submission".

Seriously, tahmedji, is this the same approach, by and large?

(I do think it is brilliant. It can potentially do away with ALL tradition, and traditional interpretations - or as much of those as one wants, if one can convince other Muslims to follow it.)

kaalchakra bhai: yes indeed.

hamidm: more seriously, do you seriously think that the pakistan judicial system is run by the acolytes of bukhari?

hamidm2, tahmed ji

A little bit of googling this afternoon had revealed that a new sect of Quranists started in Egypt sometime back, and some of its members were recently jailed, on instructions from scholars from the Al Azhar.

This sect may or may not have any relation to the views of Tahmedji and Romair.

Two relevant websites -

http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/main.php
http://www.quranists.com/

T he second site gives a whole bunch of links as well.

-----------------------

Having thought about it a little now, I think it is a brilliant idea to entirely remake Islam.

It essentially does what, most surprisingly, laddu has been shouting here about on Chowk - get rid of Prophet Muhammad, except in a nominal sense!

Whether this movement will go anywhere with actual Muslims in Muslim countries, one can't say...

hamidm: you wont find a single puritan scholar either who does not think witches should not be burnt at the stake.

Re: # 235


i meant 'subscribe' not 'ascribe' .......

Re: # 232

tahmed,

.... sorry... let me rephrase my comment: just because you and our the honrable mr romair have your own private and personal interpretations of the koran, does not change reality ......

........ now, do you disagree with my statement ? ... thamed mian, you really cannot go around denying the validity of the hadith and sunnah and expect people to take you serioulsy ...... i don't think you can find a single islamic scholar who does not ascribe to one or the other school of islamic jurisprudence .......... so stop trying to fool yourself ....

Re: # 225

Masadi sahib:

[Anil writes "Wow, Hamidm sahib has gone through some reversion (or conversion)."

Another illiterate bigot steps out to congratulate hamid on his not so unusual comments thinking that they are so form of "conversion".]

You need to improve your English. Elitist of the elite school, and buckle of the bible belt college did noting to improve your English. I guess that is the reason you call "to congratulate".

You should not have gotten out of the bed this morning.

masadi: thanks for writing (in case there is any post in the list below that is addrsessed to me).

hamidm #219 calling those who disagree with names doesnt work. ask McCain.

chowk staff,

please ban masadi mian .... we already have tahmed - we dont need any more additions to the menagerie of fools and lunatics .....

Re: # 222

bubba,

..... i don't like to get embroiled in religious arguments but i don't like scams of any kind ....... also self-righteous fools like tahmed bring out the worst in me.....

.... talking about scams, i have spent many hours trying to understand derivatives and credit default swaps but still don't have the foggiest idea what they are all about ....... i even asked some friends who are in the business and they confessed to me that even they don't understand half of it ........ and one of them is a muckety muck of of risk management for one of the big guys! .... credit default swaps seem to be a bigger scam than mo's desert trickery ...

..........i don't know about the financial war with china, but for now the american public, including me and joe the plumber, are in deep shinola ..... even if the chinese gdp growth rate goes down to 6% it won't help my portfolio or home value ..... my 401K is a 201K and for the first time in my life i am thinking of buying a lawn mower and cutting my own grass ...... what is next? .... shopping at walmart and ironing my own shirts ? !!... astagfirullah !....... goddam the chinese ! ........ i see the american dream slipping away and if i find out that they are responsible for my misfortune i will support an invasion of mainland china!

p.s. and please don't tell me that this is a cia sponsered scam designed to hurt the chinese in the pocket book .....

Posted by peonofthewest on Saturday October 18, 2008 07:21 am
you are an idiot madsadi saab

Posted by masadi on Saturday October 18, 2008 01:32 pm
peon, calling me an idiot will do nothing to improve the conditions of your baal bacha in the US.

Have a nice day and keep up the ignorance,

TNI Masadi

Ahmad sahib hamid needs to visit http://dumbass.com/ and not dumblaws.com

I suppose that would be more appropriate for his mentality.

Have a nice day and take it easy

TNI Masadi

Tahmed writes "The "islamic jurisprudence" that you refer to are laws made at the same time as witch trials were held in Salem, Massachussets, and women hanged to death for violating the law against practicing witchcraft. And some absurd laws from that time linger on. While your "islamic laws" are not even on the books!! you might as well claim that christianity calls for burning women for witchcraft."

Ahmad sahib don't try to absolve your white masters of their latter day crimes but pointing to earlier day crimes of the Muslims. The salem witch trial were held at a much later date...

Have a nice day and take it easy,

TNI Masadi

hamid writes ". you can cherry-pick the koran and deny the validity of the mainstream schools of islamic jurisprudence.."

Hamid mian you are the one who is cherry picking an self interpreting without any reference to any detailed study of the "islamic jurisprudence" you tout. ON the other hand, anyone who logically challenges your dimwitted interpretations which are made for ulterior motive becomes a denier of Islamic jurisprudence, whose validity and history you know nothing about. In other words you want to cherry pick stuff that makes Islam look bad and ignore any attempts to correct your contrived nonsense about it. You are a sorry case of a miserable ignoramus....

Have a nice day and take it easy,
TNI Masadi

Anil writes "Wow, Hamidm sahib has gone through some reversion (or conversion)."

Another illiterate bigot steps out to congratulate hamid on his not so unusual comments thinking that they are so form of "conversion". These pathetic fools amaze me

Have a nice day and take it easy,
TNI Masadi

bubba writes "Hamid mian,

So good to read your posts. "

How the bigot reveals his bigotry. It is good to him because other than "Have a nice day and come back soon" - which he repeats to his customers, Mr. Bubba is happy when he can find others sharing in his illiteracy....

Have a nice day and take it easy,
TNI Masadi

hamid writes "but that does not change the fact that islam, as understood and practiced by the majority of its followers, is a monstrous idelogy that poses a threat to the civilized world.."

I'd like to see the results of the scientific survey you conducted to arrive at this level of generalization. What you really mean is that those who have politically dominated the scene in Islamic history have through their distortion for ulterior motive use it for perverse ends. Even with that distortion it is more civilized that the civilization of the White man.

Have a nice day

TNI Masadi

Hamid mian,

So good to read your posts.

Dude, why are getting embroiled in these religious arguments?

Have you found an answer to my assertion of this financial war with china?

Re: # 220

anil mian,

.... don't start celebrating just yet - i am not that keen about hindooism either !

Wow, Hamidm sahib has gone through some reversion (or conversion).

Re: # 218

tahmed,

.... your feeble attempts at humor are totally irrelevant ..... you can cherry-pick the koran and deny the validity of the mainstream schools of islamic jurisprudence, but that does not change the fact that islam, as understood and practiced by the majority of its followers, is a monstrous idelogy that poses a threat to the civilized world .......... just because you and a few other shallow fools like romair have your own private and personal interpretations of the koran, does not change reality ......

hamidm: next time you are in detroit, i dare you to stand before the rennaisance center and declare "there are no gods but the green bay packers, the detroit lions are imposters, and my wife does not need my permission to get a haircut".

Re: # 216

tahmed,

... nest time you are in pakistan i dare you to stand in the middle of lakshmi chowk and say this: "there is no goddess but lakshmi and mohammed is an imposter" ....... if you survive the beating by the halwais and doodh walas, i promise to visit you in kot lakhpat jail where your sorry keester will rot for the rest of your life ........

.... stop trying to compete with imam abu hanifa and your pathetic attempts at interpreting the works of an illeterate man and a crazy angel .....

#215 hamidm: and you are a michigan lawbreaker!! next time make sure the missus gets your written permission before getting a haircut.

Re: # 209

tahmed,

..... you are a mirzai and don't you dare deny it ! ...... as a hanafi muslim i know ..... let me repeat that .... i know that the punishment for apostasy is death and the laws of egypt, saudi arabia and afghanistan support this view ..... in mid 2007 we tried to bring true islam to pakistan and a law was drafted under which apostates like you would be sentenced to death or life in prison ..... however, mirzaees like you, supported by the archbishop of lahore and other secular and shaa'fi infidels thwarted this attempt to estabish islam in its true form ....... may the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits and may your wives suffer from perpetual menses !

#212 pinku: you mean your statement that "religious beliefs are not like water, neither they are colorless as water, nor they are PH-neutral....they are like acids, lighlty corrosive or very corrosive." does not apply to hinduism as much as it does to any other religion?

#212 Posted by tahmed32 on
There is no way you can infer that from what i said.... how did you infer that?

#211 pinku: So do you mean that all hindus are ready to kill in the name of hinduism (as in gujerat or orrissa)? if so, then i think you are seriously mistaken.

#210 Posted by tahmed32 on
religious beliefs are not like water, neither they are colorless as water, nor they are PH-neutral....

they are like acids, lighlty corrosive or very corrosive... their effect on an individual will depend on what that individual is but they have their own solid characteristics.....


and if we know properly, they are not even like acids, they are what they are.... they create group psychologies, they are group egos

kaalchakra: as 1Safe wrote - religious beliefs of an individual are like water in a bowl: they take on the color of the bowl. your appreciation of all religions similarly reflects your own positive outlook on life. i like to think the same thing for myself.

so lets together help our less positive brothers like hamidm free themselves of whatever troubles them. ;-)

Hamidm:

Given your legal awareness, you may wish to consider this law: A woman isn’t allowed to cut her own hair without her husband’s permission.

I hope the missus gets your written permission before going to the hairdresser, since otherwise we may have to get you two booked for...violating the Michigan law.

You can look up this law (as well as plenty of other such laws) here if you dont believe me: http://www.dumblaws.com/

The "islamic jurisprudence" that you refer to are laws made at the same time as witch trials were held in Salem, Massachussets, and women hanged to death for violating the law against practicing witchcraft. And some absurd laws from that time linger on. While your "islamic laws" are not even on the books!! you might as well claim that christianity calls for burning women for witchcraft.

So - you can join dost mittar in painting mullahism as islam. that does not change the ground realities i brought to dost mittar's attention below.

anil ji, I would like to understand chinese thought better myself. Sometime back I came upon a beautiful book that described social/religious/political concepts key to understanding the Chinese discourse within and with others.

Some day, hopefully...

------------

rabia, people know, but interpretationism empowers the individual (or plays havoc with his or her sense of logic, take your pick).

anyway, I thought every 10 year old muslim kid knew this stuff, but I guess I was wrong! luckily there is wikipedia for muslims who didn't learn anything about their religion while growing up.

anil: I think women get to be confined to their homes until death or until they revert back to Islam.

dost-mittar #: "like Muslims, no Hindu in India will also be able to criticise his or her religion or convert to another religion and.."

....i have never been able to figure out how you debate religion; specifically islam......your knowledge is quite limited, but your opinions are very strong.....

...but, most of all, it is never clear, whether you want to debate the philosophical basis of islam, i.e. quran, or whether you want to debate the customs, currently, in practice......

a philosophical discussion is unaffected by current, past or future practices.....while a current events discussion, disregards the philosophical basis and concentrates, solely, on social and poliitical situations of present-day muslim societies......

...so do you want to find out whether, philosophicaly, islam allows itself to be critiqued and criticised or do you want to find out, whether, in a present day muslim country, called pakistan, it can be done or not done?

Re: # 176

rabiawsti:

"..dost_mittar: what's important is that all the major schools of sunni law prescribe death as penalty for the apostasy of adult males..."

Is it only adult males? What about adult females?

Re: # 199

Hamidm sahib:

The day finally arrived when you quote from the book to make your point. You could have been a great lawyer. Do you know why? You do not hesitate to find evidence in something you disagree, as long as you can make your point and prevail.

Wah Hamidm sahib, wah.

Re: # 192

Kaal:

My stand about Hinduism and it as a religion is that like all religions, it too needs to be put behind. It is regressive force; its caste system is evil that incarnated thousands of years ago. Overall, it, like all other religions, does not belong out in public or politics, or economy of a modern society.

Its strength is that it can be a powerful identity (if one needs to be regressive). It allows people to give their own definitions and call themselves Hindu.

Due to its capability to allow individual to define a Hindu, an individual in Knowledge society can find spiritualism in its and many other beautiful philosophies, beyond ritualism or cardinals written in a book.
Recently I had listened to Chinese premier's interview with Fareed Zakaria. The premier's answers on philosophy were something I marveled, and bought the book that he said he had read. It was written by a Roman philosopher. Once I reach back California I intend to read this book.

Kaal, you have to look beyond the dissection of society through religion. There is so much beauty in thoughts out there, all beyond religious thought.

Most of the times, I do not see anything wrong in what Tahmed sahib writes.

kaalchakra #: "Quran is not a vague or unclear book. It says things very clearly. Vagueness comes in because what it clearly says (its clear message) often goes against the 'rational views' of many of its readers."

....quran is one of the most vague books i have ever read....perhaps the most vague....it is to provide a complete way of life, yet is shorter than many diet books and most books on microsoft windows......

surely such a small book, which is to cover a whole way of life, for all of humanity, over times unlimited, must be vague....

much of the quran is actually stories.......stories of moses and joseph etc.....prayers, vague set of instructions....there are some exact commands.....however, many of these are presented in so many ways in so many places, that they become vague.....

let me give you an example.....the most recited verses of the quran consist of the surah fateha......(perhaps the most recited verses of any kind in the world).....this is recited by every muslim in every prayer, multiple times.....

"All Praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Alamin.
The Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
Sovvereign of the Day of Recompense.
You alone we worship, and You alone we ask for help
Guide us to the straight path;
The way of those on whom You have bestowed your grace, not (the way) of those who have earned Your anger, nor of those who went astray."

...basically, a set of vague statements, prayers, instructions etc......

beware of the mirzais

.... i have long suspected that tahmed is a mirzai, now i am beginning to think that romair is a closet ahmedi too ..... we have to watch out for these guys who are out to destroy true islam ...........

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

dost-mittar #: "a case of a Muslim in Pakistan who renounced Islam and lived to tell the tale over the last sixty years, my statement stands"

my english teacher in high school.....he was a christian, converted to islam......his son died.....he converted back to christianity.....last time i checked he was alive and well and teaching english.....

someone told me something similar about the father of cecil chaudhry.....not sure though....

tahmed is an ignorant apostate and therfore wajib-ul-qatl

who says? .... the pope of islam, sheik dr, mohamed said tantawi, the sheikh of aL-azhar, said that those who call for relying only on the koran are ignorant, lairs, and do not know religious rules because the sunna came from god, but it was put into words by the prophet (pbuh and his camel)......... without sunna, there is no islam

.... tahmed is not a moslem and should not be allowed to speak for the moslems ....... as a matter of fact, he is worse than a mirzai !

kcs, hey, cheema ji might confused between us. I would.

Now, welcome to chowk. And if you are a liberal and a secularist Hindu, please do develop the same attitude toward Hinduism as tahmed ji has toward Islam. That will be your biggest contribution to assuring peace between different religious communities. Thanks for your consideration.

tahmed saheb:

Jinnah did believe in political Islam; he had his parsee wife convert to Islam after she married him and practically disowned his daughter when she chose to marry a Parsee.

What I think of Islam is inconsequential. But it is you who seem to be ignoring ground realities when you say that sharia is not a part of Islam.

BTW, I did not grow up until the BJP but under Nehru's India where Islam was the good religion and Hinduism was the one full of evil practices that needed reform and indeed was reformed through legislation.

Re #142: Cheema sahib, what name change?? I am new to Chowk and #119 was my first ever post :). Sorry if you mistook me for some one else!

Tahmedji - the recent violence (totally unjustified) in Orissa is a symptom of the growing lawlessness in India and the subcontinent in general. Many people with genuine grievances have lost the patience to take recourse to the law and let the law take its due course - because for all you know nothing may happen for years. I wouldn't discount the possibility of them being misled by their political masters as well in this particular case.

Every religious group in India thinks that the government is biased against it. It is a very complex situation, and even the enlightened lot doesn't really know how to deal with it.

Imagine what would happen in India if any of the big private banks (ICICI, Citibank) went kaput and enforce restrictions on cash withdrawal for a few days (as Citibank did in New York last month). I wouln't be surprised if mobs of irate customers went around town smashing ATMs and setting buses ablaze. If in the event one Muslim died it would also trigger communal riots. I shudder to think of it.

good gentlemen and fine ladies...

harimau, instead of calling tahmed ji a lying Mullah, we should ask our own Hindu liberals and secularists to learn from him. He is respectful of his religion without being a bigot.

If Hindu liberals and secularists were even half like him, there would be peace and mutual respect between communities in India, starting tomorrow.

Kamath bhai, anil ji, drlokraj ji, and all other good gentlemen, hope you will adopt a stance toward Hinduism similar to the one Tahmedji adopts towards Islam. Thanks.

Ref lying-mullah32 #180

[dost mittar sahib #174/5: how many muslims have you heard of who have been killed for converting to another religion? how many muslims do you see ranting on chowk against christian missionaries trying to convert muslims?

please open your eyes to reality, shed your prejudices about islam (that may be hard, since these are based on doubt on a lifelong spent growing up in india under bjp) then hold an inquiry on islam.]

I have this doctor friend in Youngstown, Ohio who saw an elderly patient one day. The patient, after his consultation over high blood pressure and associated complications, asked the doctor if he was from Andhra. My friend replied that while his family has lived in Tamil Nadu for generations, he comes from a Telugu-speaking family. At which point, the patient said a few words in Telugu to him.

The astonished doctor asked him how he spoke Telugu and the patient replied that he had spent a couple of decades in Andhra as a missionary. He then volunteered that he hated Indians as he was able to convert only 20,000 persons to Christianity in two decades.

So my doctor friend asked him whether he had applied for a visa for missionary activities in Pakistan or Bangladesh. He replied that he had but was told that if he attempted to convert anyone he would be killed so instead he went to India.

That was the day my doctor friend became an "intolerant Hindu" and started collecting money for Hindu missionaries.

OK, agree or disagree with tahmedji, one cannot but admire his commitment to secularism and liberalism.

That is the kind of thinking we need in Hindu secularists and liberals too. That seems to be the key to establishing peace between religious majority and minorities.

#187 dost mittar: i am not obfuscating the issue. merely asking you to look at ground realities. i know you are one of the few indians who stand up to the spokesmen for hindu extremists on chowk - but i see you making the same mistake gandhi made 9per #188 below). and it gives me no joy to say that - because i also recognize gandhi's great contribution as a leader of the freedom struggle of india and as a promoter of peace and nonviolence.

#186 dost mittar: also, in portraying the "mullah" perversion as being islam, while ignoring ground realities, you are making the same mistake gandhi made when he assumed that the mullahs represented muslim society, not jinnah.

while it may have been emotionally satisfying for gandhi to represent as "islam" the rubbish promoted maulvis, by embracing mullahs, and ignoring the enlightened views of jinnah, gandhi made the biggest blunder of turning jinnah into from a friend to an opponent. while the mullahs proved to be paper tigers with loudspeakers and big mouths and nothing more.

tahmed saheb:

You are obfuscating the issue. I have written a whole article against these Hindu hooligans. This is certainly a new poisonous strain that has entered Hindu religion. But there was no fatwa against the converts by any Hindu religious leaders.

But if, Ram forbid, these hooligans do succeed, a time will come when, like Muslims, no Hindu in India will also be able to criticise his or her religion or convert to another religion and, like you, reserve his criticism for priests and pujaris "who have hijacked their good religion".

#182 dost mittar sahib: thanks for the answer. now let me ask you a couple of more questions: how many "converts" from hinduism were murdered in orrissa alone in your country (india) in the past month? is it indians or pakistanis on chowk you see ranting against "converts" and "christian missionaries"?

I think you will then understand why i think no indian has any business berating pakistanis or muslims for being intolerant!!

Ref KaalChakra #144

[Reality from outside: Islam is the only religion wherein ordinary people ask for fatwa on everything from which side of the bed to get up in the morning to which books are permissible to read.]

Come on, there is no reason to be nice to these guys. After all, these are the guys who, when the tables are turned on them, cry buckets about the loss of Hinduism's gentle core.

Ask them why Islam is the only religion where people ask for a fatwa on whether it is okay to kill and eat the goat one had sex with.

Don't red flag this post, you Islamic idiots! I shall dig up this question and its answer from fatwa-online if you try redflagging this.

#182:

"A Muslim was executed" should have read "A Muslim was execued in Dubai".

Don't understand why basic facts can't be settled easily. Where are our Pakistani Christian friends? They can help us decide this in two minutes.

Are there Christian missionaries active in Pakistan trying to convert Muslims to Christianity?

If there are, have they succeeded in any cases about which we might know?

Finally, have these individuals stayed safe and socially functional after converting to Christianity?

That's all people are discussing here. I find it hard to believe that there would be so many Christians in Pakistan without some numbers of Muslims actively and regularly converting to Christianity, and not losing much socially, among family and friends and colleagues. Does anyone here know of some such individuals?

tahmed saheb#180:

Not very many, but the answer is not zero. A couple of years ago, a Muslim was executed for conversion to Christianity. In Afghanistan, a Muslim was saved from that fate last year when Karzai intervened after international hue and cry and the person was spared death by being pronounced insane.

And this is true, only an insane person in a Muslim country will denounce, let alone renounce Islam. You can always disprove me by quoting someone denouncing Islam in a Pakistani newspaper or take the easy way out by calling me a bigot or Hindu fanatic. Your choice!

rabiawasti #176 you can answer the questions in #180 as well. then you can join dost mittar in holding an inquiry about intolerence in islam.

dost mittar sahib #174/5: how many muslims have you heard of who have been killed for converting to another religion? how many muslims do you see ranting on chowk against christian missionaries trying to convert muslims?

please open your eyes to reality, shed your prejudices about islam (that may be hard, since these are based on doubt on a lifelong spent growing up in india under bjp) then hold an inquiry on islam.

anyway, I am not trying to pick a fight with you tahmed32. I am just genuinely perplexed.

That wouldn't happen if there were no conversions of Muslims to Christianity going on at some level...

Surely, that question can be settled very simply.

There are so many Christians in Pakistan! I believe ijaz_gul bhai even runs a Christian school in Pakistan. That wouldn't happen if there were conversions of Muslims to Christianity going on at some level...

Do we know of a few cases of Pakistani Muslims becoming Christians, and not losing much in the process? (I suspect it might be much different were a Muslim to pronounce himself or herself a Hindu, but a Christian is almost a brother, religiously, to a Muslim.)

dost_mittar: what's important is that all the major schools of sunni law prescribe death as penalty for the apostasy of adult males. I don't understand why people like tahmed32 are not willing to engage in the matter of punishment for apostasy because there is actually not a clear directive in the Quran on this so this could actually be an aspect of sharia that could be "reformed". But that would require people like him having the intellectual integrity to accept that the actions of their co-religionists in the past actually have some relationship to the religion itself.

tahmed saheb

I take it that your answer is that you do not know any Muslim who renounced Islam and was not declared wajab-ul-qatl.

tahmed saheb

I take it that your answer is that you do not know any Muslim who renounced Islam and was not declared wajab-ul-qatl.

tahmed saheb:

My question:

Could you give an example of any Muslim in a Muslim country who renounced Islam and did not become "wajab-ul-qatl"?

Your answer:

I am a Hindu extremist!

Next question:
The next time you talk about Hindus practising caste, would someone be justified in calling you a Muslim extremist?

#170 i have been to mosques in many countries, including the US (where muslims not just from malaysia, dubai and turkey but from all over the world come together in prayer). so i know what i am talking about. how many mosques have you been to? how many khutbas have you listened to that you know so much about how islam is practiced?

#168 dost mittar: and what do you know about how islam is practised??? did you spend an year, a month, or even a day with a muslim family to see how islam is practiced??

Look - i dont see any muslims wasting their time making up stories about what sikhs practice or what hinduism claims. i suggest you do the same. unless you prefer to join laddu and co in becoming another mouthpiece for hindu extremists.

tahmed:

Further to 167, not just Pakistan or in Malaysia or Dubai or Saudi Arabia or even in Turkey.

# 165 And the biggest new phenomenon in the North, BSP, openly, shouting from rooftops, rejects the entire range of 'brahiministic' deities, and nobody seems to be able to stop them, nor should they, on that basis alone. In fact, IAS officers touch her feet, and call her a goddess. :)

That is Hinduism, as separate from Brahiminism that Murad Baig insists on calling Hinduism.

Bajrang Dal is essentially a tool of average, normal Hindus who are deeply concerned about what some Christians have been doing, but don't wish to take up the violence themselves. Now secularist Hindus can (and should) stop Bajrang Dal from engaging in violence, but do expect average Hindus to ask you: What have you done to address our concerns?

tahmed#167:

Islam is what gets practised. Unless you can tell me of a case of a Muslim in Pakistan who renounced Islam and lived to tell the tale over the last sixty years, my statement stands.

further to #166 ...in fact i have never even heard the most stupid maulvi ever say this..so i assume this is a result of your own creativity.

dost mittar: "those born to non-muslim parents have the right to reject the religion of birth, but those born to Muslim parents do not have that right."

This is new to me. Is this from the Quran, or something convenient to beat islam with that you picked up from a jahil maulvi? There are enough mullahs violating islam already - you dont need to join them.

Kamath:

As far as I know, the DMK leadership still openly denigrates Hindu religious icons. Last night, I went to a Mushaira/Kavi Darbar here in Ottawa and some of the biggest applause was for someone who recited a poem highly critical of the denigration of Ravan andfull of high praise for him. This too during the Dussehra-Diwali period.

I don't know what will happen in the future but, for now, Bajrang Dal conversion is a political act; they don't seem to care what you believe as long as you call yourself a hindu. I would be more watchful of some of those Arya Samajis who seem to be quite fanatical about what is true hinduism.

Urstruly:

One thing is certain: if these tribals had converted to Islam, they would have not been so easily terrorised by the Bajrang Dal hooligans. But you forget that desi Muslims, including the Mullahs, are deeply infused with the casteist mindset. How many choorHas and chamars do you know who were converted by the Mullahs in your neigbourhood in Pakistan?

By the Way, if every child is born a Muslim, then it seems that Islam does not seem to treat everyone born as equals; those born to non-muslim parents have the right to reject the religion of birth, but those born to Muslim parents do not have that right.

#154 hamidm: what russell didnt realize was that christ was no "fire and brimstone" preacher. christ's message was positive - i.e. of a caring God (as opposed to a deal-making God of earlier jews, or a bunch of politicos of the ancient greeks). the miseries of hell were the result of the macabre imagination of later priests.

as 1Safe quoted earlier on chowk, the religious beliefs of a person are like water in a bowl - when you look at it, you see the color of the bowl. See "christianity" as taught by the christ is of a different color than that of priests.

And this is no accident - hell had no particular connotation of eternal damnation among the early jews, e.g. Later, some priests no doubt found that adding a bit fire and brimstone helped empower them.

btw, the urdu word "jehanum" had its origins in ancient jerusalem where "gehanum" was a ditch where bodies of the homeless, criminals etc were tossed. gehanum, or hell, is now a well-tended park in jerusalem i believe.

masana, what sounds plausible is that there are at least two very different Gods. One God, let's call Him The True God, made and makes all those people who call themselves Jews, Christians, and Muslims. This God used to send down people who carried direct messages from Him for all of mankind, and stopped doing so 1400 years ago.

The other, The False God, made and makes the rest of us sinners who try to figure out things by ourselves, or learn from other people who we think might see things better than the rest of us. Naturally, we do all sorts of crazy things, sometimes.

Most Christians and Muslims seem to agree with this view, convinced that they worship the True God, while the rest of us worship (if we worship) the False God, and will naturally pay for our errors in afterlife. Unfortunately, their liberals and sufis are rather quite unfriendly, claiming that our False God is the same as their True God without ever worshipping or promoting the worship of our False God. :(

if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of the agnostics ["Gnostics" -- CW] took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the Devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.


He..he.. I think the world is created by the Devil too. :-)
If only we had not gotten rid of the "Satanic verses"..

romair, vagueness allows flexibility. It also opens a wider possibility of recruits. It does not assure success.

Quran is not a vague or unclear book. It says things very clearly. Vagueness comes in because what it clearly says (its clear message) often goes against the 'rational views' of many of its readers.

In such cases, an arbiter is needed.

Now, there are two ways of solving that problem.

(1) Many people look at the life and character of Prophet Muhammad, and notice that the Prophet's life was an embodiment of the Message of Quran.

(2) Some pople reject that view, and want to rely solely on their own judgement. They then use the device of 'interpretationism.' In interpretationism a person thinks of all possible scenarios and picks one that best aligns what is acceptable to him or her and what he must believe as Divine Text.

The relative number of the latter path are likely to be smaller.

Re: # 158

romair,

.... i don't want to waste russell's pearls on you, but what the heck :

The Moral Arguments For Deity

Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the Theists have made in their argumentations, and we come to what are called the moral arguments for the existence of God. You all know, of course, that there used to be in the old days three intellectual arguments for the existence of God, all of which were disposed of by Immanuel Kant in the Critique of Pure Reason; but no sooner had he disposed of those arguments than he invented a new one, a moral argument, and that quite convinced him. He was like many people: in intellectual matters he was skeptical, but in moral matters he believed implicitly in the maxims that he had imbibed at his mother's knee. That illustrates what the psycho-analysts so much emphasize -- the immensely stronger hold upon us that our very early associations have than those of later times.

Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say that there would be no right and wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of the agnostics ["Gnostics" -- CW] took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the Devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it.



... you can read the rest of the lecture at http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm

drlokraj #: "so true romair, but as you rightly said people like you who believe in this are exception.......may even be at risk of being declared 'non-muslim' or even kafir..."

the best way to discuss a religion, is to disassociate one's self from it, and then discuss it as a philosophy....i.e. i may think quran is the word of God, and you may not.....however, we can both discuss the content of what is there in the quran, regardless of our beliefs of how it originated.....

.....all societies, and mankind as a whole, require some social structure of ethics.....where can it come from.....i have been watching a lot of debates by athiest intellectuals........apparently, according to them 16% of usa is athiest, and only 1 million people in uk now go to church (only 2-3% of the total christian population of the country?)....

yet, there is one concept where athiest seem to get stuck...they cannot define a central ethical code for human beings......where does such a code originate from?.......should it be based on our biological and anamilastic nature?......can a grandmother marry her own grandson?......biologically yes......

what are the ethics behind looking after the poor?......if i have earned my money honestly (another ethical term), why should i help someone who is poor?.......

.......the other point i have noticed in these debates is that all the athiests (i.e. voluntarily athiests, not those who are born in states where religion is not allowed) seem to be quite well off......none of them seem to be poor, or wretched etc.....

......if there is no concept of a Creator, then this world is an extremely unfair place......what is the fault of the individual who is born blind and poor and sick and at the lowest wrung of the poorest society?.......what does he/she fall back on.....

.......there are many issues that athiests cannot address......much like there are many issues that religions cannot address.......

......the concept of secularism, itself, is very limiting and contradictory in its philosophy.....i.e. God got things correct in personal life, but not in public life.......what kind of God is only half correct?.......

.......within all these, of all the study i have done (and i haven't studied all religions), quran itself (not mixed with hadith etc.), seems to provide the, "best fit"; at least for me.......

.......it is vague enough to appeal to everyone, during all times......this vagueness and abstraction is its strength.....much of it is, infact, storytelling.....and it allows a person direct access to interpret it and to God, thereby removing the clergy.....

this is why you will find muslims, who consider themselves 100% muslims, yet do things in a totally opposing manner......go to turkey and saudi arabia - two countries with very high muslim % of population - and see how the women in each country behave.....

humanity needs some core ethical set to survive.....the more vague such a core happens to be, the more likely it is to appeal to people and succeed.......islam, in the quran, provides this vagueness.....islam of the hadith takes it to the other end and locks islam into a straightjacket......

Re: # 153

drlokraj,

..... you lie! ......guru nanak is not the 11th and last guru ......

.... what about the twelfth imam - imam hujjat ibn hasan ibn ali who has been hidden(occulted) by god and will come back with jesus to lead the new year's parade in disney world ? ..... this man is also known as the mahdi and those who don't believe in him are going to be cast into a furnace of fire with much wailing and gnashing of teeth....... beware, you infidel !

hamidm2

My own views of Mr Jesus (or was it Mr Christ?) have changed. Overall, he was definitely not a patch on Great men like Socretes. He was a simple man with some good ideas, but also had a deep, evil side to his character, which he fully misued, and exploited.

drlokraj ji, we don't differ on that. Sikhism 'starts' with Baba Nanak, and 'ends' with Guru Gobind establishing the Final Guru.

ALL of it is Sikhism, and that is how it is presented and understood by all Sikhs. Again, if I got that wrong, please correct me because errors in such matters can be misinterpreted. Thanks.

wise men say that when picking a wife one should look at the mother-in-law because that's what she will turn into when she gets older (before she turns into a black bird) ...... similarly, one should look at the character of the founding prophet or high priest before picking a religion ...... here is what bertrand russell says about the most popular prophet - the son of god (it is too bad mary did not have an abortion !):

"There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching -- an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence. You do not, for instance, find that attitude in Socrates. You find him quite bland and urbane toward the people who would not listen to him; and it is, to my mind, far more worthy of a sage to take that line than to take the line of indignation. You probably all remember the sorts of things that Socrates was saying when he was dying, and the sort of things that he generally did say to people who did not agree with him." ...............

here is what this .... this ... horrible man born out of wedlock said to us : "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell." ............ here is what i would say, "fcuk you! ... who died and made you king!" .........

Kaal bhai, startting point of sikhism is considered to be Guru Nanak's teachings...to be more precise, the time of culmination of his fist 'udaasi' when he emerged from the kali veiN recited his famous shabad "na hum hindu na musalman" ......this is not my view, this is the view of pracharaks of sikhi.( according to my view baba Nanak did not start any new religion, he just refused to accept or follow the then prevalent forms of hinduism and islam, which, like romair says, were the forms led and propagated by clergy and not the philosophy in either case).........Installation of Guru Granth sahib is not the starting point, but another mile stone in the journey of sikhism.
And Guru Granth is regarded as the 11th and the last Guru....sikhism does not start with it.

hamidm mian, no comments of my own. LOL

But some people make strong arguments (among them many Muslims) why you might have got it right, if you took out all those derogatory references and accusations.

Basically, their argument is that (for most people) the Quran/Islam is meaningless without it being exemplified by the character and life of Prophet Muhammad. And there is total harmony between the two.

Anyways, I am glad I as a happy idolator don't have to worry too much about such big things, neither for my salvation nor for my damnation. For me it was the oddness of stark differences between one theory and empirical observations.


--------------

Kamath ji, that is true. And my humble submission has been that we fail ourselves in leaving the job of 'didactic' into the hands of Bajrang dal ruffians. Liberals, educated people, refined people, honored and horable people, people like you, have to take that up.

Re: # 117 KaalChakra:
"....Kamat ji, why leave the matter of identity solely into hands of VHP and Bajrang Dal? Why not be part of the solution yourself?..."

You are free to do anything. All I am saying use reason and dialog. Refrain from violence. Violence destroys the soul of Hinduism and any other faith. Hinduism has exerience over millenia of inclusiveness of all points of view and practice of on'es faith. This will be gone very quickly if one says ,"let these fellows do the talking.." One should resort to dialectic first to extract truth.

One can not descend into barbarity and tribalism.

Kamath

...right upto Guru Granth Sahib ..

should be

... right upto when Guru Granth Sahib was recongized as the embodiment of all ten Gurus..

kaal chakri,

..... i see that you are having a profound theological debate on islam with captain clueless - international business man, political pundit and now a religious scholar .......good luck!

..... there is one thing that you guys are forgetting - islam is not a religion, it is a totlitarian political ideology like fascism, nazism and communism ..... unlike hidooism it is not really concerned whether your mother-in-law comes back to pester you as a crow or head lice, it is more concerned with conquering territory, circumcising heathens, destroying idols, beheading traitors and establishing a state where the head priest can rule in the name of the moon god ........... instead of studying the koran - a book of dubious origin - one must study the character and shenanigans of the prophet to really uunderstand islam ........ what you will find is an ambitious man aho ruthlessley exploited the superstitions of a primitive society to gain power .....the koran is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo that he used as a crutch to do what he did - the real islam is embodied in his antics ...... therefore, the moslems are right in using the hadith as the main source of their ideology ..... in any case, the koran was not recorded on tape and instead was entrusted to a bunch of women who let a goat eat part of it ...... it was also tampered with by charlatans like abu bakr, osman and omar - so what you have today is not even the real deal as cooked up by mo and the voice in the cave .........

.... anyway, good luck with your attempt to understand islam ..... maybe you can tell me what it is all about once you have figured it out ..........

drlokraj, there is a big difference between sikhism and Islam.

Sikhism is NOT sold/explained as the philosophy of Baba Nanak alone. I don't know any Sikh who does that. That is the Hindu view.

There may be Hindus who follow Baba Nanak as a great Guru who probably adhere to just his philosophy.

For Sikhs, the entire tradition right upto Guru Granth Sahib matters (for Hindus too, but not the same way).

------------

This is based on my general impression. Apologies if I got any of that wrong.

hence, the islam of today is the islam described by imam bukhari......not the islam described by muhammad.....it is, primarily, the islam of hadith......not the islam of the quran.......and the islam of hadith is based on clergy.......it was authored by clergy.......which has then built layers and layers of literature on top of it.......

so true romair, but as you rightly said people like you who believe in this are exception.......may even be at risk of being declared 'non-muslim' or even kafir.

I can understand this happening in a philosophy which is 1400 years old as same has happened even with the philosophy propagated by Baba Nanak less than 600 years ago!

A well-written post, romair. Many thanks.

KaalChakra #: valid points, as usual.......

"All Muslims are convinced that Islam has no clergy."

...not correct....i think an overwhelming no. of muslims think islam has a clergy.....those like me, who think (know) otherwise, are an exception.....very few people have studied the quran, philosophically......most rely on what the clergy (current and historic) has told them....most, specifically, rely on what those who have authored books on hadith (imam bukhari etc.) have told them....

islam, actually, does not run on the way described by the quran - a small abstract book with vague general guidelines - on how to set up a successful society.....islam runs on what is in hadith - very exact set of rules.......

this is despite the fact that the first book of hadith was authored over 200 years after the death of muhammad.....it was authored, totally, on heresay, spread across multiple generations and countries, describing what muhammad said and did, through an oral chain of individuals.......the authenticity of the chain has never been proven......in fact, such oral heresay over 200 years, is impossible to prove.....even if one tried to prove it....

hence, the islam of today is the islam described by imam bukhari......not the islam described by muhammad.....it is, primarily, the islam of hadith......not the islam of the quran.......and the islam of hadith is based on clergy.......it was authored by clergy.......which has then built layers and layers of literature on top of it.......

the quran, you may be surprised to know, doesn't even describe how muslims are to say their prayers.......the most important daily ritual.....it, deliberately, leaves it open.........

those open holes, were then filled in by clergy, via hadith (through heresay), and turned into what islam is today......

"Reality from outside: Religious leaders seem to have the maximum influence in Islamic communties (at least no less in Islam in any other religion)."

correct.....pls see previous answer

"All Muslims are convinced that Islam provides direct connection to God."

...yes and no.....they are convinced of this......but most feel there is more intensity, if God is approached via religiously significant people (a contradition, as per quran)...

and they are convinced that, when it comes to social matters (as opposed to personal matters), it is these ulema who talk to God and not each and every man......

"Reality from outside: Islam is the only religion wherein ordinary people ask for fatwa on everything from which side of the bed to get up in the morning to which books are permissible to read."

true....pls see previous answers......a combination of illiteracy and a lack of philosophical and objective study of islam by muslims........

"All Muslims are convinced that there is no compulsion in religion."

not correct.......most muslims feel that islam is the one and only correct religion.......when in fact, in reality, in islam, there is no compulsion in religion......

the criteria of going to heaven in islam is defined by the following verse in the quran:

"Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve." (Cow 2:62)

...so according to the quran, muslims, jews and christians are safe.....and those who believe in Allah (not sure if this is an islamic Allah, or God under any name, i.e. Bhagwan), last day (some form of judgement) and doeth good (generally good guys) and ok, also......not .....if hindus believe in an entity called God, and in judgement and i know quite a few hindus who doeth good, then this would cover them also...not sure though..the doeth good part would even cover athiests.....

a far more vast definition, than most muslims realize....

"Reality from outside: The numbers of people being legally persecuted from religious crimes is probably the highest in Islamic societies/communities/countries."

i am not sure is this is an accurate figure.....people are prosecuted for their religions all over the world....far more muslism, today, are killed by people of other religions (christians, jews, hindus, orthodox, athiests) than vice-versa....the numbers aren't even close......

but i get your point......the reasons for what is happening in muslim countries, is a combination of illiteracy, weak legal and political structures, which are then siphoned through a religion, which is based primarily on clerical interpretations......

romair, without getting into a religious discussion, I would very much appreciate your thoughts on a phenomenon that some non-Muslims see.

Let's call that the Inversion Principle (which might hold true for other religions too): things looking exactly the opposite from the outside than what they appear to people from the inside.

All Muslims are convinced that Islam has no clergy.

Reality from outside: Religious leaders seem to have the maximum influence in Islamic communties (at least no less in Islam in any other religion).

All Muslims are convinced that Islam provides direct connection to God.

Reality from outside: Islam is the only religion wherein ordinary people ask for fatwa on everything from which side of the bed to get up in the morning to which books are permissible to read.

All Muslims are convinced that there is no compulsion in religion.

Reality from outside: The numbers of people being legally persecuted from religious crimes is probably the highest in Islamic societies/communities/countries.

Now, you don't have to agree with anything outsiders may see. But do you have any thoughts on why some people might see that? Or, would you say these people are not looking at the world accurately?

dost-mittar #: "the difference is that I can shout that Ram was a myth, as many politiciasn do, and still remain a Hindu; you, on the other hand, cannot shout that Mohammad was a charltan and remain a Muslim. Ask Salman Rushdie..."

...i am not sure if this is true.....i have done a significant amount of research on islam....using the quran (and nothing else, i.e. writings of post-quran, "scholars" etc.) as the philosophical basis of this religion......

till now, i have not been able to discover anything, anywhere in the philosophy of islam, which lays down any kind of rules for declaring someone a non-muslim........

in fact, there is nothing anywhere in the quran, which gives any human being (muslim or otherwise) the right to declare anyone else a non-muslim....there is no society of, "ulemas" who can do so......no political govt. which can do so etc......

......nor is there any kind of mechanism defined in islam for declaring someone a non-muslim......

this and the non-documented history of hadith are two items on which i have challenged a lot of people, and so far, no one has provided any counter-argument.......

islam, philosophically (whether one views it as a religion or a philosophy) has an extremely strong philosophical basis of a direct connection between man and God......

what people fail to comprehend is that islam not only set aside idolatory, it set aside clergy, as well......the former has been maintained by muslims religiously (no pun intended), but the later has not......there are no idols in the islamic world........but it is flooded with fatwas given by self-appointed clergy....in an ideal islamic setting, there should be zero clergy.......the concept of an exclusively defined position of maulvi (with religious authority) is forbidden in islam.....

.....according to islamic philosophy, anyone declaring someone a non-muslim is committing a sin....because he/she is taking on authority which is to lie only with Allah.....i.e. only Allah can decided, in islam, who is and isn't a muslim.......He has not delegated that authority to anyone.......(nor has He defined a mechanism for doing so).....

so, if someone declares him/herself a muslim, he is one.....at least within the borders of this world.....after that, it is left to Allah to decide if he is or isn't.....

......all attempts at declaring people non-muslim are a result of political events.......ahmedis are non-muslims in pakistan, because they are a political minority.......if 95% of pakistan was ahmedis and 5% were sunnis, then sunnis may well have been declared as non-muslims by the state......the state may declare the minority shias non-muslim someday.....but i doubt the state or iran, where they are a majority, will ever do so......so on and so forth......

so, philosophically, in islam, on one can declare anyone a non-muslim, other than God......and there is no mechanism defined for doing so......however, realistically speaking, the majority view of the most powerful political sect(s) ends up ruling and deciding.....

e.g. i don't agree with the stance of the ahmedis.....it is opposed to my stance as a muslim......i have a right, personally (and vice-versa), to consider them non-muslims......but the state of pakistan, does not, officially have a right to do so.......at least not according to islamic teaching.....nor does and council of islamic scholars (this, itself, is a contradiction in islam)......

and when we die, we may well discover that, in the eyes of God, ahmedis were right and sunnis were wrong, i.e. they were more muslim than me.......(or vice versa)

Re: # 139

.... btw , why did you change your name??

Re: # 140

.... out LOUD (not 'load')

apologies

Re: # 139; kcs

it wasn't what I read between YOUR lines sir ... simply me thinking out load ... the next post followed to clarify my position on this matter

#132 akcheema

"it would appear to me that every child is born 'hindu' and it is their environment that 'converts' them into other things .... hmmmm .."

Cheema sahib, I am at once both amused and surprised by your inference. I didn't have anything even remotely close to this idea in my mind. I think you read too much between the lines :). Also note that my post was mainly in the context of Urstruly's thoughts.

#131 Shah2:

"there are tantriks, lingayets and others who too are Hindus, but all of them are missing (in the groups' opinion of Hinduism) and you get only one particular, sectarian and religiously-motivated point of view. "

I don't quite see your point. You may make these distinctions (tantriks, lingayats, vaishnavites, shavities, kali-worshippers, tribals) but I don't. So I don't see any need to mention them separately every time I make a general point (about Hinduism). Nor have I said anything, I guess, that would seem to exclude any of these "groups" that you would like included.

There are stories of highly evolved souls in each of these categories - and also other religions - who have attained salvation with their single-minded devotion to their object of devotion (which may seem different but are forms of the same Ultimate as far as I am concerned).

Many "sub-sects" of hinduism such as Lingayat were founded by social reformers to counter existing social conditions and this has happened numerous times in history, giving rise to a multitude of variations in traditions, beliefs and practices. I see it is a tree growing more branches as it grows; some see the branches as representing divergent directions, while others chose to look at the common roots.

There are some tantriks and practitioners of witchcraft whose practices are decadent and immoral - these are exceptions (which are there in every society) and should not be construed as sanctioned by religion.

Urstruly, out of interest, how do you know that monotheism is programmed in every child's genome? Did the Human Genome Project find the gene or genes? I haven't kept up with advances there in the last year, so I haven't heard of this.Thanks.

Re: # 135
Bring valid reputable scholar like Michael Wetzel Harvard vedic studies


"Gore Vidal (born October 3, 1925; pronounced /ËŒgɔər vɪˈdÉ‘Ë?l/ or /vɪˈdæl/) is an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, essayist, short story writer and politician. Early in his career he wrote the ground-breaking The City and the Pillar (1948) that outraged mainstream critics as the first major American novel to feature unambiguous homosexuality.'

This guy is gay...homosexual no doubt he is aethist

Re: # 135; correction

... I don't THINK (and not thing)

apologies

Re: # 132;

Gore Vidal wrote (and I quote):

["I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. Three antihuman religions have evolved -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal -- God is the omnipotent father -- hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the skygod and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not just for one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King, one Pope, one master in the factory, one father-leader in the family at home."]

now I don't thing we should be using the term "hinduism" to describe an ideal way of life since it has changed into a political movement and probably becoming increasingly indistinguishable from the abovementioned.

it is very clear to me though that humanity does need to "revert" to its 'natural' state .... and that is not described to my satisfaction by any organised religion (hinduism being no exception to the rule here)

Re: # 132
Cheema the answr to your question what was there BEFORE creature

'will be happy to see that Indian civilisation is 1.9 million years old. I wonder who was around that time in India but anyway they say it is that old...'

Re: # 131
Kcs Bhai

Its not that Davis frawleys theory is unchalenged and as you well know he has quiet a few who disagree with him .

interview in Rediff Michael Witzel has this to say


"First of all, it is a rewriting of Hinduism. Academics discuss Hinduism, among all religions, keeping in mind that there are so many diverse groups. If you read their edits, it would seem like Hinduism is a monotheistic religion, like Christianity or Judaism, with God spelt with a capital G.

It is a very narrow sectarian approach and that is being inserted into textbooks.

I have no preference, but you see


there are tantriks, lingayets and others who too are Hindus,

but all of them are missing (in the groups' opinion of Hinduism) and you get only one particular, sectarian and religiously-motivated point of view.

What is the second reason?

Number two is that history too has also been rewritten seriously. If you had gone to the Vedic Foundation web site, you will be happy to see that Indian civilisation is 1.9 million years old. I wonder who was around that time in India but anyway they say it is that old.

Re: # 131; kcs mian

[[As it goes in Sanskrit, "Ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti" - the Truth is One, the wise call It by different names.]]

it would appear to me that every child is born 'hindu' and it is their environment that 'converts' them into other things .... hmmmm ..

#129 Urstruly bhai,

What you say is based on your cocky notion that there is only one path/approach/way of thought towards realising the Infinite (the One, the Creator, or whatever you call It). How can anyone driving on an unfamiliar road say for sure that it is the right road unless he has reached the destination (and here we are talking of Destination with a capital D!)?

Those who term Hinduism as polytheistic and idolatrous don't realize that at the highest level, Hinduism (or to be more precise, the Vedas or Upanishads which contain the most profound philosophical thoughts of Hinduism) is monotheist. As it goes in Sanskrit, "Ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti" - the Truth is One, the wise call It by different names.

This inclusivity allows people of different geographical, mental, emotional, cultural and spiritual backgrounds to follow a way of religious practice that appeals to them and best suits their aptitude and way of life. One devotee might feel it more fulfilling relating to the Divine as his Mother, or as the Universal compassionate Mother, and hence worships an idol of a goddess representative of that concept; some one else might worship the Sun as a form of the Divine energy that sustains the world; yet another may be of more philosophical bent and dwell on the Formless Spirit; and some people do all of these at different times, based on their mental state. To untrained eyes this is confusing and may look like polytheism. But to the practitioner it is all different ways of relating to the One Truth.

In the lives of tribals and adivasi-s, who are very close to nature and depend on trees, rivers and certain animals for their survival, it is natural that they relate to the Divine through these entities. If over the course of time, some superstitious practices and unhealthy rituals have evolved, they are because of human ignorance and social decay and not because their core traditions/belief/religion is flawed.

Bottomline - don't judge any faith by what you see from the outside. Go a little deeper before you make your comments; if you don't have the time or patience for it, then at least refrain from commenting.

Here is an excerpt from the writings of Dr. David Frawley, a scholar of the Vedic philosophy:

Why Do Hindus Worship Many Gods?

Human beings through history have formulated many different names and forms for the Divine or Eternal. Just as we have many names and forms for other things, whether it is foods, or types of art, so too, in religion a similar great diversity has been created.

The Western world has prided itself in monotheism, the idea that there is only One God as the highest truth. Western religions have said that only the names and forms which refer to this One God are valid but those which appear to worship another God, or a multiplicity of divinities, must be false. They have restricted the names and forms they use in religious worship, and insist that only one set is true and correct and others are wrong or unholy.

As a universal formulation Hinduism accepts all formulations of Truth. According to the universal view there is only One Reality, but it cannot be limited to a particular name or form. Though Truth is One it is also Universal, not an exclusive formulation. It is an inclusive, not an exclusive Oneness - a spiritual reality of Being - Consciousness - Bliss, which could be called God but which transcends all names. The different Gods and Goddesses of Hinduism represent various functions of this One Supreme Divinity, and are not separate Gods.

Having many names for something is not necessarily a sign of ignorance of its real nature. On the contrary, it may indicate an intimate knowledge of it. For example, Eskimos have forty-eight different names for snow in their language because they know snow intimately in its different variations, not because they are ignorant of the fact that all snow is only one. The many different deities of Hinduism reflect such an intimate realization of the Divine on various levels.

Ref Urstruly #129

[As opposed to any other religion in the world, we Muslims do not convert people. It is nothing but common sense that every child that is ever born is born as a Monotheist. Monotheism is programmed in every human being's genome. Later the parents of those children raise them as idolators, polytheists, or atheists. We, the Muslims, only remind these unfortunate souls as to Who their Creator is who is the One whom they should prostrate to. Some of these people revert back to the faith they were born with.]

Except that even after the shahadat, Ahmadiyas are not Muslims, Shias are bad Muslims, Ismailis are acceptable so long as the Aga Khan sends money to Pakistan, etc., etc., etc.

Re: # 125 Bhai

As opposed to any other religion in the world, we Muslims do not convert people. It is nothing but common sense that every child that is ever born is born as a Monotheist. Monotheism is programmed in every human being's genome. Later the parents of those children raise them as idolators, polytheists, or atheists. We, the Muslims, only remind these unfortunate souls as to Who their Creator is who is the One whom they should prostrate to. Some of these people revert back to the faith they were born with.

Re: # 126

As if you you are not already not doing .all that

Spare us the crocodiles of Chennai tears .

Behen chod if you have guts and able to withstand the loss you will incur i say i dare you to do it .

I have altready suggest you just xerox copy china nincompop you failed at every attempt for last 60 yrs of mismanagement
failure that you are .

Ref KaalChakra #123

[kcs, we do lack the organized/mandated social responsibility element of the scale available in both Islam and Christianity.]

So, there are no Muslim poor in India? No Christian poor in the Philippines or Central or South America?

Give me a break!

Ref Shah2 #124

[Re: # 122

Harami is China a muslim or Muslim Majority country ?]

Since India is not a Muslim or Muslim-majority country either, we should then also be able to force government employees and students who are Muslims to eat during Ramadan day time, right?

How about cutting the number of Indian Hajj pilgrims to 2000 from 80,000+ and charging them $3700 instead of paying them a subsidy?

Got any answers, you Islamist thug?

#121, Urstruly

Nice joke!

Seeking others to convert (just for the sake of increasing numbers) is the job of deluded souls, who have no aptitude to introspect on their own merits and improve themselves. Men with any noteworthy degree of spiritual attainment, whatever path they may have taken, wouldn't indulge in this idiocy. The mere power of their personality and inner strength transforms others who come into contact with them.

Re: # 122

Harami is China a muslim or Muslim Majority country ?

So you r china loving then why the frikking when maoist /naxal .cpi /cpm look for inspiration to them why does it puts u r pants on fire .

Just be China it will be o. k. if its o.k with you Harami

kcs, we do lack the organized/mandated social responsibility element of the scale available in both Islam and Christianity. Nor do we have strong internal/psychic incentives for helping others that Christianity provides, or for helping other co-religionists that Islam provides.

It would be great to build those things in, but that would be hard given the basic disorganized/unorganized nature of the religion that isn't very big of strong mandates :(

We tend to rely on individual efforts, on sages, saints, thinkers and on small groups of people who band around these individuals to do good, to make a difference locally, and build it up from there.

All of you frikking Pakis who demand that India maintain the right of religious conversion (away from Hinduism, of course!): read this about how Islam is treated by your all-weather friend China.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/world/asia/19xinjiang.html?_r=1& hp=&pagewanted=all

Wary of Islam, China Tightens a Vise of Rules

By EDWARD WONG
Published: October 18, 2008

KHOTAN, China — The grand mosque that draws thousands of Muslims each week in this oasis town has all the usual trappings of piety: dusty wool carpets on which to kneel in prayer, a row of turbans and skullcaps for men without headwear, a wall niche facing the holy city of Mecca in the Arabian desert.

But large signs posted by the front door list edicts that are more Communist Party decrees than Koranic doctrines.

The imam’s sermon at Friday Prayer must run no longer than a half-hour, the rules say. Prayer in public areas outside the mosque is forbidden. Residents of Khotan are not allowed to worship at mosques outside of town.

One rule on the wall says that government workers and nonreligious people may not be “forced� to attend services at the mosque — a generous wording of a law that prohibits government workers and Communist Party members from going at all.

“Of course this makes people angry,� said a teacher in the mosque courtyard, who would give only a partial name, Muhammad, for fear of government retribution. “Excitable people think the government is wrong in what it does. They say that government officials who are Muslims should also be allowed to pray.�

To be a practicing Muslim in the vast autonomous region of northwestern China called Xinjiang is to live under an intricate series of laws and regulations intended to control the spread and practice of Islam, the predominant religion among the Uighurs, a Turkic people uneasy with Chinese rule.

The edicts touch on every facet of a Muslim’s way of life. Official versions of the Koran are the only legal ones. Imams may not teach the Koran in private, and studying Arabic is allowed only at special government schools.

Two of Islam’s five pillars — the sacred fasting month of Ramadan and the pilgrimage to Mecca called the hajj — are also carefully controlled. Students and government workers are compelled to eat during Ramadan, and the passports of Uighurs have been confiscated across Xinjiang to force them to join government-run hajj tours rather than travel illegally to Mecca on their own.

Government workers are not permitted to practice Islam, which means the slightest sign of devotion, a head scarf on a woman, for example, could lead to a firing.

The Chinese government, which is officially atheist, recognizes five religions — Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Taoism and Buddhism — and tightly regulates their administration and practice. Its oversight in Xinjiang, though, is especially vigilant because it worries about separatist activity in the region.

Some officials contend that insurgent groups in Xinjiang pose one of the biggest security threats to China, and the government says the “three forces� of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism threaten to destabilize the region. But outside scholars of Xinjiang and terrorism experts argue that heavy-handed tactics like the restrictions on Islam will only radicalize more Uighurs.

Many of the rules have been on the books for years, but some local governments in Xinjiang have publicly highlighted them in the past seven weeks by posting the laws on Web sites or hanging banners in towns.

Those moves coincided with Ramadan, which ran from September to early October, and came on the heels of a series of attacks in August that left at least 22 security officers and one civilian dead, according to official reports. The deadliest attack was a murky ambush in Kashgar that witnesses said involved men in police uniforms fighting each other.

The attacks were the biggest wave of violence in Xinjiang since the 1990s. In recent months, Wang Lequan, the long-serving party secretary of Xinjiang, and Nuer Baikeli, the chairman of the region, have given hard-line speeches indicating that a crackdown will soon begin.

Mr. Wang said the government was engaged in a “life or death� struggle in Xinjiang. Mr. Baikeli signaled that government control of religious activities would tighten, asserting that “the religious issue has been the barometer of stability in Xinjiang.�

Anti-China forces in the West and separatist forces are trying to carry out “illegal religious activities and agitate religious fever,� he said, and “the field of religion has become an increasingly important battlefield against enemies.�

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, accounting for 46 percent of the population of 19 million. Many say Han Chinese, the country’s dominant ethnic group, discriminate against them based on the most obvious differences between the groups: language and religion.

The Uighurs began adopting Sunni Islam in the 10th century, although patterns of belief vary widely, and the religion has enjoyed a surge of popularity after the harshest decades of Communist rule. According to government statistics, there are 24,000 mosques and 29,000 religious leaders in Xinjiang. Muslim piety is especially strong in old Silk Road towns in the south like Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan.

Many Han Chinese see Islam as the root of social problems in Xinjiang.

“The Uighurs are lazy,� said a man who runs a construction business in Kashgar and would give only his last name, Zhao, because of the political delicacy of the topic.

“It’s because of their religion,� he said. “They spend so much time praying. What are they praying for?�

The government restrictions are posted inside mosques and elsewhere across Xinjiang. In particular, officials take great pains to publicize the law prohibiting Muslims from arranging their own trips for the hajj. Signs painted on mud-brick walls in the winding alleyways of old Kashgar warn against making illegal pilgrimages. A red banner hanging on a large mosque in the Uighur area of Urumqi, the regional capital, says, “Implement the policy of organized and planned pilgrimage; individual pilgrimage is forbidden.�

As dozens of worshipers streamed into the mosque for prayer on a recent evening, one Uighur man pointed to the sign and shook his head. “We didn’t write that,� he said in broken Chinese. “They wrote that.�

He turned his finger to a white neon sign above the building that simply said “mosque� in Arabic script. “We wrote that,� he said.

Like other Uighurs interviewed for this article, he agreed to speak on the condition that his name not be used for fear of retribution by the authorities.

The government gives various reasons for controlling the hajj. Officials say that the Saudi Arabian government is concerned about crowded conditions in Mecca that have led to fatal tramplings, and that Muslims who leave China on their own sometimes spend too much money on the pilgrimage.

Critics say the government is trying to restrict the movements of Uighurs and prevent them from coming into contact with other Muslims, fearing that such exchanges could build a pan-Islamic identity in Xinjiang.

About two years ago, the government began confiscating the passports of Uighurs across the region, angering many people here. Now virtually no Uighurs have passports, though they can apply for them for short trips. The new restriction has made life especially difficult for businessmen who travel to neighboring countries.

To get a passport to go on an official hajj tour or a business trip, applicants must leave a deposit of nearly $6,000.

One man in Kashgar said the imam at his mosque, who like all official imams is paid by the government, had recently been urging congregants to go to Mecca only with legal tours.

That is not easy for many Uighurs. The cost of an official trip is the equivalent of $3,700, and hefty bribes usually raise the price. Once a person files an application, the authorities do a background check into the family. If the applicant has children, the children must be old enough to be financially self-sufficient, and the applicant is required to show that he or she has substantial savings in the bank. Officials say these conditions ensure that a hajj trip will not leave the family impoverished.

Rules posted last year on the Xinjiang government’s Web site say the applicant must be 50 to 70 years old, “love the country and obey the law.�

The number of applicants far outnumbers the slots available each year, and the wait is at least a year. But the government has been raising the cap. Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that from 2006 to 2007, more than 3,100 Muslims from Xinjiang went on the official hajj, up from 2,000 the previous year.

One young Uighur man in Kashgar said his parents were pushing their children to get married soon so they could prove the children were financially independent, thus allowing them to qualify to go on the hajj. “Their greatest wish is to go to Mecca once,� the man, who wished to be identified only as Abdullah, said over dinner.

But the family has to weigh another factor: the father, now retired, was once a government employee and a Communist Party member, so he might very well lose his pension if he went on the hajj, Abdullah said.

The rules on fasting during Ramadan are just as strict. Several local governments began posting the regulations on their Web sites last month. They vary by town and county but include requiring restaurants to stay open during daylight hours and mandating that women not wear veils and men shave their beards.

Enforcement can be haphazard. In Kashgar, many Uighur restaurants remained closed during the fasting hours. “The religion is too strong in Kashgar,� said one man. “There are rules, but people don’t follow them.�

One rule that officials in some towns seem especially intent on enforcing is the ban on students’ fasting. Supporters of this policy say students need to eat to study properly.

The local university in Kashgar adheres to the policy. Starting last year, it tried to force students to eat during the day by prohibiting them from leaving campus in the evening to join their families in breaking the daily fast. Residents of Kashgar say the university locked the gates and put glass shards along the top of a campus wall.

After a few weeks, the school built a higher wall.

The real shame is not what Hindu loosers are doing to the Christians and the converts; the real shame is upon Muslims that it should have been them who would have brought the light of Monotheism in the hearts and lives of the tribals and conveyed to them the message of Allah. Alas! Chritians beat us to that.

Muslims like Murad Baig have been defining who is a Hindu and who is not ever since they set first foot in India, according to their own specific needs and convenience at any time and any place. As have Christians, with increasing aggressiveness.

Re: #101, Regards

"My comparisons was only to draw attention that hinduism fools people in believing that being charitable and pious means making offerings to temples. We do not have a social responsibility towards a poor child sleeping on the footpath as long as we hold a puja and do necessary offerings. Such gestures are also done more for public appreciation and not because we really feel ourselves socially responsible."

Regards, when you say "hinduism fools people", who or what do you mean by "hinduism". Did your priest or elders (who may be your religious advisers) give you this idea? Did you read it in any of the holy books? Or is it just your narrow viewpoint based on the actions of those you like to criticize?

I personally know a lot of devout hindus who silently do a lot for their poor brethren than you might even care to know about, truly in the spirit that service to the poor is service to God, and in the spirit of "nishkaama karma" (noble action without expecting any thing in return). The same is true of several muslims, christians, jains, sikhs, etc. In the case of hinduism it is not so obvious since it is less organized and people largely practise charity in their personal capacity.

So all I am saying is don't advertise this black-and-white, narrow viewpoint based on your inability to see beyond your nose. There are excellent people, good people, average people and bad people in all segments of society and religions.

Look, the days of living the boundless life of happy, nameless savage - no matter how much we crave it - are long over.

Gone. Finito. Never to come back.

Either you step up to the plate and speak up - not just individually but for your people, or Murad Baigs of the world will define you and your people completely. Then you would have failed in your duty, and Modis will have no reason to listen to you. They will speak in your name, and spill more blood.

"VHP members will define who is a Hindu and who is not."

Muslims like Murad Baig have been defining who is a Hindu and who is not ever since they set first foot in India, according to their own specific needs and convenience at any time and any place. As have Christians, with increasing aggressiveness.

What is the problem if Hindus take the initiative in defining themselves, as they themselves think proper? Why do you want to leave that job into the hands of Murad Baigs of the world?

Do you trust them more than you trust yourself? Is talking about who you are worse than others telling you who you are or should be, at any particular time and any particular place?

Kamat ji, why leave the matter of identity solely into hands of VHP and Bajrang Dal? Why not be part of the solution yourself?

Re: # 108 Dost Mittar: Are you sure when you say,:.. I can shout that Ram was a myth, as many politiciasn do, and still remain a Hindu....." ?

I think those days where you can show your intellectual courage are numbered. A day will soon come when Bajarang Dal , VHP members will define who is a Hindu and who is not.
Already considerable majority in of Hindu society are collaborators and have accepted the idea allotting Bajarang Dal thugs as "defenders of Hinduism" using methods of intimidation, beating up or and murdering the member of weaker minorities. These are Hindu Talibanis.

You see all it needs is a small number to take control over the majority. This is what happened in Fascist Europe and Iraq etc. How then one can survive? If you you can not beat them Join em is a good formula for so many pure Hindus!

So watch your back Dost Mittar! New storm troopers of Hinduism are already here.

Kamath

Regards, if you see this, it would indeed be very helpful to hear your thoughts on how the social commitments of Hindus can be enhanced without also enhancing either their overall religiosity or level of group solidarity.

We will benefit from taking up some specific mechanisms. We need practical means that are both acceptable to people at large and effective in handing out appropriate rewards and punishments to individuals (if that is what we want).

Re: # 109

Cheema Rajput .If you did not icentify your self as muslim you would be kicked out at partition .So just saying has consequences .

If there was scolarship only for Nonmuslim and i said i was non muslim could i be taken as non muslim if i just say so .There are previleges If you one you forgo other .

You trying to have laddu in both hands

I have posted a new ilog, not being displayed on FP by Chowk Staff

Prejudice and the Culture Argument

http://chowk.com/ilogs/69490/40823

Regards, how will rewards and punishments be handed out to individuals in such a society?

#103 kaalChakra

Social altruism does not necessarily require identification with any group having any other dogma than mutual help. Only requirement is that society should reward those who accord others what they may expect from others and chastize those who do not.
There are many animal societies like Bonobos who practice just that without falling in the fascistic trap of racism and religions.

cheemaji:

I would strongly advise you not to write a letter to The Dawn saying the same thing.

As hamidm jokingly remarks, he folds his pants when he is in Pindi.

Re: # 108; dost ji (last post!)

if Salman Rushdie introduced himself to me as a muslim, I'd accept him at face value ... like stated before

(though he categorically denies that part of his identity)

a good example would be hamidm sahib and I here on chowk .... and don't go thinking I don't say what I say here openly to all my kith and kin!! ... I happen to be exactly as advertised .. worts and all!

will talk again soon

akcheema:

"If someone identifies themselves as hindus ... to me they are hindus ... by the same token, if someone identifies as a muslim, s/he is ... that is the end of that ... simple!"

I would respectfully disagree with this statement. Unlike Hinduism, Islam has a set definition; one has to believe that there is only one God and Mohammad is his Last Prophet. It is on the disputed interpretation of the "Last Prophet" that the Ahmadi issue has created a schism.

On an individual level also, there is a difference: both you and I have perhaps identical beliefs: the difference is that I can shout that Ram was a myth, as many politiciasn do, and still remain a Hindu; you, on the other hand, cannot shout that Mohammad was a charltan and remain a Muslim. Ask Salman Rushdie.

Good night, cheema ji.

You are too generous to these Hindus. Loving EVERYBODY in theory, more often that not, ends up in practice meaning loving NOBODY :(

But we can discuss that later. Good to sleep now. :)

Re: # 105; Kaal

it is a lot better than what we have; nothing is "perfect" as we all know

Khuda hafiz