The Gentle Power of the Sufi Tradition

Eklavya
Sorry I don't have time to indulge in discussion with fascists.

om bhai, it seems you are making very narrow and technical points. Primarily to do with some 'might have beens.' As does murad bhai.

Could you please put them in bullet form so we Hindus can understand you. Thanks.

Sattar bhai, I haven't made the argument about Muslim deception of Hindus yet :)

And that case cannot be made to Muslims, only to Hindus. But describing what I wish to describe is like trying to squeeze 600 year of extremely active history in a few paragraphs without Hindus losing interest, or feeling lost. As you can understand, normal Hindus have not the foggiest idea of these things. So it's a challenge. But I promise to work on it this afternoon.

Best

I made a very narrow point. People are reading more into it than what was implied.
That two systems were in conflict means that there were significant differences between the systems (at that time and place any way, things might have progressed since then to erase the points of friction) and changing from one system to another was 'conversion.'
You may have your own definition of conversion that suits your political agenda. I can claim that I don't have an agenda here and that I believe everything ought to be examined on its own merit similar to saying Hindu-Muslim violence does not preclude or eliminate caste violence. Both existe(d) and the existence of one does not negate the other.

I have nothing more to add here.

It would be good to cite proper sources such as Romila Thapar (far from a hindutwadi!) to buttress claims of violence between hindus and jains and buddhists etc. Pointing to this or that web site is not very plausible; needless to say if one did that with islam the results would indeed be very ugly !!!

There is very little evidence to support the thesis of institutionalized violence between these groups - which is not to say that ancient indian society did not have violence - it had it in plenty - its just that religion wasnt its basis. I am sure that some kings took this side or the other for political gain - today a jain group has hegemony, tomorrow some shaivite faction is ascendant and so on.

Let us contrast the survival of hindu institutions and cultural objects in afghanistan with the survival of jain cultural objects and institutions in india. I think that gives a pretty good idea of the difference in scale, scope and deliberate targetting.

Islam and european christianity are quasi-imperial systems designed for conversion and explicitly allow violence to support this in many contexts. I dont believe any indic tradition has such an infrastructure within the religous tradition itself. Again, it doesnt mean that a group of shaivites didnt attack some jains once or that buddhists never physically fought with brahmins etc.

Kaal (#304),

I read the post … but I am not sure of your conclusion regarding deliberate deception on part of sufis, all sufis, or even khojas. I think it may not be the content, but perhaps the language and emphasis, that strengthens one’s existing suspicions against the khojas.

In other words, same content, written with different emphasis, may lead the reader to a different conclusion.

Could the Khoja doctrine simply be a product of fusion of indic and islamic teachings? If a khoja/shia/muslim believes in universality of islamic teachings, it would not be unnatural for him to seek the common thread that binds various belief systems in a common theme.

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DM (#315, 317),

It depends on how one defines “Islam�. If Islam is defined as divine laws revealed in stages by the universal deity, then Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did not found Islam, but only completed it.

I think there are material differences between Quran, and, for example, Torah. Furthermore, in Quran Allah also suggests something to the effect that … whatever We revealed earlier, now stands abrogated (presumably in favor of Quranic teachings).

Jang, sure. We pretty much know what Murad Baig believes about Hinduism and Shankaracharya. I don't yet fully understand what ombhai believes.

Knowing that will help advance our common understanding

So if any other Hindu(s) undertand(s) what ombhai believes, let's all help each other grasp it.

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I know both believe that Hindus massacred others in India for their religious beliefs just as did Muslims (Murad baig - Buddhists, Ombahi - jains, and others such as assif - Sikhs). That much I get.

dost_mittar
1 is a non sequitur. I never implied that the violence was somehow Adi Shankara's fault. You have misread me.
I am not Murad Baig so I cannot answer for him. I'll merely point out that your interesting approach would substitute mythology ("cultural memory") for history. By your reckoning, in a few more decades, our "cultural memory" would tell us that the Brits were kind to us because we get along fine with them and '84 never happened because Sikhs and Hindus get along fine. I am sure you see how ridiculous that would be. Your interesting point with respect to Ghaznavi does not imply that the opposite is automatically true.

From what I understand, there is Shaivite literature in the South that recounts the way the Jains were made to convert. I cannot argue this point more since I don't have the time to research this topic. You are welcome to ignore/question/believe/do your own research, etc.

ek yar, you should write an article on adi shankara and his works. i am emphatically telling you that hindoos know nothing about him. any even illiterate muslim knows about greatness of the prophet, his hadith. now when a learned man like murad writes about shankara, most hindoos would not even understand if the writing is a praise or an attack. i understand your sadness but this is the simple truth.

offcourse even an atheist non-hindoo can evry easily "defeat" hindoo in dawa, interestingly hindoo survives inspite of it.

Since you gentlemen are patiently engaged in a discussion I would not say anyting worse than express very deeply regret that people can actually live in India and know absolutely nothing about either shankaracharya or his philosophy. This has to change if Hindus have to live in peace with others.

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Let me correct a couple of things:

Statement: Shankaracharya was representing something called 'Hinduism.' His purpose was to go around converting Jains and Buddhists to Hinduism. Had he lost any of his debates he would have had to give up Hinduism.

Fact: Shankaracharya's most celebrated debates took place with Mandan Misra - a famous Hindu scholar of ritualistic school. All of Shankaracharya's philosophy is an invocation away from any rituals, from any dogma, from a focus on rules being blindly followed. He debated EVERYBDY of every persuasion, trying to explain his philosophy. That's what itenerant Indian gurus and sages did in those days.

And Shankara's philosophy is an absolutely brilliant piece of work. I personally know of nothing better. May be some others do. Wish people actually knew about it before passing judgement about what Shankara was preaching.

Fact: As the most despicable and unfair blow, Adi Shanakara has been accused of promoting casteism. The only thing I can say is that that is akin to accusing Mr. Muhammad of preaching cow-worship.

Fact: He is being accused of being a non-pacifist. All his life shankaracharya taught and practised nothing but peace. He broke no idols, killed no enemy or enemies, asked to his followers to kill or rob no one. He taught oneness of all, of living and non-living.

Fact: He is accused of being an 'evangelist.' Evangelism is defined as the zealous preaching of a gospel.

Shankarcharya preached no 'gospel.' He had a phiosophy, he preached it, debated it. If that is supposed to make him 'worse' or 'less' than Muhammad and Zoraster and Christ (although I fail to see how), then so be it. This surely cannot be the Hindu view or even the Indic view.

The odd thing is that Murad bhai has, at other places, treated Shankaracharya almost as a founder of 'Hinduism.' He equates Hinduism with caste and holds Shankaracharya responsible for promoting caste.

I would stop here lest I say something right now I am determined not to say to Murad/Om bhais.

I would again request followers of other religions to develop a better understanding of Hinduism and of its most important figure. You cannot live in peace with a majority if you are totally ignorant of it. At some point in time, you wil be held accountable.

#358 om_prakash

[As to the argument that Jains and Buddhists were not much different from Hindus, I cited instances where such conversion was accompanied by violence.]

Which instances? Because Mr. Digambar Jain of digambarjainonline.com says so? Where is the historical evidence?

Eh?

#365 dost_mittar

["Binding progeny for all generations to come -
Is there a law in India against Muslims reverting back? Not that I am aware of."

I was talking about religion, not the law of any country. ]

om_prakash (interesting choice for a nick) knows very well that you were talking about religion. But he belongs to a people who have been able to fudge everything under the sun. Thus muhammad becomes a good person - no, a "perfect" human being, the koran becomes a book of love and peace, the muslims become eternal victims, not perpetrators and so on and on. Without fudging, in straight arguments, muslims would lose any argument very quickly. So they have evolved means to deal with that. Kill the other person - that's the traditional muslim way to settle any challenges to their "religion", or, barring that, keep stalling and fudging, hoping to confuse and divert the issue, and finally, if there is no choice, disappear for a while until the coast is clear.

Your argument with him about the Jains is a case in point. Of all the points you make with clarity - 1, 2, 3, 4 etc., he does not have any answer. Most likely, he'll lie low for a while, hoping that your post gets buried under some others (Tahmed is a master at this - for that matter all Muslims on Chowk are). If it doesn't, he'll simply keep harping on his unsubstantiated claims as if he never read your post.

om_prakash#343:

Once again, I am not a scholar of that period but would still try to address your quotation about Jains at various levels:

1. If the followers are violent does not mean that the religious leader was violent: Crusaders were violent but Jesus is generally accepted to be pacifist; similarly, some Hindus (who may not necessarily be followers of Shankara) killing Jains does not show Shankara to be not pacifist.

2. I am very skeptical of the various hairbrain theories that have come into existence after independence. As far as I know (and I am sure someone of greater knowledge would correct me if I am wrong), serious pre-independence historians of India, such as A.L. Basham or Max Mueller did not mention any such killings. The Marxian rewrite of Indian history by people with an agenda to prove that the Muslim violence over Hindus was no different from the earlier Hindu violence over practitioners of other religions is as suspect in my eyes as the M.M.Joshi's attempt to rewrite history during the NDA govt.'s rule with the opposite agenda.

3. I have visited several Hindu and Jain temples in various parts of India over the last four months, from Kerala to Madhya Pradesh to Rajasthan. Far from any sign of violence, what I found was that Jain temples were full of Hindu icons and in some cases the priests were actually Hindus (I was told that there is a paucity of Jain priests).

4. Finally, and most importantly, here is a question I have asked Muradbhai more than once and he has never answered and, maybe you can. How come Hindus carry deep, deep scars of Mehmood Ghaznavi's loot and carnage after 1000 years but Jains don't show any such scars of violence perpetrated by the Hindus centuries later. I don't know how many Jain friends you have but I have had dozens of them at various stages of my life and still have half a dozen close one (was with two of them earlier this afternoon and I broached this topic with them). None of them has ever heard of any such atrocities. Indeed, far from being anti-hindu, some of them are among the most ardent followers of the Hindutva.

"Binding progeny for all generations to come -
Is there a law in India against Muslims reverting back? Not that I am aware of."

I was talking about religion, not the law of any country.

"yar jartrustra gets a higher pass due to monoatheistic message"

maybe so, but the point remains, monotheism is a philosophical/moral crieterion not influence, fame based one.

yar jartrustra gets a higher pass due to monoatheistic message ..proly nanak too

"oye yar all murad is saying as that shankara is not the same league as other."

No jang, I am not convinced of that. That would be a morally neutral evaluation based purely on amount of influence, fame etc. But when asked to explain his grouping he mentioned pacifism, evangelism etc.

At other times he mentioned miraculous, controlling god as bad. His classification is not just influence based, but morality based.

And it is not uniform w.r.t Hindu Shankara vs non Hindu others.

(P.S also purely in terms of fame, impact, influence I would count others higher but not necessarily Zooroaster higher than Shankara either)