In Search of the Moderate Muslim

Chowkies,

I am very saddened and shocked by the massacre of Christians who were praying in Church two days ago. I actually heard about this attack last night after coming home from work. This is an act that is utterly deplorable, inhuman and must be condemned by all Pakistanis and people of Pakistani descent.

I have refrained from speaking about non USA issues because I feel it is not my place, to some degree. However, I feel this incident is an exception; this massacre lessens and injures all of us, the way any attack on an innocent people does. I know that there are many Pakistanis and Pakistan-Americans on Chowk who feel the same way. The report of thousands of Pakistanis mourning the slaying of these Christian Pakistanis points to the growing concern over the issue of the status of Christian Pakistanis. I sincerely hope that the perpetrator/s of this crime are caught and brought to justice immediately. I also hope that this horrifying attack reminds us of the status of minority communities in our respective countries and that we need to be vigillant in ensuring their/our various rights (through policy, brother/sisterhood, friendship, linkages) against those who would try to transgress the bounds of human decency.

regards

Farzana: one more feather in your cap; this was excellent! If every woman could stand up for her beliefs the way you do, I think many of the problems plaguing the female gender would slowly diminish. Though of course, as you can well see, many egotistical men find it difficult to digest such notions. I love to see them simmer with anger and jealousy. More power to you!

Definitely my most favorite lines from you:

[``The burqa as laaj-sharam Muslim or the burqa as chaudhvin ka chaand romanticised Muslim? The dum pukht Muslim or the Dom Perignon Muslim? The Holy Quran Muslim or the holy cow Muslim? The openly jihadi Muslim or the closet fundamentalist Muslim? Your sugar won’t melt in my mouth Muslim or the lohe ke channe chabanewalla Muslim? The kamsin bibi Muslim or the come sin babe Muslim?``]

Keep it coming. We can`t stop showing them their real faces.

Khair-andaish

Kiran

This is written by a loyal dyed-in-blue-&-red American.



Let the `moderates` & `liberals`(codewords for those whose a/sses,hearts and brains try to go in three different directions at the same time.

It is traumatic when all the westernised education(the artsy/fartsy kind)is reduced to nothing.Ever wonder why the bearded-ones are,mashallah,winning on all fronts?

(In case memories are short all those named had the looks & manners of `liberal` & `moderates`.They drank,fornicated & gambled....some of the feathers in the proud caps of `liberals` or `moderates` or ,these days `sufis`)

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A MOMENT OF REFLECTION

On September 11th, four teams of hijackers walked past the security at three major metropolitan airports and hijacked four aircraft. Two were crashed into the World Trade Towers, one into the Pentagon, and one was apparently and thankfully shot down before it could reach its target.

The media call these perpetrators terrorists. Given that we don`t really know exactly who they were and what belief systems they were slaves to, we cannot know whether they called themselves holy warriors, freedom fighters, or something else. I doubt they call themselves terrorists for using unconventional tactics, no more than the American colonists who used unconventional tactics that the British found morally repugnant called themselves terrorists.

But what we do know about these people is that they were educated. They were pilots. They were equipped to survive in modern American culture. Minus their hate, they could have been prosperous and successful here. With their hate, because of their hate, they were willing to throw their education, their prosperity, their futures, and their lives away in a blinding flash as aluminum ploughed into concrete with hundreds of innocent lives following just a few feet behind.

How could anyone hate America enough to throw their own lives away in their attacks on the symbols of our nation`s economic and military power? I mean it`s not like someone just wakes up one morning and decides to hijack a jet passenger liner and use it to knock down a skyscraper and is willing to die in the process because there`s nothing good to watch on TV. Nobody wakes up and says, “Gee the baseball game got rained out, let`s go blow up a building.” Anyone willing to commit such a crime as we have seen this week is seriously pissed off about something, and in order to stop more attacks we need to face up to what that something is.

We`re not talking “lone nuts”, but entire teams of people willing to die in their attacks on our buildings and against our citizens. What makes these people so hate us that they would sacrifice their lives in their eagerness to strike at us?

Maybe it`s because America, despite lovely speeches about bringing freedom and democracy to the world, has a record of backing some of the worst dictators to be found. The US Government, for reasons of commercial interest, backed men like Batista, Pinochet, and the Shah of Iran, despots who drove their people into poverty to enrich American corporations until their people rebelled. Then we befuddled Americans scratch our heads and wonder why those people don`t seem to like us very much.

Maybe people hate us because what we call Peacekeepers still looks and feels like an invading army to those who stop the bullets, step on the land mines, and catch the bombs.

Maybe it`s because the US Government has executed its foreign policy by tricking nations into fighting each other. Saddam was our buddy once, when he was useful to our policy towards Iran. We The People paid for the Supergun. Our government sold Saddam the first of his biological weapons. Then our government decided they didn`t need him any more, told him it would be okay if he invaded Kuwait and declared war on him, blowing up the Supergun and the biological weapons (we hope). Think maybe Saddam carries a grudge? I sure would if I was double crossed like that.

We played the same double cross with Osama Bin Laden, our ally and a CIA contract agent in Afghanistan, funded with $6 billion of YOUR tax dollars, now branded a supervillian worthy of a comic book. Remember the last time our government decided to “take care of Osama?” We blew up an aspirin factory in Sudan. Big joke, that was. You, the taxpayers, not only got to pay for the million-a-shot cruise missiles, you also got to pay to rebuild the aspirin factory when the owners sued the USA, with Vernon Jordan as their attorney! Think the people who worked in that factory (the ones who survived at any rate) like us? I doubt it.

Maybe the reason people in the middle east are willing to conduct holy wars against us is because so many holy wars were conducted against them in the past, going back to the so-called “Holy” Crusades.

Jerusalem was conquered on 7/15/1099 and 60,000 non-Christians were killed. Bodies were slit open to search for gold coins they might have swallowed. Jews who had taken refuge in the city`s synagogue were burned alive, thousands of muslims were chopped to death in Al-Aqsa mosque. According to the Archbishop of Tyre, who was an eye-witness, ``It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished.`` Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that ``even the following summer in all of Palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition``.

After rude behavior like that, nobody would be welcome again.

Maybe people are willing to use terror attacks against us because we use terror attacks against them. In 1985, authorized by William Casey, the CIA planted a car bomb near a mosque in Beirut to kill Sheik Mohammed Hossein Fadlallah, a muslim cleric. The bomb missed the Sheik but killed 80 people, including children. Is it really okay for us to use tactics we condemn in others? No, it isn`t. If they are morally wrong to use car bombs that kill innocent people, then so are we.

Or maybe the reason so many people hate us enough to die attacking us is something as simple as growing up watching your playmates blown to bloody bits before your eyes, and picking up a piece of shrapnel stamped, “Made in the USA”. It is silly to think that anyone could endure a childhood like that and remain entirely positive about the USA. Because for all its public talk of peace, the United States remains the largest exporter of mechanized death in the world. And if it is acceptable for the victims of guns to blame the gun makers for their injuries, it must be equally acceptable for the victims of bombs, missiles, and mines, to blame the weapons makers as well.

It is far less than clear just who is behind the attacks in New York and Washington DC. Fingers have been pointed at Saddam Hussein, Arafat, and ex CIA agent Osama Bin Laden. It may be any one of them. It may be all three. It may be none of them. It could be the work of a third party, unknown and unseen, with the goal of triggering yet another war where the blood of innocents will be bartered for greater wealth and influence. We do know that those who hijacked the planes went to a great deal of effort to steal identities of Middle Eastern Arabs and use them on their forged identifications.

What also know is that wars are often started with deceptions. Sun Tzu states in ``The Art Of War`` that all warfare is based on deception, and that rulers must cultivate the appearance of moral rightness in order to persuade their nations to fight.

When Hitler needed the support of the German people to invade Poland, he got it by staging a phony attack complete with dead bodies in Polish uniforms on the German side of the border. Recently declassified documents prove that Pearl Harbor wasn`t quite the total surprise it was claimed to be. And the story about stolen incubators that angered America into support of Desert Storm turned out to be a complete fiction created by Hill ∓ Knowlton, a public relations firm that has grown rich lying to people on behalf of governments, ANY governments, and whose executives have bragged, “We would represent Satan, if he paid us.”

Forget for a moment who was hurt in these attacks, and study who benefited.

A few weeks ago the USA was factionalized, her people justly critical of the policies of the government, questioning even if that government`s taxes were legal, questioning the support of Israel, questioning the handling of the Condit case, questioning Waco, questioning a self-critical nation demanding answers to some tough questions; answers the government did not have.

Now, the United States has been transformed. All criticism is gone, Criticism itself is now deemed to be, instead of the right of the people, an act of treason.

In the blink of an eye our nation has gone from being 266 million thinking citizens wanting to know if the government is right to 266 million conscripts willing to follow the government into war even if it is wrong. In the blink of an eye the people have stopped blaming the government for the worsening economy and shifted that blame to the “terrorists”.

The government of the United States has reasserted its power over the people. It is stronger, much stronger, because if this attack. And any educated student of history would know ahead of time that this strengthening of the US government`s power would be the result of horrendous attacks such as we have seen..

Israel, criticized by the world for its treatment of displaced Palestinians, now finds that criticism silenced. For the foreseeable future, Israel can do what it will with the Palestinians, immune from the censure of the world`s press, burying the Palestinian cause under the rubble of the World Trade Towers.

Unless he is still working for the CIA, Osama Bin Laden would not have wanted to cause any of the changes which have resulted from the horrific attacks on New York and Washington DC. The attacks made the US government stronger. Who benefits from that? That stronger US Government is now ready to wage war against the Arabs. Who benefits from that?

Who really gained from the attacks in New York and Washington DC? Whose political agendas were advanced by the attacks? That is where to look for the planners of the World Trade Towers attacks.

That we have been attacked is certain. But before we send out the cruise missiles to prove how big our national dick is, we had better make sure we are aimed at the right party, and not just being suckered into bombing someone that the real planners and perpetrators of the World Trade Center attack want to trick us into bombing. Because if, in the heat of the moment and the lust for vengeance we surrender our basic American principles such as demand for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, then we ourselves will have damaged America and what it stands for far more than those who attacked the World Trade Center could ever do themselves. What the hijackers could not knock down, we will have thrown down ourselves. If we do that, then those who planned and carried out the attacks against the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon will have won, even if we hunt them down and kill them.

Don`t be a slave to your beliefs about what a government could or could not do. History is full of governments that perpetrated monumental frauds upon their own people to trigger a war. Governments HAVE to commit fraud to start a war because most people, especially Americans, refuse to initiate a war of conquest. They have to have the illusion they have been attacked first.

5,000 lives are a lot. But to a government, ours or anyone else`s, it`s a tiny fraction of a percent to sacrifice to bring 100% of the nation under control, isn`t it? And if we go into a protracted war in Afghanistan, a region that has resisted invasion for the last 2000 years, we will soon long for the days when our dead could be counted in mere thousands.

The World Trade Towers cost a billion dollars. That`s 1/10th of a percent of what the Department Of Defense misplaced last year, and a drop in the barrel compared to the worth of the oil sitting under the lands we are about to attack.

Are you really so sure you have been told the truth about what is going on?

ree different direction at the same time).

Farzana: one more feather in your cap; this was excellent! If every woman could stand up for her beliefs the way you do, I think many of the problems plaguing the female gender would slowly diminish. Though of course, as you can well see, many egotistical men find it difficult to digest such notions. I love to see them simmer with anger and jealousy. More power to you!

Definitely my most favorite lines from you:

[``The burqa as laaj-sharam Muslim or the burqa as chaudhvin ka chaand romanticised Muslim? The dum pukht Muslim or the Dom Perignon Muslim? The Holy Quran Muslim or the holy cow Muslim? The openly jihadi Muslim or the closet fundamentalist Muslim? Your sugar won’t melt in my mouth Muslim or the lohe ke channe chabanewalla Muslim? The kamsin bibi Muslim or the come sin babe Muslim?``]

Keep it coming. We can`t stop showing them their real faces.

Khair-andaish

Kiran

Urstruly #144
Are the practices of cutting off hands of thieves and stoning adulteresses to death, part of local culture, Arabic culture or pure fundamental Islam?

Anny # 150

God! that was the bestest Sikh joke I`ve ever heard.

Anny # 150

God! that was the bestest Sikh joke I`ve ever heard.

Well I have one too.

A sikh was passing through a mangoe garden once, salivating, riding his horse. He looked around and couldnt see the watchman around. So he grabs a mangoe and tries to break it from the branch. The branch was too strong and he puts all his wieght to break the mango. While he was ding that the horse underneath him slid leaving him hanging with the mango. His bad luck that the watch man appears with his club at the moment, who asks him ``what the hell are you doing?``

``I fell from my horse`` replied Sikh.

Hamzad

re: article

There is no excuse for what the Sept. 11 terrorists did. I get the feeling that a lot of articles are getting posted by some specific Chowkies and being used to justify these kinds of attacks, in a very disturbing way. I read an article in the NY Times Magazine last week in which a journalist went to several cities to check the tenor of specific Muslim communities post WTC attack. (I agree with Farzana Versey`s question about why non Muslims are never asked these questions: MAJOR assumptions being made in these cases)I was disgusted by the comments of some Muslim students in Hamburg (basically unfazed), and the distinction madein Egypt nad the Occupied Territories that terrorism done in the name of Palestinian independence is ``martyrdom``. In my undergraduate years I worked in a Palestinian (multi-religious and racial) educational organization, and the idea of terrorism as a legitimate response to Israeli oppression was NEVER condoned and in fact, was never perceived as an option. It still isn`t. If we allow these kinds of anarchic, inexcusable excuses to continue, we can expect more massacres similar to the one in the Pakistani church.

It is one thing to view events within a historical and political context-and that context should be within reason. Bringing everything back to the Crusades, for God`s sake, is not very instructive in any real way unless it is used to point out how religion is manipulated by people across class and belief lines to justify land aquisition, inequity, etc. I have gotten over the Crusades, and I am sure most of us have, na? Those ``beards`` who havent, can come speak to me about a little matter concerning Adam and Eve, if you want to take ``it`` all the way back. And MY interpretation was that Eve was given a bum rap. Perhaps we women should make up for it...and I am sure that wouldn`t go over so well with the apologists...

regards

Farzana,

You are so confident about your description why the school was not built. Are you sure that was the important or only reason? Was this a government school?

Education of some Indian Muslim`s children and Mughal raj.

Some Chowk people have been saying how their children can not get education in India except in Muslim trust schools. This is very amzaing. In India there are two types - private schools and government run schools. Private schools are very exensive except religious private schools. Only people who can afford to go to expensive private schools go to there. Most very large percentage of schools in India is government run schools. Most Hindu and other children go to these government schools. Getting admitted to schools is getting very hard for all Indians.

Studbaker once said that people like him dont want to send their children to government schools because these children will be taught unislamic things. When it is so hard for people to find admissions anywhere, is this the attitude to help you?

I ask people who hate India so much. If like most Hindus you too are poor to send your children to expensive private schools, have you tried sending your children to government run schools? Have they kept you out? At least studbaker is honest. He is not interested in India, doenst want to be an Indian unless India was Mughal raj.

If you are Indian, please forget the thinking that this is Mughal raj. You are hurting yourself and your children by sitting out, cursing everyone in hatred, letting hatred in your heart blacken everything. For India to be part of you, you have to be part of India. Other than tall claims and bitter words, I see no posiitve action by these people. Just being bitter that you lost your hereditary Gaddi to rule over the dirty Hindus doesnt help. Only you make others return your anger with anger.

[Farzana: Could you please clarify whether Rafiq Zakaria was classifying you as a sinner or whether he was observing that, under Sharia, you would be classified a sinner.]

Undoubtedly the latter. Now whether he believes the shariat himself or not is a different thing– if he doesn’t and he is quoting it, then it is far worse.

We now know what he said. You blame others for twisting words, when you do it blatantly.

Mr. Zakaria was telling you that you will go to hell if Shariyat was followed even today. You twist the words to say that he told you that you will go to hell. Then you say ``it was worse`` if he told you that you will go to hell according to shariya if he doensn`t believe in sharia. He was showing you the absurdity of sharia which you are deperate to implement in India and indian Muslims.

Dont resort to lying.

Urstruly (Reply #: 123 )

I have heard a lot of arguments about Barelvis, wahabis etc. being the sole malaise of muslims. People tend to trace the source of muslims discontent/double-mindness to the root of sect. Nothing can be farther from truth or atleast distractionary.

Muslims r from various backgrounds, even the ones having same sect. Social behavour is mostly influenced by the socio-economic conditions they live in. A moderate muslim in Pakistan tend to be religious exteremist (in social sense) if he lives with his family in Europe, when faced with completely different social conditions. A muslim from conservative family background in Pakistan may be very moderate and secular if financially independent. Most of the muslims living in cities like Lahore and Karachi dont even know which sect they belong to (except knowing that they r sunnis or shias). Nobody knows of any one particular `aalim` or ulema to follow. People follow religion on their own. What was the last time, any religious decree given by any ulema was followed on large scale? this may happen in Saudi Arab, where ulema r on the royal pay roll, but not in pakistan, where even if ulema r paid, no body would listen to them.

The sole problem with Pakistan is that narrow-minded religion of Saudi type was being introduced by pakistani govt and religious parties for many reasons:

1. Military regimentation of poor youth for Kashmir and Afghnaistan front

2. Making west fearful of religious transformation of muslim nuclear power, and hence its enegagement with pakistan (read more aid). After Soviet union, paki army was not making any money (narcotics smuggling ban in effect)

3. Tunneling the civilian anger (coming out of lack of control over civilian affairs, and growing anarchy) towards common foreign enemies (Russia, USA, India). Very good way to avoid pressure against army to strengthen army`s rule.

Irnonically, most os these objectives r shared by other muslim dictaor countries except that Israel is the target rather than India.

Given a free and democratic society, where the freedom of thinking is genuinely and indegeniously developed (rather than living in some foreign free society), religion becomes the sole propriety of a person, rather than of some selecetd few of God.

How can we get religion rid of the dictatorial rule of selected few (such as in Iran and Saudi Arab)? I think any society free for some dissent can take its course to a genuine freedom and secular society in the long run. The path that Iran (and Turkey a long time ago) leads to very stable democracy, i believe.

urstruly,

another problem with good muslims is that they have their shaving priorities all wrong.... upside down, literally.

re: AnNy # 150

Now, where has this sense of humor been hidden all these days?!

Absolutely marvellous.

P.S. In service of political correctness, if you have any ``Hindu`` or other jokes tucked away, do share :)

Farzana #152:

Your reply reg Rafiq Zakaria has me totally confused. If I were to observe that, in certain Indian households, brides get burnt for insufficient dowry, would you hold that observation against me? If Rafiq Zakaria were to observe that, under Sharia, you would be a sinner if you did XYZ, why does it get your goat? Neither he nor I would be legitimizing the behavior by observing that it occurs.

Farzana # 152

“Maulana Azad was a liberal, but what did he get for it? He is still referred to as a “Muslim scholar” and was completely sidelined post-partition. “

I don’t think I will agree with that, but we can debate that forever.

”Not on paper, but in the lives of some it is a constant struggle. Do you think that those who are perceived as having a ‘distinctly Islamic’ identity are not looked at with suspicion? How easy is it for their children to get into government schools, except perhaps those run by Muslim Trusts? “

I would tend to disagree with this too, what about the schools run by the UP govt. in Muslim dominated area’s of Badoi, Muradabad etc. or the schools run by the MP govt. in old Bhopal. There are many more examples but you get the point.

“A new building is coming up in a nice locality. The owners of a well-known chain of department stores booked a few flats, paid the deposit to the builder. At some stage when they discovered that many of the residents were Muslim, they took the money back. And it was done blatantly, no other excuses offered. And the Muslims who will live there are well-to-do, educated and cosmopolitan (at least 3 doctors, who have Hindu relatives by marriage). We are talking 54 years after independence. “

That is very unfortunate! but I remember a Hindu classmate of mine mention in 19991 that his family was moving to Charmwood village south of Delhi and one of his neighbors would be Salma Sultan a popular newscaster on DD, it was a big selling point for the people selling the place . While we are deploring the “owners of a well-known chain of department stores” we should not fail to mention that Muslims do that as well. Take a look at the localities around Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi for example. Its exclusively Muslim. The Indian govt. gives you the right, the opportunity and the freedom to be a moron.

”unfortunately we become what we are perceived to be.”

You become what you want to be if you want it bad enough.

“Even if food constitutes a part of culture (for me it does!), then you will notice the disparities; “

Sure isn’t that great! I wouldn’t have it any other way. Take England for example they are probably a people united by a lousy traditional cuisine. Its bad and the same throughout that country.

“people often do not touch water in the houses of people from certain communities. It happens, whether you and I like it or not”

I think we have come a long way from the times of the untouchables, the Hindu chai wala and Muslim chai wala of pre independence India. We have a long way to go but at the same time we have achieved a lot. We have one of the most ambitious though largely unrealized plans to help the weaker sections of our society.

Regards,

Faruk.

anNy #150 Ha! Ha! That was the funniest sikh joke I have heard for some time. substitute ``taliban`` for ``sikh`` and I think the joke becomes the headlines we see nowadays.